The next morning Lelouch was surprised to wake up in his room alone, the walls covered in shadows as the sun rose on the other side of the house.

"I wonder where Mr. Ashtor is." he mumbled with a yawn as he scratched the back of his head with one hand while pulling himself out from under his comforter with the other. He looked over at the clock just to see that it was barely seven in the morning.

"Why am I already up?" he sighed.

But after a moment he finally climbed out of the bed, trying to ignore the pain in his stomach as he walked towards the bathroom. Then he paused by the window as he saw a sight that he had yet to see in the two days he had been in the Berkenbridge home.

Just outside his window was the ocean, sparkling blue and orange as the sun began to shine on it's foamy waves.

Lelouch walked closer to the window as he starred in awe at the scene before him.

There were already several small sail boats and large yachts sailing miles out to sea on the horizon beside a gigantic Naval ship with a flat top, the numbers 68 on the island shining in the rising sun.

"Wow!" Lelouch whispered in awe, watching out the large bay windows. "It's beautiful out there!"

It was then that Lelouch noticed that the giant windows were really sliding glass doors that led to a balcony with a small padded porch swing on it. So he quickly changed before he decided to go out on the balcony.

As he looked down he noticed a small grassy yard that ended at a ledge with a pathway leading down to the beach where he saw Leon running alone in the sand.

Lelouch took a seat in the swing and starred out in the ocean. He suddenly felt a very calm peace come over him as he breathed in the breeze coming off the sea and listened to the soft sounds of the waves paired with the sea gulls.

"This place is wonderful." he said to himself as he gently rocked himself.

After a few more minutes he heard a familiar voice behind him.

"What are you doing up so early?"

Lelouch smiled up at Mr. Ashtor.

"I woke up early and dragged myself out of bed just because I figured I might as well, then I saw what was just outside my window." he admitted.

Mr. Ashtor smiled kindly at him before sitting beside him.

"It's a beautiful sight isn't it?" he asked.

"Absolutely." agreed Lelouch.

"I remember, when I was your age I lived with Cameron, after our mother died. He had bought this old plantation on a hill on the far end of Honolulu island. Away from everything else. Where all you could see were grassy hills and the ocean in the distance. I used to love sitting out on the balcony with a good book on a sunny day. There were times Cameron and Amy couldn't get me inside." he said with a chuckle. "I'd be too comfortable and too far into the book for them to reach me. Sometimes I drove my brother's up the walls when I did that."

Lelouch smiled at the look on Mr. Ashtor's face.

It was one of happiness as he recalled fond memories of years past.

"Did you used to read a lot?" Lelouch asked curiously.

"I still do. Leon always makes sure I have plenty to read because he knows how much I love a good book."

"What's your favorite?"

"Honestly, I'd have to pick the book 'Angels and Demons' by Dan Brown. Leon read it when he was in high school and after he bought it then I wanted to see what had interested him so much. Now granted, while I'm not always much on the conspiracies and what not, I still fell in love with the book. Just the complexity of it all, and the incredible attention to detail. It was one of the few books that kept me guessing till the end."

Lelouch couldn't help but smile at Mr. Ashtor's passion for a good story.

"What's the other one the kept you guessing?"

"'The Bourne Supremacy' by Robert Ludlum. That one actually got so complicated I gave up and never finished it. I still remember that I stopped on page 216."

"It got that complicated?" said Lelouch with a laugh.

"Yes. It's like….. You think you've got something figured out. In the beginning there's this guy that appears out of nowhere and murders a bunch of mafia members. So you're like, okay, this guy is definitely the bad guy, right? But no! There's another guy and after reading a bit further you start thinking he's the bad guy, but he's not!" said Mr. Ashtor getting worked up over the whole thing. "He's actually a good guy trying to catch the bad guy, so you go back to your original theory. Then you find out the guy was being controlled and you think 'okay, so this is the real bad guy.' But it's not! Because then out of nowhere there's this crazy guy who randomly kills some other guy and then you find out he's the real bad guy who's trying to throw all of Hong Kong into a bloody civil war and it took two hundred and thirteen pages of complete confusion that was never actually necessary in the FIRST PLACE! That's when I said 'screw that,' and I closed the book and walked away." he sighed.

"That sounds pretty crazy." Lelouch admitted, grinning at the way Mr. Ashtor went about describing the whole thing.

"Robert Ludlum is a true genius when it comes to complex plots. I know Leon somehow made sense of the whole thing, but out of Robert Ludlum's books 'The Bancroft Strategy,' became my favorite and it was one of those we found in a drug store bargain bin for three dollars."

