Archive of Our Own ^beta

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.

Chapter Text

After a long while of nothingness, there’s pain. 

Ava feels the pain of the car accident. How the seatbelt dug itself into her right shoulder and sliced her open there. How the airbag broke her nose. How it felt to have her spine split in half. How Sister Frances’ right hand struck against her left cheek, the first time Ava had opened her mouth to oppose something the nun had suggested. She hadn’t been able to feel anything below her upper torso, so there was not much other physical pain that she remembers from her time in the orphanage. 

Then Ava is reminded of her first resurrection. The violent shaking. The feeling of using her legs -for what felt like- the first time. It had been more than a decade, after all. The halo bearer remembers how underdeveloped her muscle tissue had been. And how it tingled, every movement stung and it was such a delicious pain. In retrospect she’d always thought the Halo had grown her muscle tissue and connected nerve endings where there had been none. Or something. Ava, although not illiterate, had little general knowledge. All her information on life itself stemmed from the TV in the orphanage. How was she supposed to know how those things worked?

Right now her mind is reeling from feeling all the pain of her life (albeit, a short lived one, or two) at once. She feels like falling; and then the crack. The crack of a broken femur, reverberating through her whole body. Dust collecting at her nostrils. “Bitch!”, directed at Mary. The pain of getting beaten up by a seasoned fighter. Lilith’s snarl. The second and third time her nose breaks. Ava finds then that being reminded of pain is not helping her situation. So it stops. She stops feeling it altogether. The Halo whirrs again. Slowly, the sound subsides and turns into a low hum.

Here comes the nothingness again.

Ava is not sure how long it goes on. Michael had said something to her about the time going a bit different in the other realm. If she has to guess, she feels like it's going slower. Seeing, how Michael had developed into a young man in a matter of months, she's glad time's stretching. Either way, she can’t really afford to be stuck in this realm for longer than necessary. Then again, Ava is not even sure that this is the realm he was caged in. The Warrior Nun isn’t sure, if there is a way back from this. She starts counting. When she gets to 567, she stops. Ava can’t tell how much time really has passed, even though she knows it can’t have been more than ten minutes. It feels like forever, but nothing at once.

Again, the nothingness.

At some point she realises that she can control certain things in this… consciousness, in this meticulously crafted prison. Ava was able to actively will the pain to subside. She opens her eyes again. The blinding light and white noise overwhelm her and she decides that it doesn’t bother her. 

And it works. What is left is the slow and steady hum of the Halo. That is actively trying to heal her.

Ava then tries to move her body. She tries to sit up, the first try goes awry. When she wills her body to comply for the seventh time, she finds herself in a seated position. She can now make up shapes in the room she’s in. It looks very medicinal. There is not much furniture, the walls are white with no windows. Similar to a prison cell, she thinks. If she hadn’t just been sucked through dimensions, she wouldn’t have known that this wasn’t earth. Or was it? 

Her mind shifts to the Divinium that was supposedly still in her. Ava glances down to find… open wounds that look like they were in the process of healing but sans the holy metal. Her battle uniform had seen better days, that was for sure, there were three big, gaping holes that almost revealed all of her abdomen, left rib cage and her left upper thigh, but she couldn’t see the Divinium that had impaled her before the inter-dimensional travel. Maybe someone had removed them during her mindless state? She cannot find another word to describe it. Ava ponders, and decides that she is going insane. The conversation with herself is making her lose her mind.

She drifts into nothingness once more.

*

Three days after Ava had turned over through the portal, Beatrice starts to open up to Camila. She relives almost every conversation (sometimes, altered) she's had with Ava, with Camila having to sometimes squeeze her hand in a gentle way, to signify sympathy. She was aching with the way Beatrice was blaming herself.

“She seemed so different after the Crown of Thorns- we should have noticed- I should have noticed.”

“Beatrice, what Ava did or didn’t do, what drove her- all of that is of no importance. It’s not your fault. She chose to go this path on her own and there is nothing you could have said that would have changed it.”

“I’m not so sure of that.”

Camila tries again, “Ava never would have sacrificed the world. She chose to save it the only way she knew how to.”

*

Ava walks through an endless hallway, the monotonous white noise a constant companion. Just as the sameness threatens to swallow her whole, something shifts in her peripheral vision. A door. It stands utterly alien in its normality. A standard, navy metal door with a rectangular window set at eye level, like something from a hospital or a laboratory. 

It is the only break in the seamless, grey expanse of the wall. She approaches, her steps silent on the featureless floor. Peering through the glass, her breath catches.

The sight of what she sees, makes her heart skip a beat. The Halo on her back glows furiously.

*

“Mother… I seek laicisation.”, Beatrice states, her voice unwavering, a stark contrast to what is going on in her soul.

The older woman is stunned, she nods to the chair in front of her and silently orders the Sister Warrior to sit.

“And what made you seek that? Have you lost faith, my child?”

Beatrice draws in a deep breath. Faith is my business, she had said just a few months ago. And she used to believe in that so fiercely. Her world view shifted, when the once thought angel Adriel turned out to be the devil, and when she had to watch Ava pass through a portal without knowing if she’d ever return. How could she still have faith in anything?

“With Ava-”, she corrects herself, “With the halo bearer gone and no cause to fight for, I do not see myself in the OCS anymore. I have given my all to the mission. I have poured blood, sweat and tears into my work to train and protect the Warrior Nun, and now she’s- she’s gone and I feel like I failed all of you. You entrusted me with keeping Ava safe and I failed. I can no longer offer obedience.”, Beatrice sheds tears, but they are quickly wiped away by the back of her left hand, in a swift and elegant gesture. 

Mother Superion closes her eyes for a moment, “Sister Beatrice. I would entrust you with anything again, even now, especially now. You have done everything right. Ava’s decision to give her life for us is the ultimate proof. If Ava hadn’t spent her last months with you, she might not have had a strong enough reason to follow through. She loved you. She loved all of us so strongly, because of what you taught her about the order and the cause. You might be the reason the world lives.”

While the older nun only means to comfort Beatrice, she unknowingly digs the knife deeper. If Ava hadn’t fallen in love with her, she might not have sacrificed herself. But then the younger nun rethinks it. It wouldn’t be fair to Ava, to say she only saved humanity to save Beatrice (that would diminish her character development). And also, maybe that is a too heavy burden to bear, the Sister Warrior concludes. She already blames herself enough as it is. 

Just then she realises that she will not leave the convent with only the half truth about her parting. This, she thinks, is for Ava.

“I was in love with her.”

Beatrice doesn’t know what she expects to hear. She definitely doesn’t expect the faint smirk on Mother Superion’s face. 

“Did anything happen?”, is what the older woman asks, her mien a bit more stern now.

Beatrice swallows. She says nothing, just casts her eyes downward. 

“Sister Beatrice, did you break your vows? By say… Giving into urges.”, Beatrice squirms a bit at the implication. She doesn’t know what exactly Mother Superion suspects.

And it is a technicality, really. She hadn’t kissed Ava. Ava had kissed her, first. Had told her she loved her, first.

“No.”

Beatrice omits the fact that she had reciprocated. 

Interestingly she doesn’t feel guilty for the white lie. Beatrice from a few months ago might have had different feelings about this situation. Mother Superion blinks. Clearly she wants to say something, words she decides against, when she opens a drawer and pulls out a form.

“Because of the situation at the Vatican and the Papal Interregnum, I’m not sure, we can go forth with granting you laity the traditional way. However, if you wish to be released from your duties right away, you may do so on your own. Although, I must say, I do not wish to see you go. I had hoped for you to take over, once my time has come, to step down.”

“I can wait for the Vatican to sort themselves out. While I do intend to revoke my vows concerning poverty, chastity and obedience, I will fight by your side, should the holy war that Lilith mentioned, come. And as for the sentiment… I truthfully never saw myself in that position. However, Camila would be a really good leader, if you were to prepare her for that path.”

Mother Superion nods again. Her eyes now glazed over. This makes Beatrice hold back her own tears. She doesn’t want to break down now. The younger woman stands abruptly, trying to excuse herself, when Suzanne gets up as well and rounds the table with the form in her hand and something else she produces from the still open drawer to her right. 

Beatrice’s eyes widen, when she realises what is being handed to her.

*

The room Ava peers in now is a perfect, chilling echo of the one she first woke in. The same blinding, shadowless light. The same seamless, white walls and floor, so clean they seem to reject the very concept of dirt. The air that sighs out when she pushes the door open is temperature-controlled and carries the faint, antiseptic scent of filtered nothingness.

In the centre of the room stands a single, stark piece of furniture: a high, padded examination table, upholstered in pristine white vinyl. And standing beside it, with her perfect posture, is Beatrice.

But the setting makes her seem less like a person and more like a display. She is dressed in her habit, although it is different, it’s neutral-toned, her hair pulled back in a severe, flawless knot.

She looks like a specimen, or a tool, waiting in a storage room. The clinical perfection of the room leeches all the warmth and life from her familiar form, leaving behind only a sterile replica.

Ava doesn’t have it in her to question anything. In that moment it doesn’t even dawn on her what it means to have Beatrice in this realm with her. Any questions could wait.

She bursts into the room with urgency.

“Bea…”, it’s barely above a whisper.

Beatrice, almost unmoving, looks at her.

Ava crosses the room they are in, barely being able to contain her excitement, and throws herself onto the other woman in a bone crushing hug. 

“I thought, I’d never see you again…”, she breathes. And it feels like she is breathing for the first time. This is what a true resurrection feels like. 

When nothing comes back, she draws back to match her gaze with the Sister Warrior’s. A weird feeling creeps up, and she is not sure what to expect next, but then Beatrice smiles back and she forgets it right away.

“I’m pleased to observe that your healing process appears to be proceeding efficiently.”

A sigh of relief washes over Ava, when she goes in for another hug, and then seemingly never lets go. She just then realises that she hasn’t had a human contact like that in what seems like ages. Beatrice melts against her and holds her, but she doesn’t say anything. Ava doesn’t know what she’d expected, but she locks away any doubts. It doesn’t dawn on her that Beatrice shouldn’t be in this realm. It’s like something tells her that it’s normal. Something wants her to feel safe here, with Beatrice. 

And what if she’s going insane? This insanity could go on forever, as long as she has Beatrice by her side. I will be fine, she thinks. Just then she accepts the fact that she will not return to earth. Ava is determined that she is dead and that this realm was heaven. 

The Sister Warrior distances herself from her, ordering her to sit down, onto the examination table. Ava does as told, even though she has a strange feeling about this. Was this really heaven? Was she imagining all of this? She gets shaken out of that quickly, when Beatrice’s hands find her shoulders. Suddenly the nun is way closer than where she was moments ago. Her slender fingers working away in a swift motion and then-

Beatrice tugs at the zipper of the armour, seemingly wanting to part the garment- not that there was that much else to reveal, but Ava was still clothed modestly enough.

The Warrior Nun halts her, with her own hands on top of Beatrice’s, carefully looking away, almost shy. She cringes at herself.

“I need to see your injuries.”, the Sister Warrior explains.

“Bea… I’m not wearing anything underneath.”, it’s barely above a whisper.

Confusion written on her face, Beatrice draws her brows together. Apparently not understanding, why that would be a problem. And Ava is still just so happy to see a familiar face, to see her face, that she doesn’t deem it completely out of character, and in the context of those two, very inappropriate. She vaguely registers the familiar hum of the Halo fade out.

Beatrice licks her lips, Ava glances down to that offending movement, immediately snapping her eyes back up. And then, when the other woman doesn’t really stop, Ava’s gaze flickers down to her mouth more than once. Something about that movement just does it for Ava. 

She thinks of the kiss. 

And then it dawns on her that she has kissed Beatrice. With her being busy, walking into a death trap with Michael, she had close to no time to process that they had kissed. It was not her intention after all, she just wanted to tell Beatrice that she was planning to lay down her life for her. A big romantic gesture. And then she stepped in closer and the nun hadn’t backtracked, not like the times before, when they got too close. Not even, when Ava gave her that split second to reject her advance, after she had successfully prevented Beatrice from using the Crown of Thorns on her, to stop her- no, the nun actually had drawn her in for another kiss. 

The mental image gets interrupted by a sound. Beatrice clears her throat. And she does it again. The meticulous wetting of her lips. 

Ava mirrors her. Somehow in her mind she thinks she can get the nun to break her vows for her again. She knows in her bones that it's not her Beatrice, but something doesn't let her know it. Her staring is interrupted by said nun speaking.

“You’re in love with her.”

Now it’s Ava’s turn to be confused.

*

It is a yellowish envelope with a loopy handwriting, very similar to a child’s. A handwriting Beatrice had started to adore, because she had taught Ava how to properly write in Switzerland. Years in the orphanage without being able to use her fine motor skills made it impossible for Ava to have mastered this simple skill. She could read, thankfully Sister Gertrude at the orphanage would sit with her and further her literacy, but writing itself had been relatively novel to her. 

Dear Beatrice,

When you read this, I’m most likely gone. I wish, I didn’t have to write this letter and that circumstances were different. I also wish, I was better at writing poetic letters in midst of impending doom and lurking Sister Warriors.

Please rest assured, that whatever happens- all of this was worth knowing you. The last few months of our life together in the alps made me experience more humanity than the 19 years I’ve lived before. 

I got to call you my best friend. Next to my mother, who I have limited memories of, you’re the most important person of my life. A person, I would entrust my life with. Bea, if the roles were reversed, I’m sure you’d find some genius loophole, but time is running out for me.

Fuck, I hate this. (Language, I know. But I’m allowed to curse, I’m going to die soon.)

Beatrice gasps at this and realises that she is crying. She pauses for a couple of minutes, before she is able to continue.

I’m not sure, how brave I will be when it comes to say good bye (ha, brave enough to die, but not brave enough to talk about feelings). 

I’ve fallen in love with you. I love you.

I cannot tell you, exactly when it happened. Maybe it started, when you looked like I was magic, when I crossed the 20ft stone wall in Dr. Salvius’ lab and maybe the feeling developed during our time in Switzerland. I just know that it happened, and I’ve been keeping it a secret for some time now.

I just thought, we’d have more time to explore this. I thought that we’d be able to talk about what developed between us after Adriel. This saddens me a lot. I think (assuming, you’d not break your vows for me- I would have never asked that of you), it would make for a hot workplace pining. Of course this would have to mean that you share these feelings with me. 

The thing is, it is incredibly selfish of me to say it. For many reasons. One being the fact that you’re a nun and have sworn to withhold yourself from certain aspects of your life, another would be the fact that it is incredibly hard for me to say, because I’ve never said it to anyone else before and the most important reason: I will not be able to offer you anything, now that you know. 

Even if the first reason was not reason enough, I will have died, when you read this. And I am aware, how selfish this is of me. To lay this upon you, to tell you and to leave you. I’m truly sorry.

There is only one more thing to say: Please, Beatrice, do live your life to the fullest. Do it for me. Experience everything. I will be in the wind and in the sun and in your laughter and your tears. Do not mourn me (okay, you're allowed to, a little), but I don't want you to beat yourself up about this. We knew, this was inevitable, you know that this had to happen.

In the next,
Ava

p.s.: I sincerely hope that you’re not a nun in the next.

At the end of the letter Beatrice breaks down completely, not being able to control herself. She doesn’t even realise it, when Yasmine and Camila join her in her room to hold her until she falls asleep. They never read the letter. And Beatrice is endlessly grateful that they never bring this up afterwards.

*

Ava groggily opens her eyes. She’s in the room, where she met Beatrice again. It’s a bit different though this time around. There are windows, with blinds that shield natural light from coming in. Just now she wonders, where light is actually being emitted from. She doesn’t quite recall what happened before she woke up in this room. The Warrior Nun takes in her surroundings, there is absolutely nothing in there now, except for the examining table, where she is currently situated on and the two ominous windows. 

Wait, and of course, Beatrice.

Her head snaps to the Sister Warrior, who looks at her in a calculating way.

Ava knows not to react too enthusiastically. She doesn’t remember why exactly though. The Halo is still.

“You’re awake.”, Beatrice says and walks over to her. She’s wearing a habit, but her hair is let lose. Ava cannot remember the last time she saw Beatrice like this. At Jillian’s she had always kind of veiled herself, or worn her hair in a tight bun, because practicality and faith, she guesses. 

“Your hair.”

Beatrice ignores the comment and draws impossibly closer. She is inches away from Ava’s face and catches the Warrior Nun looking at her lips (again). 

But then the craziest thing happens: the nun connects their lips, almost as if to test something, and it feels mechanical at first, because… Because Ava is not prepared, but then she matches Beatrice’s eagerness. She doesn’t catch the absurdity of this situation. She loses herself in the feeling. The butterflies never come though, but the human(ish) contact feels so good, Ava doesn't think she has felt this good, since being in this sterile prison. She briefly registers the low fizz emitted by the Halo, but ignores it. Her hands are holding Beatrice in place by intertwining behind her neck, feeling soft hair, partly falling around their faces like a curtain. Beatrice has hers steadily on Ava’s thighs, and then moves them to her torso, and the motion makes Ava jump away. 

A sharp, electric jolt of pain lances through Ava’s side, so sudden and intense it steals her breath. The Halo on her back gives a weak, sputtering whine in response.

She looks down, her gaze drawn to the source. The angry, lacerated skin where the Divinium shards had pierced her is still there, a remnant of her sacrifice. But the metal itself is gone. The observation is sidelined by a more immediate, bewildering detail: she is dressed only in her underwear, a simple, functional sports bra and shorts she has never seen before. 

“Compliance is necessary to facilitate the healing process.” the being wearing Beatrice’s face states. Its voice is a placid, gentle monotone, devoid of the subtle undercurrents of worry that would colour the real Beatrice’s words. The command is so reasonable, so delivered with an air of absolute certainty, that Ava’s instinct to question it evaporates. She simply nods, the strange kiss already fading from her priority list. Something is fundamentally off in the cadence, in the hollow warmth of Beatrice's eyes, but the sheer relief of not being alone is a more powerful drug than reason. This is heaven, she convinces herself, and my mind gave me a Beatrice without all her pain. A version that’s finally free. The thought is immediately followed by a pang of guilt. Is this all she will remember?

The replica turns, retrieving a basin of a viscous, iridescent substance. Her movements are not just efficient, they are flawlessly economical. There is no wasted motion, no hesitation. Each gesture is precise, calculated, and executed with a sterile perfection that is deeply unnerving. Beatrice dips her fingers into the ointment and begins to apply it to Ava’s wounds.

The touch is where the illusion is most cruel. The fingers are Beatrice’s -the same slender shape- the same calluses from years of training. The pressure is expert, applying the cool gel in smooth, perfect circles that somehow manage to be both thorough and completely impersonal. It is the touch of a master artisan restoring a valuable object, not a lover tending to a partner.

“You will experience a marked improvement in your condition soon, Halo Bearer.”, she says, the title dropping from her lips like a clinical designation. Beatrice looks up and offers a smile. It is a perfect replication of Beatrice’s rare, tender smile, but it doesn’t reach the eyes. They remain placid pools, reflecting light but generating none of their own.

The perfection of the act is fake-Beatrice's most convincing feature. Ava’s resolve crumbles. Maybe she’s just… focused, she thinks, clinging to the hope. Maybe this is just how she is when she’s not worrying about everything else.

Overwhelmed by a need for comfort, Ava reaches out and takes Beatrice's hand, “Can we just… lie down for a while?”, she asks, her voice small.

In the space of a blink, a bed manifests behind them, plush, inviting, and utterly soulless in its instantaneous creation. The replica allows itself to be led, to be held. It moulds itself against Ava’s body with a perfect simulation of familiarity, its weight and warmth a devastatingly accurate forgery. It is this final, cruel mimicry of intimacy that breaks her. The will to doubt, to question the impossible, is finally extinguished, smothered by the desperate, all-consuming need to believe she is not alone. Her loneliness doesn't just win, it collaborates with the deception, weaving a paradise from the threads of her deepest longing, blinding her to the sterile prison she truly inhabits.

Chapter Text

“I’m sorry, Mother Superion. Someone else is going to have to teach them.”

Beatrice takes a last breath. The smell of frankincense and cold, damp stone is etched to her brain. She has spent the last 6 years at the Cat’s Cradle after all.

Camila, oh sweet Camila, who has been nothing but a true friend to her Sister Warrior looks conflicted. Almost pitiful and actually sad. This tugs on Beatrice’s heart. She has of course let her in on her plans to leave the convent some days prior. It was just that Camila didn’t expect it to be so abrupt. There was so much knowledge and skill she wished to inherit from Beatrice. 

Out in the courtyard everybody knows what is happening. Beatrice is wearing civilian clothes. Her habit and wimple -although the OCS’s version of what a nun was to wear, strayed from the original concept- sat neatly folded on the bed that she had taken up for herself up until now (minus the time at the alps and at casa Salvius). 

The only thing she does take with her is a necklace made out of silver with a tiny cross pendant hanging from it. The cross itself was made of Divinium. Camila had it made out of the pieces they had recovered in the basement of Adriel’s cathedral. She wears it to be reminded of the home that she had found all those years ago. And to honour Ava. And maybe some day… she would see its familiar glow again. Beatrice feels that she should spare some faith, to be able to enjoy her life to the fullest.

Ava would want her to.

Father Vincent smiles at her knowingly and she doesn’t have it in her to look at him in disdain. Yasmine almost can’t meet her eyes. Beatrice sometimes wonders, if Ava’s display of love had touched her more than herself. Yasmine had proven to her that she was a trusted ally, when she hadn’t mentioned the kiss she and Ava had shared to the other sisters, not even Camila. 

Everybody wonders where she might go. Nobody dares to ask. In fact, nobody is strong enough to stop her. It is general knowledge that Beatrice had requested to be released from her vows and duty. Everybody respected that.

Beatrice’s target is the UK. She is planning to tie some lose ends, to legally change her forename to Beatrice. She likes it. She likes who she has become after taking the name. The now informal ex-nun boards the train that would take her to London, St. Pancras out of Paris.

Once in her designated seat, she realises quickly, how tired she is and succumbs to her bodily need to regenerate. She has half a mind to set an alarm and dozes off quickly. Beatrice doesn’t know why, but something in her tells her to let go. And it is the first sleep after Ava’s disappearance that comes naturally.

She sleeps for the entirety of the train ride and when she awakes, she wishes that she could go back to dreaming.

*

Ava wakes up, feeling more and more like herself. Her torso almost doesn’t hurt anymore and the surroundings make themselves known to her slowly. She learns that everything in her heaven is pliable- it was her heaven, after all. Very unlike St. Michael’s, where she had to beg for every commodity. Where she sometimes would lie in her own filth for hours, before anyone would burden themselves with cleaning her up.

