six
white is grey is black;
The first time Suzaku mentioned the Special Administrative Zone of Japan, Lelouch spat out his coffee.
"Went down the wrong hatch?" said Suzaku sympathetically. "I understand."
"No, you don't," Lelouch responded immediately. "How would your idea even work?"
"It's not just my idea," Suzaku told him cheerfully. "It's Euphie's, too. We're working on it together."
It turned out that during the last few weeks while Lelouch had been caught up in his divorce proceedings, Suzaku had led a life of his own. He had met up with Princess Euphemia and her knight Anya again and not simply once either. They met at least once every weekend and apparently they would go for ice cream because Euphie loved caramel and Anya was a fan of cookies and cream. Despite being quite clearly the poorest of the three of them, Suzaku paid for every cone. Lelouch knew about this because he had seen Suzaku on one of his trysts with the princess one day. They were both wearing ridiculously oversized sunglasses, as if under the assumption that this would hide their identities. Lelouch hurried on his way because he did not want them to recognise him, and also because he considered them a public embarrassment.
Evidently, it seemed, Suzaku and Euphie had been discussing more than simply ice cream. They had been discussing politics; specifically, the issue of racism in Area Eleven.
"Euphie and I," said Suzaku fondly. "We both want a world where Japanese and Britannians can treat each other equally. Euphie says she's going to use her influence to make a zone where Japanese and Britannians are equal."
Lelouch was speechless.
"And who, pray tell, would go along with an idea like that?" he asked after a pregnant pause.
"I was hoping you would," Suzaku said quietly. There was hurt in his voice.
"Suzaku," Lelouch responded seriously. He glanced around the café; nobody seemed to be paying any attention to the two of them. He lowered his voice. "You know I can't involve myself in things like that. I'm neutral."
As he spoke, he thought of Kallen and the knife against his throat. He thought of Nunally, and he grimaced.
Suzaku peered at him, disappointment spreading across his face. "That's okay, Lelouch," he said finally. "But is it all right that you come to the zone when we make it?"
Inwardly, Lelouch's unease only festered. Outwardly, he smiled.
"Of course," he said. "I'd do it for you, Suzaku."
It was a kind of truth that Lelouch found he believed in so much, it was like a falsehood to him. Suzaku realised that, too, when Euphemia was gone and there was nothing but the musky scent of defeat between them.
Light danced off the chandeliers lightly and daintily, as if it owned a pair of feet that was afraid of overstepping. The dining room itself was awash with light chatter and the pleasing yet peripheral-sounding tunes from a nearby string quartet. Distant from all of this, Euphemia li Britannia sat at her table with her legs close together and tucked under the lengths of a long, silky white dress. Her teeth were gnashed together under a pleasant, vacant smile; she was resisting the urge to fidget. She glanced up at her sister before looking squarely back down at the food on her plate: Bouillabaisse. Half-heartedly, Euphemia took a pigeon's bite at her food. Meanwhile, deftly and precisely, Viceroy Cornelia was at work cutting up the veal on her plate.
Seated beside Euphemia, Anya paid little heed to the atmosphere around her. She was attentive, in the sense that being attentive meant playing Tetris on her cell phone with a bored expression on her face. While it seemed Anya was barely listening to Euphemia's attempt at light-hearted chatter, Euphemia knew from experience that her knight always took in everything she said.
Today, the princess was nervous beneath her smiles. She could feel her heart wrench and palpitate inside of her, even though nothing very heart wrenching had actually happened. Anya noticed, and instead of saying anything, she looked up at her princess and calmly held her gaze. She nodded once.
Euphemia gulped.
"Is something the matter, Euphie?" Cornelia asked, putting down her fork and regarding her younger sister with puzzlement.
"Well, er, you see…" Euphemia began nervously. She took a deep breath so that she could let the resolve sink into her. That was what being a politician was about, right? Always seeming as if you knew what you were doing.
