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From the serious line of Ava’s shoulders, Beatrice immediately knows something is wrong. She’s hued in the amber of the cross and Beatrice can’t see her eyes.
Something terrible and anxious crawls in her stomach, makes a horrible home of it as Yasmine questions Jillian’s intentions.
“She lied about its location,” Beatrice determines, because Ava is hiding something and it’s making a mess of her, “Ava?”
“Because I told her to.”
For a horrifying moment, when she turns, Beatrice doesn’t see Ava. She sees a story told a thousand times before her; epilogues detailing old flowers on a rotting grave.
Her jaw’s still set in the same stubbornness it shows when they argue about the proper time for bed, but she looks matured. Resigned in a way you can only find in hospital rooms– in a way that molds and curves the mouth of priests performing last rites. Ava’s grown and grown and grown and how could Beatrice not register the extent of it? How opening a door encourages someone to disappear through it?
To settle it all with an unequivocally selfless act.
In the panic, against her code, she grabs for the crown of thorns. Ava counters beautifully, and Beatrice would almost be proud if she wasn’t distracted by the burn in her throat and the ache gripping her chest.
Ava closes her eyes and barrels toward conclusion, pressing her lips against hers so gently Beatrice’s mind runs blank. Ava stays there, in between an I love you and an I’m sorry , and Beatrice realizes she’s taking the first step and letting Beatrice make the choice to run.
And god , how Beatrice longs to run.
Beatrice lets her mouth give in to desire, lets it push her deeper into devotion as she brings Ava’s face into her hand. She’s a September afternoon under Beatrice’s palm, solstitial at the fingertips. Ava licks into Beatrice’s mouth and she understands the anticipation of an eclipse, finds credence in karmic paths.
There’s salt on their lips, and Beatrice’s brows pinch together as she drinks it in.
Everything’s right. No, everything’s a calamity. A cataclysm.
“In the next,” Ava says, and she phases through the floor before Beatrice can exhale.
And Beatrice can’t help but think, if just for a moment, that she looked beautiful.
There are countless stories of the consequences of attachment, but one reigns in particular. An old Greek tragedy concerning the absence of love, how ruinously human it is to do anything in your power to get it back.
Of Orpheus venturing to the underworld, charming hell itself into letting a soul slip through the cracks. Everything came at a cost, and they almost made it, and it easily became one of Beatrice’s favorite tales.
She’s quickly learning that all myths are established on some spectrum of truth.
All missions before this were between her and god, yet this is the most personal. She lets the blades expand from the bostaff, lets guard dogs descend on her with fire and brimstone in her heart. Sharp edges slash tendons, steel finds muscle, buries itself in it and pulls . There’s blood–the ground and her boots are wet with it–and someone is screaming.
Beatrice takes an elevator to hell, and everything is a little on the nose, but she’s willing to overlook the insanity of the situation if she can prolong Ava’s life. She doesn’t need charm or the grace of god. She’ll be ugly and selfish and every little thing her parents despise in the face of loss.
She’ll split hell open, let it burn, let it fall.
Beatrice is already too late.
There’s been a battle she’ll never know the intricacies of. Michael’s corpse is on the ground and Ava’s already breathless and bleeding. Adriel stands tall and he sees her and he doesn’t even care .
In the stutter of the moment, Beatrice isn’t sure what will happen next. But then the faint hum at Ava’s back burns to a glow and she’s looking at Michael and–
Ava’s choking on a cough and Beatrice’s feet can’t move fast enough. The nun braces an arm under Ava’s back, hauls her up in a sense of deja vú that pangs at her heart. Beatrice falls back on the things she’s good at, and if it’s a little more than solace and compassion that leads her hand into Ava’s then who is anyone to judge?
“Now let’s get you out of here.”
“Just let me rest for a little bit, okay?” Ava nestles into her shoulder and it’s so similar —so reminiscent of a night tucked away in the mountains, that Beatrice startles.
She blinks, face tilting up to bite away the sharp sting in her eyes. There’s no god for her to pray to. Not when the one she needs the most is in front of her, blood and bone, heaven settled in the bow of her lips.
Alternatively, she settles on the persistent exhale of air hitting her chin like a drumbeat, like a lifeline. How exceptionally warm, nearly feverish, Ava feels under her palm because it reminds Beatrice she’s alive and she’s here .
There’s a small wheeze, a whine really, rattling the back of her throat. Ava’s breaths are laborious, like her lungs are trying to take, take, take and the world won’t give.
She’s—she’s dying.
Beatrice’s jaw sets so hard she feels something crack.
Adriel rises, then he falls again. An angel stuck in its history, something out of her old Sunday books.
They’re alone now, heroes at the end of their story, like the movies Ava loves to watch.
“We have to get you out of here, Ava,” Beatrice manages, softly. If there’s an urgency to her tone, any indication of how bad it looks, Ava doesn’t show it.
Instead, worse, she tells the truth: I’m not gonna make it.
Beatrice frowns. Ava can heal, she just needs to—she just needs to what ? She’s given all she can, all that anyone’s ever asked of her, and it’s left her here: mangled, on the floor of a false church dying for a false god where no one can see her. Where light can’t touch her.
It’s all too much for Beatrice to bear.
There’s been a consistency to the whirlwind of people in and out of Beatrice’s life. She lost her parents all those years ago and Shannon and Mary even now. Countless sister warriors in between. They pass like summer rain—heavy and occasionally without fanfare. Sometimes it still hurts, still smells of petrichor after. She’s no stranger to the lingering touch of grief.
But this? Grief has never sunk its teeth like this. It’s never held her close in an apartment barely big enough to breathe in. Never taught her to find beauty in the imperfect, in stains on a couch that make a home or the crooked parting of a smile and snorted laughter on a long walk home. Never told her she’s beautiful and seen her all the times she wasn’t and loved her anyway. Grief’s never been her best friend, her heart.
Beatrice doesn’t know if she’ll survive it.
But then Ava smiles and there’s absolution a world away. Beatrice will be damned if she doesn’t give it to her.
She’s sat at the edge of the portal, beautiful and bleeding, asking Beatrice to let her go where she can’t follow. It’s her personal hell and she nearly feels her knees give in at the premise.
Fitting, she thinks, for a woman to be her final undoing.
“I love you,” Ava cries, breaks her breath with a whimper.
It sounds like goodbye, and Ava slips through quietly.
“I love you,” Beatrice says, rushed and always, always too late.
She’s alone now, a hero at the end of the world. Ava never waxed poetic about how all of it could feel so wrong. All the stories that end and leave bitter tastes in the mouth and crumpled windpipes.
Michael’s remains stain the floor and there’s blood on Ava’s sword. The hilt is faintly warm and Beatrice swallows down the bile threatening her throat. She breathes in through her nose, out through her mouth.
And in the hellmouth of a church, where the light doesn’t touch, Beatrice smells rain.