For instance now, the windows provide a view. It is a city of zero inhabitants, a sprawling, silent metropolis etched in stark monochrome. The skyscrapers are angular shadows against a perpetual, starless night sky, their peaks vanishing into a haze that isn't quite fog. There is no movement, no flicker of a curtain, no glide of a distant elevator car, no scatter of headlights on the streets below. The only lights are the countless windows of the towers themselves, each one a perfect, unwavering square of sterile, electric yellow. They burn with a constant, unblinking intensity that feels less like illumination and more like a million watchful eyes. It is a cold, beautiful, and profoundly lonely diorama.

The scale and the artificial grandeur of it all remind her distinctly of what she pictures living in New York City to be like, a place she’d only ever dreamed of, now rendered as a breathtaking and empty monument to her own isolation. Somehow, Ava still likes it. She’d always dreamt of living in a big city. Madrid was the largest city she’d ever been to and it fascinated her. Her most special memory from that short term stay was how she navigated a tranquillised Beatrice through the streets of Spain’s capital and how close she felt to her in that moment. Although -or maybe because- Beatrice was completely out of it, she’d let Ava take over for her. The sort of trust they had in each other made her realise that this was a special bond. In hindsight, it did last her her lifetime.

The Warrior Nun is now wearing a full set of clothes. She picked them out. Ava doesn’t remember when and how, but certainly there was a closet somewhere or maybe she conjured it all up. It doesn’t matter, she can do everything and nothing, she’s getting used to it. To just knowing. To just being.

When she walks out of the room, fully expecting to walk for hours on end in a hallway again, she finds herself in a train station.

Only, there is one track, with one single train on it and weirdly it just won’t move. No matter, how much time passes. She decides to give in to curiosity and boards the train. She skims through the seats quickly. Of course, there are no passengers in the seats. She is just about the sit down at the very end of the compartment she is in, when someone catches her eye. Beatrice is sleeping soundly on the next carriage, with her hair pulled back, wearing the white blouse that she looks so beautiful in, and Ava feels a familiar tug at her heart. She walks towards her and plops down next to her unceremoniously.

The movement startles Beatrice, but Ava doesn’t feel bad, because this is her heaven. And fake-Beatrice didn’t seem like the kind of person that would need sleep anyway. Was the thing even a person? Then she gets existential and wonders the same about herself. 

Beatrice looks to her left, obviously annoyed by the fact that someone would take up the space next to her, to only realise that it’s Ava. Said woman finds herself in an embrace immediately, as if Beatrice hadn’t just seen her some… moments ago. It is still unsettling for Ava that she cannot pinpoint the actual timeline she is in. But that was the point of forever, no? Also, fake-Beatrice has never shown her this kind of physical contact. It is a bit strange, but Ava doesn’t question it.

“Ava.”, Beatrice husks, still full of sleep. And the way she says it, lets the Warrior Nun melt a little bit. The Halo prickles on her skin. She is not familiar with this sensation. Something is different. This fake-Beatrice comes really close to her Beatrice, with the mannerisms and the voice. Maybe fake-Beatrice has been practicing, she thinks.

“Where are we going?”, Ava asks, to play along with the scenario.

Beatrice looks at a screen, the Warrior Nun follows her gaze and sees nothing, but then, “London.”

“Huh. Cool.”

“Ava.”, Beatrice says again, a bit more urgency in her voice, and the other woman looks at her, expectantly. The halo bearer realises then that fake-Beatrice never had used her name before. Especially this often, in this short amount of time.

Beatrice buries her face in her hands, exhaling a few times, “I’ve been wanting to see you. Wanting to have a conversation with you. About all that has happened. I just never imagined it to be a dream.”

The Warrior Nun arches an eyebrow, ever so lightly, turning curiously towards Beatrice. This conversation makes no sense in her head, but then again, she has had blanks in her memory before. It’s like Michael said, everything just is. You come to accept it. Ava has accepted a lot in terms of what came after her death. She even accepted a corrupted Beatrice, just to not be lonely.

When Ava doesn’t respond, Beatrice goes on, wanting to get it all out of her chest, “I hate you.”, she blurts out. The halo bearer diverts her gaze to the window. They are still not moving, she realises then. Somehow Beatrice’s words do not register the right way. Or maybe they do, but fake-Beatrice can’t be held responsible for her choice of words. Ava would teach her the softness that is Beatrice. How tenderly she loves. 

“… if you had told me what you were about to do- we could have found another way. It frustrates me. Because I should focus on the good memories, but you had to go off and play martyr without thinking about the consequences. Without thinking of what you’re leaving behind.”

Ava snaps out of it. This is so, so strange, but she indulges it.

“I did it to save your life.”, she offers.

“I have not been living since I lost you- not like you want me to. And I hate that I'm doing you a disservice, that I cannot honour your last wish.”

This admission sobers up Ava completely. She feels an ache in her heart, amplified by the metal ring that was currently burning into her skin. Stupid doughnut.

“Beatrice, it's okay. I'm okay. We're good. We're together.”, is all she can muster up. And she laughs nervously afterwards. Was that some kind of role play? Not that Ava had thought about being intimate with fake-Beatrice.

The words and her nervous laugh still hang in the air, a sound so quintessentially, imperfectly Ava that it makes Beatrice’s head snap up. Her own grief and frustration, so all-consuming a moment ago, are suddenly shoved aside by a terrifying, brilliant, and impossible thought.

She watches Ava glance around the static train car with a familiar, wary curiosity. She sees the way Ava’s hand absently moves to her back, as if soothing the Halo, a habit she’d developed after particularly tough training sessions. This wasn’t the serene acceptance of a dream construct or a memory. This was Ava’s specific, vibrant presence, her confusion as genuine and palpable as it had been the first day she’d resurrected in the morgue.

The pieces click into place with the force of a physical blow: the way this Ava didn’t quite match her memories, the strange setting, the lingering pain she’d mentioned. This wasn’t her subconscious punishing her. This was something else entirely.

Oh, my God, Beatrice thinks, the world tilting on its axis. It’s not a dream. It’s a connection. She’s not a memory… she’s really in there. And she thinks she’s dead. She thinks I’m not real.

The anger and hurt she’d just unloaded now curdled into a chilling horror. She had just shouted at a traumatized, isolated Ava, who was listening to her and believing she was nothing more than a figment of her own afterlife. Beatrice sits perfectly still, her blood running cold as she connects the dots, the truth dawning on her with terrifying, wonderful clarity.

“Tell me something only I would know.”, Beatrice asks of her, gnawing on her lip, not wanting to be too eager about the discovery, but also not being able to contain her excitement.

Ava thinks, clearly not understanding why Beatrice requests it, but she still tries to come up with something very specific to her.

“The conclusion in the letter, about hoping to find a Beatrice that isn’t a nun in my next life. Totally backfired. You’re a nun here as well.”

Beatrice blinks. 

“Ava.”, she says for a third time.

“That’s my name.”

“In my world, it is the 16th of January, 2022. You’ve been gone for a little over two weeks. What day is it for you?”

Ava pauses, her lips stretched into a thin line. She considers the provided information. The implication slowly dawning in on her. She can’t believe it though. There was no portal to earth, not that she knows of- except for the arc, which would not work now, because the Halo was not on earth anymore and Adriel was dead. This all must be a dream.

A cold, sharp doubt, small but insistent, pricked at the edges of her certainty. Except, a new voice whispered in her mind, she knows how long it has been. And the Beatrice in my head, the one I made up, she never talks about this. She never feels this… real.

The thought is terrifying, more so than the endless white rooms. If this wasn't a dream, then the raw pain on Beatrice's face is genuine. The anger, the frustration, the love buried beneath the I hate you, it was all real. And that meant the woman in front of her wasn't a comforting fiction. She was a bridge. She was a miracle. Ava can’t believe it though, not fully. There was no portal to earth... This all must be a dream. Except, she never dreams. She only wakes up and is.

The Warrior Nun starts speaking slowly, “I don’t know. Time doesn’t really pass here or maybe it does, but it sort of stretches. Honestly it could have been 3 hours, but also like 3 years? I might be in a different realm than Michael was in. It’s only me and…”, Ava meets Beatrice’s eyes and they look at her expectantly, “… you.”

This blows Beatrice’s mind. She is dreaming, she can tell. But she has never dreamt this lucidly. There’s a bit of residual doubt about whether or not it could really be Ava. The real Ava. The one that sacrificed herself to save the world. However, judging by what she knows about dreams, her time is limited. She reaches out and takes ahold of the Warrior Nun’s hand.

“Are you being treated well?”, Beatrice has to make sure that Ava is alright. Later she will curse herself for not asking something else, not asking about how she survived and how the injuries were healed.

“I guess…”, Ava catches up then, the meaning of the question and how it was phrased, why it was asked, even though she still cannot fully stop doubting. But then she realises the small details. How Beatrice’s face softens, when she looks at her closely, or how Ava’s name rolls off her lips so easily. She notices now, how this is so vastly different from her realm-Beatrice. 

“Tell me something only I would know.”, Ava prompts now, and Beatrice smiles. And yes, that alone is her answer. The Halo hums and whirrs and Ava wants to tell it to shut up. 

“If I had known, in the next meant the very next year, I’d have been crying a lot less.”, it was her Beatrice.

Ava lets out a delighted laugh, tears staining her face, her nose getting congested, her dam about to break, but then Beatrice looks at her alarmed, and with that she vanishes.

The nothingness is actually nothing, compared to what Ava feels now.

The silent hum of the Halo is what accompanies her to the darkness.

*

The shrill, digital beep of her phone alarm shatters the silence, yanking Beatrice brutally back to reality. She jerks upright, her heart hammering against her ribs as if she’s been running. For a disorienting second, the plush seat of the train, the muted landscape blurring past the window, mean nothing. She rubs the heels of her hands against her eyes, pressing until colors bloom behind her lids, trying to physically push the dream’s lingering warmth from her mind. 

Slowly, the world solidifies around her. The hum of the tracks. The chill of the windowpane against her arm. The faint smell of stale coffee. She blinks, the pieces of her reality snapping back into place, and with them comes the memory, so vivid it feels more real than the seat beneath her, of where she has just been. Of who she has just been with. The ghost of Ava’s embrace, the sound of her laugh, the devastating weight of her confession, all of it clings to her like a fine mist, already beginning to evaporate in the cold light of wakefulness.

Acting on an instinct she doesn't question, she fumbles for her smartphone. The screen glows to life, a stark contrast to the dream’s soft focus. A notification waits for her: a text from Camila.

Miss you already. Stay safe.

Her thumb hovers over the reply box, a sudden, powerful urge to pour everything out, the train, the conversation, the impossible possibility, threatening to overwhelm her.

But she hesitates. Her fingers still. What does she even say? That she’s shared a dream with a dead woman? That Ava is alive in some other dimension, confused and thinking she’s in heaven? It sounds like a desperate fantasy, the kind of grief-stricken hallucination she’s read about in psychology texts. She has no proof, only a feeling, a heartache so precise it feels like a message.

Her hand flies to the base of her neck, her fingers finding the cool, familiar shape of the Divinium-cross necklace. She holds it, waiting, hoping for a sign, a faint hum, a trace of warmth. But the metal remains inert, silent, and cold against her skin. The hope deflates. Of course. Beatrice had asked Ava to provide information she’d already known, a test any projection of her own subconscious could easily pass. This could very much be her own mind weaving a beautiful, cruel tapestry from her deepest desires.

She lets the necklace fall back against her collarbone. She doesn’t text Camila back. Instead, she closes her eyes, leaning her head against the cool glass. She decides right then that she will sleep as soon as she reaches her hotel room. The facts and logistics can wait. Because if there is even the slimmest, most impossible chance that was real, she needs to get back there. She needs to see Ava again.

*

Ava opens her eyes. As always, she just is. Her eyes fixate on the clock hanging above the conjured windows, in her sterile world. It always shows her the same time. 10:09. She doesn’t know if the universe is on her side. This whole realm vs. heaven business makes her a bit impatient. Since she saw her Beatrice, she cannot forget the way she felt so right and how insincere and cold realm-Beatrice now seemed.

“I take no offence, Halo Bearer. For I was only made up to offer you solace in your time of need. I could have also taken the form of your progenitress, however there were no memories to make her image up from. I was chosen to resemble Sister Beatrice, because you had a close connection to her. Your known attachment to this identity was leveraged to ensure you remained tractable.”, Beatrice states, Ava then realises that she can read her mind. Of course she can. And also that there was a we.

Ava knows all of this. Somehow. It’s like she has heard this somewhere. And it makes total sense to her now. Everything just is.

Of course there would be a higher being, placing the stones, playing the cards.

“So...”, Ava says, the hope in her voice feeling dangerously fragile, “Now that I’m all healed, I can go back?”

The air itself seems to stiffen. The figure of Beatrice does not respond. Instead, it dissolves, not with a fade, but a sudden, soundless unmaking, like a statue of sand blown away by an unseen wind. In the space it occupied, a new presence coalesces.

Reya appears.

Their form is both there and not, a shimmer of impossible light and profound shadow. Their voice, when it comes, is not a sound that travels through the air, but a frequency that vibrates directly in Ava’s bones.

“Nothing is given, Warrior Nun. All things must be earned.”

Ava’s face hardens, the fragile hope curdling into a familiar, bitter frustration. How dare they. This creature had consigned her and Michael to a suicide mission -a mission that had ultimately failed- and now had the arrogance to stand before her and speak of earning.

“I did what you asked of me-”, Ava bites out, each word sharp and precise, “I sacrificed myself. I paid your price.”

Reya glides forward, their movement an affront to physics. They don’t walk, they simply are in a new place, circling Ava, examining her from every angle as if she were a specimen. They drift behind her, then above, their feet treading on the air itself.

“That you did.”, they concede, the tone flat, acknowledging a simple fact without a shred of gratitude or remorse.

The confirmation, so devoid of meaning, fuels Ava’s anger. She steels herself, forcing the question out before her courage fails, “Is there even a way to go back?”

Reya halts, their enigmatic gaze fixing upon her, “A path exists. But I cannot walk it for you.”

Ava has enough self discipline to not flip Reya off, but thinks of it, when the entity turns to her, amusement dripping in their voice, as if they'd seen her thoughts (they did), “This gesture means nothing to me.”

“What the fuck even!? You sent me on death mission and now you won’t even send me back?!”

“Caution, Warrior Nun. You obey Me.”

“The thing is… I don’t. I’m disobedience personified.”

At that Reya laughs, almost diabolically, and waves with what would correspond to a hand on a human body. They could not be human, could they?

“So, then why did you follow the path to your demise? Why did you do what I intended you to do? I see all and I know your heart‘s contents. I can think ahead millions of steps and will always know what drives you to certain actions.”, Reya glides dangerously close to Ava, “Rest assured, I know that you will find your way back to your beloved, she will guide you home.”

At that Ava perks up, “There is a way and Beatrice can help me?”, she tries to get something out of the deity, but they vanish without warning.

*

Beatrice finds herself in the apartment in Switzerland. She immediately recognises the musky smell of the old wood that had been used for the construction, before her eyesight takes in the surroundings. It was a distinct smell, after all.

“Hey Bea…”, the nickname makes her heart flutter and she looks over her shoulder to see Ava by the door connecting the bedroom with the living space, unsure of the situation. 

“It’s me.”, Beatrice hopes that it was her, as well.

Ava blows out air audibly. Beatrice squirms under the intense gaze of her counterpart. Just then the ex-nun realises that Ava is nervous. If this was her Ava, the one that gave herself up for humanity, then this was the same that had confessed her love to her not even a month ago. This sets the woman ablaze, sensing the tension between them.

Beatrice decides then that the space that was between them, was impossibly big and that people that loved each other, or at least, claimed to, could not have any distance between themselves. She goes in for a hug, and Ava’s doubts almost dissipate. The shorter woman finds herself on tiptoes and is surprised, when Beatrice lifts her up effortlessly and makes a half turn. Okay, this, even though she could only see her Beatrice temporarily, was heaven for real. But then in that moment she shoves away this sentiment. Reya had assured her that there was a way back. 

“You know…”, Ava breathes into her neck, “… I’d had hoped to wake up in London. Not our tiny apartment in the alps.”

Beatrice draws back, her hands cradling Ava’s head like she was something valuable, her eyes conveying so much love that it could have lasted the Warrior Nun a lifetime. The Halo is pulsating. Beatrice catches onto that, but says nothing. Ava was after all still healing, she concludes.

“It doesn’t matter where we are. I’m glad that this worked.”, then the ex-nun pauses and draws her hands back, they still are in close proximity to each other, Beatrice moves to their tiny couch and prompts for Ava to follow with a head gesture, “You said that you woke up here. Does that mean it’s a dream for you as well?”, Beatrice draws her brows together in concentration and Ava watches that movement, mesmerised, when she sits herself to the ex-nun’s left, completely facing her. Fake-Beatrice didn’t have those creases. Fake-Beatrice was a perfected version. A humanoid. Something that mimicked her Beatrice.

Ava shakes her head, “I think this is some kind of limbo? I’m not sure how exactly it works. It just sort of appears.”, Beatrice also matches her and turns her whole body to Ava, both sitting cross legged on the small furniture and they give each other time to immerse themselves in this situation.

It’s the halo bearer, who initiates contact first, when she reaches out her right finger tips tentatively and cups Beatrice’s left hand. The Halo whirrs loudly at that. “Sorry, it’s a malfunction since the trip through dimensions. I’m not sure it does anything else now, other than glow and howl.”, Ava hears her heartbeat in her throat and can’t really decipher if she’d had a constant heartbeat before Beatrice (re)appeared. The ex-nun eyes the movement, before opening her mouth again.

“The Divinium. You could barely walk, you were about to…”, she doesn’t want to say die, “You’re healing, yes?”

At that Ava draws back her hand and for a moment Beatrice wishes, she hadn’t said anything, but then the opposite happens, when the Warrior Nun carefully lifts her sweatshirt to reveal a broad expanse of her abdomen and lower rib cage. The skin is flawless. Beatrice studies her counterpart’s body, before realising that she hasn’t seen Ava like this in a long time- not since the alps, when they had to occasionally change in front of each other. Mostly they had turned from each other though, but sometimes Beatrice had caught the Warrior Nun’s body in a reflection on a vase or the mirror in the bathroom. A blush creeps up Beatrice’s cheeks and she gives in easily, she's mesmerised by the Warrior Nun's delicate skin, by the flawlessness of it. Ava matches the mood, but she doesn’t want to ruin anything by saying something inappropriate, so she just revels in the way Beatrice, her Beatrice, looks at her.

A beat passes, and the moment is gone, when the Warrior Nun clears her throat and brings Beatrice out of her dazedness after letting go of the hem of her own shirt. It was funny really, Ava briefly wonders, if Beatrice has ever dreamt of her like this. Did she also dream of leading easier lives? Had she dreamt of what it could have meant, if they were different people?

“Listen, as much as I enjoy this whole flirty vibe that we have going on...”, Beatrice’s eyes widen a bit by Ava’s bluntness, “I have some important news: I’m not dead.”

“I figured as much.”

Ava shakes her head, partly in frustration, because how didn’t she realise it herself earlier, “But I didn’t…”, Ava pinches the bridge of her nose and exhales, “I thought, I had crossed over to heaven or something. I mean, the first few days were absolute hell and well, there is a fake-you over here- where I’m currently held captive, but I sort of grew to like her and there was not much I could do while I was healing anyway. But then I met you in your dream and I started doubting the whole dead-undead thing. Reya said I could come back and you’re the key or something.”

Beatrice tries to follow, not trying to feel guilty for not being able to be there for Ava, when she was hurting. She doesn’t mind that there was a fake-Beatrice taking care of the Warrior Nun, it actually made her feel a bit better. That Ava had a caregiver resembling her in another realm. Beatrice’s voice is soft when she responds, “What can I do?”, anything to get you back, is what she holds back.

Before Ava can respond, Beatrice feels the pull. This time she realises it, as it’s happening, she quickly drops a, “I have to go.”, and surges forwards to kiss the Warrior Nun’s left cheek. The ghost of her lips tingles on Ava’s face. She moves slightly in that direction to feel it again. It doesn’t work, of course, but a smile creeps up her face anyway. 

Bold, Sister Beatrice, very bold.

*

Beatrice: Camila, I arrived in London last night safely. Please do give my regards to Mother Superion. 

Camila stares at her phone. She doesn’t dare responding to Beatrice, for she might not be able to contain herself with the new information she has. It is not information per se, but the Cruciform Sword glowing in its typical blue, just how it does, when the halo bearer nears it, is something that might have been of Beatrice’s interest. Mother Superion had asked her not to disclose this to the ex-nun. Not yet anyways, sparing her the pain, if this was not what they thought it was. The sword was now in Suzanne’s office, safeguarded from onlookers. Sister Dora had been the first to notice it, when she’d been walking the halls, like she always did, when she couldn’t sleep, and brought it to her Mother’s attention.

*

The reading room at the British Library is a cathedral of silence, its high ceilings and vast, polished tables demanding reverence. Beatrice sits in a pool of warm light from a green-shaded lamp, surrounded by a fortress of books. The air smells of old paper, dust, and quiet concentration.

On her left, a stack leans precariously: Jung’s The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, a thick volume on Aboriginal Dreamtime, and a beginner’s guide to lucid dreaming. On her right, the stack is neater, more severe: The Fabric of the Cosmos by Brian Greene, a textbook on quantum entanglement, and a dense academic paper titled, 'Non-Local Consciousness: A Theoretical Framework.'

Her notebook is open, her pen moving in swift motion, drawing a diagram with two circles. One is labelled Realm of Reya?. The other, Earth. Between them, she draws a line and scribbles Ava’s Consciousness (The Bridge?).

This is not why she came to London.

The manila envelope sits in her bag, a quiet, weighty presence. Inside is the application form for a deed poll, partly filled out. Beatrice. It is the final, official step in shedding the name her parents gave her, the one tied to a lifetime of expectations. It is the name she chooses for herself, for the woman she is becoming because of Ava.

She came to this city with a singular purpose. But the deed poll website remains open in an unused browser tab on her laptop. The list of local solicitors’ numbers is saved in her notes app, untouched. She has not made a single call, not booked a single appointment.

All she can think about is the arc. The Halo’s resonance. The way Ava’s voice sounded in the dream realm -so real, so terrified, so close. The scientific and the mystical have collided in her mind, and she refuses to let go of either thread. The name change is for a future that still feels abstract, a hope for a normal life. This research, this frantic, impossible quest, is for Ava’s immediate return. And the Warrior Nun's return is the only thing that matters.

A sigh escapes her, barely a whisper in the immense quiet. She massages her temples, her eyes straining from the tiny text. This is madness. She is a former nun cross-referencing quantum physics with dream interpretation. It is heresy against the rigid logic that has governed her entire life.

