A/N: wow guys my fiftieth chapter woo! ngl, this one is a bit sad (more than a bit) so imma just let you read it and decide if you still like me by the end of this journey. okay bye pls don't hate me

Air.

The only thing Sophie needs right now is air.

The walls seem to be closing in, there's still dust falling from what used to be a ceiling, and Sophie is pretty sure she's covered in blood, sand, and dirt. She needs air, she needs to clear her lungs of the dirtiness of the oxygen around her, clear her head from the horrible thoughts flying around, and yet all she sees is the darkness in front of her.

She's completely alone, completely cut off from the outside where Edaline is, and she doesn't remember hearing from Keefe after she had frantically transmitted to him when she figured out what was going on.

Lumenaria is completely in ruins.

She only feels the faintest sense of deja vu, but she can't stop running in order to figure out why. Maybe she's running in circles, the entire building was designed to confuse people. She doesn't even care, because she knows that there are still people in there. She hadn't seen Mr. Forkle or Oralie with the refugees. And who knows where Keefe could be. She can't think of any sort of reason why Keefe wouldn't have left the cave he was hiding in if he knew that people were in danger. She wants to think that he would at least have come looking for her with the refugees...

Right now, she can't think about who could and couldn't be in this building. She just needs to find someone at all. Needs to know that whoever is stuck in here will get out. Needs to know that everything is okay.

And then suddenly it clicks. She's a genetically enhanced telepath who can track thoughts to their exact locations. So, she crouches down and places two fingers on her right temple, face contorting in concentration as she reaches her mind out like a blanket, trying to feel for something. Anything.

She's just about to give out to the strain when she feels the slightest flicker of a frantic thought, just a trickle of warmth as her heart beat speeds up, and suddenly she's not in charge of her limbs anymore. She's running, running, running at full speed, dodging fallen support beams and shattered marble and crystal and glass, going so fast she must be levitating now. She's moving things along the way with her telekinesis, instinctively knowing exactly what do, as if she'd done it before already. She just needs to find this person.

She reaches her consciousness out again, feeling more than one flicker of life this time, and it's getting closer, just above her. She can feel the cold chill of fear settle into her bones, the blood drain from her face as she's about to levitate onto the floor above, so she calls out random names of people she knew were at the summit.

"Hello?" she hears a frail voice call out, and suddenly her breathing is erratic, her chest heaving with the relief of finding them, and the fear of what she could see. But she has never been prepared to see what is in front of her right now.

"No." That's all that comes out of Sophie's mouth before she's running, falling on her knees, and already feeling her entire body heave from the force of her sobs this time.

"You really shouldn't have come looking for us," the familiar voice says, though gruff and clearly full of pain and strain, and she finally looks down into his face, not totally ready to accept the fact that who she saw was really him. But looking into those eyes, she can't deny it for much longer.

"Keefe...," she cries out, reaching for his hand and holding on so tight she can't even feel her own hand anymore. She looks up to the frail voice from before, Oralie, who's hand is pressing on Keefe's torso, shiny and red, and Sophie is suddenly overcome with the pungent and choking smell of iron. She doesn't know if she's still sobbing, or if she's gagging.

"It's okay, Sophie. Believe me, I gave as hard as I got," he rasps out, turning his head the slightest bit to the left, and Sophie follows her gaze in that direction until her eyes fall upon a lump in the corner, covered with what looks like a curtain, and it's terrifyingly body shaped.

"It's Brant. He came after me, keeping good on his promise," Oralie choked out through her own rattling sobs, albeit much more controlled than Sophie's.

"The sword..." Sophie suddenly looks back down to Keefe's torso, and sees the blood that won't stop, the fabric tied tight around the wound, and it all kicks in at the same time.

"Yes. He came after me, but Keefe found us while he was looking for you...," Oralie trails off, staring back at Brant's lifeless body. "A beam fell on him, crushing his skull. Brain matter everywhere." She looks away from Sophie, her eyes going dark and distant as she seems to relive the memory.

"Yeah, it was pretty gruesome. Definitely not something you'd have wanted to see," Keefe gets out between weak breaths, but Sophie's more focused on the blood trailing from the corner of his mouth. She shakes her head, placing a hand on his cheek and wiping the blood away from his mouth with her thumb, gently and carefully, as if she could somehow hurt him even more.

"Keefe..."

"I'll be okay, but listen to me right now," he says weakly, coughing in a way that looks like it's so painful, Sophie can feel it in her chest. She meets his eyes again, and they're the same eyes she looks into everyday. No flicker of pain. "You need to fight this war, and you need to win it. I promise that I will be with you through every part of it, do you hear me? I'm never leaving your side." Sophie's tears only start coming again, hot and fast, and they burn her eyes.

