"I dream of him, you know," Biana says, her voice small enough to hurt. Tentative enough for him to know who she's talking about. "Do you?"

"I haven't dreamed in a while," Fitz admits. He can't track it back to a certain point; maybe the echoes, maybe the betrayals, but he knows that something in his mind has turned gray and fuzzy and he can't retrieve the color that once swirled through his thoughts. If he were a painter, maybe he could find them again.

But he only knows one painter.

"Well, you think of him, don't you," Biana says, and it's not a question. "I know you do."

"How do you know?"

"Because you talk to yourself sometimes." Biana brushes her hand over the pink of her carpet, the one they are stretched out on their stomachs, chins on their forearms. The scars on her exposed shoulder and tracing up her face catch the light and turn pale against warm brown skin. He doesn't let his eyes stick on them for long. She hates it when he does that. "And because I do too, and that's how I know Alvar thinks of us."

Fitz rolls onto his side, facing her directly, eyebrows raised. "Why do you say that?"

"Because we're the same. All four of us. We're cut from the same cloth, molded from the same expectations. We share thoughts like we used to share mallowmelt, all from the same plate, the same fork, the same laughter." She eyes him carefully.

He presses his lips together, but he can't stop himself from repeating, "The four of us."

Biana twists to face him, teal eyes matching their mirror across the foot of space between them. It has been so long since they've talked like this, been close like this, that he had nearly forgotten about the faint freckles scattered across her nose. They're barely visible now, faded into the darkness of her skin. "The four of us. You, me, Alvar, Keefe. We're the same."

"I heard you the first time," he says. "You don't have to remind me." I already know. With a touch of irony, "Two out of four ain't bad in terms of fuckups, right?"

Biana laughs outright. "I think you can add two to that number."

Fitz shakes his head, and a few strands of hair fall into his eyes. "You and I aren't fuckups."

"Think about it, Fitz," Biana says. "Are you everything you wanted to be?"

Fitz thinks about cognates and how powerful he's become. He thinks about the scar on his stomach and the limp and the remaining echoes in his heart, and he thinks about Biana's scars and Alden's fragile mind and Della's hardened eyes, and he thinks about dreaming and "He's gone? Typical." and the weight a mind can take on when it's left to hold the world up.

"When I was younger, I think I wanted to be happy," he says softly but doesn't answer her question, and Biana doesn't respond, only turns back on her stomach and rests her chin back on her hands. Her skin wrinkles, her chin smushes in, and she's growing up but now more than anything Fitz remembers that they are still only kids, still too young to know loss, to understand why it burns to breathe.

They sit there like that, in a sort of contemplation, half-waiting for the other to speak. Until she does, slowly, like she's trying to remember how to form the words she needs to.

"Don't you miss him?" Biana asks.

He doesn't know if she's talking about Keefe or Alvar.

"Yes," he says.

...

At thirteen years old, Fitz manifested as a Telepath.

Although looking back, he supposes it was less of a manifestation and more of a discovery, a finding of himself that he doesn't think ended. And a part of that finding was learning where to go, where to search, how other minds felt when they didn't want to be entered and how they felt when they did, the difference between thinking and making a decision, all the new rules to break and who he was allowed to break them with.

The rule was this: Do not enter a mind without permission.

And Keefe always was a rulebreaker.

Not to mean he would read his thoughts without consent, but the way that Fitz knew him better than anyone else and that meant he knew when he wasn't wanted.

So, at thirteen years old, Fitz Vacker became the youngest Telepath to ever manifest, and Keefe Sencen was talentless but still with the unusual skill of knowing him better than anyone else possibly could. And this is how he knew him: well enough to reach into his mind from across the school and open a line.

After months, Fitz started knowing Keefe's mind better than his own. He liked it better in there, anyway, bursting with sunshine and blue skies that Fitz only realized years later were carefully controlled. Even back then, before he manifested, Keefe kept a harness on his emotions and his mind.

Fitz has always wondered what he was hiding.

But it doesn't matter anymore. It stopped mattering a long time ago, because as soon as Sophie showed up, Keefe stopped letting him in.

...

Fitz pushes his sweaty hair from his eyes and waits to be attacked again.

It comes quickly: a strike to his stomach (blocked) and a jab at his right leg (dodged) before he's able to lash out with a stab to her arm (also dodged) and the fight continues, weaving back and forth between them.

His foot shifts in the sand, and he stumbles.

"All right!" Grizel steps in and blocks Linh's next strike, and she moves back, sheathing her dagger. "Fitz, wanna tell me what you did wrong?"

He scowls. "I moved forward instead of giving up ground."

