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“Why’d you turn her down?”
Sophia closed her locker with a hard shove, listening for the click of the lock moving back into place. She always checked it after watching someone slam theirs shut a few rows over and the ones around it swinging open, striking outwards like a wave. Winslow was shitty like that; in all the small ways one could build habits around but never forget. Sophia turned to Emma, shrugging her bag over her shoulder. Her friend was waiting behind her, arms crossed with a frown as Sophia finally faced her.
“The fuck are you talking about?” She asked. Emma scowled, leaning closer.
“You got asked out today and turned her down,” She elaborated. Seeing the confusion on Sophia’s face, she added. “Rebecca? She's on the track team with you?”
“Oh.” The Rebecca that did hurdles; she remembered now. Wasn’t great at it, but good enough to skirt staying on varsity. Tried to match Sophia’s pace in her laps and often was left behind after the first half. They shared a few classes, though didn’t usually talk unless forced into smaller groups. Rebecca often slipped into hers, asking questions she should already know the answers to. Sophia usually tuned her out unless it was important
“She didn’t ask me out.” Sophia retorted, rolling her eyes. Emma watched her, waiting a moment as if her answer would change before letting out a loud scoff.
“Are you for real? She cornered you after history and asked if you wanted to get dinner and talk ‘track forms,” she said, using her hands to mockingly quote it. “She puffed up her chest and fluttered her eyelashes when she did it too, the whore.”
“She did?” Sophia felt her face twist, her stomach curling. She had missed that, not even having entertained the idea in the first place. “Doesn’t matter anyway. I told her I couldn’t and she backed off. Got internship shit today anyway.”
That answer didn’t seem to be good enough for Emma. Her frown grew, face tightening as another emotion flickered across her face. She leaned in, watching Sophia closely.
“And if you didn’t, would you have said yes?” she said slowly. Sophia frowned.
“No.” she replied.
“Why not?” Emma pressed.
“What’s it matter? You’re making a big deal out of fucking nothing.” Sophia said. “I told her no. She’s probably just looking for someone to push her on her sprints. We’ve hung out after school before and it wasn’t anything special.”
She was paraphrasing, but it was still true. She had hung out with Rebecca, but it was social stuff she had to do for track; pre-meets and team dinners, the occasional group movie showing for team spirit. They carpooled once, she thinks. Her taste in music was ass and everyone in the vehicle had told her as much. Sophia had been shotgun, no one had fought her for the seat.
But the fact that Sophia had gone out with her, even in such limited capacity, didn’t seem to appease Emma. If anything, she seemed more upset, her expression darkening even more. That flicker of something else sharpening her face as her posture straightened.
“Soph,” Emma said, tone soft, as if placating a child. “I know you’re gay, but Rebecca’s a slut. You can do better than—”
Sophia’s train of thought crashed and burned in an instant.
“The fuck did you just say?” Sophia said, unable to stop herself. “Gay? You think I’m gay?”
“...Obviously?” Emma said. She rolled her fucking eyes at Sophia, as if it was obvious. The knot in her stomach grew violent, lashing out at her walls.
“What the fuck made you think I was gay?” Sophia hissed, resisting the urge to throttle her.
Emma blinked, her exasperated expression turning into one of disbelief. “God, sorry for clocking my friend—”
“You didn’t clock shit—”
“You ignore any guy that flirts with you,” Emma interrupted her, counting off on her fingers. “You dodge the school dances like they’re cancerous. When others talk about guys you get bored and focus on something else. I don’t think I’ve ever heard you call anyone hot.”
Sophia was growing angrier with every word that came out of Emma's mouth. The fact she was saying this at school with hitler youth stomping around looking for a chance to get in with their role models aside, the fact she was speaking to Sophia like this was fact was just—it made her feel off kilter. Like she was about to vomit with nothing in her stomach. Torn between the urge to throttle Emma and run away like a coward.
“In fact, you only really praise girls. Like when you went to New York— ” Sophia grabbed her before she could finish, tugging her through the crowd of students and dragging the both of them into an empty classroom. She slammed the door shut as Emma kept talking, as if discussing the weather, rather than her cape activities. “—and met that Ward? The one with the arbalest? You said you wished you could trade Kid Win for her.”
