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"Don't be silly," Lelouch said, flushing. "You're my sister. I can't marry you."
"You can so." Euphie glared at him, her hands on her hips. He edged away. Nunnally peeked at her and stuck her tongue out. Euphie said primly, "You're his sister too, you know," and Nunnally pouted. Euphie thought briefly about pushing her into a hedge.
"Brother," Nunnally started, reaching for Lelouch's arm. He gave them both a panicked look and froze.
"Mother," he called nervously. His hands twisted the hem of his coat. Over the vivid wash of rose blooms--the rarest strains of ancient breeds from the old European motherland, Euphie's mother told her in a hushed tone, so she shouldn't try to take any of them--Marianne glanced at them and closed her book. She gathered her skirts and stood; her hair gleamed blue-black in the afternoon sunlight. The maid started forward with a parasol, but Marianne waved her back.
She knelt beside Lelouch and gently freed his arm. "Don't make a princess sad, darling," she said, smoothing his hair. Her other hand clasped around Nunnally's, and Nunnally beamed.
He looked desperately at her. "But--"
She smiled. "But you mustn't let them bully you." He relaxed. "Be kind, and firm, and proud." She brushed her fingers over his cheek, smoothing his worried frown. "That is a prince's duty." He smiled gratefully and nodded.
Euphie felt a pang of jealousy. "What about a princess?" she blurted. Marianne gave her that same warm look and shifted, smoothing her skirts over her knees. The train of her dress settled attractively over the garden's flagstones.
"Your Highness Euphemia li Britannia," she said, "should be graceful and lovely. A vision to behold." Euphie straightened and folded her hands over her skirt and shook her head in a way that she knew made her hair fall very nicely over her shoulders. Nunnally struggled to do the same, but Euphie was satisfied with the idea that she was very much more the princess. Marianne straightened too, her throat an elegant, creamy line clasped in lace and silk. "A princess must give hope to the people--she must give them something to believe in. At any moment, you may be Britannia herself." Marianne smiled kindly at them, two fledgling princesses like little swans, and Euphie despaired a little, because there was no one who was royal like the Lady Marianne. She did not think she would ever live up to being a princess like that, not without Marianne's proud stance and wise eyes. She wished very badly that Marianne was also her mother. She understood Lelouch's absolute love.
"Sorry," he said later, when shadows were growing long across the lush gardens and it was time for formal tea. He held out a rose to her. It was a perfect, snowy white, its petals just beginning to spread. He bit his lip.
"It's all right," Euphie said, lifting her chin. She curtsied primly and took the flower from his hand with two graceful fingers, which she thought was very royal of her, anyway.
She first read Kururugi Suzaku's name in a textbook. No one who mattered ever forgot the only member of Japan's oldest families who willingly enlisted in the Britannian army, and it was deemed suitable learning for all the royal children. Her tutors neglected tell her many things about Area 11: the miserable reality of the ghettos, for instance, or the prejudice that ensured high Britannian employment rates in everything but menial labor. Or the Britannian army's brutal racism and hate, or about the ordeals that would await any young Japanese man in the military, let alone one bearing the Kururugi name. (They didn't have to.) They told her instead the last prime minister's policies, the consequences of his suicide and the Japanese military's loyal grief for him. They told her the surrender was laughable, an easy escape dwarfed to cowardice beside Britannian pride and might. That, now, it makes Zero's insurrection even more foolish.
But what she remembers most is a picture of a severe Japanese man with his years carved into his face, his hand on the shoulder of a fierce little boy. She remembers running her fingers over the photo's edge, her lips forming an unfamiliar foreign name. She wondered about this boy and his wild hair, his belligerent eyes and proud chin, this little Eleven prince. Her ideas of strength always trace their way back to Cornelia and her straight spine, her sharp eyes and low voice and the men that don't so much protect her as follow her with a sort of fervent loyalty that impresses Euphie very much. Cornelia was her paragon of strength and fierce beauty, and she always will be, but Euphie thought for the first time, curled with her book in bed, that this boy was also strong and proud, not Cornelia's steel but rather a different sort of fire.
Five years later, Kururugi Suzaku took her hand before he knew she was a princess and smiled at her, playfully called her Your Highness and unthinkingly protected her, and she felt a wash of pleasure that her twelve-year-old self might actually have been correct.
She wishes she had studied his hands then, turned them over in hers and inspected them for callouses and scars, dirt under his nails or worried hangnails. Her own hands are royal hands, manicured and conditioned, soft and white and taught to fold just so. She isn't used to hands that have worked. She imagines that his are probably warm.
"Should I be afraid of Zero?" she ventures. She combs her fingers through her damp hair and casts a look at Lelouch over her shoulder. His back is to her, but he darts a shy glance back and away again as she watches.
"Don't be stupid," he says, looking carefully at the shore. "You're my sister." He looks as though he will continue, but he stops himself and watches the waves. His mouth is a thin line, his brow knit.
