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Ava starts noticing them the first time they’re in the Alps.
She doesn’t see that much of Beatrice’s skin that go-around. She just catches glimpses of a shoulder here, a lower back there, or even an upper thigh on one particularly memorable Thursday night. But, the one thing that really sticks out to her - other than the tantalizing sight of Beatrice’s beautiful, glowing skin, of course - is that every time she does catch a peek, the skin she does see is accompanied by a scar. A long slice here, a rough circle there - they vary in size, thickness, and age, but every time Ava sees new skin it has a scar. Without fail.
They don’t know each other well enough for her to ask about them then. They grow close, yes, but never to the point where Ava feels like she can say, “Hey, so I snuck a look at your shoulder when you were changing and I saw some scarring. What happened?” Besides, given Beatrice’s life at the OCS and the less than happy home life she’s alluded to over time, Ava’s pretty sure she can guess where most of the scars came from.
Still, it sits with her. Eats at her.
She doesn’t like the idea of Beatrice in pain.
She doesn’t like the idea of someone else taking care of her. Or, worse, of her patching the wounds up herself.
When Ava returns, falling through the portal like a kid that got team-bounced off of a particularly large trampoline, things change.
First, Beatrice is not there. Ava has to chase her all the way back to their apartment in the Alps before she finally gets her reunion. When she does, the second thing Beatrice says to her is, “I love you.” (The first thing is, “Move and I’ll kill you,” because Ava made the mistake of merely phasing into the room in the middle of the night and startling Beatrice out of her sleep, but that’s a story for another day.)
Second, life with Beatrice when the world isn’t ending is actually really fun. They stay in their apartment, though neither of them return to work at the bar. They visit sometimes, of course, to recreate what Ava has dubbed their first date night, but neither of them really want to work there again.
Beatrice finds work with a local museum in need of help translating and digitizing a particularly large collection of ancient books in a variety of languages. Ava bounces around jobs for a while - barista, lifeguard, bartender in a different bar - before eventually deciding to enroll in an online school to get a degree before trying again.
Life’s not perfect everyday. It takes a while for them to settle into living together like this. It takes even longer to settle into being together like this. But, they take it slow. Ava starts them out with quiet nights in. Then dinners and dancing out. Eventually, they progress to star-gazing dates where they wind up making out on a blanket more than actually watching the stars.
It’s perfect. It’s them.
When they do, eventually, move all the way into intimacy though, Ava can’t help but be overwhelmed by the sheer number of scars she finds on Beatrice. They’re fucking everywhere. Her stomach. Her back. Her legs. Her shoulders. Her chest. She’s so covered in scars it nearly makes Ava cry the first time she sees her fully naked. She manages to push it aside and refocus on the moment and the very shy and needy Beatrice in front of her.
But it stays with her. Eats at her.
She doesn’t ask about it until a month later.
“Hey, Bea? Can I ask you something?”
They’re sitting side by side on the couch, both enjoying a nice glass of wine after a busy day. It’s not the wine that makes Ava ask, but it also doesn’t hurt in finally giving her the courage. Beatrice turns to her and sets her own glass down on the table so she can give her full attention. “Of course. What is it?”
Ava takes another healthy gulp from her glass before setting it down as well and dropping her eyes down to her now empty, fidgeting hands. She sucks in a sharp breath for courage and then forces her eyes back up to Beatrice’s face, who now looks more than a little concerned.
“Is something wrong?” Beatrice asks.
One of Ava’s hands flies up to cup the side of her face, both to ground herself and reassure Beatrice with the contact. “Of course not. I just wanted to ask something. I’ve noticed, well, I’ve noticed you seem to have a lot of scars. More than- more than I would have expected, even given the OCS and everything, so I wanted to ask about them but I haven’t been sure how.”
“Oh,” Beatrice breathes. She falls incredibly still below Ava’s fingertips, though she doesn’t pull away. “Is it, uh, are they, um, bad to look at?” she asks. Her eyes drop down from Ava’s to stare at the empty air between them instead.
“Of course not!” Ava exclaims. Her other hand comes up to grab one of Beatrice’s and squeezes. “Of course not. I just noticed and it feels like a lot and they’re all different. How did they happen?”
Beatrice sucks in a slow breath and pushes it out through her teeth. She shifts on the couch and half-turns away. Ava’s hand falls away from her face at the action and drops down to join her other one on top of Beatrice’s.
“If this is sensitive we can just forget I asked,” Ava says quickly. She squeezes Beatrice’s hand again with both of hers.
Beatrice shakes her head. “It’s not, really. It’s just that- I did get pretty much all of them through training and the OCS. There’s not much to tell.”
Ava frowns and scoots a little closer to Beatrice on the couch. “Really? They just, they feel like a lot. I would have thought the OCS doctors were better at sealing things up so they wouldn’t scar.”
Beatrice shifts her weight around more on the couch and her eyes dart back and forth at the room in front of herself, but don’t return to Ava. She doesn’t reply for several long seconds.
Something wrong settles in Ava’s stomach, like that feeling she gets when someone cranks up a radio and it devolves into nothing but bassy static, and her frown deepens. “Bea?” she prompts. When Beatrice still doesn’t reply after a few seconds, Ava lets her eyes drop down to scan the other woman carefully, looking for any sign that could clue her in on what’s going on in her head. It’s as she’s skimming them down from the side of her head to her elbow that she realizes it - none of the scars are on visible skin. Even now sitting here in a t-shirt, none of Beatrice’s more prominent scars are visible. Ava’s noticed smaller, faded scars on her hands or forearms before, but nothing nearly as visible as the ones on the rest of her body. It’s like the hidden ones were barely treated at all, leaving them to fully scar. With that, a sick dread pools in her stomach and she twitches her fingers to grip a little harder where their hands are still joined.
