Disclaimer: Code Geass – with its characters, settings, and all other borrowed elements here – is the sole property of its creators. In other words, yeah, it's not mine, and I'm not making money out of this. Enjoy the fic; author's note at the very end.
Trial and Error
. : 4 : .
Just minutes after the last nurse had left for the day, there was a momentary flash, an artificial clicking noise, and then a whimsical series of notes that chirped contentedly in the air. "Recorded," an emotionless voice informed him helpfully, and Luciano Bradley turned to see the Knight of Six standing impassively in the doorway, watching him. "Thank you."
Anya never allowed any particular emotion to grace her features, but even then Luciano knew he must have made quite the sight: all in all, he'd collected a split lip, three cracked ribs (and they were not even consecutive ones, at that), a black eye and too many small bruises to count. He'd heard rumors of the boy's fighting skill, but even with this prior knowledge Suzaku still apparently hit a lot harder than he'd thought. And he was impossibly fast as well, to the point that Luciano stopped trying to block or parry merely half a minute in.
He chuckled - ahh, shit, how it hurt to do that. He had been severely disappointed when the boy walked out on him during that time at the lounge, but he knew better than to give up after that failure. Now, he congratulated himself for his single-minded perseverance.
"Have you come to survey the damage, Lady Earlstreim?" he called out to the girl at the door. "Or did Lord Weinberg send you to torment me in his stead?"
Anya merely stayed at the entrance, fiddling with her beloved gadget and choosing to let its tiny beeps and chimes fill the silence. He supposed she wasn't fond of him, and he wasn't surprised; they'd exchanged very few words and had precious little in common outside of their occupation. Then again, in retrospect, he couldn't say he was close friends with any of the other Rounds at all - Gino's personality was grating, the women did not interest him in the slightest, Bismarck simply took things too seriously for his own tastes.
And Suzaku... Luciano laughed again (pain, pain) at the mere thought that he and Suzaku could even be remotely considered friends.
"He's angry," the girl finally quipped, and her voice was thoughtful and quiet. "He says you deserve it."
"Perhaps I do," he drawled in assent. He'd known what he was in for the moment that final, vulgar accusation left his mouth; when the first punch finally came and smashed into into the left side of his face, he had begun laughing in sheer glee (because that was what he wanted, what he had been waiting for, and it took the boy damn long enough to deliver.) "How is he?"
"Fine. Angry."
"Not Gino," he rolled his eyes and let out a dramatic sigh. Anya stared at him blankly for a long while, and it wasn't long before he realized why: after all that had transpired today, anything resembling concern on his part for Suzaku would understandably seem suspicious. "I'm just curious," he shrugged.
She still stared, as though debating whether or not to answer him (and somewhere deep down, a part of him was miffed that she would feel the need to protect that worthless Eleven like this). "He's calmed down now," she said after a very long pause.
Luciano smiled wryly at that, and at the memory of the incident still fresh in his mind: how, even through a mouthful of blood, he kept up his taunts and provocations (and Suzaku responded with his fists, repeatedly, yelling at him to shut up, shut up, shut up.) By the time the other Knights of the Rounds had arrived at the rooftop to see what was causing all that racket, Suzaku had felled him to the ground. The blood in his mouth and the pain in his chest had made it inconvenient to speak at this point, so he merely laughed as the boy began kicking him; even from below he saw the fury shining in those eyes that were normally so dead, and he just laughed harder at the sight.
It had eventually taken both Gino and Bismarck to pull the younger Knight off him and bodily drag the boy away. And Nonette had clicked her tongue as she pulled out her cellphone and took her own sweet time dialling for a medic: "Can't really say you weren't asking for it," was what she had said then, or something along those lines.
(And on some level, this perplexed him as well. So he had said some unsavory things at the lounge. How could she - how could they all -come to the conclusion that whatever transpired at the roof was his fault as well? Why didn't they assume, for example, that Suzaku had simply attacked him without reason like the barbarian he was? It didn't make sense.)
