Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

“The universe folds in on itself infinitely through space and time,” Mary says for maybe the tenth time as she and Ava walk through the sand of the Arc realms. She’s been trying to explain where they are, how things work, give Ava a run down of everything but at every explanation, Ava counters with things she thinks she knows based on movies she’s seen and books she’s read.

If Mary had to guess, they’d been walking for almost a week. A week of Ava theorizing and running away with tangential ideas. Asking Mary thousands of questions about time and space and everything in between, none of which she could answer. A week that started with rapid back and forth chatter had slowly dwindled to slower, more thoughtful conversations as Ava’s energy waned.

The first time Ava asked to take a break Mary hid her panic well. People aren’t supposed to get tired or hungry or thirsty here for weeks. Mary herself was closing in on week four, if her growling stomach is anything to go by. They have to be getting close to their next destination by now, if they aren’t, well, Mary doesn’t want to think about the side effects.

“I know about the multiverse Mary, this is not that,” Ava has said this same sentence many times, just as many times as Mary had tried to define the world they are in. Questioning and poking holes into how Mary described it though this time, the fight and sureness is lost in her voice.

“You might think you know about it but everything you know is theoretical. This is reality, the truth of the science behind our theories,” Mary has said this sentence too. Has felt like they are a middle schooler and preschooler trying to define something neither of them know the truth of.

“If this is the multiverse, this world should be a one to one replica. I know the science behind tier one multiverse theory and this is all wrong. We should be seeing cities and shops that are exactly like where we are in real time. It should be more than just sand,” Ava kicks up a cloud of sand to prove her point.

“You don’t know anything about the multiverse Aves.”

“Yes I do!” Ava stops, the strongest urge to stamp her foot and whine fills her before she stops her unconscious reaction. “My friend Neil walked me through it, Marvel did a half assed job, but Neil told me all about it.”

“That would be solid knowledge if we were in a tier one multiverse but we are not in that Ava, we are back and back and folded over and over, hundreds, maybe even thousands of layers deep. We aren’t even at the second tier of the multiverse,” Mary knows the person she was years ago would have just knocked Ava out, carried her over her shoulder until they got to their destination but this Ava and this version of herself, mentally years older, loved the conversation. Loved challenging and pushing Ava’s mind, loved that Ava did it for Mary’s mind as well.

“We’re in tier four aren’t we,” Ava sucks in a deep breath, finally realizing the completely theoretical science of this place, the bubbles and sudden appearances of massive cities. The endlessness wasn’t actually endless. They were walking through bubbles, full civilizations and not even knowing it as they walked because they didn’t want to be seen.

“I don’t really know what tier four means to you but this place moves constantly,” Mary furrows her brow at the sudden awe etched across Ava’s face, how soft her voice has gotten when all she’s done for days is probe and ask pointed, loud, cutting questions.

“It’s why Antioch can disappear and reappear, why it can decide when it appears, to who it wants to appear for in the silence of the traveler. It's the perfect landscape for quantum shifts and subatomic manipulation,” Mary can tell Ava is finally getting how deeply intricate this place is in how she talks now. No challenge, just complete and utter awe.

“I guess? Everything here is controlled by something else so if that means tier four, then sure, it’s tier four, but our scientists cannot even fathom the intricacies of this world on paper or with numbers because it’s unfathomable to us,” Mary counters Ava’s certainty but knows it’s useless given the renewed sureness of Ava’s face.

Ava blinks, this is more than she could ever have imagined. Fourth tier is unheard of, when she gets back, she needs to find Neil, she needs to find every scientist and author of the papers she’s read and tell them about this. Prove and disprove their theories. The Arc must be a bridge to the fourth tier or a deeper tier still. Jillian would go for broke to save her kid and accidentally create a gateway to the biggest scientific breakthrough in history.

“Have you played chess before?” Mary asks after she sees a little life come back to Ava’s blown eyes.

“Um excuse me, have you?” Ava laughs at her own joke, letting her body be shoved when Mary pushes her. “Yes, well no, not like with actual pieces on a wooden board but I’m pretty sure I’ve played on my phone and have seen people play in movies.”

“Okay so take that, take the best chess match you’ve ever seen played, the longest one, with the least amount of pieces taken from the board the longer the game goes because everyone playing is a chess master,” Mary uses her arms to explain to enormity of it all, trying to add in expansiveness to what she is sure Ava is picturing as a single board game.

“Yeah, sure, pieces on the ceiling and drugs and sleep deprivation, I’ve seen the Queen’s Gambit, we all have, that bug eyed gal was very talented,” Ava follows Mary’s arm movements with her own, thinking they’re both dancing out really large chess moves.

“Okay, no,” Mary stops, turning towards Ava and gripping her shoulders. “You know nothing, repeat that, tell me you know nothing, right now, literally wipe your brain or I’m about to explode it with what I have to say.”

“Fine, fine,” Ava waves her hand across her face, “these are not the droids you’re looking for. I know nothing. I am a baby bird with a baby bird brain. Please, enlighten me Sister Mary.”

“Fuck you,” Mary flicks Ava forehead to get her to uncross her eyes and pull her tongue back in her mouth. “You don’t though. The big bitch in white has a hold on this realm. She is both opponents of a chess game, she is making all the moves for the black and white pieces as she sees fit. She runs the Silver City as if every capitalistic company on Earth is part of one company.”

“So like, Google owns everything on the internet?” Ava furrows her brow, making it make sense for herself. “They bought up the duck internet and the fox internet so it’s just Google.”

“No Ava, it’s every single thing,” Mary feels a little break, feels like Ava is about to get her metaphor now. “All things that can be bought or consumed, like every internet, every form of media, every grocery store and gas station and car manufacturer, it's all under one single person.”

“That’s impossible, there are laws in place that stop monopolies, it's literally why Google or Disney doesn’t get to own everything,” Ava shakes her head scoffing at Mary like she should know this.

“For the last time, we are not on earth you dingus! I am trying to tell you about this place, the place you are in right now, not earth!”

“Aright, geez, calm down,” Ava lets out a halfhearted laugh, done with teasing and now ready to actually dive into the science behind it all, get to the why and the how and what is connecting all of this back to the real world. “I’m going to recap one more time. No, do not grumble at me. I get the capitalism, I get the multiverse of it, but this time, you’re going to be nodding and agreeing with me, I swear.”

“If you mention sport mode Croc gems, NFTs, the football draft, any meme at all, Hamlet, the box office, streaming services, the lack of empathy for the service industry or any single recipe for cocktails or coffee, I’m leaving you here to die,” Mary ticks down against her fingers, forming a fist to punch against Ava’s shoulder with her count down.

“Got it, none of that. So, first, the big bitch,” Ava mouths Reya’s name, having learned to not say her name after being scolded and hit too many times for saying it out loud. “She isn’t God, more like a tyrannical, capitalistic leader that somehow influences what happens in our world and profits from it.”

“God isn’t a thing in general here, but yes,” Mary reminds Ava for the tenth time. “This isn’t heaven. God, in all of its forms, is what people created and recreated thousands and thousands of years ago to define the unexplainable existence of everything when it was too hard to quantify. There are a million Gods, a million ideas of heaven, one to fit everything, but here it’s just who has the best, strongest power moves and right now, that’s our lady in white.”

“Right, sure, love that for no one, but okay. So Beebee.” Ava feels her tongue growing thick with the need for water as she continues talking, feels it stick to the roof of her mouth as she laughs at her made up nickname for Reya. “She started buying up all the religious stock until she was the strongest and most powerful and built an army of Tarask and an impenetrable city of silver to keep anyone from challenging her reign as leader of Christianity.”

“Not just Christianity, all of the big ones. Christianity is obviously the biggest and loudest in our world, but Islam, Hinduism, Judaism, everything that has a bubble in those questions on the census. But that’s just the story I’ve heard over and over here from so many people. She gets to consume all human energy tied to those faiths from our world. I don’t know how it actually works but I’m hoping we can find out,” Mary clarifies while squinting her eyes at something in the distance that Ava cannot see.

“Tarask are what then? Rey- sorry, Beebee’s strongest supporters? The zealots that murder people and ruin every single public space in the name of white Christian family values?” Ava doesn’t have to hide her sneer, her balled up fists, or her full-body detestation when it’s just herself and Mary. “Are they just the ugliest hearts throughout history that allowed themselves to be changed into beasts to protect her from persecution or being overthrown? How does divinium come into play? How does Adriel?”

“That, all of that is what I’m hoping Lomi is going to tell us,” Mary holds up her hands, a pinched forefinger and thumb from each hand meets to form a tiny diamond at eye level. Looking through it, focusing the nothing of the desert space into a pinhole, she sees their destination directly in front of them. Dropping her hands and her shoulders in relief, the structure disappears on the horizon. “We’re almost there, they’ll have food and water too, you look a little gaunt.”

“You look gaunt,” Ava mocks back, her throat feeling like sandpaper and her stomach completely folding in on itself. By Mary’s estimate of the rate of restoration and the need to consume to fuel your body, she thinks she’s been in the Arc realm for four weeks. It hasn’t felt that long, it’s barely felt like more than a handful of days but she can feel her body shutting down.

