A/N: Like the summary to this mentions, this set of one-shots will be dedicated to C.C. and will focus on the role she played in Code Geass, and in Lelouch's life. Because I can't stand what happened in the ending, and my mind's been running rampant ever since I rewatched the series to get a better feel for TTHM (which will come soon, I promise) and I rewatched that scene between C.C. and Lelouch in the room after they discovered Nunnally was alive and Suzaku tells C.C. that whole bit about how he is Lelouch's sword and C.C. is his shield before leaving. That scene won't be featured here, in this particular one-shot, so I don't exactly know why I'm mentioning it, but I digress.

Title: The Eternity Promised to Them

Summary: She stares at him through hooded eyes; at the life and death mingling in his gaze, at the sins and the loathing that weighs down on him without pause. She should be immune to this. She's lived for centuries. She's experienced countless wars—countless lives—and she shouldn't be hurting. But she is.

Disclaimer: I do not own Code Geass or any of its characters.

the eternity promised to them

"Listen well and heed my words, Lelouch, Suzaku. From now on, I declare that you are my enemies." Nunnally's voice wavers just the slightest bit, but it holds enough hatred and fury to pierce their guards, bite into their strongholds, and bring their masks down.

…So this is your plan, Schneizel, C.C. thinks angrily, her fingers curling into fists. It has to be him. Because it's impossible to forget the loving girl Nunnally was at Ashford—so gentle and understanding and patient that this has to have been Schneizel's fault. She sees the edges of Nunnally's lips—they're set into a frown—quiver. She grits her teeth.

"Nunnally…" Lelouch breathes out in shock, leaning forward in his seat as his eyes widen. He trembles slightly; he will never be prepared to face his sister in battle, and C.C. knows it. "It's you. You're alive."

"Yes," Nunnally responds levelly. "Thanks to our brother, Schneizel."

"…Schneizel," Lelouch hisses as the first drops of realization dawn on him. C.C.'s eyes narrow—she can see the whiteness of his knuckles as he grips the armrests tightly.

"Nunnally, do you understand what Schneizel has done?" Suzaku asks, his voice firm. It hasn't cracked yet, unlike Lelouch's, but C.C. doesn't miss the desperate edge to his tone.

"Yes. He attacked the capital, Pendragon, with a F.L.E.I.J.A. warhead."

"If you know about that, then why?" Suzaku demands, heart caught in his throat.

"Do you think that using Geass on people is better?" Nunnally asks in response, practiced and prepared. Suzaku falls back into silence as his shock overpowers him and he loses his voice. "Both you and big brother have been lying to me from the very beginning, haven't you? You've kept the truth from me all this time," she continues. (C.C. keeps one eye on Lelouch and her jaw shifts when she sees the anguish staining his gaze at his sister's accusations. Stop this, C.C. begs silently. He's doing all this for you. Only Nunnally can bring him so much distress.) "But… now I know everything."

Everything?

C.C. resists the urge to bark with laughter. It isn't funny, not even a little, she thinks. But the sheer irony of this situation isn't lost on her. No, Nunnally, you don't. Not everything. She bites her lip and casts Lelouch a concerned glance, slightly relieved to see that he's regained his composure—only no, he isn't as fine as he pretends to be, and she knows it. She can practically hear his heart shattering.

"Lelouch, you were Zero all along, weren't you?"

Lelouch stiffens, his shoulders hiking up and tensing in the face of her words. His breath hitches, and C.C.'s eyes fly to him reflexively, worriedly.

"Why?" Nunnally pleads. "Tell me! Were you doing it for my sake? Because if you were, then that means—"

"For your sake?" Lelouch snaps back, insanity in his eyes as he straightens his back from his hunched position and raises his head to glare at her. He practically cackles at the inference, and C.C. flinches a little at the sound. At the madness. "I see my little sister is as presumptuous as ever," he sneers derisively.

Nunnally falls silent, shaken by his outburst. She swallows thickly, her breath caught in her throat.

"You think it's just natural for people to help you, out of sympathy and pity?" Lelouch drawls, his voice gaining a sliver of venom. C.C. looks away, noticing the cracks in his gaze and the slightest tinge of agony injected into his posture. She notices it only because she knows him, because she knows to look for it. "It's so easy to criticize others while you keep your own hands unsullied, isn't it?" he rants.

Nunnally whimpers a little, her own steely expression breaking at his response. C.C. imagines that she's the only one who notices the way Lelouch's interlocked hands shake helplessly as he locks away the frightened little ten-year-old boy still inside him; the boy begging for justice to be given to his mother and sister. He was denied then, and she imagines he's too guarded to let himself be denied a second time—by the very same sister he'd do anything for (no, he already did everything for her), no less.

