Utena, Revolutionary Girl Fan Fiction ❯ Memory of the Rose ❯ Chapter Eleven ( Chapter 13 )

Your soul will be dead even before your body…fear nothing further.

-Friedrich Nietzsche

Chapter Eleven

The noise and bustle of the train station seemed too close and personal for her taste as Sari stepped out of Nurikia's convertible and onto the concrete sidewalk. The peace and quiet of the cemetery was as an oft-experienced dream of solitude and light only just remembered in the dim vestiges of late afternoon. She was tired and cranky and did not want to pick up some random new student at the train station, but as Nurikia's Bride she was required to go wherever the Victor did. This meant that if the Victor wanted to start volunteering the pair of them as chauffeurs to every Tom, Dick, or Hanako that came across Ohtori's front steps, it was not her duty to argue.

Quite the contrary, as a matter of fact.

As Tama had so calmly put it little over a few months before, "Sari, your job is to be a rag doll, understand? Write in your little diary, dance in your dance classes, practice with me in the Rose Garden every evening at seven, and above all LISTEN TO THE VICTOR. They are the boss now, okay?"

Wondering how in the world why she had ended up with Nurikia as the most recent Victor out of all the new Council, Sari mutely nodded and tried to ignore the familiar feeling of humiliation and degradation as the Secretary's nimble and slender fingers pushed sharply into the flesh of her upper arm. Nurikia had a fondness for yanking Sari about as if she really were the rag doll Tama instructed her to be. Yet that was neither here nor there when it boiled down to it. That had been in the confused jumble of days right after Miki's accident when her only desire had been to hide away from the world, to disguise her face and figure and form and just die a slow lingering death. It was no better than she deserved. She deserved to suffer for her sins. As Nurikia was so fond of reminding her, it was all her fault Miki died like that. If she hadn't so foolishly swum so far out he wouldn't have had to brave the riptide to try and bring her in. The storm, the algae-coated rocks… all of it was her fault. All of it.

Sari knew at the time that she had retreated almost to the edge of madness. She knew and welcomed it. To her the students… and not just them, but people in general began to look at her differently, with mixed hatred and pity. She'd killed the kindest, most wonderful instructor at the Academy and then had the audacity to live. How dare she?!

Filled with guilt, with shame, Sari stopped eating except only when Tsuwabuki forced her to. She didn't know when he had returned, she didn't care. All she knew is that, at the time, she inexplicably wished her mother had never seen fit to force her bloody and screaming from the womb. She wished herself dead and nothing her teachers or Mitsuru did helped. Already slender, she grew thin to the point of emancipation. Her hair, always so bright and shiny started to lose its body and became dull and limp. Sleep, once before a quick, sweet respite from the cares of the day became her solace and only escape from the world.

She began sleeping day in and day out, only rising from her bed to bathe and write a little, before returning to the soft down of her bunk and hard reality of her constant nightmares. But the nightmares at least gave her the chance to save Miki, to reach out her pale, slim hand and grasp his long fingers, to draw him upward. Every time, however, every time he slipped and plummeted down anyway. His nighttime demises grew considerably more gruesome and painful as the nights passed, but she could do nothing more except toss and turn and weep and cry out in her sleep until finally her neighbor would pound on the door to wake her. It was worse than living death; it was death alive.

Ironically enough, it was the simple sacrifice of her soul to the woman in white and Tama, dark Tama, who saved her from dying that summer…

"Sari," murmured Tsuwabuki in her memories, "Sari you have to eat!"

Curled in a loose ball on her bed, Sari just shook her head and kneaded the pillow in her hands a little harder. The purple velvet was crushed beyond salvation, small areas of the fabric had been worried down to little nubby bits and bare patches through which stuffing was leaking out.

"Go away," she muttered, kneading the pillow a little harder. Her knuckles were purple and bruised from all the times she pounded her fists against the walls. She was so wasted that Mitsuru felt he could almost see the shadow of her bones pressing through the thin veil of skin.

"You know I can't do that," he replied, settling on the bed beside her, brushing her hair away from her face. "You know I can't leave you alone like this."

She was silent. For one brief moment he thought he might have actually broken through to her this time. He put his hand on her shoulder, he wasn't sure what for, perhaps to offer comfort, perhaps to lift her to her feet. To his dying day he never could figure out why he had done such a stupid thing.

