The Birth of Venus (Revolutionary Girl Utena, Anthy/Utena)
First of the yuri_challenge pieces.
Utena's one of the harder characters for me to write, interestingly enough, but I think I did a decent job with her here. And I really, really couldn't resist the prompt.
With any luck, I should have the Endless ficbits up tonight. Yay productivity.
Title: The Birth of Venus
Author: puella_nerdii
Fandom: Revolutionary Girl Utena
Pairing: Anthy/Utena
Rating: R
Warnings: N/A
Request: Anthy/Utena - Myth/Legend - "On the throne of many hues, immortal Aphrodite."
Summary: Utena thinks, talks, and dreams.
Utena’s been walking for a long time, that much she knows. Her feet feel puffy and swollen inside her-she looks down at the funny overlapping plates that cover her shoes and taper down to a point and tries to remember what they’re called. Something French. It probably doesn’t matter. Left foot, she reminds herself, tugging it out of the searing sands and setting it in front of her. Now the right. There’s so much sand in her right boot, wedged between the cracks in her toes, tiny rocks pushing into the cuts lining the soles of her feet. It stings, but she knows she has to keep walking, so she pushes the stinging to the very back of her mind.
The sun beating down on her is heavy and orange, like an overripe fruit, and it makes the air sticky and thick. A bead of sweat rolls down her cheek and lands on her armored shoulders with a hiss. She swallows hard, but her mouth won’t produce any more spit, so she moves her cheeks around like she’s chewing gum, because sometimes that works and if she doesn’t have water or moisture or anything soon, it won’t be good.
The armor is heavy. All the buckles and clamps and overlapping layers, and they’re all getting mirror-bright and white-hot. She thinks they might be why her skin feels rubbed and raw like one giant blister; they’re part of the reason, at the very least. She thinks about tugging off the steel collar covering her throat (the gorget, she remembers that part, although she’s not sure why), but touching it is like touching the sun, and her hands come away cherry red.
Utena throws her head back and laughs at the blinding blue sky, because she can’t really do anything else.
***
It’s habit now for Utena’s hand to clasp Himemiya’s before they sleep, and habit for Utena to look out at the stars and wonder aloud about anything and everything. (Akio says that stars do that to you. They make you see connections you never thought about before. That’s why all the ancient civilizations had constellations, because they knew how to find patterns in the sky.)
“Himemiya?”
“Yes, Utena-sama?”
“Don’t call me Utena-sama,” she sighs. She says it every night, hoping that today’s the day it’ll finally sink in…
“Yes, Utena-sama,” Himemiya says, and Utena mouths the familiar refrain along with her. Maybe it’s like a joke now. Maybe Himemiya’s trying to be funny. Stranger things have happened, right?
“Do you ever wonder what it’s like to be reborn?” she asks. It’s kind of a stupid question, because the whole point is that nobody knows, but it’s the kind of question that sounds right when it’s nighttime and you’re looking for pictures in the stars.
“What do you mean?” Himemiya asks softly.
“I don’t know. I guess-are you still the same person the second time around? Do you remember anything from who you were?”
“Flashes, perhaps,” Himemiya murmurs. “Like pieces of a dream.”
***
She thinks it’s a mirage, at first-one of those visions travelers in the desert get when they’re sick and crazy. Then she smells the salt in the air and decides that as far as illusions go, a deep blue sea is a pretty good one right now and it’s definitely better than the alternative, so she might as well run as fast as her aching legs can carry her.
And they do carry her, that’s the best part. She flies over the rolling white dunes, which shrink under her feet until it’s just a smooth stretch of brown sand between her and the waves rolling in. She runs, and her white armor peels away from her and hits the sand with wet thunking sounds; it’s hollow as snakeskin now, and looks just as shriveled and useless. She’s never been this light before. If she stretched out her arms and flapped them, she honestly thinks she could fly.
The ocean spray tickles her nose and kisses her cheeks, and maybe this is what it feels like to be born, to open your eyes and know that this is the world and you’re alive in it.
