"Amazing," thought Leonard Monroe, looking around in disbelief and despair. All around him, a battle was unfolding with calamitous haste. Men are dying again, he realized. A patriotic soldier of the United States military, he groped for his rifle without fail, and started shooting at people he knew nothing about. Except that they're the enemy… The enemy.

"Amazing," he repeated. "That we, the scourge of brutality, killing each other by the thousands because we are told to, are the same being that created symphonies, literature, and compassion. How can we compare a young Mozart, fingers flying listlessly over the keys as if they were soothing the piano to sleep, how can we put that image next to that which I see all around me now: vile brutes hunting each other down like dogs; useless violence, imposed by our rich superiors? We are a disgrace to our kind… and yet our kind supports us, admires us even. How sad… It is always the nationalists that ruin their country."

He glanced sideways. Billy fell to his knees in death. At the last moment, just before he left, the young man gave Leonard one last look of pain, and closed his eyes forever.

He had called Billy a friend. He didn't know why, but he couldn't help it. Ever since losing Peter, Leonard had tried to expel the word friendship from his existence, to ignore all human intercourse. But he could not fulfill this desire. The soldier's heart is too lonely and full of remorse to survive without love, or even companionship. He needed someone to accompany this lonely journey through the voids of his soul, and whom better than the quiet, reflecting William Hartson.

Leonard forced his sorrow down, locked it up in a shameful vault for some psychiatrist to make money off of in the future. Natural survivor's instinct aided in this painful profession; he did not lose a tear as he turned back toward the enemy, and resumed firing with renewed apathy.

He could count two people who died by his gun. Did they have families? Will they be missed? Survival is almost as selfish as love, he pondered. And it is often love that ignites the will to survive, with all the coldhearted recklessness that follows. He thought of Marianne, his bride to be—that was, if he ever escaped this wretched hellhole—and became proud of his onslaught. "I killed these men for you, Mary," he whispered. "And for the children you and I will raise, I will murder to return to you."

Though his words were audible, none of his fellow soldiers looked up. Ramblings and ravings were common on the battlefield, and even off. He thought of his mother, who was praying for his life. "A God will not help us, mother. We have been deceived."

He killed another man, and forged a sad smile onto his face. "You want Leonard to come home, don't you, mom? Your little baby boy." Two more lives were lost at his expense. "I will come home."

Suddenly, he dropped his rifle, and gazed at the ground, wide-eyed. She wants Leonard Monroe to return to her. Mary wants Leonard Monroe to return to her. He looked at his hands as though they were sodden with blood, and realized that he was still smiling. "But… Leonard Monroe does not exist…" He looked around—blank expressions that had seen too much gazed forward into the tumultuous firefight. "I am a very different man indeed."

Suddenly, a bullet hit his chest. It came from the gun of a man who was smiling just like he was. "I cannot judge this man," he stammered. "I am no better." He fell down into the dusty filth that seemed an omen of where he deserved to be. "Crawling with other lowlife filth…" No one looked over at him as he squirmed in agony, regretting the last fatal moments of his blundered existence. "I have walked with the devil," he said. "How fitting that I should meet him so soon."

As the last particles of life left him, he thought back to his childhood days. Swinging on the tire in the back yard. Walking around in wonderment of what beauty the world had to offer him. He remembered the virtues he had lost. Innocence. Promise. Ignorance.

He made a cozy bed of the dirty ground, sucking his thumb like an infant. Leonard the baby was back for two seconds, resting peacefully in his little crib. Then, he departed our realm forever, thoughtless and free.