Title: lovely but never loved
Author: Lily
Characters/Pairings: C.C, C.C/Lelouch
Summary: Two moments where C.C never loved and one moment where she did (introspective one-shot, R2 spoilers)
C.C sighs, somewhat bored, as the boy moans against her neck and presses her harder against the tree. He claws at the bodice of her gown and sticks his hand underneath her skirts to the crevice between thigh and torso. He reminds her of a badger foraging for food and she bites back a derisive laugh.
Afterward, the boy slips away and she reaches for her discarded clothing, preparing to make her escape when a woman dressed as a nun emerges from the bushes to clamp a vice-like grip on C.C's arm. "What do you think you're doing?"
One eye is bright and without guilt, the other is glowing, --- a bird-shaped sigil in red --- as she replies airily, "He tells me he's in love with me."
The nun who is as old and worn as the moon and the rocks still keeping their graving, smiles bitterly.
"Then may you always be happy in love."
C.C reaches her hand up to the chain around the nun's neck and touches the cross gently with her fingertips in thanks.
"This is my witch," Marianne introduces, all smiles and hidden looks.
C.C. reaches out her hand, palm sideways and V.V slips his hand around hers, shaking it. Both their skins are numb and blank and so thin they can feel each others pulses where their thumbs touch the insides of their wrists. It feels the same as looking closely at a painting and focusing in on a single brushstroke, a minute yet remarkable detail.
C.C likes going to church. Likes to kneel down before the pew and clasp her hands together, looking pious.
Dear sweet Jesus. All I ever wanted was to be loved. I only wanted to be strong and lean and winsome. Impervious to weather and loneliness, impervious to bending and bleeding.
"Are you religious?" Marianne asks conversationally, eyes locking on the giant crucifix over the empty alter. C.C stares up at it too and counts Christ's ribs.
"Not really."
"And yet you pray." She is speaking in a tone that makes C.C think of Anubis, the jackal-god who weighs the hearts of the dead and passes their judgment. "But what shall you do when the gods are dead and gone?"
C.C looks at Jesus' sorrowful down-turned eyes. "Leave me be," she says and Marianne recoils.
"You have much to learn," she chides.
C.C's face is grim, but satisfied. "Not more so than you."
Dear God forgive my sloth.
Lelouch will leave fingerprints on every world he creates and destroys. Heavy marks of I Am Zero as C.C continues to tail him in clumsy strides.
Can one person really change the world?
"Are you afraid?"
"A little." Lelouch admits.
"Of everlasting damnation?"
"More of the pain of having a sword shoved through my chest to be honest. But yes, I suppose it would suck if I did end up burning in a fiery hell within the afterlife."
"They say that the fate of those in purgatory can be affected by the prayers of the living."
Smiling as though proud, Lelouch pulls her forward and breaks her and weaves her back together to stop her dissolving without a sound.
"Who would pray for the soul of a demon?"
A piece of sharp green glass on the church floor is cutting into her knee. She picks it up and etches a letter on her hand; puts it on top so she can see the jagged edges bleeding out: L.
L is for lost, for all she never knew. L is for love now, her punishing ways.
They call her a witch.
And yet here, on her knees, hands clasped --- her heart beating its staccato rhythm in time with Lelouchs own heart in the infinitesimal seconds before his was ceased entirely --- she is more human than she ever was.