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ANTIGONE: And also because - Oh, my darling, my darling, forgive me; I’m going to cause you quite a lot of pain.”
Ava is dying. She knows it. Beatrice knows it. Ava can see the deep concern in Beatrice’s brown eyes, in the furrow of her brow as she is set in front of the portal. It whirls and hums behind her back like a caged lion. She can feel a pull from her halo, a draw from the other side as her lifeblood leaks out around the glowing blue divinium shrapnel buried in her body. She cannot sit up, not without Beatrice’s support, Beatrice’s careful hands on her face.
Ava can’t help but stare into Beatrice’s warm eyes, traces her face and the smattering of freckles across her nose, and those two strands of hair that frame her face. The words bubble out of her, “I love you.”
Beatrice’s face is unbearably sad, her eyes are always so sad and Ava cannot do anything to fix it. Her thumb runs along the apple of Ava’s cheek and the pull from the portal grows undeniably strong as she begins to fall back.
Her last view is Beatrice’s sad smile. She imprints it into her mind and sears it into her very being. Beatrice. Beatrice.
“Beatrice!”
Ava cannot move. A plain white ceiling stretches out in front of her. And she can’t move. She cannot move .
Everything beneath her chest, beneath her shoulders, is dead and feelingless.
“Beatrice!” She screams out. “Bea!”
A nightmare. She’s back in the orphanage again, she’s paralyzed. She opens her mouth and wails, as good as a disembodied head in a bag.
“Stop yelling.”
Ava’s breath locks in her chest and sticks there as her heart seizes in her chest. A figure looms into her line of sight.
Mary. Mary dressed in her combat outfit with two shotguns at her hips, precisely as she looked the day she disappeared beneath the horde of possessed.
“Am I dead?”
“I sure as hell hope not. No way I’m stuck with you for eternity.”
There was no bite to her voice, and Ava hadn’t allowed herself to mourn how much she missed Mary until that moment. It hit her like a truck and tears began welling in her eyes.
Ava thrashes against the prison of her body. She wants more than anything to reach up and hug Mary. Mary places a careful hand on her shoulder, squeezes, and Ava can feel that. “Easy.”
“What’s– what–” An oppressive weight presses down on Ava’s eyes, on her body as unconsciousness begins to press down on her again. “I need to–”
“Shh. Come on, breathe.” There is so much white, white everywhere pulling at the edges of her sight. It’s creeping inside her chest and wrapping around her lungs in a stranglehold.
“We’ll talk when you wake up. All we got is time.”
+
When Ava comes to again she can feel her fingers. It’s such a relief that she almost begins to cry beneath her closed eyelids. She’s not a quadriplegic. She’s not trapped in that sick bed again.
“Rise and shine, sunshine.”
Ava opens her eyes and blinks back the blinding white light poking into the back of her brain.
“ Fuck .” They weren’t joking about the whole white light in heaven thing. She blinks until Mary’s silhouette solidifies into a form. “Why the fuck is it so bright?”
Mary laughs. “You’re going to love it here.”
Ava wiggles her fingers and feels the feeling creeping into them like they’re waking from a long, long sleep. She’s not on a bed. She’s on some kind of platform or bench. Mary helps prop her up as Ava drags her dead legs.
“Where are we?”
She looks around and it’s eerily similar to that place she went when she put on the crown of thorns. But where that room was dark, this one is nothing but white, bright light.
“Welcome to the hotel of California,” Mary says. At Ava’s blank expression she frowns. “The song?”
Ava still doesn’t know. “I was raised in a Spanish orphanage. With nuns.” And not the hot kind.
“And you never heard of the Eagles? You can check out any time you want but you can never leave – that song?” Mary gives a disgusted snort. “Point is we can’t leave.”
“What?” Ava tries to bodily pick up her legs, willing them to move. They fall painlessly onto the plinth again.
“You think I’ve been staying here for fun?”
“We can’t leave?” Ava isn’t the smartest person. That’s Beatrice, beautiful, brilliant Beatrice with a mind like—like Ava doesn’t even know. Something amazing. But Mary’s words are now making themselves home in her head. They repeat in an endless repetition in her mind. “We can’t leave?”
“I knew you’d be out of whack but Jesus Christ.”
“Oh god, this is hell,” Ava groans. Heaven would have more Beatrice-shaped angels and less Mary on her ass. At least she isn’t near a cliff this time. Her head throbs in her skull like it’s trying to shake weight its way out. Ow.