"There has to be time to get you to the physician, I can carry you, and Elwin can fix this, or-"

"Sophie, there isn't time. Forkle has already started finding his way out of here to find a refugee group to alert them about what's happened," Keefe tells her, but she keeps shaking her head hard.

"You're just giving up? I just got you back," she has to ask, a sob cutting through the end of her sentence in the form of a hiccup.

"I'm not giving up, just waiting for the right time. It's amazing how long you can stall something if you really put your mind to it," Keefe says, never taking his eyes off of Sophie's. "Sophie, thanks for coming to find me, but you can't save me this time. All I can ask for is what you've already given me. The gift of goodbye." He rattles out another breath, each one sounding more painful than the last, and there's nothing Sophie can do.

"I'm sorry I can't save you," she sobs, wiping away more of the blood falling from the corner of his mouth. She can see some of his own tears, washing away lines of dust on his cheeks.

"I'm sorry I couldn't save myself. I'll always love you, Sophie Foster," he says before closing his eyes, breathing more slowly, and Sophie looks from him to Oralie, who's already starting to lift her hands from his wound. Sophie closes her eyes tight, squeezing out more hot tears, and when she opens them, she sees the tears drop onto his shoulder.

"I'll always love you, too, Keefe," she shakily gets out, hoping that he's conscious enough to hear it. And right after the last words leave her mouth, falling off of her tongue, she can see his chest fall still.

And then she's screaming. Breathing so hard she can't focus on her surroundings, but she's fairly sure she's being strangled by something that's too soft to be dangerous. Struggling, she kicks and thrashes, trying to focus on where she is and what's going on, and wondering what the hell just happened. The only thing she can make out is the large, brooding figure at the foot of her bed, and the light pouring in from the open door in the corner of the room, and that's when it hits her: she's in her bedroom.

That horrible scene had come from her own twisted mind, she'd dreamt the whole thing. She's crying, screaming, still thrashing, and she can't answer any of the questions being asked to her. All she can do is kick the strangling blankets off of her and scramble to her desk, entire body shaking and coated in cold sweat as she grabs for her imparter.

"Show me Keefe," she says shakily, probably loudly judging by the concerned look on who she can now identify as Sandor. She waits, breathing heavily, trying to calm down her nerves and get rid of the cold chill in her bones as the gadget rings. The only thing going through her mind right now is that it was a dream, and Keefe Keefe Keefe, because he has to be okay. But she has to see that.

"Sophie? What's going on?" she hears, and the breath of relief she inhales is so loud that she's pretty sure it was a gasp.

"Oh my god. Keefe, oh my god," is all she can get out before she's crouching down on her flower petal carpet, pulling her knees up to her chest and burying her face between them, leaning against the bed. She doesn't even know if Keefe can see her with how dark her room is, but she knows he can definitely hear her and her loud sobs. She's surprised she hasn't woken up Grady and Edaline.

"Hey, what's wrong? What happened?" he's asking, and she can hear him clap, turning on a light. She doesn't have the strength to raise her head to look at him now, scared that when she does she'll see the horrifying image from her nightmare. It doesn't matter anyway, because it's all she can see when she closes her eyes, too.

"Can you come over? Please?" she chokes out, trying to dry her eyes on the fabric of her pyjama pants.

"Of course, I'll be right there," he says, sounding concerned. Sophie silently tries to control her hiccup-like sobs as he ends the call, telling her that he's already on his way. She can't stop her chest from heaving until she finally hears footsteps coming up the stairs, and she whips her head around to stare at the doorway, ready for a fresh set of tears when she finally sees him frantically walk into the room, turning the lights on and seeing her on the ground. He shares a look with Sandor before going to kneel right in front of her, and she immediately holds onto his hand so tight she can't feel her fingers anymore. She can hear him asking what's wrong and what happened over and over again, but all she can do is look from his clean torso to his unbloodied mouth to his eyes, proving that she had dreamed it all up. Her subconscious mixed up her own tragedies and cooked up a completely new and terrifying one.

Before she can even make sense of what's happening, she's throwing herself onto Keefe, wrapping her arms tightly over his shoulders and burying her face into his neck, a new round of tears coming. It has to be at least her tenth, including those within the dream.

"Hey," he starts, wrapping his arms around her waist and shushing her in a soothing way. "I'm right here. I'm right here, I promise." His voice is low and steady, nothing like the rattly sentences she'd heard from the dream. "Come on, let's stand up now," he says, and Sophie only half understands what he's saying, just following his lead when he leans back a little bit and starts standing up, helping her get back onto the bed.

