Chapter 2/ end
The rain was still falling when she arrived. Her hair was drenched, her clothing soaked; her very bones felt near freezing. She couldn't help but notice the irony. He'd chosen such a sunny day to die, yet it seemed to only rain over the shrine – hard. It was as if he'd accepted their sadness and taken it with him. She didn't understand how one person could put such a burden on himself. People were selfish, weren't they? Lelouch defied everything C.C. thought a human to be. He was filled with the same desires and fears as anyone else, yet... He was more, perhaps less, but certainly beyond what she conceived as human.
She'd never seen a hero before, but Lelouch seemed to be its picture.
Either way, they're absolutely crazy, she thought, passing the heavy bag to her other hand. Only someone with some serious mental problems would have thought up such a plan. Stab him and make it look like he died? She wasn't so sure it was necessary to take things that far. They could have probably faked it well enough without having to critically injure him.
But it was Suzaku. And it was Lelouch. He wouldn't have done it if Lelouch hadn't asked him to specifically and Suzaku wouldn't have done it if he knew it would kill Lelouch – probably. Who knew the level of his devotion? He would have probably killed him for real if he so asked.
What a pair.
She padded through the shrine, old floorboards creaking underfoot. Rain water dripped through the cracks in the ceiling, making little puddles on the floor and dripping onto her hair. She flinched when a cold drop rolled down her forehead and she quickly swiped it away with the back of her hand. The shrine certainly hadn't been maintained. Every hallway felt dark and alone, devoid of life.
For a moment, her chest tightened, a cold fear sinking in that Lelouch really might not be okay when she walked into the room. She stopped, gripping the handle of the bag tightly in her hands, and took a deep breath. Lelouch had to be okay. With all his reckless heroics and dumb luck, he had to be okay.
C.C. held her head up, the bag held tight, and thrust herself finally into the room. For a second, she thought she found the wrong room until she looked down and found what she'd been looking for.
Lelouch lay cradled in Suzaku's arms, head lolled to the side, blood covering his middle and on Suzaku's hands which held loosely onto his.
"Lelouch!" She rushed to their sides, hoping, praying that he was really all right. There was so much blood, too much, and it looked like Suzaku had stupidly fallen asleep while he should have been looking after him. She sunk to her knees immediately, prying one of Lelouch's hands away. He felt warm.
She breathed a shaky sigh of relief, her hand tightening around his. "Idiot," she murmured.
"Heard that," a weak voice mumbled back, sounding half-dead.
"Good. Cuz you are." She wanted to say more, like, "Did you have any idea how worried you made me?" She cried for him, prayed for him, begged the God she hadn't spoken to in years to spare his life. If he was going to live, the least he could do was have the decency to look a little more sorry.
Suzaku seemed to be waking up slowly as well, long eyelashes fluttering against his cheeks. His emerald eyes narrowed, bloodshot, the limited light seeming to still hurt his eyes. He looked confused, like he forgot where he was, didn't expect it to still be evening when he woke up, maybe didn't even realize he had fallen asleep. He looked down when he felt Lelouch stir against him and he instinctively wrapped his arms around him, holding him closer.
"Aghhh, f- watch it, Suzaku!" Lelouch's annoyed tone took him aback and made him immediately release him. He looked down at him, eyes widening when he saw his bloodied stomach, remembering what had happened not too long before. Strangely, he felt odd. It was a little bit darker outside but what had happened felt like such a long time ago. Maybe he'd been dreaming about something, but this wasn't what he'd expected to find upon waking up.
"S-sorry," he said back quietly, placing his hands tentatively on top of Lelouch's shoulders.
C.C. observed them with a quirked eyebrow but shrugged off any of the strange vibes she got from the pair. "I brought the things," she said, reaching over to unzip the bag. "You couldn't even find any bandages for that? What kind of dumb are you?" Her words stung even more with the fact that her eyes never left the bag. She pulled out a roll of white bandages and, grabbing one of Suzaku's hands, placed it in his palm.
He looked at it with some confusion, as if she'd just handed him an orange instead or something equally strange. "You want me to...?"
Her deadpan expression gave him more than just a "yes". After apologizing nearly every time he made Lelouch move in some way and after uncomfortably getting elbowed in the gut a few times, Suzaku succeeded in wrapping it around him.
Lelouch looked down at himself with a mixture of displeasure and disgust, running his fingers lightly over the tender skin around the bandaged area. "I'm still... crusty, though." Indeed, as he said, the blood had dried and hardened on his skin already, cracking a little where his middle would bend.
C.C. gave a small 'hmph', looking somewhat amused at his bewilderment. "Get over it, little prince. There's no running water here so you'll just have to wait until you get to the village to get it off, okay?"
His head still reminding him about the amount of blood he lost, he glanced at her with his eyes half-closed. "Village? What do you mean by that?"
She spared a look at Suzaku who sighed in return, averting his eyes.
"There's a small village away from here. It's not that far, but it's... not here, at least."
"'Not that far' meaning a few towns away or 'not that far' meaning a country away?"
