I found a place I could watch (most of) the second season of Code Geass, and when it got to A Bride in the Vermillion Court I kinda fanfic'd stuff in my head. It made a lot of sense, so I ran with it and this is what I've got. Schneizel/Nina is kind of messed up and adorable at the same time, and has actually really relieved a lot of the hatred I had towards Nina in the first season. I know that she's still messed up but I don't really care, now I've found a reason for her to exist. And that reason is to be shipped with Prince Schneizel. Yes.
EDIT 4.24.12: It was pointed out that "adorable" is not the word to be used here. My apologies, I often use it in a sarcastic sense, especially when dealing with the Not Okay ships in the world. So thank you, RandomNumbers and MisterSP for remarking on that and reminding me that sarcasm sometimes fails to come through in the written word. I'll try to clarify intonations like that in the future :)
All my other readers, we will be returning to your regularly scheduled Naruto updates soon. I've hit a bit of a block on Samurai but I'm going to try and power through it.
So, without further ado,
Enjoy!
Nina tried to reconcile herself to the life that His Majesty—Schneizel—was so casually steering her towards. When Milly's engagement had become public more than a year ago Nina had been puzzled. She couldn't wrap her head around any of it—marriage at such a young age to such an older man, to such a powerful man. In some way it had been a good preparation, because Hi—Schneizel—wanted her complete loyalty. Lloyd Asplund was better at keeping up with her scientific endeavors, but Schneizel was better at seeing the rest of her and at remembering her love for Euphie. He knew that she was in love with Euphie, as that gentle girl had been his favorite sister out of so many. He knew and he didn't care—he was going to make her his wife soon, to ensure that she never left his service.
The idea to introduce her visually, to let the cameras and the nobles see her, at the engagement party for his older brother Odysseus had been his. There was no need to put too bright a spotlight on her so soon, it was good enough to let powerful people see her hand in his, to let them gossip about perhaps another one of the high royal princes marrying. The current Emperor, Charles, had wed young and had wed often—a practice which only a few of his children imitated. Princess Cornelia, Euphie's older sister, was one of them and Schneizel himself was rumored to be another. If he was, he took great care to not let Nina find out about his other dalliances and she appreciated it. Besides when Nina bothered to think about it, she was half-convinced that Schneizel had no time for such trivial things as affairs.
Earlier that morning he had arrived to her room, tailors and seamstresses in tow. Nina had been in the middle of writing a report when he had ordered her fitted for a dress. It was hard to protest against him—she really needed to get the report written down and why did there have to be tailors too, they couldn't expect to fit her for a dress so soon before the party, and then the Second Prince of Britannia had pulled her up by a hand and spun her once around the room before handing her to the entourage of clothing-makers. He seated himself easily in the chair he'd taken her out of.
"Then dictate it to me, my dear. This part of my morning is directed towards helping you decide what to wear or how to wear it—and I would enjoy helping you out, after distracting you from your work in this way."
Unfortunately, Schneizel hadn't thought of the stairs—the many, many stairs—present in the Chinese palace. Neither had Nina, they had both been a little more concerned with the fact that Schneizel towered over her small stature, and high heels had been the order of the day. Well, for Nina. Schneizel was confined to boots with only enough heel to be called a proper sole. It evened them somewhat. The blasted stairs had nearly been her undoing, seeing them stretch on forever up to the main dais of the party. His hand, supporting hers, gripped Nina's fingers a little tighter and they started climbing. They had to maintain a proper amount of distance, so instead of half-carrying her up the stairs he waited patiently for her at each stair step.
With every step, Nina thought about the fact that there was no discussion of the fact that he preferred the company of his top aide, Lord Maldini—a reasonably attractive man, if one was interested in such things—or that she was still blisteringly in love with his sister Euphemia. He would kiss her occasionally, and it was sincere when he did. They had quiet discussions sometimes, in the late evenings when he would teach her how to dance or help her with her style choices—she was to be a princess by marriage, and should look it—that he told her he was disgusted by his father's polygamy, of the fact that he had siblings he barely knew by sight. That if she accepted his hand, then she would be the only one and therefore producing his heirs would fall on her shoulders. His beautiful purple eyes weren't hard but they were serious.
Their engagement was not public for a reason. If his father got the faintest whiff that Schneizel was interested in marrying, then the prince would be soon married to no less than a dozen women as had happened to several of Schneizel's younger brothers. Nina had thought, before she'd come back from the balcony with Milly, that that was the only reason the engagement was being kept secret. She had thought that protecting her and his own pragmatic idealism—his ideals could only come about in a world where his father was dead, after all—was the only reason.
But the scene she'd caused at the party. At the end of it, she was just the young woman the prince had brought with him—she was not the fiancée of the prince, and that was all the difference. Smoothing out ruffled feathers and scandal was much easier for Schneizel because she was not yet a high-profile person. She also remembered vaguely that out of everyone there, it hadn't been her fiancé who laid a comforting hand on her shoulders. It had been Kallen, who had been a false-friend in the past but was her real friend now, and Suzaku who she had hated save for the fact that Euphie loved him. So later that evening, as she sat in shock in her room—she would never be allowed such an outburst once she was Schneizel's wife—it was Schneizel who had to ask Suzaku nicely to visit her. Suzaku had loved Euphie just as much as Nina had.
