a lesson in running away (the art of returning)

a lesson in seeing the shadows and knowing how to let the light swallow them

Fitz's neck sticks to his pillow with sweat, the sheets barely on his body, twisted around in a desperate attempt to find sleep. The heat roasts him from the inside out, and he gives up with a sudden groan, pushing the covers back and standing in the cool air of his room.

Sweat trickles down his back, and he runs his fingers through his hair like that'll slow down the spinning cogs keeping his head running when it hasn't rested in too long. Fitz peers into the mirror on his wall, hazy in the darkness of his room, and notes the deep circles under his eyes.

There are marks on his face where the fabric of his pillow bunched up against his cheek, and he rubs them in a fruitless attempt to bring back the usual bumpy texture instead of the lines. Acne scars usually line his lower cheeks in deep purple-brown, and he doesn't like the sight of them crisscrossed with lines. It makes him think too much of pale scars torn by mirrors like this one.

Fitz needs to leave his head. The oily wave of escape presses against his temples and scrapes down the sides of his throat like saltwater or sand. He'd rather swallow gravel than keep thinking, or reaching for sleep that won't come.

The cool glass of the mirror sings against his slick palms as he presses against it, squeezes his eyes shut, and pushes his mind past its limits into somewhere he doesn't belong.

Somewhere he hasn't belonged in three years.

He finds Keefe's mind in the middle of a nightmare.

Blinding lights flash so brightly in his eyes that he sees spots, falling forward in his physical body until he's pushing the mirror back into the crystal walls so hard the glass warps slightly. The light in Keefe's dream doesn't blink out so much as get swallowed in an avalanche of shadow, a deluge of whispering darkness that smothers Fitz in velvet.

Keefe! he transmits, shouting, but his voice doesn't escape the nothingness suffocating it.

But it's not nothingness. Fitz feels things creeping around him, invisible but decidedly there, shuddering up his mind, melting into his fake thought-skin, becoming a part of him, corrupting him. And it burns like echoes, like needles, like a thousand bites all bleeding out at the same time, like bones snapping in half, one after the other. The waves keep coming.

Help! Keefe's thoughts launch into him with the force of a bullet, desperate. Help, help, HELP ME—

Fitz pulls himself back into his body with a grunt of effort, disconnected from himself and slightly dazed.

The mirror fractures in its frame.

...

When Fitz materializes at Havenfield, no one is there to greet him. But he's still here with his socks sinking back into the soil, frantic again, hair messed from a mixture of tossing and turning and all the times he's run his fingers through it.

And Keefe looks... peaceful, when Fitz finds him in the gnomes' living area.

He's lying on soil under nothing but the sky instead of in the hut the gnomes had provided for him. One arm is flung out to the side, the other tossed over his stomach, and he's snoring, chest rising and falling in an even rhythm. There's a leaf in his hair and a line of drool runs down his cheek, open mouth exposing crooked front teeth. His eyelids flutter anxiously, but he doesn't twitch, or scream for help like he had in his head.

Fitz goes to his knees in front of him and seizes his shoulder with both hands and shakes with all his might, always the only way to wake him.

Keefe shoots awake with a shout, panic in his eyes, clutching at Fitz's arms, tears trickling down his cheeks before the sleep is gone from his eyes. "Help help help help me help..."