They say that water has the power to wash away your sins.

Vincent had never believed it.

Maybe once, when he had been a Turk, he could have come back to his small apartment—his fingers smeared the dried blood of a businessman or crook, and the smell of death still lingering slightly, like a ghost, on his dark blue suit—he could have let the water run down his smooth, lean, body and imagined that he felt it all being washed away with the dirt and grime of the Midgar slums. But now he knew that sins ran deeper than cloth and skin, it ran like demons through his blood, his mind, his being. But maybe, he allowed himself to wish when he was tired, maybe the water could give him precious refuge and solitude—if just for a moment.

He turned on the water with his right hand—he did everything with that hand, now—and turned it as far left has it would go. And then he waited. And not until the water was steaming, filling the whole hotel bathroom with a thin layer of its pure white mist, did he step in. Fast.

The water hit him hard. He liked it this way. It made him believe that he could still feel—just a little bit—in this strange body and world that were not quite his. He could feel the heat of each thin stream of water as it hit his pale skin and ran like a river down his body. Flowing from the showerhead to the tiles below, weaving in and out like a stream. One that he had seen, but would never be a part of. The Lifestream. When he closed his eyes he could almost—almost—imagine that the water gliding down his back and clinging to every inch of his skin was that wonderful thing.

But as soon as he opened his eyes once more, he was surrounded once more the glass and mirrors. Sometimes, especially after transformations, he would reach a shaking right arm out in front of him, and place his palm against the warm glass. And when he removed his hand, there was a handprint. A human handprint. And even though it wasn't perfect—far from it—it was human. Clean, and pure, and crisp.

And when the print started to run and deform, he turned off the water.