Hello and welcome back to The Illusive Empire! Thank you kindly for all your reviews to the prologue; it—and the decision to rewrite as a whole—seems to have been well-received. This chapter is mostly focused on Britannia, and introduces a character we left out of the last version but who will have a far more important role here. The next one will involve, amongst other things, both Shepards and Best Girl (if you don't know who that is, you're reading the wrong story).
This will be the first and last time we mention this, but if you did not already know, AlSmash has a Discord server where you can find all of us (it even has a dedicated channel for discussing TIE). The server code is cqp3fCb so we hope to see you there!
Chapter 1
Pendragon
Holy Britannian Empire
Earth, Sol System, Carcerem Cluster
December 8th, 2162 [5 AH]
For Lelouch vi Britannia, the last week had become the sort of waking nightmarish hell that he would wish only upon his enemies – except he didn't even know who his enemies were.
All he knew, was that his mother, Empress Marianne vi Britannia, was dead. Assassinated by a sniper. Even now, a week later, all he could see when he closed his eyes was the image of her sprawled on the steps of the House of Lords, her lifeblood spilling out and staining the pristine white marble as she stared vacantly up to the heavens.
It was only a miracle that Nunnally had not been watching when it had happened. His mother's—his mother's murder had stunned him into insensibility, and he didn't want to imagine what it would have done to his sister. The moment it had happened, he'd found himself and Nunnally being quickly grabbed and taken to one of the secret bunkers meant for the Imperial family. There, his worst fears had been confirmed; he'd hoped, somehow, that his mother managed to survive—even though he knew she couldn't have—but it had been a child's hope.
Lelouch was now the 121st Emperor of the Holy Britannian Empire, and there was no more time to be a child.
More importantly, he and Nunnally were now orphans. If he had a choice, he would have given the damn title back in exchange for his mother. She was worth more than anything else. But that, too, was a child's fantasy.
Lelouch didn't know how to be an Emperor. He didn't know how to be an orphan. He did, however, know how to be a brother. So, he did what any other ten-year-old big brother would do: he looked out for his sister. At six years of age, Nunnally had issues understanding that their mother would not be coming home. Nor did he have the heart to show her the proof that woke him screaming from sleep. Instead, he weathered his sister's inconsolable grief – when it wasn't powerless anger that she took out on anyone who came near. Mostly him.
It had only just been an hour ago when he had finally got her to sleep again, and he could feel exhaustion gnawing at the edges of his vision. The only things keeping him from succumbing were the nightmares that refused to let him forget—regardless of whether it would have made a difference—that his mother had died alone.
All of this led him to where he was now, staring vacantly at the vid-screen, the news channel still running round-the-clock coverage of the assassination a week later. Lelouch didn't register anything they were saying. He was lost in his own thoughts, trying to remember a mother that already seemed to be fading away in his mind. What had they had for breakfast together the day she died? How long had they spent braiding Nunnally's hair last month?
It was to this scene that Cera stepped into the room. After Marianne had decided that the assassination would go on, she couldn't stay. Returning back to Avalon, she'd buried herself in her work as the Director of Project Safehold, not wanting to dwell upon the knowledge that soon she would receive the call to return back to Britannia to bury her lover – and in the process be entrusted with not only the future of Britannia, but of the galaxy altogether.
Every day she'd woke up, she'd wondered why she bothered.
But she had made a promise to Marianne—the other half of her heart—and she would honor it to her dying breath. No matter how much pain it caused her to look at Lelouch and be reminded of her.
Clearing her throat, she watched as it brought Lelouch from his reverie. His head turned to look at her, and amethyst eyes—just a shade darker than Marianne's—took her in. His expression morphed into a scowl.
"Lady Cera." Her name came out just short of a growl.
Reminding herself that Lelouch was not Marianne, despite how similar they both looked at the age, she bowed slightly. "Your Majesty."
When no further acknowledgment came, she took a few more moments to glance up, quickly noting that his glare hadn't abated. Cera couldn't help but marvel at how like Marianne the glare was, before quickly discarding the thought with a pang of sadness. She hadn't come to remember.
"Why are you here?" he demanded; he wasn't quite sneering, but it looked like he wanted to.
It was a question she wasn't quite sure how to answer. She could talk about how she was here to brief him upon Project Safehold, which was technically her job. She could try and comfort him – but she suspected he was more likely to bite her arm off than accept it in sympathy.
So instead, in honor of the woman she had loved, she decided to be blunt. Marianne had often told her it was one of her best qualities.
"I'm here to fulfill a promise."
Lelouch's snort of derision pretty much told her what he thought of that. Being the ten year old that he was—yet to learn restraint, unable to control his impulses—he didn't just stop there. The next words that exited his mouth were like a knife to her heart.
"Rather late for that, Duchess. Don't you think?" His lip curled. "One has to wonder where you have been hiding for the last month. It surely wasn't in my mother's bed—"
Cera had never been one for losing herself to anger; the ability to detach herself from emotion was one of the hallmarks of her directorship of Project Safehold. They called her a witch to her face because of the leaps of progress she'd managed to conjure out of what seemed like nowhere, and a bitch behind her back for the fact she never let anything get to her – success, failure, or even a broken coffee machine.
Unfortunately, with her emotions as raw as they were—and with the son of the very woman she would move heaven and hell for insinuating that she would dare dishonor her memory in such a way—it was only who he was that prevented her from slapping him right then and there. And for all that Cera could control her hands, she couldn't control her mouth.
