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Worthy of Innocence
Innocence
It is a weapon that can only be handled by those chosen by the Innocence. It is a weapon that will save the world in the hands of the Exorcists or dirge it's ruin as broken particles slipping from the hands of the Earl. It changes and shifts and bestows its godly power sparingly upon the human race. It is not benevolent and it is not cruel; but it is painful and it is unforgiving. Innocence demands loyalty just as it's Exorcist demands it's power. That is the nature of Innocence and the Exorcists as it has been for centuries.
Innocence does not like.
Innocence does not adore.
Innocence does not love.
Under these unspoken laws, I have failed as Innocence.
Century upon century, I have waited, been found, fought, been lost, and waited again. A never-ceasing cycle of Exorcists to my power. The century of the end of the war, as all Innocence can sense its coming, is when that monotonous cycle breaks.
I was carried across countless miles until I approved of a young man my carrier came across. Seeking the young man's hand, I was wielded as the mighty Innocence I was, guised in a new form. He took me too many battlefields and, occasionally joined by another part of me, I brought ruin to countless Akuma. I witnessed his courage against the Earl's machines, his ceaseless trek in the war, his blooming adoration for a young woman, and his life through my unbiased view.
I did not like the young man. I did not adore the young man. I did not love the young man.
His death was not unexpected and my return to waiting was not pleasant but accepted. I believed the cycle would simply continue.
It did not.
It would not, ever again.
Instead of being carried to the next Exorcist I was brought into a laboratory. Men and women, not worthy of being chosen by Innocence entrapped me with machines and desperate theories. I was not the first to be there, nor was I the last. Innocence, other pieces that were not me, disappeared with time. Unable to sustain the Exorcists pushed upon them, they instead shattered themselves and the unchosen human with them. Time does not carry weight to Innocence but over time the number dwindled to two. I was one of them.
I sensed a stirring of a human worthy of me. It was familiar and yet not. They were worthy of Innocence but I felt as though they had already been determined so. Impossible. All Exorcists who have wielded me had died. It was impossible.
It should have been impossible. But I had felt this before. The other pieces had felt this before.
The humans are fools.
I-We-Innocence that was one-part-me and one-part-not-me, were not.
I would not accept this child who is worthy but not. He was not chosen.
We rejected.
The last not-me-piece to the child who always smiled, and I to the child who cursed our existence.
These experimental bindings were consistent and only further proved to me that this child was unworthy.
The first time, I rejected the child with my power so absolutely that his spinal cord snapped in three pieces before falling. He breathed again. I felled him by destroying his inner organs. He rose again. Time after time, I killed him and time after time, he cursed me.
So long, these sessions persisted and I had ceased to try and destroy the unworthy child. I did not want to.
Want.
Innocence does not want.
But…
I did want.
I did not want to.
The child died again and again. He breathed again and again. I did not want to see him die and breathe again.
The unworthy are killed and left to peace in death. That is how Innocence has judged the unworthy. I had tried to kill this child but he does not find peace. He lives and he cries and he rages at the world that has trapped him so. He was unworthy but that part of him that was worthy still resonated within me.
He continued to curse me. I did not want to see him die.
He was haunted as he neared his end. Haunted by the one who was worthy before him. I saw this in his mind during the brief times we were forced together. It would be the death of him. The woman who had been adored was haunting the child and it would drive him mad.
…
If I could have spoken, perhaps I might have considered telling the child that the woman and the boy who always smiled were one and the same. I could not speak, so I didn't consider it at all.
…
Whether or not it might have changed the outcome was irrelevant. The murmurings had started. The child would die for the last time.
Knowing this, I had reflected as I had time to do so. Trapped, not unlike the child, I had no Exorcist and no potential to find one. The child, though hateful and filled with rage, had been a constant visitor. I would be alone with only a now half-mad-piece-of-me, a boy who smiles in the darkness, and the unworthy clothed in white. I did not know what it was about that thought that unsettled me.
I did not want to think about it.
It would be some time later, farther in the future, that I would discover the reason behind my unsettlement.
Loneliness.
The day that the child was meant to die, I paid attention. I listened, I waited, and I shared a moment –a moment of anger-hate-affront-pure unbridled rage- with the child as he demanded answers, demanded to know why this life he had was his and not his, why memories of someone who died were his to suffer.
I was the excuse.
