[[Excerpts from old logs or drabble/dream posts]]
some sorta fairytale
"Once upon a time--forgive me, Miss Proudmoore, but old habits die hard--" here he paused, giving her the faintest of smiles before continuing, "--Once upon a time, there was a kingdom that stretched from east to west, north to south, as far as the eye could see. This kingdom held many people within it, and for the most part they were happy, and prosperous. But all was not well, for this kingdom was built upon the backs of conquered lands, and ruled by a stern and cruel king.
This king had many children from many wives, but he showed none of them any sort of love or care save for when they brought him trophies or victories over rival kingdoms. Those who were willing to step upon their own flesh and blood to receive his praises were valued; those who made themselves useful were tolerated. His youngest son, however, was neither of these, yet he spent his days in blissful ignorance of that fact. His mother, meaning well (as all mothers do), protected her children from the worst of the world, keeping the prince and his sister safe and happy inside their gilded cage.
But alas, this blissful ignorance couldn't continue forever. One fateful night, the prince's mother was brutally murdered, and when the prince called upon his father to avenge her, he was turned away. For his impudence, he was exiled to a far kingdom, reduced to naught but a pawn. For a time, he found a home there, but the neighboring kingdom soon went to war with his homeland, and was crushed. In the aftermath, the prince was thought dead.
Many years passed. The youngest son of the king grew older, living in anonymity, but he could never be truly happy with his new life, knowing the bitter truth of the world. One day, while walking through the woods, he came upon a cat caught in a hunter's trap. He felt sorry for the poor creature, and freed it from its prison. Upon release, however, the cat transformed into a beautiful girl. She was a witch, a spirit of the forest, and in gratitude to her rescuer, she said, she would grant him one wish. His mind filled with thoughts of that terrible day, and the shadow that had darkened his heart for the last decade grew even larger. He wished immediately for the chance to take revenge on his family. The witch warned him to think carefully before making his decision, but the prince was so set on vengeance that he ignored her warning.
It soon came to pass that in an effort to quell spreading rebellion, the royal family decreed that part of the lands of the conquered kingdom should be restored to their rightful people. There would even be a ceremony in celebration, with the head of the royal family in attendance. This was what the vengeful prince had been waiting for, and the night before the ceremony he crept into the room where the head lay sleeping. Whispering his mother's name, the prince lifted his dagger high, and took his bloody revenge. Satisfied, he crept back home, and slept more soundly than he had in years. The next day, he awoke to the sounds of mourning. Everywhere he went that day, the people wore black and wept. Confused, he asked a shopkeeper why everyone seemed so sad. 'It's the princess,' the shopkeeper sorrowfully replied. 'The youngest princess was here for the ceremony, but last night someone murdered the poor girl. Now she's dead, and our lands will be forever denied us.' The prince, unknowingly, had killed his own sister. He was so determined to take revenge that he'd blinded himself, despite the witch's warning, and he had indeed taken his revenge on his 'family'-the one person alive he actually considered to be family."
Here he sat silent for a moment, before abruptly smiling. "I apologize, Miss Proudmoore. Such a story isn't anywhere near appropriate for this setting. Please, forgive me." The smile felt forced, and he knew that there was a chance she could see that as well. Lifting his wineglass, he drank, avoiding her eyes.
In Which Memory is Perhaps Embelllished
"Pawn to e-3."
It was a typical opening move. The innocuous pawn, taking one step forward. Simple, basic, and the key to victory. One could always tell from the opponent's reaction to the opening gambit exactly how the game was going to play out. A child's voice responded excitedly.
"Pawn to e-5!"
Less than ten minutes later, the match was over. The child was left studying the board intently, not crying over his loss, but analyzing the defeat. Learning how to overcome it. Schneizel had high hopes for him, if he kept applying himself like that. The door to the study eased shut behind him with a soft click as he left the child to his studies.
"Couldn't you have let him win? He's only five, you know." That piercing pair of lavender eyes looked disapproving, arms crossed in front of her drawing a line in the sand. Schneizel merely smiled, spreading his hands before him in a gesture of peace.
"What would that teach him? Better he learns how to win than how to accept charity. He'll get little enough of that in this life."
...
One year later. Another chess game. The same opening gambit.
"Pawn to e-3."
"Pawn to a-6!"
This game lasts almost thirty minutes before the child yet again faces defeat. As before, he refuses to give in to the usual impulses one his age would feel--tears, or perhaps a tantrum--and instead stares down that chessboard with a fierce determination glowing in his violet eyes. One can almost hear the wheels turning, and Schneizel can't resist. Leaning over his half-sibling's chair, he begins to reset the chessboard, playing back through the match's moves with impeccable memory as he illustrates every potential move.
