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.

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.

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.

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