Pre-Story Notes

So, this is part female Lelouch, part AU. The canon divergence should happen sometime during the first chapter. It may seem contrived, but I know what I'm doing. (I think.)

So I guess the main thing is not to tell me that fem!Lelouch's actions are out of character. They may be for canon!Lelouch, but this is a different person, with a different set of experiences. Most notable, I guess, would be the fact that she fell in love with Suzaku when they were kids.

Oh, yeah, if that bothers you, you should probably stop reading. It's a large part of what motivates Lelouch in this fic, even if chances are that she'll fuck them both over by the end of it all.

That said, I hope you enjoy it.

Summary

Her birth certificate reads Lelouch vi Britannia, an ill-fitting name for an ill-fitting girl. Her mother says that the name was born out of a pain-killer and endorphin high, but they both know that the real reason is that the Emperor was expecting a son.

That's probably a large part of why she is how she is. She always did feel like she had something to prove.

.

In Love and War

Chapter One
An Inauspicious Beginning

Not much is known of what happened during the vi Britannia siblings' time as political hostages in Japan. One of the few surviving witness accounts is that of Kimie Ise, a maid employed by the Kururugi family, who kept a diary that was recovered after the invasion. The "Lady Kururugi" that is referred to in this passage is Sonoe Kururugi, the Prime Minister's wife.

"Lady Kururugi has no like for either of them," Kimie writes in an entry dated one week after the siblings' arrival in Japan, "but it is with a particular fire that she hates Princess Lelouch. I cannot find it within myself to disagree with her, either. Princess Lelouch is rude to the point of impropriety – although I cannot say that I had expected anything different from a child of Britannia. There is a rumour that the Prime Minister is aiming for a political marriage between her and Lord Kirihara. I hope it happens sooner rather than later, if only to banish her from the house. She unnerves me. There are some things that you should not see within a nine year-old."

-Jenna Harrison FSA FRHistS
From the BBC television documentary, "Britannia's Black Princess", first aired Dec. 5. 2108.

.

This is Japan. It's hot in the same way that cake batter is sweet, sticky and overwhelming and raw. Lelouch, Pendragon-born and –raised, used to unbearable heat and freezing nights, steps off the plane and aches for home.

No, she remembers, not home. Not after what you did.

"Lelouch," Nunnally murmurs, too quiet for the Japanese men and women in front of them to hear. "You're hurting me."

Oh. Lelouch looks down and sees Nunnally's dainty hand, held too tight within her own fingers. She forces herself to loosen the grip, and pastes a paper-thin smile on her face before meeting the gaze of Kururugi Sonoe.

The Prime Minister's wife is a foreign shade of Britannian nobility, Lelouch would guess. She certainly holds herself like it, though that might be the power of her husband speaking, and she definitely dresses like it. Unfamiliar though Lelouch may be with kimonos, she can tell that the one that Sonoe is wearing is equal parts expensive and tasteful.

It's also a message: this is Japan.

"Follow me," Sonoe says in curt, unaccented English.

There are no introductions. A deliberate snub, no doubt, but Lelouch is honestly beyond the point of caring. She can feel Nunnally fading beneath her touch, a combination of weariness from the flight and side-effects from her pain-killers pulling her slowly into sleep.

Lelouch follows.

The journey to Kururugi Shrine takes three hours by car. Nunnally is barely there for most of it, drifting in and out of consciousness, leaving Lelouch to categorise their surroundings in silence. The differences between Japan and Pendragon are obvious, now. Where Pendragon is dry and surrounded by desert, Japan flourishes, lush and green and alive. The road hugs close to the sides of mountains, winding around in half-circles until Lelouch begins to feel slightly sick.

So was it worth it, Lelouch?

She honestly does not know.

.

There are 785 steps up to Kururugi Shrine. Lelouch climbs them all without complaint, Nunnally dozing lightly on her back, even as her legs and lungs burn. She's drenched through to her undergarments by the time she reaches the top, but she doesn't let her discomfort show for even one second.

As the daughter of the one common-born Empress, Lelouch is more than practised at hiding her own weaknesses.

It almost makes her laugh. The skills she used just weeks ago for nothing more than politely insulting Cornelia over tea might just save her life before this ordeal is over.

