Chapter Text
Do they still count, these hours I’ve spent on my own? Do they still count if I’m saving all of my shiniest thoughts for you?
Paige Lewis, Space Struck
Sophie has never been one to believe in fate.
From the time she spent with humans to now living with elves, she has always liked to think of herself as a logical person. Fate does not fit into that label, and given the life she has lived, the idea of destiny and star-crossed, universally bound pairs has only grown into an increasingly implausible notion.
To some, it may sound ignorant to say. Sophie knows that her human mother would have been highly insulted by the concept of her own daughter, the girl she had raised, not allowing herself to think of destiny. When she and Amy were younger, before Sophie knew of glittering elven worlds and crystal buildings and villainous rebels aiming to take her down, their mother would tell them about human tales surrounding fate.
The red thread of fate, a pliant string connecting soulmates together, unbreakable no matter the distance between the pair. It is said that eventually, whether that time stretched months or years, the thread would draw the two together.
Another had been the Greek Fates. Three sisters, the personifications of destiny, who live to determine the fates of every living being. They each have a role to play in determining this, a job focusing on threads, one to represent every mortal from their birth to death. Clotho would spin it, twirling the thread on a spindle as if to symbolize the birth of a person, before Lachesis would measure it to determine their lifespan.
Atropos was called the inflexible. She was the sister to cut the thread, to end the life and decide the moment and manner of the mortal's death. Amy used to tease Sophie, tell her that, given how dark and distant she was, Sophie would be Atropos.
Sophie has never quite been able to find the insult in relating her to such a powerful being, capable of ending a life with only a snip.
At that time, they had been too young for Shakespeare (or, Amy had been. Sophie had already read his works, both out of free will and by nature of being a high school student), but Sophie knows her human mother had always loved his plays, specifically the more romantic ones.
Emma (Kate Freeman, Sophie knows is the better-suited name, though some part of her refuses to call her by it, just as Amy is her sister's name, not Natalie) was the type of person to crave overcast weather. She would curl up silently in an old, weathered chair in their living room as the clouds covered the sun outside their house and read. Delve into worlds of velvet dusk and candlelit gold, of the storm-slashed moors and candle flames guttering in drafty halls from Macbeth, of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, where dreams would blur against reality in a whimsical nature tangled with something strange, like an illusion of sorts.
A lot of times, Sophie would join her. Those were some of Sophie's favourite moments with her mother, the house empty of her sister and father, leaving just the two of them curled on couches, wafting in the scent of fresh chamomile tea.
Her human mother's thoughts had admittedly been distracting, and although the two of them would never talk in those moments, never disrupt the shield of silence and peace and other gentle things they had crafted, Sophie could tell she was itching to talk to her about the stories. She had been eleven the last time she remembers having a moment with Emma like that, and although they both knew Sophie had read Shakespeare, her mother refused to tell her about the plays Sophie knew she wanted to.
For how famous the plays are, it is odd, but she knows the real reason behind it. Her human mother had wanted to live in an idyllic world in which Sophie was just an eleven-year-old girl, shy and odd, but hers, yet it has never been true.
Sophie is no normal person. She is not the type of sixteen-year-old girl to dream and wonder and wish upon the brightest star in the night sky for a story of her own. Because Sophie has never needed fate to decide her life for her, she has never had to pray on shooting stars to have a big moment. That life, the one of a hero, had been decided for her as an embryo in the Black Swan's lab. It had been set in stone before Project Moonlark had even gotten its name.
Everything in her entire life has been decided for her before she could even choose who to become—a dreamer, a fighter, or a peacemaker, or whatever she desired. Each waking moment of her life has been tied on strings to be pulled by both the Black Swan and Neverseen alike before she even got the opportunity to discover what actual, true freedom is like.
So, no, Sophie does not believe in fate.
But now, with the feeling of paper at her fingertips, desperately searching the page for something other than a goodbye hidden in the words, Sophie can only pray that it is true. That fate exists and is a strong enough force to bring Keefe back to her.
She cannot think of anything else that would do it, that would change his mind and keep him from running away from her yet again. If Sophie herself has never been enough to make him stay, she doesn't think anyone or anything other than the divine forces of destiny would hold him down.
It is not the first time Sophie has read the letter, and it will not be the last.
