"Avenger" sailed majestically in the inky darkness of space. Already the flashes of battle had gone out. Only frozen clouds of debris remained, dispersed in the void by the chaos of war.
Chess pieces were scattered across the floor. Black and white, they blended into each other. The difference between them had become nominal. Outside the game, they were just pieces of wood.
With a quiet thud, the forehead of the Mandalorian mask, surmounted by a crown of flat triangular spikes, touched the transparance steel. The private quarters had a large panoramic window. Darth Zero pressed his palms forcefully into the starry distance.
The sacrifices made in the name of purpose no longer scarred his icy heart. They slipped into the bottomless void. Sailed off into space with a torrent of shards.
But then why did it hurt so much?
It hurt, like the days of a past life that Darth Zero couldn't seem to remember. He didn't want to remember, because then he wouldn't be able to go on, to the very end. But at that exact moment, as the remnants of his soul were torn apart by grief, a shroud of memory covered his eyes.
When did all this begin?
No, not when the ten-year-old boy had been expelled from the Order and stripped of the Force because he'd been unhinged after his mother's death and his sister's injury. Not when he was exiled to Mandalore as a political hostage. Not when the boy survived with his crippled sister on a war-ravaged planet. And not even when, eight years later, he regained the Force and swore vengeance on the Republic. That was the story of Lelouch, hiding behind the mask of the righteous revolutionary Zero.
Darth Zero, though, came later.
Lelouch wanted to build a kind new world for his little sister. She was the meaning of his life. The day Nunnally died, so did he. And it was his fault that she ended up in the middle of the battle: had he not started his crusade, no one would have used her as a shield.
Had he not then done this to Euphemia, intoxicated with hatred...
Under the unbearable press of guilt, bones crunched and broke. For his sins, Lelouch had to pay for his life. But the former best friend at whose hand he should have fallen ignominiously held out that hand.
"I am not you. I will not let revenge pave my way. Your death will be atonement only if you take the hatred of the entire world with you into the Force," Suzaku said.
The Mandalorian Suzaku Kururugi, who became a Jedi. Believing in the triumph of Light to the very end. That the system can be changed from within. The childhood best friend Lelouch survived the Mandalorian War with.
Filthy hypocrite.
Darth Zero clenched his fists viciously. On that day of his final despair, the plan for Requiem for Zero was born. The merging point of their ideologies and their grief at the loss of their loved ones. Nunnally and Euphemia. A plan in which the Republic would turn Empire, shuddering under the tyranny of Lelouch vi Britannia, who would become a self-proclaimed emperor. But only to be overthrown by Zero. And all the hatred of the world will die with him.
Zero, on the other hand, will become the embodiment of hope and justice, just as it was intended from the beginning. A faceless figure serving the Light. What the Jedi were originally meant to be. What Suzaku was supposed to be.
'A foolish, naive plan. For even in the heart of the Light there will always be Darkness,' Darth Zero curled his lips in contempt. The day he was born he remembered very well.
"This is nonsense!" Kallen exclaimed. With a blow capable of smashing walls, she tossed Suzaku away. Grabbing Lelouch by the chest, she shook him. Her seething Force splashed with fierce hope. "We want you, not your pathetic parody! You must live, Zero!"
And by the very curse Lelouch had once put on Suzaku, Zero was doomed to live.
Requiem's suicidal plan crumbled under the power of another's will. Lelouch could no longer deliberately embody his death wish. Suzaku, on the other hand, could not take it. They were both driven by rage and despair, guilt and bitterness.
On emotion, the horrible truth came to light...
Darth Zero pulled away from the window, turned around. Quietly whipped at his feet a heavy cloak, hit a white pawn. It rolled across the floor.
The low coffee table was shattered by the power of the uncontrollable Force. The chessboard, upside down, lay on the floor.
"Darth Zero?" Schneizel smiled with only his lips. "Will you play black as usual? Now your choice of that color is more symbolic than ever."
"Do you still prefer to play with white? Unlike me, your choice of color is no longer relevant. With the death of the Republic, the mask of innocence is no longer needed. And the emperor doesn't need one," smirked Darth Zero.
"So blacks are on both sides? You make an interesting point. What do you think happens if you turn the chessboard around?" With these words Schneizel carefully turned the chessboard, with the white pieces away from him.
Darth Zero tilted his head. Expressed a mute question.
"If you turn the chessboard around, nothing changes. No matter the colors or slogans, the essence remains the same. And it boils down to absolute power. Victory."
This Galaxy has been inverted and twisted like that board. The unprecedented happened: the Darkness served the ideas of justice and democracy, and the Light became a slave to the Empire.
For Darth Zero, power was but a means to an end: to create and keep the kind world at peace. And he swore that he would prove Schneizel's judgment wrong. The color, the idea, they made sense. Except now, following the pain, came the fear that Schneizel was right somewhere...
Darth Zero felt that his legs were no longer holding him. He knelt in the middle of the shattered quarters.
"...Through power, I gain victory..
Through victory, my chains are broken..."
It's almost funny. It seems Schneizel would have been a much better Sith than Darth Zero himself.
This whole farce of accepting the Darth title was just a whim of a desperate mind. Lelouch had lost everything. His sister, his friends, even part of the Order that followed not Kallen, but the traitors Ohgi Kaname and Kyoshiro Todoh. Lost what little faith he had in the Light, disappointed in Suzaku. Bitterness enmeshed Lelouch, preventing him from moving on.
Darth's title became a symbol of renunciation of the past. Including Suzaku's ideas.
Did he say he was above revenge? Liar. The truth inevitably surfaced. Rushed in and scattered the remnants of the plan with a whirlwind of rage. In a final battle their blades crossed.