The household staff show her and Nunnally to their room, whispering all the while. It's a foolish assumption on their part that she can't speak Japanese, though she supposes that she can't blame them for it.

If she had been born to any other family, Lelouch would have been lauded as a prodigy. She wasn't, though, and she isn't, so people look at her and they see nothing more than a spoilt brat in a dress that cost more than they make in a year. They don't see her intelligence, and they don't see the girl who sat by her sister's hospital bed with nothing better to do than to teach herself a new language.

It's a pitiful advantage, in truth, but it is all she has.

Dignity has no place in survival.

So, when the maid behind them mutters, "Little Britannian bitch," under her breath as Lelouch settles Nunnally on the bed, there is only one possible course of action that she could take.

"Did you say something?" Lelouch asks, head tilted to the side with just a hint of arrogance. It's a gesture she had seen far too often in her half-siblings, even if she and Mother had thought it made them look vapid.

The maid demurs, shaking her head. "I apologise," she says formally, foreign tongue butchering the syllables. "I do not speak English."

Of course she doesn't.

Lelouch sniffs and turns her head, a clear dismissal. She leans in close to Nunnally and kisses her little sister's brow. There's a murmured promise to describe everything she's seen in detail later, but Nunnally is still recovering and the flight knocked her out, so it will have to wait.

"I love you," she says, throat raw around the words.

"Love you too," Nunnally mumbles back sleepily, and then she's gone. Lost to her dreams.

Lelouch smiles sadly.

Britannia is poison. It's decay and rot, a society that is slowly stagnating inside its own arrogant indolence. It will collapse, if not from its own unstable principles, then because Lelouch will forcefully topple it. The country that took her mother, took her sister's legs and sight – it deserves no less.

Japan, though… Lelouch is honestly not sure if it is any better.

The room she and Nunnally have been given is obnoxiously Japanese. The floor, the walls, the door, the décor – everything about it screams national pride in the most obvious way possible. If Lelouch didn't know better, she'd probably think they were trying to make a point.

She snorts delicately. There's no try about it. Kururugi Genbu is definitely making a point.

You are not in Britannia anymore. This is not your home. We will bow to neither you nor your homeland.

How transparent.

But this, she reflects, is Japan: hopelessly set in its ways, too proud for meaningful negotiations and too obsolete for a military victory. Lelouch, too clever by half and far angrier, thinks it's what this pathetic country deserves.

.

Lelouch hates Kururugi Sonoe with an intensity that is only matched by the older woman's returning sentiments. Sonoe is Japan's folly distilled into one person, a woman obsessed with tradition to the point of cruelty.

You ridiculous, petty witch, Lelouch fumes as her fingers twitch and the food drops out from between her chopsticks yet again. I know you have silverware in the house.

She looks up and across the table to where Sonoe is sat, body held in taut, precise elegance, sneering laughter in her eyes as she picks easily at her meal. Her lips twitch upwards, and Lelouch follows her gaze to Nunnally.

Nunnally has been blind for barely a month. She's not used to eating without the aid of her sight and the added complication of using chopsticks means that she misses her mouth more often than not.

I suppose a woman like you has to find victories somewhere, Lelouch wants to say, but she swallows the words down. Instead, she draws her focus away from Sonoe. "Let me help you with that," she says, putting a hand on her sister's shoulder so that Nunnally knows what she means.

"Thanks, Lelouch," Nunnally says back with a smile.

"No problem." Lelouch needs to concentrate on something other than plotting their host's death, after all.

In the end, it turns out that Lelouch has underestimated her ability to multitask. By the end of the meal, she has four ways that she could murder Sonoe and get away with it, and a further seven where her innocence would probably be called into question.

There is no compassion within Kururugi Sonoe, Lelouch decides, and in that, she is Britannian to the core.

.

Nunnally is still sleeping when Lelouch emerges from their room, a week after their arrival in Japan. She's dressed herself in the most offensively Britannian clothes she brought with her, a frilly, useless dress that she would hate if not for the way it makes Sonoe curl her lips in disgust.

But that isn't the reaction that Lelouch gets when she enters the sitting room. Instead, Sonoe smiles at her.

It would be enough to put anyone on edge.

So Lelouch stands there, in the doorway, frozen like an idiot, until Sonoe says, "Where is the other one?"

