#lulukare

The night air is chilly, but Kallen pays it no mind as her feet take her wherever they please.

She stumbles as the side of her foot comes down hard on a seam in the pavement, but she rights herself and finds her footing, running on with wild abandon into the night. Tokyo does not sleep and neither does she, no matter how tired she feels or how heavy her eyes are and she's come to learn that, when these agonizingly slow nights find her, there's nothing she can do but meet them where they are.

She runs past her favorite corner store, past the train station that takes her to school, towards the river, dodging those in her way. Most of the passersby are drunk and smiling, turning to look at her with bleary, glassy eyes as she sprints past them. One group has a man who shouts after her, but she forgets about him as she pushes herself into a sprint to make a light.

The park is full of shadows when she arrives, and the only sounds she hears are traffic and night birds, just as she wanted. The Shibuya river is a trickle, a narrow canal compared to the width of the Kano and the estuaries where she'd grown up, but there's something soothing about being near flowing water. Kallen takes a minute to take in the sight of the Shibuya, the lights of the city glinting on it through the trees, but then her restlessness seizes her by the throat and she has to run again.

She has two options: run until she vomits, or scream at the top of her lungs for an hour straight. Running doesn't bring the cops or piss off the neighbors, so that's what she chooses.

Kallen remembers all the trees in Izu. Beech, black pine, cedar--cryptomeria, she remembers Naoto had called by its Latin name. She remembers Naoto taking her into the woods, a little girl with coltish legs and too much energy, quizzing her on birds. As she runs, she pushes herself to recall as many as she can: Pacific loon, greater short-toed lark, Japanese skylark... She takes a ragged, gasping breath--barn swallow, Pacific swallow, Japanese waxwing--and tries to ignore the burning in her calves. Japanese thrush, Eurasian tree sparrow, Japanese bush warbler, and she falls to her knees, hard, in the middle of the path, rolling off to lay panting next to a cypress tree.

She wonders where that little girl went. Kallen is sure she doesn't know.

Kallen raises a fist and pounds it against the tree trunk, the rest of her body still. Whatever it is that hovers over her, she can't fight it, and she can't outrun it. All she wants to do is run until she collapses, to push herself, feel nothing but strain until she forgets herself.

There's something bubbling inside her, water or lava, she doesn't know. Geyser or volcano?

Kallen raises her hand and wipes sloppily at her face, smearing snot, sweat--and are those tears?--but she stays laying where she is. Hopefully, no one will come by and question why there's a young woman laying on her side under a tree, in a deserted park, at three in the morning.

She gives herself five more deep breaths, then she'll get up. Otherwise, she has an utterly bizarre feeling that whatever possesses her on these nights is going to drag her back home, face down on the pavement, by the nape of the neck. It's not rational, but it motivates her to move when otherwise she'd just lay there, blinking and sleepless, until the sun comes up.

Kallen pushes herself upright, sighs, shakes the dirt and leaves from her hair, and begins her run back.

-

When she sees her apartment complex, Kallen slows herself into a jog for the last few blocks. Her street, so busy in the morning, is silent and still now, the few lights peering out from the windows muddied and dim. But soon, she knows, there will be a slow trickle of people, then a flood of them, as they all rush out to make their way to school, or work, or wherever it is they're going.

She had left Lelouch asleep on the sofa he had moved, and he hadn't stirred as she tiptoed past and silently shut the door behind her. Hopefully she can return and slip inside, back in her room, without waking him; if she's really lucky, her door won't squeak at all.

Technically, she's supposed to use the main entrance. But the service door is easily wiggled opened, and it's far closer to her apartment than walking all the way around to the front of the building. Kallen slips inside, jogs up the stairs to the fifth floor, trying to remember all the while why she wanted a fifth floor unit (a little bit bigger and a private bathroom), and sticks her hand down what passes as the pocket of her leggings to find her key.

Slowly, incredibly carefully, she inserts the key and presses it to the inside of the lock, making sure to maintain the pressure as she twists it open, and then takes the knob in her still-sweaty hand and twists that too. Kallen tiptoes inside and turns to press the door almost silently shut, bracing a knee against it as she turns the lock to the "closed" position, not noticing that the small lamp on her bookshelf is on. To be fair, the light from said lamp is super dim, so dim that if she turns it on in the daytime it's almost like it isn't on at all.

