Random note here: But it took me a while to call this series as After images. Then again I can't think of any other words that could relate with Shadows...

Chapter 1.852 Déjà vu

"Good evening! How unfortunate... it seemed you missed yet another date with the reaper! You're lucky that you're still alive. Judging from the wreckage I've seen earlier, the bomb caused quite a big damage but wasn't too dangerous. I'm quite surprised about it frankly, from the remains that we managed to gather of the bomb fragments I could tell there's quite some interesting stuff in there..."

"Lloyd! Aren't you overdoing it? Suzaku's only just woken up—!"

"Ah! My bad... but I really wanted someone to listen to what I found out—"

"There's always me after all, why are you bothering the injured—?"

"Yeah... yeah..."

Somehow... this felt familiar. It's like how it has been before, during the time he met Lelouch again after such a long time. In Shinjuku, back when the last thing he remembered seeing was Lelouch's terrified face at the prospect of being killed by some random soldiers...

Just as he thought about that memory, another one... a much recent one came to mind.
Lelouch standing in front of him in his Zero costume. Lelouch... walking away before they were engulfed in a bright light—!

Lelouch!

"Lelou—!" he gasped out, trying to sit up before the pain started to register all over his body. Cecile immediately turned around to make him lie down again.

"Not yet, Suzaku! You shouldn't get up yet! You've been banged up so badly we needed to have you properly treated before we can let you go—"

Suzaku shook his head as he struggled again to sit up. He dragged his legs down from the stretcher as Cecile proceeded to hold him back from standing.

"What're you going to do anyway in this state?"

"I need... to check...!"

Cecile frowned.

"There's no point for you to go back there anyway. By now the cleanup team should've already finished with the place. If there's anyone at that place with you when the explosion happened, don't you think the team that went earlier would've found them by now? But they've only found you,"

Suzaku let out a curse.

This outcome...

...this was not how he wanted to end things between them!

And then a few hours later I realised that this part clashed a bit with Shadow Sun. Hahaha. But I like this part so changing the one on the main chapter.