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Title: Anther
Author: ebonbird (ebonbird@hotmail.com)
Summary:  Suppose, Mikage showed up earlier in the games? 

Feedback makes my typing hands happy.  Please, e-me with what
you think (ebonbird@hotmail.com).

May 22, 2001

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Saionji has won the Rose Bride. 

Himemeya Anthy is the Rose Bride.  Her full red skirts flare around her.
Her waist is so small, so sweet, so slender.  She wears glasses.  They
make her look studious. But that's not quite true, because the glow that
surrounded her when she lay back and Mikage bent over her and
unsheathed the sword from her delicate breast is the glow of
diamonds on fire and dust motes twinkling in a shaft of sunlight;
white breakers at afternoon; headlights - bright and cool, and
vibrant and powerful; smiles and secrets all around them.  

That glow is reflected in the sparkle over her eyes.  He can't see
his Anthy.  He can't see her, the prize - Anthy liberated. 

The Victor holds the sword in a hand unused to the pommel.  The scent
of roses is strong. That, and the odor of sweat and saliva.  The
Victor, Saionji, wipes his cheek.  There is spit on his face.  With
the back of his sword hand he wipes his upper lip.  Mucous. 

He is panting.  He's won. 

Anthy watches him.  She wears a red gown he's never seen before.
The top of it looks like a student council uniform, but her slender,
shapely arms are bare.  Her slim hands are crossed in front of her,
almost lost in the folds of skirts.  Her breasts are wondrous, and
that face above her narrow shoulders with the enormous eyes
that stared and stared at him when he trained hard and harder at
swordplay and fencing. 

Help me, they said, while Juri and Touga passed her back and forth
between them.  She carried their books, walked a step behind them.
Why is she always with either one of you? he'd asked. And Touga
told him that it was a game that he and Juri, just the two of them,
shared, and Anthy played along. 

He received a rose signet from "The End of the Worlds". And he
remembered the rumors.  Slut.  Whore.  Low self-esteem.  She likes
duelists.  School champion can do whatever he wants with her... but
dueling at Ohtori was the secret of secrets. 

Before that, Saionji learned roses from Anthy. Or he tried to.  He
fell into the cadence of her speech, the drib of water out of the
watering can, the smells of the fertilizer, and the snip of her
pruning sheers.  She only wanted to spend time with her garden,
really.  She glowed there.  She even initiated conversation there,
but one day she didn't meet him there for lunch - they'd made the
habit - and when he went to find her, she was in the company of Mikage. 

"I am done with roses," she told him, but her great green eyes had
begged him for... what? Something. 

Help me, Saionji-san, her eyes said, when she shadowed Souji Mikage
for that one week and, he never felt the sun's rays on his face
though the sky was clear and it never rained after, he came upon
the glass dome of the greenhouse, lit up long after curfew. 

He knocked before entering, though he knew that only Anthy would
be there, could be there that late.  She'd met his stare head-on,
but her cheeks had been tear-stained.  She was snipping rose-blooms
off at the stem. "Why?" he'd breathed. 

"Mikage-sama says I am done with all roses until I make him a black
one." 

I'll kill him, kill him, he swore, said it aloud, and Anthy
had turned her narrow back to him.  He'd seen her hair, long and
darker than dusk, with purple dusk-light in it, and trailed halfway
down her back and the ends were mangled.  That was when he noticed
the hair on the ground.  It was Anthy's by the color.  By its miraculous
length, it must have fallen to her ankles unbound. 

Saionji roared at her, stood over her, and made her cower with
his height and his voice and his wavy, luxuriant hair, the envy
of all the girls of Ohtori Academy, and some of the boys, crackled
with static and fury. Anthy bowed, bent sideways from him.  Her shoulders curved towards
one another, and she averted her gaze.  Her eyelashes were the longest
he'd ever seen. 

"Do you love him?  Do you want this?" 

"I am the Rose Bride," she'd murmured.  "There's no use in wanting or
loving anyone or anything." 

He made Touga tell him about the duels. And Touga added that
Anthy had been his fiancee, and then Juri's depending on who won
what particular bout. 

"You mean, if you told her to strip naked and run through the
volleyball court, she'd do it?" 

