Disclaimer: I do not own Maria-sama Ga Miteru

A/N: Hey everyone! Welcome to my FIRST EVERY REQUESTED FIC! WoooO!

*Ahem* Anyway, this is a request I got from a fan of my previous Yumino fic, Revenge is a Dish. I hope it will not disappoint ^.^ If it does... I'm sorry T.T

Off we go!

Rose Garden

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Prologue

-Seedling-

The front door to the doctor's office opened, letting a warm swath of sunlight spill into the small lobby. The only occupant, a middle-aged women sitting behind a desk at the opposite end of the room, squinted towards the doorway. A young girl strode into the room from the sunny exterior, followed closely by an older woman. The two made sure the door shut before approaching the desk at the end of the room.

"Ah! Shimazu-chan, it's good to see you today!" The small, portly receptionist said, sending a smile just as wide as she was towards the young girl that stopped in front of her. "Here for your post-op check-up?"

Yoshino Shimazu grinned up at the older woman, feeling inexplicably energetic that morning. "You bet!" She said, giving a small pump of her arms to show how ready she was. Yoshino's mother gave a tired sigh beside her daughter and shook her head.

"Honestly… Yoshino, if you don't calm down a bit, you're going to hurt yourself." She said warningly.

Yoshino snorted and looked away from her mother. "Right. So I can't be in a good mood this morning?" She said, mock-coldly. "Sensei said the operation went perfectly. I have been taking it easy this week, so why can't I be a little energetic today?"

The receptionist chuckled a bit at that. Yoshino's mother just shrugged helplessly, and walked up to the desk to fill out the required forms for her daughter's check-up. Yoshino stepped back from the desk to pace around the small office while her mother filled out her paperwork.

Truthfully, she had woken up feeling energetic, happy and, for the first time in a very long time, physically able. For the longest time, ever since she could remember, she had been under the handicap of her damned heart. It had always kept her from doing the things she wanted… being who she wanted to be.

If she wanted to get up and run around and play… she couldn't.

If she wanted to join her classmates in a game… she couldn't.

If she wanted to grow up and be a swordswoman (like she wanted at one point, even going as far as to sneak a stick into her room to practice)… she couldn't.

But now, she could actually do all those things. She had undergone surgery for her poor heart condition last week, and pulled through splendidly. She had worried many people, especially her cousin, Rei… but it would all be worth it. She could repair her relationship with Rei, actually make friends with people on their own level, and grow to be the person she always wanted to be. The whole world was open to her now.

It was the perfect start to a new life. It was the perfect time to show everyone the real Yoshino Shimazu.

"Alright, Yoshino," Yoshino's mother called from the counter. "I just need you to sign here and we're all set."

"'Kay!" Yoshino skipped over (carefully!) to the desk and signed her name with a flourish. The receptionist whisked away the form and told the mother/daughter pair to take a seat to wait for the doctor. The wait didn't take long, as the office Yoshino and her mother chose to go to for the post-op check-up was small. After a short couple of minutes, during which time Yoshino sat humming a nondescript song and her mother leafed through a magazine, the doctor opened to door to the lobby.

"Good morning, Yoshino-chan." The doctor said, taking a moment to adjust his eyeglasses to see the girl better. An older man, but still a great physician. Yoshino knew the doctor most of her life through her disability, and was nearly a family friend. In fact, he had been the main correspondence between Yoshino and the hospital she had gotten her heart surgery at. Now that the surgery was over, she could go back to (hopefully) infrequent meetings and check-ups with the kind older man. "How are you feeling today?" He asked with a soft smile.

Yoshino pushed herself to her feet and gave a 'thumbs-up' to the doctor. "Great, Sensei! I feel like a million yen!"

The older man nodded, his bespectacled eyes flicking from Yoshino to her mother, and then back to Yoshino. "That's great to hear. Shall we?" He turned and gestured to the inner office. Yoshino nodded agreeably and walked through the door.

The check-up proceeded normally. A height and weight check (Yoshino had lost a kilogram; one that she was happy about but her mother and doctor were not so much) showed up relatively normal, and then Yoshino was placed on a large, sand-colored table to check the area around her heart. After thorough examination of her chest to make sure the sutures were holding firm, and a gentle cleaning around the cut, Yoshino checked out just as fine as she could be, considering the severity of the surgery she went though not one week ago. In fact, if she continued to recover as well as she had been, the stitches could come out after one more week. That was good news in and of itself.

"Excellent!" Enthused Yoshino, causing her mother to smile worriedly. "I can't wait to actually start doing things at school instead of just pushing everything onto everyone else!" The doctor nodded, albeit somewhat hesitantly. There was something in the man's face that Yoshino didn't quite catch. It was a look that, one that Yoshino found out later, meant that everything wasn't as excellent as the girl hoped for.

