He was dreaming. He knew he had to be, because in his dream, he was killing Kase, and Kase was already dead.

His claws ripped through the man over and over. He felt the compressed metal across his palm that controlled his bugnuks vibrate as the blades skated over ribs and then sank suddenly into softer tissue. He felt the abrupt rush of hot fluids over the leather of his glove, spilling over the cuff to trickle down the inside of his wrist, and heard the boneless thump of the body as Kase fell. He heard himself scream into the light rain, a terrible cry of rage and grief.

It was the only part of the dream that did not mesh with real life. In reality, when Kase had cursed him and died, Ken had merely stood there, eyes turned away from the body of the man who'd been his best friend for all of his young life and whispered, "I'm already in hell". It had been the only truth he'd been able to give Kase, the only thing he could think to say.

In the dream, he killed Kase over and over and over. When he woke to cold sweat and an aching head, he could still feel the phantom blood on his hands. He'd given up trying to scrub it away after several nights. It wouldn't go.

So he knew it was a dream, but that didn't help. He couldn't stop the infinite loop his nighttime visions were set on. They'd faded for a while when he'd been distracted by Yuriko, but after the confrontation with Yohji, after listening to his usually laid-back and elegant friend tell him in harsh and certain tones exactly what he was, he couldn't hold them off anymore, not even with the memory of her skin.

She deserved a happy life, but he was a murderer. He'd killed his best friend.

He woke gasping, as he did every other night, feeling the itch of congealed blood on his hands. This time it was real – his fingernails had dug into his palms hard enough to draw blood. Like a zombie, he staggered to the bathroom and ran cold water over the burning skin. It washed away the blood and eased the sting, but he couldn't help staring in mild horror at the little half-moon marks on his palms. It'd been over a month, and he was still having nightmares.

Ken Hidaka dried his hands on a ragged, but clean towel, and went back to bed. The moon shone through the window. He imagined the silver light piercing his body, turning him transparent, drawing him up to it and away from this life.

He did not go back to sleep.

X-X-X-

"Oi, Ken! Wake up… I think the lilies have had enough water," Omi chastised gently, disengaging Ken's hand from the hose.

Ken blinked and started, dropping the length of green rubber into Omi's hand. "Er… sorry, Omi," he murmured softly, palming the back of his neck in embarrassment. He looked down into a pair of wide blue eyes that seemed guileless and innocent and had to smile – Omi was just too cute when he worried.

"Ne, Ken-kun," the younger boy said slowly. "Are you all right? You've been distant lately, like your mind is a million miles away." He smiled wryly and offered the hose back.

Ken took it and shook his head. "I'm all right," he assured Omi softly. "Thanks. I was just… daydreaming. I've had a lot on my mind lately," he confessed, part of him twisting oddly at the notion of talking to Omi about the feelings that haunted him. It would be such a relief to tell, and Omi would understand – there was more to him than most people understood. He wasn't really as happy and carefree as he let on, so he wouldn't be shocked if he found out that Ken wasn't either.

Omi nodded sympathetically. "I know you have. But I know what will make you feel better. You have soccer practice in two hours, right? Why don't you go ahead and leave early? You can spend some time at the park. It's a beautiful day to be out," he said matter-of-factly, beaming at Ken triumphantly. "And you should have some time to yourself that you don't spend moping in your room."

Ken chuckled quietly. "Have I been moping?" he wondered, and shook his head. "All right, Omi. Are you sure you're all right by yourself?"

"Mm. Yohji will be down in an hour and I can take it by myself until then," he said confidently.

"Okay. Omi… thanks."

Omi turned on him with a smile that was brilliant, but almost sad. "It's nothing, Ken-kun. I understand. Feel better, all right? We need you."

Ken paused in midstep, blinking at Omi, who looked so sincere. But behind those bright blue eyes he saw a dark thing twisting, and his breath froze in his throat. Omi was a killer too, just as he was, but his admission of needing Ken was both frightening and touching. He managed a brief nod, then slipped away, untying his apron and going to change into his soccer clothes and collect his ball before he went to the park.