That thought, the passage of time, brings about too many negative emotions. If she thinks about it too long, tries to calculate the time she’s been here versus the time passing in the real world, Ava knows her willpower to keep pushing forward will shatter.

Gaunt or not, exhausted, confused, planless and wandering through an endless desert, Ava knows she can’t afford to think too hard about anything happening in the real world. Knows she needs to follow Mary’s footsteps in the sand to get to their destination for real answers. Nothing more, nothing less.

“I recharged the compass Lomi gave me at Antioch,” Mary turns around, waving the compass in front of Ava’s face, refocusing her drooping, dull eyes. “It vibrates when we’re about to cross into their space. It’s vibrating so…” Mary stops, following Ava’s skeptical expression as she looks behind her, seeing nothing. “You’re new so their place won’t be visible to you yet, you have to kind of earn their graces.”

“Is Lomi like a secret religious group? You keep saying they, what sort of group am I about to experience? Do I have to be worried about being touched by hundreds of people again?” Ava refocuses on Mary, her eyes growing a little wide as she remembers how overwhelmed she felt with the people of Antioch. She doesn’t want to have to perform or pretend to be something she isn’t in front of another group without warning.

“Oh right, right,” Mary smiles again, remembering how she was originally introduced to Lomi, “Lomi’s pronouns are they, them. They aren’t actually a being, or a person, or a, well, I actually really don’t know, they’ll explain it to you when we meet them.”

“Got it, singular being, so a few hours away now?”

“No, um no, just about six steps, are you ready?”

—-

“Big Mac!” A figure comes to the gate Ava finds herself in front of after taking those six steps. There is a key pad protruding from perfectly manicured grass, giant, sculpted privacy shrubs easily fifteen feet high on the left and right, a long winding driveway behind them that wasn’t there a step before.

The face of a thousand people pushes between the bars of the gate. A strong brow and chin moves to a more delicate jawline, a wider forehead, a dropped chin, lips going from thin to full and everything between constantly shifting along their face. Blue, green, brown, hazel, near black eyes shuffle up and down the spectrum of color, their skin tone doing the same. The smile holds while teeth shift from big to small, straight, crooked. If Ava’s mind could explode looking at something, it just might as Lomi’s features slowly start to settle.

“Lo, my friend, how goes it?” Mary grins, wrapping her arm around Ava’s middle to keep her standing, knowing a little about the mindfuck currently taking over her body, remembering the first time Lomi’s features settled in for her. “This is my friend, Ava, she is a bit… touched you could say. Would it be cool if we came in and hung out for a bit?”

“Mi casa es su casa babe,” Lomi winks with one hazel eye and one blue eye, pressing a button to open the gate. They jump up on the gate and ride it as it opens, skipping around when Mary, half carrying, half dragging Ava, comes through.

“Oh, so fresh, so new, I can always tell when we have a newbie,” Lomi pushes the gate closed behind them and leads them towards a house that looks like the makers of the Barbie mansion had a sudden burst of postmodernism, minimalist influence.

“Love the new look,” Mary whistles as she takes in the sharp lines and peaks of the pale pink roof, the too smooth lines and slopes of the darker pink walls.

“Can you tell what it is?” Lomi beams at Mary, Ava still too preoccupied as she stares as Lomi’s melting and shifting body. “No, here, stand right here and angle your head like this,” Lomi directs Mary’s head to the right and points their finger out, “that window is an eye. Do you see it?”

Ava, feeling less queasy now that Lomi’s shifting has all but stopped, settling into a dark olive skin tone, one dark hazel eye, one deep brown, both wide and winged, a dusting of freckles across a wide nose and rounded cheeks. Dark brown hair, shaved on one side, flowing down to their shoulder on the other side. Their hands are large, their fingernails short, they stand a few inches taller than Ava. They are familiar and all together a stranger.

“It’s a cat.”

“The new, small one is correct!” Lomi yells and jumps up and down, startling Ava from the daze and haze in her mind. “Very recently designed. Do you like?”

“I see it now!” Mary high fives Lomi and follows them through the mouth of the cat, the front door, “love what you’ve done with the place.”

“I have a spread ready in the dining room, I felt you coming for hours and hours,” Lomi ushers them inside, briefly looking over their shoulder before shutting and locking each of the seven locks of the door. “The little one is unwell, you must be so hungry sweet thing. Though admittedly you are experiencing a decline far too fast, have you noticed that Mary?”

Ava fights every muscle in her body to stop herself from swatting Lomi’s hand away from ruffling her hair. She bites her tongue from telling them off, from telling them that being five feet four inches tall is a standard height. That she can do a lot of damage with her small body and would be willing to demonstrate.

“Faster decline, Aves, how hungry are you, the high end of a one through ten scale or just in the middle?” Mary scrutinizes Ava’s body language, remembers how early on Ava had asked for a break, how she might have mistaken Ava’s confusion and sluggishness for hunger and dehydration.

“I mean, yeah, I’m really fucking hungry and I feel like my tongue is about to shrivel up and choke me, but you said a month, have we not been walking for that long?” Ava stumbles through the house as Lomi leads them through it. Dizzy and exhausted, the effects of wind and sand and sun burning against her cheeks as she walks along the quiet, clean, pristine hallways of Lomi’s home, feeling everything the halo would have and should have taken away in the real world.

“No, Ava, you’ve barely been here a week and that’s being generous, whatever,” Mary waves away the timing issue of Ava’s stomach, blaming it on the halo or how much smaller Ava is than she is as she crosses into Lomi’s kitchen, then through to the dining area.

“I feel like that is fully not a whatever issue, but,” Ava’s mouth waters as she sees the spread laid before them, any further words sucked back into her mouth as she follows a very cartoony line of desire towards the food.

“We appreciate your hospitality Lo, but we are also here for a specific reason,” Mary sits at the kitchen table, loading up a plate of fruit, nuts, breads, and cheeses, sliding the carafe of water towards herself. She nods for Ava to do the same, not surprised in the slightest that Ava waits for Mary to eat before getting her own food.

“Of course, of course, you never just come for a gab,” Lomi drops themselves in a chair across from Ava and Mary, a bottle of wine appearing on the table beside them. “What is it this time? Adventure to the crusades? The first brick laid at Giza? Oh, how about the building of the first boat, now that is hilarious. The hijinx, the shenanigans, it takes them months to get it right!”

“As fun as that sounds,” Mary pauses as she chugs a full glass of water, refilling her glass before continuing. “Ava here, well she didn’t die, she’s the halo bearer and doesn’t belong here so we need to find a way to get her back as fast as possible, that is where you come in.”

“This little bean sprout! No,” Lomi gasps, their hand coming to their chest as they sit forward in their chair, sizing Ava up. “The bearer usually has more to them.”

“Alright enough,” Ava wipes her mouth with the back of her hand, having enough of these little insults. “I know we just met and I mean no offense, but I am not small or little. I defeated a devil on Earth. I can fly and heal and fight and wield most weapons,” Ava pauses, taking an aggressive bite of a baguette, teeth scraping against a glob of butter on a knife to chase it down. “I don’t like guns so I don’t actually know how to shoot them but these fists you keep calling little can do a lot of damage.”

Ava throws herself back in her seat, grabbing for her water glass only to slosh it down the front of her shirt and into her lap. Her embarrassed, frustrated grunt is far too loud at the table in the silent room. She feels her cheeks pink, a current of heat runs through her body as she tries to cover up her spill and chew faster against the hunk of bread in her mouth.

“Small packages, I know about them, what I mean by more,” Lomi sits forward in their chair, fingers steepling on the table as their eyes roam up and down Ava’s body, watching her wipe water and crumbs from her clothes. “I mean Warrior Nuns have lived more, had more years, more time, more life. You though, you’ve only just started. Why is that?”

Ava’s eyes dart to Mary, silently asking if she has told Lomi about her. If Lomi knows about her being a quadriplegic, being confined to a bed at an orphanage for so many years. Asking if Mary has told Lomi that she was murdered and came back to life by a circle of metal shoved into her back. Mary looks back with a tight lipped smile that tells her no. No, Mary hasn’t told Lomi anything about her life until she told them she was the halo bearer moments ago.

“It’s a long story,” Ava wants to come off as strong and confident, remove her shitty life from the equation so she can just get back but her voice is a whisper that Lomi latches on to.

“Sweet girl,” Lomi waves an empty wine glass towards Ava and pours her wine with another flourish. “We have nothing but time here, please, enlighten me.”

The abridged version Ava chooses to tell Lomi takes less than five minutes. She glosses over so much, she highlights things that aren’t that important. When she finishes, she feels even smaller than how she felt when Lomi called her little. She has done nothing with her life and the summary of it proves that.

Hadn’t lived, hadn’t grown, hadn’t felt or learned like any of her peers. She really only started living four months ago by anyone else’s standards. If they hadn’t been on vacation, if it hadn’t been raining, if they hadn't crashed the car, if her mom hadn’t died. If the car rental place wasn’t so cheap and the tires so bare. If she weren’t in a catholic, under funded orphanage, if Sister Frances weren’t her caregiver. She could have done something, been someone.

