Despite the truce reached an hour earlier, Kallen shifted uneasily in the heat of the fire. Her hands were cut free to allow her to eat, her stomach demanded she do so, but the apprehension froze her limbs. The boy sitting on the other side of the small fire was oblivious to her internal struggle. The firelight licked at the shadows across his handsome face, making him look softer and younger than he was. He smiled with a content sigh as he finished his meal. It seemed unlikely that this boy with kind eyes and a friendly smile for everyone at school despite how they treated him was the same boy that had ruthlessly thrown her to the ground and declared her a prisoner. The bruises that bloomed across the pale skin of her back twinged at the memory of it. She shifted again.

"Aren't you hungry?" he asked, blinking at her with wide, concerned green eyes. He wasn't concerned about a possible attack, Kallen thought bitterly, since he had clearly established his physical superiority earlier.

"I'm a vegetarian," was Kallen's droll reply. Her stomach twisted and growled again.

He laughed easily. "I don't think you can afford to be picky right now. Come on, I know you're starving."

"Yes, let's save the starving for prison," she sniped.

Suzaku blinked in surprise, then his gaze finally hardened. "We don't starve prisoners."

"Is that what they told you?" she scoffed. "So ignorant. It's almost adorable."

"We don't."

She remembered the cell, the metal shackles digging into her wrists. She remembered the confusion and the pain and the hunger. She remembered the heel of an officers boots cracking down on her forehead where she knelt on the dirty concrete.

"Sure," she muttered, finally convincing her arms to move. Her fingers carefully separated a piece of fish from bone and slipped the slightly burned meat into her mouth. The flavor was better than she had expected. Saliva pooled beneath her tongue as she chewed. Then, she noticed how Suzaku watched her curiously.

"What made you choose this?" he asked softly.

Kallen's chin tilted as a loud, genuine laugh was torn from her throat. "You think I chose this?"

"You didn't?"

Her eyebrows knit together and she looked at him bizarrely. It wasn't a strange questions, she knew, but the idea still seemed so ridiculous to her. Why on earth would she want to take up arms with people who bombed Japanese buildings and incited Britannian violence against the Japanese for the supposed glory of Japan?

"No." She busied her mouth with eating before she could divulge anything else. Her throat itched with the urge to talk, to finally get it off her chest. The possibility that maybe things would be easier if the truth was out in the open, that maybe redemption was an option, was entirely too tempting. To ward off the seduction, she stuffed her mouth with crispy fish.

"How did you end up here, then?" Suzaku seemed genuine like always.

Mouth full, Kallen could only made unintelligible sounds. Annoyed, Suzaku crawled around to sit by her side. The girl recoiled against the fat log behind her, staring at him through slitted eyes. Foolishly, she hated him for invaded what she had silently declared to be her territory.

"Kallen," he said seriously, eyes burning with an intensity she didn't know he was capable of, "if I tell you a secret of mine, will you tell me the truth?"

She could only swallow some of the ridiculous amount of fish stuffed into her mouth. Her cheeks burned as he stared at her. Now more than ever she cursed her inability to lie. It was one thing she wished she had inherited from her parents.

"I killed my father," he blurted out. His voice sounded airy and weird.

Kallen choked. Alarmed, Suzaku grasped her thin wrist in one hand and beat the other against her back, calling her name and telling her, "God, I'm sorry! Breathe, just breathe. I'm so sorry." The sticky lump in her throat dislodged. She jumped forward, wincing, away from his hand. The bruises would surely be worse now.

"Sorry," he said meekly.

She cleared her throat for good measure and croaked, "No worries."

The silence between them was awkward. Suzaku still had his large, calloused hands on her, which made it worse. Static fuzzed through her brain. What was she supposed to say to that? How was she supposed to feel? The Prime Minister had seemed zealous to her as a girl. The speeches broadcast over radio and television were teeming with hatred. "We will never surrender! To the last man, woman, and child- we will never surrender Japan!"

"I-I took a knife and I killed him," Suzaku said again, voice stronger this time but still broken. His hand tightened around her wrist. Her large, blue eyes blinked owlishly as they locked with his. In the back of her mind, she wondered if this was how his hand tightened around the hilt of the blade when he murdered his father. His father. Tears pooled across his lower lids, glittering in his long lashes.

"Why did you do it?" she whispered.

His throat jerked as he gulped. A vein beneath his tanned skin twitched. "He wouldn't give up. People kept dying. I begged him to stop. I just wanted it all to stop. I-I thought-"

"You thought you were doing the right thing," she finished for him.

"Yeah." He shuddered. "I joined the military because I think I can make a difference from within, rather than with violence against them. But no matter what I do, I can't shake what I did."

