Chapter Text
Ava grunts as she tries pulling her foot from the wall. She’s been stuck for minutes now, and Mary laughing behind her isn’t helping.
“Seriously, Ava. This should be easy for you now considering you’ve phased through twenty feet of rock before.”
“I panicked at the last minute, okay?” She grumbles.
“Well what the heck happened?”
Beatrice is what happened, Ava wants to say. There she was minding her own business, phasing through the walls, when Beatrice appeared in the hallway out of nowhere and smiled.
Of course Ava got distracted.
“Nothing. God, let me just -,”
“What’s going on?” comes a familiar voice, and Ava’s heart starts hammering in her chest. She whirls around, cries in pain when she remembers that her foot is still stuck. God, she’s so embarrassing.
“Fuck.”
“Language,” Beatrice tuts, but she’s already lowering herself to the ground. “What happened?”
“She panicked at the last minute,” Mary supplies. “I don’t know why, though. Did you see a ghost or something?”
I saw an angel, Ava says in her head. Or at least that’s what she thinks she did.
“You saw an angel?” Mary suddenly repeats, and only then does it come to Ava that she’s said it out loud.
Beatrice turns to her.
Oh no.
And then Ava is suddenly falling, literally, phasing through the ground of the second storey down to the first where she (thankfully) lands on a dirty pile of sheets.
Camila blinks at her from where she stands, a few meters away with a bag of detergent clutched tightly against her chest.
“Focus,” Lilith growls as she bears the weight of her sword down on Ava’s shield. “Use your own strength. You can’t keep relying on the Halo for power, Ava.”
“I’m trying,” Ava grunts.
She’s been looking for an opening for god knows how long now, but Lilith is fast and unrelenting, and Ava’s getting tired of holding the weight of the metal above her.
“Try harder,” Lilith all but shouts. She raises her weapon higher, ready to slam it back down on Ava’s shield when Ava notices a pair of legs drawing nearer.
Ava cranes her neck off to the side, curious as to who it is that’s watching them train. She holds her breath when she finally sees who it is. It’s Beatrice, wearing that goddamned smile of hers that makes Ava’s heart begin to race.
It’s like she’s been shot with energy all of a sudden, and before she knows it there’s a burst of light coming from behind her, this uncontrollable thrum of power splitting her back and going off, sending Lilith flying over to the other side of the mat.
“Shit,” Ava mutters when she realizes what had just happened. “Lilith, are you okay?” She asks, running over to Lilith’s side and inspecting her for injuries.
A smack to the back of her head is what she gets in response.
“I told you not to use the Halo,” Lilith hisses.
“I couldn’t help it.”
And then Beatrice is coming into view, lowering herself to the ground to help Lilith.
“You may have overexerted yourself,” Beatrice chuckles when her eyes find Ava's.
“Um, yeah, I’ll do better next time.”
“I know you will.”
There’s a certainty in her voice that makes Ava’s heart stumble upon itself. She’s blushing now and she knows it.
“Oh, I see,” Lilith suddenly says, a satisfied smirk plastered across her face.
Ava looks down at her, panicked, “What?”
Lilith simply grins. Gossiping might be frowned upon by the holy order, but Mary and Camila are going to want to hear about this.
“So you almost killed Lilith,” Mary teases when Ava plops down the seat beside Camila. She’d just finished her chores for the afternoon, and she’s extremely not in the mood to be made fun of at the moment.
“I did no such thing,” Ava says with a roll of her eyes. “She kept beating my shield with her sword and I guess the Halo took over and saved me.”
“I don’t think it’s the Halo that saved you,” Lilith says a little too cheekily.
“What do you mean?”
Lilith laughs, glancing at Mary before saying, “Maybe it was your angel.”
Well, fuck.
“No,” Ava gasps, wide-eyed in trepidation. “You guys know?”
Camila laughs beside her. “We kind of had a staff meeting about it earlier. I mean, you’ve been pretty obvious from the start, Ava. The evidence from the previous days basically just confirmed it for us.”
“Evidence?”
“You got stuck on a wall when you saw Beatrice walking by. And then you phased from the second floor down to the first when you slipped up,” Mary points out.
“You almost gave me a heart attack, by the way,” Camila adds, jutting out her lip when she remembers the incident.
At this, Ava groans. “Okay, okay. You guys got me. Maybe I do have a little crush on her.”
“A little crush? You threw me across the mat when you saw her watching you!”
“Fine. Okay. So maybe it’s a huge-ass crush that can be seen from outer space,” Ava groans. “Do you think she’s noticed?”
Camila is about to respond when Mary’s suddenly shushing them. “It’s Beatrice.”
Ava instantly reddens.
“Oh, h-hey Beatrice. Just h-hanging around with my ladies over here.”
“Oh. Your ladies?” Beatrice clarifies, tilting her head in a cute way that makes Ava lose her mind. Of course, Ava knows that she isn’t being cute on purpose. She’s just naturally cute which makes it all the more difficult.
“Y-yes, my girls. Right?” Ava asks, looking around but everyone else looks like they’re barely containing their laughter.
Thankfully, Camila speaks up. “Yes, Ava’s girls. Like Charlie’s Angels. Except we’re actually God’s girls. Ladies? Anyway, we were simply bonding, sister Beatrice. Would you like to join us?”
Beatrice smiles at them fondly. “Of course.” She’s about to sit beside Lilith when the other girl suddenly spreads her legs open, claiming all of the available space.
“I’m sorry sister, but my legs are exhausted from my sparring session with Ava. I need to open my legs to rest them. Perhaps you could sit beside Ava instead?”
“It’s not a problem, Lilith.”
Beatrice circles around them to claim the space beside Ava. It’s when she’s sitting down beside the girl that she notices her flushing. Without preamble, she stretches out her hand to hold Ava’s face.
“Are you feeling unwell, Ava? Your face is so red.”
Mary chortles in front of her before fixing her face into a more serious expression. “You know what, Ava? Beatrice is right. You do look a little red.”
“You also feel a little warm,” Lilith adds, nodding her head. Ava glares at them, willing them to stop their bullying lest Beatrice catches on.
“Would you like me to take you to your room, Ava?” Beatrice offers.
That’s the last thing that Ava remembers before she implodes, literally, as a burst of light appears from her back before getting sucked back into her and leaving her unconscious on the floor.
When Ava wakes up, it’s to the kind face of Mother Superion.
“What happened?” she asks, wiggling her fingers and toes to make sure that she can still feel them.
“You imploded, Ava.”
“I -what?”
“You imploded. Your light exploded inward.”
Ava rolls her eyes. “I know what ‘imploded’ means, Mother Superion. What I don’t understand is why I imploded.”
The older woman simply smirks, like she’s in on the secret.