Stage 3: Blackened Lisianthus

By God…I can't believe that I'm actually here…

Gail would not stop fidgeting in her seat; she's a few short minutes away by meeting the most loved person in all of Paris…Queen Marie.

I wonder if my hair looks okay, I'd better fix it now, because I'm meeting royalty…face-to-face!

She puts down her pink hood and takes the pins that were sticking out and her giant bun of hair comes down flat as an ironing board. Her hair was, in fact, a brilliant shade of red, a deep dark color of red, sort of like the famous wine 'Bloody-Mary'.

"You, have beautiful hair."

Gail gasped as she turned around. She sees a girl in a pretty lavender gown and she also has red hair, but, not as dark as Gail's. She keeps up her curly ponytail tied up in a big pink bow, and she has very short layer of bangs; to Gail, her aura seemed very serene and friendly. It shows on her vivid green eyes, as she stares directly into Gail's calm, blue eyes.

"Wait a second, you're not Queen Marie." Gail answers, picking up the pins that she accidently dropped on the floor when she freaked out. "You seem pretty young to be the Queen."

"That's because I'm not the Queen." The girl in the lavender gown giggles. "I'm only her Lady-in-Waiting. My name is Anna Rochefort."

"By God, you're Anna? The Anna Rochefort? By God, I have heard so much about you from outside the palace! I hear a lot of stories about you when I go grocery shopping, that you were always sticking around with the Queen and other times where you're taking care of the Queen's son, Prince Auguste. And I heard that you recently married to a knight three years ago! Congrats!"

"Why, thank you!" Anna giggles, "I really love my husband, and he's so good to me. Tonight, once your opening performance is over, I could come and introduce you to him. It's sometimes hard to contact him all the time because he travels a lot with his three companions."

"So, Anna, I see that you've met Miss Gail D'Costa."

Both Anna and Gail spun around, as they saw the Queen standing there, looking really beautiful and elegant in her new, frilly golden gown. (It was obvious that she's trying out the gown for the event that's going on tonight.) She smiled down at both of them. Her blue eyes showing a sign of piece and harmony flowing within them.

"Wow…" Anna's eyes glistened. "My Queen, that gown…gold really speaks to you!"

"Why, thank you Anna." Queen Marie replied, she turned to Gail and said, "And I know who you are, you're Miss Gail D'Costa. Welcome, my darling."

Gail's eyes widened straight-away. She immediately fell to her knees and started to worship her by touching her feet. Both Anna and Queen Marie looked at her as if she was crazy.

"By God…my Queen…" Gail answers when she sits back up again, "At last, we finally meet."

"My word, I've had a lot of greetings, but not one like this." Queen Marie laughed.

"She reacted the same way when I came in, and I thought it was cute." Anna replies, joining the Queen in the moment of pure laughter.

"My dear, you should probably get up now, any minute now, and your legs will be stuck together like glue." The Queen answers at Gail.

Gail blinks, and then stands back up again. The long, red hair flowing behind her looks like as if she was wearing a cape. Both Anna and Queen Marie watched Gail pull up that long beautiful hair of hers back into a giant bun and she pinned it up with all these black pins.

Queen Marie walks up in front of Gail and asks, "Miss D'Costa, don't you know how beautiful you are? Why must you hide all of your beauty up in such a way?"

Gail immediately looks away from Queen Marie's gaze as she answers, "As much as I love to tell you my Queen…I can't do that. In fact, I don't even have the greatest reason to why I do this."

Queen Marie touches a lock of Gail's free hair and Gail looks back deeply into her eyes.

"Well, it can't be helped. It's okay if you don't want to tell me. Surely it wasn't my business at all to begin with."

Gail watches the Queen smile at her, and then turns to Anna and she does the same thing. Gail's eyes shimmer in the late afternoon light, and then she says, "I will tell you why one of these days…I promise."

The Queen lets go of her hair and said, "Now, that will be the day that I will look forward to."

Gail lifts up her hood and says, "My Queen, it's almost 4:30, and I must hurry and go to pick up my gown."

Queen Marie sits down in a regal chair and says, "Then so it shall be. I will ask one of those wonderful knights in the south corridor to get a horse carriage set and ready for you. But of course, since you are staying with us now, I'd say that you need to have a chaperone with you at all times. I suggest that Anna should go with you."

Gail turns to Anna and she sees her face light up with excitement. It seems that she wants to take a peak at the dress herself.