At this point, on her thirteenth or so re-read, she almost attributes it to the stories her human mother read to her and Amy. A bedtime story, an after-school thing, out of pure and genuine want to hear tales of destiny and mythology—it's a constant habit Sophie finds herself wrapped up in. Except, unlike those, this story is entirely real.
Keefe has left her, and the only thing she can do to replace his presence is sit at the foot of her bed and read his letter over and over again until her thighs turn numb and the words begin to blur together. Sophie has tried to read it in his voice, to create an echo of his tone and the way he rolls words off his tongue, but the attempt always ends up ringing in her ears and turning into a sound that is all too similar to her human mother's voice.
It seems to be a prevalent theme in Sophie's life. She cannot stop thinking about the people in her life who are gone.
Her human parents.
Mr. Forkle.
Calla.
Even Jolie, who has never been in her life, still haunts every moment of it.
And now, Keefe.
Keefe, the one who has already left her before. The same boy whose bedside she sat at for weeks on end, memories of magsidian thrones and crowns of ethertine playing behind her eyes each time she closed them. The one who she promised she will never hate—no matter how hard Keefe seems determined to make it.
He is gone, and for some reason, Sophie thinks that this might be worse than if he had still been in the coma.
At least then, he would still be here. Safe and decidedly alive.
Sophie would have known where he was, just sleeping in the Healing Center rather than running through the Forbidden Cities and likely getting himself into heaps of trouble.
If he is so determined to stay away from her, why couldn't he have simply stayed with Elwin? Logically, Sophie knows the answer, Grady and Edaline having explained it to her, all of the pressure Keefe is feeling. And yet, she still stubbornly feels that they could have made it work.
If Keefe just talked to her, none of this would be happening.
With a heavily frustrated growl, Sophie tosses the letter across her room, wanting to see it fly down her floorboards, wrinkle, and slam painfully against her flowery carpet.
The paper falls smoothly, delicately almost, to the ground in front of her.
She has a strong urge to tear it to pieces.
"I need to get a grip," Sophie murmurs instead, pressing the heels of her hands to her eyes. It's probably better for her than ripping out her eyelashes, but it lacks the satisfaction she gets from plucking out a lash.
She pauses, makes sure she is out of range from Vertina, and tears one out.
Sophie really needs anything other than Vertina lecturing her on how wildly stupid it is to rip out her own eyelashes (though it is oddly endearing to listen to her go on and on so passionately, almost like a big sister, but Sophie would never admit that).
It may be due to how long it has been since Sophie has indulged, but oddly, she doesn't feel the familiar sense of satisfaction after she lets her eyelash fall to the floor. She feels...
...empty, almost. Like a physical thing, waiting and gnawing at her to be filled.
Sophie lets out a sharp exhale, rubs a fist at her ribcage where she knows all her emotions are boiling up, and begins to stalk her way downstairs to get something to eat. It is almost dinner, she can tell by the setting sun. Grady and Edaline were busy on the pastures for a long while, so it is going to be a late dinner, and the feeling of emptiness inside her is likely due to that hunger.
As she makes her way down the stairs, hearing her adoptive parents laugh heartedly about something or the other in the kitchen, Sandor trailing behind her and discussing the patrol routes quite fiercely (Sophie lacks the heart to tell him that she really does not care. Though, he likely already realizes that, which is why he is choosing to vent to her of all people), she finds that it is nice.
A suitable distraction from long-gone memories and painful nostalgia about a life that was never truly hers. From a blond-haired boy with a mischievous smirk and too often troubled eyes.
That feeling of contentment is exactly why Sophie should have expected it to go wrong.
Grady and Edaline turn to smile at her once she enters the room, and the sun is shining into their kitchen in shades of too-beautiful gold, and the ever-present scent of spring has wafted into their house through a still-open door (which has muddy footprints tracked into the house, courtesy of no other than Grady).
It is something of a dream when she smiles back and opens her mouth to talk, before a sharp, stinging pain erupts in her temple.
Sophie's hands dart to her head, cupping her forehead and trying to squeeze the ache out, holding her breath and waiting for the odd pain to subside, but it doesn't.
This pain does not just stay, but it grows as her knees buckle, falling to the ground as Sandor calls out her name behind her, panic laced in his tone, with Grady and Edaline scrambling to her side.
