A few days later, Suzaku tagged along when Aurora headed out for her usual errand trip of the week. He wasn't exactly sure why, but neither of them had quite been able to drag themselves away from each other ever since that embrace in the pasture. Suzaku had no genuine idea what had happened that day, but he'd found himself magnetized to Aurora's presence with a puzzling intensity. And she seemed drawn to him the same way. How two notoriously difficult people could spend such a copious amount of time together in thorough harmony, he couldn't begin to guess.

Aurora hadn't the foggiest idea, either. Even when she and Nik had been at their most in-sync, it was nothing like the rhythm and ease she and Suzaku had exhibited around each other recently. The best she could compare it to was dancing with her instructor. He'd been her favorite person to compete with, and quite possibly her first crush. But whatever was sparking between her and Suzaku was honestly a completely different animal.

Yesterday, she'd gone to the study to ask Suzaku what he wanted for lunch to find him hunched over on a stool she'd unearthed during her storage cleaning mission, gazing at an in-progress canvas. He was in the process of painting a storm at sea, vicious and wild and unapologetically brutal. A bird, small against the fury of the storm with the sharp wings and long tail of a raptor, battled his way to the shore, buffeted and beaten by the wildness he found himself trapped in. It wasn't yet finished, but Aurora had the feeling the sense of uncertainty, whether the bird would find his way home or be swallowed by the storm, was intentional.

Suzaku had set aside his brushes and paints, and was staring at the canvas in ruthless concentration. Meanwhile, he rotated his right hand over and over again, the joints in his wrist cracking wetly a few times every revolution. It was the same wrist Britannian officers had crushed so long ago when it was discovered that the son of the late, reviled Prime Minister of Japan was in their midst.

She stepped closer, catching his hand before he could twist it around again, and began gently massaging the tense tendons. He startled at her unexpected touch, but it was hardly noticeable. Stupid, that Aurora glowed from such a change, but she did. There was incredible intensity in his eyes, the colors shifting and whirling – there was so much more than the gorgeous green. Gold and silver gave the metallic shine of star hearts and space dust.

"Been painting a while?" Aurora queried as his hand began to loosen in hers, barely able to speak around the way her throat tried to close, moved by what she could swear was a fragment of his soul that she could see. Suzaku nodded, turning his gaze back to the painting, allowing her to breathe again.

"Yeah. I've been working on it for about six hours – I had to take a bit of a break. But I want to get this one done. I've been thinking about it for a while, and I finally got it going last night."

They gazed as the painting together, and Aurora's touch along his hand slowed to more of a caress than kneading, a change neither of them really noticed, but both subconsciously relaxed into.

"What kind of bird is it?" she finally asked quietly. Aurora appreciated birds, but couldn't claim ornithology as one of her strong suits.

"It's a Japanese sparrowhawk," Suzaku answered with easy confidence. "The lighter barring and red breast are exclusive to the males. They normally live in wooded or open areas, so this fellow's far from home."

As her fingers finally stilled and curled around his, Aurora leaned a little closer, her unbound mane of hair sliding over her shoulder to tickle his ear. Balancing her other hand on his left shoulder, they talked a little longer about the work, creating a warm, almost intimate tableau that would have been impossible even a few weeks ago for either of them.

Instances like that had become almost commonplace over the last few days. So teasing each other in the frozen aisle seemed practically second nature. When Suzaku had to lean against the cold glass cabinets, he was laughing so hard at Aurora's impression of a king chicken with a wildly exaggerated accent, not even a thought went to how this must look to the people around them, two lunatics laughing about frozen chicken.

When a frowning housewife started down the aisle towards them, he reached out and looped his arm around Aurora's waist to tug her out of the way. As she bumped into his side, a flash fire of heat sizzled through his system. It spooked Suzaku, but it wasn't enough to incite him to release Aurora, not when her hand rested against his back to steady herself, the smell of lilies and cinnamon drifting from her meticulously braided hair. Just holding her was far more pleasant than he ever could have guessed, the woman supple and warm in his grasp. He'd just started to waver against the urge to drop his forehead to the crown of Aurora's glittering hair when she straightened from her rather cozy spot against his side. When the warm press of her left his skin, Suzaku couldn't help but feel a little bereft, a little weak.

