Code Geass: Youngest of Knights (1/1)
Title: Youngest of Knights (1/1)
Fandom: Code Geass
Author: blahchiharu
Pairing: Gino/Anya
Rating: G?
wordcount: 2237
Summary: A boy of many moods meets a girl with few. Abandoned dresses, apple trees, knightmares, and even operation!CupidDay couldn’t tear them apart. Anya/Gino and Knight of the Rounds fic.
Anya meets Gino at age thirteen. She’s crawling out of her stockings while thrashing at the laces of her corset when a blonde boy abruptly bursts into the room. He’s too consumed with outrunning the guards in the hallway to notice her presence. Moments later, the boy spots her and falls on the ground, a series of incoherent babbles coming out of his mouth, “you-what-sorry-I-he-I.”
“Quiet.” Anya hisses as she steps into a pair of shorts. “I don’t want more people to come in.”
“What are you doing?” Gino continues a few seconds later, glancing at the discarded dress on the floor.
“Leaving,” she mutters quietly, patting her side pockets. “Gone?” Anya pauses upon fishing out the keys to her Sutherand. She then proceeds to open the curtains to the sewing room and crawl out of the window, stopping only when the boy pulls her backwards.
“Are you crazy?” He stares, mouth open. “This is the second floor!”
“My knightmare is parked right below us,” she says absentmindedly. “I can jump into it.”
“Oh…” Gino closes his mouth slightly. “Nevertheless, it’s dangerous. A lady shouldn’t be jumping out of windows, especially not from a ceremony honoring her elder brother, Miss Alstreim.”
“Third brother,” she replies slowly, looking up at the tall blonde with little expression on her face.
“Third brother to be knighted, I got it.” Gino nods, starting to pick up on the girl’s short responses. “So where are you going?”
“Away from here,” Anya says, taking a look at the classy furniture and the large casement. Her outfit stands out amongst the Victorian furnishings and the estate itself.
Gino follows her glance out of the window. It takes a few seconds for him to understand the girl. “Yeah,” he grins at her. “Yeah, I’m going places too.”
Anya is no different as a knight than she is as the daughter of a noble. Offensively quiet and sometimes borderline rude, she spends most of her time watching Gino. Everyone watches Gino, but in the end, the blonde boy would throw his hair aside and bid the ladies goodbye before turning to Anya. “Come on,” he would then proceed to grab her hand and lead her elsewhere in The Knight’s Academy.
“We’ve been here before,” she says when he takes her to the abandoned path behind the academy one day. Gino had brought them here last week before getting a bad case of poison ivy from frolicking in the grass.
“Yesterday I found an apple tree back there,” he says, busy hacking away the tall weeds with a rolled up scroll -the assignment for Professor Maldini’s class- with a smirk. “Hurry up or we’re gonna get caught!”
Anya follows him wordlessly. The designer shoes her mother ordered for her uniform is botched with mud patches by the time they arrive at the said tree. She glances up as Gino begins to climb up the brittle branches. “You’ll fall,” she declares, although not quite sure of what she would do in that case.
“Live a little, Anya!” He laughs, arms wrapped around the upper tree trunk.
“I am living,” she mutters as an apple falls on her head. She looks up to find a shower of apples littering the ground.
All the while, Gino plants his foot firmly on two separate branches as he reaches for the farthest apple. “Catch,” he grins before throwing another one at Anya. “Smile a little for me, hmm? I got the reddest one for you!”
Anya kneels down wordlessly and begins to pick the apples up.
Gino has a habit of stumbling into the wrong room. He returns from a ball late one night and manages to wake Anya up by crawling into her bed at 4am. Tucked under the blonde’s arms, Anya didn’t have a chance to respond before Gino had fallen asleep. She wakes the next morning to find her comforter on the ground.
“Morning!” Gino grins, busy twirling a strand of pink hair in one hand. “You sleep a lot!”
“You don’t sleep enough,” she says, pointing at his abandoned jacket on the ground. “Nonette will get ideas.”
“If only thoughts could kill,” the blonde laughs, tightening his hold around her waist. “You’re so small!”
“You’re big.” Anya raises an eyebrow, her left hand reaching for the nightstand. She listens as he rambles about all the eligible girls he met, freeing up one hand from under her to exaggerate his point.
