A/N: Did you know there are basically no Todoh/Chiba stories? I thought that was weird. Anyway, I had a funny idea, so I wrote them up. Thanks for reading, and please let me know what you think. -T
I don't Own Code Geass.
Nagisa Chiba woke up with a groan. She felt like she'd been run over by her knightmare. She tried to open her eyes. One was swollen shut, and she could taste blood in her mouth. What she did see was a familiar sight: a Britannian prison cell. Her hands weren't bound, she noticed, and there was a small tray of food in the corner. She crawled over to inspect it.
"Oh! You finally woke up, thank goodness," someone said. It was one of the girls from the command center, in the cell across from her. "Hey everyone, Chiba's awake." There was a bit of commotion, and several voices she recognized.
"You've been out for at least a day. We were worried you were dying, but the stupid night guard wouldn't do anything. At least that other guy made sure you were alive," someone said in the cell to the right. That's right, at least she was alive. When the Britannians captured them she had struggled, and they-
'Oh no!' she thought 'what happened to Todoh?'
"Hey-HEY!" she said, stopping the others from talking. "Did they bring Todoh through here? He was badly wounded."
"No, it was just you. I think it's all women on this hall, except Tamaki. He's at the corner. I heard him crying," one of the girls responded.
"General Todoh!" Chiba cried out, face up to the glass wall, but it was no use. She couldn't see past the end of the hall, and he didn't answer. 'What if he really is dead? His wounds had been bad. He couldn't even stand. Those disgusting Britannians probably threw him into the sea!' She thought she was going to cry, but her face hurt too much. No, Todoh was one of their commanders. They would want a public execution. She had to find him, and make sure he was treated with respect. She had to see him again, before they killed all of them. It was over.
She was really bringing the mood of the cellblock down, apparently. The hum of soft conversations had stopped. Then, she had an idea.
"Tamaki? Can you hear me, it's Chiba!" she shouted in the direction the others indicated. There was no way that idiot wasn't going to answer. She kept yelling.
"What the hell do you want Chiba? I'm havin' a moment here," he'd clearly still been crying over Zero, but that didn't matter.
"I need to find General Todoh, Tamaki, can you see him from there? He was wounded," she asked.
"Why should I even look? It's not like I can do anything about it. Are you expecting me to break him outta here?! I'm not Zero, I don't have some magic trick," Tamaki ranted on for a few minutes. Chiba started pushing her head against the wall. What an idiot.
"Tamaki, don't be mean just do it! You know Chiba cares deeply for Todoh. She needs to know he's alright," one of the girls started pouting at the man, and then it was a choir of whining. Chiba had looked up at the casual statement about her feelings. Did everyone really know that? They must have finally worn Tamaki down, because he was calling her again.
"Fine, I'll do it, just hang on a minute. I'll ask the asshole across from me, but it's a pretty big gap," he said. Tamaki's cell was apparently facing the center of a larger room that their hall was branched from. How big was this place anyway?
"Hey you! Yeah, you. Find out if Todoh is on that side. Chiba's lookin' for him," Tamaki yelled to the pilot across. The bastard had been mocking his dramatic wailing about Zero.
"Chiba? They didn't put them together?" the man called back.
"No, these Britannians are pretty dumb, huh? Anyone would put those two together," he laughed, and the rest of the room was laughing too. Tamaki's voice carried. Genius that he was, he realized all of them could look for Todoh.
"Oh my, is she trying to find him because she never confessed her feelings?" a medic on the far side called back. There was a round of groans and gasping.
"Hey! Sugiyama says there's a grate in his room to the level below. I think we can reach everybody," another pilot yelled out.
"Then we gotta do it, because the Black Knights never give up! The task at hand is finding General Todoh!" Tamaki cried. A round of cheering commenced. A guard poked his head out of a side room and told them all to shut up, but didn't care enough to come out.
