Author's note:

When I initially conceived the idea for this story during the course of Code Geass season 1, it was meant to be a side story and the characters were supposed to be secondary. However, as the season progressed even into the second season and with the addition of even more canon characters, the story evolved, though I retained quite a lot of info/facts from Code Geass 1 while sometimes completely ignoring some from the R2. Readers may be initally confused about the characters introduced here, perhaps due to me altering their backgrounds (for characters appearing in the series) or the fact that they are created solely by me. I have had the intention to write another story (with the storyline tangent to the original storyline) to formally introduce the characters as they come, but somehow, I've never gotten down to doing it. I will try to leave as much character information in this story now and then, occasionally weaving them into the plot, and I hope that that will answer most of the questions you have about them. Enjoy.

-FantasyWR


Part I: The Traveller's Tale


Chapter 1:

Maxima had to admit – the road was bumpier than she last remembered it to be. It has been almost a year since she last set foot on that corner of the world, and she was truly grateful that she was returning to that same place instead of having to hunt down their latest abode. She couldn't blame them for doing so, though; it has been a long five years since they left and over the course of that half-a-decade of time, they resorted to – and were probably already accustomed to – leading a rather nomadic life and never staying in a single area for more than six months, for more reasons than one. It was certainly unexpected when she received a letter – Morse-coded, nonetheless – from them that they were expecting her at the same place she had met them last July, and although she hadn't sent back a reply asking why they had not moved to a new place, she couldn't stop wondering why.

Maybe they'd wanted a break from all that moving around, she mused. They would have to do that for a very long time to come, anyway.

Beside her, her fellow traveller, exhausted from all the work he had to rush through in order to accompany her on her trip to nowhere, had fallen fast asleep, his head resting against the side of the carriage. Maxima smiled as she reached out a hand to his face and brushed away a few stray strands of blond hair that had fallen over his sleeping face. He stirred at her touch, but after grunting some incoherent words, he went back to his snoring.

She couldn't help but stare at his face – the same face she had fallen in love with during the course of the war; the same face that pouted when she refused his initial advances; the same face that contorted with both fear and anger when she told him that she was going to marry another; the same face that smiled when he rescued her from that doomed wedding ceremony; the same face that cried tears of joy when she finally flung herself into his arms, promising never to leave him again.

She had kept her word, even dragging him along everywhere she went. It wasn't against his will, though – it was his duty as her knight to be beside his princess all the time. She knew she was selfish – he wasn't just her knight, he was Britannia's knight, the Empress' knight, but she had wanted him all to herself. Nunnally didn't show any objection to that, but Suzaku did express some concerns about having the First Princess steal away the one of the Empire's knight for long periods at a time. Maxima had rebuffed him, saying that Suzaku's own presence would suffice the Empire's need of a knight, and that there were more Knights of Rounds then just the Knight of One.

Come to think of it, Maxima realised that he was in essence the only Knight from her father's reign to stay on as a member of the Rounds, though he had been promoted, having been the most senior Knight left. Anya had resigned to go tend an orange plantation with Jeremiah, while Nonette had left, saying that she wanted to go explore the world before she became too old. Then again, Nonette was never really involved in the affairs of the Knights of Rounds – she even declined to stand with Waldstein when he wanted to overthrow Lelouch. Suzaku, well, his position and situation were quite self-explanatory; after all, he was the one the remaining Knights of Rounds had to face when they challenged Lelouch's right to the throne. Georgia Marken, Knight of Two, however, just faded into her real identity of Maxima el Britannia.

Speaking of Anya, the girl had become rather close to the former Purist. Jeremiah was reportedly the one who removed the effect of Marianne Lamperouge's Geass from her with his Geass Canceller. How he managed to rope her in to his orange plantation project was still beyond Maxima, even though she had known Jeremiah for a long time, ever since his stint as one of the guards at the Aries Palace. As a child, Maxima had been a regular visitor to Empress Marianne's palace, not because she was interested in her father's other consort, but rather, she was a regular playmate of the Empress' two children, especially her son. Initially, she went alone, but when her younger sister Euphemia expressed interest in meeting Marianne's children, she had brought the little girl – just a few years younger than herself – along with her, of course with the permission of Euphemia's overprotective older sister. Then again, it was Schneizel who had sought Cornelia's consent for her, being the kind of older brother that he was, so Maxima suspected that Cornelia had been compelled to allow Euphie to tag along with her.

