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The blood on Becka’s clothes had begun to dry by the time the bus had stopped near Agnes’ house.
It was a ten minute walk by foot to get to the house she had spent multiple days a week at.
Until recently, that is.
Until Agnes became distant towards her. Because Agnes, her Agnes, was busy being in love.
Becka tried to get the blood out from underneath her nails as she walked towards the front door of Agnes’ house.
Standing there, dressed in green and blood, she felt brave for the first time.
Proud, even.
Because, unlike Agnes, Becka knew what true love felt like.
How it could let you do things you never thought possible.
Like seeking justice with your own hands and a pair of scissors.
She straight up knocked on the door. Maybe, she thought briefly, this was the most upfront she had been since, well, ever.
No more facades, she promised herself then. No more hiding.
The door opened surprisingly quickly for how late it must’ve been. Though Becka wasn’t sure what time it was exactly.
It was dark already when she had cut those roses.
Darker even when those same pair of scissors had severed something else.
Like her father’s rotten soul from his possessed body.
Possessed by sin.
Sin that she also housed inside of her soul.
Though she’d like to think that her sin was rooted in love, not in lust.
“God help us.”
A woman dressed in green mirrored her where she stood on the other side of the door.
“I’d like to see Agnes.”
Becka replied to who she knew to be one of Agnes’ Magdas.
She had even known this one for quite a long time, though she never paid much attention to her.
Visits to Agnes’ house had involved paying attention to dolls and dresses when they still had worn pink.
Then, about learning dances and snickering about ungodly gossip as they had grown into purple for the first years.
And, when they slowly truly turned into women rather than only being kids dressed up for slaughter, visits at Agnes’ house involved studying the curls in Agnes’ hair.
How they bounced up and down when she ran around.
How her eyes looked in different lighting.
How her laughter rang in different tones depending on what Becka made her laugh about.
They contained a lot of studying Agnes.
And ,sometimes, when Becka allowed herself to do something as dooming as dreaming, she could’ve sworn she got studied back in return.
In the way Agnes’ hand lingered on hers for two heartbeats too long after she had pulled her somewhere.
In how her eyes dropped down to Becka’s lips from time to time. And how she felt her gaze burn into her back when Agnes thought she wasn’t paying attention to her.
As if Becka could’ve ever paid attention to anything else other than the breathtaking woman Agnes Jemima had become.
“Follow me,” the Magda whispered, a shake clear in her voice. Then she stepped back and allowed Becka in.
When she took a step forward in response, the woman in front of her flinched, making Becka blink slowly through the daze she had been falling into since that wrecked dinner with her soon to be husband.
“I won’t hurt you,” she reassured the woman, a strange feeling of injustice overcoming her.
She had protected the world, protected those women, those girls, by committing the sin of killing.
How could the woman in front of her look at her with fear?
Despite her fear- or maybe because of it- Agnes’ Magda reluctantly turned her back to Becka, heading up the stairs for her to follow.
She motioned for her to stay where she was when they reached the bathroom on Agnes’ floor.
A finger pressed to her lips before the Magda pushed open Agnes’ door, assumingly to wake her.
Becka busied herself with counting her breaths while she waited.
In.
She should’ve known something was wrong when Agnes began to distance herself from Becka.
Out.
No, she should’ve already known when her father came back from work later and later the years before that.
In.
She should’ve known when she had worn pink and her father had commented on how he couldn’t wait for her to grow into a stunning woman.
Out.
And then it took a while before she inhaled again.
Because there, in her nightgown, stood Agnes.
Looking like an angel, the white contrasting with the dark shade of her skin.
A crying angel, Becka realised with the most horror that she had felt the entire night.
“He can’t hurt you anymore,”
she offered reassuringly.
Because really, Agnes shouldn’t cry anymore.
Becka took care of it, took care of him, right?
“What happened?” Agnes responded quietly.
To Becka’s dismay, looking just as frightened as before Becka’s promise.
Did she not believe her?
That she had taken care of it?
That she had made sure Agnes was safe?
Determined to prove her devotion and Agnes’ safety, Becka pulled down her jacket, letting it drop to the floor with a defeated thump.
Agnes’ eyes dropped from her face down to her body.
Dressed in the same nightgown as Agnes.
Only that hers was drenched in red sticky blood.
Silence followed. Then the a hesitant:
“We should get you cleaned up a little, mh?” Agnes offered her a small smile.
Tears still fell from her eyes, but she took a small step towards Becka and there it was.
Becka breathed properly again, a small relieved smile mirroring on her face.
She had made Agnes understand.
A small nod from Agnes, directed to her silent Martha, made the woman in green disappear through the door she had come in from, closing it quietly behind herself after opening the bathtub tap.
