AN: See chapter end notes for AN details.

Summary: During the demon emperor's last night with his witch, he continues to philosophise and questions who he is. And maybe he finds his answer in her, and with each other. After all, what were they but human still. R&R. C.C. / Lelouch

Disclaimer: Code Geass is not mine. Only the idea behind this short story is.

The Apple

by:Nym13

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Lelouch paces in front of C.C., his heels clicking against the marbled floors with each deliberate step.

She watches him stop in front of the mirror and he gazes into the smooth gleaming crystalline frame that stretched out in front of him, while she sits on the emperor's massive bed.

C.C. sees the curving of his lips, morphing into his reflection against the amber of her eyes.

She looks away and smiles sadly to herself...the image reminds her painfully of youth.

Youth that was both lost and damned.

"C.C.," he calls her name and she casts her eyes towards him.

Purple meets yellow in a quick stab of attention. The demon prince smirks and questions her then, "Do you think I can perform miracles in hell when there the relevance of death won't stop me?"

C.C. looked away for it was suddenly painful to continue gazing at him, blinding like the sun but cold like a shadow.

Lelouch kept on talking, "I believe I can change hell! Not even the world could have stopped my ambition...not even my wishes were halted from coming true. That my very death would be my salvation. Even my lies I have spun true; straws to gold." Lelouch bragged as his gesticulations became more apparent.

Looking much like a child engaged in soliloquy.

"Tell me, has there anyone before me who could have done all these and meet death but still win...win against not a mere foe but win the whole world." Lelouch started laughing as he gazed into the mirror in mirth while C.C. frowned at what she saw.

She let out a sigh and gave Lelouch a sideway glance, "Stop embarrassing yourself."

C.C. remarked as she stood up from the bed and walked towards Lelouch. The silken sheets pooling on the floor like water in a basin.

She flicks her hair over her shoulder as her indifferent amber eyes was now looking at the demon emperor in pity.

Sympathy or empathy? What did she feel for him?

She traipsed the carpeted floors her bare feet barely lapsing with the fibrous hairs.

Lelouch on his part even stepped back as if afraid of her...she kept pushing onward though until she has him pinned against the cold glass. The icy touch a comfort for him against the hot intensity pouring from her stance.

C.C. paused in front of him and raised her hand halting just a breath above the smoothness of his cheek while Lelouch eyed her warily.

She turns her hand and the back of her fingers grazes the side of his skin.

Her touch ticklish to his senses.

The feel of her quite pronounce maybe this is due to their close proximity, for the nerves upon his exposed flesh is so closely linked with his brain that everything so trivial is heightened by her simple gesture concentrated upon that single spot.

Their eyes never leaving each other as if anticipating each flutter of their lashes that swept the calm wind, as they conveyed silent messages of their souls.

Suddenly, vulnerable to the other.

C.C. settles her hand at the back of his neck, tracing the roughness of his nape and gripping the thickness of his hair. She leans forward tucking her head under his chin and collapsed against his lithe frame, "You do not have to lie to me. It's okay to be afraid. It's okay to mourn for all that you have lost and all you'll never gain."

C.C. tells and she lifts her eyes and stares into his shocked face.

She reaches for his white cap and pushes it off his head, its weight imposing upon gravity and fell behind them with a thud she smiles at him, "It's okay to cry for your woes as much as it's okay to laugh at your joys. Didn't I tell you, fake smiles only hurt yourself."

Stop hurting yourself, please...it's okay to cry...share your burden, I'll take it...take it all...for we're partners aren't we?; C.C. silently pleads to him in her heart.

Lelouch suddenly shakes and grabs C.C. by her shoulders and presses her to him. His chin digging into the crown of her head. She begins to feel raindrops falling to her scalp and the violent shaking of the boy who has trapped her inside his arms.

A boy is crying...a young child, C.C. thinks this and recalls that before this happened before the demon prince was born from the bones of this man, this angel fell from the skies and was nothing but a babe.

A babe who had cried, unclothed then and vulnerable, seeking comfort from a woman.

Much like he is now.

The demon isn't so different from an angel; that has always been true.

"C.C.," he says her name, he pulls back from her and grins at her without the trace of previous arrogance and malice in his eyes that was present moments ago. He looks at her with his tear stained eyes...so unlike the dryness in her irises.

"Will you miss me? Will you remember me? For how long would you?" he asks her, "How long until this world will forget me...until the proof of my existence washes away with the sands of time?"

C.C. doesn't answer not because she didn't know what to say but because she's lived long enough to understand herself so well. An eternity spent with her constance has made her quite self-aware and the answer to his questions was a resounding 'Never', she'll mourn for him always and that's why she can't open her mouth to reply because then it would be real...the fact that this was their last night together.

