Author's note: This isn't a Lelouch/Shirley fic, but this chapter will have some Lelouch/Shirley content. So yeah, this is a warning to those who aren't a fan of het. Obviously, the eventual pairing won't be Lelouch/Shirley (if that sort of question bothers you).
This chapter takes you back to the beginning of the story. From now on, the chapters will follow each other in a generally chronological order. Updates will be weekly.
two
he the knight in shining armour;
Lelouch first met Suzaku Kururugi at a Shinto shrine. They met again, over ten years later, at a casino.
Lelouch Lamperouge prided himself on his status as a professional gambler. He was one of the few individuals who could pull it off through the virtue of his wits alone. He could count cards in blackjack, calculate odds in the blink of an eye in poker and in many other subtle ways ease his chances of winning into his favour without ever actively cheating. When he was younger, he had enjoyed chess, but after years of being able to completely manipulate his games, he decided the element of luck was necessary if he was to have any interest in the outcome. So he had turned to the card table and he found it suited him quite well. He was a high-roller player; the gambling stakes were high and each session was like living life on the edge. He won often enough to make a living and lost often enough to retain his thrill of anticipation.
What Lelouch enjoyed about the casino most of all was the people, which was ironic considering his apathy towards them. Countless people came to the card tables thinking they could play – young couples more in lust than in love, businessmen with millions to spare but nothing to give, grey-haired cardsharks who counted themselves as professional as Lelouch – and Lelouch took pleasure in defying their naïve expectations of victory. The best victims were Britannian noblemen; there was nothing that was quite like shocking the pompous sneers from their often bloated faces. Then there were the bunny girls, whom Lelouch seldom noticed and would probably have ignored altogether if his hatred of Britannian nobility had not been such a fundamental aspect of who he was.
He noticed on one particular occasion, because a nobleman attempted to lay his hands on a bunny girl's breasts. Normally, the bunny girls were ridiculously big-breasted, which rather repelled Lelouch if he had to be perfectly honest. This particular girl, however, while by no means flat-chested, was far more reasonably proportioned. Lelouch noticed her face when she jumped backwards in alarm. For a brief, stark moment, it wasn't just disgust that flickered across her features – there was pure, withering hatred, the type that took years to cultivate properly. Lelouch had been intrigued. He proceeded to bust the Britannian lord in the next hand and, rather than choosing to peer at his face, Lelouch watched the girl. A triumphant smile danced on her lips. "Ha, serves you right!" she was probably thinking, and then all of a sudden the smile vanished. All that remained was the same vacuous expression all the bunny girls wore.
Lelouch memorised the rest of the girl's appearance then. She had shoulder length auburn hair and a lithe, athletic body that clung tightly to the form-fitting outfit she wore. Lelouch watched as she passed his seat by, carrying a tray of cocktails. He waited and mentally contemplated what benefit his next action would provide him before gesturing to the girl. He cleared his throat. "I want to talk to you."
He noticed the grimace flicker across her face. He marvelled at how he had not noticed the girl earlier.
"Yes?" She came up to him.
"Are you an Eleven?" he asked her.
Her honest eyes told Lelouch what he wanted to know even before the girl bristled and wrapped her arms defensively around herself.
"What of it?" she demanded.
"Nothing," Lelouch chuckled. "I was curious."
"Now that I've sated your curiosity," she said, with a haughtiness that conflicted so jarringly with her undignified outfit that Lelouch smiled. "I'll just go."
"What's your name?" he asked. The next hand was rapidly being dealt. Lelouch peered dispassionately at his cards.
The girl scowled. Lelouch was an upper-class Britannian citizen; he warranted her resentment.
"Kallen," she answered stiffly. "Kallen Kouzuki."
"You have nice eyes," Lelouch told her, while measuring his chip stack appraisingly.
"I'm not going to bed with you," she said.
"That's nice to know."
She stared at him. It seemed that in spite of herself, she was intrigued with him.
"What's with you?" she asked bluntly.
Lelouch folded his hand.
"I thought it would be nice to have a chat," he said, smiling his million-dollar smile that he reserved solely for occasions when he wanted to coax information out of people. "Believe me," he continued, as Kallen's scowl failed to abate, "I have no interest in you as a woman."
He was aware of how Kallen must see him: he was a young man who took pride in his affluence. He was also admittedly handsome. Rather than be comforted by his words, she was merely confused. "What do you want to talk about?" she asked gruffly.
"A girl like you must have a reason for wearing that outfit."
"It's none of your business."
"Never mind, I can guess," said Lelouch. "You're trying to pick up information from the men who come here because a man's tongue is loose in bed."
"Shut up," said Kallen, reddening.
"It's clever and discreet, if a little desperate." Lelouch shrugged. "I'd do the same in your position."