In her misery she thinks of the counter of the bleak summary of her childhood. If not for volunteers that read to her as she grew up. If not for the repeat visitors that actually tried to know her. Visitors that bought her a walkman and CDs for Christmas when she was ten. DVDs and a player when she was twelve. The people that brought her posters for her room, remembering the things she told them she liked. Then an audio player for books in her teenage years.

If not for the constantly shifting roommates she might never have learned true empathy. Might never even been able to listen to or watch any of the gifts if they hadn’t pushed play or pause on each of her devices. They’d complain if they heard the sound through her earphones or complained that they couldn’t see or hear or read it themselves. Ava would narrate and tell stories stories the next day but never let her roommates have direct access to the only thing in her life that was hers.

If not for Diego, the roommate that stuck, Ava would never have known what having a little brother felt like. Not until Diego did Ava actually let a roommate into her bed in the deep hours of the night to watch or read or hear what she coveted so close. He deserved it as much as she did, maybe even more.

Her other roommates had been her age, they had experienced the same things, were dealt the same hands but Diego was four when he came into her room. Surely a new type of punishment from Sister Frances. The Sister had expected Ava to hate having someone so young in her room, hate someone that was more needy in his younger years than her in her teenage years. But Ava had loved it, loved him, and Diego loved Ava from that very first night.

Four years old, alone, and Ava hadn’t pushed him out of her bed. Instead, she had instructed Diego to restart the book she was listening to, one that would become a classic for them, Pet Sematary. She had him turn the volume low so no one else could hear them without headphones, she laughed at the scary parts and Diego followed her lead.

Sure, Ava couldn’t move her limbs but even if she could, she would never have pushed Diego out of her bed that first night or any night after. She felt needed, wanted even, for the first time in her entire life. Their bond had only grown from that moment.

She had nothing in life but managed to get so much out of the nothing her life gave back to her. She lived as much as she could in the single bed of space granted to her. She lived enough to know that when she died and came back, that she was more, would and could be more than anyone had suspected. She never let herself live inside the confines of the horrible hand she was dealt or the bed she was resigned to.

Ava lived in her head, she lived in her heart, she always had and always would. She lived in the far reaching world of books and music and shows and dreams and a promise of something better. She was never small. Not in that bed and not when she came back to life.

“That,” Lomi whispers in the delayed silence around the table as Ava thinks of her real life outside of the abridged version. They sit back, satisfied as a familiar, small smile tugs at their mouth. “There you are. That’s you, that’s the big part.”

“Sorry? She just gave a Tiny Tim during the Great Depression version of her life pre-halo and you say that’s big when minutes ago you said it wasn’t? No, we really don’t have time to play games so do the thing, come on, if anyone needs it, it’s Ava,” Mary sets her water glass on the table harder than she intended, the sound echoing off the walls as she waves her hand at Lomi to continue to probe and push.

“We’ll get their Mac,” Lomi waves off Mary’s request, keeping their eyes locked on Ava, “but what Ava has just played out in her mind is actually much bigger and more complicated than any Warrior Nun I’ve ever felt from here. There is trauma and then there’s trauma and what our dear little hedgehog here has is the capital T version of trauma. That and much, much more than the eye can see.”

“Wait, what? You can hear what we think?” Ava half yells her question as Mary sputters and coughs, apparently not knowing this little factoid either. Ava clicks her tongue as she takes a slow, calculated sip of water to cool the heat suddenly flushing her cheeks, then gulping down her wine. Already feeling like the cards are stacked against her. Knowing she can’t lie, can’t just tell Lomi what she thinks they need to hear.

“Of course I can, which is why, my sweet,” Lomi addresses Ava, refilling her wine glass, “we have quite a bit to unpack.”

“I’d prefer not to unpack because we have to be getting on,” Ava watches as the wine fills up to just below the brim of her glass. “We have somewhere to be and if time is what I think it is, I do not want to be forty when I get back, so Mary, hop to, we have to go.”

“Ah, no. Sit please,” Lomi snaps their fingers, voice sharper and harsh as Ava drops back to her chair, her knees giving out, “time is time out there, time here is not. And for you, time is not like Mary’s, it is not like that little blonde boy or your dark friend. Time here is yours.”

“That makes zero sense,” Ava pushes her feet against the floor, her hands against the armrests, with all of her might to stand but the force of whatever Lomi is using keeps her in place. “I would like to leave so please don’t take my agency.”

“There she is, you can leave at any point but,” Lomi lifts the hold on Ava, restoring her ability to bolt if she wants, “in order to get back to where you want to be, what you call the real world, you must first lift the chains and weights you hold against yourself.”

“Talk in riddles more I dare you,” Ava rolls her eyes, grabbing her wine glass and taking a deep drink, side-eyeing Mary as she does. Every muscle in her body is begging her to run, but her brain, Mary’s words, the uncertainty of what is beyond Lomi’s home keeps her in place. “Say what I need to do and where we need to go next and we’ll be on our way.”

“Ava,” Mary chastises Ava’s tone, not wanting to be pushed from Lomi’s kitchen and back into the desert before they’ve gotten answers or replenished themselves completely.

“No, Ava is right, I shall speak truthfully,” Lomi smiles and waves their hand at Mary, brushing her off. “Ava, you need to unburden yourself or you will be buried alive when you leave this place. To be honest given the state of your precious noggin when you walked in, you should have choked on sand long before you arrived, the minute you left Antioch even but here you are. This is also why you’ve grown so hungry in such a short amount of time. That or you’re being specifically targeted but no Warrior Nun has ever been targeted here. There is an unspoken rule.”

Ava bites her lip and digs her blunted nails into her palms, knowing Lomi can hear her thoughts. Doing anything she can to keep out the events of Adriel and Reya and how she came to be in this place in the first place. She floods everything in her mind with the image of Beatrice. What walking on water felt like, how different Beatrice’s skin felt in contrast to the cheap sheets they slept on in Switzerland. If Beatrice knew she cuddled up against Ava’s back each night before she woke or if she pretended not to.

“Ah, okay, so you are being targeted then,” Lomi laughs outwardly, not subtle at all about knowing that Ava is trying to cover up the truth. “Regardless, it should take weeks for mortals to grow famished here, meaning your vitality is being sucked from you in addition to your mind doing it’s own damage. Those that do not unburden, those that harbor hate and resentment well… Well, they usually find themselves in the Silver City, indentured to some whim of Reya’s. You are lucky to have Mary, but you need to release to move on, there is no way around it. You must speak your truth out loud in here in order to make it out there”

Ava stares at Lomi’s pointing finger and follows the point outside the window towards the green grass and sunshine. She looks towards the front door, thinks of the front gate that will take her away from here and back to her real life, back to her friends, to Beatrice.

This might be an easy task for anyone else but Ava doesn’t talk about herself, not really, she never has. She doesn’t talk about how she grew up, she doesn’t talk about how she was raised. She has never unburdened herself, wouldn’t wish it on any friend, acquaintance, random person at a bar, or a therapist. It was too much to unload and too much for Ava to even want to think about addressing in a singular sitting.

It is too painful, too hard to remember. How she was cared for, how she wasn’t, how she was raised, how she raised herself. Why dredge up things that hurt when you could just bury them so deep in your mind that your body just forgets it ever happened. Simply cover the reality of her emotions and traumas with tasks and life or death missions, the feelings of other people. Bury them in the absurdity of being murdered by a nun only to be resurrected to serve the very church that killed her and fall in love with a different nun. Her life reads like the most ridiculously crafted, horrific full circle moment.

She’s lucky to have Mary, yes, sure, always, that part is very true, but is she lucky to have Mary as a shield in this place? Absolutely not. Ava would not let Mary become a shield for smiting and hellfire and anything else this realm could throw at her for being who she is and what she wants to do. She will not let Mary die a second time for her.

“My sweet,” Lomi laughs as they walk around the table, Ava knowing they must have heard everything that played out in her head as she thought about her current situation. They pull the empty chair up against Ava’s and sit down. “I can tell that this must feel like your tenth circle, your thirteenth reason even,” Lomi looks to Mary with a wink, like they had done something significant for Ava, brought in pop culture, only for Mary to grimace and shake her head.

“Tenth circle?” Ava sniffles a little as she pops a grape in her mouth, looking to Mary for an answer. “Only Mary has a connection to thirteen so that’s not me either.”

“It’s well, fuck… Lo is trying to connect with you using the only thing they know outside of your mind, movies and tv shows and books, I told them you like media during my own sessions,” Mary waits for both of their eyes to find hers, then she waits a beat longer for Ava to know that Mary is also in control here. If Ava still doesn’t trust Lomi, at least she can trust Mary, trust that Mary is doing this for her, has her best interests in mind. “Ava, babe, you have to do this or we physically cannot leave this house. I tried after my first session and I didn’t even get to the gate before I- It was-”

Mary knew pain, she knew it deeply, physically, mentally, emotionally her whole life. She grew up alone, she grew up bitter and mad, she lost over and over. She knew pain. What she experienced after she pushed herself up and out of Lomi’s house not even thirty-minutes into her first session, that was a pain so deep and severe that the rest of her real life felt easy.

