"How could they find her sane?" Sophie thought out loud. Her and Batwoman had set up shop on the abandoned floor of a building three blocks down from Wayne Tower. They'd spent the last hour reviewing case files she'd downloaded from Arkham's servers and were trying to connect Duela Dent's recent release with her case file. "There is no evidence her condition improved. If anything, there are signs of deterioration."

Kate pondered this. She'd been reading through Dr. Butler's other cases when Sophie interrupted her thoughts. "How do you mean?"

"She was observed by multiple nurse practitioners throughout her time - and they all logged notes that suggested she had not improved - that her 'animosity toward physical attraction was growing'. Just two weeks before her release, she attacked an 'attractive' family member of a fellow inmate visiting the facility. The scratches resulted in eight stitches, and Duela had to be physically restrained after seeing him," Sophie said. "What's interesting is one NP noted that Duela's reactions were perceived to have a "fight or flight" nature commonly associated with fear. Are they suggesting Duela is afraid of attractive people?"

"I can't say I've ever experienced that fear before," Kate commented in response.

"That's because you have the confidence of someone who is attractive," Sophie responded absentmindedly.

"Oh?" Kate responded, looking up from her folder with an amused grin on her face.

"Well," Sophie stuttered, realizing she'd uttered those words out loud, "I just mean, from what I've seen - yo-your exposed bits are… one might logically assume the rest is equally attractive."

Batwoman grinned back at Sophie with a twinkle in her eye, "Well you're not so bad yourself, Ms. Moore."

Sophie rolled her eyes and returned to Duela's case file.

"Hang on," Batwoman said, pulling Sophie from her review a moment later. Sophie looked up waiting for Batwoman to continue.

Kate paused, rereading the case file to make sure she hadn't misread. "Dr. Butler was also treating Mouse."

"You mean that guy who was Alice's sidekick?" Sophie asked, "Jonathan... ?"

"Cartwright," Batwoman said. "And get this, Mouse was scheduled for early release two weeks after he broke out. In fact, it looks like our pal Dr. Butler has released over half of his patients in the last six months. None of these patients show evidence of recovery though."

"Do you see anything in common with them?"

Batwoman paused, reading a series of footnotes in Jonathan's file. "Do you know anything about blue poppies?"

Sophie scanned her memory but couldn't recall hearing it.

"It looks like part of Dr. Butler's studies involved using them on his patients. It seems those who responded positively to this are what determined their early release, It's not clear what 'positive' means to Dr. Butler though..." Batwoman said. She looked up at Sophie who was stifling a yawn and realized how late it had gotten. "It's getting late. You should get home, and I'll continue reading through the files. If I find anything I'll reach out."

Sophie was about to disagree when another yawn betrayed her sleepiness. It had been a long day, and she only just realized how high her stress level had been over the last few days now that she was relaxed and in friendlier company doing what she did best. She was exhausted. "All right. But if you find anything, let me know right away. I'm worried this isn't helping us track Duela, though."

"You're right there isn't anything explicit but…" Batwoman paused, trying to formulate her thoughts clearly, "I think there's something connecting these releases. Maybe Duela is an anomaly, but we've got six other threads that might all weave together into something worse than one rampant lone wolf. We should also try getting more information about this blue poppy thing - is that something you could scrub the Arkham server for?"

Sophie's brow furrowed slightly, "About that, I'll need to be more cautious about this moving forward. Things could get sticky if I'm not careful."

"What do you mean?" Kate asked, already knowing the answer.

"Things are… there's going to be more oversight than usual for a while, so my ability to do this kind of stuff is going to be limited."

Kate pretended to ponder this. She had expected Sophie to bring this up. "Is there anything I can do to help?"

Sophie chuckled, "not unless you can convince my ex I'm not the enemy."

"Your ex? That Tyler guy? He's not even in your division. Just tell him to buzz off."

Sophie paused, realizing Batwoman had no idea who she was talking about. To be fair, most people in her life wouldn't know who she was talking about if she mentioned a 'Kate' as an 'ex' in conversation - it wasn't a part of her past she commonly shared. She shook her head, "no, this… this is someone else. We dated back at school."

"How many exes do you work with?" Kate asked innocently. The conversation was trivial to Kate, but it mattered that Sophie never suspected Kate and Batwoman shared identities, so she'd take any chance she had to capitalize on that ambiguity.

Sophie hesitated, wondering how many details to provide. She'd rather Batwoman not know dirty details about her life, but a part of her wanted to talk about this with someone. It was weird, though, thinking that the person lending her ear about intimate parts of Sophie's life was someone whose identity remained a secret.

"Her name is Kate. She's Jacob Kane's daughter. The Kane family founded the Crows, so they have a permanent seat at the board. With Jacob being sidelined, she took over, and it let's just say she's not taking the position lightly. She's the reason I almost didn't get the position at the board meeting this morning, and she's negotiated herself into overseeing day to day operations now," Sophie said as succinctly as she could.

