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The garden of an emperor is truly a sight to behold. Lush fields as far as the eye can see, meticulously maintained by workers who somehow keep themselves invisible to those that inhabit the acreage. A stream runs through the property, large enough to sustain its own ecosystem of fish of varying size. Suzaku has spotted the odd fox even, on the hunt along the bank.
The sky is clear today. It has been that way for days now, far too bright compared to the horrors those ruled by the 99th emperor must endure for now. Too bright for Suzaku's own mood as of late as well, though that's no surprise with the Requiem fast approaching. It's not as though the weather cares.
Suzaku lies in the grass, his eyes closed as the sun gently warms his skin. He will enjoy this feeling as much as possible before he no longer can. Of course, it's when he's just started to nod off slightly that he's rudely interrupted. He listens as the footsteps shift the grass beneath soles on high alert but for a moment before he relaxes completely.
“Shirking your duties, knight?” A stern voice says from above him, a cool shadow blocking out the light. Suzaku sighs, cracking one eye open.
“You caught me.” He tells Lelouch in a flat voice, not remorseful at all. Lelouch sighs and plops down frankly quite un-emperorly from where he stands, just above Suzaku's head in the grass. He doesn't seem to care for the pristine nature of his white robes. Suzaku takes the invitation for what it is and shifts upward just enough to rest his head on a soft thigh, closing his eyes once more. The sun is still blocked out, but somehow this warmth is better. He hums as cool fingers thread through his hair.
“And what if I were to be attacked? Assassinated?”
“Please. As if you don't have Jeremiah on your tail even more than I am. And I've been keeping you in my sights even from out here.”
“Hmm… an acceptable answer, I suppose. So long as my infallible knight is doing his duty.” There's a hardness to Lelouchs's voice however, that betrays the way he's on edge.
Suzaku places his arm straight across his chest, fist on his heart. The picture of a perfect soldier other than the way he tilts his head into Lelouch's hand.
“Of course, Your Majesty. I would never let harm come to you. Not until it's time.”
Lelouch hums, continuing to run his fingers through Suzaku's hair. Suzaku looks up again to see Lelouch staring blankly into the distance. He looks tense, eyes worried.
Suzaku has never quite gotten used to the contacts now that he knows they're there. Now that when he really looks at Lelouch's eyes he can see that they aren't quite the same as they once were. That hue is off just slightly, that the colours don't vary quite as much as they should. But he knows he'll never see Lelouch's real eye colour ever again. It's been lost to Geass as well, as so many other things have been.
“What's wrong?” Suzaku asks him, continuing to study his face. He wonders if they should move out of the sun; it looks like Lelouch may already be starting to burn.
“I don't have enough time.” Lelouch murmurs solemnly. He's still looking off to the distance and Suzaku already knows where his mind is. It's with Nunally, as it so often is, and the worries he has about not being there for the rest of her life.
Suzaku reaches a hand up, cursing the gloves of this uniform that he wears even now, sans mantle, just in case. He wants to touch Lelouch's face skin to skin, to offer him that human touch that Lelouch has been sorely lacking in recent months, but he can't. One more layer of duty separating them. Lelouch leans into the leather all the same.
“That's why you're leaving her to me,” he says and that's enough. Lelouch breathes out a long sigh.
“I'm exhausted.” Lelouch tells him and he sounds like a man 30 years his senior, fatigue far beyond his years. And, of course, Suzaku is equally exhausted, but he doesn't get to be. They each have their role to play and Suzaku's won't be completed for a long, long time. Far after Lelouch is gone. It's daunting, to know he has to live in a world without him for so long. That soon he won't have these quiet moments that they manage to steal away with each other. Where for even a few minutes they get to see what it might have been like, if they lived different lives.
So Suzaku will keep on living. For Lelouch. For Nunally. For the world. Maybe someday, if he's lucky, for himself as well.
There's no other choice. It's not even a choice in the first place.
“I know,” Suzaku finally says, a light breeze brushing over their skin gently. “You can let it all go soon. As much as you can at least, you'd better not stick around just to haunt me.”
The joke is morbid, but Suzaku half-hopes Lelouch will stick around to do just that.
Lelouch laughs. Full-on laughs in a way that Suzaku hasn't seen for some time now. He sits up to get a better view, Lelouchs's eyes sparkling in the sun in a way that even the contacts can't obscure.
Lelouch's hands gently cup Suzaku's jaw and pull him forwards until their foreheads rest against each other. Lelouchs's laughing has calmed down and Suzaku closes his eyes, leaning into his childhood friend.
They stay like that for a moment, simply breathing in each other's air, as if they could sink into one another and become the same.
“I'm leaving it all to you.” Lelouch breathes. “Everything.”
“I know.”
“It has to be perfect.”
“I know.”