It took him a moment, shaking off the longing and confusion and fear that clung to his spine like moss. He just had to lengthen his stride a little to catch up, to see the face Aurora made when she tossed a bag of chocolate chips into the cart, a cross between maniacal glee and insane intent. She had to play it up, of course. She'd barely caught herself before snuggling into Suzaku's side, wrapping her other arm around him until they could just sink into each other, muscle and bone melding in a moment of contentment. It was so tempting, Aurora focused on acting like a moron to get a laugh. It was never something she was very good at, but she would do anything to keep Suzaku safe, even if it was from herself.

They laughed like loons all the way through check-out, even back to the house to drop off their purchases. Ban was reading their mood with his usual accuracy, and settled into a clown-like routine Suzaku had never seen the likes of before, involving a great deal of bounding and singing and banging miscellaneous body parts against innocent walls, chairs, and legs.

Even with everything put away and their list for the day completed, Aurora and Suzaku still bounced off each other with almost frenetic energy. Aurora knew that she was going to do something delicious to Suzaku if they didn't burn off some of the intense heat that had smoldered between them during inappropriate jokes and snotty expressions. She damn well wouldn't regret it now, but she'd bet serious money that they both would before the day was over.

Aurora wanted to go for a run, a walk, maybe even a drive in Natasha. But the light drizzle that had appeared during their drive home put any of those ideas in a slightly less ideal light. But Suzaku was also eager to get out of the house, looking slightly perplexed when Aurora refused to expose the princess to this sort of weather. Finally, it was decided that they would take the rental car out to poke around the nearby area. Remembering the way Suzaku had longingly looked at the ocean of the way to Galway, Aurora suddenly knew exactly where to go. He snagged their coats, and with a final pat for Ban, who watched them go with a tilted head, they hurdled out into the cool light and damp breeze. Like a pair of young racehorses released from their stalls, they moved with a wild sort of joy and freedom that Aurora had worked years to earn and Suzaku had long ago forgotten.

The air was heavy with rain; they could almost taste it. It was like gunmetal, coating their skin and tongues with the promise of sound and wet. Once the car was started, they both rolled down their windows as if in tacit agreement, allowing the chilly, moist air to brush against their cheeks. With the scent of ozone and grass and the sea leading the way, Aurora pulled out of the drive, heading west towards the coast before nosing north.

The pearly glow hummed in the crests of waves, folding into then smoothing themselves out from the base of the cliffs to beyond the horizon in an eternal shifting. Suzaku leaned towards his window, immune to the slap of the cold air against his face, his eyes hungrily drinking in the sight of the Atlantic sheened over in storm light. As they drove along the coast, occasionally nudging close to dizzying cliffs, Suzaku never once looked away from that iron sea, deeply breathing in the primal scent of salt and stone, water and wind.

He may have been on the opposite side of the globe, but while he looked at that water, Suzaku felt like he was home. The cliffs were staggering, brutal in their abruptness, and somehow proud. Black as obsidian, a single glance revealed their strength, and their weakness. The ocean ate away at the ancient rock, proving it vulnerable to the inevitable march of time and the depthless hunger of that primordial water. Feeling his mouth quirk, he glanced at Aurora out of the corner of his eye, gilded hair struggling free from its snug braid, her elegant hands loose and competent on the steering wheel and gear shift, and knew how the rocks felt. How that small, seemingly gentle pressure could chip away at you, until you fractured and crumbled, revealing something in the breaking you'd never known had been inside you in the first place.

"You want to stop somewhere, stretch our legs?" Aurora eventually asked. They been driving for almost an hour dodging spots of rain, and Suzaku had hardly spoken. It was a good silence, however – she didn't feel nervous about it, just… content. Finally tearing his eyes from the pounding surf and scattering of islands, he looked at her and nodded.

