five
made like a pair of porcelain dolls;
Lelouch hesitated.
The problem, he mused, was that he knew Suzaku too well. He could read every subtle flicker in his expression. He knew, simply from a glance, that something had gone amiss. Something to do with Euphemia, maybe?
No, Lelouch decided. That was Suzaku's own business. If he had problems in his job, he kept them to himself. He had spared Lelouch the descriptions of what was most likely the most difficult and most humiliating job a Japanese man could be employed in. Just how many Japanese would turn around and fight for the very nation that had subjugated them?
But that was getting off the topic at hand, which was the intent behind Suzaku's gaze. Lelouch caught sight of it as he opened the door for his friend. Then Suzaku's mouth contorted into a smile. Some implacable emotion shone through his eyes.
Lelouch found that he could breathe only lightly.
He swallowed, but not too forcefully.
"Come on in, Suzaku," he said. "What's the matter?"
Suzaku winced. "How did you know, Lelouch?"
Lelouch treated that as a rhetorical question. He said, "If there's something bothering you, you should just say it."
Suzaku entered and closed the door behind him. He sat down at the table, paused for a moment and said nothing. Then abruptly, he turned his face towards Lelouch.
"Have you been taking care of Shirley?"
Lelouch felt something in his head throb slightly, like a heartbeat. "Why do you ask?"
Suzaku looked at him; the implacable emotion was back. He hesitated. "I don't know how to say this, Lelouch," he began uncertainly, but before Lelouch could reply, his expression grew firm. "You haven't been treating her well, have you?"
Lelouch saw it instantly: the gaping distance between them, the sentiments they would never share. In the past, they might have argued about it, but now Suzaku was willing to sit down. Yet standing would have been so Suzaku; a man could not adequately express his rage sitting down. Suzaku wanted to understand, but Lelouch already did.
So Lelouch sat down too. Not beside or opposite Suzaku at the table but rather some distance away from him on the sofa. They did not need to look at each other as they conversed.
Suzaku told him about Shirley's recent attempt at suicide.
"Where is she now?" Lelouch asked with an eerie semblance of detached calmness.
"Her friend's house," Suzaku replied. "I think her name was Milly."
"Ah," said Lelouch. In that case, he thought, he would no doubt be expecting an enraged call from his former student council president. Milly had always been particularly protective of Shirley.
It was, Lelouch thought, far too perilously simple for him to think about the practicalities. All of a sudden, his marriage seemed to have blown up in his face and for now, he registered no particular high emotion. He was shocked and his head throbbed incessantly but the chaos suited Lelouch well. He was not pleased by the situation, only cognisant of its implications and this new heightened awareness of his own mental detachment.
"I don't want to interfere," Suzaku said, "but I don't want you to be unhappy either. Or Shirley," he added.
There was a stiff, jagged pause. Neither man looked at the other.
"I seem uncaring, don't I?" Lelouch said finally.
Suzaku said, "Yes."
Lelouch smiled then at this unexpected reemergence of the blunt, straightforward Suzaku of old. That, more than anything, was what prised apart Lelouch's defences.
"I do care about Shirley," Lelouch said. He did not insist; he stated, yet with slightly more feeling than he would otherwise have spoken with. "Yes," he went on, "I am concerned about her. I don't know what brought her to do what she did."
"From what I could gather," Suzaku responded slowly, "it had something to do with you and the casino."
"She's tolerated that for a while," Lelouch said. "I don't know what changed her attitude."
But changed it had, after the last time Lelouch had been there. He remembered the fragile smile Shirley had offered him before she let him in the house. He remembered that sudden, pulling moment when he thought she was about to reproach him and he remembered the secret tears she had wept and he had pretended not to see. Lelouch almost wished he could have acted differently, but how he could have done that he did not know. He had not ascertained all the details.
Suzaku said, "She mentioned a bunny girl." He hesitated once again as if aware of the delicacy of the situation. "She said a college friend saw you... fraternising with one of them."
And Lelouch laughed. He laughed because he understood where the drama had come from. It had not occurred to him in his meetings with Kallen that she had any impact on him beyond his political life. But then, he was a married man. He had always considered himself above such frivolous misunderstandings.
