It takes two rounds of poker within the Knightmare hanger of the Black Knights' headquarters before Kallen can categorised their style of playing. Minami with his poker face and careful placing of cards. Tamaki who smugly tossed down cards without particular strategy. And Sugiyama, who scrutinized and calculated for an eternity before making his move.

"You're going to be doing cleanup duty for a week," Tamaki chanted, shuffling his pile of cards, smirking at his opponents.

"Actually, you're losing," Minami sneered at Tamaki, who scowled.

"Actually, I doubt there's anything we can do to stop his winning," Sugiyama frowned. "It was well played," he grudgingly said, tossing his hand down.

"Actually, your face was well played." And while Sugiyama commented that that didn't even make sense, Kallen cleared her throat quietly.

"Actually..." she said, laying her cards down and allowing herself a tiny grin. "Full House." Minami stared at it, Tamaki's jaw slowly crept down, and Sugiyama laughed.

"We're keeping her," he said.

She was sitting against the cell bars, eyes distant and arms folded across her chest (don't think about there, gods, he had his hands all over there and you liked it you sicko). She still couldn't believe that she had done that. It felt surreal. Had she really straddled Suzaku and....

Kallen grimaced, pressing her thighs together. She did not want to remember. She wanted the cold numbness of amnesia to soften her memories into a distant wet blur. She felt sore and tired and defeated. Broken like the china doll she had once dropped accidentally down the stairs. Face cracked open and glass eye rolling away.

There was someone behind her. Kallen could feel him. Her spine tried to curve inwards and claw its way out through the front, and her eternal organs felt like they were going to jump ship, so she knew it was Suzaku. Disappointment ran deep through her body to mingle with the shame and the resentment coiled inside the pit of her stomach. She was hoping he at least wouldn't show his face around her again, after what had transpired between them yesterday. Kallen for one, definitely did not want to face him --- probably never again, unless it was on the battlefield. Then again, if there was one thing that she had learned throughout her entire experience as a prisoner thus far, it was that passion and violence were often closely linked and she wasn't sure if she could fight against the Lancelot again without remembering and knowing….

She swallowed and turned her head where her gaze landed on a tray laden with food placed directly in front of her jail cell. Straining her eyes against the weak lighting, she realized there were also two small white pills sitting next to the glass of water. "What are those?" She croaked into the still air, her voice sounding thready and weak even to her own ears. It seemed like an eternity before Suzaku answered, his own voice a monotone.

"....They're an emergency method of contraception."

Kallen froze as if he had just drenched her with a barrel of ice water.

Suzaku's low, flat voice continued on like a robot. "You take the first pill with something to eat so you don't get nauseas. Twelve hours later, you take the second pill."

She swallowed a sob, breathed shakily and deeply. She remembered then, that they hadn't used any condoms and she was, of course, not on birth control so it was a logical arrangement really, how Suzaku had managed to procure the morning-after pill. How sensible. How very practical. Wouldn't want any mini Suzakus running around, now did we.

Oh what would her brother do if he could see her now? Probably die again from the shame at seeing his sister having unprotected sex with the enemy. How could anyone be so stupid, so caught up in the moment that they forget to use protection? What was wrong with her? She used to be smart. She used to get straight A's in all her classes. But now it was as if she was slowly losing all sense of her sanity being cooped up in this godforsaken jail cell. But maybe that wasn't the entire problem since she was sure that when Ougi and the others had been captured, they hadn't resorted to having orgies on the dirty cement floor. So it really all just came down to her and whatever the hell was going on inside her head.

The atmosphere was so tense it was choking her. Realizing that Suzaku was keeping careful watch of her facial expressions, Kallen snatched up one of the pills and swallowed it dry, gagging at the quick ache when it slithered sluggishly down her throat.

"Here, have something to eat ---" he tried to offer her a sandwich through the metal bars but she smacked it away in annoyance. It was just like the beginning, when he kept harrasing her to eat. Only this time, he was making no move to enter her cell anymore, and it wasn't because the bars that were holding him back either. Something unspoken and raw had changed between them; a barrier he wouldn't cross over, not after the intimacy they had shared and Kallen knew inexplicably that Suzaku would keep his distance.

"What are you, my mother?" Kallen snapped, reacting with anger as she always seemed to be doing these days. It was like Suzaku brought out the very worst in her or maybe it was the whole damn situation. She didn't know. Or particularly care.

Suzaku evidently seemed to have lost all patience with her as well.