As soon as Mary stepped out of Lomi’s door, the pain started in her mind, ripping and pulling in dozens of directions. Then it spread to her skin, pin pricks against every pore, pulling taught and set on fire. She felt like she was being swallowed whole with every single step she took from the doorway. She had fallen to her knees in agony. Tearing at her clothes, slapping against herself, anything to stop the flames consuming her. Lomi had pulled her back inside and explained the process to her. Explained how it worked and how it didn’t work for those unwilling.

“So-,” Mary shakes her head, clearing her mind of the image of her weakest moment, feeling Lomi’s hand on her arm to encourage her to keep going. “New deal, yeah, yes, great. Lomi wont use metaphors you don’t know and you won’t try to express your feelings through characters that they don’t know. The point,” Mary stands, licking her dry lips, balling her hands into tight fists before releasing her tension, looking at Lomi and Ava with cutting eyes and a sure set to her jaw. “Speak to each other factually and truthfully. Ava, this is the only way for you to get back, please, please believe me.”

Mary can tell Ava is trying to hold in some emotion, sees her lips clamping shut, sees her trying not to smile or say something callous or jokingly. Mary also sees the moment that Ava’s twitching, sarcastic comments and callousness fades away. Sees that Ava gets it with the settling of her brow, the shake out of her jaw, the small acknowledging smile at the corner of her mouth. Ava gets it, she gets Mary, as she always has, so Mary sits, satisfied and ready to play referee when Ava gets too lost in what Lomi is about to do.

“So, you know I can hear your thoughts and feelings so I will refrain from pretending like I don’t but,” Lomi nods deeply at Ava across the table, smiling with teeth she knows in a blink and doesn’t in the next. “From this moment forward, I want you to be you. I will trust what you say verbally and how you express yourself, unless there is something you hold back that is vital and relevant to your release to which I will ask questions and I do hope you answer. If you do not want me to hear what is in your head and your heart I will simply disregard it if it doesn’t come out of your mouth. It’s just you and me and questions and answers. That’s all.”

Ava can feel the sting against her eyes already. Truth and honesty, she’s only really done any of that in the last three months of her whole life. She only ever did that with Beatrice. The sting is there, the bite, because Beatrice isn’t the one she gets to unburden with. Ava doesn’t get to ask Beatrice to do the same with her, doesn’t get to cry in the arms of the woman she loves while they both cry together. Shedding layers and layers of hurt and undoing a life they didn’t deserve to rewrite it into something better.

Lomi wouldn’t cry, Lomi probably wouldn’t even offer to hug her if she needed it. Mary might but Ava would never ask. She doesn’t want to do the hard verbal part without Beatrice being the soft physical part at her side. The soft part that Beatrice had always been for Ava. In the Cradle, in Switzerland. She doesn't want to do hard without Beatrice, it feels wrong.

“The biggest thing for you to take in from our conversations is that you have to unburden yourself or you will die a real death when you attempt to leave,” Lomi cuts into Ava’s thoughts, hammering home how important this talk is. “I am not manipulating you, I promise. I will not store your answers or use them against you in any way. You shouldn't have been able to leave Antioch, that is a fact, but you will not leave here with Mary if you don’t let go.”

“Fuck,” Ava says under her breath after a few minutes of thought, keeping Beartrice in her heart as she moves on to the actual matter at hand. She takes a few sips of wine, pops a cube of cheese into her mouth, then a handful of olives. “This is therapy isn’t it? That is what I’ve always considered my tenth circle, I get the reference now.”

“Got it in one my love,” Lomi grins and touches their glass against Ava’s on the table in a one sided cheers. “I’m glad I got one reference right. Big Mac did it a few years ago and we’ve been on so many adventures since, this is just the start of your real life. Nicola Tesla did it with me here then he accidentally harnessed lightning to create glass, thank you Nic for the wine glasses and windows. Cleo was a bit of a pain but she had the best make-up tips. Kushim was one of the most wholesome humans, taught me a lot about nothing, and nothing Ava, just living, is even more important than actually doing something.”

“What?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Mary stands, waving her hand at Ava to do the same. “Lomi is going to ask you questions and you have to answer them honestly and truthfully and then we get to ask the same amount of questions back. That's it, it’s simple. Be honest, be you and we’ll be out of here in no time,” Mary sounds confident in her words but Ava sees her reach for the wine bottle, taking a deep swig as her eyes bulge, silently questioning everything that is about to happen as she walks from the dining room to the sitting room.

—-

“Are you comfortable, do you need more pillows, is there a candle you don’t want?” Lomi asks as they fuss around the sitting room. Candles and incense flicker and smoke all around the room, platters of snacks and wine carafes cover the surfaces where the candles and incense holders aren’t.

“This feels really excessive and unnecessary, we could have just talked at the table, I don’t need to be on this overly dramatic fainting couch from the Victorian era but go off I guess,” Ava rolls her eyes, settling back into the headrest of the lounge chair, sipping her wine, looking to Mary for any direction.

Mary steals her features. Her own session, well sessions, took weeks. She couldn’t or wouldn't admit or acknowledge many things from her childhood, her adolescence, even into her adulthood. Even after her death, she refused to acknowledge things. She fought Lomi, she fought the faults of others when she believed them to be her own. She countered and refused to hear the things Lomi said. If she fought, Mary knows Ava will fight even harder.

If Mary were a betting person, she would bet they would be here for no less than a year before Ava finally had a breakthrough. Before she finally gave in and started saying things that mattered, before she stopped making jokes and started saying real things. At least there was food.

“I am asking about your comfort level now because I am about to take it away,” Lomi sits up straight in their wooden chair a few feet from Ava and Mary. Utilitarian, strict, no-nonsense.

“What does, uh, what do you mean?” Ava repositions herself in her chair, swallowing thickly, pins and needles run up and down her legs and arms, her hands clammy. She looks back at Mary for any answer but what she finds is a wide, fearful expression, Mary’s body wound tight and straight as she stares at Lomi for an explanation.

“I am sorry Ava,” Lomi attempts a soft smile in lieu of an explanation.

“No, no, what does that mean, are you going to like, burn me with hell fire?” Ava is on her feet, ringing her hands as she paces, her voice a few octaves higher than normal. “Torture me? Force me to kill my friends one by one? Make me watch them die in horrible ways? Pick between Mary and Beatrice, pick between any of them? What is it Lomi!”

“Ava, Ava, please,” Lomi stands, their hands out in front of them, hoping to calm Ava’s rapid speech and staggering heart rate. “If I may, I would be happy to explain the nature of what I mean.”

Ava grits her teeth, grinding them together, flexing and unflexing her fingers over and over, before turning to Mary where she is standing at the head of the couch but staying silent. All she gets is a subtle head nod back towards the fainting couch, a bit of a plea in Mary’s eyes. Wordlessly, Ava rounds the couch slowly, she fingers dragging against the fabric of the couch before settling back in.

“This is not a form of torture, this is me and you, and tapping into the hardest parts of your life so you can unburden. A part of that, a very large part of that, is going back to who you were before you had the halo.”

“Jesus fuck,” Ava heaves the largest sigh of relief, taking an overly large gulp of wine, shoving nuts and cheese and fruit into her mouth as fast as she could, swallowing it all down with another gulp of wine before settling into the couch. “You’re only taking my movement, old hat babe, could have just said that. You didn’t have to get all cryptic and say my comfort. My movement is not my comfort but go off I guess.”

Ava continues to shove things into her mouth, kicking off her boots, draining her glass of wine as Lomi and Mary retake their seats. She wipes the back of her hand against her mouth and chin, brushes the back of her fingertips against her shirt before dropping back heavily against the chair.

“Take it Lo, I’m ready.”

Mary hears the forced ease in Ava’s tone and knows she is being too cavalier. Mary wasn’t present for Ava’s training, only getting the best and the worst parts in the notes and reports Beatrice kept but Ava’s alone in a sick bed comment... That line in Beatrice’s notes, in an uncharacteristically shaky script, stuck with Mary. This fainting couch might become a new, momentary sick bed for Ava, but Mary will make her presence known as aggressively as possible so Ava never, ever feels alone.

“You aren’t going to feel anything when I-”

Ava laughs, loud and obnoxious, cutting off Lomi’s words, “of course I’m not going to feel anything, that’s the point. But, uh Mary-”

“I’m here, I’m not going anywhere,” Mary moves her chair around so that she is sitting up against the couch at Ava’s shoulder, her hand gripping tightly to confirm her intention to stay.

“Do your worst,” Ava grins and lies back, clenching every muscle in her body just to feel it one more time before Lomi takes it. She does feel it, slowly, like taking a fast acting sleep agent. She lets it take her muscle by muscle, slowly dipping her mind and her body back into the memory of her former life. She tests it, or the last of it, when her feet don’t move, her knees, her hips, elbows. She tests every part of her but forces her mind to settle back into over a decade of practice so she doesn’t panic.

“Ava, I do hope you are still comfortable. Please tell me about the death of your mother,” Lomi’s opening question immediately makes Mary’s leg jump, her body tense. Ava was too young, she wouldn’t know how to quantify that or how to feel about it then or now. They’d be here for years if this was the line of questioning.