It is the worst thing Sophie has ever felt, a pulsing, torturing feeling that is shaking her down to her marrow. Tears are streaming down her cheeks, and she can do nothing more than close her eyes and pray for fate to change its mind. This cannot be her new normal—destiny, and the Fates, and all of the idiotic stars in the sky cannot have decided that this stinging ache is what she has to face next.
Sophie can't tell if it is fate answering her calls or simply her body shutting down from the pain when her hearing starts to fade, voices becoming further and further away until blackness finally swallows her being, and she slumps against a hard chest.
Maybe, just maybe, this is a twisted sign for Sophie to start believing in fate.
It is a feeling beyond déjà vu when Sophie opens her eyes to the sight of the all too familiar ceiling of the Healing Center above her. The crystal is gleaming, flawless in a way that feels slightly unnatural, reflecting faint, fractured glimmers of light that shift when she blinks. For a second, Sophie just stares at it, letting the recognition slowly settle into her bones, heavy and inevitable.
Strangely, her first thought is to wonder whether Keefe had felt this same indifference when he had woken up from his coma.
Whether he had stared up at this same ceiling and felt nothing at all. No relief. No grounding sense of safety. Just this hollow, floating disconnect, like the world has moved on without him and he has been dropped back into it without any warning.
Or, maybe it is not such a strange thought. Keefe has spent an unfair amount of time occupying her thoughts, so it really is only natural for her mind to automatically go to him.
Sophie distantly wonders how long she has been out for, finding that her concept of time is somewhat distorted in the Lost Cities, given the fact that light leaping shortens travel time enough to make waking up from unconsciousness already in a hospital bed pretty confusing. It could have been minutes. Hours. Long enough for the sun to rise and set again without her even noticing.
Her body doesn’t offer any clues.
Her pain is gone, having waned in intensity, only leaving faint tremors of her muscles in its wake. Small, residual shakes ripple through her arms when she tries to move them, subtle enough that she almost convinces herself she imagined it. Her limbs feel too light and too heavy all at once, like they don’t quite belong to her yet, giving a trembling feeling that feels like falling.
It’s possible that the lack of pain may be a sign that it was just a one-off accident.
Her body has done weirder things before. Pushed itself too far, reacted too strongly, broken and healed in ways that never quite made sense, often as a result of her even stranger mind.
However, it could just as easily mean that her pain has receded in the way the tide does before a tsunami. Pulling back all the way before flooding everything in sight and leaving nothing behind.
The thought settles uneasily in her chest, refusing to leave.
Her next idea is to look around. If she sees the Council standing in the room in front of her, Sophie genuinely believes that she is going to fully lose it this time. She doubts that she has it in her to sit through another round of interrogative questions and half-answers, of people looking at her like she’s both fragile and dangerous all at once. Like something other.
The sheets covering her body shift as Sophie sits up in the cot, cold air breezing onto her arms and making her tug them back up again, fingers gripping the edge of the blanket a little tighter than necessary. The chill seeps into her skin too quickly, too sharply, like her body hasn’t decided how to regulate itself yet.
If Havenfield is a place covered in morning dew and spring sunshine, the Healing Center is the closest thing elves have to artificial.
Cold, smooth, and made of glass.
Even the air feels different here—cleaner, thinner somehow, stripped of the earthy warmth she’s grown used to. It smells faintly of elixirs and something sharper beneath it, something sterile that never quite fades.
The room is, surprisingly, empty. From what Sophie can see, both the area of cots that she is in and Elwin's elixir room are devoid of people. No soft clinking of vials, no muttered commentary from Elwin as he works, no quiet footsteps passing through.
None of the things Sophie has grown used to with her time in the Healing Center, especially after the echoes, are here.
The silence presses in around her, heavier than it should be.
Sophie frowns. "Elwin?"
Her voice sounds smaller than she expects, slightly rough, like she hasn’t used it in a while.
The call echoes off the smooth walls, bouncing back at her in a way that makes the emptiness feel even more pronounced. For a moment, she thinks it is going to go unanswered, that she’s somehow been left alone here without explanation, although that is probably the least likely situation Sophie will ever be in.
Then, Grady, Edaline, Sandor, and Elwin make their way out of his office, gingerly shutting the door behind them.
The sight of them should be reassuring.
It isn’t.
There are identical looks of concern on all of their faces—too synchronized, too carefully held—and in all of her visits to the Healing Center, Sophie cannot recall a single moment that has started in the way this one is now.
Usually, there is urgency. Motion. Elwin talking too fast as he works, and pain still coursing its way through her body.
