Coup d'�tat

November 2nd, 2022 a.t.b.

“Yes, thank you,” Lelouch said. “That would be for the best, Jeremiah.”

He ended the call and looked at the screen thoughtfully. A moment later, he dialled another number.

“Jarvis? Yes, it’s me. Can you put me through to Hiroshi? Yes, that one.” A pause. “I can wait but I don’t have time for games . . . Hah, I knew you wouldn’t be very far away--”

After a few more minutes, Lelouch ended the call.

He replaced the mobile into his pocket. He had done what he could for now. Kallen had been right when she had said that one did not cut themselves off from their former comrades. No matter how eccentric or weird they were.

Now what next?

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

November 2nd, 2022 a.t.b.

The mess quarters of the KMF pilots were a whirl of gaiety as the men and women of the Eighth and Ninth let their hair down. This meant immediately after landing in Pendragon and getting out of their Frames.

“It’s a right circus out there, no mistake,” Alonzo said, unzipping the neck of his flight suit. There was a certain amount of informality amongst pilots and Suzaku was not about to do anything about it now.

For a lark, they had royally embarrassed Suzaku half an hour ago by forming up ranks and saluting him in a display befitting an emperor. Suzaku made a mental note to get someone--not Lelouch--to overhaul the etiquette books and ban such showy obeisances. For however long the Empire would last after this.

That evening, the Eighth and Ninth Battalion had returned from the Gulf after the relief squad turned up. The pilots in command were amongst the trusted circle of ringleaders. While it was true that Honorary Britannians were not allowed to be pilots of KMFs, it did not apply to their children’s children. Generations of Honorary Britannians from the first colonies who had merged in with the conquerors . . . It was not quite Suzaku’s idea of a paradigm shift, but Alonzo Vastrez had been one of the first who had joined him in the beginning.

“You sound like a Britannian,” Victor Tan complained. Their head engineer was a Chinese expatriate in Tokyo who had opted for Honorary Britannian status after the invasion of Japan.

“I technically am,” Alonzo said. “More than a lot of the other second generation Britannians at any rate.”

“We are not going to go there tonight,” Piotr said, brandishing a bottle of wine. “It’s the end of our tour--for now.”

“You still don’t indulge?” Alonzo asked Suzaku as the men and women of the Eighth and Ninth went for the alcohol with a will.

“Bad experiences after too many parties,” Suzaku said. He had learned it the hard way when he had been knighted. The Britannians drank socially, informally and for fun. KMF pilots did all that and more.

“That’s because you never drank when you were younger,” Victor said sagely. “You have to build up resistance from youth.”

“Maybe you’re right.” He had managed to dodge most invitations to get stinking drunk in the army, not the least because some of them were the preliminary stages before someone got cling-filmed to a lamppost buck-naked.

“It’s never too late to start,” Alonzo said cheerfully. “To the Empire! May it expire soon!”

Suzaku wondered how Alonzo could be so cheerful when his homeland would be amongst the last to be liberated--if at all.

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

November 27th, 2010 a.t.b.

In the evening after dinner, Suzaku did his homework dutifully even though he was not that fond of writing compositions and found mathematics unreasonably complicated. He finished the essay, stared at it for a moment before deciding that Angela-san would be the best person to ask about the sentence structure and grammar.

He had gone to the living room to find her, but she had abandoned the coffee table laden with work and by the sound of things, she had gone to the bathroom for a while. This was something Angela-san did when she was feeling stressed.

She did not smoke but she did swear in the narrow confines of the bathroom--to spare his ears, Suzaku supposed, but the walls were pretty thin. The toilet bowl had steadfastly withstood the verbal abuse despite the paint-peeling nature of Angela-san's invective and would continue to do so.

In the living room, the cat lay on top of some of the papers littered on the coffee table, blinking contentedly beside the open laptop--an excellent source of warmth in the winter. In a fit of inspired unoriginality, Angela-san and Suzaku had both agreed to name her Tama.