You two. The other one. Each address is like that, never a name, not even a title, and Lelouch holds no small amount of contempt for Sonoe over it.

To you we will never be anything more than bargaining chips, will we?

"Nunnally isn't feeling well," Lelouch replies, eyes narrowed. She moves into the room.

Sonoe huffs and it's then that Lelouch notices for the first time that they're not alone in the room.

"You will have to suffice, I suppose. There is someone that you are going to have to meet."

And then there's a fist flying towards Lelouch's face.

.

This is Suzaku. He's sanctimonious and self-righteous and it will probably get him killed some day. Lelouch distantly recognises him as the type to be dubbed a "good kid" by adults – obedient and morally-sure, with a healthy appreciation for athletics.

He is a good kid, but he's also painfully naïve. Too quick to anger, and too dense to make it count.

Lelouch is sent sprawling by his punch. She clutches a hand to her cheek as he rants at her angrily in Japanese. It's going to bruise and the swelling will make it hard to hide from Nunnally. Lelouch glowers up at him.

How dare he. She is the last thing standing between his pitiful country and the Britannian Army. How dare he.

So Lelouch doesn't cry. She sees no point in letting this brat see her tears. Instead, she pulls herself up, back and shoulders already falling into the familiar rigidity of good posture.

"As expected," she says, letting the Japanese drop off her tongue as if she were a native. She is done caring about what these people think of her, caring about petty advantages or distant plans for revenge. "A nation of savages."

Suzaku stiffens, either at Lelouch's proficiency with the language or at the insult.

"You…" Sonoe says in English, "speak Japanese?"

Lelouch twists her lips. It doesn't matter if it's a smirk or a sneer that comes out – both will have the desired effect. "Know thy enemy."

Then she turns away, yet another dismissal, because this miserable woman and her miserable son cannot take away her pride, not yet, and leaves the room.

This is Suzaku, though, and Suzaku – who she calls that, no honorific, never an honorific – is so much more than the boy who punched a princess because of what she represented.

It takes a little longer for her to be able to see it, though.

.

Nunnally is lost.

She's lost and she's gone and Lelouch doesn't know how it happened. How does a girl in a wheelchair run off? she wonders frantically, but that question is secondary to the fact that Lelouch's little sister is missing and—

"Lelouch!"

Suzaku. Kururugi Suzaku. What is he doing here?

She spins on her foot, a snarl already at her lips, because she does not have time for this, but she stops dead when she sees what Suzaku is carrying.

Nunnally's wheelchair.

And then, she is so very insufferably angry. "You," she spits, the word Japanese and rough, "you took her!"

His eyes widen. "No!" he cries. "No, I would never—I just want to help you find her, I swear!"

"I don't need your help!" she screams. "Why do you even care? You hate Britannians, right? I don't need you and I definitely don't need your help—"

Slap.

Lelouch blinks. She brings a trembling hand up to her cheek, wet with tears of desperation and raw from the impact. Her mouth drops open as she looks to Suzaku, who's just standing there, fists clenched.

"You don't get to decide who I help," he says. "If I want to find Nunnally, then I'll do it, no matter what you think or say or do." He sprints past her then, only looking back to call out, "If you think you can do everything on your own, you're even more stuck up than I gave you credit for!"

And the worst thing: he's right.

He finds Nunnally. He keeps her safe. He keeps her calm.

Lelouch stumbles upon them an hour later, and her relief at seeing Nunnally alive and unharmed overwhelms any feelings of resentment she might have held because Suzaku found her first. But then she stops and she hears—

"I wish you and Lelouch wouldn't fight so much."

That… That's English.

"Sorry, Nunnally."

…And so is that.

Suzaku can speak English. Suzaku can speak English.

(Of course he speaks English, you stupid girl, English is the language of the business world, it isn't like Japanese, it isn't obscure, how could you not remember this—)

Oh God, what if he heard her?

(Because she'd sat in the moonlight, and she'd told the sky everything, because English was the language of her confessionals to the stars at night, because in truth she really has no idea what she is doing—)

"She's just trying to take care of me," Nunnally is saying. "She's been the only one I can count on ever since…"

"Ever since what?"