“Geez, right into it, but I don’t know what you mean,” Ava’s voice is still light and even as Mary coughs next to her, her facial expressions, the only thing she can control, remain calm and neutral.

“What do you remember of it?”

“Nothing. I was in a coma for nearly a month after the crash. When I woke up, the only family I had ever known was gone,” Ava had dreamed about her mother’s death for years, relived the reality of it just as much as the made up aftermath she longed for. She thought about it so many times, but never talked about it. In truth, no one had ever asked.

“That thought in your head, the reality and your dreams. I know I said I wouldn’t acknowledge it but it’s the first question and I hear it so, just say it out loud,” Lomi smiles, it's soft and inviting and it makes Ava’s jaw muscles soften, makes her want to start talking.

“Right so, I saw her there, on the side of the road. I was wrapped in tin foil, the sound of the blanket was so loud when the ambulance people wrapped it around me,” Ava can hear it even now, how hollow and deafening it was in her ears, drowning out the sound of the sirens and the voices of the paramedics around her.

“I could still move my head, just barely, I remember that, so I looked towards the flames of the car for her thinking she’d be standing there, with that look that told me she was going to explain what happened later but… But she was just there, unmoving on the, uh on the pavement. Her eyes were open, there was blood on her forehead, but she looked alive and she was looking at me, I know she was. I yelled for her. She didn’t move or turn her head towards me or stand to come to me. She didn’t explain anything. She never blinked, she didn’t move, didn’t run to me like I know she would have if she could. She just stayed there and the ambulance door shut in front of me. The doors shut and she was gone and I was taken away but she just stayed there. She’s still there, looking at me.”

“Last time, I promise, but it’s important, you thought of dreams, what were the dreams?”

“Just that, the road side and her unmoving body,” Ava stops, unsure of why she is still talking, wants to hesitate before continuing but the words just keep flowing out of her. “Then as I got older, I dreamed of her coming to the orphanage to get me. To pick me up and take me away from them. Bring me back to our home. She holds out her hand to me and I can walk again, I can feel my body and everything that comes with having feeling as soon as I take her hand. But there were other dreams where I couldn't feel and the sponges she used were like silk against my skin, how she talked to me was loving, and the moveable bed she bought me had every angle imaginable.”

“When did you stop having those dreams? When did you stop hoping she would come and rescue you?”

“Yesterday?” Ava tries to make a joke but it lands like a nuclear bomb, shredding her throat raw so the laugh she tries to push out to lighten the mood sounds like a sobbed choke. She locks eyes with Lomi and knows jokes won't fly. Knows her attempts at being casual won’t work here.

“In truth, maybe two years ago. I gave her up two years ago,” Ava wants her muscles to move against the lounge chair, wants to reach for her wine and feel casual about these questions but it's not casual. It’s painful and it hurts her mind and her heart to have to say things out loud instead of keeping them inside. Ava waits for Lomi to ask the next question but from the long pause, Ava knows they want her to elaborate.

“The dreams, right, when I had them, they were always the same. I wanted her to show up and say she was in a coma too or she was bedridden too. I wanted her to say she never wanted to leave me, that she never wanted me to be alone without her. I wanted a family, I wanted my family, I mean, who doesn’t. Every morning I woke up in the orphanage, every night I went to sleep, I knew that wouldn't ever be a thing. And every day I grew a little more bitter about it. But um, two years ago, I uh forgot what her face looked like. It just… just left my mind. I forgot what she smelled like, what our house smelled like years ago but when her face was gone, I just… I gave up my dreams. I made myself stop dreaming about it.”

Ava had said and admitted more than she ever wanted to about the death of her mother and her own mental state while at the orphanage. Years and years of waiting and wanting and hoping for something that would never happen, years of wanting to have the agency to leave, years of wanting more than her life allowed her to have.

“She loved you,” Lomi speaks into the funnel of Ava’s thoughts, bringing her back to the present. “She loved you more than she loved anything she ever knew and I can tell you that honestly and completely. You’ve already thought this and internalized it but it wasn’t your fault. Your mother’s death was not your fault. Not to make light of that because that is a big step in understanding grief, but you’ve already done it. So tell me about dying and coming back. What was that like?”

Ava’s body buzzes like hundreds of bees contained in a tiny glass. Wanting to move, to spring up, but three months doesn’t outweigh years and years. She rotates her head on the lounge chair, clearing her throat, thrusting her head back, seeking and finding comfort in Mary. Seeing but not feeling Mary’s hand reach out and grip her own.

“I didn’t die, I was murdered and for a few hours I didn’t even know it,” Ava imagines squeezing Mary’s hand back, much like she had imagined hugging Diego back for years. “I uh, yeah no, um- I killed the nun that murdered me and no offense to the faith shit but I would do it again and I would do it more brutally than I did it the first time if given the chance.”

“Say more, if you’d like,” Lomi probes and knows it will be fruitful.

“I was admittedly an ass all my life, but also, I couldn’t move my limbs so I wasn’t a threat at all, they could have-” Ava balks, lobbing her head to the side once more to see Mary. Mary only looks at her reassuringly moving even closer but staying quiet, knowing this wasn’t about her or validating Ava.

“You know being murdered wasn’t your fault right?” Lomi’s question hits Ava hard. She should have expected it, could have and should have guessed this would be a line that would be crossed and no, Ava doesn’t actually know it wasn’t her fault. The softness of Lomi’s voice triggers something in her mind.

She was never thankful, she never repented, never did anything they told her to do over and over for years. She made them hate her, encouraged their hate just to have that spark of spite that fueled her each day. She would acquiesce when threatened enough to keep her television, her books, to keep Diego in the room with her, to have visitors and people that actually cared..

“I-”

“No,” Lomi stands and comes to sit at the end of the fainting couch. “That, in your head right now, is wrong. I’m sorry but I must call that out because it is wrong and I will not take questions. You should not have experienced that. Full stop.”

Ava knows this to be true as well. Like her mother’s death, she knows her treatment was not her fault. She knows what kindness feels like, she knows what loyalty and support and faith feels like directed towards her now. She knows that even if she is joking or mocking, causing chaos and being a contrarian, that kindness doesn’t waver. In honesty, she thinks it even grows as her sisters, her family, adopt her mannerisms and joke back, questioning things on their own. Even when teasing and fighting, they all make themselves better.

“Tell me about what it felt like to come back to life.”

Ava’s body, her neck at least, tingles at the influx of new thoughts, dizzying with the sudden shift in Lomi’s questions, she had been prepared to stay in her death for hours. Prove herself worthy of the life that was taken from her by her caregiver, convince Lomi that she believed it wasn’t her fault. She had even put together a little speech in her head but was happy to move on to something a touch less tragic.

She saw nothing, experienced nothing in her brief first death. She didn’t get a desert or a white light or a gentle hand guiding her somewhere. She didn’t get an invitation to her next. She fell asleep watching a movie and woke up watching someone, a nun, get murdered at the hands of some man.

“I rolled off a table not knowing what my body felt like below my neck for years then I immediately knew what it felt like to break my nose. Horrible by the way, I think I’ve broken it like five times since I’ve come back, but that first time, holy shit Lo,” Ava grins, remembering the first time her entire body fired on all cylinders. Remembers how her toes curled back, unused muscles pulled back against limestone, how her knees vibrated with the pain of impact, the grooves of the ground against her hand, how the cold of the floor seeped into her skin through her flimsy gown.

“Was a woman murdered right in front of me the second my eyes opened, yeah. Did a wraith demon materialize above this massive, angry murderer, one hundred percent,” Ava lets the memory of that terror and confusion consume her again. “I didn’t have any context, I was terrified, beyond confused, thinking I was in some super lucid dream after watching The Matrix for the first time, but…” Ava trails off, wishing she could be recounting this story with boisterous hand and body movements, reenacting everything in the sitting room floor as she remembers it, with the zip of energy and excitement she feels about it now.

“My instinct, or maybe the halo’s, it doesn’t matter. My first instinct even then was to grab for a medieval torture device and smash open the face of that murderer. My first instinct was to take out the wraith demon. I had no idea I could do that, no idea my body was capable of moving like that, of physically harming something. I definitely didn’t know how bad blood tasted when it dripped into my mouth from my nose but I knew that I had to get rid of the red wisp in the room and I did. Not only that, I picked a weapon, a metal that held the exposed halo, the one thing in the room that would kill it.”

The first moments of rebirth were foggy for Ava even with how vivid it felt, it was pure survival mode. She plays it back like she was watching a first person view of a video game. She watches her hands move, the body of the man she kills fall, she watches her vision bob up and down as she runs through unfamiliar corridors looking for an exit.

“After that, well, I still didn’t know anything. Like, Lomi,” Ava tilts her head to Mary to double down on her thoughts. “I didn’t know a single thing about the outside world. I survived being hit by a truck, destroying a clothing store and all I did was steal clothes to blend. I didn’t even question it. I didn’t care about anything or anyone. I actually pretended like it didn’t even happen for a while. No, not pretended, I let myself live as if I was in a dream. I did so much stupid shit.”

