Archive of Our Own ^beta

They split from the others one week after they reach the first safe house. She says goodbye to her remaining sisters and hopes it isn’t their last.

It takes them exactly six hours and thirty-seven minutes to reach their first contact.

(Name: Pietro Esposito, Gender: male, Age: forty-three, Family: none, Connection to OCS: was left at the door of one of their churches as a baby.)

It takes three more to track down the second.

(Name: Charlotte Buchanan, Gender: female, Age: seventy-four, Family: one daughter and two sons, Connection to OCS: none.)

Beatrice is given the blueprints of three different apartments in three different mountain towns under the Alps. She doesn’t tell the contact which one she chooses. It is expected.

When they arrive, she doesn’t let Ava inside the apartment until she’s done the first quick sweeping of it. Careful, naturally. But maybe not as punctilious as she would usually be. She takes out the alarmed locks for the windows from the bag.

She can hear Ava’s steps as she works, the only sound in the dead of night- they’re comforting, the padded fast steps as Ava rushes through the three-roomed apartment in her socks, occasionally sliding.

She hears her laugh, as she slips and regains her balance on the hardwood floors. She almost cries at the sound.

Then the steps stop.

“So…” Ava starts, her voice soft and childish as always. Only it isn’t childish? Childlike, maybe. The happy tilt of the words makes the sentences always flow melodiously to Beatrice's ears.

Beatrice had missed it.

She doesn’t turn from the task she has, though, not even to witness Ava’s sly smile.

“Yeah?”

Beatrice tries her best to put the same inflexion to the word as she usually does. Everything has been so fragile since teleporting away from the fight. From Mary.

(She doesn’t think she will ever forget the scream Ava let out at the sight of their friend being swallowed by Adriel’s followers.

She doesn’t think she will ever forget the one that ripped from her own throat.)

“There's only one bed.”

She pauses unintentionally. She rises as she connects the last wire. “So there is.”

She turns and feels like she turned a moment too later, as Ava’s face ducks out of sight beneath her new cap. She wonders where she had found it. She wonders why she misses seeing Ava’s eyes unperturbed by shadow.

“I will sleep on the couch. It faces the only possible entry to the apartment. Obviously, the windows are a problem too, so I might board up the one in your bedroom and—”

Ava’s arms flash out suddenly, and Beatrice finds herself grasped at the side. And, to her surprised perturbation, lightly shaken to a stop. “Wait, wait, I can’t take the bed.”

“You will.”

“No, I won’t. You need to sleep, too.”

She tilts her head, wondering what wasn’t clicking to her. “I will sleep. On the couch.”

“Not satisfactory.”

She can’t help but bristle at that. Pride is a sin but so is… She lets the feeling flow. Shakes herself free from Ava’s grasp. “Not satisfactory? I'm doing the best I can, here. I'm sorry we can’t get a suite but—”

“I know!” Ava’s hands are once more on Beatrice’s body, this time closer to her wrists than her shoulders. She doesn’t know how to feel. “I know you are. But what’s gonna happen to my brave warrior sister if she damages her back on a lumpy couch?”

She wills her blood not to rush to her cheeks at the words- at the word. It’s been a long time since Bea’s ever been someone’s. “I will be fine.”

“I refuse.”

“What?”

“I’m your superior—”

“Only technically,” she adds, lest Ava starts getting ideas about their relationships.

“—and I won’t accept insubordination. So I'm ordering you to share the bed with me.”

Of all the things she had expected Ava to say that was not it. “I’m sorry?”

“Share the bed. It’s certainly big enough for us. Let’s face it, we aren’t the burliest nuns around.”

“No,” Bea agrees, and can’t help the sadness that permeates her voice, “That was Mary.”

“We will find her.”

“I know.”

“In the meantime, we sleep.”

Together, Beatrice’s brain supplies. On one bed.

Panic shoots like ice through her veins and Beatrice doesn’t find herself a liar as she says: “I’m not tired.”

“Don’t you try it, darling, I know you. You will jump on that couch as soon as my eyes close.”

“I won’t—”

“So… It’s cuddles time,” Ava continues to drag her, and Beatrice lets her, and Lord she isn’t strong enough- the flesh never is.

Beatrice will deny the squeak that escapes her lips for all their lifetimes. “Ava!”

“Your fault, really. You should be less predictable in your martyrdom.”

“I’m not—”

Ava grasps her hand before it can move, dances around it and ticks her off balance so gently Beatrice is almost surprised when her back hits the mattress.

“You are,” Ava giggles, or chuckles, or grasps Bea’s naked heart in her hands and grips it so tight she doesn’t breathe, “Or maybe I know you too well.”

“Maybe,” she whispers.

Ava pushes her farther up on the bed, before jumping in after her. “Also it’s way too cold up here, I’m used to beachside cities… well, I’m used to not feeling actually. No nerve endings.”

“What was that like?” she asks as gently as she can make her voice sound, as gentle as her calloused hands can be.

“Dulled. Like feeling the world through a blanket.”

A thorn burrows in Beatrice’s heart at the thought of it. She can’t imagine a non-fidgety Ava, a not constantly brimming with energy Ava, and she thinks maybe that’s why she is constantly moving, to remind herself she can.

The blankets get thrown over them before Beatrice can think of saying anything else. Anything at all.

She wakes the next morning to warmth, spreading from her side and up to her neck where Ava’s face is burrowed, her nose pressing against Beatrice’s pulse point. Said pulse point drums as if Beatrice’s hands were holding a baton and not the body of the saviour of her church.

Her saviour.

Her best friend.

And Ava is so still in her sleep, she can’t make out with her sight the details of her, but her body memorizes the feel of her as if it’s been scorched in her flesh.

Beatrice imagines vines sprouting from Ava’s hand resting against her chest, tilling the earth until they rest over her heart and make their home there. The leg thrown over hers a pillar of creation left to decay and anchor Beatrice into the reality of the universe. The reality of the love she cannot let go.

There’s a light shining just over Ava’s left ear, that makes the newly acquired piercings sparkle. She thinks Mother Superion won’t appreciate the new holes in the warrior nun’s body, but she couldn’t deny Ava when she turned to her in a rest stop somewhere over Chamonix-Mont-Blanc, hair all around her as Bea improvised herself hairdresser and piercer all at once.

(Was it holy?

The blood spilt from Beatrice’s needle- melted divinium from one of her daggers- as she pressed ice swiftly on the other side of the lobe.

The gasp of Ava’s spark of pain.

The way her own breath seemed to still as Ava’s breath hit Beatrice’s lips…)

Ava moans slightly, curling against her more, her nose brushing against Bea’s skin and mapping a path of shivers. She can’t bear to watch Ava’s eyes scrunch open.

She shifts and brings Ava’s side back to the darkness, to the stillness of the night.

Yeah, she will board that window up tomorrow.

**

“Why Switzerland?” Ava had asked as they crossed the alps- from the French border, not the Italian, days spent moving from Civitavecchia to Porto Vecchio by boat and then up and up the island and the boat to Genova and then the car ride to Nizza and then up again to Charmonix-Mont-Blanc and then Saint Maurice, Bex, Gryon until they had found their way to the chosen safe house.

She hadn't answered. Not past a glance of acknowledgement of the question. Ava had huffed.

Not even Beatrice knew why Switzerland.

The illusion of safety in the cavernous chest of the alps, surrounded by osseous tendrils covering the soft preciousness inside. The betrayal and the sincerity of neutrality. The shape of a caged kind of freedom. She supposes she’s offering Ava that same kind of reprieve she had once been akin to.

Why Switzerland…

Because a punishment soon turned out to be a new path, perhaps.

Maybe the better answer was the delight, the wonder, the excitement behind Ava’s eyes as they crossed under tall mountain roads skirting along rivers, as she giggled in delight at the still snowy peaks no matter the season.

“We have to go in here!”

Beatrice looks at the pub sceptically. “Why?”

“Because you don’t know how to cook, and I'm hungry.”

She ignores the dig at her cooking skills. They were… adequate. Certainly better than Ava’s- and yeah, okay, so she had been paralyzed for most of her life so what?

“Okay, but why here specifically?”

The pub seemed secure enough. There were many access points but that also translated to many possible ways to escape the scene quickly if the occasion called for it.