“That doesn’t mean I’m gay, Emma.” Sophia said, jaw clenched. Flechette was fun. Not quite up to her level, still taking the PRT's words at face value, but powerful, and willing to take risks other Wards would flinch at. But praising her didn’t mean she wanted to date her.
Emma didn’t seem to believe her words, her posture shifting, arms still crossed as she quirked an eyebrow at Sophia’s correction, and it made her nails dig into her palms. She knew that expression Emma was making, that air of superiority as she stared someone down and made them feel small. Emma thought she knew better than her. That Sophia was lying to herself and that she had seen through the cracks to some truth. It made her want to cave that expression in.
“Look, my bad if I cracked your egg or whatever they call it. I just thought I’d save my friend from a shitty relationship,” Emma said, sighing. “You know she’s been passed around the basketball team right? I heard she’s on the arm of someone different every week—”
“Emma,” Sophia interrupted, taking a deep breath. “I’m not gay.”
“...Of course you are,” Emma said, looking at Sophia like she was the crazy one. “What other option is there?”
“Don’t do this shit,” Sophia snapped, her calm failing in fluttering starts and stops. “Stop trying to clock me or whatever. It’s weird. Save it for Hebert or something.”
“Then do you like boys?” Emma kept pressing, and Sophia couldn’t find it in herself to answer yes. “What about girls?”
That—that didn’t appeal to her either. It wasn’t that one option made her feel disgust, or stood out to her as the better option. Neither made her feel anything at all. Thinking about it made her head swirl, but neither question provoked something in her.
If she had felt something, anything at all, it would be clearer. Easier. She could draw a line and admit that one of them appealed more than the other. Just shrug and go along with whatever Emma was saying. But the Nothing she felt was vague, any chance of finding a line to declare lost in an ever shifting landscape. She couldn’t draw a line because there wasn’t a foundation to make a declaration in the first place.
“I—I don’t really think about it.” Sophia answered, and that felt like the best truth she could give. Romance wasn’t—Shadow Stalker took up most of her afterschool time and her weekends. Anything that wasn’t hero business was saved for Emma and Madison, and if not them, track. Her life was full, she wasn’t exactly starving for activity. Romance wasn’t really in her vocabulary.
So dating just…wasn’t on her mind. It hadn’t occurred to her as something she should be thinking about. It’d be a problem anyways, because if she wanted anything serious she’d eventually have to unmask, and if that didn’t work out there would be someone running around with the knowledge of who she was behind the mask. Another failure point that could get her killed. She could date another cape, she guessed, but that had its own issues.
Thinking too long about it made her stomach hurt, so she didn’t. It wasn’t important to her life, and paying too much attention felt like she was taking away time she could be focusing on something else. It wasn’t that she felt upset thinking about it, but what Emma was repeating made her think more and more about it, and that was making her feel off-centered. Like the world was tilted she alone stood straight.
“You don’t think about it?” Emma repeated back, looking at her as if she was crazy. But Sophia didn’t think she was; not about this.
“I don’t exactly have the time to date someone,” Sophia explained. It was true, but saying it out loud felt like an excuse. A bad one, but she couldn’t explain why. The words to make it make sense fell apart like puzzle pieces, the edges changing with each thought. "Not with the full blown gig I have going on with my internship.”
Sophia stressed the last word, hoping Emma would understand. “So yeah, I don't think about it."
At all, was unspoken.
But apparently that wasn't the right answer, because Emma's expression changed from confused to a look of pity, and that wasn't what she wanted either. She didn’t need Emma’s pity. There was nothing for her to pity, like Sophia was missing out on something grand. She wasn’t. There wasn’t—she didn't like this conversation anymore.
It had gone from confusing to annoying very quickly, and Sophia wanted it to stop now before she had to keep thinking about it, and she needed Emma to stop looking at her like that—
"Look, I'm gonna be late if you keep hounding me like this," Sophia said, looking at Emma and staring. "Just drop it, alright?"
"But—"
"Drop it, Emma." Sophia repeated. She could feel her edges fraying when she said that, teetering on shadow. Emma finally seemed to catch on, and her retort died on her tongue.
Sophia didn't run from the room, but it was a close thing, swinging open the doors and stomping down the hallway. At least the random students in the halls caught on to her mood and got the fuck out of her way. She was supposed to have another class before she left for the day—had an assignment due and everything—but she was done with this. Done with Winslow, done with other people, done with this entire bullshit. Fuck today. She sent a message to the front office acting like she was called in early and the school went along with it without question. Cowards.