Chess is important to a young noble. It is more important than foreign affairs, more important than history or etiquette or fencing. Chess shows them how to survive in an uncaring world that follows rules as ancient as time. Chess gives them the skills of command necessary to rule, teaches them to deal with the loss of subjects. How to accept defeat, and how to always plan ten moves ahead. Chess is life.
"He hardly talks about anyone but you, you know," Marianne says with a teasing smile. "I'm only his mother, not halfway as interesting as an older brother." Schneizel bows before her, reaching for her hand to press a kiss to its back, his own words just as teasing.
"Oh, he may not say anything, but a mother is the most important person in a young boy's life. I may be a star in his sky, but you are the sun itself."
She laughs, and he smiles--this is how the royal game is played.
...
This game is different. It's been ten years since the last time they played. Part of him knows the setting wasn't this study. Knows that at the time, he had no idea who he was facing. And yet....this is what is comfortable, familiar. His mind trying to establish a playing field he knows. Between the two of them on the antique cherry table, a chessboard is set, pieces ready for the game to begin. He reaches for the customary pawn, but the piece in his fingers isn't the cold ivory he remembers. He looks down at the warm, living creature in his hand, places it carefully back down one square forward.
"Euphemia to e-3."
His opponent counters this with a knight, disregarding the row of pawns entirely. "Kallen to f-6." The redheaded miniature wields a switchblade, a wicked-looking thing despite its size. He decides to sacrifice a pawn to satisfy his curiosity.
"Kanon to g-4." The pink-haired aide, ever trusting, marches forward to his doom. Blind faith in one's commanders, loyalty without question--what more could one ask for?
"Kallen, take g-4." With sudden ferocity, the Black Knight darts across the board, switchblade thrusting itself over and over into the yielding flesh of the Kanon-piece's body. Bright red blood spatters the black-and-white of the chessboard. Schneizel feels an uncustomary shudder crawling over his body. His eyes tear themselves away from the gruesome death throes of his pawn and lock with his opponents--too late, he reminds himself of the danger inherent in just such an action. The face he sees is contorted with fiendish glee, and with a sickened feeling he looks back to their board to see nothing but chaos. The Zero-King has advanced upon his Euphemia-Pawn, now surrounded with the corpses of Pawns both Black and White, covered in blood as she guns down yet another innocent Rook. She pauses in her massacre, looking up at Schneizel's horrified face and smiling as Zero lifts a gun and puts it to the back of her head, pulling the trigger. He cannot look away. And try as he might, he cannot stop this game, cannot stop playing, and as he looks down his hands are covered in blood, the same blood that smears the board and drips slowly down the sides of the table, pooling to wet the carpet, more blood than could have possibly been in those tiny fragile bodies. And now the Suzaku-Knight is holding Euphemia-Pawn in his arms and weeping, and now Zero-King is sweeping his green-haired queen into a waltz, treading on the fallen bodies of comrades and enemies alike, and where is his king?
Schneizel frantically scans the board, and sees--himself. The White King. Unmarked by blood or gore, he walks among the dead, wheeling his Queen before him. Her hands are covered in blood as they clutch her scepter. Her unseeing eyes imagine fields of flowers, blind to the corpses at her feet. His King-self looks back at him, smiling that smile so very familiar to him. It speaks with his own voice.
"We are as Gods among men. What is a little bloodshed to a God? The blood of a thousand, the blood of a million--a small price to pay for peace."
The wheels of her chair, the heels of his boots crush the face of a purple-haired woman he once loved. She moans in pain, a sob choking from her bullet-ridden chest. Flinching away from the board, he looks up at his opponent once more.
"I forfeit."
His opponent shakes his head, laughing. "You can't. There are rules, you know. We must play this to the end."
