Haha. 'Somebody' (User profile forgotten. Sorry.) has a point...again. Last chapter wasn't as great probably because C.C is becoming more happy and I'm so used to making characters feel sarcastic or unhappy. I will try my best to make C.c. still an interesting character, and I will try my best to wrap up the plot. Many hate the idea of my Suzaku x C.C. blend, but I love it. In fact as I said in the last chapter I was distracted by my desires to make other stories. One of those was a Suzaku x C.C. story. It's incest so unless your not open minded to pairings as such I suggest you don't read it. I have gotten reviews of how good the chapter was and some of how I didn't do so great. It was one of my downfalls sadly and I hope to make this chapter better.

Also some people might be happy to find out what happened to poor...oh..Just wait and see o_~ (wink)

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I was approaching the downfall in my life. It had not been so eerie like other occasions such as brutally enduring maltreatment. It was close though and was definently in my top ten of things that I was afraid of. Prom. The word made hell break loose into such a formal dance filled with lame hip-hop music and others from the 70's, tie occasions, and dresses that made even the sluttiest people look like a royal princess. Excluding their cigarettes hanging from her mouth.

Could I look like a princess? All ravishing with flowing silk hair and a dress of pure elegance? I was comely, but not of the royal figure type. Shirley could more fit the role. Maybe Lelouch could go with her. I shudder at the thought. What was I thinking? For an elongate amount of time I had dwelled on the thought of them being the perfect Shoujo couple. Now that he was in my grasp, I still awkwardly found the ideal of them together more realistic than what we had.

Would I go if he asked me? Probably.

It has been more than a week since I had found my mother in the clutches of another. How terrible. My dotting angelic mother, only to be held in some sort of hostage manner by a cruel woman. My mother.....It was too morbid to think about.

It has been five days since me and Lelouch took our relationship to an intimate level. We would osculate ourselves in an odd manner. It wasn't like other couples, we would only do it when bored or fatigued unlike couples who did it an overwhelming situations or just for the thrill of the electric touch. Depletion, as it would seem, was the key success in our relationship to achieve intimacy.

It has been four days since Suzaku had also laid his lips on mine. Now that I overlook the kiss I notice odd things and find myself comparing both kisses from his and Lelouch. Lelouch tasted like sweet blueberries, which I enjoyed heavenly. Suzaku tasted like the creamy and desirable chocolate. Lelouch was tender in his kisses while Suzaku was hungry and rough. I was confused all the same why he had kissed me, but pushed that aside and found myself feeling like a criminal. That was infidelity wasn't it?

Would Suzaku ask me to the prom?

I shook my head in dismay. Bad thoughts.

Kallen noticing my distress raised an eyebrow. Shirley and Milly weren't observive enough to notice.

Why was I sitting with such a group? I had not at all minded the company of Kallen and Milly wasn't exactly down my throat either, but Shirley.....

So, here we sit in a circle folding papers and cutting hearts in them for Valentines day. Why would I mind to do such an activity? One simply gooey oozy cheezy word that mad your mouth water. Pizza. I took a bite and licked the cheese that was stained in blood red tomato sauce.

"So...." Kallen says. "Who are you going to the dance with Milly?"

Milly smiled and shook her head. "I don't...know. Rivalz asked me, but...."

"You should go with him." Shirley says abruptly. "We would be a perfect double date. Me and Lelouch you and Rivalz...."

Kallen glares. "Don't try to take taken men, you whore."

No one has yet seen the evil side of Kallen that I had once sensed. Behind a frail and sickly girl was a fighter with an ill-temper. Now everyone silences and stares at her except me. My savior. I can see our freindship will work out perfectly.

"Well...um...he's not taken...." Shirley says while glancing back at me and Kallen. "So...." She acts innocent just like the anti-christ.

"Well you're terribly wrong there, love." I feel the words turn to fire on my tounge. I was going to mince this girl into a perfect cannibalistic smoothie. "As a matter of fact me and Lelouch have just recently made love and now I'm bearing his child." I lie.

Kallen drops her scissors and Shirley falls backwards. Milly however, is ecstatic....Freak.

"How wonderful!" Milly exclaims. "Lelouch and C.c. juniors!" I hate it when she calls me C.c.

"No!" Shirley jumps up and we all turn towards her as she turns crimson. "I'm tired of your lying! My Lelouch would never....never.."

"Did you expect him, love, to be a virgin forever?"

