The him that I loved…I never saw. Yes, I admit it now. I love him, and I don’t know whether or not he hates me.

I’m not saying that I’m entirely attracted to him sexually. It’s mostly his personality, or what’s not covered of it, that attracted me. For a long time now, I felt like I wanted to protect him… Wanted to keep him alive, even if he’ll hate me for it.

Can god sense my feeling of helplessness? This feeling that…I want someone to stay alive, yet I know he’ll hate me for it. My love is just that selfish… I know fully that he will not be happy, that I’ll just be seeing an improvised "life" at its perfection. He’ll laugh, he’ll eat, and he’ll sleep…he will live, but he’ll just be like me: an empty husk. At least I don’t put up an effort to make people assume that I am fine. I hope I never do.

In my next life, I just want to be an emotionless flower or a robot… As short of a life as that is…

I don’t want to feel love! I don’t want to be loved! I don’t want to feel this pain or fear of losing him…

********************

"What are you saying, Omi?" I hissed, still holding onto the sobbing boy’s collar, "Quit your whining!" Omi gasped at my sudden outburst, and he calmed down a bit.

"The mission that Youji was assigned to is fake…" Omi stated, "He will go to an old warehouse for a mission that will never happen. The place will be bombed by our own people and him along with it. The warehouse is located behind a Yakuza building, so even if he manages to escape the explosion, he’ll still be killed. He doesn’t have his wires cuz his watch is missing, so Birman gave him a gun. But that gun he is equipped with doesn’t have bullets, so…" The boy trailed off, afraid to explain the rest.

"Why?" I whispered, "Why are they doing this?" Omi sniffed again, "They said that Youji was already corrupted, so they can’t use him anymore… They had to kill him. He survived the staged car accident, and now it’s this…"

I shook me head in disbelief and got up to go to my car. "Where is this place?!" I shouted, grabbing for my trench coat. "Aya, what are you doing?!" Omi took a hold of my shirttail, trying to drag me back, "Birman will kill you!" I slapped his hand off, glaring at him.

"I am no longer Weiss," I growled, "So Birman can’t do shit to me. Where is this place?"

"…By the docks."

********************

The transmitter on Uriel’s earring buzzed and a voice came through. "Uriel," Birman’s voice probed, "Did you find the place fine?" Uriel pressed the earring and nodded, "Yes, Birman."

"Good," Birman’s voice fizzed, "Go in the warehouse and wait for further instructions."

Uriel entered the dark warehouse and the door slammed shut promptly behind him. "Birman?!" Uriel panicked, "What’s happening?!" No answer from the transmitter; the door was locked. "Birman!!" Uriel shouted.

Still no answer from the woman. The only answer he received was a small rumbling and a sudden explosion. Uriel’s scream pierced through his throat and rang in the warehouse. An object slammed upon Uriel’s back, knocking him to the ground. But instead of harming him, the object seemed to be shielding Uriel from the flames that lit up the once darkened space. A drop of blood spilt to the ground.

"Aya!?" Uriel shrieked, finally able to remove his hand from his face. "I’ll get this back from you some other day…" Aya muttered, blood running down his head.

He’s bleeding!

"What’s going on?!" some voices were heard from the outside, "Intruders?!"

"Come on!" Aya grabbed Uriel’s collar and dragged him out of the warehouse. Waiting outside, however, were people from the Yakuza who were attracted by the sound of the explosion and the fire like flies to feces.

The fire… Red flames… Flowers with the color of blood…

Uriel heard Aya curse bitterly under his breath next to him as he drew out his katana. "Help me out here!" he said, reaching for something in his pocket.

"Youji! Help me! Come and save Mommy!!"

Aunt Charlotte…in the fire…?

"Here!" Aya called, "Catch!!" He tossed Uriel the watch that Youji used. "Put it on!" he instructed.

Fingers shaking, Uriel put on the watch. "Aya…" Birman stammered, "W…what are you doing?! Only Youji can use those wires…!"

There’s no backing out now…

********************

I took out the wires and lashed them out at the men in front of me. I remember it now…

Yes! I remember it now…! Only blood can wash out the sin and guilt of my filth! Only this hunt and kill can release me from my forbidden sins and transcend me to the most primal of life!

My sins…

"Youji… My beautiful child…"

Soft hands that caressed my cheeks. Would you still caress them now that they’re stained with blood, "Mommy?"

"You won’t leave Mommy, would you…? Good child… You have to always love Mommy!"

No!

My parents divorced because my father hated my green eyes, saying that I was born of another man my mother went out with, which she didn’t. When mother finally went insane, she…decided and thought that…I looked like father.

"Youji, why do you conceal your face with your hair?"

The beautiful girl I killed…

"You have such beautiful eyes!"

This girl doesn’t know anything! She doesn’t know what I did with my mother…! She doesn’t know…

"You want to work together after we graduate? You have the brains for a detective!"

She doesn’t know how filthy of a person I am… How unclean I am…

"Sure," I had said.

I wanted to become someone else in front of these people, this girl… I wanted to keep on lying…

"Youji! Didn’t I tell you to come home faster these days?! The presents those strange girls sent you are disgusting! Burn them!!"

Mother’s hand was too close to the flames when she threw the blood colored roses into the flames. She caught on fire and screamed.

