Receive them into a twinkling star

[cethflayn]

[When the remainder of the passengers returns to the ship, Flayn steals away to read what Constantine gave her upon their parting. She reads it, and cannot find it in her heart to burn it.

Well. With the rest of the letters from the dead it goes. They'll all be on her person, now, which is the safest place she can think to keep such precious words.

Quietly, privately, Flayn comes to Lelouch to ask for his assistance, and soon enough pieces of paper with Flayn's lovely handwriting find themselves slipped under your door.

Please come to the Pub on the seventh floor this evening, so we may not spend this dark night alone.

- Flayn





Cethleann

No more hiding.

Between Lelouch actually knowing how to cook, and Flayn being a doggedly determined young lady, the pub is much more hospitable when you arrive. There are homemade snacks as well as...McDonald's milkshakes and apple pies? And all manner of sweets brought over from the various floors of the ship, as if in Jasper's honor. Lengths of relatively subdued fabric have been cut from bolts in the crafts room and laid out over the tables and bar, and there are even some various liquors put out if you feel like getting absolutely wasted. We're all kind of fucking sad at the moment, it's fine. It's fine. Just eat before you imbibe, please.]

Comments

[jibunwo]

I...can't afford to change who I am now. I can't risk losing my nerve or allowing my conviction to fall out from beneath me. I have to remain the kind of person that could kill someone here for my own sake--that is the kind of person that can destroy what I need to destroy.

So I suppose that if such an event were to change me, it would have been what happened ten years ago that convinced me to put an end to the empire seeking to conquer my world.

I've killed countless people in pursuing my goal, and when I return I'll likely continue. Zero protects the weak, this much is true. But the end justifies the means, and the end is to create a new and peaceful world. I am not a 'good person' by most definitions, Zaveid. But there are much worse where I come from.

[sivard]

...but what does it mean, ultimately, to be a "good person"? I'm not saying I approve, but here I am, weeks after this started, having voted to kill somebody seven weeks in a row. How the hell can I go around telling people how awful they are when I've done the same thing week after week, without fail?

I'm starting to believe the distinction is meaningless, not unless you're doing something truly terrible, like enslaving the world or sacrificing dozens of strangers in some unholy ritual.

Look at Magica; she's been talking about how evil she is since day one, and she has never acted. She's been offended, even, by the suggestion she would.

Good people can make bad choices. Bad people can make good choices. And sometimes, good people can convince themselves they're bad people.

[if you thought zaveid was going to stop being a protag I'm sorry but you're wrong]

[jibunwo]

I suppose the question you're really asking is this: is it 'good' to allow the positive end results of one's actions take precedence over all steps taken to get there? If Zero and the Black Knights kill a thousand people to liberate a million, is that 'right'? If we kill by proxy week after week to survive, are we 'wrong' to do so?

...I don't labor under the delusion that every single Britannian soldier is absolute evil or an empire-loving sycophant. Of the soldiers we've killed, of all the casualties the enemy has suffered, I know for a fact some did not deserve their fate.

[Shirley, inconsolable in the rain. 'If Zero protects the weak, why did my father have to--']

[...Narita had worse casualties than he had known. But would he do it the same way again? Of course, because that was the method to gain victory. No less could be accepted. No matter the guilt, no matter the pain he caused, 'Zero' had to create miracles to keep what little ground the Knights could gain.]

[And then there was Suzaku. Someday he wouldn't be able to talk his way out of or otherwise evade the inevitable. One of them would have to kill the other, more than likely, and Lelouch chose not to think about that.]

I'm not being humble or self-deprecating. I am a murderer, both directly and otherwise. I would have killed before long if John hadn't beaten me to it, and if Plumeria and Freyja hadn't done the same before him. I think it is 'right' to sacrifice the few to ultimately save the many. If that is what others see as a 'good person'--and many do see Zero as exactly that--then so be it. Truthfully, right now I do not know what the distinction is, or if it even matters.

...I just know the person I fight is worse than me. So long as that's true, that's all I care about.

[sivard]

We're all murderers here.

With the exception of Carmen, every single one of us has killed to ensure we survive another week.

Are you doing the right thing in your world? I don't know; that's not up for me to decide. Malakhim are so long-lived we don't see the passage of time the way you folks do. Someone bad is in power in a city? Wait fifty years and it won't matter. That next person is even worse? Oh, well, wait one hundred years and the whole place will be ruins anyway. One thousand years from now, I won't even be middle age.

It doesn't matter who we were in our worlds, because what matters here is trusting each other as we are in this place, to trust that this cooperation we've formed can last long enough to get us the hell off this boat.

As long as the Captain is a mutual enemy for all of us, we need that trust.

[jibunwo]

[Lelouch didn't answer that for a long time, closing his eyes with a quiet sigh.]

....You're right. The Black Knights, the conflict in Japan, even the Empire is nothing right now. None of it matters in the face of what we have to do, and I've been stupid this entire time. Keeping a thousand secrets and wearing so many masks that I don't know who is even beneath them. That's not going to accomplish anything, and without John around taking point I'm going to have to pull myself together to be what we need to win.

Lelouch vi Britannia is my name, exiled eleventh prince of the Holy Britannian Empire. No more secrets, no more lies, and no more masks.

[sivard]

[Lelouch, you are so lucky that Zaveid is from a JRPG because that name doesn't even make him blink.]

Names have power to a malak. We have our names, and then we have our True Names. True Names are us, are the most basic description of who we are. Those who learn them are few and far between.

Mine is Fylk Zahdeya, Zaveid the Oathkeeper.

[jibunwo]

[honestly it's not even the weirdest one in the family, much less the anime]

...You know, your profile says anyone who learns your true name dies. [...he's read them every damn trial] That's a pretty dangerous thing to say in a place like this, especially at this late stage.

Lucky for you, I'm under a contract. I'm not allowed to die until I see it through, no matter what. And I have an empire to topple before then, so frankly I'm just much too busy to die in general.

So, hope you won't be too mad when I end up breaking the trend.

[sivard]

[That gets Zaveid to smile. It's tight, but he doesn't look particularly bothered.]

I wouldn't worry about it. The Captain is referring to Eizen living on borrowed time. It's technically true, but full of crap the way it's worded.

Here's to you proving that little fact completely wrong.

[jibunwo]

Put in a broad sense, I would say we're all living on borrowed time in one way or another.

[mortals, amirite?]

You know, I'm very good at upsetting authority. I look forward to seeing the look on that puppeted corpse's face when we finally put him in checkmate.