Mao, Lelouch, and Why She Could Not Shoot
At first glance, C.C. seems cold.
She pushes people away.
She jokes at the wrong time.
She says harsh things.
Even when Lelouch is suffering, she does not comfort him easily.
She eats pizza.
She wears strange outfits.
She calls him a “cheater.”
But if you look closely, C.C. cares a lot.
She just does not show it in the usual way.
C.C.’s kindness is not:
“It’s okay.”
“It’s not your fault.”
It is more like a heavy kind of kindness:
“You are still going to move forward, aren’t you?”
“Then I will watch you do it.”
She Does Not See Lelouch as a Tool
With Lelouch, C.C. never really looks like she sees him only as a tool.
She calls it a contract.
She acts like he is the person who will grant her wish.
She does not spoil him.
She does not give him an easy way out.
But if you watch what she does, she stops treating Lelouch as a mere tool quite early.
If he were truly just a tool, she would throw him away when he broke.
If he failed, she would look for someone else.
She would not deal with his emotional swings.
She would leave him alone when he suffers over Shirley.
She would handle the Mao problem in a colder, more mechanical way.
But C.C. watches him.
She jokes, but she watches.
She pushes him away, but she stays near him.
She never fully abandons him.
When Lelouch is crushed by guilt, C.C. does not become the person who comforts him.
Because if she comforts him there, Lelouch can run away.
If he keeps being Zero, people will die.
His plans will ruin someone’s life.
If she tells him, “It is not your fault,” Lelouch can move forward without fully accepting what he is doing.
So C.C. blocks his escape on purpose.
She does not say, “Poor you.”
She asks him, “Even so, will you keep going?”
That is cold.
But it is not simple cruelty.
C.C. is not someone without feelings.
She knows that if she shows those feelings, she and the other person may break.
She has lived too long, and her way of connecting with people is damaged.
So she wraps her care in sarcasm and distance.
Why C.C. Could Not Shoot Mao
You can see this most clearly in her relationship with Mao.
Mao is a very sad character.
What he does is awful.
He corners Shirley, shows a sick obsession with C.C., and hurts the people around him.
But the way he became that way is pure hell.
C.C. gave him Geass when he was young.
He started hearing people’s thoughts without meaning to.
He could not stop it.
Other people’s true feelings, malice, noise, and contradictions all poured into him.
Normal relationships work partly because we cannot hear every true thought the other person has.
Mao does not have that.
He hears both the words people say and the thoughts behind them.
It keeps flooding in all the time.
Of course he breaks.
In all of that, C.C. is the only person whose mind he cannot read.
So for Mao, C.C. becomes something deeper than a romantic interest.
Silence.
A safe place.
A mother.
A god.
His only escape.
In a world where everything is too loud, C.C. was the only quiet place.
So Mao’s obsession with C.C. is disturbing.
But from his point of view, it is close to: “Without this person, the world is too loud for me to survive.”
Mao Is an Abuser, but He Is Also a Victim
Mao hurts other people.
But at the same time, he is also a victim broken by Geass.
His power is too strong.
And he received it when he was still a child.
Before his mind could grow, he was thrown into a hell where he could hear every human thought.
In that world, only C.C. was silence.
So he depends on C.C.
But that dependence does not grant C.C.’s wish.
Mao does not want to kill C.C.
He does not want to end her.
He does not want to save her either.
He wants to possess her.
He wants her for himself.
If C.C. will not look at him, he wants to take her with him, even if he has to break her.
That is why he fails as C.C.’s contractor.
He cannot become the person C.C. wants, the one who can end her.
Mao does not free C.C.
He clings to her.
That is what makes him so pitiful.
C.C.’s Care Comes Through Watching, Not Comforting
C.C. knows Mao is dangerous.
If she leaves him alone, Shirley and Lelouch will be hurt.
They already are.
He has to be dealt with.
But to C.C., Mao is not just an enemy.
He is a child she gave Geass to.
He is a person broken by that power.
He is someone who depended on her as his only salvation.
He is a contractor she could not save.
So shooting Mao is not just dealing with a dangerous enemy.
It means ending, with her own hands, the child she helped break.
I think C.C. could not shoot him because it was not just love.
It was motherhood, guilt, responsibility, and regret all mixed together.
If C.C. were truly just a cold immortal, she would have cut him off much sooner.
But she cannot.
That is even more true if she had known him since he was around six years old.
To C.C., Mao is also the result of her own sin.
So even when she points the gun at him, her hand stops.
C.C. has feelings.
They are just much heavier than most people’s.
Her feelings for Mao come out as guilt toward someone she could not save.
Her feelings for Lelouch come out as watching over him without spoiling him.
C.C. is not cold because she lacks feeling.
She acts cold because she feels too deeply.
If she is openly kind, she and the other person may break.
So she keeps her distance.
She uses sarcasm.
She jokes.
She turns it into a contract.
She eats pizza.
She calls him a “cheater.”
On the outside, she is a cold immortal.
Inside, she is a woman who grows too attached to the people she gets involved with.
That is C.C., I think.
To Lelouch, C.C. is not someone who comforts him.
But she is someone who does not abandon him.
To Mao, C.C. was the only silence.
But he depended on that silence too much, and he almost destroyed both himself and C.C.
This is where C.C.’s heaviness lies.
She knows too much.
She has lived too long.
She has seen people break.
And some of those people broke because of her.
So she wears a cold face.
But behind that coldness, there is a very deep well of feeling.
Back to Table of Contents
Related Article: Shirley and the Sad Loop of the Best Move
Related Article: Ohgi and Villetta as Organization People
