Change of Heart
Change of Heart
Chapter Two : These Foreign Feelings
Road sighed as she whacked her fist with emphasis on the hard floor, which caused a fair-sized echo in the expanse of the dimension.
"Why won't you leave me alone, Exorcist?!" She shouted as she hit her fist on the floor again, clearly exasperated. It didn't matter that she had seen only a half-hearted smile…it was still something of a smile, and enough of one to drive her crazy.
"Why can't I stop thinking about you!?" She yelled again. Her snake-like yellow eyes widened when she heard a banging on the other side of the door. Slowly, it opened to reveal a tall man with a gray complexion identical to Road's. He tilted the brim of his black top-hat up to show a raised eyebrow.
"Well…would you care to fill the rest of us in on your emotional escapades, Road?" It was Tyki—apparently, even a dimension couldn't separate Road's irritated exasperations.
Road sighed as she responded; though she had a feeling she might regret it later.
"I can't get this stupid boy out of…" She didn't need to finish her sentence before Tyki started to laugh.
"Oh—you mean the Exorcist, right?" He stopped laughing as he put a gloved finger to his chin in thought. "Let's see…what was his name…? Ah, yes, Allen. Allen Walker! That boy, I presume?" He asked.
"Maybe." Road responded with a pout as she crossed her arms once more. Tyki found this amusing as he leaned against the dimension's door.
"Y'know, Road, and I think I said this before, but a love between an Exorcist and a Noah isn't going to be…fruitful." He stifled another chuckle as he remember the first time he had said that to her.
Road narrowed her eyes in a 'shut your face' sort of glare that she promptly directed at Tyki. Needless to say, she was ticked. It was bad enough that she couldn't get Allen out of her head, but having Tyki harass her about her feelings just made her want to kill something.
"That's not it." She retorted with venom in her tone that she hoped would get him to leave.
Tyki took the hint full force, and then some. He took a few steps to the door with a 'please don't kill me' sort of smile. With a cautiousness one would use when backing away from a very angry, very hungry animal, he opened the door and tipped his hat in parting.
"Alright…whatever you say, Road." He said in a slightly hurried manner before he closed the door, and thus, left Road to her solitude.
Road maintained her pout and crossed arms even after Tyki had left her alone. After a few moments of silence, she uncrossed her arms and used them to push herself to a standing position. Her pout slowly gave way to a vacant, albeit agitated, expression.
"That's right…whatever I say." She muttered under her breath as she walked over to a wall. Not just any wall of her dimension, but the wall.
She ran her black-painted nails over the wall's surface slowly and with purpose. She stopped when she reached three large holes in the wall. She tilted her head before a small grin played her lips, which was followed by a somewhat sadistic cackle.
"Oh…you were a fun toy then, Allen Walker…" She mused contentedly before she stopped cackling. She let out a deep breath of air as she stared at the holes in the wall. She looked at the ground, which still bore dried blood-stains.
Oddly enough, Road felt a shiver run up her spine that caused her to twitch. She shook her head and stood up and turned her back to the wall.
"Get a hold of yourself, Road…" She told herself. But she now found herself face to face with something she really didn't want—a flashback, or rather, a memory simply playing in front of her.
Allen stood there; his cursed arm, in the form of a cannon, was pressed against the back of Road's head. Road walked over to where the scene played out, and stood between the imaginary Allen and the imaginary Road. She tilted her head as she watched and listened.
She listened as she taunted Allen to shoot her. Her shoulder sunk slightly—she hadn't been aware that she had ever raised them. Her eyes widened a little bit as she realized something she hadn't fully realized then.
"A part of you wants to shoot me…" She looked the imaginary Allen in the eyes, still focused on the imaginary Road before it.
"But…a part of you…can't." She tilted her head and stared at the memory, then at the cannon, and over to her imaginary self.
She walked away from the scene, and as she did so, it slowly faded into nothing, as fog fades in the presence of sunlight. Road crossed her arms once more before she walked back over to the wall.
Again, these strange feelings…they built up inside her, and she felt as though they were eating away at her. Eating away everything she had been taught to do, everything that she had been raised to believe. Everything… everything was…building up in those feelings…and every time she looked at the bloodstains on the floor and the large holes in the wall, the feelings grew.
She sat on the floor with her legs in front of her before she flopped onto her back. She looked up into the endlessness of her cosmos; a swirl of green and black, and maybe purple. Even without looking at the wall or floor, she couldn't deny the rising of these feelings inside her. She closed her eyes and attempted to drift off to sleep.
Road didn't realize it then, or maybe she chose to ignore it for sanity's sake, but those feelings…the feelings of remorse, of regret…were directly tied to her other new-found emotion:
Her love for Allen Walker.