This ... started out fairly harmless. I shouldn't be writing angsty stuff for six hours straight in the dead of the night. The liturgy is heavily based on that of HM The Queen's coronation in 1953. Plenty of references and Genius Bonuses. Catch 'em all!
Code Geass is not mine. I wish the last part of this weren't. I actually love Nunnally, really!
Retrospection
"Sirs!," the Archbishop shouted into the north aisle. "I present unto you Nunnally, your undoubted Empress and Queen! Wherefore all you who are come this day to do your homage and service, are you willing to do the same?"
"GOD SAVE EMPRESS NUNNALLY!"
She indicated a nod, being unable to bow or curtsey. Trumpets sounded.
It was a warm summer day. Many-coloured cascades of light broke through the high stained glass windows of the abbey church and painted shadowy silhouettes of peers and guests and priests and journaille on the stone floor. It was hot under the crimson gown and thick velvet-and-ermine. Garter King of Arms and the King of One, Sir Gino, stepped forth to help her from her wheelchair into St. Edward's Chair in the centre of the platform. As she was seated into it, Nunnally was surprised at how hard it was, and thought to smell the soft odour of salt water. Legend had it that the crate containing the throne had fallen overboard during the flight from Edinburgh, and then miraculously reappeared to guide the royal fleet into the safe harbour that would become the new capital. She scoffed at the idea. She had stopped believing in miracles long ago.
"Madam, is Your Majesty willing to take the oath?" The Archbishop of New Haven was a morbidly obese man of sixty-seven, with a red face, deep sweat stains on his ornate vestments, and two mistresses he kept in his episcopal palace just outside the city.
"I am willing," she briskly said. She had decided this was to be his last major function when she had noticed him ogling her during rehearsals.
"Will you solemnly promise and swear to govern the peoples of the United Kingdom of Great Britain, of the Kingdoms of France and of Ireland, of the Britannian Empire and of all your possessions and other territories to any of them belonging or pertaining, according to their respective laws and customs?"
"I solemnly promise to do so." She shifted on the rock-hard coronation chair.
"Will you to your power cause Law and Justice, in Mercy, to be executed in all your judgements?"
"I will." There had been an offer to hold the ceremony in November. It would have been far more bearable then, with cool autumn showers going down on the abbey. She had been foolish to insist that a summer ceremony was more dignified, more joyful, and would do better to please her people. How foolish she had been.
"Will you to the utmost of your power maintain the laws of God and the true profession of the Gospel? Will you to the utmost of your power maintain in all your realms the Protestant Reformed Religion established by your noble forbears of Tudor? Will you maintain and preserve inviolably the settlement of the Church of England, and the doctrine, worship, discipline, and government thereof, as by law established in England and New Britain? And will you preserve unto the Bishops and Clergy of England and New Britain, and to the Churches there committed to their charge, all such rights and privileges, as by law do or shall appertain to them or any of them?"
She suppressed a soft sigh. "All this I promise to do." The Bible and the Sword of State were brought before her. She put two fingers each on both. "The things which I have here before promised, I will perform, and keep. So help me God."
She kissed the book and signed the oath and felt no difference.
In retrospect, of course, she should have expected it. A hot day like this one, but on the other side of the world. The heat, of course, had been more bearable when all she had to clothe herself with had been a rough crimson shirt that she could only suspect had been chosen because he would enjoy the view. He had changed towards the end, in many ways. Her steel shackles, however, burned like fire in the sunlight.
Had she suspected it? Of course not. To suspect would have been to imagine, and even after all that had happened, to imagine cruel steel impaling his supple white body, his gleaming blood splattered all over the throne, his robes and her very own face, would have been unthinkable. With all their faults, she still loved her emperor.
Should she have known it, then? Perhaps. She had realised, of course, silently, that the European's wishful doctrine of rebellion and revolution was ludicrous in extremis. The rabble had no desire for freedom or participation, and were just as glad or angry under Caesar as under Gracchus. Bread made rebellions, and blood made revolutions. But the late emperor had spilt his fair share of blood. (As with every revolution worth its bayonets, of course, nothing had changed. She sat now where he would have sat, had he had the time.) So she might have seen it coming. Under a monarch who is more Donar than Woden, there are no wars, but there is blood and where there is blood there is hatred, and hatred breed more blood.
