He has only himself to blame. He knows that as well. Knows that if it weren't for him, weren't for his lamentable actions, weren't for his failures, she would still be his. He failed her. He sees it in the way she holds herself, the way she turns away from him.

He wishes he could touch her again. It's like a fire inside him, pulsing, burning. He wants to feel her beneath him, feel the sway of her as they move together. She has fires of her own, banked and burning, flashing before his eyes. She doesn't speak to him, has nothing left to say as she moves further from him, leaving him by inches.

He tries not to watch her, tries to look away, but finds he can't. He's compelled to watch her. He wants to accuse her of infidelity and betrayal, but he knows that he's far more guilty in every way than she can ever be. She was true to him. The betrayal was his.

His breath catches in his throat, tight and thick there. The cloying heat surrounds him and makes it worse, makes the pain that much sharper. He thinks of everything she's endured in his name and wonders that the air doesn't suffocate him, drawing his breath in penance for his sins.

He cannot abide this. Cannot watch as she moves in the circle of other men, surrounded by their greedy hands and knowing smiles. He wants to destroy them all, tear them limb from limb in some kind of battle-crazed fever, rend their flesh from their bones and shed blood, keep her safe from them.

He can hear them though, even if he manages to keep his eyes averted. He can hear their words as they woo her, hear the promises they make, the lies they tell. He knows she's susceptible - she fell for his inadequate words, did she not? She succumbed to him easily, and he had nothing to offer her save his name and whatever else that might be worth.

"Mine," he mutters. He is unsure if he's laying claim to her or accepting his deserved blame, but the word falls from his lips again and again. It is only like this, alone and at a distance, that he can say it, can take it as his own. Everything else requires tact and care, proper words said in proper ways. Everything else requires that it not matter, that he show so little regard for her, that he grant her so much less than she deserves.

He curses under his breath, damning himself and his circumstance and biting back the other words he wants to say. Apologies and confessions, words he knows will fall on deaf ears, words that will echo back to him in the silence that is all she affords him now. He knows the words would do no good, even if she would hear them. He has debased her, brought her low.

Moving back, he watches her again, his eyes caressing her in ways his hands are no longer allowed. Everything he loves about her is hidden from him now, awash in blue skirts, the depths of her hidden from his view. He closes his eyes, remembers her as he knew her, remembers her curve and movement, remembers her awkwardness and the way she responded to a steadying hand.

He almost reaches out, stilling his hand at the last moment. It is enough that he can see her still, though it tears at him, destroys him as he has destroyed her. He should have done more for her, done better by her. He should have stood up for her, and allowed no one to sully her name, her honor.

Instead she is fodder for men who don't appreciate her, don't understand her. She wears his name and it humiliates her far more than it does hanging like an albatross around his neck. He wants to do more for her, though he is in no position to do anything for any of them.

He is as useless as she now is, beached and broken on the shore, gutted like so many of his men, though she did not go down without a fight. He wishes her sunk, drown and dangerous beneath the waves, but instead she is there, a testament to his failure.

That he had no choice does not matter. She was his to protect, and instead she is his sacrifice. He surrendered her to save his own life, those of his men and, though she fought bravely to the end, he could not save her as well, and now she lies, a testament to failure. A fitting epitaph for the slow grave that is Rosas Bay.