“Why not here?” Ava asks, and Beatrice lets her face go from unperturbed to quiet resignment.

Beatrice can’t very well say the truth behind her reluctance- which is she’s never stepped foot in a pub in her life safe for a stakeout once- so she can do nothing but sigh and follow when Ava grabs her hand and drags her inside.

All in all, Beatrice thinks it could be worse.

The pub is more or less clean and not as crowded as it should be on a Friday night. She watches as Ava’s eyes sparkle at the décor, a mix of wood and old triangle country flags- probably a remnant from the last European soccer festival, she reckons.

“This is awesome.”

She touches the sticky table uncertainly. “Sure.”

“Don’t be a hater, it’s perfect.”

“For what?”

“For a drink! For a burger! We could make it our thing, the apartment is so close by.”

She shushes Ava quickly, scanning peripherally to see if anyone is overhearing their conversation. “Don’t disclose our position, out loud. And I don’t drink.”

“Okay, sister ninja,” Ava rolls her eyes, but she lowers her voice considerably, “No need to rain on my parade.”

She’s spared from answering by a waiter approaching. “Hello, I'm Hans. What can I get for you?”

Ava is basically vibrating in her seat. “I’ll have a burger. With polenta on the side. And a milkshake. And a beer.”

To his credit, the waiter doesn’t much react to the weird combination of food and drink. “We don’t have milkshakes.”

“Movies had milkshakes,” Ava grumbles under her breath.

“Could you do a milkshake?” she asks the waiter before she can think better of it.

“I could do an Irish coffee?”

Ava perks right back up in her seat. “What’s that?”

“Only thing that has cream in it on the menu,” the waiter shrugs, tapping his pen on the notebook, “Though there’s alcohol in it so maybe the beer—”

“Great. That. I’ll do that. No beer. Thank you, Hans!”

“You?”

“Water.”

Hans looks at her like she’s the weird one out of the two of them. His tone is dry as he repeats: “Water. Right. Okay. I’ll be right back with the drinks.”

“Ava.”

“What?”

“I need you to stand out less.”

“It’s not my fault I've been blessed with good looks.”

She doesn’t bother to reply.

“And also I think you’re the one he noticed more.”

“Why?”

“Water,” Ava says in a scarily good approximation of her voice and intonation, “You’re in Switzerland, there are no sober people here.”

“I thought that was Ireland.”

“Shh! You’re British you can’t say that!”

Bea rolls her eyes. Patientia virtus fortium, she reminds herself.

Just then a crash on her right makes her stand up, her stance lowering and her feet taking position smoothly spinning on the floor. She doesn’t realize how in the time it takes for Ava to blink up at her, she had already placed herself in front of her like a shield.

“Bea what?!”

“Stay down.”

She turns and doesn’t consider anything she knows consciously of bar brawls and the happenstance of them regularly not correlated to their presence there at all. Still. She ducks under a sloppily thrown punch by bloke number one and pushes bloke number two under his shoulder and under her heel, deviating a new punch from bloke number one into a judo throw.

She doesn’t break a sweat.

She only realizes how suspicious her actions were when she notices all the few patrons staring at her wide-eyed.

“Woo, Bea!” Ava yells from her sit still at their table.

“I—”

A man more or less runs his way to her. She’s ready to be yelled at, and for sirens to start blaring but he only looks at her and says: “You want a job? I'm in need of a bouncer.”

“I—”

“Yes! We do!”

When did Ava step up here? Not important. More important: “I don’t want to work as a bouncer,” she hisses at Ava.

“We need jobs,” Ava hisses back, less subtle.

“Inconspicuous jobs,” Bea says, stressing the in part of inconspicuous as much as she could. Ava ignores her.

“What can you do?” the grey-haired man says, his gaze set on Ava.

“I'm a bartender.”

“No, you’re not?” Bea tries to say but Ava’s fist strikes her subtly in the spine. Ouch.

“Mh. Been needing another one of those. Sure, yeah, want the job?”

“We accept!”

“You don’t even know the pay! Ava!”

**

“I figured out why Switzerland.”

“Yeah?”

“Mostly, but I'm sure the flag is a big plus.”

“Get out.”

**

Weirdly enough- or maybe it was to be expected- Ava is a natural bartender, and Beatrice enjoys watching her twist bottles open and joke around with customers and their co-worker.

(Name: Hans, Gender: male, Age: twenty-seven, Family: no children, Connection to OCS: none.)

And while Beatrice never aspired to be a bouncer, she has always found relief in servitude, even if such servitude is hauling beer kegs around and escorting almost completely incapacitated Erasmus students out of the bar.

She grunts as she connects said keg to the bar once more, adjusting her shirt from where it had ridden up from the friction. The noise around her overwhelms her, but her ears have been too trained to miss the soft gasp on her left.

She turns to Ava, question in her eyes- borderline panic in her eyes, as they switch around the bar in search of tell tales signs of being watched, of imminent danger. When she doesn’t find any, she turns to Ava again. She rises an eyebrow. Ava shrugs, maybe blushes- the light isn’t apt for taking into account such things as the blood rushing through appendages- and Beatrice is much too tired to think twice about it.

“Can you help out a little here?” Ava yells, her face much too close to her own, “I need to cut up more limes.”

She sighs and nods as she plasters her best resemblance of a friendly smile for the next customer in line. “What can I get you?”

Please say a beer bottle, she thinks, I still haven’t understood half the names of the cocktails sold here.

“Your number,” the guy says instead.

She blinks once. And another time for good measure. It could be a new cocktail, she reckons. “I’m sorry?”

“Your digits?” the guy taps his phone as he says it, the smile still there despite Bea’s courteous one having long since faded at the confirmation that yeah, she's being hit on.

“I’m working,” she states slowly- the last of her objections but the easiest to voice.

There's a familiar uneasiness clawing at the flesh underneath her skin, one that had been rarer and rarer as she hid beneath her habit. She ignores it, as she usually does with things regarding her own comfort.

“I can come by again later.”

“There’s really no need to do that.”

The guy backs off the counter slightly then, smile still there but less insistent. “Oh. No problem, dude. No hard feelings?”

Before she can guess the nature of the offer, a hand slams on the counter. Hard. Too hard. The wood groans audibly like an old house settling into itself and the glass jump slightly with the shock. She can’t contain her sigh as she tunes out Ava’s words in favour of covering the slight crack with one of the tip jars.

“—and if you can’t understand that I will more than gladly—”

“Stop Ava.”

“But he—”

“You can go,” she dismisses the now, frankly, terrified guy.

She ignores Ava’s protests as she drags her out back. She closes the staff door behind her, and the chatter and the music become cotton and fog in the air- she dislikes the absence of silence more and more, another familiar thing ripped from her, and it isn’t Ava’s fault but. But.

“Are you mad at me?! You can’t be mad at me I was trying to—”

“You almost lit up in there. I told you we have to be careful. If you show yourself everything we’ve done—”

Ava waves her off and it ignites Beatrice once more. “Yes, yes, the whole mission is compromised.”

“Do you think—”

“He was being—”

The word mix and tangle and Beatrice speaks again before Ava can catch her breath again. “I don’t care what he was being!”

“I care!”

“Why?”

“Because!” Ava’s whole face is red, her mouth almost stretched into a snarl- and Beatrice knows the prophecy of her end will come out of Ava’s mouth one day be it word or teeth- “Because you looked uncomfortable.”

“And?”

Ava takes two steps back, the empty bottles tingling behind her as her foot touches them. “You looked uncomfortable,” she repeats.

“Yes. I was.”

Ava’s always too expressive for her own good, and Beatrice can read the confusion across her face as if had been painted. “Why are you saying it like that?”

“Like what?”

“Like it doesn’t matter?”

Before she can answer Hans slams the door open. “Ava! You know you can’t leave the bar like that. And Beatrice there are two guys who are about to throw down or throw up and I'm not sure I want to deal with either.”

Ava swears at him in German and Beatrice thinks the argument done and gone.

She’s wrong.

They walk the whole way back to the safe house in silence after their shift finally ends. Beatrice is used to manual labour, but she certainly isn’t used to staying up on her feet so long without really moving.

She doesn’t expect Ava to explode as soon as they step through the door. “Are you making yourself do this?”

