Chapter Text
She feels a push and then is pulled into a black hole, of sorts.
The last thing she sees, is her Sister Warrior’s pained face, trying to pull it together for her.
Be free, Beatrice had told her.
I love you, Ava had said back.
And then, the push. A swooshing sound.
I love you. Is what Beatrice said back to her, she thinks.
At least that’s what Ava wants her last thought to be, before she dies.
Truth to be told, she doesn’t think she will make this, she doesn’t think she will survive by being sucked into the realm, even though it had worked for Michael before. Kind of.
Ava resurrects for the second time in her life and is immediately hit by a harsh, antiseptic white. The room is a perfect cube, every surface, wall, ceiling, floor, seamless and gleaming under a light that has no visible source. It is a light that doesn’t cast shadows, leaving nowhere for her eyes to rest. The air smells of nothing, not clean, not stale, just a complete and utter absence of scent. The only sound is the high, persistent whine of the Halo on her back and a deeper, sub-auditory hum that seems to vibrate in her teeth rather than be heard. It is a place that feels less like a room and more like the inside of a sterilised instrument case, designed to hold something in perfect, lonely stasis.
Just then her mind gets flooded with the images.
Adriel.
Michael’s impaled body.
The shards of Divinium boring into her.
Ava looks down and finds that the source of the light is in fact the Divinium in her body. She is glowing. Not only that, she hears this unfamiliar humming sound. A tinnitus. Constant and kind of nerve-wrecking. After a while the halo bearer realises it’s the emptiness of the place. This is what absolutely nothing sounds like. Panic rises in her and she closes her eyes again. The nothingness engulfs Ava. The harsh light becomes darkness and she tries to picture something, anything that will shift her mind away from the panicked state she finds herself in. To no avail.
She dies again.
Or at least, that’s what she thinks.
*
Camila is the first to reach Beatrice in the basement of Adriel’s Cathedral. At first, her gaze shifts to the floor, it looks like absolute carnage, the smell of burnt flesh is sour and sweet at the same time. She can’t pay that any mind though, when she sees her friend, her sister, sitting still by the once humming arc. Its blue-ish portal gone, now posing as an artefact. At this point she already can deduct what has happened, by what little information Yasmine could provide her and by how devastated Beatrice looks.
The nun says nothing, when she draws closer, just puts her hand on her sister’s shoulder, who looks up at the gesture. She asks no questions, when Beatrice sobs and breaks down, taking Camila’s left hand into her right.
That night Beatrice lies awake in Ava’s room, or what Dr. Salvius had offered to the Warrior Nun in terms of sleeping arrangements. Beatrice cannot wrap her head around what had happened. She is a highly logical being, this means she has to pinpoint the exact moment, when everything went wrong. The Sister Warrior is almost certain that Ava’s death is her fault. The more she tries to reconstruct their last days together, the more her fears solidify.
Beatrice hears Ava in her head now.
She can see her pleading face, not even a week ago. “If I left, would you come with me…?”, was directed at her with so much hope, while Ava was inching closer, “We could go back to the alps. To the bar. Hans and the regulars. You could teach me how to dance. I could teach you how to drink.”, how ridiculous, Beatrice had thought then, trying to mask her pain. The pain of knowing Camila was going to be right about that one thing. Loving the Warrior Nun is what made it so very hard. They never last.
The nun wishes, she could turn back time. She would choose the alps. With Hans and the regulars and the picturesque backdrop. Getting to be just Ava and Beatrice. Without the impending doom, of course.
“Ava, yes, I will come with you. I would do anything for you to ask me again.”
Nobody answers.
Beatrice stares into the ceiling, into emptiness. A singular tear makes its way from the corner of her eye onto Ava’s pillow.
At some point she falls asleep, her chest heavy, her eyes dry and her mind on overdrive.