exsiliumlogs | did you set your sights upon a target moving?

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did you set your sights upon a target moving?

Date & Time: June 12th; backdated to a little after this bickering baby conversation.
Location: Room 602!
Characters: Utena & Nanami
Summary: Stupid sad sick children.
Warnings: Probably nothing will come up this time but just in case your standard warnings for Utena: discussion of incest, abuse, exploitation of minors, trauma, etc. Your standard things. Hopefully the kitten thing doesn't come up (i am sorry for this canon).

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Utena limits her visits to Nanami. They'd bump into one another here and there, but she and the youngest Kiryuu had never really gotten on very well (to be fair, this was true of Touga too) and so she kept her distance.

But Nanami was the only one from Ohtori here, and she was, as far as Utena could hear over the network, very ill. She had never been around anyone who was sick, and was rarely sick herself, but as the days had gone on, the streets had gotten emptier, and everyone had gotten worse. This, like the overall atmosphere of Exsilium itself, rested heavily on her spirits. She had thought too much of this lately, human life, and the impermanence of it, and so she consciously does not think too deeply on what the empty streets mean, or even her own persistent cough and unshakable exhaustion. It was easier to think of other things.

She's got her scarf tucked halfway over her mouth, both to prevent the spread of germs and to hide how clammy she looks, but she can do nothing about the sore throat and the fever-brightness to her eyes. It couldn't be helped.

It takes her a little longer than usual to get to Nanami's apartment, and she rubs at her temples before knocking, as if expecting a headache before it arrives.

"Nanami-kun," Utena raps against the door with the back of her knuckles once, then again. "It's me. I brought tea for you and your roommate."

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She might very well expect a headache, because Nanami already has one. Nanami is a walking headache herself.

At least she's a walking anything. The fact that she's still mobile (though she probably shouldn't be) is another point in Nanami's favor, and it serves as justification for her not to return to the hospital. With Sayaka's magic masking the progression and some of her symptoms, she's even approaching functional, maybe a little too assured in her ability to do things now. The disease is still there, after all, but there's false confidence in being unable to see as much evidence of it.

It will give her the confidence to throw Utena's own words back at her, at least. She's still trying to stick her nose into her business like that.

Nanami cracks the door enough to stick one eye against the gap and look out.

"How sick are you?"

"Not as sick as you."

The flippancy is more automatic than intentional. Utena tries not to lean against the door frame. She appears worn out, a little pale, and vaguely annoyed, but the illness has not progressed enough to make her look seriously ill. She's grateful for at least that.

"Are you gonna let me in?" It would be a waste to have come here, only to be turned away. She's tired too, and needs to sit down for a little while. Just long enough to get some energy back.

Sure, whatever.

Nanami steps back to let her in, not even staying at the door long enough to close it behind Utena. She goes to the couch immediately, pulling her knees up and leaning into the cushions. She's wearing a nightgown, her hair kept down, and on the sofa she looks a little toy-like, very small.

"Some girl came by and did...something. For the coughing." This is by far the most lacking description anyone has ever given of Sayaka, but it's hard to make her stick in Nanami's memory. She isn't healthy, really, after all, just feeling a little better by incidence.

"Some girl? Geez...she helped you, and you don't even remember her name?" This could easily become scolding, but Utena mostly appears baffled. She's tempted to ask more questions, but when she gets a closer look at Nanami, she decides to let it go.

She looked about as tired as Utena felt. "I guess you can find her later. Are you feeling any better?" She sets two thermoses on the table — one has the tea, the other has soup (it's a little flat, flavor-wise, but edible).

"I remember! I didn't think it was important. You're so nosy! You're gossipy just like other girls."

Sayaka had been plenty nosy, and optimistic, but upfront about the temporary relief. Nanami turns onto her side so she can stare at Utena and the thermoses, worrying at her pale lower lip.

"It could be worse," she says flatly. "I feel better but I know I'm not getting better."

"It's pretty important..." She mutters to herself. But she catches herself, remembers Nanami is sick and that they are both tired, and so she leaves it alone a second time.

Utena watches Nanami for a moment, her expression unusually thoughtful and solemn, and then heads for where she believes the kitchen to be. "Hmm...do you guys have cups and mugs?"

Nanami doesn't look good. It bothers Utena — she isn't really comfortable enough to call it worry, but it's troublesome, all the same.

"You want her to help you, too? If you wanted to know who she was, you should have just asked." It sounds like something she's heard and shrugged off before. Now she's the one saying it.

But then, if magic is a thing, is a real thing, is it any surprise that it would favor people like Utena? Maybe she'd heal miraculously; another thing she doesn't deserve, another handout for Utena Tenjou.

Being sick does nothing for her mental state.

"Of course we do," Nanami says irritably. "We don't live like animals. They're" she sighs. "They're over the sink. Jeez! If my brother was here..."

