chronic.
He was an incorrigible masochist.
The sad thing was: he knew it. It wasn't one of those painfully subconscious things that you were unaware of, those –oh, I didn't know that about myself! – sorts of things. He knew it, and lived with the knowledge. Daily.
He knew it each time he threw himself in the way of an opposing knightmare. Every hack, slash, and shot. Every blow that his ridiculously advanced frame took. It was there in every drop of sweat he shed in the musty hot cockpit of the Lancelot, every twitch of his finger on the controls, in every 'yes, my Lord' he uttered.
So, he asks himself, how is it that he hated, abhorred with every last fiber of his being the Geass cast upon him?
Live on.
When all he wanted to do was die already, dammit.
By rights, he should've accepted it gladly. He realizes this now. He was younger- a year in time, centuries in experience. Freakishly naïve. But he's not so shallow as to renounce his beliefs- the beliefs that have carried him on for years, giving him something to live for.
Fight from the inside. Attack from the rear.
(And he'd done just that.)
He was just doing it a different way now. Working – on the same side, technically. He snorts. What a convoluted way to describe the excuse of betrayal (countless betrayals!). Zero Requiem, Lelouch had called it, with a pleased smile. He'd a strange passion for naming his missions with the most cryptic of words. Privately, Suzaku'd called it: my redemption. Because he knows now. Losing things- it really put everything into perspective. He can see more clearly than he ever has behind the mask of the century's most beloved hero, ironically.
He'd live, and suffer. And that would be his method of payment. Time – lots of it. Not blood. A willing forfeit of something that much greater.
Well, his masochistic side was fine with that.