Emma’s voice followed her out of the building, echoing in her ears. The question rang, repeating itself again and again. As if an answer would appease the ghost in her mind.
"What other option is there?"
It trailed behind her, clinging to her tightly. She crushed it in her thoughts, tried to think of anything else, and still it lingered like a smell she couldn’t wash out. It stayed right up until she was suiting up, finally finding enough purchase in its edges to bury it. She couldn’t afford for Emma’s stupid fucking question to fuck with her this long, lest it take her focus and make her slip up.
Better to bury it and pretend it was never asked in the first place.
She had better things to do.
~
“Absolutely the fuck not.” Sophia hissed.
Clockblocker deflated at her refusal. The corsage in his hands—an ugly thing, a mishmash of flowers and colors, white and purple with green and orange mixed in—slipped to the ground as he dramatically deflated. She considered stomping, crushing it under her heel until it was nothing but a fine powder just to drive the point home. It’d hammer home her point but the audience around her would most likely not let that slide. Instead, she stepped back and waited for him to either pick it up or get the hell away from her. Preferably both.
Sophia was lucky, she supposed, that the music was loud enough to drown out the other conversations and keep people from paying attention to her. There were eyes on her already, those nearby who were unable to not snoop at business that wasn’t theirs, but she didn’t need the entire venue to turn and state. She already had people glancing at her funny at her by just being alone; the last thing she needed was more eyes on her.
Most days, Sophia tolerated being a Ward. Beyond the fact they swaddled them like babies and tried to drown them in regulations and paperwork the moment they stepped slightly out of line, all things considered it could be a worse deal.
(Most days it was almost easy to forget how she got there. Easier to count the days until freedom, until she could make her own decisions, until she could be something other than this.)
But every once and a while some higher up suddenly remembered that they weren’t just capes, they were teenagers, and decided they should be doing ‘normal’ teenager things instead of what mattered. That meant being a cape was often interrupted by unnecessary shit on their behalf.
Sometimes it was small things, like giving them a gymnasium with a free pass to play with their powers. Sometimes annoying, like having graduated Wards come in and give talks about how Great and Fantastic the rest of their lives would be when they joined the Protectorate proper. Two months ago it was taking a trip to another state to meet other Wards, their future ‘colleagues’. As if some of the losers who couldn’t even meet her gaze would make it to adulthood.
And sometimes it was real stupid shit, like the entire Protectorate North East deciding to host a fucking Prom. Worse, it was mandatory. She could usually weasel her way out of the more boring events purely by scheduling patrols or just not showing up. Attendance was asked for, and she often got chewed out when she dodged them without reason, but they hadn’t stopped her yet. She hadn’t been able to dodge this one simply because Battery had come along as a chaperone and escorted all of them to the truck that had taken them here.
Whoever thought that Wards from various cities needed to be gathered in one room and paired off like cattle needed to be fired and then forced to work in a high school for the rest of their life.
“Just saying no would have worked.” Carlos said next to her. He looked at her with a judgemental glare, arms crossed as he glanced back at Clockblocker, who was still dramatically slumped over as he walked away. The corsage was forgotten on the ground.
“I did.” She replied. He stared at her, that disappointed sigh of his slipping out like it always did when she was involved. She felt a twitch of anger rush through her at the action; it wasn’t like the problem was her, here.
“You be his date then, if you feel so bad for him,” Sophia suggests, turning away from him as she makes her way back to her corner of the venue she had been sitting in. Carlos followed her as he tried to school his expression, his face twisting ever so slightly at her comment. “Honestly, it’s a match made in heaven; you’re both annoying, love hearing yourself talk, daddy issues—“
Carlos’ face pinches into distaste as she keeps talking, unable to hide his expression any longer. She loved fucking with him because his expressions were so wild; so used to hiding behind his usual coverage and using his eyes to emote more than anything, they looked cartoonish, overly pronounced. Even now, hiding behind the cookie cutter domino masks they gave out for this event his face was dramatically emoting. She was lucky in that she had kept the prototypes from their attempts at ‘sophisticating’ her vigilante look, and was wearing a half mask of her usual design that only covered the top half of her face. Looking around showed either plain domino masks or their usual flair.