And today, Cornelia was in a good mood; she had recently come back from a successful military campaign in Area Eight where she herself was declared the MVP of the engagement. Unfortunately, the moment Euphemia defined the Special Administrative Zone of Japan to her, Cornelia's expression dropped. She regarded her sister with an open jaw.
"What gave you such a… preposterous idea?" Cornelia demanded.
In another lifetime, Euphemia might have bit her lip and quieted down, but before she could bite back her tongue, she saw Suzaku's face in her mind's was the right thing to do, she thought.
"Don't you think the current Honorary Britannian system is such a condescending approach to racial equality where the Japanese are concerned?" Euphemia retorted. She said it with more feeling than she expected. When she finished, she was almost as stunned as Cornelia was.
When they were young, Euphemia had shown no particular prowess at any physical or intellectual pursuit. Though she had rudimentary training to pilot a Knightmare Frame, she had none of Cornelia's strength and none of the cunning Lelouch or Schneizel had displayed. She had not even been allowed to finish school. Like her, Clovis was at heart a soft man, and yet she had none of his artistic talent, either.
And so Euphemia found her calling in life at the dinner table: disagreeing with her sister. This was particularly strange because since their early childhood, Euphemia had not so much as raised her voice against Cornelia. Cornelia's presence was like a warm, insulating blanket to her.
For a very long moment, Cornelia stared at Euphemia. The slow realisation was dawning on her that her little sister intended to enter the dangerous world of politics. She could come to only one conclusion.
"Are you seeing an Eleven boy?" she asked finally.
The conversation between sisters that followed was the prelude to the events that transpired the next day.
Cornelia pointed her sword at Suzaku Kururugi's throat and said: "On your knees, boy."
They were standing at the centre of a former baseball stadium in Shinjuku. The stadium was in disuse now: the stands were worn and beaten down by the elements and the overgrown grass on the pitch carried the faint scent of neglect. The sun beat down upon the two of them, casting a spell of humidity characteristic of summertime in Area Eleven.
Standing several feet away, Euphemia and Anya watched on. Anya actually seemed fairly engaged in what was going on and was dutifully filming the action with her camera phone. Euphemia, on the other hand, was biting on her nails. Suzaku threw Euphemia a frantic glance, to which Euphemia mouthed in response: My sister's a nice person. I swear!
"Your name?" Cornelia asked coldly.
"Private Suzaku Kururugi, Your Highness."
"You're in the army?"
"Yes, Your Highness."
Cornelia considered that for a moment.
"I'll make this very clear with you," she said frostily. "I don't give a rat's ass if you're Britannian or an Eleven – you have no claims to my sister whatsoever. Is that understood?"
Suzaku was nodding so hard, his head seemed on the verge of falling off his neck.
"But, Your Highness," he added quickly. "We're not really like that. We've been talking about-"
"Quiet," Cornelia cut in. "I hate men who speak out of turn."
Suzaku fell silent. Cornelia motioned to her knight Guilford, who stood behind her with a carefully neutral expression on his face.
"Give Kururugi your sword, Guilford," she said.
"Your Highness!" Guilford exclaimed, flabbergasted.
"Do it," Cornelia said sternly, and Guilford had no choice but to comply. He unstrapped the fencing blade from his belt. A flicker of dislike and trepidation passed through Guilford's bespectacled gaze as he looked at Suzaku and relinquished his sword.
Suzaku was baffled. "What is this-?"
"Now," Cornelia announced. "We fight."
"Sister!" Euphemia cried out reproachfully. "You're not going to hurt him, are you? You said you wouldn't!"
"A true Britannian does not judge by race," Cornelia responded firmly. "A true Britannian judges by strength. The strong strive to create a better future. Britannia has no place for the weak. And so," she said, sweeping her gaze back upon the hesitant Suzaku. "If you can prove yourself to possess more strength than your countrymen did ten years ago, then I will listen to what you have to say about yourself. I promise no more, but no less, either."