Standing there ankle-deep in the foaming surf, she understands why she needed the desert. Why she needed the scorching metal and the weight of the sun and the sand swarming over her body like flies.
Without these things, she’d never have realized just how beautiful the water is.
***
Utena props her chin up on her fists. “But do you think you can come back and be a better person? Maybe you don’t know that you remember, but part of you still remembers, and that part of you…stops you from doing stupid things sometimes, because it remembers how it ended the first time around and it doesn’t want to do that again. Something like that.”
It takes her a while to respond. “That’s possible.”
“I guess…I don’t know what the point of it would be, if you didn’t learn anything. If you just kept doing the same things over and over again. If you get a second chance, you’re supposed to do better the second time, right?”
“It’s-an interesting thing to ask, Utena-sama.” If it were daytime and they were face-to-face, Himemiya would hide behind her glasses now. She has this trick with them where she can make them catch the light so it’s impossible to see her eyes through the glare on her lenses. Utena hates it when she does that.
She flops on her stomach. “I saw a bird fly out in the middle of the road this morning, and it hit the windshield of a car going by. And then in the afternoon, there was a different bird flying in the middle of the road. A car hit that one, too. So I wondered if it knew what had happened to the first one, or if it knew and just didn’t care, or if it just couldn’t stop itself from flying into danger even if it did know. Then I thought about what would happen if the birds came back to life, and if they’d end up doing it all over again. Is that silly?”
“No,” Himemiya says. “But I think they would. People only think they learn things. But there are never any real beginnings. Only old patterns starting over.”
There’s a response to that, Utena knows, but she doesn’t know what that response is supposed to be. “Himemiya…”
“Rebirth is an illusion,” she says simply.
“Why do you think that?”
Himemiya’s hand squeezes hers for just an instant, then retreats. “It’s just something I thought of. I don’t know if it’s right or not.”
“Oh.” She pauses. “Are you sure? Um…are you upset? Did I say something wrong?”
“No.” Himemiya’s voice is soothing, like a lullaby. “Go to sleep.”
***
Then a low chiming fills the air, and the water carries the pulsing hum straight to Utena’s bones. The waves falter, shrink, and grow still.
Is the ocean dying? she wonders. No, that’s not it. It’s preparing. It’s getting ready for something. She doesn’t know what that something is, but she has a feeling that she will soon. The swell of the music matches the beating of her heart. Lines of radiance unfurl before her eyes, twisting and twining together to form a luminous whole.
The water rises to meet the convergence of light, and the place of their joining becomes too bright for any eyes to bear. Squinting, Utena thinks she can make out a gently scalloped shape bubbling from the foam. The sea before her parts then, and the waves roar in time with the music. She wants to dance. She hasn’t danced since she was five and giddy at her birthday party from eating too much ice cream, but the rhythm drags at her body, tells it to show its appreciation at what it’s about to witness.
The light fades enough for her to see a giant seashell, colored a delicate pink that reminds her of a newborn baby’s blush, suspended on a bed of foam. A woman stands in the shell, her toes hanging over its white-rimmed lip. It’s almost wrong to call her a woman, Utena realizes as she traces the curves of her legs and hips and breasts with her eyes, because no woman glows like that, no woman that she’s met has such a stare, as though she’s looking right through Utena’s skin and seeing straight to her heart. The woman-“Goddess,” Utena whispers, and knows her description is fitting-has Himemiya’s dark glossy skin and Himemiya’s soft violet hair, but Utena’s never seen Himemiya like this: serene, majestic, and herself.
Utena stumbles over to the floating shell, with the water gently rippling around her ankles and murmuring encouragement as she walks forward, and drops to her knees right there in the shallows before the goddess Himemiya has become (or the goddess she always was, maybe, if Utena had thought to look). The beating of her heart drowns out the gentle lap of the water against the shore. Then fingers, searing as the desert heat but without its weight, because they’re made of light, caress her cheek and leave a trail of heat behind before Himemiya’s hand catches her under her chin and tilts her head up, up so she’s staring right at the glory pooling behind the goddess’s head. And she doesn’t know why that makes her cry, but she remembers a story about a blind man who wandered for years before the gods restored his sight and thinks that might have something to do with it.
