Interesting take on Chikane's thought process, although it's a bit overdone and OOC if you consider Sumio Uetake's notes on Chicane's characterization and motifs. I'd elaborate on this but DezoPenguin already touched on the main points. He either read Uetake's character notes or has an uncanny insight on these characters. At any rate, listen to him, he knows this stuff. And keep it up!

Ah, I see miss author has returned to her melancholy form in style, after "dabbling" in some side splitting comedy writing XD This is very good. KnM is one of my all time favorite series, one that moved me to tears, literally ;_; I love both Himeko and Chikane's characters, and I think you did a great job expanding on how that evening's events devestated Chikane and utimately led her into the fateful decision, however misguided it may be.

I'm not too sure what the title means. I looked it up and the word basically means traitor right? Is this referring to Chikane being one of the Orochi? That in itself is also quite a puzzling plot point... but I guess if we're seeing a catgirl nurse with a giant syringe blowing up bridges in a flying mecha, we can't exactly demand logic in such a story right xP

Looking forward to more KnM fanfics! Since I haven't seen the major's review yet, I'll borrow his word and

"Semper-fi, carry on!"

I know that I already sent this review to you by e-mail (yep, it actually exceeded the character limit) so of course we've already discussed several things below-for example, now I do know that it was your deliberate intention to introduce the truly tragic implications for their relationship that I discuss below...which was a truly bitter pill to swallow, far more bitter than the agonizing-enough matters that are Chikane's suffering thoughts here. But you deserve to see the commentary in "print" as well.

Let's start with the obvious: You set out to write tragedy and angst, and boy, did you succeed. This fic is painful in places to read, Chikane's pain is so open and raw and her logic so horrifically twisted that it's like watching a train wreck about to happen. Of course, as readers we know What Happens Next, which makes it all the worse to see. The sheer irrationality of it all makes it painful to see. The ending, especially, is so powerful: "despair was a privilege Chikane did not deserve any more." It's a very potent statement, with her being so suffused by that emotion. I recall from back when I first watched Episode 8, when I saw the initial scenes of Chikane "wrapping up" her life, quitting her clubs, retiring from the student council; my first thoughts were, "This is a person planning to commit suicide." And, of course, she was, although with a number of intermediate steps along the way to insure that the method of her death was "get killed by Himeko."

So in that respect, this story is a towering success. And it slides right into a very interesting space which the original story leaves untold, since for dramatic purposes we can't see what's happening in Chikane's head while she makes that decision. In that respect, it's not much different from my story, "Sunrise," which looks into Himeko's head while she's making the final decision which is similarly left unseen for dramatic purposes (so we can be surprised along with Chikane as we read).

So, on to the negative part, which you, being you, have probably already guessed what I'm going to mention: the fact that you've provided that Chikane and Himeko were properly lovers in their previous life. It's an intriguing choice which has a lot of effects on how I view the characters, the situation, and the events of Kannazuki no Mikoas a whole. And given what those effects are, and given the fact that this is you writing the story, you who is (a) very awake to subtleties and such effects in her stories, and (b) is writing a tragedy anyway and is after all the Queen of Tragedy, the more I think about it the more I've come to suspect that you did it all on purpose for the sake of emphasizing the tragic nature of the story (which if you did, I'll be able to post this review on since it would suddenly be a positive review! _ ). After all, "Hey, Chikane is suicidally depressed" is tragic, but it's tragedy that we know, and it's ameliorated by the fact that we know it turns out okay in the end. But the effect of making them lovers in a past life is even worse, and brings about brand new tragedy that's not part of the series and adds a color of misery and despair to the ending, besides!

...I'm not sure if it's a good thing that that last sentence is something that I immediately associate with the kind of thing you'd do in your writing. ;;;;;

Anyway, this is a situation where, ironically, I was recently asked this question in a review of "Madness of the Sun," that is, do I believe that Chikane and Himeko were lovers in their past lives before KnM? My answer was, as you've probably guessed, no. Of course, this is considerably easier in the manga, where Chikane has, as far as we can tell, pretty much full recall of her past life starting with the moment that she awoke as Lunar Priestess (well, she knew even before that that she was the Lunar Priestess, but "SolarHimeko" was new information to her then, so I'm expecting that it was that moment where she gained the major revelation, similar to the Ep. 7 kiss in the anime). We're even handed this information in the scene with Sister Miyako's hallucination, where Miyako presents a sexually-interested Himeko to Chikane and Chikane rejects it because, in her words, Himeko would never behave like that (which of course is rather funny in hindsight when we consider that the series ends with Himeko in the shrine, pouncing on Chikane with saliva-heavy French kisses and busily stripping off her kimono, so much so that I felt the need to highlight the point with "Moving Day"). The point here is that in the manga, it's pretty solidly clear that Chikane, with full awareness of her past lives, is nonetheless convinced that it's impossible for Himeko to be attracted to her as a woman-not just "it's sick and wrong" of generalized gayngst, but "it's not possible that she'd do that," which is an impossible conclusion if they actually were lovers in the past.

The anime is different-I don't think that it played out quite the same way in Ep. 7 (Chikane seemed, IIRC, to be rejecting her own feelings to Miyako rather than making any judgments about Himeko), and in any case the situation is different there because that scene happened before she regained her past-life memories. Thus, the door is opened to your fic and my arguments are not "No, that's wrong" but "I don't like the consequences of that assumption."

And here are the consequences:

On a character level, Chikane is a complete idiot.