"Well, it doesn't matter now," he said nonchalantly, linking his fingers behind his head and using them as a makeshift pillow - the real one, much like the cot beneath him, was lumpy and hard. "I'm stable, he's sane again - everybody's happy!"
"Lord Bradley is happy." It was hard to tell (with Anya, it was always hard to tell) but he was somewhat positive the girl had meant it as a question.
"Of course!" he grinned up at the ceiling. "It may not seem like it, but I got exactly what I wanted." And he remembered Suzaku, stoic and cold and fighting to remain indifferent. Suzaku, stuttering and desperate. Suzaku, finally giving in to his inner demons, all illusions of composure and control shredded violently to pieces.
He peered at the Knight of Six as she moved to take a snapshot of surgical implements arranged neatly on a side-table.
"Lord Bradley got what he wanted," she mumbled, repeating the words to herself. Click, chimes - the flash reflected off the stainless steel and forced him to squint. "Does that mean Lord Bradley will leave Suzaku alone now?"
So that was what this was all about. He threw back his head and laughed, and this time the sheer hilarity overcame the aching protest waged by his ribs. "You would think that. But there's still something else I want from him."
For while he had managed to finally wrest away Suzaku's maddening self-control, he highly doubted the boy considered it precious and irreplaceable. True, the hardened Knight of Seven's mask had shattered today, but tomorrow he would merely forge another. That little fiasco at the rooftop - they could do that again and again all year, and no real conclusion would come out.
No, his initial goal had not changed. He still wanted to find (and then, proceed to gleefully take away) whatever it was the other Knight found most precious to him, and he wanted it to be something the boy could never reclaim again; only then could he really claim 'mission accomplished.' But today had shown him that Suzaku Kururugi was not infallible after all; he had a breaking point, and getting to it simply required knowing which buttons to press, and possessing a ridiculous amount of perseverance. And this excited him, because Suzaku was still human, and in fact was capable of quite a fantastic range of emotions. Of course the boy would recover from today's little exercise, but next time he would not be so merciful, and Luciano looked forward to the end of this little endeavor, when he hoped to take him so far past his breaking point that he would no longer be able to find his way back (and he shivered, a little, in anticipation.)
Another flash broke him out of his internal scheming; Anya had taken a picture of a metal chair off to the side of the room.
"Recorded."
"So feel free to go and tell Weinberg," he stated loudly, "that whether or not he approves of my actions is honestly the least of my concerns right now." To be perfectly accurate, he was quite certain none of the other Knights looked kindly upon what he was doing (again, with a vehemence that for some reason simply eluded him) but it wasn't as though the approval of his peers had ever been a deal-breaker in any of his past motivations, both on and off the battlefield. And... "Also, tell him the next time he has something he'd like to say, he should do it to my face. It's quite pathetic to hide behind a lady."
Anya regarded him for a few seconds; her eyes were dull and lifeless and they reminded him of Suzaku. (But really, by this time his obsession with the boy had grown so intense that almost everything reminded him of Suzaku, in one way or another). "Lord Bradley is mistaken. These," she raised the electronic diary to eye-level, hiding her face, "are for my memories."
She took one last photo of him, murmured a faraway goodnight, and turned on her heel to exit, leaving him alone with his thoughts.
Later that night, he learned that Gino had taken Suzaku out for sushi.
He supposed it should have come as no surprise, really, that the last leg of his self-imposed mission would be the most difficult one. What did surprise him was just *how* difficult it was shaping up to be.
Luciano frowned as he strode purposefully down the hallway, his footfalls soundless against the carpet. Several days had passed since that incident on the rooftop, and most of the minor injuries he'd sustained had healed. The rest were not quite there yet - his ribs still ached, and the skin around his left eye was still quite comically discolored - but they were on their way. Still, his injuries required round-the-clock doses of painkillers, which in turn meant he had to temporarily kiss the key to the Percival goodbye.
Thus he had decided to spend these last few days coming up with a plan to finally finish his mission. And he started by going over everything he knew about the boy so far, from several months' worth of tireless watching, listening, observations, and some rather creative research on his part.