She waited for his response, hoping he’d snap. It’d be a good excuse to get out of here, find anything more fun than this shitty event. But to her disappointment he merely backed down, exhaling deeply through his nose as he turned away from her.
“I’ve already got a date.” He said, glancing back towards a crowd of people nearby. Dean was chatting idly with his own date—Glory Girl, who would have fucking guessed—and standing next to them in a dress that clearly was making her uncomfortable was Panacea, his supposed ‘date’. The girl looked more interested in her sister's night than her own, not even glancing back at Carlos.
“And how’s that going for you?” She asks, and he stammers, rambling an excuse to why he’s chewing Sophia out rather than spending time with her. Some poignant line about waiting for her to warm up to him and giving her space. Sophia rolls her eyes as he keeps trying. Panacea wanted to come and used him to get here, the idiot’s just in denial about it. Still, it gets him to leave her alone, suddenly determined to prove her assumption wrong and interact with his ‘date’ more.
Sophia snickered as she watched him crawl back to his ignored date, pausing to grab two glasses from the buffet table as Sophia nursed her own cup. It wasn’t alcoholic—despite a few other Wards attempts to spike the punch, the chaperones caught them quickly—but a nice fruit punch, one that she could easily use as an excuse not to talk to someone. Sophia shifted back to look out towards the main floor, eyes roaming over the others. There are a few pairs she recognized; some from the New York trip, others from Endbringer situations, and a few that had made big enough splashes in the news that they caught her attention.
Most looked paired up or willing to dance, couples coming together for a song before moving to other people. They made it look easy, picking someone out of a crowd and dancing with them. There’s an awkwardness to their movements, a few look uncomfortable, but none of them seem to truly hate it or want to leave. Sophia sees a few of them glance towards her, making it only a couple steps in her direction before her gaze and posture scare them off.
She was lucky—as gross as it makes her feel—that Clockblocker tried too hard and basically showed everyone else to leave her alone. Part of her wishes she didn’t have to be here to scare them off in the first place.
She catches a glance of Fletchette on the other side of the dance floor, idly moving between bodies to chat with others. She was wearing her usual mask, though her hair was done up in a fancy tight braid that draped over her shoulder. Her dress matched Sophia’s in color, and something about that made her want to throw the cup in her hands to the ground and hear the glass shatter.
She thinks for a second, that the two of them lock gazes. Emma’s words ring in her ears as Sophia looks away.
It’d be easier for her, Sophia thinks, to just saddle up with someone and have them be her buffer. Remove the option of someone pestering her by looking like she was already paired up. But there wasn’t a single person here she could trust to do that.
She spends a few minutes like that, watching the crowd. She should be counting the minutes down until she gets out of here, but with the soft music playing overhead and the lack of idiots approaching her, it wasn’t…terrible. Being here. Maybe even she could sneak a dance in during the louder songs, pushing away from everyone else. Make use of this dressed-up act she had spent hours preparing.
Of course, the next annoyance approaches the moment she thinks that. Missy’s steps are quiet and slow, like she's trying not to spook her. Sophia doesn’t say anything, barely acknowledging her as she gets closer and closer, glancing at the girl for a moment before turning her head back to looking at the crowd.
The younger girl had clearly been dressed by someone else; she looked like a puffed up dog. Her hair is curled at the edges, visor replaced in favor of a sleeker, green domino mask. Her dress is the same color as the one her costume usually wears, but it's interlaced with white and an undercoat. It’s a childish look, and Sophia can see the bits where Missy had tried to curb looking like a talking doll after she got here.
Like Sophia, Missy had come alone. Unlike her, however, she had ended up dancing with a few Wards her age, intermingling between a few of the younger capes whilst trying hard not to look like she was waiting for someone specific to ask her. The complete opposite of Sophia.
Missy stood beside her, fidgeting with her fingers as the two of them stood in silence. Sophia kept her eyes out into the venue, watching couples chatter and move about the dance floor whilst the younger girl tried to get her attention. Other stags, seeing her isolation broken, had approached her and turned away quickly yet again, searching for another space away from Sophia. It was her space, one Missy was intruding on by thinking she was being subtle instead of just saying whatever she wanted to say.
