CG: "A Clever Disguise/Interlude"
A year after that betrayal, a man made out of stone begins to crack.
This was written with 10_switched in mind. That means genderswap. Covering the year timeskip before we get back into the proper narrative... The story will be moving more AU from here on out.
.a clever disguise: interlude.
And he can identify precisely the moment when it happened: when fury and despair and disappointment and pain and all the chaos that had become his existence turned to stone. It must have been the same moment for her, when the cool facade she wore even disheveled and unmasked and laid bare finally tore at the edges and turned to incoherent rage. When this twisted thing they had called a friendship finally became nothing even like that.
It was the moment she lifted her gun and shot at him, impulsive and wild.
That was the moment he became someone else.
Cold. Calculating. Conniving. Cruel. Words he never would have applied to Leloucia because he had known that she held the potential to be more than that. For every coldness, a warmth; for every calculation, a sincerity. Leloucia had been enemy and best friend, a study in multi-faceted reality to a sheltered boy who had seen the world in her.
Suzaku took those words into himself (cold. calculating. conniving. cruel.) and he struggled to be better than she was. Had been.
Was.
The stone man that he had become handed Zero over to the Emperor and saw in her just another stone figurine: blank and empty, like himself, filled with nothing but angry words. He didn't even bother to say any of them to her. It didn't matter.
But even though they had become so similar he told himself that he was still better than her because the person who could have killed Euphy would never, ever have stopped, while Suzaku still believed that a day would come when he would have fulfilled his purpose and he could finally stop moving and not have to hear the cruelty of his own thoughts questioning his motives.
.
Gino watched the news, which Suzaku would never have guessed of him. He took in the media parade surrounding Zero's execution and turned to Suzaku and asked casually, "What's she really like?"
He shouldn't even have answered. A better man probably would've told Gino that it wasn't his business, that it didn't matter anymore. But Suzaku wasn't. He said, distantly, "She hated the whole world. In her mind, everyone was an enemy."
Gino seemed amused. "Sounds like a tough way to live."
But she had been the kind of girl who would always push her own fears and frustrations aside to help the few, few, few people she dared to care for. And he'd used to be the kind of boy who thought that was admirable, who'd believed that it could make up for the vicious world she constantly struggled to avoid drowning in.
"That doesn't excuse her actions," he said.
Gino only shrugged. "No one's actions can ever be excused. There is no excuse for ending someone's life." And he flipped the channels, sounding certain, as if these were facts chiseled in stone that no one had ever seen fit to share with Suzaku. "Killers like us can't really judge another killer for the lives she's ended."
It struck him hard, almost chipping the stone of his armor, and he stared at the ceiling that night in his bed, entertaining second thoughts for the first time. Did he have the right to judge her?
If not him, then who? The Japanese she had manipulated on a mad quest for vengeance? The friends she had deceived and betrayed, used as tactical collateral? Some god after the end of it all?
Could anybody?
But no-- no. Gino's naive philosophy might be admirable in the delicate world where he'd been raised, but in the real world things weren't so clearly-defined. Sometimes you needed to kill to survive, to help those who couldn't help themselves; some killers were better than others. Suzaku was doing what he had to do: Leloucia was doing what she had chosen to do.
Euphy was different.
He had been given the power to decide: by being the one who found her, who identified her, and the one who had sworn to protect a woman she had murdered. And he was the only one who could decide. The rest of the world knew her carefully-constructed lies -- lies about justice, about heroism, even lies about who and what she was.
Suzaku was the only one who knew the real Leloucia vi Britannia.
So he was the only one who could judge her.
He could never let go of that.
(He was different.)
.
The Emperor seemed to think so as well. That was why, months later, it was Suzaku that he had given the task of monitoring her when she seemed to have regained her memories. And he held onto that conviction, that iron truth, when he stepped onto Ashford grounds for the first time in a year.
It was a bittersweet reunion with a place where he'd never really belonged. Most of the students there had never been his friends, but now he carried the Emperor's oath, the Empire's weight, and even thinking about how they would see him now -- afforded respect on the surface as a Rounds, but secretly loathed as a Japanese -- made him sick.
But it was what he'd wanted. What he'd needed to do.
They took him to their monitoring station when he arrived, Gino and Anya trailing behind him to see him get settled into his new post before they went off on their separate tasks. The control room was dark and insulated, the only light coming from the dozens of monitors on the wall.
The array of cameras was impressive, but he didn't see her. He asked them, "Where is Zero?"
The operatives glanced among themselves and then one said, "Right there, my lord."
His eyes had slid over the screen, searching for something else. He didn't know what he had expected. Had he expected anything? Somehow an instant recognition of the lies that he was familiar with, the games she had always played, the thick walls that sealed the real "Leloucia" off from the world that she hated.
Leloucia was sitting on a low brick wall with Shirley, the two of them laughing gently as they ate their lunches, with the warm spring breeze stirring their skirts.
Her disguise was gone. Months of plain black uniforms had given her a lean spartan appearance that had hidden everything about her, but here-- Her hair had grown longer. She seemed happy, eyes clear, and she was startlingly beautiful, refined features and elegant delicacy finally not hidden away under layers of careful artifice.
It wasn't startling to realize she was beautiful. She had always been, and he had always known she was, always believed it even when it was hard to see. But it was another thing to see that beauty so... naked.
Anya said neutrally, "She makes a prettier girl than a boy."
"I'll say," Gino added, and laughed.
Suzaku clenched his fists to fight back the feeling of stupid disappointment that was seeping through cracks in his stone that he hadn't realized were there. It felt as if somehow this one change meant that he was no longer the only one who knew her, that she was no longer a secret that he alone held.
This didn't change anything. She was lying even now, hiding behind a different mask. He was still the only one qualified to be her judge.
His hand the only one that should end her.