“I've destroyed the world.”
“And I'll do my part in rebuilding a better one.”
Lelouch will never thank him for this, Suzaku knows. He will never breathe the words, but all the same, the way their mouths brush as they speak doesn't leave any room for doubt.
And Suzaku will never breathe words of forgiveness, nor would he even get the chance, but all the same, the way their fingers slip together will be enough to subsume them.
As all things with the two of them, seemingly destined to never get the time they want, it can't last forever.
“Your Majesty!”
Lelouch sighs at the sound of Jeremiah's voice. Suzaku can barely contain his grin at Lelouch's expense.
“It seems your bodyguard has found you,” Suzaku says, biting his lip to keep from snickering.
Lelouch grimaces.
“That's your job,” he huffs. “Which I'll remind you, you were slacking off on which is why I had to sneak away from him,”
“I'm impressed, I would've thought you'd trip over your own feet before you'd get away from someone like Jeremiah.”
“Yes, yes.” He puts a hand up in the direction the voice came from, knowing without needing to look that Jeremiah will stop in his tracks now that the emperor is at least back within his sights. “I suppose we don't have time for things like this anymore anyway.” His voice is wistful. As the Requiem fast approaches, they don't have much time for anything else. Lelouch won't go so far as to call this thing between them a distraction but they are both aware that that's what it is. As much as Suzaku will have to live with the regret of never getting to fully explore it, there's nothing to be done for it. It is what it must be.
They pull themselves to their feet and Suzaku takes the breeze in one more time, facing the stream. The sun glitters off the water beautifully. When he turns back to Lelouch, his breath catches in his throat.
He stands with his eyes closed, seemingly also just enjoying the weather for a moment. He's beautiful like this. He opens his eyes again, then squints from the bright sun, looking at Suzaku so softly that he thinks it could have broken anybody's heart. Despite the softness on his face, it's still filled with weariness and sorrow.
“Y'know.. sometimes I think I would've been happy. If we had all managed to stay together back then. When we were kids.” Suzaku muses out loud, heart aching for the boy in front of him. Because that's really what the two of them are at heart, just boys with their childish dreams of changing the world for the better. For a split moment he can imagine it. The warm evening sun on his skin, hanging clothes one by one on the line, Lelouch walking over to him with a basket filled with even more clothes. In his mind's eye he sees the two of them, side by side, as they do the mundane. Nunally sitting on the porch nearby listening to the birdsong, the summer breeze on her skin. He knows in this version that the world would be crumbling around him but he thinks that if he could preserve this little slice of heaven that he wouldn't even care if the rest of it burned away. He pictures Lelouch smiling, this time without the heaviness that weighs down his every expression, his skin aglow in the sun, he thinks he'd be a little less pale after years of living out in the countryside. But try as he might, even here, Suzaku can't picture a Lelouch with a carefree smile. Even in this far-off fantasy, the burden of Lelouch's task coats his every expression, dulls the glint in his eyes and Suzaku mourns for his friend and for himself.
“I wouldn't be.” Lelouch finally replies after a long silence, without care for the way the words pierce Suzaku’s heart. And they aren't even surprising words, but it hurts all the same. Suzaku does what he can to muster up a small smile that he knows doesn't touch his eyes. “Could you really say that you would be either?”
It wipes the forced smile from Suzaku's face near instantly. Could he believe that? He wants to believe he would but even now the guilt eats at him after years of trying to atone for his childhood sin. Could he really have turned a blind eye to it all? Lived in his own paradise while his people suffered? He tries to pull upon that idyllic fantasy once more, but all he can muster is an orange sky shrouded in dark smoke, the sounds of war too close to ignore.
“You're right.” Lelouch watches him with barely concealed amusement as Suzaku drops to one knee, but doesn't bow his head, making a mockery of the subservient gesture. “We will never grow old together, I know that. So instead of standing by you in your life, I instead will stand beside you in your death. When it’s time I will be right there next to you. And it isn't only obligation that chains me, there is no one I would let steal this role from me.”
Lelouch smiles, seemingly bemused, but Suzaku can see the way that just for a moment, his eyes glisten with a brightness that's been missing for a long time.
“And there's no one else I would give it to.” He says in turn, reaching out his hand, the emperor pulling his lowly knight to his feet.
Days later, a bloodied knight stands alone atop a royal float. The crimson stolen from the one who just days earlier had touched his skin, breathed his breath.
And now, breathes no more.
There had been one final gentle touch, one final chance to feel the warmth of his body, the proof he was alive even as the sword pierced his chest.
The emperor slain.
The knight wants to clutch at his chest, wants to cry out in conjunction with the tears that stream down his cheeks, wants to match the wails of the emperor’s sister.
But he cannot.
He has a duty to fulfill.
A promise to keep.