Title: Left Behind

Summary: he will die in two months and he seems to be forgetting that it is those left behind who suffer the most—she knows he will bleed and she can do nothing but love him.

Disclaimer: I own nothing.

left behind

the emperor and his empress

They walk together, close enough that if she leans even a centimeter further toward him they would be touching. But she doesn't, and they don't touch, because she knows—she knows and it hurt, hurts, hurts—that he will die, and she doesn't know what to do.

They are accomplices.

But she hopes—deep inside her, so deep no one can see it (she can barely see it herself)—that they are something more.

Maybe, she muses, if they were something more, he'd hesitate. Hesitate long enough that she can convince him that there's another way—a better way—aside from the wretched, half-baked plan he concocted in a frenzy of desperation, in an attempt to keep his enemy—his old friend—from killing him.

But, no. Kururugi will get to kill him anyway. And nothing he thinks up is ever half-baked.

He was—is, she catches herself (he's not dead yet and she's glad for that)—a genius. Sometimes too much of a genius, she thinks, and inside, she wonders why she's aching.

She is broken. Broken and hollow and empty and unrecognizable. So hollow that she should have no heart left to feel—no heart left to hurt. And yet if she has to put a name to the feeling strangling her chest, it would be heartbreak.

("Don't be upset," he smiles, and his voice is soothing but his words do anything but soothe her. "You'll be fine. You're a witch, after all."

"And you were a warlock."

"Are, C.C," he corrects her gently. "Present tense."

And, she thinks, there's no present tense to it because he is going to die and if he truly is a warlock, he wouldn't die—warlocks don't die, just like witches. He's going to die and leave her just like everyone else had, and time will pass and he will become nothing more than a cynical slip of a boy who earned a place in her memories. Memories that will fade, and she doesn't want him to.)

Kururugi, unlike her, looked all-too-pleased at the thought of finally getting the justice—is it?—he thought he deserved (he still thinks so), and she wished so bad that she could wipe his smirk off his face. He had always been so arrogant, so cocky and so self-assured.

Much like Lelouch. But Lelouch is kind, an angel in demon's clothing.

And she wants to tell him—beg him—to reconsider, to call off the stupid—stupid—Zero Requiem and to think about her for once.

But she doesn't. Because she betrayed him. She lied to him and deceived him and worked against him alongside his greatest enemies, and she has no right to challenge him when she betrayed him.

Her eyes, though, talk to him in the place of her mouth. Please. Please, please, please, they say, but he doesn't hear. He's looking straight ahead, and he doesn't spare her even a single glance, and she feels like a little girl again.

The little girl who looked at the world with shining hopes and sparkling eyes, because she was loved by her family and she loved them back and she had still been so young.

When her parents—and her world—disappeared, and she was taken in by the nun—who betrayed her like she betrayed Lelouch and why did she betray him and she shouldn't have and if she could rewind time she'd change that because by the Gods she shouldn't have betrayed him—she became only a shell of that little girl.

And then the nun forced the Code on her and she had been left alone, and she was even more alone when she finally said goodbye to the little girl in her.

But now she wishes she is young and little again, because back then everything had gone her way. And if she cried, people would fret over her and her parents would give her whatever she wanted.

And she wants to cry now—to plead, to beg, to grovel, to pray, to break—but he doesn't do anything except face frontward and to the future, to certain death.

And he will die.

She knows it, because there's no changing his mind. And Kururugi will not allow him to change his mind, anyway. But she hates it, and she wonders if she can kill Kururugi first, before he ever has a chance to draw his sword and impale Lelouch and kill him and murder him and slay him and take him away from her.

Why?

The question originates from the deepest, darkest depths of her soul—depths she never even believed existed.

Why? Why, goddamnit—

Lelouch knows. He knows. He knows very well—too well—that she curses her immortality, that she hates it because while everyone else dies around her, she's forced to stand back and watch and survive. Lelouch knows and he's still planning to go and die and leave her.

Why?

Why can't he just stay alive? Why can't he stay with her?

("You're so curious," he murmurs when he thinks she isn't listening, and the way he's staring at her makes her feel special—not the special her other suitors used to bestow upon her, gifts in their hands and her Geass in their eyes—but a real special, a kind that leaves her all warm and tingly inside. "I've never met anyone quite like you."

And she fights the urge to sit up and kiss him senseless because she's meant to be asleep and she isn't supposed to be listening to him.

And then he whispers her name, and she thinks it's a beautiful sound.)

