There were nights when all he saw were blood spatters on pale, porcelain skin, nights that even absinthe couldn't redeem. He knew exactly what he saw on her, and it wrenched at him.
"I was just on my way home," he answered, bewildered at such a normal question. When he reached her, he knelt and pulled out a handkerchief from his pocket. "Are you all right?" He didn't wait for her to say he could; he just started cleaning her up. "You're..."
The blood. The blood on her mouth, the blood he'd wiped away far too late for it to have mattered...