"Desire and Despair"

By The Queen of Blueberry Toast

An Utena Ficlet For Murasakisuishou

I'd like to take this time to apologize for any goofs I may have made 
regarding the layout of the academy dorms.  My memory is fuzzy and 
pictures are few and far between.


At first, the room felt empty as a cloudless sky.  The sunset caught 
curiously within had turned the air a brilliant pomegranate red among the 
webs of shadow.  Though the windows were shut tight, a rush of sound 
from the sidewalk outside slipped ghostly soft over her senses.  In the 
otherwise silence of the dorm, it was deafening to her, enough to drown 
out the sound of her own breath.

But she walked through the clotted gleam, her gaze tracing over faint 
footprints still caught on the carpet.  Everything else had shifted so 
little in her absence that the uneasy familiarity of the scene niggled her 
senses until they whispered to her that she was stealing through a painting 
she herself had somehow rendered. 

Shiori darted once to the edges of other vacant chambers, scarcely of more 
presence to them than a flicker of dust.   Certain she was alone, she 
returned to the sitting room, and with a sigh, slung herself over the couch 
to wait. 

It was only from that vantage she realized she could see the hilt of Juri's 
blade winking at her from behind the sofa.  That startled her only enough 
that the voice had no power to do so.  In the blindness the evening left 
between the windows, Juri had vanished.  Presently, she returned only her 
silhouette, the hazy outline of a caryatid against the outside world.

"I almost thought you'd changed your mind," she said.

"I wanted to put on some other clothes before I came over."

"Hmn."

Shiori huffed, ran her hand through her hair and along the droplet of her 
earring.  "Well, what's the harm in that?"

"Nothing." The shade of her companion shifted and something caught on 
her twinkled dully against what was left of the sun.  "Only that you still 
care so much about what doesn't matter in the end."

"Somehow I get the feeling if I ask what you meant by that I'll get alllll 
offended." She would have laughed at herself- her lips ached to do so. "So 
I won't, and you can't make me."

The footsteps were faint, but they brushed her senses nonetheless, and 
some paleness of Juri's eyes began to seep through dark glare of her body.  
"It's not Ruka.  It's not anything about us."  

And there a strange warmth, more memory, but hers or Juri's?  That the 
close horizon had reached for the last vestiges of the evening only made it 
harder to tell.

"Okay, well, maybe *that's* good to know."

"It's what you aren't."

Half-shielding her eyes now, she offered a smile, "You know, this is all 
your fault.  If you'd just said something, anything! In the first place..."

"No, this is her, the other Shiori."  
   
And then she knew: her companion hadn't really been talking to her, not as 
she was, not as she made herself out to be, for as the sun fell away, Juri 
faded into colored focus.  She wore little herself, only a touches of sheer 
lace, black boots, black gloves and a holster from which she had probably 
pulled the whip that spun sinuously through her fingers.  It was her own 
shadow on the thing that held her gaze.

"I don't love you.  I love her," she told the gasping quiet before her.  "If 
you're so sorry you took her from me, let me make you her again."

"Oh, do you think I'm afraid of a little kinky stuff?" This offered almost 
spitefully.

"I don't know you."

"Then it looks like I have something to show you." And now, she purred 
because she could purr and because she knew she shouldn't.  "Alright.  I 
don't mind.  Lets play.  I don't understand any of this.  But lets play."  

Shiori tipped backwards to watch the other girl- Juri had drawn near, 
stalked around where she rested, the whip flickering over the sofa here and 
there, now the soft white mounds of her breasts where their upper curves 
lay free of her silk bra.  

Though the leather was tough and scratched her, she found herself enticed, 
found herself giggling.  "I didn't know you liked this sort of thing.  Or did 
it just start?"

Juri never answered her.  Rather there were lips upon her lips, breath upon 
her breath and the fine coil of the whip resting hard against her heart.  She 
had been convinced herself the idle contemplation of moments shortly 
passed it would not be so bad, offering one kiss to those girl- that it would 
be like pressing her mouth to a lily.

But it wasn't.  She felt flesh not her own inside her and a gauzy pain upon 
her lips.  Her lipstick smeared upon her cheek as Juri left her at last.  
Though it was only a moment before she, gloss not her own shining on 
her, bent, and sunk her teeth into her neck.

"Oh!" Shiori fussed.  "You left a mark."

"So did you," said the voice stealing over he ear while the other girls nails 
slunk over the soft, slight curves of her arms.  

A few tiny beads of blood welled up, though hardly enough to mean 
much.  No, what took that was the fingers which short clasped her wrists 
and pinned them in the air above her head.  Juri's slim hands narrowed the 
pressure, and she felt herself crackling a little with it.  Though she did not 
mean to strain or twitch, she did both.  