Nevertheless, the execution had been peculiar. Flashy, over-the-top, ridiculous in its audacity. Had she not known it otherwise, she might have thought (and dreamed) that it was of his own conception; he had always been fond of such silliness and thus a horrible actor. She had almost laughed when the executioner had appeared the selfsame night in the bedchamber that had been his and now was hers. "Are you here to kill me, too?," she had asked and sat up in bed. He bowed, deeply, and asked for forgiveness. Even through the voice modifier, she heard that he had been haunted by guilt for doing what was right these past hours. The modifier had never fooled her, but it was no voice she knew well, though not entirely strange. When she removed the mask and remembered the face, she had almost laughed. The most competent, most trusted of his lieutenants, the only one who had been able to flee the extinction of his order following the Battle of Mount Fuji after a wound sustained halfway through had rendered him incapable of fighting on. His face stern as ever, a relic of an age that had never existed, a samurai-aspirant who had tried to build the rice paper façades of his ancestors' pretentious little lives in stone, who had succeeded, but ridiculed himself in the progress.
"It was not your idea, of course," she had quietly said. "It is not your style, unless you have changed so much as to be no longer yourself. What would you have done, walk up to him and challenge him to name a champion to duel you?"
"You mock me, Madam."
"What did you expect, that I kiss your brow and hold your head and talk sweet nothings in your ear?"
"I had expected either absolution, or hatred. I would have borne either with humility."
"And guilt?"
"If you decide to leave me with the guilt of robbing you of your brother, I shall live with it. I would prefer you took it from me, though."
She smiled at him. "You could be my father in age, sir. Stop acting like a boy. No one can absolve you of your sin, be it myself or one of your priests and shrine maidens or the gods themselves."
"Then I must ask that you understand the necessity."
"There is no necessity, only desire, and those who act on it. You murdered the boy you used to teach to wield a wooden blade in the most cruel manner conceivable, by twisting one of steel inside his guts. I want you to live with your guilt. I want you to look upon me and despair in the knowledge that you will never wash white that stain on that sacred armour of yours, honour. I want you to be torn apart by your demons night by night as you lie alone, no one with your mask and no one without it. Do I make myself clear?"
Her guest stiffly nodded and replaced the mask. She lay back in her pillows, smiling faintly. "You are dismissed, General Todo. I'm sorry, Zero. Or whatever a dead man must be called."
Again she was presented with the gospel. "Our gracious monarch!," the dean, a wiry old priest with neither humour nor wit nor sense exclaimed. "To keep Your Majesty ever mindful of the law and the Gospel of God as the rule for the whole life and government of Christian princes, we present you with this Book, the most valuable thing that this world affords." And the Archbishop added, pretentious as ever: "Here is Wisdom, this is the royal Law, these are the lively Oracles of God." She returned the Bible to the dean without so much as looking at it. She noticed one of the heralds (Montjoie? California King of Arms? Portcullis Pursuivant Extraordinary? She did not know, there were so many) exchanging a worried look with one of his colleagues (forget it), but she didn't mind. What did it matter what her people and the world thought of her? She had no intention of doing as he had done, and very soon a mortal's blade through her heart would mean nothing to her.
Nunnally wished the Archbishop would speed up. He had returned to the altar to celebrate the Eucharist, leaving her with her back turned to the altar like a fool. Who on earth had thought of this? The traditional liturgy demanded she perform a complex choreography of standing and kneeling and sitting and praying and eating and kneeling again. Had no one noticed she would remain seated in the chair of estate for the entire duration of the ceremony without help?
Psalm 84, she knew. Poetry, badly translated in an attempt to fill it with meaning. "Behold, O God our defender, and look upon the face of thine Anointed. For one day in thy courts: is better than a thousand. … Almighty God, unto whom all hearts be open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid: Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of thy Holy Spirit that we may perfectly love thee, and worthily magnify thy holy Name through Christ our Lord. Amen."
She moved her lips in reply. She wished she had been deaf, and remained so, instead of blind.
In retrospect, she had been incredibly naïve. Had prided herself on her Machiavellian plots and machinations, had thought herself guile and – eventually – ruthless in the pursuit of her goals. She had failed to realise three basic facts of her life: firstly, that this was no game of thrones, as she had been led to believe, but one of power, and that the throne was but a particularly tacky chair. Secondly, that she was not the only player on the field who was willing to stab their own siblings in the back. Thirdly, that no player of this game of power ever spoke the truth.
