It's so canon~ IT'S ALWAYS BEEN CANON! (To me and everyone else 🤪)
Not the S2 Cour 1 Opening song being all about Satoru's feelings towards Suguru. 😭
Not the S2 Cour 1 Ending song being all about Suguru's feelings towards Satoru. 😭
The last time I went feral over opening and ending themes (for any media) that complement each other was Lelouch of the Re;surrection and it was for Lelouch and C.C...
Of course this just wrecks me. A decade later, this anime still cuts me up. This time tho, it's happy tears that trickle down my face as I ugly cry into my pillow at 4am.
I love the use of silence in this scene so much. CC taking a moment to process what Lelouch just said (as do us, the audience), and everything that he meant behind it, and how she goes through such a myriad of emotions that ultimately ends up with the fulfillment of Lelouch's promise to her -- her true smile.
She almost doesn't believe it. She, who has been alone for centuries that she buried her loneliness in indifference; who drifts from place to place, era to era, people to people with nothing constant in her life; whose sole companion was loneliness itself, has found someone who doesn't want to let her go. It's even more impactful as Lelouch has the choice to stay with Nunally and Suzaku and to be reunited with everyone and live out his life in peace (and anonimity, but with their wealth he can stay at a secluded villa somewhere where they can live peacefully together, and other ways to get around that), but still he chooses CC, chooses a life with her even if it meant they leave everything behind. This moment, without words, is such a nostalgic callback to the time when Lelouch told her she was not alone, to that other time when his geass command to her was to stay by his side, and to his promise to give her her true smile. This final scene was executed so perfectly, from the reminder about Lelouch's poor stamina (lol) to their familiar banter to CC dropping hints of her real feelings to Lelouch taking half of her name, essentially affirming that they are two halves of one. Forever tethered to each other.
I have no enough storage to download apps that would make a proper slideshow. I only used the built in feature in my phone. CURSE MY PHONE AND ITS LOW STORAGE. This doesn't really have any effort but I did it anyway because I was bored
She rests on the top of the bed’s surface; he on the lower, his head cradled against her chest as if they oddly enough tethered to each other like gravity. An inevitable tug and pull that resulted in messy sheets and ruffled pillows until the perfect ‘click’ happened. Until her arms were around him and his hands ghosted her waist until tightening in a gesture not unpleasant.
This is their routine.
A gold eye sleepily opens, annoyed that he’s woken her, but eyes the clock once, twice, before muttering above his head: “It’s only 3 in the morning. “ Softly murmured though not without that grouched note laden in irritation. It’s never fully sincere though.
“….Are you having a nightmare again?” She does not let him know the depth of her dreams, even if he knows they are nightmares and sees through her anyway. He knows that death and sorrow walks with her in the day as surely as in the night; and in her eyes the unfathomable pain of her years has become a hell that only brief moments like this can assuage. Somehow, this odd, arrogant, dramatic, selfish in his own right boy, has come to grasp the enigma of the Grey Witch.
And somehow she doesn’t shirk away.
Fingers idly find his soft hair relaxing to stroke as she idly touches them; fine black strands that are nothing compared to the length of verdant green stretching and spilling over the edges of the bed in their sheer size.
“Do you want me to tell you a story?” Her voice is high pitched, teasing, and she feels him squeeze her waist in annoyance; C.C.’s mocking, yet lacking in malcontent chuckle echoing softly in the room.
Somehow this had become their place. Their haven away from the cruelty of the world, and the cruelty they visited upon it for the sake of ambitions, her own wish, her own hope withering away with each passing moment….renewed by these nights.
How strange, how very, very strange.
But she thinks how even stranger it would be if neither one of them was in the bed, much less beside each other, and maybe there’s something neither of them will admit quite yet in this story, that will one day be without end.
That there’s something about them that leads to this clumsy tenderness found in the habit of reaching for each other even in sleep. How their bodies fold perfectly together in the messiest of ways.
How her soft voice lilts him back to sleep, his soft hand eases her brow of the sweat permeating from the worst of her vulnerabilities in her own constant hell.
How Lelouch is only Lelouch in this room, and C.C. is only a singular ‘water drop’ of a name whispered half-sleepily and half-fondly, rough and coarse as he could be, insensitive at times, but oddly..gentle.
This is what they’ve become. The clock ticks, she knows this, but in these moments time has no meaning; rebellions hold no sway, armies hold no might…and they are only a two people who have made a strange makeshift home in one another’s souls and bodies.
“Lelouch…you’re gripping too hard….I’m not Cheese-kun…” She yawned; wriggling a bit until this time she is under his chin; content to feel the pulse of his heart and remind herself that for however long, (never long enough when she foolishly forms attachments), that there is another person beside her.
But he’s silently, wordless as his hands pull her head closer; and her eyes lid in both sleepy fondness and an untold, aching emotion she’s long forgotten, and perhaps has never even known.
“You’re so annoying.” She mutters; even as her body inches closer for warmth. Even as the world decides that Witches will join with Princes and not be obstacles for them to overcome. Even as time and destiny is defied.
She hears his light breaths and as if in sync with him, her soul merged in a way with his through time, through things unnamed and things not yet discovered in their story – C.C. exhales and murmurs against his chin a sloppy and drowsy half-finished goodnight.
It doesn’t have to be a glorious confession but two bodies, minds and souls that made a home in one another . It doesn’t have to be a white horse. Sometimes it’s a Witch and a boy and a man and King finding that no matter how they try,
there’s something between them anyway.
The truth will stop hiding behind veiled insults…..coy glances, silly and heated banter. Nicknames and glances that said everything and nothing.
A lonely drop of water in a forgotten name and a single boy.
And it won’t bring back all they’ve lost, but there’s hope in the scope of their breaths ghosting in sync. For now, as they sleep, unaware of how their story will unravel…