Chapter 14: Nunnally
When you're fifteen and a princess of Britannia, you think that life will be easy as long as you follow a few simple rules.
Keep your head down. Be polite. Avoid politics like the plague. Escape your tutors with Euphie one afternoon and giggle as you catch snowflakes on your tongue. Get caught. Act like you're sorry. Wipe the snow from your hair while your tutor gives you an earful. Rejoice that Father thinks you're too useless to become Empress.
Get older. Discover boys. Bicker with Euphie over who gets to marry Lelouch. More importantly, find the hidden alcove behind Cornelia's copies of Clausewitz and Machiavelli where she keeps her dirty books. Show Euphie. Steal the books and deny everything.
Attend college before your twelfth birthday. Suffer through an internship in one of the newly conquered territories. Watch Numbers getting executed for rebellion, hundreds at a time. Complain to Euphie. Rejoice again when they reassign you. When your relief wears off, realize that your responsibilities extend much further than you thought, and start building charity organizations.
Graduate with honors and decide that academia isn't for you. Accept Cornelia's offer to teach you to ride a horse, even though horses always made you nervous. Spend the first few sessions watching her safely from the sidelines until you screw up the nerve to ride. Receive a pony named Bubbles. Discover that Bubbles prefers standing still and eating grass, and that your worries were unjustified. Trot around the pasture a few times and accept that you'll never be a good horsewoman.
Wake up with a billion voices in your head.
Wash up naked and shivering on the unfamiliar shore of a dead world. Vomit LCL from your lungs. Notice the crumbled buildings, the purple sky, the red sea. Most of all, notice the severed head that towers into the stratosphere. Access the nearest MAGI terminal and locate help. Any help. Survive on canned food until Jeremiah arrives.
Restart the automated municipal services, and fight off warlords with N-2 mines. Try to forget that you've just committed your first murders, and that they won't be your last. Meet the woman who raised you and your brother while your real mother played court politics. Discover that she's insane and lovesick. Feel guilty that you never knew about the latter.
Accept that your family isn't coming back.
Wait for Lelouch anyway.
…And wait.
…And wait.
Find a way out. Maybe. Construct a machine that can access the Collective Unconscious and send you back, but will probably turn you into a comatose vegetable. Against all odds, wake up in the past. Laugh. Dance. Sing. Pretend that you're fifteen again, and ignore the weird looks you get. Allow yourself to become giddy. Take your problems lightly. Indulge in hope for the first time in years. Tell yourself that you know what's going on this time, and that the stars will align.
Try to change things. Encounter resistance. Conclude that the task is actually impossible, but keep trying. Just remember that you're going to fail, and that another waking nightmare is less than six months away. Call Lelouch. Ask him to spend time with C.C. and get frustrated when he pretends not to understand. Fight with every ounce of your willpower to avoid telling him that he'll be dead in six months. He doesn't have the time. Neither of them does.
Find out that Cornelia has disappeared and that you can't do anything about it. Try to console Euphie. When she asks you why you're not crying, dodge the question. Realize later that it's because you already thought of Cornelia as dead.
You think of them all as dead. Cornelia, Euphie, Father, Mother, Lelouch….They just haven't realized it yet.
Now you can cry. But not too much, since you have work to do.
Kaji's package contained a single memory stick. It shone dully under the lights thanks to its red tin coating. Kaji hadn't bothered removing the lanyard, and had complained that he needed more time to assemble evidence. I didn't have the heart to tell him that he was scheduled to die the next day.
Euphie spun the stick on the table until the weight of the lanyard stopped the rotation. She stared at a point on the wall. The sleepless nights after Cornelia's death had not been kind to my sister. Her eyelids drooped, and the skin under her eyes had turned ashy gray. The cookies she'd baked sat on the table untouched. Just as well. She'd burned them.
"So…" she said.
"It's not enough."
Euphie's shoulders tensed. She started to say something, but bit it back and returned her attention to tracing patterns in the wall.
"You can snap at me if you want," I said.
"Why would I want to snap at you?"
