fandom: Code Geass
title: to live again.
pairing: lelouch + kallen, suzaku + kallen

rating: pg-13
description– Kallen is summoned by Zero with a message from Emperor Lelouch. (Spoiler warning!!! - This takes place right after the ending of season 2.)

Disclaimer – Code Geass does not in any way belong to me. I just write because I love it and the only things that are mine is the poem and the story I create from it.

Drive me into mental instability,

I feel you have made the decision

and I'm left all alone

feeling through all the effects.

The darkness seems too bright here.

Drowning in my innocence,

I can't look into your eyes,

those hands I refuse to reach towards,

holding all my weakness.

You knew everything by now.

Even in a joke,

don't make fun of me that

I'd just go with anyone.

Closer and closer,

a drop of water separates all

the accumulated dust.

Blowing away my smile,

I hold all my feelings

inside of me.

I only capture you

when I act like a

wild, untamed mermaid

swimming in the

Sea of Your Uncertainty.

I keep looking to Heaven,

"When will this ever end?!"

Fathomless,

just a little farther down,

maybe I'll get closer.

To live again.

By miyamoto yui

Fresh or worn, the guards do not turn when I pass by.

In between orange steel and white lights, I go up the elevator and look below. In this new office, there is no one here and yet it does not feel empty. I am imagining what this place would have been when everyone was able to freely enter and exit it without a permission slip.

The doors open, announcing that I have arrived one-hundred and fifty meters up. I step out and I feel out of touch with whatever is happening outside of these metal poles holding up the structure that once stood as a symbol of our city.

Even though the design is from long gone days, the newness makes me partially sad. Can something New come out of something made from the Old?

Stepping out, my face does not reveal my doubts or resolutions. And the doors close behind me.

There is no one here, but when I lift my eyes from the semi-sparkly black tiles, the mask with the bloody red fingerprints stare at me. The man in front of me has his back to me, leaning forward on the counter to look out into Japan.

Because of them, we are no longer citizens of Area 11.

We are JAPAN.

Yet, only one half of the whole is here before me. Realizing my presence or finally acknowledging it, calmly, the dark, brown-haired man says, "First Knight."

He does not say 'my' or 'his'. I am more disappointed at the fact that he doesn't say my name.

All those feelings of rage and fierce triumph crumble before me. My fragile velvet heart is grazed by those invisible fingers of whose owner will never come back to me again. My pride as a soldier makes my fingernails push into the skin of my palms. I grate my teeth without realizing it…

I WANT TO SCREAM!

WHYAREYOUHERE?WHYHAVEYOUBROUGHTMEHERE?WHYDIDN'TYOUDIE?AREYOUHERETOPROVETOMETHATHEGAMBLEDONYOUANDNOTONME?AMIJEALOUSTHATYOUWERETHEONEHEASKEDTO-

In a gentle voice, as if talking to himself, he whispers, "There is much to undo. So much to recreate."

He lifts his hands to the windows that are not stained by the finger impressions of excited visitors as it was many decades ago. He presses his palms to the glass making a diamond connecting his index fingers and thumbs.

But unlike the original architectural design, this side faces Shinjuku Ward.

I cannot make out what he is staring at as the sun begins to set.

Hachoo~! I sneeze, but I dare not take a step forward or back.

It is colder in here than I expected from the center of my city.

"I do not have all day to stand here wondering what you want from me, Zero." My tone is as ruthless and as callous as I wore the red uniform I used to wear when He was still alive.

But somewhere deep inside of me, I am ashamed.

I wanted to say that name just one more time. Even if it wasn't towards the person I had in mind.

The taste of that first and final kiss forces itself deeper into my soul.

He places his hands calmly back onto the counter like a politician on the podium ready to make a speech before the general public. It is strange to see the twin of the man I once loved. It is even harder for me to admit that underneath all the sharp pieces of body and brain, they both share the same heart.

The same voice that absentmindedly called me by my official title had changed suddenly. In a humble tone, he asks me as if pulling me from every crevice that I know as 'myself',

"Will you follow me, Kallen?"

He does not explain anything, not of why He died under his sword nor why he does not ask me through the title as First Knight. From the tone of his sorrowful, yet undiscouraged voice, I somehow know he does not have to tell me why.

There is no beginning and there is no end:

This is the answer he's trying to tell me.

It doesn't matter who He touched before he died. The sliding finger marks on the mask taunt me when my eyes look intently at them again.

I can't seem to move away from them. They are the only sense of color next to the black, brown, and transparent.

Before I know it, my eyes begin to smile faster than my lips. I run my fingers through my spiked hair and find myself laughing so hard at the terrible joke that tears come out of my eyelids.

Haven't I heard this question before?!

As His story repeats itself, it all seems to be making a fool of me.

Louder and louder, I laugh hysterically until I hug the middle of my body, unable to know if I want to attend to the throbbing of my stomach or that of my heart. My voice bounces off cruelly from all the wooden and metal parts surrounding us.

I wipe my tears away and then I suddenly stop. I bite my lower lip as my eyes glare a hole into that pathetic back that won't face me.

His boots screech as he turns around and at that moment, I open my quivering mouth and shout with all my lungs, "STOP FUCKING WITH ME!"

