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rote: fitzchivalry farseer

open » all secrets sleep in winter clothes

CHARACTERS: fitzchivalry farseer (

buckkeep) & you.
LOCATION: station log; crawling on the floor, infirmary, etc.
DATE: first week of october
CONTENT: fitz back from a canon update
WARNINGS: mentions of an infectious flesh eating virus + brutal bodily injury. also spoilers for the end of the realm of the elderlings series. will cw any topics that come up in the headers!

FLOOR TIME

( death is slow. but death is not silent.

it's not as though the powers that be in the ximilia were unkind enough to not put fitz in the infirmary. it's that fitz has the ghost of a very stubborn wolf in his ear reminding him that he has something infectious festering inside himself, something contagious, something that goes by the name of traitor's death, which is precisely as pleasant as it sounds. sick people home in the infirmary. fitz, a sick person, cannot risk bringing harm to them.

which is how he ends up on the floor, somewhere between doors, using his upper body strength to pull him and his useless legs away from wherever the population is. it's slow going. it's punishing. ultimately it's somewhere between worthless and futile work, because the hallways never stay empty for long, and when someone goes to help him, fitz recoils, curling into himself. )

No, no! Don't! Don't touch me. You can't. ( it's not painless, even for someone as in tune with pain as fitz. he jerks away from their touch, fending it off. ) Get far away. As far as you can. Do this now, for me. Leave me, please.

THE INEVITABILITY OF CARE

( fitz has never learned how to be a patient patient, but he is eventually resigned to listening to the caretakers on deck, if only to make their jobs slightly easier. after a few days, he can sit up straight. after a few more, and he isn't even coughing up worms anymore.

the infirmary bed is becoming a semi-permanent home to him. in it, he flirts with rest, but mostly reflects on his life and the choices he's made, the people he's left and the people he will leave, when what has been foretold will come to pass. more often than not, fitz can be found wide awake in his bed with a red, leather bound journal in his lap, weather worn and water logged but still decorated with a child's colorful drawings, side by side with her flowery script. it hurts to look at, but fitz treasures the pain — he treasures the memory of long nights spent with the fool, reading from their daughter's book. fawning over their once lost, and recently found, child.

at another point in time, fitz would've hated sharing this little piece of bee he has in his hands, his alone, his burden, his gift. now? he knows seeing bee again is the farfetched dream of a father armed with an apology, as much as he knows with stunning clarity that he wants people to know — of his brilliant daughter, of the way she swoops her ys with little curls, and colors her pictures with meticulous intelligence far outnumbering her years. he wants everyone to know he taught her exactly none of it, she's just that clever. )

Would you like to see? ( he asks, to whoever's around. ) It belongs to my daughter.

A CURE ALL

( i didn't mean for that to happen is becoming a bit of a regular theme in life, for fitz.

when cleared for leave (or, when he's finally capable of ignoring doctors orders) fitz goes to the sunlight room, where he spends the majority of his time with his feet in the water, praying for something to hunt, but enjoying the serenity of a rushing river and the feigned image of foliage around him. nighteyes grumbles. no meat, little brother. for what purpose are these trees, then, if not the hunt? and fitz smiles, and smiles larger than he should, and retorts, ) Clean air. Almost.

( it's climbing out of the riverbank that's the problem. fitz may still look somewhere in his forties, but he's a man well into his sixties now, and his body sometimes decides its spritely youthful days of running around, assassinating, restoring dragons to life, killing forged, dancing through skill pillars, are well and truly done. which is to say, when fitz moves to get out, he lets out a grunting old man sound, before slipping on the rock, and reaching towards whoever is closest to him —

and he sees it, automatically. not with his eyes, but with the magic that courses through his veins, connecting him at once to all that lives and breathes in the world, and some of the things long dead in the other. an imperfection. one little blimp on your body — or maybe a big one, an open wound, a papercut, an ancient scar, a tattoo. he sees it, and using the stores of strength from your own body, he heals it. immediately. without even a thought. unsubtly. )

I'm — Eda and El, I'm sorry. Are you alright?

