Warnings: Spoilers for both seasons of Code Geass.

inevitable



When she was young, she believed in forever.

It was everything. Forever was compensation for a life spent in chains, in shame, hands plucking up the skirt of her dress and wringing her soul dry. It was perfection. Heaven's gates waited for her, and behind those bars of pearl and gold and silver were paths paved in emerald and ruby skies, buildings of sapphire and a place where she would be safe, a place where no one could touch her unless she gave them her consent. Forever was being beautiful. It was feeling safe and being loved—that was what the priests said. They never told her, for what did such clean men have to say to a poor slave girl, with her dirty feet and her scabbed knees and her chapped mouth, raw from things little girls should never do? They never even looked at her. Their eyes saw straight through her, but she left stolen incense on the altar and prayed until her knees were sore (that got better as time went on; other activities made her used to being on them).

God heard her. God must.

But what if he doesn't? she asked herself once, chewing on the ends of her green hair—an unnatural color. A witch color. But she shook her head. He must. He had to hear her cries, her prayers, because he could hear everything and he always listened.

And as she grew older, she realized that forever was nothing what she'd imagined it to be.

The bath was scalding hot. The nun scrubbed at her with soap and nails, peeling back layers of dirt like a second sheath of her skin, and it hurt in a good way. C.C.—though that had not been her name, not then, but she could not quite remember what it had been anymore—giggled. The nun was telling her fantastic stories, about witches and wizards and charming princes, and while she'd never believed in them as a child (as a slave, whispered a harsh voice in the back of her mind) she could believe in them now.

They fell in love.

It was beautiful. It was amazing. It was all she'd ever wanted, to be kissed without the intention of pain, a mouth hot on her own, a tongue transferring the taste of wine to her. There were so many of them! her lovers, who smiled and petted her, who's devotion sometimes disturbed her before she brushed it off. But that was okay. Devotion was fine, because they could still deny her. They could still reprimand her. It wasn't like they were going to starve themselves to give her pieces of hot bread covered in hotter cheese, the freshest fruit, the finest crops. They still had the leftovers.

"Selfish, selfish," the nun taunted her. "Why should you have the best?"

"It's no different," C.C., or the girl who had been her, muttered. She plucked at her sleeves. They were in a chapel, and chapels always unnerved her; the faces of the saints, the Apostles, seemed to stare her down, pity for sinners like her written over their visages. The stained glass windows turned the sunlight indigo and crimson and virescent. "It's not like they wouldn't give it to the vassals anyway. And they want to give it to me. Why should I deny them?"

The nun pursed her lips and clucked her tongue at C.C., who gave her a lopsided smile in return. It was all right. They loved her because they wanted to, and what did it matter if it was artificial? It wasn't like they had done any good to her before. This was compensation for all those years of her life, being whipped and chained, carrying pitchers of water too heavy for her and having her ears boxed. It was a shame one of her suitors had killed her master. She might have liked to watch him bleed, as grotesque as it was; she could not believe that he would bleed the same as her, red and wet. Monsters couldn't bleed the same as other people.

Either way, she scoffed to herself, as she knelt on the same altar she'd once left embezzled items on, it isn't like I could convince them to love me over someone else. I doubt the villagers care—the girls' future husbands would just sleep with whores instead of them, if they didn't love them, and the girls expect that. It's not like I'm any worse than those men. After all, adultery is a sin; love is not.

Christ's sorrowful face stared down at her, and she turned her face away in mock-prayer.

She had been gone for weeks now.

C.C. strolled into the parlor, casting her cloak off as she went. It was mid-summer. The air buzzed with flies and shimmered with heat, and everything was filmed with dust. She had been gone with one of her paramours to the coast, where they had drank champagne and licked salt off one another's lips, and now she was back. Home.

They were all in the kitchen, as she expected them to be. But it wasn't the same. Instead of not noticing her, they all snapped to attention, eyes fixated on her with unnerving focus, lips stretched into identical smiles. C.C. stepped back. They all had loved her, yes, but love was always different. Two different people loved in two different ways. And this was all the same pasted expressions from some madman's portrait, and her spine seemed to shake and buckle underneath her skin.

