#alira(taor)

[dreaming-of-the-end]

Dear Fitz: in a black and white world (you'd still be golden)

A/N: Remember that bonus I was talking about? Here’s the full letter Keefe wrote to Fitz in the forbidden cities. Please comment/reblog if you like <3

Links: [ao3] [wattpad] [masterpost] [previous chapter]

Tags: @an-ungraceful-swan @likefolksong @gay-otlc @fruityfintanfortythree @synonymroll648 @bookwyrminspiration @skylilac @song-tam @gaslight-gaetkeep-gayboss @abubakr0567 @raeny-nights-and-faery-lights  @kamikothe1and0lny @arsonistblue @daphneishere @lemon-girl-in-devil-town @istanrandomfandoms @sunset-telepath  @s0larismoon

Dear Fitz,

Hey, Fi

I'm sorry,

Fitz,

This is not an apology. 

Because it's too late, isn't it? I’m already gone. I’m not sure if I miss you or not.

You'll be angry, won't you, that I ran away again. You are well-versed in abandonment but you still don’t understand why I would do it. Why anyone would do it. You can’t possibly know that i

I think we're past understanding. Let me help you.

In a world that was black and white, you'd still be golden. Guess gold's my favorite color for a reason. You probably don't know what the hell I'm talking about. You're never good at catching signals. In a world that was golden, you'd still be the brightest of all of us. Do you get it now? I sure don't.

Here, let me try again. In a world that was made of diamonds, you would shatter first.

Does that make more sense to you? Or should I keep seeing your face in my head when I'm trying to sleep, keep imagining your lips against mine even though it’s clear that can never happen, keep on stringing words on a necklace until I find the right order to send to you (I won't send this to you)—

You were sweet. Sweet in a sour, salty, bitter world. Sweet the way that turns your stomach into mush, sweet the way that keeps you wanting more, sweet the way that poison frogs are bright colors so predators know not to eat them. Dangerous sweet. Wicked sweet. Terrifying sweet. You scared me, is what I’m trying to say. But that’s not what made me run.

I want you more. I don't want you anymore? We are meant to be contradictions, question marks at the end of sentences that logically should use an exclamation point. Even if you're obviously still so obsessed with me that you'd open this letter that I'm not sending because it has your name that I traced onto my lips so often it probably left a mark, and I can say this because you won't ever see it. Maybe you won't recognize my handwriting that you'll never see again. Maybe this letter will be another piece of trash in a pile.

Why don't you recognize me, Fitz? Why don't you know me?

Fuck.

Why are you still in my head.

I'm going to leave you behind. I meant to leave my heart behind, but sewing it to Sophie's sleeve left needles in my stomach instead of butterflies.

I'm supposed to know how to feel but there isn't a definition for you.

Do you get it now? Do you get what I'm trying to say?

I'm saying my favorite color is golden because that's what you outshine. My Golden Boy, the failing perfection who couldn't stand the idea that he liked the perfect failure, the last thing I think of before I sleep and the first nightmare I have when I wake up.

A dream and a nightmare and a hallucination rolled into one, that's what you are, a sweet-smelling flower petal rubbed between your index finger and your thumb like how my heart got crushed open right there in front of you and you didn't even have the decency to mop up the blood.

But that's not what I'm saying.

I'm saying I know every acne scar on your face and I know about the hair dye you keep in the space under your sink just in case you ever get the courage and I know that you won't ever get the courage because you're a coward like me. Too cowardly to tell me you love me. Too cowardly to tell you that I hate you.

You're so obvious about it and it makes me wish that this world was easy. Makes me wish that there was doubt about it and that's why I'm not sending this. Instead, I'm not sending it because I know you won't try to find me if I do. Why do I keep waiting for you to find me when you're still waiting to find yourself?

Good thing I'm never sending this. Because you know the way my hair falls over my eyes and how my arm weighs around your shoulders and you've counted the freckles on my face when you thought I was sleeping (I wasn't sleeping. I felt your fingers feather-soft on my cheek) and you know me too well to let me stay away. You know me too well to let me come back.

This is another dare. You can't pick truth this time when I know you're so good at lying.

I wish you luck finding me. The coward I am. The cowards we both are.

I said this wasn't an apology but maybe I'm asking for one

Blame yourself for my disappearance, please.

Love,

Your darling, your love, your everything,

The only thing you ever won by being yourself,

-Keefe

#sillies! #summer's writing #i dont like endings. i dont like letting things be over. probably why im posting this a day late #<- def not bc i forgot #alira(taor) #a lesson in running away (the art of returning) #keefitz #keefe sencen #fitz vacker #letter writing trope #kotlc #keeper of the lost cities #kotlc writing #kotlc fic

[when-wax-wings-melt]

Star star star tell me about your fics !!!

I'll talk about alira(taor) of course <3

specifically about numbness

now I couldve played into sun and moon but I didn't bc I think both Keefe and Fitz are a mixture of both. in that they're both blazing hot and desolate.

I mention this with tam too. that all of them have gone a little numb. it isn't a thing reserved for empaths (although it's sooo interesting that feeling too much leads to numbness but anyway) but for all of them in different ways.

Keefe is vibrant and full of feeling all the time. but he tries so hard to prevent his inner emotion from affecting him (esp in letting his father feel it) that he accidentally blocked out all of it. his heightened empathy overwhelmed him because he didn't understand how to feel it and function anyway. He's numb but in a way that keeps him feeling.

fitz is numb in a selfish way, because his feelings aren't enough to stop him from doing what he knows is right. he can justify anything and he will, and it comes off as numbness or apathy to everyone, including himself. of course he can kill alvar and not feel guilty about it: this is what matters. this is what is necessary. he's not actually numb-- he just thinks he must be

tam is numb in a selfless way. he gives bits of himself up for other people and doesn't keep enough to survive on. he lets the shadow cloak his true feelings, but when they escape they are not vibrant but poignant, lonely, isolating. he is numb because he does not know how not to be.

I tried to convey this in a few ways. Fitz and tam don't feel bad from killing. Keefe can't deal with his emotions. hopefully it came through <3 I wanted to make sure all the nuances of their feeling (or lack thereof) came through

#summer gets an ask #ask games #alira(taor) #a lesson in running away (the art of returning)

[synonymroll648]

⚙️⚙️⚙️

And then Dex tries to climb under his covers as quietly as he can and curls up on his side, so he can fake being asleep if his mom pops in to check on him. (She’s a light sleeper, which she’s jokingly coined as her proof that she married into the Dizznee family instead of being born into it.) 

#i see you in my askbox and i go !! #because it's like. whoa. cool writer mutual #btw i am most likely reading alira(taor) out loud to my partners this weekend #because i have demanded one of them to read it and the other's just there for the ride #the one i have demanded to read it made me read their fav genshin fic #so i was like alright you're gonna read my fav multichapter kotlc fic now #and it has yet to happen so i'm gonna make it happen #they know almost zero kotlc lore so it will be funny #but they were there when i read chapter 20 for the first time and watched me die over multiple parts #and i read a few clips out loud and they were like 'i don't even need to know the source material to know that's beautiful' #so. there is your alira(taor) love i will not stop giving you because i love the fic too much to do that #ask #when-wax-wings-melt #qpr keefex fic

[dreaming-of-the-end]

Dear Forkle: the right way to be empty (and wake up nevertheless)

A/N: damn, I finally got around to posting this. Turns out Keefe wrote to Forkle, too. It just didn't make it into the story.

Links: [ao3] [wattpad] [masterpost]

Dear Whatever The Hell Your Name Is,

How's all the necessary information you never share treating you? Are the secrets burning a hole in your pocket, through your tongue, into your brain, setting you on fire? I need to know because I need to know how to put my fire out.

I guess the real question is how do you handle being alone, being without your other half, knowing that you'll be empty for the rest of your life because of the decisions you made? How do you wake up in the morning?

I need to know because I'm empty now. And alone.

I don't have another half. I'm made of thousands of tiny pieces, and they've been pried out of me with tweezers one by one until I'm echoing with unusable space. How do you keep fighting when there's nothing left inside to fight with? When your heart isn't strong enough to keep pumping blood and oxygen through your body anymore?

You've always called yourself a mentor, a teacher, a guide. Guide me. Guide me even though I will never get the answers to my questions because you won't be getting this letter.

It's okay if you hate me. I'm a distraction to Sophie, after all. Not because she likes me (she doesn't. I'm the empath.) but because she's always worried about me.

Not to worry! I'm taking the you approach, and I'm not telling anyone anything ever again. Easier for me than it is for you, I suppose, since I'll never see anyone that will understand my secrets again.

No one knows yours, either. Not even the people you're supposed to trust. I guess it's hard to give away the remaining bits of your soul when there's already less than half of it gone. I'm trying to untangle my thoughts to arrange into words but they keep getting mixed up.

You're better at blocking your emotions than most people. That's true. But I'm a better empath than most people. So I know you're proud of me for being brave. For still fighting.

I bet you're disappointed now. I'm done fighting. In Sophie's letter I told her running away wasn't the same as giving up.

I was lying.

From,

Keefe

#summer's writing #alira(taor) #a lesson in running away (the art of returning) #keefitz #keefe sencen #mr forkle #kotlc #keeper of the lost cities

[dreaming-of-the-end]

5: to staying brave through the floods (raise a glass!)

A/N: Chapter five! Keefe pov and he’s literally sitting there being sad or whatever <3 as he should

Links: [ao3] [wattpad] [masterpost] {previous chapter} [next chapter]

Tags: @an-ungraceful-swan @seulgibabes @gay-otlc @fruity-fintan-fortythree @synonymroll648 @bookwyrminspiration @skylilac @song-tam @gaslight-gaetkeep-gayboss @abubble125 @rainy-nights-and-fairy-lights @kamikothe1and0lny @arsonistblue @daphneisntreal @lemon-girl-in-devil-town @istanrandomfandoms @sunset-telepath

Keefe lays on his bed with his arms behind his head and wants so hard it hurts.

It begins in his head, with the memories. ("I'm going to marry you someday." "No, you're not.") and spreads like disease, like wildfire. The longing, that is— most likely for the impossible, even though he can't quite put his finger on the cause.

It reaches his throat and the heart bobbing every time he swallows, beating too fast to be normal, reaching across his lungs and compressing them into a fist, sending tsunamis of hurt across his stomach. Jagged glass lodges itself in his sides, and it feels like nostalgia.

It isn't that he misses them, exactly—although he does, unbearably—but that their missing him has reached all the way to the Forbidden Cities. Keefe breathes in and feels his nostrils flare and smells Fitz's cologne like a phantom pain, a ghost of a scent, a ghost of a feeling, a ghost of a want.

It's this hotel room, filled to the brim with reasons to miss them. It's the empty space, the extra rooms he doesn't need, the space beside him on the bed for more than two other people, shadows filling up the corners and lights blinding him when he looks the other way. It's Candleshade, always there in the back of his mind with its endless empty floors and forgetful opulence, just more gold that doesn't mean anything.

Back then, he'd miss something he never had. Something like comfort.

Now, he waits for what doesn't miss him. Shouldn't miss him. He knows they want them back (he feels it in the pain in his stomach, a cramp worse with knowing that he had something and threw it all away) and he waits for them to stop.

For a moment, he wishes he were a telepath with Sophie's strength. So he could transmit, rest in a mind other than his own. But he knows that the temptation would be too great.

Part of the feeling too much that comes with empathy is the feeling too little, of remembering too many times when you stopped feeling because you wanted to. Keefe can count them if he wants to. And he wants everything.

When he closes his eyes, he sees eyes crinkled in the beginnings of a grin but not quite allowed to reach it. Dark skin and darker moods, hands cresting over his cheekbones with feather-light callus-hardened fingertips brushing his bottom eyelashes, laughs polished to a shine and smiles harsher than a winter breeze and—

Keefe opens his eyes.

A pile of notes and letters wait in a shoebox under his bed, barely filled after the few he's written and found. They pull him off the bed in a stupor, an unfinished story waiting to be written. Is he writing it for them or for him?

Keefe finds he cares less and less about the answer these days.

He has had enough of wanting.

…

Dear Linh,

I want to know how you're still brave when you've been taught how to live terrified all your life.

See, you navigate a world that hates your guts for a mixture of things you can't control and mistakes you made in the past. And you're happy. You seem happy. Are you happy?

I wish I could send this so you could answer. If I were brave like you, maybe I would. Maybe I wouldn't run at all.

The thing is, my parents tried to teach me to be strong. They tried to teach me to be tough, to be persistent, to take yes for an answer and nothing else.

I like to think I know you, but I know that's not true. I might be the empath, but you know me much better than I know you. It isn't that I don't pay attention. I do.

But you were raised to be weak. To cower. To say yes to those that won't take a no, to sit back when your power tells you to stand, to be scared and lonely and young and stay that way.

