A/N: Nope. Didn't get the rights to Code Geass for Christmas.

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Things you didn't know about the ninety-ninth Emperor and the hundredth Empress
5. Of how the person I had to trust was the person I could trust the least

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A few days before I went back to the Tokyo Settlement to assume the viceroyalty, I received a phone call during what was for me the early afternoon. It was a call from Suzaku, who had ascended to the dignity of Knight of Seven as a reward for capturing Zero and bringing him to the Emperor. Suzaku was also one of the last people who had seen my beloved brother alive before he'd disappeared in the middle of the Black Rebellion.

Suzaku had gone ahead to pacify (read: to oppress harder) his native Japan before my arrival, by virtue of Zero having just resurfaced after ten months of silence. Before he left, Suzaku had promised me he'd do everything in his power to find Lelouch. To say that I was looking forward to the phone call I received from him that afternoon is to seriously underrate how desperate I was for news. It was all I could do to refrain from screaming in his ear to hurry up and hand the phone over when he told me Lelouch was right in front of him.

I had no idea then, but at that moment, Suzaku was manipulating us both. I was just overjoyed that I could finally talk once again to the person who had been the center of my world for as far as I could remember – that there was finally a chance that I would be near him and talk to him again and perhaps be with him again, even if I'd promised myself I would do everything in my power to permit him to stay in hiding if that was what he wished for.

But when I joyfully talked to my beloved brother for the first time in nearly a year, the only answer I got was silence, and I hesitated. I had no idea what was going on – I've only recently learned that Lelouch's memories of me had been suppressed by my father's Geass – but I did hear the gasp before the silence. And if it was really my beloved brother I had just talked to, it could only mean that there was someone around him who couldn't hear that he knew me. So I hesitantly suggested that this might not be my big brother.

I didn't hear Lelouch move, but I know something happened, that granted him an interval of a few precious seconds to talk to me. His voice was urgent – but he confirmed it was him, and that he was forced to act like we were strangers. And then he swore he would come and get me – and he told me… He yelled desperately, really… that he loved me.

I never heard my beloved brother tell me he loved me ever again. And I didn't dare reply – before I could, he was already pretending that he wasn't the person I loved the most and most desperately wanted to talk to.

And that was the last conversation – if you can call it conversation – that we ever shared as brother and sister.

Now that I know the entire truth behind why it went the way it did, I despise Suzaku Kururugi. I loathe Suzaku Kururugi. I detest Suzaku Kururugi. I hate Suzaku Kururugi more than I hate anybody in this whole world – and yes, I know there are a few people more deserving of that hatred. But Suzaku Kururugi is the one who stole my beloved brother from me, and was a cold enough bastard to go so far as to use me as a weapon against him, to try and make me the instrument of his fall, the one who would innocently doom the person she loved the most to his execution – perhaps before the call would even have ended. Now that I know the fullness of what he's done, I wouldn't put it past Suzaku Kururugi.

I will never get the chance to tell him, I will even have to pretend to the world around me that I no longer hold grievances for the dead Knight of Zero – but I hate him.

If by virtue of some curse, of some blight upon this world tainted by Geass, you end up being around to read this account long after I died – or really, in any circumstance, if you're stupid enough to steal these words from me while I live, which I wouldn't put past you – know this, Kururugi Suzaku.

I hate you.

But back then, I didn't want to believe it was Suzaku that Lelouch was so desperately lying to. I thought, naively, that Suzaku could never have sunk that low despite the evidence pointing in that direction, not unlike how I hadn't been able to bring myself to believe Lelouch was Zero despite the evidence pointing in that direction. Therefore, the only explanation that could make sense to me was that someone else was watching Lelouch, be it because of him or because of me, and that Suzaku had been incredibly brave and loving to still give me a few seconds with my brother on the phone despite what clearly had been great risk.

Which is why, when Zero came to try and abduct me on my flight to Area 11 – which was my beloved brother keeping his promise of coming and getting me, without my knowledge – I was relieved when Suzaku intervened and "rescued" me. I trusted him, fool that I was.

I can only wonder what would have happened if I had been taken by Lelouch at that time. I know that he'd have had to keep his identity as Zero as secret as possible and therefore wouldn't have been as free to associate with me as I would have liked initially, but there were a few people he could have confided in among the Black Knights, like our schoolmate Kallen, or Kaguya Sumeragi, or Kyoshiro Tohdoh. And I would have done my utmost to tell him that he didn't need to change the world for me – all that he needed to do was disappear with me, run as far away from Japan and from everything as we could. And if he hadn't agreed – I don't think he would have – I could have been useful to him in the day-to-day grind, in relieving him of some of his more mundane burdens with my newly acquired skills, and I could have helped him find ways to continue with his takeover of the world in better and gentler ways, and helped him carry his sins. I would gladly have shouldered some of those with him, or even better, in his place.