“Pardon?”

“You’re pardoned,” Ava says, a mock on her accent apparent in the open vowels, the softened r.

Beatrice feels her eyes roll all the way to the back of her skull, so far she fears they might get stuck. She sighs.

“Ava.”

There are dishes in the sink to clean, and the hot water to fix, and Beatrice is tired from having to deal with loud music and intoxicated people, and—

“What am I to you?”

She blinks, but Ava is still there, still standing with her hands perched on her waist and her mouth twisted into… uncertainty? “Where is this coming from?”

Ava throws her hands up like Beatrice is the one being difficult. “Do you—do I ever make you uncomfortable? Do you even like being around me?”

“I told you,” Bea says and when Ava looks at her she sees exactly when what she says isn’t right, “I told you I won’t leave you alone. You’re part of my family now.”

“But do you even want me to be?”

“What?”

“Do you want me?” Ava breathes and it's dejected. Unexpected. And it will haunt Beatrice’s dreams for a while probably.

There's something in the air as they stare each other down. Something Beatrice isn’t strong enough to decipher. Something she doesn’t desire to decipher. She has a mission, a commitment, and a devotion. And right now they all coalesce in Ava. But Ava is also… more. So much more.

She thought Ava knew that.

“You must know how I'm fond of you, Ava.”

Ava smiles, but it isn’t the right one. “Must I?”

“I hoped you were aware of it.”

“Yeah.”

**

That night, she sleeps on the couch.

She still somehow wakes to Ava’s arms wrapped around her.

**

It’s almost a relief when three weeks later she’s promoted to manager- even if Hans looks at her weird sometimes as she hands out the new behind-the-counter organization system or changes the rotation of the specials.

She knows it’s weird how she went up from bouncer to manager, but it’s not her fault she’s more organized than he is.

Though, mostly she thinks he looks at her weirdly because she never joins Ava after their shift, preferring to run home to a blissfully quiet apartment over the thumping of the bass and the heat of the dancing Ava seems so fond of.

(Or maybe it’s the fact she schedules all of Ava’s days off when she has hers.)

She can’t stay, is the problem. She had tried before, and it ended up being a very short-lived effort as it turned out that avoiding arrhythmia far outranked the need to protect Ava. To watch her was her mission, but to watch her be free… it was a want, a desire, a temptation.

And Beatrice can’t seem to do anything else.

(Watchfulness is for guardians.)

She watches Ava as she grows, bit by bit. She watches Ava as she learns to swim with a bunch of four-year-olds and then she learns how to throw a kick without falling on her ass.

It makes her proud. It makes her happy. It makes whatever is growing in her chest all the more unignorable.

A whole new world to see and yet she looks at her.

(Devotion is for acolytes.)

**

“What—”

“The guy downstairs was throwing all this stuff away! Said it belonged to his aunt and he wasn’t interested.”

“I can see why.”

“Look at all these books! And the CDs! How could he call this trash?”

“Not everyone is a fan of Tiziano Ferro.”

“Well, they're wrong. Oh my god, this is the hottest top ten of the eighties! Bea!”

“No.”

“What? Please?”

She walks away before Ava’s puppy dog eyes can actually take effect. She starts up on the dishes they left last night. She's still hands deep in suds when Ava bumps her hip against hers, same puppy eyes back. “Are you going to continue making me dance alone?”

“Probably,” she shrugs.

“You’re no fun. Come humiliate yourself with me. I want to see you fail at something for once.”

Pride will always be her capital sin. “Why are you under the impression I'm not able to?”

“Well, I was ‘under the impression',” and yes Ava does make mimic quotation marks with her fingers as she says it. Be patient, bearing with one another in love, she reminds herself. She sighs. “You were kept in a crypt with punchbags and bookshelves your whole life.”

She blinks. Slowly.

It’s not exactly wrong.

“Wait. Wait, wait, wait. You can dance?”

And well, no use in lying now. “Yes.”

“You can dance?”

“Yes.”

“You never danced with me!”

“It never came up.”

“It has come up, all the times you’ve left me in the pub alone? And now? For the past fifteen minutes?”

“Ava… Ava!”

“C’mon sister warrior time to show off your moves.”

“I won’t twerk for you.”

“Who said anything about twerking?”

And Beatrice must admit she loves when providence acts through her and the speakers start to blare the last reggaeton hit 40’s on the cd, the lyrics coming closer to a chant of the word twerk, for some reason.

“Okay, well. That doesn’t count.”

“This is not the kind of dancing I'm most fond of anyway.”

“Uuh, and what is that Ms English?”

“Let’s just say my instructors favoured waltzes to hip hop.”

“Fancy. Did you like them?”

She thinks of the too-big hands resting on her waist, sweaty and unwanted. She turns her head.

“Not really. I preferred my ballet classes.”

Ava ignores her awkwardness as she lifts up a hand in front of her and puts the other on her forehead, pinching her eyebrows and squeezing her eyes shut. “Hold on- I’m having a vision.”

“Ava.”

“I am. You, in a pink tutu and a tight bun,” Ava considers her for a second, analyses her, and Beatrice almost feels like she’s going to blush. “Hot,” she declares, nodding along to her words, “Definitely hot.”

It’s easier to laugh this time than to take the comment seriously. “You’re incorrigible.”

“I'm right, that’s what I am. Okay, hold on. I’ll find… the black swan or something for you to dance to.”

“That’s not how it works.”

“Beatrice,” Ava whines her name out in a way that makes all of her nerve ends stand at attention.

It feels a little unfair, to be in love.

“It isn’t!”

Ava puts another CD on unhearing her protests. The cover is of a couple dancing, her red dress voluminous and wrapped around the man’s leg.

And Beatrice knows when she’s lost a battle.

“What's the name of this one?”

“20 Liebeslieder aus vergangenen Tagen.”

Even with her lack of German, she can guess what she can’t understand. The title makes her skin crawl, and her heart speeds up. “Illustrative.”

“Don’t be a hater.”

The tip of her lip goes up without her permission and she shakes her head, but she takes Ava’s hand.

It’s a sad song. It’s a slow song.

Beatrice knows all too well how you dance those, and she dreads the moment Ava figures it out too. It doesn’t take too long, and Beatrice's hip has now intimate knowledge of the way Ava’s fingers curl as they rest relaxedly against it.

She smiles despite herself as Ava laughs when she twirls her on a whim.

Life has never looked more right on anyone, she thinks, nor as lovely.

She finds herself acquainted once more with their specific height difference; the curve of Ava’s jaw is slightly tilted to the ceiling to look Beatrice in the eye. And Beatrice doesn’t know whether to look back or keep staring at the spot where a persistent strand of Ava’s hair keeps falling no matter how many times Ava puffs it away.

She reaches without thinking.

She thinks the world stops spinning for a moment, the music- if it has even been playing in the first place- stops to a halt, and all she can feel, all she can see, is Ava. They stop moving together, slowly.

There’s a crossroad and the roads are diverging so far so fast.

“We’re late for work. Your boss won’t like it.”

She has the feeling she might regret this one.

“You’re my boss!”

Maybe she would have regretted both choices, no matter the outcome.

**

One day, Ava seems to linger more by a specific spot on the counter. Beatrice isn’t jealous when she notices the pretty blonde girl with cropped hair and cropped shirt and a nice smile that’s reflected in Ava’s mouth. Jealousy isn’t a virtue fit for nuns.

At the end of the night, Ava is prattling as always about the shift. Beatrice won’t lie and say she pays extra attention when Ava starts talking about the blonde girl. Not that she makes it obvious.

“So, you liked her?”

“I liked her hair.”

She hums in answer.

Ava furrows her brow, and Beatrice feels studied as she endures the heavy gaze of her. She’s thankful for the town's carefulness of light pollution and the soft and far between streetlights. “Are you… okay?”

“Fine.”

“You sure?”

“I'm adequate Ava. Drop it.”

“Adequate,” Ava mutters under her breath, and Beatrice’s sure she’s rolling her eyes too.

“Why are you doubting me?”

“I’m not… doubting you.”

“You seem to have a soft spot for blondes.”

“I do not?”

“Jillian,” Beatrice quips before her neurons can fire properly.