She blinks back tears and ignores the pain and the sting behind her eyes because she's the empress—his empress—and she has a reputation to uphold. But if the people were to know that the emperor—hers—is going to die, then would they blame her for crying?

(For a moment she forgets that he is hated by the world and she pretends he isn't, because if everyone loved him there would be no need for a Requiem—and his death—at all.)

Because he will die and still, still, she doesn't know what to do.

She's had so many years of experience but right now she is clueless, and she'd do anything for him but what can she do? She may be immortal but she's not God and she can't save him and he'll still die and why does he have to be the one dying and why can't she save him, he can't die, he can't, he can't, he can't—

He's hers. He promised her and it isn't fair.

He is meant to be her warlock. Warlocks don't leave their witches for death. Warlocks should conquer death and she asks—desperately—why he can't.

They were never supposed to fail, not them. They were always meant to be young and brilliant, laughing and outwitting their enemies with a third of the world at their fingertips. But infinity isn't them, she guesses. That's just her.

She bites back a sob and remembers the way he used to look at her—in awe. Now he just looks at her with regret, like he wants to imprint her into his mind forever before the end, and she wishes she could take him by the hand and tell him, don't worry, the world will wait for you.

But no, it won't. Because the world is so unfair.

She has lost so much already—hasn't she lost enough?—but the world doesn't think so and so they're going to take her warlock away from her and he's hers. And she hates hates hates the world for it.

He should belong to her.

But he doesn't and she doesn't understand why he belongs to death instead.

It's a fate he doesn't deserve. A fate that should never be given to him, because he is a knight of justice.

But then, and she should know, justice doesn't exist in the world.

(Why doesn't it? Justice should exist because if things were reasonable, he would be justice and—)

She halts when he does, surprised at his sudden stop but not daring to speak and question him. She follows the direction of his gaze and she freezes, tensing. He is staring at a beautifully-framed—not that she's paying attention, because with Lelouch's death looming over the horizon, she has no right to be enjoying such luxuries—portrait hanging on the wall, and she recognizes the subjects of the painting in less than a split-second.

It is him. Him, and her, depicted as the rulers of Britannia. The emperor and empress.

Her heart squeezes painfully.

He looks beautiful in the painting, of course, with soulful amethyst eyes and silky black hair. But she doesn't see his beauty, or his grace, or elegance, or charm. Her eyes conjure up a blotch of red that stains his skin, and she's painfully aware of how the corridor is shrinking and shrinking and she's suffocating but she can't do a thing about it, just like how she can't do anything about him dying.

The redness that spreads across his body is a red that sears and burns and crackles. But the fire is dying, and it hurts to breathe. His life slips out of him in pools and all she can do is watch—she reminds herself, sternly, that he isn't dying yet and it's only a painting, only her dreadful imagination, but at the same time she knows that it will happen to him very soon and she won't be able to do anything but stay in the shadows like a goddamn coward. She won't be there to catch him when he falls and slips in the same bloody red.

Just like people before him who had fallen.

She curses and snaps her mind back into place just in time to see the way Lelouch's teeth grit and his eyes lower evasively before he continues to walk.

She wants to reach out to him—to pull him back before he has the chance to meet Suzaku Kururugi's sword—but her arm falls just short of grasping his robe and she stares after him, words stuck in her throat but refusing to be coughed up.

Please don't die, please don't leave me alone, please stay here, please, I need you, I love you, please please please—

And then she is running, chasing, speeding up so that she is beside him again—but still they do not touch. And between them is a distance she mourns, because she knows that it will only grow when he is brought before the executioner and the noose on his neck is tightened.

before the executioner

The only death that will be paraded around today is the Demon Emperor's.

She knows this.

She hates this.

She hates more than anything that he is walking—gliding—toward death's door (it's probably double doors, she remembers him saying when she brought it up to him, because so many people die in a second, after all, so a wider entrance would be more practical) confidently, with a smile and welcoming arms.

("What are you so worried about, Cera?"

"What wouldn't I be worried about?" she whispers back and buries her head into his chest, into the white of his robes that will soon be stained by his blood. "You're a walking dead man."

"I never knew you cared so much," he teases, and she bites back a snappy retort. There is no use in arguing when he will be a corpse, soon. "But you don't need to be concerned. I promise."

She laughs hysterically.

"I'll be fine, Cera," he says, and she hears the doubt in his voice, the apology. She detests it—him. But at the same time, she doesn't. She can't. "I won't lose my way. You know I won't."

