Story co-written with Crusader Jerome

"I fought the law, and the law lost."

- Lelouch Lamperouge, at some point, probably

I would've thought it was a joke, if she didn't stand there staring at me expectantly afterwards.

"Well, boy, do you have a way of killing an immortal?" she asked impatiently.

If I hadn't spent the last five years dealing with immortals, I still would've thought she was messing with me. But as it was, I'd met immortals tired of life more than once. It wasn't some fanciful fantasy or far off dream, it was a reality. I remembered Pan, and his urge to finally rest. Briaries, and the way that his spirit had been broken, his brothers gone, but he'd been forced to endure. Calypso, and her eternity of emotional torture.

As an immortal in a world without many other immortals, finding connection would be difficult and frustrating, since every relationship you built would disappear when the other person died, over and over again. Though I couldn't quite understand, I could at least guess at what that pain would feel like.

If anyone else had asked me to help them commit suicide, I would have refused without a second thought and tried to change their mind. But an immortal like C.C.? Well… I wasn't sure I could change her mind. I don't think I'd be any different, in her situation. And because of that I felt some sympathy.

Slowly my hand inched towards my pocket, toward Riptide's pen form.

Just as slowly, deliberately, I pulled the pen out and held it lightly. With a small flick of my thumb, the cap of the pen flew off and a three-foot glowing bronze xiphos took its place.

C.C. stared at the blade with shock and almost… hunger.

"Can it… can it kill me?" C.C. asked, her voice barely more than a whisper.

I shrugged. "I don't know. I'll need to know more about how your immortality works to tell you that."

Noncommittal as my reply was, it was true. Celestial Bronze was very powerful, but it couldn't permanently kill immortals back on my Earth, only wound or banish them. But as far as I could tell the immortals here weren't even close to the same league. Riptide just might be able to cut through immortality where mortal weapons couldn't. After all, mortal weapons couldn't harm gods at all, yet Celestial Bronze could seriously hurt them for thousands of years.

C.C.'s eyes narrowed. "I… I need proof, first. Before telling you anything."

I shrugged again. "I can't really prove this'll kill you without killing you, can I?"

C.C. held out her arm suddenly. "Cut me. On my arm. If it doesn't instantly heal, I'll tell you."

I hesitated. Cuts with Celestial Bronze left deadlier wounds than the same cut with any other blade would. However, it looked like she wouldn't budge, so the best compromise was to make just a small cut.

Slowly I raised Riptide to her arm, aligning the blade with her palm and letting the pressure fall slightly on her skin. I didn't cut her forearm as she probably wanted me to — there were too many shallow and large veins there — but the palm served the same purpose.

She didn't even flinch at the cut. Apparently her tolerance for pain was higher than mine. I pulled Riptide back, making sure to keep the bloodied edge up so I didn't get any splotches of blood on Lelouch's nice carpet.

She stared at the cut intensely, her focus unwavering. A minute passed, and the cut was still there. The blood had begun to dry, but it was still flowing, dripping slowly onto the carpeted floor which she seemed to care about less than I did.

After about a minute and a half, C.C.'s feet gave out beneath her and she collapsed.

I dove forward, catching her before she could hit the ground, and set her down gently. She was breathing fast, almost hyperventilating, and there were visible tear trails on her cheeks. I chose not to comment.

She glanced up so that we were eye to eye, "I… I'll tell you everything. If you promise to finally give me peace afterward, I'll tell you every single thing I know about Geass."

I froze. That…was a tempting offer. An opportunity to learn something useful about what might be the only supernatural power in this world. But would it be worth actually killing her? Or, allowing her to kill herself at any rate. I wanted to think I was a person who wouldn't do something like this. But I'd stood by when Daedalus took his own life to end the Labyrinth, and even through C.C. didn't have a heroic, sacrificial reason…it didn't feel that different. And this time, there was an incentive that could convince me to do it myself.

"I need to know something first. I need to know if there's a way to get home through 'Geass', or through your code, or any other way you know of. To… go between worlds. If you give me a way to do that… I'll take your deal. I'll help you die. You have my word."

Her eyes dilated, and a surge of adrenaline coursed through my veins as I realized what that meant. She had a way.

"God." C.C. said instantly. "The collective unconscious is the consciousness of every single human who has ever lived made manifest as one, the will of humanity itself. It can do anything, if it can be… convinced. It won't be easy, but…"

"It's a way," I said grimly. I had known that there would be no gimme, no easy way out — that was my life for you. But this was something; a path, a string to pull on, even if I didn't know where it started.

Whatever it cost me, I was in.

"Alright. Tell me everything you know about Geass."

.HR.

