a lesson in running away (the art of returning)

Dear Tam: of knowing&loving selfishness (by seeing it in yourself)

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.