Author's Note: This is, as said in the summary, a crossover with Neil Gaiman's "The Sandman" series. This story takes place after the end of Revolutionary Girl Utena, and between the volumes "A Game of You" and "Brief Lives" in Sandman. Thank you for reading.

Objects of Desire: Prologue – Daydream Overture

Ohtori Academy lay bare to him, from the forest to the front entrance to the surrounding streets. He knew it all.

Far below, students filtered through the gates, uniforms of green and white to match the mixed architecture, their chatter filling the air. Smiles, laughter; all so familiar, all much the same as it had been every day before.

Past the classrooms, past the athletic fields, toward the center of campus where the tower stood, he looked. An elevator with an elaborate door carried those qualified to ride within to a room halfway up the tower, to a balcony with a view of nearly all of campus. There sat the student council, those he long-ago marked as special and who would remain marked as such until he tired of them, and then they would forget and become ordinary again.

He smiled for the first time in several days. Already they were forgetting what he wished them to.

The council members, four of them these days, held a debate of little importance over minor campus-wide issues concerning clubs and athletic fields. He paid little attention, as he already knew the meeting's outcome. They thought they ruled over Ohtori, that their word was final, that even the teachers and staff would not cross them.

To give youth power over adulthood . . . one of the reasons for Ohtori's existence. Or so he'd decided at the campus's creation. So much had changed since then.

At the true center of campus, at the highest point in Ohtori, Akio stood at the window, looking out over the world he ruled and contemplating how so much had gone so wrong.

How long, he wondered, had it been since he first came here? Since he and his master created the world and he populated it, since the games first began, since he realized the power behind the idea of revolutionizing the world? How long had it been since–

A scowl marred his dark features, and Akio turned from the window. He knew how long it had been.

Merely three days since Anthy walked out the door, out of the tower, and out of Ohtori. Only days since she dared to defy him.

At first, he'd expected her to return, to claim that she was wrong and had made a mistake, to give him that look that said she knew she never could leave. But he heard her voice in his head now, the last words she'd said to him, and bowed his head. Her voice had been different, then. Perhaps with newfound strength, perhaps with hope. Perhaps she was returning to who she'd once been–

Akio looked to his desk in the center of the expansive room. It seemed awkward and out of place near the couches and the planetarium projector, but with the preparations for another duel game already begun, he'd assumed that he would need it. It wasn't an easy task, being the End of the World.

He almost smiled at the thought, then caught sight of something atop the desk, and that desire 's glasses lay where she had set them three days ago. He hadn't touched them. Torn between laughing at himself and being disgusted, he walked to the desk and picked them up, toyed idly with them between his fingers.

How she'd struggled, decades ago, when he'd first put them on her. Such an independent spirit; Anthy had proven difficult to break. The glasses, like much of Ohtori, were his master's idea – a way to subdue a willful girl and bend her to him, to convince her to play the role he had contrived for her.

As Akio's master had once told him, his purpose – and to that effect, Ohtori's greater purpose – was to explore duality. Male and female. Teacher and student. Master and slave. His master was of both sides simultaneously, and had imbued Akio with the ability to control nearly all that occurred within Ohtori's bounds, the better to serve his purpose.

What greater purpose his master wanted in knowing duality, Akio neither knew nor cared. Surely his master must be pleased with him, else he would have learned of it. And when he'd told his master what he wished to explore, Anthy's arrival was all the approval Akio needed.

To understand the ways of prince and princess, of both sides of a betrothal, Akio had been given someone who could be the bride again, and again, and again. All he'd needed to do was convince her to play along.

In time, he thought he had broken her. When she would remove the glasses at his word, and not turn against him or try to escape, he knew that she was his. When she would remove the glasses of her own accord, and held not a thought in her head contrary to what he wished, he knew that the true work could begin, and that the princess would need a prince.

And that prince. . . .

Akio turned and hurled the glasses at the wall, gritted his teeth as the lenses shattered on the stone.

So much done, so much he'd changed Ohtori, all for the duel game. All for the Rose Bride and her Engaged. All to see what his students, his favored students, would do when given the chance to play the prince. It had been quite interesting at times – the drama, the conflict, the duels and the dance of victor and victim. But in the end, the game had ended, and not at his decision.

Perhaps . . . perhaps he was at fault, somehow. Such an elaborate construct, the prince and the witch and the swords, all meshing perfectly with the arena and the duels, all to see what one girl who'd decided half her life ago to become something she could never be.

Or so he'd thought.

Perhaps his master would be proud; he'd surpassed himself in that last game. The thought brought a bitter smile to Akio's face. No, his master would not be pleased, his master would see this as a failure, his master would laugh and fade away as his master often did whenever Akio was found worthy of a visit.

Was it truly his fault? Yes. The answer came as soon as he'd thought of the question. It could be no fault other than his own. He'd not counted upon the girl's independence or resilience; others had played through the game only to learn in the end that a girl could never be the prince. But this time . . . such a difference, and with such an unfortunate result.

When all the swords of hate – he chided himself for such a melodramatic conceit – had come crashing down upon him in the storm of pain and steel that destroyed the dueling arena, he lost consciousness, and for the first time since Ohtori's creation, he likewise lost control. In that moment of absence, the girl was lost, and Anthy found the inspiration to seek her freedom.

It was the first thing that had upset him in decades, the first time in so long that things went against his will.

And now, Ohtori lacked both prince and princess. What was he to do? There could be no duels without the Rose Bride. One dream was gone; the other would not do. And duels must have a victor, someone for all the others to fight against. The last round had gone so well, with the girl winning nearly all of them–

Akio shook his head, once, then turned to his desk and sat down. With only slightly more than a thought, he recreated Anthy's glasses and lay them atop the desk next to his new laptop. A small stack of envelopes, all sealed with red wax stamped with the mark of the rose, sat at the center of the desk. All the messages within them were blank; they would say what he wished them to say depending on the reaction of the recipient.

All was ready for a new game. But with no prize for the winner, what point was there in starting?

He remembered the words of his master, shortly after Ohtori became his: "What you want will be yours. What others want will be yours, and you will choose to give it to them or not. Everything wants. Not everything gets. Start there." And then his master had smirked, and was gone.

What he wanted . . . another prize for the duels. But none here would suit his needs. Even Anthy had come from elsewhere. What he wanted was not here.

"Master," Akio whispered. The word carried a reverence not found in anything else he ever spoke. "I want . . . a new Rose Bride. Or the old one returned. You said I would have what I desired."

Akio waited for a response as the sun traveled across the sky. When evening came and the stars grew visible in the darkening sky, he began to wonder what he had done to deserve being snubbed, and what would happen next, for him and his world.

A world and more away, Desire floated within the heart of a great monolith in the shape of itself, and knew all that transpired at Ohtori. Desire saw its creation, he who ruled his own tiny world, and felt his frustration, and his unfamiliar sense of doubt.

And Desire knew what had transpired, and Desire considered the consequences, and Desire came to realize what could come of this. And Desire laughed.