“And then I was introduced to princess Euphie’s knight! She left Area 11 for a conference here, and was apparently guilted into attending the ball by the fifth princess! Anyways, her kni-” He stops mid-speech when the shutter goes off, blinking rapidly. “What was that for?”
“Memories,” Anya says while setting her diary back on the nightstand.
Their third assignment together goes horribly wrong. It takes the combined efforts of Monica, Nonette, and Gino to push the enemy forces back while Mordred lies on the ground, limbs disfigured from the last attack. Anya’s escape lever refuses go off as she watches the battle from the ground, hand grasped tightly on her uniform.
“I told you to check it!” Gino blows up at the head of maintenance later, fists tight. It’s the loudest anyone has heard him yell.
“It was a technical difficulty, let it go,” Nonette sighs as she wraps an arm protectively around Anya’s waist. “How’s your hand?”
The girl frowns, pink locks disheveled from the bone-crushing hug the Knight of Three had pulled her into earlier. Her palms are burnt from the electrical glitch in Mordred’s system that had overheated the controls. She looks up when Gino kneels down in front of her, fingers gliding from her arm to her wrist.
“I’m sorry,” he says, bringing her bandaged hands to his face. “I should have seen that move coming. I should have had your back.” He kisses her palm lightly. “Forgive me?”
Anya nods until the blonde finally lets go.
Suzaku enters the Round soon after Anya moves up to the Knight of Six.
“Please take care of me,” the newcomer says when he moves into the knight’s quarters. Unfortunately, Gino takes the request personally.
“I think Anya is the only one who can put up with your insanity,” Bismark comments when Gino is busy dumping cereal into Suzaku’s milk. The Knights of Three and Six share a look before Gino goes back to emptying the box while Anya stirs with a metal fork.
“Eat up!” The blonde declares happily, shoving the bowl at the Japanese boy. He offers a peace sign and lifts Anya’s left arm in hopes that she will do the same. “We made porridge! That’s what you like to eat for breakfast, right?”
“It’s a bowl of skim milk with crap cornflakes,” Nonette adds from behind her newspaper. “No amount of sogginess will make it better.”
“It’s porridge!” The Knight of Three insists.
“I’m used to eating European food,” Suzaku smiles awkwardly.
“Are you going to disappoint this poor child right here?!” The blonde gasps offensively, arms wrapped around Anya. He whispers, “Try to make a sad face” into her ear, only to have her shove his head aside with one hand.
“I-“ Suzaku frowns and looks down at the cereal with horror. “Of course not,” he stops when Anya picks the bowl up.
“What are you doing?!” Gino half-shrieks when the girl dumps the milk into the kitchen sink. “What about our masterpiece?”
“I’m bored,” Anya decides before pulling out her diary once more. She snaps the lid open and abruptly takes a picture of Suzaku’s confused look.
The Japanese boy advances quickly in status, so no one is surprised when he calls for a challenge match with Nonette a few months later.
“I think I’ll join in the commotion too,” Gino decides one day as he submits his papers for the match. “Do you think I can do it?” He asks, nodding towards the tall man sitting in the front seat.
“It’ll be an interesting match,” Anya replies.
Suzaku defeats Nonette and moves up in number once again. Gino’s match lasts considerably longer, the blonde refusing to admit defeat until Tristin ran out of energy filters, even after Bismarck crushed the Knightmare’s right arm. “There’s no surprise there,” Anya hears one of the bystanders say. “Lord Waldstein is, after all, The Knight of One.”
“You did well,” Monica offers, but Gino’s hands remain tightly fisted. The boy has never taken defeat well.
He crawls into her bed again that night, mouth wound tightly shut when she turns around to face him. “I missed that opening,” he says. “I should’ve struck him on the right, but I was too distracted. I should have-”
“You were good,” Anya cuts in. “Bismarck would’ve countered it.”
“Did I look good out there?” He asks, tangling his hand into her smaller one.
“Charming,” She nods.
“Ha,” Gino laughs. “You little liar. That’s good, though. I taught you well.” He falls asleep quickly that night, never once letting go of Anya’s hand.
“The new viceroy is very special to me,” Suzaku tells them during the flight’s final check. “She’s been a constant in my life,” he pauses. “And the younger sister of a friend.”
