a/n: thanks to touchreceptors for beta-ing, and to Eggy for her input. All remaining mistakes are my own. Prompted by a secret on confessionsofarea11. Mature themes.
When the broadcast is over, the cameras turned off, and the guards sent away, Lelouch turns to Schneizel. Lelouch reels off a list of orders, and the faint red that lines Schneizel's eyes deepen. Kanon picks himself off the ground carefully. He grimaces at a twinge in his side where a guard had beat him to the ground for the sake of theatricality.
He is starting to sense a theme in Lelouch's rule.
"As for you," Lelouch says, turning to Kanon.
"I will not leave my Prince," Kanon says. He watches Schneizel move to leave out of the corner of his eye. His movements are slow, but it's not the languid grace that Kanon knows.
Lelouch rolls his shoulders in a shrug. "Do as you please," he says, already turning away. Gottwald moves to flank him. It's a callous, cold dismissal, but Kanon is too busy moving to Schneizel's side to be soured at the implication that he is no threat. Well. It's not like Kanon has much room to act, not with Schneizel at Lelouch's command at a moment's glance.
There had been another woman then, who had mirrored Gottwald on Lelouch's other side. Kanon hadn't paid her much mind other than to wonder briefly at the sharp gold of her eyes.
–
He starts to take notice of her more when she starts appearing in the cracks and seams of his day.
–
Lelouch does not treat them callously. Kanon senses the same sentimentality that has Lelouch cradling the lives of his prisoners and his sister with his right hand, even as he threatens the nations of the world with the F.L.E.I.J.A. warheads in his left.
The days are predictable: Lelouch summons them in the mornings, or visits himself, and lists off an itemised set of tasks to be completed. It is almost entirely work that draws on the more esoteric stores of Schneizel's knowledge, those pertaining to the matters of running government that Lelouch seems loathe to dole out, but knows full well that others can perform better.
Kanon largely acts as a go between, ferrying information between Schneizel and Lelouch, and providing gentle nudges when Lelouch is too caught up in his work and forgets to release Schneizel from his service at the end of the day. Kanon begins to measure the length of his days in the breaths he spends making his way from one end of the Damocles to the other.
He runs into the woman during one such trip, in one of the shared living spaces within the Damocles. He asks before he can help himself, because he has heard the rumours, "What are you?"
She smiles a little at that, small and sly. "How very rude," she says, and goes off on her way.
Another day, this time as they pass in a corridor, he asks, "Do you have a name, at least?"
"You have an awful lot of questions," she says.
"I can't keep calling you the Witch," Kanon says. It's what the royal guards whisper amongst themselves when their eyes aren't rimmed with red.
She looks at him, and again he is struck by the curious quality of her eyes. "C.C.," she says finally.
"That's not a real name," Kanon says.
"It's real enough," C.C. replies.
–
He relays all his conversations back to Schneizel during the gaps between the days, the quiet moments they share at night when Schneizel's eyes are clear, and his mind his own. Partly because he wants to, but mostly because Schneizel is so silent, and it's a silence so unlike what Kanon knows of him that it hurts his teeth.
"I think I saw someone like her, once," Schneizel says. They're lying side by side on Schneizel's bed. They have two separate bedrooms, small and neat, linked by a smaller sitting room. Kanon supposes that it's generous, considering that Lelouch himself had chosen a small room, hidden so deeply within the Damocles so as to be almost inconvenient. If anyone notices that Kanon spends more time in Schneizel's room than his own, no-one mentions it.
Kanon lifts himself up onto his elbows, and peers down at Schneizel's face. "Oh?"
"Yes." Schneizel's eyes glaze over, and for a moment Kanon expects the edges to glow red with geass. But then he blinks, and the lashes fall back to reveal perfectly clear eyes. Perfectly purple, and Kanon leans down to kiss Schneizel on the forehead between them because he can. "Once or twice, when I was younger. With my father, and...Lady Marianne."
Kanon waits, because Schneizel seems to have more to say.