Suzaku's family had broken contact with him soon after he joined the army. Until he was old enough for deployment he'd served as an apprentice to an older Britannian woman; he'd learnt her name and was even able to procure the address of the garage she ran, only to find out she had died many years ago, deflating his built-up excitement.
He had briefly thought of considering Suzaku's ties to Ashford Academy, but with its current students and recent alumni numbering in the thousands, he realized it would be like looking for a needle in a haystack. And it just didn't seem to be worth the trouble; he'd noticed that the boy would usually skip school for days on end, and even in the photos of his very own welcoming party (printouts from Anya that Gino had been waving around over luncheon one day, much to Suzaku's chagrin) the Knight of Seven did not look particularly thrilled to be there, not even in a single shot.
So apparently, 'family' and 'friends' were out.
Luciano ticked off the next items in his head as he rounded a corner. 'Area 11' did not seem right either, as Suzaku had practically allied himself with his country's oppressor for reasons that were still muddled and probably always would be. Perhaps with the elder Kururugi this argument could have made more sense, infinitely so, but even then it wasn't as though there was anything left of the land once known as Japan that could still be taken away.
Was it 'Britannia' then? He snorted lightly at the thought, quickly realizing it was just as absurd as his previous idea. Suzaku Kururugi fought for Britannia, indeed, and had even (dubiously) earned a place among her elite. But countless silent observations yielded a disquieting likelihood that the boy didn't exactly relish his position; he always carried out his orders with a hint of resignation, the firmness in his "Yes, my Lord" or "Yes, your Highness" artificial at best. He never had the sheer pride that Bismarck and Dorothea exuded as they charged into battle, or the gung-ho enthusiasm Gino possessed. It was...interesting, in a way that the pieces didn't quite fit. But he was certain Suzaku did not consider Britannia his raison d'etre. (And it was not as though Luciano could destroy Britannia anyway; he had no desire to do so, not when this Empire had given him a job that brought him such fulfillment, for all the wrong reasons in the world.)
Suzaku didn't have a lover; Euphemia was dead and it had been made quite clear that he wasn't over her yet. And he cared even less about his life - they had been over that, twice actually.
With all those eliminated, Luciano Bradley realized he had nothing left to work with. So he had to search a little more.
Idly he counted off the room numbers in his head as he passed a half-dozen identical, closed doors before stopping at the correct one. The residential complex was as dead as a doornail at this time of day, but still he looked around to make sure no-one shared the hallway with him, before pulling an inconspicuous-looking card out of his pocket.
Today was a Thursday, and as such Suzaku would be tied-up at the Special Envoy's laboratory for at least several hours more. It had been almost pathetically easy to obtain the key-card - (when asked to choose between forfeiting his life or handing over an access card to Lord Kururugi's chambers, the good janitor had chosen the wiser option) - that he now swiped through the waiting groove beside the door.
Not once did it ever occur to him that maybe, just maybe, this might be a crime; he did not have the time for such petty concerns.
A pleasing, high-pitched beep informed him that he had cleared the first level of security. Not that he had expected anything less; the janitor must have known that if he'd even dared to send Luciano off with a fake, the Vampire of Britannia would have been more than happy to find him again and gut him.
The dormant LCD screen above the groove lit up, and requested the passcode. (Luciano had also expected this; the system was identical to the one outside his own door, after all.)
He pondered for a moment, tapping his chin thoughtfully. Suzaku was a minimalist as far as most things were concerned, and as such he didn't think the boy would have bothered to re-program the code from its default setting: the occupant's birthdate. And so he punched in the numbers (zero-seven-one-zero-zero-zero) without even hesitating for a second.
With another cheerful beep the door hissed open, prompting a pleased grin from the Knight of Ten.
He stepped inside without preamble, taking in the room's interior as soon as the door slid shut once more behind him. The layout was similar to that of his own quarters - an open-concept suite greeted him the moment he entered. The motif, apparently, was blue, and he saw this in the wallpaper and the accents on the sheets and pillows, as well as the curtains that billowed softly from the breeze seeping through the open window.
There was something about the room that didn't seem quite right. It felt...it felt empty, in both the literal sense, and in a way he couldn't put his finger on.