"You are the quintessence of the privileged aristocrat that I've rejected," he snarls. C.C. wonders how hard it must be for him to dismiss his own sister in this way.

"You… no," Nunnally gasps in pain.

"I act for no one's sake," Lelouch declares, voice oozing with anger and the same haughty arrogance he always presents as emperor. He relaxes into his seat, leaning back and resting his arms—a whisper away from the console on his armrest, preparing and desperate to end the call, C.C. thinks—but even turned away from him, even facing the other direction, C.C. knows that his stance is fraught with outrage. "It is for me, my sake, that I take the world into my hands." His eyes narrow as, beneath his contacts, his Geass courses wildly and uncontrollably through his veins, surging into his eyes.

"If you choose to stand in my way by allying yourself with Schneizel, then I won't hesitate to crush you without mercy, and without regret." His finger jabs down on one of the buttons on the control panel, severing the connection between them quickly and furiously—his finger moves with all the anger that led him to denying his parents, denying their plan, denying the end of time itself, as if he wishes he is capable of realigning the truth and changing reality itself.

"Lelouch—!" Nunnally calls out in protest, cut off when the screen fades away into static.

The silence is deafening, for a moment (suffocating, she thinks, better fits the situation, because she can barely breathe and Lelouch is heaving) before it is broken by the Knight of Zero. "Lelouch," he starts, his voice tense and stern and there is an underlying tone to it that C.C. can neither ignore nor overlook.

"I believe you have your duties to return to, Sir Kururugi," C.C. interrupts icily, glaring at him. Swiftly, before Lelouch can say anything, she drops the line between them and Kururugi. His face disappears from the screen without delay, and she allows herself to relax, just slightly.

She doesn't hesitate before crossing the distance between them and wrapping her arms around him, closing her eyes as he leans into her embrace. His heartbeat and his cries are muffled by her as she presses against him, and she can almost fool herself into believing that she's only doing this to comfort him.

But, no. The familiarity of his body hidden by hers soothes her as well, in ways she'd never admit. Here, she can forget about her curse. Here, entrapped by her, he is solid, he is constant, and she can forget that soon, he will leave her, too, just as everyone else has.

"C.C.—" he chokes out, a strangled sob catching in his throat.

She hushes him gently, and he caves as he submits to the solace she provides him. "Your sister is alive," she whispers into the fabric of his suit, white and gold and not at all stained by the blood—his own, this time—that he is fated to spill, soon.

Soon, but not now, she reminds herself sternly. For now, he isn't going anywhere. And neither is she.

"Nunnally…" he murmurs brokenly.

"You're doing this for her," she says softly. She pretends not to notice the way his back and shoulders convulse as he weeps for his sister, not dead but still gone. She is undeniably and unavoidably lost to him, forever. "You always have been."

He doesn't say what he wants to, what they're both thinking of. He doesn't say that, to him, it doesn't matter anymore what intentions he harbored as he began all of this, because Nunnally denied him. She rejected his plans, his actions, his designs. (Even though it's for her sake; even though it's to bring about the gentler world Nunnally dreams of, so she may live without the judgment of others pressing down on her, condemning her.)

"It's all for her," C.C. repeats, and she holds him like that until they land. It is now, as he mourns his sister, who chose to stand against him in a battle that has always been fought for her, that she sees the child in him—not the prince, not the emperor, not the fearless vigilante who took on the burden of the people's hopes and dreams—as he used to be. And yet he is still the most powerful man in Britannia—no, she corrects herself, in the world—the Demon Emperor feared by the unanimous public. He isn't allowed to be that little child, quaking in fear as his entire world is stolen from beneath his feet and he can do nothing but watch helplessly (he is so, so helpless) while he falls into the endless abyss awaiting him. Shouldering the hatred of his subjects, and the world at large, he can don only the mask of the demon, cackling as he rips apart families and lives and legacies—both from his enemies and from the innocent.

He is king. And that is all he can be. (They are nearing the end, now, where the world will bear witness to his grand finale, his requiem, and it is far, far too late to turn back.) And now that they can do nothing but grieve for what is to come, she is glad for his tears, because it stops him from realizing that she is crying, too, silently and without shaking but still crying. It stops her from dwelling on the ache inside her chest.

(Sometime later, only seconds before the plane descends, he exhales, his breath warm and alive on her skin, and murmurs appreciatively, "Thank you, Cera."

…No matter how many times he's thanked her before, it still brings her surprise. She flushes, subconsciously tightening her grasp on him. She says nothing, but she doesn't need to. He is the first of her contractors to have genuinely said thank you to her, and it always leaves a dash of heat spreading through her.)

