F.R.O.S.T.B.I.T.E
Act One
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"Better never to have met you in my dream
than to wake and reach for hands
that are not there."
- Otomo No Yakamochi
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He never remembered when he had first opened his eyes, or how he had ended up to where he is now. All he knows is that his eyes finally opened to reveal the strangest of visions he has ever seen in his eighteen years of human-hood.
And he knows that was saying a lot, for he has seen much, much more than any normal person twice—thrice—his age would ever care to see.
So, he remarks cynically, this must be death. Not what he really pictured while he was still living, he must admit. But it was better than what he imagined, so who was he to complain? After all, he expected to be forever trapped in the flames of hell, not…this.
He never remembered when he started wandering in this realm, or at which particular point he started or where he's headed or why he was even walking.
All he knows is that it was considerably his first day of existence in death.
Steady whisk of the canopies. A river by his left, its waves streaming calmly. A breeze envelopes his frame once in a while. Sunsets. There were so many sunsets.
It was peaceful. It was a world he would have loved for Nunnally to see and live in—
He squelched whatever thought he would've gone on just to move on.
He wonders if he really died or, by some slight twist of the Geass, was just transported back in some other world. If this is the place people would go when they die, then they shouldn't fear it that much, perhaps.
It is night time, that is obvious enough, and it is foggy and maybe a little chilly. He is facing the foot of a wooden bridge that will connect him to a place of wooden houses and even more…wooden ways of living.
Idly, his hands traveled to his torso, supposedly to where it should hurt (it was a long sword after all) and, like crystal glass breaking, discovers something else.
He was sure that he wore his emperor's garb when he died. And he remembered Rivalz mentioning about souls who never changed their clothes once they died.
So how could he be dressed in a kimono, of all things?
Just as soon as this thought sank in, his eyes caught a figure walking in the bridge towards his direction, and for some reason he just knows that this figure is after him.
Unconsciously, he tensed, but calmed down after a few moments. He was already dead; why should he worry about anything?
And as the figure neared, the fog slightly dissipated to reveal a pale, young woman close his age, garbed in black. He noticed that there was a hilt of a sword attached to her belt strap. Her eyes, a shade of the deepest purple (just like his), burned through his.
"Took you long enough to recover, Lelouch-san?" she said after a moment, her voice calm, steady, cold.
He didn't bother pretending he knew what she meant. But the woman neither noticed nor cared, for she didn't bother to elaborate.
"Follow me, then," was what she said instead, and because he blamed it on his supposed lack of intelligence—a consequence he has to pay in death—who was he to refuse?
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A year has passed since he died. That was for those who still counted and remembered and cared for its significance.
As for those who didn't even know, life goes on, and as far as their routinary life says it, nothing has really changed.
Kallen has long believed that she belonged to the group of the latter.
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It was roughly after three months that the people noticed she changed. She always hid her emotions, and in those three months since his death she was past impenetrable. Nobody could touch her and nobody bothered to find her when she suddenly left. Like a feather caught in an onslaught of fiery anguish, she disappeared without a trace.
So when people heard that she smiled on the first day she returned to Ashford, even how small that smile was, they knew an epiphany had begun.
Unfortunately, it was only Gino who had actually seen it. It was also the only thing that had shut him up, his eyes wide and unbelieving and a little more hopeful.
And Ashford began to hope for Kallen's wellbeing once again.
Everybody knew of her first day of return to school. After three months of not being able to find any traces of her, they surrendered for the worst until Milly suddenly barged into the academy in her work outfit, flushed and teary-eyed.
"She's coming back," she whispered, haltingly at first, as if even she couldn't believe it, then repeated more loudly, "It's Kallen! She's coming back!"
It was Gino, all of Ashford would agree, who looked and sounded the happiest. Instantly organizing a welcome party, he was so insistent on being the first person to welcome her that Ashford Academy took pity of him and agreed.
Finally, in that day of epiphanies, as Kallen walked inside an empty school—she was thinking of something else that it never occurred to her it was peculiarly empty—and directly to her classroom, she was visibly shocked to find him there, donning a brilliant smile. In his proffered hand lay the first flower Kallen has seen in months.
"Welcome back home, Kallen," he started softly, noticing that the girl was slightly shaking.
It took a moment before Kallen accepted the flower, her fingers softly gracing his. She was silent for another moment, her eyes closed, breathing in the scent of the flower.
It was a second later when he saw her open her eyes, a grateful half-smile in her lips.
