It… it really was a dick move to just walk out like that–

And we can apologize to Their Highnesses for it later, but right now I'm fresh out of fucks to give.

Coming up on a public bathroom, Suzaku stepped inside, turned on a sink faucet, and splashed some water on his face, the shock breaking through some of the heavy cloud over his mind.

"I probably owe you an apology too," he muttered. "Even if my hands were already stained with someone else's blood, you-"

Were just as insistent that Britannia's Vampire was past due for the Belmont treatment, and don't you forget it. I didn't get around to calling it out during the actual fight, but… a guy like him living just for the thrill of murder, of being feared?

Suzaku didn't answer at first, content for the moment to just vacantly look into the mirror while washing his hands.

Our eyes… even though we slept for a week, they look more tired than I ever would've imagined...

Nobody really even gives a crap about what we did to him in and of itself, just for tangling with his rank, One continued. Even his fellow Rounds are apparently just using it as an excuse to try and punch down on us again. Imagine being so alone that absolutely nobody in the world would cry for you or miss you when you're gone...

"When you put it like that, he almost sounds pitiable in being so pathetic. I don't think anyone else will be inclined to agree with you, though… you're not trying to say it's a shame he had to die, right?"

More like, it's a damn shame that people can become that kind of irredeemable monster in the first place.

"Hm… I guess I can agree to that."

So what now?

Suzaku slumped, letting his forehead rest against the cool glass of the mirror. Hurry up and wait, I guess.

Ugh, two things I absolutely despise doing...

Spend enough time in the military and you eventually get used to both.

"Hey, Suzakkun? Are you in there?"

Elle…

In that moment, Suzaku honestly wasn't too enthused by the prospect of social contact with another person. And he could feel that his partner definitely wasn't in a mood for it.

So the pilot let out a sigh, dried his face with a paper towel, and stepped back out into the hallway. "Hey," he greeted her. "I'm sorry if I kept you waiting…"

Elle took a half-step back at the sight of him, causing a satchel bag hung on her shoulder to wave about, before raising her hands to wave away the apology. "Oh no, you don't owe me any kind of apology! I know there's been a lot going on that we're all dealing with, and I don't think I said it earlier… but I want to make sure you know how amazing you were in the cockpit earlier. That blonde with the Sub-Viceroy totally thought you were gonna choke on Guilford, but then you proved her wrong and just smashed everything in front of you!"

Now it was Suzaku's turn to take a step back, eyes wide at the praise being given to him. Watching her twirl a finger through one of her braids, the faint red on her cheeks. Balanced mostly on one foot, tapping the other shoe against the floor, arms crossed behind her back.

The pleading look in her eyes, silently asking him to let her reach out and not to turn away.

"The way you didn't just beat up your opponents, but tried to teach them a deeperlesson than justnot to underestimate you,and even told off that bastard Vampire for being such a creep… even if you said some stuff that made everyone worry about you, it was still ridiculously cool to see such a noble and passionate side of you, Suza… Suzaku."

Suzaku began to step forward, then hesitated.

Which I take as my cue to grab the steering wheel, wrap Elle up in a tight hug, and just bask in the adorable squeak she lets out. "Thanks. I think you're pretty damn incredible too."

Elle starts to return it... but after a second or two the muffled cry into my chest and thumping on my back signal that I probably overstepped. "S-"

"No! Don't apologize!" she insists amid forced steady breathing, now looking a lot redder than she was just a minute ago. "You didn't do anything wrong, I just… wasn't prepared. And anyway, I'm trying to keep focused on what I came here to do! ...which is check up on you, after you looked so stressed walking out of that meeting with the Viceroy."

She kind of flinches after that, which proves well enough that my frustration with Bismarck's bullshit – to say nothing of Lloyd's rude little surprise, or being hit with a vision of the Massacre Princess – must be plain as day on my face. "...well. To be honest, I was feeling pretty shitty."

I reach out and try to smile, though, and when she leans in, I brush her soft cheek. "Feeling better now that you're here, though."

"...I'm glad to hear that, but to be honest you still look kind of miserable."

"Let's say… I was around ten percent during the worst part of the meeting, then thirty percent after a little time alone, and right now I'm closer to forty percent."

Elle just watches us for a moment, before breaking away with a determined look and a fist pump. "Okay," she declares, "that decides it! Go get yourself cleaned up and changed back into regular clothes; we're spending the rest of the night on a date at the amusement park!"

