Chapter Text
"My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit;
a broken and contrite heart"Psalm 51:17
In the immense, overwhelming silence after the Arc shuts down and Lilith portals away, Beatrice simply sits and lets the emptiness consume her. The pain and heartache hover just beyond her, behind a thin veil of compartmentalisation that feels like the only thing keeping her breathing right now. The part of her brain that has long served her self-preservation reminds her that she is still a Sister Warrior in the midst of a battle, but for now, just for a moment, all fight has left her.
She is lost instead in the memories of the last - God, has it only been 20 minutes since Ava stepped around the corner to an empty pedestal? Since Bea's gut twisted before the Warrior Nun ever turned to face her, realising that this, this was what she had been dreading since her conversation with Mother Superion. This was the secret Ava had been hiding, the plan she'd been so determined to keep from Bea, the stupid, noble, self-sacrifice that has arced fear through Beatrice's subconscious every day since Yasmine shared the story of Areala's defeat of Adriel.
She is lost in the lasts - the last words Ava said to her, their last touch, the last time she saw her face before the Arc hummed and swelled and swallowed half her heart. Beatrice thinks it will be the lasts that haunt her; she can't imagine, yet, how much worse the firsts will be.
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The first time she wakes in a world without Ava she is lying curled on the bed in her room, the scent of the other woman still strong on the pillows under her head. She wants to cry, feels the hurt swell within her to a point where she feels she must cry or it will crack her open from the inside, but her eyes remain dry. Instead she surveys the room - a temporary home for them yet still so full of the other woman's presence that Beatrice half expects her to walk through the curtained door at any moment.
She won't, and that realisation swallows her. She will never again see Ava walk into a room, never watch her kick her boots off and collapse onto the bed after a long day at the bar or see her giddy and already half-laughing as she walks through the door with an anecdote she's waited all day to share.
She will never see Ava again and as the enormity of that consumes her the tears still won't come and so she lies in the bed of the woman she loves and silently breaks.
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The first time someone says Ava's name it is later that night, when Sister Dora suggests they pray for her and Beatrice wants to scream. She masters herself though and nods, stiff-necked, closing her eyes and trying to open a heart so battered it can barely crack ajar. She prays fervently, directionlessly, desperately. She prays for Ava, and for herself, and for both of them in a tangle of want and hope and need so tightly bound she wonders how it was that she ever viewed them as something separate. When were her soul and Ava's ever not entwined?
Even as she had fought to hide it, to deny it to herself, her love for Ava had not been a sudden realisation - no great awakening or moment of epiphany, just a quiet "oh, here she is" in a corner of her soul somehow yet unmarred by her parents, her church, her shame.
It almost makes it worse that she still feels the love as strongly as the loss.
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The first time someone refers to Ava in the past tense it is Beatrice herself and she gasps a sob around the grief and betrayal curdling in her throat. Camila tears up and wordlessly grasps her hands, echoes of their previous conversation ringing loud in Beatrice's memory.
"They're never yours."
She's not so sure about that.
"They never last."
She sobs harder.
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When she leaves the OCS it is the first time she has never had a plan in her life and it scares her more than she can acknowledge. She feels alone, weak and unprepared, and she reaches inward desperately for some of Ava's strength as she packs her bag and makes her way to the lobby. She casts her mind back to the memory of their kiss, a memory she only handles occasionally, with a white-gloved reverence for fear of wearing it away, and to the conversation that came before it.
"I'm doing this so you can live your life. So live it, okay?"
Beatrice has been telling herself that that is why she's leaving - to respect Ava's wishes, to honour her sacrifice. She knows in her heart though that it's not the whole truth.
Ava would not have wanted her to live her life for Ava's sake, but for her own. She was the first person in Bea's life to treat her as something more than a tool - useful and worthwhile, yes, but still utilitarian. Ava saw her in ways Beatrice hadn't even known she could be seen and it is this, this freedom, this power, this permission to walk away without a plan or a safety net, it is this that drives her forward and draws a smile to her face as she nods her goodbyes.
