"Thankful as I am that you haven't already done that multi-hit-combo thing to me again," Suzaku Kururugi grimaced at the memory of that particular ass-whupping; he'd let it happen, sure, and had most definitely deserved it, but none of that meant he enjoyed it a whit, as contrary to what some might believe, he wasn't a masochist in that way, "Why, uh... why're you here, Kallen?"
The redhead in question snorted in a manner that, despite her physical appearance of a nine-year-old girl, left little doubt that it was a grown woman in control of the body. A grown woman who had seen and done a lot of shit in her lifetime and had no patience for foolishness... Which he guessed she considered to be the definition of his existence. "To make certain that where we stand is unmistakably clear, Suzaku," she said plainly, "namely that I don't like you, and if events somehow conspire to follow the same general path as before, I will firebomb your swearing-in as an Honorary Britannian and damn the collateral damage, but since they most likely won't I want us to agree on a nonaggression pact. You keep clear of my life, and I'll leave you to live yours."
He couldn't even bring himself to bat an eye at her statement. Her naked hostility was intimidating, but she was a child rather than a grown woman in any of the Guren models; the worst that could happen at that moment was them beating the shit out of each other. The guards one might expect to surround the Prime Minister's son were absent due to being too disturbed to continue their duties; the common thread seemed to be that those without prior experience with Geass and all the... weirdness it entailed had the hardest time adjusting, while those like himself or Kallen who had been directly exposed had a high enough tolerance for paranormal bullshit to just roll with everything. Suzaku sighed, taking a deep draught of the tea they'd decided to have this talk over, the atmosphere eerie for the appearance of two children having a tense and mature meeting like adults. Since they were both soldiers and repeat nemeses in a bloody and brutal war in the original timeline, that was to be expected. Honestly, this offer was the best he could have hoped for; it was what he had hoped for from basically everyone involved with Lelouch in the Black Knights, even if he would greatly prefer to be friends and collaborate with them all for a better future he could understand people not being fully able to put the... "past future?" ...The original timeline behind them.
"Are you going to try and get in touch with Lelouch soon?" He asked, putting his response to her offer to the side for a moment. He'd accept regardless, if only because having Kallen gunning for him for the foreseeable future would be hazardous to his health regardless of circumstance, but if she managed to team up with the Eleventh Prince he was quite up shit's creek without a paddle.
"Try, yes. Succeed, maybe. He probably knows I'm going to slap him back into the first round so he might put me on hold." She grumbled the last, folding her arms and grumping in a manner that was more fitting her childish appearance clad in a girlish and modestly decorated dress. "If he does let me in, our agreement would extend to you steering clear of him unless Lelouch comes to you. I don't know if he will or not; maybe he'll be crazy enough to forgive you, maybe he'll send me to take your head in a few years, maybe he'll just wipe Japan off his personal map and wash his hands of the whole ordeal."
"I'd bet on option three, or something like it... I was with him in the moments just before the... what're we calling it, the reset? Rewind? Just before everyone got sent back. He just looked... fed up. Everything had gone to hell for him, and he just wanted it all to be over. Add to that what we learned leading up to the end, and it's anyone's guess what he'll do now, but there's a significant possibility that it involves a lot of nihilistic chaosmongering for his own amusement."
Kallen blinked owlishly at his analysis and deductions, then peered suspiciously at him. "Since when did you get so damn clever?"
"Look, I know you don't agree with my methodology but I'm not a complete simpleton. That'd be demeaning to both myself and to you, mind, since last I counted you hadn't beaten me once in a Knightmare engagement."
Blinking the sudden-onset stars from his vision, Suzaku looked up at the face of a vengeful Crimson Lotus after she'd leapt across tea to drop-kick him square in the face. "Bad idea, Kururugi." She snarled, and he deliberately stayed limp to avoid provoking her further. There really was zero (heh) point to fighting this battle right now.
"Lesson learned," he said instead, "And I'll accept that deal."
Lelouch stared down at the phone in his hands. There were a lot of calls he had to make, and it was hard to figure out just who to contact first. He would start with that verdette witch, but he didn't have any way to get in touch with C.C.—directly anyway, he'd need the help of his mother or the Emperor for that. He could try directly contacting the Stadtfelds, but that would raise a lot more questions than he had the energy to mastermind his way through at that moment; he could contact Milly, but there wasn't anything that needed to be said between them. Wait, no, there was; he was Zero and it would be far simpler to tell her himself than to let her feel smug about sussing it out herself. Really, though, the person who most deserved a direct call from him that he could also most easily justify making that call to was...
After punching in the number, he put the phone to his ear and sat back at the small desk in his room to wait. Well, "small" relative to Imperial Family standards; it still easily dwarfed anything he'd had at Ashford, being closer to a personal bureau than a mere desk. The line rang, and rang, and rang, and just before it would ordinarily go to voicemail it finally clicked and sent a chipper voice through to his ears.
"Hello?" A girl said, and his heart seized in his chest for a very long second. There wasn't really any way to prepare one's self for speaking to a beloved half-sister you'd been forced to kill to save her from an errant brain-washing into genocidal tendencies. God, if the future couldn't be changed, he'd just shoot himself on the completion of the SAZ to ensure that the Massacre Princess never came to be...
"Hel-lo~?" His little sister said again, and Lelouch finally registered the sound of keening, hysterically emotional wails in the background. Ah, Cornelia; never change.
"Euphie?" He choked out, dozens of emotions raging within him and sapping his voice of the confidence and surety it usually held.