"I loved her." Her voice rang out, low and soft, like a gunshot grounding itself in flesh. It was the voice of a woman who was only alive because of a duty to the dead. "I'd have done anything for her, Your Majesty. But she—"
In the face of her suffering, Lelouch's anger did not die. It did, however, cool. Instead of the woman who had abandoned his mother—who had always been a distraction for her from Nunnally and himself—he saw a woman who was honestly as broken as he was. A kindred spirit in grief.
Lelouch did not know how to be an Emperor – but he understood enough that when he spoke again, into the silence Cera could not bear to break, the anger was buried beneath his need to know why she'd come to him so late. Or why she'd come at all.
"What was your promise?" he asked, his voice quavering just slightly.
"Mari—Marianne asked me to take you and Nunnally to Avalon."
It wasn't exactly the best way to start, considering Avalon didn't exist, but it wasn't the worst either. And with her own personal… guard replacing everyone but the Knight of One at the moment, she did not need to worry about interruption. She held up a hand to preempt his response, calling on the same matter-of-fact manner that had served her well in the past.
"I was not only your mother's paramour, Your Highness. I was, and still am, the Director and Project Lead for Project Safehold. I know you don't know what that is, so please permit me to explain."
Grateful that Lelouch remained silent, Cera worked to gather her thoughts. There was just too much to discuss and not enough time.
"What I am about to tell you, Your Highness, has been the most closely guarded secret of the Britannia line for over two hundred years. The number of people aware of this secret is limited to the Emperor, the Knight of One, Director of Project Safehold, and maybe two or three others that the Emperor trusts in order to ensure the survival of this knowledge in the event of disaster."
Holding up her arm, she activated her omnitool, the haptic controls becoming visible for all to see as she twisted her wrist palm-up.
"Retribution."
The omni-tool flickered, cycling through colours from orange to green struck through with magenta. An alien figure appeared in her hand, recognisable to anyone in the galaxy: Prothean.
"Greetings, Director. Communications are secure. What did you wish to discuss?"
"May I present His Imperial Majesty, Lelouch vi Britannia, the 122nd Emperor of the Holy Britannian Empire," she said, watching the naked shock on his face with a mild sense of schadenfreude. "Your Majesty, this is Retribution, a Prothean VI dedicated to defeating the Reapers."
Lelouch blinked. "The Reapers?"
Retribution's avatar disappeared, replaced by what might have been a giant metal cuttlefish, if cuttlefish were forged from hate and death and the corpses of civilisations.
"Every fifty thousand years," came Retribution's voice, "the techno-organic constructs designated 'Reapers' flood through the galaxy and genocide every space-capable species for reasons unknown before returning back to dark space. They engaged the Protheans at the height of our empire and won, as they have during every other cycle in history; a history that has been confirmed to stretch back at least a billion years."
"Okay," Lelouch said, taking a deep breath. His hand shook, slightly. "So there are gigantic death machines that want to murder us all every so often. Great. What does this have to do with my mother?"
"Projections estimate that the next cycle is due to begin within fifty years," Cera interjected. "Maybe as little as twenty. We don't know. It's been the life's work of every Britannian ruler since Arthur—who found Retribution—to try and ready the Empire, ready humanity, for the Reapers. Marianne made me promise that when she died, I would bring you and your sister to Avalon – not only to keep you safe, but so you could lead our last, desperate efforts to save the galaxy."
"When," Lelouch said. He was very, very still. "You said when, not if. Mother knew. She knew this was going to happen."
Cera realised, with slow, dawning horror, that Marianne had never quite told her exactly how brilliant her son was. His mind was like a blade, cutting to exactly where she didn't want him to go.
"And so did you," he continued in a whisper like unsheathing steel. "I wondered why you'd disappeared a few weeks ago, but I was glad, because it meant Mother had more time for me and Nunnally. I thought she'd finally gotten rid of you. But you—you were just hiding. You didn't want to be here when it happened. You didn't want to watch.
"Mother let herself die, and you didn't stop her. And now you come here speaking of Protheans and Reapers and saving the galaxy, expecting me to… to jump to your bidding with every ounce of my altruistic heart? Get out. Get out before I kill you myself!"
It should not have been threatening, coming from a ten-year-old, stick-thin boy without a weapon or even a guard to call upon. But there was something in the dark, twisted rage that crawled across his face and set his eyes alight that made part of her want to run. Lelouch vi Britannia descended from a line that straddled greatness and madness both – and it showed.
Nevertheless, Cera stood her ground. The venom he'd thrown at her was nothing compared to what she'd thrown at herself, and if he wanted to kill her, that was fine: once he knew about Safehold, about Avalon, her work was done. Others could succeed her, and maybe she'd get to see Marianne again. But first she had her duty, and it had been given to her by someone she feared disappointing far, far more than death itself.
"If you want to, go ahead," she said. "It's not as if I have much to live for anymore – or much time, if the Reapers arrive ahead of schedule. But before that, Your Majesty, do you want to know why Marianne died? Why she let it happen, and denied my every attempt to stop her from going along with her own assassination? Or even why Britannia fell so easily to the Hierarchy, when we have spent two centuries preparing to fight a threat that would slap them aside without a moment's thought?"
Lelouch opened his mouth to speak, and hesitated. Got you. There was no satisfaction in the triumph.
