The nights are longer than ever these days. Even once everything has fallen into place and he is a hair's breadth away from winning it all, Lelouch is never still. He calculates odds, formulates plans and backup plans and Hail Mary passes, runs through worst-case scenarios. Even when his mind goes mercifully blank, it is never quiet or resting. There is always a buzz in his ears.
This is one of those nights, where he is thinking of nothing at all and yet his mind seethes restlessly regardless. He has taken to wandering the halls of the palace, and no one is the wiser. He is often off scheming in different places at all hours of the night, and who would guess that isn't what he's doing now? And who would even think to ask besides Suzaku or C.C.? Everyone else is safely tucked away in prison or under the effects of his geass. Of the remaining two, Suzaku is a reluctant ally but hardly a confidante and C.C. keeps her own company. Lelouch prefers it that way. He doesn't like being questioned.
His footsteps echo hollowly off the marble floors. The palace seems emptier than ever at night, but he likes the darkness.
As he turns onto the promenade, he spots a still figure perched on a ledge among the arches, looking out into the night.
"You too?" he asks. "I thought you'd be asleep by now."
C.C. does not answer, and Lelouch sighs through his nose. She is a willful creature.
He could leave her to her reflections, but his mind could use something to sink its teeth into. It always feels better to crunch through a concrete problem than spin his gears uselessly.
"Hey, C.C. Don't ignore me."
As he approaches, he notices the headphones clamped over her ears, nearly covered by her hair.
"Hm…?"
He has never seen C.C. listening to anything before. When she doesn't acknowledge his approach, he pulls the headphones away.
She startles, whipping towards him. Her eyes go wide with surprise for just a moment before narrowing again.
"Give that back," she says.
Lelouch presses one side of the headphones to his ear.
"It's okay, Mao," C.C.'s voice murmurs. "Just listen to me. I'll take care of you, Mao. You're okay, Mao."
Lelouch raises an eyebrow. "Why on earth would you be listening to this?"
He hadn't even realized Mao's ridiculous recordings had survived his death.
C.C. fiddles with the small box in her lap until the sound cuts off abruptly and then holds out her hand. "It's rude to steal, Lelouch."
Stealing a pair of headphones is a minor crime compared to everything else he has done, but he hands them back anyway. C.C. slides them over her wrist and fixes him with a flat stare.
"Why are you listening to that?" Lelouch asks again, more out of boredom than genuine curiosity. C.C. is the only one left for him to bicker with, and he's been itching for a fight.
"For the same reason I do everything," she says dismissively, turning back to the window. "Because I want to."
He snorts. "Self-centered to the last."
"I never pretended otherwise, did I?"
Lelouch looks out at the night over her shoulder. Clouds cover the stars tonight, but the moon peeks through full and bright.
"Did you really love him?" he asks after a moment.
If he had hoped to rattle her, he is disappointed. She merely shrugs.
"Really, Lelouch?" she murmurs. "I'm a witch. You don't really think I love anything, do you?"
"Besides pizza?"
"At least pizza doesn't ask stupid questions."
"You said you did, though. Right before you pulled the trigger."
"A small mercy, telling him what he wanted to hear."
A smirk tugs at the corners of Lelouch's mouth. He can smell a half-truth from a mile away. He is a master of lies, after all.
"Really, C.C.? Even though he wanted to chop you up and ship you to Australia?"
C.C. slants a look back at him, cold and unamused. "I was his entire world since he was a child. It would be cold indeed to feel nothing at all."
Lelouch sobers as she looks away again. In truth, he does not understand C.C.'s feelings well enough to know the boundaries of how far he can push. For a moment, he considers letting it go. But he has never let social niceties stop him from getting what he wants, and C.C. is durable. She is the only one who can keep up with him and match him blow for blow, and he wants to be distracted from his own thoughts tonight.
"Why did you leave him, then?"
"He couldn't fulfill his contract, so I moved on."