He was surprised that she had brought work back. Angela-san hated bringing work back home. Amongst the files and folders scattered on the table, he could see hard-copies of forms titled "Application for Honorary Britannian Status Form 1A--"

"Suzaku . . . do you need help with your homework?" Angela-san asked as she emerged from the kitchen with a drink in hand. She saw him looking at the forms and her expression changed instantly. It was the closest to upset that Suzaku had ever seen her.

"Ah--well, I have to get those proof-read and edited by Monday," she said, shuffling the papers into a pile and unseating Tama. "Horrible, complicated things--"

"Can I see it? Please?" Suzaku asked.

Angela-san looked like she wanted very much to swear. She handed him the ten-page long hard-copy after the briefest of hesitations and sat down abruptly with her drink. Sipping her tea tensely, she watched him as he read it--both the Britannian and Japanese versions of the form--and wonder if he understood it all. His Britannian was better than expected but the forms were heavy on the legalese and even the Japanese version was a chore to read.

“What does this mean?” Suzaku asked, pointing to a paragraph.

Setting her tea down, Angela-san put on the reading glasses that she used around the house when she was not wearing her contact lens and squinted at the papers.

“It means renouncing your former citizenship and pledging loyalty to Britannia. Subjects of the Empire are to adhere to the laws set down by the Imperial Court of Pendragon--”

“What does it mean to re-renounce citizenship?”

“It . . . Well, it means that you aren’t Japanese any more. You’d be an Honorary Britannian and not a Japanese citizen.” Angela-san looked like she had a headache. Tama, not one to let a warm lap go to waste, climbed up to claim her place. “This a legally-binding contract to confirm that.”

“So what does it mean to be an Honorary Britannian?”

“You can work in the settlement, join the civil service, the Britannian military, most of the opportunities that . . . aren’t open to non-Britannians.”

“So, they’ll be like you?”

“Not exactly . . .” Angela-san looked him and took a deep breath. “You know what it’s like at school, right?”

Suzaku nodded. She did not need to elaborate.

“Imagine all of that when you’re a grown-up. Imagine all that petty, unreasonable behaviour in people who should know better. Multiply that by all the things that adults can do, and you’ll have an idea of what the Honorary Britannians face everyday.”

“And . . . you, Angela-san?” It dawned upon him that she did not look Britannian. In fact, she looked mostly Japanese. The irony was that she looked more Japanese than he did.

She smiled at him and ruffled his hair because she was fond of his curls. “Don’t worry about me--you still have to survive school.”

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

“You’re thinking about something.” In the darkness of his room, C.C. was standing beside his bed.

This was no longer half as unnerving as it used to be. He could sense her now whenever she was close. He knew when she would sneak into his room. It was only his current preoccupation that had kept him from looking up as his window slid open.

He always made room for her whenever she came in--it trained him for a life of sleeping on very narrow beds.

“C.C.?” His voice sounded a little unreal in the stillness of the room.

“Hmm?” The witch was a warm lump under the blanket beside him.

“What does a contract with you mean?”

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

Here was the thing about being immortal . . .

Everything around you dies, will die or is going to die soon.

Day after day, year after year--time passing by endlessly.

The witch had been silent for years. Until a child had asked her--directly and to the point--what her sole curse and only gift would cost him.

So she told him. About the Code and what she needed him for.

Marianne was laughing at her. She could hear it.

And from that day on, he gained the ability to walk into her world.

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

December 17th, 2010 a.t.b.

Despite his own reluctance to use it, Suzaku found himself learning about the power he had been granted a lot faster than he anticipated.

The neighbourhood had begun to fill up and there were more children passing by on their way to school. A week ago, a young woman had gone around advertising her services as a caretaker for young children. Angela-san hired her for the night when she had to attend her department’s annual staff dinner and dance.

Suzaku wondered why he needed a babysitter, but Angela-san was probably trying to be conscientious so he had only nodded when she gave him the news. She had also cut down on the fast food because she had read somewhere that it stunted adolescent growth. C.C. had been most put out by curtailment of her pizza supply, but she might be even more irritated by the sitter’s presence as it meant that she could not sneak in until much later.

