A/N: Please please please please please?

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Things you didn't know about the 99th Emperor and the 100th Empress
4. Of Geass; of being returned to my father; and of how we surprised one another

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I have been using a word that is unfamiliar to you, my reader, on seven separate occasions already. Seven is a number which has many symbolic associations in religion, in mythology, in superstition or in philosophy. It symbolizes the connection between heaven and earth, completion, perfection, and eternal life. There are seven arts and sciences; there are seven virtues; and there are seven deadly sins. And seven is the number for human beings who are leaders and achievers. It is the number of those who love freedom and will not let anyone control them. It is the number of people never afraid to take risks, and who will do whatever they can to get what they want. And it is the number of people who might act as though they don't care about other people, but who find a strong purpose in life through helping others in secret.

Why the digression on the number seven? You will understand by the time you've finished reading the seventh and final chapter of this short account.

This unfamiliar word I have used seven times so far is "Geass" – you should already have been wondering for a while exactly what that word meant. I should warn you that I don't know everything about Geass; but hopefully, by the time you read these lines, nobody needs to know that word.

I've stated before that Geass is a power that is granted to people by someone like C.C. – perhaps she's the only one who can grant it, or perhaps not. And it is a terrifying power. It also has more than one form.

My brother had Geass; it allowed him to override any person's will if he could look into their eyes and give them an order, and the victim of his Geass was absolutely compelled to obey that order, no matter how dangerous it was to them. It also caused people to forget anything that happened while they were accomplishing the order given to them by Geass – this I learned by personal experience.

My father had Geass too; his power was to rewrite a person's memory – to the extent he could make you forget how to use your own senses, not just events you remembered. This I also learned by personal experience: my own father deprived me of my sight this way, while he also took my memories of being planted as a false witness of my mother's murder – which I really could have done without remembering.

How do I know? Because I did something that's supposed to be impossible – and which, according to brother Schneizel, nobody else ever managed: I broke through my father's Geass. And it took me nine years. I mention this not to lay a vainglorious claim of superiority to others, but to highlight that Geass is impossible to resist when it is applied upon a person, and it takes a very, very, very long time to throw it off.

When Lelouch ordered something to someone using Geass, they had no choice but to obey. His power was abominable – it destroyed its victims' freedom and allowed Lelouch to fully control them. And it ultimately did not have a limitation. If Lelouch wanted to order someone to become his slave, they became his slave, and that was that.

There's one last thing I should mention about Geass: the person who has one can't always control it. How do I know? Because my beloved brother loved our sister Euphemia. Even after he began his revolution as Zero, whenever we talked about Euphy, he spoke fondly of her and wished the rest of our siblings were more like her. He would still have used Geass on her, especially considering how the creation of the Special Administrative Zone of Japan could doom the Black Knights, but he would never have made her the scapegoat for the genocidal massacre of a hundred thousand innocents. The only explanation that makes sense is this: Lelouch gave Euphemia the order to kill all the Japanese without intending to. And because it is impossible to resist Geass, the only way to stop her from trying to kill all the Japanese for the rest of her life was to kill her.

I didn't know at the time, but after Lelouch had left for the ill-fated inauguration Special Administrative Zone of Japan, we never would get to spend time together as brother and sister again. We talked together on the phone a little after he'd killed Euphy, but before the news about Princess Massacre had made Britannian media. I didn't understand then why he sounded like he'd been crying. Then Euphemia's death was announced, and its circumstances, and I understood then that Lelouch had already known when we'd talked. I just didn't know that the reason he was so terribly sad was because he'd been the one to pull the trigger, in more ways than one.

Not long after, I had my first direct encounter with Lelouch as Zero; but he didn't address a word at me, and I didn't address a word at Zero. It happened in the middle of the Black Rebellion, when the Black Knights made an attempt at taking over the Tokyo Settlement. I had no idea, back then, that Zero and Lelouch were one and the same; but I was certain the only reason Zero stated he wanted the student council members unharmed was because Lelouch had insisted upon that (I was right, from a certain point of view…)

While I trusted my beloved brother, I had no reason to trust Zero or the Black Knights; not even after Kallen showed her true colors as a Black Knight. This is why I didn't have a problem with asking the rest of the student council to do what they could to help Suzaku when his knightmare got captured right in front of the student council rooms. I wouldn't have said anything if I'd known Lelouch was Zero, and history would probably be very different from what it is today.

