Author's Note: Unfortunately, I missed Tanabata. Yet another deadline missed. I really need to get my priorities straight.
Warnings: Two little boys sleeping together. Actual sleeping.
Disclaimer: I don't own Code Geass, or the story of Orihime and Hikoboshi.
July: Part I
Lelouch couldn't claim to be an expert on Japanese traditions. He had been raised to believe that Britannia was supreme, and all other cultures were inferior and primitive. It wasn't an upbringing that bred understanding. Lelouch was gradually changing, was trying to learn the language even, but years of conditioning couldn't be erased in only a few months.
So when Suzaku came over dragging a bamboo tree behind him, Lelouch's first conclusion had been that his friend had gone insane.
"What are you doing?" Lelouch demanded.
"Getting the bamboo ready for Tanabata," Suzaku replied, which probably made perfect sense to him, but was incomprehensible to Lelouch.
"Tanabata?" Nunnally asked, apparently sharing her brother's confusion. "What's that?"
Suzaku sighed, setting his bamboo down. "It means "evening of the seventh." It's a star festival that celebrates the meeting of Orihime and Hikoboshi, said to only happen on the seventh day of the seventh month."
"And the bamboo?" Lelouch prompted.
"We write wishes on little pieces of paper and tie it to the tree branches. The belief is that if you do this, the two deities will grant your wish," Suzaku explained.
"Why only the seventh of July?" Lelouch asked.
Suzaku shrugged. "There's a whole story behind it. I'll tell it to you later. For now, why don't we start writing out wishes?"
It all sounded it a bit strange to Lelouch, but he supposed it wasn't any stranger than dragging a pine tree into your living room so that a fat man could break in to your house and put gifts underneath it. And besides, it was clearly important to Suzaku, and Nunnally looked so excited about it, he didn't make any further comments.
Suzaku and Nunnally's wishes were basically the same as the ones expressed at New Years. Nunnally wanted them all to be together forever, and Suzaku wished for strength. Lelouch wasn't as forthcoming with his own wish. He had craned his arms to the furthest branch he could reach, attempting to keep the wish out of eyesight, but Suzaku had wrestled it out of his hands.
"Come on, Lelouch! What could be so embarr—" Suzaku paused, eyes widening as he read the script. (Why did his Britannian have to be so much better than Lelouch's Japanese?)
I wish that Nunnally could walk on the beach and watch the sun rise.
The wish was simple, yet impossible. Suzaku looked towards his friend, but Lelouch stubbornly refused to meet his gaze.
"Don't leave us in suspense!" Nunnally cried cheerfully. "What does it say?"
Suzaku smiled, tenderly tying the little paper to a branch. "He wants to be a better cook. What a girly wish," he teased. Knowing such an impossible desire would only place a burden on Nunnally, and neither boy wanted that.
"But Lelouch is a great cook already!" Nunnally protested.
The prince shot Suzaku a glare, but it lacked malice. "There is always room for improvement."
"Do we really have to wear these again?" Lelouch asked, shrugging on yet another one of Suzaku's kimonos.
"Yes," Suzaku insisted. "You can't go to a Tanabata festival without wearing a yukata."
At least this version was simpler than the kimono from New Year's. It was a single layer of loose blue cotton, very simple without much embroidery. Suzaku's was more or less the same, except his was light gray with some kind of fish decoration near the hem.
Naturally, Nunnally's was a more elaborate affair, snow white and intricately embroidered with red butterflies and pink flowers. Suzaku had even attempted to place a pink comb in her hair. Unfortunately, he had no idea how to go about it, and Lelouch had to take his place for fear that Suzaku's ministrations would cause premature baldness.
"I'm not so sure this is a good idea," Lelouch admitted.
"You never think anything is a good idea," Suzaku retorted, rolling his eyes. "It's like you hate fun."