And that their only takeaway are their miseries, and fears.

She answers him with a kiss instead, and he meets her lips in fervent. Their limbs tangling against each other in desperate quick strokes...sucking air from the other, frantic and un-synchronise motions that moved far too fast that the two were uncertain if they were feeling anything at all. If the pressure and heat from their mouths were figments of their imaginations.

But the sharp edges of Lelouch's nails clawing against her shoulders was a painful reminder that they were awake.

What they both painfully knew was the fact that they were holding on to the remaining borrowed time...trying so hard to prolong their stay in each other's arms. Fighting the inevitable, standing up against things that were beyond their control.

Remaining defiant until the very end. Both far too arrogant and stubborn to accept their weakness.

Lelouch breaks the kiss and breathed heavily as his purple orbs stared deeply into C.C.'s eyes his forehead settling against hers, "I...do you think if I wasn't born a prince...wasn't born in this world to my sinful parents...would I have been happy...would I have not been a demon prince?" he asks her and C.C. bit on her tongue to prevent her impulse to remark snide-fully that she wasn't a bloody god to know of these things.

All she did was continue rubbing his back in soothing strokes. He arches into her in response, as she traced the steps of his spine slowly. Lelouch sighs into her mouth and slightly pulls back.

Lelouch laughs silently, "Why am I asking such pointless questions? I cannot undo the past for I have chosen the future. Perhaps, it's the gods' will that I atone for my parents' sins and my own. Until this world is purged from our kind we will not be reprieved. We should never have been born."

He releases his hold from her and unfastens the chain that held his white cloak and allowed it to fall against his shoulders, his back slouching with the unburdening.

C.C. doesn't know why but she allows herself to drape her arms around his waist and rests her forehead against his back as Lelouch stares into the mirror. She raises both hands and holds her wrists in place as if they belonged there, with him.

"I read once that a person is immortalised by his offsprings...that a part of him lives on through his seed. His descendants proof of his existence. So isn't it only fitting that I die?" he begins, and repulsed by his words C.C. untangles herself from him.

"If you think of it that way...then yes you must die." C.C. agrees and she moves to sit back on the bed, Lelouch follows her movements and settles beside her, C.C. drops her hand on top his knuckles, "Do you know what I think?" she questions him and Lelouch nods his head.

"I think the trace of your parents died in you when you chose to renounce them." Lelouch laughs.

"An acorn tree will grow up to be an oak even if it's called by another name. You can renounce your titles...not your being." C.C. smirks at his analogy.

"Ignorant boy...don't you know of the story of the eagle who grew up with chickens and as a result the eagle didn't learn how to fly and was content picking up scraps with the other poultry? Not knowing it could have been the king of the skies. The ultimate hunter. People mourn for the lost of his potential. I always thought he was quite fortunate...ignorant yet happy. " C.C. Tells him as he listened on "...Because he was surrounded by others filled with their love.. Sharing with their labor. He doesn't need to know he wasn't meant for a life of solitude flying alone in the skies...didn't have to know he was capable of killing."

C.C. continues, "Don't you see Lelouch, what is the greatest proof of the trace of your parents dying in your veins than by living...living a life contrary to theirs. That's why I think you should live...not forever but at least live like a chicken."

Lelouch shakes his head fondly at her, "You forget our greatest difference C.C., the eagle was innocent it did not know what it was. But I knew and I lived as a fucking eagle...pretending to be chicken and truth is the eagle was genuine while I was faux." C.C. sighed and leaned against Lelouch.

"But supposing all these were true...what would you have done and could you really live like a normal guy?" C.C. nudge her knee against Lelouch's and the latter smirked at her but then looked away. His purple orbs landing on the mirror that was standing before them giving them a view of two young people who looked below twenties...barely a man and woman.

So young and yet...not.

Lelouch took her hand and rolled it into his palm their hands sinking into the sheets as he looks at the image projected by mirror then begins to speak, "I would have wanted to have a family. I would have a had a son and then a daughter...I could have fallen in love." He told her and this time he glanced at C.C., "To be honest, I could find a girl... I could fall in love with her so easily."

C.C. looked away suddenly feeling uncomfortable. To think of this hypothetical girl that Lelouch could raise this family with was frankly paining her...because he meant so much to her, but if he was borne into a different reality would he still be this man...this man that she...

She heard Lelouch laugh his face contorting into a grimace, "Here I am thinking about having a son...teaching him to protect his sister...his family and have gentle dreams and then coming home to a wife...who serves dinner in a silver platter," Lelouch leans in and grabs her chin turning her face towards him.

"...she serves pizza." C.C. stares at him gobsmacked.