"Sure." Glancing out of the windshield, he pointed at a single gnarled tree by a sizable turn-off, a bulb of land that jutted out from the road towards the water. "How about there?"

Once the car was parked, they both stood and stretched, the popping of war-torn joints eliciting smiling winces from both of them. Hands tucked in her coat pockets once she'd tossed her rope of a braid over her shoulder, Aurora strolled over to the single oak tree. It seemed lonely, stuck on the wrong side of the road all by itself, its branches bent and burned from wind and storm. But it was tough, its trunk thick and its skewed branches doggedly coming into heady green. Several of its roots broke the surface of the ground, the knock-knees of a stubborn old man who wasn't going anywhere, dammit. Aurora patted the rutted and marbled bark of its trunk, appreciating its tenacity and attitude. She could relate.

Suzaku smiled at Aurora's silent appreciation of the black sheep oak before the water called his attention again. Mirroring her pose and tucking his chilled fingers into the pockets of his wind breaker, Suzaku stepped closer to the edge. The daring was there, the easy what-if's that floated through his brain like black butterflies. But it was surprisingly easy to ignore them, to forgo the test that would inevitably fail, leaving him disappointed, bitter, and confused. Much simpler to bat them away as he settled into the thrum the ocean sent rippling through his bones, the warm presence of Aurora as she stepped to his side. Some would consider them dangerously close to the edge, but they knew what that really felt like, what staring at a lethal drop inches away while you teetered on a razor wire could do to you. In comparison, their two foot buffer was relatively tame.

"I wish he could have seen this," Suzaku murmured, immediately wishing he could have swallowed back the stupid, sentimental words.

"I thought Lelouch didn't much care about the ocean," Aurora responded quietly, the edges of her coat and fragile wisps of hair moving in the breeze. Suzaku shrugged; she had a point.

"Not really. It just seems… better here," he finally decided. It took him a moment to feel the weight of her gaze, turning towards Aurora in time to see her tilt her head consideringly, her eyes deceptively lazy. In truth, they were as bright as diamonds, and just as sharp.

"Maybe you're the one who's better."

That seemed so terrifying simple that Suzaku wanted to laugh. But it stuck in his throat, so he just looked back out to the much safer water. Storm-cold oceans had nothing on Aurora Sterling.

"Not enough. And I don't have that right. It's really quite as simple as that."

Her gusty sigh made him want to wince. The woman made it damn hard to repent with any sort of integrity.

"Uh huh," she muttered, her voice tilted in irritation. "God, you're such a soldier."

Taken aback by her accusation, Suzaku looked over at her again. It was true, but just what did she mean by it? She caught his questioning look with a quick side glance, and looked back out over the water with a sigh that lifted and curled her whole body.

"You especially, but I guess Lelouch a little, too."

Just as Suzaku was about to protest that Lelouch had never been in any way, shape, or form a soldier, she continued.

"The world was always carved into lines of black and white for you guys. Right and wrong, do or die, him or me. Your philosophies were brutally stark and unforgiving, and any compromises you made were soaked in blood."

"It was war," Suzaku said mechanically.

"It was slaughter," she ground back. Aurora took a calming breath, reining her voice and temper back like an ill-tempered horse threatening to buck and scream. "And you two were hardly unscathed. That in itself is a tragedy. But you know what I think the worst part is?" She didn't wait for his answer. "You two were just kids."

God, Suzaku thought as the rain that they'd briefly outrun started to mist down. When was the last time he'd thought of himself as a kid?

"Two pissed off, grieving, self-righteous little shits who truly only played by one rule: my way or the highway. Just look at what Lelouch did to you, Suzaku. His one true friend, and he consigned you to a fate worse than death."

"He trusted me with what was most precious to him," Suzaku protested.

"Trusted you to take your punishment with a bowed head. And that's exactly what you did because, like the dumb teenager you were, you thought it was the only way."

Suzaku was pretty sure he should be insulted because he still thought it was the only way. But Aurora wasn't done.

