Another Path Taken
By: Ryu Niiyama
Pairing: Kelly Olsen/ Sophie Moore (eventually)
Slowly but surely the Bat and the rest of his lackeys abandoned Gotham, but the Crows remained. That was why when Commander Kane offered Sophie a position with the Crows she accepted. That Commander Kane's tenacity reminded her of Kate's stubbornness was only an added bonus. Losing Kate had been a knife in her gut… if only she'd said no to those easy smiles and that softly cajoling voice; if only she'd been stronger none of this devastating pain would have happened. Kate had been a distraction, tempting her away with no regards to how important Sophie viewed her future. For Kate, the academy and the military was another escape from her loss and the new family that she didn't want. Sophie never begrudged Kate for how she coped, but she couldn't let her hopes and dreams become collateral damage.
She loved Kate…a part of her likely always would. However she couldn't build her future on love, and the military was not only her way out, it was something that she believed in. For all of its flaws, she wanted to be able to help people and to stop those that wanted nothing more than to hurt others; she wanted to serve and hopefully help build a better country than the one she was given. Was she wrong for lying and signing the confession? Certainly, and she never believed otherwise. However she wouldn't throw away everything she worked for on a hope that she and Kate lived "happily ever after". She couldn't weigh three years of love in Kate's arms against a lifetime shared with her family. The bitterness at giving up her dreams and her family would have eventually poisoned anything she and Kate could have built and unlike Kate, in the end Sophie would have been left with nothing.
Kate didn't know what it was to endure a mother's suspicious glances or to hear snide comments that weren't quite an accusation but that made the feelings locked away in her heart feel like damnation. Kate didn't know what it felt like to awaken to the stirrings of attraction and before she could even begin to explore them, discover that the world found them to be poison. Kate didn't know what it was to try to cut out her heart as surely as a limb and to live with despair of knowing that those that should have loved and accepted her most didn't even notice her bleeding out. Kate never had a crush sour to animosity as she raged that she wouldn't even have the right to try to know love's embrace. Kate didn't know what it felt like to listen to her parents condemn those that were different and then levy their expectations upon her. Kate didn't live in fear of losing the love and respect of the parents that she adored so greatly. Sophie understood that Kate carried a different grief and loss, but it was unfair to ask her to give up everything else to help Kate bear that grief. Kate didn't know what it was like to live in a world that still judged her by her skin color, diminishing her successes and emphasizing her failures.
Kate could afford to not care, to disregard regulations and drink her way through training. Kate could hop on her bike and ride away. Kate could cross oceans and climb mountains, because her father's name, her Aunt's family clout and her step mother's fortune gave her that freedom. She had a new family to replace the old, a new mother and sister that Kate had the luxury of ignoring despite how they cared for her. Kate never went to family reunions or spent weekends and summers with cousins that she loved like siblings. Even Kate's favorite cousin, Bruce Wayne had kept her at arms length; his love distant even if it was unconditional.
For Sophie, freedom and success came through hard work and gritting her teeth against the injustices that still plagued the world. The price of pinning her hopes on a chance would cost her the parents that bore and raised her, the family that she still sent letters to and called members of on a regular basis. It would cost her career path that would see her future provided for and her family assisted. That didn't mean that she never wondered "what if" on her lowest nights, or that she pushed away any chance at companionship to focus on her duties.
She swallowed the devastation and bitterness that she had been born just a little too early, that if she and Kate had been a decade younger, she could have lived in a world where their love could have been grudgingly but legally accepted, where she didn't have to place her future on the line and that one day she could have walked down the aisle to begin her life as Kate's wife and to have Kate as her own. Surely if her parents had only been a little younger, the changes in the world might have softened their resistance; it might have allowed them to eventually accept that Sophie was still their daughter and that Kate had made her happier than she'd ever been. Yet the path to those thoughts only led to madness…they were what they were and the world would not stop just because Sophie Moore fell in love.
She worked herself half to death to drown out waking dreams, when she could almost hear the sound of Kate's voice or the brush of her fingertips against her skin. She trained herself to exhaustion to outrun dreams where that endearing, lopsided smile and those sweet rare blushes were all for her. She couldn't bear to remember talks about a future shared or declarations of love. She channeled her frustration into the training room or the shooting range to drown out the ghost sensations of the feel of Kate's lips and taste of her skin and breasts and that beautiful, consuming flavor of desire that she'd once believed she'd die if she had to go without it.
Instead she paced like an addict, tracking Kate's whereabouts, praying for her safety and wishing that she could go to her, that she could beg and apologize until Kate bestowed her love once again. She wondered if there was some sort of addiction meeting for "the one that got away"; she felt like she deserved a chip after four years of abstinence. Yet she couldn't change what had been done, and faced with the same choice again she knew she would have to choose the same every time. So she let the moonlight bear witness to her tears and longing and when the sun greeted her she locked away her pain and yearning in order to do her part in making her home a safer place and protecting her family.
Not that even that was enough. She had earned success, but now her parents had lamented her being alone, fearing for her happiness and not realizing or caring that they would condemn her to have it. She had made her choice, her family for her heart, so she endured her mother's confusion and insistence on trying to set up on dates when she visited and never made sure to never visit on Sunday. She let her own faith die even as a part of her longed for its comfort, because she couldn't accept that she was somehow lower than a murderer because she sought love and passion in a form that looked like hers. She ignored the hurt in her father's voice when he didn't understand why she began to visit and call less, letting work get in the way when normally she'd push to maintain her tether to them. She didn't fault or blame her parents, they had a right to their faith, even if she didn't share it, but it hurt when it felt like their love came with a condition when all she wanted was to make them proud.
Still, she had their pride, even if it came at a cost. She didn't miss the way her father's eyes twinkled when she came home, and he stood a little straighter and invited her to play poker with his friends so he could brag and boast about her in his joy. She didn't begrudge the nicer house that she'd helped her parents buy or the fact that the money she sent home meant that her parents could actually afford to retire, after a low paying career for her mother and a 401k crash for her father meant that all their planning had become moot. She smiled when she received care packages from her mother, the pies and cookies hell on her diet but comforting reminders of home and a time when her parents were the most perfect and wondrous people in the world when she was little. She still enjoyed nights out with her cousins that she grew up with, all of them coming into their own and leaving their mark upon the world. She was at least grateful that she found men attractive enough that she could pantomime interest so that her cousins never noticed how she found them too large, too tall, too hairy and utterly lacking in a svelte but deliciously curved and tattoo riddled form that made her want to weep with longing.
It had to be enough that she was being groomed by Commander Kane to take a place of leadership within the Crows and a part of Sophie was grateful for the bond to the man that she had one day hoped would have become like family to her. She was somewhat grateful in their unspoken but commiserated pain as Kate's heartbreak had splintered more than just Sophie's relationship with her. She never told Kate that the Commander had spoken to her…that he'd shined a spotlight on the reality of the world for her, and yet he lost her in some ways just as surely as Sophie had. So she stood with him because he wanted to create a Gotham that didn't have to look to salvation in the form of vigilantes that had enough money and resources to provide an anonymity to disdain the law while seeding false hope. She stood with him because he wanted to create a Gotham where Kate didn't have to train with survival experts and place herself in danger. She stood with him because he gave her the means to protect Kate.
And maybe one day, one day that would be enough.