"You know, for a woman who's so deadly in a Knightmare, I'm surprised you aren't more aware of your surroundings outside of one."

Kallen leans her head back and closes her eyes. "First of all, save it, because I'm not in the mood. Second of all, you were asleep when I left."

"I was." Lelouch stretches his legs out in front of him, sweeping them to the side to sit fully up. "I think I just missed you. I heard the door squeak and by the time I fully woke up you were gone."

Damn that door. "Well, I'm back, so you can go back to sleep," Kallen says, moving to take the yoga mat from its spot under the side table and unrolling it in front of the television. "This doesn't make much noise." But as she starts her post-run routine and goes into Downward-facing Dog, stretching out her hamstrings and back, she notices that Lelouch is staring at her, and his expression is... unamused.

"So this is it, then?"

"What are you talking about?" she asks between deep breaths, pedaling each foot before stretching her heels down to the ground.

"Are we not going to talk about the fact that you decided that three in the morning was an excellent time to go for a run?" Lelouch sits up straighter. "Where did you go?"

"One, I'm an adult and I can run at three a.m. if I want to, it's none of your damn business," Kallen responds, "and two, Shibuya."

"You ran to Shibuya?"

"Yes, Lelouch, I ran to Shibuya," she says, lowering herself into Cobra, keeping her breathing rhythmic. "Most people are capable of running. Some of us even enjoy it." Kallen finds it in her to be amused by his glower.

"Fine, fine. You can do what you want," he says, with an airy sigh and a wave of his hand, "but why?"

Crap. "No other time to do it," she says, after one beat too long, and she knows that Lelouch knows she's lying. Kallen hopes he'll drop it, and decide it's too early in the morning for an interrogation, but death hasn't made Lelouch any less ruthless.  

"Really. So you do this every morning?" he asks. "This is your routine?"

Kallen pushes herself back into a runner's lunge. "Just drop it."

Wrong thing to say. Lelouch has never let anything go in his entire life, both the first half and the second. "What's going on?" he asks, and there's genuine concern underneath the irritation, and that little hint of concern pisses her the fuck off.

"Nothing."

"Kallen," he starts, his tone even and so annoyingly rational, that she comes out of her forward fold with a vengeance.

"What?" she snaps. "You want to know why I ran? Because I can't sleep and I can't stay here all night and stare at nothing. So I go for runs. I don't want to stay awake, but I can't sleep. I don't... I don't shut off. I never have. When this kind of night hits me it's just... there's really nothing else I can do but run."

Lelouch is staring at her again, slightly shell-shocked. "Do you have trouble sleeping a lot?" he asks.

"Don't psychoanalyze me," Kallen snaps again. "Do you think I have trouble sleeping?"

"I wouldn't really know, considering I've been... dead," he says, "but I'm going to go with yes."

"A-plus, here's a gold star." Kallen starts to roll up the mat. "Now you know."

"Yes," Lelouch says, "and the question is, what are you going to do about it? You can't function like this."

That stops her dead in her tracks. "What am I going to do about it? I have tried everything. Valerian root, melatonin, benadryl, everything. What are you going to do about it?"

He doesn't have an answer ready for that. Lelouch has always had a plan for everything, but he cannot fix Kallen, just like he couldn't fix Nunnally, or C.C., or Suzaku. He cannot make her better. When the world was wrong, before, he had fixed it. But this is different. "What about seeing a doctor? There are options for medications," he asks, resisting the urge snark back at her.

"Pills are out of the question." Kallen waves her hand. "You get one guess as to why."

"Right." Lelouch blinks and puts his elbows on his knees. "So... that's it?"

"That's it." Kallen stows the mat underneath the side table. "Nothing else to do about it. Not right now, anyway." Turning her back on him, she says, "I'm going to take a shower. You should try to sleep," and goes off without a backwards glance.

He had tried to stay awake, but the light was still low and the night still held sway outside, and the sound of the shower running provided the white noise he liked, and he had fallen back asleep before he realized it was happening.

