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rex_sunTitle: Nothing in Yourself
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Code Geass
Characters: Shirley-pov. Lelouch, Suzaku.
Summary: (Kinkmeme request.) Shirley tries to understand Lelouch. She really, really tries. But as Suzaku says: Lelouch doesn't want to be liked. He doesn't even want to like. And Shirley has to wonder if either of her friends hold any kind of hope in their hearts at all.
Finding out that someone you care about has been hiding drugs from you the entire time you knew them is-- to put it very, very lightly --maddening. It's no short of horrific, without exaggeration. It goes like this:
Fascination. Why? Why this? What does it do for them that reality doesn't?
Rejection. Of the drug, of the person, feeling yourself rejected. As if you aren't good enough? Screw him. So he never liked you in the first place!
Frustration. Because if you really could just write him off as simple as that, you wouldn't care so much. Wouldn't think about it so much. So here you are, at this impasse where you realize that you care about him, but he doesn't care about you, and there's nothing you can do to get out of the trap of such a relationship.
It's too much, Shirley thinks. This uselessness.
Sitting at her laptop alone in her dorm, she quickly searches Refrain and its effects, and it makes perfect sense to her. She thinks, How could I have not seen this before? Lelouch's long sleeved shirts and his inability, at times, to speak. His careful regulation of Shirley's visits-- not wanting her to see him on a trip, no doubt. The tired, sick, empty look in his eyes. His thinness-- Refrain keeps you from eating sometimes.
She closes the window, not wanting to read about long term effects or the punishments by law.
--Suzaku, she realizes. She puts her head in her hands, feeling her temples throb and her left eye twitch. Her eyes feel heavy when she leans forward.
Suzaku knows, and Suzaku allows. All his talk about-- about caring for Lelouch, about wanting better for Lelouch-- is it a lie? Why does Suzaku keep it quiet, why doesn't he get Lelouch help, unless... he does it too? Does Suzaku also shoot? --no wait, she's seen his arms, many times, no tracks or pricks or --but he might shoot somewhere else or--
Too much. Too much…
Shirley is distracted on Monday. Lelouch is right behind her in class and she feels the new weight that has alighted upon her shoulders in place of her gone ignorance. Should she say something? Is this something she's allowed to say? She went through his belongings without permission-- is that such a sin in light of his activities?
And she had promised herself, time and again, to leave his personal life alone-- and she has broken that promise, time and again. It's sickening in her stomach, to know that here at school he puts on a face of apathetic normalcy. He's popular and handsome and he goes unquestioned, despite his numerous absences and poor grades. But then he goes home and he gets angry and he yells and he locks himself in his room after teaching Suzaku what he can-- and the he rolls up his sleeve, sets the needle to his skin, and pushes in that plunger.
And then the real world ceases to exist for him. Shirley doesn't know what he is setting out to remember, but it certainly isn't Ashford. (It certainly isn't her.)
"Suzaku," she calls, reminding herself of the past winter, and she thinks maybe Suzaku will deflect her again. But he straightens up with a broad smile, sweat rolling down his forehead and neck streaked with dirt. The gardens sprawling behind him are bright green and young-- like and unlike his eyes.
"Hi, Shirley," he says, not aware of anything wrong. She opens her mouth, closes it. A crease appears in her brow. “Are you alright, Shirley?”
I am. Lelouch isn’t. And you aren’t either. “I’m fine, sorry, forgot what I was going to say…”
She ends up hanging out with him, unable to just open her mouth and say something. She's too much of a coward. She wishes she could stand steadfast in the face of this... darkness that has clouded the lives of her friends.
The bell rings while she is still sitting with Suzaku. He gasps. "Hey, shouldn't you be in class?"
"It's fine," Shirley says quietly, determined to confront him. Now or never. She has to.
He looks at her with a frown. "No way, Shirley," he says firmly. "You have to get your education. Don't let someone like me drag you down, go on ahead."
"...okay," Shirley says meekly.
And she has never been as disappointed in herself as when she walks away.
Shirley's next couple of weeks progress the same: a chance to say something appears, and she chokes, she loses courage, the chance disappears, she feels ashamed.
But it can't go on like this, it really just can't. She can't spend her life feeling ashamed, but neither can she find the courage within herself to speak. Because even if she does, what will happen? Lelouch will get angry because that's all he knows how to do, and Suzaku will probably deny or deflect or guilt her by saying, I asked you not to look in his room, how could you betray me in the first place? And then there won't be any friendliness between them and her, and if there's no friendship, there's nothing else, either. Shirley has no other hold on them. She doesn't even know a higher power to go to, because they don't have any family.
She could go to the staff. The teachers or the principals would know what to do, who to call and how to discipline them. But what would happen to them after that? Drugs on campus are grounds for expulsion, and then they'd surely fire Suzaku. Could Suzaku find another job? How'd he even get a job with the Ashfords? Was that Lelouch's doing, and without it would he be unable to get another?
And like that, thinking that over and over at night, thinking about how she could just as easily ruin their lives as save them, things become... Easier. In a way. Slowly. I can't live my life in shame, she thinks, and gradually she becomes less ashamed when she misses another chance. She thinks, I need to find the best way to bring it up, and now is not the time.
And then all of a sudden it is summer break and she leaves with her father for a vacation in the homeland. Suzaku and Lelouch stay home, at Ashford. And Shirley doesn't see them for a whole three months. And Shirley...
--she forgets. Or pushes it from her mind. Same thing.
The new school year starts in the midst of the wet, heavy heat of Area 11's waning summer. Lelouch shows up for the first day of school, and the first week, and even the first month with his usual, irritating false smile, but at least he shows up. And at the adjournment of the first council meeting of the year, in which Lelouch is named vice-president and Milly declares herself president, it is Lelouch who approaches Shirley, smiling softly this time-- warmly.
"Come visit. Can you?"
Shirley feels some bubble expanding in her chest, tickling her face with heat and fluttering around in her heart. She grins. "Of course! Tonight?"
"Right now," he nods, and they leave the others behind. Shirley thinks that Milly is watching them go for a little while longer than the others.
The apartment has returned to its usual dimness since the last time Shirley visited, but seeing Suzaku sitting with a book in hand somehow makes things seem a little brighter.
