One year ago today, Code Geass: To Live Without's first chapter was published. In the beginning, it was just a fairly simple, straightforward re-enactment of a story told often: the story of a fallen prince and his efforts to get revenge and make up for the damage done to him. And, to be fair, it still is the story of a fallen prince and his efforts to get revenge and make up the damage done to him, but this story wound up taking quite a different path than I'm sure many have expected. I've received plenty of intrigue and praise for it, and plenty of criticism.

But, to be fair, that was the goal. It was an experiment – to play with audience expectations and patience and attention, and then see what happens. The results were and are interesting, and I'm honestly thankful for anybody that bothered to invest even a little time in this wide-encompassing, convoluted, scatterbrained story. I should have updated more, in all honesty – my plan was to have the story done by this point (exactly one year later) but music, schoolwork, and life in general wound up getting in the way!

But hey, for those who opted to take a look, and gave this story even a little blind faith – thanks a bunch! It really does mean a lot to me. It's all uphill from here. So cheers to you guys!

[*****]

MT. TSURUGI

2010

Two young boys sat on a hillside in the beautiful, rolling foothills of Mount Tsurugi, observing the night sky. Though normally a treacherous hike - not for the weak-stomached or the faint-of-heart - it seemed to be an absolute breeze to the two boys, whose lives had been thrown into turmoil so abruptly; casually, even. Autumn had come and gone too quickly; it left death and destruction in its wake, two cultures fighting against each other for the pettiest of reasons.

The war was in its fifth month, cerca 2010, and the Japanese were losing.

The older of the two boys gazed at the stars. His shaky hand was pointed upwards; he was trying to see if he could identify any constellations tonight. It irked him slightly that he couldn't recall all the constellations on the star chart his mother gave him; it saddened him knowing that she wasn't there helping him. The distant gunfire was very distracting. The absolute silence of the younger boy beside him didn't help matters either.

There was a dull roar to the East; the eldest boy didn't even have to look to know it was a Britannian plane.

"Quiet night tonight, Suzaku," the older boy spoke, cutting through the silence like a blade.

Suzaku rubbed his hands together, his green eyes obscured by his thick, curly hair. Some distance off, a thick lump of snow fell off a tree branch; the wind kicked up, making the old, weak tree shudder slightly.

The eldest boy looked to the distance. The brightest lights were the warm, alien flashes of explosions and airborne weapons, bathing the black horizon with small orange dots, silent mountains of kinetic energy. There was beauty in the violence, but only a little.

"Like shooting stars," the eldest mused. "Tokyo has beautiful lights, but these are some of the brightest I've ever seen, maybe ever will." He looked over to Suzaku. "Britannia's wrong, you know. Maybe the Japanese they know will run away and hide like a bunch of girls, but not the real Japanese. They'll fight and win."

Suzaku gave an uncomfortable nod. The older boy knew that look; it was the look of knowing far too much yet understanding far too little.

"I wonder if we're being watched. Probably by Miyanaga. He's always hovering over us."

"He's just helping, Lelouch," Suzaku spoke, his voice a ghostly whisper. "It's his job, like my… father said. I mean, he said we're just kids…"

"Very important kids. We're young men, Suzaku." Lelouch shifted a bit, feeling cold. "We're… we're important."

The sky leapt and the ground shook. The boys were shocked into stillness, before realizing the barrage was too far away to be serious. Lelouch released a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding in.

"…I wanna go home, Lelouch."

"Me too, Suzaku. Home sounds really good."

"I, just…" Suzaku's breath hitched. "Dad, Dad, I want Dad back. He was… I just-I didn't think…"

"I'm sorry, too. He's just… dead…"

"L-Lelouch, oh, oh gosh, I… how ca—I, I never wanted—"

"Stop."

The picturesque memory began to dissolve, and then the beautiful Mount Tsurugi nightline began to fade away into digital ash, siphoned slowly into a cyberspace silo. Soon, the room was quiet, save for the low hum of purple neon, the quiet, white-noise click of arcane technology, and the reserved breaths of Lelouch vi Britannia. Prince, soldier, leader, politician, time-traveler, scientist, vagabond.

