Title: And in blood

AN: I had six hours to write in in-school detention. Six. (I mean, I like getting this out of the way just as much as anyone else, but I have to damn the education system for making me sit that long. D: It wouldn't be fair otherwise.)

Also, I hope this chapter's not too depressing . . . (Er, yeah, I totally lied about that 'might' last time. l:( )

Light clawed through heavy leaves and sent sun streaking broken earth, trees left to shudder as the sea breeze stroked their bark. Lelouch eased his way into the beating heart of the island, still hiding in the skin of soldier—a gray uniform with honors that was heavy on his bones, and taken from a defect who sold them his loyalty to Britannia—while the horizon painted his eyes in swathes of blue and fresh green. C.C. was his ghost, a shadow of a woman tracing his footsteps with an empty expression and clothed in a stewardess' regalia. Their vessel was a corpse swallowed by the mouth of the Pacific sea; she had maneuvered it further after sending Lelouch off in a lifeboat, and, as flame rolled through a web of hallways, plunged into the ocean. She swam the length her boat traveled and arrived about four hours behind schedule, but there was simply nothing he could do in that regard.

When she crawled onto the shore and stretched, C.C. said nothing until he sneered that she was late. There was a silence that permeated, sinking into the air, and she muttered a blunt "I drowned once or twice" before his stomach turned. Immortality made her a vital asset—she was not bound by death, and so he sent her on suicide missions; the kind that needed a success, but not a sacrifice—but Lelouch was a man still trapped in the palms of the Reaper. He was not cruel, and he preferred to ignore that he had sent her to hell and back for his sake regardless of C.C.'s apathy. He lived for Nunally's sake, and, watching her move fluid as water—separating and reappearing below the light, yet whole—his thoughts were eerie: C.C. had long since died a thousand deaths, but there she was. Alive and healed, even though her lungs had taken in water and then pushed it out as she choked on air. Normal physical limitations were myths to her. Could she be separated into pieces? Did her limbs regrow afterward?

It was morbid, and he wondered what exactly C.C. was. It was twisted to imagine something that existed beyond evolution; a creature not built for the past, the present, nor the future. Simply alive, for eternity. Lelouch had made attempts to force her into considering becoming a test subject for Chawla—medicine would be pushed forward ten fold if they could recreate her cells, but she had refused, and the computer screens buzzed to black when he had a physical administered against her will.

"There is only one other like me in the world," it hissed like the clock ticking, "And that cannot be remade. Only idiots can't understand that." Lelouch had been insulted in front of his subordinates—made into a fool—and locked her away in his room to lick his wounds. She was unashamed of the hatred laughing at the Knight's hero wrought, and far too old to worry about the opinions of others who were doomed to die while she stayed young. He understood that she kept all her knowledge silent because that made her invaluable, and Lelouch needed nothing and no one that was replaceable. But damn her running mouth; she was too arrogant, completely disregarded the importance of structure!

On his worse days, he isolated her from the world—from his plans, his life—because she was abnormal and a manipulator. She attracted attention with her quiet stare and secret, double-faced ambitions, and Lelouch had always been the liar when it came down to it. But C.C., he mused, was the lie itself; her lives were multiple, and he was unable to pry them apart. There was a child who wore her face once, but he had seen a million others inside her head. Perhaps even, and the thought chilled his blood, his own when it was young and wide-eyed.

"Are you thinking about it?" Her eyes were knowing—a twisted, alien gold alive in the cover of shadow, "I have died many times, and in more ways then someone like you can imagine, probably."

"A human body should suffer severe brain damage from asphyxia," his statement was blunt, "Yet, you are . . ."

"Not human? That's one way to put it," she finished coolly, with something ugly creeping in her smile.

"Were you," he was careful to keep it unemotional; blank. Lelouch may have feared death and death alone, but he would never voice an obsession, "in pain when you passed on?"

"Not from that," C.C.'s answer was dry, "There are worse ways to die, Lelouch."

"How parasitic," he muttered darkly, and she watched—studied as he slipped into the undergrowth, "V.V. appears to echo your. . . conditions."

It came slow, trickled from her open mouth in careful syllables, ". . . Are you curious?"