Lelouch had wondered about the shadows under Kallen's eyes when she first picked him up, but chalked it up to her grueling schedule, as she had told him when they arrived. Now he knows better.

When he woke, Kallen was gone, and the clock told him it was well before the time she needed to leave by. Lelouch wonders if she had slept at all. He doubts it.

He needs her to help him, but Lelouch think he needs to help her first. Kallen is loyal, honest, one of the strongest people he knows, but she is struggling. Neither is she happy, and though it may be self-centered, Lelouch's first thought is that he didn't die and come back to life for her to be miserable in the new world they helped make together.

Stupid of him, really. Milly was over-the-top in every way that mattered, why wouldn’t her wedding day be the same? 

He took a glance at her through his champagne flute. She wasn’t happy with it, not really, but he knew the Ashfords wouldn’t press her if she truly wanted out of it–but then, they didn’t know Milly like he did. She’d do anything for her family, even marry a man who she had no interest in and who had even less interest in her. The least the Ashfords could do was give her the wedding she wanted.

Milly was smiling, grasping Shirley’s hand, and there was Nunnally rolling up in her chair, waving. Suzaku was standing by Milly’s new husband, his supervisor Lloyd, and Lloyd’s assistant Cecile, whose smile–while genuine–had more than a hint of bewilderment underneath it.

Where was Rivalz? Oh, there he was–hiding behind a pillar in the clubhouse, morose and heartbroken, a glass of wine in his hand, not noticing the girl next to him… 

Lelouch sat up a little straighter, blinking. That girl. Who was she? He had seen her before, that red hair, those deep blue eyes, but he’d never talked to her, even though she was in more than a few of his classes. But it was more than class. He’d seen her before. Where? 

He decided to remedy their silence. Taking his glass with him, he made his way over, keeping to the edge of the dance floor, where Milly and Shirley and Suzaku and his bosses were deep in the middle of some call-out-the-move dance. 

Finding her leaning leisurely against a pillar, her eyes going from Rivalz at the bar to the dance floor, he stood next to her. 

“Did you enjoy the wedding?”

“It was well done,” she replied, “although I would have enjoyed it more if Milly had married someone of her own choosing.” She turned her face to his. “And I don’t believe it’s over yet.” 

Lelouch was surprised. “You knew she didn’t want to marry Lloyd?”

“Anyone with eyes in their head would have known she didn’t want to. He’s twice her age and clearly not interested in her. Or anyone, really, to hear Suzaku talk.”

“At least she’ll have some degree of autonomy, though, if she finds someone she likes. I don’t think Lloyd would mind.” 

“And love? Do you think he even cares about her?” There was a glint of steel in the girl’s eyes now. 

“I think he’s smart enough to know that he needs to keep her happy, whatever that entails. He won’t hurt her.” 

“No, he’ll just leave her alone,” she replied, sparks starting to snap in her voice, “and she’ll be left behind by the man she married for the rest of her life.”

“It’s a marriage of convenience for both,” he said, “and Milly knew what she was getting into. They didn’t force her into it.” Although the choice wasn’t really much of a choice at all. Turning to her, he said, “I’m Lelouch. I’m on the student council with Milly.”

“Kallen.” She picked at her sleeve. “And I still don’t like it. Someone’s going to get cheated on. Marriage should be a commitment, otherwise what’s the point?”

“You sound like you take it seriously.” 

“I take all my commitments seriously,” she said, her voice low and flat, and suddenly Lelouch knew where he’d seen her before. 

Hello, Kallen. Does anyone else know who you are? Her Glasgow had been destroyed beyond repair in the ghetto, and sure enough, the day afterward she had reappeared in class seemingly out of thin air, with no explanation for her absence.

“Dance with me,” he said suddenly. He didn’t know what possessed him, in that moment, but the light had dimmed and her hair looked smoky and no wallflower would turn her head that way, with so much intention. Pride, hiding behind a pillar.

“What?” 

“Would you like to dance?” he rephrased. Milly’s wedding was not the place to touch off the hair-trigger temper he now realized was lurking underneath those pretty eyes. Later, though. Maybe.