"Do you honestly believe I am an adulterer?" he asked Suzaku, amused. "You said I was uncaring."
"I did say that, but..." Lelouch sensed that Suzaku was shaking his head. "I believe in you, Lelouch. I know you wouldn't do that."
Lelouch wondered how much of his belief consisted of pure and simple naiveté.
"You're right," he admitted. "I've only ever done those things with Shirley. I have no taste for extramarital affairs."
"Then," said Suzaku, brightening. "It was all a misunderstanding? You can talk to her?"
"Do you believe that?" Lelouch asked suddenly, turning his gaze sharply upon his best friend. "Do you really, honestly believe that?"
"Lelouch, do you really want your marriage to-?"
"Answer the question, Suzaku."
Suzaku swallowed. "If you love her," he said, "then yes."
Lelouch turned his head back away with a derisive snort. He made a decision that this time he would allow himself to clash ideals with Suzaku – the situation had called for it. It made sense that they would disagree. Love was a kind of politics, after all.
"Think," he said to Suzaku. "If a relationship is meant to be based on trust and her trust in me is so easily shaken, that speaks of failure, doesn't it?"
"Lelouch, you don't have to-"
"I've been abusing her trust for as long as we've been married," Lelouch said scornfully. "She knows that the last incident was simply the final straw."
Suzaku was speechless. Lelouch noted his victory with a humourless smile.
"Imagine," he went on, "what it would be like to be her. She goes to college; she sees the world. She's at the prime of her youth and so are her friends." A vivid image of Shirley in her stylish yet unassuming skirt was firmly entrenched in Lelouch's mind. "And yet she commits herself like an old-fashioned country girl to a marriage that has no benefits for her. Her husband is unemployed and simply spends his days in a casino. I imagine she is the laughingstock among her college friends."
"Lelouch..."
"I don't offer her any stability. I can't even give her what a woman wants the most." Lelouch spoke, because it was Suzaku he was speaking to; he had never said any of this to anyone before. "I've been sterile since birth, Suzaku."
"I... I didn't know..."
"And you think a relationship like that will succeed?" Lelouch laughed scornfully.
Suzaku shifted uncomfortably in his seat. "Then why?" he demanded. "Why did you even marry her in the first place?"
"Because Shirley is my Refrain."
As the last word left his lips, Lelouch heard the chair scrape aside. Suzaku was on his feet.
"Why is it?" Suzaku began slowly, every fibre of his melancholy yet genuine brand of gentleness seeping heavily into his words. "Why do you want to cast yourself as a villain, Lelouch?"
Lelouch had expected a reproach, even anger, but certainly not this. "I don't know what you mean," he said.
"Because you're not a villain," Suzaku insisted. "You just never wanted her to put you on a pedestal. Isn't that a sort of kindness too?"
That shook Lelouch. Naive people had a way of disarming others with words; they were so absurd they were profound. They made you want to see the world the same as they did. A simple, slight readjustment of the mind was all that was needed. Only the innocent could be so wise and cunning. They needed, Lelouch thought, to be protected from themselves.
"I never loved Shirley," said Lelouch, and it sounded like a defence. "In spurts, yes, but not in this idealistic way you believe."
"Maybe you do love her and you never realised."
"No." Lelouch shook his head. "I don't believe in love. It's nothing but a state of mind."
"What if I said I love you?" said Suzaku.
It was then Lelouch perceived a sort of tension in the atmosphere of the room, like a build-up of electricity that was beginning to crackle in the foreground. Lelouch looked at Suzaku then and saw an expression that was sombre enough to make a part of his heart twinge. It meant as much and as little as the world.
"Do you believe that?" Suzaku asked.
"I always believe you," Lelouch said, and it was the truth.
"Then you do believe in love," Suzaku said firmly. "You do and I'm the proof."
Looking back in months to come, Lelouch realised that Suzaku was right, the way the ideals of the innocent could be right in their own twisted little ways. And maybe, Lelouch thought then, if that was the case, then he was the only one who had ever really loved Suzaku. It was strange how in the end, everything came back to him and his excuse.
Yet for now, Lelouch was in the present and he was beginning to feel confused about Shirley again in a way he had not experienced since their graduation. And he would probably never have felt it, had it not been for Suzaku.
