A/N: I haven't found the time to post Geass fic before now, but the overwhelming gloriousness of final ep and the complete show has successfully pushed all my other comittments aside so that I can get this up. For two of my all time favourite characters, with much love.

Spoilers for almost everything. Reviews very much appreciated.

000

In Memoriam

OR

Absolution

Their breathing echoed in the empty audience chamber, or Lelouch's did. Suzaku was silent, was always silent. It would have frustrated Lelouch, the idea that Suzaku had managed to transcend noise, if he hadn't been certain now that Suzaku was his.

The room looked…desolate, empty as it was, and it suited them both. They were desolate. The world was desolate. Life had been, and would be yet.

Lelouch's gaze—Emperor Lelouch's gaze—had moved slowly over the half-hour they'd remained here, from some blank spot in the middle of the vast room to some equally blank spot on his white trousers, on his kneecaps. Suzaku knew something was wrong; more wrong than usual. He knew almost everything, or perhaps everything he was willing to accept, about Lelouch, in a way all those countless people who'd tried had never quite managed. But there were too many things to be more wrong than usual—everything was—and he had no place acting on it so long as his prince remained focused. Lelouch was not a child he could comfort anymore. Really, he never had been. They were each other's weapons, and they made each other strong. That was as much as the world could ask of them now.

"Suzaku."

The flat, mostly-dead voice that was most of the day now, dead whenever it wasn't imbued with the fabulous act of flamboyant arrogance thrown at the world, curving, graceful, wild hand gestures, maniacal grin.

Suzaku didn't move by his emperor's side. Lelouch seemed oddly small from this angle, slumped in the monstrosity of a throne (though not as massive as the great throne in Pendragon, now only memory and dust), Suzaku standing taller and so much stronger over him. "Yes, your majesty?"

Suzaku could tell the moment that Lelouch looked up, not at him but at the room, that truth was coming, or closer to truth than usual. He hated the rush of adrenaline that brought, but it was impossible to ignore. Lelouch remained uncomfortable with truth, as afraid as he was yearning, and Suzaku knew the mingled despair and release in those horrifyingly powerful violet eyes because he'd known it himself more than once. Lelouch's voice was unusually quiet. "Every mistake I have made, every loss I have taken, has been because I prioritised Nunnaly."

Ah. Suzaku shut his eyes a moment for strength.

"Every one. Without exception. I was fighting for her, always, but…"

It was all Suzaku could do not to pull the frustrating idiot out of his chair and tell him how little he cared, how little he cared what any of them had done in the past anymore, but he could see what was coming, and he was Lelouch's knight, and he would make him become stronger.

"We have a world to fight for now. I can't afford to fight for Nunnaly any longer. We've both done too much, Suzaku. We have too much to atone for to give the world away."

Suzaku kept his mouth shut. He knew this already, but no one could convince Lelouch like Lelouch could himself; probably no one could convince anyone like Lelouch could himself, though Schneizel seemed to be doing a remarkably destructive job of it.

Lelouch remained staring into the empty room. "I will not lose again. I…you must be my strength in this. You are my knight, Suzaku. Do not let me give her special treatment any longer."

The command made response easier, simpler—this was a set pattern. Suzaku felt the warmth flood through him, the warmth that wasn't welcome and wouldn't be, ever, but that kept coming, that kept coming every time he knew that for once Lelouch, his prince, his emperor, all he had left, was being truthful with him, and fighting for them, and they were going to end this. It was easy, habitual, perhaps more meaningful than before but perhaps not, perhaps less, to drop to one knee and cross his heart. He had done it for a long time now, for many masters. He wasn't sure which one he hated most, but it didn't much matter. Lelouch thought it was probably him, and no longer really cared, because they both deserved it.

Suzaku's eyes remained respectfully lowered. "Yes, your majesty."

Suzaku's eyes remained lowered until Lelouch's stare burned the back of his neck. When he finally tired of being stared at and looked up, he expected Lelouch's gaze to flit away. Even with Suzaku whom he could not touch, cursed as he was already, Lelouch lived by a deeply ingrained paranoia of eye contact, one more than well-earned. And so he was startled, though Suzaku simply did not startle, had not in a very long time, when the gaze remained, violet and red, burning and tired and full of need and full of hate. It made him hate himself and hate Lelouch, mostly, and it made him furious and most of all it made him afraid, because it softened him, and he didn't want to feel this, like he didn't want to hate, or fight, like they were both too tired and too broken. It was one of many truths that could not be, and he hated Lelouch for gazing it at him even as the part of him he couldn't harden drew long starved breath because here was proof that Lelouch was still human, that they both were, and Suzaku hated that he couldn't stop that part loving his prince for that.

The words were on the tip of Lelouch's tongue—the words that had spoken themselves in a thoughtless, desperate moment and cursed them both. Live on, he willed with his eyes—just his eyes, not their power—willed with every breath, inextricable as his heartbeat.