"Your mother—Marianne—let herself be assassinated because she decided that we couldn't afford to let the Turians know how deeply we've infiltrated their systems with Retribution's help," she said into the silence. "Because it would jeopardise our revenge against the Turians and Reapers both if they understood more of our capabilities. Your father personally ordered the Prothean-inspired fleet at Avalon, the base of Project Safehold, to stand down when the Turians attacked, because we could not let the Reapers learn of it."
Cera broke protocol to take a step forward, closer to Lelouch.
"Your parents gave their lives for Project Safehold, Your Majesty, and if that is what you want, I am fully prepared to do the same. But you are not the only one who has suffered because of it, and if you ignore the duty that has been passed from father to son, mother to daughter, for the whole history of Arthur's line, then there will be trillions in your position soon enough. In Cornelia's. In Euphemia's. In Nunnally's."
In mine.
Lelouch's gaze flickered to the right; if the wall hadn't been there, he'd have been looking straight into his sister's room. Cera knew she was wielding her words like a club, trying to beat him around to her point of view without a hint of subtlety or diplomacy, but she didn't have the time for anything else. They had weeks at best to get Lelouch and Nunnally to Avalon, and sort out who would rule Britannia until he came of age and officially became Emperor. At least she'd figured out how to disguise his extraction ahead of time.
"God damn you," he breathed out eventually, sounding exhausted, "you win. You win."
"Nothing about this situation could be considered a victory, Your Majesty."
He glared at her, briefly. "Fetch Schneizel. You'll need him."
Cera blinked. "Schneizel? Neither Charles nor Marianne particularly trusted him. He's too hard to read."
"I know that. I don't trust him either. But Schneizel is only the way this works. Unless you want Guinevere to be my regent."
Marianne had told her about Guinevere,and what happened to her. Lelouch was right about it being a terrible idea, if not for quite the reasons he expected. Just like he was, unfortunately, right about Schneizel.
"Yes, Your Majesty."
An hour later, Prince Schneizel el Britannia, Prime Minister of the Holy Britannian Empire, had joined her in standing before Lelouch. The room, plain as it was with only a set of vid-screens to its name—not even a chair—was not ideal ground for forming a conspiracy, but she had to take what she could get. Two hours after that, she'd finally finished explaining the whole situation to Lelouch and Schneizel both. The latter had asked her many, many questions, and Lelouch had soon joined in, perhaps in an effort to keep his mind off Marianne's death, perhaps so as not to risk showing weakness or indecisiveness around his most dangerous sibling.
When at last the inquisition was over, Schneizel fell silent for a time.
"We will have to kill Odysseus and his mother," he said eventually. "Perhaps Guinevere, depending on her reaction."
Cera blinked in surprise. Lelouch was not so restrained.
"What?" he almost snarled. "Why? Kill another member of our family? My mother already died for this! So did Father!"
"Think about it, Lelouch," Schneizel said, unruffled. "When you go to Avalon, Britannia will need a ruler: a Regent, specifically, since I am assuming the Duchess will disappear you rather than fake your death to make reintegration easier at a later date. It is probably best if we make it seem as if I killed you, and am pretending you are still alive to make my assumption of power smoother and not alarm anyone unduly.
"Before it gets to me, however, the duty of Regent would fall to Odysseus and then Guinevere, as they are both my elders. The only exception would be if you made a decree otherwise – which would highly suspicious for several reasons. Odysseus is not a man cut out for rulership, and he knows it. But his mother does not, and she has all the ambition one would expect from a woman who became Father's first wife and only later found out she was not to be his only. They are incredibly close; if we told Odysseus about the conspiracy, he would let it slip to her, and the only thing more disastrous than that would be if we didn't, and she then pushed for him to assume the throne in truth.
"We could, I suppose, simply kill her and have Odysseus abdicate, but if he ever discovered the truth, he would be our sworn enemy until the day he died, and as Crown Prince his resources are not inconsiderable if he ever decides to use them. And I confess I cannot truly predict whether he would act in his usual fashion in the madness of grief; he might well demand the throne, blame the Turians or the Systems Alliance, and throw us into a war we cannot afford to fight. We also run the risk of somebody else getting to him later; his will is not exactly strong. No. It is too dangerous to do anything but eliminate the both of them.
"As for Guinevere… she would be next-in-line after Odysseus, but she is not in any fit state to rule, and if I could not predict whether Odysseus would declare against the Hierarchy in his grief should we only kill his mother, I can guarantee that Guinevere would. But she is not a fool, and if I declare my intention to become Regent just after Odysseus is killed, she may very well recognise what had happened—if not the reasons why—and abdicate in favour of her life. That is, of course, if you wish to entertain the uncertainty. Personally, I would not."
"We are not going to kill our brothers and sisters because their existence is inconvenient!"
"Stop being such a child, Lelouch." Schneizel's voice was a crack of breaking iron, harsh and sharp. "Think for a moment. If you can come up with a better solution than mine, I will be more than glad to hear it. Violence should only ever be the answer if there is nothing more efficient."
"...he's right," Cera said. "I say this as the Director of Project Safehold and Viceroy of Avalon: the secret is too important to risk, Your Majesty. It must be secured at any cost."
For a very long time, Lelouch was silent. He stood there, staring at one of the vid-screens as if it alone held everything he'd ever been looking for.