"Sensei… is there something else?" Yoshino's mother asked slowly. She had picked up on what her daughter missed. Yoshino blinked up at her mother, and then turned her attention to her doctor.

"Something else?" She asked, confused. "Is there something wrong?"

The old doctor sighed and ran his hand through his greying hair. After a moment, he nodded. "There was… some results that came back." He said slowly.

"Results?" Her mother asked, suddenly sounding much more worried that she had been before.

"It's nothing that will complicate Yoshino-chan's recovery." The doctor backpedaled, holding his hands out in front of him. "It has nothing to do with it actually. But, you should be aware of what came back from some of the more… esoteric tests we conducted." He turned to retrieve a sheet of paper from a folder on the table behind him.

Yoshino felt her mother tense beside her, and suddenly began to feel worried herself. Before she had the surgery, Yoshino had many different tests conducted on her at the hospital; many of them done by the very same doctor that stood before her now.

Most of them were fairly routine. A physical, done at her local clinic, blood tests for HIV, AIDS, and other sexually transmitted diseases (Yoshino hadn't been worried about those), a chest x-ray for tuberculosis, mainly because as a girl she had been exposed to a child that had the disease and as a result had suffered through six months of the most horrible medication in the world to prevent it, as well as numerous other tests done for different genetic issues that could possibly complicate recovery from the procedure. Many of the tests weren't very necessary, but Yoshino-s family wanted to be extra careful. All the tests had taken a little more than a month before the actual procedure; and it had been all Yoshino could do to keep it a secret from Rei. Now that it was over, though, the whole thing seemed silly. She had come through the surgery for the better, so there were obviously no complications.

Right?

"This came back from one of the tests we administered for genetic… complications." The old man said softly, holding out a paper for the mother/daughter pair to take. "Again... it has nothing to do with the procedure or Yoshino-chan's recovery. But, you should be aware of what came back from the lab." He didn't say anything more, so Yoshino's mother reached out to pick the results from the man's grasp.

Yoshino focused on the paper as her mother held it out in front of them. There was a lot of small lettering on the page, so it was difficult to really pinpoint where it was she should be looking. She saw her name, her age and address, birthdate. All things that generally meant this information was about her. That was a start, at least.

Traveling down the page, her eyes finally found the name of one of the tests she had gotten. She couldn't really remember what the acronym meant, but the lettering looked distinctly familiar. The date was next to it and right after that-

Yoshino felt her mother tense again beside her and grasp her shoulder… a little too tightly.

"What-" Yoshino breathed. Medical terminology was never her strong suit, but she was smart enough to know what the words written down meant.

"Oh, Yoshino…" Her mother whispered next to her ear. Yoshino stiffened in response and looked up to meet the older woman's gaze. It was soft, sad, apologetic. It was a look she could never, ever, remember seeing on her before. It was a look she had seen on too many people, too many doctors and nurses… it was a look she never wanted to see on her own mother. Not about her.

A slow, painful throb sunk into her stomach.

Yoshino slowly shifted her eyes away from the visage of her mother to rest on the doctor. His face was similar to her mother's, though more practiced. He was practically a family friend, and therefore knew what this meant to them. But, his decades of being a doctor prepared him for moments such as these. Even so, the bow of his head and the understanding eyes that bore into Yoshino's own caused the throb in her stomach to travel up her body to her face.

A mild burn started to prickle behind her eyes.

"Does this mean I can't—?" She started to ask, but her throat constricted painfully, robbing her of speech. She didn't need to ask. She already knew. It was right there in black and white. Her mother, sitting beside her, knew too. That's why she was holding onto her daughter so tightly now. That's why she looked down at her with such sad, apologetic eyes.

Yoshino felt the paper with her future slip through her fingers. Her arm limply fell to her side, not having the energy it had five minutes ago.

"I'm sorry, Yoshino-chan." She heard the old man say.

"I'm so sorry, Yoshino." He mother whispered.

Yoshino took a deep, steady breath. She held it for a few quiet moments, and then cried.

She would be fine. She could still run and play once she fully recovered. She could still make real friends and live the life she wanted as a child. She could do all those things now.

But, from what was said on the simple piece of paper, there was one part of her life that would never be reachable. One part of her future that she could never have. A wish, one she kept from everyone but herself, that she could never fulfill. It was because of that she cried. Her mother pulled her in close and held her tightly. After a moment, the old doctor excused himself without a word. Yoshino felt her arms wrap around her mother. She heard the woman whisper soft words into her ear, and let herself cry away her feelings.

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A/N: A short and somewhat depressing prologue, but important to set up the story. Now that I think about it, aren't a lot of Disney flicks' prologues kinda depressing?

Hmm.

See you on the next chapter!