Coup d'�tat

November 2nd, 2022 a.t.b.

Today was a marginally better day than yesterday. The standoff in South America had ended with fairly little violence and the last pockets of open resistance had quietened down. Suzaku felt the tension in his shoulders lessen a little more as he stepped out onto the terrace for a breath of fresh air. The sun had decided to show itself that day and it was reasonably balmy outside.

“The first two groups of delegates have arrived.” Beside him, without a PDA or tablet for once and sans earpiece communicator, Lelouch looked out over the expansive and doubtlessly expensive gardens behind the Palace. “They’re submitting their proposals even as we speak.”

“Does that mean I get the afternoon off?”

“It’s not a job, you know,” Lelouch said, going along with his mild jest. “Besides, you have other duties.” He gestured towards the south wing where they were housing the envoys. There was a knot of people being guided out by the liveried ushers.

“And what is this about?”

“I thought you might like to see certain people first,” Lelouch said, turning to go even as the party in the distance spotted them.

“Before the official brouhaha hits,” Lelouch added over his shoulder.

“Are you going to leave me to my cousin?” Suzaku asked as he made out the individual figures approaching from the south wing.

“Is that a request or an order?”

Suzaku almost smiled. “You’re the clever one--you figure it out.”

He moved forwards and a moment later, heard the booted footsteps behind him. His small victory was short-lived, however, as he heard a familiar voice calling his name.

“Suzaku!”

He had a terrifying vision of being trounced by a girl who was barely higher than his elbow before reality reasserted itself. Kaguya had grown--she would never be tall but her presence was as large as ever. And she might remember not to kick him as befitting the dignity of the Japanese envoy.

“Or is it Your Majesty now?” she asked in only-slightly accented Britannian. For once, Suzaku was glad of her ability to make anything sound irrelevant. It was not a title he had relished.

“Save it for later,” Suzaku said. Kaguya could be perfectly formal when she wanted to behave herself. He looked over the small party--around half a dozen of them--that had came with her to Pendragon and was pleasantly surprised to see that they were a lot younger than the Japanese average politician.

“Don’t look so shocked,” his cousin said in Japanese. “Things have changed, you know?”

From the old days. From his father’s day. That was what she meant, Suzaku knew.

“For the better, I hope.”

“Of course,” Kouzuki Kallen said. “We wouldn’t have been able to get things going so fast if any of the old bureaucratic red tape had been in the way.”

The captain of the UJDF First Squadron, in her sharply-pressed uniform, was apparently on security duty but she looked more relaxed now that Kaguya had so neatly broken the ice and forestalled any potential tension.

“You sound like a disgruntled civil servant already,” Suzaku said, more than willing to rib her a little for the time she had spent undercover as a member of the military administrative staff.

“Spare me the forms in triplicate,” Kallen said. “You look like you’ve been doing a little more form-signing and report-reading than piloting these days.”

“It’s the danger of rising so high,” Kaguya said archly. “Say, we shouldn’t be discussing this somewhere else?”

He was forgetting his manners already, but Lelouch had stepped forward. “But of course. If you will follow us to the terrace, arrangements have been made.”

Only Lelouch, Suzaku reflected, would have come up with something like this at such short notice. Kaguya and Kallen bore identical looks of amusement as they were shown to a set-up not unlike a typical Britannian afternoon tea. The resemblance ended at the tablecloths. Instead of Earl Grey and cake, there was green tea with an assortment of wagashi and cookies.

It was also positioned well away from any prying ears and Suzaku would have bet that Lelouch had every stick of furniture debugged.

The carefully-worded congratulations came first, then the more general issues that could not be misconstrued in any way to be an effort on the Japanese delegation’s part to use their leverage on the present commander-in-chief of the largest armed presence on earth. Lelouch turned on the charm that he seldom used in the company of people he actually knew to keep the dialogue going. Suzaku noticed that Lelouch resisted Kaguya and Kallen’s best efforts to draw him into actual conversation.

