Reason to Live
Disclaimer: None of the Code Geass characters are mine.
(Set R2, sometime before the capture of Kallen but after Suzaku returns to the Academy)
Summary: On a rare sick day, Suzaku comes to a realization, with the help of Arthur.
Without a reason to live, who are we?
It was official: he, Suzaku Kururugi, Knight of Seven, had been brought down by the worst kind of foe—the kind he was powerless to fight. How absolutely pathetic.
He struggled to focus; in his practice leotard, though, sweat poured out of him in rivulets. It was like training under Todou again—he felt weak and unsure of himself. It was uncharacteristic; normally, sparring didn't even make Suzaku break a sweat, and it niggled at him. The soldier putting him through his hand-to-hand paces though didn't detect Suzaku's weakening; even when ill, Suzaku was a formidable opponent. He quickly detected the mistakes of his opponent's stance, and used them to pin the man to the mat.
"A bit slow today, eh?" Gino Weinberger peered over the panting Suzaku, who had rolled off his sparring partner and was now lying on the mat.
"Ib's nothig," Suzaku tried to dismiss the (slightly) older Knight's concerns, but Gino grabbed him, helped him to his feet, then stared at him. Suzaku's body chose the worst moment to betray him; he sneezed. Desperately he tried to sneeze into himself, not over Gino, but even he wasn't that fast.
"Looks like another kind of foe has brought our great Knight of Seven down," Gino announced cheerfully as he calmly wiped the remnants of the sneeze off himself with a handkerchief. Suzaku almost laughed; lacy and delicate, it was monogrammed with Gino's initials, yet. He hadn't imagined Gino to be so prissy—a gift from his mother perhaps? No, Gino was a runaway, so the only conclusion was that Gino had ordered the handkerchief monogrammed for himself.
And if that wasn't disturbing, Suzaku didn't know what else was.
"Stop trying to be macho," Gino said softly as Suzaku watched him. "Illness isn't weakness."
Suzaku almost groaned; Gino might seem lightheaded at times but he'd long learned that the blond Knight was more perceptive than most rich little Britannian boys. He simply enjoyed acting the fool, and it was best to avoid him when he was in an especially perceptive mood.
Indeed, his foe was the kind he couldn't fight except by lying down, resting, and taking a lot of liquids. Worse, he could no longer hide it from the other Knights, who were looking amused. "Isn't it so like Suzaku," one of them whispered, "to pretend he's okay when he's not, to push himself so much?"
Suzaku sneezed again, and the ever-ready (to-annoy) Gino casually handed him a tissue.
"Thabks," Suzaku said as he blew his stuffed nose.
"Go home," Gino said cheerfully. "Unless you want the rest of us to come down with it."
Anya snapped a picture just as Suzaku knew he was looking his worst: red nose, red-rimmed eyes, and sweat-matted hair. He suppressed a groan as she looked dispassionately at the photo.
"You look terrible," she said in her usual flat tone. "Are you going to spread that around?"
Suzaku shook his head. "I'b goib now," he muttered.
"Good boy," Gino grinned, slapping Suzaku's back playfully. "Bed rest, lots of water, and maybe some TLC from the Britannian fangirls," he raised his brows naughtily, "and you'll be fine."
Suzaku didn't answer. Fangirls? Girls who wanted to kill him, more like, for the crime of being an Eleven who was a Knight of the Round.
Step…step…his eyes felt like they were on fire, and every breath he drew through his nostrils was a column of pain. He recognized a fever that hadn't broken through brewing in his body, and gritted his teeth. When was the last time he'd been so ill anyway? He'd lucked into an annoyingly healthy constitution, so much that he felt betrayed when his body finally did go down.
And on such a mundane day—no Zero attacks to contend with, no Black Knights attempting something insane, no new Geass user discovered—nothing. Couldn't he at least have succumbed on a day when something important was happening, so that he wouldn't seem so damned weak?
He found the door to his quarters and palmed the biometric entrance to give him access, then collapsed into his bunk. Everything else could wait; he just wanted to pass out.
Maybe even die.
Suzaku clenched his fists, but even that movement hurt. Damn you Lelouch, or Zero, or whatever, whoever you are! For thatwas the problem: He could not die. That he was lying weakly in bed without throwing himself to his feet to seek a doctor or treat himself simply meant this was an ordinary illness, nothing he could possibly die from.
But I want to die!
"Rrow?" A cold nose sniffed Suzaku's forehead curiously.
He turned to see the ragged black and gray cat, who was regarding him curiously. That's right, Arthur has never seen me this way, Suzaku thought wryly.