It was Euphie who succeeded her as the regular visitor of the Aries Palace after Maxima left for boarding school in Area 1, and between the time she left and the time she returned seven years later, the Empress had been assassinated by perpetrators unknown, her children banished to Japan as political hostages of the Sakuradite Conflict, and Maxima's own mother had been appointed the new empress – a position Maxima knew that her mother, although the daughter of the most influential aristocratic house apart from the actual royal family and far above the criteria required of an empress, received grudgingly. Georgina had enjoyed her freedom as one of the Emperor's queens, and had a free reign in raising her two children. It had been difficult for feisty and strong-willed, yet regal and demure Georgina to fully accept the limitations intertwined with the role as the head of the Emperor's harem. Fortunately, as Georgina had told Maxima once, both Schneizel and Maxima were no longer young, impressionable children when she took the throne beside their father.

Georgina had died soon after Lelouch took the throne, having been of poor health for the last few years. Maxima thought that it was best that she left before she saw how pathetic her prized son had become. Maxima had always revered Schneizel. Through her eyes as a young child, her brother seemed to be perfect in any way and every way, even outshining his older brother the Crown Prince. It was ironic that both fell to Maxima's younger brother Lelouch, though it took Lelouch a longer time to subdue Schneizel. While Odysseus was now effectively out of his misery, with credit all due to Schneizel, Schneizel himself was to remain under the effect of Lelouch's Geass to serve Zero, who was now Suzaku. Maxima had tried talking to Schneizel after Nunnally's ascension, and she was distressed at the hollow, empty shell her beloved, intelligent brother had become. True, she actually hated Schneizel when he tried to use Nunnally as a means to control Lelouch and when he fired FLEIJA at the Pendragon, on top of all the other unscrupulous methods he used in order regain the Empire from the clutches of 'Lelouch the demon', but he was still her brother – her only full-blooded brother. There were times when she considered smuggling Jeremiah into the palace or Schneizel into Jeremiah's orange plantation in order to have Jeremiah undo the Geass cast onto the prince, but Suzaku had warned her against it, stating all the various possibilities of Schneizel turning back into the scheming, cold-blooded yet paradoxically apathetic fiend Lelouch had to deal with once all control measures on him were lifted.

It was unexpected that the Empress Georgina would be the only person in the palace that was not under Lelouch's Geass when he usurped the throne. Maxima thought that Lelouch would have placed her under his power as soon as he was in position to do so, Georgina having been technically his mother's competition to their father's affections. It was only after Lelouch had sent an imperial edict commanding Maxima's return to the capital and her compliance that she realised that her half-brother had always had much respect for her mother. After Marianne's murder, Georgina had, for a while, taken care of Nunnally, who had been wounded both physically and emotionally by her mother's death, and had ensured that Lelouch was healthy, and even after they had left for Japan, she maintained correspondence with the Ashford family who updated her about the prince and princess' situation until the Emperor found out and severed all communications from the mainland to Japan.

The Empress was also somehow aware of Charles and Marianne's plan of Ragnarok, though naturally in less detail than Lelouch, C.C. or Suzaku after the incident in the Thought Elevator. She was supportive of Lelouch's plans and apparently, as Maxima suspected, aware of Zero Requiem – Lelouch's suicidal mission. Maxima herself only came to know about the plan much later, at the time around its completion, along with C.C. and Jeremiah, who had been loyal to Lelouch ever since he realised Lelouch's real aims. Ironically, it turned out that she came to know more details of the plan than Suzaku, Zero Requiem's co-executor, ever knew – details that she knew would hurt Suzaku more than the day he was forced to impale his best friend on international television and watch him bleed to death.

A soft moan broke Maxima's train of thought and she turned to see her companion straighten out his neck, his hand massaging the area nearest to his shoulders. Maxima snickered, and she earned a glare from him.

"How was your nap?" she asked good-naturedly, still trying to stifle a laugh as he continued to pound on his shoulder blade.

"Gee, you think?" he snorted. "I have a terrible pain in my neck and shoulders from sleeping in a weird position." He rolled his eyes at her again when she coughed choking on the gurgle of amusement in her throat. "You should have woken me up before my neck became sore."

"Oh," she asked innocently. "Now you're blaming me for your pain?"

