Disclaimer: Code Geass and all related characters and materials belong to Sunrise, CLAMP, and their respective owners. Not mine.
A/N: Every now and then I like to resurrect Lelouch. This may have to lead to something fourth wall-breaking in the future.
Tenjou
By: Nanaki BH
Other people have normal dreams. Apparently it's something common for people to dream about falling from somewhere high or being put on a chase. There are more surprising, strange things even that are pretty common for people to dream about, but he has never had the fortune of experiencing them. His dreams can't be so common.
Lelouch dreams of dying.
Lelouch dreams of the many ways that he would be killed, whether by gunshot or in fire or held under water. Each time, he wakes from them with his limbs splayed across the bed, tangled in sheets, everything still attached and in its correct place.
That was then.
He blinks his eyes open slowly this time and the world around him is black. Ah, he thinks, perhaps I've really died this time, though he doesn't recall how; no dreams to conveniently explain or foreshadow.
There's a pain in his middle, though. Maybe this is the dream, he thinks, clutching suddenly at the very real ache that threatens to steal his breath. He opens his eyelids wider, seeking, and his vision swims in and out with the effort.
The black void parts enough finally where he can see the dim outline of a window across the room from him, its drapes drawn. Not dead, he realizes slowly, and now that his senses have returned, he can feel the warm breath of another ghosting against his cheek.
"You're awake?"
He goes to say something. What, he doesn't know, so his lips refuse to move and no words come out. He sighs quietly and leans his head closer to the one beside him, as warm as ever. So inviting, his embrace is, Lelouch feels himself ready to slip back into unconsciousness again, but he wants to stay awake still. Just a little longer, he wants to grasp onto whatever threads of wakefulness he can so he can know.
He opens his mouth. It's something, but still. He doesn't know what to ask.
A blade, a mask, tears, blood – his blood, his fingers running down the side of a plexiglass visor until his strength was swept away. The dream comes back and he finds it unexpectedly easy to remain relaxed outwardly while his heartbeat races inside.
Held so closely, Suzaku can feel the rapid beating of his pulse. Gently, he eases himself onto an elbow and leans in to place a kiss to Lelouch's neck.
"Are you alright? How do you feel?"
It would be so easy to be witty. There are numerous biting remarks he could make about being run through by his lover, but those words must not have been right either.
A nearly pathetic sound escapes instead, like a remnant of the thoughts he couldn't release.
By the less than desperate tone of Suzaku's voice, Lelouch assumes that the worst is over for now, but that does little to ease the pain. Suzaku makes some sort of kind, sympathetic sound and sighs, resting his chin down on Lelouch's head where his lips press in against his hair. He embraces him closely like that, bringing him closer to where Lelouch's ear presses against his bare chest where he can hear his heart beating nearly as fast as his own.
When he lifts his hand to grasp Suzaku's shoulder, his fingers aren't shaking like he expected them to be. No tremors at all, yet he realizes how cold he feels in comparison to Suzaku's bed-warmed skin.
"Is this alright?" he finally asks; a responsible thing to say.
It feels wrong for it to be this way. He knows distantly that he should be feeling more. Maybe not yet, but somewhere inside, he already knows the sort of things this could mean for his life now. He doesn't even know if having a life at all is more or less than he wanted from the outcome of his plans. More? He just wanted things to go smoothly, whatever that meant.
"People think you're dead," Suzaku says softly into his hair. He pulls away to give Lelouch room to breathe and pets a hand across his forehead, swiping sweat-slick bangs to the side. Lelouch can't see his eyes in the dark, but he can see the outline of his lips, pulled tight, his brow, turned upward.
"That's good," he says, hoping he's managed to put a smile on, hoping Suzaku can see it.
His world begins to narrow again into the nauseating pain he feels and the overwhelming urge to kiss Suzaku. Ignoring the former, he sluggishly inches himself closer and angles his chin. It's more like Suzaku is the one doing the kissing, but that's fine. He sighs and his lips twitch at the pain but he feels more at ease, if only just a little.
