A/N: Considering how long it's been since the last update, I'm not going to say too much. I finished this chapter around the time I posted chapter 3, but things from my day to day life got a little crazy, as they often do, and well...next thing you know almost a year has gone by. So today I have edited through this chapter to make sure everything is in working order. It may need an additional edit later, but at present I feel it's good enough to post so you guys can have a little burst of humor today. This chapter is pretty short, and I'm not sure when the next one will be posted since I haven't started it yet, but...let's just say this chapter contains hints toward some surprises I have in store later. Let's see if you guys can spot them. Thank you all for reading! God bless you guys!

Disclaimer: I don't feel like writing this today. You guys know the drill with these things. It's a Fanfiction. I'll write a proper disclaimer next chapter if I feel like it. Not today.

Warnings: This chapter is really short compared to past chapters in this story, but I'll make up for this next time. And C.C. is probably still a little out of character right now too, but we'll fix that down the road. Not today.

Chapter 4

The Elevator

C.C., clad only in a lacy black bra and matching underwear, paced the floor indignantly as she waited for Suzaku to answer the phone. She had already left one colorful voicemail for him to listen to, and for every subsequent call he missed, she merely mumbled, "Answer the phone, Kururugi. Don't think you can avoid me."

After roughly five calls, he finally answered.

Accusations rolled off her tongue like butter.

"You knew about this for over a week and you didn't tell me about it," she stated coldly, her amber eyes narrowing in irritation. "Is it a habit of yours to betray friends, Kururugi?"

An audible sigh filtered through the line, angering the green-haired critic all the more.

"In my defense," the traitor began, "Lelouch swore me to secrecy. He wanted to tell you about it himself."

C.C. could only grumble in response to the perfectly reasonable excuse. Internally, she gave herself a quick mental chiding to calm down and act like the twenty-seven year-old adult that she was.

"So, I take it you met Shirley?"

"Yeah, I met her," C.C. replied, still somewhat irritable. "She's...a perfectly pleasant person, so much so that I'm tempted to rethink stealing Lelouch away from her."

She could practically hear Suzaku smiling on the other end. "Wow! She must have really left an impression on you."

"Oh, she left an impression alright." With a huff of indignation she started pacing again. "All she talks about is her and Lelouch's future, and she's just so bright-eyed and cheerful and..." A sudden knocking on the door cut her off. Assuming it was the seamstress coming back with the dress, she yelled, "Come in!"

"C.C., just try to relax okay..."

"I just don't know if I can go through with any of this..." C.C. paused in her pacing when the door opened, revealing one Lelouch Vi Britannia staring at her with the baby blue maid of honor dress in his arms.

Suzaku started talking again, but the food critic lost all interest in the conversation as she became painfully aware of her state of undress.

"Um...hi," she mumbled shakily, her eyes darting about the room for her clothes. Lelouch watched her scramble with an expression that was anything but platonic.

After a moment, a devilish smirk lifted the corners of his mouth. "Want me to turn around or something, witch?"

"Yeah, that'd be..." her amber gaze finally found her jeans on the nearby couch. Giggling a bit nervously she stumbled backward to grab said jeans, dropping her phone in the process.

"Feeling alright, C.C.?"

"Fine," she answered, trying in vain to cover herself with the article of clothing. Distracted as she was, she didn't catch the seductive tone in Lelouch's voice.

Eventually, C.C. managed to wrap the denim around herself, but the fabric barely covered the bra and underwear. She made an attempt to feign nonchalance, but the blush spreading over her cheeks portrayed the embarrassment she felt all too clearly.

Lelouch took a quick glance at the abandoned cell-phone and made a mental note of Suzaku's voice ringing out from it before returning his attention to the green-haired witch.

"I've seen you a lot more naked than that, C.C."

C.C. gritted her teeth, not sure whether she should laugh or smack him. "Well, things are different now. Aren't they?"

The raven-haired prince suddenly realized how inappropriate the situation was.

With a small hint of shame he shifted his attention to the repaired dress in his hands. "You're right. Just came to...drop this off."

C.C. gave him a nod of acknowledgement, but her eyes remained fixed the object of her affections as he gently placed the dress on a nearby chair before walking back to the door. She half expected him to run out given the awkward air of the room, but after opening the door he stopped to look back at her. Their eyes locked, and for a brief instant the familiar tug of attraction pulsated between them.

And then, Lelouch said the most peculiar thing as he left.

"You look really good though, C.C."

The door finally closed, leaving the witch alone with her thoughts...

Or would have if not for one tiny detail...

"Hello? C.C.? Are you even listening to me at this point?"

Exhaling a breath, C.C. quickly retrieved the phone from the floor and brought it back to her ear. "Suzaku?"

"What happened?"

The witch could only smile. "She doesn't stand a chance."

