
Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/4220688.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Underage
  Category:
      F/M
  Fandom:
      Shoujo_Kakumei_Utena_|_Revolutionary_Girl_Utena, 悪魔のリドル_|_Akuma_no_Riddle
      |_Riddle_Story_of_Devil
  Relationship:
      Sumireko_Hanabusa/Touga_Kiryuu
  Character:
      Sumireko_Hanabusa, Kiryuu_Touga
  Stats:
      Published: 2015-06-27 Words: 1932
****** lady of ladies ******
by Ruriruri
Summary
     Power is simple. Those who have it keep it forever, if they only have
     the will to. The phoenix never burns up at all. Sophomoric ramblings
     of sophomoric individuals, preseries. Sumireko/Touga.
There’s a party—there’s always a party at home, the same empty ritual to smile
through. Nanami haranguing the cooks and complaining about the champagne
flutes; their parents are seen but not heard in some painfully stiff exercise
in formality. It’s easy enough to sneak away now, find a girl and an alcove and
kill a little time making each other ordinary again. Strip the designer dresses
and spoil the fantasy. It’s a waste, but it will do until summer vacation ends.
It always has before.
The Chairman’s called a week before, reassuring, his voice like the wind
rustling through silken drapes. This is the year. This is the year he’ll be
president of the student council. The year of revolution. Touga savors the
thought in small, pleased moments, until he remembers Ruka, there in the
hospital bed. Ruka with the Bride in the arena, collapsing in her arms, as if
anything had ever held him up but dreams.
But Ruka never recognized the real game. His mistake, his folly, but still
something coils itself inside Touga’s throat, no matter how casually he tries
to dismiss it, something as cold and hard as the signet ring around his finger.
The violins have started up in their void of a rhythm. The musicians look like
inkblots, the same faces plastered over and over. The only half-reality seems
to be the crimson swirl of a girl’s dress as she spins to the music without a
partner.
He’s heard of her, but what he’s heard can’t be right. The heiress to the
Hanabusa Financial Clique is a quadriplegic—but Sumireko’s dancing.
Sumireko’s dancing.
--
He takes her to bed.
It’s an easy task. A few idle minutes at the punch bowl. Three dances, one
after the other. Sumireko isn’t fooled for a moment, and better still, she’s
admirably old-fashioned. She lets him lead and he’s almost impressed by how she
yields to every touch, how easily she presses herself down against the
mattress. She’s a little younger than him, but the carelessness of her motions
gives her away. He’s not her first. Touga prefers it that way.
Afterwards, she gives in to his prattle with a feylike, amused smile that
strikes him as coldly familiar, somehow. He asks the old, practiced questions:
all anyone wants to hear about is themselves, and so he gives her as many
opportunities to speak as possible, opportunities she mostly ignores. He
appreciates that, too, the lack of pretense; she’ll answer his questions, but
she won’t be caught up in what he can offer her. Occasionally she reaches over,
letting her fingers smooth down his hair as he speaks, appeasing and
patronizing, as if she’s stroking a cat, and that eases half the worry he has
over the look on her face.
“What do you do for fun, Sumireko?”
“I like going to the firing range.” She leans in, resting her head against his
shoulder. Even after sex, Sumeriko’s scent is still clean and sterile, as if
it’s a doll and not a girl he’s slept with. As if he hasn’t left a trace
behind, nothing to mar her with.
“You’re licensed?”
“Of course.” Sumireko pauses. “And you have your kendo.”
He doesn’t like how she says it. Oh, there’s never anything but pleasantness in
her tone, the coy pleasantness of as good a breeding as the bourgeoisie can
ever offer, but he has the feeling she’s laughing at him inside. You have your
kendo, as if it’s the pastime of a boy. And maybe it is.
“I’ve done some fencing on the side.”
Sumireko makes a small hum of what might have been approval on any other girl’s
lips. “That’s romantic, isn’t it?”
“You don’t think too highly of it?”
“It’s not that. I just think there are better ways to—obtain satisfaction.”
“Satisfaction,” he repeats, and his hand roams down her side, traces the jut of
her hip before sloping lower, between her thighs in slow, teasing strokes.
Languid. “Like this?”
Her laugh’s a discordant jingle, metal on metal. Sumireko catches his wrist in
one dainty, oddly warm hand. He thinks at first it’s a signal to stop, but then
as she arches forward, he realizes she’s only guiding the movement of his hand.
“Not like this.” She pauses. “Fencing is dueling for sport, isn’t it? Just like
my practice at the firing range.”
His fingers seem to freeze. He looks at her for a moment, sidelong, but
Sumireko’s expression, sphinxlike, offers him nothing. No sign that her money’s
bought her the knowledge that no one outside Ohtori’s student council is
entitled to. No sign that the Chairman’s extended his invitation past the
school boundaries. No signet ring. Her hips shove down as she fucks herself
against the dampening pads of his fingers. The only other tell is she slight,
spreading flush on her face.
He’s wrong to be afraid. He has to be.
“What do you mean?”
“Ah, don’t you see? We’ve civilized ourselves. We’re past the queens and
knights. We’re past challenging each other, and we’re past honor, too.” She
exhales, and his fingers find the strength to move and stroke again, slip and
curl almost casually between her folds as she continues. “Consider it. Three
hundred years ago, in Europe, a gentleman would place death before dishonor.”
