Title: True Colors
Summary: "But as grateful as you are for this cell, as happy as you are for ignorance that comes along with being a prisoner, you are not happy. You are afraid, scared that I could go out right now and order my army to kill all. of. your. friends."
Note: This one shot is AU, but some aspects will stay the same. Lelouch was never Zero, Kallen is a terrorist, Britannia rules Japan, etc. You'll figure it out. If not, feel free to ask questions.
"Are you afraid of me?" She asked, her voice impassive and edged with arrogant mockery, while her mouth was curled in a smirk. She couldn't even begin to describe the excitement raging through her at that moment.
She would make this man beg for his life.
The cowering guard only replied with a stern "no", but Kallen could see through his act, through the false bravery he presented. He was afraid of her, a killer, someone with no regard for others. Despite being a guard himself, especially for disgusting Britannia pigs, he was afraid of her.
Her smirk grew wider as the man continued to shake, and soon he ran off, just like the other guards, just like every other person who tried to confront her as the enemy.
And soon she was left alone, with the gray blank walls of the cell being her only company.
But she didn't care; no, she knew that wishing for anything more would be disastrous. Right now, her main priority was to take down the Britannian Empire once and for all.
But as she sat in that cold dark cell with the gray blank walls, she felt the loneliness creep up from the blackened corners of the cell, and eat away at her courage, her determination, her will.
Shaking her head, she removed those thoughts from her mind, despite knowing that those same thoughts will come back to haunt her later...
She had a job to do. Kill the Emperor. Take down the Britannian Empire. Save Japan.
So she wouldn't care for the lack of company, or for the horrific nightmares of her brother dying right before her ears, a nightmare that she knew would come in her sleep later. She wouldn't care for the fact that Oghi wasn't here; no one was here... But she knew she had to ignore it; fear was a weakness, something those pigs fed on, and she would not give in.
She closed her eyes, sleep invading her senses, when suddenly she heard a cell door open, at the far end of the hall. Footsteps echoed throughout the cells, but Kallen closed her eyes again, knowing that the Emperor would probably not give her the time of day. She took a deep breath, because she was slowly growing angry with the way the Emperor ignored the problems he was causing, the problems that were already rooted into the country from the beginning, the problems that would not go away with ignorance.
Those stupid, ignorant, arrogant pigs-
"Kallen Kouzuki, am I correct?" Her eyes snapped up to the new voice that broke the cell's silence. In seconds a glare was plastered onto her face, her anger overcoming her thoughts when she realized who the voice belonged to.
"You!" She exclaimed out of fury, standing up from her original sitting position.
The man in front of her only smirked, his eyes filling up with mocking excitement. "Yes me. Good to see I'm remembered."
Kallen scowled at this man's arrogant aura, his cruel demeanor. Of course she remembered him; the bastard killed her comrades! "You have some nerve to come here", she said through clenched teeth. Her hands were curled into fists in an attempt to contain her boiling anger. When she got her hands on this man she would strangle him and beat him into pieces. She could take him!
The man raised an eyebrow. "I can't visit my own prisoner?"
"I'm not your prisoner you jackass!" She yelled, stomping closer to the bars of the cell of which he stood behind. "You're a coward; you can only face me when I'm locked up and out of your range!"
The man chuckled, mocking her words, as if she couldn't really hurt him. Kallen scowled at that thought; she would show him. She'd beat him to a bloody pulp before-
"Yet you secretly wish to stay in that cell, don't you?" He asked, leaving Kallen gaping and wide-eyed.
"EXCUSE ME-"
"For it is not you who is out of my range, but it is I who am out of yours." He said cryptically, his eyes no longer revealing mockery and amusement.
Kallen huffed, unable to understand the audacity of this man. "I could kick your ass-"
"And you hide behind your mask, hoping your anger will scare off anyone who could really reach inside and see the true Kallen Kouzuki."
Kallen almost, almost, stayed silent, secretly agreeing with the man's last statement, and remembered when she last opened her heart to someone, even if it was just to her brother and her friends. The cold hard truth of this world was that anyone you loved could die, and to Kallen, it seemed that anyone she loved would die.
And it was much easier to hate someone than to love them, to grow angry at them than to be kind to them. Because anger helped her goal; love did not.
"Shut up", she said coldly, inwardly shaking from this man's absurd accusations. She would not fall due to his trickery. "Why are you here?"
A cruel smirk grew upon the man's face, "I only want to ask a question."
"Then ask it and leave!" She was tired of his ridiculous antics. She wanted to sleep, despite the knowledge that her nightmares would come to occupy the vacant spots in her mind that were empty due to loneliness.
A small chuckle escaped his lips. "I see the real you Kallen. You're scared, afraid to love because you know that people could die any minute. Behind your anger hides a little girl who cries for her dead brother to come back to life-"
"SHUT UP-"
"And you fight me and the rest of the Empire because you don't think it's fair", he said, his eyes now regaining the cruelness that was residing there before. He continued speaking, his words as sharp as daggers, each one of them piercing Kallen's will. "And you are grateful for this isolated cell because you don't have to see the deaths of your comrades, your friends, your family-"
She glared at him, tears trying to break free from her eyes but she refused to let them fall. "Shut up. You have no idea what you're saying-"
"I don't?" He asked, his eyes widening a little with fake concern. "Then why are you afraid?"
"I'm not afraid of anything-", she said, attempting to build her resolve back, to rebuild the walls that he was trying to tear down. She knew this was a tactic; break the enemy's strongest fighter and in turn tear the whole rebellion down to shreds.
He continued with his previous monologue, because he knew she was desperately trying to prove her strength even though the two of them knew he was capable of revealing her weakness and using it against her. He specialized in that.
"But as grateful as you are for this cell, as happy as you are for ignorance that comes along with being a prisoner, you are not happy. You are afraid, scared that I could go out right now and order my army to kill all. of. your. friends."
She was shaken silent, and her body shook just a little bit, but enough for him to realize that he had her. She did her best not to tear her eyes from his purple ones, for she knew she had lost, but she would not go down that easily...
Even though he already pulled her down.
"So the real question, Kallen Kouzuki, is this", said Lelouch vi Britannia.
"Are you afraid of me?"
So yea, this is what happens when I get tired of Lelouch acting all lovey-dovey. It's nice, but it gets tiring after a while.
Note: This used to be a series of one shots, but I ended up changing it. This chapter is an individual one shot. No updates or anything.
Love,
Ivy