“Come on Becka, let’s get you out of these clothes.”
Agnes’ voice was low, kind, soothing, and Becka soaked it in.
Let it warm her even as Agnes’ shaking fingers unlaced the back of her sleeping dress and the cool air of the room touched her skin.
She barely felt it.
Or she did, but everything felt like she was under water.
Or dreaming.
Standing bare in front of Agnes, stripped of all clothes or facades, didn’t feel properly real.
Having ended the life of the man who raised her didn’t feel real.
The warm water touching her feet didn’t feel real, until her knees were pressed to her chest, her arms curled around them, and Agnes’ hands began to scrub the dried blood off her body.
Becka felt a little more real then.
“Is the water warm enough?” Agnes softly prompted, her watery eyes focused on Becka’s face.
“I did God’s work,” was all Becka could respond with.
Because she couldn’t really judge the temperature of the water.
But what she could judge was that justice had been served.
And that she had been the one to deliver it.
“I know,” Agnes said, and it sounded like a promise, softly sworn into the dark bathroom, lit only by candlelight.
“And for you,” Becka added.
Really, it was rather the other way around.
She had done this first and foremost for Agnes, and then for God.
Because really, what had God ever done for her?
Sure, sometimes the idea of God comforted her when she saw no reasoning in why some things happened.
But she had never not felt her love for Agnes and Agnes’ love for her.
It was a bond more secure than any religion could ever bring into existence.
Agnes seemed to know that too.
Made obvious by the sad smile she offered Becka in response, combined with an even more assured,
“I know.”
Agnes continued to softly wash Becka’s body, more stroking her arm comfortingly than doing a proper job of getting the blood off her while Becka explained to her, in awe, how the sound of the scissors had sounded when she had plunged them in and out of her father’s body.
In and out, and still Agnes’ hands remained soft.
Remained kind.
Kindness was rare in Gilead.
But never Agnes’.
Never her Agnes’.
Kindness had to be protected here, hidden even. As soon as anyone caught a glimpse of it they grasped it into their greedy hands, pulled it out of you, and stomped it into the floor while you watched with a spreading numbness.
Becka couldn’t let them take Agnes’ kindness.
Becka couldn’t let them take Agnes.
“Let’s run away together.”
The idea came to her not for the first time.
How often had Becka thought of running away? Of taking Agnes and getting out of here. Together.
So often.
So often had she cried and begged and attempted to convince her beloved to flee with her. To make Agnes see the wrongness of this place and the goodness in what they had.
In what they could have.
“Tonight,” she began, suddenly feeling the temperature of the water and the feeling of slim fingers on her bare arm.
“Before anyone can find out.”
Agnes gave her a shake of her head. One that meant she was thinking. Not one that meant no. Becka knew this.
Knew what every little micro expression on Agnes’ face looked like and meant.
Memorized them like verses in the Bible, to know and to worship them all the same.
“Where would we go?”
Agnes’ words followed the movement of her hand.
Slowly bringing it up to rest on top of Becka’s head, stroking her knotted hair soothingly and slowly.
As if Becka was a frightened child.
As if she could ever flinch as a reaction to Agnes’ touch.
As if she could ever do anything other than let her breath hitch and press her head firmer into the holy feeling of it.
“I don’t care.”
She didn’t have to think about her response. It came as naturally as it was true.
If she could love Agnes in Gilead, she could love Agnes everywhere. Anywhere. As long as she could love her.
“Anywhere. We could go anywhere. Just you and me.”
She attempted to paint a picture for Agnes.
One in which her and Becka could be together freely.
Without everyone watching.
Without everyone trying to pull them apart, tear at their joined souls.
Agnes’ face remained the same display of pained sympathy, making Becka smile softly at her.
There she sat, naked and bare.
On her knees, chest deep in bloodied water.
Looking up at Agnes like a fallen angel begging to get back inside the safe gates of heaven.
The fingers against her scalp twitched, then traveled down the side of her head, forward, until they hovered over Becka’s cheek.
Barely touching it with cold fingertips until Becka nuzzled against them, closing her eyes to soak in the feeling.
Almost crying her first tears that night when Agnes’ thumb gently stroked her skin right under her eye.
A soft shaky exhale followed the motion, and then something got said that managed to pull Becka’s eyes back open.
“Okay.”
Becka’s own hands emerged from the water, desperately searching for something to hold onto. To feel. To make sure this was real.
They ended up clasping around Agnes’ wrist, keeping her hand pressed against Becka’s cheek.
“Yeah?”
Her voice broke then as her heart got pieced back together.
Agnes would leave with her. Run away with her.
