i'm sending a message of feathers and bone | (december catch-all for fitz & nighteyes)

[listenyouidiot]

Who: FitzChivalry Farseer & Nighteyes + Nie Huaisang, open! (December catch-all)
What: Fitz and Nighteyes get settled in Trench; some Winter Mourning memory sharing prompts; assorted others
When: throughout December, timelines are fake
Where: On the edge of the Trenchwood in Feed, assorted other locations as necessary
Notes: bits of the third prompt adapted from chapter 3 of Robin Hobb's Assassin's Apprentice. hmu @ ragweed if you'd like an additional starter!

Content Warnings: the gif for the second prompt includes a spooky-ish moment near the end before the frames repeat! no other warnings yet, will update as needed.



i. new to the neighbourhood
open to all!

Just on the outskirts of Feed to the northeast and within a (generous) stone's throw of Farmer's Crossing, an abandon woodsman's cottage in the Trenchwood has been reclaimed from the elements.

Well. Maybe 'reclaimed' is a bit premature. Fitz and Nighteyes have managed to oust a pack of middling beasts from roosting within the dilapidated property, which means it must belong to them now. This isn't so different from how they came by their old hut in Buck Duchy in the aftermath of the Red Ship War, though the harsh terrain and unforgiving surroundings are a far cry from the bucolic life they'd lived in the countryside.

Fewer chickens, too, Nighteyes remarks to Fitz glumly across their Wit bond, that shared connection between them that links their minds, as well as their hearts and their senses. The large grey wolf is sitting on his haunches with his tail neatly curled around his paws, watching with shrewd, judgmental yellow eyes as Fitz struggles to figure out how to turn on the mechanical... thing... that supposedly provides power to the lamps inside the cottage. Given the amount of snow that has collected on the wolf's dense coat, as well as on Fitz's bent back, they've both been out here for quite some time. Nighteyes yawns once, maw of sharp white teeth on full display, before he lowers himself down into the snow bank and drops his chin onto his paws. We are losing daylight, little brother.

"Yes, I'm aware," comes Fitz's terse, verbal response--which, to anyone else, likely sounds like he's arguing with the air. With a groan that can only come from spending far too long bent over when one is clearly not a spry young twenty-something anymore, he straightens up and rolls his neck and shoulders, grimacing. "Would that this cottage's previous tenant kept a stash of candles on hand, I wouldn't need to waste my time with this."

ii. it comes
open to all! (shamelessly repurposing this prompt from the TDM)

There are only a few benefits that accompany a life spent constantly on edge to the threat of danger--to himself, to his loved ones, or to the Farseer throne--and being able to function efficiently while in a crisis is perhaps the most valuable one.

Fitz isn't a scholar, and so while other Sleepers may take evidence of their encounters with the strange footprints in the wilds to the archives or confer with others over how best to solve the mystery, he reaches instead for what he can do best: offer the strength of his body, and that of the wolf at his side, to anyone who needs to cross the wilds to reach the other districts, and fears making the journey alone. To that end, he can often be found lingering near the edges of the Trenchwood, people-watching and sharing some rudimentary meal with the wolf, largely unbothered by the cold now that he has a decent winter coat and new boots to keep his feet dry and warm.

iii. winter mourning: kin to the king
closed to Nie Huaisang

Buckkeep Castle is an impressive stone fortress built onto the cliffs overlooking the sea. In later years, Fitz would come to know its halls and all the hidden passageways concealed within its masonry as intimately as he knows his own skin. In its gardens as a youth he would learn the mastery of his Skill magic, and in its dungeons as a young man he would meet his first death. But in this particular sepia-tinted memory from his past he is just a little boy of not quite ten, dark-haired, dirty and skinny and sitting beneath one of the many banquet tables within the Great Hall in the aftermath of some feast or another, sharing the leftover pickings with three or four puppies who bark and gambol around him with fawning excitement.

And walking through the aftermath with stately poise is the elegant--and indisputably old--King Shrewd, flanked on one side by his youngest son, Prince Regal (bleary-eyed and a bit rumpled, probably hungover after the night's festivities), while the Fool in his black and white motley capers along in their wake. They have, the three of them, paused by the table so that Shrewd can make his incisive observations to Regal (either oblivious to or patiently choosing to ignore the Fool's playful pantomiming of his every gesture).

"Look at him," King Shrewd says to Regal.

Obedient, but not particularly happy about it, Regal glares balefully down at Fitz, who stares back up at him from beneath the safety of the banquet table amid the whelping puppies.

King Shrewd goes on. "What will you make of him?"

"Him?" Bewildered, Regal looks once to his father, then back to Fitz again with disdain writ plainly into his coldly handsome features. "It's the Fitz. Chivalry's bastard. Sneaking and thieving as always."