She stays far away from him on the day of his prisoners' execution. Or, no, she thinks bitterly and corrects herself: the day of his execution. She doesn't think she can stick to the plan and just watch as he is stabbed without doing something. Anything.

So she doesn't follow him, doesn't embark his float with him when the sun rises and the time comes. He doesn't question her, and neither does anyone else.

Instead, she offers herself to the deity the people call God and walks into the church, footsteps slow and silent in a pretense of respect. The air is heavy with quiet, almost blanketing her (she can't help but think of the execution, miles away, and the noise there will be; the cheers), but she doesn't run away.

She kneels by the altar, head bowed and hands clasped together in prayer. She can think only of Lelouch, of his sacrifice, of the way his name will be hated and his grave spat upon as his deeds will always remain unsung and uncelebrated.

Lelouch, she grieves. The corner of her eyes crease, and she whispers an apology that exits her mouth and falls, like a feather, onto the floor of the church with no consequence, no chaos, no nothing.

She drags her head up and pictures him, envisioning his proud gaze and the way his face is drawn and marked with lines, far too old and weary and mature for his age. "Lelouch... as the price you must pay for casting Geass on others, you..." The first tear of many flees from the confines of her eyes and slips down her cheeks, unchecked. Lelouch, she mourns.

She imagines him whispering back, so softly she almost doesn't catch it: Cera, he mouths.

She almost sobs. Instead, she drops her gaze again, banishing the image from her mind and strangling the ever-persistent despair in the deep recesses of her soul as it begs her for escape.

"Please," he begs. His hands are clasped in front of him, and she sees desperation in his eyes. She knows his expression is one that a million others would kill for, but she cannot bring herself to appreciate his desire.

She turns away from him and his plea, her chest heavy. "Your Zero Requiem will throw the world into chaos," she hisses. She means that it will throw her into chaos.

"Cera," he says. The sincerity in his voice when her name rolls off his tongue makes her flinch. "Please, Cera."

"I can't," she says. She tries to sound cold but she hears something vulnerable in her voice and it makes her snap. "I can't," she repeats. Her voice breaks; she hears his breath catch. "Why does it have to end your way?"

His eyes close. She glimpses his expression through their bedroom mirror and tries to clutch onto it with her hands. She imprints the memory of his face into the back of her eyelids and sears it into her mind forever. "You can see it, just as I do, Cera. This is what the world needs. Remaking."

"And you?" she whispers. He says nothing. The world and the galaxy shatters in their room. She looks away. "I can see everything, everywhere. I can see infinity." She pauses, holds in the explosion inside her skin, and continues, "Infinity is a cold, lonely, place, Lelouch."

"I'm sorry," he says—he sounds earnest, but she hates it.

"You promised." Her voice is hushed. She sees him wince and her throat chokes up. "You promised!" She is howling, just as the wind will when Zero's sword impales the emperor. Just as the crowds will when their Demon Emperor falls before his slayer. "You told me you'd grant me my wish! You said you were my warlock!"

"I wish I could be."

"You can't," she sobs. "Warlocks do not die."

"Cera…"

"And you will," she finishes sharply.

"I'm sorry," he says it quietly. It lets her know that he will not change his mind. His arms squeeze her tightly, and he weeps with her. She wants to tear herself away, but his grip is tight and warm, reminding her of the times they've shared, so she stays in his arms. "I wish I could live through forever with you. To be with you, forever is but a small price to pay."

"Forever is a large commitment," she says, because she senses his sadness and she wants to play along, for both their sakes.

"Nothing is too much when it comes to you."

She stops playing. His devotion is too much. And yet… "After Zero has carried the world away on his shoulders, and the people have left you, and even the sun has forgotten you to give rise to the moon, will you meet me?"

"Always."

"…Ashford," she says. She cannot taste the promise in his words, but she savors it anyway. Because she wishes.

He smiles painfully. "The courtyard."

She says nothing.

"Eternity will be our story," he promises. "As the sun will always give us light, I will always love you."

She screams.

She jerks in her bed, twisting unnaturally in the covers. Someone—through blurry eyes, she makes out concerned hazelnut eyes—barges into her room without so much as a knock. She doesn't care. She can't bring herself to.

"C.C.," the maid gasps.

It is only when she raises her fingers to her face that she feels the dampness of her cheeks and realizes that she is crying.

"C.C.," Sayoko repeats. "Are you alright? What happened?"

She inhales, the breath of air cutting through her and bringing with it a jolt of coldness. "I'm fine," she snaps. She is barely aware that she is shaking, even though the covers are warm—they smell of Lelouch—and the sun is burning through her window. "It was… just a dream," she murmurs. Just a dream, she echoes to herself. No. A memory.