"I don't hate fun!" Lelouch protested. "I just…don't like crowds." Suffocating throngs of people with their hard eyes and heated whispers which could so easily turn into angry mobs, reaching out for him and Nunnally…
Suzaku smiled in understanding and put an affectionate hand on his friends shoulder, "Hey, don't worry. I'll be there if anything happens."
"I know," Lelouch answered. And he did know. He had seen Suzaku in action enough to realize the sincerity in the boy's words.
But the sense of foreboding in the back of his mind remained.
The town had been transformed into an explosion of light, color, and sound. The streets were lined with paper lanterns and brightly colored booths that emanated all manner of delicious smells. People happily browsed the carts in their rainbow assortment of yukatas as vendors advertised their wares, and children ran through the streets with plastic masks and paper fans. It was a tiny bubble of warmth and laughter, where troubles could be forgotten, if only for one night.
At least, until a physical representation of said troubles burst the ephemeral sphere.
The Britannian whelps joined their number, acting as if Japan already belonged to them, the little girl dressed sweetly in her pretty yukata, a wolf in sheep's clothing. And pushing her wheelchair was the Kururugi boy. This was perhaps the greatest insult. A proud son of Japan already enslaving himself to the enemy.
Lelouch glanced around warily. Just as he had expected, there wasn't a welcome face in the crowd.
The chilly reception wasn't lost on Suzaku, and he inched closer to Lelouch protectively. "Maybe you were right," Suzaku admitted. "Maybe this wasn't such a good idea. Do you want to leave?"
"No," Lelouch said firmly. "We have as much right to be here as anyone else. They won't scare us away."
Suzaku nodded. "Okay. Do you want to go goldfish scooping?"
The vendor was reluctant to take their money at first, but after a joint hard glare from Lelouch and Suzaku, he eventually relented. They were far more intimidating than their age suggested.
"It's all in the wrist," Suzaku explained. "You just flick the paddles and scoop up the fish."
They tried, Lelouch on his own, with Suzaku guiding Nunnally's hands, but their paddles kept breaking. No matter how many times they attempted to catch a goldfish, the paper would give way, and the little animal would escape.
"I don't understand!" Suzaku cried, frustrated. "I'm usually good at this. Why are these paddles so flimsy?"
"Don't blame the paddles," the vendor retorted. "Do you want to give it another go?"
"If we keep trying, we're going to run out of money," Lelouch pointed out. He suspected Suzaku would keep at it all night if they let him.
"Here, try this one," a slightly muffled voice said.
She was a young woman dressed in a sunflower kimono. Her hair was such a jet shade of black Lelouch doubted it was her natural color, and her face was covered by a yellow plastic mask. In her pale hands was a fresh paddle.
"Don't you want to use it?" Suzaku asked.
The woman laughed. "No, what would a do with a goldfish? I'm not exactly the caretaker type."
"Hey, you can't exchange your paddle!" the goldfish peddler protested.
"Why?" the woman asked, amused. "Because you can't tamper with one you have already sold? Scamming a bunch of children, don't you think that's a bit petty?"
The man's ears turned pink.
"That's what I thought." She turned back to Suzaku. "Here you go, boy. Catch yourself a big one."
In the end, Nunnally caught the fish, although it was Suzaku that directed her hands. Suzaku insisted she was a natural fisherwoman, but Nunnally just laughed it off.
"What are you going to name it?" Lelouch asked.
Nunnally thought about it for a moment. "Suzalulu," she decided.
"What kind of name is that?" Suzaku asked, eyebrows raised.
Nunnally giggled. "I combined the names of my two favorite people! Don't you think it's cute?"
"Uh…sure, I guess. But we wouldn't have been able to catch him without you—" Suzaku began, turning back to face the woman.
She had disappeared.
Nunnally didn't have custody of Suzalulu for more than five minutes before she gave him away to a crying four year old who hadn't been lucky enough to catch one on his own.
"You'd probably be able to take much better care of him than me," she said, her Japanese broken but understandable.
