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Sweat is still cooling off their bodies.
Ava is wearing a dopey smile, and Beatrice is just beginning to catch her breath. She loves this moment, just after they’re done. Loves the way Ava traces her shoulder with just her fingertips, loves the weight of Ava’s breast against her left rib cage, loves the way they fit together, like two puzzle pieces slotted into place.
Beatrice sighs, and nuzzles Ava’s forehead before dropping a kiss to the space between her eyes.
Ava’s smile solidifies into something bright and stunning, all white teeth and more defined lines around her eyes. They’re the same age now, after Ava’s brief time on the other side. There’s not much difference between twenty and twenty-five, she knows that, but sometimes she’ll notice it in the sharpness of Ava’s jaw, the defined cheekbones where baby fat used to sit. It makes it all the more real, those few desperate weeks that for Ava were years.
At least with each passing day the shadow that had covered Ava when she first returned fades away, and the ridiculous livewire of a girl she fell in love with resurfaces.
“Bea,” Ava whispers, but doesn’t say anything else. Her fingers continue their path, mapping out Beatrice’s collarbones.
Ava told her things were different in Reya’s realm, that meals were a thing of once a week instead of thrice a day, that even gravity felt different. She’d also mentioned that she didn’t need much sleep, but she had still laid in bed out of habit, staring into nothing, saying her name. Even if no one was going to answer.
She can answer now, so she does.
“Yes?”
“Nothing,” Ava says. “I just really like you.”
Beatrice smiles, a familiar warmth spreading across her chest.
“Likewise,” she tells her.
Ava hides her face against her neck, and groans.
“I’m so tired. But it’s too cold to sleep naked,” she whines.
“Then get up, and get dressed.”
“
Get up?
” she complains.
Beatrice gets up herself. Ava makes it a difficult job, holding on to her and making grabby hands when she’s freed herself, but Beatrice knows if she doesn’t get them somewhat decent, Ava will be waking up at three in the morning, shivering.
She feels Ava’s eyes on her figure as she walks the few steps to get them some clothes. She makes a conscious effort to relax. It’s still so new, so strange, to be so
bare
in front of another human being. She feels even more exposed than she did half an hour ago, with Ava’s head buried between her thighs. It was different, in the heat of it, sweating and out of breath.
She sneaks a look at Ava, and below the ogling and the heat of her stare, there’s such pure, unadulterated affection… it’s that what makes her resist the urge to cover herself even as her nipples pebble from the cold.
Beatrice digs through the chest of drawers nestled between the foot of their bed and the wall.
Her face still burns with the memory of Ava telling Mother Superion that she’d spent five years training for a holy war, and she wanted nothing but privacy and to live with her girlfriend. It didn’t feel right to live in the dorms with the other sisters, having to sneak around. They’d wanted to move to a small apartment a stone’s throw away from the grounds.
Mother Superion had offered them this small cabin on the edge of the property instead, saying that with everything that had happened, she preferred all her girls within these walls.
They couldn’t say no to that.
It had originally belonged to the gardener, back when these grounds still required one. It’s not much more than a room with a gas stove and some cabinets shoved against a wall, a twin bed shoved against the other, and two wooden chairs and a table. It doesn't need to be anything more than the place where they sleep, tangled up in each other, or where they do, well, this.
She throws Ava a pair of underwear and a tank top, and grabs socks, underwear, sweatpants and t-shirt for herself. Ava doesn’t like it when her pants ride up below the sheets, she’d much rather wrap her legs around hers to keep warm instead.
Beatrice sits down on the bed, and methodically pulls her clothes on.
It’s impossible not to remember the prayers she recited every morning from the time she was nineteen years old, while she clothed herself in a nun’s habit.
Every garment, a reminder.
Let this habit help me proclaim you with all my words and deeds. Grant me, oh God, the grace to die rather than to defile my soul with sin.
Let this veil teach me to be a pure and faithful bride of Christ. Grant me, oh God, the grace to die to the world and to myself so as to live only for you.
Her belt. The OCS crest. Even her shoes.
She wears different garments now.
This t-shirt Ava got her after their first mission apart. These socks that are definitely Ava’s. The slippers they share because the slab floor is always cold. While she’s a couple inches taller, they share the same shoe size. Ava says Beatrice has tiny feet. Beatrice tells Ava maybe she has huge feet for someone so small. These sweatpants that she chose, that she sometimes wears to run the grounds’ perimeter, because she no longer has to conform to modesty. She can hardly keep her hair in a neat bun any more, because Ava will find any excuse to run her fingers through it.
