(Suigin Tou/Shinku)
While each story hopefully can be read individually, I have written these three Rozen Maiden stories to occur in this order: 1 The Light of the Mercury Lamp, 2 Deep Red Ruby Dreams, and 3 Tea for Two. Tea for Two is placed a few days after the end of S2 of the anime, Rozen Träumend.
Read The Light of the Mercury Lamp
Disclaimer: Suigin Tou, Shinku and the others from Rozen Maiden belong to Peach-Pit and possibly some others, and certainly not to me, I am merely taking them out to play for a while.
The Light of the Mercury Lamp
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by Carola “Ryûchan” Eriksson
The strive for perfection was the one thing they all had in common, along with the knowledge that each and everyone among them had fallen short of that intended but elusive goal in the eyes of their creator.
In the case of Suigin Tou, the strive for perfection was far more than just that... it was her obsession, her purpose, the only reason she continued living. Far more than for the others, Suigin Tou needed to, no, _had to_ prove her worth by becoming the strongest, the one that was triumphant. If she was that, then she might finally win their maker’s love and he would make her complete.
All Suigin Tou ever wanted was to be whole.
First to be born amongst her sisters Suigin Tou would naturally have taken the place of their leader in harsh times, the caretaker, the loving sister whose black wings would form a shield to protect her precious and innocent younger siblings against the dangers that might face them. She would have doted upon them and rejoiced in their happiness, content with her lot as she was.
But her heart had been discarded, her soul inspected and found flawed, then thrown away uncompleted. Their maker had not even granted her the mercy of destruction, rather he appeared to have forgotten her existence completely as his focus – and his love – turned to the younger siblings who came after her. Suigin Tou watched from her dark discarded place the shadows of her sisters at play, heard their voices as they laughed together in those early days as she writhed in endless pain, alone.
No one saw Suigin Tou’s tears.
This was all the base for Suigin Tou’s existence, and it was the reason she was feared. Oh yes, Suigin Tou was aware that her younger sisters feared her and that many of them considered her evil; her and her alone, as their maker, their father, was never at fault. All of them... save for one very important exception.
In that dark, desolate and twisted spirit world Suigin Tou had created for herself, Suigin Tou spent her time while awake in thought on many things, whereas her sisters would spend theirs in play, bound to a master that would love them. Suigin Tou of course had no one that loved her, and so she had no master. She had no use for play either, as she never had the opportunity to know what that was.
Sisters. How strangely amusing it was that they used such a human concept to describe themselves, they who were alive but not born, not flesh, but wrought and given life by the hands of a genius. Their bonds to one another were not of a physical nature, but a spiritual, emotional one, and such things were too fluid, too ever-changing to label that easily.
Having spent so much time in thought, Suigin Tou had realised how erroneous this chosen term were for their small group, even if the others had yet to grasp it. Suigin Tou had seen it... the maker’s intention.
With the dream-gardening pair, Suisei Seki and Sousei Seki, it was so blatantly obvious that even the others had understood from the start that there was something binding these two closer to each other than to any other Rozen Maiden. These two who shared a love so deep that in their earliest days they had done something unthinkable... Sousei Seki plucking out one bright green eye to trade for one of Suisei Seki’s crimson red ones, and vice versa. Suigin Tou had of course not seen the pair back then, and thus not known that although the maker had created the two together their appearance were not identical; Suisei Seki long-haired and feminine in her sweeping green dress and Sousei Seki short-haired and androgynous if not masculine in her boy’s clothing and tall hat. Suigin Tou had only known the maker’s outrage when the deed was discovered, and while the maker did not undo it, their perceived rebelliousness prompted the creation of the next Rozen Maiden, all in the search of perfection.
Suigin Tou wondered if it had ever even occurred to Sousei Seki and Suisei Seki to regret what they had done. Probably not, after all, their love for one another alone proved somehow strong enough that they were never separated... they slept and woke together, any master that accepted one of them into his or her heart by default accepting them both.
She envied them that togetherness, thinking how wonderful it must feel... not to be alone.
Eventually Suigin Tou realised that it was not only the dream gardeners that were created this way, with the intention of being a pair in the maker’s mind, although none of the others were created like these two had been, together. Once she had this insight, the intention seemed oh so obvious to Suigin Tou’s eyes... anyone who had seen the tiny annoyances, the braggart Kanaria and the childish Hina Ichigo would surely notice that the two of them were a matching set, in size and appearance as well as in spirit. Why it was that the maker saw fit to create two such helpless eternally small children was something Suigin Tou had yet to fathom, but in all honestly she could not care less. Kanaria and Hina Ichigo were weak and of no importance to her.
