Chapter Two
Black and Blue

1. Lloyd Asplund and Rakshata Chawla

Do you recognise the two faces opposite? Probably not. Rest assured, however, that this multi-national duo of former child geniuses contains what are arguably the two greatest scientists the Imperial Colchester Institute has ever produced.

Meeting and matching wits during their studies at ICI, Asplund and Chawla first debuted onto the international science scene with their joint final project, titled at the time "High Speed Energy Processing and Distribution Core". The prototype that they produced provided the basis for Asplund and Chawla's later development of the Yggdrasil Drive, the power-distribution technology that is used in every Fourth Generation Knightmare Frame.

Asplund and Chawla are now rumoured to have split: Asplund for a career in military R&D and Chawla to focus on prosthetics. Only time will tell what a further team-up of these two will bring to the table in the future.

From the article "10 Greatest Scientific Teams of Today" by Sherry Williams, first published Nov. 4. 2010.

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The Second Pacific War lasted exactly one month. 31 days of bloodshed. Lelouch remembers each and every one of them with a precise, calculated exactitude. She knows better than any Britannian history textbook what happened during the last week of the war, knows how it ravaged the land and scattered Japan's people.

And still, seven years later, much like the stupidly stubborn Japanese, she dreams of it.

"—zaku! Suzaku!"

Nunnally is on her back, fragile and worried. She's shouting out at the top of her lungs, so loud that each word makes Lelouch wince. Nunnally's mouth is right there behind her ear, too close, but Lelouch says nothing.

"Suzaku!" Nunnally calls again.

Lelouch spots something. Her eyes narrow and she taps Nunnally once to get her to stop shouting.

"What is it, Lelouch?" Nunnally asks.

Lelouch shrugs, because she hasn't yet trained herself out of nonverbal gestures when talking to Nunnally, and murmurs, "I think I see him."

"What's he doing?"

"He's…" Lelouch pauses. "He's crying." She shifts Nunnally off her back. "He's up on the bank. I can't climb with you on my back. I'm going to go see what's wrong."

Nunnally nods her agreement and Lelouch ruffles her little sister's hair before she trudges up to the sharp wall of dirt that stands between her and Suzaku. It's a struggle to heave herself up it, but she manages. She's privately glad that she stopped wearing the stupid dresses when the war began and switched back to her normal, somewhat boyish clothes. She can just imagine the frills getting caught on something.

"Hey, Suzaku," she says, approaching the boy slowly. He doesn't seem to notice her. "Hey, are you—"

He flinches, a full-body action, the moment her hand touches his shoulder. His head whips around, eyes wide and panicked, before he takes in her appearance.

"Lelouch?" he rasps.

"No, simply an uncanny lookalike," she replies, sitting down on the ground beside him. "You were late to our meeting place. Nunnally got worried."

Suzaku's head snaps up again and he whirls around. "Where is she? You didn't leave her alone, did you? You know what they'll—"

"Relax," Lelouch interrupts. "She's down there." She points down the edge of the bank. "She hasn't left my line of sight once. Give me some credit." She gives him a strange look. "And why are we speaking English? I thought this was Japan and 'in Japan, we speak Japanese'."

Suzaku goes stiff. "We're not going to win this war."

Lelouch watches him closely. He's not precisely wrong, but he's not precisely right either. The problem is that Suzaku is drastically underestimating just how strategically important Japan is on an international scale. If they hold the Britannians off for, say, just a month more, it's more than likely that the EU, or the Chinese Federation will step in, just to ensure that Britannia doesn't get to control it.

But Suzaku probably isn't looking for that sort of answer. She keeps silent.

He inhales deeply, as if he's building himself up to something. "My father is dead."

Lelouch freezes. "Assassination?" The word is dry and filled with fear. If Britannia has found them, found Kururugi Shrine, then she and Nunnally are as good as dead—

"No," Suzaku says, cutting through her internal panic. "He—" He breaks off, and for a second he looks so haunted, so tormented, that she's taken completely aback.

Oh. It hits her. Suicide.

She isn't sure what to make of this, if she's honest. She always knew Kururugi Genbu was a fool, but she never thought he was a coward too.