She sighs and makes her decision, "I would love to bring Miss Anna with me."

Anna squees as she says, "C'mon Gail! Let's go!"

She gets a hold of Gail's left arm and they rush towards the while marble staircase.

Queen Marie laughs, as she says, "Oh, my dear Belle, if only you were here to experience this yourself. Trust me, you would've loved it."

"Loved what?"

The Queen turned around, no expression changes or anything of the sort. But just as she saw a very familiar face, then her eyes began to widen in full surprise.

Robin stood a few feet away from where the Queen stood. He brought back the same, boyish cute smile of his and it made Queen Marie's heart melt (well, she treats Robin as if he was her biological son).

"Oh, Robin…look at you…you've grown." Queen Marie shot him back her smile as she walked over and placed her warm hand on his cheek. "You're so tall now…and your hair, you've grown it out! It was as if, time has let go of me and that I have grown old and weary. But, I'm pretty much the same, and now it's my turn to look up at you!"

Both Robin and the Queen laughed simultaneously, and then she paused for a second and says, "Welcome back…Robin. I've missed you greatly."

"I know…" Robin sheds a tear as he spoke. The warm hand that cradled his left cheek was still holding on to him. He placed a hand over the Queen's hand (the one holding his cheek) and says, "It feels like I've come back after a century so I'm…I'm so sorry…"

Queen Marie watches Robin tearing up as he fell to his knees. He felt guilty; it's been almost three years since he last saw the Queen eye-to-eye.

And then she did the most unique thing. She kneeled down at Robin's height and placed her other hand on the other cheek. She said to him softly, "Do not cry Robin. It is not your fault that you haven't come to see me after so long. I know that you're getting too old for me and that you're interested in finding someone else…correct?"

"Please don't say that…" Robin answered, his voice ended up really cracked. "I would never stop coming to see you no matter how old I get."

"And that…"Queen Marie answered, pushing some dark brown hair out of his eyes. "…is what I like about you, Robin. Your very kind, intelligent, and you care so much about our beloved France. Sometimes I wonder if you are actually my son, because I would find myself to imagine you as our next king."

"If I really was your son or not, and if I had to make a certain choice, than my decision is to not become a king. That role is clearly made for your 'real' son, Prince Auguste. He will do a much better job at it than I will. Besides, I love to travel to different places and countries and fight alongside with my friends."

Robin laughs, but Queen Marie still remains smiling as she says, "Well said my dear Robin."

She drops both her hands and then she starts walking toward the huge bay windows. They were really high-arched and crafted with snowy white paneling. Big, golden curtains dropped down from that high arched ceiling, giving it some sort of a regal appearance.

Queen Marie turned towards Robin as she says, "Unless if there's anything else you want to talk to me about, feel free to do so. I grant you my full permission to ask me anything you please. Even if it's something not important at all."

Just as Robin opens the door, he turns to look at Queen Marie with those huge eyes of his and they started to glisten in the open sun. He sighs and says, "Understood, my Queen."

He closes the door behind him as he makes his exit, and then he started to wipe those tears off before anyone notices. And he starts making way down the same, white marble staircase that both Gail and Anna took shortly before Robin's arrival.


"Oh my, check out all these beautiful gowns!"

Anna squees as she runs around the store. Her green eyes glistened as she paid close attention to the big puffy gowns with ribbons coming down the skirts. Gail smiled as she thought, She's so childish, and it's sort of how I act sometimes. But, what's a girl to do when they find cute clothes anyway?

However, for a convenient clothing store the building itself looked high class. Besides all the beautiful gowns that you would find covering every inch (and wall) of the store, the overall building design of the store (try to imagine it without the dresses) was pretty epic.

The ceiling was high-arched, a very high ceiling that displays beautiful artwork and has very nice window paneling made so you could get a clear view of the sky. Like all 18th century buildings, the room in the farthest end of the store was equipped with really tall windows and had extremely long, silky curtains drop down from them. The curtains were a magnificent shade of dark purple, sort of the same color that you find on fully ripened plums.

In the heart of the store, there was one of those famous two-way staircases. In the middle (or the heart) of the staircase was a very fancy fountain installed and water flows from it. Look carefully, and you may find some gold coins left behind by the previous century still sitting around in the depths of this tiny pool of water.

