One more night. One more drop of blood – a sparkling crystal too profound to describe, an essence, if not a reality, that shimmers about me perpetually. Perfect like the moon, lurid like such light.

One more night. Another spray of scarlet – a personification of a river cast away by heaven, that, turning on a course away from both mountain and purifying lake, instead delves deeply into the earth. Turning up clay, becoming an open vein.

One more night. But this time, the blood would not be my succor.

It was the night of the first mission. There had been something before, a sort of test of my skills – or so I believed – but it had hardly been an assignment. Here, now, was where I would be witness to the skills of my new allies, and they, too, would place me upon a pedestal, for better to see and judge me. A night not swollen with suspicion, but each figure, including myself, when we stepped into the night, radiated feelers, maintained a sort of heightened tension.

It was not that I did not trust them. I had neither evidence to trust or not trust, and so still stood in some sort of medium. It might be a long time before I left that medium – I do not give my trust easily. More often than not, it gets you nowhere, or further back than you used to be. All too often, in the end, when you are the last one standing, when the corpses pile up behind you, before you, seemingly within you, when the blood runs thicker, and it is never yours, yet no longer theirs, and when the dry wind blows a burning scent into the barren stretch of time forever about you, trust leaves you cold.

But perhaps my particular situation changes my perception, and I am more... sensitive to such issues.

And it was not that they did not trust me. As I would not necessarily place my life blithely into their hands, neither would they theirs into my own. Yet I did not feel as if I would have to watch my back for enemies and for these three silhouettes about me. Our situation – or call it a cause, if you will – was enough to tie us together. Or at least, weave me partially into their fray – for between them was friendship, and only beyond that thread was the trust of the cause offered to me. Perhaps, in time, I would be woven into that deeper tie of friendship. Or perhaps not. As I stood – as I have always stood – it mattered little to me.

I had now had the pleasure, the experience, of sitting in the basement of Kitty in the House – the name in which I will always find no end of dry amusement – and watching the video recording of Persia. The mysterious, somewhat imposing, assuredly commanding figure that was Persia (an expensive cat to buy, or so I’ve always heard) instructed us calmly in our killing. Manx, too, was there, statuesque, silent, and attentive as we were briefed by our leader, and then taking seriously the role of secretary and thread between Weiss and Persia by lecturing us further. It was all done very neatly.

The mission, it did not seem as though it would prove difficult. A dishonest politician – the worst kind, to be sure – was the target. Apparently this was not an uncommon thing, taking out one who would further misuse power and scum-up the political world. I had always pointedly believed that the political world was long since beyond the help of anyone who would try to purify it, but that was simply my personal belief. Then again, I saw little effect in government as a whole. Monarchy, democracy, theocracy, anarchy – I had lived in them all. They were, in the very basic sense – the sense that, in the end, mattered the most – the same.

The two moons rising and the night already deeply fallen found we four shadows of Weiss having split into two groups. The politician, who normally resided on the outskirts of the city, had taken this weekend to sojourn briefly with a relative, in the manor that now rose up before it. It was intended to be a rest, a vacation, for the man – Watanabe, by name – and so it was all very hush-hush and security light.

That made it all the easier for us to get inside.

In all effects, the plan was simple. I had no qualms about it. The simpler a plan, the less that might go wrong. Unless circumstances demanded a fancy, technical strategy, it all came down to the get -in, get-out approach.

And so, commencing the ‘getting-in’ part, we broke into two groups. Yohji with Ken, with the more active role, and myself with Omi, for the surveillance and technical role. And more passive role. Needless to say, I was not well-pleased with the set-up.

I was brushed aside. I was, essentially, back-up. I was there, having submitted myself to the will of another, to comply with three others, to take action, find some purpose, and yet, I was thrust aside.

“I don’t see why I am not out there.”

I nodded in the direction the other two had disappeared, leaving myself and the younger assassin with the image-flower freesia to watch security and come in as more or less secondary offense. It was a measure of my irritation that I even voiced my concern.

Omi cast him a glance in which he clearly tried to hide exasperation and, if I was not mistaken from by the depths of his eyes, amusement.

“Ran-kun,” he said, patiently, firmly, “taking out the target it a simple two-man operation. Three people would complicate things, and besides, it’s better to have two of us to monitor, just in case something happens. That way one of us goes in, and the other remains outside and unaffected should connections need to be made.”

I remained expressionless, though the matter still irked me. The way I had been treated when the mission was received was the fuel of my exasperation. When Persia intoned what I had been previously informed was his characteristic send-off – “White hunters of the night, hunt the dark beasts of tomorrow” – I had sensed and confirmed Yohji’s jade eyes on me. There was an expectant, considering air about the gaze, as if he was gauging my reaction. There was, however, no reaction to give or receive. Unappreciative of the treatment, I had turned my flat gaze to him and his eyes were immediately diverted, sliding away from me innocently as if he had never had a stare so intently fixed upon me.

