SoKeefe One-Shots

To be okay

(Unlocked Spoilers ahead)

When Sophie went up to her room, she was exhausted. All she wanted to do was curl up into her bed and sleep for a week, but first, she wanted to check in with Keefe and let him know what had happened. Their victory against the Neverseen was a bittersweet marker of the beginning of the War and although she wished she could go back and change parts of her plan, Sophie was happy with her decision. She would deal with the caches and the scrolls tomorrow. 

Or so she thought.

The letter on her desk wouldn't have caught her eye had Sandor not done a sweep before and told her about it. After a lengthy inspection, he finally left her to read it for herself, giving her a weird look before leaving the room. When she opened the letter she immediately recognized Keefe's handwriting and took a moment to sit down.

This wasn't going to be good. He shouldn't have been here nor should he be writing a letter when he could have told her himself. That was unless he... no.

She read it quickly. And then another time slowly, trying to process what he had said before it really hit her. 

She let the paper drop to the floor.

There was nothing she could do but fall to her knees, tears streaming down her face as she tried to hold herself up.

Sandor burst into the room almost dragging a very concerned Edaline behind him. Her confused expression quickly turned into horror as she watched her daughter sob on the floor. She took a quick look at the paper and ran to Sophie's side. 

"Oh Sophie," she whispered as she rubbed circles on her back.

Part of Sophie didn't know why she was crying so hard. He had done this before, it could almost be expected for him to do this again, but too much of her had been teetering on the hope that he wouldn't. That maybe, just maybe, their friendship mattered enough for him not to hurt her like this. A selfish thought, but she decided that she was going to take a moment and be selfish before she gathered herself up to drag his butt back where it belonged. 

She hadn't slept, her heart was mending from her breakup with Fitz, from finding out Oralie was her mom, and her tears wouldn't stop. Edaline held her tight. It was moments like this she felt like she needed to stop everything, to be able to stop existing for a moment so she wouldn't have to face her emotions. She started hyperventilating as she tried to breathe but she found only sobbs. 

"It's going to be okay," Edaline assured her. "I know that the world is changing, and it feels like you can't take a breath sometimes, but lean on me. I'll hold you up so you don't have to. So you can take a breath".

Sophie looked up at her and tried to calm down. One breath. Then another.

She almost collapsed against Edaline as she began to breathe normally and found her energy gone. She looked Edaline in the eye and whispered, "I'm going to kick his ass into tomorrow".

Edaline laughed and ran her hands through Sophie's hair.

They sat together on the floor, Edaline rocking Sophie back and forth and murmured a lullaby. Sophie took a moment to appreciate that for once, she felt safe. In the back of her mind, there was a voice screaming out that she needed to prepare for the war she just escalated. That maybe, she should leave Keefe be until she could finish the Neverseen and deal with this when she was supposed to. That she should put duty first.

A bigger part of her knew that she couldn't. As awful and reckless as that was, she couldn't let Keefe go. Not without a fight, not like this. 

"Am I a bad person for wanting him back," she whispered.