And then she hears it. The quiet, almost undetectable whirring of a Britannian fighter jet. She throws her head up to the sky, scanning desperately, until she spots the source of the noise. "Suzaku," she says, urgently, nudging him. "Suzaku, we need to go, now."

He blinks at her, coming back to himself, and then follows her finger to the sky, to the jet. "No," he whispers hoarsely. "No, what are they—"

The jet swoops low, and then…

A raging inferno marks the landscape where, just moments ago, the main building of Kururugi Shrine was. Suzaku crumples to his knees and lets out a choking scream.

And then… everything just… fades… away…

No, no, no, no, no, no, Lelouch, please, no, you can't die, please, Lelouch, no.

She opens her eyes.

It's actually a bit of surprise to be even opening her eyes, given that she's pretty certain that's a sign that she isn't dead. Of course, bullet wounds aren't always fatal, but being shot in the middle of the ghetto with no chance for prompt medical attention does reduce the odds of survival somewhat.

She looks down her torso. Sure enough, peeking out from underneath her hospital gown are white bandages, wrapped tight around her shoulder. So that's where the bullet hit.

Lelouch looks around her room. She's in a hospital, that much is clear, and it's a relatively high-class one from what she can tell. That places her somewhere in the Settlement. Someone has stripped her out of her uniform, which means that they most likely found her school ID.

That's a good thing, she reminds herself. Ruben is listed as her emergency contact and, if Nunnally is in even the smallest bit of danger, he knows to get her out.

Lelouch's lips twist in annoyance. She needs more information before she can make a feasible plan. All she can do right now is trust that the contingencies she put in place all those years ago are working as they should.

The door to her room opens.

"Aha!" The man who steps through the opening grins widely. "See, Cécile, I told you she'd be awake by now." He moves to the side, revealing a woman in a burnt orange military uniform, who shoots the man a scowling look of displeasure before smiling, somewhat more gently, at Lelouch.

Oh God. The military. Lelouch feels sick. "Where am I?" she forces out. It's as much a test as it is an honest question – a way to probe, to get a better idea of her circumstance.

It's the woman – Cécile? – that answers. "Princess Nunnally Hospital, back in the Settlement," she says, one hand coming up to tuck a strand of indigo hair behind her ear. "Lloyd and I were part of the team that retrieved you from the ghetto."

Lelouch is momentarily caught up in an intense feeling of distaste. Princess Nunnally Hospital: Clovis's choice of name, no doubt, yet another example of his ever-present cosmetic grief. There's probably some sort of Princess Lelouch building out there, but she doubts it's another hospital. Too repetitive for Clovis.

She mentally shakes herself out of that train of thought.

"I suppose congratulations are in order," the man – Lloyd? – drawls, wandering over to the end of her bed and picking up her medical chart. He flicks through it disinterestedly before replacing it. "You are currently one of only three listed civilian survivors from the Shinjuku Purge."

"Lloyd!" Cécile cuffs him around the ear. "That's classified information!"

"Ah, apologies. It was an – what's the euphemism? – urban renewal."

"Lloyd!"

Lelouch feels her mind freeze up. She shouldn't be surprised. This is Britannia and this is Clovis and this is what they do, but, all the same, this is Clovis. He was the one that taught her how to play chess and she remembers his face when she won that first game, the open-mouthed shock. He taught her how to dress like a lady and though she hated him for it at the time, for the way he insisted on constricting dresses in violet with frills and ruff, she recognises it for the necessary help it was now.

This is Clovis.

He purged a ghetto.

She notices too late that things have gone very quiet in her room. Lloyd and Cécile are both staring at her, Cécile with sympathy and Lloyd with… something else.

Take control of the conversation, Lelouch, she chides herself. "Who are you?" she asks, narrowing her eyes at them. "You're not doctors."

"I can't imagine what could have possibly given us away," Lloyd deadpans, and the smile is back. "Lloyd Asplund at your service and this, here, is Lieutenant Cécile Croomy."

Lloyd… Asplund? Panic bubbles up beneath Lelouch's skin. If these two were simple nobodies, a military consultant and his minder, perhaps, then there would be a chance that this visit was nothing special. Check up on her, see what she knew about the… purge, and coerce her into signing confidentiality agreements until her fingers bleed.

