A/N: I'm working on a lot of other stuff, so this might have come out a little rushed. Nevertheless, I like it, even though it's not exactly what I planned.

Warnings: Vague allusions to the end of the series, and implied sex. 8D ...I thought putting it bluntly would be the best way.

Disclaimer: Silly readers, Code Geass is for Sunrise!

cigarette burns

She kissed him twice, and she tasted like smoke.

He remembers her dreams, the fragments of her past flashing past his eyelids. Pain. Hope. Pleasure and bitterness, and a fire eating her from the inside out, like she was some sort of walking cigarette. Lelouch has seen her entire form; she has no shame anymore, and he supposed he wouldn't either if he'd lived for as long as she had. There are no scars. Her skin is as smooth as satin and white like snow (why is snow white? It's forgotten the color it's supposed to be) and it wouldn't even show old wounds, if they didn't sew back up by themselves.

When she touches him, she's cold. He wonders how someone could have died from fire so many times (three is what she'd told him, but he isn't sure if that's an exaggeration or understatement or not) be so cold? It doesn't make sense. She bleeds just like him, red and thick and it clots along the fabric of her shirts (he would know, she makes him wash them). How can someone like him be so different? She has a heart. It beats in her chest. She has eyes and a nose and lips, and everything else someone should have— that a human should have. But her skin makes him shiver, and her lips were so drastically warm compared to the rest of her.

In the month before Zero Requiem, she found him smoking a pack (of cigarettes) outside the apartment he'd rented for her and Suzaku. She leaned against the door, his white button-up barely grazing her thighs, and smiled sleepily at him. There was scorn in it.

"I'd tell you to stop," she said quietly, looking beyond him at the horizon. There was a wry twist to her smile now. "I know it would be useless. After all, how many days are left?"

"Twelve," Lelouch responded automatically. It was a drastic, bold red number in his head. Every morning he woke, he saw it beneath his eyelids. An internal countdown to a final combustion. He was a ticking time bomb; he wondered if his whole life had led up to this point, to the time where Suzaku would push the sword into his chest and make him bleed his existence out.

"Are you afraid?" she asked. There were birds twittering. The whole world seemed to be waiting for that day, or maybe it was just his own arrogance that made him think that.

"No." He exhaled gray and watched it dissipate in the air. "Would you like a cigarette?"

"How polite of you," she drawled, and took the one between his fingers and put it in her mouth. She frowned at it. "They make them much better in Paris, though I suppose that might have changed. Must have changed."

"You're old," he laughed, and bumped her shoulder with her own.

"But still more attractive than you," she mocked.

"C.C.," he asked quietly, in the lull that fell between their words. They smoked and breathed but didn't really live. "How many times have you burned?"

Her amber eyes met his, and he realized just how old she really was. "Too many times to count," she said into secrecy the morning promised. Her hand found his and squeezed. It was not because she was afraid, or that she wanted contact— it was merely that she felt he would feel the fire lying underneath her skin, simmering in her blood, waiting to ignite itself. "I burned when Rome fell, and the Great Fire of London did not miss its chance at me. Do you want more? Do you want lists and names and identities; places and years? I could give them to you, if you like. I could tell you them and you would never know if they were lies or the truth, you foolish boy."

"No, I'm fine your word," he said, and smiled. He reached up and brushed a hair hanging in front of her gaze and tucked it behind her ear with a tenderness usually reserved for only Nunnally. "I—"

"You're just a boy," she said, and while her previous words had held no malice, no anger, these held a long-suppressed sorrow. "You understand nothing at all, do you? I burned as a saint and as a martyr. I burned underneath snow, freezing to death. I burned—"

"And while you're old, witch, you don't understand everything," he cut her off. He leaned forward, hand lightly skimming her face before flattening against the floor of the porch, his knee between both of her own. C.C.'s eyes were at half mast, her bangs falling along her cheekbones. If he had been her, he would have known that she could feel his breath against her lips, and he would have known that she was very susceptible to hormones. But he didn't expect her heart to beat faster, and so he didn't find it.

C.C. closed her eyes while he unbuttoned her shirt, and turned her face to the side when he tried to kiss her.

"Don't tell me you don't want this, because you don't lie," he whispered. C.C. sighed at the choked sound of it, the despair drenching it, and turned her face so it faced him. She still didn't open her eyes.

He kissed her, and she tasted like fire.

-

When they were done and he was gone, back to the palace where she'd watched him grow in Marianne's womb, she smoothed her shirt and fixed her hair. She laid in the sunlight and watched it drain all color from her hands.

If you ask me again, Lelouch, she thought, I will tell you that you are silly. Because I will burn in twelve days, and it will be all your doing, you silly boy.

A/N: I didn't foresee the ending. xD Anyway~! Reviews and concrit are very much appreciated. Have a nice night, whoever is reading this!

Feedback appreciated~!