"Shut up, Cecaniah! He wouldn't lose such a precious thing to a...a..bossy cocotte like you!" She then storms off and leaves us behind staring. Now, let me tell you. A cocotte is another word for prostitute, someone who engages in sexual activity for money. As laughable as the situation seemed to me, I also felt ever so lightly in a petulant mood. Not only did she call me an 'easy lay', but she also made it sound like it was such a crime to be with Lelouch.

"So..." Milly says. "When's the baby due?" Idiot.

------

I was scuttling on a wire pole in an area filled with mocking gray buildings and constant eyes vigiling me. Why was I running? My mind drew a blank on that question, but I felt a great amount of urgency swelling in me. I kept on running on the wire pole, not falling off the thin wires. My heart sped like playing drums and my eyes constantly scanned the area for danger. But....what was dangerous? Something moist was dripping on the outer layer of my skin, and until now I didn't notice. For a fleeting second I looked down and saw red. Blood. Why was there this velvet substance on my hands? Then I realized. I was the dangerous one.

Awakened by my own shear fear I began to stumble around my room. I had been a murderer. Bricks fell into my chest and absurdity filled the cracks of my own nightmare. I hadn't killed someone. Just to make sure I stared down at my hands and saw no blood. I then proceeded to stumble around my room, until I noticed this wasn't my room. It was Lelouch's and he was sleeping on the floor.

A moment of security blanketed me on knowing that I was not alone. They say that isolation is best for a persons soul in order to remain pure, but I know better. Isolation is the best way to go mad.

I flicker images in my memory of me killing someone or witnessing it. Since being with the Black Knights I had seen countless Brittanian scum be shot before my golden orbs. I normally held my front of not caring for their ruthless deaths, but now felt the guilt parade on me.

Before knowing it I grab a nearby object and stab it into my leg. Blood exudes out and luckily doesn't stain the carpet, but stains my white silk dress. I don't notice what the object is, but continue shoving the object into my flesh. For every cut in my skin is a way to repent myself for every death I could have prevented or every death I had caused. After my twelfth cut I felt too weak and collapsed onto the bed still dripping with blood. I was a monster too willing to become something I could not. I killed like a ruthless butcher and felt nothing, but a mere feather brush my skin. It did not waver me, break me, or lay any scars on me....until now.

-------

Me and Lelouch were sitting cross legged from each other at lunch as I dine on Pizza Hut pizza and Lelouch on a Caesar salad. The room is crowded with females who our talking heavily with sensation about the prom. A feeling of jealousy consumes, but is replaced by the hunger for cheese pizza.

"Your eating a salad." I point out.

Lelouch raises an eyebrow. "Are you trying to tell me you're not blind?" Hardy har har. Very funny Mr. Hero of the Elevens.

"No," I jest as I get a big chug of Grape Soda. "I'm trying to tell you to eat something unhealthy. You need some meat on those ribs. Their practically popping out of your skin."

"Caesar Dressing is unhealthy."

I snort.

Two pink rosey arms then wrap around Lelouch and hug him from behind. It doesn't take long to notice who the ebracer is since you can see a strand of orange bright colored hair fly limply in the air. Shirley. Disgust rises in me and a new type of jealousy takes form. My nemesis. As comical as it may sound I considered Shirley at length with me in the....battle, should I call it, in love.

"Hey, Lulu!" Smiles. Smiles. Happy smiles! How they irk me. I feel the table restrain me from clawing Shirleys perfect princess hair out of her scalp and of course my ever reducing sanity. "I didn't know you ate lunch with Cecaniah!" She adds a little 'Hunh' to the end and instead of making her statment sound curious, it sounds like she's an elitist.

"Well, yes." Lelouch seems unfazed.

"I force him here." I interrupt. "Believe it or not I tie him down with a dog collar and whip him until he promises to eat lunch with me."

Shirley gives me this look. One that says 'I believe you would do something like that you man-stealing tramp.' Lelouch seems inconspicuous to Shirley's hateful looks. Not that it annoys me that he's clueless, but I wish he would actually catch on that she loathes me.

"Actually." Lelouch corrects. "I sit here on my own will. Cecaniah does not repeadily whip me, although alot of men would like to have been by her." I nearly choke on my pizza and Shirley's mouth drops. Lelouch smirks.

"Um....that's nice...." Shirley looks around.

"It's mens locker room talk."

"No wonder." I mutter.

I feel something warm touch my skin and notice light brown olive hands wrap around me. My face does not flush the usual shade of any females, but instead turns white and pale. Suzaku. Lelouch do you notice my indifferent act? Do I look guilty as sin? I glance over at you quickly, but do not see rage or the emotions of being lied too. At least....not at me. At Suzaku.

