All That Remains

All That Remains
By Eline

Spoilers for R2 here! (Like you didn’t see that one coming.)

Zero/C.C. later--Only not really. A rambling future fic with very little porn.

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Qn: What do masked symbols of justice do on their days off?

Ans: They go off somewhere brood. Like Batman.

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The man known as Zero walked out into the bustling streets of Tokyo, anonymous in the crowd.

It had been a while since he had shed the persona of Zero for any amount of time. The past year had been a flurry of summits and conferences to address the pressing issue of food shortages due to the lack of arable land. They involved a lot of arguing between grown men and women who ought to know better, but were thankfully free of sabre-rattling. The technological debates had been mainly about the new generation of solar panels and the newest species of genetically modified potatoes.

The last emergency of any note had been the spate of viral internet videos released on the 20th anniversary of the end of the war. Nunally had been upset even though she took care not to let it show.

From an entirely clinical point of view, it was a very well-staged assassination. A very public and above all dramatic ending. He doubted that he would ever be able to pull that kind of stunt again. Age had its drawbacks.

Behind the mask, he had been calculating the inevitable backlash, how long the furour would last before it died down again. It was a small thing. Nothing to be overly concerned about. Some teenagers with too much time on their hands and access to some of the many copies of the news footage of that infamous scene would get a slap on the wrist for being "culturally and racially insensitive". It was nothing that Schneizel could not handle with discretion and tact that Zero lacked.

The part of him that was not Zero had cringed. He could barely stand being in the same room as Nunnally, knowing that she was remembering that awful day.

That had been two months ago. With the United Federation of Nations Summit now behind her, Nunnally vi Britannia was taking a well-deserved vacation in the south of France and Zero had faded back to wherever he went when he was not safeguarding justice. Sayoko and her apprentice were more than competent as bodyguards and the Ambassador at Large was far less of a target than Empress Nunally.

It had been her idea. Barely one year into her reign, Nunnally vi Britannia abolished the title of Emperor/Empress, choosing the less controversial title of Head of State. She had pointed out--correctly as it turned out--that negotiations where a little hard to conduct with the title of "Empress" hanging over her head.

Woe betide anyone who thought that Nunnally vi Britannia sans her title was a pushover. There had been something disconcerting about the sixteen-year old girl in a wheelchair cheerfully proposing to convert military Knightmare Frames into farming and construction drones that kept people off-balance long enough for them to agree and sign the documents.

But that had been twenty years ago. Nunally had handed over the role of Head of State to Christina Morgan--Britannia's first democratically elected Prime Minster--a decade ago and changed portfolios. As Ambassador at Large, Nunnally represented Britannia at United Nations conferences and wielded diplomacy like a surgeon with a laser-scalpel. There was still something about the lady in the wheelchair that made people sit up and pay attention.

He knew what price had been paid for that kind of strength. Time had blunted the sting of old wounds, but they were still there.

Time had also ensured that memories had faded. With the inevitable aging that came with the years, he did not even need to wear contact lenses and stock up on hair dye in order to go out without the mask anymore.

It had been difficult at first. He had no identity and clung to the one he had been given. He had no idea of how to approach the world without the costume and the voice modifier built into the mask. He had even become accustomed to the dramatic cape flourishes despite the initial phase when a part of him had been quietly dying of embarrassment every time he did it.

Ludicrous as the costume was, it represented justice. It was who he was.

Nunnally had been concerned. It was not healthy to be submerged inside a false persona for so long, she had said. And the world had to learn not always to depend on Zero.

He agreed to her terms because she would have called him by his old name next and he did not need to resurrect that old ghost.

So when justice's staunchest defender was not required, Zero turned into, irony of ironies, an ordinary Japanese citizen with an identity that was more fake than the mask he wore. Those times were becoming more frequent as of late.

If the question of his identity ever arose, he had an identity card, credit cards and an employee pass naming him as Satou Ryou, a Tokyoite who worked for an international outsourcing logistics company. Satou Ryou's job required him to travel a lot and his biometric passport was very well-used.

But because Nunnally’s influence could not supplant the geass he carried, Satou Ryou had very few friends and even fewer relationships. He knew the manager of the apartment block he lived in. The cleaner and the night-watchman. The old woman on the third floor with the two cats.

Satou, Zero thought, was a loner when he was not immersed in his work. And probably fairly inept when it came to personal relationships. Which was not surprising as he practically lived out of his suitcase. All he cared about was his work and when the next call would come for him to pack his suitcase again and head for the airport. The one thing the man had going for him was that he had better fashion sense than Zero.

In his jeans, casual shirt and jacket, he was considered "well-preserved" and “fairly handsome” by his female neighbours. They had all given up on him by now. The whole apartment block probably thought he was gay. A rumour he did not bother to discourage even after the man from the seventh floor had tried to chat him up and had been met with a blank stare.

Safe in his mundane persona, he walked briskly down the road to the small park by the river embankment. He thought better when he was moving--that would never change. As the sun made its way down to the horizon, the streets around him started to fill up with the after-office crowds. People hurrying home from work. Students hurrying out to meet their friends. Enjoying the normality that came with peace.

Ironically, it had been peace that that brought on the frequent periods of inactivity for Zero. In the year after the great war, there was no question of how much the world needed a symbol for justice during those turbulent times. But as time passed, with Schneizel working behind the scenes and Nunally as an advocate of peace, Britannia was well on the way to mending her former reputation as a greedy imperialist nation.

Zero was the champion of the oppressed, but with Britannia no longer oppressing its freed ex-colonies, the people had turned their hands to repairing the wounds of the war. There were still local disputes and deep-seated issues that had been simmering long before Britannia had embarked on her bloody path of conquest, but the UFN had become rather adept at mediation over the years.

Zero’s role, he realised, was more of a symbol than ever before. Would there be a day when such symbols would not be needed? It was Nunnally’s optimistic dream, he knew, but as Schneizel had so succinctly put it, people had very short memories.

He had a vision of himself as Satou Ryou, aged sixty-five, living in the same flat in the same apartment block with half a dozen spoiled cats. It was . . . not what he had anticipated. Granted, he had never imagined that he would live that long, but after the girl at the newsstand had jokingly called him “uncle” when he went to buy a bottle of tea, he was feeling his age for the first time.

That costume was going to be a real pain to manage at age sixty-five.

But it was his curse, his geass. To be the eternal defender of justice.

It had been Sayoko who had planted the idea in his head when she had chosen her niece as her apprentice. Not to succeed her as personal assistant to the Ambassador at Large as everyone thought, but as the successor to the Shinozaki Ryuu. Yes, traditions were important. He had been brought up in a traditional Japanese household after all and traditions had to be passed on to the next generation.

But who in the world would want to live under this geass?

Neutral justice. Colour-blind, incorruptible and faceless. A man who had his last semi-friendly conversation with an eccentric scientist over the new-fangled power generator he was designing three days ago.

Walking along the embankment, he skirted the couples, the groups of students and the occasional family going out for dinner. It was there that he saw her, standing by the park fountain as though she was waiting for someone.

She was no older than the last time he saw her. Dressed according to the current (recycled) trend of pencil-skirts, ankle boots and faux leather fitted jackets with a jaunty cap perched atop her long hair, she looked like any other urban denizen of Tokyo.

After the initial shock, he realised that they would draw attention if they stood there for too long.

"We should go somewhere to sit down. Have you have dinner yet?"

"You're treating, right?"

"Pizza, right?"

"But of course."

He could not help but smile a little at that as they walked down the embankment together.

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