Work Text:
It struck Beatrice, suddenly, that Ava had spent most of her life waiting.
Waiting to get out of the orphanage. Waiting to see the world. Waiting for her life to be her own.
And now she was waiting for Beatrice.
Ava was waiting in a literal sense, in that she was waiting for Beatrice’s bus to pull up at the station near their apartment. Beatrice had spent the last week at her parents’ estate, dealing with some legal matter that she had been loath to drag Ava into. She had insisted on going by herself, telling Ava that she would find the entire ordeal incredibly boring. Which was true. Ava absolutely would have. But it was also true that Beatrice wasn’t ready for Ava to meet her parents just yet. They knew that Beatrice had left the church, left her vows, but not that she had been with Ava for the last six months.
They also didn’t know that she had been part of the OCS, or what the OCS really did, or how they had defeated Adriel. But that almost didn’t feel like it mattered anymore. It had only been a few months since Adriel’s demise, but Beatrice rarely thought about him or the things he had done. She still had the nightmares haunting her sleep, the scars twisting in ragged lines across her body, but again, that hardly felt like it mattered. Not when her days were filled with Ava, with gentle caresses and tender kisses and smiles so sweet that they made her chest ache. With Ava’s undying enthusiasm for, well, everything , how she approached every situation with a joy and wonder that hadn’t come easily to Beatrice since she was three years old.
Beatrice watched Ava through the window of the bus, the streaks of the raindrops pattering against it blurring her view slightly. Ava was holding an umbrella, a bright, iridescent blue that matched the rainboots on her feet, rocking up onto her toes and leaning forward to watch the bus as it neared the station. There was an impossibly-large grin on her face, which somehow grew even wider when she registered that the incoming bus was the one Beatrice would be arriving on.
Shock jolted through Beatrice’s body when she realized that Ava’s dazzling smile was for her and her alone. Ava had been texting her almost constantly for her entire trip. Silly comments and observations about her day, selfies with the dogs she stopped to pet as she made her way through the city, pictures of the food she ordered after trying and failing to cook her own meals. But most of her texts had been about how much she missed Beatrice, how excited she was for Beatrice to come home. Beatrice had smiled when she read each one, rolling her eyes slightly at the rather excessive amount of heart emojis Ava included in them before she responded. But she hadn’t really understood what they meant until just now.
Ava had missed her, really missed her, because she had noticed the absence of Beatrice in her life. Beatrice had spent so long trying to blend into the background, to be a useful tool that showed up when needed but then faded into quiet, unnoticed self-sufficiency when no longer necessary. It hadn’t occurred to her that she was someone worth missing.
But Ava really had missed her, if her reaction to seeing Beatrice getting off the bus was any indication. She squealed, let out an honest-to-God squeal , a fraction of a second before leaping forward for a hug. Beatrice had to drop her duffle bag onto the wet pavement to catch her in time, laughter bubbling up in her chest as Ava buried her face into her neck.
Beatrice was laughing like this more and more often now. It was a sound that would have been completely foreign to her even just a few months ago. She had never understood how someone could be possessed to make such a sound, so ridiculous and unrestrained, sure to draw judgmental stares from those around her.
But Ava made her forget all of that. Ava made her stop thinking, stop analyzing, stop trying to stay three steps ahead of everyone else. Because with Ava, there was no need to do any of that. Ava took everything Beatrice did at face value, never judging or assuming or admonishing. She seemed overjoyed just to have Beatrice near her, even when they weren’t doing anything special. Beatrice had lost count of the number of times that she had looked up from reading a book to find Ava gazing at her with such soft, incomprehensible awe that it stunned her into silence. Which only seemed to make Ava smile even more, laughing softly as she leaned forward to press a kiss to Beatrice’s cheek before going back to whatever she was doing on her phone.
Beatrice wondered, not for the first time, with Ava’s hand held securely in her own as they made their way out of the bus station and into the parking lot, what her parents would make of Ava. She knew that Ava was everything they had raised her not to be. Impulsive, irreverent, brash, reckless, emotional. And joyful, if she was being honest. Qualities her parents had relentlessly chastised her for until she had learned to suppress them without their guidance.
She knew what her parents would probably think of Ava. But part of her still wondered how anyone could look at Ava and do anything but fall in love with her. To do anything but admire the passion and sincerity she poured, completely and utterly unrestrained, into everything she did. To do anything but cherish every smile, every touch, every word that Ava brought into the world.