She studies his profile discreetly, smoothing her skirt and tugging her dress's damp bodice down, and she thinks with a certain amount of joy that he grew up well. She can see Marianne in him: in his eyes, in his hands, in the fine, elegant lines of his neck. She supposes he gets his angles from Charles, because Marianne was a softer, gentler person, but it's a bit hard to imagine when her father has always been old and large and Lelouch does not have Odysseus's chest or Schneizel's shoulders. Regardless, he is a very handsome young man. She smiles and wants to cry, even though it's foolish and he's already told her not to be stupid.
"I'm glad," she says. His face turns blurry, and she starts blinking. "I'm so glad," she insists, wiping away her tears. She looks back at the line of mountains and tries furiously to focus on the shapes of trees and rocky beach. "I am." She shivers and makes a smothered sound as she tries to swallow back the weight in her throat and choke off her tears. Her face is hot and slick and she feels terribly undignified. There is movement behind her and then cold and wet as Lelouch tries awkwardly to settle Zero's cape over her shoulders again. His hands brush over her arms, and she wheels and sags against him, her forehead pressed against his damp jacket. The cape falls away to crumple on the ground. He smells like the sea.
He pats her back stiffly, settling his hand to move over the tangle of her hair. "I'm sorry," he says. She feels his throat jerk. "I didn't mean to make a princess sad."
Her hands creep around his sides to hug him to her, and she gives a hiccupping laugh that sounds more like a sob. He is too thin against her, lean and bony, but she can feel the strength of his spine against her grasping hands, and she thinks that perhaps he is stronger than he seems, and his hate has not eaten him away.
"I think he's happy," Nunnally told her. She smiled and gently traced her finger over the gilt on her teacup. "Brother doesn't tell me a lot of things, but he's happy." She glowed. "And thank you, Euphie, for taking care of Suzaku. I think he's happy, too."
She sees them later: photos that her aide gave her at a discreet request, and she tucks them away until darkness falls and she should be asleep but is instead curled in the folds of her comforter, studying the photos propped against her bent knees. There is a giddy sort of happiness there, a lovely childishness that stabs a pang of envy into her heart. Royalty means many things, like private tutors and carefully scripted social events, this son or that daughter who will never, never know Euphie's true heart. These photos are anything but that: they are haphazard and sometimes clumsy, with bad focus and bad angles, ungraceful, candid things, but she aches with want. Flat yearning for this place where every flower is not a perfect rose, for these boys and girls who love each other and live together and know each others' every stupid flaw and secret. Or almost every. Because she is sure that when Lelouch is at school he is not her brother and he is not Zero, but he is Lelouch, and he may be living a silly, idyllic lie, but it is indeed happy.
She can read comfort in the lines of Lelouch's body language, his openness and his smile. Suzaku is gratitude and plain love, cheerful and warm. The two of them together, the lines where they intersect and blend, send a happy spark of electricity through her. Two princes, she thinks. Two knights, two dazzlingly strong people. They could, she thinks, make the world into a better place.
"I think Zero is wrong," Suzaku replies, giving her a closed look. "I can't agree with his methods."
"But do you think he's bad?" she says again. "This is important."
He tilts his head to the side. "I don't think anyone is bad, exactly. Zero has given some people hope." He smiles, barely. "That's not all bad." There is an awful look in his face, a tightness around his eyes, his mouth. She misses his gentle reassurance, his sweet acceptance, those soft edges that he has never before now been able to hide. He looks away and gathers her empty teacup and saucer and turns to take them to the tray on the parlor table. She studies the uncomfortable hunch of his shoulders and feels her heart fall.
"I'm sorry," she says quietly. "I didn't mean to offend you."
"You haven't," he says without turning. "My opinion doesn't really matter, anyway. It isn't for me to decide." As he talks, the tension leaks from him, as though he has released a great, pent-up breath, and that troubling, numb quality fades from his voice. She wonders what this war must mean to him. What would happen to his heart if he knew what Lelouch was doing. There is a certain sturdiness to his spine--an amazing strength of spirit, that fire that she recognized so long ago--but she despairs at his humility. His reluctance to understand his own power. She wishes she could reach down and lift his bowed head, draw him up to stand straight and tall and look her in the eye without flinching away, as though she is the sun and he too weak to bear her radiance. She wishes she could tell him how wrong he is, that she is purely useless and actually rather bad at being what she is.
A princess must give hope to the people.
The memory aches. Euphie wishes she could ask Marianne for help, like a goddess or an oracle. She wonders what Marianne would make of this strange creature, this Kururugi Suzaku who is neither Japanese nor Britannian but worthy nonetheless.
She watches him and imagines running her hand up the lovely, strong plane of his back, following his spine and his shoulders and his neck, her hands moving over every inch of him, feeling muscle and tendon and bone. She wonders what he would do if she touched him like that, if she breached that taboo.
