Waking World, a code geass fanfic

Code Geass (Lost Colors): Waking World

Disclaimers: All translations are my own or based off of the Japanese official materials, and have nothing to do with either anime or (if it is released in the future) game localizations. AU.

I. Birth

Rai didn't really believe in talent.

His brothers had always tormented him with his inferior bloodline. Nobility and power came from birth, they said, and Rai, whose mother was a barbarian princess, could never be as clever, as strong, as charismatic as they. So he had ignored their taunts, and quietly worked at honing his skills to prove them wrong. Inborn talent, he reasoned, was something that could be overcome.

That was alright, as far as his guardian was concerned. Nonette Enneagram might not have much to say about talent, but she definitely believed in hard work. The hard work, for example, that allowed a minor noble to rise to one of the most exalted positions within the empire upon the strength of nothing more than her own determination.

That allowed her to literally beat the mystical powers of divine rule with human strength alone.

II. Memory

Nonette's estate was every bit the spacious backwater that she had promised. Farmland, forest, and meadow strung brilliant ribbons of blue and green and gold across the land, punctuated here and there by the brilliant white of human dwellings. The houses of the estate were designed to resemble the old castle keeps of Britannia's old homeland, now lost half a world away.

The blend of strangeness and familiarity had helped keep Rai's curiosity overriding his initial panic. The sprawling keep in which he lived might have looked old, but contained all of the amenities of the modern – future – world. It was tended by nearly invisible servants and groundsmen, and Rai was relieved that he would not have to worry about human conversation during those delirious first days when he was afraid to even open his mouth.

As the days wore on, and became weeks and then months, he managed to learn their movements and patterns. The lady gardener who tended the machines that in turn kept the paths free of undergrowth. The elderly man who took away the laundry at exactly 9 am every morning. The boy who exercised the horses and hounds. Rai nodded and smiled at them when they passed, and they returned his greetings by voice, seemingly unmindful of his silence.

Despite himself, Rai began to plan on how he would be able to speak to them, how to overcome the curse that loomed over his head and sent him here in the first place.

It only worked once, so maybe he could command everyone within hearing to some menial, meaningless task? Yell at them all to jump up and down or buy a sandwich or something. Except someone would inevitably break their legs doing it, or start mobbing the sandwich stand, or… a hundred thousand scenarios of ifs, ands, and buts played out in his mind, and even though he knew the power to be no more malevolent than its wielder, the instincts of a strategist always returned him to the worst possible scenario.

So he stayed silent, because the memories of the alternatives drifted through his nightmares still.

III. War

The only person other than the servants and workmen he saw regularly was Nonette. He had never managed to explain the details of his plight to her, fearing the sound of his own voice, but she had never asked. Her voice filled enough of the air for both of them, as though compensating for his silence.

Nonette was an adept at all manner of martial arts. Born to an age where machinery and gadgets decided the outcome of war, she was still consistently able to beat him, for whom skill at arms had been a necessary means of survival. It slightly offended his pride, and she definitely knew it. Every time he looked at her knowing grin as she helped him up off the grass, legs and back aching from another particularly embarrassing loss, he could read the challenge in her eyes. You're not going to take this lying down now, are you?

And he knew she didn't just mean sparring. Spurred by competitiveness, wounded pride, or maybe just sheer contrariness, Rai practiced and planned, honing both his concentration in the physical world and his grasp of whatever bizarro-verse resided in his mind. He filled the empty places with knowledge, learned this time from real books. Several hundred years was a lot of reading to catch up on.

Over time, his control strengthened and refined. He didn't yet dare use his cursed voice, but as the seasons turned, he knew with certainty that the moment when he would be able to speak again without endangering those around him was drawing near.

It was reflected in his physical condition as well, as he was eventually able to draw, and even best Nonette at their sparring games every now and then. Until one afternoon, when it was his turn to help her up off the grass. Her cheerful laughter echoed across the courtyard as she clapped him on the back and congratulated him with not a whit of resentment.

That evening she returned with a laptop full of images and news stories, his first news of the outside world since he had arrived. Her expression carefully neutral, carefully controlled, she showed him the state of the world. Showed him what had happened in Area 11 – Japan – after he left.

IV. Flight

When he could think again, Rai gathered wildflowers from the meadow, in memory and in farewell.

This one for Suzaku, his face now set in a perpetual frown. That one, for sweet Princess Euphemia, who would never smile again. For Her Highness Cornelia, who might have fallen in battle, and for General Dalton, who certainly had. For Lloyd and his frustrating, fascinating mannerisms, for Cecile and her gentle voice. For Millie and Kallen, Lelouch and Nunnally and all the students who had been part of home. For even Zero, who had been enslaved by either the power or his own ambition.

Flowers for his beloved family, for the people of a kingdom several centuries dead.

One day was enough to quiet his ghosts. He was not surprised when Nonette appeared the next morning with an unfamiliar Knightmare, azure and white like the sky behind it.

Operating system, weapons check, energy levels… even after all this time, the instincts he had been programmed with were as familiar as ever. The Knightmare responded to his touch, a masterwork of engineering that felt every bit as familiar as his old partner. For a moment he wondered if Lloyd had had a hand in its making. When he saw the name of the new machine blinking in a corner of the OS display, suspicion became certainty, because only the eccentric scientist could have such a sense of humor. Excalibur.

Rai slid the Knightmare into a smooth, gliding turn, stopping in front of Nonette. A faint smile tugged at the corners of her mouth, but she displayed no other sign of being impressed by his acrobatics. He popped open the hatch, and sounded his rusty voice for the first time in over a year.

"When do we leave?"