The sitter had permission to order in dinner. Which was a shame because they had been getting good at making one-pan stir-fry and left-over hot-pot.

When the sitter arrived, she had three other boys in tow. She was taking care of two others and her younger brother, so if Ms. Nakamura did not mind . . .

Angela-san, togged up in a pirate costume for the D-n-D and running late, had no time to argue with an eighteen-year old girl.

After dinner, the boys had asked to see his cat. Within the skin of a second, Suzaku had seen the different possibilities branching out around them. He hunted about for Tama, calling her namely loudly and generally making a racket, knowing all too well that she would ignore him and continue to nap up in the eaves.

He shrugged and said at last that Tama must be wandering around outside. The sitter had commandeered the television and the next few hours were literally what Angela-san liked to call “Chinese water torture”.

Suzaku had been honestly relieved when Angela-san returned home in a friend’s car. The sitter and her charges left after Angela-san paid her.

“You look like you’ve been bored to tears,” Angela-san said, dumping the outlandish hat and sword on the sofa. Tama, coming down to welcome her home after the noisy strangers had gone away, wound around her booted ankles and purred.

“Almost. We watched reruns of, uh, Bainsbury Hills 50610” Angela-san like to talk to him at the end of the day--it was a lot more informal than the conversations he had with his relatives. Speaking of which, he was due to visit Kyoto in a week . . .

“Oh you poor thing,” Angela-san said as she went into the kitchen to get a drink of water. “That should be against the law--”

“Has that girl been smoking in the toilet?” she demanded as she stomped out from the kitchen. She stopped when she saw Suzaku holding Tama tight against this chest despite the fact that fact that her teeth were fastened around his hand.

Angela-san never hired the sitter again.

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

Up in his room, Suzaku held onto the cat and wished he could somehow un-see that multi-faceted vision. If those boys had met Tama that night . . .

Another day, another time. Outside. When they had come across the cat in their yard. Somewhat familiar with the children, Tama had let them pet her for a while. The vision branched--one in which the boys had gone off to play and another when they had tied a pair of tin cans to her tail for fun. Because it was what children did without thinking.

Terrified, the cat had dashed out onto the road. Right into the path of a car.

It could have gone two ways. One with the driver swerving and crashing into a tree. He would have died upon impact. The other with Tama run over, her small broken body on sprawled the asphalt.

After the discovery of the stench of nicotine in the bathroom, Suzaku had taken Tama up to his room and Angela-san had not objected. Biting him was mostly an affectionate reflex for the cat by now and she had learned not to draw blood. Most of the time.

He sat on his bed, hugging Tama while trying to overcome the black fear of how close he had been to losing her. How close those boys had been to causing a fatal accident. It had been too real. Something he could ever have anticipated. Nor wanted to know about. Cause and effect so neatly laid out in front of him with the additional choice attached--

“She’s not going anywhere--you’re almost smothering her.”

C.C. had come in through the window, silent as always. Other boys obviously did not have witches climbing into their rooms six nights out of seven.

Other ten-year olds did not walk in the dreams of an immortal.

“What is this . . . what did you give me?” he asked the witch, loosening his grip on the cat, who mewled softly but did not move.

“The Power of Kings.” And Suzaku realised that that was not actually an answer.

“Is it supposed to . . . do this?”

“I don’t know what shape of form it takes. But it is the power to change the world.”

“I don’t want it if this is what it does!” Suzaku said. Where was this power that night when he had confronted his father?

“Only you can choose how you’ll use it,” she said, extending her arm to encircle him. “I will be beside you when you do.”

That was all she could do for him.

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

One week later, he was on the train to Kyoto to visit his extended family. Left mostly undamaged by the war, the former Imperial city still retained its antiquated air of refinement.

Suzaku was glad it did not resemble most of Tokyo. (But that was before he found out that the Britannians had been shipping the priceless artefacts from the museums and shrines to the highest bidders.) He was also surprised when C.C. popped up in his room on the first night despite his warnings that his relatives did not subscribe to things like pizza delivery. But it made his stay a lot more bearable when he realised what was going on.

