the thing about rgu episodes 35&6 is its just like...... everything is veering towards a car crash but more than usual. and everyone is more aware of how car-crashy things are going to get than usual, but its like. no one is like ‘hey what if we didn’t get into a car crash though’, or if they are, they’re expressing that sentiment in the worst way possible (shoutout anthy and touga). you have so many tiny and horrendously fucked up moments in those episodes like juri saying utena ‘looks like a girl now’ and making miki consider whether or not that’s a ‘good’ thing, or utena falling asleep at the table with her earrings as anthy just Watches, or the scene where touga holds a carrot in various initially amusing and then promptly emotionally devastating ways as both he and the audience make a series of crushing realisations neither of us are totally comfortable accepting
its like. throughout all of this acknowledgement of ‘hm. this is bad’ everyone is filled with inaction. we are all trapped in our coffins!!! people are prosing but that’s about it. all of the student council know who end of the world is, and they don’t tell utena. im not blaming them for this because its masterful, compelling writing that serves to elevate the show and its themes, but i am pointing it out because what’s endlessly relevant in utena analysis is recognising when characters make choices that ohtori frames as a natural progression or event that is immutable. anthy and touga voice wow i cant believe at least one person has to die at the end of this duelling game, which we like have to do btw. yeah. what do you mean this is all constructed and therefore can be dismantled. oh my god im going to kill you what the fuck. i dont want to kill you. i dont know how else to get you out of this situation. guess ill try and remove you from the system, thereby proving it is a structure that can be left behind and undermining my fragile worldview ive believed to have kept me ‘safe’ all this time. why are you guys talking about coffins so much omgggggggg shut up shut up shut up
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Aragorn/Arwen, 33
#33 -- your laugh is the best sound I have ever heard
meleth = love/my love. a missing scene from fellowship of the ring bc i had to write some arthurian level yearning or whatever
They cross paths in one of Imladris's many halls, as she is exiting a room. Not the room, wherein the small Halfling is fluttering back from the edge of doom under her father's careful ministrations. But a room. Arwen was folding clean bandages, for something to do.
There has always been some quietly striking thing about Estel, the way he is at all times, even covered in grime and with an expression that does not well hide his fear. He looks as if he ran the entire remaining distance to Rivendell on foot, with three panicky Hobbits in tow besides. Which, in part, she is sure he must have.
"Arwen," he begins, not quite on a pant, but startled by her appearance and desperate enough for her to inhale and step forward, reaching for him.
"Unharmed," she says, of herself, and then, "healing, under my father's hand. We made it across the river in safety."
He makes to grasp the hand she offers him but Arwen reaches for his cheek instead. She watches his eyes close and feels the tacky, bristly jaw beneath her fingers. Here in the gentle, clean glow of her father's house he stands out in a way he had not in the wild, yet unwashed and so very obviously a man. Very warm, as he always is, but the damp heat under his skin confirms his carefully-hidden distress further. His cloak is hanging lopsided from familiar broad shoulders and his hair is a nest. She wishes to tease him again, as she did in the woods, but finds in this moment she cannot; she's missed him dearly.
They inhale, together, her hand upon him. Arwen is no fool; his trust in her did not discount the real danger and magnitude of their last several hours.
"You're injured," he says, even through his closed eyes. "And you've been weeping."
Arwen touches her free hand to the mostly-faded cut on her cheek. An injury it is not. She allows his lover's perspective nonetheless.
"You know that I weep often," she chooses to say.
"Do you?" Rhetorically, in a restrained murmur.
"Yes; I am quite as tender-hearted as you are, my love."
Estel opens his eyes, startled into a sudden laugh, which stretches crooked and a little pained across his face. It is then that they both relax. They are alone in the corridor; dear Frodo is alright; she wishes very much to kiss him.
"Unharmed," Aragorn repeats, on an exhale this time, one further bout of confirmation. Arwen has come to learn this about men -- this man -- the small stretch of time required to come to terms with a simple truth. There is something soothing about its necessity. But her peace is disrupted almost immediately; quite suddenly she is feeling the strain of want in her throat as he smooths rough fingers over her wrist, then her palm, lifting her hand away just so from his face.
"Arwen," he says a second time, very differently. "Meleth ..."
Oh, to fall into his arms ...
"You are very filthy, Estel," she says instead, allowing a touch of that teasing to return.
He turns his head and kisses the inside of her wrist in response, long and lingering and silent and warm, and holds her gaze all the while.
Her name is called, once, twice, from the room she only just exited.
"My lady Arwen!"
She sighs and he releases her, offers her the smallest of bows and another tired smile, and goes, presumable to check on his charges. But she is smiling in return. Time is not something she had great consideration for until she met Estel. She thinks of it now -- its brevity, its urgency. For now, Arwen hopes, they have escaped the danger, and may see each other happy for a short while longer.
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