It was everything he ever really wanted to say to Suzaku, or everything that mattered most, because he needed him, for his sword, and to protect Nunnaly when tides turned and Schneizel threw her away, and because it just felt important, and Lelouch's instincts were never wrong…and maybe, a little, even for Suzaku himself.

But mostly…mostly just because he didn't want him to die. Not Suzaku. Not after all he'd made him survive. There were few lives that mattered to Lelouch now, in particular, but Suzaku…he had never been able to kill Suzaku, never been able to give the order, and now he had come to him at last, at the end of it all. Looking into those eyes, the words came as urgently and as forcefully as they had when he'd trapped them. The need burned on the tip of his tongue. But he didn't say it, as desperately as he meant it, because he couldn't bear to see the will disappear from Suzaku's eyes, even for the moment as the command reasserted its hold. Because he had never wanted Suzaku for his slave. Because he had never meant to take his will. And neither of them could bear the words when both knew that all Suzaku wanted was for both of them to die. It was Lelouch who looked away first, and the truth that neither of them would accept or let be real faded uncomfortably between them. There was no time for weakness, or softness, or too tired. There was no time for either of them to still be human.

"Zero Requiem will be accomplished." They were the only words Suzaku could still say that fervently, they and his submission, his obeisance to his emperor, to the other half of his final future, and only Lelouch knew how ironic it was, that even Suzaku had no idea what 'Zero Requiem' truly meant. In time, Suzaku would hold that secret alone. For now, only Lelouch knew the ending. For now, only Lelouch knew their absolution.

For one more moment, Lelouch looked down at his knight—his friend, flawed and fallen and full of nothing as he—kneeling before him, fist still firmly on his heart. This was what he had tried for all along, from the very first time he wore the mask. It was strange to finally have it. But there was no more time for strangeness than there was for anything else. He had fought for Nunnaly because he was weak—he had fought for Suzaku because together they were strong, and that was all that mattered now. But it didn't feel like that as he bowed his head, let his gaze fall back to his knees. It felt…more human that that. And it sounded more human when he spoke. "Yes." The mania of the field, the cruelty that he wielded like a weapon on buzzing communications systems around the world felt so distant, here, alone. "Because there is nothing we cannot do, Suzaku, when our hands are joined."

It felt so weak to whisper. It felt so human. It felt so much like relief, and so much more like guilt. And it felt so much more confused still when a touch turned over his hand on his knee.

Suzaku hated the part of him that, just softly, smiled. He hated the part of him that heard those stupid, meaningless words spoken a hundred times by each of them, but mostly by Lelouch, because Lelouch was a manipulative bastard. He hated the part of him that wanted them to be true not for the sake of Zero Requiem, or not for its sake alone, but because it was all they had left, all the humanity that remained, all the love that they hadn't destroyed, however hard they'd tried, however much it should have been ash by now.

Mostly, he hated the part of him that took his hand from his heart though he knelt still, and turned Lelouch's hand on his knee, and pressed their palms together. They had to be stronger than this. They couldn't be so weak that they relied on silly gestures to be strong. But…it felt good. That Lelouch's hand was still warm, not cold, though it was hard sometimes to think of blood running through his veins. That Lelouch's hand was oddly soft, because through eight years of war, he'd never done anything more physically vigorous than the silly adventures Suzaku had dragged them on as children, and the final flight from swift death that had sent them running and clambering and trekking and as lost as children are in war, drowning in the slaughter around them.

It felt good that Lelouch's breath caught when he touched his hand, lightly, to flip it up, and the slower breath in when his fingertips touched the centre of the other's palm. It felt good that neither of them had to speak. It felt good that that warmth filled him up, the warmth that swore that whatever Lelouch had done, whatever Suzaku had done, they were both still what they were, who they were, just a little more broken, and a good deal wiser than they should ever have had to be. Most of all it felt good to bow his head, to let his face press his fingers into the weak pulse beneath Lelouch's skin, to feel the soft pressure of the heel of Lelouch's hand beneath his forehead and the curl of his thumb along one of Suzaku's eyebrows. It felt good to rest. It felt good to rest here. And it felt best of all when he felt Lelouch moving over him, and then soft breath shifting the hair on the top of his head, and the weight, held off at first but Lelouch was never all that strong, the weight of Lelouch's head heavy and solid and safe, a hard certainty pressing through his prince's forehead on the back of his own.

They sat that way for a long time, resting in the scent and the weight and the quiet of each other, long enough for their other hands to reach out too tentatively and grasp each other, fingers interlocked, anchored together, blameless in their equal loads of sin. Long enough for it to be okay.

The throne room was desolate, empty as it was, and there was desolation in the hearts of the emperor and his knight that could not be healed. But before they were warriors, they were friends, and before they'd had a world to fight for, they'd had each other. And in this, in this warmth, in this silence, with their hands joined, and their heads, and their hearts, they were still human, despite it all.

With their hands joined, they could do anything.

Always.

000

In Memoriam:

Lelouch vi Brittania,

True Hero of the Revolution.

Always.

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