(But he had not come to discern the ambience of his enemy's chambers, no; he had more important reasons for being here.)
Luciano crossed the room in long, quick strides, making his way first toward the mahogany office desk near the window. He recognized the standard Imperial-issued high school textbooks sitting in a pile next to the lamp - World History, Literature, Calculus, and others. Idly he opened the one on top (Chemistry) and flipped through the first few pages. There were notes scribbled into the margins, but he couldn't read them; he merely recognized the strange way of writing an old colleague had once dubbed 'Japanese chicken scrawl.' He smirked. The boy was still such an Eleven after all.
He left that and leafed through a heavy, ring-bound stack of papers that contained blueprints, lists and instructions - belatedly he realized he was reading the manual for the Lancelot Albion (wait, Albion?...wasn't Suzaku's Knightmare the Lancelot "Conquista"?) from Lloyd Asplund's irreverent style of what should have been technical writing. Again he saw those strange characters lining the edges of each page, and he vaguely wondered what they meant.
Luciano picked up the feather pen beside the manual, scoffing at how ridiculously feminine it looked, and put it back down.
Throwing open the closet doors, he caught sight of a variety of uniforms - pilot suit, ceremonial attire, Ashford Academy, and several duplicates of their everyday ensemble. Curiously, Suzaku still kept the orange-colored uniform of the Special Corps; it was in a clear garment bag and hung off to the side at the very edge of the closet, tie and beret and all. There were street clothes in there too, but nothing out of the ordinary.
He shut the doors again.
Sighing irritably, he looked around as he explored newer territory. The kitchenette was neat and spotless; there wasn't even a single unwashed mug or plate in the sink. Peering into the fridge, he saw only water and ginger ale, and it almost literally saddened him.
Luciano stewed in his thoughts as he marched to the bathroom. He had come here with the intent of finding something - anything - a journal, a photo album, hell - a shoebox stuffed with letters and mementos, if he was really, really lucky. He wouldn't have thought his findings would be so boring; after all, this was the private sanctuary of a very complicated boy, one who had lost his family, his princess, his country, his -
He paused, mulling over that last bit for a while longer. Was that it then? Had Suzaku Kururugi, at this point in his life, literally lost everything?
He shook his head forcefully. No, of course not. He had come this far; there was always something left.
He opened the bathroom door and was greeted by the faint smell of pine soap. Glancing at the mirror, he snickered at his reflection - the sight of his own black eye was still funny after almost a week, and it hadn't gotten old.
Leaving that thought behind Luciano reached up and opened the medicine cabinet. It held all of the little odds and ends he would have expected to see - painkillers, bandage strips, gauze, iodine. There was a variety of over-the-counter medications as well, and he was about to close the cabinet door and give up when something - a small bottle that had been partially hidden by a box of lozenges - caught his eye.
These were prescription drugs; if the telltale packaging weren't enough of a giveaway, the sticker wrapped around the bottle clearly bore Suzaku's name, and that of the military psychiatrist stationed in Area 11. He turned the bottle over, hearing the contents jostle one another inside, until he found the name of the drug on the label and read it aloud.
(It intrigued him; he would have never pegged Suzaku as an insomniac.)
He fiddled with the bottle of sleeping pills, agitated: he had finally found something substantial, and yet he had no idea how he could use it. Did it even mean anything? Or was it just another random fact about Suzaku to file away in his brain, joining the scores of other tidbits and trivia he had collected that were all about as useless as a fifth wheel?
A soft mew shattered into his thoughts, and he glanced up quickly. A rather well-fed black cat was now sitting outside the bathroom door, watching him with its head tilted curiously. He recognized the collar and the peculiar way its tail batted idly at the air; apparently it had decided to stay home today, instead of following its master everywhere as it was usually wont to do.
Luciano placed the bottle of pills back into the cabinet (careful to make it seem as though it had never been removed at all) and shut the door, eyeing the feline with a slowly-growing sneer. Could this cat be Suzaku's most precious thing? It seemed ridiculous, but this was Suzaku after all. Absently he reached into his coat and drew one of his signature daggers, brandishing it with a sick smile; what if he left the boy a 'present' before leaving the room? That sounded fun.
