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Orson sat on a very hard bench, off to the sides of the training yard. In the center, Prince Ephraim sparred against one of his knights, lance a blur as he spun it. The boy had always had a taste for flair, and had worked to incorporate it until the spins were almost effortless, and had no bearing on the effectiveness of the strike. Orson did his duty, and watched, and the yardmaster called out form changes to the infantrymen drilling in the area behind the sparring grounds.
And he watched both prince and fellows in arms, and noted injuries, the number of men, which soldiers led the drills and if the leaders had changed from the day before. (Orson did this latter thing with a heavy something in his stomach. A weighty wrongness he defiantly refused to examine, as he noted the state of the general arms of his fellows.)
At dinner he picked at his food, again watching his fellow soldiers. Who was bragging, and what about. One, very close to Orson, claimed to have seen a previously ill-favored general speaking warmly with King Fado, and Orson turned his head away but tuned his ears to the conversation. During breakfast he did the same, though when Orson took lunch he more often than not was with Kyle, Forde, and the prince.
Sometimes though, King Fado would take him aside, and ask him gentle questions about how Ephraim fared, and Orson would push back a little. Ask questions of his own, as far as he dared, with that cold thing in his stomach reaching up and trying to strangle him from inside. But he smiled as much as he dared, and let his grief weigh him down and keep that grappling strangling thing behind his teeth.
In the moments between, when there weren’t questions, weren’t things to note, or keep track of. When time was his own, when a room was his alone, Orson scribbled down the things he knew. He didn’t write them in code, though he probably should have, because he was afraid that cryptic writings would draw attention.
(And, in truth, even this behavior might have drawn attention, if he weren’t also a new widower and obviously stricken with grief.)
Though, in the times between that, his duties and his information and his documentation, he spoke quietly to a small sketch of Monica. The lines of it were blurred with wear and smudged where he’d been unable to keep his tears off of it. He rubbed a thumb over the thick material, memories of her smile and the feel of her hair fresh in his mind in those brief periods of stillness between waking and leaving his quarters for the day or falling into bed and falling asleep.
It had been nearly two months now, but Prince Lyon had impressed upon Orson that no matter the time that passed, the miracle of the magic would still take hold. Monica would walk again, be with him again, and that was worth anything Orson could give. His own life, the life of Prince Ephraim, the life of King Fado or Princess Eirika or even the entire nation.
For Monica, there was nothing that Orson would not destroy, or sacrifice.
At dawn, Orson would walk calmly to the messenger birds. Smile at the dozing night watch, something sad and a little odd. (He could always hear them, speaking to each other as he walked away. “Oh, that poor Sir Orson. His beloved wife passed just a few months ago, and he’s never been the same.”) The bird he’d sent to Prince Lyon would have already taken flight as the sun rose properly, winging away bearing words and whispers and troop movements and numbers.
And he would train, though his heart was nearly heavy enough to weigh down his arms, and things would be normal. As normal as Orson could pretend they were, as normal as Orson could convince himself and others that they were. Prince Ephraim never commented on his obvious, continuing grief, but neither did he make demands, and so things continued on at an uneasy pace, as Orson felt the world careening out of control.
(The invasion of the castle, while he and the prince and the other knights were gone, was the crash he had been waiting for, but had not seen.)
Orson turned his lance towards the prince of Renais, and there was a rawness there when the truth must have come to him. He had followed every one of Prince Lyon’s instructions, whispered reports of Monica’s coming wellness his bread and butter, the coin for which he sold his country out. (Heaviness in his stomach tried to reach and and strangle him, but Orson did not falter, did not stop. He kept that behind his teeth, and paid it no mind.)
For Monica, there was nothing that Orson would not shatter. Not even his honor.