Two figures stood surrounded by rubble of destroyed buildings, both staring silently at each other, one pointing a gun at the other. Suzaku stared at Lelouch with mixed emotions hatred, anger, sadness, pain, despair and others he could not recognise.

“Why! Why did you kill her, Lelouch? Why did you kill Euphemia?” Suzaku asked angrily. “Isn’t she your sister?!”

Lelouch looked back into the emerald eyes of his best friend “I had to…Suzaku; I rid her of the pain she would have felt if I didn’t do it.”

“You killed so many people… you killed your own sister; so many people… so many innocent lives,” Suzaku said, tightening his grip upon the gun he held within his hand.

The terrorist had heard those words once before, except now it seemed as if the knight’s words were in high definition; there was no cellphone static to keep him from hearing the unadulterated hatred and fury in the other boy’s voice.

He saw tears starting to slide down the face of Suzaku, with a painful expression. Suzaku lowered the gun and hair covered his face from Lelouch’s view, so that he couldn’t see Suzaku’s pained expression. He looked up at Lelouch then raised the gun and pulled the trigger.

As if on cue, tiny raindrops begin to pelt Suzaku’s head and shoulders, soaking their way into fabric and hair, washing away smudges of dirt mingled with blood on his face and neck.

“I didn’t want,” Suzaku murmurs as he watches Lelouch fall to the dirt in front of him. He doesn’t bother to finish his sentence as the ruined buildings surrounding them cast their silhouettes upon the ground, the twilight sunshine fading more rapidly behind the storm clouds in the sky. He hears Lelouch choke as he hits the ground, a most undignified noise unfit for a seeming deity such as the one called Zero.

Lelouch raises his violet eyes to look up at Suzaku from his position on the ground. He is on his side, dark hair partially obscuring his vision, his left eye softly radiating a red glow. He is more disappointed and confused over the fact that he is dying; but he is not devastated. No, this isn’t the end of the world, he muses. The Order can continue without him, he knows it can. He wonders where C.C. is, and why she hadn’t placed herself between his chest and Suzaku’s bullet. It’s getting hard to keep his eyes open, but Lelouch’s eyelashes flutter as he struggles against closing his eyelids, a shaky, weak smile snaking across his lips.

“I…really didn’t want,” Suzaku continues, racked with confusion and desperation and thoughts of oh, GOD why does it have to be like this, please, Lelouch don’t leave me here, you’re all I’ve got left. What he’s trying to communicate, he isn’t sure, but he knows that he doesn’t want.

Whether this is on a general scale or not, Lelouch deems it to be anyone’s guess. As he struggles to inhale, he watches as Suzaku tried to say, almost willing the raindrops coursing down his former best friend’s cheeks joining the tear tracks coming down from his eyes. Little does he know that if he were to stand and press his mouth to Suzaku’s face, he would come away with the taste of salt on his lips. Even if the thought occurred to the terrorist, however, he wouldn’t have been able to carry out the action. It was a challenge to simply remain here, facing Suzaku while on the ground, breathing shallowly as his vision begins to dim.

His eyes threaten to close fully as he continues to watch his friend. The tremors of shock that had began to make their way through his body when the bullet first penetrated his skin are beginning to slow, and the blood pounding in his ears is starting to move from deafening to almost inaudible.

“So this is it,” Lelouch manages to whisper, and Suzaku looks at him as tears and rain continued to fall down his face.

The rain intensifies as Suzaku roughly lowers himself to his knees next to Lelouch, emerald eyes keeping themselves trained upon Lelouch’s face. The boy sitting up is slightly awed by how pale his former friend looks; Lelouch had always been on the lighter side in terms of skin tone, but the pall of death had almost fully robbed the Britannian of whatever traces amounts of pigment his skin had contained.

Extending a shaking hand, Suzaku gently traces his forefinger from the shell of Lelouch’s ear to the bottom of his slightly parted lips. He can faintly feel air being expelled onto his fingertips by the terrorist’s labored breathing, and he clenches his other hand into a fist, his knuckles going white beneath the fabric of his Knightmare pilot suit. The lighter-haired boy then grabs the sides of Lelouch’s face, looking him in the eyes as his eyebrows knit together in an expression of a lost.

From this distance, Lelouch ascertains that Suzaku is crying, and he takes some twisted satisfaction from this. He doesn't understand why, but he knows that he does. His eyes drifting shut. He’s losing the battle; he knows his time is almost gone.