Kallen looked at him strangely. She seemed about to say something when Lelouch's cell phone rang.
He held his hand up, indicating to the dealer that he was sitting out the next hand. Then he answered his phone.
"Hello?"
"Lulu?" It was a young woman's voice. "Are you still at the casino?"
"Yes, Shirley."
"Oh…" She was resigned. "Is it okay if you can come home soon? I've started making dinner."
Lelouch glanced at his chip stack. He supposed he had made enough for the day. Middling earnings, but only bad gamblers complained about something like that, especially on the high-roller tables.
"All right," he said, and hung up.
He turned to Kallen. Surprisingly, she was still standing behind him.
"My wife," he said in explanation, knowing that she had been listening.
"Oh." Kallen blinked. "You didn't seem like the marrying type."
Lelouch didn't know many twenty-year-old men who were. Nevertheless, he had the engagement ring to prove his matrimony and he noticed Kallen eying his ring finger with a mixture of incredulity and slight relief.
He stood up.
"It was nice talking to you," he said, and he supposed he meant it. Kallen was a rather different girl from Shirley.
"You're weird," Kallen said. "I don't want to see you here tomorrow." Then she turned and left him. Lelouch watched the bunny tail on the back of her outfit bob up and down as she walked away. To wear something like that, Lelouch decided, made Kallen the strange one. Or perhaps dangerously sane.
It was one of those brief encounters with a stranger Lelouch would remember for its meaning, but would also put aside indefinitely by the time he came back home to his wife.
"How was your day?" Shirley asked.
Lelouch made some non-committal response and bit into his steak. Shirley was an average cook and culinary expertise had always belonged with Lelouch. But when they had gotten married, she had insisted she take the traditional role and grudgingly, he had handed the kitchen over to her. She had gotten better over the last year, although Lelouch still privately preferred his own cooking over hers any day. It was one of the many secrets in their marriage.
"And how was your day?" Lelouch asked, quickly shifting their conversation away from the subject of Shirley's polite enquiry. They both knew that she was not very interested in his goings-on at the casino, only in the question of whether or not he had lost.
Shirley brightened at the question. "I bumped into Nina today."
"Oh, really?" Lelouch smiled now and eased into his chair properly. He dabbed at his mouth daintily with his napkin.
"Yeah," Shirley said happily. "She was doing some kind of experiment at our campus today. She said she was doing well lately. She changed her hairstyle recently. She looks so pretty now!"
Shirley continued talking and Lelouch listened. His high school friends had been an agreeable lot for the most part – not the types one wrote poetry about but certainly not the types who would leave him in a ditch either – and Lelouch was glad that growing up had not meant that he had to leave them altogether. After Nunally and Suzaku, his Ashford Academy student council days were the most idyllic he had known. This was strange considering he had spent the majority of high school in either mind-numbing boredom or in mind-numbing fear over the possibility that the president might make him dress up as a turnip. Or a girl. Lelouch didn't know which one was worse.
When Shirley exhausted the topic of Nina, she got up and started cleaning the dishes. The silence came then. Lelouch leaned back against his seat and thought his own thoughts.
He was still bored. Life for him, he had decided, was still trapped in that achingly slow stage that was the very antipode of chaos. Gambling had allure but no overall purpose, although Lelouch had no desire to join Shirley in college either. He knew that he probably disappointed her. She had entered the marriage thinking that she could change him or had already done so, but Lelouch was restless. The world moved at a different pace to him.
That night, Lelouch lay in bed reading a book by lamplight. He preferred to be solitary in the evenings. When he heard the bedroom door creak open, he knew when his time alone had come to an end.
The night before Lelouch reencountered Suzaku, Shirley opened the door, dressed in a red gown Lelouch had never seen on her before. She paused at the foot over their bed, one finger tracing her abdomen through the silk.
"What do you think?" she asked tentatively.
"You look good." He refocused on his reading and turned a page. The book detailed Marxian economics and its relevance to Britannian sociology.
He heard his wife's footsteps draw closer. Shirley gently prised the book away from his fingers.
"Lulu," she began quietly. She swallowed. "Please answer me. Have I been good to you?"
"Yes," he said. "Of course."
Now that she was close, he could smell her perfume. A French brand – it reminded him of the fat Britannian lady he had sat next to at the baccarat table earlier that day. Somehow on Shirley, the effect was quite different. She was a pretty, slender young woman.
"Oh, good," said Shirley, relieved. "I-I love you, Lulu."
Lelouch paused, uncertain of how to respond.
"I thought," said Shirley, smiling wistfully, "that you were my prince. You know, he the knight in shining armour. A girl can dream, huh?"
Lelouch frowned. "I'm right here," he pointed out.
Abruptly, she took his hand. "Please love me, Lulu," she whispered hesitantly, and then she guided his hand towards her breast.