"Hey Suoh," an engineer in C block called to his buddy a few cells down, "word is Chiba is looking for Todoh. She has some secret to tell him I guess. What do you think that's about? They say he's dying, do you see him over there?"
"Holy shit, he's dying? Those pigs, they can't even get him medical attention?"
"Maybe if we find him, we can make them do something. We can't let General Todoh down!" another Black Knight said. C block decided it was firmly in favor of helping Chiba before passing the message along.
"-And so she never confessed her feelings, so we have to find General Todoh," a man yelled across the expanse of the central tower. He wasn't entirely sure the man on the other side could hear him, or that he cared. Apparently those guys were Lelouch's men who defected or something.
"Oh my God that's terrible, is she cute?" the Britannian yelled back.
"Whaaaaat?" he yelled.
"Is. She. Cute?" another scream over the void.
"Yeah I guess. I mean, I don't really see how that matters," his compatriot called back to the man.
The Empress Tianzi had cried until they brought her to Xingke's cell. Kaguya was here too, across the way, so she wasn't scared anymore, but now Xingke was trying to keep her from talking to the Black Knights around them. She wasn't sure she understood the story they were telling.
"She's going to have a baby? But, will they let her out of the prison then?" she asked the woman who had been talking to her through the wall.
"Please, I don't think this is an appropriate conversation for the Empress," Xianglin pleaded from the cell she shared with Kaguya.
"It's absolutely terrible, to keep them apart. They were meant for each other!" Kaguya was falling into dramatics, which wasn't helping to keep Tianzi calm.
"It's wrong. They should at least get a cell together, like when they brought me here to Xingke," she cried.
"It's not really the same thing, your Majesty," Xingke said, trying to calm her down.
"No! If it's true love then...then we have to help, Xingke! Order our forces to help them," Tianzi said. The captive Chinese troops would have to rally behind their tiny leader.
"General Todoh? Todoh, are you awake?" It was Oghi's voice, but Oghi was deployed to Mt. Fuji...Todoh bolted upright, awake, then gasped in pain and fell back down.
"Sorry," Oghi said through the glass walls that separated them, "but I'm glad you're awake. You've been out for a few days. I think they had you in a hospital or something." He remembered now. Lelouch had won the battle and the war. The Britannian forces had come for their surrender. Chiba was there...She had bandaged his hand, but it looked as if all his dressings had been replaced. At least their jailers hadn't let him die.
"Hey!" Oghi yelled, startling him. "He's awake, you can tell them now. He can't move much, but I think he's alright." Someone answered, but it was hard to hear.
"Sorry about that. Everyone's been worried about you, but we're the only ones in this block right now. They got me a message through Hong Gu on the corner there," Oghi said, pointing down the hall. This was a Britannian prison. He managed to sit up, slowly this time, and dragged himself over to the wall where he could talk to Oghi. There was some food, but he just took the water.
"They're worried about me?" he asked.
"Yeah," Ohgi answered. "Well, it's actually Chiba. She's wounded, but she woke up too, and I guess she made everyone ask around for you. The message got here all the way from G block, and we're in A. Priority prisoners. Seems like they haven't collected everyone yet."
"Chiba wasn't wounded before we were captured. It was just me," he said, confused. They must have hurt her. Oghi was studying him carefully.
"What is it?" he asked.
"Oh, uh...well there was more to the message, but I don't know if you should hear it from me," Oghi said.
"Just tell me," he said, closing his eyes. There was no one else to hear it from, and he could probably guess Chiba's concern. She would be wondering if his wounds had been fatal.
"If you're sure," the other man gave him a last chance to refuse, "The rallying cry seems to be that she never confessed her true feelings to you." Todoh's eyes were immediately wide open, unsure if he'd heard correctly.
"Well I'm not exactly sure what-" he tried to say, but was cut off by Oghi.
