Suzaku frowned at the woman in front of him. Lelouch might still think he was a little naïve, but Suzaku had learned a lot from his mistakes. With the tea incident fresh in his mind, he wasn't going to let C.C. trick him so easily again.
"I don't believe you," he told her, hoping that would be the end of it. The witch had begun wheedling the moment he'd set foot into the suite, distracting him from reviewing the security plan Cornelia had asked Nunnally to enact.
"But it's only to further my education," she objected. "Now that I've given Lelouch my Code, I have to learn to fit back into society again."
"Don't listen to her, Suzaku," Lelouch said, coming in from the dining room to interrupt their conversation, as if he had sniffed out the scent of C.C.'s deception. "The only education she wants to get is from the Cheese-kun History of Pizza Museum."
"The what museum?"
Lelouch got a sour look on his face, as if he'd been forced to swallow something distasteful. "There's this chitzy place—"
"It wasn't chitzy," C.C. objected.
"It's the sort of establishment that couldn't even cover property taxes if it weren't in the middle of nowhere, and it was obviously decorated by someone with no budget and even less taste. Therefore, it's chitzy," Lelouch declared.
"You just don't know paradise when you see it," C.C. told him, clasping her hands in front of her chest, and staring up at the ceiling with visions of delectability dancing in her eyes. Suzaku smiled a little in amusement before he went back to skimming over the new guard layout Cornelia had set out.
If there were one thing that never changed, it was C.C.'s love of pizza.
"It's an ugly, drab building with a big, tasteless sign out front, built to amuse bored country folk with nothing better to do than stuff their faces," Lelouch retorted. He shook his head, turning to Suzaku. "They have these tacky staged rooms that are supposedly 'exact replicas' of Cheese-kun approved restaurants throughout the ages. Of course this history doesn't extend back very far, because Cheese-kun only approves of stores belonging to a certain chain."
"You can get perfectly baked historical pizza there," C.C. added, eyes still slightly glazed. "A different era of deliciously warm slices from each of the rooms. All that crisp crust and gooey cheese..." It was hard to ignore her pizza monologue in favor of the security plan, especially when Suzaku hadn't eaten lunch yet.
"Yet, this supposedly 'historically accurate' pizza all looks exactly the same," Lelouch said, thankfully drawing C.C.'s attention away.
Frowning, Suzaku forced his focus back onto Cornelia's request for additional personnel. Now that Nunnally had forgiven him, he wasn't about to give her reason to doubt him again, and he'd promised he'd review this as soon as possible. If Cornelia had noticed anything suspicious, they needed to find out immediately.
"How would you know?" C.C. demanded with a pout, her voice only distracting him for a moment before Suzaku turned back to the proposed equipment requisition. "You didn't even want to come in with me."
"I'm supposed to be hiding from the world. I need to stay out of the public eye, and yet if I hadn't eventually started driving the cart away, you would have stayed there forever."
"The cart?" Suzaku asked, glancing up from the patrol timetable. He'd assumed Lelouch and C.C. had taken so incredibly long to get back because they were being very cautious to stay out of the public eye. He hadn't heard anything about a cart.
"We're not discussing this," Lelouch told him flatly, crossing his arms and turning away, which just made Suzaku more interested, even if he was supposed to be doing something else.
C.C. smiled. "It was a lovely hay cart. Lelouch simply enjoyed the romantic, scenic journey we were having so much that—"
"It was abysmal," he interrupted. "Just hill after hill after hill, more bumps than road, and the seat was so hard—"
"Speak for yourself," C.C. told him, and Suzaku forced his attention onto the new patrol routes Cornelia had laid out, calculating the proximities as the conversation flowed over him.
"For me, who was stuck driving the whole way back to civilization, instead of sleeping in the hay, the seat was hard. In short, if you want to spend the next few months sampling everything on the Cheese-kun History of Pizza Museum menu, C.C., go ahead and do it, but I am not going to suffer through any reminders of that trip from hell."
"Who would want to keep company with someone who can't even appreciate 1960's pizza?" C.C. replied haughtily, before turning back to Suzaku with a hungry smile.
"I'm not giving you any money," he told her, finally laying the security plan down, now that it was obvious that Cornelia was just trying to tighten security around Euphy's grave. So she hasn't noticed that I disturbed Lelouch's coffin—or that it's empty right now. Lelouch figured that Nunnally could eventually make an announcement about vandals desecrating the tomb and making off with his body, but since that would necessitate at least a cursory investigation for appearance's sake, it was better to wait a bit until any real evidence, which might potentially point to Zero, faded.
C.C. lifted her chin with an annoyed huff. "Fine. I can see I'm the only one here who can appreciate the value of higher learning. Very well, I'll go alone, then. You know how to contact me when something goes wrong, Lelouch."
"What do you mean, 'when' something goes wrong?"
"This is the first Geass you've ever granted," C.C. replied, giving Suzaku an amused smirking that sent a tiny shiver down his spine.
"How hard could it be, if you managed?" the former emperor countered.
C.C. only smiled wider, not bothering to answer the question, but the dark anticipation was clear on her face. "Good luck, Lelouch," she said, waving as she stepped out the door. It clicked shut ominously behind her.
"Don't worry, Suzaku," Lelouch said, although Suzaku wondered which of them he was really trying to reassure. "While it's true that a Geass can be very dangerous if you lose control of it, that won't happen unless you overuse it or otherwise strain the limits of your power. She's just trying to unnerve us because we wouldn't give her money to waste on historical rip-offs."
