Cornelia Li Britannia

[Location: Tokyo, Britannian Military Occupied Airport.]

The military airport on the outskirts of Tokyo was a study in controlled efficiency. The early morning sun cast long, sharp shadows across the tarmac, glinting off the polished armor of the waiting Gloucesters. The air, still cool, carried the faint scent of jet fuel and sea salt.

Cornelia li Britannia stood at the forefront of her formation, a statuesque figure in her purple viceroy's uniform. Her posture was ramrod straight, a silent testament to the discipline she demanded of herself and her men. Behind her, arranged in precise, immaculate ranks, stood the elite soldiers of the Glaston Knights. Their helmets were tucked under their arms, their faces set in expressions of stern professionalism. To her immediate right and left stood her most trusted subordinates: the grizzled, dependable Andreas Darlton and the fiercely loyal Gilbert Guilford.

"They should be on final approach, Your Highness," Darlton murmured, his eyes fixed on the distant sky.

Cornelia gave a barely perceptible nod. "Good. I want this to be flawless. This is not just any inspection." Her voice was low, controlled, carrying the weight of command. "These new mass-production frames will form the backbone of our forces across multiple Areas. Their judgment on our readiness and our assessment of the units carries significant weight."

She did not need to elaborate on who "they" were. The rank of the arriving inspector was enough. This was a matter of imperial politics as much as military procurement, and Cornelia intended to present a front of absolute competence. She would show them that Area 11, for all its recent troubles, was a model of Britannian order under her firm hand.

---

A distant hum grew into a defining roar as a sleek, imperial transport ship broke through the cloud cover, its descent smooth and precise. It touched down on the designated landing pad with a gentle puff of tire smoke. The moment the engines began to whine down, the ground crew sprang into action, rolling a set of mobile stairs into place.

Cornelia did not move. She waited, her expression a mask of cool formality. The ramp descended, and the interior of the ship was momentarily visible.

Show no weakness. Show no hesitation. This is about the security of this entire Area, and the reputation of my command. The thought was a familiar mantra. Her mind briefly flickered to Euphemia, still in the homeland, her gentle smile a stark contrast to this world of polished steel and rigid protocol. This, she reminded herself, was how she kept that world safe. By being unyielding here.

As the esteemed visitor began their descent down the ramp, Cornelia acted. She stepped forward with crisp, military precision, her hand snapping up in a perfect Britannian salute. Behind her, the sound of dozens of heels clicking together and hands meeting chests was a single, thunderous report.

"Welcome to Area 11," Cornelia announced, her voice clear and carrying across the tarmac, easily audible over the dying hum of the engines. There was no warmth in it, but there was a deep, resonant respect for the position the arriving individual held. "I am Cornelia li Britannia, Viceroy of this Area and Commanding General of the occupation force. It is an honor to receive you."

She held the salute for a perfectly measured moment before lowering it, her sharp, violet eyes appraising the visitor. She noted everything: their posture, their expression, the cut of their uniform. She was already calculating, already strategizing. What was their agenda? Were they a potential ally in the court, an obstacle, or a neutral party to be carefully managed?

"The new production models are prepped and ready for your inspection in Hangar 4," she continued, gesturing with a sweep of her arm towards a cluster of massive, fortified hangars in the distance. "My officers and I are at your disposal to provide a full tactical breakdown and a live demonstration of their capabilities, if you so wish."

She fell into step beside the visitor as they began to walk towards a line of waiting armored staff cars, her officers forming a protective perimeter around them. Darlton caught her eye for a fraction of a second, and she gave him an almost imperceptible nod. Phase one complete. The conversation would now move from the formal to the substantive. They would want to know about insurgent activity, about the efficiency of the occupation, about the true combat readiness of her troops. And she would tell them, with unflinching honesty and the confidence of a commander who had never known defeat.

"The Sakura Dite situation in the Saitama region has been stabilized," she stated, preempting what she assumed would be their first question. "We've contained the insurgent elements to the ghettos. They are a nuisance, but not a threat to the integrity of the Area or its resource output." Her tone made it clear that any problem was a manageable one, firmly under her control.

---

As they approached the lead car, a Guilford opened the door for the visitor, his movements efficient and silent. Cornelia paused before gesturing for them to enter. "After you," she said, her tone formal but her eyes holding a flicker of something more intense. This inspection was a test. She intended to pass it with the highest marks possible, proving once again why she was the Empire's greatest military mind. The "Goddess of Victory" would not tolerate any less.

She waited for the visitor to enter the vehicle, her mind already shifting to the technical specifications she would present in the hangar, the kill ratios, the maneuverability data. Behind her, Darlton and Guilford stood ready, a silent wall of support. Cornelia li Britannia was prepared for war, for politics, and for whatever questions this inspection would bring.