Later, he would realize: it was that precise moment.
This was written with 10_switched in mind. That means genderswap. Covering the year timeskip before we get back into the proper narrative... The story will be moving more AU from here on out.
.a clever disguise: interlude.
And he can identify precisely the moment when it happened: when fury and despair and disappointment and pain and all the chaos that had become his existence turned to stone. It must have been the same moment for her, when the cool facade she wore even disheveled and unmasked and laid bare finally tore at the edges and turned to incoherent rage. When this twisted thing they had called a friendship finally became nothing even like that.
It was the moment she lifted her gun and shot at him, impulsive and wild.
That was the moment he became someone else.
Cold. Calculating. Conniving. Cruel. Words he never would have applied to Leloucia because he had known that she held the potential to be more than that. For every coldness, a warmth; for every calculation, a sincerity. Leloucia had been enemy and best friend, a study in multi-faceted reality to a sheltered boy who had seen the world in her.
Suzaku took those words into himself (cold. calculating. conniving. cruel.) and he struggled to be better than she was. Had been.
Was.
The stone man that he had become handed Zero over to the Emperor and saw in her just another stone figurine: blank and empty, like himself, filled with nothing but angry words. He didn't even bother to say any of them to her. It didn't matter.
But even though they had become so similar he told himself that he was still better than her because the person who could have killed Euphy would never, ever have stopped, while Suzaku still believed that a day would come when he would have fulfilled his purpose and he could finally stop moving and not have to hear the cruelty of his own thoughts questioning his motives.
.
Gino watched the news, which Suzaku would never have guessed of him. He took in the media parade surrounding Zero's execution and turned to Suzaku and asked casually, "What's she really like?"
He shouldn't even have answered. A better man probably would've told Gino that it wasn't his business, that it didn't matter anymore. But Suzaku wasn't. He said, distantly, "She hated the whole world. In her mind, everyone was an enemy."
Gino seemed amused. "Sounds like a tough way to live."
But she had been the kind of girl who would always push her own fears and frustrations aside to help the few, few, few people she dared to care for. And he'd used to be the kind of boy who thought that was admirable, who'd believed that it could make up for the vicious world she constantly struggled to avoid drowning in.
"That doesn't excuse her actions," he said.
Gino only shrugged. "No one's actions can ever be excused. There is no excuse for ending someone's life." And he flipped the channels, sounding certain, as if these were facts chiseled in stone that no one had ever seen fit to share with Suzaku. "Killers like us can't really judge another killer for the lives she's ended."
It struck him hard, almost chipping the stone of his armor, and he stared at the ceiling that night in his bed, entertaining second thoughts for the first time. Did he have the right to judge her?
If not him, then who? The Japanese she had manipulated on a mad quest for vengeance? The friends she had deceived and betrayed, used as tactical collateral? Some god after the end of it all?
Could anybody?
But no-- no. Gino's naive philosophy might be admirable in the delicate world where he'd been raised, but in the real world things weren't so clearly-defined. Sometimes you needed to kill to survive, to help those who couldn't help themselves; some killers were better than others. Suzaku was doing what he had to do: Leloucia was doing what she had chosen to do.
Euphy was different.
He had been given the power to decide: by being the one who found her, who identified her, and the one who had sworn to protect a woman she had murdered. And he was the only one who could decide. The rest of the world knew her carefully-constructed lies -- lies about justice, about heroism, even lies about who and what she was.
Suzaku was the only one who knew the real Leloucia vi Britannia.
So he was the only one who could judge her.
He could never let go of that.
(He was different.)
.
The Emperor seemed to think so as well. That was why, months later, it was Suzaku that he had given the task of monitoring her when she seemed to have regained her memories. And he held onto that conviction, that iron truth, when he stepped onto Ashford grounds for the first time in a year.
It was a bittersweet reunion with a place where he'd never really belonged. Most of the students there had never been his friends, but now he carried the Emperor's oath, the Empire's weight, and even thinking about how they would see him now -- afforded respect on the surface as a Rounds, but secretly loathed as a Japanese -- made him sick.
But it was what he'd wanted. What he'd needed to do.
They took him to their monitoring station when he arrived, Gino and Anya trailing behind him to see him get settled into his new post before they went off on their separate tasks. The control room was dark and insulated, the only light coming from the dozens of monitors on the wall.
The array of cameras was impressive, but he didn't see her. He asked them, "Where is Zero?"
The operatives glanced among themselves and then one said, "Right there, my lord."
His eyes had slid over the screen, searching for something else. He didn't know what he had expected. Had he expected anything? Somehow an instant recognition of the lies that he was familiar with, the games she had always played, the thick walls that sealed the real "Leloucia" off from the world that she hated.
Leloucia was sitting on a low brick wall with Shirley, the two of them laughing gently as they ate their lunches, with the warm spring breeze stirring their skirts.
Her disguise was gone. Months of plain black uniforms had given her a lean spartan appearance that had hidden everything about her, but here-- Her hair had grown longer. She seemed happy, eyes clear, and she was startlingly beautiful, refined features and elegant delicacy finally not hidden away under layers of careful artifice.
It wasn't startling to realize she was beautiful. She had always been, and he had always known she was, always believed it even when it was hard to see. But it was another thing to see that beauty so... naked.
Anya said neutrally, "She makes a prettier girl than a boy."
"I'll say," Gino added, and laughed.
Suzaku clenched his fists to fight back the feeling of stupid disappointment that was seeping through cracks in his stone that he hadn't realized were there. It felt as if somehow this one change meant that he was no longer the only one who knew her, that she was no longer a secret that he alone held.
This didn't change anything. She was lying even now, hiding behind a different mask. He was still the only one qualified to be her judge.
His hand the only one that should end her.
Later, he would realize: it was that precise moment.