rakuen | Backdated to IC Tuesday

Entry tags:

Backdated to IC Tuesday

Characters: Britannia and yooou~
Format: Action or prose!
This log is: open
Location: Fortitude Campus.
Summary: Having woken up with some fresh new memories and injuries to match, Britannia tries to make it to where her boss is but is having a pretty hard time of it.
Warnings: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANGST

When Britannia had opened her eyes on Tuesday morning, she had expected to find tall ceilings, elegant furnishings and the barest hint of light peeking through her curtains. She had expected to find herself in her room back at home.

What she got instead were simple furnishings and agony. Her body beat with the burning sensation and it nearly made her pass out from the sheer intensity of it all. Choking back a surprised shriek of pain and breaking the skin on her bottom lip in the process, her hand immediately went to her chest where the pain originated from as her brain tried to sort through the sudden confusion that was her memories.

'This is... home? No, Rakuen. But I was just- memory games. FLEIJA.' As her mind registered that one word, she unintentionally bit down hard enough that a drop or two of blood slipped down onto her pillow.

And then she remembered- Schneizel had unleashed FLEIJA on her heart, on her capital city whose name she couldn't bloody remember because of this damned place. She would never forget the agony of a part of her being seared off the face of the Earth. The burn on her hand from the Tokyo Settlement fiasco had seen to that.

Still, she could hardly stay here in her current state. Weak and vulnerable, it would be easy for her to become prey to someone else- anyone else and that thought terrified her more than any other. She needed to call the only person who could protect her in this situation. (God help her.)

With a low curse, she fumbled through distant memories for where she'd left her PDA and finally remembered- drawer on the night table. With a soft hiss, she stretched for it and nearly cried at the effort it demanded of her. Slowly, easing her way towards the table, she finally grabbed the knob and yanked, groping blindly for her phone within. Once she had it, she hit the speed dial, knowing it would at least save her some time.

That is, of course, provided Lelouch even answered. It was then, as she was rewarded with his voicemail, that she noticed the time.

6:23am.

She would have to go in person.

"Damn you." She swore softly, breathing through gritted teeth as she slowly forced herself out of bed, head spinning as every beat of her heart sent another dizzying wave of pain down her spine. Somehow, she wasn't exactly sure how, she managed to pull on a pair of pants and her shoes. Her shirt, a plain white tee, was too much effort she immediately decided and it was left alone. Appearance thus satisfactory (though appalling to her normal standards) she quietly shuffled out of her room, one hand clutching her phone and the other held to her chest like it could stifle the pain.

If asked how she had managed the walk between the dorms, Britannia would never have been able to answer. All she knew was that it was one slow step after the other, forced onward by the simple drive to get somewhere safer. Still, there was only so far she could go on willpower alone.

As she came to the recreational building, she finally had to stop as her legs threatened to give out on her. Her body was shaking all over and her breathing was coming hard. Leaning against the side of the campus building, Britannia took a deep breath and tightened her fist over her chest, cursing the way it drained her of energy with every painful throb. When she finally drew her hand away, she was completely unsurprised to see the spots of blood that dotted her fingers. Of course she was bleeding, Schneizel had essentially taken a canon to her body and set it off. Ruthless and cruel, everything Ricardo would have ever wanted. Her first Emperor would be proud.

When she checked her phone again, the clock mocked her with a cheerful 7:05. It had taken her over half an hour to get out of Black Dorm and to here. Barely halfway and her body refused to go any further.

It was pathetic and it was weak.

"... dammit." She hissed, slumping down against the wall.

[ooc: tl;dr she's hurt and leaning against building 4 on the settings map.]

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"The facilities building." She answered, attempting a small laugh. "I didn't make it very far."

Her attempt at levity, however, cost her as her lungs protested the motion of laughing. Quickly pulling the phone away from her ear, her other hand came up quickly to help muffle the whimper that escaped her lips. Breathing in soft, shallow breaths, only when she was certain the moment of humiliation had passed did she return the phone to its proper position.

He wasn't sure what that sound he heard was, but it didn't sound good. "I'm on my way." And he hung up.

He left the Prefect's dorms, and made his way toward the building she'd indicated. He didn't run, just strode quickly and determinedly toward her, once he'd spotted her. She didn't look good. He couldn't pinpoint any specific source. When he came up beside her, he still looked stern, but it wasn't his usual frown of disapproval of her existence. "What's the problem?"

With Lelouch there in person, Britannia made a stronger effort to hide the small stain of red on her shirt as she looked up at him, shifting so that she could face him fully. The movement, notably, caused her to grit her brow to furrow as she bit her already split lower lip again.

"I can't remember," she began, voice low as she carefully selected each word. "Do you remember what FLEIJA is?"