And if she dared to be honest again, Beatrice would have to admit to herself that was scared to introduce Ava to her parents. Because they wouldn’t approve of her being in a relationship with another woman, obviously, but there was another layer to it that terrified Beatrice to her very core. She was afraid that once Ava stood in front of her parents that she would see Ava the way she was so sure they would. That she would see Ava through their blinkered, distorted version of the world that would reduce Ava to a minor annoyance, someone to sneer at for being so fanciful before overlooking her entirely. That she would see Ava through the eyes that they had tried so hard to impart to her throughout her childhood and the icy, dispassionate letters that she still received on Easter and Christmas updating her on her family’s affairs.
Beatrice knew her parents only sent those letters out of a sense of propriety and obligation. And she still read every single one for the same reasons, even though their resigned tone still cut into her heart the way it had since they sent her off to boarding school all those years ago. She had only gotten one of these letters since she and Ava had started dating. It had arrived three days before Christmas, just like it always did. And reading it had made her cry, just like it always did. Beatrice hid the letter as soon as Ava came to check on her, but she couldn’t hide the tears streaming down her face. Ava hadn’t even asked why she was crying, just immediately pulled her into a fierce hug. Which had only made Beatrice cry even harder.
Beatrice wished, desperately, desperately wished, that her parents didn’t still affect her as much as they did. It didn’t seem fair, with everything they had done to her and everything she had done to put distance between them. It didn’t seem fair that the tiny, immaculately printed words typed on her family’s official stationary could still rend her heart in two.
But this time Ava had been there to piece her back together. That had never happened before. In the past, she had always hidden until her tears ran dry, then gone about the rest of her day like nothing out of the ordinary had happened. It hadn’t even occurred to her that the shattered, jagged pieces of herself that her parents so casually dashed against the floor were worth picking up again. That they could be fit back together to make something precious. Something worth keeping whole. Maybe even something worth loving.
Beatrice stopped a few feet from their car, her hand tightening around Ava’s to pull her to a stop next to her. She saw Ava’s confused look, the concern furrowing her brow as she asked what was wrong. But Beatrice’s mind was a thousand miles away, her mental gears spinning so furiously that they threatened to burst out of their fastenings.
She had nothing to be afraid of when it came to her parents. There was nothing to fear in their lack of approval, their judgment, or even their obvious disdain. There was nothing to fear because there wasn’t nothing they could do, absolutely nothing, that would make her love Ava any less.
As this realization washed over her, as its freedom burrowed into her soul and sent the chains she had wrapped around it exploding outward like fireworks, she understood that she had kept Ava waiting for her in an entirely different way.
Touching Ava still didn’t come easily to her. Taking Ava’s hand, pulling her into an embrace, kissing her, none of it came naturally, even after all this time. Beatrice always hesitated, second guessed herself and her desire, her want, her need. She had been taught for so long that it was wrong, that it was sinful, even evil, that she couldn’t just let herself fall into it. She knew, intellectually, that there was nothing wrong with how she felt, but that didn’t change the feeling, the tension, the guilt that still tore at her conscience until part of her recoiled from Ava’s touch. That part of her wouldn’t go away, no matter how much she hated it, pleaded with it, tried to reason into nothingness.
She found herself, standing under the gloomy sky as rain dripped onto her hands, one around the soaked handle of her duffle bag and the other still clutching Ava’s, staring directly at that part of herself. The one that skittered around the edges of her consciousness and dragged her down with all the judgments that had been hurled at her since her parents found her kissing another girl when she was thirteen years old. The part of her that was convinced that her touch would ruin Ava, ruin her the same way Beatrice's grubby, clinging, three-year-old hands had ruined the white linens her mother set out for their dinner guests. Convinced that she would drag Ava down with her into that dank, bottomless pit of destruction and despair that had threatened to strip away everything she cared about for most of her life.
Beatrice stared at that part of herself, saw it completely exposed, naked and afraid and trembling under her direct scrutiny and found that she no longer hated it. She couldn’t. Not when she saw its pain, her pain, the agony that had twisted her up and clouded into obscurity anything close to joy that she had felt since the day her parents sent her away. The only thing she felt as she reached out to it, with a steady hand that made it flinch away, was compassion. Compassion laced with an unimaginable amount of sorrow for the child who had been scolded and shamed over and over again into making herself so, so incredibly small as she tried to meet the demands of everyone around her.
