Sanzio did his best to ignore the hands that clawed (ineffectually) at his forearms, though it was a bit harder to ignore the teeth that sank into the palm of his hand when it came up to cover the woman's mouth. Just another explorer, tromping through the snow to see rare sights and natural wonders. A foolish innocent who wandered too far off the beaten path and saw things they shouldn't have, learned thing's they shouldn't have. He paused for the shortest of moments, before his arms ripped away from each-other, twisting her neck in a quick snap.
Ryosuke had asked him, during one of the first training missions the boy had been sent on with him, why he would use his blades for the soldiers and guards, but always kill the mission target with his hands. "I wouldn't be able to feel it through the sword." he'd answered. The older man had just laughed, and called him a 'vicious little thing'. "It's always the quiet ones that are the real monsters, hm?"
Sanzio hadn't bothered to correct him, but it was the exact opposite. The guards, the soldiers, they fought back. They took their roles, knowing that they would fight, that they would die. The targets were always innocent. A traveler who saw something they shouldn't have, or an unknowing link in a spy's information chain. It would be far too quick with a sword. Far too simple. It would be so easy to grow numb to the simple flick of a hand and a blade parting flesh three feet away. Tactile sensation no different from going through kata in the courtyard.
But with his hands, with his arms, he could feel their pulse. Their struggle to breathe one more lungful of air, to clutch on to one more minute of life. The uncoordinated flailing of the untrained, the innocent, the desperate. He hated it, every time, and he never hated it any less. That was the point.
It should never be easy to take an innocent life. The other Shadows, they would just slit her throat and let her body drop, no more important to their memories than the snow she falls in to. Sanzio had to remember them.
Carefully, he kneeled down as he lowered her backwards into the snow, etching the shape of her face, the color of her eyes and hair and skin, into his memories.
Remembering them was all that reminded him he was still human these days.
