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“You know, there are still things you can do even without getting on your foot.”
“I am. I’m managing. You can put those on the table next to the podium.”
Sophie dropped the boxes she was carrying onto the table in front of Ryan throwing a dirty look in Ryan’s direction. Ryan just grinned from where she sat, one foot extended onto a chair next to her, a brace around the ankle. She’d rolled her ankle on a mission a few nights ago, tearing the tendon in the process. It wasn’t serious, but Mary was having her keep off the foot to prevent it from getting any worse.
“You could find out if all the mentors are here.”
Ryan held up her phone displaying a text conversation with Mary, “Everyone but a Dr. Lily Stein is here and accounted for. Dr. Stein’s train from Central City was delayed, but she is expected to arrive within the hour.”
Sophie looked mildly impressed at that. The community center was hosting a Science Week, complete with a fair for the kids to compete in. Between Jordan and Mary, they’d managed to pull in a small army of noted scientists to volunteer their time and resources to mentor the kids over the coming week. Jordan, of course, had tapped Ryan and Sophie to help for the event.
Sophie opened the boxes, one containing stacks of fliers and forms, and another with display boards for the kids entering the fair. She placed them on the table, “One entry form and flier with each display board. Jordan’s orders.”
Ryan eyed the stack, “Surely there aren’t that many nerdy kids in Gotham.”
Sophie snorted, lifting Ryan’s leg so she could sit, letting her leg rest across her lap. “Come on, we should get this done before Jordan is back or she’ll have our heads.”
They’d made a good headway (not that you could tell because Mary had swooped in a few minutes ago and taken more than half of the finished stack because “I really need these. No time to help. Sorry. Love you. Bye.” And had promptly vanished again into the growing crowd). Ryan’s phone vibrated, but she frowned as she pulled it out.
“Babe, how and why are you calling me?” Ryan asked.
“That’s Jordan. Answer it. She forgot to charge hers so it died on her. I lent her mine so she could make any calls.”
“What’s up little Moore?” Ryan answered, making Sophie roll her eyes fondly at Ryan’s term of endearment for her sister, “Yeah, she’s right here.” Ryan handed the phone to Sophie. Jordan asked her some quick questions about the location of some of the things she’d brought in earlier.
“And one last thing,” Jordan said, “Would you and Ryan run a station to collect the entry forms. You just need to make sure the kids wrote their names down properly and that they’ve been assigned a mentor.”
“Yeah, we can manage that. We’ve already got a table inside.”
“Great. I’ll start sending people your way.” And she hung up. Sophie didn’t take any offence to the lack of any kind of farewell, knowing how focused Jordan got when she was in work mode.
“Jordan wants us…” Sophie trailed off. For the first time she paid attention to the screen, with the call display and, specifically where her contact information was displayed. There was the photo (In actuality, the photo was a still frame taken from a video taken by Luke. In the image Sophie was laughing towards the camera, in a swimsuit, at a pool party, they’d all gone together. But the real focus was the red blur just behind her head, a water balloon a split second away from clocking her right in the head. Ryan was visible in the background, hands thrown up in victory, knowing she’d hit her mark even before the balloon connected).
And there was her name. Except it wasn’t her name.
“Jordan wants us to what?” Ryan asked.
“Why is my name Crowphie in your phone?”
“Oh, yeah,” Ryan said, like Sophie had just reminded her of something banal, like a library book that needed to be returned or that they were running low on coffee in the Bat cave.
Sophie stared at her, incredulous. “Oh yeah? That’s all you have to say?”
“I saved it as that when you first gave me your number.”
“And you haven’t changed it since?”
“I forgot,” Ryan said with a little shrug.
“We’ve been dating for two months. Not to mention how long it’s been since I quit the Crows.”
“You’re mad.”
“Oh, what would give you that impression Ryan?”
Ryan took the phone from her, “I really did forget.”
“And you didn’t think to change it once when you saw it pop up with one of the, oh, I don’t know, hundreds calls and texts we’ve shared since.”
“I get why you’re mad. But I zoned it out. Like when you don’t notice a word is spelt wrong because the letters are slightly jumbled.”
“That is a whole ass other word, not just my name with the letters jumbled.”
“There, I changed it. Better now?” Ryan said, showing her phone to Sophie where the name above her number now said, ‘Light of my life and my whole heart’ with no less than seven different heart emojis after it. Sophie frowned, clearly not amused.
“Don’t patronize me, Ryan.”
Ryan sighed, but she smiled softly, reaching out to take Sophie’s hand, “I fucked up, I’ll admit that. But I don’t think about you like that anymore, you know that.”
And Sophie did. She really did. But seeing it had been a sharp reminder that everything between her and Ryan had been given the worse possible start. Sometimes she couldn’t help but question if everything they’d built since would be undone because of that shaky foundation.
Ryan brushed her knuckles across Sophie’s cheek, “Babe, you know that, don’t you?”
Sophie signed, leaning into the touch. “I know.”
“If anything, Crowphie stopped being something bad in my head. Don’t get me wrong, the Crows were never good. For you or anyone and getting out was the best thing you ever did. But even before you left, I learnt that you were better than the system. So Crowphie was you in my head. Not Sophie the Crow. Just Sophie.”
“Then why didn’t you change it?” There was still a sliver of hurt in Sophie’s voice.
“The truth? A mixture of an endless loop of ‘it will take me five seconds I’ll do it later’ and constantly having something more important to do when it does cross my mind, so it got pushed back until I forgot again.”
Sophie arched a brow at that.
“Think about it, about 80% of the time when we call or text each other is because there’s some kind of emergency."
“There are plenty of times when we talk when you don’t need to be rushing into your suit.”
“That’s true. But getting to talk to you when we don’t have to discuss our night 'job' is something rare. And why would I waste a second of getting to talk to my favorite person with changing a contact name? That’s precious time I could be listening to your voice, or typing something to make you laugh.”
Sophie rolled her eyes, but she was fighting a losing battle against the smile making its way onto her features.
“Am I forgiven?” Ryan asked, her own blinding smile in place.
“Okay. You’re forgiven.” Ryan leaned for a kiss, but Sophie stopped her, “After you’ve changed that ridiculousness to something sensible.” She pointed at the phone screen that was still displaying her contact.
Ryan laughed, “What do you want it to be? Babe? Mon chéri? The Bae ?”
Sophie thought about it for a moment, “What do you think of ‘Future Wife’?” She teased.
Ryan smirked, “Only if you’re willing to accept the consciences that will happen if Mary sees that and starts planning our actual wedding.”
Sophie snorted. She held her hand open and Ryan handed her phone over. When she returned it, the contact name had been changed to ‘Soph’ with a heart next to the name.
Ryan smiled softly at it, “Perfect.”
"It'd be perfect if you'd also changed that photo," Sophie said.
"Are you going to change your photo of me?" Ryan asked. (The photo saved on Sophie's phone for Ryan came from the same video as Sophie's did, only about two minutes further in, after Sophie had recovered from the shock a water balloon slamming into her, chased Ryan down, grabbed her and dropped her into the deep end of the pool. The Image itself was Ryan mid-fall, laughing before she hit the water.)
"Absolutely not."
"The photo stays."
Sophie rolled her eyes again, "And just for the record, leaving the Crows was the second-best thing I did. The first was opening myself up to you."