Himemiya raises her hands, lifts Utena from the ocean, and rests her inside the shell, still on her knees. It’s warm, she realizes-the shell pulses under her gently, like it’s agreeing with her. She slides her hands up the back of the goddess’s thighs and presses her cheek against the flesh that’s more than flesh, the…there are words for it, probably, but she can’t think of what they are; the heavenly melodies bursting out from wherever she’s touching Himemiya drown out all her thoughts. And her mind isn’t really sure what to do next, but something in her body remembers and responds, and that something tells her hands and mouth where they need to go, how to use the pads of her fingers and the tip of her tongue to make her goddess exult to the heavens. Himemiya smiles down at her and places her hand over Utena’s heart, pressing her down so her back rests against the shell’s spongy pink lining. Then her hands trace intricate symbols on the inside of Utena’s thighs, designs of heat and light and sound, and something radiant slips inside her and fills her up just right-she arches her back as the warmth nudges against the spot that’s just right and there and yes…yes, my holy woman, my prophet, my goddess.
The shell cradles them and rocks gently from side to side in the water with the passion of their joining.
***
“Utena-sama?”
“What?”
“…nothing.” Himemiya turns to the side then, like she always does right before she goes to sleep. Utena stares up at the ceiling and thinks about cycles and patterns and birth before her brain gets too tired to continue and collapses in exhaustion.
Utena has a strange dream that night. When she wakes up gasping from it with the image of the sun and a shell burning brightly in the back of her head, she looks over to tell Himemiya, but Himemiya’s not there. She talks to Akio about it the next morning and he smiles at her like he always does and says that dreams are repeated patterns in the collective unconscious and people try to apply meaning to them but really it’s just a collection of scattered images linked together by a narrative that makes no sense. Utena nods as she sips her tea, because that sounds right.
Still, she wonders if there might be more to it than that.
Utena's one of the harder characters for me to write, interestingly enough, but I think I did a decent job with her here. And I really, really couldn't resist the prompt.
With any luck, I should have the Endless ficbits up tonight. Yay productivity.
Title: The Birth of Venus
Author: puella_nerdii
Fandom: Revolutionary Girl Utena
Pairing: Anthy/Utena
Rating: R
Warnings: N/A
Request: Anthy/Utena - Myth/Legend - "On the throne of many hues, immortal Aphrodite."
Summary: Utena thinks, talks, and dreams.
Utena’s been walking for a long time, that much she knows. Her feet feel puffy and swollen inside her-she looks down at the funny overlapping plates that cover her shoes and taper down to a point and tries to remember what they’re called. Something French. It probably doesn’t matter. Left foot, she reminds herself, tugging it out of the searing sands and setting it in front of her. Now the right. There’s so much sand in her right boot, wedged between the cracks in her toes, tiny rocks pushing into the cuts lining the soles of her feet. It stings, but she knows she has to keep walking, so she pushes the stinging to the very back of her mind.
The sun beating down on her is heavy and orange, like an overripe fruit, and it makes the air sticky and thick. A bead of sweat rolls down her cheek and lands on her armored shoulders with a hiss. She swallows hard, but her mouth won’t produce any more spit, so she moves her cheeks around like she’s chewing gum, because sometimes that works and if she doesn’t have water or moisture or anything soon, it won’t be good.
The armor is heavy. All the buckles and clamps and overlapping layers, and they’re all getting mirror-bright and white-hot. She thinks they might be why her skin feels rubbed and raw like one giant blister; they’re part of the reason, at the very least. She thinks about tugging off the steel collar covering her throat (the gorget, she remembers that part, although she’s not sure why), but touching it is like touching the sun, and her hands come away cherry red.
Utena throws her head back and laughs at the blinding blue sky, because she can’t really do anything else.