"Fool," says Shrewd, flinty eyed. The little jester at his side, thinking that he is being addressed, smiles sweetly up at the king, but the King's words are for his son alone. "Are your ears stopped with wax? Do you hear nothing I say? I asked you, not 'what do you make of him?' but 'what will you make of him?' There he stands, young, strong, and resourceful. His lines are every bit as royal as yours, for all that he was born on the wrong side of the sheets. So what will you make of him? A tool? A weapon? A comrade? An enemy? Or will you leave him lying about, for someone else to take up and use against you?"

Regal only stares back down at Fitz in quizzical silence, though he does briefly steal a quick look around the Great Hall to ensure that they are utterly alone, before looking back again. There follows a short spell of silence, interrupted only by the petulant whine of a puppy pawing at Fitz's hand, reminding him that they had been sharing their meal, has he forgotten? The boy darts his eyes downward like a spooked hare, then back up again, dark eyes moving with keen intelligence between the King and his uncle.

"The bastard?" Regal speaks again. "He's only a child."

Shrewd exhales. "Today. This morning and now he is a child. When you next turn around he will be a youth, or worse, a man, and then it will be too late for you to make anything of him. But take him now, Regal, and shape him, and a decade hence you will command his loyalty. Instead of a discontented bastard who may be persuaded to become a pretender to the throne, he will be a henchman, united to the family by spirit as well as blood. A bastard, regal, is a unique thing. Put a signet ring on his hand and send him forth, and you have created a diplomat a no foreign ruler will dare to turn away. He may safely be sent where a prince of the blood may not be risked. Imagine the uses for one who is and yet is not of the royal bloodline. Hostage exchanges. Marital alliances. Quiet work. The diplomacy of the knife."

What things to be said in front of a child, about the child where he sits at your feet. Even Regal looks stunned, his voice dry. "You speak of these things in front of the boy. Of using him, as a tool, a weapon. You think he will not remember your words when he is grown?"

But the King only laughs. "Remember them? Of course he will. I count on it. Look at his eyes, Regal. There is intelligence there, and possibly potential Skill. I'd be a fool to lie to him. Stupider still to simply begin his training and education with no explanation. For that would leave his mind fallow for whatever seeds others might plant there. Isn't it so, boy?"

Fitz doesn't answer, but he does nod, slowly. The King looks down at him, approving. "Come here," he instructs, and Fitz obeys. Then the King goes down on one knee before him (mimicked by the Fool, who looks between both of them with surprising solemnity and earnestness), while Regal's countenance darkens. King Shrewd takes the half-eaten tart from Fitz's hands and tosses it gently to the puppies, then drew a little pin of silver with a red gemstone embedded in it. He neatly pushes it through the rough wool of Fitz's shirt.

"Now you are mine," the King says, claiming him with the surety that only a King can command. "You need not eat any man's leavings. I will keep you, and I will keep you well. If any man or woman ever seeks to turn you against me by offering you more than I do, then come to me, and tell me of the offer, and I shall meet it. You will never find me a stingy man, nor be able to cite ill use as a reason for treason against me. Do you believe me, boy?"

At first, Fitz only nods mutely, but the King's steady brown gaze demands more from him. His jaw works for a moment as he summons up the courage to speak; with all his time spent in the company of dogs, it's no wonder words don't come to him easily. "Yes, sir," he says, voice small and very young.

"Good." The King has other words for the boy before him, who even now looks down at the pin in his clothes that has claimed him for a cause he does not yet understand, but perhaps the words themselves are more for the benefit of the outraged prince who stands behind him. Prince Regal Farseer, who even now is staring down at Fitz with renewed distaste on his face, the beginnings of something cruel and hateful festering in his eyes.

This moment, this memory, is the beginning of something, and the end of something. One life is abandoned underneath that banquet table where the puppies continue making short work of their prize; every step forward from this moment is a step taken in new shoes, for a new purpose. If his life had ever truly been his own before this exchange, it wasn't anymore.

iv. winter mourning: pack
closed to Nie Huaisang

Soft. Warm. Safe.

A newly born wolf cub is a vulnerable, sightless creature, but even when their eyes have opened and their ears unfurled to take in the sights and sounds of the world around them, their principle experiences are rooted in smell and taste and touch. The scent of their mother--a wild wolf's musk, overpowering and unpleasant to a human nose, but rife with information and certainty and security to a helpless pup--the scent of their littermates, their warm little bodies nestled together within the darkness of the den. The taste of milk and meat, and the wash of nurturing, dangerous canine love that only a wolf can demonstrate for her cubs.

This is a memory that lives in the senses, and so that is how Nighteyes relives it now, his pup's recollection of himself curled like a tiny, vulnerable bundle of yearning, trusting love into the dense fur of his mother's underbelly. His mind, somehow both a pup's and his adult self at once, leans into the mind of the visitor to this memory without hesitation; he accepts these things unreservedly as they are.

Hello, Hummingbird.

His mother licks his face tenderly, trying to coax his still-closed eyes to open. She called me Nighteyes because my eyes were late to open.

The thought is dozy, warm, and content. As though at any moment, he could drift back to sleep in this dream, and forget that in a few months' time, all the warm, loved bodies around him would be dead.

