In the wake of losing his brother, there was no possible way for Timaeus to describe what that pain felt like to anyone who didn’t already know it. As far as he could convey, it was a deep, aching wound hidden somewhere within him; panging miserably every time the mere thought of Nico crept into his mind. It was something that refused to heal and no matter how quickly the world around him wanted him to bounce back to normal, as far as Timaeus was concerned, there was no such thing as normal without Nicomedes in it. Timaeus had never realized it when his brother was alive, but Nico had been the rock that had grounded the entire family together when their father had died. He had been the one to lift Periella’s spirits, keep Sil from staying out too late, and he had even managed to do the seemingly impossible task of convincing Timaeus to stay once the middle son had learned the grim news. Nico had done that effortlessly because he was just good at that sort of thing.

Timaeus was not.

He was not some great diplomat who could keep this broken family together in the wake of such tragedy. He was the boy who ran away at sixteen and only came back under the promise he could keep the life of adventure that he had grown accustomed as a Captain for the province. He had never been keen on calling Colchis home and had his heart set on traveling the open seas once more, whenever he could convince Silanos to take up the mantle in his stead; but that had never happened. Nor was it ever going to happen. Timaeus was not tethered to this lonely crag indefinitely and now it was his sole responsibility to keep this family together; for his father and for Nicomedes. It had barely been two months since the funeral pyre for his elder brother had been set alight and already Timaeus had failed miserably. Silanos was gone, having run away to god knows where. His mother was lost in her own misery. Roxana refused to talk to him and he was fairly certain that this wasn’t just some teenage phase. It was a miracle that Nicomedes had inadvertently left his brother a brilliant team of advisors otherwise the province would have fallen into disrepair as well. The poor boy was just too overwhelmed by it all.

After all, not only had Timaeus lost his brother, but now he had essentially lost his freedom. As the second son of a baron, he had been free to travel the world. As the heir to his brother, he had been given the chance to make a name for himself within the military… but with Nicomedes gone, Timaeus had no choice, but to become the Baron himself. This was a role that he had never wanted. Not that he had ever expected to take it in the first place -- at least, not with Nico always being the strong ox that he had been before he had dropped down dead at the dinner table. Now he had to do it and if that wasn’t bad enough for the young man who deposed being on Colchian shores, the world expected him to be unaffected by the death of Nicomedes while doing it. No one had said it directly to him, but he knew from the way he had been pressured to immediately start attending senate meetings and the funny looks the servants gave him when they caught him crying at odd hours, whenever he could get a moment alone. His brother’s body was barely cold and everyone was simply expecting him to move on and replace him as if nothing had happened in the first place. As if he could ever measure up to half the man that Nicomedes had been.

That was why Timaeus had started drinking.

Not that he hadn’t downed his fair share of Condos wine before while he had been at sea for four years. The gods only knew how many casks had found their way down his throat, after all. However, that had all been in the name of good fun. Drinks brought out in the name of being merry with his friends. Now he was downing the alcohol alone and in the hopes that he could forget what had happened. Forget that he was a baron. Somehow he thought that if he could just let his thoughts fade away into nothing that maybe the ache deep within him would fade away. He had yet to find that at the bottom of a bottle, but with no one else to turn to as everyone was too busy looking to him for guidance, what choice did Timaeus have, but to try?

That was why he was currently stumbling through the lower levels of Midas, trying to find his way back home after a miserable night of pub crawling. He had drunk too much that night, almost to the point that he did not recognize the streets of the city had practically grown up in. Instead, all of the roadways were blurring together as Timaeus tried to head in the only direction that he knew would eventually bring him home: up. Somehow he would make his way to the upper levels where he could crash into a soft bed to sleep off his hangover. However, he had already taken the wrong way twice and the road he was heading down would only lead to a dead-end as Timaeus knew instinctively that he shouldn’t take any of the narrow alleys as they wouldn’t lead him away from this part of the city. In short, he was hopelessly lost and stumbling around without any sense of where home was and no hope of finding it before he sobered up.

Not that his body wasn’t trying to do, of course, when Timaeus suddenly fell to his knees against a rather unimpressive building here in the lower levels in order to relieve his stomach of the nasty drink. An ugly, retching noise filled the air as Timaeus involuntarily vomited by side of some poor unsuspecting home… completely unaware that there was someone nearby who had taken notice of the lost baron in a drunkard’s clothes.