The announcements came and went.
Fitz made his notes. Most of the names garnered little reaction, except for a slight hand pause at Angelo’s name, a grimace at Abhishek’s death as he noted down the killer, and a faint – but brief – flicker of a smile when Janice was listed among the dead. But Alex’s name caused his hand to stop entirely, and him to lower the list long enough that he had to rush to scrawl in the last couple of details once he remembered the announcement wasn’t over yet.
As the danger zone was announced, and the BKA award, Fitz noted the winner and then put his list down before lying flat on his stomach with the side of his head pressed against the ground.
He waited. “Shh,” was his only response if anyone asked what he was doing.
…
By the time he sat up again, the sun was rising. Snow had gotten in his ear.
While he cleared it out, the others talked about anything from the announcements that concerned him. Evie showed the bandages around her midsection while talking about Alex.
“Yeah. Tully and Mildred told me to kill him. ...Guess they’ll stop haunting the island,” Fitz said, checking over his gun for the hundredth time. He hadn’t let go of it all night.
But when asked if he regretted the opportunity to get even…
Fitz just shrugged without looking up.
-
Fitz hadn’t let go of the rifle all night. It had been unloaded, but kept within his grip even as he attempted to sleep.
Evie had been the most blatant about eyeing the sniper rifle, and that eventually resulted in--
“Evie. Fuck off with the longing gazes, okay?”
“It’s a death game! I don’t have a weapon and you do. The fuck do you expect?”
“There’s wary glances, and there’s eyeing it like you want to buy it dinner.”
The words had been mild, but he’d had a tight grip on the gun the entire time. Whether it was the words or the situation, Evie didn’t take his response well. There was some shouting, part of which included something about the phrase ‘maniac with a gun and two murders,’ before she ran off.
“Maniac? Hey. Heyy, you followed me,” Fitz protested, calling after her. Then he returned his gaze back to the gun, muttering, “Not like I wanted to have two kills under my belt ‘already.’”
When Claire came back from her brief wander--though Fitz hadn't asked what she was doing--he just pointed in the direction that Evie had gone.
“She’s mad about something. I don’t know.”
-
Fitz didn’t really pay much attention to who followed, if anyone. He made no effort to follow anyone else’s lead. He made even less effort to talk.
He spent the majority of day 5 walking the path towards the hunting lodge, where Katelyn Graves would have picked up her weapon. Near where she must have been ambushed, and been the one to make it out alive.
...But upon nearing the town, he’d just stop, turn and walk away again without saying a word.
-
That night, holed up somewhere warmer, Fitz kept a grip on his gun just as he had before. Though he also kept Mister Fluffernutter nearby.
He would be mostly quiet during the night, staring ahead at the opposite wall.
“I don’t care,” he would abruptly say in the middle of the night, looking down at Mister Fluffernutter. “I don’t. What does it matter, as long as he’s dead? Right?”
There was no response, not even one puppeteered by Fitz.
“Right,” Fitz muttered under his breath.
((Russell ‘Fitz’ Fitzroy continued in The Sun...
.))