Author's Note: We've all read those heartwarming fanfics where Lelouch ends up in Heaven after he dies. I decided to do a different take on how Lelouch's afterlife would turn out.
LELOUCH IN HELL
-Chapter 1-
"I love you, big brother!"
Lelouch wanted to respond and tell his sister that he loved her too, but his lungs had already filled with blood making it impossible for him to speak.
He wanted to tell her to not waste her tears on him. He wanted to tell her that everything would be okay now. He wanted to tell her so many things...
"Zero! Zero! Zero! Zero!"
He had to smile at the sound of the crowd inadvertently praising him even as they condemned him. For he was the Demon Emperor, the most fearsome tyrant in history, but he was also Zero, the symbol of hope for mankind. In the end, which was his true face? Was he a monster or a hero?
Maybe he was both.
I am the destroyer... and creator... of worlds...
The sight of Nunally's tear-streaked face was the last thing he saw before...
Darkness.
For a moment, Lelouch did not know where he was until he took a breath and gagged as the smell of rotten eggs hit his nostrils.
Hydrogen sulfide. The combination of hydrogen and... sulfur.
It did not take a person of his intellect to deduce where he was. He had half-expected this after all.
Lelouch opened his eyes. It took a minute for his eyes to adjust to the dim lighting and then he saw that he was lying on the floor of a giant cavern. He looked around in bemusement at the stalagmites and the rocks littering the ground of what appeared to be a perfectly ordinary limestone cave.
He was almost disappointed. Where were the pits of fire and the howls of the damned? If he remembered his Dante correctly, he should be in the Seventh Level of Hell writhing in the river of boiling blood along with the violent, the assassins, the tyrants, and the war-mongers. Or he should be in the Ninth Circle where the traitors dwelled. Well, there was no reason that the real Hell would match the writings of an Italian poet who was probably on psychedelics when he created his masterpiece.
The Greeks had believed that the underworld was literally under the earth so from that perspective it only made sense that hell would be made of stone and moss. That raised the question of whether he was actually still in the mortal realm or on a completely different plane of existence altogether.
Lelouch recognized that he was procrastinating with these pointless thoughts. He could lie here paralyzed with indecision waiting for the other shoe to drop, or he could move forward like he always had.
He sat up and noticed with some annoyance that instead of his white Emperor clothing he was just wearing a loincloth. He gave a deep sigh as he stood up and started walking. He didn't know where he was going, but he figured that the light he was seeing by had to come from somewhere. There had to be an entrance of some kind nearby.
That was assuming that logic had any place here.
He had no idea how much time had passed before he made it to the entrance of the cave. He tried to make out what was on the other side, but the light emanating from the opening was too bright. Was this supposed to be some representation of Plato's Cave? If so, then what would be on the other side would be the truth.
To his dismay, he found that his hands were shaking. He forced them to stop. Lelouch vi Britannia was not a man who backed down from the unknown.
He stepped into the light...
He couldn't move his limbs.
Lelouch rapidly blinked his eyes to adjust to the glare as he tried to figure out what was going on. One moment he was walking out of that cave and now he was...
Tied to a cross.
He looked down and saw that his body had been arranged in the classic crucifixion pose, and he was tied to a heavy wooden cross with thick ropes. There were no nails present, but Lelouch had a feeling that it was only a matter of time.
Judging by the position of the sun over his head, it was about two o'clock in the afternoon. He was surrounded by barren dessert. He could barely make out a city in the distance. For the moment, the only objects present were him and his cross.
Lelouch had to laugh. Apparently God or Satan had a sense of humor. This was a fitting punishment for someone like him who was so arrogant to believe that he could take the sins of the world unto himself. This warped reenactment of the Resurrection and the Passion was clearly a message. A sharp rebuke of his delusion that he could become a savior through evil deeds.
He had no way of determining if his plan, Zero Requiem, had succeeded in the end. Perhaps he had damned himself for nothing. No, he had been damned long before he decided to become the Demon Emperor.
Lelouch didn't know when his laughter turned into sobs. In another life, he would have been appalled at his weakness, but what did appearances matter now? He would never see Nunally again.
Time passed. Day followed by night then day again. Endless repetitions of blazing days and freezing nights.
His pale skin began to burn under the glaring sun and his body began to wither from a combination of thirst and hunger. The slightest movement caused his muscles to explode into fiery pain as the strain of having his body held up only by his arms for days on end took its toll.
Lelouch was reminded of the desperate weeks after the Britannian invasion during his childhood when he, his sister, and Suzaku had wandered the Japanese countryside looking for food, clean water, and shelter.
He had learned an important lesson during that time. Torment did not have to be grandiose. Hell was not just a place with fiery pits and vicious demons.
It was an empty stomach. A parched throat. Feelings of helplessness and impotent rage.
Their lives had been ruled by fear of sickness, fear of assault, fear of death. Even as his feet had blistered and his vision started to blur, he forced himself to keep moving forward. Because to stop was to die.
Lelouch had gained his greatest skill during those hellish weeks. It was the ability to move forward despite pain and a breaking heart. Even after Euphemia had died, after Shirley had died, after so many people had died, he had continued moving forward.
It wasn't until he thought Nunally was lost to him forever that he realized how weary he was and how much he wanted to stop. So he stopped.
And now he was dead.