Entitled: Mistress of Denial
Fandom: D. Gray Man
Length: 2,300 words
Setting: Several years post-canon
Disclaimer: I do not own D. Gray Man.
Notes: Miranda is depressing to write, jeez.

DAY1.

When she walks back into the inn her groceries slip and tumble to the floor, egg yolk and apples mixing with macabre. The little girl in her pretty, frilled dress turns, petite face twisting into an eerie, impish smile turning odd as she licks the red from her lips.

One of her hand twitches up, little voice like watered honey, and Miranda ducks over her precious friend and pulls—

Beyond her barrier, the world has slid away and grown dark, save for the nasty floor Miranda had brought with her. The Noah girl hovers contentedly in a sea of dark matter, expression amused.

“Poor thing,” Road coos, “Are you so terribly frightened? Do you ever wish for everything to stop? For all the fighting, the blood and the demons—do you ever wish it all away?”

The barrier, Miranda tells herself, chant broken and garbled by other strings of panicked thought, She can’t get past the barrier.

“You do, don’t you?” the girlish whisper tickles her ear, and Miranda stifles her own shriek, spinning around to see only the steady churn of clock hands turning in circles as endless as the time they recorded. “You simply can’t keep up,” Road teases from behind her, always behind her, always jabbing at her weakest, softest places. The white band around her finger, still waiting to tan.

“How long can you lie to yourself, I wonder?” Road laughs, and Miranda can see her shadow slipping through the cracks, a flashing demon’s smile. “That’s all it is, I think. You just think about them when their bodies weren’t broken, when the ships stood straight and the buildings tall, and tell yourself everything will be alright. But it’s never alright, is it?”

Is the clock running forwards or backwards? She can’t tell. Counting down the seconds. Each one a step closer to—something. A step further away. Always moving forwards. Yes, of course, of course the hands would be spinning forwards—moving on without her.

“Maybe that’s why you can’t fix anything,” Road muses, “Why you can’t fix the dead people. Oh, I suppose that would make sense. You just don’t believe enough, is that it? You just aren’t good enough.”

“They’re dead,” Miranda whispers, “They’re dead. Nothing can fix that.”

“But you could,” Road dismisses immediately, still prowling the edge of the barrier, “Oh, Miranda, I’m so bored out here! Do come out and play.”

“Even the Earl can’t bring back the dead,” Miranda says, almost to herself, “It’s impossible. It isn’t something that should happen.”

“I see,” Road trills, and Miranda can hear the maddening click of pacing, prowling feet and Road stalks the perimeter, each footfall confident and light, “Do you really think so? Is that what the Order has told you? The Earl can bring back the dead, sweet Miranda. His currency is souls, and the interest collected comes through bodies.”

But she has seen the twisted, awful things those people become, has seen the way Allen’s face goes pale after each death, his eyes clear with sorrow, and tracking something invisible as it flows up, up…

“You know,” Road says idly, “Even Allen called someone back.”

Miranda’s teeth bite into her cheek, “Don’t say such things.”

“What things?” Road mocks, breath fogging over the clock face of innocence, yellow eyes catching their glow, burning up with sin, “They’re only the truth.”

DAY2.

“This is so boring,” Road said, for what could have been the thousandth time. She eyed Miranda accusatorily. “You know, Miranda, I don’t need to sleep. You do.”

Miranda says nothing, only looks at her hands and wonders if—perhaps she had been built for offense—things would have been different. Her wrist pulses, not yet, not yet.

“It’s not as though I have anything against you,” Road said lightly, “But you know, you have chosen your side. You understand it’s just business. Can you speed things up?”

Her head hurts, dully, the kind of headaches a person can get from stress. Or dehydration.

“I can’t believe no one thought of you until now,” Road said thoughtfully, “I mean, the flashy weapons are always so impressive—Allen with that lovely arm, Lenalee evolving to bigger and better—but they’re still just weapons, aren’t they? But you,” her shadow leaned in with charming reverence. Miranda felt the wood grains beneath her palms, all dry and waiting to catch and splinter. “But you,” Road continued, “You aren’t made for attacking anyone. Just healing and holding on. Kind of like a heart, wouldn’t you say?”

She smiles again, as though pleased by her own cleverness, and settles on her haunches, like a cat before a mouse hole.

“I’m nothing special,” Miranda says, throat tacky and thick, “Nothing at all.”

“We’ll see,” Road murmurs.

DAY3.

“Miranda,” Road whines, “Won’t you let me see the color of your heart? I’m so tired of this game!”

Miranda breathes softly, almost silently, and thinks about dying alone and out of sight. Her temples throb, eyes painfully dry. She keeps them mostly shut, letting her organs twist.

“Honestly,” Road huffs, pattering at the barrier with her pointed candles and knives, battle axes and pumpkin knights with swords, “At least I would have done the job quickly. You really are being quite unreasonable. I loathe wasting time.”

Miranda’s lips are cracked, and her hair feels loose in its roots. She tries not to touch it, worried it might simply fall out. Dry, lukewarm air whistles up and down her throat.

“Well, in any case,” Road says from just outside, “It won’t take long, will it? The limit is three days without water, isn’t it? I suppose I’ll just have to wait.” She finishes the thought petulantly, pretty nails tapping against her palm.

She listens to Road’s jilted, Victorian songs and watches the circles dance, and thinks about stepping over the brink. But, no. No, there is hope. Hope and fear, which keeps her power beaten back as she lies dying.