"Curious?" Lelouch parroted stiffly, feeling his head reel at the thought of her ripping into his pride. She learned he was just as human as the next man when they first met in the ruins of the ghetto, and he had spent years hiding from his own weakness. Anyone who can die can also tremble before the end; finality was the true nature of fear, and that was why the Geass was buried in his eye. Angry, Lelouch realized that he needed it back, or he was just another pathetic lamb headed for the slaughter.

"Would you," the gold was waltzing with amber, and it blazed, "become immortal?"

His answer was silence, "There is no merit as of now, C.C. I do not need the protection of immortality."

It drifted back to indifference, "Hmm . . ."

Lelouch tried to choke it down, but the words tore from his throat, "Although I may consider it under certain circumstances, given my intentions. If it was for Nunally's new world . . . "

"He is as devious as he looks! 'Those who shoot are ready to be shot,' eh," C.C.'s passion was gone, and she turned toward the sea and murmured as though she were talking to air, ". . . Hm. Well, maybe. Lelouch. Is it because living forever is something no ordinary man can have?"

His glare burned into her before he snarled a furious, "I will excuse your insinuations. Exactly how long have you—"

C.C. sneered a callous and unforgiving, "Asking nicely will not weasel information out of me. I expected you to know better by now."

Rage took hold of his heart and he snapped his mouth close, biting down on retorts bubbling up from the darker pits of his brain. There was no point in throwing insults at C.C.—she was the immovable object and the irresistible force personified. He twisted on his heel and dug heavy, steel-toed boots into mud as he trudged up the path cutting through the dunes. Legs aching in protest, he scoffed at empty patches of concrete where buildings stood, burned by the government to rid themselves of evidence.

"I expected as much. C.C. We—" He was shocked as she wiped tears from blank eyes with her mouth drawn into a frown, "Why are you crying?!"

". . . You were saying?" It was empty and deadpan.

Lelouch was quiet before he force-fed a cold, ". . . We are going to return to the excavation site."

"Without your Geass?" C.C. returned easily to her regular detachment. Perhaps, he thought bitterly, because she had never left it all, "What if there are soldiers?"

"Britannia has been stretched thin fighting off resistance by the Black Knights and their copy-cats," Lelouch was casual as he swept past her, "I doubt they have much interest in Clovis' pet projects. If this is indeed backed by the monarchy, stationing troops in such an isolated location would draw unnecessary attention to their cult."

They descended and he tugged the cellphone free as midday settled into the world. 'Tch. Already past two.' The sun hung in the sky while the sea cooed serenades to the earth, little more than an ink spill of blue-green waving in the gaps of thick trees; completely changed since he had last wandered its wild spin of tropical plants and white splays of sand.

She flared behind his eyes, that familiar, brilliant smile and those thulian pink ringlets rippling down her spine: 'Euphemia.' What felt likeso long ago, it was her at his side, rambling of the nobility and in tears as she whispered she was happy he and Nunally were safe. It was the faint brush of honeysuckle and lilac, gentle curves that blossomed in adolescence, and the rebirth of childhoods that die in the womb.

Roses had bloomed, opened to him, and shriveled in the sun as their Eden trembled and collapsed; a bloody rose for a bloody revolution, a bloody martyrdom. Their buds do not, could not grow over graves—a common belief of the Catholic faith and their mother was a religious woman, that much he remembered. Euphemia was the pariah of Britannia to the Japanese, but it was her that fostered their rebellion, and shattered its tentative, weak supports when she offered her hand and her unity. They clamored for freedom because of his Geass order, his Massacre Princess, his crude satire of guilt and blame.

She was his first love, but never his Guinevere, Eurydice, Josephine. He had been too young to be Adam in the garden all those years ago, and Euphemia was the rose—nothing else. She was a stranger built of expectations when they met again, and he acknowledged that he must accept that or he would never be able to force himself forward. Lelouch could not cling to the past because that was all there was of Euphemia and the dead corpse of the Eleventh Prince. That golden era ended; changed when he left behind his father. It was fate the moment the gun, cold and heavy, felt like home in his hands against Clovis' forehead. She was as much a potential murder as any other prince or princess who conspired against Nunally's future.

