Pairing: Lelouch/Kallen!

Relevant notes: Takes place during Turn 25, in the two month gap between the final battle and the BK/U.F.N execution. Spoilers for series.

A/N: I was watching Turn 25 a while ago and it seemed to me like Kallen caught on to Lelouch's plan almost too quickly, considering she'd been 'rawr, kill Lelouch' for some time. I thought a final conversation in prison might work in explaining that (like, the seeds were planted then) and besides, I can't continuously write fluff. :P

Thank you to Alecs and ryder for looking over this for me, to the BKBQ forum for help with the quotes and ryder again for the Kallen and Nunnally theory! :)

Edited 28th May 2009.

Other Side of the Revolving Door

. .

i. apart

. .

once upon a time, there was a boy and a girl. the boy wanted a world where his sister could be happy and the girl fought in memory of her brother.

. .

Kallen was forgetting things.

It was the trivial memories that escaped her at first: the punch lines to Tamaki's stupid jokes and the exact layout of the Ashford Academy campus. It didn't worry her, because she had spent fifty-seven days in prison, according to the markings she had been diligently making on the wall, and she was too busy wondering how long they would all be imprisoned. Her mind had more important matters to occupy itself with, she reasoned, and Tamaki's jokes weren't worth remembering anyway.

It was when she couldn't conjure up a perfect image of her brother that she panicked. The guards switched off the lights and she lay perfectly still in bed, staring up at a ceiling she couldn't even see through the darkness. Her favourite photos of Naoto floated lazily in front of her eyes, but the only part of them in sharp focus was the background, like there was a haze covering only him. Her heart skipped a beat as she tried to process this revelation: she was forgetting her own brother's face.

Carefully, when her panic was suppressed, she worked to build up a mental picture of him. It took her longer than it logically should and even then, the expression was not quite right. It was as though his face was the final piece of a puzzle and instead of one obvious answer, there were dozens of pieces that could fit; there was simply only one that was correct.

It didn't escape her notice that no matter what she did, Lelouch's face was always firmly in her head.

. .

the boy gave the girl a leader to follow and a man to worship, a revolutionary named zero. he filled her world with hope and she would have walked off the edge of the earth with him.

. .

Lelouch's desk was covered in lists.

Morbid as it was, they were lists detailing everything he had to do before the grand finale- his death at Zero's hands. He had always been one for perfection, and it was crucial that his death and this last act of the play were perfect. He would not have a second chance.

The afternoon was bright, the kind that induced all the birds in a one mile radius to chirp merrily as they went about their own routines. Lelouch spun in his chair and looked out over the garden below his window, where the flowers were blooming and the grass was green and there was nothing to indicate that the year was anything but ordinary.

A knock at the door pulled him from his reverie and he turned to find Jeremiah bowing respectfully.

'I have delivered the box as you wished, Your Majesty,' he said and there was a flicker of hesitation, like he wanted to add something else.

'Good,' Lelouch returned simply, inclining his head in a brief gesture of gratitude. He waited.

Jeremiah seemed to decide to hold his tongue and he exited, leaving Lelouch to glance down at the sheets of paper littering his desk. All he'd had to leave had been in the box passed on to Suzaku: the key to the Guren, the few photos he had in his possession and a pink origami crane he'd absentmindedly folded. He leaned forward and crossed another item off a list and he was done. Lelouch found a box of matches in a drawer and swept all the sheets into a bin, because he was the evil emperor and no one should ever be allowed to discover evidence to the contrary.

He lit a match, dropped it into the bin, watched the papers burn, and all that would be left to remind the world of Lelouch vi Britannia was whatever would be recorded in the history books.

. .

but masks can break and reveal the man behind. zero was not the hero the girl expected; he was just a boy with his own agenda and too many lies.

. .

After lunch on day fifty-eight, the guards marched her out of her cell and into a fenced garden that she had only ever seen twice a week since her arrival at the prison. Her guards watched her warily, even though they knew that she wouldn't risk her friends' lives by attempting an escape.

Blinking against the sunlight, Kallen roamed through the garden restlessly. It was an opportunity for fresh air and exercise, but it also served as a reminder that her life was wasting away as she sat in her dim, lonely cell. It made her feel more helpless and hopeless than ever and she was tired of those two emotions.

Kallen dropped onto a stone bench by a bush of pretty red flowers and stared at the ground, listening to the unintelligible murmurs of the two guards. She picked up a stick and dragged it through the sand, making swirls and jagged lines.

After a moment of pointless scribbles, she found herself scrawling out numbers. Fifty-seven days in prison- excluding the hours of day fifty-eight- meant one thousand, three hundred and sixty-eight hours. It meant eighty-two thousand and eighty minutes, or four million, nine hundred and twenty-four thousand, eight hundred seconds. Kallen studied the numbers and wondered if she was going insane, because what sane person tortured herself like this?

She stood and erased the scribbles with a quick twist of her foot.

. .

the girl left the boy, but in the end (inevitably, they both thought), she came back to him. they fought together once more and she believed in him again.

. .