She felt tears burning in her eyes as she reached for that part of herself, pulling it out of the shadows and into her arms, embracing it with all the grace and love that was now spilling out of her like an endless font. She loved this part of herself, loved it deeply as she accepted it, wholly and fully, in every way she could think of. She whispered to it about the love that she would one day feel, how she would find herself surrounded by people who weren’t lying when they said that they loved her, how she would find someone who loved her so deeply that it would fill her with a joy that would be entirely incomprehensible to her younger self. All of the pain and grief and self-loathing that she would endure for so long would coalesce into the person who was now standing across from the love of her life, completely free and filled with the unwavering certainty that she couldn’t stand to make Ava wait another second for her.
Beatrice dropped her bag on the ground, barely registering the water from the puddle it landed in splashing across her shoes and seeping into her socks. She released her grip on Ava’s hand and moved her hands to Ava’s face, cradling it tenderly as surprise rippled across Ava’s features. She took a half a second to take in Ava’s expression, to absorb the smile already pulling at the corners of Ava’s mouth, before she kissed her. Kissed her with everything she had, with all the pain and joy that she had kept bottled up for so long and could no longer hold back. Kissed her with the kind of wild, unbridled abandon that would have scandalized her parents’ entire social circle for months. Kissed her until the umbrella slid from Ava’s hand, falling to the ground as Ava moved to embrace her and return the kiss just as passionately.
They broke away a moment later, that same laughter from before erupting out of them as Ava reached up to brush the wet hair out of Beatrice’s face. Their eyes were locked together and Ava’s were filled with so much affection that it made Beatrice’s breath catch in her throat. She felt Ava bolstering her again, just like she had after she read her parents’ letter, breaking down all the misery and suffering she had lost herself in for so long and just as quickly building it up into something new and healed and whole. She could see the ruins of her old self in Ava’s eyes, and suddenly understood that they weren’t actually ruins at all. The structure was still solid, still strong and well-laid, shimmering brilliantly like stained glass in the sunlight. Each piece was a fragment of who she was, every lesson and skill and memory she had made for herself, coming together in a glimmering mosaic that she was still piecing together, that she now saw she could build in any shape and size and color that she wished.
As she watched this new part of herself take form, watched something strange and unfamiliar and beautiful emerge from what she had seen for so long as only wreckage, she realized that God had never hated her. For what was God if not love of His creation? Love like the sunlight that spilled across the sky every morning, that glinted on the dew on the grass, that urged the birds into sweet song, that woke her to see Ava lying across from her in their bed. Love like the fondness and devotion she saw in Ava’s eyes as they fluttered open and fixed on her face, that matched exactly the love Beatrice felt for her in all of its glorious, undying intensity.
Love, Beatrice found as stood chilled and soaked to the bone and staring into Ava’s shining eyes, that she could no longer keep to herself.
“I love you."
The words slipped out so easily, as if Beatrice hadn’t spent most of her life convincing herself that she shouldn’t feel that way, like she hadn’t spent the last six months petrified that she’d never be able to say them when Ava could actually hear her.
But she could and she did and she had, and as she watched Ava register her words, as she watched the sheer elation bloom across Ava’s face, it somehow all felt worth it. Every choice she had ever made, every mistake and misstep and shot in the dark, all of it had led her to this moment, standing in the rain in the parking lot of a bus station as the woman she loved kissed her over and over again and whispered the phrase back to her against her lips.
She had heard those words from Ava before, first during that moment in front of the Ark as they desperately wished it wouldn't be their last together, and then again almost immediately as soon as Ava returned to her. Hearing them that second time, so much softer, without the cutting, cloying edges of their tragedy closing in around them, had rocked Beatrice to her core. She couldn't comprehend that Ava would choose to say those words to her, not because it was their last chance but instead the first of many. Couldn't understand how they were said with the promise that Ava would repeat them again and again, over and over, as much as she possibly could.
And Ava had kept that promise, those words falling from her lips at the slightest provocation. When she saw Beatrice pull her hair up into a bun while she dressed, when Beatrice offered her the coffee she made for them every morning, when Beatrice scrunched up her nose at the terrible pun Ava had just subjected her to, when Beatrice covered Ava's skin with kisses between hot and heavy breaths that pulled the words from her in a crooning symphony that set every part of her on fire.
Beatrice hadn't understood before how Ava could say those words so easily and so often. But she could see it now, see the inescapable, heartbreaking, unbelievably deep and wonderful joy that had prompted them in every one of those moments. She saw their life together the way Ava saw it, glorious and holy in every single one of its innumerable, maybe even infinite, number of chances to fall in love with each other all over again.
She hadn't been ready before but this time Beatrice was prepared for Ava's words, rising to meet them and their vow of a life filled with moments both mundane and breath-taking that would shatter and remake her all over again, just like they had that very first time.
“I love you, too.”