Disclaimer: As usual, I don't own Noir and I hope those who do don't mind. Title once again borrowed from a song - Queensrÿche's, this time.

Note: English isn't my native language: you're welcome to point out any mistake I might have left in or to suggest better wording or phrasing. Since criticism probably won't kill me, it'll make me better :-)

----------------------------------- Roads to Madness ----------------------------------

The sun is low on the horizon, shading everything in hues of fire and blood. I don't really know why, but these crumbling remains of an ancient place seen through a sin-tinted lens are somehow fitting. My mind's eye unfurls a darkening picture of agony, the slow-moving shades of fall.

Every day we have lived, every word we have spoken, all the blood we have spilled - it all was meant to bring us down to this, to the place where three puppets would be dancing a macabre waltz of oblivion until the silvery strings would break.

And now, one of us lies still.

Kirika is there, standing by the stone slab where we laid Chloe's body to rest, her head bowed, dark hair hiding her face. I can see the muscles in her back knotted in grief, her shoulders shivering slightly in the cool evening breeze as she's wracked by waves of inner misery.

"Why?"

I can see her hand clenching the bloody fork with which she saved my life.

"What is the meaning of all that?"

Her soft, low voice is quietly painful to my ears, so sensitive I have become to its minute breaks that hide abysses of sadness. I ache to give her an answer, any answer, to find the words to comfort her and soothe the grief away, but I cannot. I have none. If there is a meaning to all the killing and suffering we've dealt and been dealt, if there is a logic behind the blood and the tears, then it is twisted beyond reason, beyond my understanding. Merely considering the depths of the tortured madness that set us onto this road, driving us to the brink of our own destruction, pitting love against love to spark a hate so vast that it was beyond salvation... freezes me inside as I struggle to keep my sanity.

It is not a meaning we can find solace in.

The sun coats the withered stones with the colors of a viking's funerals. Hate has died with Chloe, leaving only the bleeding wounds of loss. Even I, who never really liked her, can feel the gaping void her passing opened. But Kirika... the black, unending ocean of sorrow that merely tugs at the shores of my soul is rushing at hers in abyssal, crashing waves. The drying crimson stains on the silver fork she squeezes like a lifeline are mute, dark testimonies of all she sacrificed. Chloe's blood is covering it, but I know Kirika's heart bled white in that fateful instant.

The eroded columns that stand guard over the partially flooded ruins remind me of the ancient times of mankind, when gladiators battled each other, waging their own life for the pleasure of their masters. To the victor went the transient shine of glory, and final rest was the loser's reward. But there is no glory, no reward in having won, no sense of accomplishment - Death has slaked its thirst on the blood of the fallen champion but still lurks, awaiting the next sacrifice... Down this road, there is no light except the angry glow of hell's fires.

But we've gone too far to turn back now.

"Shall we go?"

She turns around and faces me, and my heart shatters. There's so much grief in her large, haunted eyes... so much sadness and pain of loss and a thousand other emotions that have no name but carve their scars in her nonetheless, that I wonder if death would not have been a kinder fate for both of us. Memories have brought her back from the void, and the flat, merciless crimson hue has gone from her gaze, replaced with this deep shade of mahogany I know and love so much, but all I could give her as a welcome gift was the death of her soul-sister at her own hands.

Even as words escape my lips, I hate myself for them.

"We must go, Kirika. We still have something to do."

I try to strengthen her resolve with the little smile that was always my trademark of confidence, but it feels so hollow and contrived that I inwardly recoil in shame and self-loathing. How uncaring and merciless I sound now, the perfect image of a cold-hearted hitwoman glancing at her most recent slaying with calculated indifference. How close to shattering my heart is.

"Mireille."

Crystalline slivers of liquid pain sparkle at the brim of her eyes. She's lost in a world that never offered her much peace or comfort but at least had a certain order to it, an order that has been shattered in the most brutal and cruel of ways. Her lower lip quivers slightly, and I am rocked by the realization that her loss goes deeper than that of her other, darker self: any sense of self-worth, any moment she could have built her life upon, any motive she had always taken for granted has been scattered to the winds as well, consumed in a flash of violence and instinctive emotion where action was beyond thought and reason, when love won a senseless and heart-wrenching battle against friendship in an instinctive life-ending stab of silver.

"Mireille..."

Glistening tears flow freely as she calls out to me, framing her delicate features, dispelling any leftover illusion of composure. Even as I cry inwardly as my pain mirrors her own, I can't help cherish that simple moment when she bares her soul and her humanity at last. I cherish the heart she's showing without restraint even as I mourn for her loss. My sorrow is mixed with the joy to know that I was right to have faith in her, that my own feelings were not misplaced.

"I.. I am so..."

The whispered words, the quivering in her voice, the downcast eyes batter down the last remnants of sanity I have left, overwhelmed by the flood of conflicting emotions: grief for the loss of the friend she barely knew, love for the one she found again and managed to safeguard, shame for having killed the former and very nearly killed the latter and for all the memories that I can sense are rushing back with their own overwhelming burden, horror at the thought of all she's done in the past, of what she just did, and of whatever is still to come. In a fleeting shard of understanding, I sense them all and wonder if all we've learned about ourselves was worth such torment. Despair threatens to drown her, and if it does, it will drown us both in a single black wave.

I have no answer, I have no wisdom, but in that single moment of choice, I can share with her whatever strength is left in me, the strength I found when I read her words and knew her heart at last.

A few steps, and I'm against her, supporting her with a will born of trust and faith, sheltering her from the orange blaze of the dying sunset, letting her feel my ragged breathing so that she knows I am alive and that I live because of her, letting her know that I am real and ready to take her hand at last. I cannot voice my feelings, not yet, but I hope she can take heart from them even unspoken.

"Let's go, Kirika."

There is urgency in my voice now. As I press her own gun against her chest, I know that we must hurry, that we must carry on now while the silvery threads are still waving in the winds of uncertainty, before our foes regain their balance and recoil back into darkness. They set us on that road, and we have glimpsed through the veils of lies and deceit, through the mist of tears, at the heart of the shadows they spread. But there is no way back for us, and no way out except the one we carve through the darkness for ourselves.

Whatever light is waiting for us lies ahead, even if what lies ahead was born of an insane mind.

She sobs her consent, nods shyly.

I fight the urge to wrap her into a lover's embrace, to shake the living back into her, to make her cry herself clean of the horror and open her eyes to a bright tomorrow. But I cannot. I need the killer in her, even as she needs the killer in me, to go through to the end of all this, to wash away the morbid aroma of death that still lingers around this place, and around us. I can only hope that the winds of change sweep it all away, and that we will find the friend and lover in each other with the rising sun.

I turn around, and walk away, into the jaws of the wounded beast, facing a twilight that might as well be the end of our world.

A few heartbeats, and I hear her footsteps, light, steady, falling into mine.

Ahead of us lies the road, not to madness, but through it.

Behind us, bathed in fire and blood, lies the fallen champion, discarded and broken.

----------------------------------------- End -----------------------------------------

Another "fragment of timelessness" near the end of the series, another introspective piece of writing. I'll try to move on to something different next time :-)

I chose this specific moment in the anime because I think the mood is breathtaking. The dialog is minimal, there is no action to speak of, but the setting, colors and soundtrack build a moody and sorrowful atmosphere that adds weight and meaning to what the characters say. I tried, in my own awkward way, to put thoughts behind (and between) the words.