Work Text:
“Can I stay over at your house tonight?”
Miki stops the stopwatch. He looks up at Nanami, surprised. “Why?”
Nanami’s arms are crossed over her chest. Her shoulders are up high by her ears, but she tips her chin up and hopes she looks haughty rather than fragile. “I just don’t want to sleep at home right now.”
“Is everything okay?” Miki asks, eyes wide with concern. “Is Touga--”
“Touga’s fine,” says Nanami sharply. Touga is fine, Touga doesn’t know anything’s wrong, Touga is not her brother. “Everything’s fine, I just can’t stay at home.” Her lower lip wobbles.
“Well, then, of course you can stay with us tonight,” says Miki. “I’ll tell Kozue.”
This is the point at which Nanami remembers Miki’s sister.
She’s never been to the Kaoru siblings’ house before. It’s nice - not as well-appointed or elegant as her and Touga’s, but cozy and solid. There’s an empty birdcage hanging in the foyer, and a piano in a room off to the side.
“I’ll take the couch, of course,” Miki says as he leads her to the bedroom. “Then you can have my bed.”
Nanami pauses in the doorway, looking at the two narrow beds. One is precisely made, with the covers smooth and tucked in at the edges. A single blanket is balled up at the foot of the other, and a pillow lies on the floor. Miki huffs in annoyance when he sees it, and crosses the room to begin making the second bed. “You sleep in the same room as Kozue?” Nanami asks.
Miki looks over his shoulder at her as he picks up the pillow. “Yes? We always have.”
“I thought you two didn’t get along these days.”
“That doesn’t change where our beds are,” Miki says, like she’s being silly. He smoothes out the covers of Kozue’s bed.
They sit at the table and do their homework together. An unexpected benefit of this arrangement: Nanami can slide most of hers over to Miki, and he does it without complaint. She can tell he feels sorry for her, cast out on the street. Of course he does--everyone should feel sorry for her. Miki keeps shooting her little worried glances until she finally tells him, after her math homework is done, “Touga and I had an argument. I don’t want to talk about it.”
It’s not true--she’d barely even talked to Touga since she learned the truth--but it’s an explanation Miki seems to accept. He stops his stopwatch, and nods at her. “I understand,” he says. “But you should go back tomorrow. He’s probably worried.”
“Thanks,” says Nanami, though she has no intent to do such a thing. If Touga is worried about her, good. But he’s probably never been worried about her. He always knew she wasn’t really his sister.
Kozue soars in well after dark. She’s still in her school uniform, but her scarf is undone and slung over her shoulder. When she sees Nanami, her eyebrow lifts. “Oh, Nanami, I forgot you were here.” There are only two chairs at the table, so Kozue perches on the table, crossing one slender leg over the other.
Miki leans back, moving his homework out of Kozue’s way. “Where have you been?” he asks, cross. “You know you’re not really supposed to wander around after dark.”
“I don’t wander,” says Kozue, winking at Nanami.
Miki still looks annoyed, but there’s something else crinkling up the corners of his eyes as well, something that Nanami can’t possibly identify. Kozue smirks down at him, her bright eyes gone narrow and sharp. Two different haughty expressions on nearly identical faces. They even move similarly--pointed faces tilted at the same angle. In just a second or two of silence, they seem to have an entire conversation. Nanami’s chest is hot with envy.
She nearly knocks her chair over with the force of her standing. “I should get to bed,” she announces. “I’m tired.”
Miki stands too, almost as quickly, and Kozue tips her head back and yawns, long and languid. Her throat is long and slender in the light from the lamp. “Where are we sleeping?” she asks. “I assume you two lovebirds will want to cuddle up.”
“Ew, no, I’m not--” Nanami starts, her protests overlapping with Miki’s stammered ones. His cheeks have gone slightly pink.
“Oh, my mistake,” says Kozue, alighting back on the floor. “Just helping out a friend who needed somewhere to stay for the night, I remember now.” She smirks at Nanami again. Nanami crosses her arms and frowns. What is this girl’s problem?
“I’m taking the couch,” Miki says firmly. “Nanami can have my bed.”
The idea of sleeping in the same room as Kozue’s prickly energy is becoming less and less appealing by the minute, but Nanami would rather die than admit that.
Kozue claps her hands and smiles, all sharp teeth. “Girl’s night!”
“So what happened with your brother?” Kozue asks, sitting on her bed and looking up at Nanami. Kozue apparently sleeps only in her underwear and a thin tank top. Nanami feels suddenly silly and childish in her lacy nightdress.
“Nothing happened,” she says, getting under the covers, laying on her side. “We had a little argument. I don’t want to stay in the same house as him. That’s all.”
“Did he do something cruel to you?”
Nanami looks over. Kozue isn’t smirking now. There’s no trace of irony or scorn in her voice, and her eyes are hooded.
“No,” says Nanami. Her voice sounds small. “He’s always very kind to me.”
Unbidden, his voice echoes in her mind. You know why we’ve always been able to live together so happily?
