The blood took so very long to wash from his hands. So /very/ long. He had forgotten what irked him so much about this - and it was the /mess/ of it all. A soft smile curved his lips as he examined the hands that so often recently had embraced, had touched friends and enemies with the same delicate touch, or the same killing stroke. Was all of life this confused? Smile at your enemies and snarl at your friends?
Perhaps. The last of the red streaks wound it's way ever so lazily from his hand. The blood seemed to stretch and flow into an unbreaking line from the back of his hand down into the impenetrable darkness of the drain. What /was/ this?
The smile was not maddened - but sad, or perhaps resigned, or perhaps it was just the same as it always was. Let the others think what they would about him - he had never lied to them. Not once. It felt the same, but was not.
He'd grown content in his false life, learned to just let go and /live/ with the fact that he was a lie. He even enjoyed life. He stepped back from the sink, drying his hands and letting the water run until the faint tinges of pink slid down the sides and disappeared forever.
The tiger that endangers us the most is the one we mistake for a housecat.