***
It’s habit now for Utena’s hand to clasp Himemiya’s before they sleep, and habit for Utena to look out at the stars and wonder aloud about anything and everything. (Akio says that stars do that to you. They make you see connections you never thought about before. That’s why all the ancient civilizations had constellations, because they knew how to find patterns in the sky.)
“Himemiya?”
“Yes, Utena-sama?”
“Don’t call me Utena-sama,” she sighs. She says it every night, hoping that today’s the day it’ll finally sink in…
“Yes, Utena-sama,” Himemiya says, and Utena mouths the familiar refrain along with her. Maybe it’s like a joke now. Maybe Himemiya’s trying to be funny. Stranger things have happened, right?
“Do you ever wonder what it’s like to be reborn?” she asks. It’s kind of a stupid question, because the whole point is that nobody knows, but it’s the kind of question that sounds right when it’s nighttime and you’re looking for pictures in the stars.
“What do you mean?” Himemiya asks softly.
“I don’t know. I guess-are you still the same person the second time around? Do you remember anything from who you were?”
“Flashes, perhaps,” Himemiya murmurs. “Like pieces of a dream.”
***
She thinks it’s a mirage, at first-one of those visions travelers in the desert get when they’re sick and crazy. Then she smells the salt in the air and decides that as far as illusions go, a deep blue sea is a pretty good one right now and it’s definitely better than the alternative, so she might as well run as fast as her aching legs can carry her.
And they do carry her, that’s the best part. She flies over the rolling white dunes, which shrink under her feet until it’s just a smooth stretch of brown sand between her and the waves rolling in. She runs, and her white armor peels away from her and hits the sand with wet thunking sounds; it’s hollow as snakeskin now, and looks just as shriveled and useless. She’s never been this light before. If she stretched out her arms and flapped them, she honestly thinks she could fly.
The ocean spray tickles her nose and kisses her cheeks, and maybe this is what it feels like to be born, to open your eyes and know that this is the world and you’re alive in it.
Standing there ankle-deep in the foaming surf, she understands why she needed the desert. Why she needed the scorching metal and the weight of the sun and the sand swarming over her body like flies.
Without these things, she’d never have realized just how beautiful the water is.
***
Utena props her chin up on her fists. “But do you think you can come back and be a better person? Maybe you don’t know that you remember, but part of you still remembers, and that part of you…stops you from doing stupid things sometimes, because it remembers how it ended the first time around and it doesn’t want to do that again. Something like that.”
It takes her a while to respond. “That’s possible.”
“I guess…I don’t know what the point of it would be, if you didn’t learn anything. If you just kept doing the same things over and over again. If you get a second chance, you’re supposed to do better the second time, right?”
“It’s-an interesting thing to ask, Utena-sama.” If it were daytime and they were face-to-face, Himemiya would hide behind her glasses now. She has this trick with them where she can make them catch the light so it’s impossible to see her eyes through the glare on her lenses. Utena hates it when she does that.
She flops on her stomach. “I saw a bird fly out in the middle of the road this morning, and it hit the windshield of a car going by. And then in the afternoon, there was a different bird flying in the middle of the road. A car hit that one, too. So I wondered if it knew what had happened to the first one, or if it knew and just didn’t care, or if it just couldn’t stop itself from flying into danger even if it did know. Then I thought about what would happen if the birds came back to life, and if they’d end up doing it all over again. Is that silly?”
“No,” Himemiya says. “But I think they would. People only think they learn things. But there are never any real beginnings. Only old patterns starting over.”
There’s a response to that, Utena knows, but she doesn’t know what that response is supposed to be. “Himemiya…”
“Rebirth is an illusion,” she says simply.
“Why do you think that?”
Himemiya’s hand squeezes hers for just an instant, then retreats. “It’s just something I thought of. I don’t know if it’s right or not.”
“Oh.” She pauses. “Are you sure? Um…are you upset? Did I say something wrong?”
“No.” Himemiya’s voice is soothing, like a lullaby. “Go to sleep.”