"My prince," he whispers, lip to lip, nose nearly touching nose. His fingers are like shadows themselves, working cleverly at the back of Lelouch's neck, easing out tension that he hadn't realized he'd been holding.
Lelouch snorts with a breath that's almost all he's got. He can't lift his hand to hit Suzaku in the shoulder like he wants to, but he's found his voice now finally.
"Not anymore," he says.
"Not anymore, no. Not to anyone else. Just to me."
The way Suzaku's looking at him so seriously makes him feel uncomfortable. His eyes ache so he closes them. "You're too damn sentimental," he mutters. His voice feels far away and lacks conviction.
Suzaku says things, but it all feels so far away and he can't move to chase after the sound of his voice as it goes farther and farther into the dark. Before the darkness envelopes his thoughts completely, he wishes that he could have said more.
He wakes up again moments (hours? days?) later with the pain in his middle and Suzaku's next to him again, breathing softly like before. He tilts his head up and kisses him on his bottom lip. The touch stirs Suzaku into full wakefulness and he lifts himself again onto his elbow. If too many things start reoccurring, Lelouch thinks he may be forced to believe that this really is all just a dream still, repeating and repeating. At least it has Suzaku. Be it a dream, be it heaven or hell, as long as he was there, he would be able to endure any amount of pain.
"You should lay on your back," Suzaku says, touching him gently on the hip with some light force to make him roll over the other way.
"Not my fault I naturally gravitate toward you in my sleep." He says it to get a rise out of him, but it doesn't work like it used to. He can tell that Suzaku is smiling again and something about how... relieved he looks and how fondly he looks at him makes Lelouch the one to react instead.
"Was I asleep long?" he asks, still feeling terribly tired.
Suzaku shakes his head, leans down to touch his lips to his feverish forehead. "No, not long. If you can though, you should try to stay on your back. It would be bad if your wound reopened."
That. Right. If he falls asleep again, maybe it will be a dream when he wakes up. So many possibilities, he thinks. What if he woke up and life was normal? Mother in the kitchen, father at work, sister happily running out the door to make it to class... Him, waking up late with Suzaku beside him, wondering how to hide him before his parents realized he was there.
He hasn't spend his life wondering about what could be, though. But now that the end has come and left him behind, maybe he's allowed to wonder.
"Nunnally?" he asks suddenly, breaking into the silence that had spread for some innumerable amount of time.
It sounds like Suzaku is hesitating, but he answers after a moment. "She knows about you. You're here because of her."
"That's not what I was asking." Although the knowledge that she knows is... both somehow disappointing and very, very relieving. "Is she alright?" he asks.
Suzaku kisses him again on his cheek, rubs a hand absently across his chest to his shoulder, squeezes. "She's fine."
That's all he had to know, really. Nearby, the mask sits on the bedside table like a reminder of their grave past, yet Suzaku's breath at his shoulder, which grows slower and steadier as the minutes pass is a promise of a future. The future has never been so uncertain, having been something he always constructed with his own hands – for himself, for everyone else around him, even. It's a strange and frightening thing to realize that his next move may not be his to make.
And yet as Suzaku sleeps and twines his fingers unconsciously with his, he knows that there are still good things in the world that exist, even after the end. The result was just fractionally different from what he had planned on the whole. He realizes now, he may have been a big player in everything, had his hand on every piece, but he was just a small piece himself in the face of it all. The world would have continued to turn without him and it still turns with him. The the fate of the world really has no concern for what he does and does not deserve.
It is impossible to call fate merciful. However...
"Lelouch, go back to sleep."
"I thought you were asleep." He even had his eyes closed and everything.
Suzaku just laughs softly through his nose, a warm breath on Lelouch's shoulder, and squeezes his hand.
He puts a hand over the bandages on his stomach and smiles weakly into the dark. He lets his eyes fall closed and this time, he doesn't have to dream.