“Jillian?” Ava echoes, her voice breaking into a note she’s sure only dogs can hear on the end syllable.

“And Miguel.” Ava stays quiet and for some truly unfortunate reason, Beatrice just barrels on. “They’re both easy on the eyes, I guess.”

Ava stays quiet still, though she does blink incredulously at Beatrice this time.

“Sure,” she agrees in the end, “You could say that.”

“I did say that.”

“I heard you.”

They walk in silence for a while.

“Bea?”

“Yeah?”

“You’re still my best friend.”

“I am?” Beatrice’s shocked into asking, Ava’s words coming seemingly out of nowhere.

“Yeah, dude?”

“I appreciate that.”

“Now you say it.”

“Ava…”

“C’mon Bea. Don’t make me beg.”

Unfortunate images pop into Bea’s mind. She wills them away.

“You’re my best friend too,” she hurries out.

Ava smiles and Beatrice worries about light pollution.

“So… How was your day?”

“Ava. You were there.”

“Yeah, and? How was your day?”

“Adequate.”

Ava groans and Beatrice can’t help the uptick of her lip at the sound.

**

She forgets- mostly, as much as anyone can forget about such a blunder- about the conversation until two days later when she gets home to a bathroom filled with brown hair.

“What the fuck did you do?”

“Language! We are in the house of the lord.”

Sometimes Bea thinks not even the Virgin could have enough patience to deal with Ava. “No, we aren’t.”

“Nope. Anyway, I liked the girl’s hair.”

Bea helps her put it right we need to look not like ourselves Bea points out they’ve been here almost a month already.

“How do I look?”

She needs to catch her breath. “You look fine.”

“You think I'm pretty.”

“I think your ego needs managing.”

“Oh Bea, Bea, Bea… I can read you like an open book.”

“And what does it say?”

Ava steps closer, and it’s dangerous. “That you’re jealous and sad I didn’t think of you. Well, I did.” She shakes a bottle at Beatrice. “I got bleach, too!”

“Ava.”

“C’mon, Bea. Live a little.”

“Ava, no.”

(Hans laughs his ass off when he sees them the next day.

Beatrice can’t find it in her to mind when Ava tugs at the dyed strands in Beatrice’s hair.)

**

“I did not say that!”

“Yes, you did!”

“I’m absolutely not royalty.”

Ava laughs and they go back to dancing, Beatrice thinks, because she feels her feet move to the beat again, and Ava twirling and giggling with her and then she feels the hot breath on her neck, and it should feel even more stifling in the general heat of the bar but instead, she shivers.

And she falls, and she falls, and she falls, her fingers still sticky from the spilt shot.

**

The girl approaches her as she’s busy counting the number of kegs they finished in a month and trying to make sense of the number in comparison to last month's earnings.

(Name: unknown, Age: twenty-something, Family: no ring, Connection to OCS: no known one.)

“I make it very clear to her that she’s not the only friend in the world.”

The smile freezes on her face. “What if she is?”

“Pobrecita,” the girl touches her arm, strokes it with intent- and all she can think is it feels different, she can only think it feels different, “You’re contained.”

“Yeah. That is painfully accurate.”

(She escapes the girl’s gaze, not noticing the smirk she sends towards the counter, not noticing the answering rage.)

A girl sits next to her and all she can think is it’s not Ava.

She recognizes the flirting embarrassingly late, in retrospect. Her eyes widen as the girl moves her hand from her upper arm to her chest, feather-light.

And then Ava’s bleeding and she’s following her out and away from the first sincere offer of companionship Beatrice’s had in a while.

**

She doesn’t know how Ava became someone that could make Beatrice so angry.

“Bea. I'm sorry.”

(It was weird.

Hurt dealt by Ava always felt like salt dissolving in water. She wonders if it will ever come a time when the salt would just pool at the bottom of the glass.)

“Are you? Because being sorry indicates regret.”

She sees the flash of hurt at her words, but she can’t. And Ava pushes and pushes, and she’s never satisfied, and Beatrice cannot. She cannot—she’s trembling. It frustrates her a bit how much Ava makes her feel. She didn’t use to feel, so much, so intently.

“What?”

“You just… you do whatever you want!” she blurts out, and in it she shows her jealousy, a vein of emeralds exposed from coal.

“Well excuse the fuck out of me,” Ava shrugs her shoulders, but she can see the tears pooling reflected in her dark eyes, and suddenly the fire isn’t worth the candle, “I didn’t ask to be paralyzed. I didn’t ask to be dead. And I certainly didn’t ask to have some fucking dirtbag angel’s halo jammed in my bag so I could fight demons for the catholic fucking church!”

(Their fits of anger were so different.

Ava’s whole body was shocked with her emotions, her voice trembling with the effort to push back tears, while Beatrice was as unperturbed as a lake, her chest swelling with the kind of heat she would never show out loud.)

Regret is a cold shower.

She watches as Ava struggled to breathe and—fuck she was such an idiot. She sighs as she takes her to sit next to her.

“Ava…”

“I’m sorry.”

“No. I'm sorry. For everything.”

And Beatrice would have to be a fool to not notice how much Ava gravitated towards touch. Waking up to some appendage of Ava touching her was by now a constant. She has been hit, punched, and slapped on her shoulder often enough that it stopped the muscle memory of fight and flight.

She sits closer to her and seeks out her hand.

She finds herself thinking of how it is so much smaller than she thought it would be.

And she thinks, you’re someone whose every choice has been stripped away since you were ten. And she thinks, sometimes you’re so red you make my blood look white. And she thinks, I see you, I see you, I can only ever see you.

She says: “And my pleasure.”

(There's a moment here where Beatrice almost forgets who they are. There's a moment where she’s sure, so sure, that this could be a movie- that the distance between them would close more still.

And then her cross lights up and the irony doesn’t escape her as she comes back to reality.)

**

The cemetery is a familiar scenery for Bea, even more so than for a regular nun- demons tended to haunt the grounds looking for grief, and her order tended to hunt them looking for salvation. She still doesn’t expect a very off-putting Ava to just jump in front of her.

“Ava?”

“It’s too late Bea. There’s no point in hiding. I know what you are.”

“No please don’t. It’s not real. This isn’t real.”

She shakes herself awake and follows the noise of the fight, sure to find Ava in its centre.

(She is. But so is Beatrice. So is Miguel.)

They gravitate towards each other in the fight, their body accustomed to the closeness fuelled by adrenaline by now. Their hands are locked onto each other, and it isn’t practical, in a fight. Beatrice will take the handicap gladly in exchange for the reassurance that she’s still there. Still there.

“There’s too many of them.”

Her hands grip Ava’s arm desperately. She stares at the set of Ava’s jaw, the tenseness of her shoulders. She’s amazed once more at how far she’s come.

“Let go.”

Ava’s eyes lock on hers, and she nods.

“Hang on.”

Beatrice’s world gets smaller and smaller until it consists only of the anchor point that is Ava’s shoulder, the smell of her mixed with leather and metal and bitter copper, and the warmth that grows and grows as the halo pulsed through layers of cloth and armour, resonating with her owner.

She knows she’s safe in Ava’s arms.

**

As she watches Ava fall, Beatrice realizes she’s never actually metabolized the possibility of Ava’s dying as a reality- knew about it, yes, in the distanced way she also knew she was in love with her. Real in the way the ground was real, facts and not integrated knowledge.

But.

But as she watches Ava hit the ground with enough force to bounce up again a few centimetres, Beatrice realizes that she had expected Ava to keep defying logic and odds forever.

But as she watches Ava's still body on the ground, as she rushes past Mother Superion and Michael and Yasmine, Beatrice thinks that this isn’t how Ava dies.

It can’t be.

Sobs break through her throat as she cradles Ava in her arms, a sound animal and foreign even to her ears.

“I know the world is hard and unforgiving. And I know that warrior nuns die,” she doesn’t know when she had started talking, and she doesn’t know if Ava can hear her but- “Please don’t leave me, I don’t want you to die.”

For another terrible moment, there's no answer to her plea. And then- “You know, I’d like to avoid that myself.”

The relief floods her like summer rain. She lets Ava go just enough so she can see her face and there she is, smiling like she hadn't almost died in Beatrice’s arms. She doesn’t realize she’s crying until Ava brushes her tears away with a smile.

