"Miss Foster."
Lord Cassius's oily tone cut through Sophie's imaginings only to dump her back in where she was: reality. Having a heart-to-heart chat with Lord Cassius. Not.
"Lord Cassius," Sophie replied, in the sharpest, coldest tone she could convey. She wasn't going to pretend she didn't hate the guy. Not once did he visit Keefe. Not once did he even ask if Keefe was okay.
He didn't care. Not one little bit. In fact, he almost seemed to enjoy the fact that his 'disappointment of a son' wasn't there to 'disgrace the Sensen name'.
If only he could see how Keefe really was. Someone who could bring a smile to anyone's face, anytime. Someone who always knew what to say, who could conjure up a laugh in you out of nowhere. Someone who was incredibly talented, insanely great, yet for all his big ego, didn't flaunt it. Or at least that was what he used to be.
Sophie sighed, a small, simple motion that somehow managed to express her exasperation better than any words ever could.
"Should I try again?" she asked, when it became clear that Lord Cassius wasn't going to restart the already dimming conversation.
Lord Cassius waved a careless arm, though there was something carefully calculated in it. "Go ahead."
Sophie place her hands on Lord Cassius's head, trying not to squirm in disgust. Slowly, as if she were dipping her littlest toe into a pool of freezing water, she delved into his head, bracing herself for the organised library of his memories.
Lord Cassius was a fast learner, and had somehow managed to figure out how to keep his private memories hidden, without even having to put a color on them, which irritated Sophie in a way that she could hardly explain, making her want to throw a bookcase down, or somehow mess up the pristine state of his mind.
She searched around the labyrinth of his mind, looking for any little flaw, any little crack that could allow her to break in, to access the memories he tried so hard to keep buried.
She had seen every other thing in his life. She had seen every little way he made Keefe's life miserable, every little act he apparently did for the almost numb emotion he called 'love'.
Nothing was there. Nothing about Lasy Gisela, nothing especially suspicious, just things that were normal. Family dinners. Talks. Events.
There where no more distorted memories, not even the tiniest glimpse of a word, any trigger whatsoever that could give them a hint of whatever they were looking for.
With a slight huff of exasperation, Sophie started to search for 'Keefe'. If Lord Cassius refused to see him, then Sophie would force him to.
Lips lifting up in what was almost a smug smile, she waded through memories of thousands of lectures that all somehow said the same thing: that Keefe wasn't to bring down the Sencen name, that he wasn't to disappoint the family.
She glanced over the sheer brokenness in Keefe's gaze, the slight pang that grazed Lord Cassius's heart.
A frown found it's way to Sophie's face. "You feel sorry for him."
There was no reply, but the startling silence seemed to only prove Sophie's point.
"I just wouldn't want him to lie awake at night, thinking that he should've acted better in his youth," Lord Cassius admitted at last.
Sophie looked away from the memory. "Is that what you do?"
"That Vacker boy asks far less questions than you," he replied, though his answer seemed to be his attempt at averting the question, while knowing that Fitz somehow always made Sophie uncomfortable. Always had, always would.
She sighed, glancing over the thousands of memories waiting to be looked through, each one taking up solid sections of her time.
The truth was that she would rather check on Keefe himself right now than search through old memories of him. This had all passed, and there was nothing to be done about them, but the future could still be prevented. Hopefully.
Biting her lip, she decided to start at the beginning and work her way through, so that at least she had some kind of order to keep herself sane with.
She found memories of a baby Keefe, the full weight of his father's urging and pressuring not quite hitting its mark yet. Not yet causing the hurt and raw brokenness of the boy who masked himself with smiles and jokes, who everyone knew, yet no one actually did.
Then she found it. Something tugged at her mind, telling her that this was important, while Lord Cassius kept up attempting to pull it out of reach.
Huffing in exasperation, she concentrated, and managed to grasp a hold on it, much to the dismay of the owner.
Lord Cassius striding into the room and stopping short when he caught sight of a blonde woman playing with his baby that was most certainly not his wife.
A rush of emotion running through him that Sophie had never, ever experienced before in any of his other memories.
Already, she felt the panic from Lord Cassius as he tried to shut the memory down, tried to black it out, but with little to no success.
Sophie had to make sure this one stayed open.
"What are you doing here?" Lord Cassius said in the memory, his tone daggers of pure ice.
The woman didn't answer, didn't turn, and only stood up to brush her hands on her dress, and boop Keefe on the nose, making him giggle.
"I asked you a question," he repeated, with an almost murderous note to his carefully calculated tone.
"Can't a woman come to visit your son?" she replied, an equally cold emphasis on the last few words of her sentence.
Lord Cassius gritted his teeth. "I thought I had made it clear that you are not welcome here."
The visitor snorted. "Afraid I might 'bring down the Sencen name'?"
Sophie didn't need to see her hands to know she was making exaggerated air quotes.
The woman's fingers delicately fingered a mobile. "Don't you forget, Cassius, that there was hardly a 'Sencen name' to begin with.
Lord Cassius took a step forward, his fuming anger the strongest emotion Sophie had ever witnessed him display.
"I almost feel sorry for this kid," she continued, "being raised by a monster like you."
"Get out," Lord Cassius growled, his words snarling knives aimed at this woman's head.
The woman glanced one last time at Keefe, already scrambling to get away.
"Still so unbelievably obsessed with your legacy, eh?"
"Get. Out."
She turned, letting both Lord Cassius and Sophie have full view of her face, full of both detest and sympathy, as if the two could run together in harmony.
"As you wish."
YOU ARE READING
Foster | sokeefe
Fanfiction*discontinued Keefe has been in a coma for three years. Nothing anybody tried would wake him up. But just when everyone had given up hope, his ice blue eyes fluttered open. Now, Keefe Sencen must try to find his way in a world that he had involun...