“He means Prince Lelouch,” Anya mentions offhandedly, as if Gino hasn’t just spent the last few hours spewing out conspiracy theories in relation to Suzaku’s “friend” (read: lover, ex-lover, codename, boy toy, sparring partner -“you realize that’s you, right?” Nonette snorts somewhere along the way-, etc.)
“Who’s that?” Gino stares, setting his pen down. He had stopped writing the list long ago, opting to doodle stick figures of Suzaku and the other Knights of Round on his paper instead.
“Here,” She shoves her portable diary in front of the blonde’s seat; the display flashing a photo of the 11th prince at a young age.
“You’re the only one who would dare to snap an unauthorized picture of Prince Clovis’s paintings,” Gino says after a while.
“There was no sign prohibiting it,” Anya replies simply, opening up another browser on her device.
“While you’re online,” Gino insists, “Check my official fan club site, will you? I’m the one that bought you this upgraded version, after all.”
“You bought it because you sat on her old one,” Lloyd comments from the doorway, where he is busy ordering Cecile around.
Anya looks out the window and wonders how long the flight to Area 11 will last in peace.
“Careful, now.” Kanon points out when Gino is finished with his first round to the buffet table. “All this talk about Guren’s pilot will make the Knight of Six jealous.” The prince’s advisor himself is sitting at their table, away from Schneizel, who is engaged in a conversation with Prince Odysseus.
“I happen to admire her piloting skills,” the blonde resorts.
“Gino admires a lot of things,” Suzaku adds with a shaky laugh. It’s the first thing he has said since Zero’s departure after the chess game fiasco. “One of which is the opposite sex.”
“Oh, Suzaku.” The Knight of Three offers the boy a look of pure disappointment. “Clearly, you don’t know me well enough.” His announcement causes Cecile to choke on her tea while Milly pats the older woman’s back.
“Lord Weinberg is not very picky when it comes to preferences,” Kanon suggests.
“I’m just fair,” Gino declares, waving his chopsticks around. “The Opportunity Knight, yes?”
“Are you joking?” Someone at their table asks.
“Who knows,” Anya shrugs and goes back to rearranging the files in her diary.
“They don’t know anything about commoners’ schools at all, do they?” Gino finishes when the group of Ashford girls disperses. Guilford offers him an irate look before ordering his troops elsewhere. Gino is toying with his blue cupid hat when Anya walks over. “They’re no fun at all.”
“Mordred could have won,” Anya says instead, walking alongside the boy as they trail after Suzaku.
“That was a little too intense for Ashford,” Suzaku laughs. “Please don’t deploy your Knightmare for such trivial things again. You really had us worried.” He stops at the nearest bathroom entrance. “I’ll go change for the graduation photo,” he glances down. “Try not to step on Arthur.”
Anya pauses, leaning down to pick up the cat. She pulls the cupid hats off Arthur’s ears and turns to Gino. “Fixed games are supposed to be won with underhanded tactics. They need to get a clue.”
“You need to get a clue,” the blonde grins, pulling his hat off and replacing it with hers. “Tell you what. Next time, we’ll find Lelouch without Mordred.”
“What are you wearing?” Suzaku is now back, clad in Ashford uniform. He lightly pulls the cupid hats off the two other knights, oblivious to Gino’s pout. “Let’s go back before Milly gets her diploma.”
“Are you surprised?” Gino asked when two identical letters came. Students in the academy had whispered amongst themselves; the seal was a dead giveaway of what the letters indicated. Now they sat in the back veranda of the empty academy wing, Anya periodically throwing pebbles into the trees while Gino sat on the end of the veranda, grinning his face off.
“I told you,” the blonde smirked. “I told you we’re going places. Did you not believe me?”
“I believed you,” she said and threw a pebble at him.
“Smile, huh?” Gino walked over before leaning down to meet Anya’s eye. “Miss Youngest of Knights.”
[end]
AN: The last scene is supposed to take place somewhere after the first two. It's also the only one written in past tense, which I really struggled with because apparently I can't stay in one tense at a time D:
Anya and Gino are so cute together. I toyed with the idea of plugging Suzaku in there for a threesome, but I either got lazy or decided that I wanted to save him for my other OTPs.
Love it? Hate it? Please leave some feedback, even if it may be a little late. You can also join the community, since I'll be locking up NC17 fics.
