The Fool is still beside Fitz, and for a moment, pain flickers across his face. It shifts into pained, closed-mouth smile before he looks away, to the fire again.
"...no." The admission comes softly after a heavy pause, but he cannot lie. Not about this, at least. In a movement that betrays the source of his bone-deep anguish, he places one hand in the other and touches his fingernails, as though to reassure himself that they are still there, that the Pale Woman had not come to him again to pry them from his flesh in her revenge against him for his hubris--
He takes a breath and sits up. "...Aslevjal may be but a distant memory for you, but to me, it was mere months ago." Another weighted pause, one in which he still cannot bring himself to look at Fitz. "I won't tell you the number of time I woke in the night tasting blood in my mouth."
cw for mention of past torture, body horror
"...no." The admission comes softly after a heavy pause, but he cannot lie. Not about this, at least. In a movement that betrays the source of his bone-deep anguish, he places one hand in the other and touches his fingernails, as though to reassure himself that they are still there, that the Pale Woman had not come to him again to pry them from his flesh in her revenge against him for his hubris--
He takes a breath and sits up. "...Aslevjal may be but a distant memory for you, but to me, it was mere months ago." Another weighted pause, one in which he still cannot bring himself to look at Fitz. "I won't tell you the number of time I woke in the night tasting blood in my mouth."