"It's odd," Schneizel says finally. He turns his head to look at Kanon. "She doesn't seem to have aged."
–
The next time Kanon passes by C.C., he says, "Prince Schneizel seems to think he's seen you before."
"I'm surprised he is still capable of thinking at all," she says, and continues walking.
Kanon raises his eyebrow at that, and at the oversized pillow in her arms, but doesn't comment.
–
"That Knight of his is still around," Kanon says another time. "Why is that."
C.C. draws her shoulders back, and waits as he thinks.
He had bumped into Kururugi as Kururugi had left a door Kanon was entering. Kanon had narrowed his eyes, because as far as a heavy, marble slab in Pendragon was concerned, Kururugi was decidedly dead. Kururugi had drawn back a little, eyes widening slightly. But then his face had turned carefully blank, and he had walked away. Kanon had let him, because he had better things to do with his time than to wonder after poorly designed schemes.
Kanon's eyes narrow as he recalls a sword Lelouch recently had commissioned, a gaudy pink and gold thing with jewels set absurdly into the blade. He thinks of Lelouch's announcements to the world, each broadcast growing increasingly insane, like an opera being led to a grand crescendo. "He's planning on having himself killed, isn't he. Like some kind of fool's martyr."
C.C. eyes had dulled at his words, but her lips quirk into a smile. "Bravo," she says. "Lelouch thinks you're too preoccupied to figure it out."
"He's starting to give me reason to believe that he doesn't think very much," Kanon says.
C.C. looks away as though slapped. "Yes, well."
–
Schneizel gives one short bark of laughter when he's told. Kanon's not sure if that's because he had already known, but had not told Kanon, or –
–
Another night, a different night when Kanon is again recounting what C.C. has said to him, Schneizel says, "You should sleep with her." When Kanon is wordless, Schneizel says, "That is where your dance with her is leading, after all."
"I'm already sleeping with you," Kanon says when Schneizel doesn't look to be joking.
Schneizel curls his lips in a smile. "I didn't know you thought me the jealous type," he says, but he reaches across to push a lock of Kanon's hair off his face.
"No," Kanon says readily. "But I did think you valued our relationship."
Schneizel breathes, and it's possibly the closest Kanon's ever seen him to hesitating in – years. Since they had taken their first halting steps out of the Academy, and Kanon had turned to Schneizel and asked, what now. "I would be quite prepared for you to leave me," Schneizel says slowly. He adds, "You deserve better than to be my minder for the rest of my life."
"Do you want me to?" Kanon asks quietly. "Leave you?"
Schneizel smiles again. "You should sleep with her," he repeats, and closes his eyes to signify the end of conversation.
Kanon stares at the ceiling, and doesn't sleep.
–
There's a meeting with Lelouch. It's a small private affair, and Kanon counts the participants on a single hand: himself, Schneizel, Lelouch. C.C. sits in the corner, and rests her chin on the pillow he has grown to recognise as a soft toy.
Lelouch doesn't tell them of his plan, because it's unnecessary, because Kanon knows, and Schneizel knows. He does, however, give it a name (Zero Requiem, he says, and Kanon fights the urge to send his eyes rolling skywards), and makes a request of Schneizel.
"You could just order me," Schneizel says, tone deliberately light.
Lelouch scowls. The furrows in his brow match the shadows under his eyes. "I can't read your actions," he says shortly. "I'm not going to gamble Nunnally's future on the geass."
Schneizel hums. "We played a game, and I lost," he says. There's a peculiar quality to his eyes that Kanon has been catching more and more of late, when Schneizel is too deep into his thoughts and Kanon can't quite pull him out. Kanon doesn't like it. Schneizel says, "I will swear my fealty to Nunnally." He adds, "I will do what I can for the siblings I have left."
Lelouch returns Schneizel's gaze steadily. Kanon catches C.C. eyes, and she looks back at him, face blank. A small movement to his side tells him that Schneizel notices.
