Author's note: This story will be nine/ten chapters in total. Basically, it's an AU where Lelouch hasn't discovered Geass and the year is 2020 rather than 2017. So Lelouch and everyone else is three years older than from how they are when they're first introduced in canon.
A note before you begin: the first chapter is set chronologically at the end of the story, so things might not make sense when you begin. You might be able to piece things together, but if you don't, don't worry; everything will make sense in later chapters.
This fic is very different from my usual works. I think I'll just let it speak for itself from here.
one
(she's never coming back);
Lelouch was tired, and so he thought of Nunally first. He thought, through the dim and scratched window of his memory, not of Nunally particularly but of a vaguely pleasant palette of colours that had once painted his existence bright. He shuddered and felt himself clutch against the softness of the bedsheets beside him. It had the same kind of texture as Nunally's hair. It was then he remembered why he preferred to keep the curtains shut over his memories. From there, it was as if his mind clicked into gear, and abruptly, it shifted to the present.
That was how he woke, on a night no different from any other except that today, a few more people might be dead. He just wasn't one of them. Lelouch sat up in his bed and peered out the window. The sky was still inky black and the wind blew, as if hesitant, ruffling the grass in the garden outside. He heard the distant sound of a dog's bark a few houses away. It sounded alien against a landscape of silence.
Soon, Lelouch thought. He lay back down and leaned his head back against the pillow. An observer might have thought he was gazing blankly at the ceiling, but his mind was working furiously: measuring, calculating, anticipating. When he heard the knock upon his front door, it merely seemed like a logical extension of his thoughts. He had deeply considered the possibility that this would happen, after all. Lelouch cast a sharp glance at the inconspicuous, black digital clock on his bedside table: 2:06, the time read.
The knock on the door resounded harshly. It was so demanding, Lelouch reflected as he slipped noiselessly out of his bed. There was no hesitation in the way he gripped his front doorknob, and yet as soon as that thought occurred to him, he noticed his hand clench more tightly and felt his brows furrow. He opened the front door and for a brief moment, a silence, too, opened up before him. It hung in the air between him and the knocker, and then dropped, as if there was a gaping empty chasm between them.
Then Lelouch felt his back slam against the wall behind him.
"You bastard," he heard the man hiss. "You fucking bastard."
Lelouch saw the uninhibited rage in the man's features. He was close enough to see every tiny crease in his brow and the whites in his eyes. But none of that conveyed his fury quite like the contortions his face made as his eyes blinked and hardened into the most breathtakingly intense glare Lelouch had ever seen.
There were tears in his eyes.
"So," said Lelouch. "You've come, Suzaku."
"You killed her. She's dead and it's all your fault."
His voice was barely above a whisper. Leouch could hear the clock ticking on the wall and the sound of his own hitched breathing.
"I didn't kill her," Lelouch said evenly.
Suzaku's fist clenched tighter against him.
"You did."
"No. The criminal was already arrested, wasn't she?" Lelouch did not know how his face must have appeared to Suzaku, but he saw the other man's reaction: his jaw clenched and his lips tugged downwards aggressively. Lelouch focused his gaze on those lips (but not his eyes – he did not want to remember how they made him feel) and continued, "Kallen Kouzuki. She pulled the trigger."
"And who asked her? Who sweet-talked her into doing it?"
Lelouch couldn't help it. He let out a scornful chuckle that died away on his lips as soon as it came.
"You've gotten so suspicious, Suzaku. You'd doubt your own best friend."
The last word was what made Suzaku flinch.
"I didn't want to believe it," he whispered hoarsely. "I wanted to believe in you until the end."
Lelouch found that he could say nothing. He had heard all of this before.
"What changed?" Suzaku demanded.
"Nothing changed," Lelouch told him wearily. "Only you did."
Suzaku growled. It was then Lelouch made the mistake of looking into his eyes. It startled him the way few things did. Because Suzaku at that moment was nothing more than a lost, defeated boy.
Yet he was a grown man. His cheeks were hollow now and there was a certain jagged quality in the way his jaw was set. It brought attention to the brilliance in his eyes. (And yet he no longer had that sparkle in his eyes he had at the beginning. Lelouch felt his chest constrict and-)
He leaned forward. His mind was swimming into the depths of nothing, and that was all it took, really, to take Suzaku Kururugi's lips against his own.
Look what you've made me do, Lelouch thought furiously. Look what you've made us all do.
Suzaku pushed him away first.
"Wh-What are you-?"
"Quiet!" Lelouch shook his head. "You're a damned fool, Suzaku."
"Don't talk to me like that, Lelouch!" His anger was back. Lelouch shook his head again.
"It's over," he said, and with those words, the finality fell upon him with the same heavy-handedness they fell upon Suzaku. "You're the one who failed."
(she's never coming back)
He kissed Suzaku again, and this time the other man responded. His hands flew to his hair and Lelouch felt his fingers pressing against him, pulling their heads closer. Suzaku's tongue was hot and furious; he kissed as if it was the only means he had to express his pent-up frustration. Lelouch knew, understood all too well, because what he did was out of precisely the same emotions. The wan moon cast short, creeping shadows with its sickly light and as for Suzaku, his eyes gleamed in a different way. It was just his way of saying he didn't give a damn anymore. Lelouch closed his eyes.