“You know he has a crush on you, right?” Missy finally says, and Sophia does her best to keep her face steeled as her gut churned at the admission. She didn’t need her to say who ‘he’ was, it was obvious. And of course she had. He wasn’t subtle about it, and if he acted on it she’d squash it like she did today.
“And? Not my problem.” She said instead, curt and swift as she took a big gulp of her drink. No room for imagination. Sophia didn’t need someone else on her case like Emma had been the past few weeks.
Because Emma had not, despite Sophia demands, dropped talking about her love life. Oh, she shut up about it when Sophia had asked her to, pretending to comply until the conversation became a distant memory. But she should have known that telling her to stop thinking about it meant that Emma was going to, without remorse, continue and constantly think about Sophia’s love life.
She tried to be subtle about it, at least. A comment here and there, mentioning someone they knew in passing and asking her opinion on them. Teasing someone else about their personal tastes in partners and then glancing at Sophia, gauging her reaction. Talking about double dates and their charms, loudly proclaiming how fun they were and if only someone would go on them with her. Through pokes and prods Emma slowly worked, trying to build a profile for Sophia that doesn’t exist in the first place. Taking hold of pages in the wind and hoping a folder will come to give them a home.
It was driving her fucking insane.
Why did Emma need to know so badly? Sophia didn’t care. Couldn’t find it in herself to give even an ounce of a shit. It didn’t matter. Finding a word, a label, whatever she wanted to staple onto Sophia—it wouldn’t change who Sophia was.
It had gotten to a point where she was willingly spending more time with the Wards so she could flake on Emma with a reasonable excuse. Look where that got her; trapped in a boring fucking dance where morons and idiots would come pawing after her.
“Oh.” Missy responded, unaware of Sophia’s inner plight. She opened and closed her mouth, floundering to say something else. “…don’t you want to dance, at least?”
Did she want to dance?
…Maybe. Dancing was fun, she did it on her own enough to know that. But she doubted that she’d be left alone today if she went out by herself when everyone around her was partnered up. She could tolerate having someone else's hands on her, but having them required to dance soured the idea enough that suddenly it didn’t look appealing anymore.
“...Not with any of them,” She says instead, and that feels right. If someone she could trust were here, someone she could understand, who she knew wouldn’t construe it into something else—then maybe. But here was full of strangers and people looking for something that Sophia didn’t want.
She swirled the last of the punch in her cup. She hadn’t felt thirsty all night. It was just easier to drink and glare than to speak and explain.
Missy took that in stride at least, nodding along with a quiet sigh. “I get that. Few of the people who came up to me couldn’t really follow the song or just kept talking. A few were nice.”
“But they weren’t Gallant,” She said, and Missy nodded absent mindedly.
“But they weren’t G—” Missy paused, frowning at Sophia while she smirked at her almost admission. “You think you’re so funny, don’t you?”
“I’m fucking hilarious,” She retorted, and Missy shook her head at her antics, something else on her lips dying as she straightened up, squaring her shoulders and patting down her dress. Sophia glances in her direction, sighing.
“Speak of the devil,” Sophia muttered, rolling her eyes as Dean and Victoria stepped over to them.
“Shadow Stalker,” Dean greets her, turning to Missy with a smile. “Vista.”
“Gallant, Glory Girl.” Sophia drawls, glancing to the girl basically draped over him. Something cruder sprung to her lips, but bit it back to play nice. “Finally ditch your third wheel?”
Mostly. Glory Girl glares at her, looking to snap back before just rolling her eyes. Vista’s elbow comes out to jab her side at the comment, and Sophia shoves her without hesitating.
“Amy’s with her date,” Victoria says, gesturing out towards the main floor. Aegis and Panacea were dancing, both of them looking like they didn’t know how to handle the other. Amy’s eyes kept roaming away from him while his stayed firmly on her, expression focused.
“Oh, good for him. Finally figured out how to use his feet.” Sophia says.
“Have you danced tonight?” Dean asks, and Sophia scoffs at him.
“Not a chance,” She says. “I couldn't be caught dead dancing with someone here.”
“Too afraid to put yourself out there?” Victoria interjects, grinning. “Didn’t take you for a scaredy cat, Stalker.”
Sophia scoffs. “Please. Half of the people out there don’t have rhythm for shit, and the other half can’t look me in the eye. You think I wanna dance with a bunch of pussies who cower when a girl holds their hand?”