But he had hardly taken a single step when the cat darted away, and was soon lost somewhere underneath the bed.
The Knight of Ten frowned at the turn of events, before quickly realizing just how absurd all of this was. He laughed, and the emptiness of the room only served to amplify the sound - he had just seriously considered killing a cat, in the hopes that this would be the trigger to send his enemy over the edge.
His laughter soon died down to a more manageable chuckle, but his shoulders were still shaking with mirth as he finally left the bathroom. Murdering a small animal, really - that would have been a new low. After all, he was the Homicide Genius, the man who had slain countless enemies and civilians on the battlefield and whose name was whispered in fear even among the ranks of Britannian foot-soldiers. A mere house pet was just not worth his time; there was no joy or pride in it, it was simply beneath him to -
Wait.
Wait.
Wait.
The cogs and wheels in his brain turned at a frenetic pace, and his body went very, very still.
There was always something left.
It took Luciano Bradley exactly six minutes and forty-two seconds (all while he stood there with a huge grin on his face, his heart pounding in excitement) to plot just how he was going to end this little 'game' of his. And while a part of him realized he ought to be appalled at the thought of exactly what he was planning to do, he paid it no heed whatsoever.
It was the Saturday of that very same week when everything went to hell.
Suzaku made his way carefully down the metal staircase to the lowest level, balancing a tray of food in his hands. It was a bit harder today than it usually was, since he had taken the liberty of adding on a few items from the Knights' lounge - namely a butter roll, an orange, and some of the best quality Earl Grey Britannia had to offer - onto Kallen's usual fare.
When he had received the urgent summons to the Special Envoy's laboratory that morning, he was nervous. Lloyd never called for him on weekend mornings, and as such he could only assume it was because of something extremely important - his misconduct at the rooftop earlier that week immediately came to mind, and he'd been showered, dressed, and out the door in five minutes flat.
It turned out Lloyd only wanted to inform him that their team had managed to override the Guren Mk-II's security features, which meant they could finally tinker with it as much as they pleased. (The scientist had practically been dancing as he made the announcement, with Cecile smiling politely behind him.) But there were some preliminary questions about the devicer-machine interface that they needed to get out of the way before work could begin, so - (and at the point Lloyd cheerfully shoved a sheet of paper with one-line queries listed in bullet points) - would he mind having this filled out by next week? Kallen Kouzuki was his prisoner after all, he had drawled, as though this logic suddenly made everything okay.
But he was not one to refuse the older man - even if he did technically outrank him now - and so he would gamble on the presumption that asking nicely, coupled with slightly-better food, would make Kallen cooperate. Somehow he knew he was doomed to fail - he simply imagined how cooperative he would be if he'd been captured by the Black Knights and given a series of very specific questions about the Lancelot's functions, and came to the conclusion that this was a lost cause. But he was still willing to try.
He sighed, shifting most of the weight of the tray onto his forearms; his knuckles still stung a bit, and they were lightly bandaged underneath his gloves. That night at the rooftop was mostly a blur: one second, Luciano had whispered something damnably vulgar into his ear; the next, his legs were flailing empty air as Bismarck practically lifted him off the ground, while Gino did his very best to pin down his arms. He had not seen the Knight of Ten since then, and perhaps it was better that way. Anya told him that the injuries weren't life-threatening, not even remotely so, and that was good enough for him.
Suzaku pushed those thoughts out of his head as he balanced the tray on one hand and began working on the locks outside the prisoner's door. Oddly, the guard that usually manned this floor was missing today, but he dismissed it; perhaps the man was sick, or decided to take a long lunch break. Either way, Kallen was the only prisoner here, and given the sheer difficulty of getting this damned door open from the outside, she wouldn't be going anywhere anytime soon.
When the door finally yielded he nudged it open gently with his shoe. "It's me," he called out, taking a moment for his eyes to adjust to the relatively dark room once the door closed behind him. "Are you hungry?"