"She sounds like an ass. I'd expect that if she's Jacob's daughter, and I expect Jacob has her doing his dirty work. Do we need to be worried about her?" Batwoman asked.

Sophie paused. She felt a desire to defend Kate to Batwoman. Kate had voiced enough for Sophie to know Kate disagreed with her father on most things, but she definitely wasn't acting like it. Sophie didn't doubt Kate was doing all of this of her volition without Jacob's involvement, but she also didn't understand her true motive. Do I need to be worried about Kate? If Batwoman had asked this question a week ago, she'd have fought tooth and nail to defend Kate as the most bullheaded but caring person she'd ever met. There wasn't an ounce of worry about that Kate. The last few days had left her confused: there was the part of her hurting from the night at her place, then there was the part of her suspicious about her agenda from that morning, and then there was a part of her that, earlier that evening, saw a version of Kate she could rely on.

"I don't know," Sophie answered honestly.

Batwoman sighed, showing a hint of frustration.

"It's not that I haven't trusted her in the past," Sophie quickly said, defending her comment. "I just don't know where she stands at the moment, and things between us are… complicated."

Batwoman's head cocked to the side as she took in Sophie's contemplative face. "You still like her," Batwoman said simply, calling out what Sophie wouldn't.

At this Sophie looked down at the papers in her hands.

"And my guess is, you've told her as much, and things didn't go as planned," Batwoman said, treading carefully to not suggest too much. Kate hadn't planned to have this chat tonight. In reality, she had never planned to broach the topic of their relationship with Sophie as Batwoman. It felt like an extra level of deception to hear Sophie's feelings shared with someone she thought was, well, not Kate.

Sophie's eyes stung with the threat of tears and a tightness in her throat made responding difficult. Feelings she'd been squashing down for days were reemerging, and her mind flashed to a few nights before when she stood in her flat and drunkenly kissed Kate:

Kate had been mid-sentence when Sophie had pressed her lips to Kate without warning. There was initial hesitation on Kate's art. Sophie could tell she took her by surprise, but that had lasted less than a moment before she leaned in to return the kiss. She felt Kate's hands find her waist and pull her closer with an eagerness as her tongue slipped lightly between Sophie's lips. An intensity and wanting took hold as Sophie pressed against Kate, stopping when she felt the wall behind her. Her hands wandered - one to Kate's hair where she ran her fingers through the helmet-tousled mess; another from Kate's waist to the bottom hem of her shirt, sliding behind the fabric and settling onto the soft skin. Kate moaned lightly at the touch as her teeth bit down on Sophie's lower lip. They spent a minute like this, reacquainting each other's bodies to their wandering hands... And then suddenly, it was over.

Kate pulled away, releasing her hands from Sophie like it shocked her, "I'm sorry, I can't," Kate mumbled. "I should go," she continued, avoiding Sophie's eyes.

Sophie stared back confused, "What? Kate, wait. What… what do you mean?" She felt like she'd just been splashed with a bucket of ice water and watched nimbly as Kate continued backing up toward the door muttering apologies.

"Kate? Wh - will - will you just stop?!" Sophie let out in frustration. Kate paused, her face filled with guilt? Remorse? Confusion? After days of thinking about it, Sophie still couldn't place it. "What are you saying?" Sophie felt her cheeks burn as she began piecing together what Kate had said. "Why… why can't you? I thought - I mean, all night you were - I just…"

Sophie wished she could read Kate's mind as she stood there silently for an agonizing moment.

"There's someone else," Kate said averting her eyes from Sophie's intense gaze. "I should have told you earlier."

Sophie fell silent. Kate was seeing someone?

"You told me to move on, so I did," Kate said. Her words felt cold and calculated to Sophie.

"But all night at the bar…" Sophie said in confusion.

"It was just two old friends catching up," Kate reasoned.

"And the ride home?" She asked, her eyes beginning to tear in frustration.

"It was late, and this is Gotham. I didn't want you travelling alone."

"But you came up to my place."

"You offered a night cap..."

"You kissed me back," Sophie accused, a tear of rejection now falling down her cheek.

At this Kate fell silent. Sophie watched Kate remain unmoved from across the room.

"You're right... but - but I don't want you, Soph."

"Get out."

I don't want you. The words had echoed in Sophie's mind every day since.

"It doesn't matter," Sophie finally said to Batwoman. "It's done."


A/N:

I owe you all an apology! I've only just realized the sections within each chapter have been losing their transition marker during upload, so everything is just a chunk of text with not obvious demarcation denoting a break! What a noob move!

I will make sure to edit these into the uploads moving forward so confusion is no more!

Thanks for giving this a read, and thanks for sticking through all my rookie-mistakes!

All my affection, EQT.95