Eventually, he spoke.
"Very well," he said, as quiet as murder. "Odysseus and his mother are to be killed as quickly and painlessly as an accident can be made to look like. If Guinevere does not abdicate when you make your case for regency, Schneizel, she is to join them. I expect you to make sure that she does not. Mother always taught me the importance of family, and if we must betray her like this, I would like her to despise me as little as possible."
Schneizel inclined his head. "Yes, Your Majesty."
"Ma—Marianne would have done the same if she'd had to, Lelouch." It was the first time Cera had risked using his name out loud.
"Perhaps," he said, almost musing, "but I expect Mother would have hated herself for it too."
He looked up from the vid-screen, looking at her and Schneizel in turn. "You have your tasks. Now get out. I'm going to see Nunnally."
Cera bowed. So did Schneizel, though less deeply. She left with him behind her.
As always, there was much to be done, and little time to do it in.
TIE
Camelot
Holy Britannian Empire
Avalon, REDACTED, REDACTED
June 27th, 2165 [8 AH]
It was a strange thing, learning war. Not grand strategy or short-term tactics—those came easily to Lelouch, like he was a four-dimensional existence in a three-dimensional world, able to see it from angles no other could comprehend—but the raw cut-and-thrust of combat. His mother had been a starfighter pilot before she'd married his father, one of the best Britannia had; that same father had been monstrously tall and even stronger than he looked. The two of them should have produced a child born for the battlefield.
Lelouch, however, was slender, almost fragile-looking, and had no particular instinct for shooting, swords, or hand-to-hand. A few years of on-and-off training had made him passable, and he expected that by the time his body had finished growing, he might even be good. But any common soldier was good. His mother had been brilliant, and it was all he could do to stand in her shadow, straining to meet the edges.
That was why he was here, at three in the morning, pushing the latest-generation Prothean Combat Frame—more commonly known by the nickname the engineers had given them, Knightmares—through its paces like he'd been doing for the past four hours. As their official designation indicated, Knightmares were a Prothean invention, designed in the early days of the war to allow a single soldier to combat even the largest Reaper constructs. Lelouch wasn't exactly sure if the galaxy would face anything like what the Protheans had called Tarrasques this time around, but he could imagine Reaperised Krogan, and he'd prefer his soldiers fought them from within the armoured cockpit of a three-metre tall heavy mech than not.
Knightmares were expensive, and the Reapers had eventually crippled the Prothean's manufacturing capabilities beyond the ability to create and maintain them on an industrial scale – but that was why Lelouch had not countermanded his father's order to develop them now, while they still had time.
Apparently his mother had been one of the test pilots, too. The best they had on record. Yet another thing to live up to, but Lelouch didn't mind. Memories were all he and Nunnally had left of her, and who was he to resent what form they took?
Well, perhaps he resented them a little right now, but that wasn't his fault. How on Earth had she been able to make the Ganymede—the very first test model—actually kick? He was piloting a Glasgow, three generations more advanced, and yet it seemed a fundamentally impossible exercise. Knightmares needed balance, and they did not and could not match the full range of human movement.
Her notes had suggested that she was trying to come up with a way to perform a full-body spinning roundhouse, but that was just ridiculous.
After a few more fruitless attempts—the controls seemed more sluggish than usual, but that was probably the sleep deprivation talking—he decided to call it a night. Tomorrow (today, technically) he had a meeting with Schneizel to discuss Britannia's future expansion plans. They needed more territory, more resources, but at the moment not even the Alliance had been given permission to start colonising anywhere new.
There were reports from his intelligence division that the Council were considering opening up the Skyllian Verge to human expansion, which sounded like a magnanimous kindness until you realised it would pit them directly against the Batarians. It was the sort of move he expected the asari had proposed: a blade-edged gift. Be seen as forgiving and willing to let younger races grow while using one of your own rogue states—what with the state-mandated slavery and piracy and all that—to act as a check-and-buffer if humanity tried to grow too quickly, or perhaps at all.
To be fair, it was just as likely that it wasn't a punishment aimed at humanity, and that was just a convenient side-benefit – the Turians were probably looking for an excuse to chastise the Batarians for the way they behaved, and if the Batarians attacked or raided a Systems Alliance colony, well, they were basically a Turian protectorate in all but name. The Turians would be perfectly within their rights to remind the Batarians that at the end of the day, it was a very stupid idea to antagonise the most powerful military force in the galaxy.
(The Reapers didn't really count… yet).
Either way, it didn't particularly matter. Britannia couldn't afford not to take advantage of the freedom to colonise—even if it galled him that they needed permission, especially from a Council of murderers—so if the opportunity arose, Schneizel had to take it. He couldn't push for it, couldn't be seen to be desperate, but by the end of the next year, Britannia needed to be putting boots on the soil of distant worlds. Naturally, Schneizel would know that, but Lelouch was Emperor, and that meant he had to give the orders, even if they were obvious.
Being Emperor, he had found, was mostly about giving the obvious orders.
Stepping out of the Glasgow, he walked across the hangar floor with the sort of exaggerated care common among the tired and the drunk, and slapped the door-panel open. Standing on the other side was, of course, the Duchess Cera, Viceroy of Avalon, Director of Project Safehold, and someone he really didn't have the time or inclination to deal with even when he wasn't exhausted. Great.
