He couldn't recall just how much time passed with him simply sitting down and gazing at the result he had caused himself, by his ineptitude if not by his own hands.
He wasn't blind, nor was he the fool the world took him for; he could see the contours of his own collapse. With a trembling hand, he reached for the cup, the wine sliding down his throat like liquid fire, yet failing to warm the glacial cold settling in his marrow.
He had once believed that time was a grand eroder, that it would eventually smooth the edges of his grief. But a year had passed in the deep, and the wound was still raw, still weeping as it turn out time did indeed scar the wound but it did not smooth the grief even one bit.
He was still bleeding as profusely as he had been the moment he laid eyes on the remains of his friend, the man he had promised the world, only to deliver him to the cinders of a fire he himself had kindled.
It hurt.
