Disclaimer: I don't own Code Geass.

X

All The Wrong Colors

[Green]

Life was fading from her eyes, so painfully he might've been the one bleeding instead. And why not? Every strained word she said was a new blow on his chest, a new fresh wound. He tried to think of the first time his own eyes landed on her bright, green irises.

"Uh… that's my seat."

He looks up and meets with a young, flushed face between short strands of red hair that barely graze the shoulders. She wears a simple, yellow headband and a rather embarrassed expression he wasn't expecting. And between the fiery hair, and the tinting of cheeks, and the inquiring frown as he takes much too long to react to her statement, he finds he can't peel off his eyes from her green ones.

"I – uh … I'm sorry," he mumbles, still looking up as he gathers his stuff.

He stands up and is about to move to another seat when she catches a small twist of pink lips directed at him. Awkward, and simple.

"It's okay."

Wasn't green supposed to symbolize life? Hope? Because in that moment the only thing it represented was how the life was draining from her and how he could do nothing. It was all the things that had been, but that were now just slipping away.

Her hand dropped to the side, along with her last breath. Her eyelids closed slowly, refusing to obey his command, and he realized nothing would ever be as green. Not in this life.

[Blue]

She remembered, now. Everything was crashing on her like a tide of forgotten memories; the Council, and Nunally, and her father, and Zero, and… oh, Lelouch.

He had done it, hadn't he? He had killed her father. Horror started gnawing at her chest, her eyes growing wide with each second. Many things made sense now, like that letter she had forgotten she ever wrote. And others just became more confusing, like her teacher, and Rolo, and how in the world they had forgotten about Nunally.

It was too many memories, it was too overwhelming.

And then she remembered. A boy sitting on her seat, and her embarrassment, and then Milly whispering in her ear, mouth hidden behind cupped hand, 'his name's Lelouch'. She remembered, alright.

"I'm sorry about before."

She meets him in the hallway as he makes his way through the students. He's startled at first, she can tell, but soon finds him calmer. "Oh, no, it's fine," he assures her with a quick nod of his head.

"I'm Shirley," she finds herself making attempts at conversation with the boy she had shooed from her seat less than an hour before. Maybe because he had moved without question, or because he had slept through class and then left it by himself. Maybe because he just seemed to need someone do to it.

"Lelouch," he says with the briefest of smiles.

"Lelouch," she echoes, tasting the word in her mouth for the first time. It feels foreign, and too grown up and serious.

The sky had been blue that day, and he had been lonely. And now, as each memory seemed to settle in its respective place in her mind, she realized that he still was. Maybe he needed someone, just like he had that day. Maybe she could help him, and how she wished she could.

The sky was still blue, and Lulu was still alone.

[Orange]

She said she couldn't forget. He held her against his chest, assuring her that she could. That she would forget, and for the moment the only thing he thought about was how hurt she was, and how badly she shook. How everything seemed to blend around them in the shades of her hair, the one he buried his face in for a moment, as if the world knew what he was about to do.

"Lulu… Lulu, NO!"

"Why are you still wearing that?" He nods toward the blue swimming cap on her head, clearly inappropriate for walking through the Academy's grounds. The only response he gets is a scrunching of features and a tighter hold of books against chest. "I know you're excited about joining the swimming team, but – "

"Oh, just shut it, Lulu!"

"What's got into you?" She only starts walking faster, and he has to make an effort to keep up with her quickening pace. "Shirley? Hey!"

She turns to him and stops abruptly, almost making him bump into her, and he's surprised to see her eyes shining too much. But her expression is just angry, and he blurts, "What is it?"

"They kept making fun of my hair," her voice almost breaks, but he's glad it doesn't, and that the tears are still safely inside her eyes.

"Who?"

"The girls from the swimming team. They kept calling me carrot-head."

For a moment he keeps silent, trying his best to fight the grin that threatens to form on his lips. The secret struggle gives her the moment to turn away and resume her walk toward the Academy's building, and he follows close by.

"That's why you won't take that off?" he asks when the grin is under control. She doesn't answer, to which he adds, "Are you planning to wear that forever?"

"I'm planning to dye my hair. And cut it. Short."

