A/N: Here's another extra. Hope you enjoy.
Disclaimer: I do not own Code Geass. I do own my characters.
Setting: Between Turn 5 and Turn 6. The Enneagram family home in southern Vortigern.
Peace makes everything seem simple. That's what Nonette Enneagram thought as she stared at the muted television screen in front of her, replaying the images first displayed to the world the day before just as it had since they were first world was about to change so completely. Nonette was having difficulty deciding where she stood.
She had lived a fairly long life now. She still remembered her days at the military academy. She remembered her first impressions of Princess Cornelia li Britannia. They were strong impressions; the foundations for a friendship. When news arrived of Cornelia's death, Nonette was shocked and rather devastated. Not twenty years ago, having a friend you had known all your life die suddenly was commonplace. Having it happen in this peace made for much grief and lost sleep on the other hand.
And here was that woman's daughter, strength in her eyes as she stood before the world with perfect conviction, looking so much like her mother. It was nostalgic almost. The face of Suzaku Kururugi might have helped with that effect. Seeing that face after so long was somehow unsettling.
She understood how it was. War was war. Nonette was a knight. She had killed men who had done no wrong other than taking up arms for the sake of her Britannia. Still, when she recalled that the former Knight of Seven had killed so many of her friends while he was the Knight of Zero, that he had helped spread so much death, that good friends of hers like Monica, Dorothea and Bismarck had met their end at his blade, she couldn't look at his now unmasked face with anything but contempt.
"Hello, Mother," a voice came from the door. Margaret, Nonette's young daughter was standing there, looking distressed and tired. Her eyes were different than they ever had been. Nonette couldn't place it, but the look in them was somehow familiar.
"Hey, Margaret. You were out all day yesterday. Is everything okay?" Nonette started, staring at the girl.
"Yeah… I'm fine…" Margaret spoke. She looked rather pale.
"You don't look fine. Are you ill?" asked Nonette, standing from her chair and walking toward her child, looking at her closely.
She looked the girl over. There was definitely something off. Her and Margaret were quite close. They were all each other had. Things had fallen apart with the girl's father before she was even born. Nonette chose to omit that man from her memory. Margaret was a beautiful child. She had been a joy to raise and Nonette was nothing but grateful for the opportunity to raise her.
"I'm fine, Mother… really," Margaret insisted, her voice strangely heavy, her eyes still strange.
"If you insist, dear," Nonette said, shaking her head and stepping back. She looked at the television. "Did you see what happened yesterday?"
"Yeah… I was there," Margaret said in a low voice, staring unblinkingly downward.
"You were there? You went to the Celebration of Peace then?" Nonette started, smirking. "You could have told me you were planning to. I'd have maybe gone too."
"Come now, Mother. You know… me and her… You should know what I mean…" Margaret said in a dark voice.
Nonette closed her eyes. She had been trying to avoid this possibility in her mind. She couldn't deny that there had been a deeply familiar voice shouting at the video crew while the whole ordeal was going on yesterday. She also couldn't deny that the girl atop that stage was one she had seen manny, many times.
Ava li Britannia was always there, at every one of the numerous competitions Margaret entered, and she always won. Nonette couldn't tell if it was a one-sided rivalry or a competitive friendship, but her daughter and this girl were definitely very much linked. That's what had made watching the event so difficult.
"I see," Nonette spoke, looking at her daughter. "So you believe the things that girl spoke on that stage?"
"You know, I don't even really know. I don't know anything, and yet for her I…" Margaret started to shake a little as she looked down.
"It must be difficult," Nonette spoke, placing a hand at her daughter's face in comfort. "I was born into a very different time. I, by choice, entered into a military academy where I was instructed in the art of killing men. Even so I couldn't sleep the night after my first battle."
"How did you ever sleep after that?" Margaret asked, looking up at her mother.
"After my hands were so well bloodied I eventually found myself not so disturbed. It was war. We fought for the sake of Britannia. There was no place to dwell on anything else," the Knight of Three spoke reflectively, thinking back on things she hadn't in a while.
"War. That's what she's brought back into this world, isn't it…?" Margaret spoke listlessly.
"Do you intend to continue fighting for her, my child?" asked Nonette with a serious stare
"I don't know…" Margaret spoke. "I killed eleven people; soldiers who were doing nothing but trying to stop her. If I continue fighting I'll have to kill much more than that. It's a lot to suddenly have to bear."
"You're a strong child, Margaret. There isn't a challenge you've failed to rise against previously," Nonette spoke, easing the child along.
"Another challenge, is that what this is…?" Margaret spoke, looking up.
"I've made up my mind. I'll take out that machine that was built for me but never flown. I'll lend your friend my strength, I'll recognize her as my Empress and I'll start to kill again after twenty years of this strange and simple peace," Nonette spoke, smiling quietly. "I'll bear the burden for us both if that would be easier for you, Margaret."
"No. I couldn't ask that of you, Mother," said Margaret softly. "I plan to keep fighting."
"I see. If that's your decision, there's no fighting it," Nonette spoke, looking at her daughter, somehow proud.
"I don't think I ever understood you, Mother, how incredible you really are, until now," Margaret said, her voice still heavy.
"I wish it was for something else I had acquired your respect, my child," Nonette said, closing her eyes.
"I want to fight for your sake as much as mine. I want to prove to the world I'm someone great," Margaret spoke, looking down. "That way, you'll be remembered as someone great again too."
Nonette moved to embrace her child. If she was in anywhere near her normal mood, Margaret would have fought off such a thing immediately in embarrassment. She didn't now. She accepted it. She was contented by it.
"That's a beautiful if unnecessary sentiment, dear," she spoke. "You're far more important to me than what others may think."
"Even so… I'm not going to stop, ever. I'm going to keep going until I'm standing next to her at the top of the world," said Margaret into her mother's arms.
"Margaret..." Nonette simply spoke as she held the girl for a while longer in her arms.
The twenty year peace had been a simple, beautiful time for Nonette Enneagram. It had given her this child. It had given her so much where war had only been about taking things away. Understanding the beauty of peace, Nonette had every reason to approach the work of Ava li Britannia with a conflicted heart. Instead she found hers pointing like an arrow straight ahead.
This child was the key for her. Her heart would always follow this child and what she decided. That was all it could do. For Margaret she would take up arms once more. If Margaret was going to become a killer, Nonette would join her. As the child's mother, that was her place. She was content with that.
A/N: I think this is the new shortest one of these. Nowhere else to take this. Eh, it was just another character piece. I've done little of these two interaction, yet in my mind they have a really close bond. I wanted to show that off a little. It also provides a different side of Margaret, a troubled side. Thinking about it, she has by far the highest kill number during the Unmasking, being the one on floor duty; this obviously would have made for some reaction, but next time she showed up after that, she was pretty much normal.