Try to focus, let each other in.
Tiergan's words rang through Sophie's mind as she tried her best to get over what she knew was undoubtedly going to happen.
She took a breath.
Tiergans right you know you need to let me in, Fitz's mental voice whispered in her mind.
Sophie cringed and tried not to think of the reason why so Fitz wouldn't see. She wasn't ready for him to know everything about her, every feeling she'd ever had, every idea she'd ever thought. Something inside her screamed at her that she had trusted him before. What was the difference now?
The difference was that Fitz had asked her out, and after only a week she had turned him down. The difference was that she had other secrets in her life now that he just couldn't know about.
Not yet.
But when?
"Why don't we try something else?" Sophie offered weakly. She watched as he let go of her hands and fell back in his chair, he pushed his hands through his hair.
"Sure," he huffed, "how about we move on to emotion reading?"
She inwardly groaned.
Emotion reading wasn't much less invasive than mind reading, plus that meant having to bring an empath to help and she wasn't sure much good would come from it.
"Alright," said, agreeing to try and ease the tension in the room.
Fitz stood up, "I'll go get Keefe."
Sophie's head whipped up.
"No wait-" but it was too late. Fitz had already left. She tried to reason with herself that this wouldn't go as badly as her rapidly beating heart was telling her.
All too quickly Fitz returned with Keefe. Sophie tried to keep from tugging on her eyelashes but she could see Keefe already felt her feelings on the matter as he gave her a knowing look.
"I would like it to be known that if it weren't for my irreplaceable talents in reading emotions I would have never agreed to go along with this!" Keefe announced. He grabbed one of the extra chairs and dragged it towards where Sophie was sitting.
Fitz rolled his eyes, "It's not like you were doing anything important Keefe."
Keefe placed his hands over his heart in mock hurt, "How dare you! I was doing very important things Fitzy."
Fitz raised an eyebrow but before he could respond Sophie decided to jump in.
"I'm sure you were Keefe, we just needed a little help."
"More like a truckload," Fitz muttered.
"Trouble in cognitive paradise?" Keefe joked though it sounded a little forced.
"We're just having some trouble with..." Sophie dropped off looking at her feet.
Fitz rolled his eyes, "She doesn't trust me with her secrets anymore, though she never did completely."
"Can you blame her? I wouldn't want everyone knowing my skeletons." Keefe said giving Sophie an encouraging smile.
Fitz rolled his eyes, "Of course you would side with her. You don't care about how important this is, we could be the most powerful cognates history has ever seen and nobody cares!"
"Foster seems to be doing pretty well on her own if you ask me," Keefe fired back.
Sophie stood up. "Okay, let's just get to the practice and then we can all go home and get some much-needed rest."
Fitz glared at Keefe, "Fine."
They arranged their seats so Keefe could monitor their emotions while Fitz and Sophie guessed based on the prompt from the practice book Tierigan had given them.
"Stars," Keefe announced.
Sophie saw Fitz's mind go soft, like a fond memory.
"Nostalgic?"
"Good," Keefe agreed. "Uh, how about trees?"
Fitz paused while he interpreted.
"Um... happy?"
"Well, more like delighted but close enough," Keefe replied.
"Is this really helping anything?" Fitz asked aloud.
Sophie groaned.
"It helps to do this with things you're more connected to, clearer emotions I think," Keefe pondered aloud.
"Might as well try," said Fitz.
"How about Biana?" Keefe prompted.
Sophie saw a bunch of gold and a little bit of red.
"He loves her but gets annoyed too."
"Good," Keefe nodded.
"How about your human parents?"
"That's a lot of love mixed with a lot of pain."
Keefe glanced at her and she tried not to make eye contact, picking to look at the ceiling instead.
Fitz eyed her, looking like he wanted to comfort her but chose not to.
"Let's go with Dex."
She saw some purple and light green.
"He likes Dex but thinks he's... silly?" Sophie opened her eyes. "Is that what you felt, you think Dex is silly?"
"No!" Fitz responded quickly, "he's just always been younger and a bit nieve."