It is not the memory of their last conversations that accompanies her through the gates, but of the first time that anyone ever told her
"You don't have to be so perfect all the time."
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For the first of Ava's birthdays since she's been gone Beatrice goes to the bar nearest to her hostel in Antwerp and for the first time gets properly, completely, and entirely drunk. She dances until the room spins dangerously long after she has stilled, then holds herself up against the bar downing lemon drops with the ghost of laughter in her ear until the bartender cuts her off.
She makes her way unsteadily back to her room and wakes in the morning with her first hangover. The nausea and guilt feel an appropriate Catholic punishment for her overindulgence and the only thing that quells her roiling mind is the thought that Ava might be proud of her for that.
The only thing that quells her stomach turns out to be bacon, and she thinks Ava might be proud of that too.
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The first time a girl kisses her after Ava, it is an Australian backpacker in a dimly-lit corner of a gay bar in Berlin. The blonde woman bought her a drink and has very obviously been flirting with her since, and Bea hasn't actively encouraged her but she hasn't drawn a boundary either. When she leans in Bea closes her eyes and lets her. It's pleasant - the woman's lipstick pressing against her mouth, the slightly sweet taste of the cocktails they've been drinking. It's entirely absent the taste of salt and the ratchet of love and fear and loss in her gut and she is grateful for that, for the dissonance between the two, and for the fact that when she places her hand on the blonde's shoulder and separates from her there is no emotion in the other woman's eyes beyond lust.
She shakes her head, willing the prickling tears in the corner of her eyes not to fall.
"I'm sorry."
The other woman just quirks a disappointed half-smile, "No worries - you got somebody else?"
The tears do fall then, meeting the laugh that springs from her. She rolls her eyes upwards blinking back those tears with the memory of Ava's fingers wiping them from her face in a church basement and exhales slowly.
"I do."
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The first anniversary of the day Ava crossed to the other side Bea goes to a cemetery in Vienna and envies the mourners who have a grave to visit.
Ava has been gone a year and she doesn't know if she resents Jillian more for telling her about Lilith's 7.8 seconds on the other side and the 107 minutes of resulting footage, or her own brain for having done the maths in spite of herself. A little over 823 years. Although Michael was gone for 3 months and the equivalent of 15 years so if she's lucky, and assuming of course that Ava actually survived, then in the best-case scenario Ava has only had 60 years worth or so of a life without her.
If Ava had survived then all of their time together, all of their life together would be nothing more to her than a distant memory, a youthful fling.
If Ava had survived, why hadn't she come back?
She has been angry so often since that day, but this is the first time she lets herself be angry at Ava. She kneels by a stranger's headstone and glares at the imagery of cherubic angels guarding someone's beloved daughter and this time doesn't bite back the resentment that she wasn't reason enough for Ava to live.
She knows it's unfair, and not that simple, and that their world would be a subjugated dictatorship if they hadn't stopped Adriel. But she also knows in the selfish grieving part of her soul that Ava left her behind and she is heartsick at that thought, she is broken and hurting, and yes she is angry.
It is only when she acknowledges this fact that, for the first time, she can also forgive.
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The first time she kisses a girl after Ava, the world doesn't end. She feels like maybe it should, that somehow this act will destroy whatever sense of normalcy she has attained in the intervening years and yet the sky over her head remains blue and clear, the grass under her feet stays solid, and the woman whose jaw she caresses smiles at her like it's easy and Beatrice thinks maybe it could be.
She thinks that maybe, with time, she can move through grief, and loss, and hurt, and fear, and finally live that life that Ava could see she deserved but Beatrice herself had yet to realise.
She thinks, for the first time, that maybe this loss is something she can get over.
She thinks that maybe she will be okay, that maybe she can carve a life well-lived out of a love hard-lost and still be happy.
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When she sees Ava again, and her heart beats for the first time in four years, she knows she was wrong.