La Vie En Rose

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"Hold me close and hold me fast.
The magic spell you cast.
This is "La vie en rose".
When you kiss me, heaven sighs.
And though I close my eyes.
I see "La vie en rose"."
- Cristin Milioti: 'La Vie En Rose' (How I Met Your Mother: Deluxe (Original Television Soundtrack) [2014]).

~*~*~

18th Century France
Palace of Versailles

It was a warm starry night in France, and a masque ball is currently underway at the Palace of Versailles. However, nothing is what it appears. Inside the magnificent, famous, and elegant French palace, total chaos is afoot. Crowds of 18th century aristocrats, dressed in finery for the masque ball, are running around in a panic. They are screaming and fleeing from the sounds of whirring and ominous shadows on the elegant golden wallpapered walls. Shadows that look vaguely, the shape of men and women.

In a nearby royal bedroom, a woman stands in front of her fireplace, dressed in an open-fronted mantua gown of golden silk, tulle, and embroidered lace, with a matching petticoat and train. Her long golden hair had been elegantly twisted up into an elaborate bun of curls, adorned with hair jewels, and even more pieces of fine jewellery had been strung around her throat, her wrists and dangling from her ears. Her name was Reinette, and she was the chief mistress to the King of France; and currently looking nervously at an ornate clock on her mantlepiece. Its glass face had been smashed in.

"We are under attack!" King Louis XV (hereafter referred to as Louis) ran in, looking anxious. Reinette looks at him through the cracked glass of her clock, and sighs despairingly, like she had known this was going to happen all along. "There are creatures. I don't even think they're human. We can't stop them."

"The clock is broken. They're coming," Reinette reveals, ignoring what her king had just told her. "They're both coming!" Louis frowns at her, looking incredulous.

"Did you hear what I said?"

"Listen to me," Reinette turns towards Louis, beseechingly. "There is a man and a woman coming to Versailles. They have watched over me my whole life and they will not desert me tonight."

"What are you talking about?" Louis demanded. "Who is coming?"

"The only man, save you, and the only woman I have ever loved," Louis opened his mouth to protest, but Reinette immediately stops him, frowning sternly at him. "No, don't look like that, there's no time. You have your duties. I am your mistress. Go to your queen!" Reinette then promptly goes back to the fireplace, and kneels down in front of it, calling out to something unknown while Louis looks at her with a half-worried, half-confused expression on his face.

"Are you there? Can you hear me?" Reinette shouts to be heard above the screams of the guests out in the corridors of Versailles, desperate. "I need you now, you promised! The clock on the mantel is broken. It is time! Doctor! Katy!"

 It is time! Doctor! Katy!"

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