"Hmm," he thought for a while, snaking an arm from behind Maxima and onto her left shoulder, pulling her close to his warm frame. "I wouldn't, if you gave me a massage and maybe, one orange from the carton."

"So you've finally showed your true colours?" she asked rhetorically. "Those oranges aren't for you anyway."

"Ah, but he won't notice if just one orange is gone," he reassured her, though it seemed that he was trying to convince himself more than her.

Maxima sighed. They had stopped by Jeremiah's orange plantation en route for a night's stay, like they always did, and like always, Anya and Sayako had always asked them where they were going and who they were visiting. Maxima brushed off that topic with the same answer every time.

"Friends," she said, taking a sip of freshly-squeezed orange juice from the glass. "They like moving around, so we usually have to go hunt them down."

Sayako didn't seem convinced and had tried to probe further.

"Do we know these 'friends' of yours?" she asked, her eyes fixated on Maxima's own, catching the princess' gaze.

"Maybe," Maxima replied ambiguously. "Then again, I'm not sure if you've met them."

Of course Maxima knew that Sayako knew these 'friends' of hers, but it wasn't her say to tell her about them, especially when they preferred to remain anonymous. Besides, it was probably for the best that they didn't know – the secret was to remain a secret within the few of them alone.

She had already told her companion about her friends; more accurately, she showed him them on her very first visit in which she had pulled him from his work and onto the road to find their residence. She remembered the shock on his face when he first came face to face with none other than their old acquaintances. He had, in his delusional and confused state of mind, crashed into all four walls of their simple abode while trying to literally run away from the ghosts of the past – a comical yet heart-wrenching sight to behold. However, since that incident, he had always been her faithful companion when she decides to pay them a visit, and he had been the only one whom she personally trusted with that secret.

Jeremiah had passed her the carton of oranges when they were about to leave to continue on their journey. He didn't ask who they were because he already knew from the beginning – maybe even before Maxima herself was aware.

"As always," he said, handing her the carton. "Tell them that if they want more, I could always give them another carton or so."

She smiled. "That I will, but they never did ask for more. I think that a carton this year will suffice, Jeremiah. Thanks anyway."

"How are they?" he asked, sealing the carton with masking tape.

"You mean, 'how is he?'" said Maxima suddenly, and she couldn't help but laugh at Jeremiah's gasp at being found out.

His face turned a nasty shade of red, but he quickly regained his composure, as expected of a former elite soldier. "He's good, no?" Jeremiah asked.

"Yeah," she agreed, turning her attention to the sun that had just begun its ascent over the foggy mountains in the background. "He's happy, and I think that's all that matters."

"So, do I get an orange?" a hushed whisper sounded in her right ear, interrupting her thoughts, and she proceeded to punch the one responsible playfully in the arm.

"No," said Maxima, her voice firm. "Not even if you begged me, Gino Weinberg."

Gino pouted, his lower lip protruding more than his upper lip, and looked at her with watery puppy eyes. Maxima ignored him; Gino had always used that trick even though he knew that Maxima never did – and never will – fall for it. "Please…" his voice came out low and hoarse.

Maxima turned to look at him, a wry smile forming on her lips. Before Gino could react, she had pressed her lips onto his, giving a quick peck, then backed away and folded her arms across her chest. "I believe that that's sweeter than any orange in the carton, don't you think so too?"

Gino blinked and then laughed, his arm pulled her even closer to him and she rested her head on his shoulder. "Of course, my princess, that was sweeter and more valuable than any orange," he said, giving her a light kissed on her forehead. He inhaled deeply, internalising the sweet fragrance of her hair. "Did you change your brand of shampoo again?"

She elbowed him and remarked dryly, "Only you pay attention to this kind of trivial stuff."

"Yes," he agreed, his fingers combing through her golden locks. "But if I don't, who will?"

Maxima surprisingly didn't respond to his question, even though it had been rhetorical; she was the kind who almost always had something to say about anything – that he found out when he first met her as Georgia Marken, Knight of Two, and was immediately pricked – if not, slashed – by her liberal use of sarcasm when he tried to entertain her with his, as she had put it, 'nonsense'.

She hadn't been very talkative when he first met her, he must admit, and he actually perceived her to be the quiet, friendly type. However, he was proved absolutely wrong when she barked at him for trying to get too friendly with her and threatened to dice him up when he tried to hold her hand to lead her to the hangar. While he stood there bewildered by her cold, unfriendly attitude and wondered why she was the only one who had reacted so violently towards him, Suzaku had given him a stare that had made him realise that even he, Suzaku, had been somewhat annoyed by him, Gino, at some point in time, and that Georgia had been the only one who showed no patience with his flippant ways.

