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 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 moment.

"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.