But Lloyd Asplund? There's no reason for a Britannian noble of Asplund's standing to be here, no reason he could possibly be interested in Lelouch Lamperouge, brilliant but lazy student of Ashford Academy.

They know. The thought cuts through her panic and with it comes pure, unadulterated terror. They know who I am, who I was, and they want something from me.

What do they want?

They're staring at her again, but it's expectant this time. They're waiting for her to say something.

Well, in that case.

"I'm sorry," Lelouch rushes out, putting on her best flustered look. "I just—you developed the Yggdrasil Drive."

"Oho? A fan?" Lloyd's face splits into a wide grin. "That does make this next part easier. You see, I find myself in the unusual position of needing you to do me a favour."

She blanks her face. "A favour?"

He knows. He definitely knows.

"Yes," Lloyd affirms. "I believe we have a mutual acquaintance – a Private Suzaku Kururugi?" She flinches and, if possible, his grin stretches even wider. "I need you to help me save his life."

They have Suzaku. Suzaku is going to die. She got herself shot for that bull-headed, ungrateful idiot, and he's still going to die.

Cécile steps up so that she's level to Lloyd. "Suzaku is set to stand trial for insubordination in three days," she says, the words calm and measured. "During operations in Shinjuku, he disobeyed several direct orders from his CO in order to save your life."

Three days? Why wait three days?

Oh. The purge. Britannians use Numbers like cannon-fodder – how many were spread out through the ghetto when the kill-on-sight order went through? Hundreds, probably, all witnessing their fellow countrymen gunned down like animals. There was probably a wealth of offences just like Suzaku's during that time.

Except… Oh, now she knows where this is going.

"You want me to testify at his court martial," she says.

"Oh, very well done!" Lloyd says, clapping. "You're very fast on the uptake – my compliments. But right now, I think the most prominent question in your mind is 'what do they want with Suzaku?' The answer to that is simple. Private Kururugi is a very important part—" he breaks off, casting a furtive glance to Cécile, "—of my team."

No, no, no, please, not her, not her, please, no.

"And my testimony will save him because?" Lelouch prompts.

Cécile blushes. "Ah, we were hoping," she stammers, "that is, we were wondering—"

"You aren't going to make me say it, are you?" Lloyd cuts across her.

Lelouch's returning stare is hard. "Yes."

Cécile stops speaking. She looks between Lloyd and Lelouch, eyes narrowed. "Am I missing something?"

Lloyd sighs, the movement exaggerated, but not entirely fake. "If I'm wrong I am going to look like such a fool," he laments. "Cécile may very well never let me live it down."

Lelouch's stare doesn't relent.

"Very well, Your Highness," Lloyd says. "Disobeying orders to save a Britannian schoolgirl is understandable, but still insubordination. Disobeying orders to save a Princess of Britannia, however, is grounds for promotion."

Your Highness.

How many times had she heard that before Japan? Thousands, doubtlessly. It was part of her identity back then.

Even in Japan, she couldn't escape the title, but it had taken on a different meaning there. Suzaku used to call her it whenever he thought she was being particularly entitled. He said it thick with irony and disdain and yet it felt like it was worth more somehow in spite of that.

Now it just feels like a death sentence in two words.

She'd always known this day was coming. She and Nunnally couldn't hide forever, but Lelouch had just thought—

She'd thought what? That it'd be later? That it'd happen as she led the charge to tear apart Britannia, to heroically unearth the truth of her mother's murder, finally bring Marianne vi Britannia's killer to justice?

In the end, there is no dignity in survival. There is no space for heroism in this endlessly damned world.

Cécile stares between Lelouch and Lloyd in growing horror. It looks like she's waiting for one of them to jump up and shout, "Psych!" She turns slowly on the spot, her gaze settling on Lelouch, and it's almost too easy to see how her thoughts are developing as she takes in Lelouch's appearance.

It's probably the violet eyes, in the end, that convince her. "Your Highness?" she echoes.

Lelouch regulates her breathing, her fingers scrunching into her palms beneath the blanket on her bed. "From Lieutenant Croomy's surprise, I'm guessing that this isn't information that is commonly known."

Lloyd smiles again, but by this point, Lelouch is wondering if his face does anything else. "Not precisely, no. Why? Planning my unfortunate end?"

