Disclaimer: If I owned Code Geass, Lelouch and Suzaku wouldn't have such odd looking outfits right now. Since they do, what do you think? Obviously I don't own Code Geass.
A/N: I think I just like the idea of Kallen/Lelouch the same way I like the idea of Cornelia/Guilford. Both of them have the whole bodyguard thing, although it's different genders. So I'm going to try this out, and see how it goes. Please enjoy.
--
Ace of the Elevens.
King of the Elevens.
Q-1.
Zero.
The Red Lotus.
The Black Prince.
They called her Q-1, the position of the Queen on a chessboard, but she knows better. She might have been the Queen of the Battlefield, his Ace, his Knight, but she was not his Empress.
Never his Empress.
It wasn't like she was bitter. She had always known that after all, that she was his ace pilot and nothing more. Or, at the very most, a close friend and advisor. But nothing more than that.
That was the position that other girls' had held. Girls like C.C., Kaguya, even Shirley to some extent. Not her.
Never her.
That's why that frail girl façade that she had always put up at school had always felt like an irritatingly small itchy sweater. It didn't fit, because she wasn't that person. She was Kouzuki Kallen, not the Brittanian lady Statdtfeld heir.
She really wasn't bitter. He had, and would always have her utmost loyalty. She had always had more use to him as his ace pilot anyway.
But still…he became emperor.
99th Emperor of the Holy Brittanian Empire, Lelouch vi Britannia.
The Emperor of Justice.
The Demon King.
No longer Zero, leader of the Black Knights.
And she was no longer the knight that he entrusted with his most important missions. That role had become Suzaku's, Knight of Zero. There was some acidic irony present there; she had felt it burning and clawing up her throat when she had attacked to kill him, and Suzaku had stepped in to defend him.
How strange, that their situations were then reversed.
It wasn't right. It shouldn't have been this way. It never should have been this way. Yet somehow it was, and she had lost sight long ago of the way it should have been.
Sometimes she had wondered if this world was the one he had dreamed of when he had first thought up his scheme. It couldn't be, could it? Or had they all been tricked all along by the violet-eyed Britannian prince?
Maybe she was bitter. She had offered to help him, had kissed him, and he had still turned her away to perform his one last lie with the help of someone else.
Why?
Why do this to them?
To himself?
To her?
Hadn't she proved her loyalty to him a hundred, a thousand times over? Had that still not been enough for him? Why give her position, her sole role in his life to the man who had tried to kill him so many times? Why keep C.C. by his side, but not her?
She was no longer his knight, and there was no chance for her to become his empress anymore. Not that there ever was.
Had it really been a little over a year that she gone to school occasionally, acting as a frail girl but still having fun with the Student council's zany antics? Those days of sunshine and laughter seemed so far away now. They seemed like a dream.
A dream that had shattered into millions of glittering shards and couldn't be pieced together again. Shirley was dead. Euphie was dead and disgraced. Suzaku had blood on his hands and was now living a lie. Lelouch was dead.
Dead.
His last grand scheme, a masterpiece of a lie played out to its finest. Suzaku was Zero, the hated Emperor was dead, and the world was at peace.
Things had changed too much for any of them to go back to the way it had been now. No matter how much she might want some of those times back.
The world really was better now, she knew that. But had it really been necessary, had it really been impossible for the world to change without Lelouch dying and going down in infamy? Hadn't there been another way for the world to change?
Why had it become this way?
Where had all the conviction, all the hope that she had once possessed, all that fiery loyalty that made her follow Zero (who was Lelouch, and would always be Lelouch not Suzaku, no matter what she might be forced to say for Lelouch's plans to succeed) anywhere and everywhere, where had that all gone?
Oh, there was Gino. She knew that, but Gino wasn't Lelouch, and Gino wasn't Zero. Obviously, since Gino loved her while Lelouch had maybe always seen her as his queen on the chessboard, a piece he could manipulate with great success and not sacrifice, but nothing more than that.
Still, Gino's love was better than nothing, but she wasn't sure if she could ever learn to love him the way she had loved Lelouch. But perhaps that was a good thing since she had loved and despised him at the exact same time.
She knew she should, if not love, at least Gino a bit for all of his one-sided affection towards her. He had saved her life after all.
Maybe she would one day be happy with him. One day anyway. Someday.
Someday perhaps she would be able to smile at this world that they had come to, and forgive her black prince for all he had done.
He most likely would have wanted it that way, and so she would fulfill his one last wish for her.
But that wasn't today; it was far, far away in the future. Right here, right now she was still in mourning for what could have been and what should have been.
But she knew that one day she would stop wearing black, and that one day she would soar happily on the wings of Guren once again.
And perhaps this time Gino would accompany her on Tristan.
Farewell Lelouch, for one day it would be time for here to move on with her own life.
Farewell.
Farewell.
--
A/N: In case it wasn't clear, this is set pretty much right after Lelouch dies but before the anime picks up. Sorry for the changing POV's, was that confusing? Please review! (As for the part at the top with their respective titles, I thought that was a nice touch, but it may not be. Sorry if you don't like that. Hope it wasn't too OOC.)