I used to wake up screaming, sometimes. Never while I was still in Weiss. I was too busy then, between school, and killing, and a part-time job that was my cover for killing. I was the one holding it all together, I think. I was the one who'd been there the longest. I designed the strategy, did the research.

I don't resent Persia, or Kritiker, or the other members of Weiss for what they did and didn't do. I am what I am because of them.

But I still wake up screaming.

I wake up crying, too, but not as often. The first time it happened, it scared the hell out of my roommates. Once I'd calmed down and truly woken, I managed to reassure them, and tell them it was nothing. I'm not sure if they believed me, but by the fifth time it happened, they just ignored it and went back to sleep.

Weiss disbanded, after we screwed around with Esstset. I mean, I think we all wanted to forget. We'd tried once, and so we were going to try again. This time there weren't any rogue groups of assassins waiting in the wings. Aya was the least paranoid; I thought he'd be the one insisting on contact or something. He didn't. Yohji-kun, I hear, sleeps in a room rigged with pitfalls and traps, and never goes anywhere alone.

I haven't heard from Aya in a while. I'd wanted to keep in touch with him; but I didn't. I wanted to hang on for a silly reason, I suppose. I had a crush on him while we were Weiss. I don't know if he knew or not. Even if he had, I don't think it would have mattered. All he ever cared about was Aya. His sister, I mean. I should call Aya by his real name; Ran. Ran. It's not as pretty as Aya. But Aya was happier when he was Ran, I suppose. I haven't seen him since Weiss disbanded again, so I guess I'll never know.

I thought I'd be relieved to get away from killing, hiding it in the dark, smiling into the sunshine as if everything were all right. We were following orders, right? We did what Persia told us, and we washed away our sins under the white cross.

Something tells me that's not how it was.

We did Persia's dirty work. We did what he – and Kritiker – didn't want to bloody their hands with. We were expendable; like the time Ken-kun collapsed on a mission because he had flu and shouldn't have been fighting at all, and they wanted us to leave him behind. Or when Yohji-kun nearly broke because of Asuka, and Persia almost told Aya to kill him. Almost.

So when I got the chance to step into the sunlight for real, to leave it behind and actually have a life, I thought I would finally be happy. I hadn't counted on the nightmares. I started to dream of the deaths I'd caused after a few months. They were similar to my memories, and different, and I watched them die over and over.

But only sometimes.

I suppose I kept in contact with Ken-kun the longest. He kept tabs on all three of us for a while, contacted us regularly with silly anecdotes and wanted to know how we were doing. I don't know if Yohji-kun or Aya ever wrote him back. I never did. After a while, the letters became more sporadic, and they finally stopped altogether. The last one sounded almost nervous, as if Ken-kun was afraid of something. Which was ridiculous, because Siberian wasn't afraid of anything.

I certainly hadn't noticed anything strange. I stopped waking up in the middle of the night with blood on my hands, screaming, sobbing, convincing myself that it wasn't real. It was old blood. So why did it look so fresh?

I think I got a visit from Abyssinian at some point after Siberian's last contact. I remember seeing him, and he looked surprised. I definitely remember that, even though most of the details are a little foggy. I don't know why, though, because I'm sure he was the one to visit me, and not the other way around. I had no real reason to see him.

I remember his katana. I'm sure of it. Perhaps he was practicing forms. I'm not sure after all. Of all of us, I think he felt the weight of his sins the most. His transgressions. He buried it all in his concern for his sister, while he wore her name and tarnished it to keep his own clean.

Hypocrite.

We all felt it. We all felt the blood and the corpses pulling at us and dragging us towards them. We all knew what would happen eventually. One day they'd succeed. And the only way to keep them at bay was to keep killing, to keep following Persia's orders and perform for Kritiker. We're here because we kill because we're here because we kill because… But the more we killed, the more would be waiting for us in the end.

I suppose that's why Yohji-kun doesn't like the dark. Why Ken-kun surrounds himself with children, as if their innocence can cloak what he is. Why Aya clings desperately to his sister. Aya killed me once. But… no, that was a ruse. That was a trick so that the Americans would think their plan had worked. I always wondered how it would go down if we fought each other.

It wasn't really staged; not like we pretended. We told them it was all a front, that we had choreographed the whole thing, like a beautiful dance. And it was; only not quite planned. The blood was real. Aya nearly did run me through, and Ken just barely stopped short of sending Yohji into Hell.

It was beautifully acted, down to shattering Ken's bugnuks. Aya really hadn't expected Ken to win. He retracted the claw at the last possible moment, of course. And not all of the blood was real. Just most of it. It didn't really matter if it was a real mission or not; Aya was going to carry it out. A mission was a mission. But that was a long time ago. Kritiker was a long time ago. It's over, the Takatori family, and Kritiker, and Esstset, and Schwarz, and Weiss…

The nightmares don't wake me up any more, but I still have them.

Takatori wasn't so different from Persia. Persia was Takatori. Using us, using Schwarz, using Schreient. And it was all part of the grand design. We were all bit players in the end, even Esstset. Death… death is waiting for all of us. Persia told us we'd be cleansed. He told us we were atoning for our sins. We hadn't committed any, then. We were clean. We truly were white.

I used to use bleach to get the bloodstains out. I don't know why I cared, but keeping that white jacket white was important. As if by keeping it clean, and pure, I wouldn't be able to see beneath my own exterior. It didn't work, of course, but I lied to myself quite convincingly.

And the nightmares. I can hear Aya scream. I can hear Yohji cry. I can hear Ken plead. But it's not real.

The poison in my darts is one of the quickest-acting known to man. On their own, they were just painful as hell and nearly impossible to remove. But the poison… that was the beauty of it. When I fought Yohji, the darts were clean. When I fought Schwarz, the darts were clean. I wanted them to suffer. I was surprised when Farfarello didn't respond to the pain; I suppose it was just part of his insanity. I never got close enough to find out. I didn't really care.

Why is there still blood on my hands? I can smell it, rich and metallic. It's slippery and red, and it should be caking and drying, clumping into black, but it isn't. It's still fresh, still new. It should be old. It's supposed to be old. It was a long time ago.

I think I see Ken-kun. He hasn't emailed in weeks; why would he visit? But it's like there's a barrier between us, and I can't hear him. He looks sad. I don't understand. Yohji's arm is wrapped around his waist, possessively. Bastards. Why should they get each other when I wanted Aya and all he could see was his sister?

Persia said we'd be Weiss. Persia said it was all right. Persia said that we had to rid Tokyo of evil. It was a fruitless endeavor. Humanity cannot be rid of evil, and to start with one city when there is an entire world in shades of gray and black and white is damning and arrogant. Is there a Weiss for every city, then? Or are we responsible for all of Earth? Arrogance and megalomania overshadow us.

We just did what we were told. We weren't supposed to think. We were just supposed to hunt the futures of the dark beasts. That's what we were told. We were making the world better.

It was all lies. They didn't care, they just wanted revenge for their own reasons. Weiss was no better. Each one of us joined for revenge, to seek out the targets that made us who we were and to destroy the shadows of our past. I guess no one told us that in order to do that, we would taint our future with an even greater shadow.

Lies.

Lies in the dark.