She pushes it away, squeezing her eyes shut and shaking her head a little against the pillow. He was right then, wasn’t he? He’s always right. He’s older, he knows so many things she’s never even thought of. Big brothers are supposed to teach things to their little sisters. And she’d been wrong, that time she’d thought he was trying to kill her. Never mind that she’d thought it, really believed it--she’d been wrong.
When she opens her eyes, Kozue’s still watching her, head cocked to the side. “You’re a duelist, right?”
Nanami sits up. “You know about the duels?”
Kozue shrugs. “Of course I do.” Her voice is light, but her mask has slipped a little. Her lip curls up in a sneer, just slightly. If there’s one thing Nanami knows, it’s what jealousy sounds like.
Nanami tips her chin up. “Yes, I am,” she says, puffing out her chest a little. She holds out her hand with the Rose Seal ring and shows it to Kozue, in case the other girl wants to get up and come across the room to look at it closer.
Kozue does not get up. “Do they want you to duel?” she asks.
Nanami frowns. “I don’t think so.” She’s uncertain, suddenly. She knows Saionji, and Miki, and Ruka, and Juri all dueled Utena and lost. There haven’t been any more letters from End of the World recently, have there? Is it possible she missed one?
“Do you have to wait for them to tell you to do it?” Kozue is leaning forward now, her elbows on her bony knees. “Can’t you just challenge Tenjou Utena, go after the power yourself?”
Nanami sighs and lays back down, staring up at the ceiling. “It doesn’t work like that.”
“So why did you leave your house, then?” Kozue pushes. “What are you running away from? If nothing bad happened--”
Touga’s increasingly unsettling behavior, Touga’s long absences and suspicious silences, Touga’s strange jokes, Touga’s cellphone still in the pocket of her jacket, the coldness of the ring on her finger, Saionji declaring that he wasn’t going to duel anymore and then fighting and losing anyway, Miki saying he didn’t trust the End of the World and then fighting and losing anyway, and Touga’s not actually her brother--
“You don’t understand,” Nanami declares sharply. “You’re not a Duelist.”
Kozue laughs at that, low and mean. “No. I guess I’m not.”
Nanami rolls over and shuts her eyes. She can still feel Kozue’s eyes on the back of her neck for several long minutes, before Kozue finally turns out the light.
The next night, Nanami stays over with Arisugawa Juri. The night after that, the Chairman asks (orders, really) her to stay in his tower, and stupid, blunt Tenjou Utena won’t stop talking about things she doesn’t understand, and Nanami goes out into the Planetarium to get some air, and--
Well.
The next day, she’s in the music room with Miki, and he’s babbling on about how luxurious the Chairman’s residence must be, and Nanami feels about a million years old.
“I was kidding,” she says abruptly, cutting him off as he’s talking about switching places. She can’t throw sweet, oblivious Miki to that pack of wolves. He adores Himemiya Anthy, if he saw what Nanami saw… “The Chairman would never let us switch. But maybe…” she bites her lower lip, “I could stay over with you and Kozue again?”
Miki stops his stopwatch. He frowns down at it, then looks up at her. “Of course, Nanami,” he says. “If you really don’t want to stay with the Chairman.”
Blue stars in the sky. The silhouette of the back of the Chairman’s head. An exhaled breath in the darkness.
“Miki,” says Nanami. “Why did you duel Tenjou Utena a few days ago? I thought you said you didn’t want to do what End of the World told you to do.”
“That was Saionji,” Miki corrects. His hands rest on the piano keys, silent. “I didn’t want to let End of the World use me.”
“Right,” says Nanami, faintly. “So why…”
“I saw something eternal.” Miki’s gaze is unfocused, a million miles away. “For a moment, it was like I understood.”
“Understood what?”
Miki looks back at her. There’s a long pause, before he seems to actually see her. “I’m not sure now,” he admits. “Whatever it was, I couldn’t do it. I lost. But it seemed like the only way to get what we needed. Kozue and I agreed, for once.”
Nanami straightens. “Kozue was there?”
“Nanami, why are you asking?” Miki asks. “Did you get a letter? Is that why you haven’t been going home?” He narrows his eyes. “Is that why you don’t want to stay with the Chairman? Did you see--”
“Something eternal?” Nanami echoes. The soft shadow of the couch. Anthy’s dead eyes. “No. I don’t care about anything eternal.”
“I didn’t think I did, either,” says Miki with a little shrug.
Nanami stares hard at him. “Do you know who End of the World is?”
“Do you?” Miki asks.
“I have a guess,” says Nanami.
Miki looks back down at the piano keys. He plays a short series of notes--Nanami recognizes a sequence of his favorite piece, the one he always plays with Anthy, but there’s something wrong with it. Transposed into a different, sadder key, maybe. She’s never been very good at music. Miki plays through it again, and then shifts his hands and plays it again, normal, and then plays it again in the transposed key.
“I think your guess is probably right,” Miki says.
When Nanami arrives at their house later that evening, Miki and Kozue are sitting at the table. Kozue’s wearing a blue wrap dress, with a plunging neckline and a slit all the way up her leg.
