Taking Foster's advice, Keefe stopped outside Fitz's door and knocked.
Fitz opened the door. "Hey, I thought you were spending the rest of the day with Sophie, what's up?" Then he looked Keefe over more carefully. "You look upset. And dude...what's wrong with your hair?"
Well, that'll be fun to explain.
"You busy?" Keefe asked.
Fitz's brow furrowed in concern. "No, not with anything important."
So he let Keefe into his room and they sat down, Fitz listening as Keefe explained about his fight with his dad and how angry it had made him.
"I...heard some yelling," Fitz admitted. "I couldn't tell but I wondered if it was coming from your room."
Keefe nodded.
"So then...you went to Havenfield? Or did you just sit and stew in your room until a few minutes ago? Is that why your hair looks crazy? It looks like it does when you've been stressed and tearing your hands through it."
"Um...yeah. Yeah I've probably been doing some of that."
He didn't really want to get into why his hair was so crazy.
"And yeah," he continued. "I went to Sophie's for a while, but...I'm just so angry. She suggested I talk to you, which makes sense, so here I am."
Fitz looked at him for a moment, studying him. "You guys have always been able to talk, to help each other feel better. I knew that about the two of you long before I understood how you felt about each other. But she sent you to me?"
Keefe shrugged. "You're my best friend."
Fitz grinned. "Yes, I am. But there's more to this story. I may not be an Empath, but I can tell."
Keefe sighed. "To be honest...we decided we shouldn't be alone together, not with me feeling like this. I...needed a distraction, and..." he shrugged again, trying not to think about how soft and warm her bare skin had felt under his hands, or how close he had come to removing her tunic.
And he silently thanked the stars that he'd found the strength to stop himself.
Fitz's eyes widened and he seemed to look up at Keefe's hair again. "Oh."
"Nothing happened," Keefe said quickly. And it was mostly true. "We just wanted to make sure nothing would."
Fitz nodded. "It's really not any of my business anyway," he said. "So, she sent you to me?"
Keefe nodded.
He was already calming down. Still angry, but not raging.
"She said you'd be a good one to talk to, since you had to work through handling yourself when you're angry, and you've managed it really well. And she was right." Keefe smirked. "It's been ages since you've lost your temper."
Fitz's face lit up at that. "I'm glad you guys can tell a difference."
"Of course. So now, it's all up to you, Fitzy: fix me!"
Fitz rolled his eyes. "No pressure. But...do you want to talk about it, or do you want to just hang out and forget about it?" He looked out his window onto the Foxfire grounds. "We could play bramble or just go for a run or something."
Keefe contemplated that for several seconds. "Honestly...I'd rather kick your backside at bramble, but I think what I need to do is talk about it. I've been trying to ignore my dad and how angry he makes me, and ignoring it doesn't make the problem go away." He paused. "Or maybe it does. I made it clear I was cutting him out of my life. He was the source of my anger, and that's over and done now."
Fitz eyed him for a moment before speaking up. "Is it?"
"What do you mean?"
"You've just said you cut your dad out. You're done with him. And I don't blame you, he's a total jerk. But...you're still angry. Even when you calm down from the fight...can you tell me you'll wake up tomorrow and not be angry anymore if you think about your dad? What if you run into him? What about when you have your own family someday and he wants to know them?"
Keefe gritted his teeth. "He'll stay away from my children."
Fitz shrugged. "That's your choice to make, and unless he goes through a pretty major transition before then, I'd agree it's the right one. But what I'm asking is what it'll do to you. The anger is there and needs to be dealt with. That's all I'm saying."
Keefe let out a humorless laugh. "Oh, that's all? How am I supposed to deal with the anger?"
"I don't know, it's so different for you than it was for me. You have a right to be angry. Not all anger is wrong or bad, and yours is justified in this case."
"Yours was justified too, you had a lot going on."
Fitz shook his head. "Yes, I had a right to be angry at Alvar. Angry at my dad, before that, for letting his guilt get the better of him. But I handled it wrong and let myself get angry at everyone else too, taking it out on you, on Sophie. I had no reason to get so angry with her but I did anyway. That's why I pushed you about why Sophie sent you to me—I wanted to make sure the two of you hadn't had a fight too."