“Divinium is like poison. That shit’s got you all turned around.”
Divinium. Wait—she was dying. Ava uses her working arms to smack her stomach gracelessly.
Between the gaps in the leather and spandex sat smooth and unblemished skin. Not even a scar remains.
“What—“ she knows, she knows she’s asking a lot of questions without getting answers, but Ava is confused as fuck. The reality of being alive—again—overrides her concern about leaving this weird white prison. “I was dying.”
“This place heals. Did the same thing with me when I got here,” Mary says. She moves aside her trench coat and Ava’s stomach plunges to her unfeeling toes. Blood. Dried, cracked, crusted blood was all down Mary’s side.
“Are you sure we’re not dead?” Ava asks again. It’s a valid question. She was dying and Mary can change her name to Bloody Mary.
“Baby girl, I can’t tell you. I hope not, because putting up with you for eternity is a special kind of hell.”
Right. Ava has questions. Lots of questions. And everything is fuzzy in her mind. It’s like when she did shots with Beatrice but less fun. Completely un-fun. She rests against the wall and wishes heaven came with a pillow.
Her eyes cast around the room again. It’s a lot of empty space; like a large empty castle tower with nothing but white everywhere. There is a single door, closed tight, and no windows. The light comes from the walls themselves as there are no windows. The room hums with light.
“I know you’ve got questions, but you’re also recovering from some nasty injuries.” Mary’s hand hits her healed stomach none too gently. Ava sees where her blood stained through the leather.
“We can't leave?”
It’s the third time she’s asked but she thinks it’s a valid question.
“Not that I can find.”
Ava tries to use Mary’s shoulder to stand. It doesn’t work without the use of her legs. Fuck.
“There’s got to be a way out.” Ava looks around again and there is a door. “Where does that go?”
“I had to haul your ass in here. I’m not carrying you around the city.”
“City?”
+
Mary half drags, half carries Ava out the door and onto a balcony. They are in a spire made of pure white glass, interwoven with blue veins like blood. A blue so bright and painful that it aches . All around them similar glass spires spiral up towards the too-bright sky. Everything glints bright in the unbearable sunlight overhead. The sun isn’t warm and yellow. There’s something clinical about the light, white like those lightbulbs in a doctor’s office. Ava cannot see the ground. Swirling lakes of pearly white mist churn underneath them and ghostly blue figures, wraiths, Ava thinks with a drop in her stomach, blue wraiths, float along glowing strips of light above the mist. Beyond the city, where the glimmering gleaming spires end, sits a desert. An immense desert with no end.
“Where the fuck are we?”
“Nevada? How the hell would I know? Your guess is as good as mine.”
Ava stretched out a hand for the blue veins weaving through the spires. Somehow the aching blue light glows brighter.
“It’s all divinium. You know how you found divinium bones in the crypt walls? The Tarasks are made of the stuff. Vessels for the blue floaties.”
“The Tarasks are Decepticons?”
“You don’t know the Eagles but you know Transformers?”
“I’m a woman of many talents.” Just moving a little drains her of her remaining strength. Her stomach throbs and burns where divinium shrapnel once lay. Her free hand not wrapped around Mary rushes down to touch her stomach. She expects to feel blood, fresh blood, and not the dried stuff, but the skin is still healed.
“Reya sends them out to do her thing in those divinium shells, otherwise they’re just here, floating like that.” Mary jerks her head at the floating wraith.
Ava breathes through the pain and her mind sticks to what Mary just said.
“Wait. You know about Reya?”
“Creepy lady, dresses like Lady Gaga? Yeah, I’ve seen her. ”
Ava struggles to keep her hold on Mary. Only Mary’s grip is keeping her upright. Once again, Ava can feel that pull of unconsciousness, that horrible swooping weakness seeping all the way into her brain.
“Where is she?”
“She stopped by when I first showed up, but I haven’t seen her in years.” She begins to pull Ava back into the room. “You’re dead weight, let’s get inside.”
Ava can’t struggle against Mary’s grip and falls into a boneless pile on the bench inside.
She has so many questions if she could just think for a second. She closes her eyes.
+
Ava feels a warm weight against her side, not against her but close. It’s a buzz in her skin from proximity. Someone is breathing in the otherwise deathly silence. Something hard is underneath her, not soft, not warm, not home. “Bea?”