(Even so: the boy in the photograph haunts her. She wants to gather that little boy to her and reassure him and tell him that nothing can hurt him and he is safe. Because for all that Suzaku is a strong, fierce person, his heart is very gentle, and he destroyed a part of himself when he was ten years old.)
"It's just that--" He turns, finally, and sees her watching him. He freezes.
She leans into her laced fingers. "Yes?"
He shifts and struggles to some semblance of dignity. "It's just that--" and here his voice grows quiet, "Zero has done some evil things. And that is what needs to stop." He bit his lip. "That's all."
"I agree," she says, and smiles. Roses do not suit him, not these silly symbols of profound love, of the old Britannian legacy that Charles so loves. Perhaps chrysamthemums, stained a faint, dawn-orange. Chrysamthemums are for strength. She stands. "Kururugi Suzaku."
He jumps. "Yes?" He snaps to uncertain attention, his heels together, his hands at his sides.
"Close your eyes," she instructs, stepping out from behind her desk. Uncertainty gives way to confusion, but he obeys. She hesitates and studies his face. "And stand still," she finally adds.
"Um," he says, and then she slides her hands up his jaw and he blushes again and shuts his mouth. Her fingers trace their way across his cheekbones, over the curve of his ear and through his hair, skim down to the collar of his uniform. This is the first that she has touched Japanese skin. The thought feels something like shame, but mostly just curiosity. The propaganda is so imbecilic, so obviously lies, because she thinks that his Japanese skin, his Japanese hair, all of him, Suzaku, is warm and clean and pleasant. She bites her lip and darts a look at his face: he is blushing furiously, red to his hair, but his eyes stay obediently closed. She feels along the line of his collarbone and then over the smooth edges of his chest, slides her fingers beneath his neatly pressed lapels. She can feel his heart pounding through his jacket.
"Suzaku," she says quietly. "My knight. Your princess has an order."
"Yes?" he says, his voice strangled.
She gives him a long look. His brow is furrowed in concentration, his cheeks still flushed pink. She remembers the little boy again, and she wishes with a fierce pang that things had been completely, utterly different, that she and Lelouch and Nunnally and Suzaku could have all been together in a world with no war, no politics, and the gardens would be bursting with sunshine and blossoms and fruit and a perfect, cloudless sky. That most of all, she could have known that little Japanese prince before he cut out his own heart.
"Don't let me mourn you," she says, finally. Duties, duties. "Be kind and strong and don't run away. But do not let it destroy you. Come back." She looks at her hand pressed over his heart. "Always come back."
There is a long pause, and then his hand lifts and his fingers clasp hers, his palm settling over her hand. It feels very much like she expected: a little roughened at the pads of his fingers (from a gun--from death--), and somehow a bit too warm, from anxiety or just his natural fire, his burning intensity. "Yes, Your Highness," he says quietly, and when she glances up, he's looking at her and his eyes are very serious, even though a blush still burns at his ears.
"Euphie," she corrects gently, and he smiles and ducks his head, giving a little laugh, but his eyes don't change, and she can see that he has carved her words upon his heart.
She lies awake at night and composes letters to Lelouch. She hugs her pillows close and stares into the darkness and promises him that she treasures his secret, that she cannot betray him. Not even Suzaku knows, she whispers, because she doesn't want to hurt them. She begs him to put aside his mask and assume his old title, come under Britannia's wing and change things from here, with them. Assume those charges his mother placed on his shoulders, those of a prince's duty. She swears that no one will be angry. She twists her hair around her fingers and sighs and whispers that she misses him (because she does, more than anything).
I loved you, she breathes, and closes her eyes. And I still do.
This is how Euphie wants the world to be: Lelouch and Suzaku together with her, both of them her knights at her either hand, both of them capable and clever and respected by Britannia and Japan alike. And when they are alone, there is no formality and none of them will be princess or prince or anything, just two boys and a girl who lead a sweet, simple life together. She thinks that Suzaku could probably keep Lelouch from breaking apart, that Lelouch could probably keep Suzaku from losing hope. She thinks that they could probably be happy.
(She thinks she has to hurry and create this world, before Lelouch goes so far over the edge that he cannot pull himself back, before Suzaku's disapproval narrows to hate.)
Things she remembers: the sing and crash of her sister's sword down on the practice field. Her mother's fine slippers and their mincing steps, the great train of fabric that whispered after. Her father's big hand, cupping her chin and lifting her face to the light, inspecting her as he would a prized creature, a possession. The cool gleam of his eyes and the deep rumble of his voice as he said, Royalty cannot afford the luxury of love.
And this is Euphie's most important memory. It tells her that she is in trouble, and she always will be, because at the very core of her being, before lessons in how to carry herself, how to be lovely and untouchable and a symbol of her country, how to lead and inspire, before all of those parts that make up Euphemia li Britannia, Euphie herself has always loved too much.