Because when Sari was upset she wanted to be alone.

He knew that, but had ignored it in his complacent need to share his own pain with another human being. So he'd touched her. So he'd offered comfort to the one person he thought would understand his tangible NEED for human contact, for comfort and desire and love. He touched her.

And then she was a wildcat in his arms.

The first blow across his face didn't hurt at first. There was a split second of shining light and deaf brilliance. Then the world rushed back at him and it took all his willpower not to yell from the agony of it. His nose felt shattered into a million pieces; he could feel small bits of cartilage shifting and moving in ways they weren't supposed to. The hot coppery taste of his own blood filled his mouth and it occurred to him that he must have bit his tongue when she hit him. There was too much of it for it all to have come from his broken nose.

Despite the flaring pain, Mitsuru was impressed with the stunning accuracy and force behind the punch. That was quite unlike her and much more like him. He was pleased, to say the least. Sari had learned a lot in these past years. Miki had always insisted on civilized duels like there would be in the arena or on the fencing floor- two opponents meeting on a field of honor to match skill against skill, pit weapon against weapon.

Or as Sari used to put it, battle shiny against pointy.

However, Mitsuru had always wanted Sari to have a more practical fighting style. Her style was very pretty; unlike the stark stances and lunges Miki favored, Sari fought with a lot of whirling and kicking and delicate pointing of toes. It was all those years of dance training coming back to bite them in the ass, he knew, but it was lovely to look on and it seemed to suit her purposes well enough. By the end of her time at Bara Academy she had been undefeated. On coming to Ohtori her training had laxed, faded, and finally ceased altogether. Miki had done his best, but he couldn't give the girl the kind of time she would need to become a true champion. Mitsuru had been caught up in his own world, his own life without Nanami, and had decided that if she wished to forgo her training he wouldn't make her keep it up.

Besides, she was starting to resemble a face from his past just a bit too much for his comfort. Working with her became difficult and sometimes frightening. She fought well, too disciplined for his taste but well, yet in the heat of battle it was as if sometimes her attention would wander… and someone within her took up the slack. As if she were possessed by something more than any of them could ever control.

It was a secret belief of Mitsuru's that if Sari ever truly let go and took on the discipline Miki had constantly been trying to foist on her, that other warrior would consume her. When Sari slipped and fought as she was fighting now- biting, kicking, scratching, and pounding her fists… - she seemed so much more ALIVE at those moments. More herself, if that made sense. And that was why, despite his screaming mass of a nose, that he felt momentary pride in the woman-child he held struggling in his arms. Softly, he began crooning bubbly words at her, ignoring the slick feel of blood running down his face. Something had broken inside her, she wept openly and pounded his back and shoulders with her hard little fists, but he ignored the blows and continued on.

Finally, slowly, she slowed, stilled, stopped. He continued rocking her slowly, his arms a warm comforting cocoon around her, his longer blond locks of hair slipping forward and brushing across her cheeks. They both ignored the drying blood from his nose; he just crooned and rocked, whispered and held her. Sari, still very much a child despite her womanly body, fell asleep in his embrace. Mitsuru tucked her in, taking care not to drip on her, and tenderly brushed her limp hair off her forehead. He slipped his fingers through the ends and marveled at its silkiness even in her ill state. "You truly are your mother's daughter," he murmured to her, marveling at the dusky-colored fan of lashes lying heavily on her cheeks. "Aren't you, Sari? Does Ohtori know, I wonder? Do you even know?"

He had his doubts. If Sari had known what he did she wouldn't have remained in bed, no matter how much she had adored and loved Miki. She would have sought out Ohtori Akio and demanded some answers. As Mitsuru intended to do. As Miki had intended to do, at least according to the journals Mitsuru had read that morning. But Miki had been waiting for confirmation from Juri about the boy Adam. He had wanted to be completely sure that the intricate web of lies and deceit he'd accidentally discovered truly led where it appeared. Because if not, he had to find Anshi. But if what he'd believed was true, no one would ever find Anshi.