The first one had been relatively easy to realise. The moment she had asked for the trigger and actually received it, she had known. Schneizel would never have given it to her if he hadn't been certain of his ability to retain control. But she was his empress, wasn't she? It was for her that he had taken up arms and risked his own life, because she was the best-suited to the throne. How wrong she had been. Schneizel had no interest in the throne for the throne's sake, neither had Cornelia. The reason they supported her claim was that she was a puppet, easily controllable, no threat to their own ambitions. Why had they both agreed? Why had Schneizel shot his sister? Because their alliance would only last as long as was necessary. There could only be one empress, and only one éminence grise. To shoot Cornelia was the sensible solution to this problem. Cornelia had not realised that she must kill Schneizel first, but then again she might have been gambling on him failing to kill her. An exceedingly risky gamble – a second and third shot, at point-blank range, would have eliminated any uncertainty and reduced it from an exercise in statistics to a simple arithmetic operation.
The second had taken longer. Her own plot had been fearsome, she had thought. Manipulate Schneizel and Cornelia into supporting her claim with their talent and power, become empress, then free herself of both, then do what she had been desiring all along. She would not even have killed them, for that she understood: a broken man who has gambled and lost is no threat. Cornelia stowed away in some barracks for the rest of her life, highly-decorated, highly-paid, and highly-bored with paperwork. Soon she would fade from memory. Perhaps she might even be kind enough to wed her to her knight of honour – a wonderful pair, that much was certain, and also ignoble enough to eliminate any threat she might ever have been. Schneizel was more complex, and Nunnally had come to terms with the need to have him killed. The list of his crimes was more than sufficient, the destruction of Pendragon combined with dozens upon dozens of fratricides would warrant the execution even of a Prince Imperial. But her plot had not been flexible enough to adapt once other players made their bids. Had there been other players? Everyone had been playing the same game. She might well have been the only one locked out from the game. Solitaire instead of Va Banque. House of cards instead of roulette. Of course, at some point the ball would have to knock her house over.
That had been when she had realised the third truth. Of course, she knew that people lied. She had seen through their lies before they even knew they would speak them. She had known that Schneizel was a liar, that Cornelia at least tried to lie, and that she lied herself with every word she spoke.
She had never thought of looking for the arch-deceiver within her own heart. She wished she might have been deaf, not blind, it might have made the realisation more bearable. People might contort their faces as easily as their voices, but there was something far more convincing about hearing a disembodied voice lie. When you saw the benign loving smile but never heard the voice, would there not always be the biting suspicion that the words were mocking, the tone scornful, the smile a lie? But she had been naïve. In retrospect – but to argue with the benefit of hindsight was foolish, no historian should dare to. Who am I to judge the Consul at Marengo with the benevolent admonition not to trust the double agent when the Consul acted according to the best of his knowledge? And yet, before history she had been naïve.
She had watched him over two years and had slowly seen him change. She was intimately familiar with the crimes attributed to him. But even then she had understood that sometimes innocents must be sacrificed on the altar of (whatever had been their goal at the end) and firmly believed that they had been misrepresented. The general poisons his own soldiers stricken with plague, and the outrage is great, but do they realise that do let them live and wait would be to endanger the many more who could still stand? Similar here. Reports of massacres made it all the way to her spoilt ears. Four hundred men, women and children slaughtered in a rebellious city, three hundred still missing believed dead. Little girls stabbed to death hiding under their beds. Infant corpses, some missing a limb or two, piled up in the central square, bullets stuck in their tiny skulls and rotting in the emperor's own August heat for days upon days. Then, torture. Female rebel captured by regime soldiers and brought before the emperor, then raped vaginally with a full-sized live rat sewn into her womb. Medical personnel forced at gunpoint to dissect a dissident's young child and make it last, then crucified in the manner of Saint Peter when one of them made the mistake of quickly ending the boy's life five hours into the operation. Details too hideous for even herself to recall. And still she did not have the slightest suspicion that there was more to it than an act, a tremendous façade, a great big lie.