"Do you usually do with your mother what we were doing last night?" He countered blandly, dropping the uneaten sandwich back on the tray with a careless toss.

Kallen balked, memories beginning to flood and refusing to be banished to the recesses of her mind. Memories of Suzaku's face against her skin, mindlessly mouthing at her flesh as he panted his release or how each press of his hips hurt but he had tried to take away her discomfort anyway; his fingers and lips doing their best to distract her enough to enjoy the sex.

She shuffled herself a few inches away from the bars. "Fuck you." She spat.

"I believe you already did."

Kallen stared, too shocked to reply. She wasn't used to seeing this unforgiving side of Suzaku. Her gaze trailed down the stony planes of his face, and lingered on the dark rings around his eyes and his slightly sunk-in cheeks. He was the one who needed a sandwich right now --- not her.

Closing her eyes, Kallen heaved one big weary sigh. She was tired, so tired all the time.

"Just leave me alone." She muttered after several in-takes of breath and drew her knees up to her chest before grimacing slightly. She was still sore from.... well, you know. Suzaku's sharp gaze caught her grimace and suddenly, his face softened and he looked just as beaten and broken as she did. "Does it hurt terribly?" and his voice was no longer sounding mechanical, "I'm sorry. I was too rough."

"I'm fine!" Kallen immediately gritted out, humiliation setting her face aflame, "It's normal for girls after their first---" She broke off abruptly, because this was embarrassing and awkward and she did not want to be having this conversation with him. With anyone.

"So you were a virgin," Suzaku was sullen as he looked at her guiltily. "I'm so sorry Kallen."

For what? she wanted to scream. For dishonoring me, or deflowering me, or some such? Was he going to feel duty bound to insist on the honorable course of marriage now? She hated how apologetic and regretful he looked --- how he always looked, like it was his fault she had jumped him, forced him to stay. She suddenly had a ridiculous image of herself tying Suzaku up to a bedpost and having her dirty dirty way with him.

"You know what? I am so done with you!" Kallen exploded, because she was good at that. "You drive me crazy with your holier-than-thou attitude, the way you keep relying on some stupid affirmation that you're this good person, that everyone should be good and follow your beliefs because god forbid that you're ever wrong, as you walk around with this whole "good guy" façade when really---"

She was grabbed mid-rant by the collar of her suit and dragged forwards until she was pressed painfully up against the metal bars of her cell. What met her eyes burned into the back of her brain and haunted her for the remainder of her days because Suzaku's expression was unlike anything she had ever witnessed before, save for the time he had first unmasked Zero.

"Don't talk about me like you know me." He told her in a voice barely above a whisper.

Kallen snapped. She really, truly did. It was as if all the pent up anger and frustration and sorrow she had been storing inside her erupted out of her mouth like a volcano. She was angry, so angry, she was actually seeing red.

"I know you're a coward," Kallen challenged, a feral snarl on her lips. She shook her head and threw her chest out, pinching her shoulder blades together in an effort to throw off his grasp. "I know that you want to find a way to justify everything you've done to give your life some meaning. Like murdering your father."

She had hit a nerve. Suzaku growled, mouth open and teeth bared, pulling her tighter against the bars with a pronounced clang.

"You act all noble on the outside because that's who you want to be, but it really doesn't make you any better than Zero." Kallen continued her tirade mercilessly, her head splitting with the need to cry.

The muscles around Suzaku's mouth were tight and angry. "Zero's methods will never save anyone."

"That isn't for you to decide."

"He's playing you like a puppet."

"And I don't care." Kallen said evenly, "I don't care, I never did."

People assigned leaders to do what they cannot-- to have the strength of will to accept what they cannot fathom. A good leader is like a good speech-- goading people onward, goading miracles from laymen, great feats from ordinary people. Only a leader can do what all others would shy from. Zero was the executor of necessity-- the executioner of paralyzing choice. The price for a liberated Japan was inked into every curve and bend of her body. It didn't matter if she had to take lives or risk her own. To free the country her brother had died trying to save, she would roll around in the mud and lick Zero's boots if she had to.

And she felt sorry for Suzaku because he needed to learn that self-denial would only impede his growth. He had to find out what he was, and what he was not. And somehow, Kallen knew they would always be on opposite sides of the battle field; forever enemies, fighting one another to the last breath, for neither one could accept anything less than someone fighting with all they had.

"Kallen." The strain in his voice convinced her to be silent and listen. He was desperate. She had driven him to desperation. There was something he had been keeping to himself for a long time, a story --- one small moment, she had probably forgotten about. When her words had meant more to him than anyone else's.