She ignores the overwhelming need to kiss her in favour of crushing into her again, the solidness of her the only thing that can confirm this is real. She’s fine. They're fine.

“Ah! Easy, easy.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s okay. It’s okay, they can’t beat us, Bea. Not together.”

She hugs her tight again. She gets stuck at the softness of her. “I know that.”

(For a horrible second she thinks Ava might kiss her.

She doesn’t.

And Beatrice reminds herself that this was still enough.)

**

They're both covered in blood- dripping, really, on Jillian’s nice stone floors.

Ava’s blood, Beatrice’s helpful brain supplies. As if her cheek doesn’t burn where Ava’s crimson had stained her skin. She keeps staring at the red rivulet coming down from Ava’s ear before disappearing in the brown of her hair tinging it dark to an almost black.

They should clean up.

And yet.

“You want first shower rights?” Ava suggests after a while of standing in silence.

“I think you’re the one more in need of that.”

The smile she receives is tremulous.

“Yeah, guess so?”

She reaches out despite her best interest, despite her vows, and despite herself. “Ava.”

Ava escapes her touch, and Beatrice feels like an idiot with her hand hovering in the air. She’s trembling. They both are. “Better get going.”

Beatrice chases after her- because it’s her duty, because it’s what she’s meant to do. And because a part of her is truly afraid Ava will disappear once she’s out of her view.

“Ava!”

“Wow, chasing me into the bathroom?” Ava doesn’t even turn around from where she’s standing watching the water fill up the fancy white porcelain tub, her voice lacks her usual melody and the world suddenly seems so much duller to Beatrice’s ears, “Guess what they say about the Catholic church is right.”

She rolls her eyes. “Those are the priests.”

“Right, my bad.”

“Ava,” she stops, wondering if it’s truly her place, if she’s anything to Ava other than her keeper. But she is, they are, no self-hatred can make her doubt that. “Ava, do you want to talk?”

“Talk? No, what?” Ava waves one hand around, and tries a smile that doesn’t reach her eyes as if Beatrice couldn’t tell the difference by now, “About what? There's nothing to talk about.”

“The Halo…” she tries again. The hand comes to a firm stop.

“The Halo is fine. I'm fine.”

“Fine,” she concedes, shaking her head minutely, “Fine.”

“Fine.”

Still, that doesn’t mean she will leave her. Alone. Leave her alone. “Let me help you.”

“Bea… you don’t… you don’t need to do that.”

“I want to.”

Beatrice had learnt early in their cohabitation that Ava didn’t have an issue with nudity. Her nudity. A sports bra and very short shorts were the norms in their apartment. For Ava, that is. So Bea is a little surprised when Ava doesn’t immediately strip down.

“Ava…”

“It might… look a little icky,” Ava warns, her hand stilling over the clasp of her robes, “I don’t think the Halo could fix all of me yet.”

“I can turn around if it would make you more comfortable.”

“I—yeah. Okay. Thank you.”

She turns and the big white and blue tiles seem to mock her with a washed-up almost there reflection of herself. Of Ava. She focuses on the design.

She hears the fumble of clothes and shoes before Ava calls out: “Ready.”

She turns and almost gasps at the sight.

She brushes her hand against the bruise, and shivers when Ava winches. The Halo pulsates slightly, as if it was working still now to heal the broken blood vessels. Bea doesn’t know what compels her to step closer, her chest brushing almost against Ava’s bare back.

There's a knot in her throat. “Ava…”

“It’s better than it looks.”

She stops. Her hands hovered at Ava’s sides. Her mouth is cotton. There's a spot just under Ava’s newly cropped hair, a freckle stubbornly living in between her clavicles. She bends down and kisses it.

Ava shivers again, and this time Beatrice feels it against her lips.

“Don’t discount yourself. Don’t discount your pain just because you heal.”

Holy light spills into the bathroom, reflecting warm gold over the white tiles and the blood pooling from the now rags that used to be Ava’s uniform and the rapidly pink-tinting white grout.

Head wounds had a tendency to bleed a lot, she knows, and yet there was so much blood. So much.

“Step in,” she whispers, so careful not to break the religious silence, “The water should be fine.”

Ava does so, the water spilling slightly at the sides, splitting down the middle like Moses and the red sea only Beatrice feels like the one being split apart and witnessing a miracle.

“Good thing Jillian splurged on the bathrooms,” Ava quips, still tense, still awkward.

She forgoes an answer in favour of scooping some water from the tub into Ava’s hair. She reaches for the shampoo and starts to massage the blood out of Ava’s hair, careful not to pull at it. Mindful not to bother any lingering scab.

Holy light and religious silences. The only thing missing is the heavy scent of incense, though even that can be subbed in by the perfumed shampoo.

But.

But Ava isn’t God. You can’t touch God. You can’t love God.

She rubs the terrible red away from Ava’s temple. “Lie back.”

She covers Ava’s forehead with her hand, careful not to let any soap wander into her eyes.

The rose water is warm in her hands.

**

The plan goes awry around the time Duretti goes up in flames, and Bea had never liked the man, had never thought him fit to be her leader, but she still felt pity as his death was made an example in live tv.

Then the familiar chaos of battle echoes in her bones, her ribcage a drum of war. She dodges and she strikes, a fluid motion learnt from years of training- use your opponent’s weight against it, you might be fighting mountains, but rivers have eroded much stouter challengers.

That doesn’t mean she’s focused on her enemies, of course, her eyes constantly searching around for her sisters- for Camila, and Yasmine, still so unused to fight. For Ava. Not her sister warrior but her warrior nun, nonetheless.

She ducks under another goon’s arm and that’s when she sees Ava reach for Michael. That’s when she sees Vincent take the Crown.

She can’t help the way her body moves. She runs and runs and slams into Ava, softening the blow with her own body as much as she can- and Ava heals, yes, but she still feels pain.

And then someone’s lifting her and they're running, and Camila isn’t behind or beside her. Her little sister is left behind, and she’s not the rookie she used to be anymore, but something in Beatrice snaps then.

You can only pull a string so taut before it does. Ava’s only sin is being in her proximity when she does. Ava’s only sin is being the object of Beatrice’s affections and Beatrice’s doubts, her dream and her nightmare.

“I let my emotions blind me to the mission.”

And they lost too much already. She has lost too many people already. She can’t stand watching as she loses Ava too. She appeals to that flight instinct that was so ingrained into Ava, that desire to live that had made her so insufferable at the start- so achingly pitiable.

“Run. Hide.”

But Ava wasn’t that girl anymore, for as much as she can try to tempt her she only ends up tempting herself. She allows her mind to picture it when Ava asks her to follow her. To picture them going away, sailing into farther safer harbours further in the future, away from and towards new happiness.

She imagines it so clearly that she almost believes it will happen. She can see them, away from this place, free from rules and constraints, bound to nothing but Ava and her laugh and her love.

She can almost taste it in the back of her mouth. She can feel the word forming in the back of her throat. She has never wanted anything more in her life. She squeezes her eyes shut. Her voice breaks.

“I can’t.”

She’d set herself on fire to light her way, but this… she can’t.

(Better to burn than to fade away was said by someone who had nobody to warm.

And Beatrice constantly burns for Ava, however slowly.)

**

She slams the no longer Father Vincent against the wall, her hand finding its target easily as her fingers press around his carotid and jugular artery.

(Hell hath no fury as a woman scorned.)

There’s the sting of betrayal of course, of losing so much to this man she had thought an ally, and there's the protectiveness that always comes through once Ava is involved.

Mostly she hates how he reminds her how close she is to the edge. The temptation. The striving away from her path. She's losing her mission just as he did, in the pursuit of a divine being.

There’s little that would stop her in this moment, she doesn’t expect the voice of reason to come to her via Michael.

She lets him go.

She glances at Ava, her attention still very much focused on Vincent and the potential of another betrayal.

The stillness of her is unnatural.

Ava was a heavy sleeper, yes, but she was also an expressive one- nose scrunching, eyes behind eyelids fluttering.

And she looked small.

Ava never looked small.

**

There’s much to prepare, even in their diminished numbers.

