Chapter Text
Ava wakes up.
Which should not come as a surprise, not to the average person. But to Ava, who has died at least three times in the span of two months, who was just pushed through an interdimensional portal by the love of her life after being injured to an inch of her death, it does come as a surprise.
Even more when she wakes up to the sound of gunshots, eyes shooting open and spine straightening so fast she’s scared it’s going to snap in half.
“Shit,” someone curses next to her. “Get up, kid, we gotta move.”
The first thing she sees is Mary. Mary with her shotguns and her frown on her face, Mary and the urgency in her voice and the honesty in her eyes. Except… She’s also Mary who throws her cigarette to the ground, Mary who has the sleeves of her shirt ripped off and who is showing muscular arms covered in tattoos.
Mary who is alive, well and truly alive, Ava gaping stupidly at her as she grabs her roughly by the arm and gets her to her feet faster than Ava could have done so herself.
“Move!” She yells, harshly, Ava fumbling with her own gun.
Her own gun. Yes.
Her own fucking gun which she grips in the palm of her sweaty hands as she starts running after Mary, tripping on her boots as they run through the hot dirt, bent forward to avoid stray bullets. Her instincts kick in, Beatrice’s voice yelling in her ear for her to keep moving, to stay down, to try to not use the energy of the Halo too much— the Halo?!
“Come on, kid, go fucking faster!” Mary yells as her.
She has some sort of meanness in her tone, something sharp and cold as ice, so far from the warmth and harshness Ava has known. She’s still staring at her as they run to a car, Ava doesn’t even have the time to marvel over the fact that this car is definitely not something she could afford as she looks at her.
“Mary…” She calls, stupidly.
“The fuck you lookin’ at? Get in!” Mary shouts.
Didn’t Mary tell her to watch her language multiple times? Hypocrite.
Ava makes her way to the passenger door as Mary runs around the car, towards the driver’s side.
“No, not this one, what the fuck are you doing? Go in the back!”
Okay, this Mary is really fucking mean. But Ava doesn’t have time to think about it, ducking down as she grabs the door handle, nearly burning her fingers off against the hot metal, climbs into the back and slams it behind her, Mary taking her own seat behind the wheel and turning the keys in the ignition, the car roaring to life so loud it echoes painfully around Ava’s skull.
“Put your seatbelt on,” Mary says, and this time she sounds a little bit more like herself, still harsh and rough but with a kindness to her voice that makes Ava wants to cry a little bit.
Mary is dead. Lilith said she was dead. How can Mary be here? Did Adriel lie? Did he drag her back into his lair and imprison her with his goons— but then why the fuck is she here and how?
Ava buckles herself in, takes back her gun that fell to her feet, and as she straightens back up, she sees them.
Beatrice.
Beatrice is running up to them, a gun in her hand, an air of danger and urgency on her face, but she looks nothing like the Beatrice she left heartbroken at the foot of Adriel’s portal. For one, her hair is short. And not Ava-bisexual-bob-please-and-thank-you short, no, full fucking short, with the back of her neck shaved and all. It falls beautifully against her forehead and around her face as she runs, yelling something that Ava can’t hear— not that she could even try without the noise of the car, she’s so stunned her mouth is hanging open, catching flies. Beatrice’s pristine white shirt is folded over her forearms (very muscled forearms, thank you very much), stained with… Is that blood?!
She’s pulled out of her thoughts when the door opens, and Lilith jumps inside, nearly slamming into Ava as she closes the door behind her.
“Move, Mary, move!”
Beatrice, too, jumps inside, in the passenger seat next to Mary, the door swinging as Mary slams the pedals, and they skid across the dirt before the car jumps forward, Lilith gripping the back of Mary’s seat not to fall.
Lilith looks different too, her hair gathered in her usual braid, except that this time the sides of her head are shaved, and there are multiples piercings on the cartilage of her ear and in her brow. She looks even more badass than she did before, even though the Lilith Ava remembers was almost reptilian last time she saw her.
“Put your seatbelt on,” Ava hears herself say, not sure how else she’s supposed to react.
Lilith’s gaze darts towards her.
“Don’t tell me what to do, greenie.”
Good to know Lilith still hates her. At least some things never change.
She can see Beatrice smiling slightly into the rearview mirror, before she turns around, eyebrows furrowed together as she looks at Mary and Lilith.