"Is that so? Are you sure you weren't running away because he loved you and you couldn't handle it?"
The look she gives him could freeze hell itself. She holds his gaze and lets the silence drag out just long enough to make him squirm.
"Mao did not love me," she says finally. "Perhaps in the beginning, but… He was obsessed with me. He made me his world. He wanted to own me, and no one owns me. Not him or you or any of the people I've made contracts with."
This time, Lelouch looks away first. He drifts to the side and sits on the ledge in the next archway over, leaning against the curved stone arch separating them.
No, he doesn't think anyone owns C.C., not even him. She is a wild and capricious woman who does as she pleases and drifts through the centuries wherever the tide of her making takes her. She is not the kind of woman who belongs in a zoo or behind glass or trussed up in straitjackets. She is not the kind of woman who should wear wide, frightened eyes and cower away from anticipated blows and call him 'master'.
He remembers his brief trip through her memories and the glimpse he'd gotten of her own geass all those years ago.
"Because deep down…I wanted someone to love me."
No, he suspects C.C. knows more about love and its falsehoods than he ever will. It had been a cheap shot to dig at Mao's obsession when she had already lived through a time where her geass stoked everyone's obsession until she couldn't tell what real love looked like anymore. It has never been clear to him how much of her previous life she remembers or how clearly, but he wouldn't blame her for shrinking away from a reminder of the prison her geass had created for her.
He will not apologize, of course, but he drops that line of questioning and lets the silence hang for a few minutes.
"Why are you still here, then?" he asks finally. He hears her shift positions and fall still again.
"You haven't fulfilled your contract yet."
"And I'm not going to. Why do you stay when you know I won't grant your wish any more than he would?"
C.C. doesn't say anything for a long time. "You could still change your mind."
"When have I ever changed my mind?"
"You might decide you want to live after all. If you kill me and take my code, you can die as you wish and escape afterwards to live elsewhere."
Lelouch taps his fingers against the glass, wishing the window would vanish so he could feel the night breeze and breathe again. Sometimes he wants out of this gilded cage, but it's a cage he has chosen.
He would rather live, of course, even with how heavy the burden of his sins has grown. But he is tired, and his plans are just finally coming to fruition. He wants to live, but he has burned his bridges. What good is a life spent in hiding, cut off from Nunnally and every friend he has ever made? What use is it to live in the world he created without the people he created it for?
And, frankly, C.C.'s bleak view of immortality has not sold him on the idea. He owes her many debts over, and one of them is not forcing her code and immortality on him like it was forced on her. If she was half as heartless as she claimed to be, he might bear her curse already.
If he was half as heartless as he claimed to be, maybe the thought of killing her wouldn't turn his stomach the way it does. He still thinks it tragic that she has been living all this time just to die.
"I've made my plans," he says. "I will not alter them. I do not wish to take your immortality, and you know it. Why do you still stay, really?"
The air whispers behind him like the echo of the breeze outside, and he sees C.C. reflected behind him in the window.
"And you call me selfish," she says flatly. "We made a deal, Lelouch. I will uphold my end of the bargain. I said we would be partners in crime and I would see you through to the end. So I will."
Their eyes meet in the glass, and then she blinks and vanishes, her footsteps echoing softly as she turns back down the hall.
Lelouch does feel selfish still. C.C. has saved him countless times and been the only one to stand by his side from the beginning to the end of this journey, and he is unable or unwilling to grant either of her wishes. Maybe in another life… But the world he is creating now has been created for everyone but her.
He stares out at the night until her footsteps fade away. It occurs to him that questioning her could have been a miscalculation. Reminding her of abandoning Mao because he could not fulfill his contract could remind her why she ought to leave Lelouch now. He could wake up tomorrow and find her gone, vanished without a trace to look for her next contract. And he could continue on without her, but the thought leaves a void yawning in his chest.
But he knows she will still be there in the morning, just as he knows that she will never tell him the real reason why.