The afternoon before the scheduled execution of the Black Knights and U.F.N, he visited Nunnally. A part of him told him he was utterly insane for even contemplating the idea, but a louder and ultimately triumphant part rebelled at the thought of dying without one last meeting with his beloved sister.

Nunnally was quiet when he arrived. He silently marvelled again over the fact that she could see and tried not to think about how much it hurt that when she looked at him, her expression was so disillusioned. He made senseless, one-sided conversation with her through the bars of a cell and after ten minutes he couldn't stand it any longer. It was selfish, maybe, but he didn't want their last real meeting to end in her looking so defeated and broken.

He began to make subtle taunts, crueller and harsher as he spoke, until disgust settled over her face. He switched to more open insults, both at her current position and her inability to recognise his true character, and after a while she was so furious that she actually started to scream at him.

Lelouch pretended like he didn't care, even as a dull ache began in his chest.

. .

there was no happily ever after.

. .

ii. together

. .

'i'll walk forward with you,' she says and enigma or not, she honestly can't imagine doing anything but following him to the end.

. .

It was late at night and Kallen was in bed, humming under her breath. She wasn't quite sure what the tune was, but she thought it might have been one of her mother's lullabies, dug up from her childhood. She didn't know why she remembered it over so many other things.

The guards had disappeared a while ago, so it surprised her when there was a clatter of footsteps somewhere along the windowless corridor and lights began to flicker on. It stirred a vague uneasiness in her stomach and she sat up, attention focused curiously on the front of her cell. She could hear a murmur of conversation as she waited, and then a figure stepped up to block the glare of the lights.

Her uneasiness became an overwhelming feeling of sickness.

'Hello, Kallen,' Lelouch said, as mildly and politely as the student she'd known at Ashford. 'I'm glad you're awake.'

. .

'you have chosen me,' he says, because he needs her to know that her heart is her own, even if lelouch will never have the loyalty and trust she gave zero.

. .

Lelouch had to bite back a laugh at her stunned- or perhaps horrified- expression. He leaned against the cell bars, his white robes settling in place around him, and content to observe her quietly for a moment, he let the silence prevail.

'What are you doing here?' she finally asked.

'I can't visit an old friend?' he replied easily. He watched fury spark in her eyes, quickly becoming a full blaze, and smiled to himself, recalling a saying Milly had once told him: the more things change, the more they stay the same. Kallen had not changed at all in the past two months- excepting the faint shadow of despair he'd noticed when he'd first seen her- and for that he was thankful.

'I am not your friend,' Kallen hissed at him, as he'd expected she would. 'I stopped being your friend when you decided to take over the world.'

'Did you stop before I became emperor, or after?' Lelouch kept his expression neutral, infuriatingly calm. 'Because I've wondered, Kallen: Do friends abandon each other time and time again? Do they leave each other to the mercy of a firing squad?'

Kallen flinched. 'You told me I was a pawn. Was that the truth?'

He shrugged and acted indifferent, even though the answer was no. 'I suppose it was.'

'Then don't you dare act like you were perfect. Friends don't lie and use each other for the sake of their own plans,' she said, turning away. 'I was right to leave you.'

'You forget that you used me too, Kallen,' he said, the response automatic; what was necessary. 'All you wanted was Area Eleven under Japanese control again. Do you remember what you said? "Keep up the lie until the very end." You had no concern for Lelouch; only Zero.'

'You're wrong!' she fired back instantly and hadn't this always been her greatest flaw- the inability to keep her heart hidden away? 'I did care about you! I would have-'

He almost wished she wouldn't finish that sentence.

. .

'what am i to you, lelouch?' she asks, because all she really knows of him comes through a layer of masks and second-hand stories, and she needs to know if he's the person she thinks he is.

. .

Kallen stopped herself before she could give him something else to hold over her.

Sometimes, when she couldn't sleep, she spent her time reliving the day Lelouch revealed his identity to the entire Order. It wasn't healthy- she knew that- but prison life didn't offer her many other alternative pastimes. The details- the sensations- were always horribly clear in her mind: the heat of the spotlights, the sweat beading on her forehead, the way the warehouse had seemed to close in on her. She remembered thinking: If this is how it ends, I won't regret it.

Maybe she should have realised then what Lelouch had meant to her.

Instead of finishing her sentence, she shook her head and said brusquely, 'It doesn't matter. It's all in the past now.'

There was something like disappointment in his expression. She blinked and when she was met with his typical calmness, she couldn't say she'd expected anything different.

'Don't you think the past matters?' he asked.

The question surprised her and she didn't answer immediately. He continued, almost as though he was musing to himself.

'It shouldn't matter,' he said, quietly. 'It's best that we don't dwell on the past, that we move on and live. But of course, it isn't always as easy as that.'

Kallen scoffed in disbelief, because Lelouch dwelt more on the past than anyone she knew. He looked up at the sound and Kallen had an odd sense that he was recollecting himself, almost like someone who'd lost their place in a script. It puzzled her.

'I've strayed from my main purpose in coming here,' Lelouch said, all pleasant smiles again. 'I meant to ask you how you were.'