“Are any of you hurt?”
Where the fuck is you accent?
All eyes turn to her, even Mary glances at her from the rearview mirror, making realize that she actually said that out loud — great job, Ava.
“Watch your words,” Lilith snarls, gripping her by the collar.
“Are you hurt?” Beatrice repeats, not looking at Ava (which is a kindness, because her voice sounds so wrong it hurts), and they all shake their heads.
Ava manages to untangle Lilith’s grip on her top, something in the back of her mind reminding her about when Lilith gripped her by the back of her head, was it only an hour ago?
They’re speeding then, Mary driving like a madman through what seems to be a sunny city, Ava swinging around in the backseat, trying to keep her own panic at bay. Beatrice keeps looking in the rearview mirrors, as if checking their surroundings.
“Slow, Mary,” she says, voice low and calm, contrasting so much with the chaos of the situation. “They’re not following us.”
“Did he know who it was?” Mary asks, voice cutting through them like a razor.
Beatrice looks silently at her for a couple of seconds, Mary continuing to spin them around, through the dilapidated streets and the scorching sun.
“No,” she says.
Mary slams her hands on the wheel, a loud ‘fuck’ echoing around them, and they seem to go even faster, Ava clenching her teeth and closing her eyes not to throw up. There is a throbbing pain in her back, all the way up her spine, and she wants to scream and to cry, but she can’t, stuck in this car with her people that do not look like her people.
“Slow down, Mary,” Beatrice repeats, voice sharper and a little louder, like an order you can’t even think about disobeying.
“It’s fucking dead ends after dead ends, we can’t let them get away with this, Beatrice!”
“We’re not,” Beatrice says with that same tone. “We’re not letting them get away with this. We’ll find who’s behind this, and we’ll make them pay. But we can’t attract unwanted attention to ourselves until then. Slow down,” she says through gritted teeth, voice cutting and slashing across Ava’s skin.
The car does slow down a little, the engine still roaring angrily as they move.
Ava doesn’t open her eyes. She keeps them tightly closed, and she breathes.
She doesn’t have any injuries. Not a single speck of blood on her skin and not even the slightest pain in her limbs— except for the ghost of an all too familiar ache in her back. She has healed somehow in the span of five minutes, since she passed through the Ark. It couldn’t have been more than that. She still remembers the wetness of her tears on her cheeks as she told Beatrice goodbye, the ghost of her touch on the skin of her hands, the sadness and the despair in her eyes that Ava couldn’t change, couldn’t take with her to the other side.
What the fuck happened in the span of those five minutes?
She only wakes up as she feels the car stop, and she opens her eyes to what seems to be a big garage, a big room full of light and space and concrete and Beatrice isn’t even looking at her as she steps out of the car, Lilith and Mary climbing out too.
Ava fumbles with her seatbelt, nearly falls on her ass as she opens the door and jumps outside. There are other people here, Lilith seems to be talking with another girl, but Ava can only think about Beatrice, Beatrice whom she left crying at the portal and who begged for her to pull through, not to leave her— and yet Ava still did. Beatrice who has blood on her shirt and knuckles and who is tucking her gun in the back of her pants, and she looks nothing like her Beatrice but Ava is so desperate for a feel of home that she doesn’t care, that she decides here and there that it doesn’t matter, perhaps.
Ava doesn’t think, she jumps forwards and closes her arms around her, trying her best not to start uncontrollably sobbing. Beatrice does not smell like she used to, she smells like dust and sweat and expensive laundry and life and death entangled together like two inseparable lovers. And it hurts and it hurts, regret sinking its teeth into Ava’s heart and clamping down, too hard.
The next second, Ava is pushed away with a firm punch to her stomach, cutting her oxygen as she falls back on her ass, coughing.
“What the fuck are you doing?!” Lilith asks from the other side of the car, where Ava can’t see her.
Beatrice is looking at her with some mix of confusion and anger in her eyes, glaring at Ava as if she had personally insulted her.
“She’s been weird since she dozed off on the field,” Mary comments, throwing some kind of puzzled look towards Ava. “Don’t be too hard on her, Beatrice.”
“If she doesn’t learn her lesson the first time, I’ll keep teaching it to her,” Beatrice mutters, before fisting her hand in the front of Ava’s top— why do the Sister Warriors keep doing that?