"No. I can forfeit, I can stop it, you can stop it, just stop. Stop it, Lelouch! You've won!" His voice is uncharacteristically emotional; some far-off part of him whispers that it must be a dream. He'd never say these things, otherwise. Lelouch doesn't seem to hear him, just keeps laughing and laughing and Schneizel can feel the blood pooling around his ankles and he still can't move and he knows that it's going to keep rising until he drowns in it, and he can still hear the sounds of the dying calling out to him for salvation and he knows that he's not a God, he's nothing but a man and a poor excuse for one at that, and oh God that's Cornelia and Euphemia and he's the one that made Lelouch like this, why did he ever teach him this cruel, cruel game--
Schneizel wakes suddenly to the soft light of false dawn, heart racing. He never dreamed. Never. What the hell was that, some kind of drug-induced hallucination? Brilliant blue eyes dart around the room, searching for familiar objects and finding none. The room is bare, strange. It is still not home, not familiar, though he's been here for weeks now. Pulling a handkerchief from his bedside table to mop the sweat from his face, he hears a clattering as his iBerry falls to the floor. A green light on the side of it is blinking--perhaps an incoming call? He flips it open, watches as it replays the last few moments of his dream. The sight causes him to flinch, snapping it shut and throwing it away from him like a poisonous snake. This isn't where he should be. The situation is far too critical, matters too delicate for him to be gone for long. Why was he here? And these dreams...they were no help at all. He sighs, sliding from bed to retrieve his phone, placing it again on the nightstand. It would be too much to hope for no one to notice this dream.
(K)nightmares and dreamworlds
"In the beginning, there was nothingness."
He sees nothing. It is not black, for black does not yet exist. It isn't silent, because silence has yet to be created. It is neither cold nor hot, vast nor miniscule. It isn't anything.
"Before the creation, before the separation of being and nonbeing, a vast and empty nothingness. Then, the universe was born."
An explosion of sudden being, flashes of colors he's never known and shapes he's never seen, because the laws of physics have yet to exist--did you know the first thing to be created was pain--
"The agony of childbirth tore the silence apart, ripped the nothingness to shreds and forced it to BE. The nothing became sky, became earth, became stars and grass and man."
He can see the world, see himself as a child, see the green grass of his home and the teeming cities of Britannia, see the streets filled with people living lives full of their own dreams and hopes and he knows--
"But it knew that this was not its true form. This was not meant to be."
--knows that deep down inside, no one's really happy, not a single damn one of them is satisfied with their lives, each of them knowing something's wrong, knowing there's something missing and trying all the while to fill the holes with something to stop the dull ache of a missing limb--
"That's why, forever after, every living thing deep down in their heart of hearts longs to be nothing again."
Masks, all of them wearing blank white masks to hide the nothingness underneath. He sees two people-shaped masses of nothing in bed together, straining together to make their nothing feel like love. He looks in the mirror, sees a mask that hides the nothing in his heart, and he knows that that's all his skin really is, a mask hiding the nothing you can see in his eyes, and it would scare him, if he could be scared. All these people, all these masks, covered in an oil slick of happiness and devotion and fear and cowardice and hope, all just hiding the true nature of things--
No. This is what Charles dreamed. This is what the Emperor wanted to make reality out to be. This is what he tried to bring about, before his dreams caught up and crushed him to dust. This is not his world. He never wanted this. He never dreamed of this, any of it. He hoped for a better world, a peaceful world. An end to the fighting and the hurting. It was true--people did so much because they were scared of nothingness. Scared of forgetting and not feeling and of ending. They hurt because to love would mean to risk, and they would rather lose their lives than their hearts. He saw the shootings in the Shinjuku ghetto, children mowed down helplessly. He saw the E.U. front, lines locked in battle for as long as he'd been alive, fighting on ground soaked in the blood of a thousand thousand soldiers. Saw Euphie fire the first shot on that fateful day, and saw Zero take her life with a single bullet. It had to end. All of it, it had to end. And he, Schneizel el Britannia, would be the one to end it.
And now, something new appeared in his mind. Knightmare frames in the air, sides drawn. On the one side, his Damocles, on the other, Lelouch's Avalon. An invisible chessboard drawn between them. This was where he'd end things, end Lelouch's bloody reign. His climb to power was built on the bodies of innocents, and while his own hands weren't free of blood, at least he had peace of mind, knowing that he never killed for the sake of killing, never killed in the name of power. Unlike Lelouch, he never wanted the title of Emperor, just the chance to save the world from itself, the power to stop all this--
***Power. Lelouch had a different kind, an unholy kind, and what was he seeing now? This was Damocles, the escape shuttle, this was himself, speaking to Lelouch over the vidscreen...he could hear the words being spoken, tinny and far away.
"Enough, kill me. But FLEIA will kill you as well. Let us create world peace with our li--"
And suddenly that was Lelouch's hand on his shoulder and the sudden sickening realization that he'd lost, that for the first time ever, Lelouch had outsmarted him, and there was no hope for the world, that black had the checkmate and all was lost, lost, lost--
"That is why I shall give you a present," the vidscreen continued, and he realized it was only a recording, Lelouch's most ingenious gambit yet, and as his eyes inevitably rose to meet Lelouch's, his little brother's cold voice speaking, "You are to serve--"
---