Lelouch entrusted the dream of the kind world to Suzaku's hands. The same hands that had been stained in Nannally's blood. The endless cycle of mutual vengeance was not broken.
There will always be Darkness and Light in every human's heart. And even a Jedi knight can fall in love. And after killing the beloved to succumb to the Darkness. Even if he later returns to the Light, it will not raise the dead.
It will always be so. Good cannot exist without evil. Therefore, even if you destroy all evil in one fell swoop, good and oblivion will very soon breed it again. Destroying evil is like destroying the Force, that is, all living things. But like the Force, evil can be controlled. Kept in check and made to serve for good.
Lelouch appointed himself as the one who would take control of the Darkness.
The idea of the Demon Emperor did not disappear. This disembodied nightmare image merged with the image of Zero. It is Darth Zero who will unite the Galaxy and give it its long-awaited peace. He will sustain it until his strength runs out. Only he can do this - because he has nothing left to lose. Darth Zero will stop at nothing.
But why does it hurt so much?
Darth Zero gripped his mask. With a quiet hiss it opened and rested in his hands. The air ripped painfully through his lungs with his first breath. Let the physical pain drown out the mental pain at least a little.
"Kallen," Darth Zero whispered. No, Lelouch. For the first time in a long while.
Her older brother Naoto used to say that neither justice nor good can exist in the abstract. Without love for someone in particular, it is impossible to fight for all these higher ideas. Because their understanding is directly dependent on it. This was the failure of the Jedi Order.
And this is why Lelouch unknowingly, with desperation, clung to his last string of humanity. To Kallen, who made him go on living. Humanity, in all its ruthlessness and kindness, was the strength of his ideas. And it was again his greatest weakness.
Again! It is hilarious, oh so much amusing to be back in the same boat! Lelouch's shoulders trembled. He laughed, joylessly, hysterically. Laughed through the pain, choked on the air.
The shards and chess pieces blew upward again. They were hurled and tossed furiously in the storm of madness.
Lelouch thought that by rejecting the past, he could endure the role he was destined to play. That now he was invulnerable and unstoppable. But he could not cope.
They took Kallen. No, she is still alive, held captive by them. But from now on she must be dead in Lelouch's heart. For she will surely be used against him. They will try to use her to wrest victory from his hands. And Darth Zero has no right to lose.
It's a stalemate. Whatever he ends up deciding, he has something to lose. He can either give up his humanity for the sake of the goal, or he can give up the goal itself.
Lelouch was scared. It wasn't even the possible death of another dear one that frightened him, but the fact that Schneizel would end up being right. That there was no purpose, no point to this whole war, except to fight for absolute power in the Galaxy. And the fact that, after Nunnally's death, the fear of losing Kallen, too, is no longer as acute as the fear of getting his ideas wrong, is probably already a harbinger of something noxious.
Lelouch forcefully stifled hysterical sobs. He pulled one leg out from under him, bent at the knee, put the other leg beside him, and sat down. He turned his head toward the window. His gaze wandered long in the darkness of space. Then it floated out to his reflection in the dark glass.
His hair was mussed, his pale, skinny face, black circles under his eyes. And the eyes themselves, permanently yellow. Ever since Suzaku raised his sword against the Darkness after the fall of the Requiem plan. And for the first time, he lost to Zero.
Lelouch looked into the yellow eyes of his reflection and knew what that meant. In fact, he had made his decision hours ago when he ordered his army to retreat to regroup. He could have rushed into battle to save Kallen before it was too late, but that would have been a crushing strategic failure. That's what Schneizel and Kururugi were after.
Lelouch couldn't let his feelings get in the way of victory. He could not let down all those people who saw hope in him, to sacrifice hundreds of thousands of lives for one single person.
Lelouch made the decision with his mind, but not his heart. He simply refused to accept with his heart until now. For it meant that only victory made sense. It was as if almost nothing separated him and Schneizel now.
Black, white... In the end, only one extreme wins. Either the cold, emotionless Light that Kururgi now exuded, or the insane fury of the Darkness. Humanity perished in their confrontation.
Dark circles swam before my eyes. There was not enough air. Lelouch might have been happy to suffocate in helplessness. To be rid of the cursed Darkness with death. But he could not.
Zero must live!
And now his hands were reaching for his helmet. The cold metal touched his face. The mask hissed tightly around his head. Soft, moist, oxygen-rich air filled his lungs.
Darth Zero pulled his arms aside, back, stretched his legs, and tilted his head back. He breathed with painful delight. Gradually a pleasant coolness washed over the pain. The anguish was drowning in the Darkness.
Perhaps there was some symbolism in the fact that Lelouch could no longer live without the mask of Zero. But honestly, he was fed up with philosophy today. To hell with that disgusting symbolism, to hell with Schneizel and his inverted chessboards, to hell with Kururugi and Light!
Lelouch will clench his teeth, cast aside his fear and bitterness, and come to the victorious end. And he'll mix his enemies with mud. They will pay for all that Lelouch has sacrificed. Especially Kururugi. Let him burn alive so that not even a memory remains of him.
The Darkness inside smiled contentedly. It's cold had become as familiar as the heat of hatred.. They were two other things Lelouch could no longer live without either. They became his fuel in moments of despair, they became painkillers. They could not dry up because of the order to live on.
The clarity of calm rage finally returned. It would not let him stray from the path to the goal. To victory.
Darth Zero rose from the floor, adjusted his cloak. He looked around the trashed quarters with displeasure. The glass table was destroyed, the sofa overturned and shattered, the chess set scattered.
With a wave of Darth Zero's hand, the face-down board rose into the air and overturned.