Fandom: Code Geass
Author: blahchiharu
Pairing: Gino/Anya
Rating: G?
wordcount: 2237
Summary: A boy of many moods meets a girl with few. Abandoned dresses, apple trees, knightmares, and even operation!CupidDay couldn’t tear them apart. Anya/Gino and Knight of the Rounds fic.
Anya meets Gino at age thirteen. She’s crawling out of her stockings while thrashing at the laces of her corset when a blonde boy abruptly bursts into the room. He’s too consumed with outrunning the guards in the hallway to notice her presence. Moments later, the boy spots her and falls on the ground, a series of incoherent babbles coming out of his mouth, “you-what-sorry-I-he-I.”
“Quiet.” Anya hisses as she steps into a pair of shorts. “I don’t want more people to come in.”
“What are you doing?” Gino continues a few seconds later, glancing at the discarded dress on the floor.
“Leaving,” she mutters quietly, patting her side pockets. “Gone?” Anya pauses upon fishing out the keys to her Sutherand. She then proceeds to open the curtains to the sewing room and crawl out of the window, stopping only when the boy pulls her backwards.
“Are you crazy?” He stares, mouth open. “This is the second floor!”
“My knightmare is parked right below us,” she says absentmindedly. “I can jump into it.”
“Oh…” Gino closes his mouth slightly. “Nevertheless, it’s dangerous. A lady shouldn’t be jumping out of windows, especially not from a ceremony honoring her elder brother, Miss Alstreim.”
“Third brother,” she replies slowly, looking up at the tall blonde with little expression on her face.
“Third brother to be knighted, I got it.” Gino nods, starting to pick up on the girl’s short responses. “So where are you going?”
“Away from here,” Anya says, taking a look at the classy furniture and the large casement. Her outfit stands out amongst the Victorian furnishings and the estate itself.
Gino follows her glance out of the window. It takes a few seconds for him to understand the girl. “Yeah,” he grins at her. “Yeah, I’m going places too.”
Anya is no different as a knight than she is as the daughter of a noble. Offensively quiet and sometimes borderline rude, she spends most of her time watching Gino. Everyone watches Gino, but in the end, the blonde boy would throw his hair aside and bid the ladies goodbye before turning to Anya. “Come on,” he would then proceed to grab her hand and lead her elsewhere in The Knight’s Academy.
“We’ve been here before,” she says when he takes her to the abandoned path behind the academy one day. Gino had brought them here last week before getting a bad case of poison ivy from frolicking in the grass.
“Yesterday I found an apple tree back there,” he says, busy hacking away the tall weeds with a rolled up scroll -the assignment for Professor Maldini’s class- with a smirk. “Hurry up or we’re gonna get caught!”
Anya follows him wordlessly. The designer shoes her mother ordered for her uniform is botched with mud patches by the time they arrive at the said tree. She glances up as Gino begins to climb up the brittle branches. “You’ll fall,” she declares, although not quite sure of what she would do in that case.
“Live a little, Anya!” He laughs, arms wrapped around the upper tree trunk.
“I am living,” she mutters as an apple falls on her head. She looks up to find a shower of apples littering the ground.
All the while, Gino plants his foot firmly on two separate branches as he reaches for the farthest apple. “Catch,” he grins before throwing another one at Anya. “Smile a little for me, hmm? I got the reddest one for you!”
Anya kneels down wordlessly and begins to pick the apples up.
Gino has a habit of stumbling into the wrong room. He returns from a ball late one night and manages to wake Anya up by crawling into her bed at 4am. Tucked under the blonde’s arms, Anya didn’t have a chance to respond before Gino had fallen asleep. She wakes the next morning to find her comforter on the ground.
“Morning!” Gino grins, busy twirling a strand of pink hair in one hand. “You sleep a lot!”
“You don’t sleep enough,” she says, pointing at his abandoned jacket on the ground. “Nonette will get ideas.”
“If only thoughts could kill,” the blonde laughs, tightening his hold around her waist. “You’re so small!”
“You’re big.” Anya raises an eyebrow, her left hand reaching for the nightstand. She listens as he rambles about all the eligible girls he met, freeing up one hand from under her to exaggerate his point.