"Don't you have handcuffs? They're kinda a bondage staple and it'll be 
pretty awkward if you don't get... something else." But then again, it was 
out of the question for pride to say it outright- Let me go.

Juri shook her head, kissed her once again, somewhat softer this time but 
only because the lipstick made her slip away.  She smiled against her 
when they were free of each other.  The cushions under her swelled as Juri 
reached beneath them and then there was not only the whip, but the belt; 
not only a halo round her wrists, but a dainty of loops tight enough to 
shimmer with her pulse.

With them set tight, the other girl left her long enough to half-upset the 
couch.  Shiori fell from it, landing face down in a garden of footprints.  
Not alone though, for what else the velvet had hidden joined her; a 
spreader bar with cuffs at either end.

"I never understood the appeal of these things..." she remarked, kicking 
softly at the hands which soon enough fluttered over her ankles and the 
padlocks they were coming to wear.  "Bondage yes, especially in your 
case.  But do you honestly think I'll close my legs in the middle of a 
fuck?"

"I don't know you."  With those words, the last lock closed, and Shiori 
found herself  supine and open on the livingroom floor, Juri kneeling at 
her feet as she gazed with empty eyes at her bunched up skirt.  "But if this 
doesn't work, it's not over.  Do you know that?"

For her answer, she cried, for the bar had been yanked from where she lay, 
dragging her legs up into the air.  The pull for the ceiling light came down 
and as the twilight broke, a chain between it the spreader clicked.  Having 
given the fine line of golden beads a yank, Juri slipped between her thighs 
crouched over her now, her hands tangled in her hair and the earring 
Shiori herself had been fumbling.  

She did not take off her bra, just pulled it down until it lay tight around 
her lower ribs, left her small, supple breasts naked to her mouth and the 
tickles of Juri's curls.  

/No,/ she said to herself, without lily kisses or with, /this isn't so bad.  
Her teeth don't hurt so much.  She isn't as heavy as Ruka.  At least she likes 
to fondle me./ For her hands short came and clasped her tight and luscious 
while the rest of the other girl swept lower and lower, freeing the last 
buttons of her blouse, the zipper of her skirt.  It left her cold, but it left 
her wet enough that when Juri pulled her panties to the side, the fine down on 
her netherlips was glistening.

"Mmm, yes.  I wouldn't mind licking you too.  It's so nice.  Don't you..." 
Shiori purred dreamy and enchanted as she felt her companion once more 
subtly shifting.  With that, she closed her eyes, and stretched against the 
floor.

But instead of feeling her clit thrum with the first caress of someone's lips, 
a swift sting met her.  She thought at first she'd been bitten, but looking 
down to where Juri lay between her legs, she saw the edge of a hairclip 
nestled between her folds.

In her silence which she could not seem to break, the other girl said 
simply, "Doesn't it hurt?"

"Yes! It hurts! Take it off!"

But she only swept away to where she had left the whip.  Shiori felt 
herself blushing.  Would it be her legs? Her belly? Her chest? All of them? 
She wouldn't have minded any of those but, no, rather as Juri knelt and 
took her knees in her hands, she scratched her with one hand, and with the 
other crammed the leather-bound handle of the whip into her cunt.  It was 
with her cheek resting on Shiori's calf she sighed, having plunged it deep 
enough to hurt, began to grind it in and out of her folds, slow at first, but 
soon quick enough its roughness left her raw and trembling with each 
thrust.

And still, it was something, it made her want in spite of her cries (and she 
did scream when she could catch her breath).  She might have come if it 
had stayed in her a little longer, but rather it flashed a moment of Juri's 
lips as she kissed the liquid from it and, sure, it was as little slick as it 
could be, rather opened Shiori's rosebud with her fingertips, and fit it into 
her ass.

Which left her with nothing left to say.  She just stared beneath the bar, 
her wounded lips trembling.

"I would have done anything at all not to think of her, but then there was 
you."

"God fucking damnit! I'm Shiori! If you love me, why are ..."

It was not simple slap that cracked against her cheek, but a fist and an 
army of stars.  

"I don't love you."

She couldn't see what exactly else slipped into her, but it shook inside her, 
and stretched her vagina painfully tight; was rough and crinkled as if it 
had been wrapped in tinfoil.

"You're not Shiori."

And then Juri again was only a shade between her and the ceiling light, 
her eyes gone, and only the tip of her boot resting against her, resting on 
the pit of her stomach where it made her hurt too much to moan.

And then the light was gone.

"But I'm Shiori! I'm Shiori! I know I'm Shiori..."

"No, but maybe by morning you will be."