Chapter Text
They were anonymously posted by the not so anonymous Milly Ashford.
It had been two years since she started her job as a news anchor, and she was proud that it took that long before the constant flow of trivial stories caused her to lose her mind which resulted in her chucking her phone across the room for no other reason than to see it break.
Relief was short lived as she was forced to pick up the pieces of her fit, i.e. her phone which was in many, many pieces. Oh well, she needed a new one anyway. But when the girl behind the counter of the tech store asked if she wanted to transfer all of her pictures and videos onto her new cell, Milly became aware of the fact that she had had that phone all throughout high school.
“Yes, please,” she responded without hesitation, and she waited with itchy fingers as the employee transferred her memories. Memories of a simpler, happier time. A time when all of her friends were alive, and none of them murderers. Milly was very careful with her memories.
Milly tried to hide how off she felt for the rest of the day, anxious to run home and sync her phone to her laptop and just relive her happiest time without Refrain.
When his face appeared on the screen, Milly cried.
All of these pictures were of a different person, someone as dead as the monster he became. All these videos were of so many people Milly cared about who would never smile like this again. Milly used to wonder if Lelouch’s pain over losing his mother ever faded, or if it hurt just as much years later. Now she had her answer.
It was an impulsive decision (like all of Milly’s decisions, really), but she felt like she had to share the memory. She wanted to show everyone the person the student council knew, even if that person didn’t exist anymore. Even if that person never existed in the first place. So that very night, making a fake account, Milly posted it all. No doubt people will figure out who it was, but she didn’t care. She just had to get this out to the public.
And the next day, she came to work with this sentence on the tip of her tongue: “Hey, you wanna see a video of the Demon Emperor dressed as a cat?”
Of course it went viral, how could it not? Any chance to shame a tyrant more, any reason to laugh at him, any reason to further justify their hate.
That was the original reason people watched it, but afterwards it was to show their friends and coworkers and family members how weird it was to see the literal devil act so human.
The first video started off in an extremely weird way: the shaky image of Lelouch vi Britannia tied to a chair getting his makeup done.
“No! No way,” His purple eyes were wide as he leaned back as far as possible from a brush being brandished by a pretty redhead in a cat costume.
“Stay still,” she ordered as she tried to apply whatever was on the brush to the prince’s eyelids.
“Shirley, I’m serious! Get off!” Lelouch turned his head again, causing her to miss and smear a purple streak on his cheek.
“Oh!” She fumed, reaching out to wipe it off, “Lulu, look what you did!”
Lulu was a popular meme after this video popped up. #GoToHellLulu was trending for at least three weeks.
“That’s it!” Shirley straightened up, striking out with her arm to point at someone just out of frame. “Suzaku, hold him!”
You could actually see the panic that came over Lelouch as his struggles intensified. “No, no, no, Suzaku, don’t you dare -”
If the totally undignified appearance of the 99th Emperor was a shock, the image of the Knight of Zero, already decked out in costume and makeup, was almost enough to send people rolling on the floor in fits.
Suzaku Kururugi entered the frame in a cat onesie, hands braced on Lelouch’s shoulders as the dress up continued.
Most people couldn’t even recognize the late knight. There was an actual smile on his face, and he was laughing as whiskers were drawn on a terrorist. The struggle and the cursing coming from his future sovereign only elicited more gaity from the whole group.
“Finishing touch, Rivals!” came the voice of the recorder, and a smaller boy with dark hair popped into frame holding cat ears with a chipper, “On it, prez!”
If Lelouch vi Britannia could move, there was no doubt in anyone’s mind that he would be out the door at a full sprint. Some people questioned why he didn’t just use his Geass if he didn’t want to do this that bad.
The dark cat ears were forced on his head, and the usual people who were obsessed with murders tried to tone down how cute they thought he was (in public at least).
“I’m serious, Suzaku! Cut it out!” Lelouch shook as hard as he could to try and get away.
“Sorry, Lelouch, but it’s the president's orders.” Suzaku replied, not sounding apologetic at all
“Yeah, as if you’re not enjoying this,” Lelouch muttered bitterly.
The glare the exiled prince sent his ‘friends’ was appropriate on a brutal emperor’s face. He started thrashing, trying to knock off the ears which caused small screams and shrieks of laughter as the student council tried to hold him, the video shaking. There was a sound of a door opening, and everyone in the frame froze.
The camera whirled around to show a beautiful girl standing timidly in the doorway, posture demure but blue eyes alive with tired confusion.
The public cheered at the sight of Kallen Kouzuki, a samurai of the new Japan who fought as one of the Black Knights. Everyone was aware of her double life story, but no one ever really got to see how the spitfire warrior acted during her Britannian school days.
The person behind the camera cried out in joy. “Good meow-ning! Pick out a costume!”
Kallen would have probably just left, but the recorder scrambled towards her and yanked her inside, closing the door.
“Good … morning, I guess.”
The meek and demure tone sent a stab of shock through people. No one knew how good Kallen’s acting really was back then.
Kallen meandered over and got a closer look at the chaos. “What is all this?”
“What do you mean, didn’t we tell you?” Rivalz exclaimed. “It’s our welcome party for Arthur.”
The camera panned quickly to the left to zoom in on a raggedy looking alley cat reclining on a cat tower.