Sari stirred in her bed and her eyes opened just as the door did. Mitsuru, about to take a step forward, instead stumbled back. A woman stood there in that open doorway, that woman from the classroom, and in her hands she held a sword and a dagger. Black tattered tights clung to her slim legs, and a crimson shirt hung half-open exposing the tops of her breasts. Oddly enough, a purple tie was haphazardly looped around her neck, dangling in the slight breeze from the open window. She stepped forward and closed the door with her foot. Though she didn't touch it beyond that, the door locked and latched on its own. "Tsuwabuki," she said, clear and loud. "Still searching for ways to be an adult, I see." She looked past the stunned young man to Sari. Her eyes, the same blue of a summer sky before a storm, blazed powerfully. "Hello, little one."

Sitting up, Sari tried to move but it was horrified to find that all the strength seemed have drained from her limbs. A low buzzing, like the whisper of a bee's nest, seemed to penetrate the room, to vibrate even the bones of her body. It swelled and faded, swelled and faded, almost as if breathing with the woman who stood there. Sari felt like screaming. She knew there was terrible, terrible danger in that room. Danger and death. But not for her. Not for her. Somehow, chillingly, she also knew that.

Mitsuru, however, didn't seem to have such conviction. "Tenjou," he whispered dropping to his knees on the floor with a sick crack. Sari recognized that sound from all those years ago in the fencing studio at Bara Academy. The day she met Miki in fact, when she'd been so badly injured by the falling bookcases. Mitsuru's leg made that same sound hers had. He must have broken his ankle. From the look on the woman's face, she had heard it too and the sound pleased her. Sari muffled a sob and tried harder to free herself from these strange bonds of nothing.

The woman smiled, and sheathed the dagger and lay the sword at the end of the bed by Sari's right foot. She could touch it if she wanted to move her foot an inch to the left, but at the sight of the black blade decorated with golden roses on the hilt, she came to the conclusion she really didn't want to touch it unless she had to. "Tsuwabuki," she answered in kind. "How good it is to see you again, and in the company of Himmemiya Sari no less! My, my, you've moved up in the world. One might almost say you've grown up. But I don't know, Tsuwabuki. It takes a lot to grow up in this big bad world. Lots of living, if you will. Lots of, say, experiences. Have you experienced all kinds of things yet? Are you an adult in all kinds of ways?"

He made a choking sound and Sari wanted to tell the horrible woman to stop, but she had the feeling it would do no good. She felt like she was dead and this woman was death to greet her at the gate of hell.

A long slender hand reached out and stroked Mitsuru's face. Sari wondered about that hand, that hand that had so easily scored a basket with her failed test. She had seemed so nice! Strange, but nice! But now…those hands seemed to be all tendons and strength and pale white flesh. Mitsuru stood bravely, but she could see the fine trembling which ran across all his limbs. And if she could see it, sure as hell the woman could.

"You miss her, don't you Mitsuru?" whispered the woman, stroking her hands through his fine blond hair. "You think of her every day, remember the sun shining off her golden hair, her golden skin, her golden body. And her body was so very golden, wasn't it Tsuwabuki?"

A feeling of nausea rose in Sari's stomach. Somehow she knew exactly to whom this woman was referring. Mitsuru… he'd always known one golden person, hadn't he? His wife. Was the woman insinuating that she'd been… that she'd known…?

"Nanami misses you, you know," the woman continued, still stroking him almost as one would a lover. "I haven't seen her per say, you understand, but I hear great things about her from a friend of mine who visits as often as he can. She passed a message along through him to me for you. And she asks that I send you this."

She kissed him, long and leisurely. Her short-cropped pink hair tickled his forehead, her nose and lips pressed into the blood running down his face but she didn't appear to care. Sari watched with a kind of dignified agony as the kiss stretched into forever. The woman brought her hand to her belt and unclipped the dagger.

'NO!' Sari screamed inside. 'LEAVE HIM ALONE!'

Those frightening blue eyes opened, looked past the bloody and battered face she was kissing, and met Sari's gaze before shaking her head almost imperceptibly. With a chill, Sari realized the woman could HEAR HER THOUGHTS.

The dagger came up.

The dagger came down.

Repeat.

Sari gagged as the blood washed across the floor and still the woman clung to his body, kissing and stabbing, kissing and stabbing. Each puncture made a sick, slick tearing sound and it took everything she had in her to not vomit. And yet still the grisly murder continued on.

Finally, when it seemed he couldn't bleed any more, when the floor was crimson with it, she pushed back. The blood of his face had sealed their lips together and made a wet pop as she shoved his limp and unresisting body away. Her pink tongue stole out and licked the residue off her lips while she looked long and hard at Sari. She took the end of the purple tie and wiped the rest off her chin and cheek, uncaring that it darkened and was ruined.