She stood there, her bones shivering in her skin, as they approached her. Laughed with (at) her. Touched her. Offered her fruit.

When she bit in, it was rotten.

She is seventeen, dying on an altar, and she knows this—God does not exist.

The next years pass in a blur. It is all tragedy and suicide attempts and blood dripping off of her fingers, tracing the scar on her chest. She has lovers. They are mostly infatuated with her, or infatuated with the proposition she gives: power, ultimate power, their heart's desire granted, as easily as plucking a ripe apple off a branch.

And who is she to deny them?

More years pass. She loses count. All her contractors blur into one another, an endless parade of clouded faces and clutching hand and whispered promises, whispered nothings. Their voices chase her in the night. They remind her of what she has said, what she has done, what she has condoned. They remind her that she left them to die or descend into insanity. Some of them chose death. But it is only some, and it is not all.

There are few that are memorable. Once there is a girl, strong-willed and passionate and brassy, who smiled and flirted as natural as breathing. She was too vibrant to be alive. Her Geass was to be invisible, for all except C.C. herself to overlook her as she slipped from shadow to shadow. She didn't think to use her Geass one winter day as she ran across the snow, laughing and giggling, when her father's men shot her down and her blood stained what was once Russian snow red.

Another is another girl. Her hair was short and she bound her breasts, but she spoke softly and bowed her head to her superiors, always hesitant to fire a gun or kill a prisoner. C.C. liked to watch the executions. That contractor's throat always worked as she pulled the trigger, and she wiped at her wet eyes when she walked out of the chamber. Her Geass was empathy. But nothing could stand in the face of war, not even empathy, and she muttered unheard prayers when her brains stained the wall red. C.C. remembered that clearly — it had made her so angry she had taken a gun off the wall and fired it until every soldier in the base was dead, until her hands were red, until her vision was and her mouth tasted like iron and sulfur. She should not have still believed in innocence and hope. It had been a mistake, giving that girl a Geass — she should have known how it would have ended, and she would not repeat it.

Still more. An endless flow, a river of broken promises and wishes trodden in the dust. Perhaps she'd be sad if she did not see herself in them. Yet she knew it was better that they died, before she could take their mortality, before they lost themselves. It was better. Those words of wisdom did not soothe her.

There were several boys. Pretty, some of them. Some were smart and some were stupid, and some were just foolish. Others were cruel and unkind and she wondered if she made them into even worse monsters.

She fell in love with one. He was handsome and dark-haired and he didn't promise her anything. His words hurt. He called her cruel and malicious and thousand other things that cut into her numb soul and embedded themselves there like chips of diamond. But his kisses were soft and sweet and she imagined that maybe, possibly, he would never ask her for immortality. He would never ask her for more. She could convince him to come away with her, and they could live out in the mountains for the rest of their days, in a small house by a river.

It never happened. He was publicly executed by the Holy Britannian Empire in a year she did not care to remember, hung in front of a crowd shouting praises of his captors.

Marianne is not kind. C.C. learns this quickly, for despite this violet-eyed woman's apparent geniality, she can kill with her eyes open. But she can laugh as well. And perhaps this is wrong, but this place makes her feel right, and it is not...so bad, belonging. What of it if she holds her tongue? What of it if she ruins lives? It is too sweet to let go of too soon, and if she is wrong, let her be damned. It is not like she was on St. Peter's list anyway.

Mao reminds her too much of herself. He is eager to serve, eager to please, and he laughs when he brings her food he has stolen, little sugared cupcakes she chides him for, but he is a child and disapproval melts off him. She teaches him English. In return, he teaches her Chinese, and snuggles up close to her during nights spent in alleyways. His hair is soft when he strokes it. Such a child, such a little boy, for life to be so unfair. So abandoned. So lost. C.C. tries to make his life better, with sweet nothings and repeated "I love you"s that have no meaning, promises to stay with him forever and to keep him safe and healthy and warm. To place her hands over his ears and silence the rest of the world and their edged thoughts.