Beatrice occupies her mind and her body counting and filling ammunition. Or tries to occupy her mind. Her mind was unfortunately distracted with thoughts of Ava that not even rattling off a rosary could overrun. If she were still praying that is.

She doesn’t know what to do if even ora et labora is failing her. Ever since Switzerland, ever since Ava, her certainties were crumbling slowly and now she is standing in the wreck of her faith.

And Ava had been acting weird ever since her trip to the dimension that may or may not host God, or something close to it anyway. Weird as in: leaving the bed before Beatrice in the morning. Weird as in: eating her lunch with Michael on the balcony. Weird as in: deciding to train with sister Dora or Mother Superion.

It hurts Beatrice to think Ava is choosing to spend the last days before the battle without her.

And Ava might be avoiding her, but they still share a room. Bea had been halfway through putting away her habit back in her drawer of the dresser when Ava came in, her armour half off and shirt all the way off.

Something is changing within Ava, something she’s hiding from her. And Michael is at the centre of it.

“You… what were you trying to do, with Michael?”

“Why did you stop me?”

“I don’t know.”

She didn’t. There had been a string tugging at her heart, a prick over her neck, to run as fast as she could. To stop Ava from touching him.

How pointless it seems to save the warrior nun. To shield her from a bullet. They can heal so they can protect, but who protects them? They had been doomed from the start.

And yet.

And yet she had jumped and rolled and tucked Ava into her shoulder to spare her the bump on the head in favour of taking the whole brunt of it.

“Then I don’t know either.”

“Ava…”

“You don’t have to worry anymore, Bea,” and she hates the way Ava’s eyes soften- as if she truly believes, as if she’s holding onto more than what she said, “I know what I have to do.”

“What did you see?”

Ava doesn’t answer as she busies herself with the buckles that hold up her sword. She steps in before she can think twice about it. She finds it a bit funny- her hands so used to killing and violence could become so soft next to her body. She wants them to be soft. She wills them to be soft.

Ava looks at her over her own shoulder, her neck straining with the effort. Bea can see all the muscles they had spent so many weeks training.

“Are you with me?” Ava asks as if it could even be a question, a doubt in her mind.

She finishes the buckle and holds onto Ava’s back, she pushes her hand against the outline of the Halo, pushes and wishes she could touch the skin. Wishes she could touch her beating heart. “Until the end. Until the next, and after.”

Ava smiles sad and tragic and Beatrice wonders how she can look so beautiful still. “Yeah, I knew that.”

“Ava…”

Ava turns around and Beatrice’s hands fall away from her shoulders, still cold from the bite of Ava’s chain mail.

“Right now Hans should be putting up the specials board of the week.”

And just like that Bea wants to yell at her to run, to spare Beatrice the pain of burying her. To let her love her enough to be the one to be left behind to protect her. To let her die first at the altar of her sin. Her name is the only thing that comes out of her lips.

“Ava.”

“I know what I am to do. I know you said no already, but I… Bea,” Ava says her name just like Beatrice does. Like a prayer she knows it won’t- cannot- be answered.

(Loving a miracle feels both holy and blasphemous, toying the line as sharp as a knife and ending up bloody either way. But she had been taught to enjoy the sight of her own blood and call it penitence, and the suffering feels as holy as the loving.)

She waits, but Ava doesn’t say anything other than her name once more. She grabs her knives’ holster, emptying it before starting to put it on.

“I wonder if the boss even let him close up. It’s technically the apocalypse.”

Ava laughs. “Probably not. Old man doesn’t care.”

Ava turns to her. “Let me help you.”

Beatrice doesn’t think she can survive the touch. Still, she doesn't avoid it.

There's something akin to electricity flowing in between the spots where their bodies don’t touch. She wonders if there would be if their full body touched.

(Does the flame pity the moth?

Does the candle apologize to the moon, for stealing away her lover?

Or maybe the moth pities the flame as it slowly fades, as the wind blows it out.)

She's unaware of precisely when she stopped breathing, but she keeps living on that last breath for as long as Ava is so close to her mouth. And even when Ava is done with the buckles and the positioning of the throwing knives, she doesn't back away.

Ava's hand rises slowly to her cheek and Beatrice sucks one tremulant breath in. Just as Ava's fingers are about to touch her lips, her body lurches back.

“Bea...”

“We should go.”

“Bea,” Ava calls again, but she pretends to be too far away to hear, her cheeks burning with what should be shame but was instead broken anticipation.

**

She follows Ava to a dead end and realizes what is happening the second she turns to her with that look in her eyes.

“Ava don’t.”

Thoughts are swirling in her mind, and she finds that she won’t allow it- she curses her past self for the worst words she ever could have uttered to Ava. And she curses her current self for not caring one bit about her principles in the face of losing her.

“I won’t. I can’t.”

Her arm was reaching an ark before she could even command it too, the halo sprouting its spike as it reacted to Ava’s proximity like fire near a spark. Ava dodges it with practised ease and then spins her all in one move, and Beatrice has only one split second to recall their last dance, before she’s confronted with Ava’s face up close.

She watches, still as a relic, as her annihilation comes closer and closer in the shape of Ava’s lips. Beatrice wasn’t a coward. She would face her death open eyed; her chest split open.

Even with Ava’s arms around her, even with their lips touching, Beatrice doesn’t quite comprehend still what’s happening. Until she does.

And then she reaches for her respite in unrest, for her salvation in darkness, for her miracle. And she holds her close. Her hand trying to carve a place for her fingers over Ava’s jaw, like well-used rosary beads.

(When Ava kisses her forehead, Beatrice feels God for what feels like the first time.)

She feels every shudder, every stutter of Ava’s breath hitting her lips, echoing the lump in her own throat.

Beatrice’s drinking every detail of her in, from the dew-wet liquid nature of her brown eyes darting from Beatrice’s eyes to her lips, the flutter of her eyelashes as Beatrice’s thumb brushes- independently, unconsciously, lovingly, oh so lovingly- across her chin, the two stubborn strands that had escaped and framed her cheekbones, her lips and the laughter lines as Beatrice watches her smile for the last- the last, the last, can it really be the last?- time.

(And then she’s gone and Beatrice plummets back to Hell.)

**

She refuses to let Ava die alone.

She had promised her she would never be alone, and she intends to keep that promise.

She kills every man that stands in her way- she offers them mercy because that is the code of conduct, but there is no mercy for anyone that comes in between her and her love, so she’s almost glad when none take it.

She became reckless when faced with the promise of Ava. She should hate the feeling, but it is exhilarating.

Love has made her a fool and she almost likes it.

**

The earth is shaking around her, and she thinks she’s late. She watches as Ava’s hand reaches once more for Michael and she knows she’s far too late. She watches as bright blue shrapnel gets embedded in Ava’s flesh.

She runs to her, and props her up against her body.

Ava might not be able to fight anymore, but Beatrice won’t leave her. She will be her crutch. She will be her will.

She feels the warmth as Ava lights up her Halo, and then the tarasks rip Adriel apart and it isn’t even satisfying. She watches as an ethereal woman she’s pretty sure is God disappears into the Ark.

And then Ava collapses away from her arms.

Only Ava could apologize as she dies. Only Ava could die with a laugh still in her throat. Only Beatrice could not accept the obvious apparent in the blood soaking through her hands.

Ava cannot die. Beatrice cannot let her. She drags her to the Ark, Lilith’s help unexpected and unsure.

She thinks, she’s going away forever.

“Let me go,” Ava says.

She thinks, she’s dying.

“I love you,” Ava says, and then she’s gone.

She thinks, does it make it any less meaningful?

“I love you,” Beatrice admits, a moment too late.

Lead pours into her veins and settles in her bones, pools at the bottom of her liver and becomes a void. She sits, slowly, at the foot of the Ark. Her hand braces her against the bite of metal before her legs officially give out.

She has never felt farther from heaven.

**

Ava had split her world into fractals.

A vortex of moments whirls before her.

Ava holding her hand, laughing and smiling, the heat of her so close and yet not close enough. And Beatrice was laughing too, wasn’t she?

She thinks, I should have kissed you.

And the ghost of lips against her cheek, so brief she thought she had imagined it. She had stopped breathing at the touch and thought she could never convince her heart to beat again.

She thinks, I should have kissed you.