Lelouch had no right to guilt. No right to beg for her forgiveness from heaven or hell or wherever God sent his innocents. He was not Suzaku with his altruism and beliefs in the autonomy of living creatures and an absolute claim to life; Lelouch had killed many in cold blood, and they were all his sacrifices, his saints that were sent to early graves. Euphemia echoed Shirley's father, the soldier with a family waiting for him, or the children playing in the gorge below Narita's mountainside that were too naïve to see their own deaths creeping in the crags. The Geass was not his choice, but once he asserted that she had brought about their genocide he remade himself as a monster; it was for the greater good, the best possible option in the worst possible world. Pleading with a ghost was spitting on the ones who loved her. Lelouch was walking hell's rose path—knee deep in carnage, but that would not fracture his resolve. Crying was never worth a tear.

'It's in the past,' he reminded himself, and his memories were films where the bullet barreled through her chest and tore the skin before exiting. It took hours of those suffocating thoughts before they reached the crumbling body of the shrine and Lelouch stumbled back inside, drowned in sensation—the reminders of Nunally's kidnapping, and of that fear tingling up his numb arms. Suzaku's blood had dulled to a rust stain; sank into the stone as tribute.

"C.C.," he was stiff, and she twirled the flashlight in her hands, "Use this as directed." Lelouch sifted through his pockets and brushed the cold plastic of a camera before he eased it into the stale air.

She arched an eyebrow as he fiddled with the lens cap, "My, a photographer, eh . . . What could he be taking pictures of."

"Please, C.C.,try not to be irrelevant," Lelouch ran careful fingers over hieroglyphs, gently digging into the rock, "The foundation seems to be stronger than expected. It is in good condition, given its age—surprising."

Something in him was left unnerved after Nunally was safely hidden behind the blankets in her bedroom. The architecture showed no Japanese-Korean influence, primarily built of stone and with something truly Grecian about its rows of stairwells and towering pillars. Its structure was far too old to belong to a recently established order, yet traces of the cult survived in the sigil drawn across the doorways shadowing the northernmost wall—he assumed that it was a revival of some undocumented, obscure religion, but it seemed there were elements of ancient Vedic Sanskrit and Latin in the language. That would imply massive migration, as Kaminejima had no natural land bridges, and, based on his investigation, there were no records of permanent civilizations excavated by Britannia in recent years. And that thing lying in wait at the end of that staircase to eternity, suspended and defying all laws of physics—eluding the entire nature of reality!

'Multiple languages. . . The Tower of Babel, eh . . .' Yet that was surely myth; it was impossible to hide the existence of an entire culture from the media's limelight. A haze of white stalked after his hands as C.C. followed, restless and wary of his intentions. 'Damn, if only I hadn't been so quick to kill that idiot Clovi—! Inanna's eight pointed star? That is . . . '

"This is a very strange detour," she muttered, tearing herself away from him and leaving Lelouch to drown in a sea of black.

"What are you doing!" It was bitter as acid, and he bolted to his feet.

C.C. turned the light to her face, casting a shadow across her pale skin, ". . . Looking."

Massaging his throbbing temples, Lelouch mumbled a broken, ". . . Do you take nothing seriously . . . "

- - -

A tomb jutted from the earth, its statue draped in chiseled robes and made like an angel as it mourned the fallen lying under its feet. Bluebells wept over alabaster and marble, painting it a deep navy before white bursts of camellia and lilac melted into the warm greens of Japanese Pendula. He heard a fountain sing elegies as water trickled into its pool, the chorus swelling and surging in a gentle croon. Gravel hissed when he walked, and Suzaku felt a lonely weight clinging to his shoulders and gripping at his heart in a world where it was unbearably empty but had too many bodies.

Euphemia was removed by her personal guard after Schneizel sent troops to quell the disaster that was the SAZ, and then buried at the Princess' request. The council refused to inearth her charred remains in Pendragon's royal graveyard to avoid association with a—with Euphie, but Cornelia gave her a grave site at the Viceroy's palace. Her funeral was private, limited to the imperials that came to weep over her headstone, and Suzaku was grateful they had the decency to force out a media that would grin at news of her caricature of genocide.

The inscription was a curvy loop of thick calligraphy blooming across the face, and he was paying tribute to a hollow part of himself as he read it.

'One threatens the innocent who spares the guilty.'

Euphemia li Britannia died at sixteen—had the life wrenched from her weeks before her birthday, and days after she smiled beautifully, was wonderful and rosy and alive, and murmured that she was glad to see his shrine. That it brought the two of them closer—let her share the world he was too afraid to voice, the pain that was so deep and so raw that death was a blessing. She had not graduated; had said no farewells; had been nestled in his arms while he was sobbing over her limp body as the room was peaceful and Japan collapsed beyond the protection of the window glass.