"But your hair is short." She still doesn't answer, and her face is no less hurt. They're already inside the school when he sighs and says, "You know carrots are not the only thing your hair's like, don't you? There's also… fire… and oranges… and sunset… I like it."

She turns her green eyes toward him in honest surprise, and decides that she will grow her hair long.

The world seemed to be ignited, for a moment. It was sunset, and he had just lost a friend.

[Yellow]

She was always scared to forget. She was scared to forget how the world looked like, the color of things, the shade of people's eyes and how they would hold a person's soul. That's why she used to ask her brother.

She could almost picture him, sitting by the windowsill, looking through the glass and describing things to her. She sometimes still pictured him as she had last seen him; a little boy, with soft eyes and messy hair. But each time he spoke, she remembered to add the years to her image of him, and how did it change. She imagined him much older, and his eyes kept getting harder, just like his voice seemed to do.

"How does it look today?"

She hears him stand from his spot by her side and walk over to where she knows the window is. She smiles to herself, knowing he can probably see it, and knows that it can't be that different from yesterday. But still, she just needs to hear it, because maybe a little detail changed, and she can't forget.

For a moment Lelouch is the small boy that took care of her, that makes funny voices and has round, rosy cheeks. But then she hears his voice and remembers to add the years.

"The sky is as blue as your eyes, with a few clouds here and there. Like cotton shaped into different things. I can see an elephant, and a bowl of soup."

She giggles, and he stops for a while before continuing.

"The tree by our window is finally starting to bloom," he says, and she's glad she's asked him to describe to her because something new has happened today, after all. "Small yellow flowers, like the ones… like the ones we used to pick."

Her smile falters for a moment as she detects the hesitation in his voice. But before she can say anything, he's talking again.

"But they're also very pretty, like little specks between the green leaves. And they're yellow like the sun, too. Today it looks huge, and it shines so brightly the whole Academy is lit up by it. You can almost imagine a smile on it, and maybe a pair of sunglasses too."

They both let breaths of mirth at this, and she shakes her head slightly at his occurrence.

"Big brother?" Her voice cut through the silence in a way that almost surprised her. She could hear him flip the pages of a book, the intervals too short for him to be actually reading it.

"Yes?" he said, and she had never heard him sound so old.

"The flowers in the tree… How do they look like?"

It had been a while since the last time she had asked him something about the outside world in that way. What used to be an everyday habit had now turned into something rare. For a moment he didn't answer, and the book remained silent too.

"Yellow."

That was the last time he described the world to her, because she didn't ask again.

[Black]

Why in the world had he been so surprised? He didn't know. He knew people wore black at funerals, but actually seeing her in that black dress made the hole of guilt inside his chest widen. It was, after all, his fault she was wearing it.

It didn't matter how her hair seemed more fiery against the dark fabric, or the way her eyes seemed to turn into an intense shade of green, almost overwhelmingly so, when they were so irritated and blood-shot. Because it was his fault she was wearing that color he had never seen on her before, and it was his fault her mother was now begging for her husband not to be buried again.

"I used to tell my dad I was marrying him when I got older," she says with a chuckle. She sits on the edge of the counter, her long legs dangling against the drawer as her eyes shift between the tin bowl and wooden spoon in her hands and on her lap, and the tomato he's currently slicing by her side, all under orders of Milly. "He still jokes about it sometimes."

"Why would you do that?" And he really can't imagine why. But then again, he doesn't have the best example of a father to speak of.

"I don't know. I used to think it was possible, and it didn't sound so weird when I was five." He nods understandingly, because many things sounded so very normal when he was a child. "But he told me I would find the man I really loved someday. And that it would make him really happy."

"Well, its true. You will find him." He says, and he's not really thinking because Milly and Rivalz are back with the rest of ingredients and he's not done slicing the stupid tomatoes.

And in his hurry to be done with it before Milly whacks him with a spoon over the head, he misses the small smile that tugs at the end of Shirley's lips.

Lelouch hated that dress. And he hated that smile she put up, and how she tried to seem fine in front of her friends when she had been so broken the night before.

[Violet]

His eyes were hard, and she knew that very well. They glared at people, almost unconsciously, and she couldn't blame them for feeling intimidated by his gaze. They were hard when they just stared ahead, or looked out a window, and seemed like an impenetrable wall of violet that hid an inner struggle neither she nor anyone could imagine.

