In the start of the series Lelouch uses his Geass in random people to see its effects. And then we know nothing.
Disclaimer: I do not own Code Geass.
Mary doesn´t remember the day it started. With the passing of the years she starts trying to understand what happened that day, but it is hard to do when you aren´t even sure of the exact day it begins. She invents explanations, fantasizes tales, but in truth she has never recovered her memories about that day. Now that years have passed she fears she will never do.
It was spring, she thinks, because she remembers that the days were warm and the fields green, but school was still in session. She knows the year, of course. How could she not? Her world, the World, started to change that year. People say it changed for the better, this world in peace, but she isn´t so sure. She was sure before, she knows. She knew exactly what she wanted from life and how to get it. That's part of the problem, her old road map doesn´t work anymore, wouldn´t have even without her strange curse. She´s stuck in a moment in time while the rest of humanity moves around.
She was seventeen, and ready to leave school. She wasn´t a Noble but her family were britannians and of a good economical position, and in those days it mattered. She was already accepted at a university of her choice, in the mainland, and many of her friends were envious. She remembers laughing with them, and promising to write and keep in contact. But she thinks that path never taken doesn´t hurt as much as the other. She was in love with him, she knows. The boy she met in that trip with her family. He was handsome, and her father approved of him, and in those golden days that was enough for her. They were going to marry, after she finished her studies, and everything was going to be perfect.
Instead she´s here, trapped in the country that killed her family. Unable to leave. Because she´s cursed. Her family tried everything, but it does not matter, every day she walks to the doors of the Ashford Academy and leaves a mark at the door. It is not conscientious, doctors say. She doesn´t know what she is doing, but still she cannot ignore it. She has to do it. She prefers not to remember what happened the last time somebody tried to stop her.
She used to dream about the tales of princesses being cursed and then rescued, but she has come around to accept that it won´t happen to her. It won´t break, she knows. And it is not so terrible once you accept that. Her parents left her in good economical situation, she doesn´t even need to work, and her curse only takes a little time each day. She does so because she needs something to do, something meaningful. She is lucky that the Ashford´s are so nice and understanding. So she takes teaching classes in the same school and then teaches Home Economics. She has made something of her life, cursed or not. And if she has the secret hope that someday she will wake up and be free, that the only thing needed to break it was to learn a lesson, like in fairytales, well that is her business and no one else.
She is getting married in a few months. Akira is sweet and understanding does not seem to care that they would never be capable of leaving the place. He says he wants a quiet life with her, that adventure is overrated, that they have good jobs, enough to pay for a house and the children that will come. That, he says, are the only thing that matter truly. Her life is good, she thinks, in spite of whoever or whatever tried to make it miserable. That is her revenge, a life well lived, but still she wonders. Why me?