InsaneJournal

[fic] Utena movie, "Not Waving but Drowning"
Not Waving but Drowning
Shoujo Kakumei Utena (movie-verse)
The Prince and Touga.
Movie spoilers. Not safe for work.



"This is a story with a happy ending," Touga says. He is wearing all white, so he blends nearly in with the shroud covering the bed he lies upon. The phone against his ear is too hot. "Isn't it?"

"That's very clever of you." The Prince's voice comes faint and light-hearted through the receiver. "Yes, it's very clever of you."

The water from the tank nearby bubbles. There are no fish.

"They all," Touga says, laughing and luxurious, "live happily ever after." He sprawls on his back and rubs a hand over the flat planes of his belly.

"Oh?" The Prince's voice in the phone has the faint buzzing as of flies across a great distance. "Are you happy?"

"Is that the question we should be asking?" Touga asks.

"Not really. Of course not really."

Touga watches a red shoe float past. He reaches out as if to grasp for it as he falls backward off the bed, but it passes through his fingers as if it were a ghost.

***

Sometimes when it rains over the rose garden the static over the phone clears up. Sometimes, those days, Touga doesn't answer when it rings. Only sometimes. There's not much to do when you're stuck indoors on a rainy day, after all.

***

"My sister, you know. You know she's a witch."

"Yeah," Touga says. "A real witch."

"Yes, yes, that's it exactly." Touga can hear the nodding in the tone of the Prince's voice. "My sister, she's one. Do you know the story of La Llorona?"

"Of course." Touga rolls in the skin of imaginary women at the thought. Moist and wet.

"She's like that. And she's always searching now."

"Yes?"

"For more princes to drown," the Prince says, and laughs. "Isn't that a terrible thing?"

Touga isn't sure. The details don't line up. "Drown in what?"

"Air. Air, then dirt. Isn't that the worst type of drowning?"

"Is it?" Touga asks. "I'm sure you're right." He sounds smugly content, he thinks. Really, very content.

***

"She has a hole now."

"Don't all women?" Touga asks, amused. He knows women well, after all, and can think of few better defining characteristics.

"Two holes, then."

"Well--"

"Ah. You're a perverted man, aren't you? You really are."

"And you're not?"

"Princes don't think of such things," the Prince says. He says, "Witches think of them. I may have loved her, but she was the one awake enough to let me."

"It's terrible," Touga agrees.

"But you don't believe in witches, do you?"

Touga believes in princesses. Shadows of them dance across his walls and show him stories of chivalry and romance. "I believe in women."

"Then you believe in witches." A laugh from the prince on the phone. "Do you know what their power is?"

"What?"

"To turn a man into dust."

Touga arches in orgasm and reaches a hand up. A young girl is screaming somewhere, he thinks. Someone needs help. He needs. He needs--

"Did I catch you at a bad time?"

"No," Touga says, and sticks his hand in the water to wash it. "It's fine."

***

"She used you to dirty your hands so she wouldn't have to."

She had been scared and hadn't known what to do, and had relied on him to know. He thinks that's no way for a pretty girl to die, not by drowning. He thinks it's not a pretty thing to witness and not try to help.

Don't go! You'll die!

Perhaps that's what he regrets; that in the end he disobeyed her wish to fulfil her wish, but the girl had lived. You can't grapple with accepting who you are unless you're alive, he thinks. And that's the most important thing. Isn't it? It may be.

When you call for help you have to trust

(the wings of moths holding an eternity, and if you rub them their dust comes free and they die)

that someone will help.

"Did she?"

***

Sometimes when it rains over the rose garden the faint smell of decay rises from it and Touga thinks of bloated corpses of drowned men and is glad that he is still beautiful.