He did catch a flash of the red, but he didn't press the matter yet. "Yes, I do. I arrived here shortly after the FLEIJA detonation over the Tokyo Settlement. I had thought Nunnally had been killed. I have never been more glad to be incorrect."

He crouched down beside her. Watching her fight her pride wondered if he was looking in a mirror, a peculiar kind that reflects one's own personality back instead of their physical features.

Edited 2012-06-06 07:02 (UTC)

At the mention of the Tokyo Settlement, Britannia's left hand, the one that was holding her PDA, twitched slightly as she became acutely more aware of the burn mark there. Still, the fact that he knew about FLEIJA definitely saved her some time explaining.

As she took as deep of a breath as she could, she finally spoke, forcing herself to meet his eyes. "I never told you this, here or there, but... I have a physical weakness. My land and my citizens make up what I am. If they're hurt badly, it effects me. If they're destroyed... so am I." Here she paused to take another deep/shallow breath before she continued.

"Some of the memories I got back were of a second detonation of FLEIJA."

It really didn't take him long to put the pieces together. There was something wrong with her chest, her heart. And knowing what she just told him, there is only one place her heart could be. "Pendragon," he concluded. "Who fired it?"

Would this damage to her be permanent? Would she have to continue her stay here with a crater in her chest? Or would the healing afforded by her death relieve this particular problem? But that wasn't a question to be answered at the moment.

The moment he said that name, her eyes went blank. She blinked once... twice, then frowned as her thoughts, already hazy from the pain, became completely muddled. After a moment, she gave a sigh through gritted teeth. "You said my capital's name, didn't you?" The irritation in her voice was palpable.

Slowly returning her mind to the conversation at hand, she had to take a moment to allow another painful throb to pass before speaking. "It was Schneizel."

He nodded. "I did." Before she had finally gotten to the point of who had done it, he wondered if it wasn't something he'd managed, or at least in someone else's timeline. But when she said that name, he couldn't keep the scowl off of his face. It didn't make sense. That single act would have laid waste to the royal family, saving only those that were placed in positions of authority around the empire. Or, those too weak to achieve power on their own, depending on your interpretation. "Schneizel..." he muttered. He didn't even bother hiding his distaste for the man.

"So you have woken up to a crater in your chest," he finally stated, returning to the subject at hand.

That wrought a laugh from her, albeit a quiet and slightly breathless one as she immediately winced at the consequent pain. "Something to that effect, yes." She finally muttered once she felt she could speak without making any embarrassing sounds. "That's why I called you."

He mulled all of this over, and seemed to have come to a solution. He stood. "Are you aware of what happens to a person when they're killed here?" He stood tall. He had no doubt that what he was about to propose was a solution to her problem.

That made her blink. What did this sudden line of questioning have to do with her current condition?

"I am." She replied after a moment, curiosity and wariness written all over her face. In the few months she'd had Lelouch as her boss, she'd noticed he had a tendency for the ridiculous.

He stated this procedure as though it was as average as making breakfast. "If I were to kill you, you would wake up again in your bed without all of this pain." And as though to punctuate his point, he pulled the small pistol out from behind his back, under his vest.

And for perhaps the first time in decades, Britannia felt her jaw drop in sheer speechlessness. It wasn't so much as his matter-of-fact manner, it was simply the proposal that he was suggesting she die. The one thing that was considered the epitome of weakness in her society. Even if it wasn't permanent, the mere thought of dying made her stomach churn uncomfortably, overwhelming the pain in her chest for a brief moment.

Worse, he was the only human being in existence who probably could kill her. Granted, she had never heard of a boss actually killing a nation, but if there was one non!nation in the world capable of it, it would be him. (And lets face it, Lelouch was one of a kind.)

When her lungs finally had enough air in them for her to speak, she got out a breathy but firm (and slightly shrill): "No."

"You would prefer prolonged weakness and vulnerability to an impossibly brief death? I know you're bleeding, Lady Britannia. You're in more pain than you have ever known in your life. Britannia has never suffered so great a blow in its life than that.

"The longer we remain here, the more likely it is for others to see you in this state. As we get closer to the start of class for the day, more and more students will wake up. And should Nanami find you, she won't give you the option. She views killing a student as an efficient solution to a student trespassing from their campus, or merely being a pest. Proud, strong, empire, or otherwise.

"Would you prefer to be killed by your Emperor, or by a stranger, a Japanese stranger?" Even without the Geass his words were dangerous. But even he wasn't so sure why he was so focused on shooting her. Maybe he saw it as another aspect of his revenge. But he didn't need to consider that now.

His words stung and it showed as she narrowed her eyes and gritted her teeth. She was weak right now, pathetically so and perhaps what Lelouch was suggesting would fix the problem, yet even still...