Mary coughs to cover a laugh, she repositions herself in her chair, moving her hand into Ava’s view as she pats playfully against her arm. Ava knows exactly what Mary is laughing about. Partnering up with a group of vagabonds, attending raves, crashing parties, running from the OCS, the ferry rides, trekking through the countryside, being kicked off a cliff’s edge, sleeping in a cave.

“Eventually, after running and getting scienced, I got it. I understood that the OCS, Mary, Camila, Lilith, Beatrice, they were supposed to be a part of me. Not in a fate or destiny way, just, like, how you find an old pair of shoes you wore years ago and your foot just slides perfectly into the lines and grooves of the sole, pun intended there because the whole soul thing and the fate of it all.”

“You joke about your soul and fate,” Lomi angles their face up and around in thought before settling purposefully back on Ava, “but there is something there, something about that that doesn’t sit right with you, would you care to elaborate?”

“I mean soul shit and fate, it’s not real,” Ava feels the echo of her body clenching and closing up shop. If she could, she’d bring her knees to her chest and turn away from Lomi. “If it were, how I grew up, how all of us grew up, it wouldn’t have happened. We'd be loved and taught to fight slowly, if it were fate, we would know what we were getting into because we would have been marked from birth. I mean-”

Ava feels bitter, slipping back into that contrarian, hostile feeling she had at the orphanage. Feeling like the halo was also meant to follow a righteous path, follow some lineage, and she was not supposed to be a part of that. She knows how Mary grew up, how Camila did, how Beatrice was cast aside, Lilith pressured. This was not fate, it was forced on them.

All she can do is grit her teeth and bare her anger, feel it against the grind of her molars, face pinching as she thinks harder about how and why they are all here. It's not even just them or the names she knows, it's generations of women lost in the name of duty. She wills herself to simmer that boiling rage as she looks to Lomi to give a more refined answer but freezes as she sees Lomi’s features shifting for the first time in hours.

“Shift back,” Ava demands through gritted teeth, she doesn’t quite believe it to be real but she swears she feels her fingers twitch into a fist. She blinks her eyes, the muscles of her neck straining, her body wanting to burst up and out, force Lomi to change back. For as welcoming and quiet and calm as Lomi has been thus far, shifting their features feels like a noose. A rope that holds back Ava’s need or want to continue answering questions, that cuts off the flow of thought from her heart to her brain.

No one gets to have those eyes, no one gets to have those freckles, that nose, the tweak of their mouth except for Beactrice. Those features should never exist here, no part of Beatrice should ever be here, it’s why Ava sacrificed everything, had done everything she could to keep Beatrice away from this place.

“I’m sorry Ava,” Lomi turns around in their chair, standing, their hands held out at their side as they walk away, “I should have warned you. Your emotions and your mental influence impact what I look like to you. For instance, Mary does not see me as the same person as you do. You are both looking at completely different versions of what you want me to be.”

“What do you see?” Ava looks over her shoulder at Mary, needing to confirm, needing to know Lomi hadn’t attempted to trick her or pull an emotion from her she hadn’t willingly given.

“Uh,” Mary startles, getting a nod from Lomi before continuing. “Darker skin but not as dark as my own, five eleven, really big hands, almost comically big,” Mary remembers laughing the first time she described them to Lomi. “Kind eyes but sharp facial features, black hair.”

“Why do you do that?” Ava breathes in through her nose, out through her mouth, settling as her eyes track along shifting features, turning from pale and wrinkled to sunkissed and bright, eyes dulling and sinking just to pop back to life the longer Ava struggles to look at them. Warring against a harsh face and one that brings her peace.

“It is not my choice, I was created to be a different sort of gate keeper here,” Lomi begins, turing back about with a smile of yellowing, crooked dull teeth, dropping their smile over a straight, white set a second later. “You could call me a receptionist for humans if that makes the most sense for you. Please Ava, relax, I can feel your tension straining you. I will shift to my true form if that is what you wish, or you can settle your thoughts so your brain doesn’t drip from your ears onto my handmade Turkoman carpet when you see me.”

“Gross,” Ava mumbles to herself as she rests her head back against the couch, turning her chin to feel the back of Mary’s hand on her shoulder. “You were created but you don’t control things like Reya does?”

“I was created many many years ago Ava, your brain will implode if I walk you through that timeline but I have seen every iteration of this place,” Lomi refills plates and glasses and spent incense flares with a flick of their hand. “I’ve seen everything, as I was created to, so that I could guide humans that slipped through or were taken. Originally I was meant to make them feel at ease, cared for and safe enough to recount their stories on Earth to the idiot that was running the show but over time, I stopped. I became my own person, my own faction if you will.”

“Faction of what? Religion?” Ava knows her brain isn’t melting but her temples are throbbing, her mind is reeling at what this place actually is, who Lomi might actually be. Sure, the fourth level of the multiverse theory is a lot, being alive through Jillian’s portal is a lot. The ancient city of Antioch standing and thriving in the twenty-first century is a lot. But Lomi, being created here, at the start of this place, a creation of the other side being her only salvation to get back feels more like a trap than a life preserver.

“Oh Ava, religion is and it isn’t. It’s a riddle, a folktale. It’s music and theory and art and nothing at all. What you experience here is nothing like what you actually see and so so much more,” Lomi retakes their seat next to Ava, winking at Mary to reassure her and calm her thoughts.

“The people in charge here are the same as the leaders in your world but leagues and leagues above them. Your leaders are all playing a game for their own benefit. The difference is the leaders here, well leader now, she’s been playing a game with your kind from the minute the first australopithecus made themselves known to us and not just for a term or two. Your world is just a game to us.”

“I am going to need you to expand on that or I might throw up,” Ava takes in a gulp of air, her stomach muscles might not work now but the bile resting against the top of her esophagus is real. Mary might not let her choke on it to prove a point like Sister Francis had but Ava would still have to be propped up to empty her full stomach. Still have to apologize with tears in her eyes after. She tamps the feeling down as much as she can

“In time, yes but we aren’t done with you yet,” Lomi’s features continue to shift and Ava finds she likes it better that way. She gets the occasional, momentary flash of Beatrice’s eyes, her nose, her hairline and freckles but she wills it not to settle, wills Beatrice to be alive and away from here. “I will state my next question more deliberately to ground you again. The halo gives you life, without it you will cease to exist, so tell me why you jeopardize yourself, your life, when you know that if you fail, you will no longer exist.”

Failure used to mean something different to Ava. A foot stuck in the wall at the Cradle, a nosebleed when she ran directly into a block of concrete. Using the wrong word, spelling something wrong. Breaking a bottle of vodka in an unnecessary flourish, dying the bed sheets pink when she washed a brand new red shirt with the white sheets. Burning toast, burning coffee, burning the edge of the cabinets when she was reckless with a candle. Running down the soles of a new pair of sneakers the third time she wore them so they spent all of their weekly allowance in a single day on a new pair.

Failure is bigger now. If she had failed to defeat Adriel, the world would have lost autonomy. If she failed, the world would be a possessed collection of people murdering and taking away everything until they were all one hive mind. Failure would have meant that the only people she loved and that loved her back would no longer exist. Failure was much bigger than a spill or a burn or a broken glass.

“My failure, my death, is actually winning for them. I would fail a million times over in the most painful ways because my failure means they win. My death means they win. It means they get to live and be better. I’m sitting here with you because I failed, I’m here because I won in my own way. I got everything I wanted in my last moments, Adriel gone, my sister’s safe. Sure I died, which is what I am assuming you are calling a failure but I won and I will continue knowing I’ve won because I know they are still alive and safe.”

“If we could see what your win looks like now, if you could look at where they are, would you want to see?”

Ava’s instinct is to yell yes, demand it if it’s a possibility, but like Mary and seeing through thirteen, it would take years for her to understand the context. If she said yes and she dropped in when Camila was crying, would it be happy tears or tears of anguish. Would Superion be smiling because she was proud of a success or a win or just smiling because no one had tried to break down the doors of the Cradle that day.

If she saw Beatrice, would the sweat on her brow be from training others or fighting against a foe she might not defeat. Would a smile mean she’s moved on and forgotten about Ava. Would she see new lines on her face, new freckles, new scars. Would she hear words that spoke of a plan meaning the fight was still happening or would the words speak of some movie or show Camila was trying to convince Bea to watch with her.

The uncertainty of the context, the world happening around the glimpsed seconds, it would drive Ava mad. She wanted it all back or she wanted nothing, she told Lomi as such.

“Nobel of you. Mary didn’t get a choice, she came here with an unexplainable ability to slip back and forth. Your friend, the sharp tongued conniving one, she has a different gift. The blonde boy though, that was a tragedy that should not have been possible.”

“What blonde boy, are you talking about Michael? How was he a tragedy? I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for him,” Ava cocks her head to the side, mouth pinching, brow furrowing, needing, yet again, more information from Lomi.

“Soon, Ava, soon you will get to ask your own questions, but my last question, if you can remove my interjections, my shifting form, our side conversations,” Lomi shakes out their neck and shoulders, sitting up straight as they smile down at Ava on the lounge chair. “Can you tell me, in as much detail as you feel comfortable with, how do you feel?

“How do I feel? That’s it, that’s the last question?”

“Your answer will define your future, but that is my last question for now, yes.”

