Chapter 7: Rain of Sorrows
Misery cannot be stopped; it will always trail behind you until you burst into tears. After that, the cloud of misery showers melancholy until you recover, returning back to its original state.
-Lelouch vi Britannia
Part 13: The Day the Sun was Gone
Lelouch's Dream
"Mother," a young boy's cry echoed.
"My son, goodbye," the woman said. It was Lady Marianne, Lelouch's mother.
"Don't leave me, we have to talk," the boy yelled off the top of his lungs.
Lady Marianne's figure receded into the distance until not even a speck of her remained.
"I have many questions I never had the chance to ask," the boy said as he grasped the air in futility.
The scene shifted into a temple and four masked persons began to chant in unison:
Doomed from the start when Thor rises,
Sealed the fate of one great nation,
Dividing into parts of many races,
Yet living under one sun,
And under one moon,
In perfect harmony.
One of the masked individuals pointed at the young Lelouch and said, "Young one, your fate sealed to remain here for all eternity!"
Lelouch woke up startled from the disturbing images from his dream. It wasn't a nightmare but the general atmosphere was uncomfortable to digest. His hair was uneven, unlike his usual appearance; his eyes were darkened, an effect from his dilated pupils. Lelouch did not show any sign of fear as it wasn't entirely overwhelming but the stuffy feeling and butterfly stomach was evidently present. Lelouch turned his face towards an analog clock on the wall; it read half past seven.
"Good, I woke up because it was time to get up," he thought internally, "But why is it so dark for a late spring morning?" Lelouch wondered why his room wreaked of wintry darkness, the type of moody atmosphere that would render one to succumb to depression. He crept silently to his window and lifted the blinds to look at the skies: they were dark like on a cold winter day, grey sombre and dry like the colour of newsprint.
"Lelouch…no…Lelouch don't leave me," a soft voice reverberated about. It was C.C.; she spoke in her sleep.
"She still dreams?" Lelouch inquired, "I never would have guessed she still have dreams."
C.C. woke up as well and scrambled to touch her plush-toy, the collectible Pizza Hut accessory. She looked like she was in fear.
"Having troubles with your dream?" Lelouch faced her with a question.
She nodded silently with a gloomy face.
"I had an uncomfortable dream as well, but it wasn't scary. It felt quite ominous," Lelouch told her.
"How was it like?" C.C. wondered curiously.
"A strong scent of some intoxicating aroma punctured my nose as cloudy mist filled the room which seemed like some sort of incense burned in ancient monastery. It felt like being in the Oracle at four in the morning."
"I think you had a premonition."
"I think so too, and you?"
"I had a nightmare."
"I am surprised you can still dream, C.C."
"To be honest, I haven't dreamt in a long time. I cannot remember the time my dreams ceased to exist. It was like my life was too repetitive to even repeat what I have seen."
"Then why did you dream today? Why was it a nightmare?" Lelouch inquired with tremendous curiosity.
"I think it was because of yesterday; I was almost kidnapped. Have you not saved me; I would be lost and hopelessly lonely," the mysterious girl hugged her Chizu-kun doll tightly.
"So you dreamt because you haven't been kidnapped before," Lelouch stated while laying back and staring at his bedroom ceiling.
"I guess what you said is true, although my conviction was practically a kidnap," she said with a faint laugh.
"Then you dreamt in response to a scenario where I left you."
"I was afraid, terrified that I would lose you!"
"Do not worry; I am here to protect you. I will always be by your side," Lelouch said with a caring voice.
"I am glad I met you," C.C. said. Her heart was reimbursed with the sentiment of consolation.
Lelouch returned with a question, "What do you think Doomed from the start when Thor rises even mean?"
"Well, Thor was the…" C.C. was rudely interrupted.
"The Norse god of thunder, I know. But what does it mean in that context?"
"Isn't Jupiter the second planet beyond Earth and both Thor and Jupiter were gods of thunder?"
"Yes."
"When the planet Thor is seen in the skies over Earth, it will be doom for…"
"Sealed the fate of one great nation, dividing into parts of many races, yet living under one sun and under one moon, in perfect harmony," Lelouch continued.
"One great nation, is that Britannia?" C.C. wondered.
"Britannia is a nation of many vassal states, populated with a diverse combination of ethnicities," Lelouch said.