"It's love," Suzaku told him, his eyes softening.
That night, when Suzaku had left, Lelouch rang the solicitors and filed for a divorce.
The call from Milly did not come until a good half hour later, coincidentally at around the same time Lelouch would usually be having dinner with Shirley. Milly said, "Get your arse down here," and hung up. Lelouch put down the phone. He stared at his clenched hand for a moment and then he let go. He sighed.
Milly, Nina and Rivalz had no doubt taken Shirley's side. But what did Lelouch care of how he was thought of? He was in no mood for another verbal confrontation. But in the end, he did make his way to the Ashford mansion; now was as good a time as any.
Like everything about Milly, her house was grand yet curiously down-to-earth at the same time. Milly had always been a fan of extravagant displays, but not necessarily ones of exorbitant wealth. Spacious in appearance, the Ashford mansion was built like a typical Britannian mansion with high windows, but it was no marble palace: it was most certainly built from bricks. Lelouch waited at the gates and waited for the security system to let him in. He was surprised to see Milly standing outside for him, leaning with her back against the steel gates and her arms folded. The Ashford mansion lay behind her, eminently present yet overshadowed by Milly's lone figure. In particular, Lelouch was drawn to her face. In spite of her joviality, Milly had always seemed wise beyond her years. Now her maturity seemed plainly stamped across her features. She would have seemed matronly if her expression was not so hard.
"Shirley's inside," she said quietly. "She's been crying."
Lelouch winced.
"What did I tell you about not letting her cry?" Milly demanded. The anger flashed indiscriminately through her eyes. "You had better apologise, Lelouch."
"I want a divorce," Lelouch said.
Milly unfolded her arms, strode towards Lelouch and slapped him across the face.
"There," she told him, frowning thunderously. "I did that because Shirley wouldn't."
Lelouch knew that Milly was the only person who had the self-assurance to stand up to him. He appreciated the gesture, and so, far from reigning in his reaction, he placed a hand against his searing skin. He said to Milly, "I think it would be better for both of us if we parted ways."
Milly took a step backwards. She sighed; the anger had dissipated. It was not like her to remain furious at her friends.
"To be honest," she said. "I'm not that surprised. I really hoped that it would work out between you and Shirley – I thought you made a good couple. But you're not capable of opening your heart to anyone, are you, Lelouch?"
Lelouch thought about his conversation with Suzaku but said nothing of it. All of a sudden, he wanted nothing more than to do everything from the beginning again. He wanted to destroy everything around him, to cast it all into flames - only then could his world be made anew.
"Can I talk to Shirley?" he asked. At least he knew Shirley well enough to know that she would be ready to listen. She would always listen to him whenever he had something to say.
Milly nodded wearily. She knew the same thing Lelouch did. "Remember to say sorry," she said finally. "I won't forgive you if you don't."
In the weeks to come, it was Shirley who remembered the soft, ringing cadences of their halcyon days. It was all she thought of during the days of her divorce. The proceedings went smoothly because Lelouch was thorough yet quick with paperwork, the type of man who needed no assistance from the law because he himself would have risen above it. He would have been a great man at many things.
As for Shirley, she cried every day, and when she was not in tears, her eyes were directed at her feet, at someplace far away from the present. She remembered the past, those innocent unassuming days when a simple brush of her fingers against his had meant the very world to her.
Lelouch put the paperwork in front of her and said, "Sign here, Shirley."
"I can't," whispered Shirley. "My hand, it's-"
It was shaking too much.
"Shirley..."
"Lulu, you fool!" Shirley screeched. "I knew you never loved me! All you ever felt was sorry for me - that's why you married me!" She sniffed. "I can't handle it, Lulu. Not anymore. I thought I could – forever – but... oh, Lulu...! Lulu...!"
Lelouch took his hand off the paperwork, stood up, walked over to her and wordlessly embraced her. She clutched at him back, her fingers groping seemingly at nothing even when they tugged upon his shirt and she could feel the texture of him through the fabric. She knew the feel of him and yet she did not.
