I've done a bit of crying in my career. More, recently. Recently, it seems, I could fill oceans with my tears, and I suppose the strangest thing about that, other than the fact that I've never been much of a crier, is that I'm not exactly sure why. There's an emptiness, and a tickling at the back of my mind that says in a frantic voice, "There is something you are assuredly forgetting!" I am helpless to control it. I don't know how to amend it. When I travel down this path of thinking, it always starts tears in my eyes. They burn, like the hate of an onion. I wouldn't wipe them away but for I cannot see where I sit with the discomfort of it. They amass even now, ready to pounce upon my soul. Somehow they makes me feel better, these cries of woe, begging for mercy from some unknown power. They vent the helplessness, the emotions that I can get out no other way. The tears flow with purpose, wetting my face with my own misery. They're heaving sobs, racking and wailing and shrieking against fate, endless. They expound upon each other, adding new variations in an eternal song of woe. Now louder, now softer, they are without end for the misery in the center of me will never end. I seek something I will not find, for what I seek is nameless, without identity. I am a blind man seeking a painting, a deaf man seeking a song. My concern is futile, and concern is the only effort for I do not know where to begin on my search for everything and nothing. I am the core of an apple, my outsides eaten away to leave only my innards, writhing without purpose. And so I cry, for there is nothing more gratifying, as I will never find what I need, and I have not the resolve to seek death. I can no longer sit straight, for what is the shame in having my head in the dirt? Embarrassment is a foul joke in comparison to the pain eating at my insides like a behemoth parasite, greedily slurping at the blood that boils with angst. My hair rests atop the dirt like a corpse waiting be buried. I can almost feel the ground reaching up to take me in its arms and gleefully suffocate me. I would not struggle. I can feel small rocks digging into the nape of my neck. They are simply a reminder of who I am, the pain of the emptiness I exist with. It seems as though it started only recently, but the hurt of the soul is so excruciating it seems it has been forever. I can't recall being without this pain. I have been injured before, bathing in my own blood, but physical pain seems so much easier than this, this -- Sobbing joins mine. Shock is a petty emotion swallowed by the pain. Compassion makes a struggle. The two spar briefly as I wonder what I have become, reduced to this mere package for pain. My eyes slowly open. I am not sure if the action is of my accord or not. Adorned by the sunlight is the obsession for which I have spent my life in search. Tears flow freely down her dark face as she searches my eyes desperately. In a blink she has dropped down and sits by my waist, her sobs beginning to shake her person. I stare up at her, tears streaming down my face, unable to move. She shifts forward, resting her weight on her palms as she looms over me, beginning to block the sunlight. Her face hovers over mine. I wonder if she is going to kiss me. I would not object. She instead shifts her weight across me and nestles her chin atop my opposite shoulder. She gently rests the whole of her weight upon me -- not very much. It's a pleasant sensation, a faint struggle to breathe. My hands reach up to encircle her waist. She whispers into my ear, a soft whisper that lingers upon the flesh. "Utena-sama." I try on a slight smile. It's a strange feeling. "Himemiya." Her fingers play across my cheek, gently, so gently I begin to wonder if she is teasing me. Her whispers caress my neck. "Don't cry, Utena-sama. It hurts me when you're sad." My only response is to clutch her tighter against me, to whisper her name, in amazement at being able to say it. My eyes are closed, but blinded with her sunlight. She fends the darkness off with an easy grace, fills the emptiness with her weight. We could talk, could fill the perfect silence with words about how much we have missed each other, about all we have endured until this moment. And the words would be true. But they would not ring with utter honesty, they would not penetrate the bones, and they would be utter lies in comparison with the truth of this embrace. How could I ever have forgotten this? Would that I could melt, to feel her in my bones, to breathe her breath, to taste her soul upon wanton lips. This embrace is nothing. And yet it is everything. Delightful little fires burn where our skin touches. Each breath fills me with her scent, her essence. She nestles against my neck, pressing soft, searing kisses there. A sweet sigh fills my lungs, tasting of her. "Ne, Himemiya?" "Hai, Utena-sama?" I pause to melt as she places a particularly poignant kiss. Losing only a slight bit of control, my words come as a murmur. "Aishiteru." She pauses. I can feel her shift of weight and thus am not surprised when her piercing eyes come into view. A gentle haze fill them, languid but purposeful. "Aishiteru, Utena-sama." I can taste her sincerity in the kiss. -end shortfic- Shoujo Kakumei Utena doesn't belong to me. Big surprise there, huh? This is a pleasant little piece of shoujoai fluff. Utena has no fanservice whatsoever, and that miffs me just a bit. No harm meant. It's important that you know "aishiteru" means "I love you", in case you don't. And there's Ferchan's helpful lesson for the day. "Honest is easy. Fiction's where genius lies." - Guster, Demons