exsiliumlogs | 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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"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."

did you set your sights upon a target moving?

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

nanami was missed :')

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