“Sounds like fun.” Kallen commented in a dead tone. Not that anyone was paying attention, already turning back to their captive and applying more makeup to Lelouch.
“Well classes are postponed, we might as well have some fun, right?” You could heat the smile in Milly’s voice.
“I set some stuff aside for you,” Shirley said, “over here to make up for my behavior before … take your pick!”
Now that was some drama the public will never be in the know of.
“What? … for me?” Kallen looked torn between being touched and being put off, but Lelouch’s voice directed the camera back to his face.
“She doesn’t need a costume,” he said in a voice that could be considered either scornful or teasing. “You’re already wearing a mask, right?”
When Milly watched this for the first time in two years, she couldn’t believe how she missed that. Lelouch wasn’t even trying to hide at that point, and that tone was all vi Britannia.
Kallen’s face twisted into a scowl that didn’t fit her Britannian personality. “You’re a real riot, you know that? You should be on television.”
Rivalz turned to Shirley, “what do you think, Miss TV star?”
“Oh, I thought she meant Lelouch -“ Suzaku admitted, causing two whole countries of people to be torn for their hatred of him and endearing the comment.
Shirley gave a sigh of irritation. “Would you quit joking about that? The whole thing’s a huge pain in the butt! We’ve been hounded for questions day and night - even in the bath!”
The public may not have made note of a pretty high schooler’s suicide, but they did remember that hostage situation. It only took some minor research to figure out what Shirley was talking about.
“We haven’t been able to leave school grounds in a week because of reporters.” Milly pouted.
Once it was released, people had edited the video to zoom in on Lelouch’s face to see how he would react to his so called friends being in danger he started, but he was only actively trying to rub his cat whiskers off on his shoulder and struggle out of his bindings.
“Not that I don’t feel for you, but I don’t see why we can’t leave either,” Rivalz mutters, holding Lelouch’s head to keep him from smudging their work.
“That’s the price of friendship,” Milly chirps. “The Romance of the Three Kingdoms: it matters not that we were born apart, upon this day, we die as one.”
Milly remembered studying that in school - twice actually.
“Is that your idea of a love quote?”
“If I go down, then we all do,” Milly’s paw was able to be seen in the camera, along with Rivalz’s startled face and Lelouch just raising his eyebrows and glancing away as if he expected that.
“That’s a little dark,” Rivalz admitted, “right, Suzaku?”
Rivalz looked over at the soldier and his look of surprise was perfectly in the frame. Lelouch looked up too and actually mirrored his expression although not as intensely.
The camera whirled over to Suzaku, and the world all gave a collective gasp at the fact that the White Reaper, Knight of Zero, Sword of the Demon Emperor, Suzaku Kururugi, was crying while wearing a cat costume.
“I’m glad,” Suzaku’s voice was swollen with emotion, and he brought up a paw to cover his eyes, “that we can all be together again, ya’know?”
The expression on Lelouch’s face was alien to almost everyone but the few who knew him. Nunnally had never actually seen this expression, but she knew it. A soft curve at his mouth as his eyebrows slanted upwards in fondness.
The rest of the world was rendered speechless.
How did this man have the right to smile like that?
The moment of wonder ended as Rivalz suddenly leapfrogged over Lelouch and dragged Suzaku to the floor in a headlock, crying for him to lighten up. Everyone burst into laughter as the knight’s face was squeezed by someone he could have easily taken down.
“That’s what’s so refreshing about Suzaku though,” Shirley defended good-naturedly.
“Yeah, but once in a while you just want him to get a clue, you know?” Milly shook the camera as if she was nodding her head.
“So-wree ‘bout dat,” Suzaku struggled to say.
“Awwww, widdle puddy-cat,” Rivalz cooed sarcastically, letting the room erupt with laughter again.
Lelouch had escaped the frame in the chaos, and when Milly turned back to him, his chair was empty, rope lying cut on the floor.
“Ehhhh!” Milly swung the camera around the room, but the ex-prince wasn’t there. “Where’d he go?!”
“Sorry, Milly!”
Shakily, the camera landed on the door leading to the hallway where Lelouch was already leaning out of, dropping his cat ears. “Gotta run!”
The terrorist ran.
Milly let out a war cry, and her paw flashed into the camera pointing like an arrow. “Suzaku, fetch!”
“But cats don’t fetch?” the knight protested, while sitting up.
“Go, go, go, go, go!” Milly commanded.
“Okay, okay!” Suzaku laughed, taking off like a shot.
Even with his head start, Lelouch’s voice could be heard farther away, screaming, “Suzaku, get the hell away from me!”
“Well, that won’t take long,” Nina sighed from her laptop.
“Yeah, I’ll give Lelouch fifteen seconds tops before Suzaku drags him back here.” Kallen agreed, sitting down in an unmanned chair at the table.
“And if he does get away, we can just get Nunnally to bring him back.” Rivalz rests his arms behind his head from his spot on the floor.
“Haha, true. Oh, Lelouch is too easy,” Milly turned off the camera.
Hindsight is 20/20, and Milly - who even knew who her friend was, knew what he had been through - actually thought someone who grew up with Princess Cornelia and Prince Schneizel was actually going to be as easy to force and trick as one of her regular classmates.
Of course, that mindset was probably what Lelouch wanted.
Milly didn’t regret posting it, even with all of the hate it got.
Didn't regret it one bit.