"Of course I'd tell her it's bad to always eat junk and that she should serve vegetables but of course she'll never listen to me. She'll argue and we'd bicker and I'll let her have the final say." C.C. shrugged and smirked at his words.

"I didn't know you could be such a masochist boy, why would you ever marry a girl like that?" Lelouch smirks at her once more.

He stood up and knelt in front of C.C., "Because I love her."

C.C. stares at him in shock but then stutters out, "I-I know you are many things but I never pegged you to be stupid."

Lelouch smiles at her and covered her hands in his, he carefully brings it up to his lips and plants a kiss on her knuckles purposefully, his breath hot and damp against her shivering skin.

His piercing purple eyes finds her honey coloured hues and they tangle in swirls, threads locked in each other.

"You've been with me all this time," Lelouch tells her as he pinned her with his eyes, "Surely you know by now that I'll do anything for love."

He moves closer to her then and C.C. instinctively leans back against the invisible air, "...how deeply I love. Is it not out of love that I destroyed this world and recreated it?" he whispers to her.

C.C. feels her eyes filling with unshed tears that were trapped like her soul barred by the very walls she's carefully built and maintained for centuries forfeited by her dried tears and blood she's spilled, "I wonder...what you were in your past life that you've encountered such misfortune of love. To love so deeply...gain the world by its name...and yet never have a love you could keep. To give so much but own a love that doesn't endure, why is such your destiny? My prince, how great is your sin that you're destined for such tragedy?" she remarks and Lelouch gives her a ghost of a smile.

"I must have been Paris." Lelouch says and C.C. scoffs.

"The fickle boy who started a war all for a pretty face. Do you think so little of yourself to claim to be the reincarnation of someone so capricious?"

Lelouch nods his head and replies, "Aye. He and I are the same are we not? Only I was reborn and this time I didn't make the same mistake. Hera offered me power, Athena bargains with me wisdom and victory in battle all for the price of a golden apple, while Aphrodite lures me with the promise of love. I divided the apple into three...that's why in this lifetime I received all their gifts."

C.C. sighs, "Maybe there lies your folly boy...a third of an apple isn't all of it. That's why you couldn't keep any of your victories, only grasp them tersely. If the three goddesses were before you now and you had the whole apple...to whom would you give it to?"

Lelouch paused as if to ponder his next words before leaning in closer to her and blew to her ear his reply, "I'd give it to you." Lelouch tells her confidently and C.C. laughs.

"I am a witch not a goddess. I have nothing to offer you for it." C.C. Informs him bluntly but Lelouch only scoffed in incredulity.

"Now that's a lie." Lelouch accuses her, "C.C. we are carved from the same stone. I am a child of darkness...why then would the heavens pay heed to me? Only you would listen to my plight."

C.C. knows this to be true, still she wonders...

"But supposing you were pure, that they'll lend you their ears. If that were true...what would you ask for?"

Lelouch shrugs, "I am Paris aren't I?"

"But then...all for a woman?"

"He was happy wasn't he? Even if all Helen did was bring him chaos...he started a war for her didn't he and he died carrying her love with her. Only those who have gained the world could die with a genuine smile on their face. You see, nothing of value is without love."

C.C. smirked and allowed her back to fall against the mattresses the bed shifting to accommodate her weight, "Then maybe you'll do better next life. Maybe you'll find love there." C.C. tells him and Lelouch laid beside her and he reaches for her hand and threads his fingers through hers and squeezes.

It seems that these past few days Lelouch always needed to feel her there, as if drawing comfort from her presence, a validation that he wasn't alone... His final plea for companionship was eloquently spoken through his actions, his dependence on her caresses like the bees drawn to honeysuckle. And he cherishes her and all she's given him. Though little she could give.

Or has she truly given anything at all when it feels like all she ever did was take? Ever since she received her Geass all she did was soil, destroy and take all that was pure and turned it into malice.

"Next life eh," he breathes, "I'd wonder if it would be possible to love you then? Would we be allowed? After all, all our sins was because we were born into an evil world that prompted us to sin and be a greater evil to not succumb to it. Perhaps then they'd take pity and not force our hands to become villains. Perhaps there we could live and exist like dust that littered the blank spaces of legends. Not litter this earth as war debris."

He shifts on his side to look at her threading his free fingers against her green locks and C.C. feels the change in her heart rate as he continued on his ministrations, "Perhaps there we could be human...die together. I might be able to call your name freely each time I see you. I'll utter it lovingly just like you've always wanted."

C.C. stares at him in shock, "You...you'd like to call me by my name?" Lelouch nods his head.

"I have grown accustomed to call you C.C. but surely snow too would like to know what colour it used to be."

