Author's Notes: This is a sequel to Iluxia's "The Cradle of Summer." Written with permission.
...this might not make sense if you haven't read that fic first.
The Cradle of Time
by Aynessa
And so the years passed onward.
They lived with each other - laughed, and fought, and lived - but whilst they both aged in mind, only one of them aged in body.
Though Suzaku knew it was inevitable, he couldn't help himself from mourning for the future - not for the end of their time together (which would eventually dissolve into Lelouch's fleeting memories of an everlasting life) - but for the kind man, forever trapped in a teenager's body, that he would leave behind. With every quiet, gentle year that passed between them, the sorrow in Lelouch's eyes grew. He smiled, and he laughed, and at times he even snarled at Suzaku in anger, but his violet eyes always held the same growing despair.
One day, in their 40th year of life, the adult frozen in a teen's body turned to him with a solemn look on his face.
"Suzaku...I don't think I can-"
"Stay with me," Suzaku interrupted, gazing resolutely at his king.
Lelouch stared at him a moment, then averted his gaze. He swallowed, closed his eyes to conceal the pain hidden within, and then slowly nodded.
x
And so the years passed.
On the 30th anniversary of the Zero Requiem, they spent a quiet day together talking about everything and nothing at all, and then they napped under the old sakura tree. Neither of them expected anyone to visit the old, long-abandoned and overgrown Kururugi shrine.
"You are both...so very cruel."
Suzaku's eyes snapped open, instantly awake - ever the soldier. Lelouch, in contrast, barely stirred at his knight's side. Suzaku slowly sat up, his green eyes swiftly locating the brunette woman a few feet away. Her kind amethyst eyes brimmed with large tears that spilled quickly onto her cheeks, framing her trembling chin.
"Nunally..." Suzaku said softly, his voice filled with all the things that could never be put into words. At the sound of his sister's name, Lelouch finally awoke. With the elegance of a dancer, the former emperor slowly rose to face the sister he left behind.
Her eyes widened impossibly further at the sight of his unchanged eighteen-year old body, and she gave a hitching sob. "So...cruel."
Lelouch silently approached her, and then slowly knelt at the side of her wheelchair. With the sleeve of his shirt, he dried her tears - though, indeed, the action only seemed to make her cry even harder. The immortal gently reached his arms around her, gathering the shaking middle-aged woman into his embrace.
"I know," Lelouch said simply.
x
x
And so the years passed.
On Suzaku's 60th birthday, Lelouch was silent most of the day - barely acknowledging a word that Suzaku spoke to him. It was oddly amusing, he thought, that Lelouch should despair of his knight's aging body far more than Suzaku himself. When he tired of the former king's sulking (which did not take long at all), he roughly snagged Lelouch's arm as the haughty man passed by his chair.
Even aged as he was, Suzaku would always be stronger.
"Stay with me."
Lelouch remained silent, facing away from his only remaining friend, even when his shoulders began to shake with soundless sobs.
x
x
x
And so the years passed.
On Suzaku's 70th birthday, the extreme activity of their misspent youth finally caught up to him. If Lloyd were still alive, he mused, the scientist would have been delighted to study the residual long-term effects of the Lancelot's sakuradite radiation. As it was, only a black-haired boy sat at his bedside, steadfastly watching over the frail old man who could no longer protect himself nor the king he'd sworn life and loyalty to so long ago.
Lelouch's face was oddly blank, but Suzaku was well acquainted with his friend's habit of concealing all emotion behind an impenetrable mask. He gazed up into Lelouch's sad eyes - indeed, the only part of his face that had ever shown his true feelings - and held the troubled gaze.
"Stay with me," Suzaku whispered, past the pain of his own body attacking itself.
Bound by the promise he had made to the man that sacrificed everything for a demon's crusade, the frozen teen bowed his head and quietly wept.
And so the years passed.
x
x
x
x
Lelouch buried his loyal knight in the very grave he should have occupied many years before, directly next to the empty grave of an empty king. Though he had never possessed even a sliver of stamina for physical activity, Lelouch dug without complaint, dug until the sweat poured off him, dug until his arms began to shake...and still continued digging anyway.
x
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And the years passed.
But Lelouch stopped counting them, and slowly he came to understand the depth of C.C.'s despair.
x
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When he found him the first time, it was completely by accident.
Lelouch had taken to wandering, in much the same way as C.C. before him. Every now and then, someone would ask for his name - and, smiling faintly, he would say only: "L.L."
When the odd historian would see him and happen to remark upon his uncanny resemblance to the Demon Emperor whose death changed the world, Lelouch would silently smirk at them until they walked away, unsettled.
But when he tripped and stumbled into the busy streets of a town he never cared to know the name of, the only response he could think of was a fervent, all-encompassing wish that the automobile speeding towards him would finally end his existence.
The blow, however, took him from an entirely different direction than he was quite expecting.
He was thrown painfully to the concrete, and a man's hands gripped his shoulders tightly before rolling them both onto the sidewalk at the opposite side of the road. Lelouch hissed in pain, and struggled to remove himself from the stranger's grasp. He hadn't allowed himself any other friends or companions since the day he failed to protect the only friend who'd ever truly cared to see past the mask, and hated being touched after all the years of lonely roads and empty nights.
"Are you alright?" his savior asked breathlessly, panting from the exertion of pelting across the street to save a stranger.
Lelouch froze.
Heart bursting with the most emotion he had felt in centuries, Lelouch raised his eyes...
...impossibly, into his long-dead friend's face.
"S...Suzaku?"
The brunette blinked startled green eyes. "What? No, my name is Aki-"
He trailed off as his gaze met Lelouch's disbelieving expression. The man blinked slowly as though in a daze, and when his eyelids raised, the edges of his pupils were tinged with red.
LIVE!
It was, perhaps, the strangest Geass order Lelouch had ever given. It was the only order he'd ever delivered without any thought behind it at all - only pure, unhindered emotion, straight from the bottom of his soul.
(Don't leave me!)
The Geass had continued on, longer than any other order he had ever given in his brief time as a human. Over the years they had spent together, Lelouch had seen his desperate wish evolve.
At first, Suzaku had been unable to remember his actions whenever the Geass took over, forcing him to escape his prevailing desire for death. Then, his friend had mastered the imperative, converting it into a weapon with which to enhance his own combat prowess - both a tool, and a curse. Incredibly, it had evolved even further in those remaining weeks before the Zero Requiem - when Suzaku Kururugi, Knight of Zero, was forced to die. His body and mind had lived on, but his existence in their world was forced to end. And so, the Geass had changed again, without their knowing.
Die, but live on anyway.
The stranger with Suzaku's face blinked at him, his wide green eyes still tinged with red.
"L-...Lelouch?"
The former emperor's eyes widened so far, he could feel the veins straining.
Die, but live.
"Impossible!" Lelouch whispered. Strangely, he suddenly found himself laughing, even as tears poured down his face. Suzaku grinned down at his friend.
"Stay with me?"
And so the years passed - meeting, living, parting, finding again - and every time Lelouch found the knight one more time, he decided that C.C. was wrong about immortality.
It was not an endless accumulation of experience - it was rebirth, and joy, and life.
"Let's meet again someday
As long as we're still alive."
'Continued Story,' by Kuroishi Hitomi