"What gave him the right? Let's put aside the Rebellion, the war. Let's talk about you. Lelouch was five months younger than you, your peer in every respect. What right did he have to flush your life, your future down the toilet? I don't give a damn that he was Zero, that he was Emperor. He was an angry, desperate teenager drunk on power eager to end the game that was killing him from the inside out. And you were a grieving, emotionally destroyed teenager drunk on power eager to end the game that was killing you from the inside out. Jesus God in Heaven, who put you two in charge?" Her no-nonsense words should have made him angry, and they did, a little. But one thought kept floating through Suzaku's brain – where the hell had she been when they'd needed her? Where had been the person brave enough, smart enough, who cared enough, to face him and Lelouch down and give them the bald truth she'd just served him. Everything might have been so different if someone had just given a damn.

"We were the ones who took charge, who made the move. No one stopped us because no one could. It didn't matter that we were young, that we were damaged. We did what needed to be done, what only we could do. And the costs were our own," he said with a shrug. He felt anything but casual, though. Aurora rubbed a hand over her chin as she digested his words, her eyes distant and unspeakably sad.

"You know that conundrum you and Lelouch were always tossing in each other's faces, and you were never really satisfied with the answers? Well, I'm going to give you my answer; it's a hell of a lot harder to give, but easier to live with. Do the ends justify the means?" With the rain clinging to her hair like diamonds, she tilted her head back to squint into the drizzle. "Sometimes."

"That's not an answer."

"Not a cut and dried one, no. And it sure as hell can't be adopted as a be-all, end-all for the public in a press conference. But I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about the question you ask yourself. Yes or no doesn't give a guy much breathing room. I'm not saying Lelouch was wrong; he sure as hell got shit done. But I can't quite swallow the price so many, including both him and you, had to pay. And while your way seemed to be the answer, I've lived too long on the shady side of the law to admit that the system succeeds the way it should. So I have to draw a personal line for myself. How far would I go? Well, that depends. Crappy as far as answers go, but it's the truth. Who I was fighting for, why, the price of both success and failure."

"There's too much gray in that answer to be of use," Suzaku pointed out. Aurora laughed.

"Honey, I used to live in the gray. Breathe, hide, fight. The gray was my world. And it formed me like your black and white world formed you. But when I came to England, I figured out pretty fast that it couldn't be the only way. So let me give you a little piece of advice: whether it's lines or the absence of them, that can't be all you have. Black and white gives structure, gray flexibility. You can't have only one or the other, or you'll go insane. So give yourself a little breathing room, Suzaku. Adapt a little gray into your mental construct. And give yourself a fucking break. Like I said, you were just a kid. We all do stupid stuff when we're kids."

He couldn't help the brow he raised at what seemed a far too simple brush-off of globe-shattering errors.

"You didn't bring down a world regime enveloping the world in war and chaos."

Aurora laughed at Suzaku's desert-dry words.

"No, I sure as hell didn't." She patted his shoulder, careful to avoid the tender areas of healing. "But neither did you. Let Lelouch have his burdens; you've got enough of your own." She left her hand on his shoulder, offering what she could. Because she'd been young and broken once, too, having made horrible mistakes she'd never be rid of for the rest of her life. But that didn't mean she couldn't have a life at all, and she firmly believed that the same could be said for Suzaku.

He looked at her silently with his head tilted slightly, those fathomless green eyes nudging at her heart. The rain had deepened the color of his hair to nearly black, sliding off his sharp cheekbones to occasionally drip from his chin. God, he was beautiful, and driving her crazy.

"You're never going to give up, are you?" he murmured. Aurora didn't have to ask him to clarify before beaming out a sunny smile.

"Not on your life. Like someone else I know, I have stubbornness issues."

He rolled his eyes at her gentle jab, noticing the fine tremor that ran along her hand.

"Let's head back. Does the fireplace in the parlor work?" he asked, curious of the gray marble fireplace he'd always seen cold. Aurora looked a little insulted.

