A/N: So, this is a short one-shot that looks at Maria's feelings about some stuff. Tried to take a different view of her. Anyway, please enjoy.
Disclaimer: I do not own D. Gray Man or any of its characters or plotlines.
-oOOo-
Maria didn't remember how long it had been, since her life and Innocence had been stolen. Not yet long enough that she'd stopped cursing herself for a fool for having trusted that bastard General Cross.
Not that he'd killed her-except by neglecting his duties, and the Order refused to admit that his neglect was murder. Even when he so blatantly profited from her death, chaining her body and Innocence to him through unholy sorcery.
But not her soul. And not her truest voice, which had sounded in a Parisian opera house until Innocence had clipped its wings. She used it now, sparingly, a song in the dark to summon ghosts from the past and banish her loneliness. Deep in the Order, where her voice echoed back to her, she imagined she wasn't so alone and sang the Barcarolle from Offenbach's Les Contes d'Hoffman:
Le temps fuit et sans retour
Emporte nos tendresses,
Loin de cet heureux séjour
Le temps fuit sans retour.
Zéphyrs embrasés,
Versez-nous vos caresses,
Zéphyrs embrasés,
Donnez-nous vos baisers!
vos baisers! vos baisers! Ah!
Belle nuit, ô nuit d'amour,
Souris à nos ivresses,
Nuit plus douce que le jour,
Ô belle nuit d'amour!
Ah! Souris à nos ivresses!
Nuit d'amour, ô nuit d'amour!
She remembers well the last time she was allowed to sing that song, back when she still lived free. The Opera House had been packed; even the box traditionally left empty for the Opera Ghost was occupied, with men and women dressed in oddly somber black clothing gazing down at her. In Les Contes d'Hoffman, she always played Olympia and Giulietta, not because she couldn't sing Antonia, but because she preferred their characters. That she became a doll girl in the end was of no consequence at the time, though she found it ironic later.
That night, all went well, right up until the Barcarolle. As she began to sing, she noted a few guests rising as if to leave, which irritated her immensely-didn't they know what intermission was for? She considered interrupting the song to chastise them-after all, she was prima donna, and to leave during her solo was an insult- when a flash of light caught her eye. Something bright and shining flew at her as she continued to sing, hitting her in the throat.
She faltered then, a slender hand fluttering at her throat, but she could feel nothing. Her voice rang out again, angry now, soaring higher than she meant it to, and she saw the people who'd been leaving stiffen and return to their seats. She made it through the rest of the performance before returning to her dressing room and being assaulted by the sight of a cross embedded in her throat. And by the time the sun rose again, she'd been a slave of the Black Order.
-oOOo-
But she wasn't angry. Not really. She'd argue (if anyone cared to) that her new, sardonic tendency to stalk lost members through the bowels of the Order was a manifestation of boredom rather than anger. The young Science Division brat, Johnny, and Chief Officer Lee's little Exorcist sister, Lenalee, would always react in such a satisfying manner.
But her meddling attracted attention, first in the form of Reever (whom she'd always liked), then with the bumbling idiot Komui Lee himself. She never allowed either of them to gaze upon her ghostly form, only sang snatches of song, wordless but high and free, in response to their queries.
In the fathomless dark, other ghosts of the Order gathered around her, formless shades who wandered where they chose unheeded. They brought her news of the Battle in Edo, the Ark, and the new Exorcists. She cared very little, except for the part about Cross using her body in the battle against the crazed Noah of Pleasure. That pissed her off.
It wasn't long after she learned of these things that she had visitors of import. The first one she saw was Rouverlier, and the so-called Doll Song she'd been singing to herself took on new meaning in his presence:
Les oiseaux dans la charmille
Dans les cieux l'astre du jour,
Tout parle à la jeune fille d'amour!
Ah! Voilà la chanson gentille
La chanson d'Olympia! Ah!
Tout ce qui chante et résonne
Et soupire, tour à tour,
Emeut son coeur qui frissonne d'amour!
Ah! Voilà la chanson mignonne
La chanson d'Olympia! Ah!
As she finished, she was grimly pleased to see her corpse float from the shadows with Cross in tow. Her body began to sing, but only remembered songs of her Innocence, high, wailing laments without beauty or technique. At the rate the voice in that body was deteriorating, it wouldn't be long before even those notes were beyond it. She began to sing as well, starting with a run of arpeggios up to the note her body could do no justice to. As she trilled ever higher, she stalked out of the shadows, the prima donna within her demanding attention. She knew what the bastard general and Rouverlier saw; a washed-out spectre, flickering in the half-light, the only vibrant parts of her being her unrestrained chocolate locks and the deep umber eyes which accused them.
In the end, her body's voice gave out, and Maria soared higher in triumph, until she sang a resonant note into the silence, her trademark vibrato the only evidence of its earthly bonds. She cut off as suddenly as she'd begun, glaring at the men opposite her with hate.
Cross clapped, slowly, mockingly. "Bella diva."
Her head snapped toward him, eyes narrowing, nostrils flared in offense, an arm rising to point at him, a condemnation. "You. You are a fool. One day soon, you will need that voice to sound and it will fail you, and you will wish that you had saved me so that I might save you. Your death will go unacknowledged and unavenged, as mine did, and you will wander your afterlife tormented by you own stupidity reflected in that choice. And then, when your very soul, black and rotten as it is, is on the brink of destruction, we will be even, you and I."
She disappeared, leaving them without a sound to storm through the depths in her impotent rage.
It did no good to rage at them. It never had.
But it sure as hell made her feel better.
-oOOo-
A/N: So, anybody like it? I thought she might be spunkier than her body's compliance suggests, with an ego to match…..The songs are French, but the English translations can be found quite easily online, by searching the title (as written in the story) and the composer, Offenbach. If anyone cares.
Love it? Hate it? Want more? Let me know!