You and Tam are opposites in every way. He's bitter and you're sweet. You're a wave gliding gently to shore and he's an arrow cutting through fire to land in flesh. He has his regrets, and I don't think you do. I think you've invented a new kind of fear, the kind where you forget it. The kind where it turns to determination, a different sort of bravery, a different sort of knowing you can be forgotten. And replaced.

Tam puts on an angry mask to hide how terrified he is.

You put on a kind mask to conceal how angry you are. All the time. Turning you into a hurricane, a tempest, something not found because no one knows to look for it. No one except an enhanced empath.

When we saved Atlantis, I felt your heart. Emotions are more telling than thoughts, sometimes, and I know you know that even better than I do.

Emotion from you feels like a flood. A wave. Makes sense, right? That your heart is full of tsunamis?

I wish you could read this. So you know that someone notices. Someone sees. I see you. You aren't a figure in the fog anymore. You aren't wrapped up in shadows. You're a saltwater tear dripping down earth's cheek, and you know how to turn into an ocean.

You're the girl of many floods. Let your ability define you. Let your ocean swallow you.

That's just what you have to do sometimes. Let yourself remember and don't make yourself forget. Stay awake in the dark and try not to stare at the stars to ground yourself in outer space. I think that's what a star is. A tether. Be your own anchor.

But what do I know? My anchor is sand at the bottom of my ocean. I'm floating free.

Please don't make my mistakes. I hide myself away. You’re braver than that. Please make yourself seen.

You're the last person who would ever need my advice.

I guess what I'm trying to say is I admire you. And you're strong enough to bear the flood.

Love,

Keefe

#summer's writing #keefitz #keefe sencen #fitz vacker #linh song #a lesson in running away (the art of returning) #alira(taor) #kotlc #keeper of the lost cities #angst #letter writing trope #kotlc fic #kotlc writing #linh and keefe relationship is SO important im so mad

[dreaming-of-the-end]

20: the art of coming back (a lesson in staying)

A/N: LAST CHAPTER EVERYONE. But there will still be something extra, a bonus chapter if you will. Please comment/reblog if you like <3

Links: [ao3] [wattpad] [masterpost] [previous chapter] [Bonus chapter]

Tags: @an-ungraceful-swan @likefolksong @gay-otlc @fruityfintanfortythree @synonymroll648 @bookwyrminspiration @skylilac @song-tam @gaslight-gaetkeep-gayboss @abubakr0567 @raeny-nights-and-faery-lights  @kamikothe1and0lny @arsonistblue @daphneishere @lemon-girl-in-devil-town @istanrandomfandoms @sunset-telepath  @s0larismoon

Dearest Fitz,

I love you. I love you. I love you.

It’s so much easier to say that now that I know it’s true.

…

Fitz decides not to register for the match.

His matchmaking packet waits, filled out in its entirety, and he feels stupid whenever he looks at it. Come on, Fitz, he thinks, scanning his entries. Ideal sense of humor: sarcastic, with goofy characteristics and a passion for practical jokes? You couldn’t possibly have been more obvious. He’s almost certain he was thinking of Sophie when he did it, but now he wonders how he ever deluded himself into believing that.

Maybe, he hopes, both of Alden Vacker’s children choosing not to register will influence public opinion. Maybe they’ll start thinking about why.

He doesn’t want to get his head too far up in some fantasy.

But since Sophie, Dex, Linh, Keefe, and Tam have all decided not to register too… maybe the combination of the Vacker kids, the youngest regents ever, the girl who saved Atlantis, the boy who took down Lady Gisela, and the boy who brought a new way of bending shadow to the Lost Cities all taking a stand…

Alden has been hinting at a more permanent solution. In other words, he wants him to be a Councillor.

But lately, the world has been looking more to Sophie for an answer. The Vackers have faded with the death of Alvar—not that anyone knows what really happened to him. They’ve simply become… irrelevant.

In any case, it doesn’t matter what happened to the Neverseen. The world, Tam has pointed out on multiple occasions, is still fucked. But, he tends to add, it might still be up to us to save it.

…

This letter, you can read. You looked through the notebook already (the gold one, the one filled with you) and you’ve basically lived in my head for the past year, so this is the last secret.

The last secret: I know you don’t remember that I told you this (it was rather distracting when we kissed a few seconds later) but I did write a goodbye letter to you, before the one for Sophie.

It’s maybe still sitting in Candleshade, in my trash can, ripped to shreds.

I told too much of the truth in it, and that’s why I didn’t leave it for you. Of course, I do remember it (I remember everything) but I won’t be sharing it. I don’t think you need any reminders of what it was like.

Because, holy hell, things have changed, haven’t they?

For instance, we’re happy. (or… well, as happy as we can possibly be)

…

“You killed him, didn’t you,” Biana says softly, a confession, a secret laid bare. So she’s known for a while. So she’s only just found the nerve to confirm it.

Fitz lays with his head in her lap and thinks about how the last time he’d lain like this, hit with the melder and shaking with pain. It came in tsunamis then, and it comes in waves now.

“Yes,” he says. Even if the official story was that a mixture of the stress of getting his memories back and his injuries at the troll hive had killed Alvar quickly, everyone close to him either knows or suspects that Fitz was the one to finally end it.

“How did you do it?”

He looks up at her, matching her hesitant gaze above him. “Dagger. In the throat.”

Biana lets out a shuddering breath, squeezing her eyes shut and scrubbing at them with her hands. “God,” she says quietly.

“I guess you were right,” he says, letting a bitter smile grace his lips. “We are all just a bunch of fuckups.”

She doesn’t deny it. But she twists her fingers through his hair and says, “Sophie kissed me yesterday.”

He blinks up at her, but she’s not looking at him anymore. She stares off into space with stormy eyes, oceans and jagged rocks blocking the path to whatever she’s feeling.

She smiles slightly. “Yes.”

“Did you kiss her back?”

“Then what’s wrong?”

“Nothing. I just—I want her to know she has it right this time.” Biana meets his eyes again and suddenly there are tears there. He doesn’t know why. It could be anything. There is so much there to cry for. “I’ve made so many mistakes. I don’t want her to think she’s one of them.”

“As the second-best expert on mistakes in your life,” he says, and reaches to flick her cheek. She bats his hand away and scrunches up her face. “I don’t think you have anything to worry about, Bee.”

She smiles, for real this time, a grin that splits her face in half. “You haven’t called me that in ages.”

“Sorry about that,” he says. “I’ve been a little distracted.”

“Ah.” she complains, pretending to swoon onto his stomach, summoning an oof. “No time for me any longer… I have become irrelevant.”

“No!” he calls, pulling her hair until she shrieks with exaggerated fury. “I could never forget you… my dearest sister…”

She sits up and pokes him in the stomach so hard he yelps and sits up as well, pinching her arm. “Come on, Bee, I called you my favorite sister.”

“That’s a given, Fizzy! I expect a million handmade desserts by tomorrow to prove it.” Biana nods to assert her statement, and he pulls her hair again.

…

But this is supposed to be a love letter. Allow me to express how irrevocably you have restructured the way my mind works, the way it redirects attention to your lips, your hair, the acne on your face and the bump in your nose and the way your laugh feels when you let yourself fold in half with the weight of it on your shoulders—much better than that chip you were carrying before—and the way your spine feels under my fingertips when I press down enough to feel the bumps.

(see, I can be romantic! riddle me this: which is better, this awesome and eloquently composed letter, or a boring-ass pen?)

The thing is, I’m not able to forget anything. I remember all the fights and the shouting and the cruelty, even—we both were cruel, and petty, and maybe a little ruthless with each other back then, and now too—and I remember the laughter and the games and the promises we made.

Ones like I’m going to marry you someday. And the promise you made in return: no, you’re not. You said that’s not true, like I have ever in my life cared about honesty or right and wrong.

…

Sophie gives them a bulletin board left over from her human home that the Council brought to Eternalia. Fitz helps Keefe hang it up in the main sitting room at Candleshade, right over the fireplace.

They’d encased Gisela’s last note in never-melting ice specialized by Juline and Kesler’s efforts. It would never fade, never yellow, never age, and neither would she.

Neither, Forkle had pointed out when they told him about it, would she be able to turn back. They still don’t know how long Keefe’s commands can last—or if there is a limit. Or, in this case, whether there is anything left of a person in her. Perhaps she is simply a concept, a voice, an endless whisper.

(YOU ARE MY LEGACY)

And he can’t hear a thing.

Gisela’s words go up onto the bulletin board, pinned by the same starstone pin she’d keyed to Keefe’s blood when he was eleven. It’s a reminder that he won’t see often since no one lives in that house anymore. It will crumble into ruins around her.

They stand in that house and Keefe looks at the note and Fitz looks at him.

“I haven’t ever—” Keefe starts, and then pauses and stuffs his shaking hands in his pockets. “I haven’t ever been good at saying goodbye.”

Fitz knows this better than anyone. But he isn’t talking to him.

“And it’s much easier to say it when you don’t mean it. I ran away and didn’t say goodbye because I didn’t think I’d be coming back. I’m saying goodbye to you and I don’t know if I’m telling the truth.”

(He isn’t telling the truth. Fitz knows this like he knows his own name. Keefe has a disease where he can’t let things go. He will return over the years, pacing these halls and running his hands along the wall to see how much dust he can collect on his fingertips. They will come away filthy, and he will wipe them on his father’s office chair. He is made of beginnings, not endings.)

“What am I saying?” Keefe mutters, and takes a few steps back. “God, you don’t care about lying. Bye, Mom.”

…

Maybe we are one big shade of gray. But you know what?

In a black and white world, you’d still be golden. Sorry for bringing that up, darling. I know you hate being the Golden Boy. But I think you can’t help it.

I also think you’ve been gilded, not golden. You’re lead covered in gold paint, and you know what that makes me? Coal that can never turn to diamonds no matter how much pressure you add. An oyster without a pearl, if you prefer that metaphor instead.

Yeah. You know me. I know you.

What else is there to say?

I love you, I love you, I love you.

That’s what else.

I know you and I love you all the more for it.

Let me put it into other words: for a long time, gold was my favorite color. Do you get it now? I’m saying that I stared into the sun until I went blind because looking at you happy without me hurt worse than fire. I’m saying that I wake up spitting butterflies because there are too many in my stomach. I’m saying my blood, maybe my being (whatever the hell that is) is made of you and your smile.

You confound me. That’s a new word, isn’t it? Confound, perplex, confuse, humiliate, terrify, intrigue. They’re not usually synonyms. Let’s change the definitions, huh?

…

Fitz lays on the bed and thinks of being made of stone.

It’s part of the reason he avoids looking in mirrors these days: whenever he meets his own eyes, they glaze over in a practiced marble. His jaw sharpens as he clenches it, his hair solidifying, skin graying. Part of who he is leeches away when he sees himself, who is he and who he appears to be broken down the middle in a rigid line.

He looks more like his brother every day.

He tries to avoid it: letting his curls grow out instead of gelling them back or cutting them off, allowing his smile to go crooked and sloppy, even asking Biana to teach him about eyeliner to remind him his eyes are darker teal, not a pale blue.

Fitz twirls his finger around Keefe’s hair. It’s getting even longer these days, and he often ties the upper half of it up. His brown roots are showing through again, which means another Keefe-Biana bonding day shut up in the bathroom with the nasty smell of bleach filling up her bedroom.

“Hey,” Keefe says.

Fitz smiles. “Hey.”

Keefe’s lips turn up in a familiar smirk.

“What?” he asks.

He sits up, and Fitz immediately misses the warmth of his head on his chest. Keefe pulls a slightly crumpled paper from his pocket. “I have something for you to read."

…

I think we’re afraid of being abandoned. I guess I’m at least a little to blame for that.

But, see, there’s a lesson found in running away. I don’t know if I learned it yet, but I think you’re teaching me the art of coming back.

With you, I want to stay. That’s what this letter is about.

Thank you.

Love,

Keefe

#summer's writing #alira(taor) #a lesson in running away (the art of returning) #kotlc #keeper of the lost cities #keefe sencen #fitz vacker #biana vacker #keefitz #sophiana #letter writing trope #angst with a happy ending #<- FINALLY I CAN USE THAT TAG #kotlc fic #kotlc writing #shit's crazy dude. 35k words...

[dreaming-of-the-end]

12: a lesson in guilt, leadership, and broken glass

A/N: Cognate Inquisition: Part 2! Please comment/reblog if you like <3 New chapters on Sundays and Thursdays!

