A/N: I do not own Code Geass, nor any of the characters.
"Lelouch!" Suzaku shouted as he lunged toward his friend. He'd noticed as the boy's legs began to buckle, his eyes flitting across the room before they rolled into the back of his head. Working from quick reflexes, he threw himself in front of Lelouch, so the boy's body simply slumped forward onto him, rather than hitting the floor. Carefully, then, he lowered him to the ground, where he lay splayed across his lap. By this time, both Shirley and Kallen had joined Suzaku at his side.
"Lelou!" "Lelouch." Their responses varied; one hysterical, and the other no louder than a concerned murmur.
"Here-can you two help me flip him over, so he's on his back? Millie, I need you to call an ambulance." For once in her life, the confident student council president looked flustered. She had been a friend of Lelouch's since he and very young Nunnally arrived on her grandfather's front porch with nothing but their royal names. The Ashford family had kept them hidden, safe as students at his private academy. Once she regained herself, Millie pulled out her pink cellphone and began dialing for help.
"Hello," she said. "Yes, one of my friends just collapsed."
"No, he hasn't yet regained consciousness."
"No medical problems that I'm aware of."
"We're at Ashford Academy, the Student Council Center."
"Thank you."
Lelouch now lay on his back, his head still in Suzaku's lap. Millie was right- his pallor was far paler than usual, and despite the heat radiating from his body and beads of sweat on his forehead, he was shivering. Suzaku placed two fingers on his neck and found them met with a rapid pulse. His breathing, too, seemed labored, shallow.
"What's wrong with him?" Shirley asked, gazing down at the boy's sleeping face.
"I think he's just sick with a virus or something. Knowing Lelouch, he's probably had it for a while and never got it checked out." Suzaku sighed. "For now, let's get this overcoat off him. I know he's shivering, but his body temperature feels off the charts."
As the three of them worked to get the black Britannian student uniform off their friend, he didn't so much as budge, his body lolling with their every motion. Though he didn't tell the girls, this worried Suzaku. He'd expected the boy to wake up within a few seconds. If he didn't stir soon, the root cause could be something worse than he anticipated.
He balled up the overcoat and set it under his friend's head for a pillow, moving out from under him to assess the damage further. "Alright, Lelouch," he murmured, lightly striking the boy's cheeks. "Can you hear me? We need you to wake up." Still, the boy didn't so much as murmur or groan. Now, the black tank top he wore betrayed even more clearly the shallow heaving of his chest.
"Gosh, Lelou. Why do you have to be so stubborn?" Shirley had balled her hands into fists and was pounding them lightly on the wood floor next to her unconscious friend. "Never caring enough to look out for yourself; making the rest of us worry all the time." Despite her harsh words, there were tears forming in her eyes.
In the distance, the teens could hear ambulance sirens growing closer and closer. Suzaku lifted Lelouch's eyelids up one by one, each time revealing a dull, unseeing violet iris. His pupils weren't dilated, so there didn't seem to be any head injuries keeping him under this long. What's the matter with you, Lelouch? Suzaku wondered, idly clutching his best friend's limp hand.
Soon enough, the sirens were blaring right outside the building. The teens sat in silence as footsteps thundered up the stairs down the hall. Shirley and Kallen both moved back as the paramedics swooped into the room beside Lelouch; Suzaku, however, remained right where he was, answering their many questions.
"Name?" a thin black-haired woman asked, as she knelt down beside Lelouch, checking his vitals.
Suzaku hesitated, before saying, "Lelouch Lamperouge." Millie shot him a questioning glare, and he hoped that this information wouldn't create trouble for the exiled prince and princess.
"How long has he been like this?" she asked.
"About five minutes." Kallen and Shirley nodded.
"Alright, we're going to take him to Tokyo General. Would one of you like to come along?" As she asked, she was also helping lift Lelouch's body onto a gurney. The other paramedic, a young man, slung an oxygen mask across his face.
Suzaku looked back at Shirley, nodding to give her permission to go. The girl stood up. "Yes, I'll go with him." The other teens simply watched as their two friends, one strapped to a gurney, left the room.
"I'm sorry, Lelouch," Kallen murmured, as the elevator moved toward the first floor of the Hospital. While the other student council members sat in the waiting room, she had been forced to leave early, before her friend awoke. They'd all seemed disappointed when she told them she had to go. None of them knew about her membership with the Black Rebellion, so they simply thought she was being a bad friend.
Kallen was a few minutes late to the meeting, after pulling on her sleek Black Rebellion pilot's outfit in the bathroom, and letting her hair spike out, so she looked less like a schoolgirl and more like a soldier ready for battle. Panting, she swung open the door to the Black Rebellion's headquarters, a decked out trailer in the garage of an abandoned warehouse, only to find her colleagues all sitting on the couch, still twiddling their thumbs.
With narrowed eyes, she strut across the room and took her place next to Ohgi on the couch. "Where's-"
"Zero?" Tamaki interrupted. "No friggin clue. I think the dude flaked on us."
"Have you heard anything from Zero, Kallen?" Ohgi asked. "We've all tried calling, but there's no answer."
"He's probably just running late," she said, waving a dismissive hand. "You guys are always looking for excuses to distrust him, I swear." After a few more minutes of waiting, however, Kallen could feel the rebels patience wearing thin. With an exasperated sigh, she pulled out her cellphone. "Fine, I'll try calling him."