"No," Lelouch answers, and it's the truth. There wouldn't be much point and the death of a figure as high profile as Asplund wouldn't bring any kind of good scrutiny. "Not yet, at least," she adds. "I…" she pauses, considering.

On the one hand, Lloyd is a wild card. He's near impossible for her to get a read on, a far cry from any number of nobles she's met in her time in Area 11. On the other, he's in here, talking to her, instead of running straight to Clovis, which means…

"You're not part of the main body of the military, are you?" Lelouch asks. "You're well-known in the field of Knightmare development, so at a guess you run some sort of R&D division. Who's your sponsor?"

Cornelia would normally be Lelouch's first guess, but the Witch of Britannia isn't a particularly good fit for the role. The Britannian press have her placed as the head of some campaign in the Middle Eastern Federation. No, if Lloyd were one of hers, he would be over there with her, not stuck in some battle-scarred area so desperate for personnel he's turned to hiring Honorary Britannians.

Clovis is also out; Lloyd wouldn't risk pissing him off by withholding her survival from him.

It has to be someone above Clovis in the Imperial pecking order and, given that he's the Third Prince, there aren't many of them. Odysseus lacks the drive and Guinevere the foresight, so—

"Schneizel," Lelouch breathes, answering her own question. She's not sure if this is better or worse than the other prospects. "Your sponsor is Schneizel."

It's another set of good news and bad news.

Good news: she's just bought herself a decent amount of time. There's some kind of summit going on over in the EU right now – Shirley was nattering about it a couple of days ago – which means he's going to be unreachable for at least another five days.

Bad news: it's Schneizel.

If Clovis taught Lelouch how to play chess and how to dress for court, Schneizel taught her how to win at chess and how to survive court. Britannia's Second Prince is… slippery. Not to be underestimated.

She never was able to beat him at chess.

But if it's a choice between Schneizel and Clovis, she knows which is the better ally to have.

"Suzaku wasn't protecting me from terrorists when he disobeyed orders," she says, "so you can understand why I'm not eager for the truth of my identity to get out. Getting shot by the Royal Guard once is enough for me."

Cécile frowns. "Why would the Royal Guard be—" she breaks off. "Oh." Her eyes go wide. "Oh."

(Schneizel's face from a decade ago smiles down at her. "Give them the truth," he instructs, "and let them create their own lies. Show them just enough of what they expect that they fill in the rest for you.")

"Suzaku is," she takes a deep breath, searching for the right words, "a very good friend of mine. I will testify at his trial, but there are things I need," need, not want, "if I'm going to survive the ordeal."

Lloyd is looking at her, lips set into a grim line, but he looks willing. Cécile's face is somewhat more expressive, creased with concern that edges too close to motherly for Lelouch to be entirely comfortable with it.

Got you, she thinks and sends a small prayer upwards that Nunnally will forgive her for what she's about to do.

.

Lelouch and Nunnally are cut from the same cloth, but ultimately they are vastly different.

Lelouch is hopelessly cynical – tolerant and compassionate, but rarely openly friendly. She's been anchorless for years now, slowly drifting away, and though Nunnally's older sister is an excellent actress, Nunnally is the one person on earth her sister is not be able to fool.

Just yesterday morning, as Lelouch kissed Nunnally's forehead before heading out the door, Nunnally wondered how long she had left before she lost Lelouch forever.

She didn't mean it like this.

"I'm so sorry, Nunnally," Principal Ashford says, voice muted in a way that suggests he's holding his head in his hands. "This is all my fault."

If only it were that simple, Nunnally thinks. Lelouch is reckless in all the worst ways, not brave per se, but dangerously unconcerned about her safety beyond the sadness that her death would bring Nunnally. No matter what Principal Ashford wants to think, there is no way that Lelouch is blameless in this.

"We're trying to get more information, but we're hitting a wall of 'classified', I'm afraid," Milly adds. Her voice comes from somewhere above and to the left of where Principal Ashford's did, so she's probably standing above her grandfather. "All we've got out of them is that Lelouch has been shot and is recovering in the military's care."