"Suzaku!" she calls and when he looks up, face splitting into a grin, she rushes to hug him.
"Careful," he says nervously, but hugs her back. Shirley looks down and at last notices his leg in a cast.
"What did you do!" she demands, placing her hands on her hips.
"I fell, that's all!" Suzaku hastily reassures her. "From a ladder, but I'm okay!"
And that would have mollified her, except Lelouch muttered his own answer where Suzaku couldn't hear, and she isn't sure but she thinks Lelouch said something about jumping off on purpose.
Their friendship picks up right where it left off, and it's again so very comfortable. Visiting every weekend, and eventually Shirley finds she doesn't even need to announce herself, she just waltzes right over and opens the unlocked door and finds them sitting, teacher and student, huddled together with barely any sunlight coming through.
Lelouch takes the time of Suzaku's recovery to teach him Shakespeare, which Suzaku struggles with terribly.
"I understand this part," Suzaku says one day, near the end of reading one of the plays while Lelouch is in another chair, searching for a suitable enactment on the Internet video sites. Lelouch hums and he and Shirley look up to see Suzaku smiling softly.
"I hope so. It's the Comedy of Errors. Not exactly rocket science, there," Lelouch drawls.
Shirley rolls her eyes at Lelouch and then implores, "Read it out loud, Suzaku."
And Suzaku reads, "We came into the world like brother and brother; and now let's go hand in hand, not one before the other."
That ...is the cutest thing Shirley has ever heard, and Suzaku is smiling at Lelouch and looking like some adorable puppy dog, and--
Lelouch frowns darkly. "Thank god you're not my brother," he spits.
"Lelouch!" Shirley admonishes, shocked. What is that supposed to mean, anyway?
"I didn't mean anything by it, Lelouch," Suzaku says, and though his voice is meek his expression is a little irritated.
Shirley is actually surprised when Lelouch lets it go and returns to his search on the Internet. Suzaku throws the play to the side, leans back, and closes his eyes.
If Shirley was under the impression that Lelouch was starting to straighten up and be a good student, she was wrong. As soon as Suzaku's leg heals, they are off again, skipping school to go gambling.
"Lelouch is really smart. If he just focused on school, he'd get high grades!" she finds herself ranting one afternoon to Milly and Nina. Milly snickers at her.
"Oh, I wish my darling Lelouch was a more serious young man~"
"M-madam president..."
She doesn't realize anything is wrong. Not even when Suzaku calls her in the middle of a swimming meet and asks her to check the news. She just huffs and flings her phone when Lelouch, whom she can hear beside Suzaku, wrestles the phone away and clicks it off.
The next day, though, both of them seem distracted. Shirley looks over during the council meeting to see Lelouch staring into space. What could he be thinking about?
--maybe he made a lot of money yesterday. Maybe too much. Maybe he made some nobleman angry and now there's a hit out for him and he and Suzaku want to know if they are outlaws on the news or...
This time, it's Lelouch that gets hit with a newspaper. It's kind of funny to see.
And Suzaku, too-- she finds him standing on a porch, head down, sweeping the same patch over and over again. She asks him about Shinjuku, which she saw on the news, but he smiles and says something vague that she can't remember five minutes later.
Their governor, Prince Clovis, comes on the news again later and says some equally vague thing about poison gas leaks in Shinjuku. Paulene from two rooms down tells everyone to watch the broadcast.
Paulene, who follows every scrap of royal family drama, says that Prince Clovis looks a little pale and asks everyone for guesses on what might be wrong with their usually handsome prince. Shirley shrugs her shoulders when it's her turn and folds into the couch.
She feels a worry forming in her gut, but she doesn't know why.
"Shirley~! Wanna help me with something?"
Shirley laughs nervously and looks over her shoulder at Milly. "Madam president, I sort of have to get to class..."
"Nonsense, my dear!" Milly declares emphatically, waving an arm as if beating away any possible argument that Shirley could come up with in the space of the next five minutes. And this is the way that Shirley is dragged into planning the surprise party for one Kallen Stadtfield, which she honestly doesn't mind and is even sort of excited about.
--up until, that is, Kallen sort of gets soaked in champagne and the party comes to a halt.
While Kallen is taking a shower and Suzaku is laundering her clothes and Lelouch is finding her temporary stuff, Shirley sits on the balcony and swings her feet and wonders.
What in the world could Suzaku, Lelouch, and Kallen have been talking about that had made them so tense and angry to be interrupted by the rest of the student council?
"Hello."
The girl speaks before Shirley can gather her wits about her. Shirley halts in the kitchen doorway of the club house apartment and stares. Her mouth is still stupidly open, even, when the girl gives up and turns her piercing golden eyes back on the two boys. Shirley is struck instantly of a lioness. The eyes, the demeanor, all of a predator who knows she is stronger and faster than you, and does not care for your existence unless you come close enough for her to eat. The girl leans comfortably in the wooden chairs, wrapped in one of Suzaku’s orange work jumpsuits, white heels peeking incongruously from the bottom of the pants.
It pisses Shirley off.
"Who--"
"Well?" the girl says blandly without sparing Shirley a single glance. "Do you have an immediate answer?"
Shirley whips her head to glare at the two boys she had decided to come visit. Neither of them looks at Shirley either. A cloud of guilt and nervousness tints Suzaku's eyes. Lelouch, however, is a lot harder to read. Something in his face looks awfully... dangerous, Shirley decides. Eager.
After several long tense moments, Suzaku glances over to Shirley. The girl with the green hair seems to understand and sighs. She puts down her teacup and rises as gracefully as a flower unfolding to sunlight. "Very well. But at least consider my contract. For each other's sake."
And then the girl strides past Shirley, heels clicking on the tiles. Shirley watches her go, swelling with anger and not even considering why she is so angry. Shirley chews on her tongue, quips and jibes coming mere seconds after the opportunity to say them have passed. With the final click of the front door closing, a needle punctures Shirley's hot air balloon and she deflates.
She turns to the boys again with a new slump in her shoulders, knowing she had no right to be angry at the girl. But the boys are staring at each other now. Their eyes are hard and their faces stony. For that instance Shirley feels like some sort of silent argument is going on right in front of her, but neither boy says a thing.