He didn't get the volley of insults or swear words he'd expected, and he soon saw why: for some reason, Kallen had been bound thrice more - at her knees, thighs, and elbows - and gagged. Her eyes were unusually wide when they locked onto him, and she was frantically trying to tell him something with an urgency that gave him pause.
But he caught the dagger expertly by the hilt when it came flying his way; the tip stilled inches from his face.
"Amazing!" There was the sound of muffled applause, and a voice that he had not wanted to hear so soon. "You certainly never cease to surprise me, Lord Kururugi."
Very slowly, he knelt down and set the tray onto the floor, tossing the dagger aside without a word.
"Oho. Not speaking today, are we?"
"You and I both know we have nothing to discuss," he replied tersely.
"Oh, but I think we do." Luciano finally came into view, stopping several feet away from him with a maniacal grin and several daggers held in each hand. "I've done a little bit of thinking ever since our last encounter. And I've come to realize: I do want you dead. So how about that duel?"
"Fine with me," he snarled, rising once more. Kallen didn't seem hurt in any way, which gave him a bit of relief - but it was a trifle compared to the anger that still coursed through his veins. "When and where?"
The only reply he got to that was a series of three daggers thrown in quick succession.
He didn't need the Geass to side-step each one; the crashes as they collided with the wall behind him rang clearly in the tense, cold air. And he didn't need the Geass to close the distance between them in a heartbeat, sending the other Knight hurtling toward the opposite wall with a powerful kick.
Suzaku watched impassively as Luciano slid to the floor, clutching his stomach with a strained hiss. He was tired of forcing himself to ignore the other man's antics, tired of trying to be the bigger person and tired of swallowing his pride for fear of drawing unsavory attention towards himself. And he was tired, so tired, of simply dealing with Luciano Bradley; he wanted to end this once and for all. "Get up," he said tonelessly. "I will wait."
But the Vampire of Britannia merely chuckled, shaking his head as though this were a joke and he just didn't get it.
"No, this duel is over," he stated matter-of-factly, finally looking up to meet his gaze; there was a positively evil glint in his eyes. "And I win."
It was then that he felt that first wave of dizziness; he stumbled a bit, confused and trying to make sense of what was happening. And that was when he saw the small, half-empty syringe sticking out of his shin.
"You...you coward," he murmured brokenly, clutching the side of his head and trying fruitlessly to stop the world from spinning. "You - "
"Yes, yes, well you'd put up too much of a fight otherwise, and that's just a bit more trouble than I'm willing to contend with." Luciano was laughing when he stood up, brushing the dirt off his pants and retrieving the daggers scattered on the floor nearest him with slow deliberation. "But really. Did you think that just because you want the rest of the world to fight fair, it will?"
His knees buckled and before he knew it he had to slam a hand against the floor to keep from breaking his nose. He squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head furiously, trying to fight the drug through sheer will for as long as he could.
Luciano circled him leisurely, like a vulture. "Still awake? I'm impressed. But that's all right, it's better this way." He crouched down, plucking the syringe unceremoniously from the boy's leg. "It will be so much more satisfying if you remember everything, after all."
He didn't have the time to process what exactly that meant, as immediately afterward he felt the man grab a fistful of his hair and roughly slam his head into the floor, eliciting a strangled cry.
"Question, Suzaku Kururugi!" The voice sounded muffled and hazy - *everything* did, from the rustle of cloth as the other Knight shifted above him, to Kallen's frantic wordless protests in a faraway corner, to his own heartbeat thumping in his ears as he lay face-down, his cheek cold against the concrete. "What is the thing you hold most dear? Is it your liiife?"
"That again...?" he rasped out, unable to resist as Luciano took both of his wrists and pinned his arms above his head, against the floor. He felt the telltale flash of pain in the middle of his head, behind his eyes, and for once he was grateful; giving himself in to the Geass, he waited for it to take over completely.
"You're right. We've already established that it isn't so. That means killing you would be pointless." He laughed, before continuing in a mocking tone. "Don't worry. I'm not even going to try."