Following this logic then of the seven Rozen Maiden there remained three whom Suigin Tou had yet to determine how the maker had intended to be paired: herself, number five, Shinku, and number seven, Bara Suishou. This was something of a dilemma.
In her most bitter moments Suigin Tou would occasionally entertain the thought that otherwise was banned from her conscious, that she herself was probably not in their maker’s plans – having been discarded after all – and therefore there was really only six real Rozen Maiden... leaving the ones yet to be matched Shinku and Bara Suishou.
This possibility burned beyond belief, and for the longest time Suigin Tou managed to convince herself that this was so merely because she wished her existence to still be a factor with their maker, that he had not undone her life in his mind completely. In time she came to realise that this was not all the reason she hated the thought that she might not be a contender in this rather cruel little private struggle. Yes, more and more the truth of the matter was becoming too hard to ignore.
Shinku. If Suigin Tou did not count for a real Rozen Maiden, then Bara Suishou was the one intended to form a pair with Shinku. And that was something Suigin Tou could not accept.
_She_ was the one whose thoughts never strayed too far or too long from the elegant and almost haughtily proper red-clad blonde, _she_ was the one whom at any given moment, yes even when rising from her gilded casket after a long period of sleep, could accurately state the number of days, hours and seconds since her last encounter with Shinku. _She_ was the one who had devised a way to traverse through the realm of dreams so she could visit Shinku in her casket dreams, even though it was not Suigin Tou that had been given the power of dream gardening. _She_ was the one that ignored all others to obsess solely on the diminutive fifth.
Surely the maker had intended them, Suigin Tou and Shinku, as the ones to be paired?
The realisation had not been an easy one to stomach, much less to understand. The relationship between Suigin Tou and Shinku had always been an adversary one, their encounters either outright combat – though neither had ever taken things too far before – or a strange, almost affectionate hostility where Suigin Tou would issue threats like caresses to rose-dusted cheeks and Shinku haughty retorts like invitations. It was a long-standing habit that was hard to break.
They had a unique kind of understanding, and Shinku was the only one that had Suigin Tou’s respect.
In the silence of her own mind, if Suigin Tou had a rare moment of complete stillness and clarity, she could admit to herself that she would never grasp why their maker had continued to create Rozen Maiden’s after Shinku. Surely Shinku was the perfection personified that the maker sought after? To Suigin Tou’s eyes there was nothing flawed about Shinku, nor could there ever be... even her faults seemed like perfection to Suigin Tou. Why had their maker not seen that?
A final, startling, realisation had come late, when Suigin Tou had entered Shinku’s dream after her resurrection, supposedly to issue threats and to show Shinku that she was not defeated after all, but in reality wanting to tell Shinku that she was not only alive but whole, that she had finally found grace enough in the maker’s eyes to be completed. That she, Suigin Tou, was now a complete Rozen Maiden and worthy to become Shinku’s mate at last.
Of course, no words to that effect crossed Suigin Tou’s lips as she neither knew how to speak them, nor would have quite had the nerve to issue such a claim before the perfect Shinku. After all, not only had Suigin Tou failed in combat against Shinku last time, but Shinku had also spoken the word that in all the time they had known each other Shinku had never said to Suigin Tou... the word that on anyone else’s lips had been the grounds for their immediate execution, but from Shinku was Suigin Tou’s soul’s undoing.
Junk.
No, Suigin Tou, while fearless of most things, would not have the courage to state her intentions to Shinku after having been so completely undone in their previous meeting. What shocked her though and made Suigin Tou feel as something was crushing her chest, was that when it dawned upon Shinku that Suigin Tou in Shinku’s dream was not a nightmare but the real thing, in a visit like they used to have, Shinku had unabashedly wept in joy.
Perfect Shinku had wept with joy that she, the evil and incomplete Suigin Tou, still lived.
Suigin Tou had reeled at the sight, and her own emotional response had been... overwhelming and just a bit frightening. The things she had wanted to do, the truth that had been right there before her, screaming and undeniable... it was just too much. Suigin Tou had fled with as much dignity she could muster during the circumstances, followed by an image of pale blue eyes that would haunt her.
There was just no denying it to herself anymore. She, Suigin Tou, was in love, utterly and completely.
A nearly white hand fluttered to her chest as a slow, warm and surprisingly shy smile bloomed on features that had oh so rarely known more than the tiniest upturn of pale pink lips. The softest of whispers escaped those lips to be carried away into the night.
“Shinku.”
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