Eventually Suzaku shakes his head like a dog ridding itself of water, and he stands and greets Shirley. It is not to the living room, however, that he takes her-- it is to the door, and his smile is apologetic.
"So very sorry, Shirley, but this isn't really the best time. Could you come some other day, please?"
Shirley hesitates, a little hurt, but gets over it quickly enough. She feels guilty for even interrupting that conversation. "Okay," she says quietly. His hand claps warmly on her arm. He shows her out.
Right before the door closes, in the crack, she sees his face. Suzaku looks positively murderous.
When Shirley cannot sleep that night, she comes back incessantly upon the girl. No, woman.
That is probably what made Shirley angry. That was no girl. That was a woman. A woman wrapped in Suzaku's clothes.
Who was she? Shirley thinks that maybe she was right all along-- maybe she was a representative of the mob, maybe Lelouch and Suzaku's gambling got them into trouble with a crime lord or something.
...and Shirley wonders what those clothes smell like. Are they rough or comfortable with extensive wear? Why did she need those clothes? Where were her own?
...she couldn't be Suzaku's girlfriend, could she?!
Shirley brings her covers over her head and prays that Sophie, still awake and doing her homework, did not see the mortified blush and petulant pout that stole across Shirley's face as soon as that possibility occurred to her.
--and when she sleeps, she dreams of herself in those clothes. They are rough and warm as Suzaku's comforting hand, and Shirley sighs contentedly and rolls over, trapping herself in blankets.
The thought pops up on Shirley when she is least expecting it. It's when she's hanging back after swim meet, just relaxing and floating on her back in the pool.
Suzaku's girlfriend.
She flails and sinks under the water. She comes up spluttering and one of the trailing girls laughs at her, but the cool water cuts off any blush immediately. Shirley ducks until only her eyes are visible and glares the girl away.
So. Suzaku's girlfriend.
Suzaku could be single. She never actually thought of him as ‘single’ until she thought he might actually be ‘taken’.
Well. She can just ask, can't she? About that woman. Right. Shirley and Suzaku are friends. It's not a suspicious question. She'll just ask. Right. Yeah. Ask Suzaku if that woman is his girlfriend, or if he’s indeed single.
...no problem. Innocent curiosity.
The bell can't ring fast enough to release them for break. Shirley feels she must ask Suzaku now, before she either loses her nerve or combusts from the frustration of ten million mysteries.
As she's thinking on how best to phrase her query so that Suzaku will know it is one hundred percent innocent, she sees them. Kallen and Suzaku. Shirley stops by the second floor window and Kallen’s bright red hair draws her eyes.
They are standing very close together. And Suzaku is leaning closer and closer and now whispering something in her ear and Kallen's face is turning red and--
Shirley hurries away, hand to her lips, knowing she doesn't have the guts to ask him now.
“Have you seen those two lately?”
Shirley glances up at Rivalz after shaking herself from her daydreams. Her mind is buzzing with the image of Suzaku’s lips moving so closely to female skin. It was hard to concentrate on her lessons this morning when she kept seeing Kallen’s short hair swinging back and forth over her neck and feeling a weird flip of annoyance every time. Rivalz looks faintly annoyed as well. An ally!
“Yeah,” Shirley sighs. “I mean… why in public?”
Rivalz groans and leans forward across the lunch table, sandwich flopping in his hand. “I know! When they’re usually such private people!”
Shirley nods fervently. “They could have at least have told us. We’re all supposed to be friends, right?”
Rivalz takes a huge chomp of his sandwich, frowning very seriously. “Of course! I mean, why won’t they let us in on it?”
“…wait, what?”
Rivalz looks her in the eye, slowing down his chewing. Shirley freezes with her yogurt spoon halfway to her mouth.
“…what are you talking about?” Rivalz asks suspiciously.
“Excuse me? What are you talking about?” Shirley returns indignantly.
Shirley wants to hide her quickly reddening face. It occurs to her, as Rivalz takes a huge gulp and gives her a once over like he didn’t realize how crazy she was until this moment, that she is the one on the totally wrong page. The wrong, perverted page.
“I,” Rivalz says clearly, “was talking about how Lelouch and Suzaku have been arguing lately. What in the world were you thinking, space cadet?”
Shirley hurriedly shovels the rest of her yogurt into her mouth. “Nothing,” she says quietly later.
Rivalz gives her one last quirk of the eyebrow before explaining, “You haven’t noticed them? I mean, yeah, they’re very private people, so you hardly ever see either one lose his temper. Uh, well, Lelouch is always sort of touchy, but he doesn't explode, you know?”
“I knew that,” Shirley half-whispers. “But I didn’t know they’d been arguing in public lately.”
Rivalz gestures with a pickle. “Not big explosive things. But I have seen them go at it more than once, and other people keep coming up to me to ask because I’m supposed to be Lelouch’s best friend.” (He says ‘supposed’ with a slightly bitter tone.) He takes a bite of his pickle and goes on, obviously not bothered by such trivial things as manners when his best friend is hiding a secret from them all. “Like, it seems like Suzaku is the one that’s starting it. He keeps coming up to Lelouch between classes and dragging him off to a corner, and they look pretty angry but they try to keep it quiet.”
“Lelouch is the one who walks away?”
“Yeah… Usually to class.”
That didn’t tally with what Shirley knew at all. It always seemed to be Suzaku that left things alone, that hid and ducked and blatantly lied. Lelouch was more half-truths and doggedly clinging. Shirley frowns and pokes at the peel of her banana. “What are they arguing about?”
“No clue, that’s what bothers me. They never tell me anything.” Rivalz suddenly sighs heavily and lays his head down in his pillowed arms.
Shirley gasps quietly; she’s never seen Rivalz look so down. He’s always been very hyper and comedic—this sudden serious side is a little disconcerting.
“I’m their friend,” Rivalz says heavily. “We skip school together and gamble together and sometimes have tea together. We’re friends. So why do I feel like I don’t know them sometimes?”
Shirley hesitates, feels her face twisting in sync with her heart, and skirts around the round table to sit by Rivalz’s side.
“It’s not just you.”
The spring is full and wet and beautiful on the Ashford grounds. Suzaku and the other Eleven servants have done an excellent job with the landscaping. When the wind blows in the blustery March, it picks up the fine mist of the water fountains and sprinkles it on the passing students. It cools their skins just as they begin to warm under the newly emerging sun.
