Chapter Seventeen
Flavius
Three days. That was what she asked for.
Three days of seeing Sophia only from a distance—tight shoulders in the corridor, untouched food on her tray, the way she vanishes into her room as though she wishes the door could swallow her whole.
Three days of trying to be what the modern world calls respectful.
I have failed in every quiet way that matters. Every glimpse tells me the same thing: she is not simply busy. She is breaking.
So when my phone buzzes on the morning of the fourth day and her name appears, my whole body goes still.
Sophia: I was wrong to ask for space. I need your help. Can we talk?
I’m there in four. Only because I force myself to walk instead of run.
I close the door softly behind me.
She’s on the far side of the table, laptop open, body curled in on itself. Her eyes look wrong—red and dry at the same time, like she’d cried everything out already, and it still wasn’t enough.
Seeing her like this feels worse than any wound I ever took in the arena.
“Sophia,” I say. My voice scrapes out rough.
She looks up fast, as if she’s braced for judgment. For anger. For me turning away.
“I’m glad you came,” she says, but her voice shakes on the last word.
“You said you need my help.” I move closer, slow, leaving space so she can decide if my touch is okay. “What happened?”
Her hands are trembling when she turns the laptop toward me.
“She published it,” she says. “My framework. Under her name.”
Blackwell’s name sits at the top in big letters. Everything under it is a thick forest of English words. I could fight through them, one at a time, but it would take hours. Days.
I don’t need to read to understand the look on Sophia’s face.
Her breathing is too fast. Her jaw is clenched so hard I can see the muscle jumping.
“What is this?” I ask quietly.
She lets out a sharp, broken half-laugh. Swipes at the new tears in her eyes as if they offend her.
“It’s her paper for the conference presentation,” she says. “The one she’s been working on. The one she pretended we were ‘developing together.’”
She swallows, hard.
“It’s my work, Flavius. My framework. My language. My analysis. Everything except the name at the top.”
Heat starts behind my ribs. Slow, controlled. The kind that only comes when something truly wrong is happening.
“She stole it?” I ask.
“Yes.” The word comes out on a shuddering breath. “She stole it. And she started before I even got here.”
I sink into the chair beside her, turning toward her, not the screen.
“Tell me,” I say. “From the beginning. Like I know nothing.”
She shuts the laptop with a small, shaky thud, as though she can’t bear to look at it another second.
Then she starts talking.
It comes in bursts at first. Stops and starts like a bad wound bleeding under pressure.
Her fellowship proposal. How she poured every early idea into it—collaborative methods, gladiators as co-theorists, all the bones of the framework before it had flesh.
“Blackwell was on the review committee,” she says, voice going flat. “She saw everything months before I ever set foot in Missouri.”
Her hands curl into fists on the table.
“The paper’s submission date is March,” she continues, stabbing at the screen.
“Weeks before I arrived at the sanctuary. Before you and I ever sat in this room together. Before I spoke with even one gladiator. Before the framework actually crystallized. She took the scaffolding from my proposal, polished it, and submitted it as her own.”
Her mouth twists.
“And when I got here, and the real framework finally formed—when it came alive because of all the hours I spent in this room—she just… folded all those breakthroughs into her revisions. Like the work was always hers. Like I’m just some fieldwork drone who brought back shiny rocks for her to arrange. ”
She opens the laptop again, scrolling too fast for me to follow.
“I can see it,” she says. “The way the ideas grow. The way the structure shifts. It’s my arc. My direction. My trajectory—the exact path I took, reflected back at me under her name.”
Her voice softens, not weaker, just stripped bare.
“She didn’t just steal my words.” Her voice frays like something tearing open. “She stole the woman I was becoming, the version of me that only existed because I dared to think bigger.”
The sentence hits like a blade to the chest.
I want to punch something. Break something. Drag this Dr. Blackwell into an arena and make her look at what she did.
But Sophia is right here, shaking, and my anger is useless if I don’t use it for her.
I shift my chair closer—slow, obvious—so she can stop me if she wants. She doesn’t move away.
“What else?” I ask. My voice stays low. Steady. “What did you do when you saw it? Did you contact her?”
She lets out a breath so harshly that it sounds as if it hurts.
“I threw up,” she says simply. “Then I did the one thing I should have known wouldn’t help. I talked to my mother.”