"That's not all. They're saying she's pregnant and, well, you know, that you two should be together," Oghi said. Todoh choked on the water he'd tried to drink, coughing, and that sent pain through him again. He immediately laid back down, staring at the ceiling. That didn't make any sense, was Oghi implying that he was the father? Obviously he would remember something like that! Maybe there was that one night, when they had been drinking: Chiba, Asahina, and him, but that was too long ago. He thought it was too long anyway. Wait, why was he even thinking about this? He never slept with Chiba.
Oghi probably thought he was going into shock. "Hey, I'm not making any judgements, you know. Everyone saw that she had a thing for you, but I didn't think she'd ever got up to acting on it. I think they're all proud of her, to be honest. Maybe it's a moral booster of sorts, if that even matters anymore."
Todoh didn't want to dignify that with a response. This was obviously a misunderstanding, but if not him, then who was the father? She hadn't had a lot of free time. It was really none of his business. Perhaps the others found this amusing, but it didn't show the best judgement on Chiba's part, and he didn't want her exposed to shame. Those Britannians were disgusting, wounding a pregnant woman.
It was late into the night when the message came back to Chiba.
"They said WHAT?" she asked, not wanting to hear what Tamaki was saying.
"He's in A block with Oghi. He has no eyes, and he can't move because they broke his legs," Tamaki answered. She thought she was going to be sick. This couldn't be right! Did they do it to humiliate him, the military leader they defeated? She needed to find a way to get there. With Tamaki's loud announcement, most of the section had woken up. As G block had learned to their peril, Tamaki was even worse when he had a captive audience. The former Chief of Finance ranted on for several minutes about the Britannian dogs and their torture of a man with honor, his best buddy Todoh.
"Tamaki shut up, it's the middle of the night!"
"But what about General Todoh? What did they do to him!"
"Are they going to torture us too? What do they want?!"
The day lights turned back on and several guards rushed in to see to the commotion, smashing their batons against the cells of prisoners who wouldn't stop talking. This didn't have the desired effect. If anything, the block was descending into chaos. Chiba had to get one of the guards to listen to her.
"Hey, I need to speak to your superior," she said to the man checking their hall. He walked up, but then Tamaki started hammering on the glass, crying about justice, and the guard hurried away. That idiot.
"Don't make us beat you again, Tamaki," one guard said to him. Chiba wondered how many times this had happened while she'd been unconscious.
"Britannian pigs! Come and fight me then. I'll give you a taste of the Black Knights!" Tamaki cried. They dragged him out of the cell and pushed him around. The rest of the block had gone silent. No one really wanted to see him hurt. Chiba tried again.
"I need to speak to General Todoh. Take me to your superior," she yelled. Everyone heard her that time, and now they were chanting 'Let Her Go'. The guards shoved Tamaki back into his cell, still complaining and no more broken than before. Chiba almost regretted her actions when they gathered around her cell.
"Will you all PLEASE shut the hell up if we let her go to the Captain?" their leader addressed the G block. A round of applause erupted.
"Crazy elevens," a guard muttered as they prepared a pair of handcuffs.
"Good luck, Chiba," the girl across from her said. As they marched her past the rows of cells, her comrades supported her. Sugiyama gave her a smile.
"Get this over to Oghi right away," he started to tell the man in the cell beneath him. "Chiba is out of her cell."
Todoh thought he heard a child crying. That couldn't be right. There were bustling sounds, gates opening and closing. He looked to Oghi, who shrugged his shoulders. After several minutes, the gate on their block must have opened. There were footsteps, and the child's crying was louder.
"It's wrong! You can't do this to her and I won't let you," it was Tianzi. He could hear Hong Gu saying something as the small Empress went past, accompanied by several guards, more than were needed to guard a child. As she was walked past Todoh she stopped, looking at him.
"I told them to bring your Lieutenant here, but they won't listen to me, and now they took me away from Xingke," she said and burst further into tears. Todoh gave the guards his most stern look, and one of them looked ashamed. She was just a girl, after all. They opened the cell next to Ohgi and gently pushed her in, releasing her hands. Todoh didn't stop his stare.