Damn, he'd forgotten to make himself something warm to drink, and no tissues were within his reach. He could feel a line of snot trickling down his cheek; he was only thankful no one else could see him.
Then he felt something soft press into his hand. Arthur was gripping a tissue delicately in his sharp teeth (having been on the receiving end so often, Suzaku knew from personal experience just how sharp) and was pressing it into his hand.
"Thabks, Ahthuh," he said gratefully.
How pathetic; he was Lord Suzaku Kururugi to the known world, and yet no one was there to comfort him. He smiled bitterly, indulging himself in self-pity.
Besides, only one girl had ever cared about him, had bothered to understand him where others would simply have called him the names he was used to. Traitor. Betrayer. Liar. He rolled the litany in his head; the words no longer stung as badly as they did, though, because he'd learned the pain from losing someone he loved surpassed even physical pain. He knew—from bitter experience.
He forced his thoughts away from her; no sense in weakening himself at a time when it was pointless.
But he could still hear her voice, see her face clearly. "Suzaku?" She'd never bothered with formalities; even when they'd first met, she had called him just by his name, no –san or –kun. Just Suzaku.
Perhaps that was why he had fallen in love with her. She had never raised any barriers to him, ever—not even to her heart. Her impulsiveness was quite different from his own recklessness; hers was a warm-hearted acceptance of the world. She had opened his heart; confessing to him in the middle of a life-or-death battle was just so like her.
Euphy, Suzaku thought, and something like a sob choked him. They said time would heal all wounds—so how come this one stabbed at him, fresh and sharp, every single damned day?
And that's what Zero/Lelouch has truly taken away from me—the chance to join her wherever she is, he fumed.
Did he believe in an afterlife? Did he believe in wishes? Some days, despite his nickname, Steadfast Kururugi (well, in addition to the White Reaper, of course), he wavered and believed in nothing but a world that was full of hate and wrongness. Of a world where people bent others to their will wantonly, played God when no one should have the right.
Suzaku tried to adhere to his beliefs even when it meant taking the hard road nearly all of the time. It was atonement in many ways, and brought its own punishment with it when he was accused of being a self-indulgent idiot, of riding an impossibly high horse…no matter what he did, he was always wrong in the eyes of everyone.
Except Euphy. He caressed the name on his tongue; it was one of the few things he truly had left of her. She had understood him in the way no one else then—and since—had.
Suzaku understood that Euphy had brought light into his world, brought with her the possibility that he had been forgiven for his sins. He had come to her, when he had tried to resign as her Knight, with the truth of the blood on his hands. And she had held his hands.
"Suzaku," she said, "you still feel his blood on your hands, do you not?"
He had nodded, unable to look her in the eye. He knew she meant his father, and he shrank into himself. "I…cannot forgive myself. T-there is no forgiveness for one like me. And I must own up to it—I have always been protected, without taking responsibility."
Suzaku remembered her reaction when he told her of the murder of his father—she had not shrunk away, but she had merely gasped. So when she slipped his omnipresent gloves off, holding his clammy hands in her soft ones, he was the one surprised. Her hands aren't roughened by battle, he found himself thinking. They were firm and smooth, hands that would bless him when they touched his cheek. He thought he would like to hold her hands forever.
Euphy continued in her soft, implacable voice. "Did you know that in Greek mythology, one who holds the hands of a murderer becomes responsible for the burden of guilt as well?" She touched his hands to her cheeks; he was about to pull away, ashamed of letting his rough hands make contact with her petal-soft cheeks, when she giggled.
Suzaku's head shot up, and he stared into her beautiful eyes. She was smiling.
"Look, you won't have to carry it alone anymore," she said. "I'm holding your hands. The bloodstains are now shared between us. Now we are bonded, Suzaku. And just as you love me and are trying to spare me the burdens of your past, I love you and am trying to share it with you. Will you let me make that a reason to live? Will you let it be yours as well?"
"Er…" Suzaku cursed his shyness; it always came to the fore at the wrong moments—like this one. He had to say or do something; she had just done something incredibly, beautifully impulsive, and compassionate and loving. Yet all he could do was stare at her, marveling at her beauty, and at how she loved him despite what and who he was. It was an age-old miracle, quite the cliché, he knew—but that didn't make it any less wonderful for him.
So when Euphy kissed him, it was a shock-that-wasn't-a-shock. Another impulsive act, he thought, but soon, that kiss took control of him; how could he not let it? He would never forget the feel of her lips on his, nor of the hunger that seized him, made him kiss her back with all the passion in his heart.
When they had pulled apart, she opened her eyes. "I love you," she said quietly, as if she were saying nothing more significant than "The weather is nice today, isn't it?"
