It's her turn to be zero again.

It's not that she hates being zero; she just don't enjoy being zero.

It's the clothes. They're waterproof, bulletproof, fireproof, and made to fit you like a glove – their formal owner has not once proclaimed his own ingenuity over finding such superior textile. But, textile, they're not fit to be called…textile.

They're stiff, and stuffy, and it doesn't help that she's got to bind down and pad up here and there to achieve some semblance of the figure they once held. The rashes and chaff-marks will fade certainly, as soon as she takes them off proper, but she itches and hurts all the same.

But pizza.

Somehow, again, but surely for the last time, she had been sabotaged, and had fallen entangled in this network of causality that her predecessor had mindfully set up. Before his assassination, the young tyrant made sure to geass the entirety of humanity, not to sell or assist in purchase, of pizza to a particular green-haired female – except for his assassinator, to whom he entrusted the finer points of this scheme.

Of course exception is also made for the young princess, whom by some twist of brotherly-honour he is obliged not to geass, aside from the single past regrettable incidence.

So he locked her snug in a cage, and handed the key to her fellow inmate.

Pizza's the keyword.

The pact's simple, simple like the contract of geass. She's got to help out with being zero, and she'll get pizza in return.

It's pretty foolproof, given its simplicity. There's no way she'll attempt to convince the young princess whose temperament is starting to show her bloodline, and her fellow inmate's refined obedience to a new definition.

Pizza! It's the power that drives the sun and makes the rain fall, the force that keeps the Earth spinning, or something. It's pizza.

Think what you will, but if there's not even death to look forward to in life, you've got to nurse something, to keep you from falling, falling off the edge. Yes hers was a strange choice, for kinship, or love may god forbade, had been the commonest pillar that her fellow code bearers had leaned on with such gusto. But she's here now, delicious hot water soaking through her very soul, while somewhere, fast approaching, is a pizza, pipping hot, and heavenly. And they're all but dead, betrayed, killed, and dead. Evidence speaks way louder than anything.

C.C. lingered in the water for a last savour of its warmth, got out, and lost her balance, immediately.

Flailing and floundering, like an awkward bird tottering on ice, she threw grace out of the window in self-preservation, but landed on the floor anyway, her futile attempt bringing nothing but the towel rack down with her, and her ready-warmed, white and fluffy piece of heaven.

After the space of half a lifetime, of a distant star or a flickering breath, she sat up on the white cool tiles. Her bathrobe, her towel, and her change of clothes, are scattered like autumn leaves over the bathroom, silently soaking up water if not steam, or the alarmed cry she had let out.

For a moment she's a child again, from some forgotten golden afternoon, helpless, angered by her own helplessness, angered that she's angered by her own helplessness.

Irked, but alive and recovering, she opened her mouth to shout for some dry towel.

And then suddenly she is no more a child of some forgotten time.

C.C. caught herself, before the three syllabus tumbled down her tongue like second nature, to form a name, that she had so fondly tasted, cursed, whispered, and called.

Still gaping into the white steam-filled air, the witch known as C.C. discovered again to her dismay, her good memory.

And sorrow.

.


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First fic since I'm promoted -- to a university student!!!

shall now trot off and resume battle with unfinished essays...