Work Text:
Maria Magdalene, once a living, breathing soul, now tethered to a corpse of bones and silence, wondered if she could still remember what it felt like to be warm. She had not felt warmth in so long, except for the ghost of it that lingered when Cross Marian was near.
To her, Cross was everything—powerful, untouchable, yet possessed of a strange and incomprehensible compassion. He had bound her to this form, to this fate, and though Maria's body no longer obeyed the same rules as others, she still felt the weight of that tenderness Cross held for her. She could sense it in the smallest of gestures, the way he looked at her, the way his hands moved when they adjusted her posture as if she were still the child she had once been. It was as if he were attempting to hold her together, piece by piece, though she was already broken.
She could remember the first time she had met Cross. She had been just a girl then, before her Innocence had been forced into shattering even the minds of her comrades. The world had been different—brighter, maybe, though she had been too naïve to see how cold it could become.
Cross had been so much like the others in that he was distant and calculated, but he had held a certain weight in his eyes when he spoke to her. A weight that said, I need you to survive this. I need you to be strong.
But did she even have strength left?
As the years passed, she had learned to accept her place as a weapon.
She was not a person anymore, but something more—something less. A lifeless shell made to fight and die, but not entirely without thought. And those thoughts had brought her to the current moment.
Maria's fingers twitched, but it was not of her own volition. It was Cross' magic, pulling her strings as if she were a puppet. Her breath, shallow and labored, came only at his command.
The others never understood, never saw the truth behind her eyes—the awareness that flickered beneath the dead gaze. Maria was still there, somewhere inside, but Cross had buried her so deep that sometimes, even she couldn’t reach her own soul.
How strange, how painful it was to have a body that could move, that could feel, but could not act on its own will. She could hear Cross speaking sometimes, his voice low and comforting as it wrapped around her like a familiar cloak, but the words were not for her. Not for Maria, who could only listen and yearn.
"Rest," Cross would say, his voice heavy with something that could almost be called affection.
Can I rest? Maria wondered. When will I ever rest?
The flashes of memories, fragmented and broken, came in waves. Her mind was like a shattered mirror—pieces of who she was, who she had been, floating in a haze.
There was Allen, so young then, his face full of uncertainty. He had looked at her, eyes wide and searching, before she had cradled him in her arms. She had been the one to sing to him—soft lullabies that didn’t quite fit with the reality of their existence. She could still remember his little hands gripping at her sleeves, his breath warm against her chest.
Was I ever real? Maria thought. Or was I just a dream they held onto to make sense of their broken world?
There was a moment when Allen had cried, and Cross had looked at her with something that could be mistaken for guilt—guilt that Maria couldn't understand. He had no reason to feel guilty. He had only been trying to protect her, protect them both.
The truth was that Cross had never been cruel to her—not in the way others might have imagined. No, his cruelty was hidden in the tenderness of his touch, in the way he held her in this unnatural state. He had given her a purpose, but in doing so, he had also condemned her to a life of endless half-living.
She wondered if Allen ever thought of her, wondered if he still remembered the lullabies she had sung to him. She hoped, in some distant corner of her mind, that he did. Perhaps that was the only thing that had kept her tethered to the world outside Cross’ influence.
But where was Allen now?
Maria couldn't be sure. The last time she had seen him, he was a child. He had grown since then, perhaps too much. The war, the Black Order, the Akuma… so many years, and she had not seen his face. Did he ever think of me?
And Cross… Where are you taking me now?
She didn’t expect an answer. She had never expected one. The silence that enveloped her body was both a blessing and a curse. At least in silence, she could pretend that she was free. At least in silence, she could imagine herself as something other than what Cross had made of her.
But that was the cruelty, wasn’t it? The fantasy that she was ever truly free. That her existence had ever been her own.
In the distance, there was the faintest whisper. A name.
Maria.
The voice was soft, distant. Cross. Always Cross.
The world was falling apart, and Maria Magdalene—this broken, resurrected soul in a body stitched back together—could only wait in silence.