Outside the dressing room, just a few paces away from the door to be precise, Lelouch Vi Britannia berated himself for the comment he let slip past his lips. How could he say something like that to C.C. when he was about to get married to someone else in less than five days? It wasn't just inappropriate, it was downright disrespectful to Shirley.

The sudden rush of attraction he'd felt seeing his best female friend so scantily clothed was also a severe problem.

He would need to get rid of those feelings before the wedding. Frankly he didn't realize they'd still been present within him. It had been years since he and C.C. had cut off their dating relationship. He shouldn't have felt anything at all.

On top of that, while the irritation at having felt any sort of attraction towards C.C. was on the forefront of his mind, a seemingly inconsequential detail about her body was bothering him.

"Didn't she used to have a scar?"

~Roughly an hour later~

C.C. felt as if the day was never going end.

After the debacle at the bridal shop, Shirley drove everyone back to Pendragon Ritz, allowing the food critic to check-in.

Unfortunately, not even five minutes after arriving at her suite, Shirley knocked on the door and told her they had to get to the bridal banquet. It was, no doubt, an orchestration of Milly Ashford's, and the bride to be made a point of announcing that they were already running late to this event. To add icing to the cake of misery, Lelouch would be occupied with a bachelor party elsewhere, which meant C.C. was virtually on her own with a girl she'd only just met a few hours prior.

The ride to the plaza hosting this immaculate party was painful to say the least. Shirley talked about Lelouch the entire trip. The orange-haired girl told story after story concerning their brief time together, and C.C. was honestly surprised by the sheer number of stories the young woman had to share. They'd only been together for two and a half months after all. Of course, worse than the stories was the ride itself due to Shirley's reckless, haphazard driving.

"Maybe it would be better to let these two get married," C.C. thought sardonically as the girl nearly ran over one of the valets. "The way Shirley drives, Lelouch will be a widower in no time at all. Frankly, I'm surprised she's survived this long."

Shirley, oblivious to the terror she'd inflicted on the valet stumbling toward her, opened her door and dropped the key into his open palm.

C.C. opened the door to the passenger side in a daze. "So where's the honeymoon going to be?"

"Lelouch and I haven't really decided on it yet," Shirley answered, walking around the front of the convertible to meet C.C. on the passenger side. "Someplace tropical maybe, although it's been so long since I've been to Japan. A part of me would like to go back to the Tokyo Settlement. You know, spend time in the place where we first met. I've looked into Lake Kawaguchi. Narita might be a nice spot too, though Lelouch might complain about the cold."

C.C. fell in step behind Shirley once she started moving to the elevators a few feet away. "Has he suggested any places?"

Giggling in an outright bubbly fashion that made the witch's skin crawl, Shirley rolled her eyes.

"You know Lelouch, C.C.," she began as the elevator doors opened. "He is the biggest micro-manager ever."

"Hmm, true," the green-haired woman admitted once the two of them stepped inside. The interior of the elevator was a nice maple-brown color embellished with decorative, gold molding in swirling flower patterns. C.C. felt slightly out of place in her stained jeans and wrinkled sweater...and they weren't even at the banquet yet.

"Seriously, he fought with Milly about everything," Shirley continued, her giggles a little less bubbly but no less bright. "From the cake to the decorations...it was a mess trying to play mediator between them." With another laugh she finally pressed the button for the floor they were going to. "Lelouch can pretty much compel anyone to obey him when he's really serious..."

"Everyone that is, except Milly," C.C. joked, smiling in spite of herself as the doors closed, leaving them alone in the elevator. "She's a force to be reckoned with when she wants to throw a party. Lelouch should have known better than to try fighting her on anything regarding the wedding plans."

"I know right? As brilliant as my Lulu is, he can be a complete idiot too."

C.C. cringed. "Lulu?"

"Oh, that's my nickname for him," Shirley stated as the elevator doors opened on the fifth floor. A gaggle of people rushed in, forcing the orange-haired girl to make her way to where C.C. was standing so they could continue their conversation. "Cute right? I used to call him that a lot freshman year."

The elevator doors closed again, went up one floor, then opened again. Two people stepped out and C.C. briefly mused that those two people could have just used the stairs if they were only going up one floor.

"He was a bit of a jerk back then."

C.C. tuned back into the conversation. "Definitely. Dark and brooding. Never smiled unless Nunnally was around."

Shirley crossed her arms over her chest as the elevator doors opened once more on the eighth floor. Three more people quickly rushed out.

"Which floor is our floor?" C.C. wondered impatiently.

"Even now it's difficult to get him to lighten up sometimes," Shirley stated wistfully, leaning back against the wall when the doors closed again. "He always has something on his mind."

"He does go off into his own little world quite a bit..."