Immortal.

Lelouch relaxed in his chair, gazing at the terminal and digital displays in front of him. Very few people on earth knew The Geass Directorate existed, true – but even fewer knew about the existence of the Nemonic Room. The only way anybody could gain entrance into the Nemonic Hall was if they just so happened to be in possession of a specific, elite card manufactured by the techs at the Directorate (even though there were only three in existence); the keypad at the threshold of the Nemonic Hall was the only keypad in the world capable of reading the barcode on that specific card. If you found yourself in the Nemonic Hall, you were either extremely important, extremely lucky, or extremely secretive… or Lelouch vi Britannia.

Although Lelouch sometimes wondered if he was a mixture of all three.

The hall itself wasn't much to speak of – it barely even constituted as a hall. You could walk across the dimly-lit facility and back in under a minute. There were only a handful of devices inside here – two terminals for data extraction, and one floor-mounted machine in the middle of the room that, whenever activated, would emit a light, cold fog of purple smoke.

But it was what these machines were capable of – the showcasing and extraction of memory – that made this room so paramount. All of Lelouch's memories were on call here, and he could easily access them at any time with a few voice commands and a few swipes on a pad. He could even physically enter some of his memories if he so wished, although he could never influence or change them. He could only spectacle. Like a ghost.

Ghost. Noun. Definition: the soul of a dead person, a disembodied spirit imagined, usually as a vague, shadowy or evanescent form, as wandering among or haunting living persons.

Lelouch methodically scrolled through his memories, watching as the vitreous images flew past him like long-lost pictures drifting in the wind. He was dimly aware of the vibrating on his cellphone, but he opted to ignore it. It could wait. Not even C.C. would dare to bother him if The Nemonic Hall was occupied.

Alternative definition: a mere shadow or semblance; a trace. Like a ghost of someone's former self.

He narrowed down his memories with the input of a code. The pre-revolution days.

Alternative definition: a haunting memory.

Narrowed further. The Aries Villa. Now he was getting somewhere. He settled a random moment, and inputted a handful of algorithms without even having to look at the keyboard. The memory screen in front of him began to hum, outlined with yellow.

Sailing definition: to move when there is no perceptible wind.

"Begin immersion," Lelouch ordered. He stepped forward, and he felt himself get whisked away from one dimension to another. His body was turned into electronic mass, a spooky sensation to anybody not used to it. To Lelouch, this was commonplace – he got more bothered by a sudden draft behind his shoulder than he did something as simple as molecular reconfiguration.

He touched down on the grass, and he looked around. The Aries Villa was many things. Pastoral, practically Arcadian in design. Idyllic. Simple. Imperial. Wistful. But most of all, it was lonely and isolated. This was something that Lelouch never noticed as a child; or, if he did, it didn't bother him too much, because he had the company of his brothers and sisters along the way. But, for the most part, the Aries Villa was a ghost town.

But Lelouch kept walking, anyways, slowly drifting through this isolated little world. Even though it was all artificial, constructed only from what the technology could pick out from his brain, he found himself enjoying the feel of the sun on his shoulders, the humid feel of a rainy day, the diverse, colorful array of sights and smells all around him. It felt like home.

Verbal definition: to go about or move like a ghost.

He paused as he approached a familiar estate. His estate, to be exact. Everything was the same as he remembered; the stately, outdated Victorian designs, the gilded stairways, the fountains in the front and the small gardens off to the sides.

Lelouch leaned against a tree and observed his younger self. Little Lelouch was playing some kind of game with Euphemia. Lelouch had long since forgotten what kind of game this was, but for some reason, it involved Little Lelouch digging up a red cape and a small, wooden sword. He looked like a pompous dumbass, but Euphemia seemed pretty dazzled; or, if she wasn't, she was good at putting on a façade.

You and me both.

"Not to worry, young maiden!" Little Lelouch proclaimed, his light voice cracking a little. "The heroic Knight of Zero is here to save you!"

Euphemia rolled her eyes and shot her hands up to the sky. "My hero! Evil beware!"