"They're transferring him here in a few minutes. She doesn't listen," the guard sounded exasperated. Todoh didn't respond. "We're moving all the leaders here. We didn't do anything to her." They left, and the Empress eventually ended up just sniffling.
"When we found out what was happening, I demanded to speak to their superior," she started her tale unprompted, which was unusual for her if he remembered, "and then, Xingke said it was a riot. All the prisoners were yelling, and a few were even out in the recreation area, so there was fighting. I told them not to fight..." She trailed off, remembering her shyness.
"What happened to make everyone so upset?" Oghi asked her.
"The Black Knight prisoners said Captain Chiba had been removed from her cell, and that they were torturing her, or killing her even! And after what they had told us, that she should be with General Todoh, we couldn't allow this. Kaguya said it's a breach of the Britannian code for prisoners of war." Todoh refused to believe this. Chiba was forthright in her opinions, but she would know not to antagonize a prison guard in their situation. Were they doing this to get to him somehow? But to what end? The Empress looked like she was going to cry again.
"I appreciate your concern, and I'm sorry for the trouble you've been through on our behalf," he said, bowing. When the guards returned, he would have to demand to see Chiba. This insult could not stand, and he wasn't going to play this strange game of theirs. One guard returned briefly, sliding a blanket into Tianzi's cell.
"Good," he said.
The Captain of G block had decided it wasn't worth arguing with Chiba anymore when they received word of a riot in B block on her behalf. Chiba wasn't particularly satisfied with their conversation, but when he'd thrown his hands up in defeat she figured it didn't matter either way. When she was then dragged by the collar through the next five cell blocks, she told herself it was a means to an end. They hadn't even bothered binding her hands. She just had to find Todoh.
She couldn't really see who they were passing in her position, but there were some friendly voices calling out. She must have been gone all day because most people were sleeping again. They had slowed down. Hopefully this was where Todoh was. She tried not to think of the rumors, about his eyes and legs. She would take care of him, whatever happened.
"Now I don't want to hear anything else about this, do you understand?" the Captain said, shoving her unceremoniously into a cell. I was dark, but there was another person in the corner. It was…
"Todoh?" she called out, softly. If anyone else in the hall had woken up, they hadn't said anything. The figure stirred. It was him!
"Chiba. Are you alright?" he asked, calm as ever. She made her way over to him, arm out until she felt the wall, then slid onto the floor. She wanted to reach out and touch his face, to find out if his eyes were really gone. There were no bandages over them. No, she could see them there, looking at her. They were both silent for a minute. She wasn't sure if anyone was listening to them, but in the back of the cell and talking quietly they could probably go unheard.
"When I couldn't find you I thought," she started, but didn't want to say it. "They told me you were being tortured. I had to try and reason with the guards to see you." Todoh had offered her part of his blanket and wrapped it around them both, but didn't say anything at first. Was he shamed by her weakness?
"So this pregnancy was a tactic to elicit sympathy, then. They let you speak to their superior," he said.
"Yeah, they-wait what!?" she asked, a little too loud. She thought she heard Tianzi say something, and someone shushed. She forced herself to look back at the General.
"I'm not sure what you're talking about, sir," she whispered.
"The other prisoners were sending messages from you," he said. He was actually hesitating, she realized, "the story was that you said you were...carrying my child, and that you had to see me." Chiba thought she could tell the guards they wouldn't have to execute her. She was definitely going to die now. She was too shocked to even move away from the blanket, and was sure he could see her blushing even in the darkness.
"So it's not true, then," he said after she didn't answer.
"No, I'm not sure where that rumor came from," she replied stiffly.
"You're not pregnant at all?" he clarified. She shook her head. He relaxed. She couldn't.
"I was told they'd broken your legs," she said. He nudged her knee with his own.
"Still in one piece. You should sleep, Chiba," he ordered, so she tried. She wasn't sure when she drifted off.