Omi hadn't been exaggerating about the splendor of the day. The sun shone brightly and there was a nice breeze, and plenty of flowers were still blooming in the early summer warmth, sweetening the air with their scent. He chose to walk to the soccer field even though it was a little over two miles, enjoying the atmosphere. He stopped on the way at the small ice cream parlor and got a mint chip cone, and ate it as he walked. With every touch of the cool mint on his tongue, he thought he felt his heart lighten – it was impossible to be depressed on a day like today. The sun banished the shadows.

The soccer fields used for the community children's teams were tucked away in a large, rather nice park called Midori Gardens. There were also a few tennis courts and a path for bicycles and joggers, as well as some truly impressive landscaping. The south part of the park had been let go a bit, as it bordered a set of apartments, but the rest of it was very nicely maintained.

He paused as the sound of jack-hammering reached his ears and he turned a corner as the scent of cement dust rose thick around him. Construction blocked his usual route. He glanced both ways, then shrugged and continued on. He could come up from the south side, though it wasn't a way he normally took. He had plenty of time, after all.

A few turns later, he stepped past the low wall marking the boundary of the park and into the gentle shade of the trees. His sneakers scuffed the asphalt and he tossed the paper from his now-devoured ice cream into a nearby trashcan, humming quietly to himself as he sauntered along the jogging path. The path wound through the park, taking him past lovely stands of flowers and several benches that held other people who, like him, had taken time off to enjoy the day. He was still humming as he rounded a large statue of the smiling Buddha and passed someone reading on the bench tucked away behind it, out of the way of the others sharing the park. He continued past even as a spark lit in his brain and snapped him back to full awareness.

Someone with white hair.

His foot hit the asphalt heavily and he stopped for a minute, trying to recall what he'd seen, slowly turning and expecting every minute to meet death face to face, but he was alone on the path save for the form huddled on the bench, bent over a book. Ken's eyes fixed on the book. It was a paperback, held in pale, slender fingers marked with scars and calluses. He followed those fingers up to muscled forearms and a plain white t-shirt stretched over pointed shoulders and a narrow chest, a delicate, scarred chin dipped in concentration, the black strap of an eye-patch disappearing into frost-white hair haphazardly cropped close to a delicately-shaped head.

Farfarello.

For an eternal moment, Ken literally could not believe what he was seeing. But slowly, he unfroze, though he continued to stare. The Schwarz madman didn't look up or in any way acknowledge his presence, but merely continued to read, one hand quietly turning a page. His body language spoke of total absorption until, without raising his head, he said, "It is very rude to stare."

Ken gawked. He couldn't help it. The last time he'd seen Farfarello, he'd been wounded in a way that hurt Ken to remember, his back scarred by the acid he'd almost used to murder a nun with whom Ken had almost been friends, his chest bleeding from Omi's darts, and several long gashes across his side and short cuts on his face from Ken's bugnuks. Looking closely, Ken could see faint white lines on Farfarello's chin where those cuts had been made. Not scars, but almost-healed cuts. That was wrong, he thought dumbly. Those cuts should have scarred, and shouldn't have been even close to healed. There was a patch of irregular skin on the man's bicep where the acid had melted his flesh, a wound that should have left far more damage than that.

Farfarello looked up, fixing a single, tiger-gold eye on Ken as he stood with his chin hanging, and tilted his head in an almost cat-like manner. He said nothing, merely stared, and Ken felt for a brief and terrifying instant that it wasn't right – you could drown in that gaze, pupil a pinprick of black in a sea of gold. It made Ken's hackles rise, made him feel like running for the nearest cover and cowering there. It was an animal gaze, a predatory one. With a tremendous effort of will, he shook himself free and clenched his fists.

"What are you doing here?" he demanded, the soccer ball dropping to the ground, forgotten, and rolling toward the bench as he took a threatening step in the madman's direction.

Farfarello ignored him entirely, his attention caught by the ball. It bounced gently toward him, bumped against the leg of the bench, and stopped. Slowly, he leaned over and put a hand on it, and Ken stopped advancing, confused by his opponent's actions.

Holding the ball between his hands, Farfarello lifted it and settled it in his lap. His fingers crept over it, mapping it curiously, and Ken was struck with the sudden, ludicrous thought that maybe Farfarello had never seen a soccer ball before. After all, he was insane… Schwarz would have been stupid not to keep him locked up where he couldn't exercise his obvious destructive tendencies. He blinked when the madman leaned down and rubbed his scarred cheek against the grass-stained, weathered leather.