"I know," she says miserably. She wants to say that she wishes he would. She wants him to look her in the eye and swear that he'll come back to her. But she knows he won't.)

And she hates the way the masses look down upon him with venom and contempt and bitterness for the way he sits haughtily—on the throne of his float, no less—while he directs his row of prisoners to their execution, when in reality he is directing himself to death, to oblivion.

Please...

So she prays.

She supposes that it is irony at its finest that, when there is nothing and no one else for her to turn to, she once again sets her sights on the deity she stopped believing in.

She figures that Lelouch makes her want to believe again. Because if anything could save him, then she would gladly give up all that she had.

Lelouch...

For the first time in centuries, she kneels before God and clasps her hands in front of her chest, interlocking her fingers in a way that feels foreign to her, after all this time. She kneels, and she lets herself hope. She lets herself wish as she closes her eyes and feels the first tear begin to fall.

Because even from halfway across Britannia, she can hear it happening. She can visualize the gasps, the shock and confusion, the relief, of the people as they spot Zero racing toward the Demon Emperor. She can see Zero's resolve as he thrusts his sword into her king.

And she doesn't want to.

She wants to look away, but she can't. She's imagined it happen too many times, and the vision is seared onto the back of her eyelids. Even the darkness that embraces her when she closes her eyes brings her no comfort.

Please, live.

And in this silence, she wants to scream. She wants to scream and scream and never stop—

—something deep inside her, the constantly thrumming link between her and Lelouch, the pulsing chain keeping them together, keeping them contracted, snaps—

—gone.

He's gone.

Plunged into the unfathomable abyss below.

Falling, dying, dead.

Her world—her entire universe—crashes and burns down around her in a celebration of chaos, of catastrophe, and she can do nothing but watch helplessly.

Watch and pray inside a church, where it's silent. So silent. Too silent. Lelouch is dead and all she can hear is silence. She hates silence.

I'm sorry. I wish we could have had more time.

It's odd, she thinks. She has an eternity. She is immortal. And yet the time she longs to have with the man she can only dream of keeps slipping through her fingers, out of her grasp, and now he is no longer hers.

She wonders if he had ever even been hers to begin with.

I would give it all up for another minute with you.

Death hurts. This is the truth, the reality, she has always been taught. This is what she knows from everything she has lived through.

But it has never hurt as much as it does now.

Goodbye, Lelouch.

afterwards

"I swear I'll never leave you."

She smiles at him, giving him her hand and letting him lead her away from the noise of responsibility, the clamor of duty, the cries for war. She tightens her grip on his hand as if she fears that if she were to let go, he will disappear forever.

He glances back at her and laughs at her antics. "Don't you trust me?" he says teasingly, and the smile on his face makes her forget everything else. "I'm yours forever, Cera. Remember?"

"As I will always be yours," she says in return, voice free of hesitation. She loves him, and she knows it. She pretends to be invincible, but all it takes is the melody of his happiness, and she will fall. Because her heart is aligned with his, and she is glad that it is.

It is how she wants it to be.

She wakes with a sob, the terror building up in her throat and in her eyes, tears running down her face. She tastes her misery on her lips and it makes her want to hurl. She's lost everything that has ever mattered to her, and now, she can feel his face—those regal, aristocratic features, the sharp lines, his imperial amethyst—deteriorating in her memory.

Like everything else, she's beginning to forget, and though she's seen him before in the pictures of a history book, she doesn't want to remember him as the unforgivable villain everyone else sees him as. Because he is no villain, and his only crime is stealing her heart.

She no longer remembers why she loves him, only that she does.

No, she refutes fearfully. No, that's not true. I remember everything. I can't forget him, not him. I—I love him because he saved me from myself. Because he reminded me what it felt to be human. Because he showed me beauty in an ugly world.

And she doesn't want to forget. She doesn't want to when forgetting means signing herself a sentence in which she lives without him guiding her every step and every breath of the way.

She doesn't want to when forgetting means accepting.

Even if no one else does, even if the memory of your face is beginning to blur, I'll never forget. Not you. I refuse to.

And when she glances out the window, into the sky, all she can see is a sea of violet. It claims her vision, swimming around in her eyes until it has become her. Until she can no longer remember what her life used to be like without the color of his soul.

Because she loves him. She knows that now, even if he is dead. Even if he has left her alone in the unmerciful marching of time.

Because—

"Miss C.C.?"

—she gave herself to him long ago.