A few short minutes later, Gail found herself glancing at all of the beautiful gowns and she started to go after the silky ones with very puffy sleeves that had ribbons sewed on the cuffs of the sleeves. Every girl in the entire store went bananas and was dying to find the 'perfect dress' to woo their dates for tonight's event.


Just as Anna and Gail were done shopping for the day, they found themselves chatty and all giggly when they left the store. They placed their evening gowns (both Anna and Gail agreed that their evening gowns won't be revealed to anyone, even among themselves, until tonight's event, so they covered them up in black veils) in the back of the carriage and minutes after they did that, they took off immediately.

"So, give me a hint." Gail smiled, "What did you get while I was searching for my gown?"

"I can't say a thing until tonight, you will see, don't worry about it." Anna laughs out loud, "Though I must admit, it feels like I'm a young teenager again."

"But, you are pretty young," Gail answers and starts laughing with Anna. "Just look at you, you are probably old enough to be my older sister."

Just as Gail said the words 'older sister' her smile died away instantly and she started to feel all gloomy and depressed. She looked down at her knees and started to think about her sister.

Anna's laughter died away too and she looked at the gloomy-faced Gail and asked, "What's the matter? You looked so happy and full of energy, but now you look like you're going to be sick or something. Is there anything that I should be knowing about Gail?"

"It's been years since I've seen my sister," Gail began, "Just the thought of her not showing up for my performance really hurts me a lot."

"Oh, I'm so sorry to hear that." Anna answers, but then, a glare came to her face as she spoke, "I mean, what kind of sister does not show up for her sibling's performance? That's just plain cruel in so many ways."

"Oh, it's not like that at all, really." Gail answers with a nervous smile, "My older sister was always very good to me. We never even fought once in our lifetime. After she turned 20, we went our separate ways, and became solo artists. She wanted to lead her own life her own way."

"Well, that does not sound like being a good sister to me." Anna replied quickly, "It sounds more like she wants to stay away from you, well; at least that's what it sounds like to me."

"I know my sister very well, Anna." Gail said with confidence, "At least she was honest with me and told me to do things her own way. To be honest, I greatly respect all of her decisions-,"

Gail's eyes suddenly became bigger, as she placed both hands over her mouth. There was a vision of a man who was getting beaten up and getting stabbed by a woman, from which, her face cannot be seen since the vision was very unclear. It was as if Gail was watching a movie clip from one of those really old projectors.

"Please…stop doing this…" The man answers weakly, blood dripping from his forehead and gushing down the middle. His nose was dislocated and basically, every part of the face was dripping tears of blood.

But, when Gail suddenly recognized the voice of the man that spoke, she started to let the tears escape freely from her face. (You guessed right. It was Bernard's voice that she heard.)

When the vision disappeared from Gail's eyes, her eyes became really blurry and she fainted onto Anna's lap, since the power of her vision was incredibly overwhelming and filled with so much desire and hatred. Anna, on the other hand, didn't know what was going on and she looked at Gail and screamed, "Oh, my goodness...Gail! Are you okay?"


Shortly after Gail and Anna's carriage departs into the main road, a shadow emerges from the rooftops of the city.

The person was wearing a long, dark blue cloak, the hood was long enough to shroud her face. You could tell that she was feminine because of the fact that her legs were bare and that she wore a pair of short-shorts. She wore really short purple boots, and that's all that you could ever see from up to this point.

Her clear, blue eyes revealed from inside the hood, as she stares down at the beautiful red flower with a sharp glance. She picks it up with her hand, and gently plucks the petals, one by one.

"So, I've finally found the one who is known as the 'Lovely Rose that Never Wilts'." A fiendish smile reveals in the blistering sunlight as she says, "Wait 'till she meets a black Lisianthus."

Just as she was down to her last rose petal, she just simply plucks it off and she drops the thorny stem and it falls down swiftly and into a deep puddle. She watches a random horse carriage run over the bare stem. As the thorns have been crushed and simply bobbing up and around the puddle's barrier.

"Oh yes. Just wait Miss Lovely Rose." She smiles again, "Things are definitely going to be very interesting."


A/N: Hey, it's me! :D

Anyways, I've given it some serious thought, and I finally made my decision and I will represent a few songs by the band 'Tatu' for the rest of the story. They have songs that surprisingly match my story's overall theme so give them the full credit for the song lyrics not me! I'm no song writer! (Though I wish I was...I'm just a person who loves to draw and write stories all day long forgive me... ^^;)

-Twilight_Anarein