Fitz looked thoughtful for a minute.
"Maybe...would you let me see the memory of the fight with your dad, or would you rather not? It might be easier to talk you through it if I know exactly what happened."
"No, it's fine. Faster than explaining."
So Fitz reached for his temples, closing his eyes in concentration, and Keefe replayed his memory of the fight. He felt Fitz's flicker of anger when Cassius called Keefe worthless, not to mention the frustration Fitz felt throughout most of it.
"Well..." Fitz said, opening his eyes and removing his hands from Keefe's temples. "Good for you. I'm glad you told him you wouldn't let him speak to you that way anymore."
But then he looked down and saw Keefe's hands—which were trembling again.
"But here's the deal. You've said what you needed to say. So now, you need to find a way to let it go. If you see him again...how will you handle it?"
"Punch him?" Keefe smirked.
Fitz laughed. "I definitely understand the desire to punch him, but I think that's moving in the wrong direction." He was quiet for a minute, thinking. "You told him that you had Grady and my dad as good father figures. Why not focus on that? If you feel you're getting angry, remind yourself of all of the good you have in your life in spite of the way he always treated you. Your mom too—you have Edaline and my mom. You have surrogate siblings through me and Biana. You have friends who care. You have a girlfriend who loves you. You have this whole life to be thankful for. So if you start to get angry about your past...focus on the present. And your plans for the future."
"That's how I coped for a long time," Keefe told him. "When we became friends and you guys started inviting me over a lot...sometimes that was all that got me through."
"I know," Fitz said simply. "I asked my dad, once, if we could invite you to move in. Tried to convince him you could have Alvar's old room since he'd already moved out. I didn't know how bad things were with your parents, but you'd told me enough by then and I wanted it to end."
It was a testament to how far Fitz had come that he'd mentioned Alvar without getting noticeably angry.
"But he said your parents would never allow it, no matter how much he and mom wished we could."
Keefe, who had never known this, was deeply moved by it. He looked away, blinking hard.
Considerate enough to pretend he didn't notice, Fitz kept talking. "You've already proved to the world that you're so much better than either of your parents. Hold on to that, to knowing that they didn't break you. But then..." he hesitated.
Keefe looked back at Fitz now, and he was looking away, biting his lip, looking a bit apprehensive. "But then what?"
"I think...hear me out on this one, because it won't be easy...but I think you need to try to forgive them. Both of your parents."
Keefe raised his eyebrows. "That requires giving both of them a lot more thought than I ever intended to."
"I know. But...even if you do your best not to think about them, it's still there. That bitter, angry guy is still there, lying dormant, but there. And it'll eat away at you. I went through that with Alvar. Growing up, I thought he was a great big brother. I looked up to him. You looked up to him. So to find out who he really was...it was a huge betrayal. And you know how angry I was at him and at my parents for letting him back on the grounds. And how I lashed out at people I care about. And I realized all this anger and bitterness I was harboring wasn't actually doing anything to Alvar—he'd made his choice and didn't really care what we thought—but it was causing me a lot of problems. Especially after Sophie and I were attacked and I had that echo so close to my heart."
He stopped, absentmindedly rubbing his chest, momentarily lost in the memory of that event.
Then he shook himself out of his reverie and continued. "I realized I had to let go. Not for Alvar's sake: for mine. It was hard to do and it took a long time. And it's not like I can rewrite history, I can't change what happened, but I can look back on it and realize that he saw problems in our world and chose the wrong way to try to fix them. And that led him down a bad path. It happened bit by bit for him, and he slowly turned into a bitter person who resented our parents, and resented me. The only ones he didn't seem to secretly hate were you and Biana. And that was a lesson to me too, on what bitterness can do if you let it fester. It can lead you to hating people who actually care about you if your tendency is to be bitter. So, yeah...you can't forget the way your dad treated you. No one will expect you to try to have any sort of relationship with him, either. But...try to forgive him, try to let go."
Keefe tore his hands through his hair. "I hate it when you make sense."
Fitz laughed.
"But...I honestly don't know how I'm going to do that."
Keefe wasn't certain how long they sat there, talking through his past, Fitz trying to help him figure out how to overcome the darkest moments, but the sun had long since gone down before he finally headed back to his own room and went to sleep.