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Sometimes it’s easier to start a story than it is to finish it.
Picture this, Ilsa thinks to herself as she walks through the streets of Venice.
Remembrance that lingers in the air like the leftover scent of a garden’s favourite summer. A love letter that’s been kissed, left forgotten inside a drawer. The weight of a stone left unturned. A half-finished cup of tea, gone cold minutes ago.
There’s so much to be said— so much to be mulled over carefully. There’s so much you can’t get back.
And it goes like this: you store it inside your mind’s eye until it gives you a headache; until you can’t stand to look at anything else anymore. Until you shake, and you shiver, and you tremble with it.
It’s funny how tension curls up inside every muscle, running over your hands until they’re shaking. No one ever talks about that part.
It’s always fingers reaching out through the haze, touching like it’s all they know how to do. And maybe it’s true.
Maybe it’s all they know how to do.
Touching. Taking. Is there any difference?
The night is surprisingly cold, with the darkened sky looming over the city like a water mirror. It's beautiful in its stillness, disturbed only by the golden bulbs of lanterns, and in turn giving Ilsa a chance at wandering through the deserted streets.
When she comes face-first with the Ponte dei Miracoli, the answer to her unspoken questions comes in the form of the Chiesa di Santa Maria dei Miracoli, standing tall and proud.
Ilsa smiles. Church of Saint Mary of Miracles.
Venice is shaky ground, still. She feels a knot in her stomach walking quietly through the streets, trying to become a shadow. She's always been good at it, but something about the night sky throws her off, leaves her knees weak; drags her down into the ground, and presses her face to the dirt.
The last time she felt this weightless, she was on a train, leading nowhere. The last time she walked these streets, she was a dead woman.
Today, as she pushes the doors to this place —this church— open, she remembers something she thought she'd forgotten long ago.
Churches aren't really her thing. But she can't deny the beauty of them. The dreamlike haze of a thousand candles lit, all in honour of someone's life. Someone's death.
A life, snuffed out, and preserved through the love of a believer, protected in a place made, above all, for worship.
That, she can understand.
Creaking, the doors open under her hands. It's like watching something come undone, melting, giving way, crumbling.
The room is lit aglow, alive with the flickering fire of candles. The orange hue is blinding, calling out to Ilsa's eyes, forcing her to linger.
The warmth is undeniable, as the fire does its ancient job as well as it did millennia ago. There's something true to it. Something loyal.
Though, it's empty. Not a soul sits in the pews, or kneels before the painting of Mother Mary holding her baby.
As empty as it is, Ilsa doesn't feel alone. If she was less skeptical, maybe she'd think it's, somehow, a sign of the people that have come here before, all leaving their troubles and prayers within the hands of their faith. Maybe, she'd think it's the sorrows making her company. The hopes. Taking shape, and transforming themselves into the people that created them, and spoke them out into the world as a means to abandon them.
She'd think it's the unwanted that chase her. The lonely, that make her company as she stands in a deserted church, painted in candlelight.
But it's not enough; not quite. A second before it happens, she feels it.
One second is all it takes.
A pair of strong arms are pulling her back by her neck, and suddenly all Ilsa can see is white.
The body behind her is solid; it's the first thing she can register. The figure of a woman, pressing Ilsa's back against her chest, and tucking her cheek against Ilsa's.
Satin, soft silk against her skin, and the cold, silver blade of a pocket knife at her throat. Cold.
From this angle, she can't see the owner of these hands. But she doesn't need to. She knows them blind, knows them through touch alone. She has their edges, their scars, memorised in a part of her mind no one else can occupy.
“My White Widow,” Ilsa says, attempting cordiality; attempting a dry, unsurprised sort of professionalism —and failing. Coming out too winded. Too affected— because she knows these hands.
I know these hands, she thinks, over and over, like a mantra. I know these hands. It's comfort, and reality, and hope. Pure, unadulterated hope. Dizzying.
She knows these exhales, controlled, and the scent of this wavy, blonde hair. “Alanna.” She says, overcome, because the relief floods through her whole body, and overtakes her senses. She's eager, though she won't ever admit it out loud.
And it's all because her stomach flutters, not at Alanna's knife to her throat, but at the touch of her fingers.
It's but a hesitant instant, before she's being let go of.
Ilsa's hand flies to her neck by instinct, softly rubbing at the skin. Whether it's soothing the previous threat, or the childish equivalent to touching one's lips after a kiss, she doesn't know.
“I didn't peg you for the religious type,” Ilsa sounds out, choked by the remnants of warmth from Alanna's quick hands still lingering against the skin of her neck.
Alanna chuckles. “Not religious,” she argues, amused in a gentle, almost ironic tone. Her voice reverberates through the empty space. A revelation. “Devoted to a fault.”
“To the church?”
Alanna pauses for a second. It seems like Ilsa has finally caught her off-guard.
“No. Not exactly,” she answers, dazed eyes dancing. Her smile is knowing. Ilsa had forgotten how well it suits her, lighting up her expression like sparks threatening to start a forest fire. “But a miracle or two couldn't hurt.”
“Oh,” Ilsa says. “I'm sure it couldn’t.”
Something strange peeks through Alanna's expression. There's the slightest furrow to her delicate brows, clear as crystal, and just as sharp.