It is a good thing he cannot hear her own, for he would know she is lying.

The boy is thin and bruised and shaking, his arms only half-filled with food, and his shirt is pasted to the jut of his ribs. His hair is plastered to his skull. Marianne's son looks at her with suspicious eyes and sneezes, the rain making tracks on his face, and she feels a pang in what might have once been her heart.

"You shouldn't be out here without an umbrella," she tells him, handing him her own. It isn't like she can catch a cold, and her kimono is too stiff.

The planes come to Japan too soon, too soon. It's a shame. The pizza here is sinfully good.

Years later. She does not how many, but she is reaching upwards and she is out of her prison, her hair flopping down her back, and she sees him. The plan hinges on him. He is scrawny and small and he does not look like he will change the world, but she has seen many, many men who have fit the part less than him and changed the world more.

I could give you power, she tells him, dead in his arms, and does not think of blood on snow. Of blood on her hands. Of broken bones and broken bodies, of shattered windows, of a thousand ways of dying and how blissful those moments are next to years of living.

He accepts.

"Why is snow white?"

"Because it's forgotten what color it's supposed to be."

I love you, is what she does not say. If she were younger — if she were innocent — if she were kind or beautiful or lovable — but she is not and she will not.

I love you is what the nun said, as she ripped her heart out of her chest. The nun had cried tears of joy, rivulets of blood running between her fingers and staining her palms, her mumbled thanks barely audible beneath C.C.'s screams. I love you, I love you; thank you child, I could not done this without you, thank you. One day you will do the same.

C.C. had never hated the word 'love' as much as she had then.

"What are you reading?"

It's a careless, stupid question, delivered offhand with no ulterior motive. Lelouch quirks an eyebrow at her. C.C. smirks and snatches the heavy paperback from between his hands, ignoring his rebuttal and weak attempt to regain it; she flips through it, the pages fluttering underneath her thumb. She didn't learn to read until her third century. Even now, it takes her mind a moment to catch up with the small print, and it's an effort to keep her brow smooth.

"Utterly pretentious." She handed him the book with a shake of her head, sinking into his bed next to him. Cheese-kun was a comforting weight in her arms. "Really, Lelouch — The Picture of Dorian Gray? You of all people should know immortality doesn't work that way."

"I wouldn't. I'm not immortal," he sighed and opened it to where he'd been before she interrupted him, soon sucked back into his reading. Minutes — or hours, perhaps; a sense of time has always eluded her — he answers her a second time. "I don't know what you are, witch. You might be immortal, or you might just be able to spontaneously regenerate your limbs and be like Achilles, only killable if maimed in a certain spot. It's entirely possible, with all I've seen you do. But the only way someone can really be immortal is if they do great things. Memorable things they're remembered for. What's the point of living forever if you're never mentioned in a history book?"

There isn't any point in living forever. She turned her head to the side, nuzzling into his laundered sheets.

Later — minutes or hours or tiny eternities later, when Lelouch is asleep and sprawled across her stomach, she says to herself or maybe to Marianne, if the other woman is listening: "No. It doesn't work like that."

Mao's death is a relief. A necessary sacrifice. It's better that he died.

"Did you love her?" she asks him, after he's shot his first love. His pink-haired princess. After he killed his mother; the school girl who dreamed of making him smile; the pilot who will remember his betrayal every day; the sister he would have burned the world for.

"It was a necessary sacrifice," he says, and it is not quite a sob and it is not an answer.

"Are you sure you want to do this?" is what the knight says.

His sister screams at him through the bars of her cages. The pilot stares at him and shakes and balls her hands into fists, her lips pulled tight into a snarl. Everyone else is much the same. They all hate him. C.C. understands this far too well, but she is too old for sympathy and too callous for pity, and so she settles on a smile every time she sees him.

Somedays she almost takes his hand. Then she remembers who he is and what she is, and she stops herself before she can sin again."

His death is a necessary sacrifice.

Later, there is a prayer. Later, there is sacrifice. Later, there is salvation and damnation and blood, and the bluest sky she's ever seen.

She folds a crane—and lets go.

fin.