Sophia still hadn’t recovered from what she saw, a moment that felt so visceral that there was no point in denying it. Something about Ozymandias had triggered a memory buried deep within her, one she had no intent to look at again. Shoring it back up had as profound an effect on her as if he’d slashed her heart open.

“The meaning of this disgusting trick you’ve played,” she cut in hotly. It was a good thing he did not raise his voice, it kept Sophia on the brink of hysterics as she began to reverse-catalog every moment of their past encounters. The way he’d shored up those distant memories of Jacob all along, even at his first visit backstage, which in her blind idealism, Sophia took as a sweet reminder of the qualities in a man she likes. The thought that perhaps he’d been targeting her all this time was not far from mind, and the idea made her sick, building a thick well of poison that expanded in the pit of her stomach.

Of course, he wore this stupidly confused look that played innocent now. Perhaps it was the effects of the drug, but each passing syllable he used to justify himself served only to make the woman dizzier, her heart pounding. Shaking hands moved to clutch her chest now, where her skin felt ice cold. “Was it very amusing to you, stringing me along like a lovesick puppy? Do you pick widows as prey very often?” she went on savagely, caring little for his level tones or feigned surprise. There was no way this memory came forward by accident. He must have been sifting through her thoughts for quite some time, but with the drugs, he either grew cocky enough to overstep his boundary or she’d grown more attuned to his wiles. An insidious form of legilimency - that was the only way she could explain any of this.

“I may be a lot of things, Mister Dempsey, but an idiot who will stand being manipulated is not one of them,” the poison pit in her stomach finally burst, and gave way to clear anguish and ire. Though tears welled in her eyes, Sophia would not give him the satisfaction of seeing them fall. “As if you could ever even scratch the surface to be the man Jacob was. What, you thought perhaps if you recreated the scent of the day we fell in love, you might get deeper under my skin? That I am daft and desperate enough that I would not pause to consider that you never once stepped foot in Khimki forest, much less lit us a campfire?!”

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