I have always been yours, Lelouch. From the moment I met you and let you ensnare me in your trap. A bittersweet smile is on her face when she pushes herself off the bed—cold, without him beside her to give her the warmth she once basked in—and walks toward the door. She opens it in one swift motion, giving the man who stood in front of her a once-over. "Jeremiah," she says in acknowledgement. "What is it?"

She accepts his company because she recognizes the look on his face. It is the look worn by someone in mourning, someone who grieves with everything they have. It is the same look she sees on herself every time she stares in the mirror.

It is the one thing they share; their despair.

His lips twist into a smile of sadness. "Miss C.C., this was left behind for you."

She ignores the twinge of pain that hits her like a shockwave at his words. Lelouch's corpse is left behind for her. She is left behind by Lelouch.

"Oh?" Her voice masks her agony well, but she knows that he hears it by the pained look in his eye. He says nothing and only drops a small parcel into her hands—something so plain, so nondescript, that she remembers her time as an empress with a dry laugh.

He offers her a small nod and turns around, walking back down the hallway. Just as she's about to close the door, he stops at the end of the corridor and gives her a glance over his shoulder.

She stops.

Regretfully, he says, "Happy birthday, Cera."

His words shock her enough that she says nothing about his use of her real name—"Don't call me that! It is a name only Lelouch can wield," she would have usually hissed. But this time, all that leaves her is an empty sort of silence.

She blinks and, as she snaps out of her trance, she realizes that he is already gone, and the only thing left in his wake is the deafening ringing in her mind.

It buzzes. It stings.

Because this is a birthday without Lelouch alive to smile—to smirk—at her. Without him to watch her cut her cake, or blow out her candles, or make her wish. (Now, if she ever has the chance to wish upon tiny flickering flames again, her wish would be to have him back. That is what it will always be, from now on.)

She slams the door shut, barely holding herself together as she shakes with unshed tears, half-collapsing against the door.

Why?

Lelouch is dead.

And she is left immortal, standing strong where he has fallen.

All she wants is to lie down beside him and stay by his side forever.

All she wants is to journey into the abyss with him, as the witch to his warlock.

Lelouch...

Sometime later, long after Jeremiah has left and she's composed herself, she opens the parcel in a daze. There is nothing but a flash-drive; its metal winks at her, coaxing her to see what it holds for her.

So she does.

After all, she has nothing left to lose.

But when she is greeted by Lelouch's face smiling at her, as though nothing is wrong, she finds herself staring wide-eyed at his bliss, her heart shattering inside her chest as her skin blocks the noise from anyone that might hear it break apart.

She is drowning in her misery, in his death, in their death.

She drowns in life.

"Cera."

She is exploding, combusting, at his first word, her name. It is a voice she's missed, one she's longed to hear for so long. It is a voice that has been dead to her for months.

"If you're seeing this, then I must be dead, and Zero Requiem has finally come to fruition."

There is a hint of pride in his voice and she loathes it. She wants to wipe his smile off his face because this is no time for smiling. It is a time for sadness because he is no longer with her.

He is no longer here to yell at her for buying so much pizza, or to threaten her with a gun pointed to his own head, or to be outraged when she flaunts herself around in a straitjacket. He is no longer here to laugh at her when he beats her at chess, or to grin as he manipulates the wills of others to his goals, or to boast to her when he outwits his elder brother, or to weep when his sister is turned against him (to count on her, for once, and let her hold him close while he breaks into a million shattered pieces).

He is no longer here to make her feel wanted; to lean against her, as though she is the only thing keeping him from falling and never rising again. He is no longer here to thank her with all the honesty she's never received before, or to beg her to smile.

He is no longer here to take her hand and whisper to her that he is hers—that he is her warlock.

He is no longer anywhere.

And everything is gone.

Not just him, but all of his chances, his opportunities, the possibilities spread far and wide. Everything he could have been and done has been robbed from him.

And she despises the world for stealing him from her. And for shoving him in her face to gloat about it.

"I'm sorry it had to come to my death, Cera. You should know that if I had the choice, if I thought that anything else would succeed in gaining peace, I would never have left you. I never wanted to."

But he did leave her. He left her and she can only weep over his body, now.

His death keeps her grounded, because she never wants to feel that type of pain ever again.

"You know that, right?"

Does she?

"And I'm sorry for butting into your life like this now, after all this time, but I had to. Because I never really said goodbye to you, my queen."

No.

She panics.

No! she yells in her mind. Don't you dare!