Suzaku blinked, glanced once more at the sheepish Euphemia and then something settled over his eyes so that they almost seemed darker in hue. His hands closed tightly around the grip of the sword's hilt. He nodded firmly. Then he stood up straight and positioned himself several feet away from Cornelia. His sword hand was outstretched.
Cornelia smiled then, proud and haughty. Her face, stern, rigid and yet beautiful, like an old Britannian statue, was reflected against the sheen of her blade.
There was something, Lelouch thought, which was unusual about normalcy. The pursuit of it in itself held a kind of strangeness to it.
The first time Lelouch went to the casino after divorcing Shirley, he noticed that the price of parking had increased since the last time he had visited. Not that it was of any real concern to Lelouch, but still: those greedy bastards, he thought with a shrug. The idea only strengthened when he glanced towards the roulette tables and noticed that the wheel had an extra green pocket: '00'. That meant the odds of winning roulette were even longer than they were before. Lelouch snorted and moved on.
When he reached the blackjack table, he scanned around the vicinity, looking perhaps out of habit for Kallen. The bunny girl was nowhere to be found. Lelouch made a small profit that day and at length, he went back home to his newly rented out apartment. That was the first day.
On the second day, he found the price of drinks had increased. He played, and then he went home.
On the third day, he met Kaname Ougi.
Ougi was a stranger to Lelouch. What was more, he was the nondescript sort of stranger Lelouch could encounter a thousand times in his life without putting all those meetings down as anything more than simple coincidence. He was the best sort of Eleven: the sort who seemed to have no real presence and, if he took Refrain, wouldn't be too loud about his reminiscing. He had a face too used to giving easy, meaningless smiles that his dourness seemed shallow and the sternness of his face seemed simply stiff rather than rigid.
He regarded Lelouch with openly suspicious eyes as he sat down at the poker table. Lelouch instantly understood that a connection had to exist between him and Kallen. So the girl had told her associates about him, Lelouch thought.
Lelouch peered at Ougi and nodded once. Ougi fidgeted uncomfortably with the collar of his brown jacket. Then Lelouch paused, thought of Suzaku and of pink-haired princesses. He thought of his own insatiable need for insurance. He looked up at Ougi and saw a man that could fit quite easily into the palm of his hand. He would have a smooth texture, no unnecessary sharp ends. Nothing like a queen or a rook or a bishop.
"What," he asked slowly, his smile calculating and devilish, "are you really fighting for?"
The Special Administrative Zone of Japan was not instated in the next week or even in the next month. By the time Lelouch saw posters of it on street corners and heard murmurings of it on the street, he had almost forgotten about its very existence.
Before it happened, though, Lelouch was with Suzaku and Suzaku was with Lelouch.
"So let me get this straight," Lelouch said to Suzaku. "You're going to allocate an area-"
"Shinjuku," said Suzaku.
"Shinjuku," Lelouch amended himself. "And in there, Japanese and Britannians are equal. But how can you determine equality?"
Sometimes, they went to those theme parks Clovis made. Sometimes, Lelouch would look around the park and see all the Elevens and Britannians in the same establishment, yet never interacting. Some rides were meant for the Elevens and some were meant for the Britannians. But there were never any signs saying which were which. One had to tell simply from a glance.
"On paper," Lelouch said, "Britannians and Eleven are equal."
"What are you trying to say, Lelouch?" Suzaku asked him.
"Nothing," Lelouch said, turning his head away slightly.
"I think equality is when you don't even know you're equal, you just are," Suzaku declared. "Because something like distinctions would never even cross your mind. White is grey is black."
"Only a child would think like that," Lelouch told him.
Suzaku smiled. "But isn't that the thing with childhood?"
"So what are you going to do? Turn everyone into children? Bring them all into Neverland?"
"I don't know," said Suzaku vaguely. He was peering at the water slide and at a young boy and girl coming out of the water together, hand in hand. He spoke up again suddenly. "Remember how terrible you were at swimming, Lelouch?"