When she woke up again she was leaning on his shoulder. With her good eye, she could see Oghi sleeping in the cell across from them. It was actually warm under the blanket. When she moved her head, Todoh began to wake, and she hurried to move away.
"Sorry," she said, but when she looked up she saw his shocked expression. Was it really so bad?
"When did they do that?" he asked. Her face must look as bad as it felt, then.
"I woke up like this. It must have been when they captured us, but I don't really remember," she answered. He left the blanket and got a cup of water he'd kept in the other corner. When he got back, he unzipped his jumpsuit and removed his undershirt. There were thick bandages all over his torso beneath.
"It's not ideal, but you look terrible," he said, wetting a corner of the cloth, and bringing it to her face. The slight pressure hurt, and she flinched a little.
"I can do it, sir," she said.
"You can't even see," he answered, referring to her black eye. When he brought the cloth away it was red with the blood he'd wiped off.
"I don't think your nose is broken," he added. He finished the rest in silence. When he was done he crumpled the shirt up and tossed it into a corner. It did feel better not being so dirty anymore. They tried to settle back against the wall, but Todoh kept grunting and shifting in pain. She took the blanket off and folded it into a pillow, and he laid down gratefully. With Todoh, she never really had to say anything. It was nice to sit in quiet sometimes. He might be falling asleep this time, though.
When his hand tapped her leg, she gasped in surprise. He was raising his hand so she could hold it like she had before they were captured. She took it. Was the pain still that bad?
"Thank you, Chiba. I never thanked you before, for caring," he said. He was looking away from her.
"It's alright. Just rest," she said. She was blushing again. His grip tightened with waves of pain. He should have been laying down long before this, but he never cried out. After a while, he seemed more settled, and turned his face toward her again.
"Everything in those messages was a lie, then? You're not wounded," he asked.
"I guess a beating translated to wounded over long distance," she answered.
"They said you had something to tell me," he said.
"I'm not pregnant," she said, getting flustered again. He was serious about this? She thought she saw Oghi staring at them, but when she glanced over he looked asleep.
"No, they said you had something else that you wanted to confess," he said quietly. He was giving her an opportunity, and she had to take it this time.
"Oh, well they must have said-That is, it's true. My feelings for you have gone beyond professional," she managed. She hoped Asahina would be proud.
"I see," he said. Was that good or bad?
"It was never an appropriate time, so I kept it to myself," she said.
"Everyone else seems to know," he said. He actually chuckled, but then he winced and clutched her hand. She was red down to her toes now.
"I never told anyone! I talked to Asahina, but he already knew," she said.
"Asahina? That explains a lot, actually," he said. He didn't elaborate, but maybe Asahina had tried more on her behalf then she knew. They fell into another silence. She wasn't sure if this was what she had wanted, but he hadn't rejected her or pushed her away.
"Nagisa," he said suddenly.
"K-kyoshiro?" He had used her first name?
"You deserve better after everything that's happened. If you do get out of this, forget about me," he said. She couldn't believe this. Better than him?
"Don't say that. I'm not leaving without you," she said.
"They may only execute the leaders. Whatever the case, I'm not getting out of this. I don't want you to die for me," he said. He had locked eyes with her. He was always serious, but he really meant it. He cared.
"Awww how romantic! Does this mean he really loves you?!" Kaguya asked. The direction of her outburst put her location at the other side of the wall they had huddled against last night. There was a humming of conversation between cells. Apparently, people were waking up. Kaguya was prattling on about it to Tamaki and Sugiyama, who seemed to be two cells over, and it was clearly going to become the topic of the day for the prison. It was a wonder their system hadn't been more reliable with how relentless the gossiping was. Chiba tried to ignore them.
Todoh lifted himself up halfway on his arms, looking toward Oghi, but the other man had turned his back to them. He sat up carefully and moved his hand to her shoulder, pulling her towards him a bit, and kissed her, then fell back down with a grunt.
"Did you see that, Xingke?" Chiba heard Tianzi whisper.
"No," he said.