“This is the second time you’ve called out for Beatrice.”
Ava’s eyes snap open. Right. The white room. Mary. Shit.
It’s inappropriate. Ava’s probably dead, hanging out in what’s kind of a shitty afterlife with Mary, but she wants Beatrice with her. Not dead with her but—
She remembers the last time she died and came back to life, nestled in the safe space of Beatrice’s arms. Yeah, her head was cracked open last time and she was bleeding everywhere, but she had Beatrice. This sucks balls in comparison.
Mary has both eyebrows raised towards the incandescent ceiling and her arms crossed. Right, Mary.
“Hi,” she says, waving. Mary snorts but doesn’t move from her place next to Ava.
“Feeling better?”
Ava pushes up with her arms. She’s thrilled to report more strength in them. She even feels the telltale tingle of feeling spreading down her thighs. “Ish.” The room is exactly the same as it was before, with the same blinding light. There’s no way to tell the passage of time. “How long was I out?”
“No clue. Nothing changes. There’s no night, but it feels like time is moving. Hell, you know more than me. How long have I been here, Ava?”
“Over two months. How long do you think it’s been?”
“It feels like forever. Too long.”
Ava’s also happy to report her head feels far less fuzzy than the last time she woke up. She begins to collect what she knows about the other side in her head like incomplete puzzle pieces. In two months Michael aged 15 years. Has Mary been here for 15 years ? Alone?
Not alone, she reminds herself. Michael.
“Mary, did you see Michael?”
“Who?”
“Jillian Salvius’s son. The little boy. He went through the arc”
Come on, Mary. Even if she doesn’t remember Michael, she should remember Jillian. They stayed with her while Ava trained to break into Adriel’s tomb. A flash of recognition crosses Mary’s face.
Mary’s eyebrows furrow again. “I haven’t seen any little boys.”
“Mary, how are you here ?” It’s the first pressing question in her head. Mary was dead . They got the message from the OCS ninja cross, and Ava saw Mary get smooshed. Saw her die.
Michael went through the arc, but Mary was nowhere near an arc as they teleported away.
“You got a lot of questions. Sad to say I don’t have a lot of answers. I don’t know how I ended up here. I was dying and then I was here.”
“It doesn’t make sense.” Ava again struggles to reconcile what she knows versus what is right in front of her. “Michael went through a portal as a kid and came out full grown. You should be–” older. Mary should be much older, fifteen years older at least if not more. She shouldn’t look exactly as she did the day she died unless they really are dead.
“I can’t explain it. I don’t know how long it’s been but I know I’m not gonna get any senior discounts. I don’t know where he went but I’ve been here.”
“What about Reya? How do you even know about Reya?”
“I’ve met her. Right after I tried to jump off the balcony.” The casualness with which Mary says this is bizarre.
“Ava, I said this is like the hotel of California because we can’t leave. I’ve tried. I searched this city, I’ve searched the desert, and I even shot one of those wraiths to piss them off. I just end up back here again.” Mary’s eyes take on a hollow look. “I jumped off this tower. Anything other than being stuck here another second, but even that didn’t work.”
“But what about Reya?”
“She showed up here after I jumped off the balcony. Said her name was Reya, said she healed me and would protect me from all harm. That I was anointed. Showed me her tarasks. Then she was gone. I haven’t seen her since.”
“Did you try jumping off the balcony again?”
“Yes, Ava. She hasn’t been back.”
The feeling is back in Ava’s toes. She wiggles them and feels the painful staticky feeling shoot up and down her legs. It’s enough to get her to her feet, though she sways. Mary rises with her to support her.
“Let me try.”
“Be my guest.”
Ava jumps from the balcony and into the mist below. And ends up flat on her back on the slab from before. Mary hasn’t moved.
Ava tries again for good measure—same results. No Reya.
+
Eternity in a white room is not all it’s cracked up to be. Ava wears herself out exploring the spire they’re in, walking up and down the weird glowing streets before exhaustion catches up with her again. She collapses on the streets and wakes up on the slab while Mary does push-ups on the floor.
After a day of this, it occurs to Ava that she isn’t hungry. Also that she hadn’t peed in over a day. She doesn’t feel anything except tired.
“This place is weird. I don’t need to sleep. I guess you’re still healing. Probably why the halo isn’t working.”
