Suzaku self-consciously pushes the sunglasses up again. The cheap plastic scratches one of the bruises on his face, makes him wince. Swallowing hard, he turns away from the shadow of the court building, simply thankful for his freedom.
He has no idea where he is to go, though. The army had, more or less, discharged him (dishonorably) the moment Jeremiah Gottwald arrested him. His face is known everywhere; it would be difficult to find lodgings, much less say a job.
And Lelouch...
Biting his lip, Suzaku adjusts his sunglasses and scurries towards the direction he knew to be the Shinjuku ghetto. Seven years of loneliness, and they had managed to meet again. There had to be some trace of the Britannian prince—even if it were days since the incident.
You're hopeless! his inner Lelouch voice screams at him. Of course there's nothing left for you to find! Stop thinking like an idiot!
He knows he had asked Lloyd to search for 'Lelouch' and a green-haired girl on the casualty list, but Suzaku has no idea if Lelouch was still going by the same name, and casualty lists generally did not include descriptions. And the Japanese teenager also does not doubt that the Britannian forces did not bother to identify most of the bodies.
Suzaku wonders if it would have been better if the soldiers had taken Lelouch prisoner.
Lelouch wouldn't survive, little Suzaku scoffs, scowling. He's too weak for cold cells and beatings.
"Oi! Suzaku Kururugi!"
Without warning, a giant trailer skids to a stop right in front of him on the street, drawing no small amount of attention. And what a scene it makes, with a blue-haired man hanging out of a window shouting his infamous name.
The soldier presses his sunglasses to his face and shrinks inwards.
"Hello," the scientist says in that chipper manner of his. Barely a second later he is tossed aside by Cecille, who leans out with a smile.
"Don't mind him, Suzaku-kun." Cecille seems to stare at him for a brief moment. Finally, her eyes soften and she holds up a hand with a familiar white ribbon threaded through her fingers. "Would you mind joining the Special Dispatch Cooperative Technology Division as an official test devicer?"
Five blocks away, a young, pink-haired girl attempts her great escape climbing out of a window using a rope made of flimsy bedsheets. When she jumps, she breaks her leg on the pavement.
It takes over ten weeks to heal.
Right now, things have come to an end between you and me.
He did not believe those words. But even as he stood at the top of the stairs, on the verge of calling her back, Lelouch looked at her squarely, and bid her farewell. The mark of the Geass flickered in his left eye for the briefest moment, before extinguishing itself.
Are you sure you are leaving?
C.C. looked at him for a long moment, her gaze inscrutable. Then she turned and left, footsteps fading into the distance.
I said our contract is dissolved, didn't I?
After his eyes could no longer discern the remainder of her shadow, the prince glanced at the phone in his hand, and deleted all the voicemail on it. He had a list of important issues to take care of tonight, after all, and voicemails not addressed to him did not concern him.
You never said what our contract was truly about.
An hour later, C.C. stepped off a train and began to walk towards a closed amusement park. Lelouch finished a phone call to Diethard and headed downstairs to begin his nightly ritual of putting Nunnally to sleep.
Do you want to become like Mao?
Another thirty minutes, and blood splattered the orange-color pavement surrounding a ferris wheel. Lights dimmed in the room of a sleeping child, tucked safely between a soft mattress and warm sheets.
Fifteen minutes later, C.C. no longer had any of her limbs.
Lelouch was asleep, dreaming of a future where his Geass destroyed the ones around him and left him all alone at the peak of heaven.
Gawain was ten seconds too late.
In ten seconds, bullets pelted the cockpit of Lancelot continuously. The hail pummeled the same armor again and again, weakening its defense until one shot pierced through.
Others followed it.
The machines surrounding the white Knightmare did not let up on their assault despite the obvious victory. Lancelot looked like a macabre magician's box, with all the holes in the sides for swords to go through. Except there was no one space safe for the magician.
No one saw the pilot of Lancelot struggling to breathe, within the confines of the metal that should have protected him. His green eyes glowed an unnatural red, commanding his body to do what it could not, not when the body was riddled with holes like the armor that encased it. His heart pumped desperately on, pushing to arteries that spurted the much-needed blood to the floor and computers. In the last moments, it was nothing but pain and torture for the vessel that fought to live against his own will.
Lancelot's eyes dimmed and blinked out.
The warrior princess did not need to deploy her forces, for Gawain cut the murderers to pieces. He carved a path of explosions and death through the whole of the Fukuoka Base. Looming above the central command tower, the black demon blew the building apart without mercy. He became a dark shadow in the smoke.
For a moment, the world held its breath, its vision obscured by the destruction. Concrete pieces of the tower continued to hail through the air; the remaining parts were nothing but jagged pillars of steel barely clearing the top of the smoke cloud. All the metal warriors stopped, waiting and watching the raining debris for a sign of the single black knight that did this.
Gawain did not disappoint.
He slid out of the dust, a picture of death with Lancelot ensconced in his grip. In a somber glide Gawain left the fortress.
"We cannot bring him," the witch said, and Gawain placed its precious burden at the edge of Fukuoka, rising again and flying off into the night.
Lelouch Lamperouge would not even be able to attend Suzaku Kururugi's funeral, not when Princess Euphemia was holding it in public.
Wow. How did I end up with a theme of time? I swear I chose those events at random.
I tried to move away from death. But by the time I was scribbling the third one, I really needed to kill somebody.
Code GEASS does not belong to me.