"You know, I think that somebody should pray that he manages to get to the Galactic Calderon safely - I mean, his poor Starseed! It's going to need a through cleansing and repowering, I'm pretty sure..."
Lloyd mumbled, hiccuping.
"You believe in the - hic - Galactic Caldron?" C.C. said. "Well, I wish I could because I'm sure gonna need it if I ever manage to actually die...but c'mon, we can all pray if we want to! Who's stopping us?"
And so they did. Nunnally wondered just why she felt she should know what a Galactic Caldron was, though...It was shining and bright and cool and warm all at once, she somehow knew, but...
And then there were the songs.
"Alright, does anybody remember this one...?"
Nunnally blinked as Lloyd began to hum a melody, martial and haunting.
"Oh! I remember that - it was one of the Soviet battle hymns, right?"
C.C. said cheerfully, sipping on a big mug of wine plus something else - Nunnally wasn't quite sure what was in it, and was a bit afraid to ask, frankly.
Kallen and Gino looked at each other, mystified. Soviet??
The melody was beautiful, though.
And so it came to pass that Charles Naoto Pendragon's body was cremated to the martial strains of 'Polyushka Polye'.
Not with any normal fire, of course - they used their powers for this kind of thing, clear clean energies, each with their own signature colors, spinning out of them and making sure that there was a clean pile of ashes were a body had once laid. And the grass below the body wasn't even scorched - Nunnally was a bit impressed in spite of herself.
And then Nina gathered the ashes into the urn, and it was over.
Well, for then, anyhow.
The woman looked up in her prison cell. Ahh, how she missed the Refrain...
But it was a good sign that she was craving the drug less and starting to miss her daughter more, she supposed.
Oh, and according to the gossip-vine, the Demon was dead. Fancy that.
But now...Hmmm. Who was that?
A weirdly familiar hoodie. A dragon tattoo on one arm, showing out of his sleeve. Red highlights in his brown hair.
"...Nao..." No, wait..."...Charles, is that you?"
The voice was familiar enough to make her tear up.
"Oh, yes. I'm sorry too, you know?"
For some reason, all she could remember now was how he kept taking the baby - oh, come on, now, the baby? - On his back when he went blasting off on his motorcycle -
"But really, Charles - Odysseus? Why Odysseus? 'Alfred' was a perfectly good name, you know?"
He smiles at her, and she realizes that he's saying goodbye.
There is a small orange cat with a strange mark on its forehead, who nods at her, then nuzzles him affectionately and tells him that she'll take him to the Calderon (the what?) properly so that he wouldn't get lost on the way. For some reason, the woman knows that the cat-things name is Shirley.
And then she wakes up, on her small prison cot. She misses Kallen and hopes she is well.
Around the same time, Odysseus U Britannia wakes up with strange memories of being a small child, riding on the back of his father's bike, being called - Alfie? Alfred? Something like that.
It's just a dream, of course. What else could it be?
It's not like Charles di Britannia could even drive one, as far as he knew. A KM was one thing, but a motorbike? And how could he avoid the bodyguards long enough to do such a thing, anyhow?
But still, it had been a good dream, strangely enough.
So he remembered it.
There is a small gravestone in a small buddhist temple, wedged in between the graveyard and the small hill next to it.
Charles Naoto Pendragon.
Sometimes called Lulu. He had a twin called Vivian (middle name Naoya) and a cousin called Henrietta Nina. He also had several very good friends and comrades. Once.
He saved the World, a lot.
And even though he did mess it up rather spectacularly, in the end... Well, he also managed to fix it. As much as it could be fixed, anyhow.
Or - a part of him did, anyway.
Because Charles had really and truly been one of the best -
And only Charles himself could defeat Charles, in the end
Nunnally hopes that by the time she dies, she would have managed to do more good then harm in the world.
It would be nice to be remembered for the good things, more then the bad.
Though she would try to do good things anyway, even if she wasn't remembered for them at all - doing good was it's own reward, in many ways, after all.
But first, there was duty.
Like - finding some way of putting that song called 'Polyushka Polye' in Lelouch vi Britannia's funeral, just for one instance. She felt that her brother would have liked that, somehow.
And so time would go on, and some things would change and some things would not. That was all right, though - Nunnally vi Britannia or Nunnally Lamprouge, she'd still been her. Nunnally, So she would continue doing that.
Even if she sometimes remembers a sketchbook, with a sketch of a girl in a wheelchair, holding a magic wand...
Nunnally looks up, and waits for the dawn.
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(Posted Wed, 05 Aug 2009 18:26)
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らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
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