It was perhaps her temperament that aroused in him an interest of the quiet spitfire. He noticed that she was on good terms with Dorothea Ernst, Nonette Enneagram, Monica Kruszewski and even Suzaku, of all people. He also caught Luciano Bradley showing her some form of respect, even though that hot-headed, reckless, blood-thirsty vampire had none for practically anyone. What disturbed him the most was that she had been exceptionally close to Bismarck Waldstein. Waldstein was indeed some sort of a mentor to all the younger Knights, but her relationship with him was unnaturally and disturbingly close, intimate even. Gino remembered searching through all available databases for any hint of Georgia's family background or history – for Georgia herself had been rather tight-lipped on that issue whenever it was raised – but all the files he found were either confidential, restricted or extremely brief. All he gathered was that she had been schooled in Area 1 for a few years of her childhood and early teens – the same region Waldstein was Governor-General of – and that she had been posted to practically everywhere on the globe by the Emperor for unknown missions or jobs.

It was only much later that her true identity as the First Princess of the Holy Britannian Empire was revealed. Gino knew that it was not planned; Georgia had disclosed her true lineage on national television while discrediting Zero's claims. From then on, Gino viewed her in a totally different light, not because she was of royal descent, but because he finally understood why she could be so calm, collected and charming at one point and cold, crude and critical a split second later. He realised that these were her two personalities, just like her two personas, but he could not clearly define which persona was the calm and charming one or the cold, critical one. Over time, he has had some idea on which is which, though he suspects that his labels may be different from hers. The cold, crude and critical persona, he dubbed Georgia Marken, Knight of Two and war veteran, while he referred the calm, collected and charming persona as Her Highness Maxima el Britannia, First Princess of the Empire. Despite the differentiation, he loved her most when she was the combination of both – that he called Maxima, not the princess Maxima el Britannia, but just Maxima.

He had gotten a little more insight on that matter when he realised who her brother was. Schneizel el Britannia was a man white as the angels but shrouded in the darkness of mystery. He was a competent man, even more so than his elder half-brother Odysseus u Britannia, who was in theory supposed to be the next Emperor of the large empire. When Schneizel had taken Suzaku's offer to commit regicide and take the throne for himself, Gino had known that the prince was more than capable to do so, but was against the idea purely out of loyalty to the balance of the status quo. Schneizel had him detained because of that, and that action alone had been the trigger that set off a grenade of questions in Gino's mind throughout the entire war and left him to search the deepest, darkest corner of his conscience for the answers. While he groped, Schneizel had begun on a quest to overthrow his own younger brother Lelouch who had eliminated their father and claimed the throne for himself, which resulted in him committing sins that stained his previously pure persona a disgusting red and turned him into the cold-blooded monster the world had thought him to be.

Gino mused that only a few months before, the same prince had been the one who doomed his own sister's marriage to the previous Knight of One. More accurately, Schneizel had orchestrated the chaos that interrupted Maxima's wedding ceremony and gave Gino the chance to swoop down and rescue her from the inferno of an arranged marriage. Schneizel had only agreed to do so when Gino had professed his love for Maxima in front of Schneizel and promised that he was able to give Maxima what Waldstein thought he could but in reality could not – his heart. It was there and then that Gino realised there was a person who actually loved Maxima more than he, and that was her own brother whom she later denounced when she found out that he had blasted the Britannian capital to oblivion.

Schneizel still lives, both fortunately and unfortunately, although Gino doesn't really consider him as living. During the course of the Battle of Damocles, Lelouch – the young man who had lived his life never actually able to beat his older, more experience brother in a game of chess – finally overpowered Schneizel and subdued him with his Geass. Schneizel now only serves Zero and nothing else. Gino remembered how Maxima had came crying to him, clearly distressed at the state her brother was in, but never blamed Lelouch. Instead, Gino knew that Maxima blamed herself because she had, for a time, truly hated her brother and was now unable to really reconcile with him.