She thought about what they could have been, perhaps in another lifetime. She searched within the recesses of her mind, into someplace deep where she had to furrow in order to reach, and she thought: what lifetime would that have been? She did not know. Maybe it did not exist. Maybe it only had the potential to.
"You were my prince," she told him softly.
Lelouch looked away, his expression inscrutable.
"Yes," Shirley went on as another tear rolled down her cheek. "You could have been everyone's prince, Lulu, but you were always so cynical. And I always did think, you know, that you were being a hypocrite. Gambling the way you do, isn't that a kind of naiveté too?"
It was the first time she had ever openly reproached him.
Lelouch did not argue back. He only sat back down and, ever so subtly, pushed the paperwork towards her once again.
This time, she picked the pen up and signed her name.
Shirley remembered that moment whenever her gaze flickered towards the ring that no longer had a place on her finger. She never had the heart to throw it away. At first, when Lelouch had mentioned divorce, she had been fought against his decision. "We can still make this work!" she had insisted. "You don't have to... not so suddenly...!"
Lelouch had replied to that. He had said something, but in Shirley's mind, she may as well have spoken to a brick wall. Except brick walls did not have the power to make her body and mind tingle with meaning. They could not speak so convincingly in such a way that she could be persuaded that her feelings had no meaning. Or that by the very act of divorcing, she was really affirming those very feelings for him. He could convince of both these things at once.
As for her suicide attempt, he had addressed that too. He told her for her own good, it was best she spend time away from him so that she could be exposed to healthier relationships. It became clear to her that he held a very real concern for her wellbeing. He did not want her to hurt herself again. "But it's not you that made me want to...!" she began, but then she faltered mid-sentence. She realised in a sense, he was right, as he so very often was. What she would have wanted to say, if only she could form the argument properly in her mind, was that she had never thought it was entirely his fault either.
"Was it my fault?" she asked him. "Did I fail as your wife?" And that was the first time she cried in front of him, as brokenly as a girl could.
"No, it wasn't," Lelouch replied, but he was frowning. Not even Lelouch Lamperouge, card playing genius, could reliably read a woman's heart. He had not known how to handle Shirley's tears; in fact, he never had.
They resumed their conversation when she could make herself talk again. She smiled at him bravely and said, "I'm sorry, Lulu. I'm just so sorry..."
They continued: it was a long, dwindling talk that curved and bended with the landscape, but always inevitably led Shirley down the path Lelouch wanted it to go.
She thought about these things and how they happened, mostly in the darkness of ensuing night. The bed was still hers, but his body no longer was. After the divorce, he moved out of their mansion. He left the house and a large portion of his money with her. Another woman would have revelled in a rich man's generosity, but Shirley had not even asked for any of his wealth. He had simply given it to her and claimed it was part of the divorce settlement.
It was only after the fact, as Shirley read through the papers she had signed without the heat of her emotions affecting her, that she realised that Lelouch had lied to her once again.
She did not know how many times her husband had failed to tell her the truth. But she did know that Lelouch was not Lelouch without his mask. Being with him, Shirley had not known who she really was either. They were made like a pair of porcelain dolls.
The day after the execution of Kallen Kouzuki the "Bunny Girl Terrorist", Shirley went to see her parents. She had not seen them since she was married. She had only rung them to tell that she was fine.
"Shirley, how are you?" her father asked her anxiously. He reached forward as if to hug her, and then pulled back. His daughter was not a child anymore.
So Shirley hugged him first.
When she was a child, she had once told her father innocently that she wanted to marry him. And she could remember him saying that she would find another man she would love more than him. Shirley had been unable to imagine it at the time.
"I still don't really understand, you know," she told her father. "I still love you just as much as Lulu, only differently."
A shadow came across her father's face then. Lelouch was rich and well-bred and the divorce had left Shirley well-off, but... "He treated you so badly," Jospeh Fenette insisted.
Shirley did not reply to that immediately. She only did so as she was about to leave, to go back to the house Lelouch had left her.
"It doesn't matter, you know," she said. "I don't mind. I still love him. I could be reborn a thousand times and I'd still make the same mistake..."
She left, closing the door quietly behind her. The fairytale had come to an end.
In the dark, alone, Shirley found that she could no longer weep.