Links: [ao3] [wattpad] [masterpost] [previous chapter] [next chapter]  

Tags: @an-ungraceful-swan @seulgibabes @gay-otlc @fruityfintanfortythree @synonymroll648 @bookwyrminspiration @skylilac @song-tam @gaslight-gaetkeep-gayboss @abubble125 @rainy-nights-and-fairy-lights @kamikothe1and0lny @arsonistblue @daphneisntreal @lemon-girl-in-devil-town @istanrandomfandoms @sunset-telepath @s0larismoon

Sophie’s eyes are narrowed in concentration, almost determination. Fitz envies her for being able to plan out her speech in her head and remember it perfectly when he has to search for what to say. He’s spent too long trying to decide what to address and what to let go in this Inquisition when he has never been able to let anything go.

I can start, she transmits. Her weight rests in his mind solidly, taking up space. What realizations has she come to over the past few weeks to take her from hesitant to confident? Leading has been instilled in her right next to impulsivity. They war for control. Since I started last time.

Fitz nods.

I think it bothered you that I’m the moonlark. That I’m supposed to be the leader instead of you, Sophie tells him.

And… she’s not wrong. But she’s not quite right, either.

That’s fair. I see why you think that, and it’s kind of true. It’s hard to see you taking control when I’ve been raised to take control. Fitz shifts in his seat. My dad wants me to be a councillor someday, did you know that? He’s been preparing me my whole life for it. I went to the Forbidden Cities both to find you and to gain perspective for when I lead the Elven world someday. I’m top of my class so I get voted in. I trained every day to win splotching matches and unlocked my nexus first, to develop and prove my mental capacity. These skills aren’t luck or genetics, I work for them. I work hard for them. So when you showed up and it was just given to you… I don’t know. I want to save people. I want them to look to me instead of you.

Sophie tilts her head to the side and tugs out an eyelash. This is kind of what he’s talking about: his tics and quirks have been trained out of him. Running his hands through his hair is acceptable; biting his nails is not. It’s resentment, but it’s not jealousy. He wouldn’t want to be in her position.

But I’m working on it, he adds quickly. I think this is something I can fix.

Sophie nods slowly. That’s good. Because— she hesitates. I never wanted to be a leader.

But you’re good at it, Fitz tells her. You are. Take more constructive criticism sometimes and you’ll be amazing. I worked at it, but you have it.

Sophie wrinkles her nose, not quite believing, but he means what he said. She used to be small, unassuming, hidden. She’s discovered more than corruption and friendship in the Lost Cities—she’s discovered herself. And Fitz hopes that he gets at least some of the credit for that.

My second topic, she starts, and he braces himself— is about Keefe.

Fitz feels his entire body tense. So she knows that he knows she likes him. She knows that he can barely stand to be in the same room as him for too long before he starts to lose control of his emotions. That his anger has reached the top of the barrel and he doesn’t know who it’ll burn when it spills.

But instead, she says, I know you’re in love with him.

“What?” he says out loud, not realizing that he’d forgotten to transmit until Sophie lets go of his hand.

“You don’t have to keep it a secret, Fitz,” she says gently, with a hint of a grin. “It’s fine, I promise.”

“There isn’t any secret,” Fitz argues. “I didn’t—I don’t—I’m not in love with Keefe.”

Sophie’s eyes widen. “Wait—shit, did you not know?”

“There isn’t anything to know, Soph,” he insists. “I told you that I wanted to kiss you. I told you that…”

“Yeah, but you didn’t mean it,” she says, tilting her head. “You know, Silveny saw you go to Keefe’s last night. She told me this morning. You were there for a while, weren’t you?”

Fitz shakes his head. “You’re not an empath.”

“I’m your Cognate,” Sophie says. “You love him.”

“I love—” His tongue stops working before he can say anything stupid, anything like you.

“I want it to be you.” Words delicately placed on a pedestal, spooned into a crystal bowl with a silver spoon. And relief at the interruption, because it wasn’t the right moment yet. Because it was too good to be true. Because the world was finally being fixed, reset, healed. Because he doesn’t trust luck, and he doesn’t trust goodness. Umber leeched that out of him with her shadows. "The only person I want to see on my match list... is you."

He didn’t think he was lying. He still doesn’t. Vackers aren’t supposed to tell lies.

My turn, he transmits instead of digging himself deeper.

Sophie studies him for a moment, eyebrow raised, and nods.

Are you afraid of me? Fitz asks.

No! Sophie responds quickly, defensively. Surprised, maybe.

Okay. He weighs the words in his mouth before he says them and decides that he is lying to himself. Now think about it and answer again.

Fitz, why would I be scared of you? Sophie asks gently. I’ve seen you at your worst, I think. Stabbed through the stomach by a giant bug, your leg broken, echoes fucking up your heart. I saw the image of you in that chandelier, remember?

He smiles a bit at the memory, less at the coupled hilarity and humiliation of it and more at her laughter when he told her about it. It felt normal, that moment. Like it was just the two of them and he didn’t even have to think about anyone else. But his smile fades too quickly.

I wasn’t asking if you’ve seen me at my worst. I wasn’t asking if you know me. I was asking if you’re afraid of me.

Sophie searches his eyes with her own. Sitting inside her living room, the light glows warmly off her face, illuminating pale skin in a pinkish halo. Her eyes are impossibly brown, impossibly unique, and he wonders why she’d ever think he could be in love with Keefe when she’s sitting right here.

Because of Alvar, Fitz adds when the silence stretches on for too long. Because of what I did to him.

Tried to do, Sophie corrects him. You didn’t kill him.

You don’t believe that, he counters. Her face falters into guilt, and he adds hastily, correcting himself, It doesn’t matter. I still tried.

Sophie’s tongue rolls around her mouth. She tugs out another eyelash, shrinking in on herself.

Is it because of Alvar or because of what I’ve done to you? he tries next, no longer having to ask to know she’s afraid.

I’m not scared of you, she insists, and he sighs. But she grabs his hand and laces their fingers together, familiar with their warmth. I was scared of what you’d do. I’m scared of what could happen to you as a result.

His mind flashes to what happened that day: the terror, the exhilaration and adrenaline, pressing buttons and flicking switches and making something happen, finally making something happen. He wanted to trap him. He wanted to hurt him so badly that he’d never try anything again.

When the orange goop started pouring into the cell, he didn’t move.

Biana clutched at his arm, but her shrieks and tears didn’t cause more than a ringing in his ears as he watched it happen. Fitz pressed his palm against the glass and Alvar’s hand matched his on the other side, another mirror. “Get him out of there!” Biana screamed in his ear (as if she couldn’t do anything herself when she must have known there was a switch that could set him free), but none of it got through to him, and soon Alvar’s face disappeared into the murkiness and still he stood there. Biana went quiet the moment the fluid crested their brother’s head and they watched him die.

They were supposed to be watching him die.

He was supposed to die.

“I wasn’t planning to kill him that time,” Fitz says out loud, another echo. That was what he said that day. Despite his non-photographic memory, he remembers that day in vivid detail. “I didn’t mean to.”

Sophie squeezes his hand. “I thought we agreed not to lie?”

“Then admit you don’t trust me not to snap,” Fitz retorts, snatching his hand out of her grasp and tearing it through his hair. “God, Soph. Aren’t you terrified?”

She’s sitting on her hands, and he knows it’s because she’s aching to pull on her eyelashes.

“Aren’t you terrified?” he asks again, and feels tears well up in his eyes.

…

Fitz took Alvar’s Radiant award off of the mantle.

The corners of the prism were sharp enough to draw blood, like his brother spent his time running knives around it to make it as deadly as possible. Still, despite the sting, Fitz held it as tightly as he could and hoped that the success will leak into him.

Lately, Alvar and Alden had been disappearing into rooms and having what Biana would call “mind-crushing useless grownup talks” and Della would call “father-son bonding” but Fitz knew had to be important, perhaps more important than anything Alden had ever done before. Besides, Alvar was still in the Elite Levels, which made Biana wrong about one thing: his brother wasn’t grown up yet. She just thought so because they weren’t even in school yet but Alvar had just won the Radiant and Della had put it on the mantle, so he was an adult. He was mature. He was the best.

And now, no matter what Biana or Fitz accomplished, even if they won the same award, he’d have done it first.

Fitz smoothed his thumb along Alvar’s name at the base of the prism, letting the light reflect beams of color through the glass.

“Hey, Fizzy.” Alvar blinked into sight in front of him, hand already ruffling his hair, and Fitz yelped, dropping the trophy. His brother caught it with levitation, and he watched in awe as it floated back to its place on the mantle. “Proud of me?”

“Yeah,” Fitz breathed, grinning up at him. A lock of hair flopped into his eyes, and he pushed it back into place. He didn’t like how high and squeaky his voice was, not when Alvar’s was deep and mature and sounded responsible. Making a conscious effort to lower it, Fitz said, “Can we play base quest later?”

Alvar laughed. “Not today, Fizz. I have an assignment.” He winked at him, and Fitz’s mouth dropped open.

“What kind of assignment?”

“A super top secret one,” Alvar said, tapping him on the nose. Fitz scrunched up his face in disappointment, and his brother laughed. “Don’t worry, Fitz. Someday, you’ll get to where I am.”

“I want to be you someday,” Fitz told him. Now, he knows that his young mind had mixed up the words. He didn't want to be Alvar. Only be like him. Just like him. A copy, a replica, something that wasn't quite the same but earned the same look of pride from Alden that Alvar always got.

But his brother didn't correct him.

“Of course you do,” Alvar said. “Who wouldn’t?”

…

Fitz clenches his fist and feels the sharpness of broken glass.

Sophie places her hand back over his.

They’d shattered that award on the entrance to Brumevale, watched the glass fly down from the steps and heard the cracks spread through it in the space of a single moment. In the space of a single moment, and achievements are broken and relationships are shattered and love is hidden away and lives are torn apart and—

I am terrified, she transmits.

She’d been in his head with the memory.

“Of course you are,” he says bitterly, like Alvar probably was that day. He hadn’t recognized it because he was a kid. Just a stupid kid, already filled up with all those lies. “Who wouldn’t be?”

#i dont like this chapter it's fine i'll just post and gte it over with. im normal. #the next one is good tho so just hang on until thursday #summer's writing #alira(taor) #a lesson in running away (the art of returning) #kotlc #keeper of the lost cities #keefitz #fitz vacker #sophie foster #keefe sencen #alvar vacker #kotlc writing #kotlc fic

[dreaming-of-the-end]

16: a lesson in jealousy, guilt, and other things we know better than we know ourselves

A/N: Me when im soooo normal about fitz and alvar and foils and echoes and mirrors. Please comment/reblog if you like <3 New chapters on Sundays and Thursdays!

Warnings: death/murder, blood, violence, knife, etc

Links: [ao3] [wattpad] [masterpost] [previous chapter] [next chapter]  

Tags: @an-ungraceful-swan @likefolksong @gay-otlc @fruityfintanfortythree @synonymroll648 @bookwyrminspiration @skylilac @song-tam @gaslight-gaetkeep-gayboss @abubakr0567 @raeny-nights-and-faery-lights  @kamikothe1and0lny @arsonistblue @daphneishere @lemon-girl-in-devil-town @istanrandomfandoms @sunset-telepath  @s0larismoon

Here we are again, Alvar thinks. When will you leave me alone?

When you leave me alone, Fitz responds. He walks with his attention split between where his feet land (on rough stone) and where his mind guides him. The cold air is crisp against his cheeks and Alvar’s mind is bleeding black ink.

Ah, so our conversations are my fault now, Alvar says. Even though you’re the one creeping through my mind every week.

Fitz keeps walking, kicking aside ash and rocks, the only thing left in this ravaged landscape. Yes. Everything is your fault.

Like what? The smirk is evident in the lazy way he thinks it. He wants to catch him at something. Fitz knows how to escape him.

Like Ruy’s death.

Alvar’s mind explodes into something like denial, whispers bouncing off the shattered picture frame memories, not quieting until Fitz slams open the door to Brant’s former house and watches his brother scramble to his feet, a wraith.

“Ah,” Alvar snarls, no longer pretending to be confident or pleasant. “You found me. Congratulations.”

Hearing his voice jars Fitz down to his core. This is the voice that told him wild stories for him to repeat around school, that whispered jokes across the dinner table, that told him to be proud of himself for being chosen for Alden’s mission, that called him Fizzleberry and little brother. Now it’s torn with ash and weak with whatever that troll goop had done to him. His arms are stick-thin and void of the muscle he’d spent years cultivating, and his legs shake under his weight as he takes a step forward.

“Sophie wasn’t lying,” Fitz muses, standing his ground as Alvar takes another step. He flashes in and out of sight, flickering more than blinking. Closer and closer, until Fitz sees the shadows caving in his cheeks and sinking into his eyes. His hair, once carefully gelled, hangs limp and greasy over his dull eyes. His skin had always been paler than his siblings’, but now it’s snow white and tinged blue; possibly from an oxygen deficit. “You’re a mess.”