She hasn't mentioned Touga aloud in months. Nanami freezes.

Edited (.) 2013-07-22 17:10 (UTC)

"It's not that," Utena calls from the kitchen. "Don't you want to find her again to say thank you?" Meeting someone just to get something from them...it bothers her.

The mugs are found — how Nanami has managed to find what is likely the only yellow mug in Exsilium is beyond her — and she's on her way back into the living room when Touga is mentioned.

She hasn't thought about him in months, and Nanami, who was so obsessed with him, hadn't mentioned him either. That's odd.

"What about him? You really think he'd be able to handle a place like this?" Touga, with his girls and fancy parties. Touga, who had gone into hiding after his second duel. He was clever, so maybe...but this world wasn't his style at all.

"Maybe I already did. Some of us weren't raised in a barn."

She can't even remember half of the conversation she had with Sayaka, now - she can look at her post on the network, maybe, but the other holes are impossible to fill.

She is embarrassed, in reflection, to have said anything at all, but the fear is still there and it seeps into her response.

"I don't want him here.

"...But if he was, if he knew I was sick, maybe I'd have someone to take care of me. Even if he was just faking."

The only response that remark gets is a heavy, annoyed sigh. But she kneels at the table, unscrews the top off one of the thermoses, and begins to carefully pour tea for them both. It's not good tea — not like any tea Anthy knew how to make — but it was passable enough, and soothing to the throat.

She focuses on this process as she tries to make sense of what Nanami was saying. What had happened? "You don't think he cares about you?" She can't even fathom it. "C'mon. He's a jerk sometimes, but isn't that a little dramatic?"

There was something wrong with this. "Did something happen? You've barely mentioned him at all."

"He was just pretending to care! He said so himself!"

The outburst is not as loud as it could be, thanks to the rawness in her throat. Even then, it seems to surprise even her. Nanami's failed to reconcile that Utena is from a place where she really doesn't understand.

She clasps one hand across her mouth, staring down at her bent knees.

"I thought I could get away from it, so why..."

The outburst makes Utena jump. She's not afraid, but she is startled. What had Anthy told her? She hadn't thought that they were from different times, Anthy had said. She hadn't bothered to ask.

Utena's expression clouds. She pushes Nanami's teacup over to her, contemplates something, and then speaks up again. "He did? ...When? Did he tell you before you showed up here?"

"In the garden..." Nanami feels her face get hotter thinking of her brother with that girl, of Keiko. There's a word she has in her mind for someone like her, vitriolic and harsh.

But what if Utena is faking? What if she's just pretending not to know, to laugh at her? Her head's still half on backwards.

"He said he only ever pretended to care about me for our parents' sake..." Nanami looks up at her through the fringe of her loose bangs, willing herself to shut up. "You probably love hearing this, don't you?"

"No." Utena says, and then repeats herself, quieter: "No, I don't. ...Why would he say something like that?"

Her eyes have gone very wide. She frowns, bothered and unsettled by this new information, and shakes her head. "What a terrible thing to say. Did you two have some kind of fight?"

"It doesn't matter. I thought he couldn't mean it, but he did."

She doesn't even know if what they had could't as one. Her face still stings from Keiko's slap, it seems. But she had shown Keiko; that girl still had to answer to her; they would go on pretending and pretending that things had not changed at all after he'd put a block on her transfer.

She isn't sure what matters more - that in the end she'd tried to reclaim that authority or that, in the end, it's all fake.

"I thought he was my prince," she says.

I thought he was my prince. Utena almost flinches. There's a warning there, but she isn't in any state to see it. Not yet. If Nanami were Wakaba, or Anthy...even Asuka, she might put a hand on her shoulder, but she knows this will not be taken well.

"He shouldn't have said that," she says instead. She's quiet, at first, but her voice gains strength as she continues. It makes her angry to think about. Even a sister that was as difficult as Nanami probably was...she was still his family. You didn't treat family like that. "I don't care what kind of fight you guys had."

After a while: "I'm sorry, Nanami."

"Whatever," she says, covering for how upset the moment's made her. "No one can really understand.

She wonders if Touga will hear if she dies up here, and be happy about it. She takes a bite of soup, agonizingly, as if opening her mouth to eat anything is killing her, and pulls a face.

"I can't taste this at all." It's possible her tongue is burning, though.

She'd expected to be rebuffed, and is unsurprised but still vaguely unnerved. What was going on, she wondered. First Anthy, then this...

It felt like some sort of piece was missing. She's distracted by this thought when Nanami speaks up again.

"Huh? ...Oh, yeah." The soup, right. "Hey, don't complain. I'm still learning how to cook, and I can't taste things much right now."

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did you set your sights upon a target moving?

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ok there

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i miss you utena that's why i'll tag you

nanami was missed :')

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