"Sari," she said, and the girl cringed back.

A horn blared and Sari nearly jumped out of her skin, waking from her memories with a start. Nurikia snorted and yanked her along a little quicker. They had arrived at the meeting place rather quickly, too quickly in Sari's opinion. It wasn't often she got off of Ohtori grounds these days, and even though a large part of her didn't want to be here, another part was quietly thrilling at the sight of so many bustling people. Nurikia took care of all the nasty business aspects of it, while she absently shooed Sari towards an empty bench to save their place. Settling on the hard wooden slab, Sari pulled out a black leather-bound book from her bag and a slim red pen covered in stenciled roses. Nurikia, she could see, would be awhile. Though she didn't have permission to write, she knew the Secretary wouldn't mind if she wrote just a bit to pass the time. As least… she hoped she wouldn't.

Thinking only a moment, Sari nibbled the end of the pen and then smiled softly. It was a vapid sort of grin, one that would send shivers down the spine of anyone watching, but there was a purpose behind it. A meaning. Sari did indeed have to thank her continued existence to two people. And one of them was the enigmatic and frightening Student Council President… Tama.

Tama.

'Writers should be shot. I say this with only a very minimal amount of sarcasm. I am a writer of sorts. I always have been and most likely always will be. But in my heart of hearts I am starting to hate writers. Words are this vague tribute to reality. We string syllables together to shape words, connect words to form sentences, cluster sentences into paragraphs into pages into books and volumes on reams of dead smooshed trees all to convey nothing but the slightest of ideas, of impressions, about this world we live in. You look at words on a page and you have to hate.

'Because of the imagination.

'The imagination is both the most wonderful and terrible thing man possesses. Hatred can be pardoned, lust understood. Friendship is both fleeting and forever. But the Imagination! The mind of man uses this terrible weapon to twist your emotions into Chinese fingertrap of pomp and circumstance. Things in reality are so plain, so every day. There is beauty in the world, but the audacity of man to try and capture it with mere words... You can't convey the beauty of a girl reading beneath a tree with words. You can't impart the instantaneous simultaneous bittersweet love and hate that washes across you on meeting an ex-lover. They don't have the scope or depth or urgency. It is impossible.

'And it goes beyond the mere incompetence of words. The Imagination is a terrible weapon beyond words alone. The Imagination...no...Writers. Writers take a simple concept like love and rape it over and over again. There are a million types of love in the world. Writers (especially those of the Hollywood Screenwriting variety) take this concept and blow it all out of proportion. They show you angst and drama and humor and combine them in a zany two-hour romp across the screen that makes the audience breathless and yearning. Even women who've been married to their spouses for forty years will turn to their husbands and say things like, "Why can't you ever be like that?"

'What's wrong with the way he's being right now?

'The Imagination, Writers... they make us want more. They make us want that far off impossibility of the big screen. They make us think that all love is graceful and wonderful even for a brief moment. They make us all into Lauren Bacall or Julia Roberts or Halle Berry. They turn all the men into Rock Hudson or Brad Pitt or Seth Green. They don't take into account that the normal man doesn't know how he feels even when he KNOWS how he feels. They don't take into account that the average woman has been so stuffed full of romantic bullshit from the moment she could tell the difference between a penis and a vagina that she's practically bursting from the stress of it deep inside.

'That is cruel.

'There is no Happily Ever After. There is going to the castle, kicking back, and maybe spitting out a few kids that you shower all your thwarted love and affection on... if you're lucky. If you're not you have a tent in the Haunted Forest and you spend the rest of your life either in misanthropic pursuits or settling down with someone you could really give a shit about if only to keep the loneliness at bay for one more stinking measly day of your existence.

'And this is why I hate writers. Because I was stupid and I bought it all; hook, line, and sinker. Because I believed for one brief moment that I was special, that I was different. That maybe, just maybe, the stories held a grain of truth in them somewhere. That it would be difficult, nearly impossible even, but that if I just held in there, if I just clapped my hands and sprinkled fairy dust and BELIEVED that it would all be okay in the end.

'It's not okay. I don't think it'll ever be okay.