“I wonder if it will be gold?” Road muses, “Something pretty, like diamonds. Or maybe it will all ugly and swollen, like a real heart. Like a worm. Don’t you think it looks like a worm? Like some giant, evil slug, with its roots sunk so deeply into you, you can’t even feel it eating you up.”

Heart, muscle, veins. 70-odd years to live. Her lungs rattle like crumpled paper wings.

“The innocence,” she whispers, but cannot even hear herself speaking, watches the clock etch by, is frightened by such speed, how quickly things blast past her. Things she could not put right, make whole.

“A gift,” she tries to say, but it comes out, “Our judgment.” Before her golden clocks slant at odd angles, and every time she blinks another layer of gray is painted over them.

DAY4.

Everything is too thick, too heavy, like lukewarm dread. She is nothing, lost inside her own skin and staring inside, seeing, seeing nothing. Only whispers. Slim young men and a fragile girl, always walking ahead, moving much too quickly, and never turning back. Her chest is on fire. Her feet will not move. They are there and they are nowhere, no one.

A fire is caught and spreading.

There are dead hands and ugly tears hanging limp and ghastly across her peripheral vision. Shattered, they die with their innocence ripped away, just broken things, accidental and dropped, wings plucked away. Their eyes are always open, always looking up. So the same, so different, so dead.

Kanda, with his beastly grin hanging on a tired edge, skin decorated black and red, a serpent swallowing its tail, cursed flowers crushed across his chest, his dusted innocence. Fury.

Lavi, his jaw slack and both eyes uncovered, shock and the unknown written in his final expression, head turned, one hand seeking, even in death. Fear.

Lenalee, a girl whose very existence was made from scar tissue—of being hurt and then healing, beautiful Lenalee, her hand stretching back, crying for anyone but herself. Despair.

Allen, dying ugly, dying destroyed and ripped apart, dying locked by a rage so powerful she would not have thought him capable of such, even as he wept. Such a gentle boy. So kind. Hollow.

And from within her, the innocence burns cold and naked white. The last exorcist.

She reaches, “Time record.”

DAY5.

“No!” Road yells, as Miranda hunches, then stands shakily, her breathing labored, her hands beat against barrier, palms open and reckless, pointed face turned ugly by fury, “NO!”

Miranda licks her lips, revels in the wetness, and breathes soft, her lungs perfectly moist. Road’s gaze burns into her, all games thrown to ash. “Give them back!” the girl snaps, pressing herself near, ignoring the holy burns, “Give them back to me.”

Miranda breathes. Cells die, and knit back together. Billions of complexities unraveling and rewoven, invisible, but she can feel them all surfing the infinite loop. “I don’t have anything to give,” she says, and feels it.

“Give it to me,” Road whispers, “I need it to make it better. Do you understand? Do you know what I have lost? Thousands of years. I have fought the three realms and died more than a hundred times and you cannot take my family from me.”

“No,” Miranda says.

“Miranda,” Road burns, brighter and brighter, “You are already dead.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Miranda grabs her sides, arms locked tightly around her middle, “I can’t let you have this. I can’t. I just—I can’t.”

“Please,” Road whispers, dark tufts of hair falling placidly around her face. Less monstrous then, and more like a little girl. “It will take me back to the origin. It will take me back to all of them, and then everything will be as it should.”

“No,” Miranda says.

“Miranda,” Road insists, “I have already won.”

“No,” Miranda says again.

And in that instant Road is no longer a girl, no longer human, but a monster—something unfathomable and ancient and hurt, so badly hurt and desperate for it, ravaging her barrier with such force that Miranda’s concentration slips and almost breaks, before lodging back in place, her heart in her throat.

It comes to her then, that she will never sleep another day. She wonders if the dark smudges around her eyes have deepened.

Road is a girl again, panting and bloody, her wounds sealing back together, lips tight.

“You will,” she says coldly, “Give it to me. I am immortal. I shall never let you go.”

DAY6.

“Humanity was an accident.” Road says. Miranda tries to listen but it is difficult—so difficult to even think, she is so desperately tired. And dead. She must be dead by now, shall be dead the moment she forgets, or even sleeps.

“I was,” Road starts, and then stops, “I am the mother.”

“Which one killed Allen?” Miranda asks.

“Does it matter?” Road asks tiredly, and Miranda wonders why it does.

“You’re only a girl,” she protests, but is silenced by Road’s impatient look.

“It doesn’t matter what I am now, nor what I was then. I am the dreams of a dead civilization, of a better people. If we did not escape extermination, then why should you?”

“Because,” Miranda says, finally voices the purpose she has found within her, proud and small, “They died to protect this.”

“They are nothing,” Road murmurs, “Beautiful, perhaps. Snowflakes all look the same when they’re melted. But my family,” she looks at her small, ashen hands, “My family is forever.”

“Not anymore,” Miranda vows.

DAY7.

“No one is coming to save you,” Road says, sugar-cruel, “There is no one left but us. You cannot bring back the dead, and the Earl is too weak, now. There is no going back, and you have built yourself a castle of cards. In a minute, everything will fall.”

“No,” Miranda says, stubbornly, tracking her clocks, the time, always late.

There is a long, long silence.

“Why won’t you just let go?” Road demands, angry and frustrated and mourning, because her grief ran for centuries as mother and daughter and sister and lover.

Miranda’s chin comes up and she remembers the ink on Lavi’s hands, Lenalee’s free-falling flight, and Allen’s unshakable, unconquerable heart.

“Because,” she says, “I deny.”