And her body, when she had held her close, broken and bloody and dead and alive, her nose burrowed in her cropped hair, her ears seeking her heartbeat desperately.

She thinks, I should have kissed you.

Again.

And again.

And.

**

She waits three days, one last show of faith.

She doesn’t know why it hurts so much when it doesn’t work.

There can’t be a funeral with no body to pray over. There can’t be a funeral when the other person is simply absent, gone but not dead, though the difference seems trivial to Bea as she’s still unreachable to her.

There can’t be a funeral, nor can there be a wake, but Beatrice sits it, nonetheless. Sits with her rosary and her beads by an empty bed in the Cat Cradle that had once belonged to Ava and had once belonged to Shannon and won’t belong to anyone else after. She sits and prays for what she’s pretty sure is her last time.

(No reason in keeping trying and save her immortal soul when her heart isn’t in the same dimension as her body.

No reason in believing anymore when all the stories seem to have been lies told by men who toyed with her sisters’ lives.)

And the morning after, with no sleep in her and yet no tiredness either, she attends morning mass and grieves- says goodbye to a love she doesn’t have but didn’t lose, a love she refuses to let become a corpse.

Camila had been right after all.

But wrong, too.

Agnus dei, qui tollis peccata mundi: miserere nobis.

Because, yes, it had been all too easy to fall for her, but she had fallen for Ava- Ava of the dark eyes, Ava of the bright smile, Ava of the reckless joy- not the warrior nun. And it had been all too hard to love her.

Agnus dei, qui tollis peccata mundi: miserere nobis.

All too easy to lose her.

Agnus dei, qui tollis peccata mundi: dona nobis pacem.

But Camilla was wrong, too, because Ava had been hers.

(The pearls of her teeth, the light reflected in her eyes, the kiss left on her lips and the touch of her hands.

The way she stirred in the morning, the way she would let her toast burn slightly at the edges, the way she would skip half a step every fourth beat and the way she spun Beatrice in her arms.)

Only hers.

She finds the letter as she’s packing her bag, and it makes everything worse. The premeditation. The predetermination. She wants to shake her fist at the Lord and at the cruel impression of free will he has created.

The paper is fancier than what Ava had used to write her notes in Switzerland, heftier, the ink on it stark and yet not seeping through the other side. She thinks she’s hesitated enough. She opens it. She reads. By the end of it, she won’t know if the tear stains at the end were made by her.

**

Dear Beatrice,

Beatrice

To Bea,

I'm writing this letter to you because we both know I've always been too selfish, and I’m about to be very selfish. I'm writing selfish too much it starts to not look like a word. Did I spell it right? Also you won’t like my choice and I know you will try to stop me if I tell you about it. So you get a letter. Even if I'm shit at writing still, and I hope you understand

Great.

This is a mess already. It’s my first letter, be kind. You’re always too kind. I think you go along with half my shenanigans because of it. I think I took advantage of it a bit. A lot. I'm taking advantage of it now, as I write this to you and ask you to forgive my choice.

It is my choice.

It’s selfish, but I think I'm allowed this last selfishness. I never had many choices in my life, but Beatrice I swear, if I could, I would choose you. I would always choose you. I do choose you.

I think maybe I did it wrong, when I asked you to run away with me. I think maybe I should have asked you differently. Maybe I shouldn’t have asked you at all. I know you, Bea, I know you by your hands and by your heart and by your smile. I wish I could have known you by your lips, too.

That was too much, sorry. I just think a lot about your lips. Sorry. This isn’t meant to be a love letter.

But someone once told me things change when you realize not everything is about you.

I’m pretty sure by now that everything is about you, Beatrice. At least to me. That’s what makes this choice easy. That’s what makes it worth it.

Ps: this is a letter because I know you would throw me over your shoulder if I were to tell you I intend to explode myself to take out a weirdo in a manbun. Still I wish I could talk to you.

So.

What I wish I could tell you out loud: I wish we could have had more time free from duty. I wish we had met earlier. I wish we didn’t have the weight of the world on our shoulders. Mostly I wish we had been just two girls, dancing.

That’s sappy isn’t it? And I'm running out of paper gODDAM

I will make the hard choice, the right choice, and I will save the world. For you. I will save the world for you, because you deserve to live in it, to discover it, to discover yourself. Let me shoulder the burden. Let me be the last warrior nun. Let me do this for you.

Take care of yourself. Find a drink you actually like. Go to Iceland. Adopt a dog. Find another girl to dance with. Okay maybe wait a bit for that last one.

Another thing I wish I could tell you out loud: I love you. I've loved you for a long time now. I would have loved you for much longer, if I could have. I will love you until the next instead.

I died once already, Beatrice, I’m not scared. I know what to expect. Only maybe this time it will be different. I hope it is. If it is, I will wait for you in the next. And if it isn’t And if there’s a heaven out there, know that I will be in your arms. And if there isn’t then know that the closest to it I’ve ever been, was when I held you in mine.

Or something more poetic, I don’t know.

Remember, don’t hate what you are, you’re beautiful. You make golden everything you touch.

With all my love,

Ava.

**

She writes her letters in return, on every scrap of paper, on every train ticket, on every receipt.

(She thinks it makes her look less crazy than straight-up talking to her out loud.)

Some letters are… unsatisfactory.

**

Dear Ava,

I find myself regretful when I write your name. I wish I could… I want to say it out loud. Nobody has said your name in a week, they treat you like a martyr. Thou shall not speak the name of the lord in vain. It makes me furious. It makes me mad. I'm sharpening my grief into a dagger, my tongue to a point. I want to say your name. I want to say your name. Ava, Ava, Ava, AVA, AVA, AVA

**

Some letters she keeps undoctored.

**

Dear Ava,

I stole your jeans, the ones with the cut over the knee. The ones I rolled my eyes at when I saw you wearing them. They're a bit short on the ankle but it’s not noticeable with my boots on. I bought a train ticket to Madrid, I'm going to see the Palacio Real for you. With you.

I miss you,

Bea.

**

She waits on the third week, also. Bated breath and hopeful faith- not in God but in Ava, in her constant defying of logic and rules, in her miracle.

It takes a while to stabilize again after.

**

Dear Ava,

The alps held too much an echo of your laughter for me to survive it for more than two hours. I asked Hans to mail me whatever we had left in the flat. He sent me two boxes, your hoodie and your books and your CDs. I think it’s the first time I ever cried to a Polka.

I couldn’t tell you I loved you. I waited until there was no atom left of you to hear. I couldn’t tell you. I cannot write it now. It doesn’t make it any less true. You’ll have to wait until you’re able to hear me again for the words.

Yours,

Bea.

**

She waits on the third month, too.

She feels incredibly foolish. Half the world to put between them and still. Still, she puts her phone on the loudest setting in hope of an anonymous text from the OCS, a soft light phasing through her door.

She gets frustrated when nothing happens again. She gets annoyed when she realizes she’s still hoping for something she hasn’t believed in a while anymore.

**

Dear Ava,

It’s been a while now and I still miss you. I don’t think I will ever stop missing you. I ordered a Cuba Libre but it didn’t taste like yours did. I don’t think I'm ready to adopt a dog, yet, or to dance with another girl, so I'm going to Iceland. Losing you is worse than losing the sun.

I have nothing here but the ghost of your eyes and my sorrow.

Always,

Bea.

**

One day she wakes up with warm streaks of tears down her cheeks. She never remembers her dreams, and usually, it doesn’t bother her, but she’s so sure she’s dreamt of Ava… she missed talking to her. She missed watching her.

She touches her lips.

She can’t remember what it had felt like to kiss Ava. She wishes she had had more time to memorize every aspect of it, in the same way she had memorized Ava’s little fidgets and habits. And even those were starting to fade.

Did Ava sing in the shower? Did she play with her hair when she was nervous?

She starts to list everything she can remember and writes it down. She looks for pictures of Ava and curses herself for not having taken more, curses herself for having grumbled each time Ava brought her phone up into a selfie.

She wishes she had learnt how to draw.

If Ava were dead, Beatrice would have a reason to feel so haunted by her. If Ava were dead, Beatrice would desire- would will- her ghost into being. But Ava isn’t dead. There’s no ghost to summon. Only her memories.