Nunnally remembers the Britannian military, or rather the carnage they brought with them. We're just passing by a dump, Nunnally, she hears, a distant echo in her mind. Don't worry about the smell. It'll be gone soon.

"Do they—" she breaks off, taking a deep breath. "Do they know?"

Again, it's Milly who answers. "Most likely not," she replies. "Say what you want about Prince Clovis, but no-one can deny the man loves a media show. The military's recovery of Lelouch would be all over the airwaves by now if they knew."

"But what if they're keeping it quiet so that they can—" Nunnally stops herself before she can complete the question.

"I don't think that's the case either, Nunna," Milly reassures her calmly. "They wouldn't have notified Grandpa. Lelouch would have just… disappeared."

Nunnally feels her fingers curl around the armrests on her wheelchair. In Japan, at Ashford, she's been happy. It wasn't going to last forever – she always knew that – but she was happy and Lelouch was… Lelouch was there.

"She'll tell them I'm dead," Nunnally whispers, dropping her head so that she would be looking at her lap if her eyes were open. "She'll lie and say I died in the invasion so that I don't have to go back to Pendragon, and then…"

I'll be left alone.

She imagines that Milly is looking at her with sympathy. She never saw Milly before she lost her sight – unlike Principal Ashford, who drank tea with her mother at Aries Villa whenever he was in the capital – so she doesn't have anything to base her current appearance off. She likes to think of Milly as a blonde incarnation of Euphemia, but with an added streak of mischief to her.

Nunnally swallows. "What are we going to do?"

She hears Principal Ashford take in a ragged, steadying breath. "I'm so sorry, Nunnally," he says, again.

Oh, she thinks. Nothing.

"Right now, our best bet is to wait it out for a bit," Milly speaks up. "We run the danger of blowing Lelouch's cover if we're too rash. About all we can do is get ready to act the moment we get more information."

"If it comes down to it," Nunnally says, voice stronger than she feels, "and Lelouch has to go back to Pendragon, I'm going with her."

"Nunnally, I'm not sure if that's—"

"I've lost enough to that country," she says sharply. "They do not get to take Lelouch too."

It's a low blow that's twice as effective because no-one expects it to come from her. What Lelouch forgets, what everyone forgets, is that Nunnally is just as marked by loss and resentment as her older sister. A hail of bullets stole her legs and her mother, her own weakness took away her sight, and her sister is self-destructing just out of her reach.

She has every right to be just as full of anger as Lelouch and the fact that she isn't does not mean the anger is not there.

.

Lelouch tucks a strand of wet hair beneath her ear, staring at herself in the bathroom mirror. She's seen better days, in all honesty, but she's also seen far worse. I can't believe I'm going to do this, she thinks, fingers finding a resting place on the mirror's surface.

On the edge of the sink below her is a cheap cell phone. She paid the floor's janitor three hundred pounds for it – all the cash she had on her when she was taken to Shinjuku – and it's the closest thing she currently has to "untraceable".

She exhales, picks up the phone, and plugs in a number she's taught herself by heart.

"Mistress?"

Bless Sayoko a thousand times over.

"It's me," Lelouch affirms. "Is she there?"

Sayoko pauses, probably processing what Lelouch has said. No names and an unidentified number – it shouldn't be too hard for Sayoko to infer that Lelouch is worried about the call being bugged.

"Yes," comes Sayoko's answer. "Do you want me to pass you to her?"

Lelouch swallows roughly. "No," she says. She loves her sister, but if she hears her voice right now, Lelouch will crumple. "I—I need you to tell her something for me. Can you do that?"

"Of course."

A deep breath in. "Tell her that our first friend in this country is still alive and that the only way I can save him is to tell everyone the truth about me. Tell her that I'm sorry and—tell her goodbye."

"I will," Sayoko says softly. There's a pause. "Mistress, it's been a pleasure."

Something clogs in Lelouch's throat. "The same to you," she chokes out.

Everything Lelouch knows about being a woman, she learned from either the internet or Sayoko. Even though she's more Nunnally's maid, Sayoko has been there without fail whenever Lelouch has needed her. It's more than Lelouch can say about anyone else.

Lelouch hangs up the call.

There's a knock at the door to the bathroom. Lelouch startles, knocking the phone off the sink and shuffling it under her discarded hospital gown on the floor.