(Don't do it, don't tell him, he doesn't need to know—)

"Our mother was killed," says Nunnally, almost too quiet for Lelouch to hear. "I was there. It's why I'm… Lelouch doesn't tell me much, but we fell out of favour in court. She was the only person at our mother's funeral and then our father…"

Nunnally is only six. These are not her burdens to bear. Lelouch steps forward, coming into full-view of Suzaku and Nunnally. She keeps her chin raised, proud to the very last.

"Do you understand now?" she spits, keeping to English. "Do you understand that we are worth nothing—"

But then, there are a pair of arms wrapped around her. How long? How long has it been since you were last held like this?

"I'm sorry," Suzaku mumbles into her neck. "I'm so sorry I punched you and I said all those things. I thought you were—I'm sorry."

She tries to push him away. "I don't need your pity," she starts to say.

"It's not pity," Suzaku insists. God, his English is impeccable. How could she have missed this? "It's respect."

Then he yanks her forward, into the hidey-hole where Nunnally is sat, and into his friendship.

And he never lets her go.

This, Lelouch understands, is Suzaku: a brat, yes; hot-headed, certainly; self-righteous, no doubt. But he is compassionate and he is kind.

He earns her respect, through stumbling Japanese lessons for Nunnally, through gentle instructions on the finer points of chopstick-usage, through children's games and warm summer days.

He kisses her once, a childish experiment. It's a play-wedding that Lelouch can't bring herself to ruin by telling him it cuts a little too close to home. It would be so easy to crush his naïve idolisation of his father, just eight easy words: "Your father is making me marry Kirihara Taizō."

She never says them.

Sometimes, when she thinks about what she does to get out of the arrangement, she wishes she did. What is the price you are willing to pay for your freedom, Lelouch? The answer is the only Japanese victory in the war.

This is Suzaku. He teaches her to love this country, to grow out of her resentment for her circumstance, to live for something beyond revenge. He doesn't even know he's doing it; it's instinctual for him.

She falls in love with him by increments, a little piece in every board game, in every childish plot, in every time he stands between her and his mother.

This is Suzaku. How could she not?

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Seven Years Later
a.t.b. 2017 | Tokyo Settlement

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Lelouch straightens her school jacket one last time as she walks, Rivalz bouncing along beside her. He's been like this for as long as she's known him, always experiencing emotions in their extremes. She's never been able to figure out how much of it is just for show.

"How much do we stand to gain from this one?" Lelouch asks.

"You mean apart from a favour from our esteemed principal?" Rivalz replies. "Half a million at least, maybe more depending on what sort of negotiations happened in the game."

Lelouch snorts. Nobles. Truly the only people on the planet who could turn chess into an exercise in high-stakes gambling. Still, she can't complain. It's what keeps her and Nunnally in the green, despite their relatively high cost of living.

She sighs. "Let's get this farce over with."

A pair of servants push the doors in front of them open, and the light from the corridor spills into the gloom of the room. The colour scheme is decidedly drab – burgundy, Lelouch thinks, how very nouveau riche – and the only sources of light are a dim lamp and a muted television.

Ruben Ashford is on his feet almost the second Lelouch steps forward. He's a mess if she's ever seen one, hands trembling and grey hair slicked to his scalp with sweat. "Oh, thank heavens, you're here," he rushes out, scrambling away from the board.

Lelouch smiles dispassionately at him.

This is the man who changed warfare with one machine. He championed a Knight of the Rounds and future Empress and, for nearly a decade, he sat at the top of Britannia's social sphere. A ruthless businessman and a brilliant engineer.

And look at him now.

"Eh, Lelouch, this one looks pretty impossible," Rivalz comments from by the board.

"This is your substitute?" the nobleman asks, laughing as he does so. "A schoolgirl?"

Lelouch says nothing, but puts a hand on Ruben's shoulder. "Head back to the academy, Old Man," she says. "I'll handle this." He nods and scurries away, allowing her to turn to take in the board. "Rivalz, how soon do we have to leave in order to make it to fourth period?"

Rivalz rocks on his feet, tapping his chin. "Twenty minutes if I speed, I guess."

She smirks. "Well, then," she says as she takes Ruben's place. "I suppose you'll get to drive safe."

.

This is Area 11. It's unrecognisable as the stubbornly proud country Lelouch learned to love all those years ago, a Britannian society even more rotten than the one in the homeland. It's a home, of sorts.