"Hang on, is that actually okay?"

When Elle whirls back on me with a glare, it's my turn to throw my hands up in surrender. "I'm not opposed! Spending time with you sounds great! I just don't want you to get reprimanded or anything on my behalf..."

"Besides," I add with a glance at the floor, "things… are kind of tense right now. The Knight of One's accusing me of premeditated murder, and I've been told to go prove I'm a bad enough dude to personally punch him in the mouth with his guard up. It just feels… awkward to really think about going to an amusement park of all things in this kind of situation."

Elle rolls her eyes and shakes her head, before touching our shoulder with a worried sigh. "No matter what Britannia likes to tell itself, you're still a human being that needs time to rest and decompress. You're not some kind of machine that can just keep fighting indefinitely... and even if you were," she adds with a frown, "you'd still need to stop for maintenance every now and then. It's not just okay to stop and take care of yourself, it's a necessity... and I want to help you with that, if you'll let me."

The cute redhead rocked on her heels for a few seconds, seemingly content just watching me and Suzaku debate each other over the development.

There's the one side of things where neither of us are in any sort of mood for lights, crowds, and rampant noise… but now that it's possibly an official order Suzaku wants to at least try and go through with it, and I'm at the very least interested in spending more time with a cutie who likes us…

"Am I still allowed to feel awkward about going?" I ask, half as a joke and half not.

Elle visibly relaxes a little bit, and gently tugs us toward the showers. "Only for as long as it takes you to get used to it."

While Suzaku was cleaning himself up and getting changed, Elle whistled to herself in the hallway.

Not exactly the circumstances I would've remotely wanted for our first date, she privately admitted, but the most important thing right now is trying to help him out, even if it's just for a little bi- hoo boy...

As a visibly frustrated Princess Merrybell rounded the hallway corner, Elle stood to attention and gave a salute. "Your Highness."

"The Viceroy and I need to continue our conversation with Kururugi. I understand you're fairly close with him…"

"I don't think he's exactly decent right now," Elle replied, hoping that the Princess would move on.

Instead, the Princess merely crossed her arms and leaned against the wall opposite Elle, her sheathed sword lightly clanking against the corridor's steel. "A mild annoyance, but there's no sense in getting upset over inopportune timing. I'll merely have to wait for a few minutes."

Elle narrowed her eyes, biting the inside of her cheek. "You're going to be flying with him to the homeland soon, right? I think you can wait until then to speak with him as much as you'd like… or if the Viceroy needs to be included, then at the very least until tomorrow morning."

Merrybell met Elle's gaze with her own. "If you've made plans of some sort, they can wait."

"It's not about me, it's about Suzaku needing a break for his own well-being. Unless there are terrorists literally beating down the door and you think he knows the password to make them go away, you can wait."

A flash of wrath lighting up her face, the Princess stepped into Elle's personal space. "Just so that we understand each other, you do realize that you're defying orders not just of a superior officer, but of an agent of the Emperor himself?"

Elle grit her teeth, and in turn stepped up right up to the Princess's face. "All I've done so far is to advise you on how to most responsibly manage a key member of your administration."

That Merrybell could keep pushing and see for herself what defiance looked like went unsaid.

The tense standoff continued for several seconds… until Merrybell shook her head and smiled. "You'll give me five to ten minutes."

Elle bit her lip in annoyance, but nodded. "...yes, Your Highness."

Satisfied, Merrybell turned her back on Elle and returned to the other side of the corridor. "Such loyalty," she praised. "If you wanted, you could make for a decent knight yourself. Though you might be more careful about toeing the line."

Elle didn't answer that, aware enough that her display of loyalty to an individual over the system could just as easily mark her in less favorable ways.

A minute or two later, Suzaku returned in plain gray pants and a white shirt under a blue jacket… and was then immediately dragged off some few meters away from Merrybell, where a tense conversation ensued.

Elle wasn't quite close enough to hear what was being said, and remained certain that trying to eavesdrop might cause her some actual trouble… though she certainly noticed when Merrybell abruptly laughed out loud and then slapped Suzaku hard enough to send him reeling, before finally taking her leave.

Once the Princess was definitely gone and Suzaku halfway to his feet, Elle rushed over to check on him. "Eden above, what was that about?!"