"How predictably perverse, Saionji," Touga had chuckled. "I suppose if
it occurred to her fiancee - that would have been me the week before
last - yes." 

Those deep green eyes are shuttered.  Bells are ringing.  Bells
have been ringing.  They ring no longer.  There is no silence because
he's breathing so hard.  He can't catch his breath.  She won't look
at him, the Victor. 

"Don't fear me, Anthy." Saionji had whispered as she shrank from his
rage in the glass rose cage.  He'd fallen to his knees before her,
and gathered up her butchered hair and the roses caught in the
strands stabbed him with thorns though Anthy had snipped them at
the base of the blooms. 

He did it.  He freed her. 

"I did it, Anthy," Saionji breathes, then proclaims: "Mikage'll never 
hurt you again." 

Impassive that oval shaped face. The expression gives nothing away,
just like the old lady hairstyle of Anthy's gave nothing of the amazing
length and body of her hair away, but it's clear all the same, how happy
and relieved she is. 

"No one," grits Saionji, "No one will ever hurt you again."  He is
surprised by his victory.  He hurts too much to move.  If he moves,
he'll fall over, and he doesn't want to look weak in front of Anthy. 

"I am your Rose Bride," Anthy says. 

Then, she floats to him.  She floats, she seems to, and her skirts
whisper and wave.  She lifts her hand to his arm, lowers his arm in
its dark blue tunic and draws it down.  He's been holding it up. 
No girl at Ohtori Academy has skin like Anthy's.  It's so dark,
and flawless next to his.  Her hand is as soft as it looks. 
Saionji's eyes flutter shut at her touch. 

Tired, exhausted, he leans his sinewey weight on Anthy's shoulder.
She holds him close around his waist, feeling the sweaty, close-weaved
cotton. 

Does he stink? he wonders, ashamed.  He doesn't care.  Anthy smells
of roses, roses, roses and roses... 

He wraps one arm around her, inhaling.  She's been sweating.  She
was frightened, but over it all, roses. 

She's speaking to him... "Hmmm?" he says. 

"... the sword, Saionji-sempai.  You must sheathe it, please." 

She takes his hand from where it is at her waist.  Pulls at it until
he lets it go - his hand goes up to her chest, between Her red covered
breasts... 

"Here," Anthy says.  But she's glowing.  Her teeth transparent
around their smooth edges, and dark at their centers.  She's glowing.
They both are: and he dips her, and he presses the tip of the sword
against her chest, between her breasts. Worried, he furrows his brow
at her.  He trusts her.  She knows things.  Knows him.  His
sweat-soaked hair falls straight over his face. 

"Anthy," he breathes.  "I can't." 

"Saionji-sempai, you must." 

His eyes are full of questions.  He's his real age, stripped of all
confidence and certainty - seventeen. 

She nods.  She's so beautiful.  Her lips are the same color as her skin.
The exact color.  Her lips are so finely drawn that unless she is talking
he cannot see where they end and the skin begins unless he's as close to
her as he is now.  Her lips are small and full.  They part. 

She tightens in his arms, trembles.  She is in pain.  Saionji screams.
The sword is sunk partway in her chest.  There is no blood.  The sword
wants to sink in, in, and he grabs hold of pommel and resists. 

Anthy gasps.  From far away, when Mikage drew the sword from
Anthy's chest it looked pleasurable.  For Mikage anyway.  Anthy
seemed indifferent.  From up close, from the shaking in his arms
and the acrid smell of fear rolling off her, mingling with the scent
of roses, Saionji knows it hurts.  Though there is no blood.  Though
as the Rose Bride, she has sheathed this sword a dozen (hundreds of
dozens) of times. 

He won't do it.  He won't hurt Anthy this way. 

Gritting his teeth, growling, Saionji summons strengths and pulls back
on the pommel.  Dios light balls and bells around them, splashing down
the length of the sword. Saionji pulls up on the sword.  It struggles
in his grip like a live thing, like lightning, and his fingers tingle
and hurt and he almost lets the sword go.  

Bells are ringing.  No.  Anthy's screaming. 

Anthy screams and screams and screams and his face torqued in fear
and anguish, Saionji flows with the blaze and stabs her through. 



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