He thought of his sister with a sort of hollow monotony that always followed anger and always preceded despair. He tasted the saltiness in Suzaku's lips and knew the hollowness belonged just as much to the other man.
To them, Lelouch corrected himself and he reached forward into the dark and tugged upon Suzaku's shirt.
"Here?" Suzaku whispered carefully, pulling back. Lelouch measured him with his gaze and then he answered, all the heaviness in the world in the tone of his sigh.
"There's no going back."
In the morning, Lelouch woke up and it wasn't a dream. He had never considered for a moment that it was.
Suzaku wasn't in the bed, but the scent of him still clung in the air, and it was so thoroughly intertwined with the smell of sex that for a moment, Lelouch found that he could not breathe. He remembered vividly how it felt to have Suzaku's fingers twisting in his hair and to hear him gasping and panting his release. He remembered how bitter Suzaku's cock had tasted and how hot and pulsating it was against his throat. But most of all, he remembered the blinding white numbness of it all. He could attach no particular emotion to the event.
Then he sat up and the thoughts rushed to his head, neatly arranging themselves in an organised manner for him to survey. Suzaku had come for him, just as he had anticipated. By now, he had either left already or was still in the vicinity somewhere. Either option seemed plausible. If Suzaku had left, then he was disgusted. If he had stayed, then he was even more disgusted than Lelouch had previously imagined.
As Lelouch contemplated the thought of it, the bedroom door swung open and there Suzaku stood, his presence jarring and resonating with bitterness.
"Get up," Suzaku told him shortly. "It's today."
He was dressed in his Britannian military uniform. He stood tall and sharp, and his hair was still slightly damp from a recent shower. He was handsome in a dull and insignificant sort of way. Lelouch could not imagine touching him at all.
And yet he had.
"Today, huh?" He pulled the covers off him and abruptly felt more naked than he really was. "I don't suppose I have a choice, do I?"
"No," Suzaku said. "You don't."
He drew closer.
"You're going to watch her die, Lelouch."
And so Lelouch got up and dressed quickly in a clean suit. Together, he and Suzaku went to the prison where the execution of Kallen Kouzuki was taking place. He had not intended to go – not out of cowardice or guilt but because it simply wasn't necessary – but it was one thing he could do for Suzaku. Even now – especially now – because it had been that way all along. He stood by the rails and watched as Kallen was led to the gallows.
She looked awful. She was dressed in drab grey prison gear and her eyes were bloodshot and bleary. Her hair, now grown past shoulder length, was frazzled, knotted and dull in sheen. Her hands were tied behind her back and she staggered when an armed guard prodded her with the butt of his rifle. But her mouth, at least, was the same. She still had the ability to inject her own personality and stubbornness into her grimace. For a brief moment as she was led past the onlookers, her eyes latched onto where Lelouch was standing and her mouth tilted upwards and then back downwards. It was all that needed to be exchanged between them.
The execution itself progressed like clockwork. Lelouch noticed Prince Clovis and Viceroy Cornelia watching on from the balcony overlooking the gallows. Their expressions were carefully neutral yet inwardly, Lelouch knew what they felt was supreme vindication. Then the list of Kallen's crimes was read out by a Britannian official, who enunciated his words with a thin-sounding lisp. Lelouch felt Suzaku stiffen involuntarily beside him when the word "assassination" rang out, loud and all too clearly.
There was no moment when Kallen died. There was simply a moment when she was alive and then it was followed by a moment when she was dead. The execution was so smooth and seamless, so clearly the result of many years of prior rehearsal. There was no possibility for intervention. It was over and done with, just like that, and if Lelouch had come expecting some sort of climax or resolution, he would have been sorely disappointed. In the end, Kallen was just another name, added on as a footnote to the exhaustive procession of the dead. Lelouch turned to Suzaku and shook his head as the crowd that bore witness to Kallen's death began to dissipate.
"Did you imagine me up there too?" he asked. "Do you want me punished for my sins, Suzaku? To face my comeuppance?" He could feel himself sneering.
"I tried to," Suzaku replied. "But when the morning came, I realised I couldn't."
And so, Lelouch thought, the cycle would continue, in spite of everything. Only a fool came to an execution expecting death to offer an ending.
He watched Clovis and Cornelia leave out of the corner of his eye, a legion of armed guards following in their wake. He said to Suzaku, "I'm glad Shirley's not here."
Suzaku shot him a glance but said nothing. His mouth twitched. His eyes were moist.
"You saved Shirley," Lelouch pointed out. "At the very least, you accomplished that."
"Are you trying to comfort me, Lelouch?"
"No," said Lelouch. "I was just stating facts."
Suzaku sighed. His remorse was genuine. "I wanted to save everyone."
"I know."
"Even Kallen."
"I know," Lelouch said again. He peered at Suzaku closely. Suzaku was standing tall and firm, like the self-righteous bastard of a white knight Lelouch had always thought he was. And yet that image had already torn itself away at its seams. That was what last night had been all about.
"You wanted to save everyone," Lelouch went on, "the way you thought Euphemia saved you."
Suzaku's shoulders shook.
"You never loved her," Lelouch told him. "Only her innocence."
"Stop it, Lelouch." His voice was flat and weary.
"I loved her innocence too," Lelouch admitted. "Because of Nunally and because of you."
Their eyes met each other then, and they understood now, yet neither of them wanted to.
Then they walked on.
