Author's Note: Hey! I know, I said I was done months ago. But turns out its really lonely writing to no one, and I was reading back over my reviews page the other day, and everything you guys had written was so sweet, and I decided I really wanted to write another chapter of this. And plus, this month is the one year anniversary of my fanfiction account, so this is kind of in honor of that as well. This may just be the most angsty, depressing thing I've written in ages. For that I apologize, but it has a lighter ending. This takes place after Ron left in Deathly Hallows, after he has escaped the Snatchers and spent a subsequent day trying to get back to Harry and Hermione, and has since given up and gone to Bill's house. It doesn't specify when he splinches and loses his fingernails in the book, so I have decided that it was before he got to Bill's. But not too much before, as I really wanted him to be bleeding. Erm, I don't remember what else I needed to say.
I owe some much deserved thanks to those who reviewed on the last chapter. And they would be: LillyMay77, Pen is Mighter, whatapileofshit10, JMbroadwayfan, F Maurice, Average Teenager, Gomylittlepony, and GirlWithFiveLittleBrothers. Everything you guys said was greatly appreciated, and you guys are very, very awesome. No one has read through this, so if the grammar is wrong, it's my fault. And I don't own Harry Potter.
Reviews would be make me very, very happy.
Think that's about it,
BarbedWire

He found himself standing in water. Not that it really mattered all that much, because he had been wet beforehand anyway. A steady flow of curse words fell from his lips and he clutched his bleeding right hand in his left. He was not yet sobbing, but he felt he was terribly close to it as tears cascaded down his face.

Coward; the word tore through his mind like a razor blade. Hacking away at everything he had thought he'd known about himself and the world until it was all just a bloody tangle of hopeless dreams, broken promises and blatant lies he had fed himself for years. In its haste to once again pretend that the world was understood, his mind turned its back on the mangled heap and replaced years of ideas, and memories and understanding with the single word: coward. It was, after all, the most accurate adjective to describe him. He did not need the strange voice in his head to point that out to him now. He was perfectly capable of seeing it for himself. Whatever he had thought he had been, whatever he might have done in the past, he was at heart, a coward. A treacherous yellow coward who abandoned his friends with an impossible task all for a broken heart, which was the most disgusting, selfish thing he had ever heard of. And he'd been the one to do it.

Standing was suddenly too much effort, and the he collapsed into the surf. The salt water stung his wounded fingers but he ignored the injury. Looking at it reminded him of how lost he was. Of how he had spent the last day trying in vain to get back to where he had left them. He deserved much more pain than this. The sobs he had felt coming before took him, and he held his head in his hands to ease the temptation to drown himself. Coward. Ron let the word run through his head again as he remembered everything that had happened. The terrible things he had said to Harry, the impossible choice he had forced on her, the irredeemable way he had turned his back on her and left, ignoring her frantic calls. There could be no excuse for the things he had done, perhaps it was best that he had been unable to find them, he didn't deserve a second chance. Worthless bloody coward. This is what he deserved; bitterly cold sea water, and a stinging wound, and nothing inside him but guilt and pain.

It shouldn't have mattered what Harry and Hermione felt for each other. It shouldn't have mattered that Dumbledore had left Harry as in the dark as they had all felt. None of should have changed anything. He had made a promise to them. He had promised the two people he loved more than anything in the world that whatever happened he would be there with them. And now he wasn't. All it had taken to make him a liar, and failure, and an outright traitor was a little pain. Just a little hopelessness and blood loss and heartbreak and a tiny voice in his head, and he had been willing to go back on everything he had ever sworn and ever believed.

A tiny voice that had echoed every doubt he had ever entertained. A tiny voice that grew louder every time he slipped the chain of the locket around his neck. He should have known. He should have disregarded everything that he felt during his turn to guard the Horcrux. He added another word to the list of derogatory terms he silently hurled at himself; weak. He knew, knew exactly what lived inside the cold metal, and what had he done? Allowed himself to fill with the thoughts that came to him while it lay icily against his skin. If there was a Hell, there was certainly a special circle of it reserved just for him and his mounting list of sins.

Vaguely he became aware that he needed to move out of the water. It was much too cold to be sitting around in the ocean, and he knew he was probably in some kind of shock and hypothermia and death were surely waiting around the corner. But he didn't have the heart to move. He did not have it in him to fight for someone who had so hurt everyone he loved. What did it matter if he just sat here until he froze to death really?

Roughly he felt himself be pulled into a standing position by a figure whose approach he had not even seen.

"Ron?" gasped Bill, shaking his brother slightly to pull him out of his sobs. "What are you doing here? Where are Harry and Hermione?"