***
Then a low chiming fills the air, and the water carries the pulsing hum straight to Utena’s bones. The waves falter, shrink, and grow still.
Is the ocean dying? she wonders. No, that’s not it. It’s preparing. It’s getting ready for something. She doesn’t know what that something is, but she has a feeling that she will soon. The swell of the music matches the beating of her heart. Lines of radiance unfurl before her eyes, twisting and twining together to form a luminous whole.
The water rises to meet the convergence of light, and the place of their joining becomes too bright for any eyes to bear. Squinting, Utena thinks she can make out a gently scalloped shape bubbling from the foam. The sea before her parts then, and the waves roar in time with the music. She wants to dance. She hasn’t danced since she was five and giddy at her birthday party from eating too much ice cream, but the rhythm drags at her body, tells it to show its appreciation at what it’s about to witness.
The light fades enough for her to see a giant seashell, colored a delicate pink that reminds her of a newborn baby’s blush, suspended on a bed of foam. A woman stands in the shell, her toes hanging over its white-rimmed lip. It’s almost wrong to call her a woman, Utena realizes as she traces the curves of her legs and hips and breasts with her eyes, because no woman glows like that, no woman that she’s met has such a stare, as though she’s looking right through Utena’s skin and seeing straight to her heart. The woman-“Goddess,” Utena whispers, and knows her description is fitting-has Himemiya’s dark glossy skin and Himemiya’s soft violet hair, but Utena’s never seen Himemiya like this: serene, majestic, and herself.
Utena stumbles over to the floating shell, with the water gently rippling around her ankles and murmuring encouragement as she walks forward, and drops to her knees right there in the shallows before the goddess Himemiya has become (or the goddess she always was, maybe, if Utena had thought to look). The beating of her heart drowns out the gentle lap of the water against the shore. Then fingers, searing as the desert heat but without its weight, because they’re made of light, caress her cheek and leave a trail of heat behind before Himemiya’s hand catches her under her chin and tilts her head up, up so she’s staring right at the glory pooling behind the goddess’s head. And she doesn’t know why that makes her cry, but she remembers a story about a blind man who wandered for years before the gods restored his sight and thinks that might have something to do with it.
Himemiya raises her hands, lifts Utena from the ocean, and rests her inside the shell, still on her knees. It’s warm, she realizes-the shell pulses under her gently, like it’s agreeing with her. She slides her hands up the back of the goddess’s thighs and presses her cheek against the flesh that’s more than flesh, the…there are words for it, probably, but she can’t think of what they are; the heavenly melodies bursting out from wherever she’s touching Himemiya drown out all her thoughts. And her mind isn’t really sure what to do next, but something in her body remembers and responds, and that something tells her hands and mouth where they need to go, how to use the pads of her fingers and the tip of her tongue to make her goddess exult to the heavens. Himemiya smiles down at her and places her hand over Utena’s heart, pressing her down so her back rests against the shell’s spongy pink lining. Then her hands trace intricate symbols on the inside of Utena’s thighs, designs of heat and light and sound, and something radiant slips inside her and fills her up just right-she arches her back as the warmth nudges against the spot that’s just right and there and yes…yes, my holy woman, my prophet, my goddess.
The shell cradles them and rocks gently from side to side in the water with the passion of their joining.
***
“Utena-sama?”
“What?”
“…nothing.” Himemiya turns to the side then, like she always does right before she goes to sleep. Utena stares up at the ceiling and thinks about cycles and patterns and birth before her brain gets too tired to continue and collapses in exhaustion.
Utena has a strange dream that night. When she wakes up gasping from it with the image of the sun and a shell burning brightly in the back of her head, she looks over to tell Himemiya, but Himemiya’s not there. She talks to Akio about it the next morning and he smiles at her like he always does and says that dreams are repeated patterns in the collective unconscious and people try to apply meaning to them but really it’s just a collection of scattered images linked together by a narrative that makes no sense. Utena nods as she sips her tea, because that sounds right.
Still, she wonders if there might be more to it than that.