Sayoko stays silent, waiting for her to continue, so she does: "Something... important. To me."

"I'm sorry," Sayoko says. Pity is in her eyes, and C.C. looks away. They both know what is on her mind.

"Leave me," C.C. says. It is more a whisper than a command, but Sayoko obeys with a respectful bow. The door closes after her.

Something important. She almost laughs.

She remembers him too vividly to fool Sayoko, much less herself.

And if the sun falls? she asks Lelouch. The color of his amethyst eyes are burned into her; they brand her, and she cannot escape his ghost. When the storm comes and erases the sun from sight, will you still love me? When thunder sounds and the first bolt of lightning strikes, will you still love me?

Are you still mine?

"Eternity will be our story," he told her. But he is dead, and eternity belongs to the living, to the immortal, to time.

He is gone.

She cries for him, her hands fisting her—their—blanket (the fabric curls back into her grip, almost like Lelouch's hand as he interlaces his fingers with hers—no, no, she snarls to herself; she can't stop thinking about him and the empty space occupied only by his absence and it wounds her), and the cold takes her, because this time, he isn't here to cry with her.

It is nighttime, and even though she knows better, she arrives at Ashford, her feet bringing her to the courtyard she knows he will never set foot in again, regardless of their promise. (Not much of a promise, she thinks to herself.) But she can't help herself. For the first time, she longs for eternity. Their eternity.

She's alone for a long few minutes before she hears someone approach. A set of footsteps, not her own, comes to a rest beside her. C.C. almost jumps. She sighs at the interruption and wishes she is still alone, but doesn't walk away.

Her eyes are trapped by the gaze of the stars.

"I love to come out here, you know?" a voice mutters from beside her, and this time, C.C. does turn around. She sees gold and laughs brokenly.

"Me, too," C.C. says. "I… I wish we had more time."

"We?" Milly Ashford asks.

C.C. doesn't know Milly personally—all she remembers is that, when she asked him in the dead of night a long, long time ago, Lelouch told her he trusted Milly. But she says, honestly, "We were accomplices."

"I see."

"Everyone thinks he betrayed the world, you know," she whispers. She doesn't know whether she's saying it for Lelouch's sake, to let his memory be cherished by those he used to call friends, or for her own sake. She sees Milly's eyes, brimming with misty grief, and she wonders if it is for Milly's sake. "The only one he betrayed is me."

"Who was he?" Milly asks, captivated.

"…he was a great man. Greater than great." She turns, grabs the candle she brought with her, and sits down on the grass. Milly, wonderingly, follows her. With a twig she finds on the ground, C.C. scratches out Lelouch's name, her handwriting uneven and squiggly on the candle. Her hand is still shaking, even when she is done and his name is spelt.

Quietly, wordlessly, she sets down the lavender candle, reminiscent of his eyes, in the fountain.

She hears Milly inhale sharply beside her. As if she is alone, C.C. murmurs, "You promised me forever, Lelouch. In the end, though, you gave me a finite road, but that's not your fault, is it? Like you said. The world needed it. I'm sorry I couldn't have supported you. I'm sorry I still can't."

She watches the candle bob away, carried by the wind like Lelouch was carried away by the spirits.

"He… he touched so many people's lives," Milly is saying. "Damnit, Lelouch. He should have just lived. Emperor or no emperor."

She agrees.

She wishes Lelouch could have been satisfied with an oppressed peace.

"He saved everyone, and for what?" she says, to the wind.

Milly stays quiet.

C.C. answers her own question: "For an army who could not trust him, a best friend who betrayed him, a council who doubted him, a sister who told him he was a monster, a knight who would have followed him to hell for all the wrong reasons… and an empress who did not love him enough."

Milly's cry, silent as it is, is the most heartbreaking thing C.C. has heard in a while.

They sit, both shaking, both sobbing, both watching as the glimmer of purple drifts further and further away from them.

"Are you a witch?"

She is at the supermarket, browsing through the many aisles and dropping countless fruits and vegetables into her trolley when she is interrupted. It is a young voice, unscarred by the mark of adulthood.

Her heart is failing her when she turns around and sees an ocean of purple.

She laughs at the thought that she will always be a witch, to him. And she laughs more because she doesn't mind, if she is his witch.

"Am I?" she says with a shaky smile. "Do I look like a witch?"

The boy with Lelouch's eyes grins. "You'd make a very pretty witch," he declares, squinting at the bright green of her hair.

"You've never seen green hair before?" she asks, wishing he could stop staring so intently. She feels vulnerable, as if he can see inside her.

