I AM BACK! :D I sort of died for a little while, but now I am (hopefully) restored! I wrote this based on a prompt that had nothing to do with the word 'horizon' (or 'horizons' as it eventually was), but I liked it so I changed a few things around and made it fit.

I imagine it's simply another dream after a particularly terrible battle outcome. Lelouch is feeling bad, and Zero delivers a few home truths or something like that.

Enjoy!

Man of a Million Miracles

11. Horizons

Zero pushed the game across to the middle of the old mahogany table, his fingers splayed out across the checker board surface, lingering for a few seconds while he considered the boy seated opposite him. He hadn't even moved since arriving. The child was weary tonight. Good, very good. It would be far easier to rile him up into the fiery tempest he so enjoyed seeing. All too often did he see the boy with slumped shoulders, a little anger to set the blood moving again would find him well. Now all he needed was a subject…

"So…tell me Lelouch…is your brain irreparably damaged?" Zero began. A little salt on the wound was the perfect way to set the match. "Or do you perhaps aim to lull your enemies into a false sense of security with a cunning illusion of utter stupidity?"

"Insults already, old friend?"

The raven haired teen spoke with a hollow voice, turning sore and reddened eyes up to face the impenetrable ebony depths of his masked creation. Zero felt himself torn between comforting the idiot and throwing a chair at him. Eventually he decided that no progress would be made if the boy was unconscious. Damn those eyes, damn those mournful violet pools to hell.

"It could be argued that my harshness is excessive, but it seems common sense fails to penetrate that thick skull of yours when delivered by any other means." Zero saw his young protégé slump even further and he sighed.

He wondered if there was a way to hit someone with a chair hard enough so that they realised how moronic they were, but not enough to do any lasting damage. Probably not. With this conclusion, Zero stood. Walking over to the boy, who seemed so much smaller nowadays, he placed a hand on the bony shoulder.

"Lelouch, please understand that I say this not to harm you, but in the hopes that you finally take my advice and start doing things correctly."

"Correctly?" Lelouch laughed, the empty sound carried in the large hall. Zero winced. "There is no correct way of waging war. If there was, do you not think I would be following it?"

"War? War, my boy, is nothing but a game."

Zero dragged the chess board fully over to Lelouch.

"Think of it as a board game. The pieces on the board are the lives of the innocent civilians caught between two horizons. In order to win you must not lose too many of the pieces, including those of your opponent. If you have no pieces left because they are either dead or have fled the board in fear, then you cannot possibly win. There is no other alternative strategy. If you fully understood this fact and acted upon it, then perhaps you would not suffer so much when you see the body count."

Ta da!

The next word is: Intimate (huh…well, I'm stumped. Halp meh! Seriously, anything will help, no matter how silly or out there it seems!)