WILCARD

( anything else! if you like, you can read about fitz's canon update here, but also rote is a very complicated canon, and i'm happy to answer any questions or plot ideas you might have over pm or at trashmouth! please come at me, i'm so excited to play anything and everything ok. )

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[Daisy’s finally got whatever the hell has been spreading around, and is only leaving her room to look for more medicine. Upon entering the infirmary she nearly trips over someone before stumbling back.]

Holy shit. Are you okay?

[She asks, bending down in an attempt to help him to his feet. She quickly pulls her hands back when he snaps at her.]

What is it? What’s wrong?

[OOC: Did you mean to put November as the date?]

( ooc: oops no, fixed! )

( he heaves, breath coming out, hot and hard. he really has no stores of energy left for any of this. but if the last thing he does with the lifeforce he has left is make sure no one gets sick because of him, it'll be worth it. )

I'm — I'm infected. You'll catch it.

( and his legs are broken, with a very probably trail of blood connecting the infirmary to him. but it seems less important. )

You mustn't touch. I'll be fine.

( maybe. probably not. she needn't experience it with him — fitz is resigned to dying alone. )

[She assumes he means he's got whatever the hell Newt has spread, at least until she sees his legs and her stomach drops.]

Just-

Don't move. I'm going to go get help, okay?

( help arrives soon after her call in the form of one sweaty McCoy, fresh from a run and following Daisy in almost tripping over Fitz just in the doorway. he steps around him in time, looking first to her, then the red trail splashed across the floor. )

Good Lord–

( yeah, yikes. he grabs gloves before taking a knee beside the poor man. to Daisy, he asks: )

Did you just find him like this?

( and to Fitz: )

Hey, Farseer, talk to me.

I'm — fine.

( he says, with two broken legs, a flesh eating parasite slowly eating him, very gradually bleeding out.

none of this is helped by the fact that he fully tried to die before arriving — his reserves are spent, the tank almost fully empty. he huffs, squirming away from mccoy, laying back until his head hits the floor. )

I can heal myself with enough time. Just give me time. On the floor — don't touch. I'm contagious. ( through the pain, he huffs a laugh. ) Whatever I have, you don't want to get. It's a death sentence. Both of you should leave.

[Daisy's afraid to touch Fitz while she waits for Leonard. Not because she thinks she'll be infected, whatever that means, but because he's seriously injured. Visibly relived when Leonard shows up, Daisy steps out of his way as he kneels beside him.]

Yeah. He keeps talking about being infected. I thought he meant with the flu going around, but I'm starting to think he means something else.

[She keeps a safe distance from him, but doesn't go anywhere in case he needs help lifting Fitz up, or getting equipment.]

'Fine' my ass, you're bleedin' everywhere, ( McCoy retorts, and casts aside for a tricorder, going to fetch one from the little desk near the entryway. There's another retort he has at the mention of the flu, a scathing opinion of that particular Patient Zero, but the scanner chirps an alarm and he forgets to be angry.

...and he frowns at the display, his brows knitting over his eyes.

Internal parasites – even enormous ones – aren't new to him, but the rate at which these are going, warring with Fitz's own healing, is something terrifying to behold. )

Daisy, honey– ( he begins kindly, but calm and firm, lifting his gaze over Fitz to meet hers, ) –get yourself some gloves, and grab two of the yellow suits from the leftmost cupboard, just there. Zip yourself in one first, then bring the other to me.

And you aren't dyin' today, Farseer, not if Daisy and I have anything to say about it. Try to lie still, and I'll get those things outta your guts.

( Shifting aside on his knee, McCoy tabs a setting on the wall panel by the entryway, and the doors lock them in tight. Once he and Daisy are as covered as they can be, they can wrangle Fitz to a bed, and start working. )

[Yelena enters the infirmary to stock up on anti-inflammatories and some basic first aid supplies that she likes to keep on hand for when she goes a little too hard in training.

She notices Fitz resting and considers asking him why he’s here. Though apparently there’s some sort of flu bug going around the station after the last mission. It could be that. But before she has a chance to ask anything, he’s speaking instead.

