Special Thanks: Eien-Kiseki, kpopmaniac615, Lazy Gaga, Lovegranted, luckless-is-me

Time

Part XIV

1/18/2012 10:56 AM

It took a while before Lelouch stopped clenching his arms around Suzaku's neck as they would sleep at night. It took longer for him to not follow in Suzaku's footsteps throughout the house, trailing behind right along with the dog—though Lelouch tried to be a bit more discrete about it. He was still watched at the windows though. Lelouch still stood at the wide French doors leading onto the back porch watching Suzaku as he went about taking care of their yard and the garden. The hairs on the back of his neck stood straight on end the night Suzaku mentioned that it was probably a good time to re-shingle the roof. Suzaku had hastily corrected and told Lelouch that it could probably just wait till summer.

Lelouch couldn't stop watching though. He stood at the front porch as Suzaku stepped off the steps in his steel-toed boots ready for the day. The sun hadn't even risen. Lelouch was never awake at that time in the morning. The days were getting shorter. The cool breeze reminding them both that winter was on the way whether they liked it or not. Even when Lelouch was emperor he'd slept till at the least eight thirty—most of the time nine. So with an ample amount of coffee in his hand he watched Suzaku go through the gate before climbing into the work truck he'd had for the past few years and leave for the day.

Positively domestic, Lelouch went back into the house to start on his own work. A small newspaper paid him a bit for a five hundred word article once a week. The topics were usually opinion based and in such a small community tended to be on the farmers market or the rising prices of copper. It was things that concerned people that lived on crops they grew and on material they used for production. It was small town America. Lelouch started his laptop up and sat down at the couch. It kept his mind running as he typed away.

Occupying himself became priority as he went about his days without Suzaku.

Monday: He finished his article for that week. Proofread, proofread again, and sent it out.

Tuesday: The house was cleaned, top to bottom, even organized his and Suzaku's dresser.

Wednesday: The deep cleaning took place. Lelouch cleaned the windows. He even managed to push the fridge out, cleaning behind it. He even washed the filthy pillow the dog used.

Thursday: Organization. And Lelouch was thrown to a screeching halt.

The attic had been ignored by Suzaku and Lelouch for a reason. It wasn't the creaking old boards of the floor and it wasn't the collecting cobwebs or even the mounds of things that had been left in the house. It was what they had stashed up there. What the two of them had thrown up there in hopes of forgetting.

Even in Lelouch's need to think of nothing but the task at hand he avoided it like the plague. It wasn't much, just a small box, a bit bigger than an average shoe box. The box had been in the same spot that it had taken up the day they had moved in and since then only activity it has gotten was the layering of dust over its top.

The prior house owners had left in an awful hurry, and left most of their old rotting things behind in the old rotting house. It had been a hasty run from an eviction notice and the house was back on the market before the night was over, dirt cheap and all inclusive. Suzaku had of course fallen in love with the tall gabled house, and dragged Lelouch right along as he'd plunged head first into the idea of rebuilding. It hadn't been just a fixer upper—it had been a complete reconstruction. Lelouch had wondered if it had been an heirloom of sorts for the former family. There had been things dating all the way back to the 1800 hundreds within the house. It even seemed that the family in possession of the house had been nobles within the empire at one time or at least one of the men had been a knight judging from a photo they had found.

Most to the things were beyond repair and had been tossed from the house, given away to neighbors or taken to the Salvation Army. But it was the things like the old faded photo of the young knight or a set of pearls, a hope chest more than a hundred years old that they didn't have the heart to toss out. They were remnants of an entire line that had just been left, trashed and forgotten about and Suzaku especially hadn't had the heart to do anything but leave the things in the house. So instead of getting rid of it all, they had crammed it in the attic, where nothing but time could touch it—age it just a little more.

But now with nothing left in the house that needed to be attended too Lelouch was left with the attic. He stood at the edge of the hatch he'd come up from to look over all the things that hadn't been touched in years. A broom was in on hand and a box for putting things in was in the other. One box was what he told himself. One cardboard box was all he'd collect this time and take to a neighbor or the Salvation Army. It wasn't even their things, and it needed to be parted with if they ever planned to actually turn the attic into a comfortable loft like they had always talked about.

Unfortunately, Lelouch didn't make it very far into the room, as he stepped away from the hatch door a whirl of dust and dirt, undisturbed for years had sprung up in a whirling fog, Lelouch sneezed, trying to shake off the need to do so a second time and stepped to the side. His hip hit a small table, and on that table a box had been knocked to the ground.

Heavy with all the things it held, it spilt open at the lid, photos, a yearbook, and several other trinkets knocking as they all splayed across the ground, like the scattering of sand if one were to break open an hourglass.

Lelouch hadn't meant to look down but he found himself doing so, faced with memories and a life he and Suzaku had long since forsaken. But his breath hitched as he saw them. Both were together, the broken face of the pocket watch gleamed in what little light there was left in the room and under that watch was—Shirley.

The photo had been taken just before Lelouch had lost his memory. Shirley in all her cute beauty was smiling up at him. Long tresses of ginger hair in a swirl around her as she stood tall in her school uniform.

And the photo was horrid to Lelouch, an awful reminder. Not of what awful thing he had caused, but of what had happened, what had gone wrong, of the one moment in his life when—his Geass had failed. Shirley had died, and no matter how many commands Lelouch had given for her to live, she had still died.

His eyes widened as he looked down at it for a moment, his body almost feeling as if he would drop—and then he ran. Careening through the attic he left the mess and dropped the box and the broom back down the hatch and quickly followed, firmly pulling the trap door shut as he went. The rumble as the door slammed shut disturbed nothing in the room, kicking up a more dust, but nothing changed. Shirley's smile, long dead, still looked up under the still, damaged, and broken pocket watch.

Two weeks in a row for once! Can anyone say Whoot?

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