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The sensations of the memory don't overtake Huaisang in a rush, like so many have already; no sudden lurch, like missing a step or falling into water. No, this one is gentler, like a warm embrace coming to envelop him and nestle him down into the comforting dark. So unlike what he'd been through with Lan Xichen, oppressively dark hours in the Nie Ancestral Hall; no, this is nicer. Cozier. Huaisang finds himself both apart of and within the memory at once, as well, and leaning with relief into the welcome familiarity of Nighteyes' mind.

"There are so many of you," he says, taken in fully by the mass of warm and comforting bodies, the unconditional safety of mother. His own mother passed before he was old enough to know her, and so he has imagined her in the lifetime since— she wouldn't lick his eyes open, naturally, but he likes to imagine this sense of trust and safety he feels from Nighteyes is the same.

He relishes it for a moment, heedless of how long it is - maybe a minute, maybe thirty, in this sleepy haze it hardly matters. The simple pleasure of being cared for by a mother melds into the contentment Huaisang feels at being able to speak to Nighteyes again, and he is... enjoying himself, for once. In one of these strange, strange memories.

"My mother called me Bào," he offers in return, eventually. "For 'precious jewel.' Ah, and 'embrace'... Hmm, I might have been spoiled, for a time." Mother-spoiled, specifically. Not the other kinds of spoiled he also enjoyed.

awoooo 🐾

[listenyouidiot]

Even grown, Nighteyes' concept of the passage of time is a thing connected to sense experiences; of needs met, of learned lessons, pain to avoid. As a pup, it's utterly meaningless. He's warm nestled amid his siblings and the mind of a new and trusted friend; his mother's fierce love blankets and surrounds him; and his yearling brothers and sisters who survived from the previous season can barely be heard gambolling about outside the den under the watchful eye of the rest of the pack.

None of it can last. But mourning it while it still brings him joy is, in his opinion, a stupid human thing to do.

It is only right to spoil a cub. Warm affection and humour encircles Huaisang like the ambient heat from a hearthfire, but it's tinged with melancholy that would be more at home in a human mind, rather than a wolf's. His time sharing his mind and senses with Fitz has changed him. Life is hard and uncertain, especially for the young. They should know the comfort of a full belly and trust that they will be provided for while they can.

Nighteyes' memory of himself, small and vulnerable and filled with puppyish devotion, nestles himself against Huiansang's side and sighs, on the cusp of being drawn into sweet and dreamless sleep. Still, he presses the thought into drowsily into Huaisang's mind: It is good to hear your thoughts again, Hummingbird.

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There's good sense in Nighteyes' opinions, particularly about which things are stupid and human. Huaisang has had enough of despair and melancholy nostalgia, after the past couple weeks. Better now to live in this memory of Nighteyes', warm and loved and special, wrapping himself around the little cub with almost-unfettered delight. He is regrettably a stupid human still, himself, and so the tiny hooks of his myriad stupid human problems will not leave him entirely even for this - but he's close.

"I missed you," he mumbles into soft comfort and drowsiness. "Is this how it works now? Should I carry around one of those hideous wreaths? If I must." He gripes, but there's good humor in it; for Nighteyes, he will tote around a weird little bone circle if he absolutely has to. Better that than being unable to speak with a friend at all, except through Fitz's translation-plus-commentary.

Like, how can he get Nighteyes' unrestrained teasing of Fitz like that. It's just not the same.

Ah, and something occurs to him, in this cub-memory, on the tail (ha) of Nighteyes' oddly profound advice for rearing children- "Do you have any cubs?"

[listenyouidiot]

I do not know. About the antler wreaths, that is. That raises a question that seems far more pressing to Nighteyes, however. With this many deer around to shed their antlers, I do not understand why I am not allowed to take even a single ailing fawn. Grump. Grumpy wolf thoughts about Trench rules about not eating the deer. He's a wolf, eating deer is his job. It doesn't make sense.

(A wreath is lying on the swept wooden floorboards of Fitz's wilderness cabin, either dropped or set aside after Nighteyes' memory swept over Huaisang. Nighteyes is, dimly and distantly, aware of Fitz's presence just outside the cabin now, where he is at work chopping up additional firewood and setting it aside to keep the cabin warm when the real cold arrives.)

Huaisang's question brings a ripple of warm humour across the connection between their thoughts. I have a little brother to keep out of trouble. He will always be cub enough. Then, because he has learned to anticipate that one answer alone will rarely satisfy human curiosity, he adds, No, little jewel. I ran only for a brief time with other wolves before I returned to my brother's side. I was...

