A/N it's meant to be brief.
He stares at the beaten, purpled skin, turning his hands over and over each other. He stretches out his fingers, runs a thumb over one of them, feels the pain, but his face shows no reaction. He continues to work his hands within each other, watching as the colour changes, as the damaged tissue moves easily under his fingers. And still his face stays perfectly, utterly blank. He is trained to show no emotion, to work without fear, to embrace whatever fear comes along and move with it. Now is no different; he watches his hands, a detached air to him, wondering what other damage they have done; how many people they have hit or killed.
Flashes of detached memories come back to him. A flying array of ducking heads, of fists and of feet. A man stares him in the eye as he raises a gun, another struggles under his gloved hands. All these people, all of them just statistics. All the families he has effected, the lives he ruined. Still his face is blank. The only movement is his hands, the muscle memory making digits twitch, making his hands jerk slightly.
She walks over and a towel is placed in his hands. He stares at it for a moment, still in awe at the power of his own hands, at everything they have done. He holds the towel between his hands, ignoring the stabbing pain as worn bones pull raw tissue and muscle together and apart.
"I can see the faces.. of everyone I ever killed. I just don't know their names."
The frustration builds up inside him, but he doesn't show it. He stares at his hands, he continues to work the towel through them – gripping, relaxing, gripping, relaxing, watching how carefully and with such precision they move, even when injured. With every grip and relax he tries to grab at a strand of something in his memory. However, it doesn't work – every time he fumbles on a string of something from the past, the harder he grabs at it, the further it slips away.