Author´s note: this is the first time I write fanfiction, and in a language not my own, so please be nice. Thank you for reading it!
Disclaimer: I do not own Code Geass or anything related to it. If I did it would not finish like it did.
Most of the time Lelouch could forget a very simple and yet powerful truth: the same people who now are his enemies once, before heartache, tragedy and betrayal, were his allies, his friends, and even his family.
He does not include his hated father, the Emperor, in this because he hardly knew him, he was just a mythical and distant figure who people said he had a relationship with, but he cut all ties with him the day that man betrayed his mother, his sister, and himself. But his siblings…sometimes, in the really dark moments when the responsibilities of caring for his lovely, disabled sister, even though taken with great pride, were too much for a too young boy suddenly bereft of everything he had ever known, every single thing that was familiar… Sometimes in those times he would close his eyes and remember simpler days.
He would, of course, dream of sweet Nunnally dancing and laughing, mirth shining in her fully seeing eyes. But he would also see Euphie dancing alongside her, both of them breathless but happy. He imagined Cornelia watching over them with pride and joy, and then erupting in fury when Clovis would suggest something she would deem "inappropriate" and after that proceed to chase after him around the entire place. And he would dream of the older brother he idolised and loved playing chess with him, lavender eyes alight with laughter after seeing the mayhem the rest of their family was creating.
In those stolen moments Clovis wasn't the incompetent commander of an occupied Area who ordered a massacre so he could hide a dark secret, but the brother who would always lose to him at chess and who would make Nunnally smile with his antics. People would remember him as incompetent but in truth he was never interested in administrating anything, he just wanted to enjoy life and paint, and that was what Lelouch remembered of him at the end of the day. And Cornelia… she was just the overprotective elder sister who sneaked candies to him and his siblings.
It hurt too much to think of Euphemia, full of dreams Euphie, who was alongside Nunnally the only good person of the imperial siblings, himself included…
He had mixed feelings regarding Schneizel…he had adored his older brother, and when he had not done anything to help them after Marianne's murder he had hated him the most of all his brothers and sisters. Knowing what he knew now he understood rationally that he could not have done much…But it still hurt, when he allowed himself to dwell in it.
The halcyon days of Aries Villa are long gone and will never come back, and most of the time the hate he feels drowns these memories, but sometimes, when he lets his guard down they strike. He hates when they do, because they remind him that for all that Zero is almost a god, unfeeling and perfect, Lelouch vi Britannia, is still painfully human, still capable of sorrow, of regret, of heartache.
Zero only thinks of the Britannia siblings as the sons and daughters of the emperor, of the visible heads of the Empire he sought to destroy, for him they are only enemies. But in a deep part of Lelouch battered and guarded heart, he still names them brothers and sisters. Fate may have set them one against the others, but the ties of the past are still there, because after all, blood is thicker than water.