Little Lelouch gave a cocky smirk and then raised his own wooden sword to the sky, barely seeming to notice or care that the cape – which was far too big for his small frame – was slipping off his shoulders thanks to a poorly-fastened brooch. "That's right! I walked and flew across all the seas and skies and all the forests and dungeons to save you, and… and, um… I will save you!"

"Woo!" Euphemia cheered, pumping her little fist. Christ, this was almost too adorable and saccharine to be real. Not that Lelouch minded.

Little Lelouch started thrusting and swinging his sword around in pathetic little arcs. Lelouch realized he was exactly as pathetic with a weapon as he was a kid. But Little Lelouch kept parrying and waving his faux-rapier around like he was the star warrior of the Britannian Empire, like he was on top of the world and could slay any dragon in sight. No Geass, no manipulation, no clever mind games – just pure, unadulterated, almost crude demonstrations of heroics. Or, whatever heroism looked like to a little tyke like that.

Eventually, Little-Lelouch got exhausted, sweat dripping off his thick black hair, so he pretended to have slain evil and then collapsed into the grass, pathetically hoisting his wooden sword into the air. "Huff… take that…" Little-Lelouch panted, wiping some sweat off his forehead. "I did it…"

"You sure did," Euphie gave him a thumbs-up, lying next to him, her pink curls sprawling across the grass. "You get tired real easy. Are you sick?"

Little Lelouch listlessly waved at the clouds, his chest still heaving. "It's… just got tired beating the bad guys! Huff!"

His half-sister rolled her eyes and started drawing figures in the sky with her little hands. "You also got all sweaty running after them!"

"All in a… phew… Knight's job, Euphie," Little-Lelouch declared, somewhat-pathetically.

"I like this game! Hopefully Cornie doesn't know you stole her cape for this, though."

"Um…" Little-Lelouch looked at his bright red cape, caked with grass stains. "…Nope!"

"Lelouch, do you think you're gonna be a Knight? Even though we're, um… royals?"

"Yeah!" Little-Lelouch's eyes shined. Lelouch had forgotten how long it'd been since his eyes had sparkled like that. "Or, when I'm in charge, I'll let all the princes and princesses be Knights if they want! That'll be my first… royal decree!"

These little Imperials have no idea.

"Do you think you'll go next after Dad?" Euphemia asked, rubbing her little chin thoughtfully. "Cornie said that if she wasn't chosen after Dad… croaked (?), she wouldn't be able to control herself! …Wait, she told me not to tell that. Oops."

Little-Lelouch shrugged. "Dunno. But… I probably will! Just you wait and see, Euphie. It'll be great when I do inherit all his stuff. I'll be the best Emperor ever!"

These little Imperials really have no idea.

"Yeah, I believe it," Euphemia smiled, going back to drawing figures in the clouds. Little-Lelouch joined her.

Out of the corner of his eye, Lelouch knew Marianne was watching. He knew she was smiling. Marianne was always smiling. Nothing ever seemed to bring her down.

"…Fast-Forward," Lelouch ordered. The scene began unfolding in front of him like a time-lapse video, and the young prince and princess were quickly indoors seconds later, even though it was realistically a few hours later. The sun rose and then just as quickly dropped.

"Stop," Lelouch ordered. It was now sundown, and based on the little trail of destruction the young royals had left on their way up the stairs, they were inside the Estate by now.

Thus, he walked.

In the common area, Little-Lelouch had set up a small chess-board atop a trestle table, and was soundly beating Clovis at his own game. Clovis looked so different back then, in the throes of puberty – his hair was shorter, eyes bigger, face rounder. But there were faint traces of the cowardly killer hidden beneath the surface, just out of sight. Speaking of cowardly killers, Schneizel was quietly observing the game, occasionally giving Clovis tips when the latter began flailing in confusion.

"This game is stupid," Clovis muttered, idly moving a Rook. Bad move – that left his Bishop open to Lelouch's pawn, which would have created a direct passageway to one of Clovis' pawns. Christ, I play way too much Chess. Schneizel seemed to notice, but didn't say anything. The chandelier above illuminated Clovis' aggravation with the game brilliantly. "And boring! How is this fun to you two?"

