A/N: I was completely positive that "Thorns" was a one-shot. I still am, which is why I am making this a separate story. "Thorns" is complete in and of itself. But as I sat down at my computer to write the 10th chapter of "The Energy of Hidden Emotions" I found myself thinking... How would Utena cope with what had happened to her? Even more than that I wondered, even as Utena does, "Why, Anthy?"
Go Read Thorns First!
Weeping Rose
I could not stop thinking of that day.
A rose on a thorny stem being drawn across my belly, making me squirm, being pulled across my cotton underwear, the thorns catching lightly on the material. Stroking across my bare inner thigh causing fear, pain, and pleasure to collide in a way that scares me to my bones and coats my underwear in arousal.
After I refused Anthy's offer to "end our engagement," and thereby allow me to leave the Tournament, I'd gone down on my knee to give her my cheesy yet heartfelt speech wherein I promised too much of myself.
Anthy hadn't said anything at all, just stared at me with a look in her eye that encompassed shock, hope, and sorrow together all at once. With nothing more to say, I had stood up and as I did, she reached for me, her face drawing near to kiss me, or hug me, or touch me in some way. But any touch from her at all was too much and I had reared my head away.
"No Anthy, not that."
She had taken a step back from me, her face twitching as she tried to hold back tears. I had to get away. I had wanted to pull her toward me, the comfort her, to rain down kisses on her hair, but I also remembered
murmuring "no" "stop" and "please" even as I cannot contain my gasps of pleasure, telling her "I do not consent," as she coats my lips in my own cum and blood.
I fled our room.
I'd passed the empty halls full of doorways that led to empty rooms and stridden out the front door of the East Dormitory. I didn't know where I was going, only that I needed to go somewhere that did not remind me of Anthy.
I'd found myself standing in front of Wakaba's door. I had knocked, then waited. Nobody came to the door, not even her roommate. After a while I had sighed, my shoulders slumping, and turned to leave.
"Utena!" I'd heard the shout and barely had time to brace myself for the slight figure of my best friend colliding against me. Her arms had wrapped around me from behind and squeezed me in a hug more powerful than you'd expect from a girl her size. Finally she'd let go, and I'd turned to look at her. She had been such good site to my eyes, my Onion Princess, that I could not help but scoop her up in a bear hug of my own.
"Utena! It's so good to see you, I was just thinking about you, did you know that there are boys in your old room? I went there on accident the other day, you know from habit even though you haven't lived there in a long time and I knocked on the door and boys opened the door. I was so surprised because..."
It had been so good to hear her voice that I found myself shuddering with relief and then I was crying, sobbing even, in Wakaba's surprised arms.
"Hey," I'd heard her say, her arms stroking my back soothingly, "Could you make yourself absent for a little while?" I'd look up and seen her roommate standing awkwardly a couple feet away. She had nodded then said, "Can I grab my books first? I was planning on studying in the Library anyway."
I had stood at the door and attempted to control my sobs as Wakaba and I waited outside of her room for her roommate to finish collecting her things. As she left their room, she had placed an arm on my shoulder and looked at me seriously. "I don't know what's wrong, but something I do when I'm feeling like nothing will ever be right is think, well, at least it's not the end of the world."
I can't help it. I laughed. I had started laughing so hard that tears were falling down my cheeks, and I was holding my belly. Wakaba's roommate (whose name I never really got around to learning) had shrugged and looked at Wakaba.
"Well, I didn't think that was so funny."
Wakaba shrugged as well, then taken my arm and drawn me into the room with her. By then I was hiccupping, so Wakaba poured me some water in a glass cup from her bathroom, then, on second thought, put a tea kettle on to boil on her hotplate.
She'd patted the bed beside her.
And then, I couldn't tell her anything. I had tried. I had been so tempted to spill everything: the duels, my engagement to Anthy, what she had done to me, how I'd come in her arms and loved her and kissed her even after all she had done, how I didn't know whether to love her or hate her now, how both emotions warred inside me, the very thought of her filling me with dread and heat.
But Wakaba was innocent. I could not involve her in this, as I had been involved so over my head. If I told Wakaba what had happened... somehow I knew that it would lead to a rose signet on her finger and a sword in her hand. And also, I wanted somebody on the outside, somebody who was normal and didn't know about the dark undercurrents that pervaded our school. I could not tell her any of it without telling it all.
So instead I just cried. She'd pulled my head into her lap and stroked her fingers through my hair, making soothing nurturing sounds, telling me, "It’s all right. It will be fine. You'll be OK. It's all right."
It was exactly the same thing that I had murmured to Anthy when she came, and came apart in my arms, and that just made me cry all the harder. The tea kettle had begun to sing. Wakaba had gently replaced her lab for a pillow under my head, then kissed my forehead and gone out of my sight. I pulled myself into a fetal position and rocked myself back and forth. I didn't have any more tears left to cry.
Then Wakaba had come back. She had a big mug in one hand, and a box of tissues in the other. I sat up, took the tissues and blew my nose, once, twice, three times. Then I took the mug from her. It was hot chocolate. Just smelling it had made a small smile come to my lips.
As I sipped the chocolate, Wakaba had looked at me, her head bent to one side in silent reflection. Finally she spoke. "Utena, I don't know what has happened to you. I suspect some things, but I hope to god none of them are true. I wish you would tell me what's up, because I want to help you. But I'm not going to press. I just," and now her voice had hitched. I had barely had enough time to set my mug of hot chocolate down before she had launched herself into my arms. "I love you and I want you to be happy, and you seem so far away sometimes and you won't tell me a thing!"
So now I was comforting someone again, when I had thought I needed to be comforted. Somehow, it felt good.