An hour. It had taken her an hour to explain everything about an ancient mystical religion to me, or at least everything that she deemed relevant. Even of what she told me, most of it… wasn't. The Sword of Akasha, the thought elevators to reach 'God' and the plot to kill it, those were the only parts I cared about. The rest of it…

Well, it might come in handy if I ran into any more Geass users, which would probably happen considering the Britannian Emperor who controlled most of the ways to reach God ran the facility that made most of them, but they were a lesser concern. As far as I or C.C. could guess, Geass wouldn't be very effective against me. At least, directly. We'd already seen that her mental probing was practically useless.

"Well," C.C. said when there was nothing left to go over. "I've told you everything you need to know, and more. It's time for you to uphold your end of the bargain." An almost giddy smile had crept its way onto her face. It made a shiver run down my spine. This was her death she was talking about—Daedalus had shown resignation, Pan had shown acceptance, but neither had been excited at the prospect.

I nodded slowly, making sure that I did indeed want to do this and risk death-by-woman-scorned. "Okay. I just need you to do one more thing." I told her, bracing myself for the fireworks.

The smile slipped from her face. She stiffened, but visibly and almost robotically calmed herself a moment later. "And what would that be?" she asked, her voice dripping with barely restrained anger.

"You have to tell Lelouch yourself. I won't be the one to deliver the news. You said you gave him that Geass so he could kill you. If you don't need him any more…you owe it to him to say so."

She didn't even bother trying to divine if I was telling the truth or not, simply slipping herself off the bed where she'd been sitting and striding to the door.

Flinging it open, she came face-to-back with Lelouch and his sister sitting at their table. Lelouch turned to the door and raised an inquisitive eyebrow, silently asking if we were finally done.

"Lelouch. In. Now." she said flatly, pointing back into the bedroom.

"Is that Miss C.C.?" Lelouch's sister — I'd forgotten her name, I suddenly realized — asked. "I didn't know you were here. How are you today, Miss C.C.?"

I winced as C.C. blatantly ignored the girl, staring at Lelouch impatiently. He looked a bit irked that she was being rude to his sister but didn't comment on it, presumably reading her mood.

"Sorry, Nunnally, it looks like C.C. is preoccupied right now. We'll be right back out."

Two of us will, I couldn't help but to think to myself.

No sooner had Lelouch passed through the doorframe than C.C. slammed it shut, pushing Lelouch towards the one other open chair in the room and taking two large strides so that she was standing directly before him. He fell into the cushioned seat with a grunt, barely able to direct his attention to her before she started speaking.

"I'm ending our contract," she said. "Don't worry, you can keep your powers. Before today I had believed that the only one who could kill a Code bearer was a fully evolved Geass user, but it seems I was wrong. The contract was that you would kill me once you became strong enough and end my curse, but I don't need you anymore." Somehow, she managed to make the heap of information she'd just piled on Lelouch sound like a simple statement of fact.

She didn't wait for Lelouch's response before turning ninety degrees to look me in the eye. "You had your added condition, so I have mine. I've been alive for hundreds of years and never so much as heard whispers of something else able to remove a Code, or negate one's effects. So before I die, I have one question. What are you?"

I hesitated, glancing at Lelouch out of the corner of my eye. Should I answer?

I'd hidden where I'd come from before, that I had no idea about anything to do with Geass or this universe. It had seemed like a really stupid thing to go around spouting that I was the child of a god from another dimension. It could have marked me as anything from a crazy person to an assassination target for some global conspiracy who hated dimension hoppers. I had no idea.

But now? Now I had learned what I needed to know from one of this world's immortals, and one of the most informed, if I could trust her description of herself. So while I wasn't stupid enough to think I knew everything, I was reasonably confident I could handle whatever this world threw at me.

Then there was Lelouch.

He was standing from the seat he'd been shoved into now, looking at a loss for words, but he was still going to say something.

He was my best bet, wasn't he? He was fighting against the tyrannical government which he'd shown me was at best thoroughly corrupt and at worst deliberately designed to oppress. I couldn't be completely convinced that he was a great person, but if worse came to worst, my experience with C.C. indicated that I could break through his Geass if I had to. Besides, whatever Lelouch planned to do with the world after taking down Britannia, I would be using the thought elevator to find a way home, not staying here. I had no need to hide any more.

I shrugged. "I'm a demigod, half god, half human." I told her, cutting off Lelouch, who looked like he'd still been struggling to find the right words. "I came from another Earth, I think. A world where the Greek gods are the driving force behind Western civilization."

That threw the room to silence. C.C. stared at me blankly as if waiting for the punchline, and Lelouch turned his gaze from C.C. to me, his mouth half-open and his eyes wide.

"Who knew." C.C. said softly after several moments of icy stillness. "That I'd hear something utterly new for the first time in centuries on the same day that I finally die." She gave me a soft smile. "Okay. It's time."