"Uh, Your Highness, are you all right in there?" Cécile calls through the door.

Lelouch looks back to her reflection. It's still there, under the bland apathy that wore at her each day, that spark of regal beauty. She levels her chin and twists her lips into a small, knowing smile.

("Let nothing touch you," a teenage Schneizel says to her as he corrects her posture. "You are beyond their reach, too far above them for their insults and threats to mean anything to you.")

"I'm fine, Lieutenant Croomy," she says.

It's not a lie, not exactly.

These are the facts: Lelouch is terrified, yes, but she is no longer the petulant child she was when she demanded justice from her father. She has had seven years to let her anger cool and she refuses to let it rule her. She is more cunning than Clovis and the games her older brother likes to play are ones that Lelouch understands far better than him.

And she has a trump card.

Lelouch doesn't know who the green-haired girl in the capsule was, but she knows that Clovis was prepared to kill indiscriminately to keep her existence secret. Lelouch can work with that.

Even if blackmail is so very lacking in finesse, Lelouch sighs to herself as she turns her gaze to the clothes that are hung up on the towel rack.

After her mother was killed, Lelouch refused to wear anything other than black. It was her own passive-aggressive way of using Britannian mourning traditions to let everyone know that she had not forgotten and that she would not forget. She was the Black Princess to Schneizel's White Prince and it used to make her laugh that their monikers were reflective of their preferred sides in chess.

When she was sent to Japan with Nunnally, Lelouch stopped wearing black. It was a calculated decision, though, part of the impenetrable, inhuman mask she wore whenever faced by Sonoe Kururugi.

These clothes are not black. Part of Lelouch wishes they were, to scream, "I will never forget," at the top of her lungs, but there is a better way to send her message.

(Of all the paintings of Marianne vi Britannia, there is only one that reached any level of renown. It captures the first time she attended court after marrying the Emperor: Lelouch's mother standing at the top of a staircase, chin raised in regal defiance as she looks out over the aristocracy and dares them to disapprove of her. Marianne vi Britannia was undeniably beautiful, lean body covered in an extravagant dress of—)

Royal blue.

A quiet whisper: I have not forgotten, even now.

.

Suzaku never really understood what it meant to hate until he met Lelouch. "A child who hates like an adult," he'd heard one of the maids muttering and it was so accurate it was painful. She committed to the emotion with the full might of her mind (and what a mind); for the longest time, Suzaku was terrified that it would burn up everything else.

Seven years have changed Lelouch.

In Shinjuku, it was hard to believe that the young woman stood in front of him was the same as the anger-fuelled girl he met so long ago. It makes even less sense with distance, because Lelouch—she—she smiled.

He can't see past that, even now. He's sat in a holding cell, waiting for a five-minute trial and a death sentence, and all he can think of is the fact that Lelouch sacrificed herself for him and smiled as she did it.

What about Nunnally? Suzaku wanted to scream. What about your sister? How's she going to feel knowing that you died when you could have lived? How can you be so selfish?

But really, it wasn't. Selfish, that is. It was probably the most selfless thing Lelouch had ever done.

She did it for him.

And she smiled.

He thunks his head back against the wall of his cell. Soon, he tells himself. Soon it will be over.

.

Points of interest:

1. "Cécile blushes. 'Ah, we were hoping,' she stammers, 'that is, we were wondering—'" – In the first draft of the chapter, there was an extra scene between Lloyd and Cécile that got cut. Basically, all you have to know here is that Cécile is trying to ask Lelouch if she has ties to any notable noble family, because Suzaku disobeying orders to protect someone of a reasonably high social standing would earn him a lot of leeway. That plan, in her mind at least, probably worked out a little too well.

2. "Sonoe Kururugi" - After the invasion, Lelouch refers to everyone in the Britannian 'given name then family name' format, even Japanese people she met before the war. The only exception to this is Suzaku, because he essentially hammered his name into her head as Kururugi Suzaku. Part of it is about respect and another part of it is becuase Lelouch is a pretty snide person and she's just incredibly bitter about the way the war took away the peace she managed to find in the months before it.

Next chapter: Lelouch makes her move, Suzaku reacts, and there's a family reunion that has been seven years in the making.