"Did you and Cornelia have a fight?" Euphemia tilted her chin in Lelouch's direction, slinking an arm around her half-brother's back. Almost anything was sufficient to distract Euphemia from her harp practice- especially the appearance of her favorite half-sibling- and so it was routine for Lelouch to hide for a while before revealing himself, but to leave a little of himself just barely visible, just as routine as it was for Euphie to periodically search for someone who might be hiding and call Lelouch out when she saw him.
Lelouch would rarely admit it, but watching Euphemia play the harp... it was almost as good as driving. Listening to it, however...
Well, she did ditch practice fairly often. For example, now.
"... A little bit. We made up, though, Euphie, so don't worry about it." Lelouch replied, and leaned in closer. Euphemia's hugs were an amnesiac. Once in her embrace, he never could remember anything that had been bothering him. Just seeing her smile, her cheek, warm against his. It was strange, because Lelouch wasn't sure why this was the case. The effect Euphie had on him was a mysterious one. Even Nunnally on her best days couldn't match this feeling- or rather, as comforting as Nunnally's company was, it was always interlaced with a heavy layer of worry on Lelouch's part.
Nunnally's a girl I have to be strong for. Euphie's a girl who knows my weakspots...
Sometimes it disturbed him how easily Euphie slipped past any barrier he put up and any affectation he made of a sour mood or an embarassed countenance and extracted her prize despite all odds- a smile from Lelouch's lips, however small. But today she didn't have to fight for it. Today nothing at all disturbed him.
"What would you two possibly have to fight about?" Euphie wondered, biting her lip and looking to the sky even as she stroked over his back.
"I don't know, Euphie, it was something stupid, that's all." Lelouch sighed and looked toward her harp, reaching in and plucking a few strings, and soon afterward her hand joined his- her hands were so soft- and reached in to pluck two strings to each of his one- turning what had been idle toying into a few harmonious chords and scales. It wasn't a song- it didn't have any semblance of rhythm to it, but it did have a pleasing sort of harmony. Lelouch felt as though, if Euphie had her way, this was all she would play on the harp. Something that required no serious practice or sustained effort but just something that was pleasing to listen to all the same, as if that was all the harp was there for, that colossal, expensive instrument just existed to make a few nice noises, none of the complicated music her teacher asked her to learn. It was a ridiculous thought, but... seeing the smile on her face grow wider and brighter as they did this, it also made a lot of sense to Lelouch right then in that moment.
Sure, why not...? If it got her to smile like this, Lelouch would buy her a whole orchestra's worth of them even if she only plucked one string a day.
That thought forced an even wider smile out of him as he thought of the ridiculousness of such a notion- and another part of it made him smile when he realized he was imagining himself as Euphemia's husband.
"Well, okay." Euphie laid her cheek on his shoulder, grasping his hand suddenly and interlacing her fingers with his. "Thank you for staying with me for her last night. I didn't realize how sleepy I was... but I guess you were there when she woke up, huh?"
"Yeah, but that's OK, I needed to talk to her anyway." Lelouch sighed and reached back with his free hand, stroking it through Euphemia's hair.
"Please don't be too mean to Cornelia, she means well, y'know." Euphemia's arm curled around his waist and squeezed him rather tightly.
"She's supposed to be the commander of the Emperor's whole army someday, isn't she...?" Lelouch inquired idly.
"I guess, yeah... that's what Father says." Euphemia replied.
"Funny, I don't see how anyone could be scared of her." Lelouch laughed to himself, before Euphie would join in with a little giggle of her own.
"Well, c'mon, Lelouch, she'd never show her mean side to us. I mean, I could say the same thing about your mother, and she used to be a warrior too, right?"
"Well, a pilot, they're different." Lelouch protested, gazing out over the gardens. "I can't imagine Mother ever hurting anyone either..."
"Neither can I." Euphemia lied, as she vaguely recalled a time she had seen Marianne's gentleness fade, once...
...
"Really, Lamperouge, to accuse my daughter of that, you forget your place. Carline didn't push anyone, I'm sure your daughter was simply rooting around in the muck like the filthy commoner she is, and now she wants to blame it on someone else. It seems Nunnally's destined to be exactly the kind of lying whore her mother-"
Later, when the ringing had left her ears, the taste of blood had left her mouth, and the sting of the Emperor's decision that she'd been "asking for it" had left her cold heart, the Duchess le Britannia would muse, in private, that the Empress had one hell of a right hook.
...
"Have you and my son settled your differences, then?" Marianne draped her arms over Cornelia's shoulders and rested her chin atop her protege's head.
"Please, Your Majesty, don't..." Cornelia protested, though she made no move to stop her. "If Lelouch sees us he'll get the wrong idea again."
"Aw, you're that worried about him?" Marianne curled her lips into a cheshire-cat grin, squeezing Cornelia even tighter.
"Well, he was extremely upset about... last night." Cornelia swallowed a lump in her throat.