“And then I was introduced to princess Euphie’s knight! She left Area 11 for a conference here, and was apparently guilted into attending the ball by the fifth princess! Anyways, her kni-” He stops mid-speech when the shutter goes off, blinking rapidly. “What was that for?”
“Memories,” Anya says while setting her diary back on the nightstand.
Their third assignment together goes horribly wrong. It takes the combined efforts of Monica, Nonette, and Gino to push the enemy forces back while Mordred lies on the ground, limbs disfigured from the last attack. Anya’s escape lever refuses go off as she watches the battle from the ground, hand grasped tightly on her uniform.
“I told you to check it!” Gino blows up at the head of maintenance later, fists tight. It’s the loudest anyone has heard him yell.
“It was a technical difficulty, let it go,” Nonette sighs as she wraps an arm protectively around Anya’s waist. “How’s your hand?”
The girl frowns, pink locks disheveled from the bone-crushing hug the Knight of Three had pulled her into earlier. Her palms are burnt from the electrical glitch in Mordred’s system that had overheated the controls. She looks up when Gino kneels down in front of her, fingers gliding from her arm to her wrist.
“I’m sorry,” he says, bringing her bandaged hands to his face. “I should have seen that move coming. I should have had your back.” He kisses her palm lightly. “Forgive me?”
Anya nods until the blonde finally lets go.
Suzaku enters the Round soon after Anya moves up to the Knight of Six.
“Please take care of me,” the newcomer says when he moves into the knight’s quarters. Unfortunately, Gino takes the request personally.
“I think Anya is the only one who can put up with your insanity,” Bismark comments when Gino is busy dumping cereal into Suzaku’s milk. The Knights of Three and Six share a look before Gino goes back to emptying the box while Anya stirs with a metal fork.
“Eat up!” The blonde declares happily, shoving the bowl at the Japanese boy. He offers a peace sign and lifts Anya’s left arm in hopes that she will do the same. “We made porridge! That’s what you like to eat for breakfast, right?”
“It’s a bowl of skim milk with crap cornflakes,” Nonette adds from behind her newspaper. “No amount of sogginess will make it better.”
“It’s porridge!” The Knight of Three insists.
“I’m used to eating European food,” Suzaku smiles awkwardly.
“Are you going to disappoint this poor child right here?!” The blonde gasps offensively, arms wrapped around Anya. He whispers, “Try to make a sad face” into her ear, only to have her shove his head aside with one hand.
“I-“ Suzaku frowns and looks down at the cereal with horror. “Of course not,” he stops when Anya picks the bowl up.
“What are you doing?!” Gino half-shrieks when the girl dumps the milk into the kitchen sink. “What about our masterpiece?”
“I’m bored,” Anya decides before pulling out her diary once more. She snaps the lid open and abruptly takes a picture of Suzaku’s confused look.
The Japanese boy advances quickly in status, so no one is surprised when he calls for a challenge match with Nonette a few months later.
“I think I’ll join in the commotion too,” Gino decides one day as he submits his papers for the match. “Do you think I can do it?” He asks, nodding towards the tall man sitting in the front seat.
“It’ll be an interesting match,” Anya replies.
Suzaku defeats Nonette and moves up in number once again. Gino’s match lasts considerably longer, the blonde refusing to admit defeat until Tristin ran out of energy filters, even after Bismarck crushed the Knightmare’s right arm. “There’s no surprise there,” Anya hears one of the bystanders say. “Lord Waldstein is, after all, The Knight of One.”
“You did well,” Monica offers, but Gino’s hands remain tightly fisted. The boy has never taken defeat well.
He crawls into her bed again that night, mouth wound tightly shut when she turns around to face him. “I missed that opening,” he says. “I should’ve struck him on the right, but I was too distracted. I should have-”
“You were good,” Anya cuts in. “Bismarck would’ve countered it.”
“Did I look good out there?” He asks, tangling his hand into her smaller one.
“Charming,” She nods.
“Ha,” Gino laughs. “You little liar. That’s good, though. I taught you well.” He falls asleep quickly that night, never once letting go of Anya’s hand.
“The new viceroy is very special to me,” Suzaku tells them during the flight’s final check. “She’s been a constant in my life,” he pauses. “And the younger sister of a friend.”