(And to his dismay, he felt the Geass shutting down the moment those words were spoken, gone as fast as it came.)
"Hmmm, let's see now. Is it your precious princess then? But, wait...oh, that's right; Zero already beat me to it!"
Suzaku allowed his eyes to slide shut, letting out a ragged sigh. He considered just giving up altogether; merely staying awake took almost every ounce of strength he had, and a part of him was beginning to think the alternative - giving in to blissful unconsciousness in the presence of a man who clearly did not mean well - would not be so bad, if only for the fact that he wouldn't have to listen to this torture anymore.
But that was when he felt bare fingers sliding underneath his torso, creeping slowly across his chest and ghosting over his -
"Well then," (and the voice was close this time, so close that it didn't take long to realize Luciano was hovering inches away) "Tell me: is it your dignity?"
Suzaku's eyes snapped open. And for a brief moment, the haze of the drug was shattered as he thrashed violently, a curse on the edge of his lips. He couldn't possibly be serious, he was...this was...this was not happening!
But Luciano Bradley merely laughed at his attempts, laughed loud and long as he tightened his grip on the boy's wrists and forcefully kneeled onto each of his shins, spreading them roughly apart in the process. He wanted to scream, but the sound died in his throat when the Knight of Ten leaned in even closer, a sadistic smile on his face, and whispered menacingly in his ear:
"I think we have a winner."
Author's Notes:
Again, heartfelt thanks to everyone who left a review for Chapter 3:
MithLuin: Gino is a good friend, and he really means well. And I think you hit the nail on the head there: when bad things happen to Suzaku, his reaction is "Well, I killed my father seven/eight years ago, so this is okay." I guess by some twisted logic, he does it to protect himself, but really a thought process like that has nowhere to go except eventual self-destruction. Sigh, Angst-zaku.
Spunkay Skunk: Love the mini-alliterations at the start of your review. But yea, between these two – something's gotta give (or, more specifically, someone.)
Sam-Sam-Samedi: When Lelouch made that horrible, horrible joke, I went 'you have got to be kidding me.' It's kind of sad that the one time Lelouch tries (fails, imho) to be funny, hundreds of thousands of people end up dying. Smooth. I would have loved to add more Gino into this fic, just because he's so much fun to write, but self-imposed time constraints put a damper on that (and I suspect it might throw a monkey wrench into the binary dynamic currently going on.) The Knights probably didn't know Suzaku would send Gino and Anya away; or, if you want a slightly more disturbing interpretation, it could be that they sent Luciano to apologize right away, and he then proceeded to stalk the three until Suzaku sent Gino and Anya away. At this point Luciano's obsession has evolved into a mix of everything really, so much so that it's become unrecognizeable to himself and everyone concerned...at least, that's what I was hoping to achieve with that scene (if Suzaku had said yes, he would have been more than happy to try a hand at killing Gino) and with this entire chapter (breaking and entering = a crime, Luciano.) Perhaps the description was a bit vague, in retrospect, but I really appreciate that you noticed all these little nuances in the story.
Candelabra: That's really good to hear (and yes, "insane" is probably the best word to describe this pairing.) I'm surprised you actually like my Luciano, but I'll take that as a compliment; thanks.
review person: I appreciate it, especially the comment on the characters being IC, since I do try my best to stick as close to canon as possible. I'm also glad you find Luciano delightful as well; he got precious little screen time in R2, and even less development, so I'm happy I seem to be on the right track.
As promised, the rating has been changed to 'M.' I think at this point everyone knows what's going to happen next chapter (and, as if this pairing and premise aren't absurd enough, it's going to happen in front of Kallen.) Chapter 5 will also be the last one, and hopefully this whole fic gets tied up rather neatly by the end.
I do apologize for the sheer length of time it took to get this chapter out, though. I got a truckload of work recently, then immediately got hit by the flu as soon as I found time to breathe. So yea, the past few weeks have been pretty crazy, and slowed everything down.
Reviews, as always, are requested and will be much appreciated. Thanks for reading; I hope you enjoyed it (violence and imminent non-con and all).