What follows isn't a pause, because they aren't speaking with words, or even really sharing something as straightforward as their thoughts; a muddle of ideas and feelings and images follows as Nighteyes tries to adequately communicate the bittersweet cost of acquiring his shade of human intellingence through his Wit bond with Fitz: the loss of some fundamental understanding of what it means to be a wolf, and only a wolf. The pack he'd sought to run with had sensed the the difference in him, even if they could not understand its origins, and after so much time spent in the company of a man since his own puppyhood, sharing a man's thoughts and living as a man did, life with this pack had chafed Nighteyes in ways he still can't describe. He had returned to Fitz, and they had resumed their life together, and while Nighteyes knows that Fitz continues to worry at this particular bone years and years after the fact, Nighteyes himself has accepted it for what it is.

...I was too changed to remain with them. That is what he settles on, ultimately, without bitterness or regret or any real melancholy. The memory around them is fading now though it does so very gently, a soft transition from a wolf's warm den to a clean blanket and some pillows on the floor before the hearthfire in Fitz's cabin. That is where Nighteyes drowses now, and while there is a small couch nearby clearly designed for a human to relax upon, there is no wolf to cuddle on that couch.

Chop. Clatter. The idle crunch of boots on snow. Fitz is still outside living his woodsman's dream life, apparently. When Nighteyes fully comes back to the present moment, he touches his mind gently to Huaisang's again, just to solve that mystery once and for all. There you are. (Affectionate.)

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Huaisang can only give him the mental equivalent of a shrug, for the deer. He doesn't know; he hasn't bothered to ask, frankly, because oops- he's not really interested in the local culture. Maybe he wouldn't have touched so many of these winter mournings if he'd been asking about this kind of thing, but here they are.

There's a strange sort of ache as he listens - absorbs? listens to Nighteyes' commentary of Fitz as a little brother, a cub, unbidden; he can't help but think of Nie Mingjue, of the time he'd been a beloved little brother himself. Faraway days, and he has plenty more brothers now, but if a muddle of a smear of a memory, of a Huaisang truly small enough to be called little jewel slips through, well; there he is, pudgy tiny hands grasping at the robes of an older brother too young to have a temper yet, too young to call him names besides Pork Bun and squish the baby fat of his cheeks.

He doesn't push it away from their shared connection, but neither does he acknowledge it. He imagines he doesn't have to, given the mutual sense of understanding they've reacquired. Instead he settles in the indescribable changedness Nighteyes conveys, and something in him sticks on the phrasing: too changed to remain with them.

When he blinks a few times and finds himself out of the memory, all he can think is that he knows that one, too. Sometimes it feels like the person he was before Mingjue died is just as dead, and the cultivation world feels even more tacky and pointless to engage with these days. It gives him a sense of relief to sit upright where he's slumped down on Fitz's couch now, here, in another place, and wordlessly he slides off of it completely to join Nighteyes on the floor.

"Here I am," he says, and winds an arm over the wolf's great neck. Now he will get his proper wolf cuddle, thank you. And if Fitz hasn't yet noticed Huaisang's fresh new connection to Nighteyes, it will be a pleasingly simple thing to surprise him with later.

[faceblocks]

Vi isn't trying to eavesdrop as she passes, but she's not not trying to eavesdrop, either. She does a fair job of each, moving a little closer toward the snow covered wolf and his snow covered Sleeper. (It could be the other way around, she supposes, but no matter.) Stopping several feet away, she shakes the snow from her hair and runs a hand through it, sighing. She always forgets this coat has a hood.

"What's the trouble?" She's not even sure there's trouble, trouble. And if there is it's of the solvable kind, at least, from the looks of it. "Something stuck? Just give it a kick. Everything works better with a little kick."

Suddenly aware of her resting tired-voice, she adds, seriously, "Don't kick it." And then, "Do you need a hand?" She almost adds Or a foot? Maybe her slight smile gives away her inner commentary. Maybe not.

[listenyouidiot]

Both Fitz and Nighteyes turn to look back at Vi with alarming synchronicity. Nighteyes is back on all four of his feet, head lowered and ears forward, but his hackles aren't up; the grey wolf is all caution, but no aggression. Perhaps the same could be said of the man who he's placed himself in front of, though Fitz relaxes far more quickly than Nighteyes does, and at Vi's wry little joke, he cracks a little smile of his own. (Like, it's a funny joke, and he'd probably laugh if he wasn't so annoyed by his present circumstances.)

"It's all right." This murmured in a quick aside to the wolf, who does not seem convinced. Then, exhaling and straightening up further, Fitz calls out, "I won't say no to your aid, but I'm afraid I don't have much to repay you for your kindness." Might as well be upfront about his present, uh, financial circumstances.

Then, in hopes of easing even slightly any discomfort a young woman alone might feel in the company of a man she does not know (even one who looks transparently capable of fending for herself): "I'm Fitz. This is Nighteyes."

[faceblocks]

It helps that Vi lives with two wolves already (three if you count Sansa) besides her Omen, so while she's cautious, she isn't frightened or even surprised by the animal's presence. Palms open, she holds out her hands toward them - though the wolf, moreso. "Hello Nighteyes, I'm Vi. I probably smell like strange wolf, if that's a thing you care about. But not a regular wolf. None of the wolves I know are regular, so..."