"Eight minutes fifty-six – that has to be a new record!" Rivalz crows as they leave the building. "You haven't finished a game that fast since the first time we met."

She shrugs. "He was arrogant. Not a good characteristic when you don't have anything to back it up."

"Oh, like you, Miss Lamperouge?" he teases.

Lelouch cracks a smile. "Exactly like me," she says. "Beyond a certain point, though, chess becomes less like a strategy game and more like a maths equation. There are only so many viable moves you can make."

"Ugh, don't talk to me about maths," Rivalz shoots back. "There's a reason I always schedule these things for Wednesday third period." He laughs. "Ah, I love it when you play nobility. They're always too proud not to pay up."

Sometimes, Lelouch wonders what Rivalz is doing with the earnings from their gambling. She knows that he's on bad terms with his father, having chosen to enrol at Ashford under his mother's name, but they make more than enough to pay any living expenses he might incur five times over. Whatever. It's none of her business.

"Honestly, I'm less of a fan," she replies absentmindedly. "They're tepid."

Rivalz spins around so that he's facing her as they walk. "Well then why don't you play an Eleven? They're nothing like us Britannians, after all."

It's not "Japanese chess", Lelouch. It's shogi, and I don't know how to play it.

She lets out a hollow laugh. "Better not."

They reach the bay where Rivalz parked his bike. She pulls on his spare helmet as he sorts out the ticket. There's some kind of royal announcement happening on the television screen above the street, Clovis throwing out his hands and clutching at his heart.

He always was one for theatrics.

"Aren't you going to participate?"

Lelouch startles, looking over to Rivalz. "With the moment of silence thing? Not really my kind of thing. What about you?"

"Eh, it's embarrassing," he says, scratching at the back of his neck. "It just feels pretty fake, you know?"

She looks back up at the screen. Clovis has his hand on his heart, head bowed and expression solemn. She remembers another broadcast, from seven years ago, where he'd been wearing that same grave-faced look. He'd even said almost the exact same words as today – a moment of silence for all those lost in the occupation, including my dearest sisters…

Lelouch exhales. "Yeah, I know," she says. "C'mon, let's get back to Ashford."

.

There's bad luck, the little quirks of fate that end with you face-down in the dirt through no particular fault of your own. Rain on the day of your planned picnic, perhaps, or biting into an apple to find it rotten on the inside. The end result is often nothing more than disappointment – at its worst, embarrassment.

And then there's Bad Luck.

Lelouch, in a mess of limbs on the floor of a truck being shot at by the Britannian military, can't help but think that this qualifies as the latter. If she were superstitious, she'd probably think that this was the universe's way of getting back at her for all the less-than-legal gambling.

Oh God, if she gets out of this alive, Shirley can never find out about this. She wouldn't shut up for a month.

That's the last time I listen to my dormant hero complex, Lelouch decides. From the darkness and the road surface, they're probably driving along the old subway lines, which means that they're headed for an exit somewhere in the ghetto.

She tightens her grip around her cell-phone. There's no reception down there – too far underground – so she can't call for help. Walking around the ghettos dressed as she is would just be asking for something to happen, which leaves the military as her best option.

How airtight is my identity? It's a question she's asked herself many times over the last seven years, but for the first time the answer is too close to "not airtight enough".

She'll have to take that risk, though. Ashford Academy has good standing within Area 11; her uniform and her features should be enough to hold the military's fire long enough for her to trade with them. A terrorist communicator should be enough to get her home, right?

Lelouch takes a deep breath. This is too close. Far too close.

Suddenly, Lelouch is thrown forward as the truck collides with something. Her ribs ache as she pushes herself up, but not with the sharpness that would denote a break. That hit was either an accident or a strike from the military and either option means that she has to move. Communicator clutched in hand, she stands, and then she hesitates.

There's a gun on the floor of the truck.

Lelouch knows how to use a gun. It may have been over seven years since she picked one up, but it's something she learned from her mother and, as such, something she has not let herself forget.

These are the ghettos. The worst place to live in Area 11. And she is just a girl.

Lelouch picks up the gun.

And then promptly drops it when a foot collides with her face.

She's dazed for a moment, and for that moment she sees—

"Like it, Lelouch? Tōdō-sensei taught it to me! It's a flying spin kick."

