Annette was sitting on a bench in her home, the Rue Plumet. She watched the beautiful flowers bloom around her, but she was not awestruck by their splendor, like usual.
"How strange," Annette murmured, retying her red headband. "This feeling that my life's begun at last… This change – can people really fall in love so fast? What's the matter with you, Annette…? Have you been too much on your own? So many things unclear… so many things unknown…"
Annette stared into the deep lavender sky, her eyes wide with an emotion that she had never known before. "In my life… there are so many questions and answers that somehow seem wrong. In my life, there are times when I catch in the silence the sigh of a faraway song. And it sings of a world I long to see --! Out of reach… just a whisper away… waiting for me…"
"Does he know I'm alive?" Annette asked to herself. "Do I know if he's real? Does he see what I saw? Does he feel what I feel…?"
Jean Paijean walked into the garden; his shirt mended so as not to reveal the brand upon his chest, and sat down beside Annette. He could tell that she was trying to figure something out.
"Dear Annette," Paijean began. "You're such a lonely child. How pensive, how sad you seem to me. Believe me, were it in my power, I'd fill each passing hour. How quiet it must be, I can see, with only me for company."
Annette looked up into Paijean's eyes and sighed. "There's so little I know that I'm longing to know, of the child that I was in a time long ago… There's so little you say of the life you have known. Why you keep to yourself, why we're always alone… So dark, so dark and deep, the secrets that you keep!"
"In my life," Annette murmured. "I have all that I want. You are loving and gentle and good, but Papa, dear Papa… in your eyes I am just like a child who is lost in a wood."
"No more words," Paijean replied softly. "No more words. It's a time that is dead – there are words that are better unheard, better unsaid."
"In my life, I am no longer a child," Annette sighed. "And I yearn for the truth that you know of the years… years ago!"
"You will learn," Paijean assured Annette. "Truth is given by God to us all in our time… in our turn."
Paijean stood up, leaving Annette in the garden on her own. Annette said nothing, instead placing her hands on her black dress and looking downward.
Meanwhile, Marioh and Tamanine were outside of the giant gate that led into the Rue Plumet. Marioh could hardly contain himself.
"In my life," Marioh smiled. "She has burst like the music of angels – the light of the sun! And my life seems to stop, as if something is over, and something has scarcely begun."
Marioh turned to Tamanine and clasped her hands. "Tamanine, you're the friend that has brought me here. Thanks to you, I am one with the gods, and Heaven is near! And I soar through a world that is new, that is free!"
Marioh let go of Tamanine's hands and turned back to watching Annette through the iron gate.
"Every word that he says is a dagger in me," Tamanine murmured to herself. "In my life… there's been no one like him anywhere. Anywhere, where he is… if he asked… I'd be his…"
"In my life," Marioh and Tamanine said together, both not knowing what the other one was saying. "There is someone that touches my life."
"Waiting near," Marioh smirked, watching the unfathomably beautiful Annette from his perch.
"Waiting here…" Tamanine breathed, looking at Marioh, his customary red rag that was usually behind his ears, pulling back his unruly hair, around his neck. Tamanine knew that he liked, possibly loved, this obviously attractive, bourgeois young woman.
Tamanine turned away, feeling dejected.
DISCLAIMER: I don't own Shaman King or Les Miserables.
A/N: You probably are wondering why this wasn't paired with A Heart Full of Love. Well, it just didn't gel when I tried it that way. I'm sorry.
A/N 2: Well, Kiyuu-chan likes 'Do You Hear the People Sing?' apparently. Sing along, Kiyuu!
A/N 3: Nope, I haven't seen Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hide either... I need to get out more...