Chapter Text
The coughing started three days ago.
Keefe hadn't thought much of it at first. A tickle in his throat. A scratch he couldn't quite clear. Probably the dust in this miserable human apartment, or the change in seasons, or some lingering residue from the last Neverseen hideout he'd scoped out. Nothing to worry about.
But tonight, something was different.
He was alone in the small, cramped apartment he'd been crashing in somewhere in the Forbidden Cities. The others didn't know about this place—it was his, a bolt-hole for nights when Havenfield felt too crowded or his mother's shadow felt too close. Tonight, it was just him, a flickering lamp, and the silence of a city that never slept but somehow managed to make him feel more alone than any empty cave ever could.
The cough came again, harder this time. Keefe doubled over, one hand braced on the rickety wooden table, the other pressed to his chest. His lungs burned. Something caught in his throat, thick and wrong, and he coughed again—deeper, more desperate—trying to dislodge it.
When he finally gasped for air, his mouth was full of something that wasn't supposed to be there.
He spat into his palm.
And froze.
A petal. Small and delicate, curved like a tiny boat, stained a pale, almost translucent blue. It sat in the center of his hand, impossibly real, impossibly wrong.
Keefe stared at it for a long moment. His brain refused to make sense of what his eyes were seeing. It was a petal. A flower petal. In his hand. That he had just coughed out of his own lungs.
"Okay," he said aloud, his voice rough and hoarse. "That's new."
He turned it over with his other hand, half expecting it to dissolve or disappear or reveal itself as some kind of prank. But it stayed, solid and real, catching the lamplight like it had every right to exist in his palm.
He pressed his free hand to his chest, feeling his heartbeat through his ribs. Nothing felt different. No pain, no pressure, no indication that his body had apparently decided to start producing flora. Just that lingering scratch in his throat, already fading.
Maybe he was imagining things. Maybe it wasn't a petal at all—just a weirdly shaped piece of something he'd eaten, or a stray bit of tissue, or—
He looked at it again. No. It was definitely a petal. Delicate veins ran through it, branching like tiny rivers. It was almost pretty, in a disturbing sort of way.
"What the heck?" he whispered.
For a wild moment, he considered calling someone. Elwin would know what this meant. Or Sophie—she'd probably read about something like this in one of her weird memory books. Or Fitz—
He stopped. His fingers curled slightly around the petal.
No. He wasn't calling anyone. Not for this. Not when he couldn't explain it, couldn't make sense of it, couldn't even guarantee it had really happened. What was he supposed to say? Hey, sorry to bother you, but I think I just coughed up a flower. No big deal. Just thought you should know.
They'd think he'd finally cracked. And maybe he had. Wouldn't be the first time a Sencen lost his mind.
Keefe stood there for another minute, breathing carefully, waiting for another cough. Nothing came. His chest felt fine. His throat felt fine. If not for the petal in his hand, he could convince himself it had never happened.
He looked at it one last time. Pale blue. Delicate. Useless and strange and inexplicable.
Then he shoved it into his pocket.
It was late. He was tired. The Neverseen were circling, his mother was lurking in every shadow, and his friends were counting on him to stay sharp. He didn't have time to spiral over some weird cough.
He'd figure it out tomorrow. Or the next day. Or he'd cough again and it would be nothing, just a fluke, just his body being weird because that's what his body did.
Keefe Sencen didn't do panic. He did deflection. He did denial. He did moving on.
So he moved on.
He blew out the lamp, collapsed onto the lumpy mattress in the corner, and stared at the ceiling until his eyes finally closed. The petal stayed in his pocket, soft and forgotten.
For now.
In the morning, he found it again while searching for a crumpled food wrapper. It had flattened overnight, pressed against the fabric, but it was still unmistakably a petal. Still blue. Still real.
Keefe pulled it out, held it up to the thin light filtering through the cheap curtains, and frowned.
Then he shrugged, dropped it in a half-empty cup of water on the nightstand, and went to make coffee.
It was probably nothing.
Probably.