KOTLC Sokeefe One-Shots, Alternate Endings, etc

AU/AE: Stellarlune 37 (part 2)

The moment the door closed, Keefe stepped toward Sophie. "What's wrong, Foster?"

Sophie shook her head. Him leaving felt pointless now. His mom had always been able to track him.

He'd have been better off staying home.

And she'd needed him.

"Things felt...nice, earlier," Keefe prodded cautiously. "But now you feel...sad and angry. I'm sorry if I crossed a line before, I just missed you, and maybe I misunderstood--"

"No." Sophie shook her head again. "That's the problem. You understood perfectly."

Keefe's brow furrowed. "Why is that a problem?"

Everything Sophie had been feeling without Keefe the last few weeks was finally coming to a head.

She'd been reeling from the realization that he liked her. And from the realization that she liked him too.

She'd understood why he left.

But it had been awful. She'd missed her friend, and then she and Fitz had been fighting and he'd kind of been acting like a jerk and Sophie had needed Keefe. She'd needed the one person who always helped her work through the hard things.

So she told him.

"I needed you. I needed you and you weren't there. And now here you are but I'm about to leave again and everything is so messed up. Do you have any idea what the last few weeks have been like for me?"

Keefe looked at her with something like pleading in his eyes. "I'm so sorry," he said. "But I'm here now," he added, holding out his arms as though he expected her to hug him.

Instead, she backed up a step, shaking her head. She was about to lose him again and didn't know for how long.

And it was an agonizing thought.

"Besides," Keefe added, dropping his hands. "It's not been an easy few weeks for me either."

"But it could've been better for both of us if you hadn't left. Or if you'd at least left a way for me to contact you so we could talk. I'd still have missed you but it would've been better than nothing."

" I couldn't have," he said, a strained sound to his voice. "You don't know how hard it was, ignoring you, leaving that note, thinking I'd never see you again." Keefe looked anguished. "But I knew if I told you I was going, or if I answered you when you reached out, I wouldn't be strong enough to stay away. It was hard enough not hailing Grady with the Imparter he gave me just to ask him how you were doing—"

Sophie had been listening, trying to calm down, trying to make herself think rationally.

But then...

"Grady had a way to reach you?!" Anger and hurt flared up in an instant.

"I asked him not to tell you," Keefe whispered.

Sophie pushed past him, headed towards the doors that held the bedroom and the bathroom.

She was contemplating locking herself in one of them until Dex and Tam got back.

But realized she couldn't do that, and whirled back around instead.

She was angry and hurt and offended but Keefe mattered. He was important. Better to have it out, leaving nothing out, nothing unspoken.

Because who knew how long it would be until she saw him again.

And the thought made her want to drop it and just reach for him again.

Kiss him again. Give herself something to remember him by.