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I look back sometimes, and I'm amazed by how much my life has changed.  I walk down the same streets I always have, but they look different now, foreboding.  I don't like to come this way anymore.  It seems like I don't need to nowadays.  I don't need to see the drug addicts huddling behind the dumpsters, the scrawny dogs picking at the garbage, the sultry prostitutes watching me from the doorways.

I used to work in this world, if not live in it.  I used to sit right there, on those steps, and wait for the next pusher or pimp to pass by.  Because back then, that's all I ever did, that's all I ever was.  Just another gun for hire, looking for the next hit, hoping to bring home enough money to last a few months.  And though I moved up in the underworld, I never broke away completely from that festering hole in Paris.  There was always a client to meet, an informer to pay, a merchant selling his stolen wares.

I haven't been here in a long time.  Nothing's changed really.  The faces might be different, and the graffiti covering the walls might be more colourful, but the stories of the people here never change.  They're always sad, lonely tales.  Mine wasn't much better.  Not at the beginning.

And yet, somehow, I managed to climb out of it.  I managed to get away from it all, make a name for myself, work my way up to where I wasn't completely in the dark, but still far from the light.

I think it was then that I truly became an assassin, when I moved away from this squalid slum.  Out there, it wasn't any different.  The clients wore tailored suits instead of ripped leather, the informers were hairdressers instead of pickpockets, and the merchants were store owners instead of nomads, but essentially, it was still the same, just classier.  Out there, people talked with subtlety and euphemisms, whereas here you needed only brashness and testicles.  But other than that, all they really wanted was to give me their money in exchange for a corpse.  Except that they treated me a little differently, with a little more respect.  They didn't laugh when they saw the assassin was a woman, they smiled.  In a way, they were so much more dangerous, but I guess by then I was already headed for the top.

I remember those days: roomy modern apartment, expensive clothes on my back, and an endless string of nighttime shows.  I may have been better than you're average assassin, but I acted just like one of them.  I filled my lifestyle with extravagance, distractions, using my earnings to ease my loneliness.  I was searching for something, though I'm not sure what.

Looking back, I can see that I was lonely then, without even knowing it.  I could never show myself openly, because the truth would have condemned me.  And those who did know the truth about me kept quiet because I knew just as much about them.  I could never have friends, only contacts, interests.

I don't know why I stayed with it.  Probably because I thought if I retired, someone else would just take my place, someone with fewer scruples and looser morals, someone who didn't care if the next contract was on a drug lord or a schoolteacher.  And there was always a part of me that thought if I tried hard enough, I could learn about my past.  I thought if I looked deep enough I would understand why my family wasn't here.

And in the end, it was that belief that kept me going.  It was that ridiculous hope that I clung to when I opened an e-mail that read "make a pilgrimage to the past with me".  Had it not been for the music, the startling reminder of death and blood, I never would have considered it, that anonymous e-mail from an unknown girl.  But when I saw her, that lonely teenager silhouetted in the sunset, she reminded me of myself.  I used to be like that, lost, alone, uncertain.  And yet this girl was so much more.  I watched her fight, I watched her kill, and she seemed hollow, even more so than I ever was.

She knew me, but she didn't know how.  She knew she held the key to my past, but she didn't know why.  I told her I would help, but only so long as I was benefiting.  I told her that I would kill her, when all was said and done, and she didn't seem to care.  She didn't seem to mind.  As if life had already lost meaning to her.  I was never that far gone.

And now, we know the truth, but that lonely girl is still alive, still living in our apartment.  That's how I think now.  I want her there, no matter the past.  I hate the past.  I can feel history bearing down on me, telling me this isn't right.  Sometimes it seems as though fate set out to play one sick, macabre joke on me.  But she's not the same girl anymore.  I'd like to think she isn't so lonely now.  I'd like to think that whatever I can give her will mend her invisible wounds.

And mine as well.

Kirika...  The name shouldn't mean anything to me; it's most likely not even her real name, yet I find myself standing here, missing her company.  She's the only one I could ever truly call a friend.  Maybe that's what I've been looking for all this time, someone who understands me.  A friend, or even a little more.  Maybe I'm just as lonely now as that first time I saw her, so long ago.

Kirika.  Here she comes now, exactly on time, holding a package in her hands.  I can tell it's her, even though she's just a shadow against the setting sun.  The way she moves is unique, both familiar and dangerous at the same time.  I'm thinking of the day we met, and it seems so fitting somehow.

I don't know why I told her to meet me here, of all places.  Did I really need this time alone?  Did I really need to come back and see this miserable alleyway?

Probably.

It can be good, sometimes, to go back and look at what I once was.  It helps me understand what I am now.  It helps me see how far I've come, how much I've accomplished, and how much I haven't.

I wonder what she'd think about that, but I'll never share that thought with her.  I'm afraid that she'd prefer the life she had before, the ignorant one, the one where she went to school in a country halfway around the world and pretended to be a teenager.  I'm afraid that I'm not what she needs in her life.

She steps closer, and my doubts fade away.  There's a bouquet of flowers in her hand.  She smiles shyly as her eyes meet mine, and she presents me with the small white blossoms.  "For you."

"Thank you."

"Did you find what you were looking for?"  Her eyes shine with genuine concern.

She sees through me, this girl.  She's my darkness, my light.  And I wouldn't give her up for anything in the world.

I spare one last glance at the shadows of my past.  Gently, I take her hand in mine as we head off towards home.  "Yes, yes I did."

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END