"You look like a ballerina."

"Yeah, well, so do you!"

"…Fair enough."

—but it's not Suzaku. It can't be.

"That's enough mindless murder!" the soldier above her shouts. He's holding her down by the neck, tight enough that she can barely breathe let alone choke out an explanation. "Planning to use poison gas?" He shoves her down harder. "Don't play dumb with me!"

"Don't lecture me on morality!" Lelouch spits, twisting to drive her knee straight up into his groin. The soldier jumps back before she can make contact, landing in a combat stance across the way from her.

"Look at me, do I honestly look like a terrorist to you?" she demands. "You Britannian military types are all the same: shoot first, ask questions never—"

"Lelouch!"

She stops dead. (No, no, no, he can't know her name, she can't have been found out, not now, not ever—)

"It's me," the solider says, removing his helmet, "Suzaku."

Kururugi Suzaku – who she thinks she'll always think of like that, surname first, because Suzaku had always insisted on it, even when speaking English – is standing in front of her, a gentle smile on his lips, and she wants to rebel at the very sight. Britannia has taken everything from her, and now they've somehow taken Suzaku as well.

"You…" Her mouth is dry. "You became a Britannian soldier?" She blanks her face, but she knows it won't be enough to conceal her disdain from Suzaku.

He doesn't meet her eye. "It's complicated, Lelouch," he says. "Look," he exhales, "this is a military operation. I'm not even going to ask what you're doing in Shinjuku, but you need to leave."

"And you want me to do what, exactly?" she shoots back. "Stroll through the ghetto with the words 'rich Britannian' practically stamped on my forehead?"

Suzaku makes a strangled sound. "If you stay—"

A low hissing sound interrupts their conversation.

Lelouch turns her head just in time to catch a glimpse of the container beside her opening before Suzaku tackles her to the floor, forcing his own gas mask onto her face. It makes her both incomprehensibly furious and impossibly fond, because this is Suzaku. You stupid, self-sacrificial idiot.

But…

The hand holding the gas mask to her face loosens. Suzaku shifts off her, eyes caught on the container. "That isn't poison gas."

No, it's not. A girl with waist-length green hair tumbles out of the capsule, arms and legs bound and body weak. Lelouch watches the green-haired girl's body crumple on the concrete, before looking back to Suzaku, dread slowly pooling in her stomach.

"I don't understand," Suzaku says blankly. "The briefing said… There wasn't anything about a prisoner."

"That's because she's not a prisoner," Lelouch responds sharply. "She's an experiment."

Suzaku's eyes widen. "But she's…"

"A person?" Lelouch snorts. "I don't imagine that factored much into your superior's decision making process." Do you see now, Suzaku? This is Britannia, corrupt to the very last, and we've just stumbled into one of their dirty little secrets. Do you understand what this means? "Come on, we need to move before we're found."

But Suzaku just shakes his head. "Lelouch," he says, pale-faced and faint, "we have visual recognition software in our goggles."

She freezes. Of course they do. It makes perfect sense. The military doesn't trust Numbers in the slightest, even if they're prepared to use them as cannon-fodder. Suzaku, you idiot, Lelouch wants to scream. Your insistence on acting like Britannia's spaniel is going to kill us both.

Instead, she takes a deep breath. "How much time to we have?" she asks, already running through potential plans of action depending on his answer. Do they run, or do they hide, or do they fight? It's chess on a grander scale, with so much more than money on the line.

He shakes his head, expression soft and apologetic. "Not enough."

It's an apt judgement as it turns out. Lelouch opens her mouth to reply, but is cut off by the sound of heavy footfalls. Ten soldiers, all dressed in the distinctive uniforms of the Royal Guard, round the corner, weapons drawn and aimed straight for them

Yeah, we're dead.

"404, what the hell is this?" the leader of the group demands. Suzaku opens his mouth to say something, but the leader cuts him off. "You damn Eleven monkey! Not even a true Britannian is allowed to touch that!"

(That. You, girl. The other one. You two. Damn Brit. THEY HAVE NAMES!)

"Sir!" Suzaku jumps to his feet, scrambling for the right words to get them out of this alive. He won't find them.

I'm going to die here, aren't I?

