Disclaimer: I do not own Trinity Blood or its characters. They are the creation of Yoshida Sunao.

Glad my characters are generating some feedback from my readers. Anastasia is probably one of the more complex Trinity Blood characters I have come up with. She's like a darker version of Esther. In part, she was inspired by Seth, Caterina and a bit of old Dietrich as well.

Chapter 13

"Isaak, Isaak, you don't want to wake Cain from his afternoon siesta, do you?" Fritzroy chuckled as he stepped out of the shadows in the room.

"You! You have a hand in this sick joke, don't you?" Isaak prodded the limp form on his bed. Dietrich let out a weak moan. He was alive… "Nice of you to take Lorelei out last night instead of me, so this is a little payback. Wouldn't get too erm, passionate with him. He's taken a solid dose of foxglove, courtesy of a little Albionian miss…" The Pilot slipped out of the room.

Foxglove? He took hold of that thin wrist. The boy's pulse was erratic. The skin covered with a cold sweat. Isaak had a little knowledge of poisons from his brief liaison with the late Madame Montespan, the Orden's Poison Mistress. Hadn't she tried to poison him with her concoctions on more than one date? He had learnt the virtue of keeping some common antidotes on standby, and it happened foxglove was one of the Madame's favourites. True, it wasn't fatal to Methuselahs unless in high doses, but the side effects of a sufficient dose were unpleasant all the same. With surgical precision, he filled a syringe from a brown vial and injected Dietrich in the forearm.

"Anyone care to explain what is going on?" Abel wiped his glasses and faced the two ladies sharing the table in Anais' parlour. They had returned to the nursing home in silence after leaving Devil's Acre and sat in silence, waiting. Hugue was sitting up with one of the home's inhabitants. The brothers and sisters were busy in the main wing, away from Anais' small parlour. "What do you know about us, the White Rose Society?" Anais finally broke her silence.

"I understand from the Duchess of Milan," Abel paused as he recalled Caterina with a stab of sadness. "That you are a group founded by Queen Bridget to promote peace and non-violence. Highly fashionable among the upper class of Albionian society, although your membership hail from all walks of life. At the same time, you see yourselves as the custodians of Lost Technology… Virgil was one of you until some years back when he was forced to kill in order to save Queen from assassination …"

"You are correct on most parts, Father. Virgil's leaving due to his breaking our vow of non-killing is a grave loss to the Society. He had been one of us since he was a child, more than a hundred and twenty years ago. Since Virgil left, there has not been a Methuselah in the Albion branch of the Society. It is almost a tradition for at least one Walsh and an Albionian royal to be in the Society. The Society was founded by Queen Bridget the First and Verona Walsh, the Methuselah architect of the Ghetto and Countess of Manchester, eight centuries ago. The Count then was a Terran rake, a drunkard who finally drove Verona to seek shelter in the vast wilderness of the Continent with her youngest son and daughter. She left her eldest sons behind in the Ghetto. Hence, the Society spread outside Albion. The White Rose has members in many places. Istvan, Berlin, even Milan… The late Cardinal Sforza's mother was a member, as were Queen Esther's parents and the Istvanian abbess who raised her…" Anais stopped to sip at her tea before continuing.

"One of the aims when the Society was first formed was to safeguard the wealth of knowledge until humanity is ready. The Church fears this knowledge can be dangerous if they fell into the wrong hands. Their solution was to destroy this knowledge under the guise of carrying out God's work. We are not against the Vatican, Father, we never were. But we cannot let this knowledge be lost. We try to exercise caution when recruiting our protégées to pass on this knowledge but occasionally, there are renegades, like James Barrie and those scientists who experimented on me. A few centuries back, some of them broke away from the Society and founded a new organization in Berlin with the knowledge learnt from us, the Rosenkruez Orden. They were a small irritant then, but they grew in power, thanks in part to Contra Mundi and von Kampfer. Yes, we watch, but we cannot interfere, only educate the most promising of our young so that they may one day rectify our mistakes…sadly…" Anais cast an almost regretful look at the young Anastasia.