Aside from Kallen, the next time I got a chance to speak with any of the student council members was after I had become the 100th Empress of Britannia. That night, I was abducted again – by a child no older than twelve, who referred to himself as my uncle – a clear sign he wasn't entirely sane. He only introduced himself as V.V., and said he'd been sent by my father. That last part, at least, was true.

The moment I was taken away by this V.V. was the moment I knew I would never again be able to afford being a child. Until then, even if he'd been largely absent, I'd always lived under my beloved brother's protection. Once I was back in Britannia, I was also back to being the blind and crippled failure staining the line of the Britannian Emperors, useless in all things.

I don't really know how we got to Britannia, because something really strange happened in that journey. At first, I was taken to an island not too far from the mainland by way of a small plane, and from there, through caverns and into ruins. And then we went through a place that was weird in a way I couldn't explain – it just felt off. There was no proper air movement, echoes were distorted just a bit beyond what it should have been in still air and a mostly empty place, and there was something, at the edge of my thoughts, which suggested that the place wasn't completely real. Whatever the place was, it did not obey the rule of physics; after having hardly been moved through there, we exited, and I found myself in Pendragon, having somehow gotten there in a few minutes and despite having only travelled what felt like less than a hundred metres in this strange place.

I was left unattended to for the first few days after I was brought to Pendragon. I was alone in unfamiliar rooms, with nobody to help me get through the tasks my blindness and my paralysis made difficult, or altogether impossible. I had to patiently explore and discover an environment that was in no way adapted for my disabilities. I had to find solutions to take care of my personal hygiene as best I could. I had to find a way to drink – I was left alone long enough to have died of dehydration. It was impossible for me to cook anything – not that there was much that I could eat lying around to begin with, let alone prepare. I had no way of knowing how much time was passing – there wasn't even an opening through which I could have felt sunlight filtering. And I was left alone with my thoughts and my fears. No one came to visit, just like no one had come to see me back when I had been hospitalized. But this time, there was no Lelouch to hold my hand, protect me and take care of me…

Then I was taken to my father the Emperor in the state I was in after a few days of this; spooked, mourning, hungry, disheveled, mostly unwashed and in the dirty, wrinkled and stinking school uniform I'd had to wear non-stop for a few days. It was the only time my father and I ever had a face-to-face conversation.

After how I had been treated, I couldn't know for certain that I was going to be kept alive. I didn't know where Lelouch was or what had happened to him. All in all, I felt I had very little to lose; so despite my fear, I made a bold and insane request: before any greetings were exchanged, I asked to be handed the Viceroyalty over Area 11 – without being given leave to speak first.

I was certain I was going to be brutally rebuffed and reminded of my worthlessness. I didn't expect a tone of surprise and of interest when my father replied. Instead of chastising me, he asked if a child like me understood how hard she'd have to work to prove herself worthier than all the other candidates to the position, let alone worthier than its holder. And I replied to him I hadn't been a child since bombs had nearly killed me and my beloved brother at Kururugi Shrine eight years earlier. Then my father told me that if I could get through enough of an education to have the minimum skills required to exercise a viceroyalty, administrative duties included, he would consider me for that position.

He kept his word.

As I've mentioned before, Britannia invests very little for its disabled population. It wasn't much different in the royal household; instead of the advanced aids my beloved brother had procured for me, I had to rely on what little Braille writing and reading was possible, and had to memorize everything else I was taught, notably about law and regulations in Britannia and in its various levels of Area governance, without any assistance.

I'm not an idiot, though; I'm Lelouch vi Britannia's sister. I managed.

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A/N: Two updates in two days? Must be Christmas xD