"That makes perfect sense!" C.C. exclaimed with widened eyes.
"That Britannia will fall and break into many independent nations and everybody will live in prosperity," Lelouch capped that interpretation, "I better write this down."
C.C. looked at Lelouch with a warm smile and forgot everything about her stupid nightmare. She thought to herself, "I think Lelouch is destined to be the one who will bring happiness to everybody. He is truly amazing to even make me happy."
"Lelouch," she began.
"What is it?" he returned.
"Thank you," she said.
"Thank you? What did I do?" Lelouch replied.
"For everything, you are the first person in five hundred years to have cared about me," she said with a tender voice.
"That reminds me, how was your life like in the past? It must have been harsh considering you were some peasant girl," Lelouch asked.
"Do you really want to know?"
"It doesn't hurt."
"I can show you," she replied.
C.C. tapped Lelouch on the forehead and closed her eyes. He closed his eyes as well.
Lelouch found himself trapped in a curvature in time. It was both confusing and daunting, like meeting something of Brobdingnagian proportions. He was transported to another place and another time, a time where roads were scarce and the number of people on them was zero.
"Where am I," Lelouch questioned.
Nobody was there to answer. Lelouch could not do much but walk. He walked along the path until he could see a small wooden cottage at a distance. There he stood and stared into the open countryside as a strong breeze brushed across his face. He discovered a man knocking on the cottage door. Minutes later, another man responded by opening the door. Lelouch could not listen as he was too far away. He walked one step closer and picked up an acute noise of shouting and crying. To this sudden racket, he ran down the dirt path until he reached the cottage. Lelouch found the man who knocked at the door in the cottage. He carried a sword and thrust it up the other man's heart. The killer then yelled in some archaic Briton dialect that Lelouch couldn't understand. He left his victim by taking the wife and her child, a little girl with brown locks and a hopelessly miserable face. Lelouch gaped at the atrocity as the girl and her mother bawled at the father's death.
"This is unfair! C.C. answer me, I will save you!" Lelouch said, trying to grab C.C. It was a futile attempt as his grasp passed right through, like an incorporeal spirit. "No! I will not let this cruelty to happen!" Lelouch yelled in anxiety. He was then transported to another place but it was rather abstract. C.C. was lying comfortably on a sofa that resembled those in a psychologist's office.
"What you have witnessed was my last day at home," C.C. said, "I still vividly recall that horrible experience of losing a father.
"You were…," Lelouch could not put it in words.
"I was turned into a slave and my mother as well. My father could not pay the rent to the lord's manor and his men tracked us down by the countryside. The skies were cold I believe as the robins' cries cannot be heard. I was dragged to a dungeon and brutally punished for being a traitor the following day."
"I am sorry," Lelouch said in grief as he looked down at the ground with his hair shadowing before his eyes.
Before he had the chance to look at her again, he found himself on a cobblestone floor. The room he was in was dark, silent and eerie. He noticed a hairline of light beyond what was the door. As he approached the door, he couldn't open it conventionally, so he just passed through. He looked puzzled at his immaterial body as it felt normal to him. Lelouch heard the sound of music and laughter coming from his right. He walked down the corridor, brightly lit with flame torches until a bend. There exists a door with a decorated lion's head as its centrepiece. He passed through those doors and found himself attending an evening banquet.
"This must be the lord's feast," Lelouch commented.
"Correct," C.C.'s voice could be heard but her presence was without a trace.
Lelouch walked to the centre of the well lit room and looked at all the delicious food in the banquet hall tables: roast boar, pheasant and capon. He then noticed a young girl serving wine to a nobleman. Immediately, he recognized it was C.C. from when she was a young slave girl.
"C.C.!" Lelouch yelled.
She dropped the jug of wine on the floor and scrambled to clean it up. The nobleman said something in the old dialect. It sounded like, "Get this insolent girl out of here, she is nothing but disruption!" The entire banquet hall turned their attention to the slave girl as there was a moment of silence. Moments later everybody returned to their conversation leaving the poor slave girl alone.
Lelouch couldn't bear to see her punished for an accident and followed her as she was dragged by two maids. He passed through the locked doors and found himself in a kitchen. There, C.C. was being spanked by the two women with a wooden branch. Lelouch cried in response to her pain, "Stop!" but it was utterly useless. "Stop," he cried again "Stop, please stop."
