A/N: None of this is mine. I'm only playing in someone else's sandbox.

As to the reason this afternoon's blurb exists at all: blame Aminta defender! :p

'v'

What Matters Are Results

'v'

"Are you prepared to actually fire the FLEIJA? And more importantly, are you prepared to not fire?"

When Suzaku Kururugi had asked that rhetorical question to the inventor of the most destructive weapon in all of human history, he had held two certainties: that his being in control of the warhead meant that it would never be fired, and that the statement of its existence would convince Zero – no, Lelouch – to call off his attack of Tokyo and finally put an end to the bloodshed inflicted by his rebellion against Britannia, in the face of obliteration.

At the time, in Suzaku's mind, both had been easy assumptions to make.

Then both assumptions had been torn to shreds by reality.

First, the use of FLEIJA as a threat had accomplished nothing. That, Suzaku now realized, has been his first miscalculation. His old friend turned archenemy might have still been willing to listen only a day earlier, when the two had met at Suzaku's family shrine and Lelouch had prostrated himself and begged Suzaku to protect his sister from the Emperor – but Schneizel's intervention had destroyed that trust just as completely as, one year before, V.V. has destroyed Suzaku's own trust in Lelouch.

Suzaku had failed to realize that, and had convinced himself that the near-unlimited destructive force at his disposal would force Lelouch's will to bend. But in reality, Lelouch had valued Suzaku's word so little that he'd simply refused to entertain the possibility the threat might have had any substance, leaving the Knight of Seven in the field, carrying a weapon he'd never intended to fire and that had then, in his mind, become entirely purposeless beyond his ensuring nobody else would fire it.

Then Suzaku had failed at that.

A man could be forgiven for assuming their oldest friend alive would have given their words consideration. But the Knight of Seven had made a far worse assumption: in their battles, ever since Zero had known Suzaku was the pilot of the Lancelot, Lelouch had never once attempted to kill his former friend. On the contrary, Zero's plans orders had always excluded a lethal end for Suzaku; he'd attempted to capture or contain him, but never to kill.

Yet Suzaku had known that a consequence of the Geass placed on him by Lelouch could be his firing the FLEIJA warhead to save his own life. And Suzaku had failed to understand that after his apparent betrayal of Lelouch, his old friend was no longer interested in sparing his life. And not believing in the threat of FLEIJA in the first place, Lelouch had every reason to want Suzaku dead. Suzaku had even accepted he was about to die as the Guren SEITEN tore his Lancelot apart.

And then the only way Suzaku could obey Lelouch's order to live became firing FLEIJA.

That mistake had erased ten million lives in less than a minute. And put another twenty-five million on the line as the FLEIJA blast and the subsequent implosion had wiped out all rescue facilities and nearly all of Tokyo's infrastructure. Already, Britannia's military intelligence projected that there would be another twenty-five million civilian casualties – the dead from the implosion's devastation, the ruin of its civilian infrastructure, the wounded who would not be treated in hospitals cut off the power and water grids, and the unharmed who would still starve and thirst to death in a megalopolis that had lost any capacity to sustain itself in the blink of an eye.

And Suzaku had made it possible.

At first, the young man had simply been incapable of processing what had happened. He didn't remember firing the FLEIJA warhead – he never remembered what happened when the Geass placed on him took over and forced him to take action – and Suzaku just couldn't make himself acknowledge the role he'd played in the devastation of the Tokyo Settlement. Still dazed by shock, the Knight of Seven had landed the legless, one-armed Lancelot near the rim of the crater formed by FLEIJA and had struggled out of the ruined war machine; then he'd taken just enough steps to reach a spot where he could process and contemplate the magnitude of the catastrophe that had just happened. A catastrophe made all the more personal by the realization that, as a result of the Government Palace being disintegrated by FLEIJA, Suzaku had just killed one of the last few people he held any affection for; one of the most beautiful and innocent people he'd ever met, and one of the last few people he could genuinely have called a friend: Lelouch's blind and crippled sister, Nunnally.

The only truly good person left in Suzaku's life after Shirley had been murdered by Lelouch (which was at least a partial lie), and Suzaku had killed her with his own hands.

Nunnally was dead. She was gone. Like was the case for another ten million of Tokyo's inhabitants, there wasn't anything left of the sweet and innocent girl to bury.

And Suzaku had pulled the trigger.

Despite having never intended to.

But it wasn't his fault, was it? This was the result of Geass, the power that could twist a man's will. This wasn't what Suzaku had wanted! This was never what he had intended! His intentions had been noble; he'd gone out on the battlefield armed with FLEIJA in order to save lives, not take them. Just like he'd once stopped-

Just like he'd once stabbed-

Just like he had once tried to keep the Japanese people from suffering massive losses in the do-or-die resistance Suzaku's own father had intended to order. Back then, too, Suzaku had made what he'd thought were reasonable assumptions; he'd been certain that the death of his father would put an end to the bloodshed in Japan, that resistance to Britannia would end and the bulk of the Japanese population would just carry on with their lives, just under different masters.

And back then, too, Suzaku's intention to save lives had not mattered. The fighting didn't stop; it just took a different form, and people kept killing each other.

Yet Suzaku had been a child then, barely ten years old. His deed had failed to stop the suffering of the Japanese, but he could never have guessed what the result of his action would be; back then, Suzaku had had neither the maturity nor the knowledge to anticipate what might happen.

But this time around? This time around, Suzaku realized as a low, humorless chuckle began to force its way out of him, this time around, he could have guessed. He knew Lelouch had had every reason to lose any trust he had left in his former friend, and could have guessed he would not listen to a word Suzaku would say. He knew Lelouch's Geass could force him to take action to save his own life – any action – and he'd still taken FLEIJA to the battlefield where Geass could make him use it. And the only reason Suzaku had not known that he could be defeated so utterly Geass would take him over was his own arrogance, arrogance that had grown so considerably during his time as Britannia's White Reaper that the Knight of Seven had not been capable of entertaining the thought he might face defeat in the battlefield, not even for a fraction of a second.