"Hello." I say quickly.

He plops down in a seat next to me. Shirley has already scurried off seeing how a mess this would become.

"Hello!" He says giddily.

Lelouch fumes. I thought for a second it was the emotion of jealousy. It couldn't be. "You guys seem close." Or maybe it is. An odd satisfaction swells in me. Was I glad Lelouch was jaundiced? Certainly, but I had no explanation of why I felt such euphoric emotion fill me. It was beyond ridiculous why Lelouch felt the need to lay his claims over me. Then why did I feel this way?

"I guess." I mutter sighing. Lelouch still has his eyes glued to Suzaku.

"Don't you normally sit with Kallen?"

"This table is more interesting." Suzaku replies hastily to Lelouch's absurd comment.

"Is it the table that's interesting you Suzaku or the people?"

"The people."

"Oh," Lelouch rolls his eyes. "I see."

"Do you?"

Remarks like this are flung across the table until Suzaku says: "You know she and I kissed?"

My eyes buldge. Lelouch does the same. Please don't let this happen. Please....."What?"

"We kissed. In the hallway. During school."

Silence. Catalepsy had overtook me and not even the pulsing of my veins was to be felt. My thoughts circled around the intolerance and newly developed annoyance of that of Suzaku Kururugi and those of the betrayal my Lelouch was to be feeling now. Would he despise me now that he had learned the horrid truth of my infidelity was unknown to me. I normally appreciated the unknown, but now I had a bloodthirsty crave for answers.

Emotions were always best veiled, but some times drove you mad. I would sickeningly know the feeling of pure madness and wished not to repeat the quest of insanity. Lelouch would make me do that.

Lelouch looked at me. A haunting look that chilled my spine til it stiffened and I flinched. "Is this....true?"

"He kissed me." I stated. More like whispered.

He then sat up, grabbed my arm, and pulled me of that into the direction of the Student Council headquarters. Stares, some of concern, some of curiosity, punctured into me and Lelouch. The last face I saw of Suzaku's was regret and maybe a hint of cockiness.

He sat me down in the chair and began to pace back and forth. This situation was completely extemporaneous. I had not expected a Lelouch like this and me in a position of this kind. Inhale. Exhale.

"I knew it." He had finally said. I was choler now.

"You expected I would cheat on you?" I nearly yelled. He had not trusted me. The thought of it made disgust rise in me. "I did not cheat on you by the least. He was the one..."

"I know, I know that! Don't you see it, Cecaniah? Don't you?"

"See what? Lelouch, you're going berserk...."

"No, no, no. Just as I predicted. Oh, that bastard knew it." Lelouch stopped and stared at me. "Don't you know who the real Suzaku is?"

He definitely was going insane, yet it somehow lightened my mood. In a funny way, his crazy antics had made my horror and guilt ease away. "No. Not really."

"He's a pawn of the Brittanians." When he spoke hatred filled his lungs with the discreet intoxicating sound of pawn. Suzaku? A Brittanian follower? That was unexpected. I can see why Lelouch was so uppity and mixed. He had put reliance in his best friends who was fighting for Brittania which nation Lelouch had hated. Was my trust also crushed by the thought of Suzaku being a traitor? I didn't think so. First off, my trust in him was limited to that of a grain of sand.

"How does that tie in with me?"

"Don't you see? He knows I'm related somehow to the Black Knights. He's using you as black mail."

"Suzaku wouldn't do that. He's to much of a goody good..."

"Good enough to kiss you?"

That made me go quiet. My fingertips throbbed with abormality. The sudden catch of me being blackmail was understandingly articulate. It was also malevolent. In a way I could imagine myself using the same harmful method. In a way I could also not understand how Suzaku would do the same. Was I angry? Not as much as I should be, but enough to fall into a state of catalepsy for a moments time.

----

The night of prom had arrived and we had Black Knight duties to attend to. I was content just being with Lelouch, but I drifted onto reveries of us dancing classical at this 'prom'. Not that I enjoyed dancing. With him however it would be more...joyful, euphoric, worth the while. I did not know whether or not Lelouch would have taken me if Black Knight duties had not got in the way and for this, my mind rotted onto only that thought and it held my concentration. Then when in the midst of my interrogation with myself and logical facts of prom my mind drifted to Suzaku. The traitor.

I examined a document and sighed while casting it aside. We were looking at reports made by members of our organization and were determining whether or not the reports held any significance. Not like it mattered. To me that is.