Suzaku lifted Lelouch into a sitting position. The terrorist feels a sharp stabbing pain in his abdomen and he winces, his eyes opening once more. The dull glow of the Geass is still evident in his pupil, and Suzaku notices it, but says nothing. The knight holds Lelouch upright, supporting the back of his neck with a hand smeared with the blood steadily coursing out of the bullet hole in the taller boy’s stomach. Lelouch is surprised that he isn’t dead yet. He sort of wishes he was, if only he didn’t have to see Suzaku cry anymore, not wanting to see the painful expression that he caused.

He is Zero now, cold and calculating, disregarding any and all matters of the heart. He coughs suddenly, blood running down the side of his mouth. His eyes are unfocused, his pupils dilated. Even so, he manages to stare dispassionately at Suzaku, even with his insides feeling as if they were collapsing in on themselves.

“Suzaku,” the lavender-eyed boy murmurs. As if he deems the facade of Zero to be too painful to uphold any longer, he is Lelouch now, as Lelouch as he ever will be again. A small smile graces his once-beautiful features.

“I can’t… that’s you, right?” he wanted his former friend to remember him as who he used to be in his last moments. Either way, he doesn’t feel as if he can respond rationally to anything that the other boy says; he’s too far gone to formulate any explanation for his actions.

The sun has fully set now, and the two young men are left in almost complete darkness. Suzaku unwittingly releases a strangled sob, and Lelouch feels whatever of his heart that is left break. “It’ll all…be over soon,” the Britannian boy whispers. He can feel the end coming, inching closer and closer as his blood continues to pool on the ground, mixing with the dirt.

Suzaku blinks and stares at Lelouch. Without warning, Lelouch weakly grasps the nearly skin-tight fabric of Suzaku’s suit, raising himself upwards and brushing his lips against the soldier’s. Suzaku is taken by surprise and he very nearly drops Lelouch onto the ground from his seated position. Still grasping the fabric of Suzaku’s suit, Lelouch lowers himself down once more, his grip growing limp. It’s taking far too long for him to die, and Suzaku notices this.

The soldier is making no effort to mask his tears now; rather, he knows that if he tried, it would be an unsuccessful effort anyway. The rain is beginning to abate now, and a full moon is peeking out from behind dark clouds, casting an even paler glow upon Lelouch’s already pale skin.

The darker-haired boy opens his mouth to speak, but he finds that he can’t. His breaths are becoming more and more laborious with the passing seconds, and his eyes are half-lidded. He’s almost writhing in pain, now; he hadn’t really noticed just how much pain he was in before. Anyone could see that the one known as Zero was suffering within the voluminous folds of his grandiose cloak, his young, lithe body literally shot to hell by a small piece of metal fired from a metal barrel.

It was true that he wanted Zero to suffer. It was true that he wanted Zero to feel the pain he had inflicted upon all those people he had killed in tenfold. It was also true that Suzaku wanted Zero to burn, writhe and die for killing Euphemia, the one girl he thought of as a sister…

But Suzaku had never, ever intended for Lelouch to suffer or endure this much pain. So what was he supposed to do if Zero and Lelouch were one in the same?

With a strengthened resolve, Suzaku gently lifts Lelouch up, planting his hands on either side of his face. Lelouch looks at him, lavender eyes half-lidded in both pain and near-death, and Suzaku tilts his head slightly and presses his lips fully against his former friend’s in a soft, sadly tender kiss. Lelouch eyes widened at the brunette’s action and closed his eyes to enjoy it to the last moment.

“I love you…Lelouch, wait for me” Suzaku whispered to his ear as they broke apart. “I...lo...v...” he tried to say with his final breath, he stopped as darkness overcame him.

As Lelouch’s lifeless body sags in his arms, Suzaku’s silent sobs cease, the rain finally coming to a complete stop. Emerald eyes stare blankly at the ground before the knight, and as the Britannian helicopters finally ascertain his location and come to retrieve him, their searchlights barely register in Suzaku’s vision.

"I didn't want this," the knight whispers softly, his fingers threading through the black prince's hair.

Patricide and senseless killing. A means to an end. Living as though he were not at fault. As he is bathed in white light, Suzaku realizes just how much he had lost, and reaches for the pistol on the ground, never once letting go of Lelouch’s body, He raised the gun to his head.

It would all be over soon.

He closed his eyes and pulled the trigger.