a lesson in running away (the art of returning)

a lesson in forgetting, and in being forgotten

Keefe ran away.

To a place he can not follow.

Fitz isn't exactly sure what they expect his reaction to be. Sophie stares at him like she's waiting for a bomb to explode. Biana worries her lip with her teeth, a habit she'd broken years ago, and Dex twists his fingers into knots until the knuckles turn white.

"He's gone?" Tam leaves out the word they are all thinking. Fitz hates him for it: he wants to tell him to say it. Remind everyone that this happens all too often. He is rewarded with a dull glance up, eyes widening in mock surprise. "Typical."

This is the part where he becomes a tea kettle and starts screaming.

But Fitz just says, "Let him stay there." His insides twist tighter than Dex's hands. He doesn't think he remembers how to breathe.

"I think he doesn't want to be found this time," Sophie admits. "Last time, we only knew where he was because I hitched a ride. This time, there's no way to know."

"Good. Let him stay there," Fitz repeats. His throat chokes on itself, but Biana's giving him the look that means his face has gone into a mask again, cold and stony, poster child of sculpted stone. "The Forbidden Cities? God, I've told him about being there enough. Alvar's told him enough. He knows plenty. He'll be fine without us."

Without me.

But they've been without each other for a long time, haven't they? Fitz thinks they've been playing hide and seek, lost and found, ever since Keefe left the first time and took a chunk of his heart with him. They've never had the conversation about its safe return, and so he continues with a hole in his heart and the missing piece too close and too far away.

"Fitz—"

"I agree," Wylie says, hands folded behind his back, eyes stormy. "He can always light leap away at any danger." He's perhaps the one who knows Keefe least, and maybe this is why Fitz feels a sudden surge of anger. Who is Wylie to decide Keefe's not worth saving? Agreement feels laced with poison to him, every word an insult and his saving grace.

Maybe he didn't mean it.

But there are nods now. So Fitz nods, forces a smile on his ice-cold face. "He doesn't need us." He's trying so hard not to let his bitterness leak through.

Sophie, he knows, isn't fooled. Not Biana, either. Tam meets his eyes and shakes his head like he knows the push and pull of the maelstrom whisking his lungs around his body, the nausea rising in his throat. But no one says anything. They can't find anything that doesn't call him a liar.

He ran away from you.

"How do you know where he is?" Stina is the one to ask the question, fingers twisting in the loose curls past her shoulders.

Sophie hesitates. "He... he left me a letter."

Another sting, another fire in his head.

He is a liar. Perhaps to himself, because he knows that this time, the cowardice had nothing to do with him and everything to do with the danger of newness and the violence of terror. All of Keefe's worst fears.

I know you, Fitz will say when he sees him again. So why does it feel like you've forgotten everything I ever was?

...

Fitz digs through his bedsheets, under his pillow, under the mattress, inside his pillowcase, fingers flying desperately across gold-trimmed navy blue.

His desk sits in disarray, every drawer spilled out across the carpet he's checked under, every pocket of every item of clothing turned inside out to check for anything, any acknowledgment of his existence. Of his importance.

His bathroom is spotlessly clean, as always. There is no space to hide an envelope. No place to hide a letter.

The fire builds with every moment. Nothing, nothing— Fitz rips the sheets from his bed in vain, the mattress empty—nothing.

He left him with nothing.

Fitz lets himself erupt, punching the wall hard enough to make him leap back, cradling his fist. He needs something broken that isn't him. He needs to be fixed. He needs to be fixed. Keefe needs to be fixed. Everything is broken.

His pillow explodes behind him with a pop, sending brightly colored feathers fluttering all through the air, and Fitz whirls to face it.

He hadn't realized he was outward channeling. His hands shake a little, and he's not sure whether it's from the effort or from all the feelings forced down his throat. He swallows hard.

Fitz sits carefully on his bare mattress. Keefe used to sprawl out on it like he owned it, fingers barely brushing the headboard as he flung them back past his head and mussed his hair a little more—but that doesn't matter anymore. The bed is empty.

He doesn't know why he thought Keefe would care enough to leave him a letter. He would have taken a note like the ones he remembers reading about in human books during younger library visits: Gone fishing. Be back in a few hours, maybe a century. When the world has moved on without me. Moved on from me.

What a fucking coward.