I have always seen beyond innocence, however. That time was no exception.

A few moments later, when Manx filled in a few details and customarily asked how many of us would accept the mission, it was Ken’s turn to glance at me. It was hardly done with grace or stealth – I am not sure whether the boy possesses such qualities, I will readily admit – but I don’t believe he cared. The intent of his look was obvious, however, gallingly so – it was as if he expected me to back down. Back down because I had joined Weiss recently, because he and the others were apparently under the impression that I wold bolt when the real business came. Perhaps I was exuding some sort of aura to inspire those feelings, yet if I was, I was completely unaware of it, and wished it gone.

While my thoughts briefly circulated, Omi had trailed off and turned to the small, extremely high-tech – or so I had been told – laptop. He seemed grossly intent upon whatever it was he saw, and when he spoke earlier, it had been with only half a mind.

I cast another irritated glance back the way the pair had gone from this clearing, and my mild anger was not placated by his words.

“You people don’t trust me,” I said, expressionless but for the small amount of acid I allowed into my voice, “and so I would have expected a test-”

Utter surprise. Depthless oceans. Priceless sapphire.

Having turned around, I discovered that the boy was not as intent upon the dimly shining screen as he had appeared. A single, slender finger was pressed gently against my lips, and held my words as surely as an iron bar.

“Hush, Ran-kun,” he said, lips curving slightly. His eyes, gathering, embracing the moonlight, reflected it brightly, adding to it some inner intensity. With his other hand he reached up, absently brushing copper bangs from his forehead with a gesture that was strangely endearing.

His tenor voice was quiet, low in the density of the darkness. “We are close enough to the manor that the few bodyguards might hear.”

He arched his eyebrows slightly, and I nodded shortly in understanding. I never blinked.

Again he offered the tiniest of smiles, his gaze lingered upon mine, and then he turned back to the silently humming computer.

I remained still after he had turned away, was suddenly aware of a chill, a motionless wind, that had dissipated with contact. Contact...

I turned away, giving myself over to the self-appointed task of scouting the other ten feet of the clearing, circling to the back, eyes intent on the trees, gazing beyond them, beyond the darkness. Wandering fingers briefly touched my lips. Upon them I still imagined that I felt the gentlest touch such lips had ever known, softest action mine eye had ever witnessed.

Gazing into the night, previous, petty emotion dissolved. I perceived there to remain about me a change of disposition, an alteration of the air.

Gazing into the night, into air that was unaccountable lighter, actions and events became strangely surreal.

There were a few bodyguards that followed Yohji and Ken – of which they were aware – and we hastened away with the brutes on our heels. Watanabe was dead, they confirmed, and the two behind us now were the only two left to worry about. As if to prove something, even I am not sure what, I hung back, turned, and quickly dispatched the two.

And therefore, in the scheme of things, the target was the only one hurt, as well as his two cronies that chased us, felled by my blade. Only those three –

And, well, myself as well. A minor inconvenience, really. I more or less twisted my knee when dodging a bullet, and I took a hard punch to the kidney-area. The injuries were hardly crippling, yet still painful, in their way, especially when it came to running.

When I caught back up with the others, a few glances were thrown my way, and I turned them away with quick nods, implying I was fine. I kept up with them, hanging to the back, and I ignored the painful twinges from my torso and knee. After ages of such incidents, I was quite accustomed to pain.

As we ran, as I rose above such petty annoyances as my own injury, I distantly noted that Ken moved with no small amount of fluidity, molding into the darkness as the rest of us. Strange was the chasm between his apparently clumsy self and the graceful assassin who with the night flowed. Perhaps it was some unconscious attempt at preservation. Yet preservation of... not innocence, surely, but perhaps of some purer form of self. An attempt to keep one part whole, in a sense, by creating two separate pieces.

When they first joined myself and Omi, few words were exchanged as we left the place of darkness. Upon reaching the flower shop, we entered in the silence that had remained unbroken. The atmosphere was solemn, yet not to a smothering extent. There was a sense of amiable companionship – from which I distantly determined I was excluded – and acceptance of guilt. It was fitting, for the situation. I would hardly have expected rejoice upon return. The thought of such foolishness, and the weariness I felt, brought a smile to my lips.

“Whatever it is, laugh it up, cowboy.”

This sudden remark from Yohji, who happened to be passing my vantage as I stood paused near a rack displaying flowers that were dimmed for the darkness. I was curious, and I turned carefully expressionless eyes – masking both curiosity and the continual flashes of pain – into a flicked glance at him. His words were said not with causticity, yet neither with an affable tone. It was a simple, tired comment.

