General Cross Marian was a greedy man. He would take what he needed, take what he wanted, stashing it away deep inside until you couldn't see it anymore. He took lives, stole hearts, and left only a trail of broken memories behind him, the pulses of the Innocences he carried pushing him onwards and forwards.
His way of life was simple.
Never give back.
Never look back.
Never let go.
Maria…
"Why didn't you save her?"
Anita's voice had been unnerving steady for someone who had just lost her mother. However, the same couldn't be said about her appearance. Her makeup was cascading down her cheeks in muddy rivulets of salt and kohl and blush, a mask peeling away to reveal the actress inside.
"Anita--" Cross began, raising both arms as if to defend himself from her grief. His thoughts were a torrent of emotion inside his mind, crashing into one another, sentences and letters jumbling up before drying to a trickle, devoid of meaning, devoid of feeling – just before they reached his lips.
"Your mother, Maria-- Her death is a great tragedy to the Black Organization. She was truly a talented exorcist."
The faintest trace of cynicism flitted across her face at his vacant statement, only to be ushered away by the unwavering composure, unnerving on a face so young.
A perfect actress.
If she was an actress, then her mother had the star of the opera, with a voice of honey and smiles of poison peeking behind a gilded mask. They had lived in a world of underhand dealings cast blood-red with lantern light, where boys became men and men became faceless, identifiable only by what's in their wallets and what's in their pants, and where girls and women hid their stories from the world, only to expose their bodies like fruit ripe for the picking.
There were masks and costumes for every situation. Ones that called for flowers and soft pastels and fluttering lashes, with delicate chains of pearls framing an uncanny still life, for the scum of the earth that believed themselves gods. Ones that required dark fabrics and disdainful glares, striking arcs of kohl cutting savagely around her eyes, lusciously thick colors that filled her lips into an dissatisfied pout. And then there was the one he both hated and loved – of black armor-like cloth trimmed with silver to protect the body, and a silver cross trimmed with blood to protect her heart.
The last thing Cross Marian wanted to do was to talk about Maria's death. He didn't want to remember her lovely form, lying prone on the street with her skull ripped partially open and strewn halfway across the cobblestones in a river of blood dotted with stars and reeking of poison.
Try as he might, he couldn't remember the exact manner in how she died, only that everything – the streets, the air, and the sneering canines of the level two - had become red, red, red.
Red had been her favorite color.
The sound of Judgment had ripped through the night sky then, its acrid song of sorrow and loss mingling with the screams of the Akuma, a gruesome orchestra playing accompaniment for a songstress who could no longer sing.
He wanted to talk about Maria alive – no, he wanted Maria herself – perhaps if he denied it enough the stale corpse on his hotel bed would magically arise, full of song and color. He could feel her skin, smell her hair, taste her lips, but it wasn't enough. How crude an imitation had the fates left him with! He wanted her laughter, her warmth, her song. He wanted—wanted—wanted— it was like reaching for the stars, only to watching them falling further and further away, their terrible laughter as the cold earth dragged him down again.
He had faced Anita again, and could feel her gaze piercing holes into him, delving into his hidden secrets.
Like mother, like daughter.
The stink of flesh rotting in the summer sun sneaked into his mind from some phantom corpse, and his fingers traced the invisible outline of shattered bone and tender broken skin. And there was red, red, red – like a bloodstained silk ribbon.
"Your mother's remains will be cremated back at the Black Order's headquarters, as per regulations.
The casket he had procured was clear inside his head. Ebony wood with ivory décor, silk lined, brass hinges and clasps – the same one that awaited him sometime in the future. (He shook the thought out of his head.) She would lay in her best evening gown, of wine colored silk, ruined face swathed in bandages, awaiting the flames.
It was then, wrapped in his thoughts of fire and hell and salvation, he struck upon revelation. He finally understood – the urge to create an Akuma, to surpass the will of God – it wasn't just the weak of spirit, but the tender of heart. The Millennium Duke sought them in armies, those still nursing a emptiness in their lives. He beckoned them in, broken heart after broken spirit, with promises of a morphine that could ease their aches – and they followed, droves of the tired and destitute, towards that ceramic smile only to find out it wasn't morphine or opiates that awaited but a poison that pervaded the inner workings of their spirit and destroyed it forever.
Cross knew all this, of course, but knowledge was never strong enough to escape temptation's influences.
He nodded a stiff farewell, not looking into Anita's eyes, and strode wordlessly into an empty night.
It was late, but Cross Marian did not sleep when he arrived back at his hotel – how could he? The tiny room was nearly suffocating with the macabre atmosphere – a too-pale figure in repose, coffin in the shadows, and all that red, red, red. Blood on the floor, blood on the sheets, blood on his hands – the owners were going to have a fit, he thought wryly. The mattresses would be unusable, the carpet would have to be ripped up, the walls repainted – who knew dressing a corpse was such messy work? In the end, the only things that remained pristine were Maria herself and the interior of the coffin. Her exorcist's coat, hung in tatters and tarnished silver scraps on a near by chair, crumpled and slightly damp from when he had used it to clean her wound.
Maria had been reborn as a gift of God in that outfit, and would've been returned to God in it – if he had not interfered.
He would not allow her to take her burden to the next world.
If he could help it, he would not allow her to go to the next world at all.
He had dressed in her a red evening gown, hastily stolen after he left the brothel. The sash, normally tied at the waist into an elaborate flower masked what remained of her face.
In life she was a faceless songstress, and in death she remains a disembodied melody, poetically fitting in its tragedy.
A knock on his door signified the arrival of the Finder come to bear Maria back to Headquarters. He lifted the pale thing up, dreadfully light in his arms, and nudged the coffin lid open with his foot. He hesitated.
The lined interior repulsed him inexplicably, too humble, too shallow, too mocking in its simplicity. The ebony glinted in the moonlight, sneering at him, its hunger all too evident written in its wooden swirls.
The urge came back – to commit the ultimate sin, if the Millennium Duke could do it, he could too. Judgment snarled angrily where it laid in the holster at his impure thoughts, dragging him firmly back to reality. He was not a General for nothing - he knew the lessons that had come with being an exorcist, the evils of the Millennium Duke and his Akuma, the consequence of betraying God and the sin of trying to surpass Him.
Cross knew he had to say goodbye.
Never let go--
Before the coffin had even reached Headquarters, General Cross Marian had become incommunicado once more. He left town the night they took the coffin away, with a newly made promise to himself that the next time he looks at one of those was after he died.
He left with excess baggage, chained across his shoulder and held protectively behind his heart. It weighed him down and stressed his joints, but he plodded on, the Innocences in his pocket clinking gently against each other.
He didn't know where he was going; he didn't know when he'd get there; he didn't know if he'd ever be back.
But he knew one thing, and it was with frightening clarity.
He knew the girl in the ebony casket was not Maria.
Start: 1.14.2008
Fin: 2.23.2008
Edit: 3.28.2008
Word Count: 1,463
(Cross Marian is a whooooore. xD)
I hate fanfiction(dot)net's stupid auto-formatting.
Written on a whim... Probably will edit later.
Comments are welcome.