Shortfic

[verity-isle.livejournal.com]

This was meant to be crack, honest.

Untitled
Characters: Lelouch, Mao
Summary: Thoughts on what the World of C is like. Spoilers on 16, Character Death is par for course.



Pop.

Lelouch blinked. Along with that weird soda can-opening sound, he had somehow appeared in a white, white place that looked...oddly familiar, but with no idea where it actually was or how the hell he got there. He remembered leading a bold, daring, leading attack against Schneizel's contingent...and then? Was he captured and thrown into some kind of Britannian color-coded torture cell or what? But then wouldn't he also be in their overrated straitjacket instead of...his school uniform? Why school uniform, at all?

He clutched his temples. Oh yes, along with everything else, there was also a splitting headache. The universe certainly had a way of helping him sort out his life.

Then, from behind, an all-too-familiar clapping.

"Yo, Lelouch. Guess you aren't that great after all, eh?"

It only took half a second for him to register whose voice that was. Lelouch whirled back, facing the figure that made everything so miserable before, standing hale and healthy like nothing bad had ever happened to him.

"Mao," he hissed. "C.C. told me you're dead."

The other man shrugged, looking amused. His voice, all but gone the last time they met, seemed to have returned. "C.C. never tells anyone eve-ry-thing. She loves me, and did she ever really say so? No. Better not believe what she says. She's a shy, shy woman."

"I would beg to differ," he said guardedly, edging back. No telling if that homicidal maniac had a chainsaw tucked away somewhere...he really needed a conversation with C.C. about this. Keeping secrets is one thing, keeping secrets about supposedly dead enemies is another. "So, since we've established that you're not dead, what do you plan to do? It seems you have me at a certain disadvantage."

"What disadvantage?" Mao raised his eyebrows, or at least appeared to do so. It was hard to judge with his visor. "Methinks Lelouch-boy is paranoid. What advantage do I have? Me? Certainly not. Certainly not. You took her and she left me. What do I have? No. Not." He whirled around once, tapping the white ground with one foot. "And what I plan to do? Oh, nothing. Nothing I can really do, much as I would like to kill you slowly. You'll see soon enough."

"You certainly know how to assuage one's fears and insecurities."

The Chinese grinned. "It comes with long experience. Jealous, eh? Jealousy, jealousy, selfishness. The root of all your troubles. T-rou-bl-es. I'd teach you how, but you're a cheating thief, can't teach a cheating thief can we, it's a matter of principles. Prin-ci-ples."

He laughed as if it was the funniest thing he'd ever heard.

Lelouch frowned. He had heard that White Room Tortures have a wonderfully detrimental effect on one's sanity, and Mao had never been that sane...but he still had no idea where this was or when how and why he got here. Being a man who preferred to have all information available, it was beginning to grate on his nerves.

What was also bothering him was how Mao no longer talked like he could read his mind.

"If you're not trying to kill me, then perhaps you wouldn't mind answering a question," he began, trying to sound as conversational as he could.

"Nope! I still hate you, and it's not my fault I'm not already devising the best way to give you a terrible maiming!" Mao happily chirped.

"And why is that?" The ploy worked and he had successfully confirmed the loss of Mao's Geass, but his headache was getting worse. Not that he blamed his brain.

The Chinese man grinned like a mad puppy. He edged closer, and conspiratorially raised a hand to his mouth.

"Because you're al-rea-dy dead."

It was nearly a full minute until the impact of those words finally managed to anchor itself in Lelouch's head. He knew his eyes had involuntarily widened, his feet taking a few steps back. And something in his head, with all its terrible headache, began to click into place while everything else screamed denial. Before Lelouch had realized it, a single word was out of his mouth.

"What?"

"Aw, my mistake, let me correct that," Mao slapped his own forehead, still grinning like he had just bought the whole universe. Doubtless his expression was interesting just now. "You're dead, killed, died of old age, committed suicide. The hells I know why, but you're dead, and like me, you're not." He whistled and started to clap.

The sound of it jostled something in Lelouch's mind back to life. He gritted his teeth and gave the man his most menacing look. "Try to make sense, Mao. You say I'm dead, then you say I'm not. And I'm still here. Stop messing with my head and tell me where this is."

"This? This is, of course, the World of C. Didn't she tell you? Different existence, different source, different life. D'you think you'd end up where everybody else does? No. You failed her and so you got here, like me. The World of C," Mao rambled. "Not so great, eh? Left Mao for Lelouch, another failure, that'll teach her. Hardly worth her time. Hardly worth her time."

Lelouch scowled. That was an insult he did not care to take. "I can see you have no intention of being reasonable, not that I fully expected you to. But I'll have you know that I did nothing of the sort. Plus, you can't exactly fail someone when you're never told what they want out of you."

The other man shook his head. "No, stupid. It's simple. You fail her when you die, or like me, break your geas. This is the rule. Thought the Geass meant power? You're a Britannian, you should know better. Shame, shame."

"Mao, I certainly did not..."

Die, he wanted to say. But the word stopped in the back of his throat.

The world was white. Whiter than snow, whiter than the afternoon sun on Nunnally's sleeves, than the broken pieces of the Lancelot. But at the edge of that whiteness were shambling figures that he had seen somehow in a memory he was not supposed to remember. A white, white world...

Pain shot through his head, searing pain, worse than any headache. Something wet and sticky seeped through his hand, something with a palpable, sickening iron tang. The shambling greys seemed to creep closer in the distance.

"Ah, they're here," Mao said, nodding solemnly. "This is the geas. The rules. The vow. We've accepted a geas on ourselves and nobody else, haven't you noticed, the conditions, the obligations. Since we broke it by dying, this is where we are, this is where we will be. And they, they are the price we pay." He pointed to the shambling figures. "Those before us, given away their memories and names. Like C.C. Isn't it wonderful to be like her? The same as her? In her world? But it takes time, it takes time. She told me to wait, but it takes time, takes so much time..."

Lelouch was barely listening. He remembered little flashes, something of what happened, but just flashes and nothing more. The attack on Schneizel's forces, the broken Lancelot, the Gawain crashing, climbing out of the cockpit with slippery hands. The sound of a gunshot. A white world.

"Welcome to the World of C, Lelouch. " Mao grinned and took off his visor. His eyes no longer contained the familiar wing-shaped red, but they were filled with desperate madness. "If you want, I'll even tell you what your sister really thought of you. We have time to spare, after all."



----------------


I was just wondering about the word 'geass'. It seems to have came from 'geas', and at first I thought it refers to Lelouch's power of Absolute Command, which isn't really the traditional geas of Gaelic folklore but close enough. But ever since Mao also called his power 'Geass' (and Nunnally, in her manga) and his power is nowhere near 'command', I've been wondering if the geas in question is, after all, placed on the Geass user himself. They're required to fulfill a wish, and who knows what are the consequences of failing?

So my brain spat this out. Hardly creative, but.

Comments

[verity-isle.livejournal.com]

I think C.C. said overuse of the Geass eventually breaks it...something to balance out Lulu's weird and dorky ways of using it, I suppose. (I also wonder if each 'letter people' have their own separate worlds, or if they just share the World of C)