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Agnus Dei
(Or, two women who have paid their dues).
I. The Woman With Time
She clings to the darkness that skims her clothes, and wishes for a little kindness and perhaps a little less salt (oh, how her wounds hurt!) and her little needle, shiny, cheap, tin-made and terribly important to her, swings in and out the cloth with great finesse.
She might have made a great seamstress, she thinks, for she has skill in needlework.
But when blood falls from a pink finger, she remembers the past – the lonely walks to school, the taunting smiles on her classmates' faces, the broken plates, the haunting laughter – and oh! The tears rise to the surface, bubble over, broil, and she sinks into a dark puddle in her little room.
The clock chimes twelve. Soon, the wind will bring change, and she will find her destiny waiting at the end of misery.
But the pain has yet to come, that real true pain that relishes its grip on the flesh of mortal man. Soon it will descend, and she will rise through the ashes, wielding her power over Time and saving those she cannot bear to see perish like flies in winter.
Those dark days will be long and enmeshed in countless shadows, and she will have to walk under withered branches and blood-red nights for many nights yet. But while she can, she will drink deep of the well of comradeship, and await the beginning of the end, with Time always faithful at her side.
[[]]
II. The Pretty Girl Who Was
She grows up with pale cheeks and bright eyes and gleaming hair, and knows that it will end this way.
She feels a singular burning rise in her at her first sighting of Cross Marian, when she is all of ten and but a pretty little girl with dark hair swinging in neat pigtails. The flamboyant man winks at her, and she is flattered by his adult attention, and suddenly, irrevocably jealous of her mother's hold on the man.
Years later, when she is full-grown and walks with a swaying clout, he appears again. Her heart tears, claws, even bites its way out of her chest. They fall into each others' arms, lips on lips, and retire into her bedchamber.
(Where she learns the meaning of joy again).
Her arms are long, and her face is fair, but one day she wakes to find her bed empty and cold and bereft of his presence. She sinks her nose and gulps up he lingering remnants of his scent, biting and sharp though the aftertaste is.
(Pain, redefined.)
Waiting is a treacherous process, at once tortuous and self-serving, and the arrival of the exorcists pleases her. Now she can sail to sea to seek the man she loves with all her heart and soul. When the attacks commence, though, and she feels the choppy sea coiling under her dainty feet, she doesn't throw up (as expected of a woman of her standing) but makes herself useful.
She knows the end is near, and she knows, better than all others, that she will seek her lonely internment on the beds of the sea, her ashes scattered far and wide. She will go with pale cheeks and bright eyes and gleaming hair, to the sunless land under the waves.
(The end comes quickly.)
The exorcists board their vessel, and Lenalee holds her hand out for her. But she smiles and bids them farewell. When they next look, she has crumbled into the wind, her battered ship fading into the breeze, and her last peaceful smile lingers over the quiet ocean.
A farewell, and then some.
A/N: I understand that this has no plot too. Disappointing, much? Wrote this in 30 mins, so yeahh I don't really think highly of this. But I hope you enjoyed it, all the same. If you didn't already know, the first woman is Miranda and the second is Anita. Both women on the fringes of fanfiction! Ohhh btw agnus dei means lamb of god!
Okay need to go off; hope you enjoyed this and review if you so desire! (: