a lesson in running away (the art of returning)

a lesson in jealousy, guilt, and other things we know better than ourselves

Here we are again, Alvar thinks. When will you leave me alone?

When you leave me alone, Fitz responds. He walks with his attention split between where his feet land (on rough stone) and where his mind guides him. The cold air is crisp against his cheeks and Alvar's mind is bleeding black ink.

Ah, so our conversations are my fault now, Alvar says. Even though you're the one creeping through my mind every week.

Fitz keeps walking, kicking aside ash and rocks, the only thing left in this ravaged landscape. Yes. Everything is your fault.

Like what? The smirk is evident in the lazy way he thinks it. He wants to catch him at something. Fitz knows how to escape him.

Like Ruy's death.

Alvar's mind explodes into something like denial, whispers bouncing off the shattered picture frame memories, not quieting until Fitz slams open the door to Brant's former house and watches his brother scramble to his feet, a wraith.

"Ah," Alvar snarls, no longer pretending to be confident or pleasant. "You found me. Congratulations."

Hearing his voice jars Fitz down to his core. This is the voice that told him wild stories for him to repeat around school, that whispered jokes across the dinner table, that told him to be proud of himself for being chosen for Alden's mission, that called him Fizzleberry and little brother. Now it's torn with ash and weak with whatever that troll goop had done to him. His arms are stick-thin and void of the muscle he'd spent years cultivating, and his legs shake under his weight as he takes a step forward.

"Sophie wasn't lying," Fitz muses, standing his ground as Alvar takes another step. He flashes in and out of sight, flickering more than blinking. Closer and closer, until Fitz sees the shadows caving in his cheeks and sinking into his eyes. His hair, once carefully gelled, hangs limp and greasy over his dull eyes. His skin had always been paler than his siblings', but now it's snow white and tinged blue; possibly from an oxygen deficit. "You're a mess."

"I'd love to see you hold up under what I've been through," Alvar snaps, but his bravado is broken by a hacking cough—or perhaps it's reinforced. He spits blood onto the ground. "Come to see your brother die? Or just to see my reaction to your news in person?"

"What news?" Fitz lets his eyes roam over Brant's house. Stone walls, stone ceiling, mattress covered in what he assumes is Flaredon fur. No pictures, no blankets, no warmth.

"Ruy." Alvar's voice breaks from either grief or dehydration. "Is he really dead?"

Grief.

Fitz smiles. "Yes."

"Who killed him?"

"How do you know he didn't die all on his own?" Fitz paces slowly around the room, his shoes cracking on the bitter stone and echoing off the walls. Caught in the echoes are the memories Brant must have been engulfed when he lived here: did he scream in his sleep and wake up hearing Jolie as she died? As he killed her? That was the person Alvar chose over acceptance, over Biana, over all he had as a Vacker. Over him. "Maybe he fell down the stairs. Maybe he faded away. Maybe he ran into his own forcefield and electrocuted himself."

With each possibility, Alvar pales further. His face no longer looks shadowed, it looks old in the way elven faces aren't supposed to.

"He could've eaten rotten fruit. I know there wasn't much to offer in terms of cuisine out there, since you tried to commit genocide against the gnomes. Or maybe—" Fitz takes a step closer to his brother— "Maybe Tam did to him what Ruy let Umber do to Sophie and me."