"Five points!" Grizel mimes sticking a gold star on his forehead. "You were off balance as soon as you did that. Sometimes, it's better to step back and let her move forward. In doing that, you get her off balance. Backward is another way to dodge."

Linh grins at him, her naturally pink cheeks flushed a brighter red with exertion. Sweat slides down her temples and stray hairs cling to her forehead, escaping from the tight ponytail Grizel had guided her through putting up.

"Don't start getting cocky," Grizel warns her, and the smile slides off her face to match Fitz's scowl. "If he hadn't stepped forward, you would have lost. Can you tell me why?"

She sighs. "I went for the throat."

"Without?"

"Without getting his guard lower first."

"Five points for you! Move his stabby thing away before you try to get him. The throat is an effective target, but not with a dagger buried in your arm." She claps her hands. "Again."

Fitz settles back into his stance, and Linh goes into a matching one. They mirror each other for a second, waiting for the other to strike.

Sand flies as he leaps first with a jab to her leg.

They started sparring at Choralmere instead of Everglen ever since Linh moved back in and told him that she'd rather piss off her parents by fighting there and maybe slashing up a few of the pretty cushions. Linh splits her time between training her ability with Marella, Stina, and Maruca, and training her physical fighting skills with Fitz. He doesn't think she's stopped to think since Tam came back with Glimmer in tow and a new way of thinking about trust.

It's like they inverted, the two of them, and neither of them knows how to handle it.

Linh blocks a blow on the handle of her dagger and shoves him off. While he's off balance, she points the blade at his throat.

"Winner!" Grizel pantomimes putting another sticker on Linh's forehead. "Fifteen points! Take a few, all right? You need water."

Fitz exhales as her hand lowers and they both sheath their knives. She's been winning more and more lately, more unpredictable in her movements, more erratic.

They sit cross-legged on the patio floor overlooking the makeshift training ring on the beach.

"You okay?" he asks as she pulls the water from the pools waiting on the side of the training room and lets it glide around her forehead and neck, cooling her off.

Linh shoots him a glance. "Are you?"

Fitz twists the top off his water and takes a few sips. "I asked first."

She lets a gust of air escape from her nose. The water falls onto her hands and she rubs them together quickly to clean off the sand. "How can I possibly be okay? You were there. You know what Tam's doing. Hell, look where we are. I'm fucking home, Fitz. It sucks."

Fitz presses his lips together.

"You know I hate it here. Every time my mom smiles at me, I can see how uncomfortable she is. They're trying to act like we're back to normal when normal isn't what I want to return to."

A twinge runs through him. "I know how you feel."

"Because of Alvar," Linh says. "But you'll never know how it feels to came back to a place where you are the criminal. You did the wrong, you made the mistakes—"

"But they're the ones in the wrong," Fitz protests. "You were just a kid."

"I didn't see it that way at the time, Fitz. In my mind, I was already grown. Didn't you think you were all grown up when you were ten years old?"

He hadn't. Because Alvar was there and he was grown up and Fitz was still younger, still more naive, still immature. Their ages stood in stark relief. Who he wanted to be versus who he was.

"You're handling it much better than I did, at least," he says, and takes another sip of water. "You're not—ruining any friendships. Or trying to kill anyone."

"Ruining friendships," she repeats, and Fitz doesn't know how to identify the look that crosses her face until he realizes that it's too familiar because he sees it every time he looks in the mirror. "It's so much easier than I thought it would be."

She turns to him, and her face creases with such vivid desperation that he takes her hand and squeezes it tightly. "What's wrong?"

"Shit, Fitz. How do you know when to lash out and when to hold it in?" Linh holds his hand like a lifeline. "You're so angry. Always, you're so angry. How do you know when to use it?"

He laughs bitterly and sets his water down to run his free hand through his hair. "God, you think I know?"

Linh's eyes glimmer with something besides tears. He knows fury when he sees it. "I was hoping."

"I've lost people so many times because of it," he says. "Yeah, I got them back, but I know I'm not really forgiven. People like Sophie and Keefe and even Biana... I can't know if they'll ever move past it. And it doesn't matter how much they understand my reasons." He thinks about the Inquisition and the firecrackers as he reminded Sophie of Alden's break and everything he did to her. He knows Biana will feel the same.

Linh drops his hand and buries her face in her hands. Her voice is muffled as she asks, "Then how will Tam forgive me?"

"Because it's different." Fitz scoots closer until their knees touch. She doesn't move her hands, but she presses against him until it hurts. "You and Tam have something I can't understand. You made each other, shaped each other. I don't have anything like that."

She looks up at him, mouth twisted to the side.

"You—" he says, voice getting softer. "You can be forgiven."