Ava tries to fight back, by instinct, fumbling with Beatrice’s grip on her as she drags her away, Mary mouthing some sort of ‘Sorry kid’ in her direction. They move further to the side, past a door and past a hallway, before Beatrice yanks her into a room and slams Ava against the door, pushing it shut.
“What the Hell, Ava? I thought we made it clear nobody could know!” She shouts-whispers, voice urgent and rushed.
Ava can only stare at her, gaping like a fish out of the water, at the short hair and the blood on her hands and the darkness of her eyes, so different from the one she remembers.
This isn’t her Beatrice.
Still, she looks a lot like hers, her face losing all its anger as one of her hands cups her face, the other ghosting over her stomach, right where she hit her.
“Are you okay? I didn’t hit too hard, did I?”
“Bea…”
Ava wants to cry, all of a sudden, as Beatrice’s eyebrows furrow together, noticing the way Ava’s eyes linger on the blood on her shirt. It’s not her blood.
“That’s a new one,” she comments under her breath, more for herself than for Ava. “What’s going on? What happened?” She asks, thumb brushing over Ava’s cheekbone with such softness it suffocates her a little— in the most beautiful way.
It hits her, then, that this is not her world either.
“I’m not your Ava.”
Beatrice doesn’t move for a second, stunned, but then she takes a step back, confusion in her eyes.
“What?”
They’re in an office, Beatrice’s office, if she had to guess. The soberness and tidiness of it says it all.
“No, I mean, yes, I am, I am Ava, and I am yours, I think? What the fuck is going on here? Where are we? What did you do? Why do you have blood on your shirt?”
The more questions shoot out of her mouth, the more confused Beatrice looks, frowning at her as she takes another step towards her, cupping her face and looking at her from every angle.
“Did you take something? Did Mary make you smoke something?” She asks, making Ava tilt her head back to look at her pupils. “Answer me, Ava.”
“I’m not from here,” Ava says, so fast she barely hears herself. “I woke up in your Ava’s body about an hour ago. I’m not from this world. I don’t know what’s going on, Bea.”
One time, she watched a documentary about the theory of the multiverse, about the thousands of possibilities she could be living through, somewhere else, somewhere unattainable. She spent about two days with Diego imagining what the others ‘them’ could be doing— pirates, astronauts, maybe they were both in the same rock band. It was nothing more than another game, another foolish dream of what she could have been, in another life, knowing too well that it would always be unattainable and impossible to have or to even see.
She never asked Beatrice what she thought of that, because of her faith, because she just assumed it wasn’t in Beatrice’s chords to ask herself such things (and also because she had other things to think about). But here, now, she really wishes she knew more about the subject, as Beatrice grabs her by both shoulders and leads her backwards into the room, worry in her eyes.
“What’s your badge number?”
“My what?”
“Your badge number, Ava,” Beatrice insists. “Don’t lie, I already know it, you told me.”
“What badge?” Ava asks. “What fucking badge, Beatrice, I have no idea what you’re talking about!”
“Don’t make me do this, Ava,” Beatrice whispers, hand going towards her back, towards her gun.
“Your name is Beatrice!” Ava yells, words shooting out of her mouth faster than she means. “I don’t know your last name because you won’t tell me, but I know that you drink your tea with only one spoon of sugar, and that you hate having to wear socks without shoes, and that you sleep on your stomach, and that you say you don’t have a favorite color but I’m pretty sure it’s some shade of yellow, and that you’re kind and thoughtful and smart and that you love and are loved even though you forget it sometimes!”
She gulps down air into her lungs, as Beatrice keeps staring at her in bewilderment, frozen on the spot.
“You do know my last name, Ava,” she whispers.
“I don’t know you. I only know the Beatrice from my world. And she won’t tell me her last name. I don’t know why.”
“I don’t drink tea. But I do hate wearing socks without shoes. And I do sleep on my stomach.”
She narrows her eyes at her, with that same air of curiosity Beatrice gets sometimes, like she has just found something new to study or obsess about for the next few weeks — and God does Ava love that look on her, and perhaps shouldn’t feel that good seeing it directed at her (but she still does, sue her).
“Who are you?”
“I’m Ava,” Ava breathes out, relief coursing through her— she believes her, she believes her! “I mean, another Ava. An Ava from another world, I think.”