“Only a rich gentleman,” he tries to joke, but it falls flat. And still she
smiles, face slightly flushed from exertion, a look in her eyes that wasn’t
there before, when he took her on the bed. A look as if she’s laying claim. Her
hips rock up against his fingers, twisting, wriggling, his fingers only the
instrument she’s using to get off.
“Are there any others? But now, the… idea that a man could put his life on the
line for the sake of an insult—that’s laughable now. Foolhardy. And all we have
left are our foils and our air rifles to remind us that we’ve turned it all
into a game.”
It seems like an eternity before he finds his voice again.
“Nostalgia’s a bitter pill to swallow, isn’t it.”
“Yes,” she breathes out, body jerking, and he doesn’t relax himself until long
after she comes, until long after she’s left, all soft words and a few steps
around the bedroom. One call to her chauffeur, and then she’s gone.
--
He asks the Chairman. The Chairman assures him Sumireko knows nothing. Sumireko
is a relic, the Chairman says, the product of a bygone era. An error of time,
perhaps, a stopwatch counting backwards.
(but not a princess)
(not a princess)
There are no plans to bring her to Ohtori, no applications in the mail, no
letters with Ends of the World’s seal. Nothing.
But he could see her dueling. He could see her in the arena. Because a girl
like her would want more than a corporation. Hasn’t lost sight of what real
power is—she just doesn’t think it’s available on Earth, that it’s the relic
that the Chairman dismisses her as. Unobtainable.
A girl like her wants what he wants.
He keeps seeing Sumireko between idle dates and idler parties. Splayed on his
bedsheets, she looks like Alice after the tea party’s finished and the dream’s
over. There’s a strange assurance in her eyes, an eerie kind of confidence that
takes him aback.
After awhile he comes to recognize the scars where flesh ends and her
prosthetics begin, like seams on a rag doll. The damages don’t bother him, but
he can’t help but assess them—Sumireko’s prosthetic arms start at the shoulder,
and her prosthetic legs start about three inches below her hips. There’s
scarring on her back as well, the sharp, even lines of an operation, though
from what, he’s not sure and she never tells him. It’s all real skin there.
It makes a good contrast, he thinks. His own limbs are entirely unspoiled,
unmarked. Strong and healthy, with lean muscle where she has only wire and
titanium. Manmade imitations. Touga doesn’t think it detracts.
They never talk of real things, of businesses and corporations. He knows that
she’s planned on attending an exclusive academy—Myojo, although from what he’s
gathered, the application date’s long passed. She knows he’s a rising junior at
Ohtori. But none of that ever gets mentioned. Like anything mundane would spoil
what little they have.
Sumireko’s given to philosophy and plays. She likes Hamlet, and says once,
after Touga admits he never learned to swim, that he would make a fine
Ophelia—a would-be princess, in what he’s afraid is only half a joke. When he
asks if she’d be Hamlet, she shakes her head.
“Hamlet’s inactive.”
“But Hamlet’s a prince.”
“I’d rather be queen.”
“Why?”
“Princes are all potential, but queens are strong. And to be strong is to never
depend on anyone. I want that.” She pauses. “What do you want, Touga?”
A revolution is on his lips, but he says instead—
“Power.”
“You’re such a man,” Sumireko coos, in a way that makes it sound more like a
sneer. “Power is simple. Those who have it keep it forever, if they only have
the will to. The phoenix never burns up at all. Old money..." she says,
trailing a finger down his chest, "that's the only thing they can't touch."
"We’re the nouveau riche, you and I.”
“And that’s why it’s silly, to wish for power.”
"What else is there?”
“Castles in the sky, maybe.”
Sumireko laughs quietly. Her hand slips down to trace the jut of his
hip—they’re not cold, her hands, but they’re hard and heavy. The prosthetics
offer her plenty of dexterity where it counts, but her hands can’t pull a bow
along a violin’s strings, can’t press the keys of a piano. Sometimes even now
she can’t tell exactly when she’s placed too much pressure on an object, not
until it’s crushed between her fingers.
She never tells him that, but he’s deciphered it from all that she doesn’t do.
Sumireko attends events; Sumireko dances, shoots, bakes. But Sumireko avoids
anything that requires an absolutely delicate touch.
He wonders sometimes if that’s the real reason Ohtori’s been denied her. She
doesn’t fit the fable. There’s nothing mystical about the surgeries and fake
limbs that have kept her alive and moving. She’s not a noble cripple in a
hospital bed. Sumireko’s vibrant, insistently so. The flash of a neon light
when Ohtori is tame, soft pastels.
“Maybe.”
--
The weeks pass. Vacation’s almost through. The Chairman’s called, giving him
his long-known list of nominations for the student council. Touga calls up
Saionji to congratulate him sincerely on gaining the vice presidency. Juri
gives him a ring, too, asking about budgeting. Miki asks about how to best add
his council experience to his resume.
It’s not until a week before school begins again that he calls up Sumireko.
He’s surprised at his own insistence, surprised at his own defiance. The
Chairman’s told him already that she’s not in the running. That she’s not so
much as an applicant. He should let it all alone. Instead his cell phone’s
heavy in his hand as he dials her number.
“I’ll have to leave soon.”
“We both will.” He can almost see Sunireko’s beatific expression, and it
shouldn’t make him shiver. “I have a few business meetings to take care of
before I’ll be accepted at Myojo.”
"I thought you might like to transfer to Ohtori instead. You’d be around people
that think like you do.”
"Ohtori's no place for me, Touga."
"But--"
"The only destinies are the ones we create for ourselves."
finis
Please drop_by_the_archive_and_comment to let the author know if you enjoyed
their work!