"A… ano…" he began, not really sure how to say 'please give me back my ball' to someone so obviously unhinged.

Farfarello uncurled and rose in one unbelievably graceful motion, so fluid Ken would have missed it if he'd blinked. He hissed and stepped back slightly, ready in case of an attack, but all Farfarello did was turn his hand over, dropping the ball on the ground, and trapping it with his foot. His eyebrows were drawn together in vague puzzlement, and he prodded the ball with his toe a couple of times before giving it a firm swat with the side of his foot – his bare foot, Ken noted distantly – that sent it bouncing straight back to Ken. Years of training had him reacting without thinking and he trapped the ball easily under one foot, still staring at Farfarello, who was now staring back at him with a smirk lurking in the corners of his mouth.

"… Thank you," Ken said lamely.

"You're welcome," he returned in a slightly sing-song tone. His accent was strange to Ken's ears, oddly lyrical. The bizarreness of the situation made Ken feel an inexplicable urge to burst out laughing. He quelled it.

"What are you doing here?" he asked again, quietly but firmly, staring Farfarello in the eye belligerently.

Farfarello appraised him for a long moment. "Reading."

"Reading what?" Ken wondered. He hadn't intended to ask that, but it had seemed the next logical question and had slipped out before he could stop it.

Farfarello turned and lifted the book from the bench, turning it over so his place would be held. "Wolves of the Calla," he said simply.

Ken had never heard of it, and he was beginning to feel dizzy from wasted adrenaline. "… Oh."

Farfarello glanced up at him, that single golden eye piercing, like a hawk's. "I like books in English. I can't read Kanji very well."

Well, that made sense, Ken realized in some dim, distant part of his mind. Farfarello was obviously not a native to Japan, and in Ireland, English and… what was the other one called? He knew there was another one… would have been his first languages. Japanese, he would have picked up later, which explained why when he spoke, he always sounded so formal.

"What are you doing here?" Farfarello wondered, startling Ken out of his reverie.

"Wha… I…" Ken's mind moved fast. He couldn't tell Farfarello, of all people, that he coached a children's soccer team at this park. That would be nearly as bad as handing him the address of the flower shop. "Taking a walk," he answered defensively. "What do you mean, 'what am I doing here'? I have a perfect right to be here."

"So do I," Farfarello pointed out, and Ken's mouth snapped shut. That was true. The madman tilted his head back, letting the dappled sunlight play across his delicately sculpted features and smirking, showing a hint of teeth. "Are you going to attack me, white kitten?" he wondered musically. "You can, if you like. I would enjoy breaking your body at the feet of the false prophet."

"Aren't you going to attack me?" Ken wondered cautiously. Not that he wanted him to… hell, perhaps he shouldn't give the man ideas.

Farfarello actually took a moment to consider that, head tilting thoughtfully as he weighed the pros and cons. Ken could almost see his life being balanced against a feather, and shifted his stance… who knew what insignificant bit of information would decide whether he lived or died? Because he had no illusions – he could hurt Farfarello, but Farfarello didn't feel pain, and he would tear Ken apart before the Weiss assassin had a chance to get more than one hit in.

"Would you like me to?" he wondered.

Ken eyed him. "Well… no."

He nodded slowly, and sat back down on the bench. "As you like. I want to read today," he said idly, picking up his book.

Ken stared at him for a moment before rousing himself. "Do you… come to this place often?" It was dangerously close to the flower shop, and if it was close to Schwarz's headquarters as well, that could be a very bad thing.

"When I can," Farfarello said simply. "I like this place." He tipped his head back, gazing at the leaves above him. "It is good quiet."

Not sure whether it was a language difficulty or simply an insane man's reasoning, Ken repeated, "good quiet?"

"When I am at home, I am often restrained and left in my room," Farfarello explained matter-of-factly. "It is quiet in my room. That is a dead quiet. I do not mind it, but I do not like it. This is a good quiet, because it is not really quiet. There are many small sounds. They say that the world is still here."