If that hadn't stunned him enough, her next words finally did.
"Arigatou, Gino-kun. I'm glad to be back home."
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"Lelouch, the world is a better place now…"
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"Here in Seireitei we call it a memory modifier," the woman suddenly said. An hour has passed and she still didn't introduce herself. They had treaded through roads filled with huts and curious people he assumed were as dead as he is. Dead people pretending to live on. It was pathetic.
The woman told him a while back that he is in Seireitei, or Soul Society as known by others. They were still in Rukongai, she said.
"And that is of what significance to me?" he asked instead. Not that he really cared.
But the woman simply smirked. "Your Geass. You have used it more than once to command people to lose their memories. We also had a more efficient method for that. All we need is to push a button and, boom, mission accomplished."
He won't even make an effort in analyzing her motives for sharing such statement for as far as he is concerned, he is dead, and the dead didn't continue doing the things they do when they were alive.
Like analyzing people in lieu with Zero's plans, for example. And playing chess.
"It's not that we are blaming you, for we have also resorted to such methods especially when such a need arises. You had a powerful ability, Lelouch-san, but even you should know better than to play with fate," she continued silently, her eyes back to scrutinizing him again.
"When we die, we must be careful of what we leave behind, for we can no longer make amends for those of the living," she whispered, her lips betraying a hidden conspiracy only she knows about.
Truth be told, she had met thousands of souls just like him that addressing their concerns seem to be so normal for her already, like second skin. She was given this responsibility by Urahara-taichou for exactly this reason.
But unlike her husband, Urahara Rukia will always see all those souls standing out, especially when she saw them in their rawest.
She tilted her head, as if in deep thought, before she addressed the young man again—what a sad, sad, young man, she silently thought—her features softening.
"But we must not speak yet of these…concerns, ne, Lelouch-san? We must move on quickly. Someone is waiting for us, and this is a more pressing matter we have to attend to."
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A week after his death, it was Kallen who was the first who decided to return to the living.
Suzaku—Zero, he'll always be Zero now—and, surprisingly, Milly, were the first to see her.
A few more hours after she returned to the living, she arrived at her apartment. Her mother had already left. Everything was in place. Everything was exactly how it looked the day they first moved in.
Her fingers unconsciously trailed to a portion of a wall, to anything, itching to touch everything inside this room so it would be filled with memories, be filled with life once more, but she stopped herself before she could do anything.
Everything here still chants Kouzuki, Kouzuki. She was no longer a Kouzuki. It was the price she had to pay. She forced her eyes to head straight to her room, her movements mechanical.
Slowly, she opened the door to her room, aware of the demons she would face. It was slow and took too long, she taking all her clothes, folding and placing them inside her bags, piling her things and photos in boxes. She didn't dare stare at her photos—she knew them by heart, she knew what exactly was placed where and she certainly knew which she wanted to keep.
A photo of an evil, but dead, emperor was out of the question.
A final shove, a forceful zip, and she was ready to move out and be gone forever. They told her that her mother was already waiting in the manor her master had been so generous in providing.
She was no longer a Kouzuki. Her stay there would be her lifetime sentence.
Out her bags went, then her boxes, and with a final pull of the knob that didn't speak much of finalities, her room was closed. Then her apartment was closed and like a buzz in the head everything was blank and oh, why why why was she hurting so much and why can't she just understand anything, damnit, she was supposed to be smarter than this—
'You are no longer a Kouzuki the moment you get out of that room.'
When she landed on the soft cushions of her seat in the car waiting for her, she will no longer remember everything.
And along her ordeal inside her room, she never let her eyes trail to her walls were pictures upon pictures of him remain unscathed, his smiles frozen in death.
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From a leaf of Kouzuki Kallen's only diary entry, written a week after Lelouch vi Britannia's death:
It always rips my heart into a thousand shreds, my anguish. It cripples my ability to fly, darkens my visions of rainbows and stars, makes me think of the breeze as sharp needles piercing my very flesh I couldn't bleed with the pain.
Ironic that it is in this moment where I stand the tallest at the highest peak of my inner existence. Impenetrable. No one could touch me. No one could help me contain my madness. No one could calm my tumultuous storms.
I never should've loved him back when I still could.
I feel alone, so, so alone.
(The paper lies abandoned, torn to shreds. It will never be read by anybody else.)
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- Act One, Close -
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A/N: This is my first fic for this universe, so please bear with me. You can also be kind by giving me reviews.