a lesson in running away (the art of returning)

a lesson in putting violence on a pedestal

It feels... right to have Sophie back in his head. A sort of completeness when he is torn apart, a familiarity when everything has changed, a fake sort of normalcy that he'd still take over the chaotic mess his life has become over the past week.

He feels her unease and welcomes it. There hasn't been a trust exercise between the two of them that hasn't felt uncomfortable in a long time, a special sort of repetition that both increases and rids himself of nerves.

You're sure about this? Sophie asks.

I'm sure, he says, so of course she begins the Inquisition with the worst possible topic she could have.

Alvar, Sophie transmits, and he feels the teakettle whistling as his brain heats to a boil. Storehouse fire. Foxfire. Caches. Elysian. Stellarlune. Shadowflux echoes. Biana's scars.

Each topic sends flashes of pain through his head, like he's burning from the inside out. His leg twinges like the echoes were reminded that they should be hurting, should be seizing up his muscles and putting him back on bed rest for months, back in that time when he would barely breathe for fear that Keefe would realize he was there. He didn't want to pretend everything was okay. He doesn't want to pretend.

The Inquisition isn't for reading minds, but Sophie still tries Keefe next, like she knows where his thoughts are leading. Like she knows where they always return.

And his head turns into a wildfire. Sophie flinches back from the heat of it, like she didn't entirely expect it. Fitz imagines water spraying from a firehose to quiet the flames, but the water turns to gasoline and smoke fills his lungs, choking off any explanation.

Sophie doesn't comment on it.

"Your turn," she tells him, her voice vaguely thoughtful instead of annoyed like he might have expected. His secrets pile up in him like layers of the earth, creating a molten core that sets his lungs on fire. How will he feel if Sophie has a reaction when he's already burning?

Still, Fitz forces himself to make the journey through her mind. It's more confusing then he expected; thoughts tug him around like he's in the middle of an ocean, tempting him with whispers— most of them having the word Keefe in them.

He follows one of the streams before he can convince himself not to, one that rings with his name over and over again, until he reaches a figure on a pedestal.

Keefe's legs dangle over the sides, chin in his hands, eyebrows endlessly creased, mind as messy as his hair, and Fitz needs to scream, "That's not who he is!" but then Sophie will know what he saw and she'll know that he cares and that he's constructed a version of Keefe that isn't altogether true either. They hold the two sides of him, the tousled and the cheery, the screaming and the impulsive, intertwining until neither of them really know him at all.

Fitz supposes that Keefe constructs himself to be unknown. It's the way he's programmed. A thousand personalities in one— and now he's thinking too much about him when he's supposed to be analyzing the downfall of how he and Sophie fit together in a patternless puzzle piece that gave no clue of how they could have possible worked as a team. As Cognates.

This is something he can fix.

So he goes to her subconscious and starts easy: It's your fault Alden's mind broke. It's your fault I lost him. Misused, made wrong, malfunctioning, a machine made to break. How could you let him get away? Trust me, you have never known me. I have never known you, and I refuse to try anymore.

And he's met with firecrackers, sparking with heat but quick and over before he can blink, and he tries a subject that he's pretty sure he'll never forget, one his mind has gilded and placed in the front of his memories.

"I want it to be you." A moment measured so perfectly that it tilts to the side, uneven like the space between teeth, eyes shut and opened just a crack to catch the flaws. Leaning in and being interrupted and then the flash of relief: because it wasn't the right moment then, unplanned and impulsive when he has been measured to perfection. "The only person I want to see on my match list... is you."

Sophie's mind goes into a strange mixture of burning hot and freezing cold, a tsunami of fire and ice.

Fitz weighs his words for a moment, and then transmits, I wasn't lying, then. Or now. I still want it to be you.

That would make it easier, wouldn't it, Sophie responds, and it's not a question. But sorrow coats the words, a longing that he isn't so sure is for him.

So he skips past the other times they almost kissed (the mix of betrayal and relief from each) and transmits, Alvar.

And for a reason he can't grasp, Sophie's mind lights itself up, and it takes him a moment to remember how to breathe through imagined smoke in his lungs.

Images flash through his head, a feeling, a premonition: Alvar's nose crunching as it breaks beneath his fists, blood spilling down his cheeks into the soil of the Everglen forests, door slammed shut in a gaunt and hopeful face, a figure floating in orange fluid, and then one he wasn't there to experience, an emaciated figure with hollowed eyes and shadowed cheeks, trading information for freedom.

So the next phrase he tries is my violence, and his mind is set on fire.

...

Fitz knows Alvar's voice better than he knows his own.

But the only mind he's never read has been his brother's. It makes sense now, why Alvar would never let him in; Alvar was already in the Neverseen by the time he manifested, yet not skilled enough to know to protect his secrets from Telepaths.

So despite the boost from the Cognate Inquisition, it takes him time to locate his brother's voice, branching out to the limits of his mind. Before Sophie, he might have been able to transmit through the halls of Everglen; now, he reaches past where the gates used to be, into territory he doesn't recognize until he reaches a voice too similar to his own to ignore.

Ah, Alvar thinks as soon as Fitz makes himself known. I was wondering when you'd want to have a talk with your treacherous big brother.

Fitz doesn't respond, too busy peering into the wispy gray darkness of his mind.

What, all that effort and you don't have anything to say? I thought you'd be celebrating how far you can reach now. This is supposed to be impressive, is it not?

I was checking to see if you were still alive, Fitz responds airily, his fists clenching on the golden detail on his bedsheets, and Alvar laughs. Unfortunately, you are.

Not for lack of trying, yeah? Alvar is always amused. Before, Fitz thought that it made him approachable, confident. But now it grates at him, too close to a smirk for his liking. So sorry to disappoint you again, Fizz. I know you've had your share of them.

You— Fitz forces his hands to relax before he rips through his sheets. Now (damn him) he's thinking of the past, of Fizzleberry and Bumblebees, back when they didn't know. Why couldn't they have stayed there, back when they didn't know? Don't call me that.

Apologies, Alvar thinks, something turning sharp in the word. I know you care about your appearance. I'll make sure to be more conscientious in the future.

Fitz breaks off the connection and sits, reeling his tired thoughts back until they fit with himself again, finding a source of vindictive pleasure in the thought of Alvar talking to himself and not receiving an answer, no way of knowing if Fitz was still there.

It was always rare that he got the power. A form of addiction, to let Alvar play with him like this. Bringing him down again.

Fitz hates that his brother is the only one who knows him.