But the rules have changed. The woman she loves is trapped in a dimension science cannot map and religion cannot explain. So she builds a new framework. She becomes an expert in the impossible.

Her finger traces a line in the physics text: ...the observer effect suggests that the act of observation itself can influence the reality of a quantum system...

Could a dream be a form of observation? If she dreams of Ava vividly enough, with enough focus, is she not, in some quantum sense, observing her? Influencing her reality?

She jots down the thought, her handwriting a frantic contrast to its usual neatness.

Hypothesis: The dream realm is a quantum-entangled state. My consciousness (observer) is directly influencing the probability field of Ava’s location.

It is the most insane thing she has ever written. She believes every word.

She is so deep in her thoughts, weaving tenuous connections between synaptic firings and spacetime, that the world outside the text ceases to exist. The envelope in her bag is forgotten. The city of London is a distant rumor. There is only the problem, and the solution must be here, in these pages, if she is just smart enough, just diligent enough, to find it.

Her phone buzzes softly on the table. She ignores it. The only appointments that exist are the ones she keeps in this silent cathedral, with the ghosts of theorists and the tangible, aching hope that on the other side of the dimension, maybe in another cosmos, Ava is waiting for her to get this right.

*

Ava falls about three stories deep, the Halo cushioning her fall just in the right moment, avoiding minor injuries. The Warrior Nun is relieved that she still has access to its powers. She laughs at herself internally. How many more times will she find herself in that particular situation? 

A set of hands is around her frame in an instant and she tries to take in her surroundings. It is dark and she cannot make out many shapes of her whereabouts. She wishes the pit to be enlightened, and then a flame emerges, dancing in the air, seemingly tethered to nothing.

“Did you just do that?”, Beatrice asks.

Ava groans, clutching at her heart, or where she supposes her organ once used to be. She turns her gaze sidewards, relief washing over her at the sight of Beatrice, who appears to be wearing her combat gear. The Halo that was already humming, glows more. Ava doesn’t mind it, it makes the place less scary.

“I can do a lot of things over here.”, Beatrice just nods, then Ava concentrates on her counterpart’s body, exaggeratedly gives it a once over. When nothing happens, she starts laughing, “Okay, except when it comes to wanting you to be less clothed.”

When Beatrice wants to counter something, her eyes widening and not believing what she was hearing, Ava laughs out loud, “Relax, I would never…”, she bites her bottom lip, “Not like this anyways...”, she trails off and leaves Beatrice to fill in the blanks.

The former Sister Warrior is suddenly aware that every encounter with Ava will be like this from now on. There was something unsaid between them, a palpable tension. However, she also doesn’t feel like she should bring up the kiss or the confession, when they should concentrate on finding a way to bring the Warrior Nun back. There could be enough awkward moments afterwards.

“What day is it for you? And where the hell are we?”, Ava asks, when they both get up and she takes in her surroundings once more, now in a new light. Ignoring the fact that Beatrice was still stunned into silence.

“The 18th. Only two days passed for me. And for the where, I do not know.”, Beatrice responds quickly after catching herself and they walk into a direction Ava chooses. The hypothesis she had written out could need some revising. This is not a place she's thought of before falling asleep.

“God, Bea, obsessed much? You sure do dream of me a lot…”, Ava doesn’t mean it in a particular way, she continues walking, when realising Beatrice is not next to her. She stops to look over her left shoulder.

“I- I thought, I would never see you again. I'm sorry, if you think I'm obsessed, maybe I am, but- Anything to get you back.”

This response makes Ava soften, but before she can answer, Beatrice changes the subject.

“What exactly did Reya tell you?”

“Bea…”, Ava utters, almost in a warning to not leave her hanging, to not just ignore the emotional turn the conversation was taking.

“I- we can talk about this upon your return. We can talk about all of it. Now we need to find clues on how to facilitate your way back to us. To me.”, the last part makes the Warrior Nun feel sort of queasy (in a good way). 

Ava nods, although not entirely in agreement. Beatrice thanks her silently for not lingering on the subject.

“The exact wording was-”, she stops herself before disclosing Reya had called Beatrice her beloved, “You will find your way back, she will guide you home.”

“And how do you know the she in question is me?”

Ava huffs, lying, “I asked, of course.”, but what was she to do?

Beatrice nods, “Anything you can think of? That might help me?”

“Actually…”, Ava looks around once again, “The first time we met, it was on a train. That was a dream for you. Connecting directly to where I am. Our apartment in the alps, that was a figment of my imagination.”, she pauses, “Or… yours. I think you call the shots when it comes to where we meet. It’s your dreams. Must be something you think of, before falling asleep.”, Ava is actually so proud of herself for figuring this out. Beatrice nods, this could actually make sense. She was not aware that she subconsciously was choosing the places Ava would be spawning at. 

The ex-nun concentrates on their whereabouts now more thoroughly, rummaging in the back of her mind for the location of the dark cave like place. It does seem familiar. They walk again, the structures seem endless and intricate, but they always land back at its heart. Something perpetual about it.

“How does it work for you? How do you know how to find me?”, Beatrice can’t fathom, how it is for the Warrior Nun. All she has to do is will herself to sleep.

“I just know where to go. It’s like intuition. I open up a door and there you are. The first two times, at least. The fall into this place came from nowhere.”, Ava replies and then adds, “Do you think the next time you could think of the Maldives or something?”

Beatrice chooses to not respond to the last bit, “It must be places we both have been to.”

Ava shakes her head, “I’ve never been outside of Spain or Portugal, before the OCS. It doesn't really matter, where we meet. You can anchor me to your world.”

Suddenly Beatrice, who was slightly distracted so far, grasps at the wall next to her, obviously having discovered something. The bricks feel grimy and wet. She pushes around. And then she finds a clue. An ArqTech explosive, neatly sitting there, between two bricks. The Necropolis underneath the Vatican.

“We’re in Adriel’s tomb.”

Ava, suddenly panic stricken, looks around her and wills the Halo to glow brighter, until she can make out every detail on the walls, provided by the sheer magnitude of the glow. And that makes everything worse, the trauma coming back to her. The familiar, suffocating smell hits her first, damp earth, cold stone, and something metallic, like old blood or rust. It is the smell of her own personal hell. The light from the Halo throws long, dancing shadows that twist into familiar, terrifying shapes on the rough walls.

She can almost hear the ghost of her own voice, pleading, echoing in the stagnant air: Get me away from him. Her eyes dart to a dark crevice, and it isn’t just a shadow anymore, it is the corner she'd been left in, where her legs stopped working. The grime under her fingertips feels exactly the same as it has all those months ago. The Necropolis isn’t just a place, it is a memory made of stone, and it is trapping her all over again.

The younger woman collapses to the ground and suddenly starts breathing rapidly. Weird, she thinks. She wasn’t aware of her breathing in this realm at all.

“Ava…”, Beatrice drops down onto her knees to the Warrior Nun’s level and then she sees the horrified expression on the other woman’s face, “It’s alright, the tomb is empty.”, she offers, but Ava can’t stop hyperventilating. She reminds Beatrice vaguely of that day, when the Sister Warriors and her had to recover her from this very tomb, her distraught voice, her helplessness.

“I can’t move my legs.”, the halo bearer responds weakly, to distract from the fact that she was having a panic attack, not realising that her not being able to move her lower extremities might have also stemmed from her mental state. Beatrice grabs Ava, like one would pick up a child, sits her up and pulls her into her lap. Ava’s legs, are both encircling the ex-nun’s waist now. The halo bearer is held in position by an arm thrown over her back, while Beatrice whispers sweet nothings into her hair.

Ava wishes she could focus on what was being said to her. The panic only subsides slowly and it takes an unexpectedly long amount of time for Ava to recover. When she does, she finds herself crying onto Beatrice’s shoulder. The woman in question just holds her. 

“Next time I’ll picture the Maldives, when falling asleep.”, Beatrice promises and Ava actually laughs at that. 

They stay like that for a while, until Ava realises that it must have been really uncomfortable for Beatrice and she awkwardly shifts back, bracing herself with her arms onto the floor behind her, her back now meeting the wall. Beatrice, who was kneeling, shifts into a cross-legged position and waits.

The silence stretches, thick with everything that just happened. Ava can’t bear it. She scrambles for something, anything, to shatter the weight of it.

“So...”, Ava blurts out, her voice too bright, “We should probably, uh… figure out the whole dream realm thing, right? We should make a plan. Or something.”, she gestures vaguely at the grimy walls of the tomb, “Research… tactics…”. Her words ring hollow, even to her own ears. They both know it’s a pathetic deflection. 

Beatrice simply looks at her, her expression unbearably soft and knowing. She sees right through it.

“I’m sorry-”, Ava tries, her false cheer crumbling into genuine shame.

But Beatrice shushes her gently, “There’s nothing to be sorry about. I understand.”

The kindness undoes her. There’s no hiding from it now. She has to ask the real question.

The most pressing, world-altering event in this room isn't the war.

It’s the two of them, sitting inches apart in the aftermath of a panic attack and a still untalked about confession.

“Bea…?”, Ava starts then, her voice small, all pretence gone, “Should we… Should we talk about the kiss?”

Chapter Text

The stupid phone Camila got her, chimes up and Beatrice groans at the disturbance, but is simultaneously glad it happens.

Camila: Beatrice, please call me, whenever you have time. Something happened.

The ex-nun immediately does, as is asked of her. Hearing a breathless Camila greet her from the other side of the line, she goes straight for the question.

“What happened? Is everyone alright?”

There is a long pause. 

“I don’t want to get your hopes up and it might be a glitch in the matrix… but, the Cruciform Sword… It’s glowing again. Has been actually, constantly for the last three days or so.”

Beatrice blinks. She can feel Camila’s insecurity and fear.

“But everyone is alright?”, the ex-nun inquires again.

Camila, seemingly surprised that Beatrice doesn’t have a bigger reaction to the revelation hums, “Yes. We are all OK.”

“It might be actually connected…”, Beatrice quickly realises Camila doesn’t know, what she is talking about, “I’ve been dreaming of Ava. Actually it’s this place, Ava calls it the dream realm. She told me that there is a way to come back. Maybe the sword is signifying Ava’s closeness to our earth, this realm. I don’t know how that works, we’re trying to figure it out.”

The older woman can sense the hesitation.

“Beatrice, I’m truly sorry for what you went through and everybody goes through grief differently- I’m not saying it is particularly unhealthy to speak to someone in your dreams, make up scenarios… You probably have no control over it, even. Especially in your situation-”

“What situation?”

“The unresolved love?”, Camila can’t believe she just says that out loud, “I mean- the fact that you don’t know for sure how she felt.”

“I know.”, Beatrice provides.

“I mean, yes, of course, we all saw the heart eyes, but-”

“Camila, Ava told me she loved me before she crossed over.”, Beatrice should have been honest from the start, she thinks.

“Oh.”

“And that’s not even-”, she cannot seriously escape Ava’s question, just to fall into Camila’s trap, “The Ava in my dreams is our Ava. We need to figure out how to get her back. Reya told her that she can find a way back, with some help from me.”

Camila snorts, “Obviously.”

Beatrice chooses to ignore that, “Camila, indulge me… Divinium… It only glows in the presence of the Halo, correct? Or something akin to its energy?”

This shifts the younger girl’s attention, “Yes?”

“The arc, is it at the Cat’s Cradle already?”

“Yes, Jillian had her team bring it over just- My god… The glowing, it started, when the arc came near it.”

Beatrice considers this. There had to be some sort of counterpart in the other dimension. Ava must have crossed over through a similar device. Maybe that was active now.

“There must be some type of energy shift- Something changed.”

“It can only be activated by the Halo.”

Beatrice realises something then.

“Exactly.”, the word is a soft exhale, laden with sudden, breathtaking certainty. “Camila, don’t you see? The sword isn’t just glowing near the arc. It’s glowing because of the arc. Because the arc is now acting as a bridge, and on the other side of that bridge is the Halo. It’s Ava. Her energy is so close it’s resonating through the connection, making the Divinium react. It’s not a glitch. It’s a signal.”

The line is silent for a long moment as Camila processes this. The hesitant pity in her voice is completely gone, replaced by dawning, cautious wonder. “A signal… You’re not just dreaming, are you? You’re really talking to her.”

“I am...”, Beatrice confirms, her voice thick with emotion, “And the sword is the proof. It’s her, Camila. She’s right there...”

The last of Camila’s skepticism shatters.

“Holy shit. It’s really her.”

*

Ava blows out air after Beatrice conveniently vanishes after her loaded question. She’s not sure how their next meeting will go. Where their next meeting will be, but she knows that she has opened the box of pandora. Ava was still not sure of her return, she may have to wait years to be able to go back to earth. She just needs to know now. Ava has already lost so much time. 

It’s frustrating, she thinks. To confess your love to someone and then not knowing their response. She was fine with it before, but then the nun appeared in her realm. Beatrice could have at least said thank you for the flattery, but I can’t- I’m married to god… or something. She groans loudly and closes her eyes. 

“Why are we meeting here again?”, Beatrice was back, taking in Ava's crouching form.

“What the actual…”, the Warrior Nun opens her eyes to find Beatrice in the same spot, where she has been just seconds ago, “What day is it?”

“January, 21st.”

“Okay... For me it's still- You’ve just been here. I don’t understand this time continuum thing.”

“We have to find your energy source. You must have an arc or something similar on your side. An artefact.”, Beatrice sounds a bit hectic.

Ava blinks. Still hung up on the question she had just asked a few minutes ago. Only for Beatrice, it had been days already. She probably forgot. That was even more frustrating.

“How would I find it?”

Beatrice stands up, offering her hand to the Warrior Nun.

“Can you materialise Reya? Maybe we can ask?”

“Alright, yes, I can try.”, Ava responds, taking the hand and standing up from the grimy floor. 

Beatrice waits and looks at Ava expectantly.

“Now?”, it comes out more high pitched than she intends, she cannot have Reya and Beatrice meet, she cannot have Reya call her her beloved in front of her.

“Yes, now, Ava.”

Before Ava can summon a deity though, the entity in question appears. They don’t chance a glance at the intruder. Beatrice is of no interest to Reya in this moment.

“I see, you have found your beloved.”

Damn, Reya did not even hesitate a second. Ava’s eyes grow wide and she stammers, “Ah yes, uh, Beatrice wants to know if you would tell us the location of the-”

Ava forgets that Reya is all-seeing and all-hearing, so before she even formulates her sentence fully, a response.


“There is no such artefact on this realm. But there is something that anchors you to your earth.”

I have provided you with the knowledge. Your beloved is the catalyst. 

It’s a voice that only Ava hears.

Reya vanishes then. Out of thin air.

Ava turns to look at Beatrice, “Look, before you say something-”

“What language was that?”

The Warrior creases her brows, “Hmn?”

“Reya spoke in a foreign language and I have never heard anything like it.”

Ava realises then that Beatrice hasn’t understood a word of what Reya has said and now she wants to throw herself at the deity in gratitude (ew). She doesn’t even know, what language it was. She just understood. Perks of being a Warrior Nun.

“Doesn’t matter now. Reya says there is nothing like an arc, but there is something that ties me to earth.”

Beatrice starts pacing now, deeply in thought. And then it’s so crystal clear, “The Halo. The Halo is what tethers you to earth.”

“But it is from this realm. Reya’s realm.”

“Yes, but a human wasn’t supposed to be bearing the Halo in the first place. Your humanity tied to the Halo is the key. Of course it’s not an external artefact- it’s internal. It’s you.”

*

Beatrice convenes with Jillian Salvius and select members of the OCS (Mother Superion, Camila and Yasmine) over a video call after her visit to the dream realm. They go over what Beatrice found out while being with Ava. The ex-nun theorises that if the arc was designed to be activated by the Halo’s energy, then even in its dormant state, it might still be receptive to it. 

“That actually makes sense…”, it’s Yasmine who speaks, “The Warrior Nun needs to fine tune her Halo. To something that connects her to earth.”

“That would be the arc.”, Beatrice interjects. She has been over this already.

Yasmine and Camila share a knowing look. 

It’s Jillian now, who speaks, “I could maybe reconfigure the arc, we could try to pick up Ava’s signal. She will have a unique energy profile, something different from what is embedded in her realm. But Sister Yasmine is right. We need Ava to tune into a certain frequency. She needs to concentrate on something that anchors her here.”

Beatrice was endlessly glad that Dr. Salvius had agreed to be part of the call, considering that she had lost her son the same day the ex-nun had lost Ava. Only, her grief was so much more monumental. Michael would not be returning, and now there was a chance that Ava would.

“What are you suggesting?”, Camila wants to know, “I thought we wouldn’t touch the arc anymore?”

Camila’s stance wasn’t born from simple caution, it was forged in the specific, soul-scarring trauma of having her very will violated. Since being targeted by Adriel’s mark, a fundamental sense of safety had been ripped from her. The experience left a psychic wound that had not fully healed. Even now, in the quiet moments, she sometimes hears the ghost of his voice, a sinister whisper in the back of her mind that is less a sound and more a chilling pressure, a reminder that the door he’d forced open in her soul had never fully closed.

She knows, with a certainty that was bone deep, that she never wants to endure that again. But more than that, she never wants anyone else to have to endure it. To her, the arc isn’t just a machine, it is a key. And every key, no matter who promises to guard it, could be stolen. Tinkering with it, attempting to harness its power -even for a noble cause- feels like willingly picking the lock on a prison cell that once contained a monster. They barely survived Adriel, the mere idea of intentionally creating a doorway that could admit something of his kind, or worse, was not a risk to be calculated. To Camila, it is an unthinkable temptation of fate. Therefore, any proposal to reactivate the arc, even on a new setting, was going to be met with immediate and profound resistance. 

“We won’t activate it. We will simply put it on another mode. Camila, you’re good with technology. You certainly will understand the gist of it. The arc will receive and only let through Ava’s specific energetic composition. It will respond to a signal that matches her exact resonance. We only need to find the one thing that will connect her to this world. Ava needs to do that on her own. We cannot do it for her.”

While the others are discussing the technicalities of it all, Beatrice is designing the experiment in her head. 

“Maybe a memory could work? Something that’s so powerful that she will find her way back home.”, Yasmine says now and looks directly at Beatrice. They have a silent conversation. Everyone else seems to consider it.

“Alright. I’m flying back to Spain as soon as possible, we will get everything ready and meanwhile, I will try to lay our plans to Ava as soon as I can reach her.”

Beatrice leaves the video call and the room suddenly feels profoundly silent. The hum of her laptop fan dies down. She postpones her appointment at the solicitor to draft a Deed Poll, not having finished what she came for to London. Her bags are packed in under ten minutes. Efficiency borrowed from a lifetime of discipline. Beatrice thinks about Yasmine’s suggestion. A memory. The memory. She knows exactly what the most recent addition to the OCS was referring to.

Maybe what tethered Ava to earth was Beatrice.

It was time that Beatrice talked to Ava about the kiss.

*

Ava sits up, an endless white light surrounding her. The featureless floor gives way to something soft and yielding.

She is sitting in a meadow.

A breeze she cannot feel rustles through a sea of wildflowers, violet lupines, blood red poppies, and delicate white blooms she doesn’t know the name of. They sway in a silent, hypnotic dance against a backdrop of lush green grass. The air is perfumed with the sweet, heavy scent of lavender and damp earth, a fragrance so rich and sudden it makes her head spin. But the picture is imperfect, frozen. The colours are almost too vibrant, like a painting saturated to the point of unreality. The sky above is not blue, but the same eternal, diffuse white, bleaching the light and casting no true shadows. The distant mountains on the horizon are stark and beautiful, yet they don’t seem to get any closer, no matter how far she might walk. It is a breathtaking, beautiful prison.

The Halo on her back glows like a miniature sun, its light catching on the petals, making each one gleam for a moment before the scene settles back into its serene, silent perfection. It is a diorama of peace, crafted by a hand that understood the image of beauty, but not its soul.

Beatrice appears behind her and at first Ava doesn’t realise it. The younger woman doesn’t think that this is one of Beatrice’s dreams. The ex-nun basks a little longer in the feeling, the rush before the cards are on the table. Her heart is pounding in her chest. The Halo on the Warrior Nun’s back is continuously humming, she has seen it activated on the last few meetings they’ve had.

“Ava.”, Beatrice sits down next to her, her fingertips softly grazing Ava’s bicep. The contact is a welcome change to the rather cold last meeting they had. Ava understands, of course. She was working hard to get her back. Ava’s question hung between them and she thinks that Beatrice might not have answered, because Ava wouldn’t have liked the answer. Beatrice was a sworn in nun, after all. What was she supposed to say regarding the kiss?

“I can hear you thinking.”, Beatrice says, a bit lightheartedly, a smile evident in her voice.

“Do you have new clues on how to bring me back?”, the Warrior Nun asks, completely deflecting.

Beatrice simply nods. And there’s a foreign feeling to this meeting. The older woman is too silent, too composed. 

A beat passes.

“We have changed the arc’s primary setting. Basically it now can receive your energetic profile, when you tap into the right frequency. I’m in Spain right now, at Cat’s Cradle. I’ll be waiting on the other side of the arc.”

“How can I tap into the right frequency?”

“You’ll need to concentrate on a specific thing that anchors you to earth. A catalyst that may activate your Halo, fine tune it.”, Beatrice explains, “A memory, for instance. It needs to be a powerful one. The next time we meet in the dream realm, we’ll try it.”

Ava draws her brows together in confusion. 

“Shouldn’t we discuss which memory to tap into?”

Beatrice gets up and offers a hand, “Leave that to me.”

*

Camila sits down next to Beatrice during dinner. Doing mundane things together as a community is what makes her miss the Cat’s Cradle the most. Even though she only has been gone for a week.

“So, tonight is the night, huh?”, Camila says around a spoonful of lentils, noticing Beatrice’s Divinium pendant, which was glowing in its signature blue now.

Beatrice looks down at said thing, she feels nervous and slightly terrified, pushing it back beneath her shirt. What if the whole plan would not work? They sit there for a while, watching most sisters leave the banquet. The former Sister Warrior regards the nun. 

“I’m going to confront Ava about something. And now that she really might come back… I wanted you to know before...”

“Know what?”, Camila inquires.

“When Ava was about to sacrifice herself, she confessed-”

“You told me that already.”

“Yes, but she also… we- we shared a kiss.”

Camila squeals, honest to god squeals, and draws the attention from some sisters that sit on the far corner of the room. Beatrice shushes her, but then is met by Camila’s fierce hug.

“Why didn’t you tell me?!”