“Not a single guy out there catches your eye?” Victoria asks. There’s something in her tone that Sophia doesn’t like when she asks that. “We saw Clock asking you earlier. Not your type?”
“Fuck no,” Sophia scoffs. “Rather be caught dead than doing anything with him. Bastard would make the whole thing out to be a joke.”
“Hey,” Missy counters. “He’s not that bad.”
“You saw him,” Sophia retorted. “Baby blue suit two sizes too big and that dumbass corsage he tried to give me? Treated the whole thing like a bit.”
“What about Flechette, then?” Dean interrupts, and Sophia just stares at him, unsure of where this was going.
“What about her?” She slowly replies, turning away to watch the crowd. Was he trying to play matchmaker? That was a new one for him. Usually he was pushy in just trying to make her open up, chatting like they were friends in her direction. “We haven’t talked today.”
“She’s here by herself,” He adds, and she frowns as she realizes he’s watching her, as if waiting for something. His gaze keeps flickering around her before zeroing back in on her. “Like you.”
“Sucks for her. Should’ve found a date earlier.” Sophia replies, and Dean’s composure seems to falter for a moment, as if unsure of his own course before squaring his shoulders. Victoria looms behind him, nodding along like a groupie.
“You've gotten along before when we visited, right?” He tries, gaze even, smile light. Something about it reminds her of Emma. “You two could keep each other company.”
There it was.
She resisted the instinct to snap at him, her exhaustion at people pressing her on this gnawing her patience thin. The first few had been funny, but this pressure—both from him and Missy earlier—was going to make her pop a gasket if they didn’t fucking quit it.
“Not interested.” Sophia grounds out. Missy gives her a look, but a quick glare in return makes any comment she was about to make her up pretty quickly.
Dean doesn’t seem perturbed by her blunt dismissal. If anything, he nods at her quick statement, as if he expected it; and steps closer, gaze determined.
“If you’re afraid someone will make a big deal out of dancing with a girl,” He begins, and Sophia feels her blood freeze at the accusation. “You shouldn’t be. We’re heroes, no one here is going to mock you for swinging that way.”
Again. She had been misread again. Someone thinking they know better than her overstepping their place and telling her what they think she is.
“I’m not,” She hisses through her teeth, trying to stay quiet. The louder she is for this, the wider this fucking misconception grows. “Gay, you fucking dipshit.”
Missy seems taken back on both sides; at the accusation Gallant just made, and the other whirling to look at Sophia, so adamant in her denial. Did she have the same thought in her brain? Glory Bitch looked between them, searching for something.
“It’s okay,” Dean just kept talking. Victoria was on his arm, her expression slowly shifting as this went on, going from understanding to having a realization, trying to pull him back. “You don’t have to be ashamed or try to hide it. This is a safe space.”
“Hey—” Victoria tried to interrupt. Missy said something else. Sophia could only hear static, encroaching in her thoughts.
“You think I’m hiding it?” She muttered, feeling herself lose control. She wanted to bite, for her words to hit hard and scathing. Instead they struggled to escape her lips and fell to the floor, struggling to be heard. “Me. I’m hiding something from all of you. You know me well enough that you can tell?”
“I’m your teammate.” Dean said, as if that mattered. As if Sophia was a team player, someone who they could have gotten enough time with to know who she really is. He’s using his power now, gauging something he sees in her and prodding it. She feels invisible ropes keeping her in place snapping one by one. Misinterpreting, like everyone else—
“Teammate,” She repeats. The word feels ashen on her tongue. Foreign and heavy. It counted for nothing, she knew that. He was deluding himself into thinking it meant anything. “You think that gives you the right to say shit like this?”
Dean blinked, taken back by her sudden hostility. He frowned, no doubt wondering what step in his plan had failed. “I want to help you feel included. You don’t have to pretend to be someone else. The PRT aren’t going to complain about who you want to date, and I know you could be afraid about the Empire knowing, but—”
“Gallant, maybe—” Vista tries, but it falls on deaf ears.
“I could care less about what anyone thinks of me!” Sophia snaps. The rage is sudden, guiding her confession so quickly her brain doesn’t register what she’s saying until it's too late. “Every time one of you asks who I’m interested in, telling me who I should be interested in makes me want to throw up! This whole fucking charade is sickening to the point where every time someone brings it up I can’t think straight, because again and again there's idiots like you who keep trying to say something for me!”
