Orithion 1st, DR.
The sky rumbled as the rain came down in sheets, each drop a tiny fist ponding against the earth. He stood in the cemetery in front of a tombstone with the name "Orna de Valdris." Craved in the granite. His gaze on the rivulets that ran over her name.
He held a stuffed animal in his hand. It was her favorite.
He remembered the day she was born, oh the joy he felt. Her warmth of her tiny fragile body as she laid beside him. Every smile. Every laugh. Echoed through his mind like a forgotten dream.
His throat closed up, a hot, tight fist he couldn't swallow past. He tried to breathe, but the air came out in a ragged, broken hitch- half gasp, half sob. His jaw trembled. He clamped his teeth together so hard his molars ached, but the tremor traveled down to his chin, then his lips, and he couldn't stop it.
He didn't know when the crying started. The rain was already on his face, already running down his neck, that harsh taste of salt that the rain couldn't wash away.
He hated this. The weakness of it, the wetness, the pathetic, gasping sounds coming out of his own mouth. His father would have called him a woman. His daughter would have hugged him. She wasn't here to hug him. So, he kept crying, alone into the mud.
When the crying finally stopped, he was empty. Hollow. A shell in the shape of a man. He didn't know how long he had been there. He didn't care.
He realized, in that moment, that the world had split into two halves. Before. And after. He was living in the after now, and he had no idea how to breathe. He wiped his face with his sleeve. He didn't look back. Something in him had frozen over. He didn't know if it would ever thaw.
It started as a tightness in his chest. He thought it was just the grief, the familiar weight of it. But this was different. This had edges. Sharp ones. They scraped against his ribs every time he breathed.
The bitterness crept into his bones like cold water seeping through a crack in the dam. At first, he barely noticed it. Then it was everywhere- in his jaw, his fists, the back of his throat.
The fire was eating him from the inside out.
It was their fault that he'd lost her. The regime. And he would let every member of its cabinet be burnt by the flames that so consumed him.