Maybe Nighteyes: also not a Regular Wolf?

Wait. Before attempting a one-sided conversation with a strange wolf, maybe also say hello to the Sleeper, too. "Good to meet you, Fitz. Still Vi. Not looking for payment, I'm just here, and I'd feel like a real asshole just leaving you to ...that if it could be an easy fix. It's only gonna get colder."

There are farms out here she knows well enough (Sansa's the real mvp there), Sleepers out here she knows even better, and though her patrols don't often bring her this way, they sometimes do. So do walks. (And eggs.)

"Give me the go ahead and I'll check it out, eh?" This she says to Nighteyes, and with a bit more of a smile she adds, "I do need all my fingers for that. My job's in my hands."

[listenyouidiot]

It's a safe bet to assume that Nighteyes is, indeed, not a regular wolf.

"Please," Fitz replies and motions with one hand for Vi to approach at her leisure, "feel free. I am not too proud to admit when I'm out of my depth." And at his gesture, Nighteyes too seems to relax his stance, ears and tail falling to a more neutral position. And perhaps some of Vi's message has reached Nighteyes through the Wit bond he shares with Fitz; there's an uncanny intelligence in his yellow eyes.

The metal contraption in front of Fitz and attached to the outside of this cabin is a generator of some kind--and that is the extent of what Fitz has been able to suss out about it. This is well beyond the technology he'd ever have had access to in his own world, and some learning curves are steeper than others.

[faceblocks]

She will approach, a nod as she passes by the maybe-not-quite-a-wolf, and Fitz, to look closer at the bit of machinery. She hasn't seen one exactly like this, but it seems like though they've all got their own little quirks (she puts that down to Trench, really) they're alike enough that she's confident on what to touch, and that she won't break it. Probably.

"There's a---mmmmph. Yeah, that's stuck. It's this---"

She rests her boot on one bit for leverage, and with a couple sharp pulls that's one bit out of the way, freeing up this other bit to....

"Yeah. And I think this turns," Her sister would laugh at the time it took her to figure it out, even if she's fast on the uptake with this sort of thing. She jostles it back and forth, finding that yes, it does turn, but not without a bit of effort, and noise - but the noise fades away into a soft hum, and then even that's gone.

"Aaaand there we go."

She wonders if it might have powered itself up had she bled on it. (Well, maybe not a Vileblood, but a different-blooded Sleeper.) She holds out a hand for shaking if he's so inclined, and she voices the thought after all, "Maybe not the best idea, but sometimes a drop of blood's better than a kick. Unless you haven't used your blood before. That might be too much kick. Have you checked out the inside yet?"

That's an invitation for her to inspect whatever, by the way, and she's looking him over to see if he's got his New Sleeper Satchel on his person.

📍📍📍 lackluster pin emoji smh

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Buckkep Castle is a great squat stone thing in all the ways the Unclean Realm is not, and Huaisang's first thought is that the grandeur of its banquet hall is offset by the solidity of its walls. He finds himself there and not there, drifting around the hall in the wake of some feast or another and utterly ignored, when the old man - clearly important, marked in his stride - and his two hangers-on pass him by. Huaisang follows, more curious by leagues about what will transpire here when he spots the boy and all his puppies under the table. Oh, he thinks— little Fitz is quite adorable, isn't he? Just look at his big eyes and his mop of hair...

The conversation is... illuminating, in a word, and while Huaisang's brow creases at 'the Fitz' and sticks like that throughout, he thinks it could be worse. Doesn't he know what it is to have expectations and a whole life's trajectory foisted upon someone young? Such is simply the fate of a son, regrettable or otherwise.

(He remembers Fitz's halting explanation about his ax, a thing to kill men, and he tries and fails to connect the look in Fitz's eyes back then to the bizarre sense of purpose this old king pins to his breast here, as a child. Huaisang can't decide which is worse: to speak of young Fitz like this in front of him, as a blade to be sharpened, or to still offer him promises of keeping him well, a thing any dirty child eating scraps under a table would take.)

(He notices, too, the jester's spark of attention at the word, Fool, and his curiosity about Fitz's-friend-who-likes-to-be-called-Fool multiples a hundredfold. This is him? He's— some kind of servant? What sort of political purpose does "dancing little boy" serve...?)

Huaisang can't recall a moment such as this in his own life. Much as Mingjue would do his best to shout swordsmanship and leadership into him, Huaisang would chafe, and he had no father nor grandfather nor hatefully glaring young uncle to press upon him some token and demand loyalty with it.

Well, perhaps the saber, but Huaisang's saber festers in the recesses of a closet somewhere across Trench, and he has never felt any loyalty to it, besides. This is alien; even as an outsider, an adult looking in, he can feel the pull of the old king's words that little Fitz must have felt. It is one thing to sit under tables and exist within one's small existence; it is another to be told they can be looked after, and cared for, and kept well. Huaisang has no memory of the time before his father claimed his mother and her babe as legitimate— he wonders if he'd have promised his life away with a 'yes, sir' just like that, if he'd been older, under different circumstances.