"What are you doing here, Your Majesty?" she asked. She was always so stiff, so formal, like a doll someone had only partially taught to be human. It wouldn't even be that disturbing except for the fact Lelouch knew there was a person underneath that porcelain skin. He'd seen her smile, laugh, cry, and on one particular occasion he'd like to burn out of his mind with a starship thruster, kiss his mother like she was trying to swallow her.
But that part of her, it seemed, had died with Marianne vi Britannia. It wasn't even satisfying to hate her anymore, because most days it felt like she was barely a caricature. There was no Cera anymore – just the Duchess. The Director. Something as cold and empty as the space between stars.
"Isn't it obvious?" he replied. "I was practicing in the Glasgow."
"You are the Emperor, Your Majesty. You will never be fighting in a Glasgow. You should never be fighting at all."
"The Krogan will never follow a leader who doesn't step foot on the battlefield, and we'll need them. You know that – you were the one who organised my training in the first place."
"Oh." She blinked. "So I was."
Lelouch frowned. "If the treatments are having effects like that, you need to mention it. At the risk of sounding hypocritical, we can't afford to make mistakes at the moment. The procedure must be perfected or we'll be running into risks far more dangerous than even the Reapers arriving tomorrow."
"I know," she said. Her voice was almost curt – the first sign of emotion he'd seen out of her in months. "I've already had you back up all the data somewhere I can't access and don't know about, I picked my watchers from the guards and scientists who hate me the most so they'll report on the slightest thing out of the usual in the hopes of getting me removed from my job or executed, and our technicians have overwritten all my command codes with yours so you can countermand anything I might try to do if things go wrong. There's already a report on your desk about the sudden bouts of memory loss."
"I'll read it after I've finished with Schneizel." An Emperor was never wrong, so Lelouch suppressed his urge to apologise. "Did you come just to see what I was doing?"
It was an awkward shift of topic, but he couldn't think of anything better to ask on the spot.
"Yes," she said. "It's rather unusual for you to be alone in a hangar this early in the morning, Your Majesty, so I came the moment I was informed. You should be in bed."
Lelouch didn't bother to point out the same to her in return. She seemed to have adopted the philosophy that she'd sleep when she was dead – which only made the irony of her being a test subject for the Code stronger.
"You caught me on the way there," he said, because an Emperor only took advice—never orders—and also because it was true. "Is there anything you need to bring to my attention, while you're here?"
"Only the onset of memory problems, but that's in the report."
"Then goodnight, Duchess." His voice was not polite, but it was not rude either. "I will talk to you again tomo—later today."
"Yes, Your Majesty."
As Lelouch strode away, he wondered if maybe it would have been better if she'd tried to mother him, like he'd imagined she was going to try in the beginning.
He would have hated it – but at least hate felt better than guilt.
TIE
Pendragon
Holy Britannian Empire
Earth, Sol System, Carcerem Cluster
June 25th, 2166 [9 AH]
Guinevere de Britannia woke, as she so often did, to the sound of thunder and her mother's screams. She blinked, once, twice, three times until the memory cleared, and turned to the side. Her latest conquest—the wrong word, perhaps, given the way he'd thrown himself at her like they always did—was still sleeping, and she allowed herself a moment to contemplate his future.
She'd probably keep him for a few days more; he was certainly attentive, and made the most adorable little squeaks when the ropes got too tight. Guinevere honestly couldn't remember whose son he was, or what the parents who had no doubt encouraged him even wanted – something to investigate later. She had to reward them sometimes, or else they'd never bother to seek her favour in the first place, and where would she be then?
Slipping out of bed with sated grace, she threw on a robe and padded to her office. Her chief maid, Rayn-something, had left a reminder on her desk – she had a meeting with Schneizel in three hours, which left her just enough time to make herself presentable.
Guinevere didn't know what her brother wanted, and that worried her. Truth be told, Schneizel worried her. By all accounts, he was the weakest leader Britannia had ever had, bending over backwards at the slightest provocation from any of the Empire's enemies. And yet, like clockwork, once every couple of months she'd receive yet another implicit offer of support to overthrow him from her... friends amongst the Alliance and the Hierarchy.
Her brother was a worthless excuse for a man—nothing like their father had been—but if she called every favour she'd been promised, she'd apparently have half the Citadel and their bootlickers lining up for a shot at removing him.
Hah. The only people she hated more than the imbeciles in the Systems Alliance were the Turians holding their leashes, and if they wanted nothing more than Schneizel gone? They could all go fuck themselves. His reign as Regent, or 'Prime Minister' as he preferred to be addressed—fancy political doublespeak to hide the fact he was the Emperor by any metric she cared to name—was as secure as Guinevere could make it, no matter how much she might dislike the way he went about it.
Flicking off her holo-pad, she walked into her ensuite, where a bevy of maids awaited. Heaven forbid that Guinevere wash or dress herself – she was the First Princess of the Britannian Empire, the next Regent-Empress-whatever if Schneizel died, and such mundanity was beneath her. Her plaything would probably wake in the next hour or so, but somebody would take care of that until she next wanted to see him. Right now, she had more important concerns, like whether she should wear imperial purple to show her loyalty to her family, or mourning black in honour of her father's death on this very day almost a decade earlier.
Eventually, she decided on the purple – Charles had been everything an Emperor should have been, and an Emperor had no time for children. Only his youngest had ever really loved him. Schneizel knew that, and she felt no need to lie about how much she missed the man.