Ava tries to float using the halo but nothing. No light, no warmth. It’s like the halo is dormant.
“So what have you been doing this whole time? Push-ups?” Ava asks from her spot on the bench. Mary hasn’t joined her on her excursions into the city. It’s annoying as hell, but each suggestion is shot down with “I already tried that.” So sue her, let’s try again together, but no. Mary decided to stay in the spire because she can’t skip arm day.
“I’ve been trying to find a way out. Then I was babysitting your comatose ass.”
“Well I’m all healed up, so let’s find a way out.” Ava jumps to her feet again and paces the floor. “I need to get back. We need to get back.”
“You got a plan for that? Cause, this place is like a prison.”
“So you know what that means? Jailbreak.”
+
Ava isn’t sure how much time passes. She sleeps in fitful bursts, exhaustion pulling on her in a way it doesn’t Mary.
It can’t even be called sleep as Ava doesn’t dream. She doesn’t settle into a bed, wiggling and squirming under the covers until her mind shuts down. Her mind empties and time passes in that strange way it does here.
In between these bouts of unconsciousness, Ava explains everything that happened while Mary was away.
“You and Beatrice played house in the Alps for two months?” It’s a simple question but it stops Ava mid exposition dump.
“She trained me,” Ava says defensively. Playing house makes it sound pretend or childish. It wasn’t. It was the realest thing Ava has ever experienced. A taste of a life she could only imagine trapped in the orphanage with Diego and Sister Francis for company.
“Of course she did,” Mary says. “I’m sure she did a damn good job. She’s the best of the OCS.”
Ava couldn’t have asked for a better teacher. There was so much she had to learn, and so much that she wanted to learn that Bea helped her with regardless. How to write again, how to swim, how to fight like a badass, and how to fight with a sword. There is so much Beatrice did for her and Ava will always be grateful. She isn’t sure when she fell in love with Beatrice, but it was a fast freefall. There was too much about Beatrice to love.
“You kept yelling for Beatrice. Anything I should know?”
Ava’s tongue grew too big for her mouth. She swallowed around her heart and for the first time, no words came to her.
“Hm.”
“We–” Ava didn’t know what she was going to say. What could she say about Beatrice? The feeling was so big, so overwhelming that some days she thought it would burst out of her like that chest-burster in Alien.
Mary’s mouth twists just a bit. “Right. We need to get back so I can see this for myself.”
“I’ve been trying to get you to help for weeks!” Ava half shouts in exasperation.
“You’re too stubborn. You needed to try and get out first on your own before we could work on a plan together. So let’s plan.”
Planning is a generous term. The city is huge and the desert is endless without any way of escaping. How can you escape a universe? Where are they?
“You fell out of the sky one day. Middle of the desert with divinium sticking out of you. I brought you here but it took a day or two for the divinium to leave your body.”
“But was there a portal or something? Maybe we can go back to that spot.”
“There’s nothing there. I checked. You just phased into being.”
“Well maybe I can phase out of being,” Ava says, reaching behind her back to feel the indentation of the halo between her shoulder blades. It didn’t so much as hum. “Adriel opened a portal or whatever to get to earth. Maybe I can do that too.”
“You’ll need the halo to work first.”
There’s a loud boom like a gong and Ava regrets not having her sword when she went through the portal. She’s unarmed and without the halo. She squares her body into the ready stance Beatrice had drilled into her along the banks of that Swiss lake.
Mary lets out a soft hiss. “Reya’s coming.”
+
“Have you healed sufficiently?” Reya stands in front of her wearing a white veil made of what looks like starlight.
Every instinct in Ava is telling her to push. When can she go home? What is this place? But it doesn’t seem smart to antagonize girlboss god.
“Healed great,” Ava says, bobbing on her toes. And as always, her mouth runs ahead of her head. “When can I go home?”
Reya stares at her with inscrutable eyes. She looks past Ava and to Mary.
“And you?”
“I’m fine.” Mary crosses her arms and looks as annoyed as when she first pushed Ava off a cliff.
Ava knows antagonism won’t go over well with Reya. “Hi, um, so what are we doing here?”
“You are here because I commanded it.”
“Not to get into semantics, but I’m here because I got blown up with divinium, sooo…”
“By my will. Michael did as commanded. He gave up his life so you would join me here. You are here because I commanded it.”