"I… pretty much walked out of the earlier meeting without permission after dropping some really heavy classified information that I didn't fully explain," the pilot admitted. "She asked me why, and I knew the truth – that I just didn't feel like being in that situation anymore – definitely wasn't going to fly, so I told her I did it to be dramatic… which I guess amused Her Highness enough to let me off with a warning. And yes, I'm very aware that I deserved every bit of that and more."

Elle crossed her arms with a sigh, before pulling herself closer to Suzaku to see his reddened cheek for herself. "Well as long as you can recognize that, I guess I don't need to pile on even more grief… okay, it'll be back to normal in no time. Alright, let's go!"

"...not that I mind, but you're going to the amusement park in your dress uniform?"

Elle stopped and looked down at herself in surprise, before throwing a hand up over her mouth to cover an embarrassed laugh. "Whoops! Can't believe I forgot to change…! Give me like, five seconds and I'll get that taken care of, alright?!"

Before Suzaku could protest or even begin to respond, Elle ran just far enough into the showers to be out of sight from the hallway before digging into her satchel to retrieve a blouse and short skirt, carelessly trading the outermost layer of one outfit for the other. Packing her uniform components back into the bag, the redhead then turned back to her date with a beaming smile. "See! Barely took me any time at all!"

When she realized Suzaku was staring at her, however… "W-what's that look for?!"

"Well for one thing, I didn't expect the reminder of how nice and slim your legs are…"

Practically blowing up with a full-face blush, Elle rushed forward, grabbed Suzaku by the arm, and pulled him along behind her to keep him from seeing the goofy grin threatening to spill out. "That's enough of that, loverboy; onward now, to Clovisland!"

"So," Merrybell sighed in Euphemia's makeshift office, preparing to summarize recent revelations. "Lelouch is alive. And he's Zero. And he's determined to wipe Britannia from the face of the Earth. With a form of nigh-unstoppable optic mind control that carries an increasing risk of self-activating without his intent at the worst possible moment. Also, Nunnally may or may not be alive, but any attempt to reach out to her is likely to set off Lelouch like a bomb. ...how much of this are we telling Cornelia?"

"Absolutely none of it." Euphemia didn't quite snap at her lieutenant, but the tenseness in her voice was clear. "At least not until we've gotten the situation under a much greater degree of control. If so much as a breath of this insanity got back to the Homeland, it… there's… I can't imaginea scenario after that where any of it remains manageable."

The Princesses watched each other in the silence that followed, a thick cloud of frustration hanging in the air.

Euphemia sighed, sat up in her chair… and dispelled it with a clap and a smile. "But! As vexing as it was to obtain this intelligence, the fact that we have the information at all is still better than the alternative. And if what Suzaku said about the upcoming sakuradite distribution conference is true, then-"

Merrybell wasn't going to let her half-sister finish that thought. "Then you absolutely cannot be in attendance yourself. You're too important in too many ways to be put at risk if the JLF attempt to attack… and even if by some miracle Zero can be reasoned with, he's-"

"He's our beloved brother," Euphemia insisted, before closing her eyes in pain. "...even if he murdered Clovis. And even if Clovis may well have deserved death or worse. Whatever mistakes Lelouch has made, however troubled and ill he is… I'm not content to write him off as my enemy without at least trying to talk him down and make him stand down first."

Merrybell bit her lip, her own sentimentality at war with the pragmatic needs of their situation. "Are you so sure that you can?"

Euphemia nodded as a daring smile bloomed on her face.

Coming up on the dazzling lights of the park entrance, it's hard to not stop and stare. "You know, I'm still surprised nobody changed the name after the controversy. About Clovis, I mean. ...because of what the massacre he ordered at Shinjuku."

Elle, hugging onto our arm, looks up at us with a brief frown. "Right, that happened while you were in your coma… basically, the Viceroy gave this whole big speech about how, since Zero killed Clovis and made it impossible for him to face justice, Clovis's name and image would instead be put to work making restitution for the damage he caused after death. So, Clovisland got officially taken over by the state and is now being used as a public fundraiser for affordable housing, Refrain treatment, and other welfare projects to benefit the Japanese… heck, a ton of decent-paying staff positions at the park were given to Japanese, too."

It takes me a few seconds to realize why that sounds familiar, even as I stare down at the redhead hanging on our arm.

Holding hands was one thing, but feeling the warmth of her body pressed against mine? Damn, but I could get addicted to this…

Come on, keep yourself together…

First off, Suzaku? I don't have to. Second? You can't make me.