The child smiled sweetly. "Arigatou, nee-chan!" he said, cupping the little fish in his palms before running off to tell his mother.
"What did he say?" Nunnally asked. "I understood thank you, but what does nee-chan mean?"
Suzaku smiled. "It means big sister."
"Nobody's called me big sister before," Nunnally admitted. "I've always been the little sister."
"Well, younger children usually call older kids they don't know big brother or big sister. It's common," Suzaku replied with a shrug.
"So it's like everyone is in one big family? That's nice," Nunnally said.
"I've never really thought about it that way, but I guess it is," Suzaku remarked thoughtfully. "Want to play a shooting game next?"
The second vendor was a bit more forthcoming than the first, but Lelouch suspected this was only because his game was so rigged he didn't expect them to do anything more than waste their money.
It was disconcerting to see such a small boy, someone Lelouch had spent almost every single day with for the past eleven months, carrying a rifle. He couldn't help but think of the person who shot his mother, how they might have had a gun exactly like that one, except not a toy, very real and very deadly.
Even worse was that Suzaku was a good shot. Lelouch doubted that the vendor would have let him play had he known of the boy's skills. The game consisted of balloons stuck to a wall. The smaller the balloon hit, the bigger the prize. In a single game, Suzaku had won most of the large prizes, but was gracious enough to walk away with only a small pink rabbit for Nunnally (who promptly dubbed it Suzalulu number two).
"Where did you learn to shoot like that?" Lelouch asked.
Suzaku shrugged. "I asked Tohdoh-sensei to teach me a few years ago. We never spent much time on it, and to be honest, I prefer archery, but I went to the range often enough to know my way around a gun."
"Why would you want to learn something like that?" Lelouch exclaimed.
"I plan to be a soldier like Sensei when I grow up," Suzaku replied. "It's good to learn that kind of stuff now."
Suzaku as a soldier, being used as canon fodder by foolish politicians, and dying on the battlefield anonymous and alone.
"No!" Lelouch shouted. "I don't want you to become a soldier! You can't!"
Suzaku lying on the ground, body covered in blood and full of bullet holes. Green eyes sightless, Nunnally horrified and screaming as Lelouch merely looked on at the boy who had been alive just a minute ago.
"Suzaku, please," he whispered. "Don't be like Mother."
Suzaku tilted his head, unable to hear the words and unable to understand. "Lelouch, what—?"
"Look, it's the Buriki trash." The voice was young with a heavy accent. He barely understood the Britannian words he was saying, just that they were insulting. He came with friends, and they laughed as if he had just said something clever.
"What do you want, Koichi?" Suzaku demanded, slipping into Japanese.
The boy laughed. "I want to know what happened to the great Kururugi Suzaku. You used to be the terror of the village, and now you're nothing more than a Britannian lap dog!"
Suzaku smirked. "I can still whip you in a fight."
"You sure about that? They are so many of us, and I'm willing to bet those pampered princesses have never thrown a punch in their lives. That girl can't even walk! Easy prey!" Koichi jeered.
Suzaku growled. "You stay away from her!"
"Or what? What will you do?" one of Koichi's cronies called.
Suzaku launched himself at the ringleader. Following his cue, the group swarmed, surrounding the Japanese boy on all sides with the power of numbers.
But it was like pitting half a dozen bows and arrows against a single machine gun. There was no comparison between the two because they were in completely different leagues. Suzaku was too fast for their numbers to matter. Soon everyone else was down for the count, and Suzaku descended on the leader, pinning him to the ground and punching his face over and over.
Lelouch watched, eyes wide. He had seen Suzaku fight before, many times, but never like this. Never with this blind, wild rage. It reminded him of when he and Suzaku had first met. Lelouch could remember thinking: This boy is a monster, and he isn't going to stop until he kills me.
But he hadn't seen that look in Suzaku's eyes in months, and it was so at odds with the light that usually resided there, that bright warmth in his gaze and in his smile. That boy was disappearing to the monster, and Lelouch couldn't allow it.
