A/N. Written for the July round at fictunes_lj. This went through about four different drafts and it still turned out different, not least of all from which character's perspective it was being told. Also, appologies in advance because this has not been past my beta due to the fact she is drowning in fabric somewhere in France right now!
Disclaimer: Don't own it. Never have, never will, just borrowing the characters.
Not Just A Memory
She had seen them even when they had not seen her, watching through memories that played like silent films. There were two boys and a blind girl clambering across broken lands and burnt out battlefields while foreign shapes littered the sky. They were not her memories but she could still feel the heat of the sun and the kicked up dust that caught in her throat; it was a dying land, but still they kept walking, side by side and hand in hand with a sense of grim determination. She had not been there that day but she still heard the promise, or perhaps the threat, made by the disinherited Prince of Britannia: to bring about change, to take down the force from his homeland that had stolen this country and crushed the people.
No matter how she looked at that memory and looked at the current world she couldn't help but feel a little sad. Those two little boys and the blind girl were older but still so young, too young, and all three fought for beliefs that were supposedly for the greater good yet she knew they were selfish as they battled both side by side and across the field from one another. If she took a step back, if she had been able to, it would look like a dance, changing partners and skipping to a dictated beat. Even if the conductor of that beat had changed the outcome was inevitably the same and all for the sake of two words and too many souls: Zero Requiem.
She hadn't disallowed it though; she was stood here, by their side, letting it happen, because despite the fact that the end result saddened her she knew why it was necessary. War could not be won without casualties and sacrifices. He had always said, hadn't he, that to fight one had to be prepared to die. In the echo of those words and the lies that followed she had known that this boy, jaded by the world he had changed and that had changed him, was not one she would she grow into a man; there was far too much blood on his hands for that. Far too much blood on all their hands, but while those two boys could die or be thought of as dead she could not, so she would live and remember those fields and the boys who walked across them, shielding that little girl from the horrors of the world.
She would remember them as they were then and as she had known them behind high security walls. She would think of the disparaging look at the new wardrobe choices – was a hood that size even practical? – and the consequent eloquent reply – of course not, but it's all about personal image. She would think of all the careful hours of late night planning, details upon back up plans upon what ifs and maybes all accounted for across large tables and papers that would be burnt to ashes once memorised, all the lives safely incorporated into the once-in-a-life-time extravaganza, all prisoners free to be rescued by the cavalry. She would think of them walking side by side down the hall ahead of her, working together in a way that only they could and she would forget that somewhere there was a line between the truth and the lie of the reasons behind these actions.
She had refused to say goodbye before the parade began and she refused to say goodbye when he donned the cloak and mask. She had turned her back and walked out the door, walked away, before the cheers could begin. She already knew that the plan would work and she would not allow her last memories of these two to be of the Emperor and Zero, of a demon and a symbol; she would let her memories remain of Lelouch who let her order far too many pizzas and Suzaku who was forever being bitten by Arthur the cat, of the friendship that had been tried and worn but never fully broken.
In the end she knew their names and not their titles, she called them as such and that was enough for her to keep walking with her head held high.