Now, there is hesitation.
An odd feeling of apprehension is in the air, and it feels oddly reminiscent of being called to Dame Alina's office from when she was younger, her parents or Alden coming out of the room to tell her of her due punishment.
"Sophie," Elwin breathes, a faint uprising of the edges of his lips. It is less of a smile and more of a polite greeting, honed in by muscle memory. It doesn’t reach his eyes.
He makes his way to her side, movements just a fraction too quick, beginning to go through the motions of checking her vitals. Bright light in all of their shades flicker around her body—blues and greens and a sharp, unsettling silver that lingers a second longer than the others before fading.
Sophie watches it all carefully, too carefully for a place she normally trusts.
"What's going on?" she asks, eyes darting from Elwin to her parents.
Grady and Edaline seem to be leaning on each other in a way Sophie hasn't seen since her echoes were fresh, bedridden in the Healing Center for weeks. Grady’s arm is firm around Edaline’s waist, like he’s holding her steady—or maybe holding himself together. Edaline’s fingers are twisted in the fabric of her flowery dress, knuckles pale.
No one is answering her.
The silence stretches just a little too long.
Sophie’s chest tightens, and she pushes away from Elwin's touch, waving a hand through a bright orange light to try to make it disappear. Her attempts are futile—the light bends around her fingers in a way Sophie has never gotten used to in spite of her now four years in the Lost Cities—but they do get his attention.
"...Elwin?"
Her voice is sharper this time, but still careful. It feels as if she is prodding something that should not be touched, goading on a predatory animal.
He runs a hand through already messy hair, tussling his brown strands even more than before, a clear sign of nerves Sophie has come to recognize.
"You're alright," Elwin promises. "This is probably just a stress thing—dehydration and all that."
The explanation lands wrong. It is far too easy, too rehearsed.
Sophie's frown deepens, her heart rate quickening with his words.
She knows that they are nothing but wrong. How could the pain she felt, the agonizing twisting of her literal cells, be born from stress? Sophie has felt a lot of stress in her life—more than most—and that uncontrollable, sharp, consuming pain is something she recognizes did not happen from stress.
Stress wouldn't steal her breath, Sophie undoubtedly knows. It doesn’t make it feel like your body is being pulled apart from the inside.
"Grady?" she tries next, quieter now.
Elwin is back to checking her cells, a furrow in his brows growing more prominent with each passing second, his focus narrowing in a way that betrays his earlier dismissal.
A horrible feeling is curling in her gut, anxiousness and fear pulling tighter and tighter at her stomach. It spreads upward, slow and suffocating, until it settles somewhere behind her ribs, where she knows the bundle of emotions she calls upon when inflicting hides. It is a feeling not too far from nausea, and Sophie thinks that she is going to pass out from nerves alone.
For a fleeting second, there’s something else there, too.
A faint, strange tug Sophie has never felt before. So subtle she almost misses it, and gone before she can place it, like wind slipping through her fingers.
Grady is quiet for a long moment, his jaw clenched, his grip tightening on Edaline's hip like he’s grounding himself before saying something he doesn’t want to say.
When he finally speaks, it comes out as a sigh, as if yielding.
"...I think we should call the Black Swan."
For what it's worth, Mr. Forkle and Tiergan do arrive at the Healing Center fairly quickly. They glimmer into existence through a light leap not too long after Edaline had hailed them about Sophie's situation.
When Mr. Forkle's eyes settle on her, concerned yet calculating, as if she is still the same project whose genes he altered in a lab almost two decades ago, Sophie forces herself not to lie.
It is almost instinctive at this point to try to hide injuries rather than show them off, but Sophie knows better. If she wants a straight, real answer to whatever is happening to her, she needs to be truthful.
So, Sophie neither straightens nor hunches under his piercing gaze. She doesn’t move to hide her dark eye bags from his view, and does her best not to hold her breath.
It is slightly more difficult to continue to be open when Mr. Forkle asks for permission to enter her mind, to see if the issue is something mental rather than physical (which, considering that it is Sophie's situation, is a very likely thing).
Sophie doesn’t necessarily feel him entering her mind. Her brain is too subconsciously used to his presence to note any differences between being without Mr. Forkle and with him. It's strange, and very uncomfortable, but the only thing she can do is fist the fabric of her sheets in her hands and try not to wither under the eyes of all five people in the room (with the exception of Mr. Forkle, whose eyes are shut in concentration).