The question had been inevitable. He knew that would be they would be the first words out of the mouth of anyone he saw. But he wished it wasn't. He did not want to have to speak it aloud, as if he were s hoping that this was all a nightmare and it would still be possible to wake up again in that drafty tent with Harry and Hermione both safely in his vision. Saying it seemed too likely to will everything that had happened into being real, and he did not want that.

"Where are they, Ron?" Bill asked again his voice more demanding and more desperate. Ron shook his head.

"I don't know." He said despondently. "I don't know."

"What do you mean you don't know? Weren't you with them?" Bill's desperation was giving way to pure confusion.

He uttered his response as quietly, and as hopelessly as he could, half hoping that Bill would not hear it.

"I left." He expected to be pushed away, to be shunned and ignored the way he deserved. There was no way Bill would feel anything for his brother expect shame and disappointment after learning what he was.

"What?"

"We didn't know what we were doing, and I was a coward and I left. Just like that. Last night. In the rain. She-she tried to call me back and I ignored her." Great, shaking hysterical tremors that he did not know if they had more to do with the cold or with his grief, rocked him until all he wanted to do was sink back into the soft sand and disappear entirely.

He could feel Bill's posture change as he looked on his brother. He did not seem to have any idea what to say to him, so he chose instead to change the subject.

"Why're you bleeding?"

"Splinched." At least, that was why he thought he was bleeding. Particulars other than the sound of the rain hitting the ground as Hermione called out his name seemed increasingly unimportant. Missing fingernails and the bruises he had earned from the Snatchers were not even important enough to earn the rank of concern. They were just like the water or the cold, details of where he was and what he had done that were best ignored.

"Give me your bag." Bill said after watching his brother shaking and shivering for a moment.

Ron shook his head again. He knew what Bill was offering, and he was grateful. But he had changed his mind and no longer wanted to ask his brother what he had come all this way to ask of him.

"Damn it, Ron. You're freezing. Give me your bag and we'll go inside."

"No," he did not deserve his concern. "I'm sorry I came here. You don't have to help me. I'll just go. You can forget you ever saw me."

Bill blinked at him for a moment, as if he could not believe that Ron had actually said what he had just said. "You're full of shit if you think I'm just going to leave you out here to do God knows what to yourself."

"I'm not going to do anything stupid. It's just better if I leave."

"There are Snatchers all over the place." If Bill thought that logic was going to get through to him, than he was wrong. Logic was the last thing he wanted to hear.

He shrugged his point off. "I've run into some already. Besides, I don't think it matters all that much." His throat tightened again, and he only fought against the fresh tears for Bill.

"You won't be doing them any good if you're dead, Ron." Why had he chosen to run to Bill? It seemed a terrible idea. Bill had always known him too well. He was like Dad, always able to wheedle truths out of him that he would scarcely admit to himself.

"I'm not doing them any good wherever I am. I left. How does that help them?" he was grateful for the edge of anger that had made its way into his voice, although he hoped that Bill knew it was directed at himself.

Bill looked at his brother with sympathy and understanding, and when he spoke his voice was as gentle as Ron had ever heard it. "C'mon in the house Ron. We'll help you figure this out."

"There isn't anything to figure out!" he had at last lost the fragile hole he had maintained over his emotions, and they all spilled out him now. He was the most worthless, slime, of a human being that had ever existed in the world. "I left them because I'm a rubbish friend and a useless, dirty coward! I'll never be able to find them again because they don't want me to find them! And they shouldn't! I don't deserve it!"

Before he had the chance to comprehend the situation, Bill's wand was out and Ron found himself lying on his back in the frigid water. He blinked up in disbelief at his brother, who kept his wand trained steadily on him as he spoke.

"I don't know exactly what happened. But I have known you your whole life, and let me tell you this. Without a doubt you've screwed up; badly, from the sound of it. But you are only a coward if you give up. If you go off and get yourself killed because you don't think you deserve another chance, then you'd be right. Because that's the coward's way out, to choose self-pity and misery because it's easier to give up than to keep fighting." He put his wand away and held his hand out to his brother. "If that's what you want, I won't stand in your way. But if you're ready to be the man I know you can be, come inside with me, and Fleur and I will help you find a way to make this right."

In all honesty, he had little to no faith that it would be possible to put this right, but if the possibility existed he wanted to fight for it. He wanted to believe Bill, believe that this one colossal failure was not all that he was.

Full of uncertainty, he grabbed his brother's hand and allowed him to pull him to his feet. The smile he offered him as he took hold of his sopping bag was so genuine and so relieved that Ron allowed himself to believe for a moment that he was not a coward.

"What if I can't make it right?" Desperate as he might be to fix things, his entire being still felt saturated with doubts.

Bill sighed, and slung Ron's rucksack over his shoulder as he began to lead him towards the small shell adorned house. "It'll be alright." Ron felt his mind about to burst with all the potential ways that it could not be okay, but for once he bit his tongue. After all, he had never known Bill to lie to him…