"... Lelouch? Is that you?" The Princess said curiously, "What's going on? Sister's been having a fit for hours and it sounds like you're on the verge of one, too... Did something happen with Lady Marianne?"
"N-no, no, that's... that's not it at all, just..." He sniffled and wiped unbidden tears from his cheeks, a watery grin plastered across his face as he held a conversation he would never have expected to have. It was almost enough in itself to convince him that his parent's hair-brained scheme wasn't a total waste. "... I'll explain to you later, if Nelly doesn't first. Can... can you put her on the line for me?"
"Huh? Come on, Lelou, tell me what's going on!" He could clearly envision the adorable pout she must be putting on, it was a reflex she'd seemingly been born with. The unrepentant bawling in the background stopped sharply, and Lelouch's sense of impending doom experienced a sharp uptick in factors negatively impacting his life expectancy. "Sister?" Euphie said on the other end, "... Yes, it's Lelouch. No, I don't know, he wants to talk to you... Fiiiiiine, but someone's going to tell me what's happened once you're done!"
The Eleventh Prince gingerly held the phone away from his ear, just in case, as he heard the shuffling sounds of the device on the other end changing hands. The eruptive tirade of death threats and epithets that he'd expected, however, wasn't forthcoming. Instead there was just a quiet, disturbingly mousy "Yes?" that had him blinking owlishly at the offending device. Evidently, Cornelia had been thrown off her game pretty severely, if this was all the fire and fury she could manifest, but better not to tempt fate by giving her time to whip up her old wrath again.
"I'll be at the Aeries Villa whenever you decide it's time." He sighed simply. He placed good odds on Cornelia not wanting to kill or permanently disfigure him, not with both her darling little sister alive and well again and her idol Marianne back in the flesh, but it would be idiocy to expect nothing to come from her for all the grief Lelouch had caused her as Zero. "You know, extract your revenge for everything. For what it's all worth, Nelly... I'm sorry." Damn it, why was he still crying? Was this just going to be a day of everyone everywhere crying all the damn time? ... Stupid question. "I am. I... nothing that happened to Euphie was supposed to. Just—"
"—You're forgiven, Lelouch." What. "What happened hasn't yet." Okay, true, but what. "Euphie's back with us, and if you mean what you say she'll stay that way... right?" Ah, there it was; the unyielding iron of the Witch of Britannia in full force. Never change, Cornelia.
"I'd honestly shoot myself before letting... that happen again." He said unsteadily, "Just..."
"What do you mean I'm 'back with you?' Come on, sister, tell me what's going on!"
Cornelia sighed on the other end, and Lelouch grinned at the familiar sound of long suffering. He never thought he'd be so happy to hear that loving exasperation again. "It was good of you to call, Lelouch, but I'll be hanging up now. We'll drop by the Villa later, no vengeance required."
"... Okay. Love you, Nellie."
The indulgent chuckle on the other end was like music to his ears. "Love you, too, little brother."
The click as the line shut left him with a sense of contented hope he hadn't felt in... hell, he hadn't felt before at all. Amazing how quickly losing everything could put things into perspective. It was almost enough to make Lelouch optimistic for the other calls he was due to make.
Idly he penciled in a potential one for Clovis; he probably wouldn't remember anything, but while Lelouch was indulging in sentimentality he might as well ring up the first person he'd ever killed in cold blood and re-establish a more positive familial connection. Not with Schneizel, though; Lelouch would make it his life's mission to trounce the Second Prince if he had to, but there would be blood for the Ikaruga mutiny come hell or high water.
"... What do you mean he's gone?" Charles rumbled. He'd just begun to properly relax in the lounge of the Aeries Villa, discussing ideas for the future with Marianne, when his Knight of One interrupted with news in its own league of unsettling. "Scheizel is the Prime Minister, he can't have just disappeared!" Worse, if he had that meant nothing good for Charles; Schneizel el Britannia was like a viper he allowed into his garden to keep out the rats, but with everything he'd accomplished the last timeline? With him in the wind, able to call on his old retainers and pick up more or less exactly where he'd left off, he would pose a very lethal threat to whatever plan they did pull together, if he decided to move against Charles anyway. Which was the logical assumption, since he wouldn't have reason to flee the Empire otherwise...
"He's running from Lelouch." Marianne murmured from beside him. "He... In the old timeline, Scheizel manipulated the upper echelons of the Black Knights to betray and mutiny against Zero, offering them a free Japan in return. He must be expecting retribution."
"... And they bought that?" Charles said flatly. "Did Lelouch take on a bunch of lobotomized invertebrates as his chiefs of staff?"
"Honestly, Charles, I have no idea, and it doesn't matter now. Scheizel's a very real danger to everything if he decides to go on the offensive." The Empress turned to Bismarck, who straightened at the attention of the woman he most respected. "Secure Lloyd Asplund and Cecile Croomy and all staff they can identify as having worked under them in Camelot. We can't stop Scheizel from reclaiming the developments in technology from the last go around, but if we keep his research staff out of his hands we can at least slow him down."
The Knight of One turned to his Emperor, who nodded in confirmation. "And have Jeremiah inform Lelouch, as well. I get the sense he'll want to be part of this."
Notes:
Somewhat slow boil, this is, but I'd rather be slow than be rushed. With a potential antagonist on the docket and gambits in play, it's inevitable that plans start clashing and interests conflict; how will these events play out? Fuck if I know before I start writing.