The pink dress still clung to her sides, even the little bolero was on her shoulders. The only progress Nina had made in getting ready for bed was getting rid of those damned shoes—she would refuse to wear them in the future, unless Schneizel himself specifically asked her to. But even that might not be happening any longer—she had embarrassed him, in front of a man who was both their enemy. She hung her head as his footsteps sounded closer to her, but managed not to flinch when his warm hands settled on her shoulders.
"I did not mean to bring you pain tonight, Nina, but it seems that the Britannian Royal Family can do nothing without the potential presence of Zero." He turned her chair around and pulled her up flush to his body. His arms settled around her, holding her close.
"Can you forgive me, Nina? I will not underestimate Zero again, I promise you." Nina curled her hands into his formal coat and pressed her cheek into his chest. She had to forgive him, there was nothing that could have predicted Zero managing to get so far into the Forbidden City, on such an important night. But Schneizel was saying that he had been bested by Zero—he had tried to make a move to flank the terrorist and Zero's presence indicated that the ruse had been seen and understood.
"I forgive you, although I think the question is can you forgive me?" Schneizel laughed, drawing back from her a little and tilting her head up with a gentle hand. In that moment, he was beautiful like Euphie had been. Nina knew she could love him eventually, because somewhere deep within him was the same kindness and sweetness that had been in Euphie, at his very core he was the same person.
"Such a reaction to the person who took so much without care is warranted, my dear. Now, would you like some help changing out of this dress? Suzaku has informed me that you would see no one since we returned from the party, not even the maids. I think if I figure it out soon enough, you may even have some time this evening for a spot of research?" Nina flattened her hand out where it lay on his chest, trying to push away.
"I couldn't—I, you—"
"I am offering, Nina. You are not beneath my care and notice, just as you were not beneath my sister's—I consider it an honor to look after the one she looked after. Please?"
Schneizel grew up under his father's closer-than-average scrutiny. His father knew what buttons could be pushed, and pushed them cold-heartedly. There was no glee in his father over the suffering of others, but neither was there happiness at their success. Everything was an algorithm or a sequence to Charles, and for much of his youth, Schneizel had endeavored to act the same. His eldest brother Odysseus was useless, his sisters far too attached to glory, his younger siblings too small and distant for him to look elsewhere than their father Charles for inspiration.
He wanted to end this world of humiliation and suffering created by their father, even knowing that at the end of this lay his father's death at his hand. Even knowing that the deaths of countless more people could be laid on his shoulders, Schneizel knew he could not deviate from his course. He had suspicions of the identity of Zero, and the move to diplomatically tie Britannia to the Chinese Federation had served his purpose doubly. Such an action would be easily readable by Zero and his people, and would draw him out for a confrontation—although his appearance at the party had been unexpected. Schneizel had thought that Zero would appear at the wedding itself, where there were cameras and press.
The information he'd gained from Zero during that chess game was valuable—he was getting more and more confident that only a prince trained by his father could be leading the Black Knights, and that there was only one prince who would ever go against the grain of that man's teaching. He briefly wished, as his fingers picked the pins out of Nina's hair, that Zero hadn't ruined their evening together in exchange for those insights. He'd barely had time to introduce the girl to anyone important, which set his plan back weeks or months before he could attend yet another formal celebration with her.
There was a smile on his face, however, because the less time Nina spent dressing up in gowns—no matter how well they suited her—meant that there was more time for her to be doing her research. The words she'd confided to him a few days ago, that she felt like she was inches from figuring out how to make the explosion collapse in on itself, were exciting. He was the second prince of Britannia, and so there were a lot of resources he could draw from and a lot of strings he could pull—but it was so refreshing and rewarding to hear that they were on the cusp of a breakthrough.
It mattered little to him that he was preying on Nina's hero-worship of his dead sister, it actually was a boon to everything he was working towards. It had started out as a mission of mercy on his part, to take the girl away from the Number colony she'd been taken to as a child—to bring her back to her "home." Her wounds were gradually cured to some extent, as he praised her efforts and reminded her that Euphie admired hopes and dreams. When Nina wondered softly, bent over a page of diagrams and equations, what he planned on doing with the bomb she was making, Schneizel reminded her that Euphie had been a royal princess. Her words could have brought death without question to thousands—but that his sister had refrained from speaking those words. Was not this bomb, with an explosion which could kill millions in an instant, the same as her princess' words?
All it took to control Nina Einstein was to gently remind her of his sweet sister. Unfortunately, the sight of Zero drove her to insanity—perhaps it was good that it would be weeks or months before another suitable party was held, it would give him time to silence people who needed to be quiet, and a few important people had at least seen him finally making public appearances with a woman even if they couldn't quite remember who.
As Schneizel helped his scientist out of her bolero and helped her change into her usual attire, he smiled wistfully. Zero had actually made his job easier with Nina, because it proved that her hatred of the terrorist and love for Euphemia was still as strong as it had been a year ago. She would be finished with her FLEJA device far sooner than later, thanks to Zero's surprise appearance. He couldn't kiss the masked man—and frankly wouldn't want to—so he kissed his little Nina, the madwoman, death-dealer scientist that Zero had given to Britannia. To him.
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