“He means Prince Lelouch,” Anya mentions offhandedly, as if Gino hasn’t just spent the last few hours spewing out conspiracy theories in relation to Suzaku’s “friend” (read: lover, ex-lover, codename, boy toy, sparring partner -“you realize that’s you, right?” Nonette snorts somewhere along the way-, etc.)
“Who’s that?” Gino stares, setting his pen down. He had stopped writing the list long ago, opting to doodle stick figures of Suzaku and the other Knights of Round on his paper instead.
“Here,” She shoves her portable diary in front of the blonde’s seat; the display flashing a photo of the 11th prince at a young age.
“You’re the only one who would dare to snap an unauthorized picture of Prince Clovis’s paintings,” Gino says after a while.
“There was no sign prohibiting it,” Anya replies simply, opening up another browser on her device.
“While you’re online,” Gino insists, “Check my official fan club site, will you? I’m the one that bought you this upgraded version, after all.”
“You bought it because you sat on her old one,” Lloyd comments from the doorway, where he is busy ordering Cecile around.
Anya looks out the window and wonders how long the flight to Area 11 will last in peace.
“Careful, now.” Kanon points out when Gino is finished with his first round to the buffet table. “All this talk about Guren’s pilot will make the Knight of Six jealous.” The prince’s advisor himself is sitting at their table, away from Schneizel, who is engaged in a conversation with Prince Odysseus.
“I happen to admire her piloting skills,” the blonde resorts.
“Gino admires a lot of things,” Suzaku adds with a shaky laugh. It’s the first thing he has said since Zero’s departure after the chess game fiasco. “One of which is the opposite sex.”
“Oh, Suzaku.” The Knight of Three offers the boy a look of pure disappointment. “Clearly, you don’t know me well enough.” His announcement causes Cecile to choke on her tea while Milly pats the older woman’s back.
“Lord Weinberg is not very picky when it comes to preferences,” Kanon suggests.
“I’m just fair,” Gino declares, waving his chopsticks around. “The Opportunity Knight, yes?”
“Are you joking?” Someone at their table asks.
“Who knows,” Anya shrugs and goes back to rearranging the files in her diary.
“They don’t know anything about commoners’ schools at all, do they?” Gino finishes when the group of Ashford girls disperses. Guilford offers him an irate look before ordering his troops elsewhere. Gino is toying with his blue cupid hat when Anya walks over. “They’re no fun at all.”
“Mordred could have won,” Anya says instead, walking alongside the boy as they trail after Suzaku.
“That was a little too intense for Ashford,” Suzaku laughs. “Please don’t deploy your Knightmare for such trivial things again. You really had us worried.” He stops at the nearest bathroom entrance. “I’ll go change for the graduation photo,” he glances down. “Try not to step on Arthur.”
Anya pauses, leaning down to pick up the cat. She pulls the cupid hats off Arthur’s ears and turns to Gino. “Fixed games are supposed to be won with underhanded tactics. They need to get a clue.”
“You need to get a clue,” the blonde grins, pulling his hat off and replacing it with hers. “Tell you what. Next time, we’ll find Lelouch without Mordred.”
“What are you wearing?” Suzaku is now back, clad in Ashford uniform. He lightly pulls the cupid hats off the two other knights, oblivious to Gino’s pout. “Let’s go back before Milly gets her diploma.”
“Are you surprised?” Gino asked when two identical letters came. Students in the academy had whispered amongst themselves; the seal was a dead giveaway of what the letters indicated. Now they sat in the back veranda of the empty academy wing, Anya periodically throwing pebbles into the trees while Gino sat on the end of the veranda, grinning his face off.
“I told you,” the blonde smirked. “I told you we’re going places. Did you not believe me?”
“I believed you,” she said and threw a pebble at him.
“Smile, huh?” Gino walked over before leaning down to meet Anya’s eye. “Miss Youngest of Knights.”
[end]
AN: The last scene is supposed to take place somewhere after the first two. It's also the only one written in past tense, which I really struggled with because apparently I can't stay in one tense at a time D:
Anya and Gino are so cute together. I toyed with the idea of plugging Suzaku in there for a threesome, but I either got lazy or decided that I wanted to save him for my other OTPs.
Love it? Hate it? Please leave some feedback, even if it may be a little late. You can also join the community, since I'll be locking up NC17 fics.