The Olympian council staring at me expectantly might've beaten C.C. out in the 'uncomfortable looks' department, but she was a close runner up. A smile like that on someone who I'd only seen insincere, impatient, or emotional so far just… didn't seem right.

Lelouch finally found his voice. "You're going to die. Just like that, it's over?"

"Oh, grow up," C.C. said, barely turning. "Don't pretend there was anything between us. I needed you, and you needed me. Besides, you have this… demigod, apparently. I told him everything I know, and he'll likely be more forthcoming than I was. More useful to be certain, if what he's said is to be believed."

"I've been patient enough." C.C. said, turning back to look at me. "It's time for you to hold up your end of the contract."

Closing my eyes briefly, I let out a long sigh. I'd yet to actively kill someone so intentionally–so intimately–and the myriad of beings whose lives I'd ended in the heat of combat didn't make it any easier. This is like Pan, I reminded myself. An immortal who wanted to finally move on, to have rest at last. It wasn't as if I could pass this off to someone else — there was no way for her to finally rest without my help. At least, no guaranteed or expedient way.

As my hand fell to my pocket and slipped Riptide out of it, my eyes opened once more. I would give her the respect she deserved in her final moments. If she could be killed, I could be man enough to look her in the eye while doing it.

Flicking off the cap, Riptide sprang to life in its full three foot form. "Is there anything else you wanted to say?" I asked her.

C.C. looked at the blade longingly. "No." was her simple response.

"It'll be quick and painless." I assured her, "If you want to close your eyes, you should… you know… do that." I said awkwardly, not sure how to tell a woman to close her eyes in her final moments.

"No." She replied fiercely. "I don't want it to be quick. After living a life for so long without knowing what it means to truly fear, with no consequences… I want to savor the final moments, where I know I can do nothing but wait for eternal darkness."

That was… dark. But I had no right to judge her, nor a real frame of reference for what she was experiencing. All I could do was honor her last wish.

I held Riptide at my waist and angled it barely upwards until it was aimed a few inches above her waist, and then shifted the point left a couple inches, where it would strike the vein just to the left of the spine. Normally a cut clean through the vein would render someone unconscious and then dead in mere minutes, but if I slit it on its narrowest point, just above the waist, she would bleed out more slowly. It was the best compromise I could think of.

Not to mention, if C.C. suddenly decided she wanted to live, it might leave me time to save her before it was too late.

I took a deep breath and steadied my blade, mentally going over Michael Yew's first aid lessons for a third time. If I messed it up I wouldn't get a second chance and, more importantly, neither would she.

I looked C.C. in the eyes. She no longer looked at the blade, but now met my gaze. I nodded to her and she stared back at me, and I pushed Riptide directly forward before I could lose my nerve.

C.C. exhaled sharply (which, my hyperactive teenage brain noted, was the single most attractive sound I'd ever heard from someone actively dying) and leaned forward onto my shoulder, clutching at the entry wound. The blood got on my brand new fancy school uniform, but I only adjusted myself to let her lean closer against me.

Her pain tolerance was ridiculous. After that first exhale, she didn't make a sound. It felt like she was barely even breathing.

A single tear tracked its way down the side of her face. Her mouth barely twitched, but her eyes…her eyes were smiling.

I'd never seen anyone cry in happiness while they were dying before, but today was a day of firsts. Even among immortals, C.C. was unique, and I knew, deep down, that I would remember this moment for the rest of my life.

Lelouch stood silently, solemnly watching his supposed accomplice leave the world. Of whether he was sentimental at her death or upset at the loss of an ally, he made no sign.

I crouched to the ground as smoothly as I could with C.C. in my arms, being careful not to let the blade move about in her body. I could have pulled it out — would have, in any other situation, but the blade staying where it was helped limit the flow of blood and give her a few more precious moments of life.

Reaching the bottom of my crouch I helped her sit on the ground, cradling her against me. From what I could feel, she no longer had the strength to hold herself up.

Her eyelids fluttered. A faint rasp came from her throat. "...thank you…child."

I hadn't told her my name. She hadn't asked.

"Perseus," I said. "I go by Percy."

She looked, really looked at me, for one last time. "I suppose…I'll take that knowledge with me when I go to join God." Slowly, her eyes closed.

I sat there on the floor, holding a dead girl's body in my arms.

Hey everyone, hope you enjoyed. Ik it's been forever since I posted an update for one of these. Jerome was on a mission for the last year, and just got back in spring. Honestly that we even work on this at all despite everything is a miracle. We already workin at the next chapter tho, so it'll prolly be out in a breakneck month or two. And I'll try to make the next one a lot longer — this one is only so short cause this scene didn't really work being thrown in with the before or after.

yk how it be pat-reon and discord and stuff on my profile. If you don't read any of my other stuff, swing by the discord, I'm always looking for more Code Geass people to hang with.