(Some people certainly would, but bloodline legitimacy is even higher on his personal list of forbidden topics than Mingjue's death, when it comes to asking some people about specific things. Ahem.)

So it's strange to witness; for all that the old king's words set Huaisang's skin crawling, to speak such a way of a child, to a child, he seems... not a bad man? His pin in Fitz's clothes seems a shield, and perhaps there is some reason in this place that Fitz's father or the rest of his family could not simply declare him legitimate, and- well. It's this Regal that Huaisang watches at the tail end of the memory, as he can feel the tug of it about to fade— no man who stares at a child with eyes as dark and burning as those is a good man. It's the smoldering hate that consumed Mingjue that Huaisang sees there, and he wonders exactly how much grief the simple act of putting a pin on a child's clothes would go on to cause.

Then the stone of Buckkeep Castle fades into the much smaller, much more, ah, rustic walls of Fitz's cottage away from the city, and Huaisang drums his fingers on the edge of the antler carving they'd unwittingly touched, to excise that fear for a child long since grown.

With a pang of exhaustion, he thinks, at least nobody burst into violence this time.

"Such a heavy thing to put on a child," he says, before he can rein in his questions and remember his manners. Things are different with Fitz, who does not require a pot of tea and fifty polite apologies to talk about these things. Huaisang taps on the antlers again, although they seem spent of their strange power for now. "Did he keep his promise to you? Were you looked after?"

[listenyouidiot]

The Great Hall of Buckkeep Castle dissipates around them, like morning mist along the cliffs that is chased away by the sea breeze. They're sitting at the humble wooden table seated next to his cottage's fireplace, cups of tea before them next to a bowl of roasted chestnuts and dried fruit that have doubtless had the tastiest choice morsels fished out already. There's an unopened bottle of brandy at hand, too, though as clarity returns to Fitz's dark eyes, he doesn't reach for it, not yet.

A low, mournful whine from Nighteyes, who has risen from where he'd been resting before the fire to come rest his great head on Fitz's lap. Nothing that flows across the newly reforged bond from Nighteyes to Huaisang could easily be matched to words or easily describable feelings; just unvarnished wolf-love and sadness for old, badly healed wounds of both the heart and the body. Fitz's lips twist into a pretty depressing mockery of a smile, but he drops the hand not still holding the bit of antler down to bury in Nighteyes' dense grey fur. Gratitude suffuses their connection, and tendrils of it curl unwittingly towards Huaisang, too, natural as breathing.

It takes him a moment to decide on his answer, though he hasn't lost his smile when he looks back at Huaisang. Is there a bit of wetness at the corners of his eyes? Maybe, but his voice is steady enough, after he takes a breath to make it so. "Yes," he says, and seems almost willfully ignorant of the hot, instantaneous flash of Nighteyes' disagreement between them, like to look directly at it is something even now he simply can't do. He strokes his hand soothingly over the wolf's head nevertheless. "He was my king before he was my grandfather, I always understood that. What sort of life could a prince's bastard have hoped to lead without his claim upon me? Thanks to him I slept in a warm bed, learned my letters and how to master the Skill. He kept his word to me. In time I think he grew to love me." At that he looks aside and reaches for his tea cup, his murmur of, "in his own way," an even quieter thing before he takes a sip from it.

This sentiment, it seems, is beyond the limit of what Nighteyes can tolerate. He utters a low growl, lips curled back from his teeth, and tosses Fitz's hand from his head, which causes Fitz nearly to spill the milky tea across his lap. The wolf's rebuke is scathing due as much to his anger as the love--real love, he argues without arguing, loyal love, fierce love, love without qualifiers, without conditions--underpinning it: Idiot.

"Nighteyes," Fitz starts to protest unhappily, speaking his Wit partner's name aloud and through their bond, but the wolf has already stalked away from him with his hackles raised. By the time Fitz is halfway out of his chair, Nighteyes has nosed open the cottage door and disappeared in a flash of grey fur into the night.

No. Don't follow me. And just like that, he closes his himself off from Fitz's thoughts, a slammed door that won't be opened again until he feels like doing so himself.

Exhaling, though not looking particularly surprised, Fitz only crosses over to the door to close it again, to keep out the cold and the snow. "Don't worry about him," he says to Huaisang with an apologetic look as he comes back to his chair. With a grim smile, he admits, "I suspect he and I will never stop having some variation on that argument. There are some things he won't ever be able to understand."

[fanfavors]

Ah, and there's so many old hurts here, ones that Huaisang can only guess at in the brief touches of emotion that wave off of Fitz and Nighteyes, and then in Nighteyes' abrupt exit. He puts the antlers down to reach for his own cup of tea in the meantime, to pretend with at least some effort that two out of three people in the same room and sharing their particular type of connection can have a private argument. If he'd been playing with his fan before he'd be ducking behind it quite literally, but it hangs folded from his hip, so he busies himself with the cup for a moment instead.

