The Purest Rose - Prologue
"When Klaus agreed to become my Knight, he was scorned by many of his countrymen, called a traitor and a coward – despite his distinguished service record. He gave up every shred of pride that he owned to follow me, and so I gifted him with my own, to wield as a blade against my enemies. Now he has allowed that pride to be stripped away, so that he could defend my honor. Would you have me abandon that same honor now, and throw him away?" –Taki Reizen
1918
Klaus von Wolfstadt first travelled to the Far East when he was very young. He remembered the journey vividly – he was scolded the entire train ride there, warned to behave himself in the presence of the Imperial Family. He was tired of always being chastised for offenses that he hadn't even committed yet.
It was Spring when they arrived on the Forbidden Island, and all of the trees were in bloom. Klaus stood bored, but unfailingly polite, through every introduction. Predictably, he vanished somewhere between the Imperial reception chambers and the guest rooms that his family would occupy for their stay. He never had responded well to his mother's reprimands.
When Klaus first saw him, he was standing beneath a tree laden with blossoms, petals drifting slowly down around him. For one long, breathtaking moment, Klaus wasn't sure that he was real. His ceremonial robes were arranged to perfection, his dark hair pulled back into an intricate design with not a single strand out of place. His pale golden skin was unblemished, and dark eyes gazed up at the flowers above him unblinkingly. Klaus stood stock still, half afraid that if he moved, the boy would turn and vanish into one of the sunbeams that fell to the earth beside him.
The boy turned silently, briefly looking Klaus up and down. "You can help me." Klaus moved forward as though he had no control over his own movements, and the boy turned back to the flowers, pointing up at them. "I want to reach those flowers, there."
"Where have you been?" Klaus' mother scowled at him, crossing her arms across her chest. Klaus, for once, didn't scowl back, gazing instead back the way he'd come, his face wistful.
Standing in a secret garden of flowering trees, gazing up into a pair of bottomless eyes. A slight figure held securely in his arms, the lingering scent of roses that he couldn't see… A soft whisper… "…be my Knight…"
After several long moments of waiting for her youngest son to answer her, Klaus' mother stepped forward and cautiously check his temperature with the back of her hand. It wasn't like him to not have some kind of defensive retort at the ready. Klaus jumped, startled out of his memory by her touch, and proffered up the defiant glare that she had been expecting. "I've been around. I didn't get in trouble, and I'm not late anyway!"
She sighed, threw her hands up, and stalked away. The boy was too damned stubborn to deal with sometimes.
A/N:
I don't read a lot of manga, and I don't remember how or where I found out about Maiden Rose, but it was pretty much love at first sight for me. The artwork is absolutely incredible, I think that both the main characters and the plot are wonderfully complex, and, hey, it's yaoi… :) (I just found out that volumes 3 and 4 of the manga are available online! Just not available for sale in English yet…)
That said, this is going to be pretty AU. Some of it will mirror the actual storyline, but most of it is going to follow my own twisted mind, so I'm sorry if that makes the characters seem a bit OOC. Since the war in the story reminds me of WWII, I'm also going to pull in some places from the "real world" to serve as battle sites (although don't be offended if you love history and these battles aren't quite the way they were in real life!).
I guess that's enough of the disclaimers… If you've found this story because you watch my Final Fantasy stories, I'm sorry that I haven't updated any of those in a while :-/ I promise I haven't given up on them, I'm just having some writer's block-style lack of inspiration right now.
Please review if you enjoy the story!