Beatrice doesn’t know. She stays quiet and ponders. The kiss itself with all of its meaning and the cascade of emotion that flowed after, overwhelmed her. Maybe sharing that moment would have made Ava’s loss afterwards all the more tragic. Like this she could compartmentalise. 

When there is no response to the question, Camila’s focus shifts, “What will you do, when she returns? You renounced your vows, do you think that you two…”, she doesn’t finish the sentence.

The former Sister Warrior shakes her head. She hadn’t severed the ties to the OCS because of Ava. At least, not solely. The war with Adriel made her question the very institutions she had sworn to protect. She had not broken her vows for Ava, but they had been outgrown by the woman she became, because of the Warrior Nun. Ava had touched her in a way that nobody was able to before, but she was only a catalyst, not the driving force.

“Technically I’m still a nun, as long as the Vatican has not granted me my request, I plan to honour that. And honestly, I’ll just be glad to see her alive and well. There is no expectation for what may be after.”

Beatrice knows that this might be a lie. She can’t admit that to Camila though. She can’t even admit it to herself. Just a little over two weeks ago she’d still been a sworn in nun who believed in the cause. Just because she did not anymore, didn’t mean that she was ready to give into everything that she had denied herself. Her hesitation was not only about the plan and if it would work, it was also about if Beatrice was ready for what it would entail.

“It’s almost bedtime.”, Beatrice realises, “Mother Superion has a cot ready by the arc. I’ll sleep there tonight.”

Camila gives her a knowing look, “I’ll meet you down there… We’ll bring her back.”, she promises.

Beatrice huffs out a breath and nods, more to herself than her counterpart. She knows exactly what she is going to think about, when she lays down, she hopes that it will work.

“We will.”

*

Ava is in a bright room, the walls painted in an off white colour that is not too harsh on the eyes. The light on the other hand is very cold and unsettling. She’s used to the sound of nothingness. The Warrior Nun shifts a bit, her Halo turns on and she looks back, suddenly alert. 

“What are you trying to tell me?”, Ava prompts, not expecting an answer. 

She has spent the past whatever amount of time thinking about Beatrice’s words. Her resolve. How did the nun know, which memory to focus on? 

The Halo clicks and Ava feels a pull. 

She walks out of the room and into a narrow hallway, which is dark- a stark contrast to where she had been until now. Ava knows exactly which way she has to take. 

The Warrior Nun walks through a dimly lit opening, until she sees grey, tall walls with a cross shaped cutout, lit by a setting sun, letting the cross appear golden. There she is. Beatrice waiting for her, with her back facing Ava. 

Of course Ava knows where that was. Adriel’s cathedral. The presumable location of the arc. Jillian Salvius’ lie to protect the sisters, to protect Beatrice. This is the place she uncovered her plan and left the others, on her way to a suicide mission. Beatrice was standing, where she’d stood. 

“Bea…”

Beatrice turns over. Just then Ava realises she is wearing her battle outfit sans the head cover. Ava is also wearing hers, though hers has shreds of fabric missing. She notices it with great interest.

“Why here?”, Ava whispers, her voice small in the vast, echoing space. Even though she already knows. It’s where it ended, she thinks. Of course that would make a great memory to hold onto. Maybe force herself back through where she came from. She looks down to her feet, where she’d phased through, to get to the basement. 

A cold dread mixed with the bittersweet feeling of losing a lover trickles down her spine. Although she is not the one who lost her lover. Not the way Beatrice had. She thinks about it, does Beatrice even consider Ava her lover? A star crossed one, maybe. The Halo on her back flares, golden.

“Because I hope this is a very powerful memory of yours. At least, it is for me. This place is where I almost lost you forever.”, Beatrice steps down, to be level with Ava, mirroring her movement from a few weeks ago, on earth. Only it was the other way around. Ava had been the one to take the step down and towards Beatrice, who hadn’t anticipated what was going to happen.

Beatrice speaks again, “Because this is where you showed me the truth.”

Ava draws in a breath. She realises those are human mannerisms, not her need for oxygen in this place. So this is happening, she thinks. They are going to talk about the kiss. Beatrice draws in closer, only an arm’s reach away. 

“And it changed me forever.”, the ex-nun continues her monologue and takes the remaining step to close the distance between them. 

The spoken words hang in the cold air, Ava still hasn’t said a thing. The admission by Beatrice catches her off guard. She can’t respond, doesn’t know what to, doesn’t want to ruin the moment. Beatrice doesn’t mind though, she needs to speak. Ava needed to listen this time.

“You asked me what memory you should focus on.”, Beatrice takes Ava’s hands in hers, turning them over, placing a kiss on the Warrior Nun’s right, sending shivers down her spine, “What could possibly be strong enough to tether you across dimensions?”, Beatrice’s gaze drops to Ava’s lips for a heartbeat, before returning to her eyes, continuing, “I need you to think of that moment.”

The Halo is on overdrive. 

Something in the air changes. 

A hand lands on Ava’s left cheek, thumb grazing the bone softly. Another on her waist. This action alone, in combination with the admission before sends Ava into a vertigo. But then Beatrice trumps it, when she kisses her. First it’s soft, and then Ava catches onto what is happening, her hand reaches up and cups Beatrice’s face, urging her impossibly closer. 

For a moment Ava feels guilty, Beatrice’s vows, but that gets replaced by surprise quickly, when Beatrice’s tongue brushes against her lips and she opens up eagerly. Both inhale sharply at the contact, the kiss not as sweet and soft as the first one they'd shared weeks ago. It also does not compare to the kiss Ava shared with realm-Beatrice. When they part, both panting, the Warrior Nun cannot fight her smile.

The Halo fades out, the glow barely noticeable.

“I think we need to do that again, so I can concentrate on the memory... Research purposes…”, Ava chuckles and is about to lean in again- but then she vanishes with a click. Beatrice blinks and panic settles in her. She doesn’t know if it has worked. Now all she could do is wait. In a cathedral built by a false prophet. In the place where she broke her vows. Twice.

She puts it into perspective: it was the dream realm after all. Her vows were not binding here.

Or: Semantics, as Ava would say.

Chapter Text

The clock strikes midnight. Camila distracts herself by scrolling on TikTok, sometimes she will show Mother Superion a specific video by other OCS branches or Adriel thirst traps. (Yes, there were a lot.) The older woman sometimes wishes, she wasn’t as lenient as she was with the sisters’ usage of smartphones. 

“I can’t believe there are FBCs, still waiting for him to come back.”, Yasmine comments, while looking at a particular video of Adriel conjuring up locusts. Meanwhile Beatrice is sleeping in the cot close to the arc, so that she could be there, when Ava crossed over. It’s been about two hours, since Beatrice fell asleep. 

Jillian Salvius enters the basement with a mug filled with coffee to the brim. Camila, Mother Superion and Yasmine are situated around a table, anxiously waiting for the arc to do something. So far it hadn’t even made a sound.

“Anything?”, the scientist asks, everybody shakes their head, “Well, we do not even know, if Beatrice was able to reach her tonight. This might take a few more days. For all we know, the dream connection is unreliable. Beatrice couldn’t reach Ava every night so far, could she?”

Camila nods, “Yes, that’s true. I hope this doesn’t discourage Beatrice. I’m not sure how much more pain she can bear.”, after she says it, her eyes lock with Dr. Salvius’, who out of all of them had gone through the worst scenarios. Losing her son not once, but twice.

“Let’s remain hopeful.”, Mother Superion interjects, sensing the tension.

They all fall into a conversation, not even realising, when a low hum begins to vibrate through the stone floor of the basement. It’s not loud. It’s a feeling more than a sound, a deep, resonant frequency that makes the coffee in Jillian’s mug ripple. The casual conversation dies instantly.

All eyes snap to the arc.

The massive dormant structure begins to glow from within its core, not with the violent, electric blue of Adriel’s power, but with a warm, pulsing, golden light.

“Something’s happening…”, Jillian whispers, setting her mug down with a shaking hand and rushing to a control panel, “The energy signature… It’s completely unique. But I know it… It must be her!”

The hum rises in pitch, becoming a resonant chord that vibrates in their bones. Mother Superion rises to her feet, her face a mask of awe and fierce hope. Camila grabs Yasmine’s hand, squeezing it tightly, her lips moving in a silent prayer. At the centre of the arc, the air itself seems to warp and shimmer, like heat haze on a summer road. The golden light concentrates, spinning, coalescing into a humanoid form. It’s blindingly bright for a second- a silhouette of pure, haloed energy.

And then the light vanishes.

It’s sucked inward, collapsing into the figure now standing unsteadily in the centre of the platform. 

Ava.

She stumbles forward a step, her body swaying. She is dressed in the tattered remains of her battle gear, the gaps in the fabric revealing no scarring. Her hair is just slightly longer, matted with dust and otherworldly grime. She looks ancient and brand new, all at once.

Ava blinks rapidly against the sudden, mundane dimness of the basement, her eyes narrowing, as they struggle to adjust, her power to will light is no more. She cannot control anything in this realm, and when she realises it, she loves it. 

That’s the moment the spell breaks.

The Warrior Nun takes a stumbling step, her movement is clumsy, as if she has forgotten, how gravity works. Camila is the first to move, letting out a choked cry of, “¡Gracias a Dios!”, and rushing forward, but it’s Mother Superion’s voice, sharp with an emotion so raw, it cracks, that catches Ava.

“Ava.”

The Warrior Nun regards the group with a lazy smile, blinking a few times, she cannot believe it really worked. She wants to get closer to them, making sure, they are real, but her legs give out in that moment. Both Camila and Yasmine reach her just in time, to catch her under her arms, lowering her gently onto the stone floor. Her body is light, too light, but solid. Real. They all take turns hugging the miracle that was sprawled on the floor before them.

Ava really doesn’t want to wait any longer, especially not since what had happened in Adriel’s cathedral, just a few minutes ago, her eyes dart to the cot. She finally sees Beatrice, still deep in the enchanted sleep of the dream realm, her face peaceful, one hand curled loosely near her face. Ava’s breath hitches. Camila catches onto that and follows her eyes, “She’ll freak- I can’t believe it really worked. First try even!”

Jillian is there a moment later with a foil blanket, her eyes glistening, as she drapes it over Ava’s shoulders, “Welcome back.”, she offers. Ava takes one look at her, and her heart starts aching, but the scientist smiles kindly, she’s just really glad her invention was used for a good cause this time.

The Warrior Nun refocuses her gaze to the sleeping figure on the cot. Everybody is aware of that. She asks for a hand- to be able to stand up. Camila and Yasmine guide her to Beatrice. When Ava reaches the cot, she just stares. Her hand lifts, trembling, just an inch away. The love and reverence in the gesture is so palpable, it makes the air feel thick. Nobody dares to interrupt.

“I can’t…”, Ava whispers, more to herself than anyone else in the room, “I can’t wake her. She looks so peaceful...”

Ava stands there, a tortured guardian, caught between the desperate need to touch Beatrice and the overwhelming desire to let her have one more moment of peace. Camila, who has been holding her breath, finally lets out an exasperated, but fond huff. She rolls her eyes hard at this display.

“For the love of all that is holy…”, she mutters, striding forward. Before Ava can stop her, Camila leans down, shaking Beatrice’s shoulder firmly, “Beatrice. Beatrice. Wake up.” 

Beatrice’s brow furrows. She shifts, a soft, displeased sound escaping her lips as she is pulled from the depths of what was undoubtedly the first good sleep she’d had in weeks.

“Camila, what-?”, she mumbles, her eyes fluttering open, blurred with sleep and confusion. They focus first on Camila’s determined face. And then they shift, past her, to the figure standing behind her. Beatrice goes perfectly, utterly still. Her sleep is wiped from her face in an instant, replaced by a disbelief, so profound, it looks like pain. 

Ava offers a weak, wobbly smile, fresh tears welling in her own eyes, “Hey, Bea.” 

The sound of her voice, real and not a dream, is the key that unlocks Beatrice. A shattered, breathless sound escapes her, not a word, not a sob, just pure, unfiltered emotion. She scrambles off the cot, her movements uncharacteristically clumsy, and stumbles the single step that separates them. Her hands come up, cupping Ava’s face, her thumbs stroking over her cheekbones as if checking for the very substance of her, “You’re here...”, she breathes, the words a prayer, a verdict, “You’re really here. It worked...?”

Ava leans into the touch, her eyes closing for a brief second, she’s aware that there were others around them, so she whispers the words, “Hell of a memory to touch into.”

Beatrice stays still, something robotic about her feature, as she tries to not let on too much of her emotions. And this reminds Ava of realm-Beatrice, making her stomach drop a bit, but the feeling is fleeting. Especially, when Beatrice pulls Ava into a crushing embrace. She holds her, as if trying to fuse them together, to make it impossible for any realm to ever pull them apart again.

Over Ava’s shoulders, Beatrice finds Camila and the others and mouths a silent “Thank you.”, and everyone just nods, shedding tears of their own.

The Halo on Ava’s back, silent until now, gives one last, soft, contented pulse of golden light, bathing them both in its warmth, as if sighing in relief.

It was finally, finally home.

*

The next two hours are spent talking about what happened on the other side of the arc. Ava relays some of the information, telling Jillian and the OCS members some details about her healing, until Beatrice asks everyone to give Ava some time to rest. There were endless days to ask her now.

The door clicks shut behind Camila, her cheerful “So glad you’re back!”, echoing briefly in the sudden silence. The room feels too large now, the space between the bed and the chair, where Beatrice is sitting, endless.

Ava is propped up against a mountain of pillows in her room, formerly Shannon’s room, that she never really got to inhabit. She looks small in a borrowed sleep shirt, her fingers tracing the edge of the wool blanket absently. 

Beatrice can’t stop looking at her. Every few seconds her eyes dart to the Warrior Nun, a lifetime of discipline forcing her to give the illusion of privacy, to only be dragged back by the magnetic, impossible truth: Ava is finally here. She is real.

“You’re staring, Bea.”

“I’m just- ensuring you’re really here. That it’s not a dream.”

“I’m here.”, Ava responds, her gaze intense, locking onto Beatrice’s, “And so are you, which means, we need to talk about… You know, the cathedral.”

Beatrice’s stomach drops. She’s feared that that was coming sooner or later. She has already rehearsed a dozen speeches. And now that she is faced with the living, questions-asking reality of Ava, the words she has carefully constructed, escape her.

“Ava…”, she begins, her voice formal, the one she used when donning her armour of duty. She clasps her hands tightly in her lap, “What happened in the dream realm- it was a necessary strategy. An emotional anchor of significant magnitude to facilitate your return. It cannot… it should not be misconstrued.”

The Warrior Nun’s smile doesn’t falter, but it becomes a little sadder, a little more knowing, “Bea-”

“It was a means to an end.”, Beatrice interrupts her, the words feeling like ash in her mouth. She can’t meet Ava’s eyes anymore, staring onto the wooden floorboards, “And while the sentiment behind it was genuine. The action itself was a transgression. A violation of my vows, technically. It cannot happen again. I cannot allow myself to-”

“Beatrice”, Ava tries again, the interruption gentle, but firm, “I know.”

The woman in question looks up suddenly, surprised, “You know?”

“I know, it can’t happen again.”, Ava says softly. Her eyes are full of an understanding that cut deeper than any accusation could have, “Because you’re a nun. I get it. I’ve always gotten it- That’s why it took me so long to do something about it. I mean, that’s the whole deal, right? Chastity, obedience and all that stuff…”, her tone changes into a lighter one, “I didn’t say what I said before, to you know… Pressure you. And I didn’t think that that kiss, even though it was a really, really, really good, world-saving, bringing-me-back-from-the-underworld kind of kiss, would have changed that. I just needed you to know that it meant something to me. That’s all.”

The ache in Beatrice’s chest is physical. Ava’s quiet acceptance, her immediate willingness to shoulder the burden of the rejection, to make it easier on her, is somehow infinitely worse than anger would have been, but then again, Beatrice should have expected that, she thinks. Ava has surprised her more than once with her big heart and her capacity to love. 

Beatrice finds her voice again, but it is barely a whisper, “Ava that is not-”

“It’s okay, Bea. Really.”, Ava offers a small, genuine smile now, “I’m just happy to be here, with you. However that looks. We can go back to being best friends. You’ll be my trainer, I will be your trainee, we’ll be just fine.”

“No.”, Beatrice exhales, the word comes out more forcefully than she intends, but she leads with it, standing up, taking a step towards the Warrior Nun, “You misunderstand. It’s not that I don’t want it to happen again.”

Ava’s brows furrow in confusion, “Then what?”

Beatrice takes a deep, shuddering breath. This is it. “The reason it cannot happen again now, is because I have formally requested laicisation from the Order. I am in the process of leaving.”

The silence in the room is unbearable, Ava simply stares, her lips in a thin line, her brain trying to work out what that means, “You’re what?”

“I’m renouncing my vows. The process has begun, but it’s not complete yet. It usually requires formal approval from the Vatican, which, given the current interregnum, may take some time.”, Beatrice’s words are clinical, “Until that process is finalised, I am still -in the eyes of the Church- a sister of the OCS. My vows are still binding. To act on my feelings…”, she inhales deeply again, “Now would be to break them dishonourably. I started this path with integrity and I must see it through with the same.” The older woman finally dares to look directly at Ava, “So you see, it’s not that I do not want to. It is quite the opposite. I want to so much that I am dismantling my entire life for the chance. But I cannot- I will not do it halfway. Not with you. You deserve more than a shadow of a vow. You deserve a whole person. And I need to become her first.”

Ava is silent for a long moment, simply looking at the woman she loves. The initial shock melts away slowly, replaced by a dawning comprehension.

“Beatrice… You’re leaving for me?”

The woman in question shakes her head, “No. I am leaving for me. Because of you. You showed me I had a choice. You made me want to choose something else.”

Ava exhales deeply, her gaze directed in front of her, with a smile she cannot contain, “Okay then. We wait for the paperwork.”, she pats the empty space on the bed beside her. Beatrice only hesitates for a second, before crossing the room and sitting on the very edge of the mattress, her posture still ramrod straight. She is not afraid that Ava would do anything inappropriate. Beatrice is afraid that any closeness would make her forget her resolution. Luckily Ava doesn’t try to touch her, respecting everything her counterpart had just said.

“But just so we’re super clear on the terms of this… Ceasefire…”, interesting wording, Beatrice thinks, “The second that letter comes through…”

Beatrice shifts her gaze from the floorboards to Ava’s eyes, an unguarded smile reserved for that answer, “Trust me, Ava. The very second.”

Ava nods, “I really, really want to kiss you now. So… I think you should go.”

*

Beatrice decides to stay in Spain, at Cat's Cradle, in her old room, now that Ava was back. The Warrior Nun was a part of the OCS after all, even though Beatrice informally wasn’t anymore. Mother Superion had offered a no-vows agreement. Similar to Mary’s. The former Sister Warrior was still hesitant about it, although having agreed to make herself useful, while she was there.

Beatrice couldn’t sit still, so she had offered to do a one on one training session with Ava, to check back in. 

The sound of wood cracking against wood echoes through the cavernous hall. It is a sharp, percussive rhythm, a language both of them understand better than any other.

Ava moves with a new kind of grace. The Halo’s energy isn't just a surge of power anymore- it is a seamless extension of her will. She flows around Beatrice’s attacks, a blur of motion, her staff a silver streak in the dim light. Beatrice is her mirror image: precise, controlled, every block and parry a masterpiece of economy. But her focus is split. Part of her mind is on the fight, reading Ava’s tells, anticipating her moves. The larger part, however, is cataloguing the micro-expressions on Ava’s face, the way her breath hitched when she lunged, the sheen of sweat on her brow.

They are dancing on a knife’s edge. The space between them is a live wire.

The Warrior Nun sees an opening -a slight over-extension on Beatrice’s part- and moves to exploit it. She spins, her staff whipping towards Beatrice’s side. The former Sister Warrior reacts on instinct, bringing her own staff up to block, but she is a fraction of a second too slow. Instead of the hard crack of wood, there is a soft thud. Ava’s staff pulls at the last possible moment, the force of the blow dissipating so that it is just the flat of the staff that presses gently into Beatrice’s ribs.

They freeze.

Ava’s hand is still wrapped around her staff, her knuckles white. Beatrice’s own block is suspended in mid-air. They are close, breathing heavily, the air between them thick and electric.
The older woman can feel the faint pressure through her training gear. It isn’t a strike. It is a caress.

Ava’s eyes grow wide, locked on the point of contact. Her chest rising and falling rapidly. Slowly, so slowly, she lifts her gaze to meet Beatrice’s.

The world narrows to that single point of contact. The unspoken words hang between them, louder than any battle cry.

I could have hit you. I didn’t. I never would.

I know.

Beatrice’s breath catches. Her discipline, her famed control, is a thin veneer threatening to shatter. Every cell in her body screams to close the distance, to map the feel of Ava’s skin, to finally, finally…

She takes a sharp step back, breaking the contact. The moment shatters.

“Your control is improving…” Beatrice says, her voice slightly strained. She turns away, busying herself with adjusting her grip on her staff, a needless gesture, “You pulled that strike perfectly.”

Ava lowers her own staff, the energy seeming to drain from her, “Yeah. Control.” She sounds disappointed. In herself? In the situation? Beatrice can’t tell.

Silence descends, heavy and awkward. The easy camaraderie of their training sessions is gone, replaced by a new, terrifying intimacy.

“Beatrice?” Ava’s voice is small.

“Yes, Ava?”

“This is really hard.”

Beatrice closes her eyes. She doesn’t need to ask what this was. She feels it in the ache of her own muscles, in the frantic beat of her heart every time Ava smiles at her.

“I know,” she whispers, finally turning to face her. The mask back in place, but it is fragile, “The waiting…”

“No...”, Ava says, shaking her head. She takes a tentative step closer, but keeps a careful foot of space between them, “Not the waiting. The… this.” She gestures vaguely between them, “Trying to act normal when all I can think about is the cathedral. And you’re right there. And I can’t… I can’t just…”

The silently agreed to call the kiss the cathedral. 

Beatrice’s resolve crumbles another inch, “What would you do?”,  she asks, the question leaving her lips before she can stop it, “If you could...?”

She doesn’t know what she expects. If she even is allowed to hear, what the Warrior Nun might want to do to her…

However, Ava’s eyes soften. She looks down at her own hands, then back up at Beatrice, a world of longing in her gaze, “I’d probably just want to hold your hand. I think about that a lot. How it would feel. Your hand in mine. Not in another dimension. Not just as friends. For real.” It’s not like it hasn’t occurred. Ava has held Beatrice’s hand on countless occasions in Switzerland. But this was different.

The simplicity of it undoes Beatrice completely. Not a kiss, not a grand gesture. A handhold. The most fundamental promise of connection.

“Ava…”, the name is a prayer, a warning, a plea.