'Because I'm a fool. I'm a hopelessly romantic fool who wants the world on a platter and is bitterly disappointed to find that the world owes me nothing except a nice big reality check every month or so just to remind me what my place in life is.

'I am weak. I know that. So I'll sit back and deal with my life and the things I've done to myself and I will take pride in the fact that I tried. I was a fool and I tried. At least I have that much...right?

'Right.'

She closed the volume just as Nurikia dropped ungraciously onto the hard bench beside her.

"Done scribbling?" the flame-haired girl questioned, ignoring the obvious answer. She didn't really care; she just wanted to talk to someone who didn't insist with simpering sweetness that they had the incorrect time for the train.

Sari remained mute, only looking at the Victor with her large, expressionless blue eyes.

Shrugging at Sari's silence, Nurikia popped a piece of ginger candy into her mouth and sucked loudly while she passed the time by making brash comments about passing travelers. More often than not her voice carried and the butt of her commentary would turn and glare at the pair of girls. It did not stop Nurikia however, she continued on, growing louder and more abrasive with each new unlucky subject. Sari found it difficult to remember why she had once thought Nurikia's attitude charming, or how she ever could have considered Nurikia's rude observations in any way like a breath of fresh air. The girl was tactless, cruel, and hateful, pure and simple.

"Nurikia?" she interrupted after a portly young girl began sniffling and rushed off following the most grating round of insults she'd heard that afternoon. "When is the train due?"

The Victor paused, and sneered. "Dean Ohtori told us to pick him up at noon. But that pasty-faced cow over there informs me that the train won't be in for another," she checked her watch, "hour at the very least. So we're stuck with one another."

Sari nodded slowly, half-afraid Nurikia would continue her badgering of total and complete strangers, but that pursuit seemed to have bored the girl. Instead she uncoiled the mass of crimson intricately braided and tied at the base of her neck before letting her heavy locks loose to sway against her back. Her hair reminded Sari of…

(Touga)…

something she'd seen in a dream. Perhaps…

(blood/roses/lust/hate)

… a person?

Unconsciously Sari felt her fingers itching to bury themselves in the luxurious hair and shape it, form it. Brush it and feel its heavy silky smoothness against the grain of her fingertips, rough from working with the roses in the Student Council's garden, tough from trimming the rose blooms budding late that year.

A strange familiar yet not heat started low in her belly, a heat Sari had previously only experienced when thinking romantically of Mitsuru or her vague late-night fantasies of Ohtori Akio. Blinking with surprise, Sari cupped her hands against her elbows and shook her head slightly. Even now she couldn't escape the strange magic her role was imposing on her. She had never been…that way… and yet the moment Nurikia was given the mantle of Victor, she had begun harboring a deep need to get closer to her. Was it part of being the bride that she would always have to serve in such a manner her Victor?

In those first weeks following the birth of the Council there had been a little bit of squabbling back and forth. Excited with the new game and the prospect of being the Victor, Heero, Neo, Jitsu, and Nurikia challenged one another over and over again for the prize of a Rose Bride. The only one who did not stoop to such measures was Tama. He simply watched as Sari was passed back and forth, back and forth, only stepping forward to put a stop to it once Jitsu decided it was time to see exactly how far he could push the 'rag doll' theory.

Sari still shuddered when she thought on those nights with him. Thankfully the Ends of Innocence stepped in and insisted that Sari KEEP her Innocence… in one manner. In all others she was still to act in her role as Bride. Tama was sent personally to take Sari from Jitsu, a fact the younger man hadn't liked in the least.

Not surprisingly, however, Jitsu didn't want to play quite as hard after that. Tama, bored with the idea of having a personal slave, chose Nurikia as a temporary Victor in his stead. The Ends of Innocence and the Council both knew who was the real Victor… but Nurikia enjoyed the slave act in his stead.

Shifting carefully until the feeling subsided, Sari carefully looked out into the crowd. She hated this part of holding the Power of the Rose. It seemed to make every part of her body increasingly more sensitive and these days even the slightest touch of skin on skin could make her shiver with repressed delight. Nurikia didn't swing that way, Sari knew that, but ever since the day she'd met the Ends of Innocence, she wasn't sure of anything any more. It was too dangerous to be sure of anything, to guess at anything even. Knowledge was power and the only one with power at Ohtori was the Ends of Innocence. Mitsuru had known something, something that had caused the Ends of Innocence to decide he was dangerous, too dangerous to live. And so she had come to Sari's bedroom to take care of the problem… personally.