She has different prayers now too.
Whoever is listening, please protect Ava. God, if you’re real, if you’re really out there, please help us.
She’s not sure if Reya is The God she’s been praying to her whole life. Ava won’t say anything about it at all. Beatrice can’t wrap her head around the fact that most likely, the God that she believed to be creator of the universe is a tangible person from a more advanced dimension. She’s not sure of anything, except for this.
She looks up, and Ava is still staring at her. There’s honey dripping from her eyes.
She opens her arms and Beatrice crawls into them, their earlier positions reversed. Here she finds the peace she’s been searching for her whole life. Here, it feels like she can finally take a deep breath and fill her lungs completely. The guilt, the doubts, the intrusive thoughts about sin—they exist somewhere in the back of her mind. It might take her years to completely exorcise them. But Ava knows, she understands.
Her girlfriend cuddles her, and begins the litany of senseless words that mean she’s tired, but still too wired to fall asleep.
“You feel so nice, Bea. Cozy. My Bea. Heh. Bee. Did you wear cute little bee themed stuff as a kid? I bet you did. I bet you were totally a bee for Halloween once.”
It lands on Beatrice then that Ava doesn’t know everything about her, and a moment later the familiar weight of a past she’d rather forget tugs at her conscience.
“Wait, did your parents celebrate Halloween? Probably not, right? The nuns at the orphanage wouldn’t let us. We weren’t even allowed to watch horror movies, but we did anyway.”
Ava’s fingers thread through her hair, her nails lightly scratching her scalp. It’s cognitive dissonance with the knot in her throat.
“No, my parents did not celebrate Halloween,” she says. And then. “And…Ava. Beatrice isn’t…I wasn’t Beatrice when I was a girl. It isn’t my birth name.”
She feels Ava pull away, and she concedes, resting her head in her own pillow.
“What?”
“Beatrice…It’s not my birth name.”
“Huh?”
“When you first enter the novitiate, you are given a new name,” she explains in the simplest terms she can. “At the vesti—when you wear the habit for the first time, the superior of the convent gives you your name. I was named after Saint Beatrice of Silva.”
“Silva?” Ava perks up like a puppy. “Wait, does that mean you’re Beatrice Silva?”
“No,” she says, smiling despite herself. Ava tends to have that effect. “I’m just Beatrice.”
“But that’s not your real name.”
It stings.
“It is my real name.” But is it? She’s not a nun anymore. She still struggles with the ramifications of that choice. “It’s the name I took when I was clothed,” she says, “it’s just as valid as the name I was baptized with.”
Ava’s eyes soften.
It’s the face she makes when she knows she’s hit a nerve. It happens less often these days, they know each other so well now, but there’s still things Beatrice doesn't talk about, would rather bury and forget.
“Of course, Bea,” she says softly.
“I’m not lying to you, to anyone. You know who I am . This is my name.” How can she explain it to Ava, that the name her parents gave her at birth always felt like ill-fitting clothes, that being named Sister Beatrice of the Order of the Cruciform Sword saved her in more ways than she can count? She takes a breath. “I just don’t want you to look at me and see someone else. To see a name that I hated, that is not who I am.”
Ava kisses her.
She slots their lips together, her thumb on Beatrice’s chin, and sucks her bottom lip into her mouth. It effectively quiets her.
Beatrice closes her eyes and leans into her. It lasts only for a moment, and then they’re resting their foreheads against each other.
“You’re Beatrice,” Ava whispers. “
My
Beatrice, my kickass, badass warrior.”
She smiles, she can’t
not
do it.
They settle back into bed, Ava tucked against her side. After a few moments, Beatrice frowns. Ava is…vibrating It’s not the halo, or anything of that sort. Beatrice simply knows curiosity is eating her alive. She knows the girl in her arms.
“Ava?”
Ava expels some air, like she was containing herself.
“Can I ask? What your birth name was? It’s just— It’s so weird that you have an old name that I don’t know." Beatrice stays quiet, not sure if she’s ready to touch that conversation. It’s not even about the name, but everything it represents, everything that she’d rather not stir up. "Forget it. You don’t have to tell me.”
Ava nuzzles into the space between her jaw and shoulder. “You’re just Beatrice to me. Bea. My Bea . I love you.” She presses a kiss to her shoulder. “Beatrice Silva, I like the sound of that.”
Beatrice chuckles. “I’m not actually a Silva, Ava.”
“Not
yet,
” Ava tells her.
That shuts her up.
A few days later, Beatrice whispers her baptismal name in her ear, sure that like everything else in her life, this too will be safe with Ava.