"And what about you? Were you upset about last night?"
"... you know I wasn't."
Marianne's arms slowly slinked away from Cornelia's shoulders and her chin lifted from the violet-haired princess's head, though she would break contact with Cornelia only after swishing a curvaceous hip to bump against hers. "You're so cute, Cornelia. You'll make someone a wonderful wife someday."
"... I can't imagine ever marrying, Lady Marianne." Cornelia admitted, the blush still tingling on her cheeks as she walked forward and rested her hands on the edge of the balcony. "It would always seem like simply settling for less."
"And you think Charles was my first choice?" Marianne chuckled as she rested her elbows on the same railing, leaning back to look out over the gardens.
Cornelia couldn't help but stifle a giggle at that notion, turning to look into Marianne's eyes, and eventually raising an eyebrow. "You can't possibly be serious...?"
"He's such a grouch. And his feet stink. And he never tells me he loves me."
"Does he...?" Cornelia inquired, out of sheer curiosity, fearing that she would regret it as soon as the words escaped her lips.
"Well, I don't know, really. He's got a hundred and seven others where I came from, but then again, I am the only former commoner of the bunch, but then again, I was also a top Knightmare pilot, forgive my boasting." Marianne reached over to ruffle Cornelia's hair, and once again, Cornelia did not - could not - move to stop her, or even to brush her hair back into order once it had been thrown into chaos by those delicate pale fingers.
"It's not boasting, Lady Marianne, you are the best Knightmare pilot who has ever lived."
"Again, you, with the flattery, c'mon, weren't you the one who just told me to stop? But yes... I do think he loves me, somewhere deep down inside. But then again, perhaps many of his wives think that, and I don't know if it's within him to love more than one person in that way."
"He loves himself." Cornelia scowled as she glanced down the pillar that supported the balcony beneath her, toward a tuft of orange-fuschia jungle flowers that had been artfully lanscaped to seem as if they were naturally sprouting from the base.
"You would be surprised, Cornelia. He never wanted to be the Emperor." Marianne lifted a hand, observing a mosquito that had sunk its proboscis into a capillary on her knuckle, watching it make a meal of her, with Cornelia looking on in bizarre fascination...
"Aren't you going to...?"
"Nah." Marianne brought her hand a bit closer to her face, her right eye looking directly into the compound eyes of the insect piercing her skin. "Why should I? She only needs a few drops of my blood to lay her eggs and have a family of her own. Why should I begrudge her so little when I've been given so much?"
"That's going to itch later..." Cornelia hissed through her teeth in sympathetic anticipation.
"So then, it'll itch." Marianne watched the mosquito withdraw its stylet and clean its front legs briefly before lifting off and buzzing into the dusky purple sky. "Bye-bye!" she'd wave gently at the insect before turning to Cornelia with a smirk.
"I don't think you'll ever cease to fascinate me, Lady Marianne..." Cornelia stated, as a simple fact, her eyes gazing up in awe into her mentor's.
"Charles has told me, and I believe him, that he'd rather have a simpler life than this. But one thing that he and I have both learned, in the course of our lives, is that no one ever has the life they wish they did. The best we can do is try our hardest to change it, without causing harm to the people we love.
"This isn't the perfect life I'd imagined, once upon a time, but you know..." Marianne smiled broadly as she leaned forward and glanced over the garden path, toward Lelouch and Euphemia returning arm in arm, with the latter leaning heavily on the former... "It's perfectly good enough for me. As long as I can be here with my family." She'd turn to glance directly back into Cornelia's eyes, letting that stare linger for a moment, before clapping her hands together, causing Cornelia to jump a bit. "All right! Dinner time! I believe Lucia said it was taco night!" Lucia, an eccentric, pudgy, middle-aged lady from a hot country in between the Empire's two primary continents, was Marianne's favorite of the Aries villa cooking staff, though Cornelia preferred those with a more traditional menu...
"Taco night!? I LOVE taco night!" came an enthused squeal from far below them. Marianne was not the only one who loved Lucia's cooking.
"Well, c'mon in and get changed for dinner, Euphemia!" Cornelia called down to her sister.
"Kaaay-"
"And don't forget to wash your hands this time!"
"That goes for you, too, Lelouch!" Marianne called after them.
"Okaaay, Mooom..." Lelouch groaned.
"Cornelia, could you go fetch Nunnally from her nap downstairs...?" Marianne inquired as she turned toward Cornelia, but Cornelia was already moving, merely giving Marianne a nod back as she opened the sliding door between the balcony and the upstairs parlour.
"Of course, but I'll be a bit late for dinner," Cornelia added, glancing to her watch, "the sentries change over in five minutes and-"
"Right, right. Thank you, Cornelia, I'm glad I have someone like you to protect my family." Marianne gave Cornelia a sweet smile, prompting another blush and a deep feeling of pride swelling within Cornelia's chest.
"Of course, your Majesty. I'll always protect you."