Lelouch, hadn't you already hurt me enough?!

Dignified and unperturbed by my outburst, the dead man known formerly as Suzaku walks towards me. His boots make a tap tap rhythm like a calm pocket watch, timed and poised.

Like the red, red fingers on that see-through tinted cover, I am not able to move my eyes or feet away.

Being the way I am, I must always fight to the end, even if it is not the way as I should have seen it to be. Even when it shouldn't have been the way I received it to be.

The truth is always made reality by feelings.

But feelings distort reality when they're not focused.

Does it mean anything when you put all your passion into a lie?

I am human.

Tap.

I need a way to let it out.

Tap.

I need a way to accept it back in.

Tap.

I want to give myself to something and someone.

Tap.

I have too much pride to ask what I know I truly need.

Tap.

And I realize that what I feel towards you has nothing to do with how you feel towards me.

Lifting up his right hand, he presses so close onto me that I feel his heartbeat upon my breast. Yet, I do not push him away. I feel myself revived just a little bit from the darkness that consumed me when I saw

That white Emperor's uniform

blink

Falling falling…

Nunnally's hands holding the body

blink

Of a self-sacrifice made in selfishness.

And Zero unable to

blink

Turn back,

And see the slide stained in the blood

that is already on his helmet.

blink

His sweat mixing with His sweat.

I sigh loudly as those cold fingertips make contact with my temples and its icy palm presses itself onto my cheek. I close my eyes as he leans forward to whisper in my ear The Secret that was only left for me.

And Zero had to personally hand deliver it to me from Him:

Your Will Is My Shield.

It is like piano wires ripping time to reset the clock. In its beauty, they can easily severe any part of the body given enough effort, time, and strength.

This is how it feels like when I savor his breath on my ear, taking every syllable to sew it earnestly into what is left of the old me. His hands slide down my cheeks until the pinky touches part of my neck, right below my jawbone.

In an instant, I have lost everything from before. In another, I exchange it for a single hope.

Kouzuki Karen will have to repaint herself all over again.

When I open my eyes, my pride doesn't let me cry though my chest is full of stirring emotions. ALIVE…

My whole body is shaking from the pulsation of all my body following the same rhythm as Zero's. I want to wrap my arms around him, but he slips away before I can lift them.

When he pulls away, my heart pinches beside itself in hidden places that I didn't know existed.

I wanted to keep that moment to exist for a little more.

Zero does not know how to smile, but he has soft eyes now as he watches me earnestly and patiently.

The ability to dream. You are doing it again to me.

I kneel with one knee to the ground and raise my arm as if brushing off a cape. I lower my head. Even when I feel the heaviness inside of me, I answer sincerely, "I pledge to protect Zero until the day I die."

When Zero crouches down to lift my chin with his fingers, I swim into the depth of his green eyes. His fingers feel like they're burning my skin.

His face is perfectly blank but I can feel him pressing his way into the feelings I couldn't face yet.

I turn my head away at that contemplative gaze that tells me of his respect for me. It is too much to accept that honesty that has not left those two eyes since we've met.

Even in different bodies, under the same suit, the same mask, the same heart, they absorb me as I am and the potential I didn't know I possessed.

We both get up and it is then that I bow respectfully to take my leave.

When the elevators open, I go inside. I face him and Zero looks upon me with a mysterious smile. I feel like I'm in danger yet safe not knowing where I am going either.

Is this what trust feels like? Is this what hope appears to be in the spaciousness of our own images?

Solemnly, His mouth remains closed as the elevator doors meet one another. As I go down with the lights blinding me with the radiance of the proud burned color of the steel, I feel His quiet lips echoing to me inside of Tokyo Tower,

"You will protect me until the day you die.

Kallen, I will wait until you make a name that only you can create for me.

It is then that I will live again."

I nod my head when I pass the guards. Then, I run to the train station to get back to my apartment.

On the platform, behind the yellow line that separates passengers from the danger of the edge, I look up past the glass and ruined buildings with the cranes trying to build new ones in their place.

My gaze lifts higher until it meets the colorless night sky and a tune from an old rock group plays to signal that the train is coming.

In a blink, I do something I have never done before even though it's a Japanese tradition to believe in the various kami,

I pray with all my might.

Owari.

Author's note – I started writing out another Code Geass fic when I finished the series during New Year's Eve, but somehow, I ended up being more inspired to write this one. While listening to an instrumental of an old L'arc song, Kallen's grief-stricken face and Suzaku inside Zero's mask with Lelouch pressing his fingers onto the helmet came to mind. To tell you the truth, that image with Suzaku is permanently imbedded into my head because it was so sweet and harsh.

It was difficult to write about Lelouch and Suzaku, knowing that at this point that Kallen sees them as different people yet must call them the same name 'Zero'. Plus, other than Seishirou, I have not written about another character who has died in a series (we're not counting Sagara, Sanosuke's leader in Kenshin *LOVE*), so this is completely new for me.

This came out more poetic in format than I had planned, but I enjoyed making it all the same.

Thank you very much for reading and have a wonderful day!

Sincerely,

Yui

1/24/2009 4:50:34 AM – Los Angeles

1/24/09 9:50 PM - Tokyo