Author's Note [October 2009]: My profile said for the past couple months that I was taking a break from Habeus Corpus, but now I am briefly taking a break from taking a break.

I had begun working on a giant map as part of my notes for Requiem's Wake, but it has been unfeasible to draw on the kitchen floor with lumbago – especially since the floor has to be cleaned every time I work on the map. CrazyNinjaPenguin and TheDudeJDCT have been beta-reading drafts for Requiem's Wake all summer. Thank you both very much. I will get back to working on that story when I've mended.

Special thanks to Tomas the Betrayer for his humorous description of an ethos, which I have used herein.

* * * * *

The knock at the door heralded the arrival of General Tohdoh and UFN Secretary General Ohgi. Miss Sayoko bowed respectfully when she met them at the door. "Welcome, General Tohdoh, Secretary Ohgi."

The men reciprocated the bow. The corner of Ohgi's lips tensed slightly. He had never been particularly comfortable with being referred to as a higher up.

General Tohdoh replied first. "Thank you, Shinozaki-san. We are sorry for being late, but there was business that could not wait."

"Ah, yes. Thank you, Shinozaki-san," Ohgi remembered to chime in.

Miss Sayoko smiled knowingly. "Of course. No need to apologize. Your responsibilities have just dramatically increased. Naturally, you must prepare all you can for tomorrow."

Ohgi looked away to the side uncomfortably. Actually, he and General Tohdoh had been delayed by phoning in reassurances of their safety to Villetta and Nagisa. Very important, but not what he thought Miss Sayoko had probably meant.

Ohgi took in the peculiar sight around him. The soft background music and the bounty of the bar and the snack spread suggested a party atmosphere.

At a small dinner table sat the former viceroys, Nunnally vi Britannia and Cornelia li Britannia, and Kallen. The younger former princess appeared to be deep in thought, and the elder former princess was staring moodily at the tablecloth just behind her martini. Only Kallen looked lively as she seemed happy to see him. Smiling, Kallen waved at Ohgi, and he waved back.

In the middle of the room, there was a casket and the former Crown Prince stood beside it, his back turned to the door, his head bowed and an empty snifter in his hand.

Even as a funeral, the gathering felt like a total fail.

Miss Sayoko's voice faded back into Ohgi's awareness. "…respects to Miss Nunnally at the table and to her brother at the casket. If you have any musical preference, please let me know, and I will try to accommodate as best as I can."

General Tohdoh nodded. "Thank you, Shinozaki-san. That is most hospitable of you. I regret that I must make my visit brief. If you will please excuse me, I have a few words for the deceased and for his sister. Ohgi-san, it seems Captain Kouzuki is wanting a word with you."

She was already approaching with a couple of beers.

* * * * *

"Goodbye, Little Brother." Schneizel turned from the casket and found the approaching General Tohdoh.

There was a brief pause as the titans of history regarded each other.

The general spoke first. "Good evening, Prime Minister."

"Good evening, General." The deposed royal made to swirl his cognac, but the lack of momentum in his glass reminded him that it was empty. Apparently, he had overindulged and become forgetful. The general suppressed a smirk at the prince's uncharacteristic miscalculation.

Instead of commenting, General Todoh took an envelope out of his pocket. He looked questioningly at Scheizel who, with an inviting wave of his hand, stepped aside.

General Tohdoh approached the casket. He looked down at the Demon Emperor who appeared deceptively peaceful in death. More likely, his journey to the next life was already long and perilous as he would be meeting his supposed kin along the way. No doubt he could outsmart them on his own, but a little wisdom and insurance never hurt anybody. "Light reading for the trip," he told the departed youth before placing the envelope inside.

"How like the Vikings," Schneizel murmured at the gifting from some distance away. He must have begun to leave but stopped to observe.

The general scowled at the former prince. Schneizel smiled hopelessly and said, "Perhaps as we all linger beside his body, he is terrorizing the inhabitants of Valhalla."

The ex-prince headed for the door, snifter still in hand. The next morning, Miss Sayoko would have to hunt him down to retrieve it.

General Tohdoh returned his attention to the corpse.

* * * * *

"Oi. You look like you could use one of these." Kallen foisted a chilly, sweating beer at Ohgi.

"Thank you, Karen." Ohgi gratefully accepted the cold drink, took a gulp and let out a sigh of relief.

"That bad, huh?"

"No, it tastes wonderful."

"I was referring to the meetings. It looks like I missed a lot."

"You disappeared."

Kallen shrugged. "I was catching up with Nunnally."

"Catching up?"

"We became friends during my imprisonment."

"Ah, she must have appreciated your company today."