She stayed quiet, her hands flexing worthlessly on her thighs. Lelouch had barely been awake five minutes, let alone had enough time to gather his garbled thoughts and... this? What were they trying to do, kill him for real? She didn't say anything, but there was no doubt that she answered. If he was going to live, then he had to leave. Suzaku had seemed to imply that before, while he said things to him while he was... dying.
Being that far away meant...
He tried to turn in Suzaku's embrace, wincing slightly, blood coloring the bandages again. Reflexively, Suzaku grasped his arms and held him still, pulling him up close to wrap his arms around his small shoulders. C.C. was there but she didn't say anything, just watched quietly as he held onto him and whimpered into his back.
"You're kidding..." Lelouch muttered, his eyes wide.
Regaining his composure, Suzaku leaned back. He breathed a sigh that sounded as hollow as the one Lelouch heard before. "I'm Zero and you're dead. However..." His voice grew a little stronger and he looked up at C.C. Lelouch followed the turn of his head to look at her as well, hardly feeling ready for anymore unfortunate news.
"That doesn't mean you have to stop being Lelouch. You aren't really a prince anymore, seeing as how 'you' are dead, but you don't have to stop living."
A lot of sense that made to him right now.
After all of this, he just felt like... doing something embarrassing like curling up in a ball and screaming and crying in pain. If he really was still Lelouch, though, he supposed that wasn't an option. He sunk into Suzaku's embrace and looked up at him, feeling his head ache in that way it did when he held back tears. So many emotions were conflicting within him and begged to be let out, but he held on strongly, willing his feelings down, trying to remain calm. No matter how bad this news was, it was his reality and he knew that he had to deal with it. These were his decisions he made and this was the consequence.
At least he wasn't dead, he tried to rationalize. That was on the bright side. Everything he had set out to accomplish had been completed and everyone could live safely. His own life was more like a consolation prize. Yet somehow, considering his own life just that, a "consolation prize", like it was the second best thing made him feel awful. The mighty had truly fallen.
"Lelouch?" Suzaku spoke up quietly.
He shook his head, a wry smile nudging the corners of his lips. "I'm fine. That's how things are supposed to be now. My pride's just a little hurt, I suppose."
"Looks like more than that to me," C.C. said with cool seriousness. There was just a twinge of playfulness to her words, though, causing Lelouch to look away with reddened cheeks.
"I-It's nothing like... that."
Cluelessly, Suzaku looked between the two. As if a lightbulb had gone off in his head, his mouth fell open with an "oh!" and promptly laughed shamelessly. Lelouch felt his own embarrassment mounting and he smacked Suzaku's arm as best as he could from his position in his lap. "You didn't know?" he asked her, grinning like a fool.
"I had my suspicions. Lelouch sure has a lot of pride alright if he's talking about that." She considered her words and then snerked. "My, that came out wrong."
"I-I'm still dying here, you know!"
"Aw, it's okay! I support you two! I'll make sure you have lots of opportunities to meet each other, alright?"
Lelouch was left with no choice but to stew furiously in his embarrassment while C.C. and Suzaku went on about their apparently "torrid love", pretending as if he wasn't even there. At least they seemed to think he was recovering well enough to ignore him like that. He was feeling slightly better, though. He didn't really feel like he was right on the edge anymore – just really, really tired. Hearing the two of them talk so cheerfully like that between each other made him feel a little more at ease, too. It had been a while since he heard anybody sounding so genuinely happy.
They'd just got done discussing something that made him feel terrible, and suddenly the same conversation had turned into something not so bad. Things would be different; maybe more different than he would have preferred, but it seemed as if all the decisions were finally out of his hands. He wouldn't be the one making the choices anymore. In a way, that didn't sound too bad. If it meant there'd be no more blame on him, no more guilt, then that was alright. Being away from Suzaku, though – not to mention Nunnally – that was a thought he just tried not to think about anymore.
These were his consequences and if they spared Nunnally and everyone else just a little bit of peace and happiness, then he would bear them with dignity.
"Suzaku," he said, interrupting his friends' exhaustingly energetic chatter, "take care of her."
The mood dropped, as if the rain itself reminded them it was still falling. Suzaku bit down on his lip, but nodded his silent assent. "Yeah."
Abandoning shame, Suzaku tipped Lelouch's chin back and pressed their lips together in an awkward kiss. 'Parting is such sweet sorrow', as it goes, and this was really no exception. Lelouch covered the palm on his cheek with his own and held on firmly, a part of him still not willing to let him go.
"I'll be... going with you," C.C. said, trying not to interrupt such a moment, but still desperate to make it less awkward for herself.
Lelouch smiled at her as warmly as he could with eyelids that refused to properly remain open any longer. "Thank you." Every limb feeling weak, he relaxed again into Suzaku's arms one last time and smiled up at him. "Both of you."
As the young ex-prince slowly faded back into a well-deserved sleep, Suzaku leaned down to his ear to whisper softly.
"Zero will be watching you, too."
The official end, I guess. I held on to this part for a really long time and just never felt like updating it until now. Hope it's alright.