"Shut up," said Lelouch exasperatedly. "I told you to never speak of that again."
"You couldn't even doggy paddle." Suzaku grinned. "I had to hold your hand like those kids over there. Like this."
Lelouch felt the warmth of Suzaku's calloused hand against his softer palm.
"What are you doing?" Lelouch snapped, feeling an odd, light tingle touch against his chest.
And Suzaku laughed and laughed and laughed. What was worse, he didn't let go of Lelouch's hand either, not until he dragged Lelouch to the water slide and pushed him down to the bottom.
When Suzaku fought Cornelia, nothing seemed to happen immediately. The sounds of their blades crossing was only just beginning to ring in their ears when Cornelia stopped and said, "That's enough." She gave Suzaku a curt nod, the sort of warrior's acknowledgment that said all that needed to be said without words. Then she turned to Euphemia and gave her verdict: "Ask Clovis. Politics was never my thing."
And so Euphemia did.
When Clovis la Britannia heard about the Special Administrative Zone of Japan, a frown crossed his face and he said, "Euphie, Euphie, Euphie." He folded his hands across his desk and spoke, in that well-intentioned condescending tone Euphemia knew always preceded an outright refusal.
"I'll take full responsibility," she cut in quickly, before Clovis could go on. "You won't have to worry about anything."
"But Euphie," Clovis said concernedly. "That sort of thing, it wouldn't be seen as-"
"It is right," Euphemia declared. She smiled sweetly with all the genuine earnest of a well-meaning toddler. "Don't you think?"
There was a pause. Clovis peered at his younger half-sister before standing up at his desk and inclining his head towards the window.
"We are not the same as them, Euphie," he said at length.
"But we're all human!" Euphemia insisted. Again, she found herself thinking of Suzaku; she knew exactly what his chivalry meant to her.
She decided to be persistent. She spoke about how she was going to change the world, how she wanted to see people smile and the lengths to which she would go about to achieve that. She spoke until she saw her brother's features soften and crease into a relenting smile, tinged with melancholy. She spoke with all her passion until he said yes.
"But oh, Euphie," said Clovis sadly when all was said and done. He was genuine, of course. He always was with his siblings. "They are different from us. They always will be..."
"I hate them all," said Nina Einstein.
"Oh, is that so?" Lelouch asked his old school friend as he lifted a glass of champagne to his lips.
Nina nodded fervently. Her face was red and she spoke with a slur. Her birthday party was one of the few occasions where she allowed herself to become utterly drunk and today was really no different from all of her parties since the day she had turned eighteen. Lelouch found it a bit of an embarrassment, although usually by the time she was drunk, all of his other friends were, too, so nobody really minded. Mercifully, Lelouch held his liquor well.
Nina was a ranting sort of drunk. She would gather up at least one hapless friend (usually Lelouch, for no reason he could discern) and she would launch into a breathless tirade about some obscure subject. The first time this happened, Lelouch was nonplussed – who would have guessed quiet, demure Nina had so much to say?
Her most popular topic seemed to be what she really thought of the Elevens.
"They're disgusting!" She banged her fist on the table, upsetting some of the alcohol that was still left over the tablecloth. "They're always doped to the eyelids! No fuckin' dignity!"
Lelouch thought he could see quite a lot of hypocrisy in that statement but said nothing of it. He called over Milly, who was at that moment attempting to grope Shirley's breasts, so that she could handle Nina. As he did, his eyes locked with Shirley's and there was a pause that seemed to stretch into yesterday. Then Lelouch looked away and busied himself with cleaning up the mess on the tables.
When the party was over and done with, Rivalz was the one who took charge of Nina. As a bartender, he was used to handling drunks.