With her.
With her.
Agnes would be with her.
“Yeah,” Agnes sweetly repeated back at her.
The fingers against Becka’s cheek began to stroke it again, pushing some of Becka’s wet hair out of her face, as much as Becka’s tight grip on her wrist allowed it.
“Really? You…”
Emotions swallowed up whatever words Becka tried to get out.
Desperate to still get her message across, her hands traveled up Agnes’ arm. Crawling and holding, feeling, touching Agnes’ wrist, her arm, her forearms, until she had a hold on both of Agnes’ shoulders.
Holding on pathetically.
“You’ll be with me?”
The question was loaded.
Involving way much more than just running away together.
It was too much.
But it was not enough at the same time.
Not even a scratch of the iceberg of things Becka needed to hear from Agnes to understand this was really happening.
“I will be with you anywhere we’ll go.”
Hands free to move now, Agnes placed them onto both sides of Becka’s face.
Cradling it between her soft hands.
Holding her face still as she leaned over to insistently promise,
“I’ll be with you. I am with you, Becka.
You got me.”
It would feel unreal, like a dream too good to be true, if Becka wouldn’t still feel the blood stuck underneath her nails and see the anguish in Agnes’ eyes.
“Do I?”
Becka whispered, and truly, through all she had done, this was her greatest sin ever committed.
Asking greedily for more than she was offered when she deserved less already.
Agnes would always embody her greatest sin and her biggest blessing.
“You do, Becks.”
The words didn’t assure her as much as the feeling of Agnes’ forehead leaning against hers did.
The breath that escaped Becka’s lungs filled Agnes’ when she inhaled at the same time.
The thrill of sharing air, filling Agnes’ body with the oxygen hers offered, was only overtaken by the feeling of Agnes’ lips, impossibly softer than her hands, placing a barely there kiss right over one of Becka’s eyebrow.
Before she could properly process the sweet offering, another kiss was pressed against the side of her eye.
Firmer this time.
The next kiss, placed onto her temple, felt surer.
Lasted longer.
Like even Agnes acknowledged and saw how right this was.
How much it was meant to be this way.
A needy desperate sound clawed up Becka’s lungs.
Filled with shock and rawness.
Satisfaction and the need for more at the same time.
Thankfulness and frustration.
But mostly, with love.
Agnes gave a soft shushing sound in response.
The hands that had cradled her face now stroked down her cheeks, collecting tears Becka hadn’t realized were there until Agnes wiped them away.
Those healing hands stopped at the sides of Becka’s throat, thumbs placed on her jaw.
Guiding Becka’s face up towards Agnes’ face, though she didn’t have to do that for Becka to look up at her.
She had never looked anywhere else after all.
She should‘ve forced herself to close her eyes.
To focus entirely on the feeling of what was to come.
But she couldn’t.
Couldn’t pull her eyes away from Agnes’ face, even when Agnes herself closed her eyes and slowly closed the space between their faces, giving Becka all the time to pull away from her next comforting kiss.
She didn’t.
Instead her hands slipped up from Agnes’ shoulders into her braided hair, and her body lifted slightly, pushing a little of the warm water out of the bathtub from the sudden motion.
And then their lips met.
Soft, plump ones pressed against bitten and thinner ones.
There was no teeth in the kiss.
No bite, nothing sharp, nothing cutting in it.
No, it was entirely good.
Good, soft, tender.
It was all the things the Aunts had tried to beat out of them.
And now, for the first time, kissing the girl she loved, Becka realized why they had tried so damn hard to do so.
If you already had everything you needed with you, you wouldn’t be desperate enough to devote your life to the concept of having it.
Devotion, in its truest form, came in the form of loving Agnes for Becka.
There was nothing else she needed.
Nothing else to pray for.
Nothing else to worship.
Nothing else to die for.
“Let me grab you some clothes,” was spoken against Becka’s cheek, followed by another shorter kiss against the same spot, where Agnes knew lines would appear when Becka laughed.
Maybe, just maybe, they had the chance now, to turn those smile lines into wrinkles from years spent together in a place where their only fear was that they would crush each other with their love for each other.
Becka gave a small nod when she realised the woman in front of her awaited a reaction.
That earned her another kiss, this time a fleeting one on the bridge of Becka’s nose, like Agnes just couldn’t help herself.
And then Agnes got up and left the room.
Becka didn’t hesitate to stand up onto unstable feet in the bathtub.
Not wasting a thought on the mess she made out of the floor as she stepped out of it, wetting the wood beneath her feet.
She would be gone by the time the red water would’ve stained the floor.
They would be gone.
And all that would be left behind of them would be those bloodied footprints.