"Yes," Kallen agreed. She added, "as I appreciated her's then."

Ohgi noticed Sayoko joining Cornelia and Nunnally. The girl was smiling again. She was more mercurial in person than on television, thought Ohgi. How did her sight come back?

"Something's bothering you," Kallen noted.

Ohgi shook his head. Everything this day had been overwhelmingly weird. "Nothing makes sense. Schneizel being our ally again. General Tohdoh going along with it. Zero alive and Lelouch dead…."

He stopped at Kallen's saddened and (guilty?) expression.

"Sorry. I shouldn't trouble you with my worry when you must be feeling terrible." He bowed his head shamefully, his gaze settling on the rim of the beer bottle. As the elder, he should have been strong, comforting and reassuring. Instead, he had unburdened his thoughts and dropped them on Kallen.

"Ohgi, I'm…."

"It's alright. I mean, he was your classmate, and you were his…." There was to be no more talk of Lelouch's time as Zero.

Kallen frowned, nibbled her bottom lip in agitation. The tears welled up in her eyes again. "Sorry." She wiped the tears away with her hand. They just kept coming. "I thought I was done," she muttered in embarrassment.

So much for consolation. Ohgi frantically checked his pockets for a handkerchief. There was none. He dashed to the coffee table, grabbed some tissues and handed them to Kallen.

"Thanks." She sniffed.

Internally, Ohgi cursed his clumsiness at having made Kallen cry. (What would Naoto think?) He could give her a hug, but that would probably prompt even more crying. (And what would Villetta think?) Nevertheless, he hated to see her upset. So instead of letting Kallen weep, Ohgi changed the subject – by saying the most outrageous thing that he could come up with: "They made me Prime Minister of Japan."

Kallen choked mid-snuffle. "Huh?"

A little sheepishly, he repeated, "They made me Prime Minister of Japan."

"No way!"

"Er actually, yes. For now, anyway. We announce it tomorrow. I find it surprising myself."

"Did Zero…?"

"Well… General Tohdoh and Schneizel helped. Something about 'the need for an authentic populist voice.'"

Or a puppet? Kallen was suddenly too perplexed to weep. Maybe, some of Lelouch's suspicious nature had rubbed off on her, but fortunately, maybe his discretion had as well. Rather than suggest that her friend was about to be used, she exclaimed (perhaps a touch too enthusiastically,) "Congratulations! That's incredible."

Ohgi agreed. "You think so? I can hardly believe it either."

"Nervous?"

Tomorrow's prime minister shrugged. "It doesn't matter. I'll just have to try my best."

Kallen lifted her beer bottle. "Here's to you and a great term."

Ohgi tapped his bottle to her's. "Thank you, Karen."

They drank their beers, and both of them felt better.

* * * * *

"I wasn't expecting to see them here," Nunnally commented on the two men talking to Miss Sayoko.

In reply, Cornelia only savored the burning of the vodka in her mouth. After the resurrection of Zero, the assassination of Lelouch, the evasion by Sayoko and the flight of Schneizel, the last thing she wanted to do was mental gymnastics regarding why the Japanese leadership might pay respects to their betrayer, oppressor and almost executioner. Best to chalk it up to some "bushido thing" and be done with it.

In the topsy-turvy world, there was only one mystery left that was remotely simple because the person to whom it pertained was the most honest and forthright person in the room, possibly the planet. Reaching for the last straws of sanity, Cornelia asked this person a question because if somebody, anybody, could give Cornelia a straight answer about some part of the chaos, she could still have hope. "Sister, how did you regain your sight?"

Nunnally turned and looked Cornelia in the eyes. The girl searched the face of her elder sister, tried to figure out the meaning in the movement of her facial muscles. The girl could determine nothing, except for the stillness of Cornelia's bated breath.

Nunnally frowned, reached over to Cornelia, gently removed her hand from the martini glass and held it. The girl smiled slightly as she looked at her sister's hand, traced the calluses with her fingers and matched the visual to the tactile. Nunnally returned her gaze to Cornelia's face. "I opened my eyes."

"Why? How?"

"I wanted to see everything."

Cornelia's inscrutable expression turned to one more easily recognizable as disappointment. Nunnally elaborated in response, "Everybody knew there was nothing wrong with my eyes. I saw nothing only because that was what I wanted, a harmless blank where I could imagine just the pretty things.

'But meanwhile, the ugliness around me grew. Lelouch, Father, Schneizel…. They all lied to me because they could, because I wasn't going to look and see if they were telling me the truth.

'Finally, when Brother and I met aboard the Damocles, I had had enough. Since then, I have been unable to stop looking."

"I'm sorry," said Cornelia.