"You know," he said to Lelouch that night, as he carried the slumped over Nina over his shoulder. "What Nina said reminds me of a funny story that happened the other day. You know Charles vi Britannia's speech?" (Lelouch knew, all right. He knew a bit too well.) "There were a bunch of Elevens in the bar when his speech was playing on the TV and they stood up and started yelling 'All fuck Britannia!'" Rivalz chuckled. Lelouch nodded coolly in response.
This was how he lived these days, not totally in the present but not totally in the past either.
He dreamed of Nunally again that night, but instead of seeing the colour of warmth and peace, he saw his sister blind and feeble, groping futilely into the dark. He saw a rain of gunfire and for some reason his limbs would not move in response. He watched helplessly as the bullets impaled Nunally and her mouth fell open haltingly in response, as if everything was occurring in slow motion. The blood dribbled down her head and across her chest in thick droplets, relentlessly, until there was nothing left save for the thin, wispy memory of her.
(In the background, his father was pumping his fist and he was shouting, his eyes wide in ecstasy: "All hail Britannia!")
There was a common joke the Japanese often told each other: How many Britannians does it take to change a light bulb?
The answer was seven. One to send in the light bulb, one to inspect it, one to send it back and demand proper license to have it changed, one to read the paperwork, one to lose the paperwork, one to find the paperwork and one more to realise no one needed any damned paperwork anyway.
It came down to a common complaint about the Britannians, particularly in the upper class. They were a bureaucratic lot: in order to become an Honorary Britannian, one had to sign a relevant form, which sometimes took months to be processed. Like most matters related to the Japanese, Euphemia's request forms for the Special Administrative Zone of Japan (abbreviated to SAZ) were sent to a low priority pile and subsequently took months to even be considered. First, they needed to be read and approved of by the joint governors of Area Eleven (Clovis and Cornelia) and they also needed to be approved by a representative of each major faction of knights. It was a simple matter getting Anya's approval but for other factions such as the Glaston Knights, there was an inevitable wait. At first, Euphemia waited patiently, but as the months passed and she had no good news to report to Suzaku, she began to feel useless. What, she wondered, was the point of being a princess if it only limited her?
She called her knight to her chambers with a simple goal in mind. "Anya!" she declared. "We have to go talk to these knights in person. We have to do something!"
"You're working very hard, aren't, Your Highness?" Anya replied nonchalantly.
"Of course, Anya! It's the most important thing! Oh, and sit down, I want to brush your hair."
Obediently, Anya sat.
"Kururugi Suzaku," she murmured the name aloud as Euphemia set about untangling the knots in her pink hair.
"Yes?" said Euphemia, peering down curiously at Anya. "What about him?"
"He's the only Japanese you know."
Euphemia paused. Her brush froze in mid-stroke. "We should sneak out tonight and meet some more Japanese people then!" she suggested brightly.
Anya's eyelids closed halfway. Unbeknownst to Euphemia, a sudden icy chill had touched her knight's heart. "I'm tired," Anya replied.
"But what about the Japanese people?" Euphemia replied, puzzled. "And the knights?"
"Maybe later," said Anya with a yawn, curling up on the bed beside her princess.
That same night Lelouch awoke in a cold sweat, mumbling his father's chant under his breath, Euphemia found herself dreaming of Nunally too. It had been far too long. Although Euphemia could not see the small, shadowy figure in her dream, she knew wordlessly that it was her poor, deceased half-sister in the way people who dreamed always somehow just knew. But no matter how near Euphemia drew, Nunally always seemed just out of arm's length. Even so, Euphemia woke up the next morning smiling.
It was the last peaceful night she had before the forms returned to her and the world was changed forever. She did not have to wait that long after all. But perhaps in her eyes, it was too long for comfort.
Author's note: Now we get to the real meat of the story. To me, it makes sense that Suzaku and Euphie would have to fight for the SAZ in this universe because in the canon, on both occasions where the SAZ was approved by Britannian authorities, it was done because of ulterior motives to lure out Zero. I have a different direction I want to take this subplot from the original series, so please look forward to the next update.