'Don't pretend like you care,' she snapped.

'I do care.'

'Stop lying,' she spat at him, instantly forgetting everything but her disgust with him. 'You can't pretend to care about anyone other than yourself, because I know you don't. I've heard the guards talking about what you've done.'

'What have I done, Kallen?'

She smiled, bitterly. 'Everything Zero wouldn't.'

. .

'kallen, when all of this is over, would you return to ashford with me?' he asks, and it isn't even completely clear to him why he is posing the question to her.

. .

'Zero killed people too,' Lelouch reminded her.

He wondered if everything he was doing would have hurt her less had she never known he had been Zero. If Zero had simply disappeared, rather than become a monster in front of her eyes, would it have affected her the same way?

'Zero killed for others' sake!' Kallen retorted. 'He- you- did it for Nunnally. Everything you're doing now is for yourself!'

He'd known, really, that this visit would not end happily. He couldn't give anything away and if he was going to do finish Zero Requiem as he'd intended, he had to do it thoroughly. His reason for visiting her had been based purely on emotion and devoid of the logic that characterised him: How could he die without one final meeting with those still in his reach; the ones he cared for?

He said slowly, like it was a gradual realisation, 'I might have begun with the intention of making Nunnally happy.'

Kallen looked bewildered. 'What are you talking about? C.C. told me that-'

'C.C. is a liar,' he interrupted her. 'Don't you understand why she, Suzaku and I have chosen to band together? Birds of a feather...'

She scrambled up off the bed and over to him. He took a step back, despite the physical barrier of the bars between them.

'I don't believe you,' she said, almost desperately. 'Zero was for Nunnally! She told me things- what you used to do for her- how much you loved her! How can anyone who's known you all your life be so wrong about you?'

'Nobody,' Lelouch said, knowing his words would be only the truth, 'knows me as well as they think they do.'

Kallen had always been stubborn. It was a trait that made her both a brilliant and exasperating subordinate- and friend. He listened as she began to reel off incidents and observations belying his claim that he didn't love Nunnally as much as everyone had thought.

'Kallen.' He waited until she'd paused. 'Nunnally is alive.'

She stared at him. 'Nunnally is-?'

'And if I truly loved her as much as you believe,' Lelouch said, steeling himself, 'would she currently be imprisoned as you and your friends are?'

. .

'so then think of another plan! command us like you always do!' she screams, and even if she has to beat it into him, she won't watch him destroy himself.

. .

Kallen felt her stomach twist into knots. It was stupid, wasn't it, that despite how much she hated him- how much she told herself she hated him- she'd wanted to believe that once upon a time, he hadn't been the monster he was now? But what did it mean if what he was telling her about Nunnally was the truth?

'How do I know you aren't lying?' she demanded.

Lelouch smiled and she thought about how wrong it was for a smile to be so empty. 'You're right in doubting me. I'm a liar, aren't I? But what would I gain by lying to you about this? I would only be making myself appear more evil in your eyes... And why would I do that?'

She had no response for that. She was tired, confused, angry. Kallen wanted to crawl back into bed and pretend Lelouch didn't exist. She tried to maintain a blank face, but she had never been able to hide anything from him.

'It's late. I suppose I better let you go to sleep.' Lelouch was still smiling, only it was more of a smirk. 'I'm sure you have a busy day ahead of you.'

A sudden burst of genuine hatred forced her to speak and if there hadn't been bars stopping her, she would have launched herself at him.

'Don't come back, Lelouch,' she said fiercely. 'I don't want to see you ever again.'

He laughed, but there was a strange expression on his face when he answered. Kallen began to retreat further into the cell, eager to put distance between them.

'You may find that wish fulfilled sooner than you'd think,' he told her, and then he was gone.

. .

'don't give up! i will save you!' he shouts and it's a promise he won't break; there's no point to having any power at all if he can't protect the ones he cares about.

. .

iii. apart

. .

'why did you tell me to "live on"?' she demands, because there's a contradiction between his words- then- and his actions- now- and she can't help but give him one more chance.

. .

The air smelled of the approaching autumn. Kallen breathed in deeply, listening to the rumblings of the crowd. She heard Xingke try to soothe the Tianzi and if they hadn't all been about to die, she would have smiled at the tenderness in his voice.

Kallen had expected this. It didn't make sense for Lelouch to keep them all alive. By executing them, he'd rid himself of a whole group of dissenters and somehow she'd known, after Lelouch's visit, that it would be soon.

She tried to guess what parts of her life would flash before her eyes. Wasn't that what was supposed to precede death?

The entire procession had slowed to a stop and an odd hush was falling over the crowd. Kallen glanced around, and then she knew- none of them would be dying today. Zero- the Zero who was supposed to be Lelouch- sprinted past them, eluding the soldiers with a skill and speed she'd only ever seen in one person. Instead of her life flashing by, she heard snippets of a late night confrontation through prison cell bars, on the fifty-ninth day of her imprisonment.

The instant before the sword drove in and the beautiful sunny day seemed to stand still-

She understood.

. .

'live on,' he tells her, because she deserves a happy ending.

. .

end