She blinks and approaches curiously.]

You have a daughter?

( by his perspective, it's been near decades since he's seen yelena. a long time. she still has the mountain look about her, blond hair and built sturdily for cold weather. he nods a little, eyes going back to little bee's expert drawings, turning the page. )

I have two daughters, actually. There's quite the gap of years between them.

( he holds the page out for her, but doesn't let the book fall from his grasp. bee's words are sometimes very foreboding, and usually a bit unsettling, but fitz has learned to take comfort in them. she's a very smart child. and, well. prophetic. )

I did not think I would have another. Bee was a surprise.

[Yelena herself has been known to say strange and unsettling things, so she really has no room to judge. She leans into look at the page he’s held out for her.]

Was your first daughter not a surprise?

[She knows in theory that people who can have babies will often plan for them, but she’s not sure Fitz seems like that type. And moreover, as someone who very much can’t have babies she can’t imagine a baby not being a surprise.]

[ there's a certain comfort in knowing that fitz would kill him without hesitation. it helps nikolai sleep peacefully for the first time since the last mission started, though seeing the state of his — friend? — trusted acquaintance does sow a seed of worry deep in his heart. he can't have fitz succumbing to some strange illness so soon after arriving onto the ship. nikolai might charm people with ease — and in his mind he has charmed fitz — but he doesn't trust his secrets to just anyone. fitz is in some separate category adjacent to alina. he's not sure what to call either of them.

nikolai, after having decided that he is immune to whatever plagues fitz, has been a faithful visitor to the infirmary just as he'd been as a soldier, only he's migrated from bedside to actually napping in his bed, because what if the anklet does fail? better to be within easy reach so fitz can put him out of his misery. it's simply logic, and it's not as if anyone is actually looking for him — a new and disconcerting thought.

when his eyes flutter open, fitz is up with a book in his lap. nikolai studies it in silence for several moments before turning, brushing a hand over his eyes. fitz has been a horrid patient thus far, and he hopes his present mood includes eating, drinking, and ingesting whatever vile medication has been left for him. ]

Did you just say daughter? [ voice rough with sleep, he props himself up on one elbow and squints at the waterlogged pages. ] There's more of you?

( it is actually quite charming, to watch nikolai sleep. he looks like little more than a kitten while tussling his dreams, lips lovably pouty, groomed brows knotted together to solve his unconscious riddles. his hair feels like silk in between fitz's fingers, while he makes sure to sort it out from his eyes, lest they interrupt the heavy weight of lashes on his cheek. he tries to convince himself that he thinks of his son, while he looks at nikolai. it's nearly impossible once he's awake — he thinks almost painfully of the fool, instead. a nightmare.

but he's been sleeping for almost a worrying amount of time, so fitz despite ogling an unconscious ravkan king almost unabashedly, is happy to see him wake up without argument. axe roughed fingers reverently hold his daughter's dream book, accepting this last fraction of her life as his own, a father's claim to his daughter's childhood, too swiftly stolen from both of them. he glances at nikolai, and cracks a small smile. )

I've a daughter. ( he turns the page, the sound of it crackling and snapping back at his fingers. he forces it down. a drawing of a red dragon looks back at nikolai, protective. ) And I went home for a time, to make another. Unless you mean Farseers, in which case, there are plenty more. Not to mention my sons.

( he says, only partly kidding. )

[ it's an... odd revelation to wake up to, after he clears his mind of the remnants of scattered darkness that seem to always plague his dreams now. somehow, the depressing infirmary is a better place to be than his own head. ]

You did say you were royalty. [ nikolai peeks over his lap, studying the dragon. ] If there's anything we're good at, it's continuing a bloodline regardless of whether we should or not.