She hates goodbyes. He should know that.

Please, don't. Anything but a goodbye.

"You have always been there for me, even when I didn't want you to be. You stood up for me and with me always, and I thank you for that."

She squeezes her eyes shut, wanting to turn away from the screen, but she finds herself unable to. It captivates her, and even though it hurts, so much, too much, she can't shut the computer off.

But I betrayed you...

The tears are pressing to her skin, suffocating her and leaving her cold and shivering.

"I'm sorry I couldn't fulfill your wish and uphold my end of our contract, Cera."

She shakes her head despite herself, and even though he can't see or hear her, she murmurs weakly, "Stop. I don't want to hear your sorries. I don't care if you granted my wish or not! I just wish you're still alive."

That's all she wants.

"I love you, Cera."

Those words steal away her breath and she sobs, choking, strangled. Her eyes burn with fresh tears as they escape again, and she grits her teeth.

He loved her?

He loved her.

Lelouch… Isn't that what she has always hoped for? Not like this… not when you're dead…

"I love you, and I swear, not even death can take that away from me. Because you are more than just my contractor, my accomplice. Because when the whole world turned against me, and I had nothing, you grabbed me by the hand and told me I would always have you. You told me I'd never be alone, and in that moment I realized how true that was. I have never been truly alone. You have always been there."

(Even though she betrayed him to his parents.)

(Even though she left him to confine herself to her memories.)

(Even though she'd been nothing but rude and cruel and horrible to him.)

She weeps silently and drops her face, curling into herself and digging her eyebrows into her knees. Even when she isn't looking into his eyes, she remembers the feel of his stare—it weighs down on her, presses against and into her—and she remembers him without even trying to.

She doesn't have to strain to conjure up his face because she recognizes that he has never truly left her. Not when her memories of him are still so vivid, living inside her mind and thrashing around wildly, refusing to be contained.

She can never escape him.

"It was always you."

But does she even want to?

"Happy birthday, Cera."

Her name rolls off his tongue as though it belongs to him, and she cries because she knows that she loves him and she can't do anything about it. He doesn't say goodbye, but he doesn't have to, she muses, because she can hear it everywhere. In his voice, she hears goodbye. And in his eyes, she sees goodbye. There is no escaping it.

But sometimes, it doesn't matter, because though she's lost him she hasn't really lost him. She still has everything. Everything she loves. Everything she never believed she'd have, when the nun betrayed her to a life of misery.

The memories make it worth it, make her smile and not regret loving him. Because how can she regret that?

How can she regret the pain when the pain isn't all there is? When there is love and beauty whenever she remembers him, too?

Because she remembers it all.

She remembers all the little things; the things that make her skin tingle and heart race.

She remembers why she loves him:

The look in his eyes when he wakes up, first thing in the morning, and stares at her as if he can't believe she's there, with him.

The desperation when he kisses her, as if he is lost and drowning at sea and she is the air he's trying to inhale, to devour.

Learning the shape of his lips and his face as if they were her own.

His hands running through her hair and all over her body, finding his way around her as if he is a blind man and she is his treasure.

His voice before he goes to sleep, small and drowsy and afraid, as though he fears she and everything else will disappear if he closes his eyes.

The way he leans on her and holds her as he cries like he's a little boy again—and she's the only thing keeping him together.

The feel of his hand intertwined in hers, and the way he squeezes her tightly when he needs reassurance.

The way he wakes up in the middle of the night and calls her 'beautiful' when she groans and tells him to sleep.

His face when he looks at her and he thinks she's not looking—like he doesn't see the scars, or the centuries of age, or the anger and hatred and greed in her; like none of that matters to him because he sees her smile and he falls in love.

His lips on hers; a galaxy she has yet to explore.

The way he notices all the little things, like when she's cold or hungry or bored, and the way he cares.

He told her he would ensure that she would die smiling. He's the first person to have cared enough to make a promise like that. I'll live smiling, too, she swears.

He gave them all this second chance, this opportunity at a peaceful live. He gave it to everyone who hated him, who betrayed him, who had always wished to see him dead. He gave it even to his greatest enemies. So she will live for him. She will live and she'll strive for happiness, because it's what he would have wanted. She will embrace the future he left for them all in his wake; one without violence or war.

It's the least she can do.

fin.

A/N: I know this one is super similar to the first one, but to be honest I wrote this one first, so I figured I'd upload it anyway for anyone who wants to read it. Hope you enjoyed.