"Lelouch," I sough. "I'm going to..."

"Hold on." He urgently swept over document number twelve and glanced at it, then read slowly through. I saw sweat beads form on his pale skin and turn slightly flustered with irritation. I have no idea what his sudden interest in a single document was, but soon enough i would surely find out. Then he looks at me and without saying anything nods towards his mask and i throw it to him.

"What's wrong?"

"Were going to the prom."

"As cosplayers?" I ask pointing at the mask he was putting on his face.

"No. A report in column twelve states that...."

"Hopefully not a cosplay convention."

He glares. "Will you get serious?" Ouch. That stung. At the same time I was mildly amused. This boy was acting so tough, and yet he knew I could overpower him so easily.

"I'm perfectly serious. Cosplay Conventions are such brutal things. Yaoi fangirls, Screaming Otaku...."

"No! Cecaniah! Activity is show on Brittanian forces! Their heading for the prom!"

I clenched my fists. This was going to be a long night.

------

We arrived to the prom. There was no glittering smiles, confetti, or memorable happiness. There was however memorable grief. I had once imagined when I was a little girl, a party with woman dancing with their princes like in a ball. There would be soft, elaborate music, delectable food, and smiles. However this party was anything but,

The woman and princes were corpses laying limply on the ground as blood spewed out of them, the music was not hear and instead was replaced by morbid screaming, the food was no entirely edible, and smiles, for this occasion, could never be. Deaths. So many deaths all in one place. At least more than twenty cadavers lie before me with their skin pale and their pupils slowly devouring their irises. It was so hard to look at, but there I was. Staring like a fool caught in a traumatic experience. And that's just what this was. A traumatic experience wishing to seep it's way into my already doleful life.

Clinging to life. Was it such a meaningful thing? Every human strives for it and held onto it like a game of tug a war. Struggling so the other side, death, did not pull you into the afterlife. I used to let the death drag me while I barely even held on. I let it nearly happen to bring me into the world of my long lost dreams. Nowhere. Death.

I aimlessly hold back tears. This was so sad. So very fucking sad.

Lelouch was no better than I, but concealed it with twice as much power.

Questions were obviously risen from his throat, but were held back by strangled cries. I wish to reach out to him and comfort him, but sadly I myself need comfort. I search around the room. A few people I knew, but none of the student council. Then I spot something lurid. Orange.

"Shirley!"

An mere seconds Lelouch was running across the room and unbuckling his mask. "Shirley!" My dread fell upon me and buried itself inside a pit of remorse. It only got deeper with the more witnesses to these deaths. And to think it was with someone I knew. She laid languidly across the floor, her maroon blood soaking her hair. Shirley had been shot int the neck and was near death.

Lelouch knelt over her holding the poor Shirley to his chest. I was not surprised or even the least bit green-eyed by this act. It was only natural for him to care. Instead I was holding deep self loathing towards myself. I had wished upon her death. Why had I been so careless and threw hateful slanders towards her....when all she wanted was love from the person she most cared for. Lelouch.

"Don't die, dammit!" He had screamed. "Don't die!"

"L...Lelouch....." She had sobbed. She was grinning weakly and tugged on his dark silken hair while letting tears fall from her cheek. "I'm s...s..so happy. that you're...h...here...in my...final...hour..."

Lelouch struggled to compose his face. "No. Don't do this....Don't you dare quit!" I could only stare as the grim reaper approached on Shirley and yelling erupted from Lelouch. He knew she would die, yet he continued to make her believe and him as well believe she would survive.

Shirley lifted her arms lightly and touched and caressed Lelouch's cheek. "I...in truth I've...always...loved..." Then her head dropped and a smile that would end her life. "...you." Breathing had stopped. Then with a shrug of his shoulders and a shaking of his head Lelouch bellowed.

"SHIRLEY! SHIRLEY!!!" I strained to cover my ears. Her name tortured me and perhaps it was for the best. "SHIRLEY!!" Perhaps I deserved to let my heart ache on the thought of someone's blood covering my hands. "SHIRLEY!" Though I had not stabbed a blade into her or shot my gun into her flesh. "SHIRLEY!!!!!!!" In a way I was responsible.

Before noticing it hands had covered my mouth and I had thought it drearily as death. I let it nearly casually point a knife at my throat and hold the shining edge to the outer layer of my skin. I let it, without fighting it off, drag me to where I would never want to go back to. Somewhere I deserved to be.

Marianna's clutches.