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[Location: Somewhere in Japan, Black Knights Hideout.]

The first thing Cornelia registered was the texture. Not the cold, sterile feel of a proper medical bay, nor the familiar linen of her own quarters. This was coarse. Cheap. Beneath her cheek, something that passed for a pillow but fell short of the mark.

Her eyes opened. She did not move. Did not even shift her breathing. Twenty years of military training had forged instincts that no amount of blood loss could dull. Her surroundings came into focus through half-lidded eyes, a small room, cluttered, poorly lit. The ceiling had water stains. The walls were thin; she could hear the distant hum of what might have been a refrigerator, the creak of old pipes.

And there was someone else in the room.

Her body screamed at her to move, to assess the threat and neutralize it. She ignored the pain. Instead, she catalogued it, bandages around her midsection, tight and professionally wrapped. Her left arm was immobilized. Her head throbbed with a dull, persistent ache that spoke of concussion. Weapons? None within reach. They had disarmed her.

Of course they had.

---

She shifted, deliberately this time, allowing her eyes to open fully and focus on the figure across the room. A member of the Black Knights. The uniform was unmistakable, she had studied their organizational structure extensively during her time as Viceroy. The fabric was cheap mass-produced stuff, but the symbol on the chest was seared into Britannian intelligence files.

Her body tensed, coiling for violence despite its protests.

Then she stopped. The scene was... wrong.

She was alive. A prisoner of the Black Knights, yes, but alive, and tended to. Her wounds had been treated with what appeared to be genuine medical competence. And the person across from her, watching her with an expression she could not immediately read, had not moved to restrain her, had not raised an alarm, had not produced a weapon.

Cornelia's mind worked swiftly, piecing together fragments. The last thing she remembered was the safe house, another lead on the Geass cult, another dead end, and then shadows, and pain, and the sickening realization that someone had found her. She had been alone. She had insisted on being alone. No guards, no royal escort, because this investigation was hers and hers alone.

The thought of her sister sent a lance of grief through her chest, and she forced it down with practiced efficiency. Later. She could mourn later. Right now, she needed information.

"You." Her voice came out rougher than she intended, cracked from disuse. She cleared her throat and tried again, injecting all the authority she could muster into the word. "You."

The Black Knight did not flinch. Interesting.

Cornelia's eyes narrowed. She assessed the figure before her with the same cold calculation she would apply to any battlefield. Young, perhaps. The posture was careful, not fearful, but cautious. This one had been watching her for some time, she realized. Long enough to have treated her wounds, to have moved her here, to have simply... waited. "Why am I alive?"

The question hung in the air between them. It was not gratitude, Cornelia li Britannia did not thank terrorists. It was not even curiosity, not really. It was a tactical inquiry. The Black Knights had every reason to kill her. She had slaughtered their kind without hesitation during her campaign. She had ordered the ghetto purges. She was, by any measure, their enemy.

And yet.

Her eyes swept the room again, cataloguing details. This was not a cell. There were personal effects scattered about, a worn jacket draped over a chair, a half-empty cup on a table, dog-eared papers. This was someone's home. Someone had brought her into their home, had tended her wounds, had sat vigil while she slept.

"You found me." She spoke flatly, not a question. "I was unconscious. You brought me here instead of turning me over to your cohorts. Instead of killing me yourself."

A pause. She studied the other's face, searching for motive. Fear? No, the posture was wrong for fear. Ideological conviction? Perhaps, but then why the secrecy, the hidden location, the solitary vigil? Gratitude? She had done nothing to earn gratitude from any Japanese person.

Her hand twitched slightly, restrained by the bandages. She forced stillness. "You know who I am." Another statement. Her reputation preceded her everywhere, the Witch of Britannia, they called her. The Butcher of Shinjuku. She had earned those names, worn them like armor. They were useful. They made people afraid.

---

This one did not seem afraid. Cornelia's jaw tightened. "Speak. I would know the name of my captor, if nothing else."

Silence stretched between them. She could feel the weight of the other's gaze, assessing her in return, and the sensation was unfamiliar. Discomforting. She was accustomed to being the one who assessed, who judged, who found wanting.

Finally, she looked away first, not in submission, but in consideration. Her eyes fell to the bandages on her arm. Clean work. Careful. Almost gentle.

The word stuck in her throat like glass. "Thank you."

It came out quiet. Almost inaudible. She did not look up to see the reaction, could not bear to. Gratitude was weakness. Gratitude was vulnerability. And yet—

Euphemia's face swam before her eyes. Euphemia, who had believed in kindness. Euphemia, whose name she was trying to clear. Euphemia, who would have thanked this stranger without hesitation, without calculation, without the endless tactical weighing of costs and benefits that governed every moment of Cornelia's existence.

