A/N: Sorry for the long wait. Here's the thing: I hate this story. And I don't mean I'm annoyed it's taking up so much time or I don't think my writing is good enough. I mean I legitimately hate this story. I've been trying to like it, I really have. But the truth is, Swan Song is one of those stories that seems cool in theory but is impossibly difficult to execute properly. And the lack of action and a concrete story arc just make this really boring to write. I told you in Ch1 that I was probably going to run this fanfic into the ground. And that's precisely what has happened. If my only regular reader (you rock, Xylia!) was not so supportive and excited when I posted chapters, I would have abandoned this fic a while ago. I have no will to write Swan Song anymore. This chapter is the climax chapter, the most important chapter in a story. I tend to spend a long time obsessing over the climax chapter — revising, editing, revising again, at least three betas — but for this chapter, I am past the point of caring. It's far from my best work, and I'm not willing to invest the time to make it my best work. Just try to understand, and imagine it as you will.

This doesn't mean I'm stopping the story. I only have two chapters left plus an epilogue I've already written. I have a killer ending planned out that I really, really, really want to share with you. I'm just letting you know that if I only update once or twice a month, it's not because I'm lazy. It's not even because I don't have the time (because I do). It's because I do not want to write this story anymore. You, Xylia, and my ending that I want to show you, are literally the only things keeping me going. And I'm okay with that. Because I will finish Swan Song. I will not abandon you. I will not abandon this story. And most importantly, I will not abandon Tam and Linh.

If nothing else, I 100% assure you that those last two chapters (and the epilogue) will be up before Lodestar comes out, even if I have to stay up all night writing and post it at 11:59pm on October 31.

Now that I've said that, I have one warning about this chapter which is that I use my one T-rating F-bomb allotment in this chapter. ('Cause you know, it's the climax, and characters tend to get very emotional at the climax of a story.) I know that Shannon never swears in her writing, but I do feel like this is a more mature fanfic of KOTLC and one little swear word will not, to my knowledge, screw up the balance of the universe and send us all spiraling into endless space. I am not on the path of becoming the vulgar-tongued, plagiarizing asshole known as TMBCTC (now under the pen name "Blowjob Babe" — ugh I feel blasphemous just typing that) — I am using profanity once, quickly, because I believe it is necessary. If you're uncomfortable with this, get over it.

(I probably didn't need to write that whole spiel about using the F-word, it's just that I've seen some fanfics for children's/middle grade books where the book never swore but the fic did, and the reviews BLEW UP about it.)

CHAPTER 14

POISONED PRONOUN

"I know," said Tam, and his sister gave him a look that was two parts confusion and one part alarm.

"I —" Tam began, but he couldn't bring himself to say the words. "I —" he tried again.

I killed Tristan.

I killed him.

His lips were made of stone. I can't, I can't, I can't.

Linh dipped a finger into a puddle at her feet, left over by the rain. Ripples spread out from the middle in perfect circles. When they cleared, Tam could see a blurry image in the puddle, but it was dark and grainy.

"Tam," said Linh, staring into the water, "What happened this morning?"

"I've been trying to tell you," Tam said, "but I'm — I'm too afraid. I don't know how you'll react."

Linh looked up from the puddle, her face now one part confusion and two parts alarm. "I promise I won't tell anyone," she said.

Well, that's a start. "First," Tam said slowly, "tell me the truth. Tell me how you know Tristan."

"No." She turned her face away.

"Why won't you tell me? We're twins. We shouldn't have to keep —"

"I have reasons to keep my secrets!" Linh interrupted, the silver in her eyes flashing like lightning. "And now . . ." She gestured to his face, and Tam put his hand to his cheek, unsure of what she saw there.

"I'm sure," finished Linh, "you have your reasons too." She prodded the puddle with her finger again. "We're both cracked mirrors now. You might as well tell me who you killed. It might fix you." As Linh choked out that last sentence, she began crying. But it wasn't the kind of crying that spilled out of her on a regular basis, Tam could see that. It was a scared angry crying, a confused crying, a helpless crying, a crying borne from seeing her brother hurt and not knowing how to fix him.

Watching her sob, tears falling into the dirt below, Tam wanted to cry too. He wanted to cry for himself and his selfish mistakes. He wanted to cry for Linh, who had grown so hopeless from years of exile. He wanted to help her, even though he knew it was impossible — she was damaged far beyond repair.

But he didn't. Tam couldn't comfort his sister, or sit by her side, or tell her stories like he used to. Exile had changed him, too. All he could feel was an space inside of him that had once held something important, then had been emptied and refilled with cold, hard concrete. He could not comfort her. He needed answers from her.

"I won't tell you until you tell me how you met Tristan, and what he had to do with that patch with the eye on it I'm seeing everywhere."

"No!" Linh wiped away her tears and stood up, destroying the doll's eye in the puddle with a motion of her foot. "I left that all behind three years ago, and now it's too dangerous to tell anyone, even you. The girl who knew Tristan and wore that patch, she is gone. She was washed away along with Atlantis when she was eleven."

"This concerns me, too!" They were both shouting now. "Whatever you used to be involved in, it's ruined my life, too!"

