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."

"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."

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

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."