Why do you only focus on the vast, rolling plains stretching miles into the horizon? How can you waste your time crouching in the grass, only to inhale the gentle scent of dewy campions? Absorbed by nature’s callous beauty, you miss the scarlet beads scattered across their snowy petals.

_Do you smell the smoke?_

If you lift your gaze, now, you would observe the patch of grass blackened by ash ahead. In the center, a dismal silhouette kneels, clinging tightly to the lifeless figure of the one who had kept him safe from his demons.

_Do you feel it, now? The despair?_

Had they never met, then perhaps this could have been avoided . . . and yet, he couldn’t bring himself to regret a single moment. She had made him feel safe, but did he offer her that same sense of security?

_Ha!_ Clearly, he hadn’t even been able to keep her alive.

_‘ All your fault. All your fault. ’_

It _was_ all his fault.

“ Wake up. ”

He mumbles feverishly to no one in particular as he clutches to his aching chest the body that had long since gone cold.

“ Please wake up. ”

_Or let me sleep with you._