Pushing open the door, he looked at the defenseless Parliament. So stupid of them, just leaving the door unlocked to anyone with clearance. Now, he knew, they would pay the price.

They had made a mistake, then they ignored it. Tried their hardest to hide it. But he knew. Everyone did, now. They would pay their price. Oh, yes they would. He slid, merely a shadow, through the room. Those that saw him didn't care. They knew who he was. Was; as in past tense. He had committed many sins. He was a tool. An evil tool. Being used to make things right. That was what he had thought. He knew better now, though. He was being used evilly and for evil. He was going to make things right.

He didn't speak. Not a noise from his solemn stride. He refused. He would not be used for evil. He could not be anything more than an instrument, he knew. He also knew that the craftsmen- artisans- that held him were wrong. There was a man who showed him that. A man that had embraced his darkness just as he now embraced his; but he, he was not evil. He'd lost everything, fighting for the light. Just as he had. They were one and the same, simply meeting at different stages in their character. It was obvious: fight for one's beliefs, then- in the midst of that battle- lose everything. Finally, be remade as a shadow, but fighting to bring the light. That was their place in this 'Verse.

Then he realized: That man was not remade a tool. Neither would he be, he decided with a phantasmal upward twitch of his lip. He once was a man, he remembered. Now he would return to that. He would become what he gave up. He would be a person again. Not just a tool.

His hand crawled towards the hilt. If only he could remember his name, he thought. The sword, with practiced ease, flew out of its sheath, glinting in the clean, blue light. Disgustingly clean. That would be fixed soon. He flowed to the nearest Parliamentary member, the sword piercing his throat. He spun, an elegant agent of Death, slicing through another man's heart. On he went, turning the clean room into a mess of corpses and blood. In these last moments he remembered a conversation he'd had. "Serenity... You lost everything in that battle. Everything you had, everything you were... How did you go on?"

He spun his sword around his index finger, catching it with his thumb on the hilt, blade towards him. The Operative plunged the steel weapon into his chest, smiling. "Jude," the former assassin whispered, "That's who I was."

That man- Malcom. He had found his Serenity in a home, a ship. Now he, Jude, had found his own.