Lelouch was transported once more to another setting. This time, it was on another dirt path. He found C.C. crawling on the ground with mud on her blouse. She cried tears of pain and struggled to move. She looked miserable, showing melancholy eyes as she lost all hope and everybody dear to her. Lelouch went and tried to support her but a voice called, "You can't interfere with this frame of space and time. They are my memories and you cannot change any of it."
Lelouch cried out in anguish, "Enough C.C., I understand! I do not wish to witness all of your past. I know all the sorrow you have been through, all the horrific trauma of being exploited! Please take me back, away from this nightmare!" Lelouch was then transported again, to the abstract void, where C.C. stood before him in her usual attire. She grabbed his arm and described what had happened, "I ran away from the manor after my mother was raped and then beaten to death. Such horrors were too painful to bear and it wounded me deeply. My legs became too weak, frail from malnutrition by the time I got to my old home and my father's corpse laid there, lifeless and foul smelling. So then I crawled to a nearby monastery where the new king built away from the manor. There, I was accepted by a nun who took me in and bathed me in holy water. For once, she gave me something that I lost.
Tears flowed out of Lelouch's eyes as he listened to her agonizing biography. "I am glad you met someone you could count on," he said.
"You are wrong," C.C. said.
"What?"
"The nun had something called a Code. She was just like me today, a person who lived for too long on this world but cannot perish; a life past overdue because of Code. She gave me a Geass and I accepted the contract without knowing what it was."
"So you were like me. What was your Geass power?" Lelouch responded instantaneously.
"Yes, I was just like you. It was like fate, I needed more love in my life, so the Geass that developed within me was to love. Sooner or later, every person in town loved me until I could not differentiate the between what was real and virtual. But it was too late, my ability was rampant and it was time for me to pay my contract."
"So what did you do?"
"The nun never cared about me. She fooled me into accepting Geass and that would do one thing to her if I survived."
"What was that?"
"To kill her. Every carrier of a Code lives forever, so their final wish is to die."
"Then what?"
"Then I was found guilty for killing the local nun, ultimately trialed as a witch but survived, so they burnt me on a stake."
Lelouch couldn't believe this happened to her but it reminded him of the atrocities committed to women after the plague.
"But you received the Code right?"
"Yes, that is why my successive executions proved ineffective."
Lelouch could not imagine how much pain she had to endure in every execution, it literally blew his mind.
"My hair turned green after I used my Geass and that induced more suspicion," she added, "They believed I was a spell caster who caused much of the plague that swept through Europe."
"I am gravely sorry to hear that," Lelouch said.
He was transported back to his room, where C.C. was safe from a life beleaguered by superstitious torture. Lelouch wept tears of sorrow and cried, "I am sorry C.C., and I pity you for living a life in misery."
"Don't feel sorry for me, Lelouch, you gave me a warm place to stay. I thank you for taking care of me," she said with a warm smile as she stood beside him and embraced him, "Lelouch, you were the first to official accept me and grant me this paradise."
"I will promise you something," Lelouch began, "I will promise you that one day, I will divide Holy Britannia and I will crush this cruel empire and create a new world. I will create a new world where everybody will live in paradise. I will end exploitation, hunger and poverty. I will do this for the world!"
C.C. embraced him tightly and said in a calming voice, "I know you will and I believe you are the one. I believe one day, you will shed the light into this world of shadow, forever illuminating the words of virtue that every innocent voice longed for."
The moment was like a moment lost in time. They couldn't leave each other, fearing that if they ever do, insecurity would be a risk. The sombre day shone a ray of sunlight which pierced through dark clouds and murky waters, shedding a beam of hope onto the world, for a brighter future and a gentler tomorrow. C.C. finally learned Lelouch had a sensitive side. He was more than a calculating personality, which was only a façade to intimidate and conquer his nemeses. He was a holy soul who opposed Britannian doctrines; the Britannian doctrine that encourages selfish gain and prejudice. She finally learned that he was a man of virtue and compassion.
Lelouch thought to himself: C.C., I will forever protect you. In my arms, you will always be safe; away from those who take advantage of the weak. You have shown me your years of suffering and I will do what I can to better your life. I want to accept you, love you as my own, never leaving your side, never leaving your side.