The flowers, in bloom, are as red as Suzaku’s blood as it pools and stains their roots. His body crushes their stems and they flourish like a cradle, like a bloody outline around his entire body. It seems almost funny that he is wearing only white today—as if someone had put him on his deathbed. (Suzaku had told her that white was the color of death to his people.)
Someone screams before Shirley has a chance to. The crowd, circled in wide berth around the body of Suzaku, collectively turns their faces upward. Then someone says, “Oh, he must have fallen from the tower.”
It was Lelouch who screamed, from the large window of the tower three stories above. He disappears from the window, still yelling—“Suzaku! Suzaku!” –and some girl says uncaringly, “I always thought those towers were kind of dangerous. The windows go from top to bottom! Maybe now they’ll make sills, what do you think?”
It becomes increasingly clear, however, as Lelouch comes flying from the tower and out onto the grounds and through the crowd, that Suzaku is not dead. Not dead. This gives Shirley the strength to scream.
“—we have an emergency, someone fell out of a window—“ Milly is calling an ambulance. Lelouch is covering Suzaku’s body and sobbing, still screaming incoherently.
Lelouch fights and bites and tries to run away as the police drag him away. “No!” he is saying, the first actual words since Suzaku fell. “No, let me go! I have to see him! Let me ride with him, please—“
The policeman tries to look sympathetic. “It’ll be alright, son, we’re just going to ask you a few questions,” he says as his partner struggles with shoving Lelouch into the car.
“Why are you taking Lelouch?” some girl calls.
“That clumsy Eleven just fell, that’s all!”
“We saw it!”
The cops don’t answer. Suzaku is taken along with the ambulance. Alone. Lelouch sits, face shining with tear tracks, eyes wide and afraid behind the window of a police car. Alone.
The student council stands in the wake of this sudden and unexplained happenstance and gapes at the dent in the flowers that Suzaku’s fallen body made.
“They think Lelouch pushed Suzaku,” Milly says. Shirley has never seen her this upset, and yet there is a poised, elegant look to her distress that Shirley is envious of.
“He would never!” Rivalz immediately defends. “Those two are like brothers!”
“They’ve been arguing lately,” Kallen says, not looking as surprised as the rest of them, Shirley thinks bitterly.
“That doesn’t mean anything,” Shirley snaps.
Nina shuffles on her feet, pushes up her glasses, and says quietly, “It won’t matter anyway.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Kallen asks. Her expression is edgy and cutting, not at all the sick blandness Shirley is used to from her. It’s a bit startling.
Nina blushes and looks away. Milly has to encourage her before she says, “Well. Zack is an Eleven. Lelouch is Britannian. So whether Lelouch pushed him or not, Lelouch is perfectly within his right to—“
“How dare you!” Kallen suddenly spits, and she storms off without another word.
The rest of them stare, startled, after her back. They stay in their circle, Rivalz, Milly, Shirley, and Nina, for some time afterward. Shirley holds her tongue and doesn’t tell Nina that his preferred name is Suzaku.
Broken arm. Broken leg (the left this time). A concussion.
“And, well, that’s where all the blood came from! Ha ha… Sorry to have startled you all,” Suzaku says a few days later, laying on threadbare sheets and a hard mattress, in a room with five other people. He only opens his eyes every now and then to let them know that yes, thank glory, thank heaven, he is alive. Even the very dim lighting of this cheap ward seems painful to Suzaku.
“It looked so bad… We thought you were dead…” Rivalz whispers.
“Heads bleed a lot,” Suzaku says simply. “There was a rock.”
“Are you really okay?” Milly asks gently, resting her hand on his uninjured arm.
“Of course,” Suzaku says genially. His voice is low, his skin is pale, and his eyes look incredibly tired.
“But…” Rivalz has the courage to say, “What in the world happened? You—you tripped, right?”
The gathered friends—Milly, Shirley, and Kallen—all hold their breath as Suzaku cracks open his eyes to look at Rivalz. Rivalz blushes but stares back unwaveringly. Over the past few days, the general feeling of the student body of Ashford had changed. At first nearly no one had doubted that Suzaku had been just a clumsy, fool of an Eleven monkey, unable apparently to even be careful around large windows. But when Lelouch returned to school after being questioned by police, people clamored around him, asking for the real version of what had happened.
Initially they had taken the fact that Lelouch had come back so quickly as a sign that they were right, that Lelouch had had no part in it. But Lelouch had been pale and wild-eyed and angry, and he snapped at everyone who had come near him, and had run as soon as he could back to the clubhouse. He had locked himself inside of his apartment so that not even Shirley had entrance. And now, more than half of the school was sure that Lelouch—yeah, Lelouch, they whispered, I thought he was cool but he was always sort of prissy, wasn’t he? Cold. You could even call him mean, couldn’t you? (They couldn’t, but that didn’t stop them from making up all sorts of things about Lelouch now)—the school was now convinced that their darling student council vice-president was actually the kind of guy that would shove an Eleven off a three-story building for pissing him off in an argument.
And the absolute worst part of it all was that Shirley could not honestly argue this perception of Lelouch. Lelouch had a problem with anger, by his own admittance. To say he would not be cruel in his anger would be a lie.
Suzaku, however, looks untroubled. His eyes slide closed again before he answers Rivalz, and when he does, his tone is still cheery and kind. “I wasn’t paying attention and I fell.”
No one else pushes further.
As they file out to leave, however, Suzaku asks Shirley to hang back. Milly looks over her shoulder curiously. Suzaku says to Milly, “Please tell your grandfather that I am, as always, grateful.” And Milly nods and leaves. Shirley waits until her skirt disappeared through the door before looking at Suzaku questioningly. Suzaku sighs and looks at her like a tired old man.
“Check on Lelouch for me, please,” he says lowly. “I’m so worried about him.”
“Why isn’t he here, Suzaku?” Shirley asks pityingly.
“We’re not on the best terms right now,” Suzaku whispers.
“What have you guys been arguing about?”
Suzaku looks extremely guilty as he huddles down in his blanket and lets his eyes drift closed. Shirley stays by his side, wanting an answer but not wanting to push him. After a few minutes, Shirley realizes his morphine must have finally overcome him. He is asleep.