They were distant, and lost, and she sometimes found herself scared to look because suddenly he wasn't Lulu; he was a boy too old for his age, and he was troubled with God knew what. But if she didn't look, who would? So she did.

"It's nice to meet you, Nunally," she says, trying to put as much of a smile in her voice as possible.

She takes the girl's already extended hand. She's different from Lelouch; her cheeks are rounder, slightly rosy and more innocent than her brother's, her lightly colored hair cascading down her shoulders in soft waves. Everything seems so soft about her; even her voice when she says, "Nice to meet you too, Shirley."

Lelouch wasn't soft.

But then she looks closely and realizes that the girl has his same straight nose and pointed chin. And for a moment her soft smile falters and her lips are just as thin and straight as his, and she's undoubtedly Lelouch's sister. She lets go of her hand and wonders what eyes hide behind those closed lids, and if they're just as strangely violet, and if they could hopefully be softer than her brother's.

And then Lelouch stands by his sister's side, a hand placed on her crown, and for the briefest of moments his eyes, always so hard and intimidating, soften. And he's undoubtedly Nunally's brother, and she's glad she ever dared to look.

His eyes were too hard nowadays, as if they needed to be because what was behind them was just too much. But she kept looking because someone had to. Because she still hoped to get a small glimpse of his softer side. She always would.

[Grey]

He held the umbrella over her soaked figure, apologies in his mouth, and too many things in his mind to let him realize how stupid that was. He felt guilty, because he was terribly late, and confused, because she wasn't smacking him for his tardiness, and uneasy, because she was still here, letting herself be soaked to the bone when she should've left.

But then she looked up, and despite the rain that ran down her face he could tell there were also tears falling from her eyes, and he was horrified because she had been crying.

"My father, he was so gentle. He never ever hurt me. Never did anything wrong!" And slowly everything downed on him, falling too strongly for him to react, and the rain didn't feel so hard anymore.

"I – I don't want this!"

He tries to shelter himself under a tree, but fails as drops still manage to catch him and soak him even further. Meanwhile, she stands firmly under the grey clouds, fingers interlaced behind her head comfortably as she faces the sky with a relaxed expression.

"Can we go back now? I'm literally drenched to the bone." He ignores that she's far more than he is, having probably no single dry spot on her body by this point. She lazily looks back at him, cracking one eye open, before a smirk spreads on her lips and she returns to her previous position.

"How can you like this? The day's just awful!" he exclaims, and his eyes shoot towards the grey, almost black clouds grouping together. As if they were not wet enough yet.

"It's not that I like the day. This is just something I've wanted to do for a while." She finally acknowledges him, and shrugs as the raindrops hit her pale skin.

"Get drenched to the bone?"

"To the soul, Lulu."

Her lips were warm and soft in the pouring rain, and the umbrella had fallen to the ground, fulfilling its uselessness.

[Brown]

Suzaku remembered Lelouch, and he remembered how he had never been at peace, not even as a child. He remembered his worry over Nunally, the resentment toward his father, and the grief over his mother, and how those three would carve an almost permanent frown on his face and haunt his dreams at night. He remembered how he had gotten entangled in so many diplomatic issues he was just too young to know about, but still did. It had been because of them that they had met, after all. And because of them they had become friends.

But Lelouch used to laugh a little more too, in spite of everything.

He doesn't really like him, because he has a scary look in his eyes and he's sure he doesn't care about anyone. He is just another one of those princes his father is always having conflicts with. That is why he stands with a fistful of grimy, brown mud in his hand and closes one eye, preparing to aim toward the boy standing a few feet away with his back turned to him.

He has to be careful, though, because his sister is sitting nearby and he surely doesn't want to get her, because she's nice enough and he likes her. So he raises his hand and prepares to throw, and an image of Lelouch's irritated face and smudged, white shirt forms on his mind. He smirks.

And then Lelouch looks down toward his sister; he realizes that's the first time he's seen a smile on him, and suddenly he's not the selfish prince that doesn't care about anything, anymore. But it's already too late, because his hand has already obeyed his command and the mud is soon splattered on the boy's upper back.