"I've kept you out of this! They would have used you too, you know."

Tam through his hands up in the air and started walking in no particular direction, just focused on getting away from Linh's piercing glare. She was a mystery; the things she said, Tam never understood. And he hated what he couldn't understand.

"You never say anything clearly! If you would just tell me what you did, I would know what you mean!"

"Well, you never listen to what I have to say!" Linh shouted to his retreating back. "If I say 'I can't', you'll let me have my way, but you can't be bothered to figure out for yourself what I really mean. You say I ruined your life. But I didn't make you who you are now, you're the only one who did. You fucked up your own life. You have no one to blame but yourself, and you are a coward for refusing to admit that. You'll see it soon. You are a coward just like our father, Tam Song."

"Well, you're one to talk about being an evil person. You're the spitting image of her!" cried Tam.

With that one poisoned pronoun, Tam felt a pain in his chest. A sharp tug on the line between him and his twin, the line he had never seen but always felt. A cry escaped his throat. The pain was worse than anything he had ever experienced.

Linh cried out as well, and Tam turned around from instinct. She was sobbing, hands flailing for something invisible in front of her. Tam began to panic. What was happening? What had happened to them? What had he done wrong?

He tried to understand.

When this story began, Tam and Linh were two puppets on one set of strings. One was always being pulled in the direction of the other. They were usually willing, even eager to follow the other toward whatever lay ahead.

But the puppetmaster was tiring of his dolls. Their strings were fraying; the wood holding them up was warped and bowed. Through no fault of their own, the line drawn between them was beginning to shiver and shake from the tension of holding them together.

There was a line. Tam had felt it forever. He had felt it when he had chased Linh's shadow to Exillium, when he had taken her hand and stepped into a beam of yellow light without question, when he was lost in the driving rain and his first thought had been of Linh.

She felt it too. She could see it. And she was pulling on it.

Tam closed his eyes. His head was reeling.

We're connected . . . yin and yang, black and white, predator and prey . . .

Maybe elvin twins were different, after all. It's just that those who said they were didn't have the eyes to see why. Only the twins themselves did.

Tam blindly reached his hands in front of his abdomen and — caught a slippery rope. He opened his eyes and there it was, a thin shimmering line that glimmered, half-transparent, as if it was made of a magic not from this world.

It had to be broken. It was the only way they wouldn't see themselves in the other, and make terrible mistakes because of the reflection they saw in their twin.

Worthless was the word pounding at Linh's head. He could feel the thought in his own mind, growing more intense the more Tam and Linh pulled at their puppet string.

From his own mind: She's alone all alone why did you leave her alone in the rain . . .

With one final impossible tug, Tam wrenched the glimmering string from his body. The worst pain he had ever felt made him finally look at his stomach, and what he saw made him nearly faint.

A chunk of his abdomen had been torn out, and there was a gaping hole in him. And inside . . . he was hollow.

On the other side of the fire, the rope slid from Linh's hands like the water had from his own, that day in the garden so many years ago. She was free of their bond — they both were — but Linh remained unbroken.

But Tam began to notice little cracks in his sister's skin. Tiny fissures all over her. On the hands that had commanded waves. On the eyes that had seen humans die. On the heart that was burdened near to breaking.

She met his eyes with the question Do you see it now?

And Tam's shadow reached over her.

"Yes."

An hour later, Linh dipped her hand in the basket of water and traced over a section of her brother's face. When Tam had killed Tristan, part of his cheek had broken away. He just hadn't been able to see it back then.

She traced the jagged edges over and over, re-dipping her hand into the water, until the hole began to shrink. It shrank until it finally disappeared altogether.

"I thought I was broken," said Tam, "when I saw it. I thought I'd have to go to Exile, like those madmen who've had their minds broken."

Linh shook her head calmly. "You weren't broken," she said. "The broken ones don't even have bodies anymore. They kind of explode bit by bit until they're completely in pieces. Do you want me to do your other one?"

Tam nodded. Even though Linh had assured him that no one else could see their cracks and rifts, he still felt supremely uncomfortable looking at the gaping hole in his stomach. It made him feel like he was actually broken.

"If you've known about them for so long, why didn't you fix all your cracks?" he asked his twin. "It looks like you're one fall away from breaking."

"I like myself better with my scars," Linh responded. Carefully, she pulled a piece of herself from her face, inspected it, then pushed it back in. "They remind me that I can keep it together through anything."

"Even through what you didn't want to tell me?"

Another small crack formed between her eyebrows, and a piece of her shook and seemed about to come out for a moment. But it stayed steady in her forehead.

"Even through that." She dipped her hand in the water again.

They saw the world as the sea; pushing and pulling with a lull in the tide once every so often. Action and reaction, deeds done and returned . . . and broken and healed.

A/N: Did you know that's the first time I've used a legit curse word in my writing? I can feel Dumbledore smiling down on me as I type this, so . . . (I can also feel you cringing as you read the next sentence) . . . I hope I've used it well.

Also if you're really confused about this chapter (which you probably are, I won't judge), I hope that things will be explained better and in more detail in the next chapter. But if you really want to know what the whole I-can-see-you-breaking thing is all about, PM me and I'll try to explain it to you.