Only when he stood before her in his flesh and her blood, did she realise that every word that had ever crossed his soft lips had been a lie. She had dreamt of this moment for days and weeks. She had in meticulous labour set the stage for the central scene of their tragedy, had taken great care to make a garden that resembled in every meaningful way that of their childhood (had he lied even then? Does a child lie or merely lie?). She had not laid out any speech, she was not like him, but she had imagined the scene thousands of times. She would face him as he approached her, wait. Onii-sama … is it you? It is I. You have come to take the Key of Damocles from me, haven't you? And then she would open her eyes for the first time in twelve years. She could not remember when exactly she had realised that only fear held them shut, but it had not been too long before it had happened. Had she realised it earlier, or later, everything might have been averted. She would open her eyes and he would gasp, and she would slowly take him back to her. Take it, she would say without removing her hand from it, and then she would kiss his brow and congratulate him. 'Tis done. The world is ours now, and I would not have it any other way. And they would end this stupid siblings' war and reign side by side as emperor and empress, just and merciful.
The exact moment she had realised that the monster standing before her had no interest in being her loving brother? When he had coldly commanded her to hand over the Key, and he needed no words to threaten. From there, everything had gone to shambles.
"Lord, have mercy upon us."
"Christ, have mercy upon us."
"Lord, have mercy upon us."
Her lips moved, but no sounds emerged to say the Kyrie. Leave it to the Church to come up with such pointlessness. There was, of course, no lord who could have mercy upon anyone (and if there were, he would not), but that was not the problem. The problem was that there was no mercy, either. The reason he had spared her life and not placed her amongst those destined to die on that victory parade had had nothing to do with mercy, or duty, or even that basest of emotions, love. To have her as his plaything, his pet, meant nothing to him, but what the collar round her neck and the shackles round her wrists symbolised meant everything. Her total defeat, his total victory, more, his ascent to godhood. And won he had, pointlessly, as he had died, as he had lived. It was as much to him as to their Yahweh that the Archbishop intoned his prayers.
"O God, who providest for thy people by thy power, and rulest over them in love: grant unto this thy servant, Nunnally, our Empress, the spirit of wisdom and government, that being devoted unto thee with her whole heart she may wisely govern, that in her time thy Church might be in safety, and Christian devotion may continue in peace; that so persevering in good works unto the end, she may by thy mercy come into thine everlasting kingdom; through Jesus Christ, thy son, our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, one God forever and ever. Amen."
Of course, Nunnally thought as the Epistle, Gradual and Gospel were read, she had no intention of governing wisely. She would govern as she must, not as her people deserved – for the world had no need of even more bloodshed as she tried to purge the scum of the earth, and she had no need of it either. Let them continue under her reign, the slavers and mass murderers and rapists and racists and concentration camp guards and whomsoever. She would take them to her imperial bosom, let them thrive under her protection. What did it matter to her if the self-proclaimed innocents cried out for justice? She had cried out for justice and never gotten any. She had only learned to close her ears and close her heart and be blind to the suffering, and how else would she ever reign?
The Creed was said. Filioque, filioque, discordia.
In retrospect, she had done too little too late. She had been dying of fear and loneliness in Pendragon, when every day had brought nothing but lies and the overwhelming fear that one day a pitying (or mocking?) knight would take her to receive the mortal remains of her brother executed for treason. The news of the re-emergence of Zero had been too wonderful to believe. Why put her faith in yet another impostor when he would last a week or two at best and break her heart some more? But this new Zero was the old one, clearly. She recognised him the moment she first heard his voice. It was the most beautiful voice she had ever heard, but it was also the only voice she had ever heard. The voice modifier was ridiculous, but it had always been.
She knew it was him, and she knew she had to meet him. Already he had taken up the sword again, already innocents had died in the pursuit of her wish. This time, Nunnally vowed to herself, she would not be silent. She would be strong, and assertive, and make sure they would never again be separated.
She humiliated herself before all Britannia by begging the emperor for the viceroyship of Area 11. She debased herself at every opportunity if there seems to be some chance in it. The emperor was adamant, there were better candidates and she was far too young. She continued begging in audience after audience. She never knew if the emperor knew that she knew or if he thought her a pawn, a puppet glacéed in sugar, a he had done till it was too late, but it didn't really matter. She continued to beg, and one day he agreed.
Zero, of course, met her on his terms. Leave it to him to hijack her transport in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Leave it to her to mess up this only chance.
It was the same old plan, really. Come here, join me! Climb up into the lofty heights of moral snobbery! It would have been too wonderful. Though she had lost their chance at living together by inaction long before, they would join their hands at least to fight on her terms. He would never have fallen, and neither would she.