“I know, I know…” Ava says, holding up her hands in surrender, a sad smile touching her lips, “The paperwork. The vows. The integrity.”

She picks up her staff from where she had leaned it against the wall, “Come on. My footwork on the left side is still garbage. You should probably yell at me about it.”

It is a peace offering. A return to the familiar script of trainer and trainee, the only safe harbour they have left. Beatrice nods, her throat too tight to speak. She falls into a ready stance, her body moving on autopilot. As they begin to spar again, the rhythm less fierce now, more of a drill, Beatrice watches Ava’s hands. And she knows, with a certainty that is both terrifying and exhilarating, that the second the Vatican’s letter arrives, she wouldn’t be reading it first.

She would be reaching for Ava’s hand.


Chapter Text

The first sensation is the light. Not the warm, forgiving glow of the sun through the window of her room at Cat’s Cradle, but the harsh, sterile, shadowless white that sears her closed eyelids.

Ava’s eyes fly open. A choked gasp rips from her throat.

She is back.

The seamless white walls, the ceiling that is also the floor, the air that smells of absolutely nothing- it is all exactly as it was. The familiar, high-pitched whine of existential dread begins to buzz in her ears, a sound she now knows is the Halo protesting this place.

“No,” she whispers, the word swallowed by the immense, hungry silence. “No, no, no, no.”

She scrambles backward on the featureless floor, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird. This isn’t happening. She has been home. She has felt real sun, eaten real food, heard Beatrice’s real voice. The memory is so vivid, so tangible, that this feels like a cruel joke. Has it all been another layer of the dream? A more sophisticated torture?

Panic, cold and sharp, claws its way up her throat. She is trapped. The door gone. The train gone. Beatrice is gone.

She is back in the beautiful, perfect, suffocating prison.

“This isn’t fair!”, she screams into the void, her voice cracking with a raw desperation she hasn’t felt since her first days here, “You can’t just take it back!”

Do not fret. I did not bring you back, Warrior Nun.

The voice is not a sound. It is a frequency that vibrates in the marrow of her bones. Ava flinches, wrapping her arms around herself as the form of Reya coalesces from the light itself, gliding into existence a few feet away.

“You are not here in the manner you were before.”, Reya continues, the alien gaze sweeping over Ava’s trembling form with detached curiosity, “Your consciousness is anchored to two realms now. A side effect of your return. You are dreaming. This is a convergence.”

“A convergence?”, Ava spits, anger momentarily overpowering the fear, “It feels like a fucking prison! It feels the same!”

“Perception is often reality.”, Reya replies, as if explaining something simple to a child, “But the reality is, the veil between all worlds grows thin. Your mind is sensitive to it. You are a tuning fork for the coming storm.”

The words cut through Ava’s panic. She slowly gets to her feet, her body still thrumming with adrenaline, “The storm. You mean… the holy war? The one Lilith warned Beatrice about?”

A flicker of something… Amusement? Annoyance? … Passes over Reya’s impossible features. “You see it as a simple conflict. Two sides on a field. It is not. It is a fundamental process. A cosmic pressure valve, releasing the built-up entropy of creation. Your world, with its vibrant, chaotic life energy, is a beacon. A feast. Adriel was a glutton who tried to claim the entire table for himself and drew too much attention. You plugged that hole. But the pressure has continued to build.”

Reya gestures, and the white walls around them dissolve. Suddenly, they are standing in a star-filled void. But it is wrong. The stars aren’t being blotted out by a tide of darkness, as Ava might have imagined. They are being unmade. Silently, without fanfare, pinpricks of light simply wink out of existence, leaving behind a nothingness so absolute it makes Ava’s stomach lurch.

“This is a symptom.”, Reya states, the voice flat, “The holy war, as your kind calls it, is not a battle for a world. It is the manifestation of this pressure on every world, where the veil is weak. Yours is next.”

“What’s happening? Who is behind it?”

Reya’s form seems to sharpen, intensifying, “Names are meaningless. They are not soldiers. They are a force of nature. A cosmic immune response gone rogue. They do not hate you. They do not fear you. They will simply consume you, and the energy of your Halo, and move on. They are inevitable.”

The cold, clinical way they say it is more terrifying than any snarl or threat.

“Then why bother?”, Ava demands, throwing her hands up, “Why bring me back? Why warn me? If it’s all just inevitable, what’s the fucking point?!”

“I did not say it was inevitable for you.”, Reya says, voice lowering into a resonant hum that feels like it is rearranging Ava’s DNA, “I said the tide is inevitable. You have a choice. You can be a sandcastle, washed away without a trace. Or you can be a bulwark.”

The deity glides closer, and the starscape vanishes, returning them to the sterile room, “The Halo is not a weapon. It is a lens. A key. You use it like a club. The beings that approach… they cannot be clubbed. They must be… redirected. Sealed away. This is what I have tried to do. But there’s just so much I can absorb.”

Reya looks at Ava, and for a single, terrifying second, the Warrior Nun sees an eternity of lonely, desperate conflict in their eyes.

“You asked for a way back to your beloved. I have given it to you. Cherish your stolen time. But know that the war is coming. And when it arrives, they will look to the halo bearer. They will look to you. And you will not be ready. Not like this.”

Before Ava can form a response, Reya begins to fade, their form dissolving back into the unbearable light.

Use your time wisely, Warrior Nun. The tide waits for no one.

And with that, Reya is gone. Ava is left alone in the silence, the panic now replaced by a cold, heavy dread that sits in her stomach like a stone.

The vacation is over.

The clock is ticking.


*

The silence in the library is deep, broken only by the soft rustle of a page turning. Beatrice sits at a heavy oak table, surrounded by ancient, leather bound chronicles. She has traded quantum physics and dream interpretation for theology and military history. The subject is no longer dimensional travel: it is war.

Ava finds her there, a silhouette of focus in the pool of light from a single lamp. She moves quietly, settling into the armchair opposite.

“You’re still researching?”, Ava asks, her voice soft.

Beatrice looks up, her gaze clearing from the centuries old text, “The conversation you had with Reya. I need to understand it. A cosmic pressure valve is a very vague term.”, she pushes a cracked journal toward Ava. The page is filled with dense Latin and a frightening drawing of a spiked, shadowy creature, “Our bestiaries are incomplete. Your account is our only real intelligence.”

The Warrior Nun uncurls, leaning forward to look, “It wasn’t exactly a briefing. It was more like a really depressing TED Talk.”, she hugs her knees again.

A ghost of a smile touches Beatrice’s lips. “A unique way to describe a conversation with a deity. The tide, Ava. Does Reya give any indication of a timeline? A location? Anything we can prepare for?”

Ava’s gaze grows distant. “No. Just that it’s coming. That the Halo is a key, not a weapon. That I use it like a club.”, the younger woman sighs, frustrated, “I don’t know how to not use it like a club.”

“We will learn. Like we did with the dream realm.”, Beatrice says, her voice firm with a conviction that makes Ava believe it, “Together.”, she returns to her notes, her pen moving swiftly as she cross references Ava’s account with the cryptic texts. Ava watches her. She watches the way Beatrice’s hand moves, as she writes, the intense focus in her eyes, the slight whisper of Latin that escapes her lips, when she works through a difficult passage.

Without really thinking, Ava gets up and walks over to the table. She leans over Beatrice’s shoulder, peering at the dense equations and frightening sketches. She points to a complex diagram, “So this squiggly line here is basically the how to fight a tide part?”

Beatrice’s breath hitches slightly at Ava’s sudden proximity, “In the most reductive terms imaginable, yes.”

Without warning Ava rests her chin on Beatrice’s shoulder, the wool of her sweater soft against her skin, “I like it. It’s a good squiggly line.” They stay like that for a long moment. Beatrice is frozen, hyper aware of Ava’s warmth against her back, the scent of her shampoo, the gentle weight of her chin. It is an agony and a solace. Her pen stops moving.

Down a nearby aisle, camouflaged by shadows and shelves, Camila freezes. She was coming to return a book, but the sight ahead makes her stop dead. She sees them: Beatrice, statue still at the table, and Ava leaning over her, chin nestled on her shoulder, a picture of such easy, domestic intimacy that it steals the air from Camila’s lungs. Shipping it so hard. A slow, wicked grin spreads across her face. With the stealth of a seasoned warrior, she pulls out her phone, quickly snaps a picture, and ducks back behind the shelf, before either woman can sense her presence. She looks at the photo. It is perfect. She forwards it in a text to Beatrice with a single caption: 😉 Research looks exhausting.

Back at the table, the moment breaks. Ava straightens up, her hand giving Beatrice’s shoulder a gentle squeeze before she pulls away, “We’ll figure it out... Or like, you will.”, she says softly, and returns to her armchair.

Beatrice lets out a breath she didn’t realise she was holding. The spot on her shoulder feels cold without Ava’s chin. She tries to focus on her work again, but her concentration is shattered. A minute later, her phone buzzes on the table. She picks it up absently, her mind still replaying the feeling of Ava’s closeness.

She opens the text from Camila.

The phone nearly slips from her fingers. A deep, furious blush explodes across her cheeks and races down her neck. She stares at the picture, at the two of them, looking so peaceful, so right together. It is the most intimate photograph she has ever seen of herself.

Beatrice doesn’t look up. She doesn’t dare. She just sits there, phone in hand, the terrifying, wonderful evidence of their almost normalcy burning in her palm, her heart pounding a frantic rhythm against her ribs.

*

The wooden bench is hard beneath Ava, a familiar sensation she’d missed without even realising it. She sits next to Beatrice and opposite Camila, enthusiastically attacking a bowl of stew that tastes like heaven after a diet of… whatever nothingness tasted like.

Beatrice, beside her, eats with her usual precise efficiency, but her posture is a fraction less rigid than it used to be. Her shoulder occasionally brushes against Ava’s arm when she reaches for her water glass, and each time, a tiny, almost invisible shiver runs through her. Camila, across from them, is happily dissecting a piece of gossip about Sister Dora’s newfound and surprisingly aggressive passion for gardening, “…and then Mother Superion found her trying to plant Divinium-sharpened stakes around the rose bushes to deter pests. I think we’ve created a monster.”

Ava laughs, a real, full-bodied sound that makes Beatrice’s lips twitch into a smile, “I think it’s badass. Wraith demon-proof roses.”

“A strategic oversight if I’ve ever heard one.”,  Beatrice comments dryly, not looking up from her stew, “The undead are notoriously indifferent to horticulture.”

Camila grins, pointing her spoon at Beatrice, “See? This is why we need you. The tactical mind.” She takes a bite of bread, her eyes sparkling with mischief as she chews and swallows, her gaze flicking between her two friends, “So, Ava. Now that you’re back among the living and all, have you asked her out yet?”

Ava chokes on a potato. A violent coughing fit following, her face turning red. Beatrice’s hand flies to her back, patting it firmly, her touch professional and concerned, though her ears have turned a brilliant shade of scarlet.

“Camila!”, Beatrice hisses, her eyes wide with a mixture of horror and warning.

“What?”, Camila asks, all wide-eyed innocence, “It’s a valid question! You’re laicising, she’s… Well, she’s Ava. The sexual tension in this room could power the arc for a week. I’m just moving things along.”

Ava, having finally recovered her breath, wipes her eyes, “Wow. Okay. Direct.”, she shoots a panicked look at Beatrice, who retracts her hand and is now staring fixedly at her bowl as if it contained the secrets of the universe, “We, uh… We can’t. Yet.”

Camila’s smile fades into genuine confusion, “Why not? The vow thing? Beatrice, you’ve practically left already. Who cares?”

“I care!”, Beatrice says, her voice low, but intense. She finally looks up, meeting Camila’s gaze, “The process must be completed with integrity. My vows are binding until the official decree is granted. To go on a date with Ava before then, would be a dishonour. To the vows, to the Order, and to Ava.”

The conviction in her voice silences Camila’s teasing. She looks from Beatrice’s fiercely principled face to Ava’s, which is filled with such fond understanding, it is almost painful to witness.

“Oh!”, Camila says softly, her cheekiness evaporating, “I see.”, she nods slowly, a new respect dawning in her eyes, “That’s actually really beautiful. In a terribly frustrating, incredibly you way, Beatrice.”, she pauses, taking them both in, “You know, it’s kind of amazing. You’re both each other’s firsts, in a way. Real firsts. That’s really special.”

The air at their little table goes from awkward to utterly frozen.

Ava’s mind screeches to a halt. Firsts. The word echoes. A cold dread pools in her stomach. Oh god. JC. She had completely forgotten. She’d been so wrapped up in Beatrice, in the purity and enormity of what they were dancing around, that she’d buried the messy, complicated memory of her ill-advised make-out session with a guy whose face she could barely remember. Beatrice, with her vows and her integrity, thought she was pure, untouched. She wasn't. She needed to tell her. She would hate it.

Beside her, Beatrice has gone perfectly still as well. A different kind of panic flashes in her eyes, one Ava can’t interpret. Firsts. The word seems to strike a different chord in her. Her cheeks flush a deep red, and she suddenly finds the grain of the wooden table utterly fascinating.

Camila, blissfully unaware of the twin bombshells she has just dropped, takes a sip of her water, “I mean, it’s just so romantic. A love so big it makes you leave your entire life, and it’s the first real love for both of you. It’s like a fairy tale.”

Ava and Beatrice chance a look at each other. Their eyes meet for a split second- a chaotic mix of guilt, panic, and unspoken secret- before they both quickly look away again, their postures rigid with a new, shared awkwardness.

“Yeah…”, Ava mumbles, pushing a carrot around her bowl, “A real fairy tale.”

“Mhm…” Beatrice agrees, her voice tight.

Camila finally seems to sense the shift in atmosphere. She looks between their two flushed, intensely uncomfortable faces, “…I’ve said something, haven’t I?”

“No!” they both shout in unison, a little too quickly.

“Right…”, Camila says slowly, a suspicious smile playing on her lips. She stands up, picking up her tray, “Well, this was enlightening. I’m going to… Go check on the zombie roses. You two, enjoy the rest of your lunch.”

She walks away, leaving a silence behind her that is louder than any conversation.

Ava stares at her stew. I have to tell her about JC.


Beatrice stares at her hands. I have to tell her about before.

The space between them on the bench feels like a canyon filled with everything they didn’t know about each other.

*


The silence from lunch has stretched between them all afternoon, a living thing. It is Ava, who finally breaks, unable to bear the weight of her secret any longer. She’s practically dragged Beatrice to the most secluded spot she could find on the convent.

Now, they sit knee-to-knee in the dim light. Ava is wringing her hands, her gaze fixated on the worn Persian rug beneath their feet.

“So. Lunch was something.”, Ava starts, her voice unnaturally high.

Beatrice doesn’t reply. She thought, she could have this conversation later. She still gives Ava the space to speak, her own hands resting calmly in her lap, though her knuckles are white.

“Camila with the firsts thing…”, Ava takes a shuddering breath, “It got me thinking. And I need to tell you something. Before anything else happens. Before you and I- You need to know.”

Beatrice stays perfectly still, a statue braced for a blow, “You can tell me anything, Ava.”

“I’m not- I wasn’t…”, the words tumble out in a rushed, ashamed whisper, “With JC. It wasn’t- We never had sex. Okay? It was just… Making out in a broom closet. And some hands-stuff. The thrill of getting chased got to me, and it was against my better judgement and also, may I remind you that I was technically still a teenager with raging hormones that I never got to experience…”, she realises that she’s straying, she cringes, “But it didn’t go all the way. I just, I thought you should know. Because you’re you. And you have your vows and your purity, and I didn’t want you to think I was- That I’m…”, she finally chances a look up, her eyes glistening with unshed tears,“I’m still a virgin. If that matters to you.”

She braces herself for disappointment. For a flicker of judgment. For the cool, detached mask of Sister Beatrice to slide back into place.
It doesn’t happen.

Instead, a soft, almost imperceptible sigh escapes Beatrice. A tension Ava hasn’t even noticed vanishes from her shoulders.

“Oh, Ava.” Beatrice breathes out. A small, almost sad smile touches her lips, “No. That doesn’t matter to me. Not at all. Your history, whatever it is, is part of you. It doesn’t make you less in my eyes, it never could.”

The reaction is so opposite to what Ava had feared that it leaves her confused, “Wait… So what were you worried about then?”

Beatrice’s smile fades. She looks down at her own hands, now clasped tightly together. The silence stretches again, but this time it is filled with her own gathering courage.

“I was worried, because…”, she starts, her voice unsteady, “Because what I have to tell you is so much heavier.”

The Warrior Nun stays silent, willing her to continue.

Beatrice closes her eyes. When she speaks, the words are measured, each one costing her something, “You were afraid to tell me about a boy you kissed because you thought I, a nun, would judge you for your lack of purity.”, she opens her eyes, and they are filled with a deep, old shame, “But… I am not the person you think I am.”

She takes a sharp, shaky breath, “The reason I was sent to the catholic boarding school, the reason, why I landed in the OCS… It wasn’t just for my ‘unnatural proclivities,’ as my father would call them. It was to cover a scandal. To hide me away.”

Ava feels a cold dread creeping up her spine, “Bea, what are you saying?”

“I had a relationship.”, Beatrice forces the word out, as if it were foreign and dangerous on her tongue, “With a girl. At my school. It was not just kissing, Ava.”

It dawns on Ava, what the confession means.

It was not just kissing, Ava.

“It was discovered. The shame it brought upon my name was unthinkable to them. My devotion, my calling, it was real. It is real. But my parents’ motivation for sending me off to a catholic boarding school stems from their need to make the problem disappear. To have me atone for a sin they could not tolerate.”, Beatrice’s voice breaks, “So you see, your confession requires no forgiveness from me. I am the one who is impure. I broke my vows before I even made them.”

“Oh, Beatrice,” Ava whispers, her heart shattering. Without thinking, she reaches out, covering Beatrice’s clenched hands with her own. So, she did get to hold Beatrice’s hand, before the letter came through. However, not for any romantic reasons, it was meant to comfort. Beatrice flinches at the touch but doesn’t pull away. She seems to be waiting for the rejection, the disgust.

Instead, Ava squeezes her hands tightly, “Look at me.”, reluctantly, Beatrice raises her tear-filled eyes, “There is nothing impure about you.” Ava says, her voice fierce with conviction, “You loved someone. That’s not a sin. Your parents, they were wrong. What they did to you was wrong.”

Ava’s mind is reeling, piecing together a thousand moments of Beatrice’s behaviour- her flinch at touch, her intense self-control, her belief that she was unworthy of love. It all made a terrible, heartbreaking sense.

Ava moves without hesitation. She slides from her chair onto her knees on the rug in front of Beatrice, forcing her to look down at her, “Listen to me. You are the best person I know. Your past doesn’t change that. It just- it makes me understand you so much more. And it makes me hate the people who made you feel like this.”, the Warrior Nun reaches up and gently wipes the tear from her counterpart’s cheek, a gesture so tender, Beatrice wants to cry even more, “We both have pasts, Bea. Mine is just shorter and… just so you know, it doesn’t matter to me either.”

Beatrice stares down at her, the fortress walls around her heart finally, completely crumbling. The relief of being truly seen was overwhelming. She brings her own hand up to cover Ava’s, holding it against her cheek, leaning into the touch.

The last secret was out. The last barrier between them was gone.

All that was left was the wait for a piece of paper, and the promise of a future they could now finally approach without any ghosts from the past.

Chapter Text

The piece of paper arrives on a Tuesday afternoon.

It is not delivered by a papal courier with great ceremony. Mother Superion simply walks into the training hall, where Beatrice is drilling a group of newer recruits, a single, crisp envelope in her hand. Her expression unreadable, but her eyes find Beatrice’s and hold them for a moment longer than necessary.

Beatrice’s staff falters mid swing. The entire world narrows to that envelope in Mother Superion’s hand.

“Beatrice.”, Mother Superion says, her voice carrying easily across the hall, “A word in my office.”

The recruits glance at each other, confused by the interruption. Beatrice just nods, her throat too tight to speak. She hands her staff to the nearest sister without a word and follows Mother Superion, her heart hammering against her ribs like a wild thing trying to escape.

The walk to the office is a blur. The only sound is the rustle of Mother Superion’s habit and the frantic pounding of blood in Beatrice’s ears.

Mother Superion closes the office door behind them and hands her the envelope without preamble. It is heavy, expensive paper. The seal of the Vatican is embossed on the back, broken.

“It is granted.”, Mother Superion says simply. Her stern features soften a fraction, “Effective immediately. You are free, Beatrice.”

Beatrice’s hands tremble as she takes it. She doesn’t need to read the formal Latin inside. The three words are enough. 

It is granted.

A wave of vertigo washes over her. Six years of her life. Vows of poverty, chastity, obedience. A identity, a purpose, a family- all dissolved by the contents of this single sheet of paper. She feels unmoored. Terrified. Elated.

“Thank you, Mother.” she whispers, her voice rough, “There’s somewhere I need to be.”

Beatrice knows what she wants to do. She turns and leaves the office, her steps quickening with every stride. She isn't running, but it is a near thing. She moves through the familiar stone corridors of the Cat’s Cradle with a singular purpose, the paper clutched in her hand like a lifeline. The former nun doesn’t have to look far. She finds Ava exactly where she thought she would be: in the sun dappled courtyard, sitting on the edge of the old stone fountain, trailing her fingers in the water and watching the light dance on the surface.

Ava looks up as Beatrice approaches, a question in her eyes. She takes in the other woman’s flushed face, her bright eyes, the rapid pace of her walk.

“Bea? What’s wrong?”, she asks, starting to stand up, her face etched with concern.

“Nothing is wrong.” Beatrice says, panting, stopping in front of her, “Everything is right.”

She holds out the envelope.

Ava’s eyes drop to it, to the broken papal seal. Her breath hitches. Understanding dawns, slow and then all at once. Her gaze flies back to Beatrice’s face, “Is that…?”

“It’s done.”, Beatrice confirms, her voice soft but clear, “The wait is over.”

Ava stares at her, her expression shifting from shock to radiant joy. She rises to her feet completely, a smile breaking over her face, “So, what happens now?”

Beatrice’s own smile is a mirror of that joy. She lets the envelope fall to the stone bench beside them. It is irrelevant now. It has served its purpose. The former Sister Warrior closes the small distance between them. This time, there is no hesitation, no guilt, no invisible barrier. She reaches out, not for a handshake, not for a training grip. She gently, deliberately, takes Ava’s hand in hers, lacing their fingers together. The touch is electric, solid, and real. It is the anchor she has been searching for.

“Now...”, Beatrice says her thumb stroking over Ava’s knuckles, looking around them, making a swift decision, “I would like to visit your room.”