Tiergan is stood a little way back from everyone else, his posture painfully rigid, like he’s holding himself in place by sheer will. His eyes don’t leave Sophie for a second, sharp and searching in a way that reminds her oddly of her telepathy lessons—of moments where an answer was needed, and Sophie had to give it.
Only this time, she is the question.
The silence stretches on, leaving her fidgeting under the strange pressure she is now under.
Sophie focuses on the rhythm of her breathing, on the faint hum of the Healing Center’s walls, on anything other than the presence in her mind. It isn’t invasive—not the way she's heard other telepaths can be when they push too hard—but it is thorough. Careful. Methodical.
Mr. Forkle is not just looking.
He is searching, and that difference changes so much about how Sophie feels about the process.
Mr. Forkle is diving into her mind for answers, to find fractures or tampering. For anything that could explain why she collapsed on her kitchen floor under the weight of the most intense pain she has ever felt, pain that is still shaking through her muscles even now.
Finally, as the seconds begin to drag into something heavier, thicker, his eyes snap open. There is something there, something fleeting and sharp that Sophie almost misses.
Confusion.
It vanishes quickly, smoothed over by the familiar mask of calm calculation. But it lingers long enough to send a cold, sinking feeling through Sophie’s chest.
“Well?” Elwin asks, too quickly, like he’s been holding the word back.
Mr. Forkle doesn’t answer right away.
Instead, he studies Sophie again, gaze sweeping over her as though the answer might have rearranged itself somewhere on her skin while he wasn’t looking.
"I found no evidence of any mental interference," he says at last.
The words enter her ears and settle with a dull, unsatisfying weight. Sophie is fearing that this may be becoming a pattern—a new, indescribable pain inside her that no one can identify, one that is going to become a new obstacle for her to clamber over. She just wants things to be simple, instead.
Grady and Edaline move closer to her, then, as if sensing her increasingly troubled mind. Edaline leans against the cot, wrapping an arm around her body, with Grady standing in front of it like he is trying to guard her from the pain. Despite everything, Sophie smiles, a small thing, as she tips into her adoptive mother's touch.
Elwin exhales, rubbing a hand over his face. “Okay. Good. That’s—good. So we’re ruling out psychic strain, at least.”
“But that doesn’t explain the pain,” Edaline murmurs softly, her hand tightening around Grady’s.
“No, it does not,” Mr. Forkle agrees.
Tiergan steps forward, then, brows furrowed. “Sophie,” he says, his voice gentler than usual. “Can you describe exactly what you felt? Every detail you can remember.”
Sophie swallows, hands trembling as she allows the memories to travel to the forefront of her mind.
“It started in my head,” she says slowly. “Like a sharp pressure—" she lifts a hand to her temple— "right here. But it didn’t stay there. It... spread. Down my spine. Into my chest.” Her fingers curl unconsciously into the fabric of the blanket. “It felt like something was—”
She hesitates, fingers twitching with want to tug at an eyelash.
Like something was tearing.
Sophie forces the thought away.
“Like it was… pulling,” she finishes instead, the word weak in comparison to the reality of it.
Tiergan and Mr. Forkle exchange a look. It is decidedly not a reassuring one.
Elwin is already moving, snapping more lights into existence—cool purples and uneasy yellows this time—that sweep across Sophie’s body in slow, deliberate passes. His frown deepens with each scan, and he seems frustrated in a way, as if trying to will Sophie's cells to answer his calls.
“That doesn’t line up with dehydration,” Elwin mutters.
“No,” Mr. Forkle says again, quieter this time.
Grady shifts beside the cot, his voice tight. “Then what is it?”
No one answers him, and Sophie finds that she hates that.
She hates the way the room feels—like everyone is circling something they can’t see, a problem with no edges to define it. It reminds her too much of every time the Black Swan kept secrets, every time the Neverseen have stayed one step ahead. It is an aimless battle, a fruitless endeavour, and Sophie hates the fact that she is the unsolvable problem once again.
“I’m fine now,” Sophie insists, even though the words feel thin. She turns to Edaline, hoping to see an agreement in her expression, but she finds only concern. “The pain’s gone.”