Schneizel shrugged, giving off a cool air of adultness and professionalism. "I like it. It's relaxing. Helps you exercise the muscles in your mind."

"Yeah! Also, that one's mine," Little-Lelouch determined, snatching the aforementioned Bishop and setting it on his side of the table. His actions were met with a bemused groan from Clovis, who had only collected a handful of pieces from Lelouch's side of the board.

"Can we just draw or something? Or do something on the piano?" Clovis begged.

"After the game," Little-Lelouch decided, his eyes focused on the board in front of him. "I like this. I like the, um… the power I have over this."

"The control?" Schneizel offered.

"Yes! I can decide who goes where, what happens, what won't… all the tasks. It's nice to have… control."

Clovis mutely nodded, obviously perturbed at slowly losing a game to a kid.

Lelouch's eyes wandered to the staircase above, and sure enough, there was Marianne. She was seated atop a little throne, hands folded, smile bright.

He started ascending the staircase, his mother slowly but surely coming into view. By the time he reached the top and was standing by her side, he'd had all the air sucked out of him. She looked exactly the same as he remembered. She was an ideal. Violet eyes – Lelouch had doubtlessly inherited them from her; Charles' eyes were too dark – and thick, curly black hair, some of which graced her shoulders. The slightest hint of red on her lips. A perpetual, delicate look of calm and content written on her face – either she was ignorant of what was to come, or had already accepted it, as if it was always bound to happen.

And so Lelouch stood there by her side, the two of them watching the antics of her child and his half-siblings below.

"You know, none of them are going to change when they grow up," Lelouch began. "They'll stay the same for the most part. Competitive. Selfish. Always secretly at each other's throats even though it doesn't look like it on the surface."

Clovis, his ambivalence and confusion with chess mounting, decided to angrily knock over the chessboard in front, earning a hearty laugh from Schneizel, a perplexed look from Little-Lelouch, and a faint little laugh from Marianne. Lelouch loved hearing her laugh.

"…They'll be a little worldlier. A little smarter. Harder, too… that's kind of what happens when you realize the world is bigger than you think it is. But… much as things change, things stay the same in equal measure."

Schneizel and Clovis started picking up the discarded pieces.

"…You probably envy them, don't you?" Lelouch muttered, glancing at Marianne. "Envy their innocence. Envy their… stupidity, really. They're stupid fucking kids. Stupid, spoiled little ponces. But they're happy. They haven't had the chance to experience the fog of war, or the toxicity of reputation, or… the weight of the world on their shoulders. Yet. But you did, and you'll never forget it, will you, Mom?"

No answer from her, other than vague twitches of emotions. He knew she couldn't hear him, and that hurt the most, but it felt good to project every once in a while.

"I wish you could hear me," Lelouch whispered.

He rested his hand upon the outlines of the throne, shoulders drooping.

"I wish you were still here to guide me. I wish I didn't screw up as badly as I did… or, will do, as it is. I wish I didn't have all this responsibility choking me… I wish I had the power to turn back time and recreate my destiny. Less people would have been taken from me that way. Well… I do have the power to turn back time, but my fate was sealed the moment I pulled a stunt like killing God."

Nothing from Marianne.

"…I wish it was easy."

Lelouch moved his hand, and rested it atop Marianne's. There was no physical sensation, but the warmth was all the same. He felt like sobbing.

"I wish that…"

He looked at her eyes. Her calm, sad, hopeful eyes. They were doubtlessly his.

"…I wish that I didn't have to wish. I wish it just… could be."

Marianne simply smiled. Lelouch rested his head atop Marianne's head and kneeled like that for several moments, basking in the silence and the chill. He swore he felt her other hand lightly stroke his hair, threading her fingers through his bangs, but it was probably just his imagination.

The world stopped turning and time stopped for an instant. The only thing constant was the sound of Lelouch's heartbeat.

Thump-thump. Thump. Thump. Thump-thump.

His chest rose and fell as he breathed. Rise, fall. Rise, fall. Lelouch, the Fallen Prince, had fallen so many times. So, so many times, sometimes literally. It was almost dizzying. For every step he took, he felt like he kept taking two steps back and then tripping and falling on his ass all over again.