The air leaves Ava’s lungs in a soft, surprised rush. The smile doesn't leave her face, but it shifts, intensifies. Beatrice’s thumb continues its slow, deliberate stroke against her skin. Her gaze is unwavering, clear and certain in a way Ava had only ever seen in the heat of battle. But this was a different kind of fight. This was a campaign for a new life, and Beatrice was claiming her first victory.

Ava’s heart isn’t just beating, it is drumming a wild, frantic rhythm against her ribs. The simple touch of their joined hands feels more intimate than any kiss in a dream realm. This is real. This is a conscious choice.

“My room?”, Ava finally manages, her voice a husky whisper. She squeezes Beatrice’s hand, a silent answer in itself, “It’s, uh, it’s kind of a mess. I think Camila left some gear in there and I haven’t really…”

She is babbling. Nerves and anticipation making her words trip over each other.

Beatrice’s smile softens at the edges, a silent, fond acknowledgment of Ava’s rambling. She takes half a step closer, erasing what little distance remained, but is still mindful of their surroundings.

The scent of her soap, old books, and Beatrice wrap around Ava.

“I do not care about the state of your room, Ava.”, she says, her voice low and impossibly steady, though Ava can feel the faintest tremor in her hand, “I only care about the state of our ceasefire.”, the words are a quiet inferno.


The ceasefire is over. 

Ava’s gaze drops to Beatrice’s lips, then back to her dark, earnest eyes, she gulps. All the fear, the waiting, the painful conversations melt away, leaving only a single, crystalline certainty.

“Okay...”, Ava breathes out, nodding to herself, the word full of surrender and promise. She finds the letter on the stone bench, and pushes it into the back pocket of her trousers.

Ava doesn’t lead the way so much as she pulls Beatrice with her, their hands still locked together. They walk through the quiet hallways of the Cat’s Cradle, past doorways that usually echo with prayer or the clatter of training. Now, the silence feels heavy, charged, and private. Every brush of Beatrice's shoulder against hers, every shared glance, is amplified. They are two conspirators, stealing away with their precious, hard won secret.

When they reach the door to Ava’s room, she fumbles with the handle, her fingers suddenly clumsy. She pushes it open, revealing the modest space. It is, as she’d said, slightly messy. A set of throwing knives is neatly arranged on the desk next to a pile of laundry, and one of Camila’s extra belts is slung over the back of a chair.

Ava steps inside, pulling Beatrice in after her, and lets the door swing shut with a soft, but definitive click.

The sound seems to echo in the sudden quiet. They stand just inside the room, still holding hands, the reality of their isolation crashing down on them. The bravado of the courtyard fades, replaced by a vulnerable, heart pounding awkwardness.

Beatrice’s gaze sweeps the room, not really seeing it, before settling back on Ava. The certainty in her eyes has softened into a gentle nervousness, “So.”, she says, her voice barely above a whisper.

“So.”, Ava echoes, a small, shaky laugh escaping her.

They stand there for a moment, just looking at each other, the air between them humming with unspoken want and the ghost of every boundary that has now dissolved. Slowly, giving Ava every chance to pull away, Beatrice raises her free hand. She cups Ava’s jaw, her touch featherlight, her thumb stroking the same path it had on her knuckles moments before. Her eyes search Ava’s, asking a silent question.

The Warrior Nun answers by leaning into the touch, her eyes fluttering closed for a second. When she opens them, her gaze is clear and sure. She brings her own hand up to cover Beatrice’s, holding it against her cheek.

This is it. No dream realm. No strategic necessity. Just them.

Beatrice wets her lips and leans in. It is achingly slow, a torturous, beautiful delay that makes Ava’s breath catch. 

And then their lips meet.

It is nothing like the goodbye kiss in the cathedral, nor is it as desperate, as the one in the dream realm version of the cathedral. This is softer. Sweeter. A discovery. A gentle press of lips that speaks of reverence, of hello, of finally.

Beatrice’s lips are slightly chapped from training and impossibly gentle. She tastes of mint tea and resolve. When they part, it is only by a breath. They stay there, eyes closed, sharing the same air. Ava could feel the frantic beat of Beatrice’s heart where their chests were pressed together, a mirror of her own.

“Hi.”, Ava whispers, her voice cracking.

A real, genuine smile breaks across Beatrice’s face, the most unguarded one the halo bearer has ever seen, “Hello.”

Ava takes a deep breath, her hands sliding to rest on Beatrice’s hips. 

The first kiss is a question.

The second is an answer.

It begins with the same soft reverence, but something shifts. A spark caught, fanned by weeks of longing and days of agonising restraint. Beatrice’s hand slides from Ava’s jaw into her hair, her fingers tangling gently at the nape of her neck, pulling her closer. A quiet, desperate sound escapes her, a sigh she’s been holding for a lifetime, and she deepens the kiss.

It is like a dam breaking.

Ava meets her with equal fervour, her hands tightening on Beatrice’s hips, pulling their bodies flush, pushing her against the stone wall. The world outside the room -the Order, the war, the very laws of physics- cease to exist. There is only the heat of Beatrice’s mouth, the taste of her, the feel of her solid and real and wanting in her arms. This is nothing like the dream realm. This is raw, and real, and threatens to consume them both.

Beatrice is the one who usually held the line, who practiced control like a religion. But now, it is Ava who feels the precipice approaching. The feel of Beatrice’s tongue against hers, the way her body yields and presses against her own- it is too much. It is everything she’s ever wanted, and that is exactly why she has to stop.

With a Herculean effort, Ava breaks the kiss, pulling back just enough to rest her forehead against Beatrice’s. They are both breathing heavily, their breath mingling in the scant space between them.

“Whoa there, you do have practice.”, Ava breathes out, the words shaky.

Beatrice’s eyes flutter open, dark and hazy with a desire Ava has only ever dreamed of seeing there. A faint, self conscious blush creeps up her neck, “Was that too much?”, she asks, her voice small, already beginning to retreat behind a wall of worry.

“No! God, no!”, Ava rushes to assure her, her hands sliding from Beatrice’s hips to her lower back, holding her in place, “It was perfect. It’s just-”, the Warrior Nun takes another steadying breath, her heart still hammering, “That’s why I have to ask you now. Before we get lost in this.”

Beatrice looks at her, confused, her chest still rising and falling rapidly.

Ava cups her face, her thumbs stroking her cheeks. “Beatrice. I need to do this right. I need to date you.”, the words tumble out, earnest and rushed, “I need to take you to a stupid, overpriced restaurant and try to impress you. I need to hold your hand in a movie theatre and annoy you by asking what’s happening. I need to walk you to your door and wonder if I can kiss you goodnight. Okay, maybe not at the convent, but you know… You’re my first- almost everything. And I want to do it right.”

She searches Beatrice’s eyes, her own wide with a vulnerable hope, “So, will you? Will you let me take you on a date? A real one? Before we, you know, totally lose our minds in here?”

The request, asked while they are still wrapped in each other’s arms, breathless from a kiss that felt like a beginning and an ending all at once, is the most Ava thing Beatrice has ever witnessed. A slow, breathtaking smile spreads across her face, erasing the last traces of worry.

She leans in and presses one more firm, promising kiss to Ava’s lips.

“Ava Silva.”, she murmurs, her voice full of a warmth that seems to melt the very air around them, “There is nothing in this world, or any other, that I would like to do more.”

*

Mother Superion stands at the head of the table in the war room. Camila, Yasmine, and a few other senior sisters are gathered around, their postures tense.

Beatrice sits slightly apart, near the doorway, her arms crossed. She wears the same dark tactical gear as the others, hair in a braid that is pinned down meticulously, as to not be an obstruction. But it feels different now, a choice, not a uniform. She is a silent, conflicted bystander in the machinery she has helped build.

“The intel from our contacts in Marseille is conclusive...”, Mother Superion begins, her voice cutting through the low murmur. “The activity is not random. They are coordinated. They are searching for something. Or someone.”, her gaze flicks toward Ava, who is sitting beside Beatrice, looking more focused than the ex-nun has ever seen her.

“Our traditional Divinium arsenal might have limited to no effect.” Camila adds, pulling up a grainy, enhanced photo on the main screen. It shows a creature of swirling, oppressive shadow, its form seeming to drink the light around it, with no distinct features except for a gaping maw, “Initial reports describe them as energy vampires. They don’t just attack the body, they drain the light and energy from anything nearby. We’re designating them as ‘Umbrae’ for now.”

A cold knot tightens in Beatrice’s stomach.

They will simply consume you, and the energy of your Halo.

Ava’s recount of Reya’s words in the sterile realm echo in her mind. This was no longer a theoretical future, it is a confirmed present.

“We do not yet know how to fight them effectively.” Mother Superion states, the admission costing her, “Our only advantage is that they can be seen, but they can only operate in the shadow. For now. A significant concentration has been sighted near the port of Marseille. We are monitoring. It would be wise to gather more information on site.”

At the mention of Marseille, Ava’s hand finds Beatrice’s under the table. Her fingers are cool, but her grip is firm. 

Beatrice’s conflict is a physical ache. Her analytical mind is already whirring, cross-referencing the reports with everything Reya had told Ava, searching for a weakness. Every fiber of her being wants to step forward, to take command, to deploy the sisters with the strategic precision that is her second nature.

However, she doesn’t.

But she does agree to be part of the mission.

*

The door to Ava’s room shuts behind them, muffling the distant, familiar sounds of the Cat’s Cradle. For a moment, they just stand there, leaning against the heavy wood, the space between them humming with the aftermath of the briefing.

Beatrice breaks the silence first, her voice a soft murmur,  “Marseille.”

She says the name like a question.

Ava pushes off the door and turns to face her, “Not exactly the romantic getaway I had in mind.”

She reaches out, her fingers gently hooking into the belt loops of Beatrice’s trousers, pulling her closer, “I was thinking more pastries. Less… apocalyptic energy vampires.”

“Umbrae.”, Beatrice corrects softly, her hands coming to rest on Ava’s hips. She allows herself to be pulled close, but her posture remains slightly tense, aware of the thin door, “We will have pastries. The mission simply precedes them.” 

She leans in, closing the small distance to press a slow, quiet kiss to Ava’s mouth. It is over almost as soon as it begins, a stolen moment of comfort.

When she pulls back, Ava’s eyes are still closed, “Okay. We can work with that.”, her eyes flutter open, and a vulnerable look crosses the Warrior Nun’s face, “So… how does this work? Out there?”, she gestures toward the door, “Are we… what are we? In front of them?”

Beatrice understands the weight of the question. She watches as Ava moves to her duffel bag and starts pulling out clothes from her dresser, folding them with a nervous energy.

“We are what we are.”, Beatrice says, her voice low and calm. She picks up a sweater from the bed and folds it with automatic precision, “But… I would prefer we… ease into it. For their sake as much as ours.”, she glances toward the door, a faint crease of worry on her brow, “They know, but knowing and seeing are different things. I don’t wish to make anyone uncomfortable. Or to feel like a spectacle.”

Ava nods, understandingly. It isn’t about shame, it’s about Beatrice’s innate sense of propriety and care for her family, “Right. So, no making out in the war room. Got it.”, she offers a small, reassuring smile, “But we are a we, right? You and me?”

Beatrice looks up, a cheeky glint finally breaking through her serious demeanour, “Unless you had other plans? I may be a free woman now, but I still very much value monogamy.”

The effect is instantaneous. Ava’s nervous folding stops. A brilliant, breathtaking smile breaks across her face, “So... We are together.”, she says, rather than ask, the word a solid, wonderful fact.

Ava abandons the clothes altogether and crosses the room, but instead of kissing her, she simply wraps her arms around Beatrice in a tight, fierce hug, resting her chin on her shoulder, “I’m gonna take you on so many dates, Beatrice…”, she murmurs into her neck, her voice full of happy wonder, “Real ones. With talking. And I will be so cool and normal in front of everyone.”

Beatrice’s arms tighten around her, her face softening into a real, unguarded smile against Ava’s hair, “I look forward to it.”, she holds her for one more second before gently pulling back, “But for now, we should probably pack. Get ready for the mission.”

Ava rests her forehead against Beatrice’s, her smile unwavering, “Right. Save the world first. Then pastries.”, in her mind, she is already there: sitting at a small café, the sun warm on her skin, Beatrice’s hand secretly linked with hers under the table, their future waiting just on the other side of the coming storm.

*

The Marseille safe house is a cramped, centuries old building that serves as the local OCS branch, and every floorboard groans in protest under their weight. The day had been a long, frustrating grind. Intel on the Umbrae was scarce, gleaned from terrified whispers and half glimpsed shadows in the city’s oldest quarters. The tension of the hunt had been compounded by a different kind of strain: the rigid, professional distance Beatrice had maintained all day. Every brush of hands when passing a file, every shared glance across a map table, had been a spark that couldn't catch flame.

The restraint is a live wire between them.

Now, they are shown to their room for the night. The sister in charge, a severe woman named Sister Simone, gestures to a small, spartan door, “We are stretched for space. You will have to share. I hope it is not an inconvenience.”

“It's fine…”, Beatrice says, her voice perfectly neutral, the model of a disciplined warrior, “Thank you.”

The door shuts behind them, and they both freeze.

The room is tiny, dominated by a single, narrow bed. The walls are bare stone except for one thing: a massive, dramatically carved wooden crucifix hanging directly opposite the bed. Jesus’s sorrowful, bleeding face is tilted down, his eyes seeming to follow them into the room.

Ava lets out a low whistle, “Well. That's… A mood.”

Beatrice doesn't laugh. She stands rigid, her duffel bag hanging from her stiff fingers. The professional mask she’s worn all day finally cracks, revealing pure, unadulterated panic, “This is… highly inappropriate.”

“Ava, we cannot…”, the taller woman’s protest is cut short as Ava finally closes the distance between them. She frames Beatrice’s face with her hands and kisses her. It’s not soft or questioning. It’s a kiss born of a day of pent-up frustration and wanting to kiss her, deep and claiming and desperate. Beatrice melts into it for a glorious second, her hands coming up to clutch at Ava’s jacket, a muffled sound of relief escaping her throat. But then her eyes open, and over Ava’s shoulder, she sees it.

She jerks back as if scalded, her face flushing a deep, mortified crimson, “He’s… he's looking at me.”

Ava, breathless and dazed, blinks, “What?”

“Him!”, Beatrice whisper-hisses, her gaze darting frantically to the crucifix and then back to Ava, “I cannot do this with… with Him watching. It feels… sacrilegious.”

For a moment, Ava just stares, caught between disbelief and a wild urge to laugh. Then, a determined glint sparks in her eyes, “Right. Fuck- Okay. I see the problem.”

She scans the room. Her eyes land on the dark, woollen cloak hung on a peg by the door. In one fluid motion, Ava snatches it. She balls it up in her hands, takes aim, and with a perfect, underhand toss, she launches it.

The cloak sails through the air and lands squarely over the crucifix, draping perfectly over Jesus’s sorrowful head and shoulders, obscuring him completely.

Ava dusts her hands off with finality, “There. Problem solved. He's on a break.”

Beatrice’s mouth is agape. She looks from the covered crucifix to Ava’s triumphant face. A laugh, sudden and startled and real, bubbles out of her, “You just… you threw a cloak… at our Lord and Savior.”

“He was killing the vibe, Bea.”, Ava says, her voice dropping back into a low, intimate register as she steps close again. Her hands find Beatrice’s waist, “Now, where were we?”

This time, when she kisses her, there is no hesitation. The last thread of Beatrice’s tension snaps. She kisses Ava back with a year's worth of suppressed longing, her grasping at Ava’s hair, pulling her down onto the narrow bed with her.

The frame of the ancient furniture creaks in protest as they land on it, a tangle of limbs and desperate, grateful hands. The frantic energy of the kiss slowly gentles, shifting from a clash of relief into a soft, exploring wonder. They break apart, just far enough to breathe the same air, foreheads resting together.

And that’s when the new reality descends.

The single bed. The two of them. The fact that they are, officially and unequivocally, a couple lying together for the first time.

The daring bravado that had let Ava throw the cloak evaporates. A different, more vulnerable tension takes its place. They slowly, reluctantly, untangle themselves, just enough to look at each other. The space between them, though only inches, feels suddenly vast and charged.

“So…”, Ava whispers, her voice husky, “This is… new.”

Beatrice’s gaze is soft, her thumb stroking Ava’s cheek. Her agreement is a hum.

They move with a new, careful synchronicity. Beatrice shifts first, turning onto her side to face the room. The Warrior Nun slides in behind her, her body curving to fit against her lover’s, her front to Beatrice’s back. Ava’s arm comes to rest over her waist, her hand splaying over her stomach. Beatrice’s hand finds Ava’s, lacing their fingers together.

They lie in silence for a long moment, simply breathing, feeling the solid, real weight of each other. This is where they were meant to be.

Emboldened by the dimly lit room and the feel of Beatrice so close, Ava dips her head and presses a soft, experimental kiss to the nape of Beatrice’s neck. The effect is instantaneous. Beatrice lets out a sharp, involuntary gasp, her entire body arching back into Ava’s at the sensation. It’s a reaction so honest, so unprepared, that it shatters the last of the careful tension between them.

In a fluid motion, Beatrice rolls onto her back, her hands coming up to cup Ava’s face, pulling her into a deep, searing kiss that is all permission and promise. Ava meets her eagerly, shifting to hover over her, one knee between Beatrice’s legs, bracing herself on an elbow beside Beatrice’s head.

When they part for air, breathless and smiling, Ava’s gaze drops. And there it is. Nestled in the hollow of Beatrice’s throat, glowing with the faintest ethereal blue in the dark, is the Divinium cross necklace. Her eyes are fixed on the pendant.

Beatrice, however, misinterprets the trajectory of her gaze. Her eyes, still dark with want, flicker down to her own chest and then back up to Ava’s face. A faint, self-conscious blush colours her cheeks.

“Ava.”, she says, her tone a mixture of amusement and gentle admonishment.

It takes Ava a second to realise the mistake. When she does, her own face floods with heat. 

“What? No! I mean, yes, obviously, but -I wasn’t- I was looking at this!”, she stammers, laughing and mortified. She reaches out with a single, reverent finger to gently lift the cool metal of the necklace, holding it up as proof.

Beatrice’s expression softens from teasing to something unbearably tender. She covers Ava’s hand with her own, pressing it against her chest, right over her pounding heart.

“I never take it off,”, she says simply, “It was my tether. To you. To the hope that I’d see its glow again. And now I never want to be without it.”

Ava’s laughter fades into a look of pure, adoring warmth. She leans down, pressing her forehead against Beatrice’s. 

“Well…”, Ava whispers, her voice thick with emotion, “That’s really, really romantic.”

Chapter Text

The Umbra moves like spilled ink against the Marseille night, a patch of deeper darkness flowing up the rain slicked wall of a derelict warehouse. Beatrice’s hand is a firm pressure on Ava’s shoulder, holding their team in the shadows of a nearby alley. To her left, Camila scans the area with a modified thermal scope, while to her right, Sister Dora stands poised, her grip tight on a Divinium-tipped staff.

“Thermal signature is weak, but concentrated…”, Camila whispers, her voice buzzing with static through their comms, “It’s heading for that warehouse.”

They follow, a lethal quartet, their footsteps silent on the cobblestones. They track it to a squat, crumbling building on the outskirts of the industrial port. The Umbra slips through a crack in a boarded-up window like smoke.

“It’s cornered.”, Beatrice murmurs, drawing a Divinium knife, “Dora, take the north entrance. Camila, cover us. We flush it out.”

But the moment Beatrice and Ava breach the main door, the atmosphere shifts. The Umbra doesn’t flee. It coalesces in the center of the vast, empty space, its form solidifying into a vortex of palpable hunger. It had felt them following. It had led them here.

It zeroes in on Ava, ignoring Dora’s advancing form from the other side. A low, sub audible hum vibrates through the air. It launches itself at Ava with a single minded need to consume the Halo’s light. Ava’s eyes widen. There’s no time to think. As the shadowy mass is about to engulf her, she phases backward through the solid brick wall behind her.

The world dissolves and reassembles. She stumbles into a small, fire lit room on the other side of the wall, gasping for air.

“Putain!”, a man shouts, scrambling backward from a small trashcan fire.

Ava’s gaze darts around the room. Four squatters stare at her in shock and fear. And behind them, clinging to the shadows cast by their own fire, are two smaller, flickering Wraiths, lesser demons the Umbra had utterly ignored. These people were irrelevant, devoid of the energy it craved.

The Cruciform Sword is with Camila outside. She is unarmed.

Ava phases her head back through the wall into the warehouse, “Bea! Camila! There are people in here! Wraiths! I need a blade!”

Her words are swallowed by the chaos. Inside the warehouse, it’s a tempest. Sister Dora is a blur of motion, her staff whirling to keep the Umbra’s lashing tendrils at bay. Beatrice is trying to create an opening, her knives a silver flash. Camila is at the doorway, the Cruciform Sword in hand, but she can’t get a clear strike without hitting her sisters.

Ava pulls her head back just as one of the Wraiths shrieks and lunges for a cowering woman. There’s no time. The Warrior Nun phases back into the warehouse. The Umbra senses her reappearance immediately, lashing out. Ava drops into a roll, the shadowy appendage whistling over her head. She comes up directly in front of Beatrice, too close, invading her space. Said woman’s breath hitches, a split second of personal, self-conscious confusion at the sudden proximity in the heat of battle, “Ava-”

But Ava’s hands are already moving, not to hold her, but to smoothly pluck a Divinium throwing knife from the holster on Beatrice’s hip. Their eyes lock for a fraction of a second, a silent exchange of intent and understanding.

“Dora, press it left!”, Ava barks into her comms, already moving. Before Beatrice can even nod, Ava phases back through the wall.

She rematerialises in the squatter’s room. The Wraith is inches from the terrified woman’s face. Ava doesn’t hesitate. The Divinium knife leaves her hand in a silver streak, embedding itself in the Wraith’s core with a satisfying thwump. The creature shrieks, dissolving into acrid smoke.

The second Wraith turns from its prey, its attention now fully on this new, radiant threat. It screeches, launching itself at Ava. She has nowhere to go, no other weapons.


A sudden THWACK echoes in the small room. The Wraith is slammed sideways by a powerful strike from a Divinium staff, pinning it against the wall before it dissipates.

Sister Dora stands in the hole Ava had phased through, having kicked the weakened bricks apart. She gives Ava a sharp, approving nod, “Clear in here?”

“Clear!” Ava confirms, her heart hammering.

“Then let’s finish our primary objective!”, Dora says, her voice all business as she turns back to the main fight.