“You didn’t go to the doctors for the ones they couldn’t see,” she says.
Beatrice closes her eyes at the words and falls completely still again. “There was no need.”
“You were hurt. How could there be no need?” Ava asks. She scoots just a little bit closer to the other woman once more.
A long, heavy sigh slips out of Beatrice and she drops her head to hang low between her shoulders. “They were my failures. If I had an injury, it was because I didn’t do well enough. More often than not another Sister had also paid the price for it and was in need of the doctor’s help. There was no need for me to take their time in that case.”
Ava slips from the couch so she can kneel on the carpet in front of Beatrice, keeping their hands clasped and resting in Beatrice’s lap. Once kneeling, she dips her head down and forward to try and catch Beatrice’s eye, only to find Beatrice’s eyes shut tight. “Were you trying to punish yourself?” Ava whispers.
Beatrice swallows and the sound of it getting stuck in her throat echoes through the room. “No. And yes, I suppose. If I knew I could handle it on my own then I usually did. It was good to have a reminder of why I needed to be better. The larger the scar it left in the end, the longer the reminder would last.”
Ava gasps and squeezes Beatrice’s hand a little more before pulling it up so she can press a slow series of kisses against the knuckles. “You’ve never failed,” she says firmly.
Beatrice’s eyes fly open and there’s a thousand emotions warring there from fear to sadness and even disgust and anger. “Call it what you want, the result is the same. I was not good enough to protect myself and my Sisters and paid the price.”
Ava sighs and presses another few kisses into Beatrice’s skin. Then, she drops their hands back down to Beatrice’s lap and sits up more on her knees to put her face within inches of Beatrice’s. Beatrice sucks in a sharp breath at her approach but doesn’t pull away. “That doesn’t mean you deserved to suffer or be scarred for it. Please tell me you know that now. Please.”
Beatrice swallows again. She makes no other move to talk. After nearly ten whole seconds of staring into each other’s eyes, she blinks and drops her head down so she can look away.
It’s enough of an answer in itself.
Ava tips her head forward so she can press her lips into the top of Beatrice’s hair. She leaves her face resting there for long minutes, brain flailing and crying out for her to find the right words. Eventually, she finds at least something. “Will you tell me about them?” she asks.
Beatrice flinches at the request. She pulls her head back and up to stare at Ava again, mouth slightly ajar. “What?”
“They’re a part of you, right? You kept them to serve as a reminder, so I want to remember with you if you’ll let me. Will you tell me?”
Jaw still hanging loose and open, it seems to take Beatrice a few seconds to remember how to use it. “What?” she says again.
Ava sets her lips into a grim, sad smile and moves one of her hands to trace up Beatrice’s wrist, forearm, and bicep until she reaches her shirt sleeve. Once there, she drops her eyes down to watch as she nudges and adjusts the hem to reveal a long, half-circle scar that covers nearly half the width of her arm. She uses the pad of her thumb to trace along the scar, feeling the raised skin contrasting with the buttery-smooth, hot skin around it, before she looks back up to meet Beatrice’s eye. “I want to share these reminders with you. Will you tell me about this one?”
Beatrice opens and closes her mouth a few times, eyes darting back and forth between Ava’s, before she drops her eyes down to watch as Ava’s thumb does another slow pass over the mark. “We were in a warehouse. It was dark and there were large stacks of boxes everywhere, blocking all vantage points for advance recon...”
Ava listens intently, thumb still stroking back and forth gently, the entire time Beatrice describes the mission. It ends with another one of the Sisters bed-ridden for a knife to the lower back, and Beatrice alone in her room cleaning and wrapping this slice with tears in her eyes and harsh words in her head. When Beatrice falls silent once more, Ava leans forward to press a series of careful, slow kisses along the path her thumb now has memorized. Then, she tips her chin up to press her lips just on the outside of Beatrice’s ear. “Thank you. It means a lot that you shared that with me. For what it’s worth, I think you saved the Sister. You didn’t fail her.”
A slow shiver runs through Beatrice at the hot breath at her ear and she takes in a shaky breath. Then another.
“Why are you doing this?” Beatrice asks.
Ava rocks back on her heels to get a better look at Beatrice’s face. She doesn’t look mad. Her eyes are soft and a little wet and her mouth hangs open a bit with her brow furrowed. Ava rises up to place a quick peck on her cheek before sitting back again. “Because I love you and I don’t want you to live alone in your pain anymore, if there’s anything I can do about it.”
Beatrice’s mouth closes with an audible click and she drops her eyes down to the still joined hands in her lap. “I, uh, I don’t know what to say,” Beatrice says.
Ava squeezes her hand again. “Say you’ll keep sharing these stories with me, as long as you’re comfortable.”
Beatrice’s eyes track back up to meet hers. They’re even wetter than before and now filled with something warm and a little dark. “Ok,” she says eventually.
Ava’s lips twitch up at the corners. Then, she moves up to place both of her knees on either side of Beatrice’s thighs on the couch. Beatrice reacts instantly and drops Ava’s hand in favor of using both of hers to grip Ava’s hips and keep her steady as she straddles her.
Ava presses one more kiss on Beatrice’s cheek before tucking her head into her favorite spot on Beatrice’s neck and wrapping her arms around her back, squeezing tightly.
“Um, are you ok?” Beatrice asks.
“I love you,” Ava says.
“I love you, too,” Beatrice replies automatically. She squeezes Ava’s hips for effect and tilts her chin to help burrow Ava in further.
Ava squeezes her again and then drops a hand down to run below Beatrice’s shirt. She finds the raised line just below the hem within seconds and starts circling her thumb around it in careful strokes. “Tell me about this one?”
And Beatrice does.