Wakaba had slowly detached herself from me, blushing a bit. "I'm sorry," she said, "I'm supposed to taking care of you."
I found myself smiling, a real smile. "It's OK, Wakaba." I kissed the top of her onion forehead. "I love you too. I'm sorry I've been away lately. I'm going to try to be around more often. I want to be."
Even now I smiled to think about what a good friend Wakaba was. Chocolate and hugs were exactly what I needed at that moment. I had gone back to the dorm room that Anthy and I shared without any of the answers I needed. But I felt better.
Now it was half a week later. I was laying on my bed with my face to the wall. I'd come home that day to find that Anthy had transformed the large king sized bed back into two twin sized beds, but instead of bunking them, she had put them both at far sides of the room, with the bathroom door on the wall between them. I was glad. I did not think I could stand to be on the upper bunk knowing she was right below me. As I laid in this bed on this night, I wondered how much of it was the same bed I'd been bound to. Were these sheets the same sheets that had soaked up so much of my blood? If so, where had the blood gone?
"Miss Utena?"
I heard Anthy's voice and turned to look at her. She was in one of the old fashioned lace sleeping gowns she liked to wear. I didn't know what she was going to ask me, and I didn't care. I glared at her, suddenly needing to know. "Anthy. Why did you do that to me?"
"That?" she asked, her voice studied confusion.
"Don't play dumb with me, Anthy." I sat up and pulled my knees to my chest, something physical to keep between me and her. "Why did you hurt me? Why did you..." it was really hard for me to say, because I didn't want to think I was the sort of person this could happen to, but finally I got it out, "rape me. Anthy, you raped me."
"I...I...didn't mean..."
"You meant it! You meant every second of it! You knew I didn't want it like that. You could have released me at time! You over powered me, tied me up with your bloody roses and made me hurt too much to fight, and then you raped me!" I realized that I was screaming. At some point I had climbed out of bed and slammed Anthy against the wall, pinning her there with the full weight of my body as I shouted into her face. Her face was turned to the side and I could tell that her cheeks were getting read. Her eyes were wide in fear and something else that I knew was also mirrored in my eyes, and I was pressed against her whole body, from thighs, to belly, to breasts, my mouth inches from her own. I felt her shudder throughout my whole being. I pushed myself roughly away from her.
"Go." I told her.
"Go?" her voice was soft, questioning.
"No..." I hadn't got my answers from her yet. I pointed at her bed.
"Go sit there."
I went and sat on my bed and we stared at each other across the abnormally large dorm room.
"Anthy. I want you to tell me why." I didn't speak louder than normal, but with this much silence between us I knew she could hear my loud and clear.
"It's because-"
"Not 'it!' You don't get to hide behind vague words like 'it.' The word is rape. It's got a really clear definition. Rape is when one person sexually assaults somebody else who says no."
Anthy's lips firmed into a straight line. Some of the confidence I remembered from the other night returned to her face. I suddenly had the feeling that I really didn't want to hear the answer. I wanted to get up and leave the room, but I couldn't because I'd asked the question.
In a voice calmer than a dead sea, Anthy said the words that had me sagging against the wall of my bed. "I raped you because you were beautiful."
"What's that supposed to mean?" I was in over my head. I was in way over my head. This room, large though it was, was much too small, and Anthy, all the way over on her bed where she hadn't even twitched, was way too close.
"When you fight, you put every single part of yourself into the duel. You don't hold anything back, there is nothing between you and the rose on the other person's chest. Your anger is beautiful to me. I wanted it."
I swallowed hard at a lump in my throat and tried to find something to refute her words with, to change them, make them something more palatable. "B-but the thorns!" I rubbed one hand over my other wrists where it almost seemed to me that my scars burned with phantom pain. "It hurt so much. And the blood. Did you like that too?"
"Yes. You were beautiful."
"I... I have to go."
I got out of bed and ran to the door, ignoring the fact that I was in my pajamas. I wrenched it open. But then, it wasn't completely closed in the first place. I saw a flash of Wakaba's face, white as she fell toward me. Then she was past me and in the room.
SLAP!
The noise was loud like a bullet. I turned just in time to see Wakaba strike Anthy again, this time on the other cheek. "You bitch! You wretch!" Wakaba gave up slapping her and jumped on Anthy, her hands made into fists and she punched her again and again. I grabbed her around the stomach and tore her away.
"Let me hurt her!" Wakaba yelled. "I wanna scratch her eyes out!" She somehow managed to slip my grasp and went at Anthy again, this time her fingers in the shape of claws. I grabbed her around the middle again and lifted her up so high that she couldn't touch the ground, her feet kicking air. "Why are you protecting her!" she yelled, sobbing. "She raped you!"
I didn't say anything as I carried her out the door, shutting it behind me with a foot. Then I set her down. She tried to go back inside, but I blocked her way. "Calm down!" I said, grabbing her shoulders and giving them a little shake. She pulled herself out of my grasp, but she didn't try go back in side, just stood looking at me, shaking visibly.
"You don't understand!"
"Then tell me! Help me to understand why you can stand to live with that monster after what she did to you!"
I said nothing. I couldn't find anything to say, since I didn't know myself.
"You don't even know," Wakaba said, speaking my thought aloud.
"Wakaba?" I asked. I was so tired.
"What?" she said, her voice sullen.
"Could you just go? I can't deal with you right now."
Wakaba's mouth hung open in shock and she wrapped her arms around herself as if in pain. Then she looked up at me, gave me a sharp nod, and left.
I watched her walk away, knowing that I had just lost a friend.
Back to Will of the Rose Index - Back to Revolutionary Girl Utena Shoujo-Ai Fanfiction