He stood on the ramparts and watched the corpses burn, red fire light setting his stone-set face aglow. It was the only source of light along the length of the castle walls, the rest shadowed in a dull blue-grey that faded down to the black water without protest. Everything was dark and dull these days and the flame was a single beacon of color among the dankness, one he found comforting despite the reason for it's existance.

He stared hard into the fire, trying to concentrate hard enough on the swirl of hot color so that his mind would not have time to dwell on much else. Like the fact that none of the bodies currently being eaten by the red-orange light had the face that haunted his dreams each night. None of them - the ones already reduced to greasy ash nor the ones waiting silently for their own pyre - were the body he'd pined for over the last decade. He'd gone to watch the dead burn every single day since he'd issued the order; every day had been another disappointment. Because if she wasn't among the living or the dead of the castle, she had been long lost to the rage of the merciless sea.

He felt strangely hollow, wondering where the usual fury had bled to. He felt drained and cold, as if the realization she was lost to the flood had also washed away his energy and hope. He felt broken, like an old tired machine whose worn down parts just couldn't be replaced. He watched the fire burn and felt nothing, his brown eyes as glazed and lifeless as the dead. They whispered their condolensces to him through the crackle of the flame and he would have normally found the situation ironic, receiving sympathy from the dead. Perhaps they saw him as a kindred spirit. He closed his eyes, shunning any such pity, even from the deceased.

His palms itched at a random memory of holding hands with a woman he'd never see again and he stretched out his fingers slowly, remember how the spaces between cradled hers perfectly. She was so scared of floods, having lost her life to one once before. She'd clung so tightly to his hand as he'd promised she'd have to reason to fear anymore, to worry anymore. She'd made him a liar, but he couldn't bring himself to think poorly of her. He couldn't bring himself to accept today that the spaces between his fingers would remain forever vacant. "I would have kept you safe," he confessed in a whisper to the dark sea that was now her keeper. "I wouldn't have let it touch you." An apology rose in his throat, but died on his tongue before he could mouth the words. He made no attempt to revive it. Joel was many things, but he was not a man to apology for the faults of another, no matter how she had shredded his heart and soul. He would never apologize for her making the wrong choice. He would never apologize for letting her.