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Code Geass
Characters: Shirley-pov. Lelouch, Suzaku.
Summary: (Kinkmeme request.) Shirley tries to understand Lelouch. She really, really tries. But as Suzaku says: Lelouch doesn't want to be liked. He doesn't even want to like. And Shirley has to wonder if either of her friends hold any kind of hope in their hearts at all.
Finding out that someone you care about has been hiding drugs from you the entire time you knew them is-- to put it very, very lightly --maddening. It's no short of horrific, without exaggeration. It goes like this:
Fascination. Why? Why this? What does it do for them that reality doesn't?
Rejection. Of the drug, of the person, feeling yourself rejected. As if you aren't good enough? Screw him. So he never liked you in the first place!
Frustration. Because if you really could just write him off as simple as that, you wouldn't care so much. Wouldn't think about it so much. So here you are, at this impasse where you realize that you care about him, but he doesn't care about you, and there's nothing you can do to get out of the trap of such a relationship.
It's too much, Shirley thinks. This uselessness.
Sitting at her laptop alone in her dorm, she quickly searches Refrain and its effects, and it makes perfect sense to her. She thinks, How could I have not seen this before? Lelouch's long sleeved shirts and his inability, at times, to speak. His careful regulation of Shirley's visits-- not wanting her to see him on a trip, no doubt. The tired, sick, empty look in his eyes. His thinness-- Refrain keeps you from eating sometimes.
She closes the window, not wanting to read about long term effects or the punishments by law.
--Suzaku, she realizes. She puts her head in her hands, feeling her temples throb and her left eye twitch. Her eyes feel heavy when she leans forward.
Suzaku knows, and Suzaku allows. All his talk about-- about caring for Lelouch, about wanting better for Lelouch-- is it a lie? Why does Suzaku keep it quiet, why doesn't he get Lelouch help, unless... he does it too? Does Suzaku also shoot? --no wait, she's seen his arms, many times, no tracks or pricks or --but he might shoot somewhere else or--
Too much. Too much…
Shirley is distracted on Monday. Lelouch is right behind her in class and she feels the new weight that has alighted upon her shoulders in place of her gone ignorance. Should she say something? Is this something she's allowed to say? She went through his belongings without permission-- is that such a sin in light of his activities?
And she had promised herself, time and again, to leave his personal life alone-- and she has broken that promise, time and again. It's sickening in her stomach, to know that here at school he puts on a face of apathetic normalcy. He's popular and handsome and he goes unquestioned, despite his numerous absences and poor grades. But then he goes home and he gets angry and he yells and he locks himself in his room after teaching Suzaku what he can-- and the he rolls up his sleeve, sets the needle to his skin, and pushes in that plunger.
And then the real world ceases to exist for him. Shirley doesn't know what he is setting out to remember, but it certainly isn't Ashford. (It certainly isn't her.)
"Suzaku," she calls, reminding herself of the past winter, and she thinks maybe Suzaku will deflect her again. But he straightens up with a broad smile, sweat rolling down his forehead and neck streaked with dirt. The gardens sprawling behind him are bright green and young-- like and unlike his eyes.
"Hi, Shirley," he says, not aware of anything wrong. She opens her mouth, closes it. A crease appears in her brow. “Are you alright, Shirley?”
I am. Lelouch isn’t. And you aren’t either. “I’m fine, sorry, forgot what I was going to say…”
She ends up hanging out with him, unable to just open her mouth and say something. She's too much of a coward. She wishes she could stand steadfast in the face of this... darkness that has clouded the lives of her friends.
The bell rings while she is still sitting with Suzaku. He gasps. "Hey, shouldn't you be in class?"
"It's fine," Shirley says quietly, determined to confront him. Now or never. She has to.
He looks at her with a frown. "No way, Shirley," he says firmly. "You have to get your education. Don't let someone like me drag you down, go on ahead."
"...okay," Shirley says meekly.
And she has never been as disappointed in herself as when she walks away.
Shirley's next couple of weeks progress the same: a chance to say something appears, and she chokes, she loses courage, the chance disappears, she feels ashamed.
But it can't go on like this, it really just can't. She can't spend her life feeling ashamed, but neither can she find the courage within herself to speak. Because even if she does, what will happen? Lelouch will get angry because that's all he knows how to do, and Suzaku will probably deny or deflect or guilt her by saying, I asked you not to look in his room, how could you betray me in the first place? And then there won't be any friendliness between them and her, and if there's no friendship, there's nothing else, either. Shirley has no other hold on them. She doesn't even know a higher power to go to, because they don't have any family.
She could go to the staff. The teachers or the principals would know what to do, who to call and how to discipline them. But what would happen to them after that? Drugs on campus are grounds for expulsion, and then they'd surely fire Suzaku. Could Suzaku find another job? How'd he even get a job with the Ashfords? Was that Lelouch's doing, and without it would he be unable to get another?
And like that, thinking that over and over at night, thinking about how she could just as easily ruin their lives as save them, things become... Easier. In a way. Slowly. I can't live my life in shame, she thinks, and gradually she becomes less ashamed when she misses another chance. She thinks, I need to find the best way to bring it up, and now is not the time.
And then all of a sudden it is summer break and she leaves with her father for a vacation in the homeland. Suzaku and Lelouch stay home, at Ashford. And Shirley doesn't see them for a whole three months. And Shirley...
--she forgets. Or pushes it from her mind. Same thing.
The new school year starts in the midst of the wet, heavy heat of Area 11's waning summer. Lelouch shows up for the first day of school, and the first week, and even the first month with his usual, irritating false smile, but at least he shows up. And at the adjournment of the first council meeting of the year, in which Lelouch is named vice-president and Milly declares herself president, it is Lelouch who approaches Shirley, smiling softly this time-- warmly.
"Come visit. Can you?"
Shirley feels some bubble expanding in her chest, tickling her face with heat and fluttering around in her heart. She grins. "Of course! Tonight?"
"Right now," he nods, and they leave the others behind. Shirley thinks that Milly is watching them go for a little while longer than the others.
The apartment has returned to its usual dimness since the last time Shirley visited, but seeing Suzaku sitting with a book in hand somehow makes things seem a little brighter.
"Suzaku!" she calls and when he looks up, face splitting into a grin, she rushes to hug him.