"Stop it, Suzaku!" he cried, running out and pulling his friend's fist back. "Just stop! That's enough!"
Suzaku blinked slowly, following the line of Lelouch's arm up to his face. Slowly, he unclenched his other hand from Koichi's shirt and allowed himself to be pulled up.
Koichi, face bruised and bloody, laughed from his place on the ground. "See! A year ago you would have torn me apart, but you let this boy tame you, Britannian pet!"
Suzaku turned around slowly, face alight with fury, and took a single threatening step forward.
The collection of children took that as their cue to scatter, abandoning the scene like sailors jumping ship, with their captain running not far behind.
"You better run!" Suzaku yelled, but didn't bother to give chase. Instead, he turned towards Lelouch, looking for all the world like nothing had happened, and asked a simple question.
"Are you hungry?"
The festival participants weren't too thrilled with a fight breaking out in the street, so the group was quickly banished to the small lake on the edge of town.
"I was going to take you two here anyway," Suzaku said dismissively when Nunnally attempted to apologize for the trouble.
"Plus, it's his fault for rising to such obvious bait," Lelouch pointed out.
"How would you know?" Suzaku demanded. "Your Japanese sucks!"
"I'm getting better," Lelouch retorted. "And you don't have to be a genius to understand trash talk."
Suzaku rolled his eyes. "Fine, whatever. Here, have some takoyaki," he offered, holding out a little cardboard box of what looked like seasoned meatballs on toothpicks. "I got them from one of the booths before they made us leave."
Lelouch raised an eyebrow. "When did you do that? And anyway, after all that trouble, who'd be willing to accept your money?"
Suzaku smiled a bit devilishly. "Let's just say that they won't be missed."
"What are they?" Lelouch asked dubiously.
"I'll tell you after you try one," Suzaku replied, reinforcing Lelouch's suspicions.
"I'll take one!" Nunnally volunteered.
"Wait a second, Nunnally!" Lelouch protested. "We don't know what those are or where they've been!"
"Don't be silly," Nunnally retorted. "It's not like Suzaku's going to poison us." She picked up a speared morsel and popped it into her mouth. She smiled. "It's good!"
Lelouch took one and ate it cautiously. "Not bad," he agreed reluctantly. "What is it?"
Suzaku beamed. "Fried octopus balls!"
Lelouch had taken the liberty to take another ball, and Suzaku's declaration very nearly made him choke on it. "Octopus? You just fed Nunnally and me octopus!"
"I knew you'd never try takoyaki if I told you it was made out of octopus. You said it was good, so what's the problem?" Suzaku said defensively.
"…Well, nothing I guess. It's just…it's octopus," Lelouch protested, unable to get the tentacled sea creature out of his mind.
Suzaku rolled his eyes. "You Britannians are so picky. If you don't want any more, then more for me and Nunnally."
"Fine," Lelouch said begrudgingly. The takoyaki was divided into thirds and eaten without any more complaint.
"Now, for the piez de resistanz!" Suzaku declared excitedly.
"You mean pièce de résistance?" Lelouch corrected, smiling at his friend's butchered pronunciation.
"Whatever," Suzaku said somewhat irritably. "Just look at what I have!"
When they had left the house, Suzaku had taken a small pack with him. Lelouch had assumed it was in order to carry money and possible prizes, but apparently it had another purpose.
Shrugging the bag off his back, Suzaku unzipped it to reveal its contents. Fireworks.
With a smile, Suzaku gave everyone a sparkler. Lelouch didn't bother asking where he had gotten them, mostly because he didn't think Suzaku would give him a straight answer.
"Is this safe?" Lelouch asked warily, glancing down at the grass beneath them.
"Oh yeah," Suzaku assured him. "Just as long as nobody drops one."
"It's warm," Nunnally remarked with a smile. "I can hear it crackling. It's like holding a star in my hands."
