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The Fool comes to him one day in spring.
Nighteyes perceives his approach before he could be seen by the road, someone’s coming, he warns Fitz, weary, on edge, teeth bared, and Fitz is as much, but when they see him, Fitz feels the warmth in his chest, reverberating through his bond with Nighteyes - how many years have passed? He can scarcely remember.
The Fools says he's come to visit but then he stays. He doesn’t tell him when he intends to leave - if he intends to leave - and Fitz doesn’t ask him, because he’s scared the Fool will reply, and then he will go.
For the first time since King Shrewd’s death, Fitz feels at peace.
They talk, sitting together contently around the fire.
The Fool tells him about Buckkeep, tells him about the Six Duchies' politics, and not once calls him the Changer. The White Prophet has been left somewhere along the road to Fitz’s hut and neither of them feels the need to bring back their roles.
Sitting next to him, shoulder against shoulder, heads leaning toward each other, Fitz tells him of his travels, tells him about his time in the Mountain Kingdom, about his journey to Chalced, and then, after Nighteyes pushes him, he also tells him about the year he spent with the Old Blood folks. It takes him some more apricot brandy than what is a mere companionable quantity to tell him, but the Fool listens and doesn’t judge him.
It doesn’t matter if Fitz and Nighteyes' bond is not healthy even for the Witted People, that’s what they have. What’s done is done. The Fool understands what it means to do foolish things and screw the consequences.
He has gray fingertips, matching the gray fingerprints on Fitz's wrist. He doesn’t regret it. He knows he shouldn’t have touched Verity in his state and then, definitely, he shouldn’t have touched Fitz, but he doesn’t regret, no. They have been bonded by the Skill that once and now the Fool looks at his gray skin and at Fitz’s and he longs.
They’re destined together, the Fool knows, the White Prophet and his Catalyst, but when they had been together in the Skill they were just the Fool and the Fitz. He misses it, that’s why he’s here. Because he knows he’ll have to be the White Prophet again, he’ll have to come to Fitz and bring him back into the world, throwing him on the chessboard to divert the path of history. But not now. Now Fitz can be Fitz and he can be the Fool.
Fitz puts a hand on his arm, “It doesn’t do to dwell on the Skill. It gives you a hunger that can never be sated.”
The Fool knows, he can see it in his eyes. Fitz longs too. He longs for completion, he longs for a connection he has never experienced since. Skilling is an art that he has never mastered, but even if he had, there are no more Skilled people he could reach, no community he could have. Except the Fool is there and he’s hungry and he wants more.
“To me, it’s a thirst,” the Fool tells him, “You said that the Skill is a river, and so I want to drink from it.”
Fitz tightens his grip on his arm, a spasm of his hand, almost inconsequential. But it’s not. The Fool knows what it means to do foolish things and screw the consequences, and so he does.
He’s so close to him, that his breath falls on Fitz’s cheek when he speaks, no more than a whisper - a secret they don’t dare to speak aloud.
“We could do it again.”
Fitz shivers, his throat dry, his desire evident in his eyes.
“It’s not wise.”
“Then it’s so fortunate that I’m the Fool.”
Their hands hover, gray over gray, so close their skin is almost touching.
Then Fitz nods, an almost imperceptible jerk of his head, but it’s enough.
The gray sparkles alive, turning silver as their minds touch just as their bodies do. They share everything again, every memory they have is in their grasp, every fiber of their being bared to each other. They see with each other's eyes, feel with each other skin, breathe with each other’s lungs.
Fitz thinks this is foolish, this is too much and they will forget themselves in the river of the Skill but they don’t feel the need to Skill further. They don’t feel the need to connect with the rest of the world, of losing themselves in the holistic nature of the universe, becoming one with everything. They’re enough and when they come undone they know.
Fitz is crying. He never fit in this world - a bastard, an assassin, a witted monster, a lying lover, an absent father, always on the run, always pretending to be someone else, fearing to be recognized. But in this, in whatever it is that he has with the Fool that won’t tell him his name, in this he has a home, in this he has a shelter. When the rest of his world is ending, he still has the Fool. They have each other.
So Fitz is crying and when the Fool leans to wipe his tears he lets him, and when the Fool leans to kiss him, he kisses back.
(When Starling eventually looks out for him, believing him alone, believing him in need of company - any company, even one as fleeting as hers - she gets surprised. She stays little and when the Fool waves her goodbye from the threshold of their house Fitz knows she won’t come back. He can’t find it in himself to be too bothered).