“I feel,” Ava pauses because she doesn’t know. She walked for days to be here. Listened to science that shouldn’t be possible. Relived things she had never let herself think about in totality, only in snips and hazy fragments. Now she lies in silence before the wanting eyes of the only person that can grant her passage onward and back.

She feels broken, mentally windswept by a sandstorm of thoughts and emotions and experiences. A storm of sand made of pulverized glass from a car crash on a rainy night. The tightly coiled pilling of cheap sheets that leave wide, red, angry bed sores. Dust kicked up along a winding path then plumed up around a kicked, falling body. The embers of a fire snuffed out by leather boot soles in an unmarked cave.

Drywall from a crashed through ceiling, wooden splinters from a broken desk in a lab. Dynamite residue mixed perfectly with centuries old volcanic rock. Pebbles underfoot worn small and smooth, tracked and left behind in a bar, an apartment, the bottom of a pool. Ash from a smited body, soot from an explosion in a false cathedral.

Ava feels herself, her mind, get swept up in this sand storm, tumbling along with it, letting it cut against her skin, tear at her armor and resolve, she lets it consume her until she feels just as small at the pieces of the storm around her.

“I feel like I don’t want to be here anymore. I feel small or little or however you described me at the beginning of this. I haven’t lived enough because I know I should be back there, doing more, seeing more, failing up or whatever. I feel like I’m not done, I know I’m not done. I miss my mom even now, I’ll never stop missing her even if I don’t have her face anymore. I missed a lot of my life because I thought movement gave a person purpose but I was wrong. A person makes a person and I know I’m a person, I am not undead, I am not the halo in my back. I am a person and I feel like I’m missing one final piece to make my person whole and I need to get back to get it.”

Ava gathers her breath, herself, her mind and heart, every granular part of herself waging a war in her head. If she could control the storm, remove the parts of the whole, would that be enough to stop it from happening. If she removes one thing, even the smallest thing, she would not be here. She would not be the person who gets to explore a new dimension, she wouldn’t have known or found a real family. She wouldn’t know what it feels like to love someone.

“Upon reflection, I feel like I hated the bed I grew up in more in my head than in actuality. Yeah, obviously I hated it, you know how I feel about it but it made me, me. I refer to it as my sick bed but I was never actually sick. It was just me without movement, without choices of my own. There was a lot of mental abuse, and sure, sometimes physical abuse too, but I pushed back against that every chance I got. And yeah, I am fucking pissed that I had to do that so young for so long. I am more mad that Diego had to go through the same thing. That there are countless children that still have to beg for kindness, beg for softer touches and loving words from caregivers. And-”

Ava feels the pilled sheets in the storm slow and settle in her head. She watches as glittering glass follows after, a blanket of snow cooling the white hot anger in her mind. She lets the pieces of herself and her experiences, of everything fueling this storm within her settle and fold in on itself.

Smiling to herself, knowing she must be spooking Mary with her silent, widening grin, she makes the storm of her life come back together, pieces and sediment gathering and collecting, up and out and around. Ava laughs to herself as the storm becomes a statue in her mind. A statue with shoulder length hair, engraved tactical gear, a sword on its back and a grin on its face. She gives the statue of herself in her mind a quick solute before directing her attention back to Lomi and the question still hanging in the air.

“I hated that bed, I hated the people that took care of me because my mom died. But I love who I became because and despite it all. And yeah, does that sound like some candy corn Barbie level lie, sure but you and I both know it’s the truth. I like who I am now and I wouldn’t change a single thing. I feel most like myself right now, even without my movement. I feel like I am who I’m supposed to be. If I get to go back to the real world from here, bedridden like I am now or not, I know we’ll still win, they will win. That bed, this bed, whatever one I might find myself in back home, it doesn’t matter. What I feel is that when I go back, my family will win against any entity this place throws at us because we’ll be fighting together.”

Ava stops for a second, winking at Mary, angling her head towards her full glass of wine, wanting to wet her whistle. Mary jumps up, grabbing Ava’s glass from the table, tilting it slowly into her mouth, then far too gently wiping the tiny dribble against her bottom lip away before sitting back down at Ava’s side.

“So what I feel in this moment,” Ava rotates her head around her shoulder again, leveling Lomi with a deep, meaningful stare. “I feel like I want you to tell me what I need to do to crack the code of this place and take down the bad guys in charge so I can get back. I want you to tell me exactly who and what and how that all has to happen. I feel like I want to tell the girl that I love that I love her again, that I really truly mean it without the threat of death hanging over us. I feel like I want to tell my friends I love them too. I feel like I want to tell Mother Superion that I love her too and call her Suzanne and not feel awkward about using her real name when I say it. I feel done with answering questions and I feel like I would really like you to start answering mine.”

“Okay,” Lomi smiles slowly with lips and teeth that Ava does not recognize after a very long, silent moment. She knows Lomi is digging into her mind, trying to find a lie, trying to find a snag in her truth. But there is nothing, she knows that.

“I release you to whatever your body desires,” Lomi speaks into the space as they stand, walking briskly towards the kitchen, leaving Ava and Mary alone.

“Ha oh babe, send me back now because what my body desires is nothing you have he-” Ava feels Mary’s hand cover her mouth before she gains full autonomy over her body. She feels the plush of the couch against the back of her ankles first, then her calves, her thighs, her shoulders and lower back. The clothes against her skin, the slight wetness of wiped wine from her chin, the tickle of a loose hair against her neck.

It comes back slowly, one muscle at a time and as it does, Ava feels the tears sting against her eyes. It’s like a sunrise after years of darkness, a quenching of a thirst she cannot name. An anchor dropped into the ocean without a line, down and down without an ounce of service required. Untethered and listless. Ready to crash into the ocean floor and let the current take it up and down and back and forth as it sees fit.

She waits as the listlessness fills her body, every string pulled tight then breaking, every nerve ending sparking and tingling. She waits as long as it takes her mind to believe it and then she pushes herself from the couch. Standing as still as the statue in her mind before jumping once, twice. A tiny, satisfied laugh breaks through before she turns and throws herself against Mary, wrapping her arms around her as tight as her muscles will allow.

“You’re okay,” Mary laughs through her nose as she hugs Ava back just a tight. Her feet shuffling against the floor at how aggressively Ava buries into her. “You are here and I can feel you and hear you. You’re okay.”

“Mary,” Ava buries her face into the harsh fabric of Mary’s shirt, her voice breaking, wet with tears as she tries to keep talking. Shuffling back, she wraps her arms around herself, letting fat, slow tears leak down her cheeks as she attempts a smile. “I’m going to need a really, really strong drink after that.”

“Ava, you don’t need to joke or cover up everything you just went through, you can-.

“No, no I know. I know, I just,” Ava reaches for her wine glass, swirling it around as she drops herself back on the fainting couch, Mary following suit in her own chair, waiting for Ava to continue. “Something about getting it back for a second time, getting my feeling back. I was prepared to move on without, resigned myself to it, you heard me but, it feels different, I feel different. Like it’s…”

The word on Ava’s tongue feels and sounds like temporary. Her body, the feeling of it, it tingles the same, she feels the floor underfoot, the bend of knees, but something deeper, something far more foundational feels finite. Like her pulse is the ticking countdown to something in the future. If she lets herself dwell, if she lets herself think about that feeling, just like thinking about the goings on of the real world. She’ll drive herself mad.

“Just be normal about my life when we get back okay?” Ava settles on emotional feeling instead of physical, focusing on what Mary can do rather than what she feels in her own body. “Like, don’t pity me or kid gloves me, just, still be you. Still be you with me like you have the entire time you’ve known me.”

“I can do that.”

“But don’t just say it because you feel like you have to,” Ava can feel the red velvet curtains of dramatics coming down to drown out the ticking sound of panic. She feels calmer in the space of theatrics, especially when daunting thoughts threaten to take over. She throws her arm over her eyes as she drops back into the fainting couch, her other arm falling limply to the side, the empty wine glass dropping softly to the floor. She can feel the need for banter threatening to take over the very real conversation they should have, erase it, make it easier to swallow. “I’m not a baby bird with a baby bird brain, say it.”

“Ava-” Mary feels a sense of whiplash at the sudden drop of seriousness, the teasing, childish tone of Ava’s voice. She was present for Ava’s verbal exposition but not her mental journey like Lomi was. From her purview, Ava had barely scratched the surface of anything. Had barely released anything but she must have in her own mind, released enough for Lomi to end the session. Mary doesn’t want to play along, she wants to ask real questions, know if Ava is actually okay.

“Say it, Mary,” Ava peaks out from behind her arm, drawing Mary back into her, a shit eating grin on her face, the apples of her cheeks a light pink as she wiggles her eyebrows high enough for Mary to see over her forearm covering most of her face.

“Fine,” Mary stands, the coiled tension draining from her body as she retrieves her own wine glass, shaking her head at how easily Ava is handling all of this, how easy Ava is making her forget it all, bring her back to the impossible moment of right now instead of living in the past. “You are not a baby bird with a baby bird brain, happy?”

“Now say I’m the best thing that's ever happened to you and you can’t wait for me to save you,” Ava sits up, a little wine sloshing from the glass onto the fainting couch. Grimacing up at Mary, she scoots her body over to cover the stain, then puppy dogs up at Mary expectantly.

