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The first time Beatrice indulges her it’s with the simple act of not fleeing at her mere presence, of remaining calm and patient and there, even as she waltzes the line between thoughtless and insulting with her continuous jokes.
The second time is different, less tense, a bright little bubble of laughter from Beatrice’s mouth that sounds like acceptance. It’s a small drop of light in a sea of what has mostly been unyielding rejection, distrustful glances, whispered insults, women who stare at her back with their claws already extended. Hearing it, her jaw loosens and her shoulders relax. Seeing it, watching it spill from a pair of smiling lips and turn blank eyes to shimmers of crinkled gold, her heart opens up to reveal a long lost, bottomless hole.
The third time comes unexpectedly, in the form of a comforting press of silence and a scrap of information Beatrice bestows on her, an olive branch. Her head is so very heavy, has been since she’s become able to feel the weight of it, but she lifts it to listen. There’s always more. The hole in her heart feeds on that promise, finds sustenance in it for only a moment before it opens its hands and pleads again, insatiable.
(More, more, more. How much will Beatrice give her? How much can she take?)
It’s easy, then, to fall into the habit of reaching out for Beatrice whenever possible, of slinging her eyes in Beatrice’s direction after each and every joke, of leading her head directly into the crook of Beatrice’s neck whenever she needs comfort.
Ava’s a quick learner, especially in situations where she cares, and this is a task for which she lacks no enthusiasm. She figures out which jokes land (bad puns and lighthearted quips), which don’t (morbid, deadpan ones about her own death or paralysis), and the appropriate times to launch them. She learns how to pry information out of Beatrice, how to catch a tidbit between her fingers and pull until the thread has unraveled into a full-blown story. She maps the places where she can lay her hands without driving Beatrice to adopt the skitterish mannerisms of a startled animal—first her arms, then her hands, her palms, the calloused pads of her fingers.
In the Alps, that range of permitted touching only expands. Their home away from home stands as a barrier between them and the rest of the world, a wall to shield Beatrice from a usually ever-present audience. She pulls away less, allows her hands to linger more, lets Ava throw an arm around her after a late night shift at the bar or leaves her hand dangling for Ava to take as they explore a winding road.
The paths out there are endless, so unlike the congested streets of a city. Ava doesn’t really mind the city - in fact, she’s more than happy to slot herself into its gaps - but she would throw it all away for this, for the baby hairs that creep out of Beatrice’s tidy bun and the billowy shirts she wears to combat the heat, collar askew, skin everywhere.
Beatrice is normally so tightly wound, so strict in the way she holds herself, that Ava can only perk up at the chance to make a mess of her.
Sparring opens up this exact opportunity. The aches and pains she gains are entirely worth those few minutes where they tussle, grasping at each other in a frenetic burst of activity, their hands pulling at sweat-slick limbs until one of them ends up on the ground. Usually, it’s Ava, but sometimes it’s Beatrice, and in the wake of her victory, she’s allowed precious seconds to savor the feel of Beatrice beneath her, the jut and warmth of her hips. She’s always solid, always firm, and Ava always wants to test how that would hold up if she let herself rut into her, but she never does.
Instead, she swallows her words and asks for something else she wants, something that she knows she can get.
”Five minute break?”
Another observation about Beatrice: she yields easily to the pout of Ava’s lips and the widening of her eyes.
”Only five.” Beatrice warns, knowing from experience that Ava isn’t above napping in the middle of a forest. “Then, we get right back to it.”
”Whatever you say, boss.” Ava salutes her before dropping unceremoniously onto a patch of grass. As they lay quietly in the melody of their shared breaths and the susurration of the nearby river, she rolls over, examines Beatrice’s face. “You have freckles.”
”Thank you for informing me.”
”Smart ass.” She punctuates both words with a jab of her finger into Beatrice’s side.
She means to return her hand back to her own body, except now it’s there, hanging in the space that surrounds Beatrice’s body, and that fact propels her into a bright, diabolical idea.
”What are you doing?”
