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Mina is an attractive woman; Ana has always known that. Even when Ana disliked her, in the early days of the Crisis, off-put by Mina’s stubborn insistence that AI could still be a force for good, she knew that Mina was beautiful, that in another circumstance, she would be just Ana’s type. It did not matter, then. There were bigger things to worry about, and she was happily married besides, found attractive in Mina only those same qualities which she so loved in her husband, and those similarities were, she thought, skin deep.
Over time, she came to know Mina, to see that she was a better woman than Ana had assumed her to be, kinder, more selfless, and those things about her Ana had disliked in the beginning, her stubbornness, the strength of her convictions, Ana came to appreciate, to see instead as passion, as something to be admired. And of course, she was still beautiful—but in the midst of the war as they were, Ana did not care about such things. Look at that sunrise, Jack would say every morning, trying to give them something to hold onto, but Ana saw only the way the light illuminated the destruction of the previous day’s fighting. To her, beauty seemed a luxury of the past.
Even when things got better, when the fighting was wrapping up and they had only a few pockets of resistance left to handle, Ana found that she could not appreciate things as she once did. All around her, she found reminders of what she had seen, what she had been made to do, and it was difficult to find anything to love in all of that, and even harder to accept that a person such as her could exist alongside beauty, around joy. Her only bright spot in that time was her family, and even with them Ana felt out of place, as if she were an impostor in her own home. She was no longer the woman who soothed her daughter to sleep after a nightmare, who could hold her child in her arms and promise that all was well. She certainly was not the woman whom her husband had married.
Divorce certainly did not make her see Mina any differently. Love was heavy on her mind, and lust inconceivable. She was not able to see beyond herself even for a moment. Although she confided in Mina, it did not bring them any closer, for she was afraid, then, to be close to anyone, and unable to accept any sort of tenderness or affection towards herself—and Mina knew her well enough not to offer any, was understanding but did not treat Ana with the sort of gentleness that in those days burned.
From there, it took quite some time for Ana to come back to herself. Slowly, she came to accept again that there could be goodness in the world, that there could be any in her, and even more slowly she learned to allow others to be kind to her, to not reject any sort of overture of friendship or affection. She still felt, often, that what she had been made to do in the Crisis, what had been necessary for survival, had made her a different woman, and still was not entirely certain that she liked whom she had become, but she no longer found herself entirely undeserving of love.
And slowly, longing crept back in.
So it is that now, after years of knowing Mina is attractive, Ana finally finds herself attracted to her. There is no more war to distract her, no husband to whom she should be loyal, no fear, anymore, of being known, being loved. She can see again that there is good in the world, has come to accept even that there can be good in her, be something worth loving—and now, after some time to sit with that, to accept it, she finds that she looks at Mina differently, notices for the first time the dimple on Mina’s cheek when her lips curl into a smile, feels the warmth of Mina’s body next to her own when they are out on the balcony, watches as the juice of a plum drips down Mina’s hand to the delicate skin of her wrist.
It is not like the attraction she felt when she was younger, not the immediate chemistry she felt with her ex-husband, nor the infatuations that came before him. It does not make her nervous, make her giddy, does not have her self-conscious, overanalyzing each interaction. It lacks the immediacy, the need, the desperation that accompanied those times she sought out sex as a distraction from herself. It is something different, something new.
Longing.
Longing to have a different sort of relationship with Mina, to have lived a different life, such that they had met some other time, some other place, before the Crisis and before their marriages, when they were not the women they are now, afraid of what it is to love. In that other life, they would be friends before they were lovers, real friends, and she would know just the right words to say to make Mina smile, would do so just to see that dimple.
Longing to overcome her shortcomings, to be able to make herself vulnerable again, enough to take the first step. As it is, she is scared of that kind of connection, of what it would mean to be more than just colleagues and confidants, of what she would owe Mina, if they deepened their relationship, the honesty and the openness she does not know if she is capable of anymore. As much as she wants to close that gap between them, to reach out and to touch Mina, it requires of her something she does not know if she can give.
Longing for it to be her skin Mina bites into, not the plum, sharp teeth piercing taut flesh and all that she keeps held tightly inside of her spilling out. It would be a bursting, a rupture, her very self laid bare for Mina’s consumption. It is both terrifying and thrilling, the thought of being truly devoured. She wants it, wants for Mina to tear into her, to rend her flesh and reveal what lies beneath, to taste her and to not care if it is messy, the act of so doing, because it would be worth it, to be able to feast upon her.
But she is not a plum, she is not sweet.
Who would want to taste of her?