When Schneizel and Kanon leave the room, Schneizel brushes his arm imperturbably against Kanon's. Schneizel doesn't turn his face towards Kanon, but he smiles a little, and walks off when Kanon stills to a stop.
Kanon hangs back, and asks for a moment with C.C. when she and Lelouch walk out. Lelouch looks at the two of them with vague curiosity etched in his features, but then Kururugi turns the corner, and Lelouch leaves to speak to his Knight.
Kanon waits until the two of them have left before asking. She stares at him, lashes blinking in surprise. She laughs.
–
She says yes.
–
"I'm not the one you love," C.C. murmurs against his ear. They're in some anonymous room, the lights turned dim, the bed a shapeless, sullen mass below them. "You're losing him, aren't you. As he slips away to the geass."
There's a dull pain in his chest at his words, even though he knows she doesn't have the truth of it. He's losing Schneizel, it's true, but not in the way she thinks. Kanon whispers back, "And the one you love won't be with you for very much longer."
She pulls back, her mouth a flat line. "Then why am I spending these precious moments with you?"
Kanon trails the back of his fingers against the side of C.C.'s face. "Because," he says, "because I asked, and you said yes. And," he lets his eyes drop to the side, and lets some of the vulnerability shine through. He's not sure if he's being manipulative, or if he's being truthful. "And because I'd like to forget for a little, and I think you'd like to as well."
C.C. lets out a silent laugh, bitter puffs of air whispering against his cheek when she draws close. "Then we'll forget together," she murmurs in reply.
And then she pushes him back down against the bed.
–
When Kanon wakes, the lights are a dull blue-grey. The lights in the Damocles mimic the natural progression of the sun, pale lilac reserved for morning, and he judges it to be not quite sunrise. When he turns his head, he sees C.C. sitting with her back against the headboard, and her knees drawn towards her chin. She lets out a breath when she senses he is awake.
Kanon rests the back of his fingers against her thigh. "Are you afraid for him?" he asks. C.C. had been turning pale, he thinks, their conversations grown bitingly brief over the course of their last few interactions.
"Are you?" C.C. asks.
Kanon lets his eyes slide shut. When he opens them, C.C. is peering down at him with her curiously golden eyes, gleaming even in the dim lighting. "I'll trust in my Prince," he says.
C.C.'s shoulders shake, and the tense lines of her limbs ease.
–
The next time Kanon sees her, she is sitting at Lelouch's side. As she should be, he thinks, and he moves to stand by Schneizel.
Underneath the table, Schneizel brushes his hand against the side of Kanon's leg. Kanon leans slightly into the touch, and if Schneizel's eyes seem more like himself and more alive, then maybe Kanon isn't imagining it.
–
C.C. lets herself into his and Schneizel's sitting room without notice. Schneizel withdraws politely when she seats herself on the coffee table in front of Kanon, making it obvious to whom she intends to speak.
"Lelouch is having the two of you moved to the holding cells tomorrow," she says abruptly when the bedroom door hisses shut behind Schneizel.
"Become more hindrance than help, have we?" Kanon says. He's noticed how the tasks Lelouch has been delegating Schneizel have been becoming increasingly piecemeal, and not obviously related to Schneizel's areas of expertise. Neither has he missed how he and Schneizel have been kept in the shadows, all of the credit falling to Lelouch's shoulders. Or the blame.
"He can only hide your involvement and Schneizel's for so long, yes," C.C. agrees. "I won't be going to meet you in the cells." She adds, as though offhandedly, "You won't be seeing me on the day either, for that matter."
"What will you do?" Kanon asks.
C.C. flicks a hand. "Move on, I suppose." She says it flippantly, but her face is pale. "We all move on, in the end."
"Then that's what we shall do," Kanon says. He thinks of Schneizel, and says, "But for now, we shall treasure what we have."
C.C. looks at him, and blinks. "Yes." C.C. smiles, the light spreading from the corners of her mouth to the corners of her eyes. "I suppose we shall."