"Maybe," he admits with a quick half-smile, because - isn't that true? He's still uncertain of how he feels about what he's just witnessed in Fitz's memory himself. Strange as it felt, heavy a burden as it was to laden a child with, he can't honestly deny there's truth in Fitz's explanation for it - had he not, himself, been born a bastard child, given a comfortable life at the mercy of the father he was too young to know? There are privileges given in life that come with expectations, he knows this much. Much as he may have chafed against his own, and with only a minuscule understanding of Fitz's, that is true.

Still. Quite a lot for a child to understand. And Fitz did learn to kill people with his axe in the same way Huaisang had thrown his saber to the ground and deemed it too pointless to learn.

He lets out a sigh and slouches in his chair, leaning his elbows on the table and tapping his fingers on the side of the cup. He shakes his head. "I don't know— it's all too complicated for me to understand. I just don't know!"

There's a bit that sticks for him, is the thing; the one little hook in Fitz's explanation that stands out more than any of the actions. More than putting such burdens on a child, than speaking to him like that, than his clearly very insane uncle... Huaisang purses his lips, considering his words. (For once.) Far be it from him to tell someone else how to feel about the love one may or may not have received from a hard-to-read relative, good gracious, but—

"I almost understand," he concedes, then, "But you are a grown man now, and you can only say you think he might have loved you. I know you deserved more than that."

[listenyouidiot]

"I almost understand. But you are a grown man now, and you can only say you think he might have loved you. I know you deserved more than that."

Fitz looks up at Huaisang from considering his teacup, not precisely surprised, but slightly taken aback. Save for Nighteyes, no one in his life has ever spoken so bluntly of what he did deserve from Shrewd and the Farseers before; kings and queens do as they will in the Six Duchies, and he was not trained--raised to question such things, even if he did come to understand in time how much that life of service had taken from him, that he had been used harshly, even if he did not believe he had been discarded coldly. Even the Fool had wept over what he'd asked of Fitz, though no sacrifice for the Fool had ever felt too great.

...he's been silent for too long, he realizes. Clearing his throat, he cracks a grin and scratches at the side of his neck. "You're probably right," he admits sheepishly, then drops his hand, gesturing, "I suppose I... never thought about it like that." There. That book-ends that thought neatly, doesn't it?

(No, it doesn't, but these are wells filled with big feelings, their reservoirs deep and dark. There remains a dim, muted Wit-sense of the emotions, even without Nighteyes' presence to serve as a foci for them. But Fitz has lived many years with these memories in his heart, incomplete chess matches whose resolutions will never arrive because the other player in the game is long dead, or out of reach. He's inured enough to the ambiguity of his own losses that he doesn't consciously feel them anymore.)

A bit of an awkward pause follows. Then, his eyes brightening: "Oh, I nearly forgot, I made something for you--" Fitz raps a knuckle against the tabletop before pushing himself back up to his feet and with a short apology of, "just a moment," heads into the small adjacent room that is slowly transforming into his study. (That is where Verity's incomplete map of the Six Duchies now hangs, neatly framed, above a simple wooden desk that probably still houses more spiders than supplies.) There's the sound of a cabinet opening on a squeaky hinge, the clink of glass and wood and rustling paper as Fitz rummages around for something.

When he comes back into the main room, he's holding a small, rectangular wooden box. He fiddles with the clasp on it for a moment, hovering indecisively, before coming back to the table and setting it down before Huaisang. "It's all right if you don't like them," he's already admitting self-consciously as he reclaims his seat, "I know quill ink for writing and oil paints aren't that similar. But," a little hand wave, "I thought you might like the colours."

Inside the box are three small glass jars, each one filled with ink of a different, vibrant colour. One is a deep forest green, and beside it is one of a steely silver-grey; a palette inspired by the colours that so often catch the light and the eye in Huaisang's silks. The ink in the last jar is bright scarlet. Fitz reaches out to tap that one on the glass stopper keeping it sealed and air tight. "Like your caomeimei, I hope," he admits, smiling a little.

[fanfavors]

There's a familiarity to the way Fitz looks at him like that, as if no one has said those words in that order before, and the mere thought of it is too impossible to conceive of on one's own. Huaisang knows that one, has known it from Fitz himself that very first time, knows it every time someone looks him in the face and tells him his brother should not have done any number of things to him. He knows too the unbalancing feeling of it, like trudging upstream without falling, and nothing like this can be so neatly book-ended, but.

They can pretend. When the game is over the pieces all return to the same box, so how worthwhile is it to mire in the unbalancing act to such an excessive amount? Huaisang has no interest in spending even more hours of his daily life thinking about Mingjue; surely Fitz has little drive to spend extraneous time wondering about the hierarchy of love dispensed by his family.

So, it's fine. He shrugs - yes, book-ended appropriately, lovely - and then perks up slightly to hear of a thing? Made, for him? A whole gift, made? Yes, that's a perfect turn away from the gritty nuances of complicated family dynamics, and...