”Counting your freckles.” She whispers, fingers probing. “Stay still.”
Beatrice stays still.
The world holds its breath as Ava explores the mountains and peaks of Beatrice’s face, counting out the cinnamon brown flakes until she drifts, inevitably, to trace delicate features. She soaks Beatrice up the only way she knows how, with the tips of her fingers and the press of her starved nerve endings.
Beatrice is oddly compliant, leaning her cheek into the curve of Ava’s palm. Ava marvels at how well she fits there, how easily she seems to fill her hollow spaces. She wonders if angels shaped her body with this in mind, carving out a map for them to find each other in this life and the next.
Her finger dips lower, to where parted lips sit damp and waiting. The touch of tongue to skin brings a gasp out of both of them.
Their timer runs out, the ring of it appearing in the line of Beatrice’s tightening jaw.
”That’s five.”
Ava is slow to rise, slow to fight, slow to move. Her emotions are swollen and too big for her body to bare. How to tell Beatrice that her love for her is ever growing, inflating the space of her soul? How to tell her that she longs to learn her by more than just fingertips, but by teeth and tongue, as well? How to tell her that even the pour of the water against tile makes her ache, that she relives their small moments every night in the cloud of steam that Beatrice has left her? That just occupying the space where she was once naked drives her to slip a hand low to feel the wetness of her own adoration.
She’s beginning to think those are words that aren’t meant to be said at all, that they’re only meant to live in little pockets of time at night where Beatrice tiredly slumps against her, the slit of her mouth warm and unassuming on her throat.
Ava aches everywhere, all the time, not from being hit but from being beaten down, from the constant battering of her own heart against her rib cage.
Ache is not the word to use for what she feels, seeing Beatrice on the other side of the bar, huddled close with another woman, their smiles too light and bodies too close for the interaction to be anything other than flirtatious. Ache is not the word. This is more like madness. It occurs to her, then, watching a stranger’s hand land on the skin she’s memorized, that someone else might not have to try to unravel Beatrice at all. Someone else might get her right off the bat and in full.
She drinks that night, first with Hans but soon just with herself, until she’s properly plastered and slung over a steady shoulder, deposited into a bed that’s too small and too creaky and too familiar to do anything other than accept her in a sweet embrace.
”Do you love me, Bea?” Ava murmurs, over and over, like a joke, in a tone that’s easy to digest. “Do you love me?”
Beatrice closes her eyes. Sighs. She will not indulge her in this. “Let’s get you to bed, Ava.”
If she can only have Beatrice in bits and pieces, then she’ll take this: their cramped apartment, the bump of their hips behind the bar, the new café they try for brunch, all of the firsts Bea offers up to her. She will take what she can get, and that will be enough.
It has to be.
It would be enough for someone less selfish, but Ava has never been anything but greedy, and the line of enough runs farther from her all of the time. First, enough is twitching her middle finger up after months of practice, then enough is the burn of a run in her legs, and finally enough turns to some far away, unreachable goal, the same night Beatrice lets her get her drunk.
The bar is overstuffed with people, but Ava can only see Beatrice, unabashed, unashamed, possessing the kind of beauty the holy could only hope to grasp at.
Ava has never understood the need for silence in a church, but she learns, right there and then, that it’s not a voluntary choice, but a complete surrender of her body and mind. How easy it is to let all vital parts of her limbs fall to ruin, after years of willing them to work. Her words escape her, her mouth falls open on its own accord, and her sense of the world strips and narrows down to one woman before there’s - wind, icy and sharp against her clammy forehead, so mismatched from the claustrophobic heat inside the bar. Her world snaps and rights itself enough for her to register the steadying arm wrapped at her waist, the meandering path Beatrice is leading them down, the one that stretches to their apartment, to their home, to what could be the rest of their lives, if one of them was only braver.
As much as she wants it to be, this is not a quiet little departure to the Alps for the fun of it. This is meant to come to blows. This is obligation. This is finite. But, she still has to ask—
“Just your job?”