Her jaw tightens. “She told me I was probably misinterpreting. That collaboration is ‘messy.’ That my autism makes me see patterns other people don’t. That I should be strategic and not ‘destroy my career over a misunderstanding.’”
Autism. The word settles somewhere in my mind.
I have heard it here, in this century, though its full meaning escapes me.
What I understand is what I have seen: the way she counts her steps, needs the chair just so, goes still when sound presses too hard.
Those patterns were familiar long before I knew their name.
A curse presses at the back of my teeth. The muscle in my jaw pulses from the effort of holding it in.
“She thinks I’m the problem,” Sophia says. “That I’m too sensitive. Too rigid. Too… much.” She swallows. “Her solution is to let it go. To stay quiet. To accept whatever crumbs of credit Blackwell offers, keep myself safe, and move on.”
I frown. “Safe from who?”
“Not me personally,” she says, voice tight. “Just… safe for my career if I don’t make trouble.”
Her fingers tap out that pattern on the table—four fingers, thumb, repeat—too fast.
“My parents think I shouldn’t complain,” she continues. “That I should keep my head down, take whatever Blackwell gives me, and avoid anything that might look messy.”
“So they want you quiet,” I say.
“They want me to be small,” she says. “Somehow, it feels as though that’s always been the goal.”
I push my chair back and lower myself onto one knee so we’re eye-level. I don’t touch her. I just make it impossible for her to look anywhere else without choosing to.
“Sophia,” I say. “Look at me.”
Her glance flicks to my face, then away, as if it hurts to hold my gaze.
“You are not imagining this,” I tell her.
“I remember every time your ideas sparked and then grew. Every time you came in here lit up because you saw a new pattern that made more important ideas spring to life in your beautiful mind. Every time you left a call with Blackwell looking… dimmer. Smaller. That pattern is real.”
Her lips tremble. She shuts her eyes as though she’s trying not to cry.
“You are not a thing for her to use,” I say. “You are the builder. The… creator.”
Her breath hitches hard. Tears spill before she can stop them. She scrubs at them angrily—like softness itself is betrayal.
“I don’t know what to do.” Her voice is unsteady. “If I fight, they could destroy me. If I don’t fight, I destroy myself.”
That, I understand.
I reach up—slow, so she can pull back. She doesn’t. I rest my hands gently on her waist and rise just enough for her to fold into my chest if she wants.
She stands and leans in as though gravity pulls her there.
“I don’t know how to do this,” she says into my shirt. “I know how to write articles, not how to accuse a tenured professor of theft. I don’t even know where to start.”
“Then we don’t start big,” I say. “We start small. Make the bones. Lay out what happened so you can see it, not just feel it.”
She is quiet for a long moment. I feel her breathing against me, too fast at first, then slowly easing as I pet her spine, willing her to feel some measure of calm.
“What do you need from me?” I ask.
She pulls back a little so she can see my face. Her eyes are still shining, but there’s a different look there now. Focus. Fight.
“I need your memory,” she says. “I need to prove when these ideas actually formed and in what order. I need someone who saw it happen and can say, ‘No, she had this framework before Blackwell ever touched it.’”
I nod once, no hesitation.
“You have that,” I say. “Every session. Every breakthrough. Every word you said that changed something—I have it.” I tap my temple.
“They’ll say you’re not credible,” she says. “That you’re not an academic. That you can’t even read the paper.”
I shrug. “I am not academic. But I am witness. I do not need to read her theft to know when you made the thing she stole.”
She stares at me as if she’s seeing something new.
“You would testify?” she asks quietly. “Put yourself in the middle of this? For me?”
“Yes,” I say. “Because you matter. Your work matters. And because I have seen too many powerful people use others as if they were tools. I will not watch that happen to you while I stand aside.”
Her face crumples, not in defeat but in recognition. Like something inside her finally believes me.
“I want to be believed,” she says. “Not rescued. Believed.”
“I believe you,” I say. “Completely. And I stand with you. Not instead of you.”
Her breath shakes. “What if I fight and lose? What if every opportunity in my future disappears? If my career ends before it really starts?”
“Then you still have your work,” I say. “You still have your name on what you made. You still have this place that sees you. And…” I swallow. “You still have me. If you want me.”
She goes very still.
Then exhales slowly, like letting go of something heavy.
“I do,” she says. “Want you. Want here. I just… can’t hold all the fear and all the wanting at the same time.”