"Still, it would be bad if we started a fire," Lelouch pointed out, holding his stick carefully with both hands.
"What, are you scared?" Suzaku challenged.
"No," Lelouch insisted. "I'm just being safety conscious."
"So you wouldn't be scared if I did…this?" For the second time that night, Suzaku lunged forward. Before Lelouch knew it, the boy was chasing him, their sparklers leaving trails of light like supersonic fireflies.
But all good things must come to an end. Slowly the glowing sticks faded and died out, inexplicably reminding Lelouch of the human condition.
Panting, Suzaku collapsed on the grass. "That was fun."
Lelouch nodded, but before lying next to his friend, he awkwardly scooped Nunnally out of her chair to place her in the grass.
"There are so many stars," Lelouch remarked, looking up at the bright balls of gas, flaring like a million sparklers. "They're beautiful."
"They're the same as the ones in Britannia, aren't they?" Suzaku asked.
"Yeah, but the lights of the city usually block them out," Lelouch replied. And this was so typical of Britannia, so big and bright and smug in its believed supremacy; never giving anything else the chance to shine, not even the stars.
"Which ones are they?" Lelouch asked suddenly.
Suzaku furrowed his brows in confusion. "Who do you mean?"
"Orihime and Hikoboshi," Lelouch elaborated. "You said Tanabata was a star festival, so I assume Orihime and Hikoboshi are stars."
Suzaku smiled and grasped Lelouch's hand. With it, he traced a picture in the sky. "See that little constellation that kind if looks like a kite or a square fish? That's the Koto. Orihime is that star on the right side of the tail," Suzaku explained.
"You mean Lyra," Lelouch said, remembering a book of constellations he had read many months ago. "And in Britannia, we call that star Vega. What about Hikoboshi?"
Still holding Lelouch's hand, Suzaku pulled it towards another small cluster. "Over here is Washi. It means eagle. See, don't the angled bits on the bottom look like wings? Hikoboshi is that really bright star where the wings meet."
"The constellation Aquila," Lelouch remarked with a smile. "If I remember right, Aquila means eagle too. And the Britannian name for Hikoboshi is Altair."
"You know, Britannia and Japan really are different," Nunnally, who had been mostly just listening before this point, remarked. "But they both have the same stars and the same sky, so maybe the two aren't as different as everyone thinks."
Lelouch smiled and grabbed his little sister's hand, entwining their fingers and forming a sort of chain with Suzaku. "I wish everyone could think like that Nunnally. I really do."
Nunnally smiled a bit sadly. "Me too."
There was a few moments of melancholy silence before Nunnally breached it again. "So what's the story?" she asked. "You said that there was a story behind the Tanabata festival."
"Oh, that's right!" Suzaku exclaimed. "I forgot about that."
"Well, tell us now then," Lelouch prompted.
"Well, a long time ago—" Suzaku began.
"It's always a long time ago, isn't it? Stories can never seem to happen recently. It's always a long time ago in a land far far away," Lelouch remarked, rolling his eyes. "It's all so predictable."
"Do you want to tell the story then, smart one?" Suzaku demanded, annoyed (but secretly embarrassed because the next words out of his mouth had indeed been "in a land far far away").
Lelouch shook his head. "No, I'm sorry. Please continue."
"Okay then. There was once a princess named Orihime. She was the daughter of Tentei, the Star King, and she was known for weaving beautiful cloth by the bank of the heavenly river, Amanogawa." At this, Suzaku again moved Lelouch's hand across the sky, indicating the Milky Way, his Amanogawa.
"However, Orihime was very sad. Because she worked so hard, she wasn't able to meet or fall in love with anyone, so her father had her meet Hikoboshi, the cow herder who lived on the other side of the river. They immediately fell in love and soon married."
Why would a king let his daughter to marry a cow herd? Lelouch wondered. His own father would have never allowed such a disadvantageous marriage for any of his sisters, but perhaps Tentei was a lot nicer than the Emperor.
