KOTLC Sokeefe One-Shots, Alternate Endings, etc

Planting: Keefe POV

No.

No, no, no.

Alden was mumbling something—tears still streaming copiously down his face—about the search being called off, about the Ruewens and the Dizznees needing closure. About how scrolls would go out the next day announcing their deaths and the cancellation of school for the plantings.

Plantings.

Sophie and Dex's plantings were tomorrow.

It just couldn't be happening.

He'd had so many plans. So many hopes. He'd wanted to worm his way into Sophie's life.

And if he had, she might not be dead now.

Why, why, why hadn't he pushed her to open up to him today?

Maybe he was just as worthless and hopeless as his dad always said.

He could've saved a life. Two lives.

But he'd held back, second guessed himself, and she'd gone into that cave and been pulled out by the water and...

And Keefe thought he was going to be sick.

Biana had run towards their house, sobbing as she went. Fitz had tears running down his face but seemed like he might be having a telepathic conversation with Alden.

Della, crying heavily, gave Keefe a hug and told him he was welcome to spend the night with them. He did not want to face his parents yet. Let them receive the scroll tomorrow morning and he could leap home afterwards to get ready for the planting.

The planting.

This time, Keefe really did get sick.

Then they went inside and Alden insisted that they each take a mild sedative so they could rest and face the coming day.

Keefe needed no convincing. He took a sedative and crashed in a sleeping bag in Fitz's room.

And he awoke the next morning with the heavy weight of grief hanging over him.

He wasn't exactly a stranger to the feeling—his home life lent itself to a lot of sad, lonely nights lamenting the family he wished he had—but this was so. much. heavier.

Grief like this...he felt broken. And he didn't know how to handle the paradox of the way he felt so numb and yet so hyper aware of every stab of his emotional distress at the same time.

He got up and forced himself to try to eat—which was hard, given how queasy he felt—and saw that Fitz and Biana were doing the same.

Alden and Della were there too, handing them food and bottles of Youth but making no effort themselves to eat.

None of them spoke, but all of them cried.

Keefe desperately wished he had clothes to change into at Everglen so he wouldn't have to go home, but of all the things he tended to keep stocked in Fitz's closet so he could occasionally avoid going home, he didn't have any green.

Plus, he knew his parents well enough to know that they'd want to arrive together. They were all about appearances.

So he leapt home and dealt with his dad's endless questions—and snide remarks at the tears Keefe couldn't quite keep away—before he mumbled that he needed to go get changed.

The planting was the most horrible thing Keefe had ever endured.

The Ruewens and the Dizznees looked like...well, like something in them had died alongside their children.