"I know what you are thinking, Grand Mistress," Anastasia shrugged. "I have been educated in numerous languages and disciplines save for the most closely guarded knowledge. Will my leaving the White Rose be so demerital to Albion since the Ghetto has come into the open? After all, wasn't the initial aim of the Ghetto to be an archive of the lost technologies? Uncle Gilbert and Uncle Albert are members of the Society, are they not? Surely they can serve the same purpose as I my presence here achieves."

"The princes lack the special understanding required to be taught the lost arts, unlike Princess Laura," Sister Anais summed up.

"I am not my mother, Grand Mistress," Anastasia stood up. "You, Virgil and even Grandmother! You don't know me! I'm going to Cecil's." she left in a huff. Without batting an eyelid, Anais walked over to a bookshelf and pulled out an album.

"She's right," Abel observed. "We expect her to live up to our expectations… Why are you sharing this secret with me? Surely there was a reason why you have kept the White Rose Society's working hidden…"

"Necessity. After all, you have been entrusted with Anastasia. It was unfortunate that we were unable to initiate Esther into our Society when she was younger, given the situation in Istvan back then. It might have made educating Ana a lot easier. Due to her somewhat irregular parentage, many of us felt that she should not be initiated into the Society, including Virgil. However, Cecil and I have faith that she will be an asset to the nation someday…There is another thing that might be useful to you…Ah, here it is." Anais flipped to a faded photograph. "The founders of the White Rose." The photo showed two young women dressed in old-fashioned hoop gowns and starched collars. Abel's attention was immediately drawn to the raven-haired woman in it. There was something eerily familiar about her features.

"Ah, I see you have spotted the likeness. Verona Walsh's maiden name was von Kampfer. The last the White Rose in Albion heard of her, she and her daughter were in the lost city of Shiloh. We believe they may have accessed some forbidden knowledge and later imparted this knowledge to their descendants and most trusted protégées. One of their protégées formed the Rosenkruez, his name was…"

"You seem to be very well-informed," Abel remarked. He was feeling a bit annoyed with Anais for letting Hugue trudge the length and breadth of the known world while she was safe and sound in Albion. The intelligence gathered by the Society should have informed her of her elusive brother's whereabouts. "Why did you not look for Hugue earlier? Even if you are a faerie…" He immediately regretted his harsh words as the elderly sister hugged herself, trembling.

"I watched them die. Those children who escaped with me. At first they will be alright, normal… then years later, they sicken and die slowly and in agony. It was terrible. When they told me Hugue was alive, I can't put him through that. I don't know why I alone was spared for so long," Anais whispered. "At least now, even if I were to sicken, I will not let Hugue go through…" she looked towards the parlour door and froze. Hugue. How long had he been there? Awkwardly, Hugue wheeled himself in.

"Anais, why didn't you tell me?" Tears were running from those blue eyes…

"Hugue…" Anais gasped, unsure how to react. The photo album fell onto the floor. "Excuse me," Abel slipped out of the parlour. The siblings needed to be alone for now. He should find Anastasia. He found her at the doorway. Dusk had fallen while they were in Anais' parlour. "Anastasia, let's go back," he took Ana's hand.

"No! It is dark outside. I am afraid of the shadows… Bad things lurk there…" she snatched her hand out of his. The fear in her voice was too real for him to deny. They would have to wait for the lamplighters to light the street lamps before she would agree to return home.

Author's Notes:

Hugue gets a bit of a cameo here. I have tied von Kampfer's family to the Walsh's and the White Rose to the Rosenkruez Orden. I always wondered why in the anime there are pockets of lost technologies that pop out every now and then outside Byzantinum. Examples are the concentration in Albion of technology, Maria Kader's Star of Sorrow in Istvan and Isaak's somewhat satanic summoning of his shadow demons. So I did some explanations of my own.