Meals with his relative revolved around not-talking-about-his-father. Conversations with his cousins eventually turned out to be about not-talking-about-his-father. For all intents and purposes, Suzaku had no father and Kururugi Genbu had not committed suicide, resulting in Japan’s unconditional surrender.

In their own special way, they were living in the past. The Kururugi clan were wealthy enough to maintain their accustomed way of life. The traditional house with its neatly manicured garden and the deer-scarer. The servants and the carefully arranged day-today schedules that maintained the illusion of normalcy. They probably thought they were sparing him from the shame.

Twice a year, he would have to come back and face entire stretches of not-talking-about-his-father. Suzaku thought he might go insane one day and blurt out the fact that he had killed his father. He kept a tight rein on the Geass for fear that it might activate again while he was in the presence of his relatives. He did not want to know or see the things they did in the name of their clan.

But C.C. knew and she shared his futon with him in the house that lay a scant handful of kilometres away from his former home. She had to catch him when he had tried, while mired in the depths of a nightmare, to run outside. To go back to that house on the hill and that room with the bloodstains on the floor.

When he came to himself, her arms were locked around him and her legs were wrapped around the sturdy support pillar beside the screen doors. The bruises on her limbs were fading away, but Suzaku could see by the state of his room that it had been a terrible struggle.

He has been bitten too many times by Tama for him not to recognise the marks on her hands. No doubt they had been gained when she had tried to stop him from screaming and waking the entire house.

He said he was sorry, but it did not seem quite enough as she cradled his head on her lap and held him as he cried.

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

This had been . . . unexpected.

It was entirely random, the things that he saw with his Geass. That what a person selected in a vending machine would branch off into several other scenarios involving the most mundane things at one end of the spectrum and other, less pleasant fates like getting violently mugged at the other end.

It got worse when he hit puberty. Something to do with the hormones, C.C. supposed. The Geass was liable to activate at any time, at any place.

She thought that this one would be another failure. The very nature of his Geass was volatile and erratic, not to mention difficult for an average person to handle. The myriad possibilities that the boy could see were only useful if he could affect them in some way. But to do that required him to choose one path over another. It was not something that a child was equipped to do. A child who no longer trusted in his own judgment.

Especially a child who was prone violent nightmares and racking guilt over the most traumatic event in his childhood.

She expected another Mao at the end. Another life wrecked by the effects of a power that no human should have. And she had known remorse for it, shown it in the only way she could by staying with him until the inevitable end. Unlike Mao--but there had been nothing she could have done for him . . .

Marianne had mocked her for her double standards.

But he had mastered it. Somehow. The same way he had overcome the nightmares, probably. It was a remarkable feat for a teenager. Sometimes, C.C. could not even sense the Geass, so well buried was it within the maze that was his mind. And when he did choose to use it . . .

Hope was a terrible thing for a witch after so long. And she should have known not to get involved again.

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

They do not talk about it. What he sees when he walks in her dreams.

Her world was a place of memories. And the witch had lived a long time in order to amass all those memories.

He knew he should not be here. But after what she had told him, after she had told him that she wanted to die . . .

He had gone to sleep beside her as usual. More troubled than usual.

Then he found himself walking in a place that looked like a fancy art gallery or museum. The picture and paintings . . . were not what they seemed at first. When he finally realised what they showed, he tried not to look too closely as he walked faster. This was like peeping into rooms that were out of bounds.

He found her in front of one particular frame, looking pensive.

Hello, what are you doing here? she asked when she noticed him. How did you get in here anyway?

I just wanted to find you.

Oh? She did not look angry--just bemused.

I don’t want you to die, he said to her bluntly.

She smiled at him and looked back at the picture. That’s very nice of you to say so. But being able to die is what makes you human. I am the witch because I cannot.

But Suzaku is not nice. And neither is she.

When a portrait of him was hung in this place, he wondered what it would show.

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