(Pointless) Talk Over Cookies

Disclaimer: I don't own CG.

So I found this fic lying in my folder, half done for at least several years. Decided to just throw it out today for the sake of clearing stuff out. Haven't watched CG since it ended, but I hope they're still in-character somewhat.

The TV blared loudly. And the cookie, delicious.

"C.C.-san, what does it feel like... to die?"

C.C.'s hand was in the jar when it stopped mid-clutch from surprise.

"I wonder if my life will actually flash before me?"

This time the half bitten cookie fell and rolled down beneath the counter. Not from surprise but rather from

"Did Sayoko read one of those cheap romance novels again? Lelouch complained." Yes. From another gaping hole created in her heart. She thought it would look akin to Swiss cheese by now. Yet another puncture created by her lost of faith in humanity. Not that she had one. A heart. But to cram such crap to a poor innocent blind girl is a whole new low. And she thought 'low' was already defined when Pizza Hut introduced the new green tea plus peach and raspberry pizza: such blasphemy. Still. C.C. retracted the cookie successfully and took a bite. Lucky immortals, they never had to worry about the five second rule.

"I'll tell you where he hides his credit card," said Nunally very sweetly, sitting at the dining chair with an angelic pose - absolutely unaware that she was one step further in mastering the subtle art of manipulation. She definitely has her brother's streak.

"The platinum?"

"Yes. And the Britannian Express."

"Dying feels like dying. Where are they?"

Nunally giggled. "That's cheap, C.C.-san."

"Indeed." Then, "Why do you want to know?"

With this, Nunally touched her index finger onto her chin and went silent in a moment of reverie. C.C. wondered if Sayoko had somehow taught the kid how to act 'moe'. Out of all things Britannia destroyed in Area 11, why didn't they at least include that geek district? Surely a grenade or thirty wouldn't stretch their budget overly much.

"I guess, it's just..."

"Hmm." C.C. took another bite from her cookie.

"I guess just being curious won't cut it?" And with that, Nunally gave her such a sad, sweet smile that C.C. could not help but straighten up and wonder if the girl knew more than what she let on. "Oh, I'm not talking about death," she added upon noticing C.C.'s slight narrowing of the eyes, "I just wonder... about the process. Is it true that your life flashes before you when you're dying?"

While C.C. liked to think of herself as above the thinking of mere mortals, she however understood this fascination quite clearly. There were times when she was young, brazen, and foolish, and didn't quite know how to shut up just yet - when she liberally promoted the status of her mortality. Those times were usually laden with stupid questions like 'is there life after death?' (she shot that idiot in goodwill, just so he could find out on his own), 'does heaven exist?' (she didn't shoot him because he would go to hell anyways, but he was quite a charming specimen and so she decided to show him heaven on earth for a night instead), 'do I really get seventy-two virgins when I die?' (she used him as a knife throwing target out of pure principle – making sure to sometimes miss and nick a few minor arteries while at it), and of course, the infamous flashing life upon death thing.

"I don't know. I have never really almost died." It was true. She was always either dead, or in the process of healing – never so in between as to have her life revolving around her sight. Dying seemed so fickle, even from an immortal's perspective. She imagined it would be somewhat akin to those gun fires in low budget B-movies. Nice, but too cheerfully plastic. Besides, her life was so long it would take a few weeks to properly flash through them. By then she would be up and running and probably in another country gunning down mafias.

Nunally tilted her head as she mulled over it. "Well, do you know anyone who almost died, then?"

Munch. "They're usually quite dead when I get to them." C.C. loathed to admit it, but for a potently corrupting maid, Sayoko made pretty good cookies. She wondered if she could get her to make pizzas. "Where's the credit cards?"

Again, that cutesy giggle. "But I didn't say that I have only one question."

C.C. sighed. She figured as much. Cunning seemed to run in their family. Much credit to Marianne. Toast to you for producing such fine off-springs, Marianne. And she would have raised her cookie in salute if she could be bothered. "Do you want to know how being stabbed feels?"

"How does it feel?"

"Painful. Especially in the back."

"Oh." When C.C. didn't offer any more information in the art of being stabbed, Nunally spoke again. "I was actually... wondering... well. If you are my brother's girlfriend?"

Now where did that come from?

C.C. stared at Nunally for a while. Then: "Yes. I am. Why do you ask?"

"O- oh. Well, it's just that, sometimes it gets pretty noisy in his room. Sayoko said that there's a cat there, but I know it's you and uh-"

"Noises."

"Loud noises. Grunting. A- and sometimes, uh- moans." By this time Nunally's cheeks had started blushing a pretty shade of pink.