“You’re not a baby bird but you are a shit bird,” Mary flicks Ava in the forehead, watching her puppy dog eyes cross as Ava follows her fingers towards her. “I’m going to tell Lomi you spilled on their couch.”

“Shh, come on, it was a drop and in like one minute it will blend in,” Ava wiggles her hips to rub in the stain beneath her a little more, hoping what she said will actually be the truth when Lomi comes back.

If Mary felt whiplash at the shift in mood, Ava feels a tsunami of freezing cold water, a tornado of her own making. She knew she was good at covering things up and moving on, but this, moving on from the death of her mother, her own murder, everything she’s been through in four months without so much as a single conversation, well, Ava had no idea she was that good.

The thing though, it doesn’t feel bad. She doesn’t feel bad, she doesn’t feel like she withheld anything or lied or redirected or even moved on too quickly. She feels perfectly content moving on to jokes and dramatics. With the exception of her own, new, internal clock, being light and easy with Mary now feels right, like this is the natural progression of conversion after a therapy.

“Lomi!” Mary yells over her shoulder, mischievous eyes still locked on Ava before turning towards the door, sucking in her words when her eyes focus on Lomi already standing in the room behind her. She stands up straighter, eyes darting to Ava in a silent plea to compose herself.

“Are you ready to turn the tables, Ava? Give it back to the person who gave it to you?” Lomi’s voice is calculated and slow, their eyes assessing the two of them, knowing they walked in on a camaraderie they will never understand.

“Do your worst home slice,” Ava picks up her empty wine glass with a cocky smile, a flourish of the glass, and a nod towards Lomi, snapping her fingers to refill it as a joke only for it to refill itself at her mocking command. “Oh shit… Did I-“

“Did you just-“

The sitting room is silent, all eyes on Ava’s wine glass as Lomi questions the very fabric of their being. No mortal being’s actions or words should manifest themselves into reality in their home without Lomi’s say so. Their physical form was dictated by others but that was a feature Lomi created themselves. Had even made their house reflect the wants and desires of their guests only so they could experience new things from a human perspective. This, a simple refilling of a wine glass, it was not and had never been permitted. No one in all of Lomi’s existence had ever been able to conjure or call material things with a snap of their fingers or their words, not in their home.

“That is…,” for the first time in their life, in the time that Mary has known them, Lomi is at a loss for words. She moves closer to Ava, standing between the two in case their reaction is more battle and less intrigue. “Unexpected,” Lomi finally finishes their sentences, crossing the room in a single bound to take the wine glass from Ava’s hand. They sniff the deep, rich purple liquid in Ava’s glass, swirl it, sniff again then take the smallest of sips, sucking it between their teeth. They puff their cheeks in and out as they swirl it around their mouth before finally swallowing.

Mary steps even closer to Ava, reaching behind her to pull Ava against her back, knees bending ever so slightly in a fighter's stance just in case. They wait, bated breath, as Lomi runs their tongue over the front of their teeth.

“2011, Paso Robles, cab- no, no a Malbec,” Lomi takes a real sip this time, eyes closed in what Ava hopes is pleasure as they let the real sip of wine fill their mouth. “I have never tasted this Ava Silva. You… oh you continue to bring me new experiences. Lovely!”

Ava and Mary startle at how loud the singular word echos in the sitting room, Mary moves them a few steps back as Lomi produces carafe after carafe of the wine Ava called to her glass in a flurry of movement. They listen as Lomi mutters to themselves, talking about bottling as much as they can, what a 2013 vintage would taste like, or a 2020 vintage after the fires. They watch, Mary silently moving them away and back towards the kitchen as corked bottles start popping up everywhere. On the fainting couch, the mantle, too close to the flickering candles on side tables.

“Lo, are you um,” Mary finally finds her voice as the two stand in the archway between the kitchen and the sitting room. “Are you good? I mean, it's just wine. I think we should maybe move on to the next part of our very pressing, incredibly urgent task, if that’s fine with you.”

“Sure, sure, sure, yes sure,” Lomi closes the distance in another singular blurred step, “call another one,” they thrust an empty wine glass in Ava’s hands nodding their head in encouragement.

“I- I did that as a joke, I don’t think I can do it again but I’m,” Ava leans back a little at the wild excitement in Lomi’s eyes, “I will give it a try.”

Ava doesn’t know a single thing about wine. At the bar in Switzerland if someone asked for a wine that sounded red or sounded white, she’d just grab the label she liked the most. Not a single person had ever sent a glass back so she never bothered to learn. She was even praised by the owners after her third week when they said she was doing a great job moving their dusty crates of a sweet moscato that no one had ordered in months. To her credit the label she showed everyone while she poured it, the incorrect name in full view, was one of the most beautiful watercolor paintings she’d ever seen in miniature on the side of a bottle

“Wine please,” Ava snaps again with all of her chest, holding in a snorting laugh at the very front of her nose, wanting this to work and against any and everything, the wine glass starts to fill. Against herself, Ava smells the familiar cherry and oak and cardamom smells of a wine she actually loves. She doesn’t know the type or year or location but she knows the first time she tasted it.

Beatrice had walked into the bar from the rain, looking directly at her with a contained grin and a bag swinging at her hip. Ava remembers the smell and the taste of the wine so well because she choked on it when Beatrice ran her fingers through her wet hair, pushing the damp pieces away from her face. Honest to god Ava choked on the wine like a cartoon character at the movement and the thought of a reckless Beatrice leaving without a jacket or an umbrella. The thought of her not checking the weather before adventuring out. Adventuring just to proudly bring a gift back for Ava during a shift. Present that gift with water droplets falling down her newly tanned, muscled arms in front of god and their customer.

Ava had choked, spit the wine out all over the counter, been scolded by Hans, put on dish and bar back duties for the rest of the day but Ava didn’t care. She knew Beatrice saw her choke because she laughed from across the bar after. Ava would do just about anything, mop, trash, dishes, cutting lemons and limes, anything if she got to see Beatrice laugh like that, drenched in rain water, looking proud and excited to see Ava.

The gift in question, Ava has to pull at her memories to remember it because when Beatrice got close, all new freckles and new laugh lines, nothing else mattered. Back lit by the butter yellow lights of the bar, t-shirt clinging to her skin, her smile contained but so bright even in the company of others. It was a book, Ava remembers jumping over the counter in excitement when she saw the book. Truthfully, it was a book only university students would buy because they had to but Ava had been on an ancient Egyptian kick and the book Beatrice brought her was about the yet undiscovered tomb of Cleopatra and the theories on where it might be.

To her, the taste of that wine was secondary to how her skin felt absorbing the cool wetness of Beatrice’s clothing when she hugged her. It paled in comparison to the way they spoke the same tangled sentences back and forth to Hans about why this book was so exciting, Ava talking a little more but Beatrice filling in the gaps.

Ava had felt Bea’s eyes on her the whole time she talked, making her want to talk more. Hans had just nodded with a plastered smile and moved on to their next customer the second he had an opening. Ava remembers feeling awkward about pointing all of her excitement and thanks at Beatrice when Hans left. Holding back hugs and praise and everything else Ava wanted to do and say. She contained herself, not wanting to make Beatrice uncomfortable. She had quietly bid Beatrice goodbye with a somewhat sour wine taste on her tongue when what she really wanted to do, how she wanted to say goodbye, was held within herself.

“This. Is. Exceptional!“ Lomi’s screams fill the air as they hoist Ava up off her feet and twirl her around after taking a sip of the new wine. “At first I thought it was a smokey red blend but then the flavor changed the longer I let it rest. My dear girl!” Lomi sets Ava back on the floor and grips her chin with one hand, “do more! Whatever you want, but bottle it! No more single glasses, I need a reserve!”

“I think maybe let’s not,” Mary rests the tips of her fingers against Lomi’s arm held against Ava’s chin, pulling them from their singular mindset. “It’s Ava’s turn to ask questions Lo. She can make you an entire wine cellar after, but this is more important, yes?”

Ava and Mary exchange glances as Lomi’s blown out pupils settle back to reality, remembering where they are and what is at stake for the two women in their home. Mary stills holds her defensive stance, arm blocking Lomi from Ava even as they come back down from a tannin induced haze.

“Wow, yes, no, yes, back to the matter at hand,” Lomi runs their hand over their face, every feature pulling down like putty and resettling into an entirely new face when their hands drop. “I do not know what’s come over me, no one has ever manipulated my space like that before Ava Silva. Please forgive my excitement.”

Lomi moves back into the sitting room, Mary cautiously brings Ava back with her, still maintaining her buffer for as long as possible before Lomi takes over the next part.

“Right, right, you mentioned a strong drink, can I interest you in a nip of original pirate barrel whiskey, make you a cocktail, anything you want,” Lomi turns towards the pair far enough into the room that both Mary and Ava feel comfortable retaining their seats.

“Well,” Ava darts her eyes to Mary, looking for a reason not to but gets nothing, “if you're asking, I’d really like a lemon drop or two, or five, if you have the ingredients for it.”

“Oh Ava Silva, I have the ingredients for everything.”