Afterwards, Suzaku found the time to speak his cousin alone when Lelouch managed to shuffle the other envoys away on some pretext or other. Kallen would no doubt persist in her efforts and she would probably succeed in cornering Lelouch to give him a piece of her mind.

“You’ve changed,” Kaguya said as they sauntered slowly down the path bordered by well-manicured hedges. “I don’t think you’d let me kick you now.”

“I trusted you not to.”

“You always expected people to behave in a certain way when we were younger.” Kaguya was obviously resisting the urge to do a few pirouettes down the path as they walked sedately along. “Now maybe not so much. Did you expect Lelouch to dump the Order like that when you made your move?”

The signal for the start of the coup had been the very moment Lelouch had left the Order of the Black Knights to join up with the rogue military faction under Suzaku. It was to have been a permanent realignment of his position in the subsequent war. But as Kallen had said, soldiers did not forget their old comrade in arms.

And he had not quite dumped them, Suzaku wanted to say in Lelouch’s defence. It had been decided that the Order would disband, freeing certain groups to return to their former allegiances where they would be well-placed to help with the coming transition. Lelouch--being who he was and what he was--had intended to burn his bridges behind him. It would not do for a Britannian strategist to be so closely associated with the potential leaders of the future.

“Lelouch . . . is Lelouch,” Suzaku said at last.

"I noticed. Does he think he's that much of a liability now that he's openly on your side?"

You have no idea. And there might be more than one enemy left on the field. Another enemy we cannot guard against so easily.

No, Kaguya and the others did not know about the disturbing news that Jeremiah had brought with him when he had sought Lelouch out. The possible link between a group of Geass users and the royal family of Britannia was chilling enough without the addition of Schneizel still left unchecked.

It had been unavoidable. The Second Prince had more than one exit strategy in store and corralling him had taken second place to securing the military coup of an extremely militant and war-ready Empire with as little bloodshed as possible.

“He’s just a little paranoid.” It came from having lost too much too early. It came from a lot of bitter experience fighting a war against colossal odds. “It would take just one disgruntled faction to accuse us of setting up puppet democracies and we would be set back by months.”

"It's hard to believe that we got there so soon though," Kaguya said, sensing his need to change the subject and giving way gracefully. "You might have to fight to separate the first taken Areas from Britannia though."

He was rather hoping that there could be another way of easing Britannia out of the Areas where they had been firmly entrenched for a century or so. Countries that had not heard their own names spoken for decades. It would be messy.

"If I have to."

That was the limitation he had imposed on himself. The witch's gift and curse would not go to waste, but only for this cause alone.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

August, 2010 a.t.b.

After hearing her voice, Suzaku did not remember very much afterwards. He only knew that he had to get her out of the rubble. He had dug her out somehow--chunk by chunk of concrete flying over his shoulder until he could move her. He had gone back for the woman and child. And the middle-aged man.

But only she had stood up as though her legs had not been crushed by debris from a falling building. As though she had not lost several litres of blood from her wounds. The rest lay where he had dragged them.

“You cannot bring the dead back to life,” she said to him.

What good was this power then?

But the blade had been unsheathed.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

It was the girl’s green hair that had made them so noticeable in the middle of the devastation.

The relief workers picked their way across the ruins and found the boy and the older girl beside the bodies of the dead. They were obviously traumatised by what they had witnessed, the relief workers thought as they took in the awful scene. The blood on the girl’s clothes probably came from helping the boy pull the bodies out, they concluded. The boy was withdrawn and the girl was . . . just blank. They would have treated them a little more delicately if they had the time and the manpower, but it was imperative to get them out of the crumbling city along with the other refugees.

It was three days after the evacuation before anyone thought to ask them their names. By that time the girl had mysteriously disappeared and Headquarters had been alerted to the fact that they had--entirely by chance--picked up the late Prime Minister’s only son.

* * * * * * * * * * * *