Had he been that obvious? His anxiety redoubled. Today would be a bad day indeed if he couldn't get a grip on his own tells. He glanced worriedly at the door, then back at Theo. He reminded himself that none of this was the man's fault, and his expression softened again. "It's none of that. Don't worry about it. I think I'm just...not at my best, sir. But...you're probably right that we should both get some shut eye. I'll go get him."
He lingered a few seconds more before giving Theo a curt nod and slipping out the door without another word. A minute later, a confused Stephens now once again assigned babysitting duty, Fletcher returned to his own room and flopped listlessly down on the bed. As silence fell, thoughts of his father crept in from the shadows. He'd known they would. Had he been rested, he might have been ready for them. Today, he wasn't, and as he curled around himself and closed his eyes, the scars across his back stretched taut: an enduring reminder of the man who'd made him.
Autumn passed them by in a blur, every day of it a perfectly exhausting dance of rules and appearances and propriety. Fletcher could feel it all wearing on him now, grinding him into the dirt beneath a boot heel until his skin was raw and bruised. More and more, he retreated in the evenings to a nightcap of too much whiskey. During the day, he was quiet and formal and sullen. Indeed, it seemed that the man who'd arrived here half a year past with laughter in his eye and biting wit behind every word had faded away that morning in the Baron's study.
It wasn't to say that he didn't still calculate and plan and plot. This much was a habit that might never die. In spite of Theo's wishes, he'd begun to sniff around for traces of Elijah. The new driver and additional guards he'd carefully vetted for a rare combination of competence, discretion, and a particular softness. And twice a week, he pushed Theo out into the bitter cold for combat training — though the man was so shockingly uncoordinated that he quickly reeled it back to working on his strength and the basics of keeping one's balance. The only savior to his dwindling patience in this regard was the coat that the man had gifted him: a warm and glorious thing, charcoal gray, with a shock of vermilion lining. It was possibly the nicest thing he'd ever owned — though, true to his usual acerbity, he refused to wear it without first informing Theo that it made him look like an absolute fop. But he did wear it. And he was secretly thankful to be warm.
In spite of it, as winter drew closer, and with it the second anniversary of a moment he desperately wished to forget, Fletch grew more and more ill-tempered. He'd gone so far as to ask Aneisha to stow Ven's cloak somewhere safe so that he didn't have to smell the damned thing. Yet the memory continued to intrude: that pale and lovely face, lips blue and glassy eyes unblinking, held still warm in his shaking hands. It haunted him day and night, now, weaving in between those reminders of his father's voice and his father's cruelty. His only reprieve was at the bottom of a bottle. And so he drank, and he fell deeper into that pit of a prison: a distant husk of a man and a far cry from friend to Theo.
