Haruka stood on the hilltop, snowflakes falling into her hair and sticking there before melting. She stared at her hands, held out in front of her as if in supplication. They were clean, smelling faintly of the lavender soap Michiru favored. But these hands had spilled blood – that of innocents and sinners. She hadn't wanted to fight in the beginning, but deep in her soul there was a pull to protect Michiru no matter the cost. And she didn't regret the decision, never had, just sometimes she wondered how black her soul really was after all of the killing she'd done.

Even her gloves when she was Sailor Uranus were pristine, crisply white, ready for the next kill. If anything, they should be red, dripping with the blood of the lives she'd taken, the souls she'd arrogantly thrown away in the name of the mission. People who didn't have to die, people who were searched by the enemy, whose pure hearts weren't "the one". She and Michiru had hidden in the shadows and just left those people to die, without remorse. Now, Haruka found herself looking up some of those people. Their lives, and what it had all come down to in their short obituaries.

She wondered if Michiru knew that one of the victims – she called them that now – had also been a violin player. A student, true, but if she had been given the chance at life, she might have grown in her talent to rival Michiru. But the unfeeling soldiers had walked away from her fallen body, letting her pure heart wither.

Had they suffered? Haruka thought about that sometimes. She thought she could remember ragged breathing coming from the direction of the target when she and Michiru had slipped coldly off into the night. They would go to enjoy a delicious dinner, or a night in each others arms, after casually walking away from what amounted to murder. It hadn't been by their hand, no, but they hadn't tried to stop it. They had never tried to put the pure heart back into the soul of its host. Could that be done, if it wasn't the one?

Haruka burrowed deeper into her coat as the wind picked up. Michiru had found an approximate location where the enemy had been coming from: Tokyo. They would pick up and move there tomorrow, and their lives would be changed forever. She resolved to talk to Michiru when she got home. No more murders; they would try to return a pure heart to the victim and try to save lives. They weren't killers, even if the mission was the priority.