Euphie said it as if she was reciting a famous speech by rote. Her voice carried no energy; even her lips barely moved.
"It's—"
"Not enough," she said. "You're right. The UFN won't take it seriously."
"Take what seriously?"
I jumped. Euphie turned to the door with the same bewildered look that she'd worn when we got lost in Pendragon's East Wing as little girls.
"Take what seriously?" Schneizel repeated.
Euphie pointed at him, and then at the door. Her wrist was limp, so that the motion looked like she was waving.
"But you're—I didn't schedule—Wasn't it tomorrow?"
Schneizel gently caught her hand and kissed it. He smiled.
"Sister dear, I'm afraid you're mistaken. I recall very precisely that we scheduled our meeting at 3:30 on Tuesday. Not that I resent the company…"
He bowed in my direction. I curtsied and forced my mind into overdrive, playing out all the options; the shades of risk in each level of my brother's suspicion. He already knew something about the Qumran expedition…
Schneizel winked at me, dropping his voice to a whisper.
"So," he said. "What's this little secret?"
"N-nothin—" Euphie began.
"A coup," I said.
Schneizel took a step back. Euphie took a little longer to process my declaration. She gasped. By then, I'd already tossed the memory stick to Schneizel.
"One of my operatives compiled these files from NERV and gods-only-know where else. Take a look."
My brother stretched out his hand in that placating way that he always used before he patted my head or hugged me.
"Nunnally, I know that you have objections to the way that Britann—"
"You want to know what Father's doing in the private wing he built next to his room?" I said. "Or why Gendo seems to know about your communications before you send them? Or why Lelouch's messages don't make any sense?"
Schneizel's hand froze in midair. The mask of concern instantly dropped, and another mask took its place: utter calm. This usually meant that he was anxious, although he didn't know that I knew that.
"Go on," he said.
"Sit down," I said. "Cookie?"
Schneizel nodded and slowly lowered himself into the chair as if he was expecting to be bitten. He didn't seem to notice that the cookie looked like a hunk of chocolate chip anthracite.
"As I said, it's all in the files," I said. "Right now, just listen. You can decide later."
"Fair enough."
"Suffice it to say that Father, Gendo, and the EU's Prime Minister are planning to end the world. Now then…You obviously want the throne, so--"
Schneizel leaned forward and opened his mouth. I cut him off with a raised hand.
"Don't bother," I said. "I saw you playing emperor at the Frick Mansion when you were three years old."
His legs crossed and uncrossed.
"How….Nobody saw that. You weren't even born—"
"Never mind that," I said. "The bottom line is that we both know that you want the throne and you'll pay almost anything for it. Fine. You have the Purists. I have the Jetalot Project. Even if I'm crazy and this is a massive conspiracy theory, I still have the resources to crown you Emperor. Let's make a deal."
"You'd leave out Lelouch?"
Schneizel had spoken so quickly that it must have been instinct. Natural cunning, if you like.
"He won't collaborate with the Purists," I said.
Schneizel took a breath. He stroked his chin and tapped the blackened cookie on the tabletop. It was subtle, but I saw his tongue run along the inside of his cheeks. I wondered if I should offer him the opportunity to wash his mouth out.
"You don't like the Purists either," he said.
"Let's be honest, Schneizel," I said. "I hate them. Even you dislike them. I just happen to prefer a Purist emperor to billions of liquefied corpses."
Schneizel's eyes narrowed at my last comment, but I didn't elaborate. When Euphie finally found her voice, she gave me one of those "there must be another way" speeches. I rubbed my temples and tried to block her out. Schneizel waited until she finished, then turned a deep bow complete with arm flourish. He cracked another grin.
"An interesting proposition," he said. "I'll think about it."
Translation: Agreed.
After he left, Euphie grabbed my shoulders harshly for the first time in my life.
"Nunnally, what did you just do?"
"I—I did what had---what I…."
I sighed.
"I did what had to be done," I finished.
The cliché tasted bitter. Euphie shot back one of her own:
"Congratulations, Nunnally. You just made a deal with the—"
"Don't finish that sentence. Please."