"Not in real life," he murmurs. "You look like one of the queens in my history book."

She chuckles, because she is the queen pictured in all the history books, standing beside the tyrannical king of the era. "I could be a queen, if you want," she suggests. "But I'd need a king."

She winks, and he blushes furiously, not at all like Lelouch, and it makes her look away. Lelouch would never blush. He'd scoff and roll his eyes.

A woman with curly raven hair runs toward them. "I'm so sorry if my son has disturbed you," she apologizes, distressed, running a hand through her hair and further disheveling it.

And yet it is still Lelouch. Undoubtedly. She can see her warlock in his eyes, in his unfailing enthusiasm—determination—and the fire that still refuses to die. "Oh, no, not at all," C.C. says with a small smile.

Her heart almost stops when she sees the searing shade of violet emblazoning the eyes of another man. Inside, she screams. Outside, she stays silent and walks away from the reminder of everything she has lost.

"Excuse me?"

This time, she almost falls. Her heart stampedes in her chest and she turns to face the man, who is Lelouch and yet not at the same time. "Yes?" she says. Her voice sounds foreign, even to her.

He smiles, tentatively. "I apologize for disturbing you, but my wife saw you earlier and she was wondering if you needed a ride?"

Her heart falls. His wife. Of course—she'd seen the shadow of a woman standing beside him, but she is blind to everything but him.

Even though her mind screams at her to look away, she falls to temptation and glances back at where his wife stands. She sees a shock of ginger, almost orange, hair and eyes the color of sea glass.

"Miss?" he ventures.

But she is too enraptured by the sight of another Shirley, tall and happy and smiling. The woman shines with all the joy a past Shirley used to dream of sharing with Lelouch.

The same dream she now harbors, under the judging glare of the sun and in the middle of the night when she is alone, and nobody is there to judge her for the tears she cries as that dream constantly eludes her, slipping through her fingers and running away from her.

"No," she denies. "I'll be fine, thank you."

He blesses her with a beautiful smile, the same one that used to make so many girls fall for him, and she walks away quickly.

It is too much.

He is too much.

The next time she sees him is in the news. She's sitting in a cafe, browsing through the paper when she spots the familiar shade of amethyst standing out amongst the mute sea around him. She drops the sheet of newspaper and almost laughs at her own clumsiness. Shouldn't she be over this shock by now? How can he still affect her like this?

He's standing beside his wife, their hands on the shoulders of a little child, no older than seven, and she flinches. (They look so happy, a venomous part of her mind thinks traitorously.) But she flinches more when she realizes it's an old picture—he looks as young as he was when he approached her as a concerned woman's husband, many years ago—and dread sinks into her stomach.

She scans the passage of text quickly. And despite the fact that he is not Lelouch, not her Lelouch, she still feels a stab of pain as she drops her face into her hands and refuses to cry. She blinks back the tears. It stings, but she tells herself it isn't her place to shed tears over a stranger. (Only not a stranger, never a stranger.) She doesn't have the right.

And besides. She's a witch. Emotionless and heartless and uncaring. She does not cry.

She pays for her drinks and leaves the cafe, dropping the rolled-up newspaper into the trash can as she passes it on the way to the door. She already knows she's never going to this cafe again. Not when it's the place she sat in as she read about the deaths of Julius Kingsley and his family.

There's a familiar heavy weight on her shoulders, a burden she cannot escape. And this time, stepping out into the afternoon rain, she doesn't try to run.

And so life goes on.

(Life goes on, except it is not Lelouch she wakes to, Lelouch she inhales as she breathes, Lelouch she sees against the vision of the dawning sun, and Lelouch she savors.)

fin.

A/N: I don't know. I guess I still can't get over the ending. And, before any of you mention it, I know that season 3 is coming out. And I can't wait to see Lelouch alive, because hell, if there was one thing I hated about Code Geass, it was the ending. Or more specifically, Lelouch's ending. Honestly, I'm not surprised I decided to write this (I am an avid fan of C.C. x Lelouch, amongst other pairings). I will likely be adding to this as time passes—though, of course, not all of the one-shots will be focusing on C.C. and Lelouch only; there will always be C.C. as this one-shot series is centered on her, but there will also be other characters—but as for now, there are the next chapters for TTHM in line—which, considering that I'm almost at the halfway point, which I've taken as my rounding point for when to break off and divide the episode into two chapters, should be coming soon. To be honest, the first one-shot I wrote and intended to upload to this set isn't this one, so there is actually already another one lying somewhere in my folders; I changed my mind and decided to post this one before it—not for any particular reason—so there is that to come later.