"Oh that." C.C. said, practically purring. "Sometimes we wrestle on the bed." And sometimes she thought languages were invented for the sole purposes of double entendres and sarcasm. Of course, there was no need to tell Nunally that wrestling meant wrestling, and the moans were usually from Lelouch rolling on the floor from pain.

"...oh."

"I'm always gentle." That much was true, she always made sure to never injure him permanently. Or anywhere visible. As long as he gave her the bed and the right to eat pizza leisurely on top of it, she was content. She was considerate like that.

"...oh." The previous pink on Nunally's cheeks had turned furious red. "How... how long have you been together?"

"Seventy-two days." Said C.C. immediately without batting an eye lid, remembering the knife throwing target and his obsession with said number of virgins.

"Well..." This time Nunally's tone took a tinge of wistfulness. "I would never have found out if I didn't ask you directly. Sometimes I think that there is so much he is hiding from me now."

"He's a very private person." With a healthy dose of megalomania and super hero fetish. "He's growing up. All teenagers go through a phase of bolted doors, magazines under the bed, and hidden girlfriends. They eventually grow out of it." And a very large dose of paranoia. She still remembered him pizza-blocking her from partaking in the culinary delight of the largest pizza in the world. Twice.

"So it's just... hormones?"

"Mmm, a lot of it." And C.C. smiled in such a way that it seemed she was suggesting something entirely different from the mere issue of privacy and playing villain.

"Is that all it is, though?"

C.C. paused mid-bite. While she was all into promoting independence and inquisitiveness for today's youngsters (because god knows smartphones and all those newly fangled technologies aren't helping any), she wasn't quite pleased about being the recipient of those two very positive attributes. She wished Nunally would divert her energy and attention elsewhere. Like telling C.C. where the goddamned credit cards are, for example.

Still, Lelouch was her contractor, and for the sake of her mortality and comfortable nesting perch to eat pizzas on, she'd try her best to obfuscate and deflect.

"I'm sure it's exactly as it is," she said, not before finishing the lonely cookie and taking another one from the jar, "not that I'd know. I'm just a helpless, innocent woman clinging to her puny sized boyfriend's noodle arms, after all."

The last sentence came out very drily, very flatly and Nunally didn't look convinced at all, giggling primly with her hand covering her mouth. Maybe she should take an acting class, C.C. thought, because her lack of inflection was interfering with her bucket list of winning the Oscars at least once. Ah well. Never too late for that. She had all the time in the world.

"C.C.-san."

"Yes," C.C. replied in the midst of rearranging her bucket list.

"I might be blind, but I would like to think that I'm at least intelligent enough to understand that you're anything but helpless."

Subtext: and that onii-san is anything but a regular teenager with privacy issues.

C.C. decided to ignore the subtext.

"No, I'd imagine not," she said. "Do you have any more questions? It's time for tea and I need his credit card to buy pizza. They have a new line of Cheese-kuns I need to get."

"No, that's all," Nunally said. She took the holy grail/credit card from one of the pockets in her dresses and held it out. "Thank you for taking the time the talk with me. It gets lonely sometimes and I really appreciate your presence."

Putting the half-eaten cookie onto the table, C.C. accepted the card and turned it this way and that, squinting for any indication of falsity. Amex black.

"That sly boy," she murmured, not without a hint of venom at the thought of all the limited edition Cheese-kuns she could've bought with this, "he's been hiding this all along. All the Cheese-kuns I missed."

"Oh I'm sure onii-san is just worried for you health. All that pizza can't be good for you, C.C.-san," said Nunally sweetly, and C.C. almost snorted.

Because of all the perceptiveness and self-awareness, the only thing Nunally was truly blind to was her brother's ruthlessness. If there was a medal for one-upping an immortal at being heartless, she would've hung it on Lelouch's neck and proclaimed him number one. Alas, he was her contractor so she said simply: "perhaps."

Nunally seemed satisfied with that.

Brother, the Selfless Saviour Worlds. But C.C. knew that one day it would be Brother, the Selfish Destroyer of Worlds and Everyone Around Him. She would care, if only she hadn't left her heart behind near a dead nun in a church somewhere.

Which is why the next non-question didn't phase her the slightest.

"He'll die, won't he."

Then:

"Sometimes I just wish... I just wish I know what he looks like."

The programme was interrupted by an emergency report. An attack at a Britannian military base. Nine dead, seventeen wounded and eight unaccounted for.

She glanced at the siblings. Nunally was lucky in a way. That her brother will be the untainted image of a kind, laughing boy for a while yet.

It reminded her of the tinted picture glasses in cathedrals. Both beautiful and grand. But then again, she always had the urge to break them just to see if they were still as beautiful lying in pieces by her feet.

"I'm ho-"

"Lelouch, go make me waffles."

"And me too, onii-san."

She did. They looked even more beautiful, broken.