His empty threats rattle across my skull as I finally place the familiarity. "What, you mean like… the Babel Tower casino we took over?"

"Yep!" Elle says with a nod, popping the 'p'. "Apparently the Viceroy thought your idea with using peoples' compulsion to feed their vices as a way to bankroll humanitarian progress was such a win, she went and used it again."

I barely have enough time to chuckle at the rhyme before Elle takes a step closer to the amusement park gate, letting go of our arm as she does so. In the time it takes my arm to register the cool night air now that she's gone, she's walked out in front to face us. "This whole thing was my idea," she proclaims with a proud thumb aimed at her chest, "so tickets, snacks, and anything else like that are all on me tonight! Whether it's the rollercoaster or the swan boats, our top priority is anything you feel like doing!"

How about if feel dragging you into a bed to cuddle all night until long after the sun comes up?

Dude, you really need to stop simping.

You're really going to say you think my plan isn't grade-A?

No, no, I like the idea in and of itself, Suzaku admits, but that's not the problem. Elle's repeatedly gone to a lot of effort for us, and we need to meet her where she's at.

...yeah, that's fair.

I shake my head and put my attention back on Elle, only to see her facepalm with a gasp. "Wait, damn, I should've asked earlier… you don't hate crowds, do you? Or get motion sick?"

I step up and throw my arms around her, holding her close and soaking in her warmth-

If you keep going on about that, you're going to make us sound like some kind of vampire.

-before Suzaku takes over and shoves me to the back seat. "I don't get motion sick and I'm not terrible with crowds," he assured her with a kiss on the forehead. "You sounded excited about the rollercoaster, so I'm happy to start there."

And so the night went, with Elle guiding Suzaku into and through lines of other customers to ride a rollercoaster, and then a carousel, and then a ferris wheel.

As the pair were lifted high into the air and treated to a leisurely view of the park and the surrounding Tokyo Settlements, Suzaku fidgeted a little on the bench. "I know it must seem out of the blue, but… could I take a moment to ask you about something that's been in the back of my mind for a while?"

"Sure thing," Elle said with a nod, resting a hand on Suzaku's and entwining her fingers with his.

"What… is Eden? Or Eden Vital? Whichever it is? I occasionally hear reference made to it, but I don't really have any context to understand…"

Elle lets out a sigh, scooting her body up against his even as she looks out over the city through carriage window. "Well, I guess it makes sense you wouldn't know much since you're Japanese… well, to try and make this as brief as I can… the Holy Church of Eden Vital is Britannia's official state religion, with the current ruler of the Empire also taking control of the Church. The basic principle that sets it apart from most other faiths in the world is that instead of humanity answering to God as a higher power, Eden Vital preaches that humanity itself is God, collectively. Because mankind is God, it's our right to rule over the world and everything else in it as we see fit… and when people like you come along – people who are orders of magnitude stronger, tougher, or more capable than ordinary people for reasons that science hasn't been able to explain yet – the church traditionally calls them Closer to Eden… which you can understand as sort of like demigods in ancient Greek mythology."

Suzaku digested that for a few seconds, before letting out a bitter, twisted laugh. "So, what… are you saying that according to Britannia's church, I'm some kind of savior?"

"Maybe you could be. Britannians listen to power, and you've got a kind of power that nobody can take away from you… even if the Emperor's a total screwup and making everything evil," she spat under her breath heatedly enough for Suzaku to stop and look at her.

"I'm sorry?"

"If all mankind really is collectively divine," she insists, "then we should be preaching tolerance, dignity, and respect for other cultures! Not this stupid Darwinian bullshit the Emperor's peddling as an excuse for his dumb wars!"

After a moment, the pair realized they were staring into each other's eyes… but when a flushed Suzaku tried to look away, Elle caught him by the cheek and kissed him. "Honestly, though," she whispered against his neck, "you shouldn't worry too much about that stuff. It's all unsubstantiated either way… and no matter how strong you are, you're just one guy who's already got too much on his plate. The absolute last thing you need is to try and take all the world's hopes on your shoulders."

It took Suzaku a few seconds to decide how he wanted to answer that. But when he did, he pressed Elle against the carriage's cool window with a searing kiss that left her breathless.

"I don't give a damn about the world's hopes, just the people precious to me… and I don't want you to ever forget that you're included."