TW: violence/blood, ....abuse?

This isn't technically a shippy one but it has both of them <3 keefe and fitz parallel fics my beloved

There is a line drawn in the sand between them, and Keefe waits for her to step over it.

To smudge the line, destroy it with an elegant sweep of her hand, dig her fingers into it and let it get under her fingernails, rub the rough grains between the pads of her fingers one by one. Gather a handful of it in her palm, throw it and let it scatter into his eyes.

He stares at her, and he waits for her to blind him.

He can already feel the way the sand will get past his lips, the gritty feeling of it on his tongue, the way he will choke and cover his face and fall to the ground and desperately try to blink the sand away, and he waits for it to happen.

It would be so easy for her to do. It's always easy for her.

So he waits.

The scene is so vivid: the sun beating against the raised hairs on the back of his neck, the way the wind fails to soothe his sunburned cheeks because he forgot to put on sunscreen, the brush of his hair against his forehead, messy after swimming in the gentle ocean silhouetted behind her. The sun crests her head in a halo, setting the wisps of her hair on fire. The crown of her head, like she's the queen of something he hasn't heard of yet.

All he can see is her. 

"Do it, Mother," Keefe says, defiant, useless. "I'm ready."

And then he wakes up.

...

Fitz looks into his mirror, his head tilted to the side curiously.

It's not fear swimming in his stomach as he meets the gaze of the man in the mirror. He is aware enough to recognize that he is not scared, and there's no anger there, either.

Instead, it's confusion swirling through his chest, crawling up his throat in vague disgust. He can't find the place where the two connect, but he knows that they're both there: confusion in his chest, disapproval in his throat.

Because the man in the mirror is not him, is it?

He can't be. His eyes are teal, not cobalt. His skin is darker than the man he sees, and that's the other thing, too, that he is not a man yet (not yet grown) and the mirror definitely shows an adult.

So, logically, the mirror he is staring into is not a mirror, because it doesn't show him.

His surroundings are hazy, unformed. Fitz isn't entirely sure where he is (his bedroom? a bathroom? his kitchen? a prison?) and he isn't sure what he is, either (maybe that's why he looked into the mirror in the first place. to find out who he is) but he knows who he's looking at.

"What do you want from me?" he says, and his brother's lips are the ones that shape the words. His mouth frowns. "I'm ready for you."

And then he wakes up.

...

Don't slouch.

A ruler appears in the back of his pants, and his spine melds to it like putty.

Stop drawing when you should be listening.

His doodles shred themselves into pieces on the page, leaving blank white boring nothingness behind. He watches them disappear.

Hands out of pockets.

His hands burn as they touch the air, but he holds them out of his pockets carefully. It hurts more and more the longer he lets them hang by his sides, so he keeps them there.

Where is your mind wandering this time? Bring it back.

Keefe takes out his butterfly net and catches his mind dreaming, ambling through his wishes, drifting through his fantasies. Bits of his mind tear through the holes in the net and scatter over the grass that wasn't there a moment ago. They escaped only to be caught again, to be pieced together back into functionality.

He ties the butterfly net shut, closes his hand and twists until his mind is packed together, smushed into all it can be. It can't wander when it can't move, right?

Little murmurs of thoughts leak from the holes in the net, puddling to the ground and splashing onto his shoes. They flash brightly in the fog dribbling from his ears in a dirty-gray stream, wreathing around his feet in a ghostlike pool. He blinks, and the world is bright when his eyes are closed and dark when they open.

Sleeping in class again? Wake up, Keefe, wake up—

His shoulder twitches.

And he wakes up.

...

Stand up straight, dear.

His posture corrects itself faster than breathing, faster than he can summon his new and improved smile.

Study instead of baking, sweetheart.

Fitz leaves his concoctions on the counter for too long while he lets words burn themselves into his head, and then they are beyond saving. He watches them tumble into the trash.

Let your hands breathe, honey. Here, help me with this. You're so good at it.

His mouth blisters as words leave them, as he keeps his smile on his face. His muscles are sore from smiling so much. He wonders what would happen if he stopped.

Focus, sweetie. What else can you be thinking about?

Jokes and smiles and messy blonde hair, that's what else he can be thinking about.  His focus is a laser cutting through all the walls around him. Make it more intense, they asked him? He can do that.

He lets his focus burn through the wall. Through the building, through the endless rooms and any people standing in his way, and he hears screams but it's too late. He's paying too much attention.

Look, his eyes are closed. Is he okay? He isn't the type to sleep in class. Fitz, are you awake—

Someone flicks his arm, hard.

And he wakes up.

...

"You abandoned me," Keefe tells his mother over the line in the sand on the beach near the ocean he loves at the house he hates with the father he hates more. He takes in a shuddering breath. "You left me behind."

This dream is a recurring one. He has it every week like clockwork, and it's always the same. Every single time, he feels and sees and tastes the same things.

He counts them.

What can he taste? The bile on his tongue, that's one. He tastes gritty sand from the handful that hasn't yet been thrown (two), and yes, he tastes fear. That's three, his fear, the way the breeze dries out his mouth and forces him to lick his lips for temporary relief before they dry out again, the way salt glimmers on his tongue and stings in the places he bites his cheek to stop himself from screaming.

What can he see? A lot, that's the answer. He sees his mother's shadow, that's one, and he sees the way the sun lights up her eyes (the ones that match his. that's two), and he sees her teeth when she smiles, unnaturally white. He sees the stray hairs whisking over her forehead, the white dress she wears that has bloodstains on the stomach area, like she was stabbed over and over again and put on the dress after and let herself bleed onto it. He sees her. He wishes he didn't.

