The war has ended.

The war has ended, and so too has Yuy's life.

And it is so sad, to look at him where he stands in the shadows of the hall, watching Peacecraft speak to the assembled nations, skinny and small and pale, fingers stained with blood and gunpowder.

I was born a scholar with inky fingers, poring over texts and papers and ancient history until Meiran came, fiery and burning from the inside out with a sense of purpose, and dragged me from my hiding place.

But all my knowledge pales beside Yuy's, for he is a scholar, too, but a scholar of fear and death, a playwright whose ink is blood and oil and whose paper is the piles of disembodied organs frozen and twirling silently through space.

A comet that illuminates the world, and burns out so quickly, purpose fulfilled. And I think that perhaps his purpose is the saddest thing, for one with such intelligence as he, such skill and cunning, could have been a guiding star, pulling the world forward into a new age.

But as it is, his purpose is to kill, and the star for the world has instead become a red harbinger comet of war.

A comet that is right over the horizon, poised to fall, to become caught in the Sun's gravity and streak away into the darkness and softness of death. Death, for I am not so foolish as to think that heaven will be given to him. To Barton, perhaps. To Maxwell, almost certainly. To Winner, certainly. To me-

I am almost sure that the sign on the gate to Paradise will be 'no.'

But for him, there is no perhaps, only the certainty. His fingers twitch on the grip of his Glock as I watch, blue eyes hollow as he watches Peacecraft, the girl he would have loved, if he had ever been able to stop hating her. 'To love another person is to see the face of God.' I read that once, and it was true for me. Not for Yuy. For him, to love another person-

To love another person is to kill them.

I have watched him with the ones he loved, embraces the spatter of blood on skin, kisses the sound of bullets crashing through bone and tearing synapses apart into uncoiled threads, sex the rattle of breath rushing from lungs seizing inside a hollow body that is no longer life's prison.

To love another person is to liberate them, in his tormented brain, to free them from earthly pain and concerns, to tear their body apart and throw their soul away.

To hate them is to let them live, to let them age and become worn down and expire surrounded by ones that love them, rather than tearing them from life and allowing their loved ones to blame him.

And so he hates me, hates Winner, hates Barton, hates Peacecraft most of all.

I wonder where he will die, once her speech is over. I wonder who will find him, sprawled on the floor with an empty gun in his hands. It will not be us, the lost generation, the children who died for liberation, for we will remember him as he was: broken, hating, enslaved, insane.

We will not make him a martyr.

He moves, chambers one round. The speech is ending.

I turn and look at the others. Winner's face is pale porcelain, the skin above his left eye twitching. Barton's head is bowed, scarred fingers moving in the motions of a symphony. Maxwell's head is up, eyes open and fixed on Yuy, lips moving in whispers as his fingers click through the rosary. How quaint of Maxwell, to think that one such as Yuy could receive salvation. His voice shudders through the last of his prayers.

"Into Paradise may the Angels lead thee; at thy coming may the martyrs receive thee, and bring thee into the holy city Jerusalem. May the Choir of Angels receive thee, and with Lazarus, once poor, may thou have eternal rest."

The speech ends. Yuy looks up, meets our eyes, turns and disappears into the shadows. His footsteps fade.

A shot, heard only by us, rings through the darkness. Winner crumbles into sobs, Barton's hands jerk through a terrible spasm, and Maxwell says in a voice choked with tears,

"Lord, grant him eternal rest, and let light perpetual shine upon him. Let him rest in peace."

I am silent, but mouth the last word along with him.

"Amen."