"Huh," Sophie said and glanced at Keefe. He looked uncomfortable but tried to give her a small smile.
"How about-"
"Keefe!" Fitz interrupted.
Sophie's eyes whipped open.
"Hey you can't-" Keefe tried to interject.
"Woah," Fitz almost stepped back.
Time seemed to slow as Fitz looked at the two of them.
"Are you," he paused, "in love with Keefe?"
Keefe looked at her, eyes wide.
"I..."
She didn't want to lie again. Not about something like this, not in front of Keefe. She looked at those ice-blue eyes.
"Yes, I am."
"Sophie," Keefe whispered, his eyes softened but still looked panicked.
Fitz stood up and gripped the back of his chair, his eyebrows bunched.
"I should have expected this... she still flirted with you when she was with me," Fitz turned and narrowed his eyes at Keefe.
"Excuse me-," Sophie tried to interrupt but Fitz kept talking over her.
"And you!" he pointed at Keefe, "You were supposed to be my best friend! You knew how much Sophie hurt me, how could you go around kissing my ex-girlfriend after everything I've been through, some friend you are."
Keefe stood, returning Fitz's glare.
"And you were supposed to be my best friend Fitz! Having your dad come after me,"
Fitz flinched.
"saying how I wasn't good enough for Sophie and how I should put away my personal feelings for her for you. To be the punching bag so you wouldn't take it out on her! How messed up is that! It was clear what I felt about Foster, even your dad knew that. I always put her first, I always went at her pace and considered her feelings, considered what she wanted. It's not my fault you fucked up! It's not my fault you lost her!"
Keefe glanced at Sophie, "She's smart and funny and beautiful and you lost her because you cared more about appearances than the literal goddess in front of you. How could you not give everything to be with her, how could anything be more important to you than Sophie?"
Sophie was staring at Keefe, stunned by his declaration, but turned back to Fitz.
"How dare you insinuate I wasn't a faithful girlfriend to you? I wasn't flirting with Keefe when I told you I liked you, I didn't even know I had feelings for Keefe until long after we broke up. Not to mention you kept going around telling everyone I was your girlfriend mere minutes after confessing our feelings. Something we never agreed on, by the way. If you took our normal comforting conversations as flirting, that's on your jealousy, not me."
Fitz glared at her, "Jealousy? Are you kidding me! I was the perfect boyfriend, I brought you gifts, I listened to you, I was there for you, and you never trusted me! You always went to him!"
"You never really listened to me, you always took what you wanted to hear and twisted it to talk about yourself," Sophie huffed.
Fitz didn't look moved.
She turned to Keefe, "Let's get out of here."
"Run away," Fitz whispered to Keefe, "Just like you always do."
Keefe walked up to Fitz, dead serious.
"At least I'm not pushing myself on Sophie in a halfhearted attempt for power, Sophie never needed you as a cognate and we both know it. It was always you who needed it to be any kind of useful to the rest of us because in the back of your mind you knew that you brought nothing else to the table. Go find another way to be useful and stop putting Sophie down because of your insecurity."
Fitz went red with embarrassment.
"I always considered you a brother, Fitz. I grew up in your house, you gave me an example of what a family could be like. Should be like. I always stayed out of your way when you wanted something, I was always a shoulder when you needed it, I was always there for you when things went wrong, I helped you think things through. I had your back. Now, for the first time in 17 years, I won't be there to fix things. You can't see the value in our friendship anymore? Fine. But you disrespect the girl I love? The girl I have been in love with since we met? The girl you had a shot at and messed up because you can't look past yourself even with my help? It's not fine anymore, and I'm done pretending it is."
Keefe turned back to Sophie and gave her a small smile.
"Let's go," he agreed, and they walked away.
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A/N: Sorry I haven't been posting a lot, school has been busy. Apologies to all the Fitz fans as well, I felt like I gave him a good moment in Sit With It but this was the side of him that always came out of him in the books. This is one of those, he will learn from it moments and become a better person for it but that doesn't mean he can mess with the people around him without consequences.
Anyways, story requests are always considered if anyone has one. Just comment here.
Love you all :)