Franklin couldn’t think. He stands in the shower silently even with the boiling hot water pounding against his back. He looks down, watching the blood run off him. He tries and tries and tries to scrub it away but he can constantly feel it on him, like it’s absorbed into his skin.

It was burned into the back of his eyelids, unmoving no matter how hard he scrubbed his face. Your cold unmoving body, blood dripping down the side of your face— once so warm and sweet reduced to something cold and unnerving. A face that he had once called the love of his life.

Hypocritical, he thinks, seeing as he was the one standing behind the trigger.

He had to, he reasons. He couldn’t afford a weak spot, not in the world he’s creating. He had already heard it time and time again from his men. There was no place for romance, no place for you.

He stared at his hands, the blood stuck under his nails taunting him. “… Damn it,”