Beatrice grips her hand, lightly at first, but then - at the sight of something in Ava’s eyes that has tipped and overflowed - tighter, the pressure immense and anchoring.
”And my pleasure.”
And so, they clear out the apartment, sweep the dust from it along with their memories, pack their clothes, tuck their belongings away, and leave it alone, but not empty. Ava presses her lips once, reverent, to the doorway, and resolves to come back sometime at the end of it all.
Reality raps its harsh knuckles all too quickly against their door.
It takes Ava less than a week to die, again, this time betrayed by the thing that’s supposed to save her. The halo flickers, once, twice, and then goes out altogether, leaving her to plummet an innumerable amount of feet to the cold, unforgiving ground. She hears a shout of pure terror and spots a fleck of blurry black moving towards her - Beatrice, Beatrice, Beatrice - before the concrete smacks her.
Things are dark. Not for very long.
There’s some truth to the cliches: her life does flash before her eyes, but only one moment, a constant loop of Sister Frances standing over her with a stare that plunges her into an ocean she cannot feel. But only for a moment, only for a moment and then Bea’s voice comes, distant and underwater, raising her from beneath the surface. She can feel the split down her skull sewing itself back together at the gentle guide of Beatrice’s voice, the words lost but the melody all the same. It may be her friends who she fights and dies for, but in truth, it’s Beatrice who stitches her back to life.
Ava can hear Beatrice pleading now, can hear the rapid, desperate spit of words tumbling out of her lips, so unlike her usually controlled prayer. She can see Beatrice’s mouth forming around the words, and she wants to kiss her. She wants to kiss her and submit herself to the softness of this woman who probably has several knives hidden in her hair alone, who kills for a living but only has delicate touches reserved for her. But it’s too soon or too late (please don’t let it be too late), so instead Ava settles her head in the crook of Beatrice’s neck, savoring the skin that’s familiar and safe to touch.
She tries again that very same day, when Beatrice has mildly harassed her into a bed (not their bed, but one of the million Jillian seems to own), but she’s silenced with a gentle push onto the bed and a just rest, Ava that sounds too exhausted to fight. Beatrice ends up falling asleep first, despite it all, and Ava, who has always been selfish, lies awake to keep watch. Beatrice is tense, even in her sleep, eyes swiveling behind their lids, breathing not quite right, and Ava vows to stay conscious long enough to watch that furrow in her brows smooth out.
It’s still light out, barely halfway into the day, and yet Beatrice sleeps and sleeps and sleeps, more than she would allow herself to if she was conscious of it. Glad at the opportunity, Ava soaks up the lines of her face. They’re deeper now, more striking, the remnants of her frowns and frustrations carved clear into her skin. She’s beginning to wonder if Beatrice does love her, but has already tired of all the work that comes with it.
That would fit the pattern, wouldn’t it? Sister Frances, Lilith, her very own mother - Ava has been told, in a thousand different ways, just how discardable she is.
Always too much, always too little, never enough. The truth is, now, that her constant watch of Beatrice is no longer carefree. The truth is that her stares linger not only out of love, but a desperation to steal the details she can and take them with her. The truth is…
…she knows she’s going to fail.
It’s a solid feeling, as firm as the pillow propped against her neck. However all this unfolds, she’ll be the one who doesn’t make it. She feels a vague, odd kinship with Shannon, a connection that stretches across time and reason, that only makes sense in the grand scheme of warrior nuns and monsters.
She wonders if Shannon’s final days were hectic through and through or if she also fell into quiet pockets like this: midday naps, soft snores in the air, hands curling at her hips, hands slipping away, hands seeking out the contents of the kitchen cupboards. She finds Beatrice at the stove, bathed in glowy-blue fridge light, pouring over bits of crisped steak and rice.
It’s not a sight she’s used to. Beatrice runs a tight schedule: three square meals a day at all the appropriate times, rarely a snack in-between, unless Ava can convince her to indulge in gelato.
“I didn’t know you liked steak.”