"And I you…" Suzaku replied, his heart thumping hard in his chest. He could not add what he wanted to: I adore you; you are everything to me; I cannot live without you… "I love you, Euphy!"
Was that why he had been ordered to "live on"? No, Lelouch could not possibly have known.
But wait—that strange man who had revealed to Lelouch the truth of Prime Minister Kururugi's murder, the one who had kidnapped Nunnally—had revealed that Suzaku had a death wish.
Lelouch knew.
Damn him!
Death. He'd always sought it out; even Gino had accused him of having a death wish. Apparently it was obvious; even the normally clueless Anya had asked him if he was a masochist once. But now it was that sweet fruit he could not taste; the laughable tragedy was that he was probably pretty much immortal now, old age probably being the only thing that could claim him.
The thought of decades stretching out before him made him want to find a big-assed sword and impale himself on it. Or maybe drop himself, unarmed, into a crowd of angry 'Suzaku Kururugi is a traitor"-screaming Japanese mob. Or maybe he could get Gino to chain him to a rock somewhere and then Anya to use the rock for target practice with a Hadron cannon.
For some reason, he was irresistibly reminded of the Sawasaki incident. It was when Euphy had commanded him to love her.
"Now is kind of not the time," Suzaku said; they were firing on him as Euphy suddenly contacted him during the siege. That was when she had commanded him to love her and promised to love him back.
She didn't know I was always hers. That's why I immediately said yes!
He would never forget what came next. "I promise to love your honest face, your gentleness, your mule-headedness, the times you're clumsy, even how Arthur always bites you. All of you! So, don't hate yourself!"
She had always known and understood that about him then. He'd never known that kind of unconditional love from anyone, not in his life, not from anyone except, perhaps, Nunnally. And he had been beyond grateful; he knew he would love her, always, no matter what.
It was surreal; they had exchanged their feelings as he was attacked by a squadron of other Knightmares. Yet Suzaku could not think of any other way that was more fitting, somehow.
"If something happens to me, don't blame yourself," he'd told her. How ironic, when something had happened—to her. "Please erase all trace of my existence…"
"No, Suzaku, don't die! Live!"
He'd forgotten that part.
Siblings tend to say and do the same things; Schneizel shared Lelouch's arrogance, and Euphy had shared Nunnally's sweetness. To the end, her concern had been about him. Dying, he had desperately begged her to live, to go to Ashford with him. She clearly knew he had lied earlier about the Special Administrative Zone to spare her feelings, and had in turn lied to spare his feelings by saying it would be nice, and that he should return ther for the both of them.
She wanted me to live on, he suddenly realized. That's why she told me not to die, that's why she told me to live on, why she insisted that we become each other's reason to live…and that's why I remembered this at this moment.
A sharp pain brought him back to reality. He was now lying on the floor—when had he rolled off his bunk?—and Arthur was looking annoyed. And ready to bite.
Oh yes, he hasn't been fed. Suzaku managed to drag himself off the bed to stagger to his pantry, where he struggled to open a can of catfood. Amazing how a body which had once dodged automatic gunfire with a 0.5 second delay could now need an improvised lever just to open a can—and both hands.
He struggled as Arthur began to show his fangs; I have to open this can now! Too bad the Geass only worked in life or death situations; bites from Arthur, while excruciating, did not constitute such a situation.
The lid popped open, and Suzaku sighed in relief and plopped the can on the counter, struggling back into bed. Perhaps he could starve himself to death, assuming no one checked on him and he could slide into unconsciousness somehow?
Arthur suddenly purred, and rubbed against Suzaku's leg once he'd eaten his fill. He looked up with his strangely wise eyes at Suzaku, as if (to Suzaku's mind) asking, Who will take care of me if you go?
He thought of Nunnally as well. She would never ask him to take care of her, but as she had consoled him in all those awful months after Euphy's death, and accepted him no matter what when they had first met…he owed her that much.
I am such a selfish brat! he raged in his mind. I'm but an emo idiot, indulging in all these memories, torturing myself to make myself feel better.
And that was what spurred him into action. Speaking into his commset, which he picked up from the side table, he called the infirmary for help.
As he waited for the medics to come, he held the Knight pin Euphy had given him in what seemed so long ago—and he smiled.
Forgive me, Euphy. It will take some time before I can join you—and I will try to live my life until then, he thought. By the time the medics arrived, his face was set its usual stern demeanor. But the one moment he had smiled would sustain him for a long time to come.
END
absolutefluffiness says: Thank you for reading my first Code Geass fanfic. I appreciate constructive criticism, and reviews are welcomed with love!