He sees him stiffen, and Suzaku freezes because this doesn't seem like a funny, great idea anymore. Lelouch turns and finds him by the bushes with his scary eyes, and he still can't move and wonders how much of a chicken he seems like now.

"What is it, big brother?" her sister's asking, but he assures her it is nothing as he crouches carefully to the ground and grabs a fistful of mud himself.

And before he knows it, his vision is covered by brown because Lelouch has aimed right at his face, and the smell of the earth, and the ground, and Japan goes deep into his very lungs. He doesn't open his mouth because tasting it would be just too much, so he wipes his eyes and clears his vision and finds Lelouch smirking at him with a glint in his eyes he didn't know he had.

Maybe it was his look, or his amused face, but something urges him to stand from the bushes and approach him. And suddenly they're throwing mud at each other between yells of war and of humor, and Nunally's confused because she hasn't heard her brother laugh since before they left the Palace.

Much later they return like two filthy, brown monsters escorting the clean girl home, with small smiles and softened eyes, and a nice ache in their stomachs for laughing so much.

He went over what Lelouch had entrusted him with, his heart hammering inside his chest. He ran his fingers through the soft fabric of that black coat, and his eyes caught a glimpse of the mask nearby, light glinting from its surface.

Zero. He couldn't help but think how neat and cold Lelouch was now, or at least tried to be. He didn't laugh anymore. None of them did.

[Pink]

She bit the tip of her slice of pizza, and pulled until the warm cheese stretched and finally gave in. She walked over to the desk by his bed, careful as not to be heard, and ran her amber eyes over it; a few scattered papers on the dark wood and a pen and calculator on the side.

She bit into the cheese and pepperoni treat again as she noticed the corner of a pink slip of paper peeking from inside a notebook. This piqued at her curiosity, and her fingers surreptitiously traveled to take hold of the oddly colored paper and pull it from the white pages it was hidden between.

He's woken up from his half-conscious state by the ring of the bell, and he instantly stands from his seat and gathers his belongings. He meets Rivalz by the door, and his friend is rolling his eyes and laughing at his reddened cheek – the one he had rested on his hand for far too long – and together they make their way to their next Council meeting.

And as soon as they get there he's welcomed by a pair of angry, green eyes and a bunch of papers shoved right into his hands.

"You've got to start paying attention in class, Lulu," she says sternly, before turning away and back to her usual seat at the table. Rivalz raises his eyebrows at him before taking his own seat, and he looks down at the papers in his hands and realizes they're the notes she had taken in class during that week.

"Thanks, Shirley," he says, and folds the papers before tucking them in his bag.

"I don't even know how you get good grades, missing so much classes and sleeping through the few you go to," she says as she flips open a book Nina hands her and tries to put up her most annoyed expression. "But you'll have to stop snoozing because I'm not lending you my notes anymore."

He chuckles while he takes his seat, because it's not the first time she's told him that. And again, he grins slightly and says, "Thank you."

The witch heard footsteps coming through the hallway, so she quickly tucked the slip of paper back where she had found it and flung herself to the bed, right next to the pizza carton as she reached for yet another slice.

The door creaked open letting the owner of the bedroom in. He acknowledged her with brief eye contact before dropping his bag to the floor and sitting on the other side of the carton. She stared at his profile for a moment, the one she had seen sharpen through the years, and the pink slip of paper with the neat handwriting flashed back through her mind.

You seem distracted, Lulu. Is everything all right? I hope these notes help you. Shirley.

And she almost felt bad for her.

[Red]

There was a loud noise that echoed around the walls; it was terrible and pained, and when it stopped he realized it had been his own voice. He looked down at her, almost expecting her to wake up for a second before he saw the pool of crimson around her, and how her face was so still, and her eyes closed, and how her shirt was red when it shouldn't have been.

"Ouch, Milly! Be careful!" she says as her friend tightens the straps of the dress into a bow against her back and threatens to obstruct her breathing.

"Voilà. There you go," the blonde says in a satisfied voice, and her eyes look at the garment up and down with studious eyes and Shirley suddenly feels conscious. "You'll look great in it!"