"In an Irish cottage? Of course it does."

Pivoting to follow her, Suzaku couldn't help the small smile – she thought the Andrews' house was a cottage?

He was still smiling a little when his foot slipped in the softened mud, momentum and gravity carrying Suzaku down the slight incline, centuries of erosion crumbling the lip of the cliff under his weight. Time seemed to end as he tumbled out into space, fragile flesh poised to plummet an unforgiving two hundred feet to the rocks and water below. It all happened so fast, he hardly had time to be afraid

Aurora had just started to turn away when she saw Suzaku stumble. Because it was him, and because she was who she was, she was already reaching for him when he slammed into the ground, wet and circumstance sending him skidding those precious few feet to the edge of the cliff. His eyes were wide, his quick reflexes earning him nothing as he instinctively scrambled for a purchase that simply wasn't there. As he slid clear, his lean frame suddenly suspended by nothing at all, an inhuman gush of adrenaline swamped Aurora's system. Because this wasn't happening; there was no way this was happening. It was only a matter of seconds, but each detail loomed large in her mind, the terror scrounging the ticking of the clock down to nothing. In this handful of moments, everything mattered, and Aurora gave it everything she had.

Quite suddenly, Suzaku wasn't falling anymore. There was incredible yanking pressure on his right arm, and he bounced off the cliff face like a rubber toy. He looked up and could see Aurora, her face set with a fierceness and fortitude that could have burned cities to the ground, gripping his wrist with everything she had. Fear and admiration and shock and gratitude melded with things he couldn't name, until there was nothing in him but a mess of emotion and a stomach that wanted to dribble off the toes of his shoes dangling in space. But then he realized an absence, the implications of which took him beyond stunned to paralyzed. He could only look up into the savage silver of Aurora's eyes as every part of him except the wrist clenched in her hand went numb.

She had him. Jesus Christ, she had him. She didn't know how, and she couldn't give a fuck. Aurora had a hold of Suzaku, and by God, she wasn't letting him go. As the initial, mind-numbing relief started to fade, other pertinent facts were trickling in. Her arm was already screaming, but she blocked that out with a brick wall. She was losing ground by slow centimeters. Suzaku was so shocked, he was all but limp, his eyes dark and huge. And the rocks that had given away under him banged against the water, which might as well be cement from this height, after falling the dizzying distance that would be their fate if she didn't get her act together.

Aurora began to coax Suzaku to take hold of her wrist, anything to solidify the only connection she had to him. He eventually obeyed, but she didn't know if he was actually hearing her or if it was just instinctive. She needed to, was dying to, use her other hand, but until she was more secure, it was pretty much the only thing holding them up. Feeling the fragments of grit disintegrating under her chest, Aurora realized that they were on the clock.

"Suzaku," she said in a firm voice, trying to cut through the shock that still had his eyes gigantic and empty. "Listen to me. I need you to grab onto me with your other hand, OK? Come on, bud, my shoulder's killing me. Just grab onto me, and we'll move from there."

"I… can't," he whispered through bloodless lips. She fought back the panic that wanted to surge up into her compressed lungs. Maybe he'd hurt his shoulder or arm in the fall. That was a grim thought, but dying was worse.

"Can you reach anything – a foothold or a handhold?" The cliff arched slightly inward, making it unlikely. But Suzaku mutely shook his head without looking, and Aurora started to curse.

"Suzaku, I really need you to try." A chunk of dirt and rock about the size of her fist gave way under her, and Aurora could actually feel the muscles in her shoulders starting to fray. "Come on, big guy."

Nothing. He just stared, like he'd been cored out and nothing but the husk remained. Terror resurged, this time as to what his dead expression meant.

"Suzaku, you know how I'm always telling you 'don't even think about it'? Well, I need you to think about it, right now. Please, Suzaku." She begged, she pleaded. She used every persuasion she could think of, without reaction. A terrible thought slid through her mind as she struggled against the pain and consuming fear.

He'd given up.

After everything, he'd checked out. Saw his chance, and took it.