“You can have my bed tonight, Nanami,” she says, without preamble. “I’ll find someone else’s bed to sleep in at the party tonight.” She may be addressing Nanami, but she’s looking at Miki, her chin resting on the back of her hand.
Miki just lifts an eyebrow at her. “I told you, Kozue, do what you like.”
Nanami feels like she should maybe care about there being some party somewhere she’s not invited to, but she can’t quite muster the energy for it. “Thanks, Kozue,” she says, leaning against the wall.
Kozue looks over at her and tips her head, studying Nanami like she’s a bug or perhaps a berry. “Miki said you’re here because you don’t want to stay at Akio’s anymore, right?”
“Right,” says Nanami, her voice thick. She submitted a transfer request this afternoon, after seeing Touga and Keiko in the greenhouse. She’s done with it, all of it--her friends, the duels, the school, the Student Council, Utena and Anthy, the Chairman, End of the World. She needs to talk to Touga one more time, because she needs to know how much he knows, how much he hid from her. And then she’ll be gone.
“Hm,” Kozue chirps. She inspects her fingernails. “I used to go out with Akio, you know.” She looks up at Nanami through her eyelashes. “I offered to introduce you to him. Remember?”
Nanami’s mouth parts in surprise. “Your Daddy Long Legs,” she says, slowly. Anthy’s fingertips brushing the floor.
Miki wrinkles up his nose. “What?”
Kozue laughs. “And he sure was,” she says, carding her fingers through her hair.
Miki rolls his eyes.
“Why did you stop going out with him?” Nanami asks. She feels almost cold.
Kozue shrugs, voice light as air. “I got bored.” She smirks at Nanami. “Besides, his little sister is much cuter, don’t you think?” Her eyes cut across to Miki.
“Come on,” says Miki, his annoyance much sharper now, losing his indulgent tone. He stops his stopwatch. “Don’t you have somewhere to be?”
Nanami lies in Kozue’s bed in the blue darkness, staring up at the ceiling. She’s exhausted, but she can’t make her thoughts quiet. They keep drifting back to the Chairman’s residence, to those two curved beds by the big window. Is Anthy in one of them now, with Nanami gone? Or is foolish, oblivious Utena lying there by herself, with no idea what’s going on in the next room?
And what about Touga? Is he worried about her, thinking about her after her fight with Keiko in the greenhouse? Or is he sleeping soundly, without a thought for Nanami at all?
Eventually, Nanami must drift off, because she wakes to a figure sitting next to her on the bed. Their side profile is just a silhouette in the darkness, and Nanami’s first thought is that it’s Himemiya Anthy. Then the head turns, to look at Nanami as she stirs, and she realizes it’s Kozue.
“The Chairman did something you didn’t like, didn’t he?” Kozue’s voice is low in the quiet room. Her head is angled toward Nanami, but she’s looking past her, at the mosaic bird on the wall.
Nanami pushes herself up on her elbows and says nothing.
“You’re just a kid,” Kozue says, her lip curling. “You don’t understand anything.”
“We’re the same age,” says Nanami.
Kozue clicks her tongue, still glaring behind Nanami’s head. “You know, your brother spends a lot of time alone with him.”
In Kozue’s mouth it sounds like a question, or maybe an accusation. But it’s just another in the long collection of facts. She loves Touga. Touga called her common, and boring, and said he was only ever pretending to care about her. Touga is not her brother by blood. Touga is the only brother she has. Touga spends a lot of time with the Chairman. The Chairman and his sister are…are…
Nanami sits up the rest of the way and crosses her arms, protecting the place where her heart is thudding hard against her ribcage. “I don’t know what you think I’m going to say. You don’t know anything about my brother, or about me. I am nothing like you.”
“Maybe not,” says Kozue. She looks across the room, at Miki, who is somehow still asleep, the moonlight cast over his face.
Then Kozue turns, leaning her body over Nanami’s, their faces only inches apart. For a reckless second, Nanami thinks Kozue’s going to kiss her.
When she speaks, it’s a hiss. Flecks of her spit splatter across Nanami’s face. “Don’t bring that shit here. I want you out of our house by morning.”
Nanami blinks, stunned into silence. Kozue holds her gaze for a few seconds, blue eyes flashing and ferocious, then pushes up off the bed and stalks away, leaving Nanami cold.
“How dare you?” Nanami hisses after her, but Kozue doesn’t even look at her. She slips across the room in the velvet darkness over to Miki’s bed, and she slides into it with him. She curls up beside him, folding her body around his, two fox kittens in a den.
Miki stirs in his sleep, his brow furrowing. Kozue strokes his hair and murmurs something Nanami can’t hear. Miki’s expression smoothes out, and he settles against the pillow.
Nanami burns.
She gets up, right then. She pulls her yellow jacket on over her nightdress like armor and leaves, feeling Kozue’s watchful eyes on her the entire time.
In the pre-dawn darkness outside the house, a red car is already waiting.