Napoleon II stepped in first.
The room was dim, but not dark. Curtains had been drawn to soften the light, not block it completely. A single electric lamp was on near the bed, casting a steady light across the space.
Napoleon I lay at the center of it.
For a mont, Napoleon II did not move.
He took in the sight quietly.
The man on the bed was still the sa, but not as he had always been rembered. The posture was weaker. The face more drawn. The presence that had once filled entire rooms was now contained within the limits of the bed.
Murat entered behind him and stopped a step back.
He did not speak.
The doctor turned as they approached.
"Your Imperial Majesty," he said.
Napoleon II gave a small nod.
"Report."
The doctor stepped forward, careful with his words.
"The condition has worsened since yesterday," he said. "The pain is now constant. There are no longer clear intervals of relief."
Napoleon II listened without interruption.
"There is increasing weakness," the doctor continued. "He has taken little food. Fluids are difficult. Even small movent causes strain."
Napoleon II’s gaze remained on the bed.
"And the cause?"
The doctor hesitated, then answered.
"We believe the issue originates in the stomach," he said. "Severe deterioration. Possibly a lesion or growth that is advancing."
Murat glanced at him.
"A growth?" he asked.
"Yes," the doctor replied. "It would explain the persistence of pain, the decline in strength, and the difficulty in maintaining nourishnt."
Napoleon II remained still.
The words confird what he already knew.
The doctor continued.
"We have treated it as an internal disorder," he said. "But the progression suggests sothing more serious. Sothing that is not responding to conventional treatnt."
"Can it be stopped?" Murat asked.
The doctor did not answer imdiately.
"No," he said at last. "Not with what we have."
The room fell quiet.
Napoleon II stepped closer to the bed.
Napoleon I’s eyes were open.
He had been listening.
"You always did like clear answers," he said.
His voice was lower than before, but steady enough.
Napoleon II stopped beside him.
"I prefer them."
Napoleon I looked at him for a mont, then shifted his gaze slightly toward Murat.
"And you," he said. "Still standing behind him."
Murat gave a faint smile.
"Soone has to make sure he doesn’t forget the rest of us."
Napoleon I let out a breath that might have been a short laugh.
"That would be difficult."
He shifted slightly, and the movent brought a visible reaction. His hand pressed instinctively against his abdon.
Napoleon II noticed it.
"How long has the pain stayed like this?" he asked.
Napoleon I looked back at him.
"Since last night," he said. "Before, it ca and went. Now it just stays."
Napoleon II nodded once.
The doctor spoke again.
"We are doing what we can to manage it," he said. "But the effect is limited."
Napoleon II turned slightly toward him.
"You will continue observation," he said. "No delays in reporting any change."
"Yes, Your Imperial Majesty."
The doctor stepped back.
The room settled again.
Napoleon I looked at his son.
"You ca quickly," he said.
"Yes."
"And you brought him."
Napoleon II did not answer that.
Napoleon I’s gaze shifted between them.
"Good," he said. "Better than being alone with doctors."
Murat stepped forward slightly.
"You’ve been through worse," he said.
Napoleon I gave him a look.
"Have I?"
Murat did not hesitate.
"Austerlitz," he said. "You didn’t even sleep."
Napoleon I’s expression shifted faintly.
"That was different."
"You still complained," Murat said. "Just less."
Napoleon I gave a faint breath.
"That was a long ti ago."
Murat shook his head.
"Not that long."
Napoleon I looked at him for a mont, then back toward the ceiling.
"We moved faster then," he said. "Everything moved faster."
Napoleon II remained beside the bed.
"We still do," he said.
Napoleon I glanced at him.
"I heard," he said. "The war."
"It’s over."
"So they say."
"They accepted the terms."
Napoleon I studied him.
"And you didn’t let it stretch."
"No."
Napoleon I gave a small nod.
"Good."
He closed his eyes briefly, then opened them again.
"War should end when it’s decided," he said. "Not when people get tired of it."
Napoleon II stood there without moving.
The room remained quiet around him, but his thoughts had already moved ahead of everything being said. The doctor’s words, the symptoms, the pattern of decline, all of it aligned too cleanly to be anything else.
He knew what it was.
Stomach cancer.
The sa disease that had taken Napoleon I before, in another history that had already played out long before this one began. The sa slow progression. The sa pain that ca in waves at first, then stayed. The sa weakness that followed, not sudden, but steady, until there was nothing left to hold it back.
He watched his father breathe.
Each movent was controlled, but it took effort. That was the part most people missed. Not the pain itself, but the effort required just to remain still.
There was nothing here that could be reversed.
Even if he spoke it aloud, even if he explained it in precise terms, nothing would change. The dicine of this ti did not have an answer for it. It barely had a na for it. At best, they would continue to describe it as a disorder, a deterioration, sothing internal that could not be reached.
He kept that to himself.
There was no value in speaking it.
For a mont, another thought passed through him.
Poison.
In the other history, there had been speculation. So believed the British had poisoned him during his exile. Arsenic, slow and hidden, working through the body over ti. The theory had persisted because it offered sothing simpler than illness. Sothing deliberate. Sothing that could be blad.
But standing here now, watching it unfold without exile, without British custody, without any of the conditions that had fed that belief, the pattern remained the sa.
This was not poisoning.
This was the body failing from within.
The sa disease. The sa end.
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