The fury and agony and, worst of all, disappointment that burned through her kept the steady destruction of her shoulder from her mind. It drove her to scream at him, and even cry. She might as well have been holding onto a corpse.

Screw that, Aurora thought with venom. This wasn't the first time she'd dragged him back from the edge, and it wouldn't be the last. He may have given up, but she sure as hell hadn't. Two sizable chunks crumbled free from under her, and Aurora quickly reevaluated.

Throwing quick, desperate glances over her shoulder, she finally caught sight of the oak. Suddenly blessing the crotchety tree with fervent prayers and the sweetest of compliments she could think of, few of which were actually applicable to a tree, she wormed her foot under the biggest root of the ones breaking the surface close by. It twisted her whole body pretty awful, but her knee was hooked securely around the wood.

She didn't even have a chance to celebrate the torque she could remove from her shoulder when a solid six inches of the cliff edge fell away from underneath her. It would have been their death sentence not twenty seconds ago, but she managed to adjust, to keep her balance thanks to that lovely old tree. The jolt, however, loosened the grip she and Suzaku had on each other. His mouth trembled open, and Aurora clapped her other hand over his wrist before he slipped anymore, readjusting her grip. She was steady now, but who knew if that would last.

Summoning all the rage and desperation and something unnamable that ached under her sternum, Aurora sucked in a deep breath.

"Let you go, my ass," she hissed, then gave everything she had into dragging him back over the edge. The scream she loosed to the air was stunning its ferocity, its sheer animal anguish. Not since the time of ancient battle on these shores had the cliffs heard such a war cry. It felt like everything in her was tearing, ripping, but Aurora refused to stop. She'd made a vow – she would not let this man die. No matter the cost.

For a few seconds, it didn't seem possible, her wild purpose ramming head long into the wall of agonizing pain. But she tipped past the center of gravity, and the pair of them scrambled away from the edge, instinct energizing them into action that would otherwise be impossible. Aurora collapsed at the base of the tree on the other side from the ocean, practically wanting to cuddle her new best friend. Suzaku sprawled in the mud a foot or two away, too stunned to compute what had happened. It had felt like centuries – it couldn't have been more than ten minutes.

Both of them sat panting for a solid couple of minutes, too overcome by the insanity of what they'd just survived to even think about talking. Suzaku eventually sat up, drawing up his knees to brace his elbows against them, burying his fingers in his wet hair. The anger that had spurred Aurora to save his life resurged, and she held her arm close to her body, the intense throbbing in the joint only increasing her abject rage. When a drop of rain slid down her neck, Aurora felt like she could breathe fire.

Then he started to laugh. Still bent over, folded in on himself, cradling his head in his hands, Suzaku cackled. It wasn't a good laugh, or even a venting one. It was cruelly hysterical, gnawingly dark, and too close to insane to be anything positive. It set Aurora's teeth on edge, and her fingers vised around the wrist of the arm she was cradling against her.

"Shut up," she said quietly. Suzaku did not stop. "I said shut up." Even the slightly louder tone didn't pierce the veil of Suzaku's frenzied cackles. "Dammit, Suzaku, shut up!" she snarled, and the laughter quickly cut off as he raised his head. His eyes were still enormous, his pupils extremely dilated and his face nearly translucent.

"What could you possibly be laughing about? In case you didn't notice, we almost just died," Aurora snapped with a cutting scowl. Suzaku, though, hardly seemed affected. He muttered something under his breath, and started to giggle again.

"Knock it off!" she barked. He just stared at her silently. "What is going on?" She knew, of course. He wanted to die. He wished she'd just let him die. Of all the ungrateful-

"It's broken," he murmured, sounding dazed and increasingly mad.

"What?" Aurora croaked, confused and already aching. She was suddenly petrified about his arm and shoulder. Had the plates cracked? Had all that healing bone shattered again? He met her eyes, and the look in them sent a shudder down her spine.

"My Geass command, Aurora. It's broken."

Well. That just happened.

Hope you like it!

Love, Tango