"I'm not, not anymore," replied Nunnally. "But Sister, where were you after—"

Sayoko returned to the table with more coffee for Nunnally, and a glass of water for Cornelia.

"Thank you, Sayoko," said Nunnally.

"Thank you," murmured Cornelia. She sniffed her glass, discreetly she hoped. There was no scent. She took a sip.

"Looks like I missed something important, whatever it was," said Sayoko.

"It was nothing really," Nunnally replied. "I was just telling Cornelia how I opened my eyes."

Sayoko tilted her head slightly and raised an eyebrow.

"Sometimes, you just have to want something badly enough to make it happen," the girl added.

"Ah. You are quite right, Miss Nunnally."

The urge to decry their optimism as naïve bull-crap (in more ladylike terms, of course) sorely tempted Cornelia, but nonsense seemed to be the order of the day. She was only one person, and the spirit of the dawning age overwhelmed her.

Having finished her water, Cornelia also drank away the rest of her martini. If the era was to be absurd, then she would be absurd as well. Small talk was the occupation of peacetime in the past, right?

Putting on her best "friendly" smile (which really only made her look like she was about to devour something,) Cornelia asked in a cheery (no, manic) voice, "Miss Sayoko, you and Mr. Gottwald seem to be on unusually good terms, despite recent events. Do you like him or something?"

Caught off guard for once, the color rose ever so slightly in the ninja maid's cheeks. It was rare that anybody asked a servant about her feelings, even if she was an unusually skilled servant. Nunnally suppressed a giggle. Sayoko noticed, shrugged and chuckled. "Perhaps, I do. He visited me on a few occasions during my imprisonment. The times between were like an eternity."

"Hmm…. I wonder what Lelouch thought," Cornelia mused. "He can't have approved of his guard and a prisoner getting too close."

"Oh, don't be silly, Cornelia," Nunnally scolded. "Love conquers all."

"Well, Mr. Gottwald must have been extraordinarily clever to have found ways to drop in without attracting suspicion," Cornelia hypothesized.

"I feel rather spoiled now that you put it that way," said Sayoko.

Cornelia grinned. Maybe, she was getting the hang of frivolity. "There must be some amazing story about how you two met and became acquainted, two people so unlikely to ever be so much as friends. It's nothing short of a miracle, a Purist and a Japanese."

Nunnally nearly snorted her coffee, and Sayoko paled.

"What?" Cornelia inquired. Wasn't asking how people met a normal part of polite conversation?

Sayoko dug her fingernails into the tablecloth. "Former Purist," she corrected.

Before Cornelia could apologize for her apparent faux pas, Nunnally noticed General Tohdoh's arrival at their table. "Ah, good evening. General Tohdoh, right?"

"Yes." He bowed politely. "Good evening to you, too, Miss vi Britannia."

"Please, I prefer to simply be called 'Nunnally' or if you insist, 'Miss Nunnally.' I no longer have any title or position, and we're not at the most formal event in the world."

"Well, 'Miss Nunnally,' it is nevertheless elegant, especially given the time constraint." He added, "You must have worked very hard, Shinozaki-san."

Sayoko forced a little smile. "Thank you, General. This is actually one of the smaller gatherings that I have arranged."

The general returned his attention to Nunnally. So, she was the one whom the Black Knights had risked their lives to abduct. She was the one whose misreported death had driven Zero mad.

Yet, he could not resent her. Despite all the misery wrought on her behalf, Lelouch had betrayed her, too. Died for her, too.

She only looks delicate and innocuous, the soldier realized. Surely, her fragile appearance and unassuming manner masked an overwhelming burden of frustration and rage. Nobody liked to be deceived, made powerless or used, but the child had suffered all three fates many times over at the hands of her family. If she ever had innocence, it was most certainly quite dead now.

"I am sorry for your loss," said General Tohdoh.

"Thank you. Your sentiment is much appreciated," said Nunnally, "but he was a demon."

"A demon with the conviction of iron," he reminded her.

She smiled wistfully. "You make it sound like he was so strong."

"Even the strongest steel someday rusts. Stone inevitably breaks or melts. Every tyrant sees his end coming."

"He did have the most peculiar peaceful look then," she remarked. "I will have to keep that in mind. Thank you, General Tohdoh."

"It was nothing," he replied. "Now then, if you will please excuse me, I should take my leave."

Sayoko asked, "Would you like to take something with you, General Tohdoh? A sponge cake perhaps? It will only take a moment to box one up."

General Tohdoh very briefly considered refusing, but the corpse in his peripheral vision reminded him of an important fact. "You're too kind, Shinozaki-san. I haven't had a sponge cake in the last eight years."