[ or not is certainly the case for the lantsovs. but that doesn't stop the uncomfortable ache of wanting everything, the true curse of his existence. what would it be like to have a life beyond saving a drowning country? a family. a house full of children to teach bad habits to. he fears that tenuous branch of a possible future has been severed by the shadow coiled in his chest. ]

Sometimes I think you made the right choice. Shirking a throne certainly has its perks. [ he leans back, nimbly lifting the book and transferring it to his own lap, careful with the pages as he leafs through them. ] So, tell me about her. Since you've neglected to thus far. That's quite the oversight, and I might take offense if I wasn't so handsome, kind, and forgiving. Who did you even convince to have a child with you?

( in truth, fitz resents nikolai's jaded look on the royal house, the or not sticking like pine needles in his thumb. that isn't to say monarchy is the end all be all answer to government regulation, but fitz loves his family — his family that has claimed him, denied him, refused him, loved him. it's all very complicated. it's easier just to love them with everything he's got than to think about it with an weight.

he watches the book in nikolai's hands, feeling like half a man without it in his lap. still, and oddly enough, he trusts those blackened hands to handle it with care. his daughter's expert drawings, her strange, strange words. i dreamed i was a nut, she wrote. )

Molly.

( he says it with the wealth of emotion that it deserves — his first love, the mother of his children, his wife. the very first human friend he ever made in buck keep, when the street urchins called him newboy and fitz learned the rudimentary rules for pickpocketing wealthy upstarts flaunting their heavy pockets in town. molly, always smelling like lavender and honeysuckle, like her candles made with care, donning blackened eyes and bruised arms from her drunk father. molly, his tone implies with the weight of a lifetime now fully behind him, who died.

in any case, )

It's a bit different for me, now. The crown claimed me as a prince. It's awful. ( not hiding in the shadows is so foreign to fitz, he has no idea how to behave with anything resembling regality. he quickly changes the subject. ) Nettle is the Skillmistress at Buck. This Skill is part of the reason I can stop your beast, and all of the reason how I could heal your head after. ( he gives a little gesture, to the silver scar still hidden in nikolai's hairline. ) Bee is my second daughter, and ... well, Bee is strange. That's her book. ( his eyebrows pull together, trying to put his odd daughter into words. ) She ... she was very small, as a babe. We didn't think she'd last the night. But she did, and remained small for her age, always. Molly was pregnant for years.

( all of it is so normal for him to recall now, that it's strange how unstrange it seemed, even at the time. )

She's very smart, though, my little Bee. She's entirely practical, and very meticulous, and wise beyond her years. She likes to do things for herself, and relegates no tasks, just like her father. She's stubborn and fierce, just like her mother. And ( another gesture to the book. ) she's a prophet, as you can see. Like her third parent. I think you'd quite love her.

[ there's an immediate sort of kinship, an odd feeling that arises as nikolai thumbs through the book. i dreamed i was a nut, something inconsequential, something easily dismissed as a childish whim, but nikolai might have had this exact same thought and pondered upon it for days. he skims the fragile pages, his eyes moving quickly over the words. i am so bright i illumine places that are dark, and in those places i see the important dreams. there's something about this girl that makes him feel right at home in her head. ]

I think I do love her.

[ he murmurs it to himself, a faint smile on his lips as he keeps reading, half listening. he can hear the adoration in fitz's voice, proof of his affection as a parent. nikolai never heard such a tone from his father. he'd been a difficult and misunderstood child, too irritating for his parents to invest time into, so his boyhood was spent mostly with books and troublesome recreations of physics experiments. if he'd had someone like bee to spend time with — how different his life at the palace might have been. ]

Three parents. [ nikolai finally looks up, a smile on his face. ] Saints, two was enough. [ two hadn't been nearly enough. presently, he can't even get one woman to like him enough to even muster the courage to think of bringing up the thought of an heir. ] And all of you got along?

It isn't as you think.

( at another time, fitz would've been thoroughly affronted by the very reasonable assumption that having three parents means bee had three parents. but. time has dulled his sharper senses. he's less quick to anger, more resigned to the idea that no one will ever fully understand him. he takes a breath, and has little hope for making sense. )

And I mentioned him for a reason. The, ( he almost says the fool, then stops himself. he also doesn't say beloved, for similar reasons. he cannot introduce his old friend without damning himself as a bully or a lover. ) well. You do recall the healing I performed for you? Surely you felt it, at least in some part. Me, moving inside you.