"Ah," said Lelouch, understanding what all of this was about now.
"I want to please you," Shirley insisted. "I want to make you happy. I… I'm not being too forward, am I?"
"No," Lelouch responded, not unkindly.
That night he did love her, and she embraced his body from beneath him and panted, writhed and moaned against his neck. She did it with true earnest, as if it was the only thing she knew how to do. Her eyes – bright, shining, liquid – were like that of a virgin lover.
Lelouch fell into an exhausted sleep that night. He dreamed of Nunally and feather-like embraces and a wide, green peaceful world.
He woke up and the weather was shit.
Rain cascaded down from the heavens, urged on by a furious blowing wind that threatened to pierce a person's body through. Worst of all, it reduced the speed of the traffic to a crawl and Lelouch found his fingers drumming impatiently on his steering wheel when his car jerked to a halt for the umpteenth time. In order to pass the time, he scrutinized the billboards. Some of them were advertisements, but most of them were posters of the Third Prince of the Britannian Imperial Family, Clovis la Britannia. Clovis – the proof that the world was not about to change anytime soon. It was there in his features; they were just as aesthetically appealing as Lelouch's in the same somewhat effeminate way. It taunted at him. Lelouch tore his gaze away and drove on.
He eventually arrived at the casino about an hour later than usual. It was not an ordinary day and so Lelouch decided that today he would play at the eastern end of the casino – with the Elevens, no, the Honorary Britannians. They were generally the worse players, which made sense since half of them were doped up during the hands. When Lelouch wanted to make easy money, he played with the Honorary Britannians.
On retrospect, it probably had not been a good idea. Within two minutes of sitting down to play, the gunfire started.
Lelouch was well-accustomed to the occasional conflict at the card tables. Men often had knives concealed among their clothing, although seldom did any actual violence occur. If it did, it was quickly subdued.
So when he heard the gunfire, Lelouch's first reaction was one of astonishment. He swung his head around in search of the source of the noise, but simultaneously, the casino broke out into chaos. He heard screams – mostly from the female patrons – and urgent yelling from the personnel. The lights flickered. The screaming swelled in volume. Lelouch detected within himself the beginnings of a pounding headache.
But there was no time to think about the condition of his own head, he decided. He had been sitting at a table furthest away from the exit, so he was the furthest from safety. Lelouch had no idea where the gunmen were (at least he knew there was more than one of them) and his first impulse was to duck under the table. As he did, he caught a flash of sight of a blonde-haired man in a suit three tables away slumping over. He had been hit, Lelouch realised, startled.
After he had hastily positioned himself under the table in an undignified sprawl (it would do for now) Lelouch took stock of his situation. His table, which had once been occupied by about five other players and an ethnic dealer, had already been completely vacated. And since the shooting sounded dangerously close…
So. That narrowed down the reasons behind the incident. Lelouch's suspicions were confirmed when he peered up and caught sight of Kallen dashing past his table. She wasn't armed but she certainly had her wits about her. Not, Lelouch thought wryly, a damsel in distress type. So when she said "I don't want to see you here tomorrow," it had been an oblique warning to him. It figured.
He waited. Just as he expected, the gunfire ceased abruptly within a minute of its starting. It had been a hit-and-run incident. But the babble of urgent yelling pervaded and Lelouch chose to remain hidden under the table. He was not quite ready to venture out into the open.
He noticed dozens of uniformed men run by the table. One of them noticed Lelouch and stopped, crouching down in front of him.
"Are you all right?" he asked. Lelouch could not see his face; the corner of the table obscured it from view. "Here, I'll help you up."
Lelouch hesitated for a moment, but the man continued to wait expectantly for him. Lelouch grabbed his hand (it was a warm, strong hand, suited for giving handshakes) and the man pulled him firmly and easily to his feet.
"Thanks," said Lelouch.
"Just follow me," said the man good-naturedly. "I'll get you somewhere safe, all right?"
They looked into each other's eyes at precisely the same time.
What Lelouch thought of first was not a name. He thought of how it smelt outside among the aroma of the bushes, how the rocks felt when he accidentally scraped his knee on them during climbing. He thought of Japanese summers (Japan, not Area Eleven) and how it felt to be stupid, not clever, and how much fun that had been before the pain had come.
"Is that you?" he asked slowly.
It seemed to him that at once the noise in the casino dimmed. It had not vanished altogether but it was muffled now.
And the man said, his eyes widening in shock and delight:
"Lelouch?"
If only, Lelouch thought later on, if he had been aware then what it all meant, what his memories had meant, what the earnestness in those bright green eyes had meant. But then, he reflected, if he had known, he probably would not have been able to keep himself wholly distant anyway. Some things had to give.
And so he smiled in a way that he might not have smiled in years, and he said:
"It's been a while, Suzaku."