By then, her hair had almost finished drying, and one of her maids was busy towelling her body down. The towel was soft and fluffy, and probably worth more than some small air-cars, but the colour reminder her of Turian blood.
"Fetch me another, girl," she said, short and sharp. "Throw that one out. It's hideous."
The maid scurried away, as mouselike as her hair. Good help was hard to find, but Raynelle, Revela, Rydthia, whatever her name was, trained them well. She hadn't had to fire a servant in months.
Soon enough it was time to meet Schneizel. Guinevere, for once, would go to him; normally her appointments came to her, but Schneizel was the only person in the whole of Britannia who truly outranked her. She did what she could to hint at dissent between them—all the better to give their enemies someone to rally to, so they did not go looking for those who might truly rebel—but there was no point being that petty.
She'd just storm out of the meeting later, and complain about him to servants. Spies infested this palace, and somebody would find out they'd apparently had an argument later. Certainly at least one of her maids was in the employ of the Alliance, another belonged to the Hierarchy, and she'd cut her hair to her shoulders if the STG weren't reading both of their reports at some point along the line. It didn't really bother her. Let them watch. It was always more exciting that way.
Guinevere did not bother to announce herself when she reached Schneizel's section of the palace – she was expected, and even if she hadn't been, nobody would get in her way. Except maybe Maldini, but Schneizel's majordomo was nowhere to be found. Unsurprising; he was probably busy kowtowing to someone on Schneizel's behalf. No wonder her brother kept him around, considering how much experience he had being on his knees.
(She very much doubted that was why, considering the man's reputation, but it was nice to imagine Schneizel had a human side. And Maldini was very pretty, for a servant.)
She strode towards his private office, passing servants and courtiers and guards. An idle part of her mind—the one that had never quite left Terra Nova, that remembered Marianne vi Britannia—wondered if any of them would try to kill her today. Hopefully not. She had a dress fitting tomorrow, and her tailor was very, very good with his hands.
When the doors clicked open in front of her, Schneizel wasn't there. How dare h—well, at least she wouldn't have to make something up when she complained to her maids later. Guinevere had been polite enough to arrive on time, and she did not appreciate being made to wait.
With nothing better to do, she sat down on the couch, lounging across it with the sort of indolent grace that rumour said had made her millions as a certain kind of model. Most might have taken that as an insult, but it was Guinevere who'd started those rumours in the first place. Let them dream of the soft curves of her body and never know the sharp edges of her heart.
A few minutes later, just as Guinevere was about to relieve her boredom by sending a guard to fetch her a glass of Schneizel's prize bourbon, the door opened.
"Good afternoon, Guinevere," said the man himself. "I do apologise for the late arrival; I had to see the Turian ambassador off."
The Turians. It always came back to the fucking Turians.
"Hello, brother," she said, as polite as poison. "How goes pretending you don't run the Empire?"
Schneizel smiled, soft and inoffensive. Everything about him was soft and inoffensive. Her bathmat stood up to people better than he did. That was what scared her the most: half this accursed galaxy apparently wanted him off the throne he claimed not to occupy, and Guinevere didn't have the slightest inkling why.
"I am not pretending anything," he said mildly. "I am the Prime Minister, duly elected to lead our great nation through its transition to a more enlightened form of government."
She scoffed. "You elected yourself into a role you invented. Come now, my lord Regent—sorry, I mean my lord Prime Minister—we all know you're just trying to pretend you don't have one foot on the throne and the other poised to kick away anyone else who wants it."
Schneizel raised an eyebrow. "Even if I was, as you say, the Regent, I would merely be holding the throne until the rightful heir came of age and returned to us. And if I were to… kick anyone away, well, they would not have had a claim in the first place."
"Ah, yes, the rightful heir. The mysterious Emperor Lelouch," Guinevere replied. "Our little brother. Favoured despite being one of the youngest. A boy whose face I haven't seen in almost five years. You'll forgive me for questioning if he truly exists. Did the aliens do away with him like they did Marianne, or was it you, like poor Odysseus?"
It was a dangerous question. It was a dangerous conversation. But Schneizel did not act without reason. Without premeditation. He wouldn't come for her until he'd looked to see who'd put her up to this – and when the conversations she'd recorded happened to slip into his hands, he'd find them too. If there was any sense in Schneizel's head, he'd know who gave them up, and she'd be safe again. For now.
Still – it wasn't like the answer really mattered, so perhaps she should make that clear.
Guinevere sighed, waving away Schneizel's half-formed reply. "I suppose it's not important. You might as well be Emperor anyway. Who am I to question you, brother?"
"My elder sister," Schneizel said. His voice was light. Affable, even. "First Princess of the Holy Britannian Empire. Who else could but the one in line to take everything should I fall?"
That sounded an awful lot like a threat. Was that why Schneizel had called her in here? To tell her that he was aware of her 'ambitions'? Did he not know everything she'd done for him? Did he truly believe she wanted his throne? She'd thought him smarter than that.
"So my friends in the Systems Alliance and the Hierarchy like to remind me."
"I hadn't realised they'd grown so bold."
"Their boldness was never in question, brother. Only yours. Your foreign policy is so forgiving you might as well have wrapped up the Attican Traverse in a pretty little bow and signed the accompanying card, with the way you gifted it to the Alliance. I told you a year ago that the chance was coming, and six months after the Council opened it for mining Britannia has not even submitted a proposal for permission!"