And I wanted to scream with the child who had been loyal –to me, to the unworthy ones who lead the Exorcists- and so brutally betrayed by them. In his dying moments I felt him calling to me.
Innocence is absolute.
I made a mistake.
The child was worthy of me. He was worthy of my power.
I made a mistake.
And he would die for it.
It was not resistance that proved it to me. Nor was it the way I felt
No, it was when the remnants of the one who came before him vanished under death's dark veil and the child still continued to call to me.
I felt his life draining away and I waited, vigilant from so far away, to be watching as he passed under that same veil one more time. I did not want him to die.
Then, I sensed something else. A burst of memory. A memory of pain, love, and promises long lost. His draining life slowed, paused as though contemplating something. Even as the child lingered between the plains of light and dark I had made my choice. I wanted.
I wanted.
So keen upon the child, I sensed his decision as his will surged against the constraints of death… and-
I wanted him.
-broke through.
This child that I entered physically, mentally, soul-deep and used to summon myself for his use. This child –screaming, withering, clawing, savage in this flux of madness- was worthy of Innocence. The child was worthy of me.
Brutalized and betrayed, he saved one who was damaged but worthy nonetheless. With blood exchanged I connected to this other who was chosen by Innocence, if only briefly and felt the stirrings of another-piece-of-me that was not mad.
Exchange. Two pieces joining. Briefly, a moment, and then separate again.
Knowing each other.
Noel Organon.
I accepted this other, pleased with its presence.
The child, power of will beyond the strength of his breaking body, I assisted, dragging the one he insisted on saving while also dragging regrets and longing beyond his age. I sought the presence, communion, with the half-mad-piece-of-me-that-was-not-me, that piece that would know where the child's source of regret and longing was.
…
No. No. No.
Gone.
The half-mad-piece-of-me-but-not-me and the boy who smiles. Gone. Far too mad to save themselves now. They would destroy themselves or the world around them.
The child, pushed too far, betrayed and broken, would be met with more death where he wished to find life. The scene the child saw meant little to me; unworthy humans in white cloaks dead, the end of the laboratory and desperate theories. I did feel, briefly, heavily, for the discarded bodies of those who were like the child, denied peace in death and never even able to connect with the Innocence they once carried.
Confrontation. Fast, bloody, betrayed again…
I reacted, angrily, furious, how dare it –this other-part-of-me-now-half-mad, failing to retain its sense of self, surrendering to his Exorcist's insanity- try to kill mine!
The child's despair was tangible to me, if I had hands I would have clawed it away but I did not so I left it where it grew. When the child, drenched in despair, but holding a resolve that would haunt him for years to come called out for me, I had my chance to answer. Finally.
Not alone. Not alone. Here. Summon me.
I was thrust through the body of the boy who always smiled, countless times. Meeting the other half-mad-piece-of-me and savagely dominating its essence. I could not destroy myself any more than it could me. I could disconnect it from the boy who smiles with blood stained skin and with each 'death' that the child delivered, I severed the half-mad-piece-of-me bit by bit.
…
Silence.
Silence.
The child was alone, wandering in the ruins of the birthplace of his torment and sorrow. But not alone. I was held tightly in his hand, soaked in the blood of the boy who might never smile again.
The child may never know that the object of his regret and longing was that boy, and that that boy still lingered in this realm of life. Half-mad. They both were and it was what had kept me from separating them completely.
When the time came that the child would face the half-mad boy, he would not face them alone.
He would face no enemy, be it Akuma of the desperate Earl lost in his delusions, the unworthy humans who swarmed the child to help, the Exorcists who will never understand just what the child understands about Innocence and life and death and memories that can haunt both.
Even if Innocence attempts to be his enemy, the child will not be alone.
Innocence is not many things.
But I have already broken so many rules, seen the consequence of disobeying them just as sharply as obeying them.
It is no matter.
I will follow this child, guide the child when necessary, and (like/adore/love) this child as he does me.
When we are alone, the child's fingers trace the blade that his will has formed me into, calling for my power steadily for the first time since the laboratory full of blood and madness.
Mugen
Eternity.
Yes.
We've tasted blood and madness and life and death and the reality that nothing will spare us. So I will be lethal, cold, and spare none in return. The child will survive and forge new lines through the century of the end of the war.
This new name is mine, all mine, ours, and Kanda Yuu shall be my eternity.
No other will ever be worthy of me again.
When this child shatters so too will I.
I am Innocence
I am Mugen
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