"Careful," he says nervously, but hugs her back. Shirley looks down and at last notices his leg in a cast.
"What did you do!" she demands, placing her hands on her hips.
"I fell, that's all!" Suzaku hastily reassures her. "From a ladder, but I'm okay!"
And that would have mollified her, except Lelouch muttered his own answer where Suzaku couldn't hear, and she isn't sure but she thinks Lelouch said something about jumping off on purpose.
Their friendship picks up right where it left off, and it's again so very comfortable. Visiting every weekend, and eventually Shirley finds she doesn't even need to announce herself, she just waltzes right over and opens the unlocked door and finds them sitting, teacher and student, huddled together with barely any sunlight coming through.
Lelouch takes the time of Suzaku's recovery to teach him Shakespeare, which Suzaku struggles with terribly.
"I understand this part," Suzaku says one day, near the end of reading one of the plays while Lelouch is in another chair, searching for a suitable enactment on the Internet video sites. Lelouch hums and he and Shirley look up to see Suzaku smiling softly.
"I hope so. It's the Comedy of Errors. Not exactly rocket science, there," Lelouch drawls.
Shirley rolls her eyes at Lelouch and then implores, "Read it out loud, Suzaku."
And Suzaku reads, "We came into the world like brother and brother; and now let's go hand in hand, not one before the other."
That ...is the cutest thing Shirley has ever heard, and Suzaku is smiling at Lelouch and looking like some adorable puppy dog, and--
Lelouch frowns darkly. "Thank god you're not my brother," he spits.
"Lelouch!" Shirley admonishes, shocked. What is that supposed to mean, anyway?
"I didn't mean anything by it, Lelouch," Suzaku says, and though his voice is meek his expression is a little irritated.
Shirley is actually surprised when Lelouch lets it go and returns to his search on the Internet. Suzaku throws the play to the side, leans back, and closes his eyes.
If Shirley was under the impression that Lelouch was starting to straighten up and be a good student, she was wrong. As soon as Suzaku's leg heals, they are off again, skipping school to go gambling.
"Lelouch is really smart. If he just focused on school, he'd get high grades!" she finds herself ranting one afternoon to Milly and Nina. Milly snickers at her.
"Oh, I wish my darling Lelouch was a more serious young man~"
"M-madam president..."
She doesn't realize anything is wrong. Not even when Suzaku calls her in the middle of a swimming meet and asks her to check the news. She just huffs and flings her phone when Lelouch, whom she can hear beside Suzaku, wrestles the phone away and clicks it off.
The next day, though, both of them seem distracted. Shirley looks over during the council meeting to see Lelouch staring into space. What could he be thinking about?
--maybe he made a lot of money yesterday. Maybe too much. Maybe he made some nobleman angry and now there's a hit out for him and he and Suzaku want to know if they are outlaws on the news or...
This time, it's Lelouch that gets hit with a newspaper. It's kind of funny to see.
And Suzaku, too-- she finds him standing on a porch, head down, sweeping the same patch over and over again. She asks him about Shinjuku, which she saw on the news, but he smiles and says something vague that she can't remember five minutes later.
Their governor, Prince Clovis, comes on the news again later and says some equally vague thing about poison gas leaks in Shinjuku. Paulene from two rooms down tells everyone to watch the broadcast.
Paulene, who follows every scrap of royal family drama, says that Prince Clovis looks a little pale and asks everyone for guesses on what might be wrong with their usually handsome prince. Shirley shrugs her shoulders when it's her turn and folds into the couch.
She feels a worry forming in her gut, but she doesn't know why.
"Shirley~! Wanna help me with something?"
Shirley laughs nervously and looks over her shoulder at Milly. "Madam president, I sort of have to get to class..."
"Nonsense, my dear!" Milly declares emphatically, waving an arm as if beating away any possible argument that Shirley could come up with in the space of the next five minutes. And this is the way that Shirley is dragged into planning the surprise party for one Kallen Stadtfield, which she honestly doesn't mind and is even sort of excited about.
--up until, that is, Kallen sort of gets soaked in champagne and the party comes to a halt.
While Kallen is taking a shower and Suzaku is laundering her clothes and Lelouch is finding her temporary stuff, Shirley sits on the balcony and swings her feet and wonders.
What in the world could Suzaku, Lelouch, and Kallen have been talking about that had made them so tense and angry to be interrupted by the rest of the student council?
"Hello."
The girl speaks before Shirley can gather her wits about her. Shirley halts in the kitchen doorway of the club house apartment and stares. Her mouth is still stupidly open, even, when the girl gives up and turns her piercing golden eyes back on the two boys. Shirley is struck instantly of a lioness. The eyes, the demeanor, all of a predator who knows she is stronger and faster than you, and does not care for your existence unless you come close enough for her to eat. The girl leans comfortably in the wooden chairs, wrapped in one of Suzaku’s orange work jumpsuits, white heels peeking incongruously from the bottom of the pants.
It pisses Shirley off.
"Who--"
"Well?" the girl says blandly without sparing Shirley a single glance. "Do you have an immediate answer?"
Shirley whips her head to glare at the two boys she had decided to come visit. Neither of them looks at Shirley either. A cloud of guilt and nervousness tints Suzaku's eyes. Lelouch, however, is a lot harder to read. Something in his face looks awfully... dangerous, Shirley decides. Eager.
After several long tense moments, Suzaku glances over to Shirley. The girl with the green hair seems to understand and sighs. She puts down her teacup and rises as gracefully as a flower unfolding to sunlight. "Very well. But at least consider my contract. For each other's sake."
And then the girl strides past Shirley, heels clicking on the tiles. Shirley watches her go, swelling with anger and not even considering why she is so angry. Shirley chews on her tongue, quips and jibes coming mere seconds after the opportunity to say them have passed. With the final click of the front door closing, a needle punctures Shirley's hot air balloon and she deflates.
She turns to the boys again with a new slump in her shoulders, knowing she had no right to be angry at the girl. But the boys are staring at each other now. Their eyes are hard and their faces stony. For that instance Shirley feels like some sort of silent argument is going on right in front of her, but neither boy says a thing.
Eventually Suzaku shakes his head like a dog ridding itself of water, and he stands and greets Shirley. It is not to the living room, however, that he takes her-- it is to the door, and his smile is apologetic.
"So very sorry, Shirley, but this isn't really the best time. Could you come some other day, please?"
Shirley hesitates, a little hurt, but gets over it quickly enough. She feels guilty for even interrupting that conversation. "Okay," she says quietly. His hand claps warmly on her arm. He shows her out.
Right before the door closes, in the crack, she sees his face. Suzaku looks positively murderous.
When Shirley cannot sleep that night, she comes back incessantly upon the girl. No, woman.
That is probably what made Shirley angry. That was no girl. That was a woman. A woman wrapped in Suzaku's clothes.
Who was she? Shirley thinks that maybe she was right all along-- maybe she was a representative of the mob, maybe Lelouch and Suzaku's gambling got them into trouble with a crime lord or something.
...and Shirley wonders what those clothes smell like. Are they rough or comfortable with extensive wear? Why did she need those clothes? Where were her own?
...she couldn't be Suzaku's girlfriend, could she?!
Shirley brings her covers over her head and prays that Sophie, still awake and doing her homework, did not see the mortified blush and petulant pout that stole across Shirley's face as soon as that possibility occurred to her.
--and when she sleeps, she dreams of herself in those clothes. They are rough and warm as Suzaku's comforting hand, and Shirley sighs contentedly and rolls over, trapping herself in blankets.
The thought pops up on Shirley when she is least expecting it. It's when she's hanging back after swim meet, just relaxing and floating on her back in the pool.
Suzaku's girlfriend.
She flails and sinks under the water. She comes up spluttering and one of the trailing girls laughs at her, but the cool water cuts off any blush immediately. Shirley ducks until only her eyes are visible and glares the girl away.
So. Suzaku's girlfriend.
Suzaku could be single. She never actually thought of him as ‘single’ until she thought he might actually be ‘taken’.
Well. She can just ask, can't she? About that woman. Right. Shirley and Suzaku are friends. It's not a suspicious question. She'll just ask. Right. Yeah. Ask Suzaku if that woman is his girlfriend, or if he’s indeed single.
...no problem. Innocent curiosity.
The bell can't ring fast enough to release them for break. Shirley feels she must ask Suzaku now, before she either loses her nerve or combusts from the frustration of ten million mysteries.
As she's thinking on how best to phrase her query so that Suzaku will know it is one hundred percent innocent, she sees them. Kallen and Suzaku. Shirley stops by the second floor window and Kallen’s bright red hair draws her eyes.
They are standing very close together. And Suzaku is leaning closer and closer and now whispering something in her ear and Kallen's face is turning red and--
Shirley hurries away, hand to her lips, knowing she doesn't have the guts to ask him now.
“Have you seen those two lately?”
Shirley glances up at Rivalz after shaking herself from her daydreams. Her mind is buzzing with the image of Suzaku’s lips moving so closely to female skin. It was hard to concentrate on her lessons this morning when she kept seeing Kallen’s short hair swinging back and forth over her neck and feeling a weird flip of annoyance every time. Rivalz looks faintly annoyed as well. An ally!
“Yeah,” Shirley sighs. “I mean… why in public?”
Rivalz groans and leans forward across the lunch table, sandwich flopping in his hand. “I know! When they’re usually such private people!”
Shirley nods fervently. “They could have at least have told us. We’re all supposed to be friends, right?”
Rivalz takes a huge chomp of his sandwich, frowning very seriously. “Of course! I mean, why won’t they let us in on it?”
“…wait, what?”
Rivalz looks her in the eye, slowing down his chewing. Shirley freezes with her yogurt spoon halfway to her mouth.
“…what are you talking about?” Rivalz asks suspiciously.
“Excuse me? What are you talking about?” Shirley returns indignantly.
Shirley wants to hide her quickly reddening face. It occurs to her, as Rivalz takes a huge gulp and gives her a once over like he didn’t realize how crazy she was until this moment, that she is the one on the totally wrong page. The wrong, perverted page.
“I,” Rivalz says clearly, “was talking about how Lelouch and Suzaku have been arguing lately. What in the world were you thinking, space cadet?”
Shirley hurriedly shovels the rest of her yogurt into her mouth. “Nothing,” she says quietly later.
Rivalz gives her one last quirk of the eyebrow before explaining, “You haven’t noticed them? I mean, yeah, they’re very private people, so you hardly ever see either one lose his temper. Uh, well, Lelouch is always sort of touchy, but he doesn't explode, you know?”
“I knew that,” Shirley half-whispers. “But I didn’t know they’d been arguing in public lately.”
Rivalz gestures with a pickle. “Not big explosive things. But I have seen them go at it more than once, and other people keep coming up to me to ask because I’m supposed to be Lelouch’s best friend.” (He says ‘supposed’ with a slightly bitter tone.) He takes a bite of his pickle and goes on, obviously not bothered by such trivial things as manners when his best friend is hiding a secret from them all. “Like, it seems like Suzaku is the one that’s starting it. He keeps coming up to Lelouch between classes and dragging him off to a corner, and they look pretty angry but they try to keep it quiet.”
“Lelouch is the one who walks away?”
“Yeah… Usually to class.”
That didn’t tally with what Shirley knew at all. It always seemed to be Suzaku that left things alone, that hid and ducked and blatantly lied. Lelouch was more half-truths and doggedly clinging. Shirley frowns and pokes at the peel of her banana. “What are they arguing about?”
“No clue, that’s what bothers me. They never tell me anything.” Rivalz suddenly sighs heavily and lays his head down in his pillowed arms.
Shirley gasps quietly; she’s never seen Rivalz look so down. He’s always been very hyper and comedic—this sudden serious side is a little disconcerting.
“I’m their friend,” Rivalz says heavily. “We skip school together and gamble together and sometimes have tea together. We’re friends. So why do I feel like I don’t know them sometimes?”
Shirley hesitates, feels her face twisting in sync with her heart, and skirts around the round table to sit by Rivalz’s side.
“It’s not just you.”
The spring is full and wet and beautiful on the Ashford grounds. Suzaku and the other Eleven servants have done an excellent job with the landscaping. When the wind blows in the blustery March, it picks up the fine mist of the water fountains and sprinkles it on the passing students. It cools their skins just as they begin to warm under the newly emerging sun.