For a moment, silence. Then Guinevere sighed, long and slow, and her rage left her like she'd breathed it out as air, replaced by the cool, dismissive disregard that she wore even before her clothes. She was a proper princess, not a brute like Cornelia or a insipid fool like Euphemia, and she was always in control.
"Let us be honest, Schneizel. You are a man who couldn't be faster to bow and scrape when the Citadel comes calling, and years of snubs from the Alliance gone unanswered are not even the weakest things about your rule. All you have to your name is the strength of our economy, but you refuse to do anything with it, and so Britannia languishes yet again behind her enemies. Even some of the nobility want you gone, brother, to say nothing of the commoners."
It was pathetic. Schneizel bowed to those Guinevere would destroy, and so Britannia survived – but it did not live. If she ruled, the Batarians would be less than ash, she would have sent the Turian ambassador home in a box, and she would have delivered the Systems Alliance's to Arcturus in pieces shot from the main cannon of the Emperor Charles.
The war would be short, and all the more vicious for it. Britannia would fight. Britannia would die. And if they ever found her pieces, there certainly wouldn't be enough left to fill a box. Guinevere was many things, but she knew exactly what her rule would be like, and that was why she didn't.
Once, she might have thought differently, but the Humiliation had taught her a very personal lesson about the glories of war. When you sat scared, shivering, starving under the rubble left behind by Turian artillery, survival was all you had. No – Schneizel's Britannia was pathetic, but so was the girl who cowered in the dark as she clutched the only remaining arm of her only remaining protector. The girl who sometimes wondered if she'd ever left that darkness at all.
"Even the nobility," Schneizel mused, interrupting her thoughts. "Interesting. And you, sister?"
She snorted. It was surprisingly inelegant, coming from a woman who spent three hours every morning straightening her hair just right.
"No. Never." Guinevere turned her head to stare him in the eyes, and did not look away. Let him see her. Let him know. "A life where all I have to do is be beautiful, spend money, and take advantage of all the pretty boys our enemies throw at me in the hopes I'll forget fire in the sky and the smell of my mother's corpse? I have nearly everything I want, brother, and ruling Britannia will not give me the rest."
For a long moment, Schneizel was silent. Then he smiled. There was nothing soft or inoffensive about it.
"Come with me, Guinevere. There's someone I think you'll want to meet."
"Oh?" There was the steel she'd seen in him in the months after Marianne's assassination. The steel that had slain Odysseus all those years ago, and convinced her to retract her claim before he could do it for her. Guinevere drew herself up off the couch. "I hope this won't take too long. My chambers aren't exactly empty, you realise."
Schneizel chuckled. "Are they ever?"
Guinevere tilted her head to the side, considering. "Fair point."
Her brother led her through the door at the other end of his office, the one that lead to his bedroom. For a second, she wondered if he was planning to introduce her to his secret lover, as unlikely as that would be. Cornelia would win the bet if it was Maldini.
Instead, however, he took her into a secret passage that was connected to his closet. It wound down and down in a spiralling circle, almost dizzying. The stairway was cramped and dark, the walls falling in on her from every angle. Their footsteps echoed like gunshots. Her hands shook as she called up her omni-tool, her fingers furiously desperate. She fumbled through the commands three times before the device finally spat out a pair of drones—little more than glorified light-bulbs—to hover around her shoulders.
Schneizel turned to look at her with nothing but polite curiosity.
"I'm fine," she snapped. "Considering the Liscelles have gone out of business, these shoes can't be replaced. I refuse to embarrass myself by stumbling in this godforsaken tunnel and breaking a heel."
Like all the best lies, it was even true.
After far too many—two—minutes, they arrived at a door that only opened after Schneizel submitted to what looked like a blood test, a retina scan, entered a password into a keypad, and spoke another aloud. It'd sounded like something from Shakespeare, possibly The Merchant of Venice. Guinevere didn't really care. Breathe in. Breathe out.
The door closed after them, and she and Schneizel stood in a small room, dominated by a holographic projector hooked up to something she didn't recognise. Ignoring her, he stepped over to it, and started tapping away at the keyboard. That was fine.
Breathe in.
Breathe out.
The door clicked open again—like the safety of a rifle—and she spun, barely wrenching herself away from the instinctive urge to run, to hide. Guinevere sighed in relief, too soft for Schneizel to hear. It was only the Knight of One.
"What are you doing here, Michele?" she asked. "I doubt you're the mystery Schneizel wants me to meet."
"My lady, my lord," Michele Manfredi said, bowing to her and Schneizel in turn. The steel of his cybernetic arm glinted in the light. "Prince Schneizel requested my presence, Princess."
"Oh? And why was that, Schneizel?"
"The Knight of One should always be present to hear his liege speak."
That was not Schneizel's voice.
Guinevere turned, and saw impossibility.
"Hello, sister," said Lelouch vi Britannia in all his flickering, holographic glory.
She stared at him. No. What—what the fuck. This made no sense. This was wrong. This could destroy Britannia if it was ever found out. Why would they bring her in here? Of course she deserved to know, she was Guinevere de Britannia and how dare they keep this secret from her, but they had no guarantees that sh—oh.
Michele Manfredi was behind her. The door was behind him. This room only had one exit. His sword had been on his hip when he'd come in, and she'd seen him beat a Turian to death with only one arm. She remembered what its blood had felt like, splattering on her face.