But I didn't know Zero was Lelouch. I went with Suzaku willingly, too happy to have escaped Zero's clutches, not realizing that far from meaning my chances of getting reunited with my beloved brother had been preserved, one of the two chances I'd have had just been snatched away from me. But I didn't know, because just like I protected Lelouch from what I really felt and understood, he'd protected me from the knowledge of what he'd been doing in his quest to try and create a kinder world.

If only we'd somehow found a way to be open with one another despite wanting so desperately to protect the one person who was the most important to us in the whole world…

As we arrived at the Tokyo settlement, I asked Suzaku if there would be a chance I could talk to the young man he'd thought was my brother again – and Suzaku rebuked me in a harsh manner I had never known him to have. That was when I started wondering whether something had happened between Lelouch and Suzaku – although initially I imagined it would have been about Lelouch telling Suzaku in no uncertain terms that he was a fool to think becoming a Knight of Rounds would give him a real chance to change Britannia or protect Japan, and that eventually, the two would reconcile.

There was someone else I had sought to become the Viceroy of Area 11 for; someone who could no longer speak for herself: Euphie. I really don't know if I should write your nickname like this or 'Euphy'; but there was no such ambivalence in my heart towards you. Much like I didn't want to believe Suzaku could be a cold snake, or that my beloved brother Lelouch could have been Zero, I couldn't bring myself to believe you had it in you to order the kind of slaughter of the innocents even most Britannian Princes were too squeamish to contemplate (most of them wanted all the Numbers to die eventually, but quietly and out of sight).

I was right, for once…

When I announced I intended to continue with Euphie's plan to establish a specially administrated zone of Japan, I also did it knowing Lelouch would be watching me, from wherever he was forced to stay hidden. I told the Emperor as much when he called me about that announcement – which had been as much a surprise to him as to anybody else. I was determined to stand up to our Imperial father in this. I told him how, my entire life, I had lived under the protection of my big brother, and that I was sure that he was out there watching me. And I said I didn't want to make an embarrassment of myself while Lelouch was out there somewhere (which I knew he was), figuratively looking over my shoulder. But I thought, for sure, that I was going to be overruled.

But I wasn't. Instead, the Emperor abruptly ended the call, and I was notified a few hours later by Schneizel that I could do as I wished.

Now I know this is going to sound outlandish – after all, my father proved himself a monster during his years as Emperor, but… I looked up his history, or more accurately, I looked up what his youth had been like, and whether he, too, might have lost an older sibling he'd wanted to make proud of him. And there was one older sibling who would have protected him during the horrors of the Emblem of Blood, one Victor zi Britannia, who had died when he was just eleven years old. Maybe, this one time, I found a way to relate with my father, even if I didn't know it. I know what it's like to hate the world that has taken from you the one person who protected you when nobody else would. Maybe the key to understanding my father is figuring out he took out on the world his anger after the world let his beloved older brother die.

I don't need to spend too much time on how my attempt to reestablish the specially administrated zone of Japan went. A million people answered that call, despite how few actual applications there had been in the build-up to the inaugural ceremony – and it was all a play. I was kept out of the negotiations with Zero proper – something I made certain to express my displeasure about after all the "luminaries" who had handled those negotiations ended up unwilling accomplices to Zero mobilizing a million people and taking them away from Japan.

I had to fight hard to become more than a figurehead, but this blunder was how I really got a chance to assert myself over my advisors. I stopped them from undertaking more repression just so they could take out their anger on the local population, and made them see that deprived of a million people determined enough to fight against Britannia, the recruiting pool for resistance groups had dried up overnight, and we had a real chance to foster better and much more willing cooperation from those who had stayed behind if we tried to treat them a little better, instead of letting them slowly die of hunger and of disease like was the norm in correctional areas.

And it was a success, too, despite the best efforts of some of my advisors to derail my plans, chief among them my appointed aide, Alicia Lohmeyer. In a matter of weeks, I got Area 11 raised back to developing status, and demonstrated it was, in fact, in good enough a shape for accession to satellite status. True, Zero taking the Black Knights away from Japan helped immensely. But I also played a significant part in making the lives of the Japanese who stayed better, and fought for them, and I refuse to have that success taken away from me. You might have use for an iron glove, but it's worthless if you abuse it when you could solve so many problems using a soft hand instead.

It was around that time that the Emperor ceased to respond to any calls for about a month. And it was at the same time I began to realize Suzaku wasn't just having temporary difficulties with Lelouch, but that something much more serious had happened, and he didn't want to tell me. I suspected it was to protect me from the truth, although I doubt that now. But in that moment, his response – and his refusal to hold my hand and tell me the truth about whether it had been Lelouch he'd handed me over on the phone – spoke volumes, although, once again, I was incapable at the time of imagining Suzaku's motivations had been malicious and manipulative, because I didn't want to accept that I could have been so profoundly betrayed by the only friend I'd had left in my life.

It took the destruction of most of the Tokyo Settlement and the revelation my beloved brother was Zero to finally make me grow past my inability to accept the people I loved could, in fact, also be monsters.

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