Warnings: Spoilers up to episode thirteen of R2.
Disclaimer: I don't own Code Geass. If I did, I don't think I'd be writing fanfiction. Nor do I own the rights to the Ballad of Reading Gaol.
She had the most lurid eyes he'd ever seen, bright green on paper-white skin, almost acidic, capillary veins standing stark. Her clothes are stark against her, too— red, the color of the blood that it isn't, soaking her shorts and dying her pastel pink shirt the same shade. Her intestines flow out, warm and wet against his palm.
Shirley isn't breathing.
He thinks of placing his lips against hers, ponders screaming wake up into her mouth in lieu of breathing. But he's afraid they'll be just like her, moist and hot and unmoving. A testament to how she isn't just sleeping, that she isn't just cursed to dream for another hundred years.
It would have done her good. She doesn't look healthy, he observes, in a clinically apathetic way. There are purple shadows on her cheekbones and finger-shaped bruises on her jaw, on her neck, that send chills down his spine.
Lelouch swallows; almost doesn't check her vital sign but does still, breathing out when no heartbeat pulses beneath his shaking hand. His other hand is still splayed against her stomach, holding her insides in and him together.
On reply in his mind is her smile, her hands, the way her hair felt as she stood in the rain.
And, maybe, it's a magical sleep. Maybe the princess, to be saved, needs more than a kiss.
Maybe she needs the sun, not the rain.
He slips an arm under her and carries her, bridal-style, to the door. His heels slip in her blood and his steps echo in the empty space. The air is thick and smoky in his lungs. Her shirt rides up and he feels skin that's growing cold.
The sunset breaks over her face.
Birds are singing. The sky is blue.
He kisses her.
(She doesn't wake up.)
(every man kills the thing he loves, by each let this be heard— some do it with a bitter look, some with a flattering look; the coward does it with a kiss, and the brave man with a sword!)
A/N: I was impressed with this when I first wrote this, but now that I look back on it, it's not that great. Code Geass is just one of those fandoms where I can never get a good grip on the characters' personalities. Either way, and especially so....
Feedback and concrit are both greatly appreciated. Replies are guaranteed!