Taxed with her fear and anxiety, her heart gave another spasm of pain and she doubled over, not quite able to completely stifle the small cry of agony. Something that made her feel regret and embarrassment. No one should ever be able to see her weak, not even her boss. But what he was suggesting... it went against everything she knew. Everything she stood for. Even if the voices of her people had taken on a strange tone since Lelouch's ascension (something she attributed to his overzealous use of the geass) that part of her remained strong.

Survival was the most important thing, and using death as a way out was unforgivable.

"I said no." She repeated, softly but just as firmly. Raising her eyes so that her gaze met his, she gave him a searing look for a moment before shaking her head. "I came to you for protection but if that's your solution, then I'll find another way. I cannot die."

Edited 2012-06-06 09:36 (UTC)

He didn't seem to react to her decision or her glares at all. Instead, his bored, cold expression never faltered. He met her eyes for a long moment. How easy that could have been. But no, his Geass was locked away from him.

After a long, tense, silent moment, his arm went back behind his back, under the vest. "Very well." When his hand came back into view, it was empty. "What do you propose I do? I can't very well hide you in my bedroom."

With the gun gone, Britannia relaxed against the wall and swallowed a breath of relief she didn't want Lelouch hearing. As her boss- as one of Ricardo's, she hadn't expected him to listen to her. That he had she could only attest to the fact that he had other plans in place already. Lelouch was terrifyingly brilliant that way.

Tired and exhausted from the whole affair, her voice was dry when she spoke again, containing none of her usual humor. "Why not?"

He crouched again, coming back down to her level. "The prefect's dormitory isn't meant to be accessed by students except by special invitation." He recalled what had led to Nanami's invitation and the negotiations that had followed. He thought through what he knew of Nanami's routine. If she was feeling especially sickly, she wouldn't even leave her bed. Yuri and the others would be easy enough to manage.

As he considered, he reached his hand out toward where she clutched her chest. "Let me see where the blood is coming from." He didn't really consider that a thing like feminine modesty would apply to someone like a personified country. His fingers lightly brushed on the back of her hand. The same hand that had just held a gun against her.

For a moment Britannia hesitated. Not because of modesty, she hadn't had such feminine concerns since she had given up her identity as a female in the 19th century, but if only because she didn't want to show the source of her weakness. Still, the feeling passed after a moment and she finally let her hand fall away. Her shirt, now speckled with dots of bright red that were her blood, was otherwise clean and undamaged save for the wrinkling done by her grip.

Underneath, however, was a different story. Across her chest over her heart, roughly 6-7 inches in length, was a large, angry scar that stood out in stark contrast to the rest of her skin. The veins around it were swollen and vivid, as if her blood had been poisoned in that one area, making it obvious that the wound was recent and going nowhere. The blood itself, smeared in bits by her shirt, came from the scar in small drops despite its size, indicating it was nothing more than a byproduct of an almost sealed wound.

The damage beneath her skin was most likely an entirely different story, but for now it certainly wasn't life threatening.

He wasn't sure if he expected that, or what he expected, really. He knew enough to decide that if it wasn't for he unique circumstances, he would be halfway through cooking breakfast and none of this would have happened. But he finally made a decision. He couldn't leave her here. It was a risk he would have to.take. "I'll take you to my room if you feel you'd be better after some more sleep."

For a moment she debated the truth, of telling him that she simply didn't want to be alone in a place where she could be attacked. Of reminding him that, while their numbers were dwindling, there were still other nations here. Her "other self" sotospeak was her greatest fear. Manchild or not, he was still a country and even he would know how to seize an opportunity.

Still, she felt as if she had exposed enough of herself for today and instead nodded. Sleep, if possible, would be wonderful right about now. That decided, she reached up, clearly needing a hand to rise.

He stood back up and took her hand to pull her up. "Should I be flattered that you have come to me in your hour of need?" There was a light note of teasing there, but he helped her all the same. He wondered if the others that called themselves nations were posing an active threat or if she were being cautious. He would deal with them in turn, all the same.

At Lelouch's remark, Britannia gave him a strange look, even as she used her other hand to push off the wall and nearly stumbled straight into him. Bracing herself on the slender young man, there was a moment when their bodies were uncomfortably close as she made sure of her footing. Once she had that, she carefully stepped back from him and returned her hand to the place over her chest. Both to steady her heart and hide the stain.

With that settled, she looked right at him, then gave him a very "duh" kind of look. "You're my boss. You're the only person I'll ever ask for help from."

Edited 2012-06-06 21:48 (UTC)

He didn't mind her pressing on him, and if she needed the support, he was willing to provide it. In more ways than one, he supposed. Seeing this side of her was new, and he hadn't had time to consider why he was reacting the way he was. "Lean on me if you have to," he told her.

"Are you sure you can handle it?" She asked, voice meant to be teasing. Instead it came out with a low quality of sincere curiosity as she placed her arm over his shoulders and distributed her weight a little more evenly. "I may no longer be an empire, but I'm still a nation."

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