“I’d love to see you hold up under what I’ve been through,” Alvar snaps, but his bravado is broken by a hacking cough—or perhaps it’s reinforced. He spits blood onto the ground. “Come to see your brother die? Or just to see my reaction to your news in person?”

“What news?” Fitz lets his eyes roam over Brant’s house. Stone walls, stone ceiling, mattress covered in what he assumes is Flaredon fur. No pictures, no blankets, no warmth.

“Ruy.” Alvar’s voice breaks from either grief or dehydration. “Is he really dead?”

Grief.

Fitz smiles. “Yes.”

“Who killed him?”

“How do you know he didn’t die all on his own?” Fitz paces slowly around the room, his shoes cracking on the bitter stone and echoing off the walls. Caught in the echoes are the memories Brant must have been engulfed in when he lived here: did he scream in his sleep and wake up hearing Jolie as she died? As he killed her? That was the person Alvar chose over acceptance, over Biana, over all he had as a Vacker. Over him. “Maybe he fell down the stairs. Maybe he faded away. Maybe he ran into his own forcefield and electrocuted himself.”

With each possibility, Alvar pales further. His face no longer looks shadowed, it looks old in the way elven faces aren’t supposed to.

“He could’ve eaten rotten fruit. I know there wasn’t much to offer in terms of cuisine out there, since you tried to commit genocide against the gnomes. Or maybe—” Fitz takes a step closer to his brother— “Maybe Tam did to him what Ruy let Umber do to Sophie and me.”

Alvar’s fists clench weakly at his sides. Fitz hates the thrill it sends through him, of knowing there is nothing he can do. Of knowing that for the first time in a long while—probably ever—he’s the one with the power. “Tam Song.”

“You underestimated him. You underestimated us.” Fitz gets in his face, then, and realized with a start that they’re the same height. Alvar glares at him with his pale eyes, but there’s helplessness behind the fury.

“Did the shadows do it?” he asks finally, grudgingly. Shouldn’t he be used to death? Brant, Umber, all the others who’d given themselves to the Neverseen’s twisted cause… Why is Ruy his breaking point?

“Probably,” Fitz muses, tapping his finger against his lips. Alvar emanates a cold fury, bridled with the knowledge that he can do nothing to stop this. It has already been done. “Or maybe it was loneliness. He had nothing but his ability, and then Tam took that too. Shit, when you left, who did Ruy have? Trix? Glimmer was already gone. And who would want to talk to Vespera, numb as she… is…” He goes cold for a second, stumbling.

Who is he to talk about numbness?

“So Tam killed him,” Alvar says. Here’s the final test, and he fails: he’s too frail to hide his emotions. They all blaze across his face in a wildfire of grief, wrath, pain.

“You care?” Fitz studies his brother closely. The anger keeping him going falters slightly at the look on his face. He hadn’t looked like that when Alden had broken. But he looked like that when Fitz was punching him in Everglen’s forest, blood streaming down his face. Terrified, confused, angry. Everything bad, everything jealous, everything horrible. This is who they are: sand sculptures blasted with heat and made glass, shattered on the floor. Fitz steps in the shards and lets the burn center him. “Did you love him?”

Alvar starts, straightening his posture, and for a moment he looks more like the man Fitz used to know. The light rekindles in his eyes, maybe. That could be it.

“Did you join the Neverseen for him?”

At this, he laughs hoarsely, glass from their sculptures tearing into his throat. “Come on, Fizzy. Not all of us join rebellions to follow our little crushes. Some of us actually care about the cause, you know.”

“I don’t have a crush on Sophie.” As soon as he says it, Fitz curses himself. First of all, it’s a lie—it has to be— but more than that: it’s childish. He hadn’t wanted to be childish.

“I never said anything about Sophie,” Alvar says, his lips turning up in a Keefe-like smirk. Or maybe Keefe’s smirk is Alvar-like. “But it doesn’t matter. I didn’t join for him. He was…”

“A bonus?”

“Perhaps. Doesn’t matter. We couldn’t protect each other, anyway.” Alvar’s face creases over, but his smile remains. Fitz thinks of stone and the impossibility of erasing what has already been carved into it. “That doesn’t matter either. Tam killed him.”

“Yes.”

“Do you want to learn something else from me, little brother?” he asks, and takes a step forward within punching distance. Fitz eyes his nose and the new crook he’d caused by breaking it.

“I don’t want to hear anything from you,” Fitz snaps.

“Oh, yes. You do. Because I’m about to give you a lesson in death and guilt, one I know you will use because I have used it many times over.”

“I’m not like you,” Fitz says.

“And still you are a liar,” Alvar says, and the smile drops off his face. “So here is your lesson: Kill when you need to. Kill for a purpose. Kill to avenge.”

And then he runs, but not at Fitz: to the exit.

To light.

Fitz chases after him, scrambling, and suddenly the thumping of his shoes on the stone isn’t as authoritative. Not when Tam’s life hangs in the balance.

Alvar is weak, slow, out of shape. Maybe Tam would be able to fight him off, but Fitz isn’t ready to take that chance. It’s fine when it’s his life that hangs in the balance, but Tam didn’t ask for this. He didn’t want any of this.

Fitz grabs Alvar’s arm and pulls him back. His brother loses his grip on his pathfinder, and it clatters to stone. He snatches for it, but Fitz tugs him further into the house. With a desperate flail, Alvar’s fist lands against his face in a surprisingly solid punch.

Fitz tackles him to the ground and suddenly he’s back in that forest. The Neverseen stands in front of him, all assured and confident that Alvar will betray him again. That no matter what forgiveness he could be offered, it wouldn’t be enough.

Punch—Punch—Punch—

Alvar evidently is thinking the same, blood staining his teeth red as he opens it to speak. “Here we are again! Will you have the courage to finish it this time?”

A knee thrust into his stomach and Alvar kicked himself free from his grip, escaping for only a moment before Fitz was on him again.

Punch—Punch—Punch—

Alvar blinks out of sight with every punch. But they playfought all the time as children. He knows how to stay in control, even though this is no longer a game. Maybe it never had been.

“I don’t need courage for this,” Fitz growls, raising his fist to hit him again. His fist stings, and he remembers that last time, he split the skin on his knuckles doing this. Sophie wrapped the cut with the fabric from her sleeve. Alvar used the blood from the bandage to open the gate and let the Neverseen in.

“Good thing,” his brother whispers, eyes hollowed with resignation. “Coward.”

Fitz punches him again.

He hit his mouth and something crunched. Maybe those white teeth, maybe his jaw. It didn’t matter.

“Coward. Coward. Hit me again and prove it.” His eyes glimmer with freezing light.

Fitz pulls out his dagger from the sheath on his back. Alvar’s gaze breaks a little at the sight of it, like despite all of it he hadn’t expected him to actually use it.

Maybe he’d known all along what he came here intending to do. After all, he’d taken the dagger with him. For protection. For death.

“Remember my lesson,” Alvar tells him, and then he goes limp. Stops fighting. Gives up. “Kill with a reason.”

“You know that I have a reason,” Fitz tells him, and he moves the dagger to his brother’s throat.

Alvar laughs, adam’s apple bobbing. The blade grazes his skin, and he stills. “Like what?”

Fitz finds his hand is shaking. “You’re planning on killing my friend. You kidnapped my friends, my—” (not girlfriend) “You—you let the enemy into our home. You exposed our family.”

“You said our home, our family,” Alvar grins. It seems in the face of death, he has finally gained his bravery. “Fizzleberry, am I still your brother?”

The dagger shudders above his neck. He doesn’t know why he’s hesitating.

“Don’t let them break you the way they broke him,” Biana had begged that day. Her fear left tear-tracks down her face, but all it accomplished was to gleam against her scars and bring them into sharper focus. “Please, Fitz—” They had all looked at him like he was the monster instead of the one he was ready to kill.

“You’re not my brother,” Fitz says. Alvar smirks up at him. But he’s not an Empath. He can’t possibly feel the lie.

“Is that what you want to hear?” Gethen’s voice echoes around and around, bouncing off the stone walls of Brant’s old house even though Fitz knows they’re alone. Their lives, he thinks, all they went through, every path they took, led them right up to this lmoment.

“Why are you killing me?” Alvar asks, his smile flashing off his face.

“Perhaps I’m trying to see if we recruited the wrong Vacker.”

“Because it’s how I keep them safe,” Fitz says.

“Liar. Why are you killing me? Your brother, Fitz. I’m your brother.” Alvar’s eyes fill up with tears, and Fitz is shaking too hard to know if it’s just another trick. The hilt of the dagger is sweaty in his hand.

“There you are, holding a permanent solution to the threat you’re facing. But will you have the courage to use it?”

Keefe called it a game that night. Maybe he was right. Or maybe it was just because he still couldn’t take anything seriously, couldn’t admit that anything was real.

Now, with his humor leeched from him, he will understand.

“I’m killing you because it’s the only way to get you out of my head,” Fitz says, and he shoves the dagger down into his brother’s throat.

And here’s the cowardice: Fitz closes his eyes at the last second so he doesn’t have to watch it happen. But he feels the warm blood on his hands as Alvar dies, quietly like he’s been practicing. He feels it seeping into his pants, spreading across the stone like fizzleberry wine.

He opens his eyes.

Maybe Keefe isn’t the only one going numb.

Fitz stands from Alvar’s body and cleans his bloody hands on his dead brother’s ragged tunic.

He is stone.

#how silly! how comical! #summer's writing #alira(taor) #a lesson in running away (the art of returning) #keefitz #fitz vacker #alvar vacker #fitz&alvar #kotlc #keeper of the lost cities #kotlc fic #kotlc writing #death tw #murder tw #blood tw #this and the next chapter are the culmination of everything... the chapter after that yes but mostly these two. are why i wrote this fic #so.

[dreaming-of-the-end]

11: of knowing&loving selfishness (by seeing it in yourself)

A/N: them kam dynamics hit deep. interpret this however you want, you’re probably right. Please comment/reblog if you like <3 ALSO: From this day on, posting schedule will be Sundays and Thursdays (bc im impatient)

Links: [ao3] [wattpad] [masterpost] [previous chapter] [next chapter] 

Tags: @an-ungraceful-swan @seulgibabes @gay-otlc @fruityfintanfortythree @synonymroll648 @bookwyrminspiration @skylilac @song-tam @gaslight-gaetkeep-gayboss @abubble125 @rainy-nights-and-fairy-lights @kamikothe1and0lny @arsonistblue @daphneisntreal @lemon-girl-in-devil-town @istanrandomfandoms @sunset-telepath

Hey, Bangs Boy,

It feels wrong to call you that when I know I'm bringing your mind that much closer to breaking by running away.

For the record (of my brain and this letter and certainly not of you since you won't see this), you were right. I fucked it all up. I was just a little too in love. I was just too blind to not know who I was loving.

I thought I could stand up there and beat my mom at her own game and save you and Fitz and Sophie and everyone else from the villain I know too well. And maybe there would be a kiss in it for me at the end. I don't know.

Was I in love with you? No, I don't think so (I'm the empath here, after all).

Did I want to kiss you? Maybe a little. Maybe a lot. I don't know what you've heard, but I don't think there's a measurement for these sorts of things. If there were, I would have already searched the world for it just so I could know why I keep imagining your lips on mine when I know I don’t love you, don’t even like you like that.

Maybe curiosity. Like how all the time, I wonder how you'd look with a lip piercing and then I wonder how the metal of it would feel against my upper lip, like how I sometimes sit still and think about silver hair and sometimes I laugh too hard at your jokes and hope you don't notice.

I know how to be lonely, but I don't know how to be alone. For all of your brooding, you can't be either. I don't know how to lose you or anyone else, but I know that.

More than anything, I don't know why I'm writing this letter. It’s not like I’m saying anything new. You already know exactly how selfish I am. You've always known, haven't you? You only knew me for a little while before I joined the Neverseen. I'm not going to put the "joined" in quotations when we both know (more than anyone) how deeply their claws go into you.

After a while with them, you start thinking about how the Council doesn't do anything. And you start thinking about your friends and how they'll be bad matches, and you start thinking about the twins you know or are, and you start thinking about how match lists don't work for you the way they do for your parents. You think about starting fires and the Nobility and ability detection class and you think about who you love and why. You think about how the Black Swan sits and twiddles their thumbs and is working with the ones who started all this bullshit. And you start thinking about staying.

I think that's the worst part of them. Not the brand burned into my skin or being another experiment or even having to smell them for long periods of time; the worst part is how they like to fuck with your head. My mom being a Polyglot means she speaks my language too, so she knows how to get to me.

But you know all this, don't you? You were there. You were there in my head. I don't think you ever left. Not when I disappeared into the Healing Center and you disappeared into the shadows of my thoughts. You're good at occupying those.