Whatever external force is causing this—fate, destiny, or a physical thing that Sophie actually believes in—she knows it must think of her as a joke. With everything she has been through, it would seem like she has already realized that, already known that everything in her life's sole purpose is to inconvenience and cause her pain with every move, yet Sophie is still surprised by the way something angry twists in her chest.
As if summoned by her denial, there is a sharp, sudden tug, like a string pulled too tight. Except it is entirely unlike a string, because this pull is not weightless. It is heavy and hard, choking the breath out of her lungs and making her hands fly to her ribs as if the movement would keep the air there.
“Sophie?” Edaline has one hand at her back, the other on her knee, trying and failing to get Sophie to meet her eyes.
“I—” Sophie tries to speak, but the sensation spikes, sharp and vicious, stealing the words from her throat. “It’s back—”
She lets out a choked noise, breath knocked out of her body, only allowing a pitiful whimper.
Elwin’s lights flare brighter, darting faster now. “What changed?” he demands, eyes wild, searching for answers. “What triggered it?”
Mr. Forkle and Tiergan shift behind him, as if moving to do something, to help her, but she knows nothing can. It is an odd feeling of knowing, an awareness that screams inside her that this pain cannot be helped, is impossible to get rid of.
“I don’t—know—”
The pull vanishes as quickly as it came.
Sophie slumps slightly, breath coming in uneven bursts. The absence of pain feels worse this time, like her body is bracing for something it knows is coming.
There is no energy left in her body for even her limbs to shake like before. All she can do is lean her weight against Edaline, feeling cold and alight with sparks all at once.
Elwin’s expression has gone from concerned to unsettled. “That wasn’t physical damage healing,” he says, more to himself than anyone else. “There’s no residual strain, no tearing, no cellular disruption. It’s like—”
“Like what?” Grady presses, putting a hand on Sophie's back from behind Edaline.
Elwin hesitates. “Like something is affecting her without leaving a trace. No trail to follow, no evidence to suggest any specific harm.”
A heavy silence follows that, but Sophie is too exhausted to examine it, to focus on how the room seemed to darken with each word Elwin spoke.
Tiergan’s gaze sharpens. “External influence?”
“I would have seen it,” Mr. Forkle says immediately. “There is no sign of a telepathic disturbance, no foreign presence in her mind, no traceable signature—nothing.”
“Then it’s internal? Could it be her echoes again?” Edaline asks, her voice trembling despite her effort to steady it. It is reminiscent of earlier days, when Sophie had first arrived in the Lost Cities, and her adoptive mother knew nothing other than shaky words and distant eyes after Jolie's death. She hates that she is the one to bring it back.
Elwin shakes his head, rubbing at the space between his eyes with two fingers. “But there’s nothing wrong internally, and I'm familiar enough with the echoes to recognize their traces, and I'm finding none of those.”
"Neither did I," Mr. Forkle murmurs. "That was the first thing I checked for, and even without Mr. Tam's ability, I could see that the echo is not the case here."
“This is making no sense,” Grady snaps, frustration with their futile conversation having spiked.
“I’m aware.”
Sophie pulls her knees closer to her chest, fingers gripping the blanket like it might anchor her to something real, leaning in deeper to Edaline's shoulder in spite of how it digs into her cheek painfully. Nothing is making sense. Not the sharp, sudden pains, and the way they come and go without warning. Not the way they feel so specific and yet entirely untraceable.
Her mind drifts, unbidden, to a boy with messy blond hair and a crooked smile. To his letter lying abandoned on her bedroom floor.
To the hollow, gnawing emptiness she felt before the pain ever started. Sophie wonders if that is where it started, sitting in her bedroom and feeling completely fragmented as she read and searched and wanted to scream. Oddly, she finds herself wanting to return to that moment, before her pain became a thing. The near torturous feelings Sophie got from reading the letter seem infinitely better than whatever situation she is finding herself in now.
If that is what is the better choice to her—words scrawled on a page by Keefe and the confusing everything between the lines—Sophie believes that she may be going delirious from the pain.
Another faint tug pulses through her chest.
Sophie freezes, stomach swooping with expectation.
This time, it’s softer. Quieter, but it’s there.
Waiting.
Watching, not entirely unlike her echoes. But Sophie herself can recognize that that isn't what is happening here, although some part of her wishes it were, as then she would at least understand where the problem lay.
“What if it’s neither?” Tiergan says suddenly.