And whatever other thoughts Huaisang might have had are put away neatly for some other time, when Fitz puts down the box of inks for him to see. Huaisang leans forward to peer over the jars, fingers brushing over each one with a delicate touch, like to actually pick one up would be ruinous to the picture-perfect display of them in their little box. His gaze flicks back up to Fitz-- the colors, does he like the colors, wow-- and then to the box, picking up the red one at last. He tucks a lock of hair back behind his ear, a motion that seems to materialize caomeimei herself perched on his shoulder, where she rests only for a moment before fluttering over to land on Fitz's hand and twitter her tiny delight.

Huaisang laughs, the spell of silent awe for these inks broken but undiminished. "They're beautiful," he says, and adds in a murmur, fingers skimming over the other two jars again, "My colors."

That hovers there between them, while Huaisang... wonders. A thoughtful and handmade gift is not so unfathomable, but his own colors - to take note of the details - is... well. He wonders. No doubt exists in his heart for his affections for Fitz, but perhaps, like the book-ends, there's merit in leaving the unspoken unspoken for a while longer.

(Still, what is he supposed to think! Unbelievable, for Fitz to sit there and smile at him like that and— mmph.)

"I want to paint you," he says, unabashed. He's an artist, he can paint whoever he wants. "And Nighteyes, if he'll hold still long enough." (A tease, with a glance at the wolf and the brief flash of a grin. Nighteyes, pose for a portrait...) "I've used inks before, I can— I can do it in these colors. Mm, you'll let me, won't you? Sometime?"

[listenyouidiot]

His eyes follow Huaisang's slim fingers as they move to tuck that lock of black hair behind his ear, admiring the elegance and grace of the gesture (sure), only to startle at the sudden bright splash of colour on Huaisang's shoulder that is caomeimei. Obligingly, Fitz holds out his hand for her to alight upon when she flits over to him, laughing a little at the complimentary birdsong she favours him with. He's never had quite the right mindset for understanding birds through his Wit sense, their minds too quick and sharp in a way he can't put into a man's words. But maybe it's easier with caomeimei because she is in essence an extension of Huaisang himself, and her obvious delight can only mean one thing.

"They're beautiful," Huaisang tells him, touching the little jars admiringly and murmuring, "my colours," in a way that, listen, it does things to Fitz that he's not yet prepared to examine too closely, and so he does not dwell overmuch on the flush of colour he feels in his cheeks. He drops his eyes instead, abashed, and rubs the side of his neck with his free hand.

Then comes that request--to paint him, using the very inks that he'd made himself for this gift. Fitz looks up in surprise, but there's an uncertain, hesitant smile at the corners of his mouth barely hidden by his beard. "Of course," he replies, quiet but earnest, because how is he supposed to say 'no' to a request like that, even if he wanted to? And he doesn't want to say no, he realizes, which, through process of elimination, means he must want to say yes, mustn't he? (Yes, that's how these things usually work, Fitz, when one isn't turning one's thoughts inside-out trying to make them more complicated than they need to be.) He gestures again with the hand not still supporting caomeimei, not wishing to dislodge her from her perch before she is ready. "Whenever you like, I'd--I'd like that. To sit for a portrait, for you."

He pauses, then laughs a little and admits, "Though, I don't know about Nighteyes. Unless you paint him while he's sleeping, I suppose."

I

[survivalthroughhate]

Maul recognizes the voice talking to himself as one of the new Sleepers he'd met on the beach. He's bundled up nice and tidy in a warm black coat he got last year. It was almost around this exact time too, when the snows started to pile up so high. He stares at the pair for a moment with amusement crinkling up the black tattoos around his eyes. Look, he knows a lot of people come from worlds that are a bit primitive by his standards but it's still a bit funny to him to see someone struggle with a piece of mechanical ingenuity that is really quite simple to use.

"If you keep this up, you shall become a pair of snowman and snowwolf before too much longer," Maul observes, unable to keep all of the amusement out of his voice.

[listenyouidiot]

The Red Man approaches. Nighteyes' observation to Fitz across their link with each other--this is your moniker to the wolf now, Maul, congratulations. Fitz straightens up from his losing battle with unfamiliar technology to greet his new acquaintance with a rueful, lopsided grin.

"I suspect you're onto something there," he says and takes a few steps through the snow towards Maul. He gives his head a bit of a canine shake to rid it of the accumulated snow, though he seems otherwise unbothered by the weather. "What brings you out here this evening?"

[survivalthroughhate]

"A need to get away from the pollution of the city," Maul explains. He's always done best in nature. One thing he's started to notice whenever he starts getting particularly irritable or snappish, that means it's time to go for a walk wherever there is a lot of life growing. That's no small task given how hard it is for plant life in general to grow in Trench.

"I assume you haven't had much luck getting the generator going?" he asks, eyeing the machine behind Fitz and the wolf.