"But that's what makes him alluring I think," the hopelessly in love girl droned, interrupting the witch before she could finish speaking. "And maybe that quality is why he likes you so much. You have a mysterious air about you too, C.C."

"I'm not liking where this conversation is going," the witch thought, agitation beginning to crawl through her skin. Once more the elevator stopped to let out the last two passengers on the eleventh floor. C.C. quickly noted how the button for the fifteenth floor was still lit up.

"Good. Just four more floors..."

"You know, when we first got together again," Shirley murmured, her voice suddenly soft as the doors closed for the final time. "I was really jealous of you."

C.C. blinked, confusion overtaking her features. That expression quickly changed into something resembling suspicion when Shirley walked toward the elevator's control panel. Without so much as a word of warning, she pressed her thumb against the red emergency button, halting the elevator in its tracks.

Nearly losing her balance, the food critic threw her hands out against the wall behind her as a means to catch herself.

"Okay, now I really don't like where this conversation is going."

Shirley let out a sigh, then slowly turned to face the green-haired witch she'd heard so much about.

"Every time he kissed me, I would think about how he once kissed you the same way."

With her nerves heightening, C.C. felt like the small room was spinning.

"Not to break your train of thought or anything, but do you ever get uncomfortable in confined spaces?"

Shirley didn't address the question, instead saying, "I used to wonder if he would ever love me the way he loves you."

"Maybe we should switch the topic to Lelouch's outrageous snoring," C.C. suggested in an attempt to add some humor to the increasingly uncomfortable situation she had found herself in. Bad enough she was having to spend any amount of time with this lovesick woman, but now she'd been caught in a vulnerable position with no real way to defend herself from the onslaught of words Shirley was spewing or the dizzy spell beginning to set in.

"Not one of Lelouch's flaws hold a candle to the one person he refuses to forget."

C.C., moaning internally about needing a cigarette, began to pace from one side of the elevator to the other. "She's going to murder me. She's actually going to murder me. I'm definitely going to die in this elevator and somehow Shirley will get away with it and still marry Lelouch just to rub it in my ghost's face."

"You'll always be there in his mind," Shirley babbled on, almost as if she were in a frenzy (or at least it seemed that way to C.C.). "You'll always be that perfect creature that he loved for all those years."

C.C. moaned out loud this time while pressing her head against the cool surface of the wall. "Perfection is an exhausting thing to maintain. Could really use some water right about now...and a cigarette too."

Shirley let out a puff or air. "I'm not kidding around, C.C."

"Good. That makes two of us."

"I had to face up to all my competitive drives, and believe me I got plenty of them."

All C.C. could do was nod as she moved away from one wall of the elevator to lean her head against another. She was legitimately beginning to feel sick now, but Shirley didn't seem to be taking the hint at all. The girl merely followed the witch every step of the way, determined to make her point regardless of how uncomfortable it was for both of them.

"But am I going to be jealous of you for the rest of my life?" Shirley asked. "Our paths will keep crossing and he'll always talk about you."

At this point, C.C. was just giving slight verbal assurances to everything Shirley said without actually hearing a word. All she could truly focus on was how the four walls were closing in and how her breaths were coming up short.

"And then it came to me one day."

C.C. finally stopped moving, her knees about ready to give out as her forehead rested on the wood. With her eyes closed she muttered, "What did?"

"The answer!"

"Which is?"

"You win."

The words settled around C.C., momentarily distracting her from the dizziness and nausea. "I'm sorry. Did I miss something?"

Shirley's answering smile, though perfectly innocent on the surface, was cold and vindictive.

"He has you on a pedestal and me in his arms."

For a few seconds, all C.C. could do was stare into Shirley's leaf-green eyes with pure disbelief, which quickly transformed into anger. However, remembering Lelouch's remark about her body earlier, she shifted her gaze away from his soon to be ex-fiance to the red emergency button that was pushed in. With one precise movement she yanked the button outward, allowing the elevator to quickly climb the last four floors.

"We'll see whose in his arms by the end of the week."

A/N: That's all for now! Just a quick little bit of fun. Next time I'll pull in some more Code Geass characters into this madness. See you in a year! XD Lol. I'm kidding...I hope. God bless you all! Thank you all for reading! I hope you guys enjoyed this chapter! Please leave a review if you feel so inclined.

Additional Note: If you guys ever get a little antsy waiting for updates on my Fanfiction stuff, feel free to check out my YouTube channel, Lillymu961. At present I mainly make K-Pop content, but I am also in the process of reviewing the Vampire Academy series by Richelle Mead. Sometimes I'll randomly do anime themed stuff and in the past I made videos where I made musical fanfiction for the Fate series, and I think I made one for Suzaku specifically once too. So..if you guys want to see what all that is about, feel free to visit the channel. Anyway, until next time, see ya!