Ken swallowed hard, wondering if he should be worried that the man was making perfect sense to him. He had spent a lot of time lying awake in his room recently, staring at the ceiling, in the dead quiet hours of the night, when only the sound of a car passing on the street outside reminded him that he was still part of a larger world, not totally alone in his private prison.

"Why do they… do that?" he wondered, thought he was fairly sure he already knew the answer. Still, morbid curiosity propelled him – he took a step closer to Farfarello, who showed no signs of becoming aggressive anytime soon. Was he on medication? "Restrain you?"

"Because if they do not, I will go off by myself to have fun, and The Oracle will be angry. He feels my fun is a security risk. If I cannot go out, I will have fun with myself. Oracle does not mind this, but it makes Prodigy very nervous and sometimes…" he flexed a hand idly, causing the veins to stand out in his wrist. "I cut too much and it does not heal easily. So they restrain me to make me stop, and they leave me there, because it is easier than taking responsibility for someone as difficult as me." He smirked distantly.

Ken felt vaguely sick. He could picture Farfarello with one of his precious knives in his hand, slicing deeply into his forearm, rocking back and forth and crooning gently as blood spilled over him, and he had seen what the Irishman had done to some of his victims. Farfarello's idea of fun fell more under the category of rabid mutilation.

"Couldn't you just… not do that?" he wondered, taking another step toward Farfarello. "Why would you do it, anyway? It can't be fun to hurt yourself, really," he insisted.

Farfarello rubbed his thumbs along the pages of his book with a gentle rasping sound, twisting his head to eye Ken evenly. "Don't you ever want to?" he murmured. "Don't you feel the hurting inside, so deep, and want to let it out? You are wracked by guilt for the weight of a thousand sins. Don't you ever want to be punished?"

"You don't care about sin," Ken shot back, eyes narrowing as part of him curled up to defend itself against those pointed words. "You like what you do. I've seen it… what you do to them, you couldn't do it if you didn't enjoy it."

"No," Farfarello agreed. "I did not say that was my reason."

"Then what is it?" Ken demanded, feeling frustrated. Nothing about this conversation was going the way he tried to make it go.

"Perhaps I will tell you another time," Farfarello told him.

Ken blinked. "I… another time?"

"Your children practice their game here," Farfarello said simply. "You come here three days of every week, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday."

Ken felt his blood turn cold and his teeth clench. "You… know that?"

"I like this place," was the musical reply. "It is my place. The others do not know it. I will not tell them," he said, offering Ken a conspiratorial sort of smile that looked extremely out of place on his exotic features. "I do not want them to spoil my place with their games. I do not care about playing games with you," he told Ken.

"So…" Ken felt flummoxed.

Farfarello spoke in the patient tones of someone lecturing a slow child. "So, I want to come here. It is a nice place to read and no one bothers me. You will still come here because you want to teach the children to play football. So at some time, you will see me again. But whether you speak to me or not is your choice."

Ken nodded slowly, raking a hand through his hair. "I… all right. But you're Schwarz," he protested weakly. "You're our enemies. It's just… strange to not fight."

"And on the seventh day, He rested," Farfarello said solemnly.

Ken couldn't quite hold back a chuckle. "Day off… all right. I guess I can buy that. But…." He thought about threatening Farfarello to keep him away from his kids, then realized that was pointless. Farfarello didn't care about his kids – Farfarello didn't even care about him. He was here to read a book, which, for some reason, Ken was having trouble accepting. "Nevermind," he said sheepishly. "Er… goodbye."

"Good afternoon," Farfarello said politely.

Ken couldn't bring himself to turn his back on Farfarello until he was around the bend and out of sight of the white-haired assassin, and even then, he jumped at small noises. He moved as if in a daze. Could the sun really be shining and the birds singing, still, even though he'd looked death in the face? Admittedly, Farfarello hadn't seemed to be in a killing mood, but none the less, he was the most dangerous person Ken had ever met. And it was just so surreal….

The happy shouts of children snapped his attention back to the moment, and he went to join a few of his team members who had come early to play around, forgetting for the moment the sight of white hair and that single, burning golden eye.

When Ken passed through the park again, hours later, on his way back to the shop, Farfarello was gone.

X-X-X-