Ava takes a steadying breath and phases back into the warehouse, now a true breach point thanks to Dora. Camila is already inside, the Cruciform Sword held high, its blue light causing the Umbra to recoil and shriek in agitation. Beatrice uses the distraction to land a deep slash with her knife, making the entity howl. Working as one, they drive the wounded, disoriented Umbra back toward Camila. With a final, two handed swing, Camila brings the glowing sword down in a blazing arc.

The Umbra doesn’t so much die as unmake, its form collapsing inward on itself with a silent, vacuum like pull, before vanishing completely. 

The warehouse falls silent, save for the heavy breathing of the four warriors.

Beatrice’s eyes immediately find Ava, scanning her for injuries, “The civilians?”

“Safe.”, Ava says, leaning against the now broken wall, “Thanks to Dora.”, she looks at the knife still in her hand, then back at Beatrice with a wry, exhausted smile, “I owe you a knife.”

Beatrice finally allows herself to exhale, a small, relieved smile touching her own lips, “I’ll add it to your tab.”

*

Back at the safe house they update Mother Superion on the fight. Suzanne’s stern face stares out from the laptop screen, the video call connection glitching slightly. Yasmine is an attentive silhouette beside her.

“...and the Divinium was effective.”, Beatrice concludes, her pointer tapping the screen of a tablet displaying a grainy freeze frame of the Umbra recoiling from Camila’s blade, “Not just the sword. My knives, Dora’s staff. It appears, a sufficient concentration of the material can disrupt its form… permanently.”, she says the last word with a certainty she doesn't feel, the memory of the creature’s silent, vacuum like collapse itching at the back of her mind. She dismisses it as an effect of its unique demise.

“A costly solution, but a solution nonetheless.”, Mother Superion says, her voice crackling through the speakers, “This is more than we knew this morning. You have done well.”

“The intel is solid.”, Camila adds, leaning forward, “We’ve mapped its last known route. The civilian population in the immediate area has been advised to relocate. For their safety.”

“Then your work there is concluding.”, Mother Superion states, “Secure the area for one final sweep tomorrow. If you find no further traces, you are to return to Cat’s Cradle. We have much to discuss.”

The call ends. The room exhales. The plan is set: one last patrol, then home.

*

Later, in the narrow, stone walled hallway leading to their room, the formal tension finally breaks. The air is cool and smells of damp stone. Ava’s fingers find Beatrice’s, linking them together in the shadows between the sconces.

“So…”, Ava whispers, her voice a low, conspiratorial hum that makes Beatrice’s skin prickle, “One last sweep…”

“Mhm.”, Beatrice confirms, her thumb stroking the back of Ava’s hand. Her senses are still on high alert, her mind replaying tactical formations.

The Warrior Nun stops, tugging Beatrice to a halt beside her. She glances both ways down the empty hall, then leans in, “I was thinking… That leaves us at least the whole morning tomorrow to do whatever we want…Sneak out…”, a slow, hopeful smile spreads across her face.

Beatrice’s brow furrows on instinct. “Sneak out? Ava, the protocol after an engagement is to-”

“-to have a croissant.”, Ava interrupts, her eyes sparkling, “And a coffee. At a little table. In the largest city on the Côte d’Azur... Where no one knows we’re the halo bearer and the former nun who can kill a demon with a paperclip. Where we’re just… Ava and Beatrice. On a date.”

The protest dies on Beatrice’s lips. She looks at Ava, at the hopeful, almost shy expression in her eyes, so different to the warrior who’d phased through a wall hours before. This wasn’t a disregard for protocol, it was a desperate grab for a sliver of the normal life they were fighting for.

A slow smile, small and private, finally answers Ava’s, “Breakfast.”, Beatrice concedes, her voice soft, “I suppose… that is a significant tactical opportunity.”

Ava’s grin is triumphant. “Yes! It is! A very important, very secret mission. Code name: Breakfast.”

“Code name: Breakfast.”, Beatrice agrees, her voice a low whisper as she finally lets herself lean forward and press a quick, soft kiss to Ava’s cheek, “It’s a date.”

She pulls back, her professional demeanour settling back into place, but her eyes remain warm. Taking the Warrior Nun’s hand again, she leads her the final few steps to their door, behind which the draped crucifix waits. 

*

The first light of dawn is a pale, grey smear over Marseille when two figures slip from a side door of the safe house. They move with a practiced silence, more reminiscent of a mission extraction than a morning stroll. Beatrice pauses just long enough to slide a folded note into the gap between the door and its frame.

C & D,
Gone for reconnaissance. Perimeter check. Back by 0900.
-B

It isn’t a complete lie. They will be observing the perimeter of a perfectly normal café.

Twenty minutes later, they sit at a small, wrought iron table on a cobblestone street, the air smelling of fresh coffee, baking bread, and the distant sea. A single croissant sits on a plate between them. Beatrice holds her espresso cup with a precision that is entirely at odds with the casual setting, her back straight, her eyes constantly doing a subtle, automatic sweep of the surrounding area.

Ava watches her, her chin propped in her hand, a soft smile on her face. She reaches out and gently stills the faint tapping of Beatrice's fingers on the table, “Hey. Stand down, soldier. The only hostiles here are the pigeons.”

Beatrice blinks, her focus snapping from a potential rooftop sightline to Ava's face, “Right. Sorry. Force of habit.”

“It's okay.”, Ava says, her smile widening. She takes a sip of her own coffee, which is mostly frothy milk and sugar, “I’ve just never seen you look so suspicious of a pastry.”, she nudges the plate toward her. 

“So… First date questions…”

Beatrice's eyebrows lift slightly, “Is that what this is?”

“Absolutely. We skipped like, twelve steps. We’re backtracking.”, Ava’s expression turns playful, curious, “Okay. First question: What’s a secret hobby you have that no one at Cat’s Cradle would ever guess?”

Beatrice actually laughs, a soft, surprised sound, “Ava, I spent the last six years of my life in a convent. My hobbies were prayer, martial arts, and strategic analysis.”

“Boring.”, Ava declares, though her eyes are sparkling, “There has to be something. Did you ever… I don’t know, secretly knit? Write angry poetry? Learn to juggle?”

“I once disassembled and reassembled every sidearm in the arsenal… for fun.”, Beatrice offers, a little helplessly.

Ava points a finger at her, “That is the nerdiest hobby I have ever heard. I love it. Okay, another one… What’s your biggest fear?”

The playful air shifts. Beatrice’s gaze drops to her espresso. The answer is too immediate, too vast.

Losing you.

Failing you.

This world being too much for you.

But she doesn’t say that. Instead, she gives an older truth, “Being ineffective. Watching something terrible happen and being unable to stop it.”

Ava’s teasing smile softens into something more understanding. “Yeah…”, she says quietly, “I get that.”

The halo bearer reaches across the table and laces her fingers with Beatrice’s, ignoring the way the former nun’s eyes dart around instinctively to see if anyone is watching, “What’s the first thing you’re going to do when all of this is over? For real over.”

This time, Beatrice doesn’t hesitate. She looks down at their joined hands, then back up at Ava, her expression open and sure, “This.”, she says simply, giving Ava’s fingers a gentle squeeze, “Exactly this. For as long as we want.”

Ava’s breath catches. The sounds of the city, the clatter of dishes, the chatter of French around them, it all fades into a distant buzzing sound. In that moment, they are just two people at a table, with a future stretched out before.

*

The evening air is cool, carrying the sharp scent of the sea and the distant, melancholy cry of gulls. The stunning azure of the Calanque de Sugiton has deepened to a bruised purple in the twilight, the cliffs casting long, predatory shadows. Their final sweep is a different beast at night. The playful hope from their morning café date is gone, replaced by a watchful tension. The plan is the same: a routine check, then extraction.

But in the dark, nothing feels like routine.

Beatrice moves like one of the shadows, her senses stretched taut. Every flicker of moonlight on water is a potential threat. The memory of coffee and Ava’s smile is a tiny, guarded ember in the encroaching dark.

“Thermal’s picking up… something,”, Camila murmurs, her voice hushed in the vast quiet. She is perched on a dark rock, the eyepiece of her monocular glowing faintly. “Residual heat signatures near the cave entrance. Faint, but they weren’t there this afternoon.”

“I told you we should not have left.”, Dora states, her grip tight on her staff. She stands poised, a silhouette against the star dusted sky, “They are creatures of shadow. Of course they wait for the dark.”

Ava shivers, and it’s not from the cold. The beauty of the place has turned sinister, “So much for a peaceful goodbye. Let’s make this quick. I’m suddenly not in the mood for mussels.”

Beatrice’s gaze finds her, and the professional mask slips for a nanosecond. The concern in her eyes is a silent conversation. Stay close. “We stick to the plan. We sweep the sea cave. If it’s clear, we leave. No exceptions.”

The descent down the goat track is treacherous in the fading light. Beatrice leads, her flashlight beam a frail spear against the overwhelming dark. Ava follows, the Halo on her back a dormant, watchful weight.

The sea cave is a black pit, a void in the cliff face. The sound of water sloshing within sounds like a hungry mouth.

“I’ll go.”, Ava whispers, phasing a hand through the cold rock at the entrance. The familiar nothingness greets her, “It’s just dark and wet- Wait…”

Her voice tightens. “Bea. There’s something… It’s not heat. It’s… light. A pattern. It’s glowing.”

Beatrice is beside her instantly, clicking off her flashlight. In the utter blackness, the faint, sickly blueish-green glow from deep within the cave is unmistakable. A complex, spiraling sigil etched into the stone wall.

“It’s a similar pattern… Just like the arc...”, Beatrice breathes, the words misting in the chill air, “They’ve been building something. A gate. And it’s active.”

The sigil flares.

The light that erupts isn’t green or blue. It is a silent explosion of pure, blinding white, so intense it seems to tear the night itself apart. It doesn’t illuminate the calanque- it bleaches it, erasing color and depth. There is no sound, only a pressure that pushes against their eardrums.

From the heart of the devastating silence, they unfold. Three Umbrae, their forms not of shadow, but of stolen, concentrated light. They are voids of absolute darkness given shape only by the corrosive light they emit, moving with a silent, terrifying purpose.

“Contact!”, Beatrice’s shout is swallowed by the oppressive quiet. She shoves Ava behind her, Divinium knives flashing in her hands.

The fight is a nightmare of stark contrasts. Their Divinium weapons, which had bitten into the creatures before, now feel ineffective. The things are stronger in the dark. Camila swings the Cruciform Sword, its blue light a brave, small defiance against the overwhelming glare, but tendrils of white light wrap around it, trying to smother its energy.

“They’re feeding on it!” Camila grunts, her boots sliding on the wet stone.

Dora is a tempest of motion, her staff a whistling arc that shatters lashing tendrils of light, but for each one she destroys, two more lash out from the darkness, driving her toward the cold, black water.

The largest Umbra ignores them completely. It fixates on the only thing in the calanque that rivals its own terrible light.



Ava.

It flows toward her, a silent tsunami of annihilating brilliance. Ava phases, but the light is an aura, a field. Phasing through it is agony. She screams, a raw sound that finally breaks the silence, rematerialising on her knees. The sleeve of her jacket is gone, the skin on her arm beneath blistered and angry red. The Halo on her back sputters and flares, a star in distress.

“Ava!”, Beatrice’s cry is pure terror. She launches herself into the path of the creature, knives crossed. The impact isn’t physical, it’s a concussive wave of pure energy that slams into her, throwing her back. She lands hard, the air driven from her lungs.

The Umbra hovers over Ava, its form widening, a silent, gaping chasm of light ready to consume her, to extinguish the Halo’s glow forever.

Beatrice pushes herself up, her body screaming in protest. She is too far. She will never make it.

The world freezes.

The Umbra’s blinding advance halts.

The crushing pressure vanishes.

The silence becomes absolute, deeper than mere quiet.

It is the absence of all vibration.

A figure coalesces from the darkness beside Ava, untouched by the Umbra’s fierce light.

Reya

They don’t glance at the others. They merely extend a hand, palm open, toward the creature.

The devastating light of the Umbra bends. It doesn’t attack, it obeys. It streams into Reya’s hand like water down a drain, not destroyed, but… reabsorbed. The other two Umbrae stop their assault, dissolving into rivulets of light that are drawn back into the now dormant sigil on the cave wall.

Reya’s head turns. Their gaze, ancient and utterly alien, sweeps over Camila’s stunned face, Dora’s defensive stance, and finally rests on Beatrice, who is still frozen mid rush, her chest heaving.

Then, without a word, they are simply gone. The normal sounds of the night, the wind, the water, crash back in, deafening in their normality.

The calanque is just a calanque again, lit only by the moon and stars.

“Ava!”

Beatrice doesn’t think. She doesn’t see Camila’s wide eyes or Dora’s stunned expression. She only sees Ava, crumpled on the ground, clutching her injured left arm, her face pale with shock and pain. The ex-nun crashes to her knees beside her, her hands flying to Ava’s face, her shoulders, checking for other injuries.

“Ava? Look at me. Are you alright? Talk to me.”

“I’m… okay.”, Ava gasps, her voice shaky, “It burns… but I’m okay.”

The relief that floods Beatrice is so violent, it steals her breath. The carefully constructed walls of propriety, the agreement to ease into it, the fear of being a spectacle, it all shatters into dust.

Cupping Ava’s face, her hands trembling not from fear but from an overwhelming surge of emotion, Beatrice leans in and kisses her.

When she pulls back, her eyes are clenched shut, as if waiting for the world to end.

But the world doesn’t end.

The only sound is the sea and their ragged breathing.

Ava brings her uninjured hand up, her fingers gently brushing Beatrice’s jaw, “Okay...”, she whispers, her voice still unsteady, but a faint, wondrous smile touching her lips, “So… we’re not easing into it.”

A choked sound escapes Beatrice. She opens her eyes, and the world has narrowed to just the two of them.

The secret is out.

The war is here.

And none of it matters as much as this.

Camila finally finds her voice, a hushed, awed whisper into the comms, “Uh… perimeter is secure. I think. Extraction in five.”

Chapter Text

The sterile air of Jillian Salvius’s lab is a welcome contrast to the damp, ancient fear of the Marseille safe house. Ava is sitting on the edge of a medical examination table, her jaw tight as Jillian gently probes the angry, blistered skin of her left arm. The wound, a livid map of their encounter with the Umbra, pulses with a dull, persistent heat.

“Fascinating…”, Jillian murmurs, more to herself than to her patient, as she adjusts a scanner over the injury. The device emits a soft blue light, tracing the patterns of damaged tissue. “The cellular degradation is… profound. It’s not a simple burn. It’s as if the energy didn’t just scorch the cells but unravelled them on a fundamental level.” She glances at Ava, her scientific curiosity momentarily overriding her bedside manner, “And the Halo’s regeneration is significantly slowed?”

Ava nods, “Yeah. It’s trying. I can feel it… whirring. But it’s like trying to fill a bucket with a hole in it. Slow going.”

Beatrice stands a few feet away, her arms crossed tightly over her chest. She isn’t just watching, she is studying, her eyes fixed on the injury with the same intensity she once reserved for ancient tactical manuscripts. Every wince from Ava is a fresh blow, a silent failure that echoes in the quiet hum of the lab. Her posture is rigid, a soldier on guard, but the worry in her eyes is entirely personal.

Jillian’s gaze flicks between them, from Ava’s pained focus to Beatrice’s protective, anguished vigil. A slow, knowing smile touches the scientist’s lips, “I must admit…”, she says, her voice cutting through the clinical silence, “When we first met, I did not believe I would live to see the day a Sister Warrior of the OCS would renounce her vows to be with a woman.”

Beatrice’s head snaps up, she looks like she’s been physically struck, her carefully composed mask slipping into one of flustered embarrassment.

“Dr. Salvius, I- that’s not… it wasn’t…”

Jillian shakes her head, her smile softening into something warmer, more maternal. She turns away from her instruments to face Beatrice fully, “Please, don’t misunderstand me. I am not mocking you. Quite the opposite.” She lets out a soft sigh, her eyes drifting to a framed photograph of Michael on a distant console, “Working with the Order, knowing all of you… It has taught me a valuable lesson. It taught me that I was wrong to dismiss all organisations of faith outright. That even within the most rigid of structures, there can be pockets of profound humanity… and courage.”

The meaning hangs in the air, clear and accepting. She wasn’t just talking about the Church. She was talking about Beatrice. About her choice. About the love that is now so visibly etched into her every look and gesture.

The tension in Beatrice’s shoulders eases slightly, the defensive posture melting into something more vulnerable. She gives a nod of gratitude.

Ava, who has been watching the exchange with a pained, but amused expression, reaches out her good hand. Beatrice doesn’t hesitate. She steps forward and takes it, lacing their fingers together, the simple contact a quiet defiance and a comfort all at once. 

“See, Bea?”, Ava says, her voice strained but light, “Not everyone thinks we’re a scandal.”

“You are a scandal, Ava.” Beatrice replies, her thumb stroking Ava’s knuckles, her voice fond despite the words, “But you are my scandal.”

Jillian watches them, the grief for her son still a shadow in her eyes, but now accompanied by a faint, genuine light of happiness for them. She turns back to her scanner, the moment of intimacy passing but its warmth lingering in the air.

“Now,” she says, her tone shifting back to the pragmatic, “Let’s see if we can’t find a way to patch up that bucket.”

*

The last thing Ava remembers is the soft scratch of Beatrice’s pen on paper and the low, soothing murmur of her voice reading aloud from some dense text about divine healing and ancient battlefield injuries, stealing kisses here and there. The Warrior Nun was curled on Beatrice’s bed, wrapped in the scent of her. The throbbing in her arm had finally been drowned out by a wave of exhaustion. She hadn’t meant to fall asleep. She’d just been listening to the sound of Beatrice’s focus, a lullaby more effective than any drug.

The transition from that peace is not a gentle awakening, but a sudden, violent reassembly of self. One moment there is the soft pressure of the mattress, the sound of a turning page, the feeling of being safe. The next, there is only the silent, screaming white of Reya’s realm.

Ava gasps, her body jolting upright on the familiar, seamless floor. The Halo on her back gives a weak, sputtering whine, its light flickering erratically against the oppressive glow.

Reya is already there. Waiting.

They stand a few feet away, their form a shifting silhouette against the infinite nothing. They do not look at Ava immediately. Their attention is fixed on a point in the middle distance, where the air shimmers and warps. The Warrior follows their gaze. Figures -sleek and alien- moving with a unified purpose, are assembling a structure. It is vast, a framework of impossible geometry that seems to be focusing the realm’s inherent light into a single, terrifying point. It looks like a magnifying glass designed to burn ants on a cosmic scale.

“What is that?”, Ava’s voice is a rasp, raw from a scream she doesn’t remember making.

“A tool.”, Reya says.

They finally turn their head. Their expression is, as always, unreadable, but a new weight hangs in the air around them. A profound, ancient fatigue.

“And a monument. They are building it from the ashes of this world.”

Ava’s blood runs cold, “This world?”

“This was another Earth. Another reality. A branch of existence that grew too vibrant, too loud.”, Reya’s gesture is slight, encompassing the entire sterile void, “It drew the attention of the tide. And now, its energy fuels the engine that will target the next. Your world is the next.”

The words land with the force of a physical blow. All of it: the fights, the sacrifices, Beatrice’s choice, the OCS’s preparations, it all shrivels into insignificance.

“No…”, Ava breathes, “We’re fighting. We’re learning. We can stop them.”

Reya actually tilts their head, a gesture that might be mistaken for curiosity if it weren’t so utterly cold, “You believe your Divinium blades and courage will be enough? You are scrubbing at a tidal wave with a brush. Your efforts, while… spirited, are a waste of energy. You do not have what it takes to defeat what is coming. Not yet.”

The entity turns fully to face her now. Their gaze is like a physical pressure.

Ava’s mind is racing, she has to ask, “You… you were there. In Marseille. How? I thought you could only be summoned to earth through the portal, the arc.”

“The tear into your dimension, the one that the eaters of light have caused, was small, but it was a wound.”,  Reya explains, their tone flat, as if discussing a mathematical equation, “It was open to more than just them. I simply stepped through.”

“Why?”, the question is ripped from Ava, “Why did you save me? And how did you… how did you destroy it? Just by touching it?”

For the first time, something flickers in Reya’s impossible eyes. Something that might be the ghost of strain, “I absorbed it. I can contain their light, their essence. But it is not without cost.” They look down at their own hand, flexing their fingers slightly as if they feel a lingering ache, “There is a limit to what even I can hold. Too much of their corrupted energy… is harmful.”

The admission is shocking. This being, who Ava has seen as an all-powerful, manipulative god, is admitting a vulnerability.

The deity saved Ava’s life, and it cost them. The realisation makes something in the halo bearer soften, a flicker of empathy for the ancient, lonely creature.

Reya’s head snaps up. A faint, almost imperceptible smile touches their features. It is not kind.

“Do not become soft on my account, Warrior Nun.”, they say, their voice a low hum of amusement, “I find your feistiness far more entertaining.”

Ava connects the dots in her mind then, “You said we were missing something- What are we missing?”

“Your willingness to do what is necessary. You.”

The word is simple. Final.

It feels as finite as the last time.

Ava stares, confusion cutting through her fear. “Me? What does that mean?”

But before Ava can get a response, they are gone. Vanished back into the light, leaving Ava alone with the horrifying sight of a weapon being built from the corpse of a world, and the chilling, singular word echoing in the silence.

You.

*

Ava’s eyes fly open with a sharp gasp, her body jolting, as if electrified. The sterile white light of Reya’s realm is gone, replaced by the warm, dim glow of a desk lamp. The scent of her lover floods her senses, a stark contrast to the memory of nothingness.

She’s curled on her side on Beatrice’s narrow bed, a wool blanket pulled up to her chin. The throbbing in her left arm is a dull, persistent ache. The ex-nun is still at her desk, but she’s turned in her chair, her reading glasses perched on her nose, a concerned frown on her face. The book on biblical injuries lies forgotten in her lap.

“You fell asleep.”, Beatrice states softly, her voice pulling Ava fully back into the room. She removes her glasses, setting them aside with a quiet click, “You must be exhausted.”

The Warrior Nun just stares for a moment, her heart still hammering against her ribs, Reya’s word You echoing in her mind. She manages a shaky nod.

Beatrice’s expression softens with sympathy, but then a faint, flustered blush colours her cheeks, “You know… I think you should not fall asleep here though...”, she says, her tone gently chastising, “Mother Superion would not be entirely pleased to find the Warrior Nun in my bed. The rules of the convent may not technically apply to me anymore, but they certainly still apply to this building.”

The words barely register. Ava’s mind is still reeling, trying to process the cosmic threat while anchored in this small, quiet room. The comment about rules feels trivial, absurd.

“Oh, come on, Bea…”, Ava mumbles, pushing herself up on an elbow, her voice still rough with sleep and residual shock, “Don’t you think she has way more important things on her mind right now than keeping us from having sex?”