It was like that, that me and my old friend became intwined. Inseparably, down to our souls. That is how he is Bee's father as much as I — how she resembles him so. ( he gives a somewhat flippant handwave. ) I've no idea if the same happened for us. It was a much less thorough healing, but it's still a mystery to me. So.

( if nikolai has babies that more resemble wolf cubs and talk to dogs — yeah, those are fitz's. and if that's true ... well. bee doesn't need more parents. he wish he never thought about this. )

It probably isn't the same.

[ it sounds. exactly as he's thinking. that he could possibly have just become entangled in a possible surprise parentage down the line, when he least expects it. with a grip on the throne as tenuous as his, he can't just leave things to chance. ]

That could be a problem, Fitz. [ he didn't come here to think about this, and he's annoyed that he has to think about it now. luckily, nikolai has always hid his irritation well, and he's not irritated at fitz, really, who did nothing wrong but help a king who probably wasn't worth all the trouble of being saved. ] I'm a bastard. I've lived with the rumors my whole life, and to have children that might resemble some other bastard I know — I mean that kindly — would subject them to the same ridicule, and throw the argument of my heirs into question.

[ alina would be called a lover to fitz — if either of them even stick around that long. all this worry might be for nothing, if nikolai just ends up alone anyway. which might be for the best, is what he's hearing.

he shakes his head, putting on a smile as he flips to the end of the book. ] It doesn't matter. Children — a family — that's so far off it might as well be a dream. I'm not exactly a prime candidate for much of anything right now. If I did have a child, and it turned out anything like yours, I'd count myself lucky. Maybe we'll all strike gold and I'll have abolished the monarchy by then and I can have a chance to live — I don't know. As something else. A beet farmer, maybe. With a horde of children to pull beets from the ground. And maybe they'll all look like you.

( possibly, it all smarts because it's all thoughts fitz had in his own youth, before the cycles of life came to repeating past and old mistakes. he can remember being a boy, promising himself he'd never make a bastard. that it would be him and molly, married, regardless of what the king said — he and molly making children, and entire houseful, and living their days out in humble domesticity. but, he did make a bastard, in his foolhardy youth. molly had her children with another man. fitz pretended to be dead, to not interrupt that happiness, even if it was a happiness he longed for himself.

maybe the cycles work differently for nikolai. he seems an intelligent man when he isn't braiding his words cleverly, speaking something as pretty as it is nonsensical. taking a heavy breath, he reaches over, tentatively setting his hand on nikolai's. )

Bastard to bastard, ( was a time in his life when the title made him flinch, made him angry, made him so affronted that his name had to be fitzchivalry, son of chivalry, of a man regarded for his courtliness and valiance, who impregnated a mountain woman and couldn't even be bothered to introduce himself to the spawn his spend sired before being murdered. ) children are always a blessing, no matter the side of the sheets they come out on. Even the bastards of princes have their place in the world.

( well — fitz did, at least. an assassin. a recluse. nettle, his own bastard, had the life he dreamed of for her, far from court and the politics of buck, and she hated him for it. had they been able to switch their childhoods, they both would've been happier — but then, neither of them would exist as they are now. )

If it has happened, our children would be of two royal lines, from two different worlds. You'd think their regality could be unquestioned, that they would inherit more than the world, but the stars beyond. ( he lifts the corner of his mouth, a small, pitying smile. ) I'm sure I could recognize myself in you, if I left anything behind. I could look in and remove it, and save your line from any more potential bastards. I'm sorry that I did this thing to you, if I truly did it.

( but bee? she has always felt alien to fitz. he's not sure he could recognize nikolai in her, if indeed he left a mark, and there's simply nothing to be done about that. it seems the kinder reminder, that the children in his potential future might look suspiciously like a bastard in buck, than to tell him there's a wonderful child living who might already be his, who he will never meet. )

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Inevitably of Care

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the inevitability of care

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