But she had forgotten that Oberon could never climb from his chthonic lairs to the lofty playground of the Thames-maidens. Garstig glatter glitschiger Glimmer, wie gleit' ich aus.
She had given up on wondering if that had been the point where they had truly parted. The next time she had repeated her offer, he had not even deigned it worthy of an attempt, but left to wage his foul war. Had he already decided at this point that their goals had shifted to far apart? That she was no longer an objective suo jure? That she might be in the way? She had to agree with him on that, if she had been in the way of his aims, he had every right to remove her. But she had never been in his way. He had only ever chosen the wrong paths. And still she could have opened his eyes.
The choir sang the hymn Veni, creator spiritus, and the ampulla was brought. The Knights of One and Three stepped to her sides and lifted her out of the throne as the Archbishop prayed. "O Lord and heavenly Father, the exalter of the humble and the strength of thy chosen, who by anointing with Oil didst of old make and consecrate kings, priests, and prophets, to teach and govern thy people Israel: Bless and sanctify thy chosen servant Nunnally, who by our office and ministry is now to be anointed with this Oil and consecrated Empress and Queen: strengthen her, O Lord, with the Holy Ghost the Comforter …"
She stopped paying attention. Sayoko, in the robes of a marquise, approached her to remove her robe of state with the aid of some train-bearers and replace it with a plain white linen dress. The choir sang Handel, Zadok the Priest and Nathan the Prophet anointed Solomon king and all the people rejoiced …
Nunnally didn't know, nor did she mind, if no one rejoiced her her coronation. What did it concern them if she had to sit through this ordeal, what meaning did it have? She had used to think that symbols had power, but she had been mistaken. Only power had power. Why had she not recognised this before he had?
God save the king, long live the king, may the king live forever. Amen. Hallelujah.
She was returned like a life-sized puppet to King Edward's Chair and four knights of the Round Table – except for Sir Gino and Lady Anya, all nonentities appointed after the war, she had seen Suzaku's corpse herself – held a pall of cloth of gold above her head. The dean poured some holy oil into a tiny golden spoon, the archbishop dipped his fat fingers into it, and marked her with the cross. "Be thy hands anointed with holy oil. Be thy breast anointed with holy oil." (Uncomfortable in extremis.) "Be thy head anointed with holy oil: as kings, priests, and prophets were anointed: and as Solomon was anointed king by Zadok the priest and Nathan the prophet, so be thou anointed, blessed and consecrated Empress and thrice Queen over the peoples whom the Lord thy God hath given thee to rule and govern in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen."
That was supposed to be the holy moment? The television cameras were turned back on. She doubted many people were watching. Another prayer was said and the dean and Sayoko put upon her a heavy supertunica of cloth of gold and a broad girdle of the same. It grew hotter by the minute.
In retrospect, it might have been better had V.V. killed her. She did not want to die, of course. She loved to live, and in the moment, she had been fearful. But that was why she regretted with the benefit of hindsight. Evolution – the egoistic gene – forces any being to survive and reproduce, spread its genes. And since humans were the only species to develop a delightfully varied range of ways to kill each other (to take their food, or their women, or tools to acquire either or both), humanity was the for now the pinnacle of billions of years of evolution. From that point of view, it seemed counterintuitive to wish for death. She had been 15, very much of childbearing age, and had no knowledge of being infertile. But the egoistic gene had always been a bit of a misnomer, since "egoism" as a concept ignored that she was not the only one with her genes.
Indeed, he shared an average of fifty per cent of her genes, though she had always known it to far higher in their particular case. To protect her genes, her organism drove her to protect his. The justification for altruism summed up in four letters.
Still, objectively it made little sense, and yet she would have to reiterate it: Nunnally would she had died, murdered in whatever gruesome way by V.V. when he had captured her. For what had been the reason for her misery? The third truth, that everyone lied, he had lied. Would this have changed had she died? No, but she had been happy. Every day spent, if no longer in the company of, then in the "knowledge" that he loved her and fought for her. With Euripides, ignorance is bliss. She would have murdered to regain that ignorance, and had.
