Keefe through his years at Foxfire
Year 1: Bright, excited little eleven year old. He walks down the halls with a spring in his step, not afraid of anything in the world. The world sparkles, for him. He's going to school with his best friend, he's taking fun classes, nothing can go wrong! He's got more freedom than he could ever ask for, and he's sure he'll make more friends. Everything will be amazing! This lasts for approximately a week and a half. Then he takes a test, and is moved up a level.
Year 2: His smirk hides the fact that he's bored out of his mind. His eyes burn as he stares at another textbook he doesn't have the patience to do more than scan and skip through, knowing he'll be able to recall it all for the test tomorrow anyway. He gets into pranks, this year. He's coasting through all his classes, putting no effort in. His dad took him out of Art, his dad upped the math classes. All he needed to do was stare at a page for about ten seconds and have it memorized. There's no challenge. He's bored. The Great Gulon incident was the prank that marked the school with his image. He grinned as he marched down the halls, pride in his eyes. They still don't know that he did it.
Year 3: He's become the school prankster. The one who never takes anything seriously. He ditches class constantly. He'll still pass every test with flying colors. His father's made sure of that. He smirks, finger guns, and slowly makes every girl in the school fall in love with him. He doesn't seriously pursue anyone, a bit of a Sirius Black more than anything else. He climbs the walls and goofs off and gets more detention than he should, primarily because Dame Alina's decided he's a little miscreant. He is, he admits to Fitz at lunch, one day, but that doesn't mean she has to say so. And, of course, this is the year he meets Sophie. This is the year that everything begins to whirl into a mess, right in front of his eyes.
Year 4: He smiles, and it somehow still reaches his eyes. His dad's gotten really bad, this year, his mom's been acting weird. It doesn't matter, he thinks, ditching school still, passing every class, still, flying on the back of an alicorn to save his friend from her own powers, still. He falls in love with Sophie for real this year. Her soft eyes and her flustered blushes. He really loves her. He thinks he'd die for her, if she needed him to. He kind of hopes she won't. He knows he'd do it, but he doesn't know if she'd like that.
Year 5: His smile doesn't reach his eyes, anymore. His life is spiralling out of control. He's missed too many days of school to make them up. It'll be a miracle if he's even allowed back in after the whole Black Swan mess goes down. Halfway through the year, he stops going to Foxfire. No one misses him, not really. Except his friends. He blows up someone's office. No one is surprised(Except Sophie).
Year 5(repeat): It's a good thing he was a year ahead, his father says. He's still on track to finish school on time. Keefe cringes inside. School is really hard, right now. He can't do anything right. How many different ways can you say "Traumatized Gifted Kid Burnout Syndrome"? He's failing a few classes, he gets yelled at a lot by his dad. He's kind of a loner, now. He used to be friends with everyone in the school, but not anymore. Almost everyone thinks he'd betray them at the drop of a hat. He keeps to himself, mostly. People tolerate him, from a distance. Sophie hangs out with him a lot. Partially because he's alone. It's not good, she thinks, that the person who kept me from feeling alone my first year is alone now. I need to stick by him. After all, she thinks, happily, almost. We're in the same level, now.
Year 6: He's got war intrenched in him. Flames seared into his mind, whenever he closes his eyes. Nothing is okay. Nothing will ever be okay again. He dreams of his mother. He wakes up to hear his father. He goes to sleep praying that the next morning the world will have finally burned around him, and he won't have to worry about it anymore. Needless to say, the world never does. He's still in love with Sophie. But it doesn't matter, because she's in love with someone else. Everything hurts. Everything is bad. He can't sit still long enough to pass any test, no matter how long he tries to burn the textbook into his brain. What was so easy years ago is now practically painful. Everything is hard. Everything is bad. But he still gets up, every day, almost mechanically, and goes to school.
Year 7: He doesn't to to school. He ran, again. No one is surprised. Except Sophie. Sophie cries. A lot. Everyone else quits going to school this year, too. There's a war going on. Haven't you noticed? School isn't important if the Neverseen are burning cities to the ground, looking for a mesmer who ran away.
Year 7(repeat for all Keeper Kids): His dad is pissed about this. Keefe doesn't talk about it. He goes through the motions, once again. Nothing is better. The classes are harder than ever, and he can't make himself think. It's hard to sit and stare at a page for endless hours, he can't figure out what anything means, or even what any of it says. But he's always had good deductive reasoning, even if, as his father says, he rarely uses it. He can pass tests as long as they're multiple choice. Most everything is multiple choice. He'll be okay. Sophie kisses him in the hallway they first met in. It's not their first kiss. He hopes, as he thinks about their plans for war, that it won't be their last.
Year 8: The war is over. He didn't have to come back for another year. He did. He wanted to take an art class. And somehow, as though breathing life through him, the art class pulls him back to life. He's going to be okay, he thinks, staring at a canvas with paint splattered in intricate depictions of real life. He's going to be okay, he thinks, sitting across from his new Mesmer Mentor, knowing that this power does not need to terrify him. He's going to be okay, he thinks, sitting in alchemy in front of a new teacher who knows him as a War hero, not a delinquent, passing the assignments with a sort of joy he hasn't felt in years. He kisses his girlfriend in the hall they met in, again, but in between classes they both enjoy. He looks around the halls of Foxfire. This place has not been okay in a long, long time. He had not felt okay here in years. But right now, he thinks, on his way to Elite Historical Writings, with books on people he's met in the bag he has on his shoulder, he's okay. He's going to be okay. He'll fight to be okay.