What can he feel? Not enough, if that's possible. He can feel her eyes on him, scarring with the way they burn, and that's one. He feels the sand beneath his bare feet, shifting with every time he adjusts his weight, the grains scraping against his calluses. He feels the sunburn on his nose, the heat from the sun glaring onto his shoulders. 

He feels the knife plunged into his back.

"Don't you have anything to say?" he asks his mother. She smiles at him, deceiving in her warmth. Blood creeps up her fingers from where she stabbed him. "Don't you have something to tell me?"

It always happens now, he remembers.

It's always now that he wakes up.

...

"Where did you go after you left me behind?" Fitz asks his reflection, the one that resembles him but isn't him and will always be him. "Who did you replace me with?"

He's had this dream every single night since he left. It happens the same way every time: he looks in the mirror, and someone he knows but wishes he didn't but wants more than anything to love is staring back at him.

The man trapped in the mirror mouths a phrase at him, lips pressing together and forming o's and i's and me's, but Fitz doesn't understand. His breaths come faster. Alvar's adam's apple bobs in his throat as he swallows.

There are bruises on his brother's throat, dotted on his arms. Fitz watches a slice form just under his eye, blood dripping slowly. He touches his cheek, and the hand in the mirror mimics him, but all he feels is smooth skin. He isn't the one wounded.

Alvar's nose cracks, like he's being punched. Tackled to the ground and scratched and punched and still standing there with that dead look in his eyes, accusatory and tortured and guilty and Fitz remembers the feeling of Alvar's skin beneath his knuckles, the grunts of pain and the blood coating his lips as Fitz hit him again.

He was whispering as he did it. Whispering all his secrets to his brother.

Punch—I miss you—punch—where can I find you—punch—I let a tear fall for every night you aren't here—punch—I think you and I aren't that different—punch—I hate you—punch—I miss you—punch—punch—punch—

A tear slips from Alvar's eyes, but Fitz's face is dry. Which one of them is crying?

"Do you miss me?" he asks his brother, asks the figure standing still and silent and broken with his face and alien eyes. "Do you regret leaving me behind?"

He knows what comes next.

It's always now that he wakes up.

...

Keefe pinches his arm. It's red with all the times he's pinched himself tonight, and he knows it'll be bruised by tomorrow.

But he can't let himself sleep.

Just for tonight. He can sleep tomorrow.

The dream always comes when he's expecting it, but if he doesn't sleep, then he doesn't dream.

Simple. Easy, at least. All he has to do is keep pinching himself, and she won't appear in front of him, and he won't be back on the beach of the Shores of Solace and he won't have to remember her.

Does he want to forget her? He thinks about this, and he decides the answer as easily as breathing. Yes, of course he does.

Keefe stands from his desk chair to pace around his room. Only a few hours left. Only a few hours.

His eyes are irritatingly dry as he blinks, and he resists the urge to rub them as he passes the mirror on his wall in his route around the bedroom.

He frowns. Pauses. Looks back.

There's a woman in the mirror, trapped there, pressing her hands up against the glass, and for a moment, he doesn't recognize her.

Her hair is down, laying against her shoulders in red-tinted blonde waves, the usual sharp angles of her face softer as she smiles at him. Her eyes crinkle at the corners, head tilted slightly to the side in... what? Curiosity?

She looks... younger. Kind, maybe. Caring, even.

Keefe presses his hand to the mirror, to where her fingers meld with her side of the glass. He expects it to be warm where her hand rests, but it's cold. Like ice. His hand freezes against it, and he leans forward to fog the glass with his breath. The woman on the other side leans forward with him, and he lurches forward in surprise.

His forehead brushes the cold glass, and he stumbles into the mirror and out the other side, onto the warm beach with sand beneath his feet and a sunburned face and his mother waiting on the other side of a line in the sand.

He doesn't remember falling asleep.

But something's different this time. For one, his mother is still the woman in the mirror instead of the one he knows. Softer. No bloody dress, no white teeth, just hair down around her shoulders, glowing in the sun. A close-lipped smile, eyes crinkled at the corners.

It disarms him, how many pieces his heart breaks into. He waits for a butterfly net to fall to his feet to gather the pieces, but nothing comes. He's mixing up his dreams in a big pot and setting them to boil.

He tries to remember his script, the one he's followed since that first night when she'd appeared, months ago. What did he say then? "Do it, Mother," he says, voice wavering nervously. "I'm ready."

...

This is different. He hates it when things are different.

He counts the different things in this dream (the one he has had every night since his brother died), the one he was only able to stay awake and avoid for a few days.

One: Alvar's friendly eyes, wide with a familiar expression: pride.

Two: Fitz's bloody hands.

Three: There is no mirror. There's duct tape on the ground, a line splitting Fitz in half with him on one side and Alvar on the other. The half of him that's Alvar.

Four: He has a setting now. They're in the woods, and he knows without knowing that they're in Everglen, where Fitz tackled his brother and punched him bloody.

Five: He keeps coming back to his brother's face. The warmth in it.

It's the pride that hurts the most. Why is this version of the dream giving him what he wants?

He doesn't want to follow the path of his previous dreams. They all end the same way, anyway.

Alvar kneels to the ground, and Fitz finds himself following him, knees pressing into the dirt of the Everglen woods. He sees specks of blood on the ground, even though they can't possibly be any left over from where he broke his brother's nose.

His brother presses a hand against the line between them. Like he wants to rip it up, put them on the same side again. Fitz copies him, mirroring him in reaching for the tape, neither of them daring to cross it.

Their fingers touch.

Reality flips. 

Alvar cocks his head to the side, and Fitz's neck moves with it.

"What do you want from me?" his brother asks, and Fitz feels his mouth move to form the words. His eyebrows furrow. "I'm ready for you."

Yep, it ends there