Book Two: KOTLC One-shots and More

Legacy 18-19: part 2 (Fitz POV)

"Knew what?" Fitz shouted, trying and failing to get his arm away from Keefe.

He should've known better than to get within arm's reach of the empath.

Keefe simply tightened his grip and, with a look of concentration, muttered, "Shhhhh, let the Empath work."

Fitz looked over at Grizel, who was too wrapped up in Sandor to pay much attention to her charge. "Ugh, a little help here?"

"No, this one's your mess!" Grizel called over her shoulder. "You can get yourself out of it!"

What was the point of having a goblin bodyguard shadowing his every move if she wasn't going to help him when he really wanted it?

Fitz thrashed harder, twisting his wrist almost painfully, and somehow the flailing nearly knocked the package of cookies to the ground.

"Relax, Fitzy, no need to take your frustrations out on the poor innocent biscuits! I'll let go in a second. First things first. It feels like... Yep! There's definitely another reason you signed on to be my dad's personal memory boy. Something you're embarrassed of and super angry about, so... I'm guessing it has to do with your brother?"

Fitz scowled and stopped struggling. "Empaths," he grumbled under his breath.

"I take it that's a yes?"

Fitz nodded, feeling embarrassed but also resigned to his fate--and to this conversation. "Your dad said he knows how to find Alvar and offered to track him down for me if I help with this."

Keefe finally released Fitz's wrist. "Sounds about right. And okay, three things." He held up his right hand to count them off. "One: Take a Custard Cream. Seriously." He waited until Fitz had grabbed one of the cookies before he continued. "Two: Uh, you know my dad will claim anything to get what he wants, right? I mean, I'm not saying you made a bad call—hopefully you'll also find some juicy secrets my mom tried to hide. But just... prepare yourself for disappointment, okay? Odds are, my dad only knows one tiny, useless thing about your brother—if that—and you're going to want to punch him."

"And if that's the case," Ro jumped in, "punch away!"

"Oh, don't worry, I will," Grizel assured her before Fitz could speak.

"So will I," Fitz agreed, though he wasn't sure he could actually hit Lord Cassius--though, he'd managed to get in a few good punches on Alvar, so maybe he could. He took a tentative bite of the cookie in his hand and immediately wished he had some Youth to wash it down. "Wow, human cookies are dry, aren't they?"

"You think that's bad, try the Digestives," Keefe told him.

"Yeah, uh, pass." He finished the cookie anyway--they were dry, but not all that bad--and grabbed another one. ""I know learning anything useful from your dad is a long shot," he admitted, not quite meeting Keefe's eyes. "But I'm not making any progress on my own, so..."

"I get that," Keefe promised. "I do. But what I don't get is thing three." He counted it off on his fingers as he asked, his voice suddenly softer, "Why didn't you just tell me this had to do with Alvar from the start? Did you really think I wouldn't understand?"

"Honestly?" Fitz stuffed the rest of his second cookie into his mouth, spritzing crumbs when he said, "I don't know." He hadn't planned on sharing that with Keefe, even if he'd been able to reach Keefe earlier to warn him about what he was doing. He was going to leave the Alvar thing completely out of it.

Keefe nodded slowly, processing that, and grabbed another cookie, looking down at it as he began pulling it apart. "Life's... getting complicated, huh?"

"It is," Fitz agreed, looking down at one of the other packages of cookies, the little heart in the center making him think of Sophie, which did nothing to quiet the chaos and heartache and frustration coursing through him.

Neither of them had much to say after that. There was silence until Ro told Sophie, "I swear, watching boys try to communicate is like watching amoebas. You just stare at their blobby little bodies and think, 'How do these things even function?' "

"Hey, who you calling blobby?" Keefe complained, pulling back his tunic sleeves and flexing his arms.

Ro snorted. "You elves are so adorably puny."

"Aren't they?" Grizel asked. "I swear, I have swords that weigh more than some of them."

"Um, excuse me, I complete your training regimen every day," Fitz reminded her, "even with my healing leg."

He'd been pretty proud of himself for that, even if he was still not back in the kind of shape that he'd been in before breaking his leg.

"You do," Grizel agreed, before turning toward Ro and stage-whispering, "Do you think I should tell him that it's the same workout we have our toddlers start with in Gildingham?"

Fitz scowled. Of course the goblin and ogre would find common ground by making fun of their elvin charges.

Keefe just smirked at them. "I think the moral of this conversation is, females are cruel."

"They can be," Fitz said quietly, avoiding Sophie's eye. He shouldn't have said it, it had just sort of...slipped out. He knew Sophie well enough to know she wasn't trying to be cruel. She wasn't trying to hurt him.

But she was.

And she seemed to know it, because her voice filled his mind. I'm really sorry.

I know, he responded immediately. We'll...talk later.

Sure, she replied, her mental voice quiet and timid.

He just wanted things to be easy between them. He wanted to hold her hand at school...if Foxfire ever started back up, anyway. Or hold her hand or keep an arm around her when they were hanging out with their friends. More long walks at Everglen. He wanted to kiss her by the lake, or under the Panakes tree at Havenfield. He wanted to buy her crush cuffs. He wanted to do all the things that couples were supposed to do.

But he also knew she needed him to take it slow, be patient, wait for her to wrap her head around everything that matchmaking and the elves entailed.

And she was definitely worth the wait.

If only she'd stop pushing him away.

On that depressing thought, he cleared his throat and told Keefe, "I guess I shouldn't keep your father waiting."

"You shouldn't—and don't go easy on him in there," Keefe warned. "You'll never find anything my mom hid if you let him push you around."

"Oh, don't worry, I have big plans to make this as miserable as possible for him," Fitz assured him.

He definitely owed Keefe that much.

Keefe grinned. "That's what I like to hear! If you need pointers for maximum annoyance, you know where to find me."

"I do," Fitz agreed, hesitating a fraction of a second before consenting to Keefe's fist bump.

"Wow, did they just fist-bump?" Ro asked.

"You bet we did!" Keefe told her. "That's what besties do, right, Fitzy?"

Fitz nodded and gave Keefe a small smile. Regardless of what was going on between him and Sophie, his friendship with Keefe didn't have to be derailed, too.

He turned to head down the hall, and heard Grizel complaining about having to be around Lord Cassius before Keefe called after him, "Oh, but Fitzy?"

Fitz turned back to look at him.

"I want to know all the memories you see, okay? Not because... whatever. It's just possible there's something in his head that'll knock something loose in mine, you know?"

Fitz gave him a thumbs-up and, taking a deep breath, marched off to explore the mind of one of his very least favorite people in all the world.