In the long term, the reason for his perplexity had been her selfless egoism. By racing to rescue her from the clutches of the immortal, he had lost the battle, lost the war, lost her. Was that the start of darkness? The emperor's fault, who had made his own usurper by replacing her by his side. She had never met the boy, but she thought she would have liked to – should have liked to, but would she dare fortify the third truth by recognising how shallow and deceiving his love for her had always been? Compare it to that he had felt for the impostor, conclusion by analogy. When he had been parted from her, she had lost all chance to control him and soothe his anger. No, his anger had been born from the separation.
Double blind. What if she had died, then? Would he still have raced to retrieve a corpse? Of course, if only for the chance that she might still be alive, but in danger, if just to ascertain the news. But suppose the news had never reached him. He would have fought the battle, won the war and gained the rule of Japan to continue his war from. But even then he would soon have realised that she had died. Would he have grieved for her? She liked to think he would have, but she noticed that her recollections were beginning to contradict. Would he have revenged her? Revenge is the grief of those who never loved enough to grieve, of course he would have. Fire and blood, fire and blood. But at the same time he would never have become the monster he had become to spite her and thwart her, if subconsciously.
And yet, she could not blame V.V. for what had happened, since even he had no recollection of the future, for even then she could have changed the path.
The archbishop continued to twist a pair of heavy golden bracelets onto her thin white arm. She struggled not to flinch at his touch, let him have his moment. That will make it far more enjoyable to crush him. She was adorned in the Robe Imperial and the Stole Royal. More prayers were said, more hymns were sung. She received the orb, it was blessed in her hand and removed (thankfully, it was incredibly heavy). A ring, two sceptres, and more prayers. She did not pay attention to any of them. She watched the congregation, were her friends from Ashford present? She doubted it. Had they even been invited? She didn't know, nor care. What had her friends that she had not, what lacked they that she had? It would have been pointless to invite them, they would have understood as little as she did. Would they have recognised her? Some nights, when she woke up drenched in sweat and thought of the third truth, she did not recognise herself. Was she the same person still? Science, she seemed to remember, said that a body is but the temporary assembly of an ever-changing collection of atoms into a distinct shape. Why did she come back to those pointless analogies? Clearly, the heat.
And then all the people rose. The archbishop retrieved the Crown of St. Edward from the altar behind her, put it down again, and spoke: "O God the Crown of the faithful: bless, we beseech thee, this crown and so sanctify thy servant Nunnally upon whose head this day thou dost place it for a sign of imperial majesty, that she may be filled by thine abundant grace with all princely virtues; through the king eternal Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen."
Flanked by a pair of bishops, the archbishop lifted up the crown from the altar, in slow procession moved before her and solemnly lowered it on her head. The first thing she felt was how heavy it was, the second was nothing. Her lips twitched briefly, and a great cry of "GOD SAVE THE EMPRESS!" went through the church. The princes and princesses and peers and peeresses put on their coronets and caps, and the kings of arms their crowns, and the trumpet sounded, and in the distance a gun battery thundered a first round. 61 more would follow. "God crown you with a crown of glory and righteousness, that having a right faith and manifold fruit of good works, you may obtain the crown of an everlasting kingdom by the gift of him whose kingdom endureth forever. Amen."
And the choir sang Be strong and of a good courage, keep the commandments of the Lord thy God and walk in his ways. Clearly somebody did not understand the concept of imperial monarchy, but then again he had likely been the first to realise since the Caesars of old that nothing separated him from a god – not from the moment on he had discarded any pretence of being human or humane.
In retrospect, she had been a coward. She had seen the signs from the beginning. He had underestimated her, as he always had in that sweetly condescending way of his, when he had thought she would never find out. Or had he not cared if she found out or not? She believed she had pinpointed the day it had happened rather precisely, not that it mattered. Gone to gamble (for her or his own enjoyment?), he had returned late, with the stink of the ghettoes around him. A metallic scent, blood, but not his one. She had lain awake that night trying to figure out what had happened, whether she should be worried. Even though he was her protector, she had felt she needed to be his, impulsive and reckless as he was. In hindsight, her fears had been laughably naïve. Gambling debts? That would require he lost. Drugs? Distinct possible from likely. A secret girlfriend? Don't be absurd.
Well, and then she had heard of Clovis' death. A pity, really, and a bad choice. He had been an obnoxious fool, but that was not (yet) a reason to murder him. At the time, she'd had no real evidence or even suspicions, but something about the way her brother had reacted when he heard the news gave him away. A sudden freeze, a pitch change. Nothing more, but enough for her, who could read him as well as a book in Braille. He knew more than she had wanted him to. Soon afterwards, Suzaku had reappeared and Zero had made his début.