Lelouch couldn't help but feel a connection with Mr. Ashtor through his love of a good book.

"So if I wanted to read a book which one would you suggest?" he asked.

"I would suggest 'Angels and Demons'. It's got the complexity without the needless mind-boggling confusion."

"What is it about?"

"That's something you'll have to read to figure out. In a way it's about the delicate balance between religion and science and the catholic church, but it also goes deeper than that which is why you'd really have to read it."

"So it's religious?"

"Yes………. And no." said Mr. Ashtor with a tiny nod then a tiny shake of the head. "It's really just a good thick plot that draws me. I have no interest in the religious part. I know where my head is and with whom my heart lies. I'm no Catholic, I've never been to church a day in my life except for my family's funerals. But I know God is there, and angels are real. Otherwise I'd never be where I am now. They say Malachai is a descendent of Gabriel himself, the next in line to help rule over archangel society as head of the high council."

Lelouch couldn't help but feel curious over the whole matter.

"So if he was next in line to be head of the high council, what is he doing here?" Lelouch asked curiously.

"They say the current high elder demoted him for fear of loosing his seat of power. He was demoted to an angel of mass death which meant he took care of the mess when the death toll reached the hundreds. He was assigned to all the souls of WWII."

"How many people died during the time?" Lelouch asked.

"Over fifty million in European front alone. But it's been estimated that there were near seventy million in the six or so years it went on. Because of it Malachai was given the title of Perdice Mortis nuntius by the other angels of death because he's taken the most souls of any of them."

"What does Perdice Mortis Nuntius mean?"

"It's Latin. It quite literally means 'Very worthy deadly messenger,' or something along those lines anyway. The Germans called him 'der Schatten des Todes,' 'The shadow of death.'"

"That's kinda creepy." Lelouch admitted with a shiver.

"Well what really made it strange was how methodical he was about the whole thing." Mr. Ashtor admitted with a strange look on his face. "He had records, paper, a book."

"A book?"

"He called it his book of souls and it's a record of every soul he's ever taken. I remember him summoning it when I died. It's quite fascinating really. It holds every name, the date they were born, the day they died, how they died, where they were sent, even pictures of each person."

"I don't even want to know how big that book is." Lelouch admitted.

"It's actually not as big as you'd expect. It's hard to describe."

"What did it look like?"

"It was this huge brown leather bound book that had to of been at least half a foot thick and on the front was the crest of blood that he was required to wear on his uniform by order of the head of the high council. Anyway, if you want to know anymore about that, you'd have to ask Malachai. Mind you the one that takes care of my brothers and I is Vivian Eveninglight, Malachai's most faithful subordinate. She's something like a probation officer of sorts, to make sure the three of us stay in line. She's the one that grants us our freedoms and such for good behavior, but she can also take them away."

"Freedoms? Like what?"

"Like how far we can wander away from our counterparts. When we first started our redemption we couldn't go very far. Not even into the next room. Now we're allowed more distance. Like Travis's counterpart is Leon's brother Trowa who's actually on the other side of the country. He just likes to hang around here more since Trowa got a girlfriend. But Cameron, he's had that freedom taken away because of how he's been acting lately. He's been restricted to the confines of Midnightstar Sanctuary for the time being."

"Why do you need counterparts?" Lelouch asked unsurely.

"Because we live through our counterparts. I live through Leon, but one of my rewards is solidity which means I'm practically alive. Which is why I can't go through walls but Travis can but why I can touch you or pick up an object. Of course there is a downside to the counterpart system."

"What's that?"

"If our counterpart dies, we loose the chance to live again and we die with them. So part of our redemption is to be protectors, guardians of sorts."

"And yet Leon is military? Isn't that kind of dangerous?" said Lelouch.

"Leon's one of the best pilots in the world. Not the kind to go down easy. Besides it's better than Travis's counterpart. Trowa's a CIA assassin."

"Ouch." said Lelouch with a wince. "That's worse."

"It most certainly is." agreed Mr. Ashtor.

After a quick moment of silence Lelouch asked, "How did we even get on this whole subject?"

Mr. Ashtor laughed a little.

"Good question. I think it started with a conversation about a good book than went on from there." he said with a smile as he stood up. "Now I say we go get some breakfast shall we?"

Lelouch smiled than stood up as well. "Breakfast sounds like a good idea." he agreed.

So the two headed downstairs for breakfast, leaving the conversation where they had ended it.