"I'm so sorry, I just-" she starts, starting to feel dizzy. Keefe sits down next to her, taking her hand and holding on tightly, staying silent and letting her finish. "It was a dream, and I just had to make sure you were okay."

"I'm perfectly okay. What happened in the dream?" he asks, looking at her with so much concern that she almost feels bad for worrying him. She tries to get her crying under control and is left with only sniffles before she tries to sum up the horrors her brain showed her.

"Lumenaria. I- it was, uh, it was you, instead of Forkle," she stutters out, still sniffling, with a few hiccups here and there. She can hear the stuffiness in her voice, and she can still feel herself trembling, even when Keefe wraps his arms around her shoulders, holding her close as she leans on him for support.

"Oh, Sophie, I'm so sorry," he says, and she just can't shake the cold emptiness she can feel in her chest. She can still feel the fear in her bones when she first looked at him in the dream, feel her heart being ripped in half as he told her he loved her, and she just hides her face in his shoulder, feeling bad for ruining his shirt with her new tears.

"It was just horrible. It was, it was like my brain just, merged two tragedies into one," she gets out between sniffles. She knows her legs and hands are still shaking, making her feel so much colder than she really is. For all she knows, she could have a fever right now, but she just feels so... empty. And cold.

"Lay down, Sophie," he says, and she silently obeys, hesitantly prying herself away from him and laying down, letting her head fall on the pillow. She can feel that Keefe is still holding onto her hand as he lays down to the right of her, and he uses his other arm to wrap around her, pulling her closer. She leans her head on his chest, barely even blinking for fear of seeing the horrifying images again. Sophie's left arm is slung across her chest, and partly on Keefe's, holding his right hand as she feels where his wound was in the dream. There's nothing abnormal about it, and Keefe just seems to know what she's doing, because he stays silent.

"Do you hear my heartbeat?" he asks, waiting for her to nod slowly. She's just staring into space at this point, still barely blinking. She's probably broken a record for longest time not blinking at this point. "Just focus on that. Focus on my heartbeat," he says, soothingly rubbing his hand up and down her arm, calming her spiked nerves. She's not feeling as cold anymore, and the emptiness in her chest is starting to fill back up as she listens to his heartbeat, just like he told her to. It's steady, strong, and it fills the silence, reminding her that he's still here. She tries to sync up her breathing to the beat of his heart, needing something to steady her lungs.

"How are you feeling?" he asks, dragging Sophie back to reality. She turns her head to look at him, reassuring herself that he's full of life, and she sits up straighter on her own, probably looking more worn out than he does at this point. And all she can think of now are those last words he spoke in the dream.

"Keefe, do you love me?" she asks, strangely calm. But after that dream, she's not sure she can be scared about anything the way she was scared when it felt so real. She just has to know.

"Do I... love you?" he asks, looking surprised. But she meets his eyes, so much more vibrant than they were in the dream. She nods. He's still holding her hand, his other still on her arm, and there's a strange calmness on his face. Maybe he's tired.

"In the dream, you told me you loved me. I just... I need to know," she says. It's so hard to explain to him without explaining the horrible gruesomeness that came with it, and it's surprisingly a lot more nerve wracking to explain someone's own death to their face. Even if it was fake.

"Yeah, I love you," he tells her softly, sitting up more with her. She can't help but place her hand on his cheek, wiping her thumb at the corner of his mouth, completely absent of blood, his face void of any pain, and she thinks about how she really thought she'd had to let him go without him knowing how she really feels. So, she leans down, feeling the warmth start to find its way back to the cold parts of her body, and the frightened parts of her starting to mend back up, the shaking finally stopping, and she calmly places her lips on his, just wondering what it feels like.

"I almost had to let you go without ever doing that," she says, her eyes filling with new tears. Whether these tears are from grief, fear, or relief, she doesn't know. All she knows is that she's tired, and she finally feels at peace for the first time that night. Keefe smiles at her, small but reassuring, and she leans back down, resting against his chest again.

"You don't have to let me go, I'll stay right here, okay? You're not going to lose me." His voice is so steady, so sure, so strong that she believes it, and she nods, finally feeling okay enough to close her eyes. This time, she doesn't see the image from her dream, but the image of Keefe just now, smiling at her and reminding her that he's still here.

"Keefe?" she asks softly, still listening to his heartbeat.

"Yeah, Sophie?" he answers, his hand trailing to the back of her head, soothingly combing through her hair.

"I love you, too," she tells him, eyes still closed, picturing more pleasant things to think about than the dream. If she could have them, she'd ask for Calla's reveriebells, but having Keefe right with her might be better. And before she can even hear his reply, she's already asleep, in dreamless, timeless, and painless oblivion.