In her head, she could almost hear Tamaki telling her to use this against him. To beat against this exposed weak point until he crumbled. Then, Suzaku lowered his head to her shoulder. Messy, brown curls that smelled like the ocean and smoke and boy tickled her neck. His breath puffed unevenly against her exposed collarbone.

"My older brother wanted to make the world a better place," she began quietly. "After our father left our mother for a Britannian woman, Naoto took it upon himself to take care of me. He used to tell me stories at night about peace and open fields and skies that weren't covered in smoke. He never told me how he was setting out to achieve it, though. When I was thirteen, he started disappearing for days a time. Once, he was gone for a whole month."

Suzaku lifted his head to look into her eyes when her voice began to shake.

"When I was fourteen, we lived in this tiny apartment in one of the ghettos with our mom. Soldiers kicked our door in one night and shot Naoto to death in the bed we shared. They dragged me away to prison. I didn't know why they kept saying I was a terrorist. Three weeks later, they decided I was broken down enough to re-enter society as a Britannian."

"Kallen," he whispered.

"My brother's comrades found me, took me under their wing. I promised myself I would never be that helpless or weak again. Things have gotten out of hand, though. Bombs are falling. Innocent people are being caught in the crossfire. I never wanted this."

It came out faint like a terrible secret. As a Black Knight, she was not supposed to regret anything. Zero told them it was all necessary, but Kallen couldn't chase away the thought that maybe it wasn't. Whenever the crippling self-doubt washed over her, she would remind herself that it was too late to turn back. They were chained to Zero now and if he went over the edge, they were damn well going with him.

Suzaku crushed her shoulders in a tight embrace. She made an embarrassing squeaking noise in the back of her throat. Hesitantly, she reached up and put one hand between his broad shoulders. The other curled awkwardly at her side, arm trapped by the boy's body.

"I'm so sorry, Kallen," he said into her hair and squeezed her tighter. "You must think I'm a real piece of shit."

She snorted at the unexpected phrase. "You kiss the princess with that mouth, Kururugi?"

Suzaku pulled away, blushing. "I don't kiss the princess."

"Not with a filthy mouth like that," she teased, shifting away from him and looked at the fire. For a moment, neither said anything. The tension from before had leaked from Kallen's muscles. Finally, she was able to relax somewhat against the log, though the contact with the rough bark made her cringe in pain again.

"Are you hurt?" asked Suzaku.

Kallen wanted to lie for the sake of her pride, but then he ran a hand over her back and the tiny yelp of pain escaped before she could stifle it.

"I'm sorry," he said quietly.

"Stop saying that," huffed Kallen, glaring at him. "Let me go if you're so fucking sorry."

His lips twitched with a faint smile. "You kiss Zero with that mouth?"

"Maybe I do," she replied haughtily.

"Do you?" His words were sharp. When she looked at him his lips were pressed together in a hard line.

"No," she admitted. "The mask kinda gets in the way."

Suzaku looked down with an odd, withdrawn expression tightening his features. "Why do you follow him, Kallen? Can't you see what he's doing is wrong?"

"Everything these days is wrong. If you hadn't killed your father you would regret that, too."

"What?" he sputtered.

"Think about it," she said fiercely, turning her whole body this time to face him properly, "if your father lived, millions of Japanese would have died. We were already losing. Perhaps not surrendering when we did would have made things worse. You would still be stewing in guilt no matter what you did."

His body went rigid. She could see his shoulders shaking. He couldn't meet her eyes.

"I follow Zero because I think he might be able to lead us into an age where it's possible to do the right thing. All we can do is keep our heads above water and swim like hell."

Instead of condemning her beliefs, Suzaku gently reached up with one hand and pulled her head towards his. His lips were chapped against hers. His eyes were closed. Kallen's eyes went wide as she was kissed for the first time in her life. Shocked into perfect stillness, she wracked her brain for an idea of what she was supposed to do. Panicked, she tried to pull back, but his hand held her firmly in place. When his lips pressed harder against hers, his wet tongue swiping against the seam of her lips, her eyes fell shut. Kallen nervously tried kissing him back, but felt clumsy and stiff. She was acutely conscious of how her mouth might taste like the fish she just ate. How embarrassing. Was it supposed to be this awkward? She wished Milly was here to answer her questions.

Suzaku took her lower lip and gently scraped his teeth over the plump flesh. Kallen inhaled sharply through her nose when his tongue brushed against hers. His tongue is in my mouth. Oh my god. It didn't make her see stars or angels or whatever Milly was always going on about, but the warmth and the pull of his lips and teeth and tongue were somehow better. Her heart pounded against its cage, and her blood felt hot.

He sighed against her mouth. She realized she wasn't the only one shaking. Slowly, he pulled away to examine her reaction. Kallen was relieved when his face was as red as hers felt.

She narrowed her eyes accusingly. "Is this because you saw me naked earlier?"

His eyes went comically wide before he bellowed with laughter.