Alone on the ground with the girl, Lelouch's eyes fall to the gun. It was knocked away a little bit by Suzaku's kick, but it's still within arm's reach. She could have it in her hand in seconds.

"…Going to be lenient. Private Kururugi, take this and execute the terrorist."

Lelouch's head snaps up. Suzaku is frozen, staring at the gun in his superior officer's hand.

She takes a steadying breath. So that's how they want this to play out, then.

It'll go like this: Suzaku will shoot her. She'll die by his hand, and it will be only marginally better than being brought down by the hands of a full-blooded Britannian. Afterwards, they'll probably use her death as the weapon they need to finally screw him over. "Suzaku Kururugi shoots unarmed Britannian schoolgirl" will be the headline that they'll use to hold him up as concrete proof that the Japanese can't be trusted.

The Son of Japan, traitor to his own country and traitor to the one he signed his soul over to.

He'll be executed. Dead.

It could go the other way, she supposes, not that it would change anything. If Suzaku refuses to shoot her, they'll kill him on the spot for insubordination. She'll be dead seconds later, yet another corpse among the rubble of the ghetto.

She could save him. It would be effortless, as simple as "you would shoot a Princess of Britannia?" but it's out of the question. She'd sooner die than do anything that could result in Nunnally being shipped back to the capital. She just—she never thought it would come to a choice between her sister and her best friend.

I'm so sorry, Suzaku, Lelouch thinks. But Nunnally always wins.

Lelouch isn't courageous. She's pragmatic, though, so when her eyes fall to the dropped gun once more, she thinks, I'm dead either way.

Nunnally will understand.

Please understand, Nunnally.

There are some things, after all, which it is just not worth it to live through.

A moment's hesitation is all she needs from Suzaku. He gives her that and more. Lelouch throws herself forward, over the green-haired girl, and clasps her hand around the gun. It's a desperate, futile last hope, and she knows before she even makes the dive that she's going to be dead before she's even fired one bullet.

But that's not the goal. Look at you now, Lelouch. Once a princess and now a glorified distraction for Kururugi Suzaku.

She launches herself to her feet. She doesn't even make it halfway before she feels a bullet hit.

Getting shot hurts about as much as she expected it to. It's overwhelmingly painful, the type of thing that takes up the entirety of her attention, like something screaming in her mind. As she falls down, though, she catches Suzaku's eye.

A kind smile. It'll be okay. Run.

He looks back, stricken, and the expression on his face makes her want to laugh.

He always was so very expressive.

She wonders who fired the bullet that hit. Who betrayed the Empire without even realising it. Who her executer was.

And then she hits the ground and everything happens at once. Suzaku's screaming something at his superiors – she hopes it's not the truth of her identity, because she'll come back from the grave to murder him if it is – and then there's a loud, ear-rendering bang, too close, and there are hands on her, pulling her up – strong hands, Suzaku's hands, and she is glad that it is him – and then there's too much movement.

Someone is crying above her.

"Su… zaku…" she says, syllables disjointed. "I…"

She falls into darkness.

.

Miles away, a woman in a burnt orange uniform perks up from her station. "Lloyd!" she screams. "Lloyd, we've got contact!"

.

Couple of points, just for interest:

1. "The answer is the only Japanese victory in the war." - In the audio dramas, we see a little more of what went down in Japan before the war. At one point, Genbu, the sleaze, tries to marry himself off to Nunnally, which, given that she's six and he's like 40, is exceedingly gross. It's heavily implied that Lelouch sells him Britannian military information to get her out of the arrangement, which is sort of the idea that I was building on here.

2. "You haven't finished a game that fast since the first time we met." - Fun fact: Rivalz met Lelouch when he got in over his head playing a chess game. The meeting in canon can probably be best described as 'Rivalz panics and Lelouch is a cocky little shit'.

3. "...acting like Britannia's spaniel" - Lelouch is referencing a monologue from A Midsummer Night's Dream. Long story short, Helena is all "I'm your spaniel, the more you spurn me, the more I adore you" and I was suitably horrified that I had to read that shit without a caveat that that was a seriously fucked up basis for a relationship.

Next chapter: Lelouch wakes up, Suzaku waits to die, and Nunnally makes a decision. Oh, and gratuitous Lloyd. Who doesn't love a bit of Lloyd?