KOTLC Sokeefe One-Shots, Alternate Endings, etc

Hopefully (Dex POV)

A/N: This oneshot is set sometime during the events of Stellarlune.

Dex was in his lab at Slurps and Burps, busy cleaning up from making his latest batch of elixirs. His mind was reeling from everything he and his friends were facing.

Keefe had vanished.

Sophie obviously missed him desperately, but wouldn't talk about it.

Sophie and Fitz were very plainly fighting.

Sophie had taken Dex along to view the memories in Kenric's cache, but Sophie had seemed...off.

He suspected that was just Sophie's new normal until Keefe came home. Honestly, it was like neither of them was really themselves if they were apart.

Dex didn't know why it had taken him so long to see that. And he wasn't entirely sure Sophie realized it either.

He'd wasted so much time being jealous of Fitz.

But then, he'd hated Fitz for so long, while Keefe was just exceptionally likable.

He supposed Fitz was, too, now that he'd gotten to know the Vackers a little bit better. But now that he could look at the situation objectively--his feelings for Sophie were long gone--he knew his prejudice against the Vackers had clouded his ability to see that Fitz wasn't the only one Sophie gravitated towards.

What's more, the feelings he'd started experiencing for Biana had Dex in a whole other realm of confusion and uncertainty.

He wasn't sure when they'd started. It had been so gradual. For years, he'd hated the Vackers and everything their family represented. As he'd been forced to spend more time around Fitz and Biana, he'd slowly started to soften.

Just toward Biana, at first, because Fitz was the competition. Fitz was the one Sophie was always staring at, blushing over, flirting with.

That had made it far harder to like him for a long time.

But eventually he came to respect them both.

And he started spending more time around Biana. It was hard not to be affected by her beauty. But it was more than that.

She wasn't at all what he expected from a Vacker. He'd assumed her to just be a pampered little princess, but she was...fierce. And loyal. And kind. And funny. And...

But she was a Vacker. Somehow even admitting to himself that he was falling for her felt like some sort of betrayal.

He was still pondering these things as he headed back into the shop.

His dad was restocking some shelves. They had just closed, so there were no customers in the store, and there wasn't much left to do before leaping back to Rimeshire.

His dad looked up at him. "Um...son?" He peered at him more closely. "Why do you look like you accidentally swallowed a vial of Mind Mush?"

"I don't—wait, what's Mind Mush?"

Kesler shrugged. "I don't know, I just made it up. That was my roundabout way of asking why you look troubled and mentally weary. Care to talk about it?"

It was Dex's turn to shrug as he leaned up against the counter.

But what could he say? He knew he was falling hard for Biana. And he had no idea if she shared his feelings. It felt like she did, but...he'd deluded himself into thinking he stood a chance with Sophie when he'd always known, deep down, that she didn't see him that way. So could he even trust his judgment?