Disclaimer: I don't own Code Geass, nor Dead Like Me.

Mortal

Ever since C.C received the Code, she's never stepped foot in a church. It's her one mortal fear. The one thing that elicits fear, and hate.

She smiles morbidly to herself, when she thinks of it as the single reminder of humanity she has left.

It was one more week until the Zero Requiem followed through. She was humming a simple tune quietly to herself, while lounging carelessly upon the couch.

"Lelouuch," she whined in a lackadaisical tone, "Make me a pizza."

She eyed her cuticles. I really need to give myself a manicure.

"I'm working."

"Lelouuch."

"I'm working."

"Leeeeloouuuuch."

"Do you not know the meaning of work?" His tone became hard, which prompted C.C to lift herself up to see.

He was at the kitchen table in his usual thinking position. His dark fringe over swept and covered his eyes.

"That's not work." She murmured, as she swung her arms over the back of the couch, and cocked her head to the side, as she inspected further.

Purposefully making a loud sigh, she picked herself off the couch and sauntered to the brooding mess.

With a plop, she perched herself on the edge of the table.

"What's the matter." She casually said it, but he could tell it was no question.

"Everything's going..." C.C paused for a moment, to find the right word, "Swimmingly. For you at least."

"You've got what you wanted, after all this time." Seeing that he still gave no response, she continued.

"You're the emperor of the empire. You've made this whole complicated plan, that's basically foolproof. And you've-"

"I'm going to die." He slowly put his hands down on the table, as if admitting defeat, "I'm...going to die."

An odd wave of silence slipped over the room.

"All the more reason why you should hurry up on that pizza." The immortal girl said this softly, without any hint of teasing, contrary to the words.

He started to shake, and then the shakes turned into full blown laughter.

C.C softened her eyes at this. She gently pried his arms away, and sat herself into his lap. Her arms wrapped around his thin torso.

Lelouch was trembling now. But, it was for a completely different reason.

He buried his face into her shoulder, and C.C could feel his fingernails digging into her back.

It's unpleasant, but she knows she been through much worse, and there isn't another place she would rather be right now.

"You think it could've been different?" He confides into her shoulder.

"Not with the choices that you made." C.C answers lightly, but the simple honesty underneath, strengthens those few words.

"Maybe I made a mistake. If I'd not killed Euphemia, it'd all be over by now. Maybe if I'd known sooner about the fleija, I could've seen Nunnally grow into a woman. Maybe..."

"All those maybes don't make a change." She plays with the ends of his hair. She thinks that it's getting a bit too long for her liking.

"You're right."

"Aren't I always?" She chimes.

A faint rumble emerges from his chest. A real laugh this time.

"I should get started on that pizza huh?"

"I like cheese." She glides off him with ease, and it makes him feel like nothing had ever happened.

He was a dead man walking, but he knows it'll be better for both of them, if the words inside both of their heads, were left unspoken.

The aroma of cheese fills the room as the pizza bubbles and bakes inside the oven.

"You should give me the recipe for it."

"Over my dead body." The dark irony over his quip, makes them both smile sardonically.

"I'll take it as an invite to grave rob you."

Lelouch scoffs at her threat. "As if. You've asked me to dial the phone to call Pizza Hut, because you were that lazy."

"Underestimation's your downfall."

"If only you mentioned that in the beginning."

Would it have helped anything, Lelouch?

The green-haired witch only looks at him, but she knows she doesn't need to ask a question they already know the answer to. Besides, she's always been a big fan of time management, and that would've taken up time that they...

That he doesn't have.

"People say the Lord works in mysterious ways." Lelouch says to no one in particular.

"Funny how people worship such a shady character." C.C airily comments, as she watches the pizza through the oven glass.

"I'm sorry." He moves his head to look at the woman, who still has an indescribable relationship to him.

She raises an eyebrow at this sudden action.

"For not fulfilling our contract." He blurts out.

"Are meant to be broken." Lelouch grunts as Suzaku plunges the sword into his stomach. It was just like Suzaku to do that.

A quick and certain death. He smiles at him, and thanks him for this mercy he doesn't deserve.

Blackness eats away at his field of vision, and soon he doesn't see anything at all.

The sinned martyr's last feeling before drifting off into oblivion, was a distant wetness upon his hand.

Somehow, C.C finds herself in front of a large stained glass window of the Virgin Mary. She doesn't know what she's doing, and it almost feels pleasant.

She berates herself for doing this, but it wasn't enough to stop her from it.

In less than two months, he caused her to walk within 3 feet of a church- in over 80 years- just to kill a man, she once loved.

In less than a minute of meeting him, she willingly made herself die another death, for a boy whose name she didn't even know yet.

So really, it was her own fault that this happened to her. She should've seen the signs, or rather, she could've seen the signs, if it was any other person. But it was Lelouch, with his powerful, uncontrollable charisma, and his fool-hardy idealistic ambitions.

He swept her up like sand in the evening tide.

Because of him, she kneels in front of whatever god or deity society has come to worship, and prays for a fruitless wish, that she knows no all seeing god can make true.

"Lelouch, you bastard." She curses at him for taking away her single reminder of the humanity she once had.

But she can't curse at him with the vigor she'd like to have, because with the fat, accusing tear rolling down her cheek, he has given her more humanity she's ever felt in all ten of her lifetimes.

The ground shivers underneath her and her ears pick up muffled cheering. C.C decides that it was time to leave, and picks herself off the floor.

"People say the Lord works in mysterious ways." She turns and walks down the rows of wooden pews, "But it doesn't make the shitty things in life any sweeter."

Mary doesn't get a look back. Not from the girl she cursed so many years ago.