She's drawing a crowd now, Sophia vaguely realizes. What could’ve been passed off as a small scuffle between teammates is burgeoning into a scene that the entire north east coast Wards roster is watching. Everyone here is going to know what's wrong with her by the end of the night. Despite that, she keeps pushing.
“You thought you were being so inclusive, didn’t you?” Sophia continues. She can’t stop, words pouring out like a flood, growing louder and louder. Dean takes a step back from her vitriol, and Victoria steps with him. “Poor little Shadow Stalker, trying to hide who she is. Afraid to admit anything to herself. You think you know me so well? You think you know enough to tell everyone what slurs they should call me? I’m just a sad little dyke to you, huh?”
“That’s not—“ Dean paused, swallowing as he tried to find his words. She wouldn’t let him.
“You don’t know shit.” Sophia snaps. She’s vaguely aware she's shouting now, and doesn’t care.
“I’m just trying to help.” He defends himself. Victoria looks torn, wanting to step in but clearly seeing the misstep her boytoy made.
“Help?” Sophia could have laughed. It would’ve shaken her, trapped her in deranged, manic laughter to ease the emotions that were crawling under her skin, threatening to pierce the surface and let everyone see just how fucked she is. “You think this is helping me? Acting like you know me better than I do?”
Knowing how she worked seemed to be a popular pastime recently. Labels and wrongness, slapped on her over and over. She shrugs them off like a jacket three sizes too small.
“No, you're just helping yourself. You just want to feel good about being—what, an ally? Correctly clocking someone? Fuck off.”
She exhales, and takes a look around. There’s a crowd now, drawn from her outburst, people from all across this side of the country looking at her with fucking pity. She glares, and with a final shout turns around and leaves. She’s done with this.
Sophia doesn’t look back as she slams the door shut behind her. She ignores the voices calling after her as she stomps down the hallway, already planning on putting herself as far away from her as possible. She’s lucky that the dress she picked out for this stupid event was short enough that she didn’t need to hike it to run. It was a nice dress. She picked it out with Emma on a day when they could tolerate each other. Days like that felt rare, recently. It was nice.
She thought today would be nice. Not fun, but she’d find her own amusement like she always did. Make a little game out of how the others acted, enjoy the buffet.
—Why did she even come? It was stupid, she realizes. Everyone was going to see her as a lonely girl without someone by her side, surrounded by pairs enjoying the party properly. Mandatory or not, she should’ve just shouldered whatever punishment they wanted to give her for flaking instead of showing up to be humiliated like this.
It was stupid to get dressed up. To spend time putting her hair in a different style than usual, to pick out a nice outfit and wear it out. To put on the makeup she so rarely breaks out and practice her mascara lines. It was so fucking stupid to put time and effort into something she knew exactly the sort of reaction she was going to get.
She should’ve known. She did know. Sophia did it anyway, and she can’t figure out why.
The voices keep calling after her, drawing closer. She turns a corner and phases through a wall before they catch up. They pass by, ignorant of her hiding place as she doesn't make a sound, standing in a quiet, dark room by her lonesome.
Sophia doesn’t pay attention to how long she stands there, listening as the voices grow faint. The darkness is comforting, as it always is, but lacks guidance. The room is nothing but that black and the faint haze of light through the bottom of the door. Sophia stands pressed against the wall, frozen, and tries not to scream.
Why was everyone like this? They want to pull her apart; figure out what that indescribable piece is inside of her and then put her back together like nothing happened. They seem confused at her hesitation, lost at her unwillingness to let them open her up and label everything inside of her. They’re so desperate for labels that they kept slapping them on her shoulders, lost when they don’t stick.
“Don’t you want to know?” They ask her. “Don’t you want to be able to describe what you feel?”
She tells them to fuck off. That she doesn’t need an explanation for every part of her. That Sophia was happy with herself now, and that labels wouldn’t change who she was or how she felt. What was this incessant need to be correct? To have an exact term for feelings, for how she moved in the world around her; why wasn’t it good enough just to be her?
Her knees buckle. She doesn’t let herself fall. Her mascara smudges around her eyes. Sophia refuses to falter
Fuck it. It was good enough for her. Even if it didn’t matter to anyone else, it mattered to her.
That had to count for something.
It has to count for something.
What other option was there?