The streets were empty as the rain began to pour. It started slowly, the plat-plat of the drops falling barely audible, but increasing with every passing second. The sky was dark and obscure, clouds of rain amassed against each other. In this desolate night the rain fell, soaking the streets and the buildings and cleaning away the dirt.
Through the rain, a man ran. His movements were fast and hurried, steps soft and soundless. He would have passed unnoticed, a single, shadowy blur against the dark facades of buildings, had his breath been less labored and erratic, his movements smoother. His eyes searched the streets with urgency, needing a place to escape, to hide for only a moment, just a moment. The rain soaked his skin and cleaned away the blood that flowed from his clothes. The crimson trails slowly dissipated and disappeared into nothingness as the rain fell and the man ran, and ran.
Finding what he sought, the man took a sharp turn into an alley and stopped. There, he stood upright, attempting to conceal his trembling hands, to calm his heavy breaths. The tangy, sharp smell of blood caused him to choke, forcing him to remember what he had done just moments ago. Forcing him to remember the reason why all he could taste and smell and see for some time now was blood. It covered his clothes, his hands, his soul. For all the victims, all the lives he had taken, he could never be clean again. The rain cleansed his clothes, but it could never cleanse his soul.
For in this war-torn country he had been hired years ago as an assassin for his invaluable skills and steadfast beliefs. He had been a mere boy then, a romantic wishing for peace and a new era. He had thought it right to kill people under the cover of shadows, to harden his heart and throw away his soul for the sake of the greater good. He was supposed to be a human weapon, lithe, deadly, and unfeeling. But his bloodied hands shook, and his chest ached, and he felt weak, so weak. The guilt he carried inside felt like a dead weight, and he slumped against the wall, forgetting all pretense of strength and sanity; allowing himself, as the rain washed and cocooned him like a nurturing mother, just a small moment of weakness.
As he leaned his forehead against the cold stone wall, his breath ragged and hands clenched in fists, he told himself that he was doing all of it for the greater good. That his growing insanity and forsaking of his soul were not for nothing, that his sacrifice was a necessity. He said all this out loud in choked, whispered breaths so that perhaps they would somehow engrave themselves into his heart, his head. But no matter how many times he repeated them, they did not make the pain nor the guilt any easier to bear.
As a child, he had never imagined that being Death would be so lonely. He was so hungry for human contact, for a simple smile or warm gesture to relieve his tortured heart, even if for a moment.
In this moment of weakness he wept, allowing two small, insignificant tears to fall. As they caressed his cheeks they mixed with the rain, and went unnoticed. Two tears for all the lives he had taken, all the lives he had destroyed for a brighter future. Two tears for the innocence he had left behind a long time ago, and the soul that had gone with it. He permitted himself two tiny drops for the hope that someday, somehow, he could be forgiven.
But then, the moment of weakness he had allowed himself was gone, and he straightened his back, once again fixing his features into an unreadable mask. It was as if the tears he had shed had never existed, the only thing that disturbed his countenance was the rain. Drops rolled down his face, soaking his clothes, washing away the blood that covered them, and trying in vain to wash away the blood that could never be cleaned from his soul. In a moment, the assassin was gone, and the alley left empty, as if he had never been there in the first place. As if there had never been a man grappling with himself for his own sanity, questioning his actions and reasons, drowning in his own anguish. As if there had never been a moment of weakness. All that was left there was the rain, and its cries as it hit the empty asphalt, going plat-plat-plat.