So, Tam, I don’t think there’s anything I can tell you. You know me better than you know yourself.

Have fun with your shadows. Please take mine out of me.

Love,

Keefe

…

Keefe is pressing his fingers against each other and remembering how it felt to hold Fitz’s hand when Tam joins him at Calla’s tree. Wynn and Luna have ceased transmitting to him for the time being, instead lying quietly together next to him. He trails a hand down Luna’s back and tries not to look Tam in the eyes.

He sits down beside him in silence, their backs against the tree trunk. Sun filters through the pink and purple petals, lighting up the silver in his hair, highlighting his soft jaw. This is the part where Keefe should be struck by a wave of something (longing, maybe), but the wave never comes.

“Did you miss me?” he asks with a grin, because if he doesn’t pretend things are normal they never will be.

“Of course not,” Tam says, ire in his voice. Not what Keefe expected. “It was so much better having to deal with the aftermath of the Neverseen without you. It was so much easier blaming myself.”

He winces, pulls his knees up to his chest and wraps his arms around them. “Sorry about that.”

“About what, exactly?”

“About running away.”

“Running away again, you mean,” Tam says. Keefe can’t make himself look at him. “Damnit, Keefe, were you even planning on coming back?”

Keefe stays quiet. “You left too.”

“You chose to leave,” Tam snaps. “I would never leave the people I love if it weren’t life or death.”

Keefe lets his knees go and twists to face him head-on. “You say that. Everyone’s saying that, but you don’t know that it wasn’t life or death! God, Tam, don’t you think I thought of that? I can kill with this voice! I could kill you right now! I knew that then, I know that now, only now I didn’t have a choice on whether or not to come back.”

“But you did,” Tam points out softly. “I was there. You did have a choice. You could have put us to sleep like you did to Ro, even waited after I got rid of the tracker. You could have started over somewhere else.”

He hesitates. “I could have.”

And Tam grins, a mockery of his own face just a minute ago. “So, what? Did you miss me?”

Scowling, Keefe sits back again, turning away. “You wish.”

The silence between them stretches like a rubber band. The sun beats down warm on Keefe’s face, a strange contrast to the cold Tam’s body exudes. The rubber band snaps.

“Ruy’s dead,” Tam says. Verdi roars in the distance.

Keefe tries to find a reaction, but he can’t seem to figure out what he’s supposed to feel. “How do you know?”

“Because I killed him,” he says simply. There’s a beat of silence.

“Oh.”

But Tam doesn’t seem extraordinarily bothered by this. He states it matter-of-fact, a data point. One less enemy. Ruy is dead.

“Remember when I smothered him in shadowflux and it went under his skin and he passed out and went into a coma?” The words escape him in a rush now, a flood. Keefe remembers the frostiness between Linh and her brother when he saw them again and understands that he has become the second choice because he is the only person who could understand. Besides Fitz, but Fitz was never in the Neverseen. He doesn’t know how tight their grip can be. “I’ve been feeling it this whole time. Feeling him. Not tracking, but knowing how hard it was for him to breathe. And then yesterday I… stopped feeling it. The breathing. The shadows came back into me. He’s dead, and I killed him.”

Keefe looks at him again. His mouth turns down at the corners, eyes hard and glistening with a mixture of guilt and relief. But he’s relaxed, arms propped up on his knees, thoughtfully regretful instead of grieving.

“So we’re all going a little numb, then,” Keefe says.

Tam meets his eyes. “I suppose so.”

And they’re back to silence, and Keefe turning over every cruel thing Ruy has ever said to him, the jealousy and the inflated ego, sarcastic and cocky and so, so afraid. Being banished so young would do that to a person, he supposes. Tam and Linh are lucky they got out when they could. If Alvar is Fitz in another life, then Ruy is what Tam probably would have become if they hadn’t met Sophie.

“Do you have echoes?” Tam asks suddenly, a quick need for answers.

“Like the ones Sophie and Fitz have?” Keefe asks, eyebrows furrowing as he remembers the months spent in the Healing Center, teaching Sophie Neverseen skills and watching Fitz fall for her more with every day.

“And me,” Tam reminds him quietly. “I gave them to myself, remember? To test them out. They don’t hurt me, but I feel them. Do you have any?”

Keefe hesitates, and shakes his head. “I haven’t been feeling anything unusual like that.” He hasn’t been feeling anything at all. He’s been avoiding Sophie, the only person whose emotions are strong enough to break through his numbness.

Tam lets out a breath, his shoulders slumping like he’d been holding this weight for too long.

“Is it because of the shadow you pulled out of me last week? Or is it because of my legacy?”

Tam looks at him like he’s stupid. Perhaps that’s fair. “You know the answer.”

“That wasn’t your fault,” Keefe says, but he isn’t sure he means it. “You’re forgiven. You’ve been forgiven.”

He snorts, flipping his bangs out of his eyes. His hair has grown in the month Keefe has been gone, nearly covering his eyes entirely, black strands brushing the nape of his neck. He could probably pull it back into a ponytail if he wanted. He’s gained another pair of earrings through the top of his ears, too. The rest of him is still the same, though: piercing eyes, small moles climbing his neck and temples, thick eyebrows lifted, full lips pursed in irritation. “Don’t lie to me.”

“What are you, reading my shadow or something?” Keefe glances at his shadow, rippled across the grass and petals.

“You’d feel it. I don’t have to shadow-read you to know that you’re lying, Keefe. I don’t know if anyone has ever told you this, but you kind of suck at it.”

“No one has ever told me that,” Keefe says, letting his head rest back against the trunk. The bark digs into his back, not completely uncomfortable. “I’ve always thought I was a good liar.”

“You’re a terrible liar. It’s just that people tend to believe you.”

“Because of my good looks and stunning charisma?”

Tam rolls his eyes. “Because you’re pathetic enough that any excuse is believable.”

“I resent that,” Keefe says, letting his head fall to the side. He looks at Tam and finds that he is already looking at him. They hold each other’s gazes for a moment.

“It’s okay that you don’t forgive me,” Tam says. “I wouldn’t, either.”

“You love holding grudges,” Keefe points out. “I don’t.”

“You love loving people who hold grudges,” Tam says with a hint of a grin, and Keefe wonders how long he’s known.

“I don’t like you like that,” Keefe says, stupid in his defensiveness.

“I wasn’t talking about me.”

#you can think whatever you want to think about how kam fits into this #it's very silly of them to be sooo messed up!!!!!!!! #also the fitz and linh dynamic vs the keefe and tam dynamic... how we feeling folks #summer's writing #keefe sencen #tam song #kam #keefitz #kotlc #keeper of the lost cities #alira(taor) #a lesson in running away (the art of returning)

[dreaming-of-the-end]

7: how to keep the anger down (from behind the foggy glass)

A/N: Keefe chapter! Hope y’all get this one bc it’s a little confusing <3 Special guests make physical appearances!! Comments and reblogs are better than a life free of headaches!

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Dear Dex,

I know what it's like to feel forgotten.

It's like you're trapped behind a two-way mirror, right? You fog up the glass with your breath so everyone else is just as removed from you as you are from them, but it's no use. The fog fades. The glass still doesn't break. You're invisible to them and they're out of reach to you. All your efforts to cause some damage to them are useless. Unnoticed.

Yeah, I get it.

You'll be blaming yourself for my disappearance, right? Because of Rex?

I want to tell you that it's okay to cry. You won't hear it from behind the glass, but I promise I said it. I promise I see you.

Just make sure the tears aren't because you blame yourself for me leaving. It wasn't your fault you were too scared of me (I don't care that I didn't feel your fear. You had to have been scared of me. I only detect head emotions, not heart). That was part of the reason I left, your fear (which I can say because you won't ever see this so I don't have to lie) but mostly, it was so I didn't hurt you more.

You know who your emotions match in our little group? A lot of the time, your feelings are similar to Stina's. Marella, Fitz, yes, but you and Stina have a special sort of anger brewing inside of you, and I don't think anyone else sees how deep it goes.

I think she needs that anger to keep going. I don't think you do.

Knowing that Rex was talentless, I think, made that anger worse. And, yeah, I could feel the resentment aimed at me. It's fine.

I don't blame you, and you shouldn't blame yourself.

Blame me instead, okay? I know you already do. The guilt wouldn't break me even if I were there to feel it.

The guilt is never what breaks me.

I would love to tell you I know you. I'm supposed to know everyone, aren't I? But you are terrifyingly accomplished at hiding yourself away. I told you earlier that I only read head emotions, not ones from the heart, and that's true.

I can't read you for the same reason you kissed Sophie: you are very, very good at convincing yourself to feel things that you don't want to. Your obsession with Sophie, guilt for things everyone has forgiven you for, and above all, how much you care. You care so much. It's kind of incredible, because I didn't know someone could want to make people happy so much and still believe he's a horrible person.

Take it from an Empath: you have been forgiven many times over.

I can tell you this because I haven't been forgiven, and I probably won't be for a long time, not until I'm a distant enough memory that you only remember the good times instead of the ending. Or... the endings, since I like repeating my mistakes.

The good thing about being trapped behind two-way glass is that you get to know everyone so well that nothing they do surprises you. The bad thing is that no one notices when you cry.

Thank you for trying your best with a lost cause.

Love,

Keefe

…

"You must be lost," Keefe said from his usual spot in the bleached white hallway, arms stretched out behind his head, sprawled across the bench like he owned it. This, he'd learned from his father: pretend things belong to you so that no one takes them away.

The girl shuffled back, eyeing him up and down. And he felt it, the curiosity, the nerves, a twinge of pain, all strong enough to make it through the wall that he'd built up over the past few months. Construction had begun just around the time Fitz stopped entering his mind during school, and now he was constantly reinforcing it. But her emotions were strong enough to penetrate his makeshift shield (it was cobbled together from tired debris), the only reason he said anything at all.

"How did you know?"

And there: he was hit with a wave of confusion, trepidation, interest. Things he hadn't bothered to identify in too long.

"It's the middle of session," he pointed out. "Either you're lost, or you're ditching—and clearly you're not ditching." He knew that this time; could pinpoint the way she held her wrist too carefully. Using his Empathy for something outside of class was like stretching a muscle that he hadn't realized he'd been neglecting.

"Why couldn't I be ditching?" she asked, a mystery coming unwrapped. Defensiveness, irritation, still more curiosity, bemusement.

"Are you?"

"No," she admitted. And Keefe wondered at it for a second, wondered at the ease with which his mind had slipped into numbness, into a brick wall. And the ease, even more, which this girl—Sophie Foster, Fitz had told him— had broken it down with her vibrant, swirling emotions. They felt like they were flecked with gold, little pinpricks scraping against his skin and peeling down his wall a layer at a time.

She was safe, maybe. Safer than all the disappointment and anger, Alden's pride in him, the dangerous direction Fitz's emotions had been turning, all the things he couldn't control or do anything about. All the reasons he started numbing himself in the first place.

"You're the new girl, aren't you?"

Sophie hesitated, then nodded.

He eyed her again, reminding himself to commit her to memory in case he ever needed her later. Maybe, he considered wryly to himself, he was more like his father than he wanted to admit. "I'm Keefe."

…

It's happening again.

This time, it feels more intentional. As in, Keefe doesn't exactly try to stop the numbness from leeching through his blood. Perhaps there's a half-hearted attempt to stall it; he hasn’t been going out in crowds. Submerging himself in people like that would speed up the process. Maybe he hopes it will. He isn't quite sure about his feelings on the matter.

He'd heard before now that numbness took away your ability to feel other emotions or tell them apart from your own. He hadn't known that he would stop being able to identify his own.

Glittery gold dances through his vision when he closes his eyes. That's always how he knows her, by feel more than sight. That's how he knows everyone. That's the only way he knows them.

Maybe that's why he keeps his eyes shut, trying to pinpoint the gold, the wave of emotions that always comes when she's close, getting stronger with determination and hope and fear and—

There's a knock at the door.

Keefe shoots bolt upright.

And now he knows that the hope doesn't belong to him (because he thought he already lost all of his, so how could he be convinced he had any left?) because that's her knock, the one he knows, the one he's been able to memorize over the years of her barging into places she shouldn’t be.

As soon as he opens the door, she’s throwing her arms around him and burying her face in his shoulder, and he catches her like the sand catches an anchor. It hurts to breathe as her shoulders shake a little, and he sees Tam and Dex waiting behind her through blurred eyes.

So he slips back into who they expect him to be.

(I’m happy to see you, Foster, really, but I do need to breathe—)

Sophie lets him go and to his surprise, Dex replaces her, bony elbows digging into his sides in a comforting weight.

