***

    The town is burning. The town is in flames and it’s all my fault.

    My mission was clear and so I did what I had to do.

    That doesn’t mean I enjoy the smell of burning flesh or the screams of the dying any more because it was my duty. It doesn’t make me feel any better about the fact that two hundred people are dead or dying because I had a mission.

    They’re only Lambs…

    … but does that mean they deserve to be slaughtered?

    All for the sake of awakening this stupid ‘God of Death’. Who believes in gods and demons anyway?

    All I need to know High Commander Jay will tell me.

    And he told me to attack this village.

***

    Duo, carrying his rake over his shoulder, crossed into the town square, greeting people as he went to visit Alice.

    “So, Duo, how are you today?”

    “I’m doing well, Elder Hopi. How did the cattle herding go yesterday?”

    “Much better, with your help.”

    “Oh, it wasn’t anything that was really hard, Elder, it was my honor.”

    “It’s so nice to see that you’ve become so adapted to Lahan after such a short time, Duo. Many young people spend their whole lives living within the boundaries of our small town and don’t learn to fit in anywhere near as well as you have.”

    “I don’t really think that’s an accurate appraisal, Elder…”

    “Oh come now, Duo, it’s been four years and you are just like another member of the large collective family we all live in here.” The older man puts his arm around Duo’s shoulders and squeezes. “You’re more integrated than the good Doctor, and she’s been here at least twice as long as you have.”

    Duo smiled and nodded, his braid tossing slightly and thumping Hopi in the back of the head gently. “I’d love to stay and chat, Elder, but I’ve got to go and speak to Alice.”

    “Ah… young love. I wonder what Timothy will say.”

    “Timothy?”

    “Go on and talk to her, but I won’t be held responsible for Hilde’s response.”

    “Sure thing,” Duo replied, moving on and shaking his head.

    As he reached the door to Solo’s house, he caught Hilde staring at him from across the way, sitting out behind her own family’s home. “No one’s there.”

    “What do you mean?”

    “Solo went out to look for you earlier.”

    “I know. I saw him.” He paused. “Isn’t Alice in?”

    Continuing to peel the potato in hand, Hilde nodded in an agitated manner.

    “Well then you lied, someone is home.”

    “What do you have to do with her?” she asked, making a particularly violent cut with the peeling knife in her hand. “She’s getting married to Timothy next week.”

    “I don’t think it’s any of your business, Hilde.”

    “What’s so great about Alice anyway? It isn’t like she’s anything special. Thin, ratty hair, pale complexion…”

    “You sound like a match maker, Hilde.” Duo joked with a smile before he knocked on the door to the cottage and entered.

    “Who is it?” a meek voice from within responded.

    “Just me… Duo,” he responded as he crossed the threshold and closed the door soundly behind himself. “Are you busy?”

    “Not… really, just working on my wedding gown.”

    “Oh,” he said, stopping short and glancing up at her.

    “So, what brings you by, Duo?” she asked with a small smile as she pulled the thread with her teeth and snapped it. “Is something wrong with Solo?”

    “Oh him? No. He and I had a nice chat this morning.”

    “So he’s put you up to trying to get me not to marry Timothy as well?” Duo blinked. “Oh don’t worry, you aren’t the first.”

    An uneasy silence passed between the two of them and she hummed a little as she began to sew the hem of the gown. “I think you’re the only one it might actually work with, though,” she whispered.

    Blinking and looking up at her, Duo arced a brow. “Alice, what’s that supposed to mean?”

    “I… Duo, do you ever wonder what would have happened if you’d grown up here in Lahan?” she asked, turning to glance out the window.

    “What do you mean?” Duo asked.

    “Well Duo, I really…”

    Scratching his neck awkwardly, Duo interrupted her, “I wasn’t really sent to make you not marry Timothy, Alice.”

    She blinked.

    “Solo asked me to make sure that you knew what you were getting yourself into. I didn’t know that he’d already asked other people to try and get you to stop, and to tell you the truth I bet you’re more prepared for this marriage than he is to loose his little sister.”

    She smiled winningly, ice blue eyes sparkling and continued to sew the hem.

    “Just… take care of yourself, all right, Alice?” Duo asked, turning to leave.

    “I will, Duo, to be sure.” She began humming as she worked and Duo smiled to hear the song. When he had first been brought to the town and the orphanage, Hilde had hummed the song while she helped Father Maxwell to nurse him back to health, so hearing the melody always gave him a sense of warmth and comfort.

    “Oh, Duo?”

    He stopped, hand on the doorknob. “Yes, Alice?”

    The quaint domestic feel of turning back to gaze at her as he left the cottage struck him and for a long moment her wondered if his own parents had ever had a scene like that one, if they had ever shared such a simple thing as a glance with his infant form in the corner.

    “Doctor Po said she would have some medicine ready for Solo,” the reminder of his friend’s infirmity struck a cold shiver down Duo’s spine, “and I was going to go and pick it up from her, but it seems I won’t have time to now. I’m really behind working on the dress, you see…”

    “Ah,” Duo said, keeping the melancholy from his voice. He hated to think of Solo being sick, and the idea that there was a new type of medicine the pale blond boy would have to take grieved him greatly. “I can go pick it up if you’d like.”

    “Would you?” her smile brightened. “Thanks Duo.”

    He opened the door and took a step into the sunshine.

    “Now why can’t you ever get that disturbed when I get medicine for myself?” Alice mumbled, moving back to her sewing. “I wonder if this is truly the things were meant to be, between Timothy and I.”

 ***

    The look in that young man’s eyes as I shot him remains with me even now.

    Arranging someone’s death and causing it are two separate things. Very separate.

    He was probably about my age, somewhat shorter and very slender. He had bright, wide ice blue eyes under a mop of shoulder length blond hair. It was probably mere chance that the target knew him so well, but something about the anguished scream that came out of the target’s mouth as the boy fell to the ground tells me that it was something deeper than I even understand.

    What…?

    Were they friends?

    Brothers?

    … lovers?

    Whoever he was, his death served it’s purpose.

    Jay was very pleased by the resultant commotion. He said there was no doubt at all that the target I picked out was Shinigami, the slumbering God of Death.

    I drifted into the woods and let the rest of the squadron die their deaths there at his hands. It was within my mission protocol. I wasn’t sent here to die.

    It isn’t like I wanted any of this to happen.

    I can still hear them crying out.

    Please, stop, don’t leave us. Are you injured? Where are you going?

    It all reminds me, too much. I must try, I must forget that time. It was out of my control, out of my hands. The inspectors said so.

    It wasn’t my fault they tried to coerce me into action without orders. How was I to know that they were under their own orders? It’s not like this stratified Eden we live in is without those with their own free will. For all I knew they could have been just another gang of upper ranks idiots looking for another pretty face to cater to them.

    And when all’s said and done, it was the Zero that did it anyway, right?

    Sure.

    If that’s all it was, then why do I still see their blood on my hands so vividly? If it was only the drug then why do I feel like this squad I was assigned to, these Lambs that died, why do I feel the weight of it all upon me, if it wasn’t my fault?

    Damn it, snap out of it.

    If I don’t watch my step here I’m going to run afoul of something I can’t handle without a suit. I can’t afford to call a suit here.

    And this bullet has got to come out soon or it’ll get infected.

    What was that noise?