And yes, she should probably be more scared or freaked out about that, but she came back from the dead, for fuck’s sake, there’s barely anything that can surprise her anymore. Maybe this is a fever dream Reya induced her into. Maybe she’s going mad. The possibilities are endless.
“Huh. And where is my Ava?”
She says it with some kind of possessiveness and gentleness that makes Ava shiver from the tip of her toes to the roots of her hair. This is definitely on her top ten weirdest things she’s been through— and she was murdered by a nun.
“I don’t know,” she breathes out. “But I have to go. I have to go back to my Beatrice.”
“Where did you come from?” Beatrice asks, letting go of her and leaning back against the edge of her desk.
“A portal,” Ava says. “You put me through some sort of magical portal because I was injured. It was supposed to take me to another realm.”
“And this is the other realm?”
Ava shakes her head. The remnants of her dream, of her visit to Reya, tells her all she needs to know about said other realm.
This is not it. Or maybe it is? Doesn’t matter. She’s not staying long enough to figure that out. She’s going back to Beatrice as soon as she figures out how.
“How do we put you back through your portal?”
“You believe me?” Ava asks, a relieved laugh in her voice.
Beatrice shakes her head.
“I’m not sure I do. You’ve trained yourself to answer your badge number in your sleep, and yet you don’t seem to remember it,” she sucks in a breath. “I’m humoring you.”
That’s good enough for now.
“It was located under Adriel’s church, in Madrid.”
“Adriel? The businessman?”
The antichrist, mostly.
“Uh, sure, yeah, that’s probably what he is.”
“It was flooded a year ago in an attempt to cover up the proof of his shady experiments,” Beatrice said, crossing her arms over her chest.
“Wait, what are you? Are you…”
Beatrice raises an eyebrow, Ava adding up the pieces of information she has gathered. The blood on her shirt, the weird garage, the guns and the expensive cars, the way she talked to Mary and how everyone listened to her, with some kind of respect laced with defiance that she was completely aware of.
“Are you in the mafia?” Ava asks, baffled— her Beatrice couldn’t even think about drinking alcohol without shaking.
“You would know, wouldn’t you? You were the one that was sent to investigate me.”
“Investigate…? What am I?”
“I’ll get us a car,” Beatrice sighs. “I’ll take you to Adriel’s church.”
This Beatrice drives faster than her Beatrice did, in Ava’s world, but there is something careful about the way she moves, the way she looks around, always searching for danger — but Ava has this nagging suspicion that she might only be careful just because Ava is here, just because she knows of the way a car gets her tensed up and gripping at the fabric of her seat. She doesn’t look at Ava. Ava who inspected her own reflection in the rearview mirror and found some harsher version of herself looking back at her. A version with hair cut to her jaw, with an eyebrow slit and a little scar at the corner of her lip, and a piercing on her bellybutton. A version that somehow looks like an act, something she pretends to be and loves a little bit more than she’s supposed to.
“What the fuck, Bea?” Ava asks as Beatrice takes the road around Madrid, avoiding the busy streets. “We’re in the mafia?”
“To put it simply,” Beatrice mutters. “Although you’re not completely there yet.”
Badge number. Investigation.
“I’m a cop?!” Ava screams, louder than she means to, and Beatrice smirks to herself, as if her indignation is funny to her.
“Trust me, I don’t like it either.”
“But… What am I doing here, then?”
“I’m sure you can put it together yourself.”
“I’m… Undercover?”
Beatrice nods.
“But… You know I am.”
“Yes. Because you’re also undercover for me,” Beatrice says, turning at a crossroads.
“Holy shit…”
“No one knows. No one but me.”
“And we… What are we? To each other?”
That does get Beatrice to avoid her gaze, blushing slightly like a teenager, looking insistently away. Well. At least some things are still the same.
“Are we… lovers?” Ava asks, grinning from ear to ear.
“I wouldn’t put it that way,” Beatrice mutters.
“What, we fuck raw and tell everyone how much we hate each other?”
Beatrice stutters, trying to find her words and panicking when she doesn’t.
“That does sound more like it,” she manages to admit, ears so red they would probably burn Ava’s fingers would she touch them.
“Jesus,” Ava laughs, because there is nothing funnier than this.