Failure had never stopped Marianne, even when it absolutely should have. Even when she was told she would never amount to anything as a Knightmare Pilot. Even when the nobles and consorts looked down upon her commoner status with disdain and suspicion. Even when it seemed like she would never catch the eye of the Emperor. Not even her death stopped her.

Slowly, shakily, Lelouch lifted his head, staring into her calm, comfortable eyes, which were staring off into the distance by this.

They were doubtlessly his.

Doubtlessly.

Lelouch rose, smoothing out his outfit and breathing a big, final sigh.

To give up the ghost. Idiom. Definition: to cease existing or functioning.

He let his hand wander over Marianne's for a moment before retracting it, and letting it hang by his side.

To die.

Lelouch cast his eyes over the ballroom one last time. The chandelier cast a warm glow over the red-brown interior. The sun had long-since set, and now stars were gracing the sky, dark clouds and a harvest moon adorning them. The sound of Clovis' piano-playing reverberated across the halls – a haunting refrain in B Flat Major. Sad, nostalgic, peaceful, but hopeful.

He descended the staircase. The sound of Clovis' piano became clearer and clearer, as did the poor, slightly off-key harmonization of Lelouch, Euphie, and someone else singing along. Lelouch wasn't sure who the "someone else" was, but it sounded like someone very dear to him. Or, someone who was once very dear to him.

Lelouch stopped at the door as Clovis' song came to a close, the slow-burning chords resonating throughout the house. Lelouch turned back to face the ghost of his Mother, still perched on her throne.

It might have been a trick of the eyes, but Lelouch saw her smile at him.

And he smiled back.

"Bye, Mom."

The world around him began to collapse, like a digital hailstorm. The sights and sounds of his childhood faded away into a dim silence. Lelouch closed his eyes and let the feeling of giving up the ghost drift over him, felt his soul enter the real world once again. When he re-opened his eyes, all that he saw was a lonely, technology-laden room.

He was still alone.

But not for long.

He turned to the nearest terminal and watched it light up as he drew near.

"Activate charges," Lelouch muttered. "Deposit detonator in Slot A."

The computer beeped in recognition, and tiny red lights popped out, dotted across the room like miniature stars. A metal slot opened up at Lelouch's knee, and he bent down and reached inside the trunk, pulling out a slim detonator with a purple pin.

"Put the room on permanent lockdown the moment I leave, inaccessible to everyone, regardless of whether they have access or not."

Another beep. Some codes were filled out, followed by a low hum from the terminal.

Lelouch stuffed the detonator in his pocket, and looked around the room.

"…And if I have even a ghost of a chance, I'll see you on the other side. Lelouch, signing out."

He left the Hall, briefly pausing at the threshold of the door to let his eyes adjust to the brighter lights of the underground Directorate. He began walking down a familiar series of hallways, and was quickly joined by a team of technicians and guards, who helpfully guided him to the elevator he needed. The elevator, jam-packed with people, began to ascend into The Engine, and stopped just as quickly as it rose, the doors sliding open with a resounding ding. They made haste down an incredibly familiar, linear hallway, and Lelouch departed from the group, walking up an incredibly familiar, tall staircase before finding himself in front of an incredibly familiar, electronic door.

This time, he didn't even wait. He placed his hand on the pad and a melodic little ding graced his ears as the hatch opened. Kaguya was already waiting for him on the dais. She smiled, her heavy eyes and tight posture giving away her anxiety. But she looked ready, and happy. C.C. looked the same as she always did – emotionless, distant, her eyes far-away. But she, too, looked ready. And maybe a little happy.

"Are you ready?" C.C. asked, crossing her legs.

Lelouch pulled out the detonator, placing his thumb atop the trigger, harmlessly fiddling with it for a moment.

He breathily chuckled, relaxing his shoulders. Everyone was waiting for him; no time to waste.

Heh. Time-travel joke.

"…Let's rise," Lelouch declared. A genuine smile crossed his lips as he pressed the detonator.