“Since you appear *so* amused with something-” I caught the emphasis. *So* amused? Hardly. “-I’ll leave you here to clean up. Either of y’all two can stay and help chuckles, but I need my beauty sleep.”

He disappeared up the stairs.

I gazed after him, eyes narrowed thoughtfully. I had not taken offense, but was yet somewhat put-off by his actions. Chuckles? Cowboy? I was truly baffled by that latter. I had no earthly idea where he might have devised such a nickname. As far as I was concerned, I in no way resembled a cowboy. As far as he was concerned, however, it didn’t seem to matter. He didn’t care, and his continual attitude reinforced that. Had I even suggested overtures of friendship, I feel they would have been denied. I would not exert such effort, however.

I broke my scrutiny of the spot his figure had last occupied. My attention now dispersed, I saw there to be another gaze fixed after Yohji. There was a tightness to the eyes, lips, a suggestion of disapproval. Mild, yet still persistent.

“Oi, Omi.” The voice that spoke was Ken’s. He was halfway between the assassin in question and the stairs. I watched in silence as Omi blinked, pulled out of his thoughts, and turned large, reflective eyes to Ken. The tightness, the speculation, was immediately gone. “How tired are ya’?”

Omi smiled. “Go ahead, Ken-kun, I’ll help clean-up. If we were smart, we would’ve hurried and done this earlier, but... Oh well.”

“Ya’ sure?” the soccer player asked. He was already walking to the stairs.

A small, fond laugh escaped Omi’s lips. “Go ahead. Goodnight, Ken-kun.”

Ken grinned, and even that was tired. “Goodnight.” Footsteps thumping, he was soon gone.

Turning, I reached for the broom, careful not to put pressure on my right leg. I did not believe it had been twisted severely – I was sure a night’s sleep would leave it sore, at the most – yet the pain was persistent. Coldly schooling myself to ignore it, I turned around, broom clutched solidly, and began the menial task of sweeping. Dead leaves, rotting petals, they clustered at my feet. How fitting for myself to be the one gathering death in it’s different forms.

My thoughts roved dark paths, and I made no effort to halt them. I was not in a bad mood – I rarely feel so intensely – but I did not want to be bothered. I suppose I was admittedly still wishing I had been placed into a position that earned more trust on the night’s mission. Of course, in spite of my placement, I was still the only one with injuries to display, but an injury was hardly what I was aiming for. All it proved was my carelessness.

I wasn’t waiting for recognition, either. I had wanted action, and I had wanted them to test me, to trust me with the mission and understand that I could do whatever it was they asked. Unconsciously my fingers clenched on the broom.

Damn it. I don’t even know half my thoughts anymore. I don’t know the point. *Why* is it that the matter was so important to me, that I fixed my thoughts on the matter of trust? With myself, with my past – with the immortal moon hanging clear to me in the canvas of the sky – trust is a short-term affair. I give it, rarely, when it seems applicable, and then, when the age ends, move on.

And then, suddenly, it became of importance to me. Perhaps these three and their friendship had already begun rubbing off on me.

“It’s not that we don’t trust you.”

In spite of myself, I started, was unable to contain my surprise. Lifting my head, I saw Omi, watering can held at his side, watching me. Luminous eyes peered through the dim light – no one had turned the lights on, because all four of us had adjusted to the sufficient moonlight – and there was a solemn, earnest look on his face.

My voice was low, expressionless. “Nani?” Cold.

What might have been a sigh escaped his lips. “Before, when we were talking during the mission, I know what you were thinking.” He raised his hand, half-turning, and absently began to water a few of the potted plants on the rack that was a metal sentry nearby.

I watched his slender profile. He watched me with a sideways glance. “The whole thing about you expecting a test. It didn’t come, not as you saw, and you assumed it was because we didn’t trust you in the position of Yohji or Ken, when you would be taking out the target.” He shook his head, copper bangs swaying slightly. “That’s not what it is.”

The broom was still. I didn’t like the way he had been following my thoughts. “Are you going to insist that you speak for the other two?” My gesture with one pale hand encompassed the stairs, the two who had since gone up.

He bit his lip for a moment, then shrugged. “I suppose I can’t be certain, can’t tell you with absolute conviction that they think the same way. But I know them, I’ve known them for a long time. They are my family, now. It is not a personal reaction – we have had a few people come to join us, and simply freeze up when faced with their first target, or screw up their first mission. We were all disappointed with those, to say the least, and they are now wary of new members.”

Waiting for you to screw up. The words remained unsaid.

“You seem more open-mouthed than the others,” I noted, voice quiet.