She wonders if it would be easier if she were- hope is slowly consuming her, a fire she didn’t even realize she had lit.

She tries to remember what living felt like, not only before Ava but before the church. It’s a startling realization to come to the conclusion that it isn’t like she doesn’t remember. It’s more like she never has. Lived, that is.

She figures it’s as good a time to start as any.

**

Dear Ava,

I've danced with a girl.

Bea.

**

She visits the places Ava would always talk about like a pilgrimage. Takes pictures in the hope to show them to her one day. Talks to strangers, sometimes, the ones that look like her- Beatrice, not Ava. She avoids people that look like Ava. She flinches at every bob of brown hair, at every round face with dimples and pretty doe eyes.

And every day she starts another letter she knows she won’t send. Another letter she will scribble all over as soon as the page is done.

Dear Ava,

At night I call your name over and over. I fill my mouth to the brim of you, careful not to spill a drop. I've thought a lot about saints and holy things and false idols these past ten months. I think about you, defying death. I think of three being the holy number. God was a parlour trick until he came back. I guess that makes you a miracle twice already.

Bea stops writing, as the light in the park is suddenly obscured by a figure wearing a pair of black boots. The kind Beatrice used to wear. She scowls as she caps the pen. “May I help you?”

“I think you’ve done enough for me already.”

If the voice hadn't been enough of a giveaway the face staring right back at her, not as wide-eyed but certainly just as teary, the lovely, loved face with two dimples and a scar over the eyebrow and…

“Ava.”

And that’s just like Ava. Coming back once she had lost hope.

“Hey.”

They collapse into a new star, limbs connecting easily- they fit into each other, Beatrice had known that since they first shared a bed, and even earlier as an unknown girl collapsed in her arms in search of comfort.

“How—” and she’s crying, maybe she’s laughing- her body doesn’t know how to answer to the pure unaltered joy cursing through her veins- her words don’t come out right, get all tangled in the shape of Ava’s neck and her shoulder. She tries again- “How are you here?”

Ava understands her still.

“I had to show up Jesus one more time. Homeboy couldn’t even manage coming back twice.”

“Ava.”

“What? You’re not a nun anymore I can say all the blasphemous jokes I want.”

Beatrice laughs and holds her close again. She wonders how they look to passers-by, two girls crying and laughing.

“You were writing to me?” Ava asks, her voice high-pitched in excitement when she notices the pen in Bea’s hand, the napkin stolen from a bar counter ink-stained and messy. Too messy. She hides it behind her.

“I—”

Ava tries to peek over her shoulder. Bea shifts accordingly. “How many are there? Can I read them?”

“No!”

“They're addressed to me, though. Withholding mail is a crime, Bea.”

And oh, she still hadn't got too good at lying, had she? She struggles with her syllables before stuttering: “My handwriting is dreadful. Truly.”

Ava laughs and something in Bea’s heart births anew.

“I thought I’d never see you again. Never talk to you again. I thought I’d die with your name on my lips for the last time.”

“There’s no need to die.”

“Ava.”

“Beatrice,” Ava confirms, her smile still her smile, her hands still her hands.

And Bea laughs, not because there’s anything funny but because the joy comes out of her so quick and fast it turns into laughter, and she drags Ava back home.

**

It takes her all of four hours for Beatrice to become uncertain around Ava. To be fair, it takes Ava all of four hours to become uncertain around her, so.

She is different is the thing. Ava. But she supposes so is Beatrice. She hadn't exactly changed her personality, but she likes to think she’s more open now, less sure of herself, and definitely happier now that Ava is back. Ava is different, too. She looks the same as Beatrice remembered her, still beautiful, still giddy with the high of being alive. But her shoulders seem wider, and her eyes are lost sometimes.

It doesn’t matter, is the thing.

Bea loves her.

Only.

Only now she knows Ava loves her too- or had loved her, at some point.

“God I missed showers.”

“How does—”

“It’s difficult to explain. Space and time and dirt are foreign concepts to Reya. As are showers, unfortunately.”

“How long was it for you?”

“Long enough.”

“Ava…”

“Time isn’t linear… there. I don’t know how long it’s been. I don’t know how long I've missed you. But I did miss you for as long as I was gone. I don’t know if I've changed. I don’t know if you changed. I don’t think I care anyway.”

She thinks, you look so haunted.

She thinks, how could they have hurt you?

She thinks, what has happened to you?

Too much. Too much has happened. But. She grasps Ava’s arm a bit too desperately. She says: “I don’t care.”

Ava smiles and she’s hers again.

“Yeah I didn’t think you would. I think even if you have changed I would still know you. I know you. I missed you so much I think it’s the only reason I managed to come back.”

“The land that shall receive thee dying, in the same will I die: and there will I be buried. The Lord do so and so to me, and add more also, if aught but death part me and thee.”

“Talking Heads?”

Beatrice laughs, despite herself- despite her desire to kiss Ava, despite many things. “Ruth 1:17.”

“God you’re still such a nun.”

When Beatrice doesn’t say anything Ava continues. “There’s a war coming, Bea, and I—I was selfish, coming here. Tracking you. But I had to see you. And I don’t know if you… you’re not a nun, anymore. It’s not your war, anymore.”

Bea shakes her head. “It is.”

Ava shakes her head back. “It’s not. I didn’t forget what I said to you, or what I wrote I—I want you to be free. To make your choices.”

“What choice is there to make?”

“Beatrice I can’t—” Ava’s hands go to her hair and it shocks Beatrice a bit how they're the same they were almost a year ago- her own hair long since faded, long since cut- “I couldn’t stand to watch you die.”

“Like I had to?”

“Bea…”

It’s not anger, that’s rising in her. Beatrice has become more well-adjusted in recognizing her feelings. It was something more akin to frustration. And hurt. “You can’t expect me to wait at the sidelines while you risk your life once more.”

“There is no reason for you to die.”

“And there is for you?”

“These are forces you can’t fight or understand.”

“Fuck that!” Beatrice erupts, her hands flying to the skies in exasperation.

Ava blinks. “Did you just—”

“Fuck you!”

Ava blinks again. “What?!”

She pokes one finger into Ava’s chest, one, two, three times. “You can’t come back here and then expect me not to follow you.”

“You left the church!”

“I don’t believe in the church anymore. I don’t care about Holy Wars and Messiahs, but I will fight for you. I will fight with you. ‘Now I rejoice in what I am suffering for you’,” she quotes, because she might not be a nun anymore, but the catholic education was still there.

Ava stands there, her chest heaving. Bea sees all her tells, all the habits she had thought she had forgotten, from her twitching left index finger to her neck muscles straining. She waits for the storm that’s to come.

“You’re beautiful.”

Not what she was expecting her to say.

“What?”

“Sorry! Sorry. Only no, not sorry, I do mean it but—”

Beatrice kisses her. She wonders why she hadn't been doing that from the start. Ava kisses her back. She wonders why they hadn't been doing that from the start.

It doesn’t matter.

What matters: her hands making their home in Ava’s cropped hair. What matters: Ava’s hands digging into Beatrice’s hips and travelling up her spine. What matters: the noise that escapes Ava’s lips when Beatrice’s teeth sink into her bottom lip.

They hadn't had time to kiss properly, then. Not with the weight of the world sinking Ava’s shoulders. Not with Yasmine’s eyes on them.

Now Beatrice understands.

Religion could have never been enough to fill this void that Ava could fill with half of her. Though Beatrice wanted all of her. How can she care for the love of a God she cannot touch when she has found her own divinity to worship? She could accept the prayer and return the touch. She could make Beatrice holy, too, just by kissing her back.

How could she care for God anymore, when Ava was right there, in her arms?

“I love you,” she says, once they have to separate long enough to breathe, the only words that could belong inside this moment.

Ava’s eyes have never been lovelier, open wide and tear-wet. “You do?”

She realizes then, one crucial detail.

“I couldn’t—how could I tell you as you were leaving?”

“Beatrice…”

“I’ve loved you long enough to beat myself up for every moment wasted. I've loved you long enough to know it won’t stop anytime soon.”

“I love you,” Ava says.

“I love you,” she says, Echo to her Narcissus.

And with Ava in her arms, for a moment that tasted of eternity, all was well.

Finally.