She took care of a lot of things personally, Sari realized. In the past several months, Sari had come to slowly understand that the Ends of Innocence knew everything that happened on campus and probably most of the things beyond the school as well. In fact it was by her orders that Sari and a Council Member were here in the train station today, meeting this new student… because The Ends of Innocence decided it was supposed to be.

He was reputed to be the key to the lock.

He was believed to be very, very special.

Sari had kept this information to herself. Just because Tama and likewise Nurikia were her masters that did not mean that they had to have every piece of her. They could use and abuse her body, but they would never take her mind. What the Ends of Innocence told her did not go past the room she shared with Dean Ohtori. Sari, in a sick parody of her aunt before her, came to the tower twice a week and had dinner with the Dean and his "wife". It was a strange parody of the family she'd always wanted. They had pleasant conversation and passed the potatoes and spoke quite calmly of the next steps to Revolution. The Dean didn't join much in their conversation except to ask Sari how school was going, despite the fact he had to know she barely ever attended class anymore. Nurikia had her doing other things. But he didn't seem the slightest bit interested in all the strange and wonderfully frightening things going on all around him. All he cared about were the normal, every day aspects of Sari's life, something she found both relieving and disturbing. Had she once thought him handsome and debonair? He was thin and quiet now- and he stared at her with such hunger!

"Wake up," Nurikia said suddenly beside her. "Hop to. The train's here."

Sari rose to her feet, smoothed her skirt, and made sure her hair was neatly brushed into her customary ponytail. Two wings of pale pink-tinted lavender hair fell over her ears and she let them be. She didn't have time.

Nurikia stood there and looked up and down the crowd. "The Ends of Innocence said we would both know him when we met him. So keep a lookout for someone you've met before."

Sari gamely looked through the crowd, only half-believing the Secretary's words. She had known very few people that she would remember in her life. Very few…

And then she glimpsed him through a hole in the crowd. He was carrying a battered backpack, had a tattered paperback clutched in one hand, and was leaning over to speak cozily to a bubbly pack of school girls who were thrilled by his obviously foreign look but very Japanese sound.

No.

No. It couldn't be.

Broad shoulders. Sandy-brown hair with highlights that shimmered in the sun. A red jacket that seemed to strain almost at the seams. No longer boyish, his face had matured into the lines and angles of a man. He had never been boyishly pretty like Mitsuru or Miki, even when he WAS a boy.

"Adam," both Nurikia and Sari whispered at once.

He caught sight of the pair of them and straightened. His voice carried on the breeze. "I'm sorry, ladies. My ride awaits." He gestured to the pair of them and they received several envious glares.

"Awww, Adam-san," purred the head girl taking his arm in a very forward manner, "WE can take you to Ohtori if you'd like."

Nurikia bristled beside her and Sari found herself projecting calming thoughts toward the girl. "He won't," she murmured. "Adam keeps his…"

"Promises, promises," he chuckled, bowing politely to the gaggle. "I must keep my promise. Now if you'll excuse me ladies, thank you for the wonderful entertaining train ride."

They bowed in return and he strolled their way.

"Nurikia," he greeted the red-haired girl with the glowing enthusiasm Sari remembered from childhood. "Thanks for the ride." Reaching forward, he slapped her so heartily on the back that the normally graceful, smooth woman stumbled forward and nearly didn't catch herself.

"Adam-san," she growled in response to both his touch and informal tone. "Let's go. We've been sitting here forever and I want to go home."

"Wait a second," he protested. "Aren't we forgetting our manners? I've yet to meet your charming companion." He winked broadly at Sari and grinned in a manner she found both amusing and rude. He didn't remember her?

Nurikia paused and raised an eyebrow in surprise. "You don't…? Well… okay. Chida Adam, I'd like you to meet Himmemiya Sari. Sari-san, this is…"

She broke off as the boy she had been speaking to roughly thrust his bag into her arms. She stumbled back yet again and by time she had caught her balance she found herself staring at a sight she never thought she'd see in her entire life: Adam was holding Sari in a tight embrace and was stroking her hair, crooning softly.

"I see you've already met," was all she could think to say.

And from across the station two pairs of eyes took in the scene.

"So it begins."

"The return of the Prince."