Beatrice shrugs, a barely visible motion beneath the fabric of her silky sleep shirt. Ava marvels at the seemingly insignificant movement and the detail that comes with it, wondering just how much of Beatrice there’s still left to know. How much will she miss?
Ava searches blindly for some forks and sits once she finds two, taking the seat closest to Beatrice despite her other options. Beatrice wordlessly pushes the food towards her, their knees knocking as they share a plate. The hot oil and salt on Ava’s tongue makes her feel as if she’s miles from here.
”Don’t tell Jillian, but I think I liked our kitchen better.” She could almost be there right now, with the company and the blend of their moving forks - Bea slow and precise, Ava shoveling in all she can get, yet never venturing too far into Beatrice’s portion.
”Our kitchen was a mess. You chipped the counter on the very first day, Ava.”
”Only because you told me I needed to practice phasing in close quarters.”
”Yes, but not in our kitchen.”
”You can’t hold that over my head anymore.” Ava points her fork at her. “I made up for it, remember? With the—“
”—with the gelato, I know.” Beatrice finishes for her, and the room hums at the pleasure of memory. She ducks her head after a moment, nursing the kind of private smile that could only exist in the dead of night. “I suppose I did like our kitchen better.”
The knot in Ava’s chest pulls so loose that all she’s made of is thread. It’s easy, then, with not a soul in sight but Beatrice, to let herself fantasize.
Easier still, when she finds Beatrice out on the balcony, shrouded in beautiful sunlight but no doubt more absorbed by her thoughts. Her lips are turned down, sagged into that frown Ava longs to sweep away with her mouth. She’s so tired, of fighting, of failing, of seeing the agony on Beatrice’s face as the world boxes them in. So, it’s easy, to ask Beatrice to run away with her. She tries to be casual about it, but the words spill out in stop and starts, revealing the emotion that has sat in her throat for months, since she first heard Beatrice use the word our.
Beatrice says no, and it stings less than she expects it to. It doesn’t sting because she knows Beatrice by now, knows her rejection is based more on duty and honor than anything else. And she knows herself, too, well enough to understand that it’s not the Alps she will miss, and if she dies that apartment will not be the home her bones reach out to. Every time, it will be Beatrice.
Dear Beatrice, dear Beatrice, dear Beatrice… Ava tries to put this sentiment on paper, but there are no words, no scripture that could properly convey the depth of her emotions.
(Dear Beatrice, you know I suck at letters and you know I suck more at saying the right thing. Please don’t hate me…)
(Dear Beatrice, this letter feels silly to write when you’re right there in the other room. I feel silly. I could have told you I loved you a hundred times by now. I could tell you now…)
(Dear Beatrice, you would think that when the halo goes out, I would stop feeling everything, but that’s not true. Not really. You can’t move or anything, but the memory of the feeling is there. Phantom motion, maybe? Like when we went swimming and you said you could still feel the waves after.
Do you remember that time I got drunk and tried to phase through the door? I should’ve eaten shit but you caught me. The alcohol really fucked me up and I was out of it for so long that I started to think I was done for. Death by margarita mix. Sorry, not funny, no death jokes. The point is, I could feel your hands and I could feel your arms, but they were drifting away, and feeling them leave me only made me want to stay put. That’s why I didn’t say I love you. I know that must not make much sense. I’m sorry. But that’s my only explanation.
I wanted to live in it forever.)
(Dear Beatrice, I love you. I’m so sorry.)
It’s Beatrice in the beginning and it’s Beatrice in the end, staring at her as they stand above floorboards and ceilings and all of the things remaining between Ava and death.
Beatrice comes at her with the crown of thorns and a spin move that Ava has long since learned to counter.
For a split second, she has Beatrice in her grasp, not yet kissing but close enough to express the intent, and she watches as Beatrice’s eyes grope helplessly over her adoration, uncomprehending. She pushes her love into Beatrice with her mouth, letting the hollow inside of her fill and flood and spill all over their bodies in leaking eyes and the unyielding devotion of two interwoven lips.
And then, finally, she lets herself sink.