KOTLC Sokeefe One-Shots, Alternate Endings, etc

Flashback 22 (Keefe POV)

Keefe sank down onto the nearest cot. A memory was forming, but it felt wrong.

Keefe's memories were always perfectly clear thanks to his photographic memory, but this one was distorted—maybe even more so than that other imperfect one they'd recovered. It was really confusing at first and he couldn't understand why.

After a moment, it started to come into focus a little more, but it was still clearly damaged.

Keefe was standing talking to his mom, and he looked to be about ten or eleven, he wasn't sure which.

It was still fuzzy, somehow. They tried some Fitzphie pizzazz to see if it would clear it up, but it did nothing.

They were flummoxed as to why it was so messed up.

It sounded like his mom was asking—though she never really asked, she really just demanded—him to do her a favor.

Then handed him what looked like a sealed envelope and asked him to deliver it.

To a man at a green door.

Fitz voiced exactly what Keefe had been thinking.

Uh, did she just say "man"? Not "elf"?

Looks like it. Keefe watched his younger self look at his mother in shock as she handed him a leaping crystal to the Forbidden Cities before insisting that he do it right away.

He looked excited, but curiosity and uncertainty had held him back. "Why?"

"Because I'm telling you to."

"Yeah, but why?"

She pinched the bridge of her nose in frustration. "Does Fitz question his father when Alden sends him off on their little errands?"

"I don't know—like I've told you a zillion times, Fitz doesn't tell me anything about that. But I'm pretty sure he knows where he's going and why he's going there."

"Yes, well, all you need to know is that the message you're holding needs to be delivered discreetly. And since no one's watching your registry feed, you can sneak away far easier than I can."

The memory seemed to warp further, so they couldn't quite catch most of what Keefe said in response, though he seemed to be arguing with her when it came back into relative focus.

Looks like you were old enough to be driving your parents crazy, Fitz told him. Fitz's emotions were on edge after being mentioned again, but also mildly amused--probably by Young Keefe's reaction to his mom's request. And it sounds like we were friends.

Yeah. So I was probably eleven.

"That kind of information is earned," his mom told him in the memory. "And you can prove you're ready by delivering that message without any further argument."

Young Keefe looked at the envelope again, honing in on the golden wax seal, which bore an unfamiliar symbol. There were two crescent shapes--Keefe assumed crescent moons--forming a loose circle around a glowing star.

Do you think that symbol has anything to do with her facility? Fitz asked. Didn't the runes on the door say, "The star only rises at Nightfall"?

I thought that was a reference to the Lodestar Initiative, which had a different symbol, Foster cut in.

True, Fitz reasoned. And Vespera's symbol was more of a swirly shooting star, wasn't it?

Keefe sighed. Were they getting answers by doing this, or just raising more questions?

Not to mention giving him more reminders of just how he'd been used and abused over the years.