After the Revolution

     "No," Souji Mikage whispered. "I see you for what you are now, Anthy 
Himemiya!" he shouted, and smashed aside the leaping form of Utena Tenjou. Utena
fell, stunned by the blow, and her sword clattered away across the floor of the 
Dueling Arena. Mikage slashed her rose away almost as an afterthought, and 
stalked toward the Rose Bride. 
    Anthy stared at him, her eyes wide with fear. For a moment, Souji thought 
her features changed to those of Mamiya, but now he remembered Mamiya as he 
truly was. Dead. Gone. As if some fragment of Tenjou's shredded rose had 
infected him with her rage, he felt his face contort and a scream burst from his
mouth. He stabbed forward with his sword and felt it pierce the Rose Bride, saw 
her collapse onto the floor in a welter of blood and fabric. The blade slid out 
of her body with an obscene sucking sound, and as he stood transfixed, 
Himemiya's face seemed to age centuries in an instant. Her body dissolved into 
dust and blew away, and the fancy dress of the Rose Bride was all that remained.
     There was a choking, agonized sound off to his left. Mikage turned, 
bringing up his sword, and saw that he was no longer in the Dueling Arena. He 
was in the Chairman's room atop the Adminstrative Tower. Akio's face was gray, 
impossibly old, and in a moment, he too collapsed and died. Like his sister, his
 body swiftly decomposed into dust, and the breeze through the windows quickly 
carried that away as well. Mikage knelt and cleaned his sword on the Chairman's 
pants, then sheathed it. He saw a cell phone hanging from the belt, took it, 
then turned and walked over to see to Utena. She was still unconscious. Mikage 
flipped open the cell phone, clicked through the preset numbers, and found one 
whose name he recognized. He dialed it. When the other party answered, he said 
"Seitokaicho? This is Souji Mikage. Would you be so kind as to collect the rest 
of the Council and meet me in the Chairman's office? There's been...an 
unfortunate occurrence. No, I really can't explain over the phone. Yes. Thank 
you."


***

     I can't say that I really understand how you feel. What you've been through
 shouldn't happen to anyone, and it's particularly hard on you because you 
really believed in her, the same way you believed that all of us were basically 
good people. You never understood that some people are just fundamentally evil. 
     Yes, I know I'm a little bit prejudiced about her, but after we found 
Akio's journals, how could even you go on believing? It was all there, the 
horrible truth about how he and his sister had played with us all like puppets 
on strings, making us dance to the tunes they played. Even you. You were the 
most pure and honorable among us, whose belief in herself was untarnished by 
selfishness or meanness. You were the one he had chosen to be the sacrifice, the
 one to be built up as the strongest and most noble, until he could cut you down
 like a tree being cut down to build a temple gate.   
     I know that you don't want to hear this, but you should be grateful to 
Mikage. He was strong enough to defeat her illusions, skillful enough to defeat 
your sword - and he set us free. It was a shock to him to realize that he too 
had played the puppet to Akio, that the little boy he'd tried to save had been 
dead for years. Anthy had him fooled too, pretending to be Mamiya for all that 
time, but in the end her pretenses failed, and you know what happened after 
that.
     When she died, he died. I guess there was some sort of link between them, 
something magical in a dark sort of way. I saw them afterward, along with the 
Student Council and the rest of us that dueled you because of the Black Rose. 
They were just...dust. Dust in the fabric of the Rose Bride's dress and the 
uniform of the Chairman, dust on the little ball-thingy he used to hold his 
hair. They must have been terribly old.
     Well, I have to go now. I want to say one last thing before I go today - in
 spite of everything, you are still a prince. Still unique. It's boring without 
you, and I wish you'd wake up and come back to us. It's a different school now 
that Mikage's in charge, in a lot of ways, and I think you'd like it. 

***
     Wakaba stood up. She brushed a stray lock of hair off Utena's forehead, and
 on impulse bent over and kissed Utena on the forehead. She whispered, "I love 
you, Utena! Wake up!" and straightened. Utena continued to lie there, still and 
unmoving except for the slow breathing and the slow pulse of her blood visible 
in her neck. Wakaba sighed, and turned to leave. Outside, Kyouichi waited for 
her as he always did when she visited Utena. 
     "Any change?" he asked.
     Wakaba shook her head. "No, she just lies there like she always does. 
She'll wake up someday, though," she insisted, and nodded emphatically.
     "Maybe you're right," Kyouichi said as they passed the open door to the 
room where Utena lay motionless. He glanced in, and saw the still form of his 
former opponent in the duels. Nothing had changed since yesterday. He walked on.
     Behind them, in the fading light of the late afternoon, a single tear 
trickled down Utena's cheek.