Lost by by E. Liddell ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Author's Notes: Obviously, this takes place near the end of the Black Rose arc. I do not own the characters, yadda yadda yadda. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- I can't believe that I saw you today. It's been a long time, hasn't it, Tokiko? I wish I could have asked you how you've been, but you seemed preoccupied, and not just with that mouse- thing, either. Were you wearing *his* ring before? I must confess that I don't remember. But you must have. You must have intended to take part in the duels--how else could you have hoped to save him? And now you have the chance. Now you have the Rose Bride. Except that wasn't really you, was it? That was the other girl. Utena, or whatever her name is. It's so very difficult to remember. The memories blur and shift inside my head. Nothing since the Academy burned down is very clear, but that time, that handful of days when I believed . . . I believed . . . Do you remember? I really was like a computer, when we first met. You didn't even register on me as beautiful, when you first introduced yourself. In fact, I think that what flitted through my mind was phrased rather like: "Female--facial features quite symmetrical and balanced--probably attractive to the male of the species." I had no passion in me, back then. I'd subscribed to the religion of Science and Number, whose devotees have little interest in the rest of humanity. Numbers are beautiful, you know. They, and the physical laws that they help define, are the clear, pure thoughts that occupy the mind of God. They're like pieces of a crystalline jigsaw puzzle, perfect and beautiful and cold. And God, for whatever reason of His own, gave me the skill to assemble them, to perceive a few of His thoughts as they scintillate there in the emptiness. I'd become fascinated with numbers early in life, trying to escape a home life that I had rather not describe, even to you, and they'd carried me for over a decade. They said that I was a genius. They gave me prizes and scholarships and made me the youngest person ever to leave the university where I studied with a doctorate. I did not regard my numbers with passion, oh no, for they do not speak to those who are passionate about them, and so I was passionate about nothing, for there was nothing else in my life. Until I met you and Mamiya. If you hadn't invited me to your home, I think I might have continued to go on just as I was. But seeing you with your brother . . . something changed. I still can't say what. I'm glib with some kinds of words, but not those that describe emotions. That isn't my way. But when I saw you with Mamiya in the rose garden, I didn't think, *Appropriate display of female nurturing instincts.* Instead, I thought, *She is kind*. "She is kind." Something that had been frozen inside me since I was a little child began to stir then. I was absurdly old for first love--twenty, twenty-one, I don't remember exactly anymore, but far too old. It wasn't until then that End of the World displayed any real interest in me. Could it be my newly-developed passion that attracted *him*? I wonder. I've always thought it a little odd that I was the oldest person working on that project. All of the others, except for you and *he*, were mere adolescents. I thought at the time that it was because no one else would be insane enough to pour all of their energies into such an absurd undertaking, but now I've seen the power of youthful passion. Adults can't want things with that same total intense purity--they have too much to worry about, jobs and families and finances and the like--and children rarely want anything that's both important and unobtainable. They're too fickle in their passions to provide the energy that must be harnessed in order to open the path that must be traveled to reach the Power to Revolutionize the World. That's why I couldn't solve that equation, you know. That was the factor that I failed to take into account. It was because I became passionate about you that *he* snared me. If I hadn't wanted to please you--if I hadn't wanted to gain the power and save Mamiya for you--if I hadn't wanted to make you love me, instead of *him*, or else obliterate you from this world forever . . . I would never have . . . Did I . . . ? I remember lighting the candles that Mamiya used to burn down the building, and at the same time, I remember casting a burning match aside, onto the stack of papers that lay on the corner of my desk, and walking away . . . And then I met you outside, and you accosted me. For burning all of those boys to death. Or letting Mamiya do it. But I still don't entirely understand why you cared. Each and every one of those young men was under contract to *him*, and any of them would gladly have died to fulfill the terms of his contract. As they did. Their passion was needed to open the path. They were all part of the numbers, or at least, it's easiest for me to think of them that way. After all, do numbers scream? What gods do they call upon when they reach their last extremity? Do "x" and "y" feel pain, when you plug them into an equation like "x + y = 0"? I think not. It's so very difficult to remember anything that happened after that point. How many years did you go away, how many years ago did I start hiding under the alias of Souji Mikage? It can't have been that long. I'm still young, young enough to pass for the seventeen- or eighteen-year-old that I wasn't even when I first arrived here, and Mamiya is still young, and End of the World looks just exactly the same. And yet, I have these blurry recollections of another set of Duelists--maybe even two sets? Three?--who have passed through this school since the Arena was opened. Not this present set, certainly. The Kiryuus, Saionji, the Kaoru boy and that lesbian Arisugawa . . . I don't remember those others clearly, but I do know that they were not at all like the present Student Council. So perhaps it has been as much as five years, although I doubt it. And yet . . . Who was it that I saw in the hallway near the Chairman's Wing today? She looked very like you, but she was far, far too old . . . twenty years too old, easily. And her hair was too long. Still, if you had an older sister, or if your mother were still alive, I might think . . . No, that's nonsense. I saw you today, and you looked just the same as you always have. Or was that the other girl? Damnit! Trying to focus in on my memories is like trying to investigate that little square of open ground behind the Chairman's Wing of the main building . . . I know every other inch of the campus like the back of my hand, but every time I get anywhere near there, every time I get close enough to see the grave marker, something happens to distract me. If I don't have an urgent errand somewhere else just then, someone always seems to come along and manufacture one for me, like those two idiot professors and their paper. I don't know why I stay here and write things for those incompetents . . . but where else would I go? It isn't over yet. I haven't given Mamiya what he needs to be truly whole and well. He isn't bedridden anymore, but he is still such a sickly child . . . And I haven't captured your heart yet. Now that you're back, Tokiko, I'm not going to lose you again. I *will* bring death to the Rose Bride, and set Mamiya up in her place. Then everything will be all right again, won't it? Won't it? ------------------------------------------------------------------------- The End ------------------------------------------------------------------------- E. Liddell eliddell@puc.net http://ejlddll.virtualave.net --------------------------------------------------------- "One tacky fairytale artefact per expedition is about my limit." --------------------------------------------------------- UtenaCode(1.0) U:6- F:To+++Mk+:pOA D:CC X:*:a39++ M:f"Internal Clock, Municipal Orrery"