In her world, she could only dream of kissing Beatrice, but here, she does it behind closed doors and loves the thrill of it, of knowing they shouldn’t but still do.
The Big Guy really has a fucked up sense of humor.
“What were you doing in that place? Whose blood did you have on your shirt and why is Mary so angry?”
Beatrice clenches her hands around the wheel.
“Shannon was killed a couple of weeks ago. We’re trying to find out who did it. We don’t know which of our enemies’ gang could have done it.”
“Vincent,” Ava breathes out, Beatrice’s gaze snapping towards her. “In my world, it was Vincent.”
“Vincent… Your supervisor?” Beatrice frowns.
Oh, fuck.
“I don’t know, Bea. That’s what happened in my world. You have to talk about it with your other Ava.”
“I will.”
She’s nearing some sort of abandoned building, nestled in the middle of dilapidated houses and wild lands.
“Do you believe me now?”
“I will. Once my Ava comes back to me. Until then… I don’t know.”
Beatrice was right, there is nothing left of Adriel’s cathedral, or at least what it used to be in this world. All she can see as she steps out of the car is a long extent of water, like a lake, the rumbles of a destroyed building at its center. The hot wind blows through her hair as Ava walks towards it, in a daze, dust sticking to her sweat covered skin.
“Do you see your portal anywhere?” Beatrice asks, stepping up to her.
There is a distant buzzing in the back of Ava’s mind, something that sounds and feels strangely like the Halo, even though the Halo doesn’t exist in this world. She looks at the water, still and dark, reflecting the blue of the sky and the clouds above Ava’s head.
“I think this is the portal, Bea.”
The more she says it, thinks about it, the more it becomes obvious. Why would it be anything but this?
“Does your Ava know how to swim?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“Good, ‘cause if this works, she’s gonna wake up hella confused and she’s gonna need your help.”
“I will help,” Beatrice promises, with that same solemnity Ava’s Beatrice always had.
Ava can’t help but grin at her, cupping her face and running her fingers through her short hair, Beatrice relaxing under her touch, softer and almost more tender. She looks beautiful, like this, but somehow, Ava’s pride kicks in and she thinks that her Beatrice looks even more beautiful, even though it’s impossible, even though they’re both Beatrice and Ava loves all of her.
“I’m really digging the short hair.”
“I know you are,” Beatrice says, rolling her eyes.
And this version of Beatrice is rougher and harsher and she’s not the Beatrice Ava fell in love with, but in a way, she is. She understands it, she knows why this version of Ava fell in love with this version of Beatrice, even if they don’t say it. There is some beauty in finding something that could be yours but never will be, and loving it anyway.
Ava doesn’t think, only selfishly decides to enjoy this version of Beatrice, this version that isn’t afraid of herself and allows herself to love her, even if it’s in secret, and presses a kiss to her lips, quick and desperate.
“You’re not my Ava,” Beatrice says when they part, like she could tell just from the quick touch of their lips.
“Yeah, you believe me now? Talk to your Ava, seriously. Trust me, we never liked authority. You could have something beautiful.”
She bites into her lower lip, sighs as she rubs her thumb in between her two eyebrows— a habit she has picked up from Beatrice and that tears her heart in half at the feeling of it.
“And leave this whole thing, please,” she adds, even though Beatrice scoffs like it’s the stupidest idea in the world, even though she herself knows that it might be impossible for the two of them. “I’m serious. I know danger, I’ve been living in it since I… Since my life started. I’ve wasted so much time living in it and I lost focus of what was right. You can’t build a life around danger, Bea. And if you don’t leave now, it’ll consume you, and it’ll consume your Ava. There’s nothing for you here. We’ve already wasted enough time by being scared of death. Please,” she says, she begs, pressing her forehead to Beatrice’s, begging for her to understand, for this life to be saved, to have the chance she never had.
“I’ll try,” Beatrice whispers. “I’ll try.”
Ava can only smile with her eyes closed.
“I love you.”
She doesn’t wait for Beatrice’s answer, just takes her nod as a yes, as an ‘I love you too’ and turns her back on her, walking towards the lake. She goes faster, starts running, with the wind in her hair and on her cheeks, and then she jumps.
For a second, she is flying, in between the sky and the water, in between time and eternity, in between this life and the next.
And then she plunges into the water.
And it’s darkness.