She still found it absurd, contrived, that no one else seemed to have made the connection. The "coincidences" were too numerous. Milly, at least, should have known that Suzaku was a childhood friend, but had not thought anything strange about her brother's absence by her side. No one had thought anything strange about the design of Zero's costume and mannerisms, which she had had Sayoko describe to her en detail the next day, and which could only have sprung from the mind of her brother. But might she be mistaken about this? She knew him better than anyone, was she too harsh on her friends? And yet, no matter what she thought about them, they had soon become in her mind (and, doubtless, in his) background characters in an ill-spun tale, hastily indicated on the canvas for an apprentice to fill in.
The same week, Sayoko had taught her to fold paper cranes. Perhaps the alert maid had noticed something was off and wanted to take her minds off such matters. If that had been her intention, she did not succeed, but it was lovely nonetheless. She was almost certain now, and she frantically tried to race against the clock. Paper crane after paper crane, she needed to complete the legion before her brother slipped further from her grasp, before he committed another murder and destroyed everything they had. When he asked her what she was doing, she wanted to tell him.
What could she have said? I know you are Zero. Please stop. Horrible. And even so, was that what she wanted? Already the masked vigilante was becoming a hero to the Japanese, she could hear that from Sayoko's voice. He was creating what she thought at the time she wanted, and moving the world closer to the utopia of her dreams where there was nothing keeping her from being with him and the rest of her family (but mostly him, she didn't even cry for Clovis, nor for Euphemia). She had been fool enough to phrase it subtly when she should have cried those words out, screamed them at him and shaken him and kissed him and sobbed to save them both. But she had not dared, had been not only fool but coward and had said "I wish for a gentle world."
That, he had taken as his carte blanche.
The next day, she had met C.C. for the first time. She did not yet know of Geasses and Codes and would prefer she would not have learned about either, but she knew instinctively that this woman was the cause of the sudden change in her world and, ultimately, its destruction. "Your brother and I have made a promise to each other." And then she realised that she would never be able to give him all the love he desired, and she hated the witch for it.
Nunnally smiled at her and welcomed her in their sanctuary, and that was the first real lie she told.
She was blessed and received homage. "God save the Empress! Long live the Empress! May the Empress live forever!;" the shouts resounded in her ears and she was intent to do them justice.
The rest of the service proceeded along the usual lines. She took Communion, then sat through all twenty-five stanzas of the national anthem, and finally proceeded out of the church. In a gilded carriage and large cavalry escort she was driven through the streets lined with her loyal and surprisingly enthusiastic subjects, out of the city and onto the palace grounds. A luncheon, a banquet and a ball had been arranged. She changed out of her heavy robes at once and excused herself from the luncheon under the pretence of a headache, to hell with etiquette.
After Zero's late-night visit, she had moved into the Prince of Newfoundland's suite which had not been used for decades. It was smaller, not quite as wheelchair-accessible as she had hoped it was, but at least she could be certain that her brother never had so much as entered the room. With all their faults, she had loved her emperor, but there was something strongly disturbing about sleeping in the same bed he might, towards the end, have fucked his green-haired whore in.
As she sat under the cascade of the hot shower, she still did not understand what had change him. For a few moments she would have liked to think of the nonsensical plan she had made up on the spot when the monster had stared down on her from fiery cold eyes. She still dreamed of those eyes, the first thing she had seen for years upon years. Everything since had been tinted with their Tyrian purple, their august cold. Could this have been the same brother who had once, ages ago, tucked her in bed with a kiss every knight? And when had he stopped being that person?
In the end, she was left to assume that he had always been he.
She wondered if she should have a Requiem sung for him. Force the dean of the abbey to pay remembrance to the monster on her coronation day, the Rod with the Dove and the Sword of Mercy flung into the dust. Only the orb remained, globus cruciger, heavy, but true.
Nunnally left the shower and got dressed, without help. Then she called for an adjutant – one of many aides at her service, nameless young officers straight from her academies with neither character nor skills nor names worthy of her memory. Did she recognise herself in the mirrors of the elevator down into the catacombs of the palace? Ah, but she was still the same Nunnally who had folded paper cranes and linked her little finger with his. She had learned, in the harshest possible way, but learning was part of life. She was less naïve now, less foolish, less sweet. But she was still beautiful, as he had always insisted, she was still cunning, as she had known, and she was still ruthless, as she had never admitted.