The flowers, in bloom, are as red as Suzaku’s blood as it pools and stains their roots. His body crushes their stems and they flourish like a cradle, like a bloody outline around his entire body. It seems almost funny that he is wearing only white today—as if someone had put him on his deathbed. (Suzaku had told her that white was the color of death to his people.)
Someone screams before Shirley has a chance to. The crowd, circled in wide berth around the body of Suzaku, collectively turns their faces upward. Then someone says, “Oh, he must have fallen from the tower.”
It was Lelouch who screamed, from the large window of the tower three stories above. He disappears from the window, still yelling—“Suzaku! Suzaku!” –and some girl says uncaringly, “I always thought those towers were kind of dangerous. The windows go from top to bottom! Maybe now they’ll make sills, what do you think?”
It becomes increasingly clear, however, as Lelouch comes flying from the tower and out onto the grounds and through the crowd, that Suzaku is not dead. Not dead. This gives Shirley the strength to scream.
“—we have an emergency, someone fell out of a window—“ Milly is calling an ambulance. Lelouch is covering Suzaku’s body and sobbing, still screaming incoherently.
Lelouch fights and bites and tries to run away as the police drag him away. “No!” he is saying, the first actual words since Suzaku fell. “No, let me go! I have to see him! Let me ride with him, please—“
The policeman tries to look sympathetic. “It’ll be alright, son, we’re just going to ask you a few questions,” he says as his partner struggles with shoving Lelouch into the car.
“Why are you taking Lelouch?” some girl calls.
“That clumsy Eleven just fell, that’s all!”
“We saw it!”
The cops don’t answer. Suzaku is taken along with the ambulance. Alone. Lelouch sits, face shining with tear tracks, eyes wide and afraid behind the window of a police car. Alone.
The student council stands in the wake of this sudden and unexplained happenstance and gapes at the dent in the flowers that Suzaku’s fallen body made.
“They think Lelouch pushed Suzaku,” Milly says. Shirley has never seen her this upset, and yet there is a poised, elegant look to her distress that Shirley is envious of.
“He would never!” Rivalz immediately defends. “Those two are like brothers!”
“They’ve been arguing lately,” Kallen says, not looking as surprised as the rest of them, Shirley thinks bitterly.
“That doesn’t mean anything,” Shirley snaps.
Nina shuffles on her feet, pushes up her glasses, and says quietly, “It won’t matter anyway.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Kallen asks. Her expression is edgy and cutting, not at all the sick blandness Shirley is used to from her. It’s a bit startling.
Nina blushes and looks away. Milly has to encourage her before she says, “Well. Zack is an Eleven. Lelouch is Britannian. So whether Lelouch pushed him or not, Lelouch is perfectly within his right to—“
“How dare you!” Kallen suddenly spits, and she storms off without another word.
The rest of them stare, startled, after her back. They stay in their circle, Rivalz, Milly, Shirley, and Nina, for some time afterward. Shirley holds her tongue and doesn’t tell Nina that his preferred name is Suzaku.
Broken arm. Broken leg (the left this time). A concussion.
“And, well, that’s where all the blood came from! Ha ha… Sorry to have startled you all,” Suzaku says a few days later, laying on threadbare sheets and a hard mattress, in a room with five other people. He only opens his eyes every now and then to let them know that yes, thank glory, thank heaven, he is alive. Even the very dim lighting of this cheap ward seems painful to Suzaku.
“It looked so bad… We thought you were dead…” Rivalz whispers.
“Heads bleed a lot,” Suzaku says simply. “There was a rock.”
“Are you really okay?” Milly asks gently, resting her hand on his uninjured arm.
“Of course,” Suzaku says genially. His voice is low, his skin is pale, and his eyes look incredibly tired.
“But…” Rivalz has the courage to say, “What in the world happened? You—you tripped, right?”
The gathered friends—Milly, Shirley, and Kallen—all hold their breath as Suzaku cracks open his eyes to look at Rivalz. Rivalz blushes but stares back unwaveringly. Over the past few days, the general feeling of the student body of Ashford had changed. At first nearly no one had doubted that Suzaku had been just a clumsy, fool of an Eleven monkey, unable apparently to even be careful around large windows. But when Lelouch returned to school after being questioned by police, people clamored around him, asking for the real version of what had happened.
Initially they had taken the fact that Lelouch had come back so quickly as a sign that they were right, that Lelouch had had no part in it. But Lelouch had been pale and wild-eyed and angry, and he snapped at everyone who had come near him, and had run as soon as he could back to the clubhouse. He had locked himself inside of his apartment so that not even Shirley had entrance. And now, more than half of the school was sure that Lelouch—yeah, Lelouch, they whispered, I thought he was cool but he was always sort of prissy, wasn’t he? Cold. You could even call him mean, couldn’t you? (They couldn’t, but that didn’t stop them from making up all sorts of things about Lelouch now)—the school was now convinced that their darling student council vice-president was actually the kind of guy that would shove an Eleven off a three-story building for pissing him off in an argument.
And the absolute worst part of it all was that Shirley could not honestly argue this perception of Lelouch. Lelouch had a problem with anger, by his own admittance. To say he would not be cruel in his anger would be a lie.
Suzaku, however, looks untroubled. His eyes slide closed again before he answers Rivalz, and when he does, his tone is still cheery and kind. “I wasn’t paying attention and I fell.”
No one else pushes further.
As they file out to leave, however, Suzaku asks Shirley to hang back. Milly looks over her shoulder curiously. Suzaku says to Milly, “Please tell your grandfather that I am, as always, grateful.” And Milly nods and leaves. Shirley waits until her skirt disappeared through the door before looking at Suzaku questioningly. Suzaku sighs and looks at her like a tired old man.
“Check on Lelouch for me, please,” he says lowly. “I’m so worried about him.”
“Why isn’t he here, Suzaku?” Shirley asks pityingly.
“We’re not on the best terms right now,” Suzaku whispers.
“What have you guys been arguing about?”
Suzaku looks extremely guilty as he huddles down in his blanket and lets his eyes drift closed. Shirley stays by his side, wanting an answer but not wanting to push him. After a few minutes, Shirley realizes his morphine must have finally overcome him. He is asleep.
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Date: 2011-09-24 06:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-24 02:06 pm (UTC)