“Were you following me?” She asks, surprisingly gentle. Ilsa wouldn't have expected it, if she weren't hearing it with her own ears.
She owes her nothing short of honesty, so she gives her a little mmhmm in affirmation.
Undeniably, something burrowed deep within her chest longs for Alanna to see through her sheer veneer of detachment. To understand that under all this cool, almost death-like tone of voice, lies a reserve of longing for Alanna's rare acts of soft-heartedness.
They haven't talked since the train, a few weeks ago, and yet she feels like they haven't left each other's side in years.
Because after all, being achingly hungry is one of the biggest failures and humiliations of Ilsa's life.
When she wanted to get out, it was the hunger that drove her. It was the pangs of want echoing in her stomach like strikes to a bell— a giant bell, making itself known through the streets of the town, of the ears and hearts of passers-by.
When she thought herself selfish, until the spasms hit. Until the hunger was violent.
The kind of hunger that makes you forget yourself; that forces you into madness, into betraying yourself in search of the satisfaction of the impulse. The eradication of the pain.
And now, she wants Alanna. She wants her, with a strange urge to follow after her, to trail the footsteps she's left in her wake. To sneak through the cracks, and make good on an offer she gave someone else a lifetime ago. To go home.
“Good,” Alanna says, like she can read her mind. Like she knows Ilsa's wild, frantic instinct pulls her towards Alanna's every-move. Gravitational, and helpless. “How perfect, isn't it? You've followed me all the way to the altar.”
“Now all that is missing is a ring.” Ilsa answers, amused.
“Seems like it. Though there are many alternatives.”
A pause. “Such as?”
At Ilsa's question, Alanna laughs that airy laugh of hers. Ilsa's breath quickens.
In response, she slowly unwinds the pale, cashmere scarf wrapped around her neck. Ilsa raises an eyebrow, and Alanna comes even closer, until they're practically chest to chest.
With a tenderness Ilsa hasn't been shown in years —or ever before, perhaps— Alanna grabs at her fingers, reaching out for her, and lifting her arm.
Immediately, Ilsa turns it, palm up. “May I?” she asks, glancing at Alanna's other hand still holding her pocket knife. She gracefully places it in Ilsa's hand.
She would be lying if she said warmth doesn't shoot up her wrist, all the way to her chest. It's like being burnt by sparklers, being blinded by the quick bursts of dancing flashes; except it's just the pearl-like gleam of Alanna's impossibly soft skin touching hers, the trust she places in Ilsa by handing her what is surely a dear object.
It's strangely intimate, the gift of it, while standing together in a church. The silence, like time has stopped just for them.
It's solemn. It's holy. Ritualistic, and crazy. It's the most romantic thing Ilsa's ever experienced.
Thank you, Ilsa tries her best to say with her eyes. She tries her best to say, with the light pursing of her lips; like her mouth longs to kiss her, but doesmt het know how to come closer.
Alanna's icy blue eyes whisper you're welcome. Her pale eyelashes flutter, a cat-like kiss back.
Ilsa looks away, glancing down at the sleeve of her blouse. It's blood red and pure satin, reflecting back the vivid dance of the fire around them in pools and ripples of wine-like colour. A sharp contrast to Alanna's white-as-snow scarf in her hands.
Nonetheless, Ilsa doesn't hesitate when she drives Alanna's knife through the fabric, listening to the threads pulling apart under the ruthless blade of metal. The rest, Alanna pulls apart for her, arm extended like an offering, until all that's left is the torn edges of a long, scarlet strip of fabric.
“Good?” Alanna asks, pink lips turned into a mischievous smile. She looks enchanting, like a sorceress of sorts, making a mess of Ilsa while standing on home ground.
“Good.” Ilsa answers.
Together, they tie the ends of Alanna's scarf and Ilsa's blouse. It looks like blood in the middle of a snowstorm. It looks like love.
Ilsa's eyes don't leave Alanna's face for a moment, as she focuses on returning Ilsa's arm to her desired position. They're standing, facing one another, one hand on their makeshift ribbon, the other hand holding to each other's wrist.
Intimate affair, this proclamation, Ilsa thinks. It's like a surrealist dream, thrown into a shifty reality, unsure if it can stand on its own two feet. Too good to be true; except it is.
“Will you keep following after me?” Alanna asks, almost hopeful. Her voice is slightly choked. Watery. Ilsa's never heard her like this before.
She feels almost blessed, that she's standing here, listening to this voice.
The unspoken question, the beating, bloody heart of it is do you take me?
“Yes.” She answers. And she means it. With every bone in her body. With every muscle. With every vein.
She's suddenly awfully grateful that everything she's ever done has led her here.
Even more surprisingly, she says so, marking every syllable. Speaking slowly, and tasting the truth on her tongue.
It's impossibly sweet.
Alanna just smiles wider.
“I may just love you,” she says, smirking. Ilsa takes it for the I adore you that it truly is.
Ilsa's fingers tighten the neat bow they've made together. “Enough to follow me?” she asks, already knowing the answer.
Alanna chuckles. Her hand, now tightly pressed against Ilsa's bare skin, squeezes at Ilsa's wrist. “Yes.”