Let's start with #1: One of Chikane's major defining points as a character is her serious angst over being gay. Himeko never has those problems; in the anime she's instantly "If it's you, it's okay" the only time the issue is actually discussed (Ep. 12) and in the manga she says, "The things you want to do, I want them too" (which is yet another point I have for preferring the manga version's content...). Chikane, on the other hand, steals a kiss from Himeko in Ep. 1 and in Ep. 2 is dumping buckets of freezing water over herself in a cleansing/purification ritual. It gives her several episodes of general torment as Himeko haltingly moves through the initial steps of a relationship with Souma, together with a very bad case of Can Not Spit It Out. But now we're presented with the idea that she has in fact had a relationship in her past life-not just with anyone, but with the actual object of her love and desire! That is, she would already know that Himeko is quite capable of loving her and accepting her feelings. Now, that doesn't touch on the question of guilt and betrayal. There's still plenty of wide-open room for her to feel bad over "betraying" Himeko by killing her in their last life, so that she'd be reluctant to enter a relationship on those grounds. But that doesn't go anywhere near the concept of "I must not soil Himeko with my unclean lusts." At worst, she ought to be thinking, "This is what I deserve for betraying our love by killing her; it's only right that she find a different love in this life who will always be true to her." But she shouldn't be feeling bad over being gay, which Miyako works her over with up one side and down the other. (I suppose one could excuse it all by saying that this Chikane is so heavily heteronormatively socialized that she's been crushed by the concept, but if her past-life love and her past-life guilt are both working so heavily on her, she shouldn't have present-life idiocy drowning other past-life effects.)

(I will omit the discussion of Chikane's further idiocy in viewing herself killing Himeko as any kind of betrayal, given that past-Himeko was obviously taking part willingly-which we know because she didn't have any lingering past-life resentment...which ought to be a clue for Chikane, honestly-in a sacrifice to obtain something that she, Himeko, wanted to accomplish, because that's Chikane's canon stupidity.)

You also omit one key point in the characterization of Chikane's guilt: her hatred and resentment of Ame no Murakumo. After all, if she really wanted to make up for killing Himeko, all she had to do was to say to her, "Look, last time you were the sacrifice, this time I'll do it." Turning Orochi and mentally torturing Himeko (including rape) to make Himeko hate her wouldn't be necessary. The problem with that was the fact that she was truly unable to pray for Ame no Murakumo's return-she was sabotaging the ritual. You obliquely nod at it in one sentence, but it's what makes the rest of the plot needed, because it's what makes Chikane have to take herself out of the equation, and so it deserves more.

But all that's nothing compared to what the implications are for the entire series itself.

Part of what makes Kannazuki no Miko so effective as a romance (which, when you get right down to it, is what genre it belongs to) is the ultimate resolution. Here are two young women who, burdened by impossible circumstances and by the horrors of the past, are able to overcome all that emotional burden, where Chikane can confront her guilt and shame and Himeko can confront her weakness, and through Himeko finding strength Chikane is in turn able to find hope. They open up to one another and are able to find love together. It's why the final confession scene in Ep. 12 can move my wife to tears even though she's iffy on the characters (particularly Himeko).

And you just shot the whole thing down.

Finding love? Nah, they already had that in their last life. So that's hardly any kind of great victory. Indeed, in the universe created by "Quisling," they were lovers before, and far from being a power that transcended their suffering, it did jack-all nothing. Chikane loved Himeko, Himeko loved Chikane, and the end of the cycle still tore Chikane's emotions apart to the point that she became an Orochi. So what possibly makes things any different for the future. We've now had demonstrated for us the absolute worthlessness of love, even of mutual love, to shape fate and offer hope. Himeko's feelings for Chikane don't matter-they existed anyway. Indeed, Chikane probably would have ended up happier if they didn't exist in this lifetime, because it would have opened up the possibility that Himeko could have been happy without her. Whereas now nothing is accomplished. Nothing is transcended. And in their next life, Chikane is probably just as crushed by despair because the options have now been laid out: either Chikane kills Himeko (which she already considers a Bad End) or Himeko kills Chikane (and lives out the rest of her life alone). The natural implication of this is that the post-credits reunion scene (which the director explicitly leaves completely ambiguous and up to the viewer to supply context) take place not in the future of the "present life" but in a future life...one which will likely end just as badly.

So in other words, the net implication of there being a past-life love between them is to destroy any hopeful message in the series itself, returning it to bitter tragedy.

See why I suspect that you did that on purpose, O Queen of Tragedy? _ You didn't just write a sad story, you took it one step beyond and destroyed everything positive in the series itself, suggesting that bitterness and pain is the only thing that these girls will ever find in the future! The only way in which any hope can then be snatched from the series, therefore, is if you believe that the unique circumstances of the finale mean that the cycles are broken. Of course, that's one possible ending (as the writer and director openly stated that they left the anime's ending ambiguous and so that each fan could write the conclusion that they wanted)...but it's also possibly not true, and not within the scope of this fic, so the tragic implications remain unblunted. Which, in turn, made "Quisling," while superbly written, quite the bitter drink to down with my morning coffee!

Excellent insight into Chikane's mind.

I've always found it sad that Chikane's repression led her to use the Orochi (after all, i believe a very large part of her wanted the world to go to hell), and it's enhanced because only she remembers the past life. I've always wondered whether it would be more beneficial to the plot of the anime if Chikane and Himeko loved each other before, and reading this I have to say that having a once lover kiss somebody else is pretty vital to Chikane's turning point.

I'm sad that this doesn't have reviews. :( This makes an excellent oneshot, but if you're planning to add insight to the rape scene and especially the scene where Chikane's killed in the end GO FOR IT. Your summary seems to suggest an AU, though, so that would be another interesting take.