"Youji! Help me!! Youji-------"

I didn’t help her… I only stood there, against the wall…horrified…

And then… I was free… but the job as a private eye didn’t go off as well as planned at first. I started to numb myself with alcohol, just like mother. I had to rely on my father, who hated me. Only my father’s wife supported me. I decided I wanted to get away for a while. My step-mother funded me to go to America, and I saw my cousin there…

"Cousin Youji! You’re so cool, you know that? All my friends want to meet you! I feel so proud!"

Uriel…how can you laugh and smile in such a cynical world? So innocent… Like a flawless piece of fresh paper… If you aren’t careful, I fear you might end up like me one day…

"I look so much like you, Youji…"

Really?

That night, before I went to pick Uriel up, I sent Aya a package that replaced the value of a will and then I dyed my hair blond. After I gave Uriel more drinks than he could handle, I dyed his hair brown and took him into the car. I wanted to kill my cousin as me! But…

I couldn’t do it…

"No…" I had said, holding his sleeping form, "It’s not you… It’s not your fault… Aya… There’s still someone I have to live for… I can’t leave…"

I started home before we traded our places back. Then the car accident happened, and then…

I remember now… I…am Youji!

I glanced at Aya, letting the blood drip from my hair. "It was as well-fought as any other mission, eh? Birman?" Aya chuckled, "Your stage is ruined!" I smiled, stepping over the dead bodies to the railings by the dock, looking at the dark waters below me. So dark…

"Youji?" Aya whispered loud enough for me to hear over the fire’s crackling. The flames illuminated his face, making him look almost human. A smile played upon my lips. "Aya…" I started, letting my trench coat slide off my shoulders and stop at my waist. The cool wind felt so good… "’Youji’ is not the type of person who would express his true feelings to anyone. So than to let you forget about him… He’d rather you hate him for the rest of his life," I finished, rubbing the blood on my gloves into my bare shoulder as if attempting to wash off my tattoo. I reached for the gun.

"That sort of thing…?" Aya answered, "Of course I know!"

A smile. A tear slid down my cheek as I turned to face him.

You are my wings…

The gun. Its cold steel upon my fingers. A hand raises it up.

Without you…

Its barrel pressed against my brown hair, which pressed against my temple.

I wouldn’t even be able to survive on this planet…

The trigger pulled.

…click.

BANG!!

The person whom "Youji" wanted to kill…was himself…

********************

A person falling into the waters beneath him, blood flowing from his head like petals thrown by a child.

Why, Youji?! Why must you always do this to me?!

Seconds translated into hours as he fell, in front of my face, into the waters. I couldn’t get to him in time to catch him… The black fallen angel…covered in blood of sins…

Why must you always break our promises, smiling…

The waves of the waters reached up to embrace and grab him, like hands of screaming girls reaching for a rose thrown to them.

Youji-------!!

[One month later]

"A person like Youji who was sexually abused ever since he was little is especially prone to multiple personalities," Manx explained to me as we walked down the halls of the infirmary division. "So when he tried to kill himself due to the guilt of getting his cousin killed, he was going in and out of Death’s Doors. And he, in the confusion, made himself another person." I nodded, watching her walk down the white hall, her high-heels clicking like Youji’s Felix Cat clock.

"Oh yeah," Manx turned to me before opening the door to a room, "How did you know he was Youji?" I shifted my feet and looked at her with a side ways glance. "His neck," I murmured, "Youji’s the only person in Weiss with a suicide device implanted on him. It was after I touched his neck I found out…" She nodded with a smile I couldn’t read.

Actually, I already knew when his heart went out to travel… This body…it let the components of making "Youji" up become another "him…" The bullet, due to his falling back, only managed to scrape the side of his head.

The door creaked open, and I walked into the white washed room.

"Youji…" I whispered.

"Aya?" a voice chimed. Too high to be an adult’s, too deep to be a child’s…

"That’s a dream…"

That day, as if in a miracle, I saw him. His green eyes peeked out at me, underneath the brown locks of hair. He looked like Jesus Christ, under those white sheets. Brown hair parted at the center of his head, bronzed skin due to his "cousin’s" constant tanning…he was Christ reincarnate.

"Aya…" Youji whispered, "I just had…such a terrible nightmare… Perhaps that is the real me…burned my mother…got my cousin killed…killed Asuka…all for my own selfish reasons… Everyone hates me, everyone wants me dead… So instead of letting that happen, I’d rather end my own life…"

I interrupted him then, sitting myself on the bed. "That’s a dream!" I said quietly, "This is the real world… You don’t need to think too much about it… Stay here…"

Youji… I can’t hate you… Your green eyes have already drowned me… I can’t break out…

"Why are you crying… You’re so strange, Aya…"

"Shh… Schlaf, Herzig Ermorde," I whispered, entangling my fingers in his hair, "Schlaf…"

Philomel, with melody…

Author’s rants: Whew! That’s the end of that! What did everyone think? Sucked bad Green Pond water, ne? Heheh… Some people were wondering why in the world I love to torture Youji this way…but that’s just my little secret. At first I was thinking about ending the fic right at where Youji shot himself and then Aya goes crazy or something like that… But that wouldn’t really make sense since Youji claimed that he had to live for Aya… But now that it’s ended…I am expecting a flood of flames! Flames go to youkofujima@hotmail.com.