They reached a thick steel door guarded by two female junior officers of the Guard at the end of a long corridor, deep underneath the palace. Most of the underground level was storage rooms and other necessities, including a fully equipped hospital and operating theatre. This room was different.
The moment she had entered with her aide, the door behind her closed. The room was almost unbearably bright, with strong halogen lamps reimagining sunlight. White tiles on floor, walls, and ceiling, though some had stopped being white some time ago. Speakers loudly played music – she had made no particular orders in this regard, but right now it was Wainwright, The Thames-Gold. Ha! Zertrümmer, zerknickt. Der Traurigen traurigster Knecht! She had the aide turn off the music; if it was too loud to sleep, it was far too loud to talk.
In the centre of the room, a female figure had fixated by her hands and feet to a St. Andrew's Cross by means of eight long steel nails. The figure looked strangely incomplete, and Nunnally knew why – both breasts and seven fingers had been removed over the course of the last seven months, some several times. Already, they were regrowing, a gruesome image. The woman's chest, for example, where the left breast area had the look of thick, bloody and ulcerous red scab. The right breast, which had been removed around the same time, had not regenerated much since the wound was regularly being reopened. Even those areas of the woman's body which had not been mutilated showed traces of the lash, electric shocks and worse. Nunnally grimaced at the sight and tried to focus on the bloody white tiles.
At the sudden silence, she slowly looked up at them with unmitigated hatred from behind a ragged curtain of green hair. "Look who's here," she rasped. Apparently her orders to give the prisoner enough to drink had been ignored, she would have to see the ones responsible punished. "My la …" The immortal broke off to cough up some blood. Nunnally steered her wheelchair closer and got out a handkerchief to wipe the blood and bile away, only to be spit in the face.
"I am not your enemy, C.C.-san," she softly said, wiping off the gory spit.
"You have held me here for months, t-torturing me in ways which Maleus would condemn as inhumane. Of course you are my enemy. Worse, you are a complete monster."
Nunnally's fingernails dug deep into the cushioning of her wheelchair's armrests. "I would recommend," she said with as much restraint as she could, "that you adjust your choice of words. Otherwise, it might end up to be very painful for you."
"Monster."
She nodded at the aide, then tightly closed her eyes not to see it. From the sounds of it, C.C. was being shaken by at least several Ampere of electricity running through her body, strong enough to kill any mortal human. The woman's screams were mortifying and turned Nunnally's stomach. "Stop!," she said after a short while when she could no longer bear it, "that's enough."
The electrocution left the witch sagging from her cross. The wounds on her hands and on her left breast had reopened and looked mildly charred from the inside. The stench of burned flesh was nauseating. "W…why are you d-doing this to me? The Nunnally I knew …," C.C. rasped, then broke off in a violent and visibly painful coughing fit.
Nunnally gave her a sad smile. "You know why. I have given you every choice. I told you, you are not my enemy, which is why I sincerely regret it. You only need to say it, and you are free to go wherever you want to."
For a long moment, the only sound in the room were C.C.'s heavy breaths. Then, finally, she had gathered enough energy to say: "Fuck. You."
Her face hardened. "I told you, C.C.-san. I have time, lots of it. 70, 80 years … I might grow over a hundred. Sometime, you will give in, and then you only need to say it:" She leaned in, whispering into the witch's ear. "I … propose … a contract …" She paused and sighed. "I like you. I really do. In a different time, we would have been great friends. You must understand me, C.C.-san. I need that Geass. I need that Code. Not for myself – it was your Geass that corrupted him, I must prevent repeats …"
Her prisoner scoffed. "Lelouch," she snarled, "would never have stooped so low. He has never been corrupted, least of all by me, or the Geass. If you want to see the reason you are where you are now, look no further than a mirror. No … not Lelouch. You cannot even begin to comprehend to extent of his final gambits. You are nothing like him …"
Nunnally coldly interrupted her. "You're not completely wrong," she whispered. "There are ways in which I am different from Onii-sama. He was too soft. Trust me. You will give me the Geass I need. And I shall be kind as kings upon their coronation day."