"Sorry," he says in a rush, like Keefe knew he would. "I never meant for you to leave. I thought we could find something." But something in him is stretched, desperate. Keefe squeezes him tightly and lets him go, raising an eyebrow at Tam in teasing expectation. He makes a sarcastic face and shakes his head.

But, later, after explanations, Tam’s gentle as he removes the tracker. His gaze is soft, accusation blunted with relief as the shadowflux drops into the empty waterbottle and disappears into the trash.

Maybe that’s part of why Keefe decides to come back. It’s the wanting, the loneliness, the empty room, the numbness (Sophie chases it away with her vivid feeling), and it’s the selfishness that makes him leave with them. He is always selfish.

So Keefe abandons the note and the letter sitting next to each other on the couch, pen rolling away into the cushions. And he tries; he really tries to forget about them.

The one in his messy, slanting handwriting, riddled with spelling mistakes and crossed-off words where he rethought himself even though Fitz wouldn't be seeing it, even though none of them would be reading the letters he'd written for each of them over the course of the month. He’d finished Dex’s earlier and only now managed to get through everyone else’s, all the ones he’d left for last because they were the hardest to figure out.

And the other paper, in an elegant, refined script. Signed in print and in cursive, in English instead of the Enlightened Language because of course she would know that he's a polyglot now.

The one signed,

Mom

#summer's writing #yippee now we're going plot things!! hooray!!!! #alira(taor) #a lesson in running away (the art of returning) #kotlc #keeper of the lost cities #keefitz #keefe sencen #sophie foster #tam song #dex dizznee #angst #lowkey angst with a happy ending in this one eh? #are you proud of me #kotlc fic #kotlc writing #chapter seven #letter writing trope

[dreaming-of-the-end]

9: the right way to be proud (and hate me all the same)

A/N: Keefe chapter! in which he is silly (but that’s all of them!) PLEASE please please reblog and/or comment if you like!!

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Dear Alden,

I wish I could call you dad, but there are a few reasons why I can't.

1: Real fathers don't tell you they're proud of you for being less than perfect.

2: You've hurt me more than Fintan ever could. Weird, right? But that's what a father is supposed to do. You're supposed to be worse than the villains.

3: You've loved me more than my mother was supposed to. I don't want to admit that hating me is genetic.

But it is. Hating me runs in the family, and you were exempt from that disease on account of being a Vacker.

Your pride in me is something I have never been able to match up with who I am. If I am not yours, why are you proud of me? What right do I have to take those shreds away from Fitz, away from Biana? You owe me nothing. I owe you everything.

The first time you told me you were proud of me, my father's hand was around my wrist. And he didn't feel excitement or happiness or gratitude, he felt confusion.

I'd never heard those words with my name where Fitz's was supposed to be. Something didn't quite match. Something came out wrong, and I think it was me.

You spent years looking for Sophie, hoping to find her because of what you did to Prentice— ruining his life, that is. But you never found her because she came out wrong too, didn't she? Not quite human, not quite elven. Not like what you know.

Sophie was something you had to learn. Someone you had to teach yourself about.

But you assumed that I was straight out of the textbook definition. Look for Keefe in a dictionary and I come up. Definable. Noteworthy. Disaster.

Did you know that Keefe means loved in some human languages? Being a polyglot means that I understand every language, but I don't understand a world where my name means loveable. Worthy of being cared for.

That's not a father's job, anyway. Your job is to break me down to your level and try to repair the damage when you've pieced your mind back together. Your job is to shout and shout and shout and wait for the words to get through to me. Your job is to find me where I've hidden myself and bring me back into the burning sunlight.

Find me, Alden; find who I am, what I am, what I've kept from you. Why aren't you looking? Why do you never see? I've hidden myself away. You haven't found me yet. You're not my dad.

You love learning secrets no one was supposed to tell. Here's one of mine:

You gave me the idea to run away.

I was thinking about Fitz. And I was thinking about how we met. And why we became friends. It's because no one knew where he was. He was mysterious. Gone all the time. Gone to look for Sophie in the Forbidden Cities.

Do you feel your mind shattering the more you read? I think you're better off not reading this, but that's not why I won't send it.

It's because you never tried to peel back my layers. It's because my hiding spot was too good, it's because my head records every word and plays them in a disordered line, it's because neither of us has fixed our stupid broken matching heads yet. It's because you accepted me as who I was instead of who I was throwing at you, over and over, desperate to break the glass between us. Too bad that part of me is dead now.

I think you killed him.

I cried at your planting. Sometimes I regret it.

Love,

Keefe

…

Fitz isn't there the next morning when the rest of the group comes to see if it's true that he's back.

Biana gets there first: he knows it's her by how tightly she squeezes him, crushing them together. Her hair tickles his chin, bracelets digging into his back, but it's hard for Keefe to care, to breathe as she whispers, "Missed you."

"Missed you too," Keefe says softly, and Biana releases him. Her expression switches quickly from easy relief to a hesitant question. "And I've already seen Fitz," he adds, watching her eyebrows lift.

But she steps back.

"A lot has happened since you left," Tam puts in, barbed and accusatory. Not since you've been gone. Since you left.

Sophie catches it too, forehead wrinkling. She tugs out an eyelash, and Keefe winces. "Sorry about that, by the way."

They accept his apology a bit easier than Fitz did. Then, none of them know he doesn't mean it, besides Sophie, who was there last night. Not even Biana. They don't know the tug, the pull and push of anywhere but here that keeps him running, keeps him lying, keeps him leaving everyone behind. They don't know the desperate need for change, the roiling fear, the tumbling guilt that mixes with his blood and sets it itching in his veins.

Tam and Linh probably know it least of all. They run for need rather than want. He's seen their backpacks that pack for quick escape, and he's also seen the drawers they've filled since. They want a home. He wants to leave his forever. No wonder Tam hates him. The only part of him he’s ever known has been betrayal, from either side of whatever dynamic they have made for themselves.

Even now, he feels it: the monotony of his days here. Trying for solutions and knowing that all will fail. The cycle that he's found himself drawn back into against his will. This is why Fitz found him lying when he said he wanted to come back.

Keefe feels a chill set over him, and Tam's shadowy voice whispers: Keefe, we're going to have to talk sometime soon.

This is the worst part of going numb, a new kind of blindness. As he meets Tam's eyes, he can't tell whether his calm is genuine or not. He's gotten out of practice at reading expression before emotion, and he can't match them up anymore.

But he nods.

And he thinks of the letters he has stacked up, one for each of his closest friends. The ones he thought he would never have the chance to give to them because he'd never see them again.

It's worse now. Because now he has to choose to keep them piled away, written and unopened, addressed to him and him only.

Dear Biana, he thinks as she ruffles his hair and he ducks with a yelp. Sorry for wanting to forget you again. I hope I'm forgiven for coming back.

#summer's writing #alira(taor) #a lesson in running away (the art of returning) #keefe sencen #keefitz #biana vacker #alden vacker #sophie foster #tam song #keeper of the lost cities #kotlc #letter writing trope #angst #kotlc writing #kotlc fic #keefe angst

[dreaming-of-the-end]

17: of being made from stone (and learning to let it crumble)

A/N: the chapter you’ve all been waiting for! Please comment/reblog if you like <3 New chapters on Sundays and Thursdays! only a few left 👀

Warnings: swearing... there’s a knife that makes an appearence for like two seconds

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Dear Fitz,

This is not an apology.

Fuck. Fuck this. Fuck you.

…

Keefe opens the door too quickly, alight with an excitement he can’t name, and Fitz jumps from his seat with a curse.

He comes to an immediate halt. “Fitz, why the fuck are you holding a knife?”

Fitz’s hand clenches, flexes, and drops it. The polished dagger lands softly on the navy blue carpet, and when he looks at him, it’s with confusion. Maybe a little relief.

“It’s you.”

“Yeah, it is. Who did you think it would be?”

Fitz shifts on his feet. He looks a little like he did when Keefe first came back; not unsure, not exactly angry, but colder. Distant, maybe. “I just wasn’t expecting you.” His face creases in fear for a split second, but Keefe doesn’t think it’s aimed at him.

“Hey,” he says a little softer, and he takes a step closer. Fitz moves back, away from him, shoulders tensing. “What happened?”

His nostrils flare, but he doesn’t say anything. He just gets colder, farther away.

Keefe wishes he could still feel. He’d give a lot to decipher the stony look on Fitz’s face.

But he can’t. So he sits down on the bed.

Fitz stays standing, but he takes a deep breath. And then he says, “What was it like in the human world?”

Keefe studies him for a second. “You’ve been there. More than I have, probably.”

“Yeah, but as an outsider.” Fitz is acting like an outsider now. Does he realize it? Does he see the wall that’s been built between the two, reinforced by every day (every minute) apart? “You lived there. I was just… a visitor.”

“If I’m going to tell you, you have to sit next to me,” Keefe says, letting a grin spring to his face at Fit’z eyeroll. But he does come, sitting far enough away that he wants to scoot closer but knows he’s testing his luck. It doesn’t matter how he feels, anyway. He’s seen how Sophie and Fitz act together. Cognates, he knows, share a trust bond— something he and Fitz do not have. Something they haven’t had in a long time.

Keefe puts on a storytelling voice and gestures wide with his hands like he’s ready to tell an epic tale, even if it’s not that epic at all. “I rode a whale to the top of a mountain, jumped into an active volcano, became the Queen of England, and, most important of all… tried human food!” He drops the fancy voice a moment later. “It’s really good, actually. They have this thing, pasta and the gnomes don’t grow anything like it. There’s a lot of meat everywhere, but it’s pretty easy to avoid. Remember the gelato we got that one time?”

Fitz smiles. “Batman shirt. I remember.”

Keefe does remember. Remembers with perfect clarity how Fitz looked in his t-shirt with his arms above his head, brown skin lit up in the sun, cool and confident and still flirting with Sophie. But— shit. He’d looked good that day. Biana had laughed at him when he couldn’t stop staring. Of course she’d known even then.

“Talking?” Fitz prompts, and he laughs and continues.

“I read—by choice, mind you. They always told us humans are stupid, but they write some cool shit. And the libraries were quiet. Good place to get away from any—” he hesitates— “emotions that didn’t belong to me.” They were also a good place to write his letters. “There were cafes, too. Like the ones in Atlantis, the cute shop we went to that one time with Biana and Maruca.”

“Was that in Level One?”

“I think so. Yes.”

“We’d only just become friends then, right?” Fitz had moved closer while he spoke, looking at him with a focused gaze.

“About a year before, yeah. Why?”

“Just wondering.” He sits back and watches him more. Keefe wants to figure him out but he can’t possibly understand how.

“I tried more human biscuits, too. You wouldn’t believe how many ways they’ve found to sell the same things in different packaging. The packaging is so shiny, too. I opened a package of it and it was all silver inside and I carried it around in my pocket because it was so pretty.”

“I did that, too,” Fitz says. “I found stones and cans and trash in the road and picked it up to take with me.” He turns to the side and points over at his desk drawer. “It’s all in there. I think there’s an umbrella, too.”

Keefe laughs. “You brought a full umbrella back?”

“And a few movie posters. Normal things to carry around, you know.” Fitz grins, a full grin, and Keefe wants to kiss him so badly it hurts.

“You’re always normal, of course.”

���Compared to you, yes,” he says. “I, for instance, can’t identify a gulon by the smell alone.”

“That’s just my special skill!” Keefe protests, and Fitz laughs. “Come on, Alina could probably do that too with all the gulons I’ve stuffed in her desk—another skill, by the way, those are hard to carry around and they don’t like desk drawers.”

“Who would’ve figured?”

“Not me!” Keefe announces, and he laughs again, so hard the bed shakes a little with it, and he wants to keep making jokes forever.

…

You were sweet. Sweet in a sour, salty, bitter world. Sweet the way that turns your stomach into mush, sweet the way that keeps you wanting more, sweet the way that poison frogs are bright colors so predators know not to eat them. Dangerous sweet. Wicked sweet. Terrifying sweet. You scared me, is what I’m trying to say.

…

But Fitz says, “Wait. You were telling me about the human world,” so Keefe continues.

“I stayed in a hotel in London. The fanciest one they had and it was made of stone and metal instead of crystal. I stayed in a suite on the top floor and walked around the city and talked to people sometimes and went a little numb.” He’s quiet for a moment. “The parks are beautiful, even though you can’t see the stars at night.”

“You can in some places,” Fitz says softly. “You can see them in the mountains. Or where there aren’t that many people. And they really appreciate them there. I think we spend so much time mapping them and bottling them that we don’t see how beautiful they are.” He’s still looking. Keefe wants him to stop and he wants him to continue. His eyes glimmer in the warm lights.

“Fitz, what’s wrong?” he asks softly.

His face freezes over, and he looks away.

“Come on,” Keefe says, frustrated. “I’ve told you everything, haven’t I? I’ve cried in your goddamn arms!”