Suzaku could only manage a shattered and weak, '. . . Euphie, it isn't fair.' She was young, brave, kind, and simply amazing from his place of false smiles and fatalism, where there was nothing but the destiny he created for himself. Euphemia could have chosen anyone, whereas he was doomed to solitude and the end. When she danced through the rose bushes in her gardens, she careened on her axis and took the entirety of the world with her until it was a spin of colors and things that might have been, but were not—moved fluid as red petals tangled in the wind, guiltless and free wherever they fell.

Shuddering, he dropped to one knee and knew that everything he had of her now were memories, lies, and that headstone. His fingers curled around the watch weighing against his pocket and he was gentle as he dangled it above the dirt, its sterling silver gleaming under the sunlight. With a melodramatic flourish, Lloyd had returned it to him and waxed that the soldiers and coroners had no use for it. He could recall how it felt in his hands, heavy and nostalgic of the days it hung at his father's hip when he was not a corpse—and, back pressed against the walls in the hallway, Suzaku cried because it was worthless, yet there was nothing more important to him. It ticked, a metallic echo bounding off steel, while the hand whirled a thousand revolutions per minute in a reality where there was no Euphemia anymore; where he had no home, no family, no sympathy, and no faith in himself.

Disgusted, Suzaku could only string together thoughts of, 'if she was here, what would I say?' Would he force that same smile he wore when he choked out lies and tell her how he worked himself to death at school because it would have made her happy? That he loved her so much, and then whisper, low and broken, how he would never have let her go that day. That he would have begged them to him follow her keep Lelouch from—from being that monster he became. That their friendship culminated when they separated and the car slipped away into the skeleton that was his country. Would she abhor that he chose to shoot because they deserved it for glorifying something so wicked, and she was his reason for rushing headlong into battle? That he had killed willingly and in blind rage.

Suzaku had tried, tried so damn hard to be a good person; to be open and see everyone as human even when they beat him into the dirt with their prejudice and rhetoric. The future was capturing air in his world then, because he needed to be redeemed for everything he had selfishly inflicted on his Japan. If he was thinking about it, then it was in passing—foolish, two-faced ephemerals like, "will it rain? If it does, I should take the bus, but where to get change?"—as he waited for the bullet to tear him in half.

Taking the bus always meant sitting in the back or getting out of the way. In his worst moments, there were lulls of indulgence where he realized he preferred the smoke of the gun, but Suzaku Kururugi was a number, an officer, and not paid to think.

That was what he was told at fifteen in a line of others who put a price on their lives. Being a soldier did not translate into being a martyr, but he had been young enough to believe it in the days when he was uncorrupted and vulnerable. It was a stupid thing to remember—like mood rings and how his was easy green; the haunting, forbidden glint of swords before they were weapons; the dining hall his father never used. How he would walk down the roads of Shinjuku's heart and listen to the construction outside of Ashford while the city breathed alongside him. People remember the stupid things and he wanted to know more of her, but he had only death to cling to—no matter how he struggled, it was trauma that was burned into his mind and he wanted to have something, anything that did not eventually shrivel and die.

He had really, genuinely loved him. Felt lonely when he meandered the cobblestone path outside their threshold and Lelouch broke his promise to meet him and walk together in the morning. It had been seven years of separation, and he remembered that stiff, discriminating face that sneered at canned food and whined about dirt stains. A quiet, buried part of him wondered what they had done while he was gone: had they been happy, lived good lives? Been given the protection of normalcy while he was stranded on the streets? Had Lelouch cycled through best friends—was he another face now, forgotten and condemned to melt with the crowd? When they found each other, he was elated since they could rebuild their childhood world of three, and it was draining to argue in that empty student council room. He would wait until night seeped over a jagged skyline before smiling and apologizing because Lelouch did not think he was listening. Mutter that he did not necessarily agree, but that was fine because they understood one another; could simply overlook differences in opinion, although that was never Lelouch's way.

Suzaku gritted his teeth and knew that he had not cared about the nature of his arguments—could only pretend that he did not think him an idiot who could never manage the right answer. Or even his own answer. Lelouch always laughed that it was his right to lead and others to follow, after all.