Hindsight is 20/20, the saying went – or as 20/20 as hindsight could be in a world where one's Liege Lord can erase and rewrite the entirety of a person's memories – and in hindsight, Suzaku realized as his chuckle turned into full-blown laughter, all it would have taken to prevent the single worst killing of civilians in the history of humankind would have been his realizing there existed one scenario in which Geass could make him pull FLEIJA's trigger, and Suzaku had had all the time he'd needed to sabotage its firing mechanism and prevent the disaster before taking off - or failing that, he could have just have drawn and then dropped the weapon before Lelouch's Geass had a chance to coerce him into action.

Sabotaging his own weapon? Abandoning it? Either would have been a despicable thing to do, and treasonous to Britannia. It would have been lawless, honorless behavior of the type the Knight of Seven despised. Yet it would have been so simple, and it would have saved lives in such numbers that they would never be fully counted, but it would have meant acknowledging that he could fail, and compromising with his morals.

Instead, Suzaku had launched himself into battle armed with absolute certainties and the noblest of intentions. And the result was ten million had died.

And to think Suzaku had once berated Zero – berated Lelouch – for attaching importance to his scheme to rescue Suzaku having had a bloodless result. Not to mention what came after in the battles between Britannia and the Black Knights. Lelouch vi Britannia killing soldiers in the battlefield? Morally wrong, because his intentions were impure, and his weapons were unfair. Suzaku Kururugi killing soldiers in the battlefield? Morally right, even if his advanced weapons and Britannia's superior arms made it unfair, because his intentions were pure. Suzaku Kururugi was on the side of life, of justice and of law – he'd always been! Zero's ends didn't justify his means!

… yet Suzaku's somehow did.

But the ends never justified the means, according to Suzaku himself. And until this day, Suzaku had still clung to the notion it was really his enemies' fault that he was left with no other choice but to beat them and kill then in the field. Even during the invasion of the EU, Suzaku had justified his own deeds with the pretense no one would have had to die if the EU's forces had just bowed down and accepted Britannia's superiority – and his superiority – in the first place. Britannia's White Reaper had demanded that the EU's forces lie down and submit to Britannia rather than face his might, just like young Suzaku Kururugi had once expected the Japanese to lie down and submit to Britannia after his father died, just like the Knight of Seven had expected Lelouch to lie down and submit to Britannia in the face of FLEIJA.

But the Japanese had never surrendered, and the bloodshed never truly ended in Japan, and hundreds of thousands died as a result. Then the EU's armies refused to surrender, and millions of soldiers and civilians had died – thousands of them at Suzaku's own hands – as a result. And now Lelouch had refused to listen and pulled yet another trump card; for the very first time since the two former friends had faced one another, Lelouch had tried to kill Suzaku, and he had nearly succeeded, never having a reason to believe this would end in the release of the most devastating weapon in humankind's arsenal in the middle of an overcrowded metropolis – and ten million civilians died as a result, and in that single moment, despite his action being unvoluntary, Suzaku Kururugi became the single worst mass murderer in history.

Worse even than Zero.

And even if Lelouch had lied and dissembled when the two had met at Kururugi shrine, he had at least been honest enough to acknowledge he had murdered, time and time again.

Then there was even a possibility Lelouch had shouldered responsibility for more deaths than his fair share, as he'd deliberately portrayed himself as every bit the heartless monster Suzaku had convinced himself Zero was.

And then there was the fact the monster had begged for the life of his pure and innocent sister.

But Suzaku had not saved Nunnally. Instead, in his blindness and arrogance, Suzaku had killed Nunnally, and probably shattered what little was left of his former friend's sanity as he took the life of the one person who had mattered the most to Lelouch. And through the same blindness and arrogance, Suzaku had just caused the same heartbreak to the families, the friends and the lovers of at least ten million other people.

What could Suzaku tell them? That he had every reason to believe he was doing the right thing? And what of the dead? Was that truly the epitaph Suzaku should write for them, "I'm sorry for your deaths, but I was sure I was right"?

And so Suzaku Kururugi laughed, and laughed, and laughed at the Heavens as his understanding of the world shattered, and he finally accepted that no matter how well-intentioned or noble he had thought himself to be, ten million had still died at his hands, and that all their deaths, all the heartbreak and all the grief he'd caused to their loved ones were, in the end, the only tangible result of his noble intentions. In the eyes of the world, the only thing that was relevant was that ten million had died, and Suzaku had pulled the trigger, just like he had killed thousands more in the battlefield and caused hundreds of thousands more deaths when he'd killed his father. His reasons meant nothing. They never had. The ends were irrelevant. The means were irrelevant. Only their consequences were relevant.

The young man's laughter died. And what that laughter left behind was hollowness, an emptiness Suzaku should never be filled with excuses and rationalizations, but with self-acknowledgment, no matter how horrible one's deeds. And Suzaku's deeds were more horrible than many.

As he now stood silent in the crater, Suzaku Kururugi acknowledged all his idealism and self-righteousness had accomplished in the end was make him a killer. And if he was predestined to be a killer, then so be it. If that was who Suzaku Kururugi was, then at least the end result of his murders had to be an end to all the bloodshed and murder he truly wanted to prevent.

"Zero was right", Suzaku said to no one, and his voice was colder than it had ever been. Then he shook his head. "No, Lelouch was right, and I was wrong. Good intentions don't matter. What matters are results."

'v'