heart shaped clock
by NiNA_eN
two. Allen Walker
"She knows them most. The power of words"
"I-I'm so sorry!"
Miranda knows them most.
The power of words is a terrible terrible thing. Whether decoratively put, it was all the same; and so it was best and worst when they were simple for they efficiently cut to the quick.
"You don't need to come in tomorrow."
Words had an enormous impact. They could shape a person for better or worst. One they would cling onto that single word until it fused into their very being, distorting their self for all eternity. Or two a rebellious feeling would sow in their heart and they would try to fight that accursed future. Unfortunately for Miranda, it was the former and thus she succumbed to a life without a future.
"W-wha-?"
Five years in the grave and her father still hadn't gotten over her death. Patience and humility had never been his strong point and as his pillar of strength deteriorated as did his mentality. He wasn't insane; he didn't abuse her or anything. No he simply grew more mean-spirited; cruel almost in his wonderings and denials of whether this was really his own child.
For his wife had been gentle and elegant, moving always with an easy-flowing grace that came to her all too naturally. This child with her clumsy ways and butter-slicked fingers, he decided, couldn't possibly be a product of so perfect a woman.
"Useless. I never imagined someone could be so useless."
It was times like this that Miranda Lotto missed her mother dearly.
"It's not often someone can count the number of times they'd been fired in triple digits."
Miranda has never really equated much with words, she was never the most eloquent in class but she has always felt the blunt pain and rejection hidden in their depths, waiting to slice her open.
She had always been a persistent child, she strove yet rarely succeeded. She would get depressed, scold herself a few – yet she never gave up. She wonders if that made her stupid. She'd never been a very bright child anyway.
"That's when you cannot deny that you are utterly useless."
But then the seed is planted, the doubt is sowed and its roots are spreading further and further. She tries to fight it, this near-suicidal urge but it only sinks deeper into her, into her small little brain – and she realizes, cannot deny that persistence and a strong will is nothing when connected her because yet again she has failed.
And so, for once in her life, for one small moment, Miranda Lotto gives up all hopes and she steeps herself in melancholy, drowns herself in alcohol; and with bottles rolling around her thin ankles, body lolling against an old grandfather's clock for support, she wails.
"I wish tomorrow would never come."
She was never to realize how big an impact those words would bring to her life.
"Thank you Miranda-san."
They were words rarely used in her lifetime, even rarer when used in conjunction with her name and for a moment Miranda wonders if this can really be happening. These are words she's always wanted to hear, an honorific of which she thinks she is undeserving yet has always desired. This moment, she thinks, cannot possibly be real.
"As long as we are alive…
She meets a boy with white hair and a star in his eye; and he's just so unreal that Miranda shakes and tries her hardest not to wake from this dream. Because she has never seen, let alone met, so pure a person. He is her first everything, first smile, first thanks, first helpful and kind and sweet; the list goes on and it's all so very genuine.
Miranda wants to cry. They claim that believing in God is a good thing and He Himself is a good person, yet there is a child on the battlefield fighting in His place and what kind of God puts a child on the battlefield and how is that in anyway good?
She never was a religious person, the many years she has spent crying in dark corners has erased almost all her faith – and so she takes it upon herself to live, just like this child who's been cursed by fate has. But still she cannot help but wonder how he is so untouched by the corruptions of this cruel cruel world despite what he has seen, malevolence of which he has obviously witnessed more than her.
….the wounds will heal….
The demoralizing words and spiteful actions she has received so many times before are no longer spoken yet still they echo in her soul, a bell that though minimized still resonates its tinny toll within her weak mentality. Such damage is irrevocable, crippling self-doubt entangling her every thought and action.
….but the scars will remain."
But she will learn to live with it.
"Exorcists are not saviours. They are destroyers."
Just like the boy cursed by fate, just like the girl shackled by her own power, just like the boy who hates the world, just like the boy who must learn not to love it.
Because she is an exorcist.
"I want to be a destroyer who can save."
Because her Innocence is of Time and Space.
"Thank you, Miranda-san."
Because she is Miranda Lotto.
"You saved us."
The original first chapter. It turned out slightly different from what I initially imagined – less romantic, more very subtly hinting of such. Hopefully my next chapter will portray more of such.