They say that grief is to mourn something. To miss. A striking longing for something, a missing part of one's soul. That grief is love persevering. Such pretty, poetic words, for something that is wrecking Vissarion's every moment, solemn silk over the ugly, jagged wound thaat his loss has left on him. A wound that he's found has been delightfully healed with the consumption of alcohol. Bottles on Bottles, barrels on barrels, he finds himself drinking the days away, lying languid, uncaring of anything around him. He heard the whispers. Count Dunayevsky, a man that's so filled with grief after the loss of his spouse that he no longer was suited for his position. He didn't care.

Let them spread their talks. For what was life without them, his love, his darling who had been taken from him. Vissarion still found himself, on those bad nights, screaming their name as they get consumed by fire. There was a words for him, he supposed, mind his own self caused haze, withering away. Alcoholic. Depressed. Dying. He didn't really care about his own wellbeing much anymore after they died. A part of him had died in that fire. Vissarion had already come to terms with the fact that a large reason he hadn't drunk himself to death were his dear servants.

It was for that reason that had led to the events of him hiring a painter. He had been rather passionately told on how posthumous portraits helped with grief, the servants voice wavering but determined. Vissarion was smart enough to realise this was an attempt at an intervention, but he held no ill will. They meant well. So here he was, hands behind his back as he waited in his gallery, a section of it entirely dedicated to his spouse. This paticular painter had made a portrait for him before, and it had brought him such contrary feelings of comfort and sorrow for when he looked at it, he saw life in the way their eyes was painted, the lines of their smiles. Ironic he supposed that he would hire the painter for a work that would be steeped in death.