a lesson in running away (the art of returning)

a lesson in failures and new endings

Keefe presses his lips together in a sad line, so Fitz already knows what he will feel before he says it: "I wanted to come back."

And there they are.

The three skipped beats.

Fitz drops his hand.

"You better spit out a fucking apology," Fitz tells him right there, watching his slow, shocked blink and feeling bare satisfaction but mostly the hollowness that comes from being broken and then told you should be whole again. "I need to hear a sorry out of your damn mouth."

Keefe breaks a tentative smile, guilt leaking from him in a fog. "I'm sorry."

"Not good enough." His grin falls. Fitz hadn't realized an apology wouldn't be good enough to fill his gaping heart until it wasn't. The thing is, he feels the shadow-blood leaking from it, left over from Umber's echoes, crumbling beneath the weight of seeing him smile. He hates that smile, even as he studies it carefully: right side pulled up higher than the left, slight dimple creasing his cheek, teeth just barely showing. "Never fucking enough."

His smile is replaced by a grim line in Fitz's stone-cold eyes. "What do you want me to say?"

"No matter what you say, I won't believe you." Fitz watches Keefe's lips press tight, creasing his face into hurt. "I believed you before, you know. The first time you came back, I believed you when you said you missed me."

Keefe's lip tugs out into a pout. He's searching for something to say. He doesn't understand that there's nothing left to hear. "Fitz—"

"But I don't believe you anymore," Fitz interrupts, bleeding heart tearing itself open and turning inside out. His skin feels itchy, his words uncertain, both stepping into himself and becoming someone he doesn't know. "I shouldn't have then. And now you don't even mean your apology."

"That's not fair," he insists, like there's something left for him to say about fairness.

Fitz wants to laugh. "You know that nothing about us has ever been fair."

Keefe's eyes search for his, questioning something he hadn't meant to say at all. He's reading too much into it, or maybe not enough, or maybe everything when there should be nothing or nothing when there should be everything. This is how it always is with him: everything confusing, everything terrifying. Everything that quickens his breathing and reminds him of failures and new beginnings and all the other things people crow about as lessons but have taught him how to hate.

But he still doesn't have anything truthful to say.

"I really did miss you, you know," Fitz tells him, but he makes his voice sharp. Let him know that sometimes, truth hurts worse than lies.

Keefe's mouth pulls down at the corners, set tight with resolve. "I know." Then, mockingly: "You are wearing my pajama pants."

Fitz glances down at the green and gold set he'd brought Keefe from the Forbidden Cities so long ago, back when he was the one running there all the time. He had no idea how they'd ended up in his closet, and he doesn't know how to find words that aren't meant for burning.

So he turns and walks away.

...

He sits in thoughts that are not his and tries to remember his own name.

Little brother, Alvar's thoughts echo in his head. Fitz knows this is his brother speaking, but it sounds disturbingly like his inner voice. Too familiar, too alien. Perhaps this is why he hates sitting with his thoughts. Thank you for reaching out.

Fitz's thumbnail digs into the flesh of his pointer finger, grounding him in his body. He has a purpose this time, one beyond impulse.

Do you have to do that every time? Remind me we're related? It's his turn to speak, and he uses the opportunity to delve deeper into Alvar's mind. The last time he was here, there was nothing but gray, no memories left from Gethen's Washing. Now, Alvar's mind is an open book, as weak as he is: memories line the walls in picture frames, but the paintings inside are watercolor and charcoal, all running together in a blue-black haze. How much damage has his brother's mind been through in these past months?

Oh, so one little secret gets out and suddenly I'm not your hero anymore? Alvar's laugh shakes the frames hanging on the walls in his mind, exposing a hidden track behind one of them. More secrets, more mysteries, and Fitz can't help but follow it.

You haven't been my hero for a long time, Fitz tells him. The passage opens nearly immediately into a wide room, words scrawled on the walls in uneven, chalky letters. He would take time to be impressed by the level of detail Alvar has put into his hideaway room if it hadn't been so badly hidden. He finds the reason as he looks closer at the words—word—on the walls, repeated over and over, circling around him. hurt hurt hurt hurt hurt hurt hurt hurt hurt hurt hurt—

Oh, so who is my replacement? Alvar scoffs. That old geezer, Forkle? Sophie? Don't tell me it's Dad? Then again, you always have been obsessed with becoming him—

I don't want to be Dad. Fitz digs his nail further into his finger. He's starting to leave his body. It's a symptom of long-distance transmitting, he's discovered; as one of only two Telepaths who can do it, and the only one not programmed to, the toll it takes affects not only his mind but his body. It's how he imagines fading away to be, except there isn't a nexus to keep him tethered. You know that.

I do, Alvar agrees. The room shudders around him, and Fitz leaves the hidden room and makes his way back into the mixed-up painted memories. I do know you.

He wishes he could tell him he was wrong. But instead, he's peering at the cracks in all the picture frames, splattered with paint, some of them peeling with mold and age. The glass on some of them is fractured, or shattered completely. Like someone has taken a hammer to them.

So I know you're wondering about what fucked up my head, Alvar thinks, and he can feel the bitter smile leaking through. The answer—Fitz stiffens, a precursor—is you. You broke me, Fitz. The fumes I inhaled in that damn troll hive, the boiling fluid, no air, little hope... How does it make you feel?

Fitz sits cross-legged on his floor, shaved carpet a royal blue with gold trim. His nail digs into his finger so hard he isn't sure if he drew blood. Alvar's mind is tenuous, his hold fraying from a mixture of the distance and the broken shards of glass cutting into his concentration. But he feels it; feels Alvar holding on with all his might, keeping their connection alive.

A smile tugs at the end of Fitz's lips.

I don't need guilt to break my mind, little Fizzy. I have you.