Une pushed her way through the knee-deep snow, as she approached the large seaside warehouse. After several months of tracing her quarry, she had finally found him in Dover, England.
She crept to the door and tested; surprisingly it was unlocked. Bracing herself for an attack, she rolled through the entrance into the dark interior. Coming up in a crouch, she held her rifle ready, but nothing jumped out of the blackness surrounding her.
The assassin cautiously weaved around crates and pieces of machinery, arriving at a locked door that she was sure hid her prey. She raised her gun to shoot at the lock, but was halted by a cold voice.
"Allow me."
Une slowly turned around to face narrowed blue eyes above the barrel of a pistol. She immediately recognized who she was confronting. "So you're still training under the good doctor, are you?" She received no answer. "Adin? Where is he?"
Adin's finger tightened on the trigger, and he tossed his dark hair out of his eyes. "Drop the gun."
Une sighed, "Listen, kid, you don't scare me. I have some business with him, so where is he?"
"Like what, Une?" someone asked from the catwalk above Une's head.
She glanced up to see her target grinning bemusedly down at her and clicking the digits of his claw together. "J, I'm here to kill you."
The scientist chuckled. "And how are you going to accomplish that? You can't assassinate anyone, your dear Treize, Duke Dermail, no one dies at your hands, because you're too emotional. In fact, that's where I went wrong with you, letting you become ruled by your emotions.
"Adin there is completely emotionless; he'll have no problem pulling that trigger on you, even me if it was part of his mission. You never could kill people. Always something interfered, namely Treize Kushranada and your love for him. Killing me won't solve your problems. It will just multiply them."
Une silently regarded the old man and, after several excruciatingly long moments, dropped the rifle, her shoulders drooping. "I can't go back to him. I'll just fail him again."
"You're letting your emotions get in the way, Une," warned the doctor. "Feelings are over-appreciated. Lose them, and success shall be yours."
The would-be assassin glanced back up at J. "So you're saying that if I become a cold-hearted bitch, then I'll always complete Mister Treize's plans?"
Receiving a nod, Une continued, "All right, J, this is the last lesson I'll ever learn from you." She studied Adin's unflinching features and mirrored them on her own face, the unforgiving eyes, the thin line of a mouth.
When she next spoke her voice was hard, strong, icy. "Doctor, you spoke of not regretting killing someone. I have no remorse for anything I have ever done, and I never fail." She strode past Adin towards the street.
The boy started to follow, but J prevented him by saying, "No, she's not the same woman who came in here. There's no point in killing her. At least not until she becomes a threat." Adin wordlessly nodded and let Une go unimpeded.
Une wiped the tears from her eyes at the end of her reminiscing. "And thus the monster I became was born," she murmured.
"Yes, but that monster didn't live very long."
Une smiled, despite her dark mood. "J, that last lesson was false. Even Adin was defeated by his emotions."
"No, his emotions only betrayed him. He was defeated by Relena Dorlian. But you must admit that his emotionless helped him become who he is now. As it did with you. If not for your brief stint as a merciless beast, you would have been a quivering mass of guilt trips, not the strong leader of the Preventers."
"But I still regret having murdered all those people for Treize and for not revealing my feelings to him."
The scientist moved forward and rested his hand on Une's shoulder. "He always knew you loved him. That was the entire motivation behind his plans, to bring back your sweet, loving self. He succeeded."
Une shook her head. "He didn't have to die."
"Yes, he did. By sacrificing himself, you grew..." J snatched a rose out of the vase on the desk. "...and roses must grow, before they can blossom. For peace to be possible, you had to blossom." He twirled the flower around in his fingers for a moment and then replaced it.
Une nodded; somehow his words made sense. A sad smile broke on to her face. She had a few more lessons to learn from the scientist.