Lelouch watched her impassively, but she couldn't see him.
Breathe in.
Breathe out.
Michele laid a hand on her shoulder, softly, gently. Guinevere wrenched herself away and almost stumbled to the floor. No. No. She was better than this. She'd spent a third of her life trying to be better than this. She was the Crown Princess of the Holy Britannian Empire and if she was going to die it was going to be with some fucking dignity.
Guinevere drew herself to her full height, channeling every inch of the poise bred into her by a royal heritage two thousand years in the making – and knelt, one fist pressed against her chest.
"Ave, Imperator," she said. Her voice broke slightly. "Morituri te salutant."
Hail, Emperor. Those who are about to die salute you.
"Pretty words, Guinevere," Lelouch said, "but you have served me well in the past, and I may still have use of you yet."
She stood. It was a breach of protocol, but this situation was a breach of sanity anyway.
"Served you? I thought Schneizel had killed you until a minute ago."
Lelouch smiled. It was every inch the smile of an emperor, amused and knowing and sharp as a knife.
"Do not imagine you have secrets from me, Guinevere. Do not imagine you could have come so far without my help. You serve as a rallying point for all of Britannia's enemies, all those who would depose Schneizel and ruin everything he has built by my command. I read every report that crosses your desk. I know everyone you've spoken to, every word they've said. Some of them you would never have even met had I not guided them to your door. You are the bait in a trap only six people know has been set – and, like all the best bait, you have always thought it was entirely your idea."
"No. Fuck you. I do what I do because I want to. Because I chose to." She thrust a finger toward him. Her hand shook, half with fury, half with fear. "I keep Britannia safe from all the jumped-up idiots who think they can twist me to their whims because I am the one in control!"
"You have certainly done an excellent job of it," Lelouch said. His smile softened, just slightly. Perhaps he'd seen something in her expression. "And your plan to get yourself 'elected' as Foreign Minister is a masterstroke. A snub to Schneizel's apparent favoured candidate, a way to further ingratiate yourself with all the—fittingly—foreign influences who want to destabilise his rule, and guaranteed status in a reformed Britannia where nobility is not a path to power. But tell me: did you ever wonder why, say, the Harringtons promised to support you?"
He cut off her reply—not that she'd known what she was even going to say when she opened her mouth—with a raised hand.
"Of course you did. You're smarter than people give you credit for; not a genius of war or politics like Cornelia or Schneizel, but no child of Charles zi Britannia is an abject fool. Be glad for it, sister – it means you're clever enough to be useful, but not enough to be a threat."
Guinevere clenched her fists. "And what use is that? Going back to being your—your puppet?"
"Do the strings really hurt more when you know they exist?" His voice was musing. "I would have thought it was the opposite. But no, Guinevere. Now that you know I still rule this empire—and that it is, indeed, still an empire—there are far greater purposes for you to serve. You are not satisfied with the way Britannia cowers beneath her foes. Neither am I. And there are things out there in the howling dark that would terrify even our enemies if they had the sense to see them.
"The Protheans are dead. You know that. Everyone does. But what killed them still lives. And it is coming. I will tell you now, sister, that I do not intend to make Britannia strong enough that it never need fear the Hierarchy again. I intend to make the galaxy strong enough that it will survive the reaping. All the Turian fleets combined would not scratch the one the Protheans called Harbinger – but it will be Britannia's blade that slays him. It will be Britannia that forges the spear, and it will be Britannia that leads the charge.
"And then, when everything is over and the war is won, it will be Britannia that sits in judgement of those who remain."
Lelouch looked at her, his gaze searing her skin like plasma. She flattened a hand against the side of her thigh, pressing fabric against flesh, but the scar was gone. Of course it was. It had been for years.
"There will be a reckoning. And you will help me start it, Guinevere. Soon, a man called Nicolai—Nicolai Alvin Hubert—will get into contact with you. He will want help establishing a presence in Britannia for his company, and to make use of your connections to begin marketing his products throughout the galaxy. You will offer him all the help you can, become a public partner in his business, and make sure to brag about how you got in first over Schneizel. Do not worry about the cost – no matter what you have to spend, you will find your investment returned tenfold once people understand what he is selling."
"Why?" She hated how soft her voice was. How cowed.
On the hologram, Lelouch's own omni-tool glowed, projecting the letters Nicolai Alvin Hubert before a flick of his wrist rearranged them to Lelouch vi Britannia.
"The time has come for me to step onto the chessboard. If the king does not lead, how can he expect his subordinates to follow?"
He dismissed his omni-tool and spoke again.
"Manfredi, leave us. I have more to explain, but your absence will soon be noted. You may remain, Schneizel."
"Yes, my lord," Michele said, bowing. "Farewell, my prince, my princess."
After he'd left the room, and the door had shut, Lelouch turned back to Guinevere.
"You know what I want you to do, sister, but I think you would find it easier to cooperate if you knew the why – why the galaxy thinks I'm dead, why Schneizel rules Britannia, why the secrecy and the lies and everything else. I mentioned it before, but now I will take the time to explain properly. So: have you heard of the Reapers?"
She shook her head. "No."
"I didn't expect you to. They make quite an effort of killing everyone and everything that ever has. The secret history of the galaxy takes some time to explain, Guinevere; I hope your shoes are comfortable."
They weren't.