The puzzle pieces click into place devastatingly fast. Reya knew the plan wouldn’t work. She knew Adriel would live, that Ava would be mortally wounded, and that in order to save her they would send her through the portal. Which is why it closed immediately after Ava was through.
“Michael died for nothing?” If there was a time the halo would come to life it would be now. Instead, it sits dead between her shoulder blades while Ava seethes.
“Michael played his role.”
“He is a person, not a chess piece!”
“Ava.” She feels Mary’s hand on her shoulder and does her best to calm down. She can’t fight god in her own kingdom.
“Humans are destined to die. Today or tomorrow, it does not matter when. I gave him more time than he would otherwise have had and he served.”
“You wanted me here. Had Michael blow himself up to do it. For what?”
“You both were brought here upon the edge of death to become my champions. I saved you and now you will serve me.”
++
Three days later and Beatrice hasn’t grown accustomed to it. She still expects to turn and see Ava at her heels, instinct having her look back or to her side every few minutes because Ava was so easily sidetracked.
Beatrice isn’t sure where to go or what to do. She considers Switzerland. But that place belongs with Ava. We will return there together, Beatrice promises. Because Ava will be back.
She’s not dead. She’s repeated the words to Mother Superion, to Camila, and Yasmine. She’s not dead.
Ava is healing. Jillian espouses the healing powers of “the other side”. It is why she wanted to send Michael through once upon a time. It was the only way to save Ava, and it will save Ava.
Beatrice is logical. Her faith is shaky, destroyed upon its foundations and demolished with a kiss from the halo bearer. But she believes in Ava. And she knows that if Adriel could leave Reya’s realm then so could Ava. She just had to wait.
Knowing she could only wait is one thing. Waiting is another. Beatrice lasts three days before she leaves the OCS and returns to Jillian’s complex.
Jillian has relocated the arc, moving it from Adriel’s temple to its former place in her laboratory. It sits there, silent and unpowered.
“What are you doing here?”
Jillian is diminished, scars lining her arms and looking frail, but not as shattered as the day they returned without Ava and Michael. She screamed then.
“I don’t know.”
What did she expect? The arc is dormant, as it was the moment Ava vanished beyond the veil. Beatrice is an ex nun, with so much training on how to kill but not on how to resurrect. She doesn’t know how to pull open the other side and make sure Ava is alright. That her gambit worked and Ava is whole and healthy. That Beatrice didn’t condemn her to spend years alone.
“I have nothing left to offer,” Jillian says tightly. It was kindness that spurred Jillian to allow Beatrice back into her home. “I have nothing more to give.”
Beatrice is lost without the anchor of the church around her. So often it felt like stones dragging her beneath the river, but there was certainty and reassurance. In her death, she would be cleansed of sin. She could still have value, serving the Catholic Church and ridding the world of evils. Now she’s battered in the currents of life without any direction to turn to.
Beatrice has money, in a trust fund under a long-forgotten name for a long-forgotten girl. Money never taken away, despite her flaws, and her vow of poverty.
There’s freedom in that. She can take her parents’ money and roam the world. She can see the Blue Grotto and all the places Ava spoke, the places she wanted to see and explore (together).
Ava wanted more. So much more. She was too big, too full of life for even death to hold her down. The first halo bearer to rise from the dead. All she ever wanted was to live her life. And to not be forgotten or alone.
Beatrice cannot explore the world without Ava. (Together, never alone).
“The portal was powered by prayer,” Beatrice recites. “Could prayer reopen it?”
“Adriel had thousands of followers. All that prayer and devotion allowed the portal to work. Even then, it would only open in bursts.” Jillian’s face takes on a calculating look, analytical. There was nothing but fact in her voice. “Even if your devotion were enough, only someone touched by the other side can cross: Michael, Lilith, and Ava. Each carried marks from there. You are only human.”
“Michael said part of him would remain in Reya’s realm. I will continue to research. But one day for our world is—“
“Thank you,” she cuts her off. She does not want to know, has thought of nothing but the math as Ava’s absence stretched into one day, and then two. “If you find anything…” she let’s her words linger in the air between them. Doctor Salvius nods once, curt and dismissive and Beatrice knows she has worn out her welcome.
She leaves with one of Jillian’s security guards at her heel.
Michael, Lilith, and Ava. Three touched by the other side: divinium, Tarask, and Halo.
Only one remains on earth. It is time to seek out Lilith.