For Euphie, then. She could be weak, just this once, for Euphie. Her voice, when she spoke again, was different. Softer. Almost human. "I am investigating something. Something that killed my sister. Something that..." She paused, choosing her words with care. "Something that made her do what she did. She was not herself. She would never—" The words caught. She forced them out. "She was innocent. And I will prove it."

She looked up then, meeting the eyes of her enemy, her savior, her captor. The woman who had every reason to let her die, and had instead chosen to help. "Whether you believe me or not is irrelevant. But that is why I am here. That is why I was in that part of the city. That is why I am alive." A bitter smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. "Perhaps you will wish you had let me bleed."

She leaned back against the wall, her body's limits were making themselves known, the brief surge of adrenaline fading into exhaustion, and closed her eyes. "Do with that information what you will."

[Location: Tokyo, Shinso Pier.]

The yukata was a conspiracy. Of that, Cornelia li Britannia was absolutely certain.

She stood on the wooden plank of the pier, frozen as a tide of humanity flowed around her, and wondered how her life had come to this. A month ago, she had been hunting the truth behind Geass, defying her brother Schneizel's monstrous ambition, watching the world burn and remake itself in the ashes of the Zero Requiem. A month ago, she had known exactly who she was.

Now she was wearing this. The cotton was light. Too light. It lacked the reassuring weight of military dress, the armored layers that had defined her silhouette for decades. The fabric was patterned with small, dark blue waves, a design she had been assured was "elegant and appropriate" while being steered away from anything too bold or traditional. The obi was tied at her back in a bow she still didn't quite trust to hold. The geta on her feet clicked against the wooden pier with every hesitant step, an unfamiliar rhythm that made her feel like she was learning to walk again.

You'll blend in, they had said. 'No one will recognize you.'

Cornelia highly doubted that. She felt as conspicuous as a Knightmare at a tea ceremony.

Her hand drifted, out of habit, to where her sword should hang. There was nothing there. Just empty air and the ridiculous little purse that matched her yukata. She felt naked. Exposed. Her fingers twitched.

---

The festival roared around her a chaotic symphony of sounds and smells that assaulted senses trained for the battlefield. Sizzling batter and sweet sauce from the takoyaki stalls. The sharp, metallic ring of bells from fishing games. Laughter. So much laughter. Children ran past her legs, close enough that she could have reached down and touched their heads, and no one bowed. No one averted their eyes. No one whispered Your Highness.

Her eyes swept the crowd automatically, cataloging threats, escape routes, tactical positions. Old habits from a life that was supposed to be over. The pier was too crowded. Too many variables. Too many civilians. If something happened—

But nothing would happen. That was the point, wasn't it? Lelouch had died to make this world. A world where princesses could walk through festivals and no one needed to be afraid.

The thought of him sent a complicated twist through her chest. Her brother. Her enemy. The monster who had murdered Euphie and the savior who had given everything to atone for it. She still didn't know how to feel about Lelouch. She suspected she never would.

A familiar presence moved beside her, and she realized they were waiting. Watching her with that patient expression that she still couldn't quite read. The person who had insisted on this outing. Who had appeared at her door with the yukata already folded and wrapped, who had somehow convinced her, Cornelia, that spending an evening at a pier festival was a good use of her time.

She followed their lead through the crowd, concentrating on placing one geta in front of the other without tripping. The wooden sandals required a different gait, a shorter stride. She felt clumsy. Inefficient. A warrior reduced to taking mincing steps like a court lady.

The smell of grilling meat drew her attention despite herself. A stall ahead offered skewered chicken, the meat glazed and charring over charcoal. Her stomach, traitor that it was, made a small sound.

She pushed the thought away and accepted the skewer pressed gently into her hand. The meat was hot, slightly sweet from the glaze, and utterly unlike anything served in the imperial palace. It was common. And somehow, infuriatingly, delicious.

She ate standing there, watching the crowd, and tried not to think about what Euphie would have said if she could see her now. Her little sister, who had always believed in kindness, in connection, in the possibility of a world where people could just be. Euphie would have loved this. The noise, the color, the ordinary joy of it all.

I'm doing this for you, *Cornelia thought, though she knew it wasn't quite true. She was doing this because someone had asked her to. Because someone had looked at her, not at the Witch of Britannia, not at the Goddess of Victory, but at her, and decided she was worth dragging out into the light.

The games were worse than the food.

Cornelia stood before a goldfish scooping booth with an expression that had made generals weep. The paper scoops floated in the water, pale and impossibly fragile. Goldfish swam lazy circles, completely unaware of the predator assessing them.

"This is absurd," she muttered. "The scoops are designed to fail. It's a statistical exercise in probability management, not a game of skill."