"...Right. I'm sure we'll be fine," he said, all too eager to believe that he wouldn't have to deal with any problem worse than a stressed Cornelia, from now on. She was certainly getting prickly enough as it was. "I mean, it's not as if I actually have to use my Geass."
Lelouch gave him a warning look then, which meant, Suzaku finally realized half an hour later, that a long and rather uncomfortable lecture was coming. Unfortunately, by the time Suzaku had figured that out, he had already suffered through most of the lecture, so the warning didn't do him much good.
"You mean, I truly have to use the Geass, in order to 'develop' it fully?"
"That's what I've been telling you this whole time."
"Okay, okay. I just wanted to be completely sure. You don't need to be so short tempered about it," Suzaku chided, wishing they'd left the discussion until after he'd had lunch. It was always easier to take bad news on a full stomach, and Suzaku wasn't pleased to hear that just having the Geass for a while wasn't enough.
There has to be a way to use it without hurting anyone else, though. "If I have to actually use it, then how exactly does Geass work?" Suzaku asked.
Lelouch gave him an incredulous look, as if he couldn't quite understand what he was hearing. "You mean you didn't hear from C.C., and you're only getting around to asking me this now?" he asked. "You're just the sort who always signs things without reading the fine print!"
"I was trying to stop you from committing eternal suicide in the heat of the sun! I figured I could work out the details later," Suzaku defended. "Besides, I don't always skip the fine print." Lelouch stared at him. "I skim," he hedged. "Well, sometimes," Suzaku grudgingly added, under his friend's increasingly skeptical gaze. "Anyway, since you're so concerned with discussing everything ahead of time, can you at least get around to answering my question?"
Lelouch sighed. "A Geass, as I told you before, is like a wish. In fact, it reflects whatever your deepest wish was when you made the Contract. I trust you, Suzaku," Lelouch said, and despite their past animosity, perhaps particularly because of it, Suzaku found the statement warmed his heart, "and so I was willing to grant you an extraordinary power, since I believe that what you long for most must be something good. At some point, you will be faced with a situation that will trigger that longing. When that happens, it will be like intensely remembering something you've known all along, and using the power will come naturally."
"Just like that? There's nothing special you have to do?"
"Your own Geass will guide you in what you have to do. You already know how it works, because it's a wish that was written so deeply on your heart that your every thought has been reflecting it."
"But that still doesn't tell me what it does."
"It's your deepest wish, so why don't you tell me?" Lelouch asked, his voice amused.
"But you know I don't know! If I did, then I wouldn't have to ask you!" And if I could just get this settled, then I could finally have lunch.
"It shouldn't be that hard to figure out, Suzaku. What do you want most?"
"...Peace, I guess?"
"It's good to see you know yourself so well," Lelouch replied with a small smirk.
"I do want peace," he insisted, a bit stung that Lelouch would be sarcastic about this.
We worked so hard to achieve a peaceful world, together.
"Yes," Lelouch agreed, his expression softening, "but Suzaku, the world is peaceful right now. A wish is an unconscious request for help, a desire for something beyond your own power, something you either don't have or don't think you can keep by normal means. Do you feel that the peace of the world is currently so shaky that it can't be maintained without extraordinary help?"
"No, I—I have faith in what we did, Lelouch. I wish you hadn't come up with a plan that involved your supposedly permanent death, but now that we've both come to our senses on that point, I think this peace can be maintained. The two of us will be working together, right? And I know there are lots of other people dedicated to protecting this new world, as well," he said, thinking of Nunnally and the Tianzi, along with Kallen and Toudou and the other Black Knights, as well.
"Then peace is not your deepest wish. What is it that you deeply want and yet don't have?"
"It has to be just one thing?"
"Yes."
"Well, right now, I'd really like to have lunch."
Lelouch just shook his head tiredly.
"Hey, it's not my fault C.C. made me feel hungry! And you're the one who likes to lecture on and on." I'm pretty sure those onigiri Sayoko left in the fridge are calling to me. "Besides, how long did it take you to figure out what your Geass did?"
"I knew immediately."
"Immediately?"
"Yes. If you'll remember our first meeting after that long separation, Clovis's Royal Guard wanted me dead. After they shot you and cornered me, that's when C.C. granted me my Geass. If I hadn't used it immediately..."
"Oh." Suzaku didn't particularly like being reminded of all the ways in which he might have lost someone precious. It only made it worse to think of how corrupt Britannia had been back then, exactly how cruel the masters were that Suzaku had willingly served.
But Britannia is different now, with Nunnally in charge, and we're going to make sure it stays that way.
"Well, it hasn't been that long since we made the Contract," Lelouch continued, seemingly unaffected by the bad memories he'd just casually dredged up. "Since the world is peaceful now, maybe you just haven't encountered a situation that would trigger your Geass yet."
"But what if I never do?"
"You will," Lelouch told him, with a peculiar sort of ominous certainty. "You will, Suzaku, because it must have been a wish that weighed on you again and again, to have sunk in so deeply. That wish is always with you, and it wouldn't be a wish if it weren't in need of granting."
"Well, I guess we'll just have to wait and see, then," Suzaku returned lightly, eager to get to his lunch, but something in the cold certainty of Lelouch's words reverberated in his mind, even when his belly was finally full.
What exactly does my Geass do?