They all turn to face him, Elwin's lights pausing in their motions. Sophie lifts her head to watch him, noticing the way he is rubbing his thumb and pointer finger together with nerves. It is a familiar sight, one that both lightens Sophie and worries her.
“What do you mean?” Elwin asks, words laced with concern. A heavy weight in Sophie's chest loosens at his tone. Elwin, after all his years caring for her and her friends, clearly cares for Sophie deeply, and her situation feels slightly better when she knows that everyone in the room is here out of care for her.
Tiergan hesitates, like he’s stepping onto uncertain ground. “What if it’s not purely physical or mental?” he clarifies. “What if it’s something... in between?”
“You’ll need to be more specific," Mr. Forkle says, eyes narrowing slightly. The air grows tense, and all Sophie can do is dart her eyes between the two and be grateful that they aren't Empaths and cannot sense the millions of emotions inside her (especially the one that surges up with the thought of Empath. She forces that one down).
Tiergan exhales slowly. “There are phenomena we don’t fully understand. Rare ones. Connections that don’t behave like typical telepathy, empathy, or other abilities associated with the mind and body—”
“No,” Mr. Forkle cuts in, firm. His tone makes Sophie straighten and pluck an eyelash out in the same moment. If she notices beyond her worry, Edaline says nothing, which makes Sophie even more nervous than before. “If you’re implying what I think you are, there is no evidence to support—”
“I’m not implying anything,” Tiergan interrupts, though his tone lacks conviction. “I’m saying we don’t have enough information to rule anything out.”
Elwin looks between them, clearly unconvinced and confused. “You’re both talking in circles.”
“Yes,” Grady says, voice low and strained. “And none of it is helping my daughter.”
The word—daughter—falls heavily in the room.
It makes Sophie's heart beat a little faster than before, seeing the protective nature of her adoptive parents come out in full. Their daughter.
Mr. Forkle’s expression shifts, just slightly. “We will continue testing,” he says. “There are still areas we haven’t yet explored.”
Sophie lets out a shaky breath. Tests, more questions, and still no answers—just how it always goes.
The faint pulling sensation lingers in her chest, subtle enough that no one else can notice, but impossible for her to ignore. Contrary to what Elwin and her parents may be thinking, it doesn’t feel fully like an injury or illness, the type of thing Sophie is used to. The feeling is worse, an aching, indescribable thing.
It feels like something is missing. Like something is too far away for her to grasp and set into the missing space. To remove the pain and make her whole.
Sophie presses her hand harder against her ribs, as if she can hold whatever it is in place. She knows no one will say it, will not even come close to it. But as the silence settles over the room once more, thick with confusion and uncertainty, one thing becomes painfully, undeniably clear.
No one knows what is happening to her.
Not Elwin, her doctor of countless years, or Tiergan, the one person she knows who seems to be the least bit disconnected from the elven perspective like she is.
Not even Mr. Forkle, who literally made her.
And for the first time in a long time, Sophie has no enemy to fight, no plan to follow. The realization comes with dread rather than the relief she once expected to feel with such a thought. There is nothing here but a pain no one can explain to her, and a feeling she herself cannot name, stretching thin and fragile somewhere deep inside her, as if it might snap at any moment.
Something inside is beginning to burn, and Sophie fears that it will scorch her before anyone can find a way to put out the flame, but at the same time, she feels that it has been growing for far longer than this moment, as though the fire began long before she ever noticed the smoke.
You mean a lot to me, Foster. More than you'll ever know.
The words rise unbidden, and for a moment, Sophie can only stare at the floor, her chest tightening around a feeling she cannot quite contain.
Because Sophie finds that now, more than ever, she wants to know. She aches to know what he meant, why he left, if he is safe, all before the fire can grow any larger.
Beyond that, it is the word ever that truly lingers—it echoes through her mind long after the rest have faded away.
More than you'll ever know.
She wonders how long that time might stretch, if ever truly means eternity. Sophie knows that elves have forever, but something inside her tells her that she will not be following the normal, just as she has every other time in her life. For reasons she cannot fully explain, forever feels strangely fragile, more than usual.
Like a promise made to someone else, something she was never meant to keep. The thought settles over her with the same certainty as a storm cloud gathering on the horizon. Fate has never been kind enough to leave her life untouched. It has a plan, and she isn't sure whether she should be doubting or accepting it.
She isn't sure if she wants to find out what fate will allow—whether she will be given an ever to discover Keefe's truth, or not.