Sitting there with his knees wet with dew, Suzaku did not believe he was stupid, and he did not believe he was wrong. No one deserved to die violently for wars they never committed to, for souls and sadists who stole them from their safe-heavens. It was simply cruel how he could involve civilians in his fight and go on to hide behind pretense and body bags. When they were children, all wide-eyed and surprised at how far the horizon stretched before it met infinity, they painted the world for themselves. Made colors of truth and blind faith to run into their background, and were full of a potential that could have created something superb rather than a black, muddy canvas. Yet they were no longer young, and Suzaku was burying the Lelouch he knew and Euphemia—two loves who died far too early.

Suzaku was gentle as he rested it delicately on her tombstone and felt the burn of tears behind his closed eyelids. He had not understood love when he met her; being ashamed, afraid, and secretive left him alienated and alone in a world of thousands. He had known only his relatives and their outrage at his patricide—always felt he was rejected long before he was acquainted. Euphemia said she loved him, and it made him sick that there was a private, desolate ghost inside him that doubted her. A fragment that remembered blood and shame so well it did not trust anything else. Love was a fickle, self-serving passion, and it was harder to understand her because he continued to ache with feeling and she was gone. Suzaku had lost before, but not like this, when he had been so cut off and lonely and she had loved him.

"You should be less reckless," she chided, jittery as he pulled gloves over scars from days he stumbled and caught the blade instead of the hilt,"because it would be terrible if anything happened to you . . ." He was oblivious to her concern since she was careful with that smile she hid behind—Euphemia had been afraid for him and it felt removed, distant. Suzaku lost all claims to normality when he was disowned by a family who wanted nothing to do with the instigator of their fallen legacy, and he lived in chaos; there was no meaning to caution when he could die, when tomorrow was not guaranteed because he had nowhere to live. He never wanted to frighten her, but sacrifice was the only thing he had left to give to the world.

He despised Lelouch and his lies these days, but he could still value his sophistries when they meant something, and he could think of one—a conversation after they both scrambled into the devil's den that was Mao's cathedral and he had been exposed for everything he was, but wished he had never been.

"Suzaku."

"Huh? What?"

"A sacrifice done without recognition or meaning is worthless. Your dying will not change the fate of the Japan we know now."

"Lelouch . . ."

"It is arrogant to assume that one life somehow rivals that of thousands. Therefore, you should continue living in the name of those who have died, provided you are devoted to your atonement."

". . ."

"I will not claim to relate to what you experienced in those seven years we were apart—"

"You are the kind of guy who hates to talk about the past . . ."

"—but I believe you will reconsider such propitiation. That is cowardice, and . . . contrary to what you are. Death is too permanent a factor, and we are too young to be such cynical adults—thus, if you cannot live for your sake, then choose the world's. Work towards a goal that can benefit your people's nation. All of it, Suzaku."

That Geass continued to lie dormant inside his skull, and he could not cling to sacrifice to protect himself from reality. Irregardless, he did not want to endure only through Lelouch's orders; only because survival had been demanded of him. Suzaku wanted to choose how he died and how he lived.

Shivering on her deathbed, Euphemia cooed that she wanted the two of them to be together, and they could be. She promised to change the world to something kinder, and he would carve that path for her if no one else rose to the challenge. Suzaku had always been an observer, simply watched Euphemia strive towards her peaceful world, but that was disregard. He would create it with his own hands now, even if it implied he had to change himself to accomplish that goal. Even if he had to kill Lelouch to make it possible.

That was his oath, his creed, his motivation in a world where he had to stay alive, and he wanted that watch to stay as a memento. It was all that was truly his and, if his memories were a part of her, she would have a part of him to keep. Suzaku felt the sting of slick, hot tears as he choked out a simple "I love you" and tensed when the teeth of steel gauntlets gnawed into his shoulder.

"Sol—Suzaku Kururugi," Cornelia's voice was severe and controlled, but her shaking fingers betrayed her, "Get up. The time for tears is over."

AN: Damn, Suzaku has motivation?! Maybe he can finally stop digging his own grave! (Ha, yeah right. I'll believe that when I see it.) Hmm, I hope this chapter was on par, guys. D: And it is true that red roses represent martyrdom, and 'Euphemia' actually was taken from a martyr. In history. (Screw you namesake. )': You killed my OTP in the womb.)

. . . Ah, and thanks for reading, as usual! (And, for people with slash-glasses, I intended for Suzaku's mentions of 'love' to be platonic, but hey. Think of it however you want.)