a/n: A plot bunny that was born while watching Death Note.
dedication: to Tiana the Sadistic, my dark muse.
disclaimer: I own nothing.
summary: An eternity in Hell was a small price to pay, especially if everyone was there. – Lelouch/Euphemia.
witch
Lelouch was expecting the raging fires and boiling magma and suffocating sulfur.
After all he did, after everyone he'd killed, after the destruction he'd wrecked on the world, Lelouch knew the Hell was his rightful punishment.
"Lelouch?" He turned sharply at the sound of a familiar voice. He had spent the last – minute? hour? Time was fluid here – watching the flames dance. He didn't expect to be recognized.
Much less by a girl all in pink.
"Euphemia?" Lelouch couldn't help the incredulity in his voice, "You're here?" The princess in question nodded and smiled, a smile so bright that even the hellfire dimmed for a second.
"Oh, Lelouch, I'd been waiting for you!" Euphy smiled, taking his hand and tugging him along as she walked briskly in a new direction, "Wait till they see you – everyone's been waiting for you, brother!"
"Everyone?" Lelouch's genius mind was struggling to keep up, "What do you mean, everyone – aren't we in Hell?"
"Of course, dummy!" Euphy giggled, before leading him near a group of people – people that looked vaguely familiar.
Lelouch had a moment to gape at his dead family before they attacked with hugs and kisses and endless questions.
"But – but I died, and I'm in Hell," Lelouch said breathlessly, his lungs getting crushed, "Why – why would all of you be in Hell?"
"Why does anyone get sent to Hell, Lulu?" Marianne smiled at him like he was a little child who cutely asked the most obvious of questions. Lelouch gaped at his mother before looking past her to see the Emperor, looking strangely like he belonged on the bloodstained floors with the fire in the background.
"But –" Lelouch could feel his brain breaking, "I thought Hell was the eternal purgatory!"
"Oh, it is," Euphy, said, biting her lip, "The Original will probably be by soon enough, to give you your punishment."
Lelouch let her lead him to all their family and friends, his mind still overwhelmed by the fact that Hell seemed a much kinder place than he thought it would be.
It turned out that Lelouch's sentence was, fittingly, being tied to a burning cross.
It took him ten years to stop screaming.
"So," Euphy smiled, "I've told you all that's happened – you've heard the life stories of practically everyone here – and now it's your turn."
"Is this how you pass the time between deaths?" Lelouch rasped, his throat still recovering from the years of screaming, "You all exchange stories while you wait for your kin to die?"
"Well, of course," Euphy smiled, "What else is there to do?" She curled up at Lelouch's feet, careful not to touch the flames that ringed her brother, "Well, you could always apply for reconsideration…"
"Reconsideration?" Lelouch perked up. The fire was nothing more than an inconvenience right now but getting out would be nice.
"Yeah," Euphy nodded, "You apply to the Original to revise your sentence, or to put in a request for reincarnation."
"Is that why you're not being punished?" Lelouch asked, noting that in all the years he'd been there, he'd never seen an inkling that Euphy was suffering.
"I told the Original that I'd been under the Geass when I killed all those people," Euphy said, her eyes unusually sharp. Lelouch looked away. "I didn't get a sentence, but you can't leave Hell unless you apply for reincarnation."
Lelouch was seriously considering reincarnation until the Emperor told him that reincarnation started at the bottom of the food chain.
Lelouch had no desire to become a cockroach.
"Can we play the Word Game?" Euphy asked him, puppydog eyes at full force.
"Fine, just one more time," Lelouch huffed, shuffling to get into a more comfortable position.
They were on their 4829012th game when Suzaku finally showed up.
"I'm tired of waiting for Nunnally," Euphy moaned, her head resting on Suzaku's shoulder. Lelouch suppressed the twinge of jealousy that rose up, as he did for all the years that passed.
"Well, she was in perfect health when I left her," Suzaku said, absentmindedly petting the small black cat and ignoring the scratches that decorated his face and arms, "My guess is that it will still be a few years."
Euphy sighed and made her puppydog eyes at Suzaku, who agreed to play the Word Game. Lelouch simply closed his eyes and wondered if his true punishment was being unable to shut his ears.
The Original was the main reason Lelouch hadn't put in a request for reconsideration.
Three feet tall with pale skin and black, waist-length hair, the Original took the shape of a little girl with an innocent smile.
A little girl with a bloody cleaver.
It was frankly the most terrifying thing Lelouch had ever seen.
"He left," Euphy said numbly, stared at the empty spot at Lelouch's feet as if it would somehow mutate into a Suzaku-shaped being. Even Zero, the black cat that was Suzaku's eternal torment, was gone.
Lelouch ignored the side of him that said 'finally' and tried to reassure her, "Suzaku didn't belong in hell, Euphy. You knew that. He was too good."
"I – I know," Euphy sank to her knees, "But I didn't expect him to be…gone."
Lelouch let his disappointment in Suzaku and the pain of losing his best friend, again, show on his face, projecting an empathetic smile that eased Euphy's heartbroken look.
On the floor, a few meters away, Cornelia gave Lelouch a sad smile as gunshots ripped apart her body.
The Original had a sick sense of humor, Lelouch learned that very quickly.
He was punished like the witch hunts of old. Cornelia was shot, over and over, to repay every bullet she ever fired. Schneizel was stuck in a chess game that he always lost. Clovis, strangely, was glued to a mirror as his hair disintegrated before his very eyes. Suzaku, for the brief time he'd been there, was tormented by the very things he tried to protect.
But the one punishment that made Lelouch laugh – actually laugh, like he'd never done when he'd been alive – was his parents'. Marianne and Charles were put to work as the Original's assistants, taking care of the various paperwork she received.
Watching the Emperor and Empress of Britannia working as slaves never failed to amuse him.
"Come on, Lelouch," Euphy whined, "Why won't you apply for reconsideration? You don't deserve more torment!"
Lelouch looked above Euphy's head and muttered, "I am not asking a demonic little girl with a very sharp knife to untie me from this cross."
He sometimes wondered if this was Euphy's punishment. Spending an eternity in Hell as she watched her family and friends get tortured.
It seemed like the sort of underhanded thing that the Original would do.
"Nunnally's sure taking her time, isn't she?" Euphy groaned, falling back against the cross, long past caring if her hair caught on fire, "It's been, what, a century? How long is she going to live?"
Lelouch, about to reply that she should reincarnate and kill Nunnally herself, stopped cold when he saw Marianne's sad eyes and Cornelia's tears. Even Clovis managed a look of pity through his mirror.
Wondering what they were so heartbroken about, Lelouch considered their conversation. What problem did they have if Nunnally lived for a hundred years? Sure, even he considered Euphy's endless waiting bothersome, but Euphy simply wanted her youngest sister to join them all in Hell –
Oh. Oh.
The Original did end up reconsidering and Lelouch was released from his punishment only to hold Euphy's shaking frame as she cried. He looked up into the Original's face and saw only malice and viciousness – not even a hint of humanity.
It was then that Lelouch realized that what he mistook as kindness was actually suffering – an eternity of it.
a/n: I wrote about half of this before realizing that Nunnally was obviously never going to Hell.