Fitz laughs. Laughs. His eyes crinkle and his cheeks lift and his teeth glint and it’s far too fake for him to bear. “Keefe, you know I’m not like that.”

“I wish you were!” Keefe stands from the bed and lets Fitz stare at him, shocked and a little insulted. He scrubs at his face with his hands and lets them tangle in his hair. “God, I wish you shared something. You don’t have to tell me your deepest darkest secrets, dammit, but I’d like to know— maybe who the fuck you are!”

“Of course you don’t know,” Fitz says bitterly. “Of course you don’t know me.”

“Of course I don’t know you!” Keefe cries. “Because you don’t tell me shit! I barely know your favorite color! You’re always just so— perfect— the golden boy— Dex was right, wasn’t he? You’re just so put-together, so talented, and god forbid you let yourself slip and admit to some goddamned emotion for once in your life—”

“I’m not the numb one!” Fitz shouts, and Keefe feels his eyes well up with hot tears.

“You could fucking fool me!”

They’re both standing now, fists clenched at their sides. Fitz’s face is tinged red, eyebrows drawn in a line across his forehead.

“Why do you just have to be so fucking perfect all the time?” Keefe’s tears threaten to spill over and he wills them to stay in his eyes with all his might, so hard that his nails dig into his skin. “Perfect grades, perfect life, perfect fucking girlfriend—”

“Don't you think I'm crumbling too?” Fitz cries back, his lower lip trembling slightly. “Don’t you think I know what it feels like to break?”

Keefe blazes past him. “You just do everything right, don’t you. You know exactly what to say, what to do, to convince them you’re all okay! Everything’s normal! Well, you can’t fool me! I don’t know shit about you but I know that everything’s fucked and you can’t fix it this time! You can’t fix anything!”

“Figure out yourself before you come after me—” he starts, but Keefe doesn’t let him finish, throwing his hands up in the air.

“Damn it, you even confessed to Sophie before me!”

“I never wanted to confess to Sophie!" Fitz shouts, hands clenching and unclenching, brown skin darkening in concentrated spots on his cheekbones. "If I'm so perfect all the time, how come I've never been able to confess to you?"

Keefe’s breath stutters in his chest, but the words don’t stop slamming into his chest at the speed of sound, caving in his ribcage until all he can manage is a choked, “What?”

Fitz deflates. He looks so, so scared, but exhausted. He runs a hand through his hair and Keefe thinks of the millions of times he’s watched him do this, a movement so familiar to him that he barely registers it. Hello, Keefe might introduce him. This is Fitz, and he runs his hands through his hair when he’s too exasperated to figure himself out. And, he adds as an afterthought, I’m Keefe, and I don’t know how to deal with myself either.

“Damnit, Keefe,” Fitz says. “I’m in fucking love with you.”

…

I'm going to leave you behind. I meant to leave my heart behind, but sewing it to Sophie's sleeve left needles in my stomach instead of butterflies.

…

He hasn’t breathed in thirty seconds, the time counted by grains of sand in an hourglass.

It’s supposed to be sweet.

Keefe supposes that he’d imagined this moment a million times, and every time he’d imagined it sweet.

What had he written to Sophie?

Fitz is like honey. I feel my feelings dripping down my spine, catching in my hair and tangling it with liquid fingers, gilding my vision.

Honey isn’t supposed to be filled with broken glass. But he supposed that’s how the two of them work: shattered, clashing against each other to smooth their edges.

“Say something,” Fitz says, his voice breaking, eyes creasing with regret. Like he’s already expecting the disappointment of a rejection.

…

This is not an apology.

…

“What do you want me to say? Something as perfect as you try to be?” Keefe asks softly, and as Fitz takes a step back he takes one forward. “That when I look to the clouds I think of you? That the sound of your voice is the only music I ever need to hear? That I could pluck a star from the skies and it still wouldn’t be as bright as your smile?”

Fitz’s lips part ever so slightly, and Keefe takes another step. This time, he stays still.

“Or maybe you want to hear more about the Forbidden Cities. Here: I missed you and hated you there because you were part of the reason I left. I wrote letters to everyone including you but you won’t ever see yours because it’s about how much I can’t stand being away from you and can’t stand it when you’re near me. I ripped it apart and threw it away. I’ve been dreaming of you since we were twelve years old.”

He takes another step, and Fitz meets him in the middle with it. Keefe brings his hands to his cheeks, cupping them gently, bringing them closer. “Or maybe,” he breathes, and Fitz closes his eyes. “You want me to say that I love you.”

Fitz’s fingers go into Keefe’s freshly bleached hair. Their noses bump, breath ghosting over lips, and suddenly he feels again, the forest-green wave of excitement and fear and yearning spreading over him until he’s full to bursting. “Do you?” Fitz asks softly. “Love me?”

Keefe laughs, breathless. “Yes.”

"Oh," Fitz says, and kisses him.

It’s fierce and angry, the only way they know how to be. His face is feather-soft and bumpy beneath his fingers as he comes closer, as Fitz’s fingers tangle in his hair, as their hearts match rhythms in their chests. He’s heating up, a teakettle, asphalt in the sun, a boy in stupid love with the stupidest boy he’s ever known besides himself.

...

What's wrong with me?

...

They turn inside out and lose themselves in their new skins.

#summer's writing #alira(taor) #a lesson in running away (the art of returning) #keefitz #keefe sencen #fitz vacker #angst #keeper of the lost cities #keefexfitz #kotlc #kotlc fic #kotlc writing #angst with a happy ending #<- ACCURATE THIS TIME!!! won't be in like one more chapter but for now it is!! #oh also if u need clarification. the crossed out bits are the letter keefe started writing to fitz in the human world #he tore up the letter and flushed it maybe. use ur imagination. point is he never finished it <3

[dreaming-of-the-end]

4: a lesson in putting violence on a pedestal

A/N: Chapter four! Happy cognate inquisition everyone <3 Fitz pov my beloved

TW: fire mention

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Tags:  @an-ungraceful-swan @seulgibabes @gay-otlc @fruity-fintan-fortythree @synonymroll648 @bookwyrminspiration @skylilac @song-tam @gaslight-gaetkeep-gayboss @abubble125 @rainy-nights-and-fairy-lights @kamikothe1and0lny @arsonistblue @daphneisntreal @lemon-girl-in-devil-town @istanrandomfandoms @sunset-telepath

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.

#summer's writing #do you like the sokeefitz snippets everyone... im being very nice #fitz vacker #keefe sencen #alvar vacker #keefitz #sophie foster #fitz & alvar #kotlc #keeper of the lost cities #kotlc writing #kotlc fic #angst #alira(taor) #a lesson in running away (the art of returning)

[dreaming-of-the-end]

8: a lesson in failures and new endings

A/N: Fitz chapter!! you’ve been waiting for this one im sure. PLEASE please please reblog and/or comment if you like!!

Links: [ao3] [wattpad] [masterpost] [previous chapter] [next chapter]  

Tags: @an-ungraceful-swan @seulgibabes @gay-otlc @fruityfintanfortythree @synonymroll648 @bookwyrminspiration @skylilac @song-tam @gaslight-gaetkeep-gayboss @abubble125 @rainy-nights-and-fairy-lights @kamikothe1and0lny @arsonistblue @daphneisntreal @lemon-girl-in-devil-town @istanrandomfandoms @sunset-telepath

Fitz knows jealousy better than he knows himself.

For example, he wishes his mind would finally break, just as proof that he still knows how to feel.

Maybe for once, he could be the one whose mind needs to be saved from its own darkness. Its own guilt. He doesn't remember how it feels, that regret, that shame.

But he knows his dreams. They repeat every night, and maybe they are the part of himself that remains, that hasn't been torn away.

His dreams tell him Sophie understands, Alden makes his own mistakes, Della cups his face and tells him it will all be okay, Biana doesn't need to know how tears feel on her face, Keefe never knows peace, his room opens to the sky and it rains down on him daily, Alvar is dead and he killed him.

They are happy dreams.

…

It's nearly midnight when Sophie sends her transmission, and it's five minutes later that Fitz stumbles into Havenfield, hair still mussed from several unsuccessful attempts at sleep. He didn't have time to fix it, nor time to get dressed beyond pulling on a shirt to go with his pajama pants.

So it's with eyes muddled with exhaustion that he sees him again: speaking to Sophie in a soft voice, heads bent together in collaboration like nothing has changed, like he didn't leave them all again and not even have the decency to write him a half-assed note. Like they haven't been friends for so long that imagining their lives apart keeps Fitz awake at night.

And he's angry.

Of course he's angry. Nevermind that Sophie is forgiving, nevermind that Keefe is a part of who he is, nevermind that they shaped each other with warm hands into who they are today so Fitz is as much to blame for this as Keefe himself.

"He's gone?" And a slight pause. Barely a moment to digest the fact that he'd hardly died and come back before he was lost again. Barely a moment, because they all knew it was going to happen anyway. Because they couldn't possibly expect anything better. "Typical."

Fitz is back where he was when he first heard Keefe had run away again. Let him stay there. "Hey!" he shouts, and Keefe's head shoots up, that pained expression back on his face. So he'd been part of what he'd been trying to avoid.

Asshole.

Fitz starts jogging towards them, remembering his shoeless feet only as his socks sink into the soft soil and he bites back a wince. "Hey!"

Sophie steps back, and he realizes for a startling moment that he knows her well enough to read her even in the dusk when he can hardly make out her nose. She's nervous, but curious. She will let him say whatever he needs to.

"Hey, Fitz," Keefe says softly. He never says his name. Not like that.

"Why'd you come back?" Fitz reaches them too quickly, says what he's thinking before he's decided to let the words leave his mouth. "Why didn't you stay there?"

Keefe's eyebrows push together. "Because Sophie found me."

"And because I wanted to," Keefe adds, and Fitz seizes his wrist in both hands. Keefe's pulse rushes beneath his fingers, warm and anxious.

"Because she found you," Fitz says, a breath escaping him, heart thrumming too fast in his veins. Keefe's eyes narrow like he can feel the fluttering heartbeats, the remains of the pillow Fitz exploded nearly a month ago when he thought he'd been forgotten. His empathy has never seemed more like a curse.

"Say that again," Fitz demands.

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 has 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.

#summer's writing #kotlc #keeper of the lost cities #alira(taor) #a lesson in running away (the art of returning) #keefitz #keefe sencen #fitz vacker #alvar vacker #sophie foster #fitz&alvar #kotlc writing #kotlc fic

[dreaming-of-the-end]

18: a lesson in change, and stopping it before it goes too far

A/N: shorter chapter <3 in which they talk or whatever. Please comment/reblog if you like <3 New chapters  on Sundays and Thursdays! only a few left 👀

Warnings: mentions of blood/knife/killing

Links: [ao3] [wattpad] [masterpost] [previous chapter] [next chapter] 

Tags: @an-ungraceful-swan @likefolksong @gay-otlc @fruityfintanfortythree @synonymroll648 @bookwyrminspiration @skylilac @song-tam @gaslight-gaetkeep-gayboss @abubakr0567 @raeny-nights-and-faery-lights  @kamikothe1and0lny @arsonistblue @daphneishere @lemon-girl-in-devil-town @istanrandomfandoms @sunset-telepath  @s0larismoon

Keefe kisses like he’s trying to kill him. And he might succeed, fingers tracing his jaw and cheekbones, pinkies grazing his throat. His heart speeds, skips beats like an inexperienced drummer playing a bad rhythm. His leg aches as he takes a step even closer, echoes lunging through his body. Fitz’s heart burns in his chest like it’s ready to explode. It wouldn’t be the worst way to die.

No worse than driving a dagger through a throat and feeling blood spray across your face.

“Hey—hey,” Keefe murmurs against his lips, pulling away and searching his eyes. He’s blurry, and Fitz realizes with a start that warm tears trickle down his cheeks and drip off his chin.

“Fitz,” Keefe says, like he’s invoking some sort of god. His face fractures and reforms as he blinks and his eyes well up again.

“Sorry,” he mumbles, wiping his eyes, but that only reminds him of how he wiped his hands on Alvar’s tunic after killing him, and a bit of the stone comes back against his will, calming down the echoes in his heart. It’s not really fair, because Fitz has only lived with this realization (of love, that is) for a few minutes and his brother shouldn’t be ruining everything again. Shouldn’t still be ruining him, because he’s supposed to be fixed. Killing him was supposed to make everything better.

“I killed Alvar,” he says, and Keefe sucks in a breath. But he doesn’t let him go. “I— today. Before you came over. I killed him and I wiped the blood on his tunic and I washed the knife in the bathroom sink and wiped it off with toilet paper. I cleaned my brother’s blood up with toilet paper, Keefe.”