Gino suddenly noticed that Maxima's breathing had become deeper and stable. He tilted his head to look at her face, and found her to have fallen asleep. He smiled; she had insisted that she be in charge of all the logistic work of their trip, even with all the court work she had to vet through. The planning had obviously taken a toll on her. He traced a finger over the edge of her face, knowing that it would not rouse her. Maxima had always been a heavy sleeper, even during her time as a Knight of Rounds.

Something in him made him study her face. It was not the first time he seen her up so close, and he believed that it wouldn't be the last either, yet it was as intriguing as the first time he had seen it. It was the same face that had mesmerised Gino's own father more than thirty years ago. Schneizel and Maxima were known to resemble their mother very much, and Maxima was almost an exact copy of Georgina, whom Gino's father had known and fallen in love with as young teens, and had parted with when she was sent by the wishes of her family to marry the Crown Prince of Britannia. The only difference between Maxima and Georgina's appearance is the colour of their eyes – Maxima had inherited her father's eyes. Strangely enough, out of the many children Charles di Britannia's 108 consorts had borne him, only two had his purple eyes – one being Maxima, the other, Marianne's son Lelouch. However, Maxima shared only the shade of her irises with the Emperor; her gaze was identical to the Empress Georgina's – it was fierce, yet meek; powerful, yet mellow; passionate, yet subtle; wild, yet tamed. It was perhaps the paradox of their gazes that had captivated the hearts of both father and son.

Gino remembered the first time he had invited Maxima – then only known to him as Georgia Marken – to his home. It had been during one of the breaks interspersed between missions and he had decided, out of goodwill, to bring her home for dinner as she had then claimed that she had no family residing within the capital. She had surprisingly agreed. There weren't many people at his place – his brother and sister were away, his mother in Area 4 visiting a relative - only servants and his father. When Gino had introduced Georgia to the older Weinberg, Lord Weinberg senior had been stunned, not only because she had resembled his first love in appearance, but also her name. It was only later that Maxima admitted to Gino that she had named her alias after her mother's own. Gino's father had told his son some years later that it must have been fate that brought Gino and Maxima together, as their parents were denied the chance to have happiness with each other.

The older Lord Weinberg had been at Georgina's deathbed the night she passed away, and the two former lovers had spent their one last time together in silence until the Empress closed her eyes with a smile on her face. Gino's father had explained to Gino that Georgina always believed that silence spoke more than words, and he had thought that it was perhaps for the best that they enjoyed one last moment of perfect silence together there and then. After the Empress' death, Gino noticed that his father had grown much quieter and had probably retreated into himself. It was then that Gino concluded that his father had really loved the Empress even after she had left him to marry another, and that it was his love that allowed him to let her go.

Gino knew that he was incapable of doing such a self-sacrificing deed. He knew he was selfish when he lost his temper after being told that Maxima was going to marry Bismarck Waldstein. It was nothing new for the First Princess to be marrying the Knight of One; in fact, it had been a tradition ever since the reign of the 90th Emperor – a tradition that Gino had no intention to break. Indeed, he had freed his princess from the clutches of a loveless marriage, but he knew that this was only running away from the problem. He knew that he had to solve it, and the only way to do so was by becoming the very thing he had initially sought to topple – by becoming the Knight of One. Only then will he be able to claim her as his own and no one else's, and finally giving her the happiness that she deserved.

Looking at her lying in his arms, her head on his shoulder, Gino knew without a doubt that he had been successful. Taking a deep breath, he placed his cheek on the top of her head and within a few moments, he had joined her in the world of dreams.


Endnotes:

Maxima was a character I created while watching Code Geass 1, and she wasn't supposed to be a princess, or anyone royal for the matter. But somehow, she did become one. I chose to ignore R2's Guinevere and crown Maxima as the First Princess. With the introduction of the Knights of Round, I thought, hey, why not let her be one as well, as a woman with a double identity. Perhaps when thinking about that, Cornelia came into the picture, but then again, Maxima is totally different from Cornelia, whom I believe to be a stronger character than Maxima, having been an older sister to Euphemia while Maxima was the younger sibling. Also, Cornelia would perhaps be a better team leader while Maxima tends to work solo.

Gino was a character I thought to have been quite neglected in the series, though he often served as the comedy factor. Maybe what really caught my attention was that he was blond (yes, FantasyWR has a penchant for blond boys) and that he was voiced by Souichiro Hoshi (aka Kira Yamato from Gundam Seed). laughs

So let's hazard and put these two together. More information to come in later chapters.

Till next time.

-FantasyWR