C.C. shifts on the bed and moved to straddle Lelouch, the bed bouncing due to her action and she lays her hands flat against the plains of his chest and Lelouch stares at her in surprise.

"If everyone called me by my name so casually..referred to me so intimately through it. Then would my name remain so enigmatic to you? For me it would turn into commonplace...just another noun. You should be honoured knowing my real name and having the liberty to use it, such privilege for don't you know it means you have control over me...that you own me."

C.C. hovered above him and begun to shed off her black dress while Lelouch looked on, his eyes widening as she article was shed off. She then traced her fingers against his gold buttons and starts to unsheathed them from their cases.

She feels it beating against her finger tips; the pulsing of his heart.

He was still alive.

"Don't misunderstand," she tells him, "I am not anyone's property. But if it's you...you don't have to use your power over me to make me obey you and not want to leave you." C.C. confesses as she drew nearer to the end of his shirt and untucks it from the hold of his trousers. Her hand sweeping that particular spot that has started to harden, the feel of it decadent between spread thighs. It's been so long since she craved another's touch, because everyone has always been intent on hurting her even if she did nothing at all.

"But only if it benefits me." C.C. adds haughtily and Lelouch smirks.

"You selfish witch." he accuses her and C.C. flips her green hair.

"Of course for I am C.C.," C.C. told him and dipped her head down to kiss his cheek innocently, "You boy, have far too many names."

"If you could name me what would you call me?" he asks her and C.C. pretends to ponder this as her hands swept against his shoulders to fully remove his shirt.

She moves to whisper to his ear, "Mine."

Lelouch turns to look at her then, "You are mine." C.C. declares and Lelouch shakes his head fondly at her pronouncements.

He grabs her neck to kiss her, turning them over, now C.C. lies on her back as he touched her in places she so desperately wanted him to.

Maybe he was touching her like he always wanted too, all C.C. knew was that if theirs one thing men couldn't resist it was her talents in bed. For though mistress of love she was not, lust... Lust was her expertise.

But then this didn't only feel like lust, after all...he was love.

They were making love.

Maybe they were never suppose to have such unholy union. Maybe she was never meant to seduce him. But ever since she picked him as hers...he never really stood a chance now did he?

She's completely tied his destiny to her chord of skulls and truly he is left powerless.

Because when Eris chose to throw that apple at Paris...she didn't expect him to throw it back at her.

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'to the fairest'

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He so declared.

And because he's thrown the darkness that was hers into a loop...she's given him everything she has.

So maybe she was seduced too.

And maybe this was Paris' great scheme all along...to own her and take the world too.

What did it matter anyway? Who seduced, who won or who lied?

After all, this was love they had, they were loosing themselves to the other and only with each other can they be unclothed and true.

And tomorrow?

Tomorrow is the end, but at least, they still have tonight.

Lelouch grabs her by the waist, his arms snaking around her as he traces invisible patterns on the curve of her neck and bare shoulders with his lips and tongue, "What shall we do in the next life, C.C.?"

She turns to capture his sly kisses with the skin of her lips and they devoured each other's tongues hungrily, sounds of sighs and licks mixing with the lingering balsam in the air. She pulls back and brushes the bangs off his forehead as he watches her transfixed.

Beautiful, they were beautiful, like snow.

"Wish to live." she pauses then and adds an afterthought, "...we should use our lifetime to make love. We are Adam and Eve too, are we not?"

And underneath their makeshift world of feathers and cloth, with candle lights serving as their stars was nothing more but a man and woman, expressing their love in the most primitive art of confessions and wishes. Because in this craft there needs no masks, there are no lies...what remains are only two bodies, just the remnants of Adam and Eve, struggling to find a piece of Eden with each other. Fighting for momentary relief, a taste of happiness to make the struggle worthwhile; à deux .

Indeed.

After all, he who holds the apple choses his life.

A trade of misery for the chance to say...I chose.

I got to choose.

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Fin.

AN: I had the sudden crave for returning to write for this pair once again even just for awhile. For my fellow CCxLelouch shippers you might know me by my other name can you guess who I was? I abandoned my last story here almost five years ago.

I hope you enjoyed this. Honestly, I wanted to try my hand at writing SMUT, and this is the only ship I wanted to write it for but for some reason my writing style rebelled against it and I wrote this instead and still didn't manage to write lemon. After all I always believed that smut and lemon should have a relevance to the story or it would just be porn.

Thank you for reading and please review. And it's so good to write something again for this pair. I've missed it! Five years later and I hoped I've improved at writing Lelouch, since people used to say I suck at writing him.

And C.C. do I still bring justice at characterising her or have I forgotten how?

Criticism would be much appreciated!

Can you guess who I am?