Keefe removes Fitz’s hands from his neck where they rest and holds them in front of him. They’re scrubbed clean, except for crusts of dried blood under his nails. “You missed a spot,” he says quietly, and Fitz feels his face crumble at the mistake. “Why did you do it?”

“He was going to kill Tam,” Fitz answers immediately. “I did it to— to save Tam.”

“Why would he want to kill Tam?” Keefe asks, before the pieces click and he breathes, “Oh. You told him about Ruy.”

“If you want to ask me why I did it, I don’t know.” Fitz imagines that he is the statue of a prince, raised high above the masses of morality and reasoning. But the tears keep falling and his voice keeps breaking. Princes molded from gold aren’t supposed to cry, and they aren’t supposed to lie. “I just—I think—I wanted to—”

“What did you want?” Keefe traces Fitz’s palms with his thumbs and a shiver goes down his spine. He can’t tell if there’s disapproval or understanding hidden in his eyes.

He should be the one to understand, the only one who possibly could. Maybe Sophie wouldn’t, or Biana, or Linh, but Keefe is supposed to get it. He’s supposed to be numb too.

“I wanted… I wanted to protect Tam. And my family. Protect everyone.” He’s a shield thrown in the way of the truly important people, like he’d been in Exile when that arthropleura had stabbed him in his stomach. He’d doubled over and felt the venom sing through his veins and known that Sophie was safe from everyone else’s mistake.

“Liar.” Keefe clings to his hands like a lifeline.

Or like he’s reading his emotions.

How far does the numbness reach? How strong are his walls?

“Liar,” Alvar had said. “Why are you killing me?”

Fitz closes his eyes so tightly it hurts and watches his life flash by.

“I wanted to hurt him,” he says softly. Set him on fire like he’d watched Dex and Sophie and Kenric burn, poison him like he’d allowed the gnomes to wither, slash him open like he’d done when he set those newborn trolls free to wreak havoc. Alvar killed Calla. Alvar killed Umber. Alvar gave Biana her scars, kidnapped Wylie, Tam, Sophie, and Dex, took Keefe away from him. “I wanted him to feel what he did to me.”

Keefe nods and drops his hands, and Fitz feels the immediate lack of him, a phantom pain. “Do you regret it?”

The tears have stopped. He considers this for a moment. “No. I don’t regret it. I would do it again if I had the chance. I wish I could do it again.”

“So you’ve discovered it,” Keefe says, like he’s come to an epiphany that Fitz just has to hear. He rubs his fingers together, a familiar tic that he’d stopped doing years ago. “You’ve discovered the way to feel no guilt.”

Fitz wants to laugh. Of course he’s guilty. Of course his mind is close to broken over this. The last of Alvar’s blood swirling away as Fitz flushed the fucking toilet, dying the water pink, and he’s not guilty? Any moment, he waits to feel a pressure in his head and the fracture of his memories. Maybe he’ll faint as Alden had, but be locked up in Exile instead of the accommodations his father got. His father, the hero, a tortured soul. Fitz, a murderer, deserving of guilt. Deserving of regret when he doesn’t feel any at all.

He doesn’t feel any at all.

“If you want something hard enough,” Keefe tells him. “Then you will do whatever you need to achieve it.”

“Then why is Fintan like that?” Fitz challenges. “Because he didn’t want to burn down Oblivimyre? He didn’t want Kenric to die?”

“It wasn’t that,” Keefe says. “I’ve spent more time with him. It was the first time, when he killed his friends, his students with Everblaze. He’s broken, at least a little bit. But Brant didn’t want to kill Jolie. And Alden didn’t want Prentice to break. And you wanted your brother to die.”

Fitz can’t look at him anymore. He looks instead at the window, the glaring sun burning into his retinas until he can’t see at all. If he can’t see anymore, then the mirror won’t betray him and show him who he is.

“Yeah,” he says softly. “I wanted him to die.”

“Then…” Keefe grabs his hand again, and Fitz stares at it: chipped pink polish versus his own nails bitten nearly to the quick, slender fingers belonging to a painter and all the scars Fitz’s accumulated over the months of training and the years since Sophie arrived, the fresh split on his knuckles where he’d hit Alvar too hard (again), pale against brown. “Then… it’s good that you killed him.” Fitz meets his eyes, and he adds, “Sometimes, not doing anything is worse.”

“Is that why you ran away?”

“Yes.”

They’re both quiet for a moment.

“Since we’re telling the truth…” Keefe starts, and Fitz shoots him a glance, already dreading his next words. He’s waiting for rejection, maybe. But instead: “I’ve been getting letters from my mom. And my dad has, too.”

“What?” Fitz asks in alarm, flicking through the reasons she could be after him (legacy, changes, abilities) before settling on the most important question: “She knows where you are?”

Keefe gets this stupid dopey expression, like he should be scuffing his shoe on the ground with his hands in his pockets and sending dirt flying. “Tam removed the shadow tracker, and the notes stopped coming, but then today I got a new one.”

“So she knows where you are,” Fitz repeats.

“She won’t come after me,” Keefe says, so confident and reassuring like he has the brain cells to back it up.

“How the hell do you know?”

“Because she wants me to come to her.”

It takes a few moments for the words to register. “Did she say that?”

“Well, she wrote it.”

“Are you going to go?”

“Sure,” he says, matter-of-fact, but there’s a miserable undercurrent in the words. Keefe attempts a grin. “I’m glad we got this resolution, though. Before—you know.”

“Before you die? Before your mom kills you?” Fitz asks in disbelief. He wants to pinch himself, or punch someone—he can’t believe he kissed this guy a few minutes previously. Is stupid contagious?

“She won’t kill me,” Keefe tells him, like that’s any reassurance. “Just—y’know, use me. She needs me for her plan.” Catching the look on Fitz’s face: “Either I do this, or all of you die. She can get anywhere she wants, you realize.”

“And if she makes you kill us? Which you could, with your new ability,” Fitz points out. Keefe shifts on his feet. His finger taps errantly on his leg. “What if she sends you after Sophie?”

“Fitz, I’ve thought this through,” he says, even though he clearly hasn’t because Fitz can think of a million reasons why he shouldn’t do this off the top of his head. “I’d rather lose myself than lose you. She can’t force me into anything.”

“And she won’t,” Fitz says, leaving no room for argument. Keefe opens his mouth anyway—of course he does— and Fitz presses his finger over it to silence him. “Because I’m coming with you.”

#kind of a boring in-between chapter LMAO #i know fitz vacker better than anyone don't even argue #summer's writing #alira(taor) #a lesson in running away (the art of returning) #keefitz #keefe sencen #fitz vacker #kotlc #keeper of the lost cities #kotlc writing #kotlc fic #angst

[dreaming-of-the-end]

3: to throw yourself into the wind (and trust that it will catch you)

A/N: Chapter three! Keefe pov, and comments fuel me more than all the mallowmelt in the world <3

Links: [ao3] [wattpad] [masterpost] [previous chapter] [next chapter]

Tags: @an-ungraceful-swan @seulgibabes @gay-otlc @fruity-fintan-fortythree @synonymroll648 @bookwyrminspiration @skylilac @song-tam @gaslight-gaetkeep-gayboss @abubble125 @rainy-nights-and-fairy-lights @kamikothe1and0lny @arsonistblue @daphneisntreal @lemon-girl-in-devil-town @istanrandomfandoms

Dear Della,

I want to be effortless like you.

I want to know how you're the perfect blueprint of a Vacker when you weren't born as one, when it's still so hard for me to know what to do and how to act, when I've never fully fit into the Vacker image but you are a puzzle piece slotting into place next to Alden in family portraits.

They've built you up block by block to be a Vacker. Or maybe you were born that way, with that influence. With that power. Even if no one knew about you before you married Alden. Makes me think that your parents were talentless and you had to learn how to be powerful. Maybe you have a secret twin. Or you're the youngest of seven brothers.

Something, anything, that will make me think I can be like you someday.

Don't we all want to marry a Vacker?

When I was younger, I thought it was universal. To love the idea of you guys. To love the real version of you, too. The perfection, the routine, the expectations that no one has any trouble living up to.

Would you fall into the wind and trust it to carry you safely to the ground? I wouldn't, but I suppose for you, even the laws of nature would bend themselves to keep you happy.

See, that's what I want to be.

Not powerful. Not beautiful. Maybe not even a Vacker.

Happy. I want to be happy.

(this letter is made up of wants, isn't it? i feel like a child)

So why am I running away again? (Again, again, again.)

Bring me back before my mother does, Della. Please find me. You're the only one I want to see. I want you to tell me everything's all right. That I can be the kid and you can be the adult. That's the way it's supposed to be.

The Neverseen is made up of adults. I don't think it's fair that we're supposed to be as good as they are when the worst thing I did before joining them was ditch class and lie and lie and lie.

I think you're the one person I've lied to only once. But it was the same one, over and over again.

I'm not fine, Della. I want to fix my past lies so now you aren't left with a letter full of them left for someone that's not you.

I want to stop lying. But sometimes I think about what you'd look like if I told you the truth (i'm not okay, i'm not okay, i'm not okay) and now I can't even think about you anymore.

Because every time, I see pinched brows and tightened lips and disappointment drawn into every line on your face and sadness rimming your eyes without tears. You know yourself well enough that you don't need to cry.

I've never hated loving you. I think you're the only one I will always regret leaving.

There will always be moments where I convince myself that I did the right thing because Fitz is set in his ways, because Sophie is free now, because it keeps Biana safer, and I'll miss them but I can live with it but you? You shaped me into who I wanted to be and didn't let the anger settle when I went back to who I had always been. You gave me the blueprint and let me scribble it out to make my own.

Thank you, is what I'm trying to say.

Love,

Keefe

...

Keefe stands from the plush chair the hotel room had come with, part of the amenities package he'd been sold on when asking where to go. Great for somewhere private! the man who cheerfully took his payment to buy the hotel room under his name had said. They won't ask questions about coming or going.

He supposes Sophie has always been right about what liars humans are. She didn't quite understand that elves were worse because they had to pretend they weren't lying. Humans didn't seem to try to hide their deceit.

Keefe also didn't ask questions about how the man knew about this place. He couldn't afford to lose his contact when he was the only one around that pawn shop whose emotions matched his words.

Either way, it suits him well enough. The room is larger than his room in Candleshade, more of a suite than a bedroom, complete with a bathroom, sitting area, kitchen table, and chandelier casting a soft glow over the room. Currently, it's littered with scraps of paper and discarded human clothing that he'd bought during an impulse trip to a mall.

Like he's trying to fit into a world that doesn't know he exists.

Like part of him is still invisible.

Still, despite the constant bombardment of human emotions, the loneliness, the fear that the Neverseen will find him, and the constant danger of losing control of his voice... there's a pressure lifted from his lungs.

He only realized as he left the Lost Cities that he hadn't taken a full breath since waking up from that coma in the Healing Center, perhaps since he'd found out his mother had betrayed everything he thought he stood for. Like basic human decency.

Here, Keefe can inhale and hold the smoggy London air in his lungs for as long as he wants. There isn't a time limit anymore.

This might have been the best decision he's ever made.

Not because it keeps them safe. Not for Sophie.

For him. Someone he has never thought deserved some kind of freedom like this.

Keefe returns to his desk and runs a hand over the note waiting there, a wry smile crossing his face.

...

When they were 12 years, Keefe told Fitz he was going to marry him.

Perhaps he didn't plan it. Perhaps it just slipped out.

That's what he tells himself, four years later at sixteen and seventeen when they both know better than to indulge in fantasies. A lapse in judgment. Another impulse, just words that don't mean anything.

I'm going to marry you someday. All matter-of-fact and naive. Uninformed, is what Keefe would call it today. Shouldn't he know that it doesn't work like that? Shouldn't he know not to lie?

They never spoke about it beyond that day, but Keefe still wonders if Fitz thinks that's all it was. Words, words, words, packed with a punch but no strength to back it up, filled with bitter sugar and glazed with poison sweetness. Words words words and they all spin in his head, in this quiet silent room that he can't break open and reform so he keeps thinking of things he wishes he could forget.

Things like:

"Don't say that," Fitz whispered urgently, clapping a rough hand over Keefe's mouth and glancing around furtively, as if anyone could possibly hear them through the expanse of Everglen.

Keefe dragged his hand away, warm fingers wrapped around his for a moment before Fitz snatched his back. "Why not?"

Fitz stared at him, puzzled and perhaps a tad guilty. At twelve years old, he already knew who he was supposed to be. "Because it's not true."

#summer's writing #keefitz #keefe sencen #fitz vacker #kotlc #keeper of the lost cities #a lesson in running away (the art of returning) #keefitz longfic #kotlc writing #kotlc fanfic #angst without a happy ending #letter writing trope #alira(taor)