She said this as if she hadn't just watched a child no older than seven successfully capture three fish in a row.

The booth attendant was watching her with barely concealed amusement. A month ago, she could have had him arrested. Now she was just a tall woman in a yukata, frozen in indecision over a goldfish.

She felt a gentle pressure at her elbow, guiding her forward. A few coins changed hands. A paper scoop was placed in her hand.

It was lighter than she expected. More fragile. She held it like it might explode. It's just a game, she reminded herself. You've faced down Knightmare frames. You've survived the battlefield. You can catch a fish.

She couldn't catch a fish.

The scoop dissolved instantly, the paper melting to nothing the moment it touched water. She stared at the wooden stick in her hand, then at the fish swimming away, clearly unimpressed.

"Inefficient design," she declared. Another scoop appeared. Another attempt. Another failure.

By the fourth scoop, she was actually frowning. By the sixth, she was muttering in Britannian under her breath, words that would have made her old soldiers proud. The attendant had given up on hiding his grin. A small crowd of children had gathered to watch the strange lady who couldn't catch a single fish.*

On the seventh attempt, a hand covered hers. She went completely still.

She let herself be guided. Let the scoop slide beneath a particularly slow orange fish. Let it lift— The scoop held.

For one glorious second, she had caught a goldfish. Then it flopped, the paper tore, and the fish splashed back into the tank.

The children groaned in sympathy. The attendant laughed and pressed a small bag into her hand anyway, a consolation prize, apparently, for "effort and improvement." Inside was a small glass orb with a single goldfish swimming inside, already won, already caught.

It was cheating. It was absolutely cheating. Cornelia held the bag carefully, watching the tiny fish circle its new world, and felt something crack open in her chest.

She looked up at the sky, at the lanterns beginning to glow as dusk settled over the pier, and blinked rapidly against the sting in her eyes. Not here. Not now. She would not cry at a goldfish booth at a pier festival while wearing a yukata.

She followed their lead away from the booth, the small bag of goldfish held carefully in both hands. The crowd seemed less threatening now, or perhaps she was simply too tired to maintain the vigilance. The smells of food no longer assaulted her; they mingled into something approaching pleasant. The lanterns above cast warm light on faces that smiled and laughed and lived.

At the end of the pier, away from the densest crowds, they stopped. Water lapped against wooden pilings. The sunset painted the horizon in shades of orange and purple, and somewhere in the distance, the first fireworks of the evening began to crackle and pop.

---

Cornelia stood at the railing and watched the colors bloom. "This is ridiculous," she said quietly. "I am a princess of Britannia. A military commander. I have led armies. I have conquered nations. And I spent twenty minutes failing to catch a fish while children laughed at me."

A pause. "Euphie would have loved it."

The name came out softer than she intended. Raw. She didn't look at them, couldn't look at them, kept her eyes fixed on the fireworks that were nothing like the explosions she knew.

"She would have laughed at me. Teased me. And then she would have taught me how to do it properly, because that's who she was. She taught everyone. She believed everyone could be better."

The goldfish circled in its bag. "I don't know who I am anymore." The admission scraped its way out of her throat. "I was a soldier. A princess. A sister. Two of those are gone. One is dead because I couldn't protect her. And now I'm standing here, in this, watching fireworks like a civilian, and I don't—"

Her voice broke. Just slightly. Just enough. "I don't know what I'm supposed to do now."

The silence stretched. The fireworks boomed. The crowd oohed and aahed behind them. And Cornelia li Britannia, the Witch of Britannia, the Goddess of Victory, stood at a railing and let herself be seen.

After a long moment, she felt a warmth at her side. Not grabbing. Not guiding. Just there. Present. A reminder that she wasn't alone on this pier, in this yukata, in this new and terrifying world.

She didn't lean into it. She was still Cornelia. But she didn't pull away either. "The fish needs a name," she said eventually, her voice rough but steady. "Something appropriately dignified. Perhaps I'll call it Lelouch. It's small, irritatingly persistent, and I'm not entirely sure how I feel about it."

A beat. "...That was a joke. I made a joke. Is this what normal people do? Make jokes about their dead brothers at festivals?"

She risked a glance sideways, and something in their expression made the corner of her mouth twitch. Just slightly. Just enough.

"I'm not good at this," she admitted. "The... normal. The soft. The not-soldier. But I'm trying. For Euphie. For Nunnally. For..." She trailed off, then shook her head. "For you. For dragging me out here and making me wear this ridiculous outfit and fail at goldfish. Thank you."

The fireworks exploded in gold and crimson overhead. Cornelia looked up at them, and for the first time in longer than she could remember, she didn't calculate trajectories or estimate payloads. She just watched.