"Do you remember the first day I came to Ashford?"

Her brows scrunched in confusion. "Yes, but why –"

"It was lunchtime," he interrupted, knowing what her question would be. "You were eating inside the classroom with some other girls and I could tell you didn't like their company."

She gazed uncomfortable. "How do you know that?"

"I was there," he continued. "You made some sort of excuse and then you went outdoors and sat behind some bushes to finish your lunch by yourself. I thought it was a little odd, but there you were, outside alone. You were so confident and poised -- totally different than when you were around the others. And I remembered thinking how amazing it was that you didn't mind eating alone when someone like me, the new kid, was so self-conscious about it. I wanted to speak to you, but I didn't know what to say. You scared me, and I didn't want to embarrass myself so I just stood there. And then you looked up at me and said –"

"'You don't have to be nervous with me'," she finished, recognition written on her face. "I remember. You didn't say anything back."

Suzaku looked away. "I was intimidated. My whole life, people have been putting expectations on me. Growing up, I had to be perfect in my father's eyes and when I started attending Ashford, people were waiting for the worst out of me, but you just looked at me with no expectations. Slowly, it helped me to realize that I could refuse to do anything I didn't want to do, because in my mind I knew there was at least one person out there, who wouldn't be judging me for it. The feeling was overbearing."

He looked back at her, gaze heavy and unnerving. Kallen said nothing, but the constant elastic pull in her chest seemed to loosen, ever, ever so slightly.

"Thank you." Suzaku informed her, almost wistfully.

"Something as small as that made that much of an impression on you?" Kallen asked with as close to a smile as she would allow.

"It was the best thing anyone's ever told me."

And that was that. They had reached the critical point where it ended just as suddenly as it began. Anything after this defining moment of their pseudo-relationship would just be resounding acknowledgment of a dull rhythm surely morse code for Goodbye.

There was nothing left for Kallen to do but wait. But it was a different kind of waiting now. Waiting for things to end. To be complete. It was a long wait that didn't have a known end. But this type of waiting.... somehow it felt right.

Kallen took a deep breath after Suzaku left and pushed her head back against the wall. Not crying, she told herself firmly. Not crying.

Just waiting.

Naoto carded his fingers through her hair and she shook her head frantically. He recoiled and made a face at her.

"Why'd'jya cut it anyway?" he asked, eyes glancing over the way her hair now fell only to just below her collarbone, tracing the edge of her neck.

"To catch wind," she replied, tossing her head wildly, letting the short strands fly in the hot summer breeze. When he buried his fingers in it again, she didn't shake them away, instead laughed and said: "we have the same length now."

"Ah I see now! You just wanted to look like your dear older brother didn't you? Can't say I blame you---"

Kallen rolled her eyes and kicked him in the shin. "I'm not that obsessed."

He retaliated by poking her in the cheek. "Face it - you love me kiddo. You love me like a fat kid loves cake."

A shrug. "Eh. You're okay."

"Why you little ---"

After being tickled senseless, Kallen couldn't stop laughing. Clear and bright and echoing.

"Long time no see, Kallen."

She had figured that there was nothing left that could surprise her now but she was wrong. At first, there was only shock. And then, slowly, a ghost of a smile blossomed onto her features.

"Nunnally." She greeted and sat up straight.

Fin.

A/N: Aaaand that's where everything ties into ep. 12. I know the time-line is hella screwed up but bleh. Whatevz.

To my readers:

I started off Critical Point with the knowledge that Suzaku/Kallen wasn't the most popular of fan pairings and I've ended it satisfied in the knowledge that I contributed something to its small fandom. I don't picture a relationship between Suzaku and Kallen as being very joyous so it reflects that way in my writing. To me, Suzaku/Kallen is very complicated to write. But it has its own appeal and I hope you guys enjoyed my portrayal.

I don't believe that I can thank you long time readers enough for sticking by this fic for so long. But thank you anyways, you people are the best.

A spiffy fanart by tenshiyaki from livejournal was also drawn for this fic!

h t t p : / / i m g . p h o t o b u c k e t . c o m / a l b u m s / v 5 1 6 / M r s K u ch i k i / su z a k a l l c o p y . j p g

Isn't it epic? 33

(Btw, no, there was no rape involved in the previous chapter. Seriously, I'm a little offended people would even say that. The sex was obviously consensual despite the scenario being vastly different from what you may be used to reading.)