She studies her reflection in the mirror, and she can't deny it is one beautiful dress she has tried on. The red fabric falls swiftly from her waist and down to her knees, and the sleeves cover her arms to the wrists while they still let her collarbone nicely exposed. She imagines her hair pulled up in a braid and knows it would indeed look good, but something still doesn't convince her.

"Oh, I don't know…" she says while she looks over her shoulder at how it looks from behind, and how beautifully perfect the bow Milly confectioned is.

"What? But it fits you perfectly! And it's beautiful, not revealing but still sexy…"

She doesn't answer, but turns and looks at her reflection from another angle with dubious eyes.

"Lelouch will like it," she suggests in a little, sly voice, and the reaction is instant, for Shirley is suddenly glaring at her and its amazing how quickly her cheeks have flushed.

"Don't say that!" she exclaims with a mixture of embarrassment and anger.

"Why not?" The blonde stands and circles her with folded arms, studying the dress and searching for a single reason she wouldn't like to wear it.

"Because it's nothing like that." She has cooled down, and is back to looking at herself in the mirror, pulling the dress from the side with her fingers and adjusting her shoulders into the broad collar. "It's…"

"What is it?"

"I… I just don't think red is my color."

He buried his face in her chest without caring that the scent of blood – her blood – was almost too overwhelming. Everything was blurred, and red, and he realized he hadn't sobbed like that in years. She had never liked red.

[White]

He had never meant to see his sister like that. Everything had downed on her in understanding, and her eyes had widened and suddenly he hadn't been sure if he was looking at them or at the sky. And why hadn't he appreciated the fact that, after so many years, she had finally opened her eyes?

And now she was the one begging him to open his, and she was crying and screaming and it broke his heart, because only she understood while everyone else cheered for Zero, the one who disposed of the destroyer of the world. He wanted to wake up, and tell her it would be fine, that it would be all right. But he couldn't, and he felt himself slipping away.

She was right, it wasn't fair.

But then Suzaku came to mind; the hero no one would ever meet, and then it was Euphemia, and Rolo, and Shirley, and he realized nothing had ever been fair.

"Lovely girl, isn't she?"

Her voice is soft behind his ear and curls around the words, as it always seems to do when she speaks. He barely glances at her, trying not to attract much attention from the rest of the attendees. She wears a black, simple dress, and has managed to hide her conspicuous hair under an oddly fitting black hat, although he can still catch a few strands of bright green escaping here and there.

He agrees internally, for he sees her across the ballroom, laughing charmingly in a pure, white dress as if the problems around them dissolve for the shortest of moments. But he just grunts and refuses to say anything to the witch.

She snakes an arm around his, and stands right by his side while she continues in that same voice of hers, "Unfair, isn't it?"

"What is?" He still refuses to look anywhere but ahead, and he thanks they're standing in an overlooked corner.

"That she's been so devoted to you, of course. And not just her, but all of them. Because they can't imagine the life of solitude you've been condemned to. They never will."

He gulps, and he knows she notices when her grip on his arm tightens. His eyes scan the ostentatiously decorated room and he spots them. His friends.

"It's for the best, and you know it," he says and his voice shakes slightly at the end.

"Oh, I do. Of course I do, Lelouch." Her arm unwraps from his, and she takes a step back into the darkness she had come from. "But they don't. That's why it is unfair."

She walks away to God knows where, and he looks at her disappearing form while his heart starts pounding for some reason. He looks back across the ballroom, and there they are standing, all of them. She wears a white dress, and beckons him with a raised hand and a small smile.

But hopefully it would be better now, because all of this happened so it would be better. He could still hear her sobbing against him, and the chants of thousands of people hailing for Zero, and he hoped, he really, truly hoped, that she would be happy someday.

The world would be better now, for her, and for Kallen, and for all the ones who were left behind. Because that's what it had been about all along, right?

With that, every sound became distant until there was only silence, and the pain suddenly subsided and got replaced by a cold, comforting feeling.

It was funny; he had always imagined death would be black. But no. Death was white.

X

Crazy time skips, crazy flashbacks, crazy tense changes... ah, just crazy. No idea where this came from, I just suddenly found myself in a Code Geass mood. And also, the world needs more Shirley/Lelouch :) Hope you enjoyed!

Edit: I fixed some typos and some thingies. Thanks to everyone!