He shrugged, somewhat uncomfortably, and he broke our gazes, dropping his when he spoke. The watering can hung still in his hand. “Well, Yohji... He’s the oldest, he’s had the most experience with things in general. With people. We’ve all had rough pasts, and his way of dealing with it is his sarcasm, I guess. And he’s protective, because he’s lost in the past, and he refuses to let it happen again – at least, that’s my take on it. He’s hard to get close to, to know, to trust, and he likes it that way. There are just the two of us, me an’ Ken, that know the real him, and he is wary of anyone who might join, or perhaps hurt one of us that is under his wing.” Looking back at me, he shrugged.

“And Ken...” he continued. “Well, he’s Ken. I know he hasn’t been as cool to you as Yohji has, and he hasn’t come running to embrace you, either. He, too, is wary, but not so much in a protective way. Besides, he’s preoccupied half the time with soccer and with the kids he teaches soccer to. He’s got half a life of his own., really, besides the flower shop and Weiss.” The smile that Omi offered was rueful, regretful, as if he envied the other assassin that.

“And yourself?”

Omi blinked, eyes swirling with endless, azure shades. He dropped his eyes. “Myself what?”

I disliked evasion. “Why are you so ‘genki’?” My lips twisted with the word. “Why is it that you’re the one willing to talk to me like this? To welcome me?”

He began to water again, seemingly casually. “Every group has a particular setting,” he said quietly. “Every group has a designation for it’s members. Ken’s the oblivious, funny, lovable one, the one that kid’s love the best. Yohji’s the jaded, sarcastic, secretly-caring-though-he-doesn’t-like-to-admit-it, attractive one, the one that women love can’t help but love. You’re the new one, to complete it. The cold, unyielding, anti-social one that no one will ever figure out, but that the lonely ones will love, because they see their loneliness in you.

“And me?” He glanced back at me, and there was a weary bitterness in the depths of his eyes. “Me?” he repeated softly. “I’m the silly, innocent, overly-genki-” his own mouth twisted “- clown, the one that will always be ready to smile and lend a hand, to laugh first. The one everyone likes.”

I was somewhat taken aback by his words. The way he spoke them, they were true. A group of people always settled into a circle, everyone assumed a particular role. He had given the classic description, of even myself, rudimentary though it may have been. He was more perceptive than I had given him credit for.

I had nothing to say to him. Not to the silence that stretched now between us, nor the haunted look in his eye, that was diminishing as something within him recovered itself.

Turning away, I began to sweep once more, gritting my teeth and cursing silently the hot pain in my knee.

“Ran-kun.”

I didn’t respond. I was not entirely sure what our conversation had established, but I was tired, tired of thinking, of staying on guard, tired of being with strangers. I wanted to finish cleaning, then to leave, sleep.

Omi was not put-off by my silence. I heard a soft footfall. Still, I did not turn.

“You are the cold, silent one,” he continued, voice quiet, reeking of compassion. “You take into you so much pain, and you release nothing.”

More footfalls. The broom halted.

“I know you were hurt when you fought the guards. I saw the pain in your eyes, and I still saw it as you turned away a few moments ago.”

My fist clenched. So tired.

“You don’t have to be so strong,” he whispered. He was there, right behind me.

One hand lightly touched my shoulder. I stiffened.

I hated being touched.

And even as such thoughts echoed, there was warmth. There was the strange driving away of the chill as I had experienced in the clearing during the mission.

“It’s all only beginning,” he was saying, continuing, voice still low. “Physically, mentally, with Weiss, you will find more pain even as you strive to better this life for others. And you... You are the one that would shatter before bending to that sorrow. That one is the one who will die.”

I couldn’t think clearly. Things weren’t right, I was unaccustomed to such intimacy. His words were biting for the truth they brought, the truth that I always striven to encase in ice. That he would perceive me so soon, label me for the one I was...

“We will all be your friends, Ran-kun.” He spoke delicately, hesitantly. He knew what that meant to me. Friend. I stood rigidly. I did not need friends. Friends brought dependency, dependency brought weakness. The world would wither around me, my friends would die as I would be the last one standing. Standing, weeping over their graves. I had to be stronger than that.

Penetrating too deep. I didn’t want to listen to him. These were the things I strove to escape, strove to deny, even as a part of me was ready to embrace it. It was that part of me that retained memory, that forced bubbles of feeling to the surface, emotions from some past I did not remember. From there, bursts of color such as white, pale loveliness.

“I will be your friend.”

Friend. The bane of my existence. But the thing that might hold me to bending, keep me from instead shattering. If I might, indeed, shatter.

I was glad I was not facing him. I did not want him reading me, as I did not want to read him.

I had not relaxed. His hand, touch ever-gentle, still lay lightly on my shoulder. I leaned the broom gently, silently, against the counter.

“Goodnight.”

My voice echoed cold. Without looking at him, I broke the contact, turned sharply, and left the room.

And the entire time, as I left him in darkness, I was thinking that, perhaps, he was right.