Beyond the Family Ties

Part 16

After the first day of training, she quickly fell into a familiar routine. Every morning she was forced to engage Imra in hand-to-hand combat, already somewhat skilled due to her black belt and boxing lessons, but nowhere near at the same skill level as her SO, and she came home black and blue at the end of the day, most of the time with Freen to gently kiss them all as Becky found herself in her bed at night. After their initial reservations, it had become surprisingly easy, and more often than not, they were each other's release. After a stressful day, a disappointing date, or purely for the sheer pleasure of it, they would seek each other out late at night, before going back to their own beds.

To keep things casual, they went on dates too. Mostly just Freen, but she'd eventually coaxed Becky into going on a few, sheepishly confiding in her that sometimes she felt like she was using her, and it would ease her conscience if she gave it a try. Becky didn't know how to tell her that what they had was perfect, leaving her without the bothers of trying to fit and please someone else in her life. Nevertheless, she did go on a few dates. There had been a Tibetan woman called Veronica, who Freen had set her up with after patching up a few drunks outside the bar the woman owned. They'd gone to an Italian restaurant and out for cocktails, before making it back to the woman's flashy apartment on the East Side of the city. Becky had left as soon as they'd finished, making no pretences of why she was really there, and that was the last she'd seen of her.

Her training progressed quickly, with her jumping straight into learning the computer software, analysing data, learning code breaking, coding and communications. She was put through three months of weapons familiarisation, showing off the skills one could only pick up from growing up around said weapons. Her aim was near perfect. There was toxicology, learning about poisonous substances and how to counteract them, explosives and bomb defusal at a facility in the desert a few hours south of Albany City, surveillance and reconnaissance lessons for a week in Metropolis with an agent called Helena Bertinelli, who she spent more than one night with while she was there. There was a resistance to intelligence program, consisting of her being essentially kidnapped before reaching the DEO headquarters and taken to an unfamiliar location, stripped and locked inside a dark room. She was left alone for an unknown amount of time, before taken to a different room and questioned for hours by unfamiliar interrogators. It was thrilling in the sense that it all seemed fantastical, like something out of a spy movie, but she never treated it as anything other than serious, and at times when she was flown across the country, the weight of her situation settled heavily upon her.

Over the course of her training, Freen turned twenty-four, she turned twenty-two, and Ducky turned four, and things stayed much the same as they had before, with only a few changes. They still went to the park on weekends to feed the ducks, went to the movies to watch the latest kids films, and when Becky decided to re-enroll in karate lessons to brush up on her self-defence, deciding that Laurel was old enough to start too, Freen volunteered as well, coming whenever she wasn't at work. To any outsiders, it would've looked like they were the perfect, loving family. Except that her and Freen weren't a couple.

Yet there were moments that caught Becky off-guard, making her pause to check that there was nothing there. She knew her own heart well enough to know that she didn't love Freen, beyond the deep affection held towards her friend, but there were times when even she wasn't quite sure what they were doing. Freen went on frequent dates - more than she did - going for dinner and drinks nearly every weekend, often coming home before midnight to cuddle up on the sofa with Becky and watch TV, and Becky knew that there was nothing there, but the amount of time they spent together made her a little concerned.

They were still young, too young to be serious about anything, and Becky was too preoccupied with giving her daughter as much attention as she could when she was home, but Freen was free to do what she wanted, and aside from a near-weekly date, she spent all of her free time with Becky. Although, quite often those times were spent at game nights with their friends, visiting bars and eating out, so it wasn't always just the two of them, but Becky worried that this was all there was for them. She wanted better than casual sex for Freen, and deep down, she knew she wasn't the person who was able to give her more than that.