"However," Suzaku continued, "after the marriage, Orihime and Hikoboshi spent so much time with each other, they no longer paid attention to their work. Orihime wouldn't weave the cloth her father loved so much, and Hikoboshi allowed his cows to wander all across the sky. Tentei was so angry by this that he separated the two, forcing them on the opposite sides of the Amanogawa."
Okay, maybe not so nice, Lelouch amended.
Nunnally seemed to agree. "That's too cruel, forcing a couple apart like that!"
Suzaku nodded gravely (he wasn't a bad story teller). "Yes. Orihime was devastated by the separation and she begged Tentei to allow them to meet again. Eventually, Tentei said she could see her husband on the seventh day of the seventh month, provided she got all her weaving done."
"I still don't think it's enough," Nunnally said stubbornly. "Husband and wife should be able to meet every day, whenever they want."
Suzaku shrugged, admirably hiding his irritation at the continued interruptions. "Well, I guess her father was just mean like that. Anyway, when Orihime came to meet Hikoboshi, the two soon discovered that they couldn't cross the river because there was no bridge."
"You think they would have thought about that beforehand," Lelouch remarked. "How did they meet in the first place if there was no bridge?"
"Maybe there was a bridge, but the king took it down because he didn't want them to see each other," Nunnally suggested (she was getting very passionate about this).
"I don't know!" Suzaku shouted, frustrated. "Can I get back to the story please?"
"Sorry, Suzaku," Nunnally apologized sheepishly.
"Yeah, sorry," Lelouch said.
"Anyway, when Orihime realized that she would be unable to meet her love, she cried so much that a flock of magpies came, and with their wings they made a bridge so she was able to cross the river to see Hikoboshi. And they continue to meet every year on July seventh unless rain prevents the magpies from coming. The end," Suzaku finished with a huff.
Lelouch would have liked to ask why the two lovers just didn't build this bridge themselves, rather than wait for a few kindhearted, but rather unreliable magpies, but he didn't because he suspected Suzaku would snap at him again.
"That was a good story," Nunnally remarked sleepily.
"We should go to bed," Lelouch said. Nunnally was way ahead of them. They could both hear her adorable little snores that she refused to believe that she produced.
"We will in a minute," Suzaku replied. The grass was too soft, the night air cool and comfortable.
Lelouch rolled on his side to face his friend. "Hey, Suzaku?"
Suzaku quickly followed Lelouch's lead and rolled on his side as well. "Yeah, Lelouch?"
"Do you think we'll ever be able to do what they did?" Lelouch asked. "Do you think we'll ever be able to build a bridge, and bring two sides together?"
Suzaku sighed. "I don't know. There's quite an ocean between Britannia and Japan, and there aren't that many magpies around to help us out."
"Yeah, but…haven't we already started?" Lelouch pointed out, giving Suzaku's hand a little squeeze.
Suzaku smiled. "Yeah, I guess we have. And maybe that's enough. Maybe to build a bridge, all you need are two people willing to cross sides. To show others it's possible."
"Maybe," Lelouch agreed, yawning softly.
"We should go to bed," Suzaku said, repeating his friend's earlier sentiment.
"In a minute," Lelouch murmured.
He and Suzaku were so small, so insignificant. But they could make the first step, and maybe that was all that was needed to change the world.
The Britannian prince cast one last sleepy look at the young face so very close to his, and then allowed his eyes to droop closed, still clutching the Japanese boy's hand.
Author's Note: There are several variations of the Tanabata story out there. I more of less copied from Wikipedia, so if I glossed over or messed up a few details, I apologize. I may or may not post something for Suzaku's birthday, depending on motivation and time.
The last little scene was taken from a picture sent to me by Aynessa, which for some mysterious reason I was never able to open, but judging by her description of it, this was kind of what the picture looked like. However, if I got it wrong, again, I apologize.
*puppy eyes* Please review?
