Chapter Text
Sometimes when Dex looks at Sophie, especially when she laughs or the sun catches her eyes and they turn that golden honey color, he's reminded of his boyhood crush. How he had looked at this girl with her decidedly moral nature and depth beyond her years and could do nothing less than fall in love with her.
Of course, so did everyone else. She was a force to be reckoned with and everyone who saw her in those first few months after she moved to the Lost Cities wanted to know her, even just to understand the wisdom in her strange colored eyes.
But he had become her friend, her best friend, and he realized that if this feeling of connection and understanding, of both himself and his family, was love then he wouldn't mind being in love with Sophie Foster.
Dex was the first person to understand just how indestructible her spirit was, how impossibly human, as it definitely wasn't something elves were taught. When they were kidnapped and she saved his life he saw her courage for the very first time. And then she kept saving him, even after he made the restrictor and yelled at her in his jealousy, she stayed his friend and loved him through it all. She stood up for him when the other boys called him scrawny or when they judged his parent's marriage. They're the ridiculous ones, she would tell him, referring to the other boys. No use judging something as precious as love or as uncontrollable as having triplets. She accepted him in all ways, she was safe, and she was beautiful, there was no way to not love her.
Then he kissed her, his first kiss as well as hers, and it was terrible. After years of comfort and pining it just seemed like the logical next step, even if in the back of his mind he had seen the signs pointing him away from this path. They agreed to be best friends, basically family, after that and Dex was satisfied.
But he could tell that Sophie wasn't.
Something had happened after Team Prodigious was formed. Sophie was tired, the ever-present dark circles under her eyes became a worryingly permanent fixture. Her relationship with Fitz was strained and every conversation she came back from with Forkle left her in an angry place. Her indestructible spirit was faulting and Dex couldn't help but mourn the loss. She was their leader, the face they looked to whenever something was going wrong, the very moral character they relied upon to move forward and it seemed like she was pulling away. Losing her will to go along with every plan that was laid out in front of them, not that she had been very good at following them before, but now she seemed beaten down.
She had been through too much too fast. They all had and they were too young to be at the forefront of it all but it all rested on her shoulders. It had taken Dex too long to realize that and he blamed himself for not being there for her more.
They had all taken breaks. Fitz left anytime he got too angry, weeks spent hiding in his room. Biana needed months after her face had been scratched by the mirrors. Linh had been out of commission when her brother had gone to the Neverseen. Keefe was constantly being detained to his room, though that wasn't entirely his fault, but Dex could tell that when things got hard it was Keefe's instinct to run away. Even Dex had taken time for his family, mainly for the triplets when they had manifested.
But Sophie? She never stopped. It didn't seem like she minded, even pushing others to keep working or stay away if it was too dangerous. When Forkle's twin died, the only person she knew from her human life that she got to keep, the grief she had been keeping inside was suddenly too visible in her eyes. She looked older now, the girl he knew fading before him.
She stayed strong, Dex knew he could always count on Sophie for that, but now those beautiful honey eyes carried a hardness that only grief can cause, unable to hide it away like she used to. Now when the council asked her for help she locked her jaw before nodding in agreement. When Della mentioned her and Fitz's flirtation Sophie snapped at her and didn't apologize. Dex had done his best to back her up but she seemed to be far away whenever he talked to her, like she was thinking about other places. Whether past or present, he could never tell.
It dawned on him that perhaps she had never known a life of peace, that maybe for her there was no time that she could recall of true happiness. The screeching voices and mind-reading childhood threw her into a new world without her family that seemed to always have someone trying to kill her. Life had always been testing her unusual talents and Sophie always seemed to bear unreasonable hardships. The weight of it all was catching up and he wasn't sure how much more of this she could take nor how he could stop it.
But then Keefe would make a joke and her face would relax into laughter. For a moment, Dex could see a glimpse of the girl she might have been had she not been put into such strange circ*mstances.
Her ridged shoulders would relax, her straight posture would loosen, and her eyes brightened into something dangerously marvelous. Her laugh was mesmerizing. It was a sight worth a thousand words and not one to miss if he could manage it as it never lasted as long as he wished.
He was grateful for Keefer's crush on her, it kept him in the employment of making Sophie laugh. She would always make a little sigh afterward and look at Keefe a little too long, like her brain was trying to figure out how much of Keefe's joking was just for her.
All of it! Dex wanted to yell, shaking Sophie out of her oblivion. But he also knew that if he rushed Sophie or pushed her faster than her heart was ready for, the whole situation would end up just like him or Fitz. Sophie needed to make this choice for herself, to find happiness herself, even if it made Dex want to scream whenever he noticed their mutual pining.
It was ridiculous honestly, everyone knew about them. Everyone who knew Sophie well that was. Keefe had always liked Sophie, that much had been clear since he declared himself president of the Sophie Foster Fan Club. It was just that back then, no one thought he stood a chance. He was a prankster, he showed up late to class, he was the class clown. No one took anything he had to say seriously. But then Keefe met Sophie.
Dex didn't actually know how they met. From what he remembered, it seemed like the first time Keefe had entered the room with Sophie they had already been friends. Maybe it's just that easy when you look like Keefe.
After that, he still made his jokes and gags, but it was all for her. Anyone could see the way he looked for her laugh after a silly one-liner or the way he always came on time to class when he knew she would be there. Maybe that's why Sophie was so oblivious, she had never known the Keefe before her.
Nobody said anything of course and Sophie had a crush on Fitz back then. But time had moved forward and she moved on. Now, as she spent more and more time planning to stop the Neverseen, Keefe had dedicated just as much time to being there for her. He told everyone he wanted to stop his mom, that he was in the long haul because it was so personal for him, but Dex knew better.
He had seen Keefe sit by Sophie's bedside after she had passed out from her allergic reaction, you'd never seen a man more devastated. Ever since then, Keefe had made sure he was involved in whatever the Black Swan had planned. It didn't matter how dangerous it was, if Sophie was going to risk her safety then so was he. There was a reason that they both had so many bodyguards, they were both reckless when it came to saving the people they loved.
Maybe when all the fighting was over Dex would nudge Sophie in the right direction, help her to see just how right she was this time with her feelings. The others in their group had concerns over the potential relationship. Whenever the team got together without Sophie and Keefe, it tended to stray into telling gossip more often than not, swapping stories of what they had seen or heard. Biana was the most guilty of this as she often ranted about how annoying her brother was being and all the things Fitz had told her he had seen happen between Sophie and Keefe. There were several voices in the group that raised concerns over their unmatchability and whether or not their relationship was even going to be allowed.
Tam brought up how crazy their number of talents combined was and how weird it would be if they did get together and have kids, nobody knew how much of their gene alteration was something that could be passed on or if their kids would be as crazy powerful as both of them. Lihn would always try to stop the gossiping and get them focused on their work but would end up as one of their biggest advocates, aside from Dex of course, and point out that neither of them cared about being a bad match, and how much more of a good match that made them.
Ultimately, he decided that Sophie and Keefe deserved to be happy. He couldn't think of a couple more right for each other, other than his parents. He knew that it would all work out and if the council didn't approve of the match after Sophie saved their sorry butts, then he didn't know what she could do to ever get their approval. So if it came down to them getting illegally married in the woods, then so be it, he would be the best man.
Sophie was his best friend, and Dex knew that he would make sure she was happy, even if it meant letting Ro trap Sophie and Keefe in a room until they kissed.