The word sex is between them now, blunt and startling.

Beatrice goes perfectly still. The fond concern on her face solidifies into something more severe, her posture snapping back to that of a disciplined sister. The shift is immediate and absolute.

“Ava.”, her voice is low, quiet, but it carries the weight of a final verdict, “That is not… We will not be doing that. Not here.” She meets Ava’s gaze, her eyes earnest and unwavering, leaving no room for argument, “This place... It is a sacred space to me. I will not dishonour that. Whatever we do… it will not be within these walls.”

The boundary is set, not with anger, but with a profound and unshakable respect. The awkwardness of the moment is replaced by a clear, solemn line. Ava’s flippant comment dies in her throat. She doesn’t even have half a mind to think about the fact that it seemed like the former nun was not at all opposed to the idea of having sex with her.

Beatrice returns to her studies, the soft scratch of her pen once again filling the room. But the sound is no longer a comfort, it is a countdown. Ava lies perfectly still, the wool blanket suddenly feeling like a lead weight. The dread doesn’t crash over her: it seeps in, cold and insidious, filling the space where the shock of Reya’s visit had been. 

You. 

The word echoes in the silence of her own mind. Your willingness to do what is necessary. The conclusion is inescapable, a terrible, familiar script she knows by heart. She had done it once to save them. The thought that she might have to do it again, that her hard won future, Beatrice’s choice, their first kiss, their date in Marseille- all of it just being a beautiful, fleeting prelude to another goodbye, settles in her gut like a stone. She stares at the unadorned stone wall, and for the first time since returning, she feels the chilling vacuum of the other realm calling her back.

*

A few days later, the tension in the Cat’s Cradle hums like a live wire. Maps of Marseille cover tables, strategies are debated in low voices, but a quiet anxiety thrums beneath it all. And at its centre, Ava exists as a still point. She participates, she trains, but the radiant energy that usually surrounds her feels muted, dimmed. She retreats early, often to the archives under the guise of research, but mostly just to be alone with the dread that has taken root in her chest.

Camila finds her there, tucked into a window alcove in a deserted corner, staring out at the training grounds but seeing nothing.

“You’ve been quiet…”, Camila says softly, not as an accusation, but an offering. She leans against the stone wall opposite Ava, “Quieter than usual. And you’re favouring that arm more than you let on during drills.”

Ava offers a weak, half hearted smile, “Just tired. And it still stings. Jillian says it’s healing, just… slowly.”

Camila hums, not buying it for a second. She studies her friend, the way she seems to carry a weight no one else can see, “You know… I see the way she looks at you now.”

Ava finally turns from the window, a question in her eyes.

“Beatrice.”, Camila clarifies, her own smile warm and genuine, “It’s different. It’s… lighter. I’ve known her for some time now, Ava. I’ve never seen her look that happy. It’s like you pulled her into the sun.” She leans forward, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper, “So whatever you’re worrying about… stop. We’ll figure this out. We always do. A fairytale never has a bad ending, right? Not for the two main characters.”

The kindness, the unwavering hope in Camila’s voice, is the final crack in Ava’s resolve. She has been holding the secret inside, letting it fester, and the weight of it becomes unbearable. Camila’s blind faith in a happy ending feels like a condemnation.

Ava’s face crumples. The false smile vanishes, replaced by a raw, pained expression. She looks down at her hands, clenched in her lap.

“Camila…”, she starts, her voice thick. She takes a shaky breath, “Reya comes to me. In a dream- Or… not a dream. Ever since Marseille there is a portal or something...”

Camila’s playful expression fades, replaced by focused concern. She stays silent, letting Ava find the words.

“They’re- The Umbrae are building something… out there. A weapon. From another world they already… consumed.” The words feel alien and terrifying in her mouth, “Reya says our world is next. That all our fighting is a waste. That we don’t have what it takes to win. Except…” She finally looks up, tears welling in her eyes, the full, devastating truth spilling out, “When I asked what we were missing…” Ava’s voice breaks on the word, “Reya said I am what’s missing, Camila. I think, I need to give myself up… Again.”

The hope drains from Camila’s face, replaced by a dawning horror. The fairytale ending she’s just painted evaporates into the cold, dark reality of Reya’s prophecy. She stares at Ava, the isolation, the quiet dread, it all makes sense.

“Are you sure?”, Camila asks, the words sharp and clear. “Ava, are you absolutely sure that’s what Reya meant? That it’s… a sacrifice?”

Ava lets out a wet, broken sound that’s half laugh, half sob. She shakes her head, a single tear tracing a path through the dust on her cheek, “No... but what else could it mean, Cam? ‘Your willingness to do what is necessary.’? From a fight against world ending ghosts? It doesn’t exactly sound like a promotion. You saw what the Umbrae can do to me.” She swipes angrily at her face, “It sounds like a trade. Me for… everyone.”

Camila’s mind, usually so quick with data and possibilities, scrambles and finds no counter argument. Dread settles in her stomach. She looks at her friend -vibrant, stubborn, life loving Ava- and the thought of her possibly being offered up again is a physical pain.

“Okay... We research, we find out... We cannot accept this.” Camila demands, her voice losing its questioning tone. It becomes steady, firm. She is no longer just a friend, she is a sister warrior accepting a terrible mission briefing, “What do you need? What can I do?”

Ava’s head snaps up, her eyes wide with a new kind of fear, “Nothing.”, she insists, her voice desperate, “You can’t do anything. That’s the point.” She grabs Camila’s wrist, her grip surprisingly strong, “You have to swear to me, Camila. Swear you won’t tell anyone. Not Bea. Not Mother Superion. No one.”

“Ava, Beatrice would-”

“-Beatrice would lose her mind!” Ava interrupts, her whisper fierce, “If this is true... She would tear the world apart to find another way, and there might not be one! She would destroy herself trying to save me, and I can’t… I can’t let that happen.”

The memory of the arc, of Beatrice’s shattered expression, it all comes together in her mind, “Promise me. Not a word. Not until I… not until I know for sure.”

She says the last part like a lie, because they both know she’s already sure. The Warrior Nun just needs time to figure out how to do it.

Camila looks into Ava’s pleading, terrified eyes. She wants to argue, to scream, to run straight to Beatrice. But she sees the steel beneath the tears. This isn’t a plea, it’s an order from her Hail Mary.

Her friend is asking her to carry this unbearable weight alone.

Slowly, solemnly, Camila places her other hand over Ava’s, where it grips her wrist. It’s not a hug, but it’s a pact.

“I swear.”, Camila whispers, “On my life. No one will know.”

The relief that washes over Ava’s face is so profound it’s heartbreaking. The burden is still hers, but she no longer has to carry it completely alone. She has one ally in the dark.

“Thank you.”, Ava breathes, her grip loosening.

*

The stone corridor is cool and quiet, a brief pocket of solitude away from the war room’s tense energy. Beatrice gently guides Ava into a small, shadowed alcove, her touch hesitant. Ava has been distant for days, a quiet, closed off version of herself that makes Beatrice’s chest ache.

“Ava…”, Beatrice starts, her voice soft but laced with concern, “You’ve been… distant. Since the other night.” She pauses, searching Ava’s avoidant gaze, “If… if my boundary about the convent… if it made you feel like I…”, she struggles with the words, “If it made you feel like I don’t desire you… that is not the case. At all. My feelings for you are… absolute.”

Ava’s agitation, a product of days spent drowning in a secret too terrible to share, finally snaps. The words come out sharp, coated in a hurt she can’t properly explain, “Maybe I’m the one who doesn’t want to, Beatrice. Did you ever think of that?”

The words land like a physical blow. Beatrice flinches as if struck, all the colour draining from her face. The carefully constructed confidence she’s built since leaving the order shatters in an instant.

The old, deep seated shame rushes back in, cold and familiar.


Of course. The thought is a vicious, immediate spiral. She knows.

She knows about my past, and now that the novelty has worn off, she sees the impurity. She sees what I truly am.

The honorary Sister Warrior takes a small, stumbling step back, her hand falling from Ava’s arm. Her eyes are wide with a raw, gut wrenching hurt, “I see…”, she whispers, the words barely audible. She wraps her arms around herself, a defensive gesture Ava hasn’t seen in months, “I… I understand.”

Ava’s heart screams at her to stop it, to reach out, to pull Beatrice close and take the horrible words back. But the other pain, the certain, looming pain of Reya’s prophecy, is even greater. Letting Beatrice believe this lie, letting her think Ava’s love is conditional and fragile, feels like a lesser evil than telling her the real, world ending truth: that she might have to leave her again. 

That she might have to sacrifice herself for real this time.

So Ava says nothing. She just stands there, her own heart breaking as she watches the light in Beatrice’s eyes die out, replaced by the old, familiar shadows of unworthiness. She lets her think the pain is about them, because that pain, however terrible, is something they could maybe survive. The other truth would destroy them both.

*

A few days later, a cold silence has solidified between them, more impenetrable than any wall. Ava’s attempts to bridge the gap have been met with a polite, devastating frost. A day ago, at lunch, she’d gathered her courage and slid onto the bench beside Beatrice, her tray clattering slightly. Without a word, without even looking at her, Beatrice had simply stood, collected her things, and walked away, leaving Ava sitting alone in a bubble of crushing humiliation.

Now, they sit at opposite ends of the long war room table during the evening debrief. The space between them feels stretched, too vast.

“The update from our contacts is… perplexing…”, Mother Superion states, “All Umbra activity in and around Marseille has ceased. Completely. For the last seventy-two hours, there has been no sign of them. No energy signatures, no sightings. It is as if they have simply vanished.”

Ava’s gaze is fixed on Beatrice, who is meticulously studying a report in front of her, her posture rigid. The longing in Ava’s eyes is a physical ache, a silent plea for Beatrice to just look at her.

“This is not necessarily a victory.”, Beatrice suddenly says, her voice cool and analytical, directed solely at Mother Superion. She does not glance down the table. “A retreat suggests a strategic regrouping. They could be concentrating their forces elsewhere. We need to expand our search parameters immediately. Analyse global data for any anomalous energy drains or similar patterns of disappearance. Let the other OCS branches know. This lull is an opportunity to gather intelligence, not declare the war over.”

Her analysis is flawless, her tone professional and utterly detached.

It is the voice of Sister Beatrice, the perfect warrior.

The woman, who kissed Ava breathless against a wall is gone.

The Warrior Nun watches her, her heart breaking all over again. She sees the slight tremor in Beatrice’s hand as she turns a page, the only betraying sign of the turmoil beneath the icy exterior. She wants to scream, to throw the truth on the table and shatter the horrible, necessary lie that is poisoning them.

But she remains silent. She lets Beatrice believe the worst of her, because the alternative -telling her she might have to lose her again- is a cruelty Ava cannot bear to deliver. So she just sits, sending silent, desperate stares down the length of the table, each one ignored, each one met with the unyielding wall of Beatrice’s perfected composure. The war outside may have paused, but the one between them is raging, cold and silent, and Ava is losing.

*

The order lands like a stone in the still pond of their silent war. Mother Superion’s voice is firm, brooking no argument, “Intelligence confirms a surge in Wraith activity in Vienna. A concentrated, aggressive pattern. A small, mobile team will deploy at first light. Ava, of course, as our primary offensive asset. Sister Camila, for her tech expertise. And Beatrice, for tactical command and close combat.”

Beatrice’s head snaps up from the map she’s been pretending to study, “With all due respect, Mother-”, she says, her voice clipped and too formal, “My skills are better utilised here, coordinating the broader search for the Umbrae from Cat’s Cradle. My analytical-”

“That is ridiculous, Beatrice!” Mother Superion interrupts. Her sharp eyes miss nothing, and the tension radiating from her two best warriors has not escaped her notice, “You are one of the best fighters known to us. Your place is on the front line, not buried in reports while others take the risk. The decision is final.”

A muscle ticks in Beatrice’s jaw. She gives a sharp, stiff nod, “Understood.” 

Without another word, the honorary Sister Warrior turns on her heel and strides from the war room, her footsteps echoing with barely contained fury down the stone corridor. Ava watches her go, her own heart pounding. She catches Mother Superion’s gaze as she passes. The older woman’s eyes hold a silent, pointed question. What have you done? It’s clear the entire convent has felt the deep freeze between them. Driven by a desperate need to fix this, to say anything, Ava follows her. She rounds the corner just in time to see Beatrice’s retreating back, her shoulders tense.

“Beatrice, wait-”, Ava calls out, her voice echoing in the empty hall.

But just as she’s about to reach her, a figure emerges from a side passage. Father Vincent, his expression calm and placid.

“Ah, Beatrice. Perfect timing…”, he says, his voice smooth, “I require your assistance in the reliquary. The archives on pre-Schism European demonic activity are a mess of contradictory translations. Your eye for detail would be invaluable. It should not take long.”

Beatrice doesn’t even look at Ava. She simply stops, her back still turned, and gives Father Vincent a curt nod, “Of course, Father.”

And just like that, she turns and follows him down the side passage, vanishing into the shadows without a single glance back. She chooses the dusty, frustrating task of translation over a single second alone with Ava, leaving her standing alone in the corridor, her plea dying on her lips, the chasm between them wider than ever.

*

The hum of the jet engine excites the nun: Camila, wedged firmly in the middle seat of the three-across row, vibrates with a nervous energy that is entirely out of sync with the glacial silence emanating from her companions.

She tries valiantly to pierce the tension, “I’ve always wanted to see Vienna properly!”, she chirps, looking from Ava’s window facing stare to Beatrice’s rigid, forward facing focus, “The art, the music… the coffee houses! I hope this mission takes a few days. I just read about this place on the inflight magazine, Meissl & Schadn. They’re supposed to have the best Wiener Schnitzel in the city. It’s, like, a whole thing. We have to go.”, she shows it to Beatrice excitedly, a picture of a breaded veal cutlet, served with lingonberry jam and potato salad.

Ava, seeing a fragile thread of normalcy, grasps at it. She leans forward slightly, peering around Camila’s head to look at the offered picture, and then to Beatrice, “Yeah? That sounds amazing. You’d be down for that, right, Bea? We could make an evening of it. A mission debrief over schnitzel?”, her voice is hopeful, a quiet peace offering across the aisle.

Camila’s face lights up, “Yes! A team dinner!”

Beatrice doesn’t turn her head. She glances over for a moment, returning her gaze on the seat back in front of her, her posture impeccably straight. When she speaks, her voice is cool, precise, and utterly devoid of warmth. It is the voice of a nun lecturing a novice.

“Sister Camila…”, she says, the title a deliberate, icy wall, “While I am sure the schnitzel is… adequate, I believe you are still sworn to a vow of poverty. A thirty-two euro cutlet is not an expression of poverty. It is an expression of gluttony.” She finally turns her head, but her eyes slide over Ava as if she were part of the aircraft’s upholstery, landing only on Camila, “Our focus will remain on the mission. I want to be in and out of Vienna, as soon as we can.”

The rejection is absolute. It’s not just a no to schnitzel, it’s a no to them, to any semblance of the team they were. The Warrior Nun slumps back in her seat, turning to stare out the window at the blanket of clouds below. The hope curdles into a bitter lump in her throat. She’s flying to one of the most beautiful cities in Europe, a place she’s only ever dreamed of, and she’s going to be trapped there with the one person she wants to share it with most, who now acts like she doesn’t exist. The irony is so painful it’s almost funny. She’s living a dream and a nightmare at the exact same time.

*

The Vienna safe house is not what any of them expected. Tucked away in a beautifully preserved building in the heart of the first District, it feels less like a tactical outpost and more like a luxury apartment. The moment they step inside, the scent of old wood and lemon polish fills the air. A huge, ornate window looks out onto a narrow, cobblestoned street where the clip-clop of horse drawn carriages provides a constant, romantic soundtrack. In the distance, the Gothic spire of the Stephansdom pierces the twilight sky.

Ava stands by the window, momentarily forgetting the icy silence between them, “Wow…”, she breathes, her voice full of genuine awe, “It's so... beautiful.” The city outside looks like a postcard come to life, all elegant architecture and soft, golden light. It’s the most romantic place she’s ever seen, and the fact that she’s here with Beatrice -while being utterly ignored by her- is a special kind of torture.

The apartment itself is spacious. One bedroom with a large bed, and a vast living room where an -obviously pull out- sofa has been made up with fresh linens.

Without a word, Beatrice drops her duffel bag squarely in front of the sofa. “I'll take this one.”, she states, her tone leaving no room for discussion. She doesn't look at either of them, already beginning to methodically check the room's perimeter, her soldier's instinct taking over.

Camila's jaw drops. She stares from the luxurious bed in the other room to the admittedly nice, but definitively not a bed, couch. Her eyes widen in sheer disbelief. This isn't just a preference- it's a statement.

As soon as Beatrice moves to inspect the kitchen, Camila grabs Ava's arm, yanks her into the bedroom, and shuts the door firmly behind them.

“What in the actual hell is going on?”, she hisses, her voice a frantic whisper, “She’d rather sleep on a couch than share a bed with you? In a room with a door? I've seen you two make out in the library! This is insane!”

Ava slumps onto the edge of the bed, the beautiful view now seeming to mock her. The weight of the last few days crashes down, “We had a fight.”, she admits, her voice hollow.

“Is this about- About what you told me last week?”

Ava’s eyes grow wide, “No- No- It’s something else.”, she lies.

Camila throws her hands up, “Okay... I’m a tactical expert, Ava, not a miracle worker. The tension on that plane- I wanted to evaporate. What did you even fight about then?”, she leans in closer, her expression shifting from frustration to strategic plotting, “Look, I already picked out, like, seven museums I was going to disappear to, to give you two some alone time. This was supposed to be a romantic getaway with a side of demon-fighting, not a silent retreat! Whatever is going on... Don’t you want some normalcy, before...”, she doesn’t dare finish the sentence. The weight of the possible sacrifice still weighing down on her. There was still hope that Ava had it wrong.

“It's... complicated.”, Ava mumbles, picking at the bedspread, utterly defeated. She can’t tell the real reason.

She can’t say, I let her think I don't want to sleep with her because the alternative is telling her I might have to die again.

“Un-complicate it!”, Camila insists, planting her hands on her hips, “Look at this city! Look at this room! This is the setting of a really badly written romantic comedy, and you two are the stubborn leads who just need to kiss in the rain! You have to fix this. Now. Before we all die of secondhand sexual frustration.”

Ava just shakes her head, the misery etched deep on her face. Fixing it would probably mean telling the truth.

*

The night air over the Donaukanal is cool, the water a dark, shimmering ribbon under the city lights. The bizarre, colourful facade of the Hundertwasserhaus looms nearby, its uneven windows like watching eyes. They are tracking three figures moving with a furtive, skittish energy along the path.

Ava’s breath catches. A faint, familiar chill -the signature of a Wraith- hangs around one of them. She sees it clearly, a flicker of corrosive energy, looming.

But Beatrice signals from the shadows, a series of precise hand motions outlining her plan: Hold. Flank. Engage on my mark.

Her movements are sharp, her focus absolute, but Ava can feel the brittle edge to it. She’s overcompensating, burying their personal war in military precision. Beatrice hasn't seen it yet. She's tracking the humans, not the spectral threat only Ava's Halo-enhanced senses can clearly perceive.

The Wraith coils, preparing to attack the other two. Beatrice’s plan is too slow, too cautious. They will be too late.

Acting on pure instinct, Ava breaks from the shadows. She doesn’t flank. She steps right into the open.

“Hey! Sie da! Haben Sie eine Minute?!”, her voice, sharp and clear in German, cuts through the night.

The three figures freeze, turning toward the sound. It’s the exact opposite of the stealth approach Beatrice had commanded.

In the split second of stunned confusion, Ava moves. She doesn’t go for the Wraith directly. It’s still half-insubstantial, coiled within the terrified man it’s using as a conduit. Phasing through him would do nothing. Instead, she phases forward in a burst of golden light, appearing directly in front of the man whose eyes are now glowing with a sickly, internal light, “Es tut mir echt Leid…” she mutters her apology, and drives her fist into his solar plexus. The other two scatter.

The air whooshes out of him. He doubles over, gagging, and as he does, the Wraith’s form is violently expelled from his mouth in a cloud of black smoke and static, no longer protected by a living host. It screeches, a sound that tears at the air itself, its form solidifying into a clawed, hateful thing made of pure shadow and stolen energy. It lunges for her, faster than thought. Ava drops into a roll, the Halo flaring on her back as she avoids a taloned swipe that leaves a gash in the cobblestones where her head had been. She comes up, a Divinium dagger already in her hand, pulled from the holster at her thigh. The blade hums with a soft, hungry blue light.

The Wraith circles her, a predator assessing new prey. It feints left, then darts right, but Ava is ready. She’s not the novice she once was. She parries a razor sharp tendril with the dagger, the Divinium meeting the shadowy form with a sizzling crackle of energy that makes the creature recoil with a shriek of pain. Seeing an opening, she presses her advantage. She spins inside its guard, getting dangerously close to the core of chilling darkness at its centre. For a heartstopping moment, she’s surrounded by the thing, the cold of it leaching the warmth from her skin. She ignores the fear, the instinct to phase away.

With a two-handed grip, she plunges the Divinium dagger deep into the Wraith’s core.

The effect is instantaneous and violent. The creature doesn’t just shriek, it unravels. The shadowy form convulses around the blade, light -a horrible, corrosive white light- erupting from the wound. The energy tries to cling to her, to infect her, but the Halo on her back flares in response, its golden light shielding her, burning away the corruption. With a final, silent implosion, the Wraith collapses inward on itself, sucked into the void its own destruction created, leaving behind only the faint smell of ozone and the humming Divinium dagger clutched in Ava’s hand.

Ava lands, breathing heavily, the adrenaline coursing through her. She turns, a defiant look on her face, ready for Beatrice’s reprimand for breaking protocol.




But the reprimand never comes.

Because from the bushes right behind Beatrice, a second Wraith, one that had been completely concealed, explodes outwards. A tendril of shadow whips around Beatrice’s ankle, yanking her off her feet with a brutal, shocking force. She crashes onto her back on the concrete path, the air driven from her lungs in a painful gasp. The Wraith looms over her, its maw opening to drain the life from her, to infect her.

The world narrows to a single, terrifying point. Ava sees Beatrice on the ground, vulnerable, surprised -distracted- because of their fight, because of the cold silence between them that had made her sloppy, and because she simply couldn't see the threat, Ava could. The thought that she could lose her, now, like this, because of this… it unleashes something primal in Ava.

She doesn’t think. She just moves.

A blast of pure Halo energy, brighter and more violent than any she’s ever summoned, erupts from her. It hits the Wraith not like a weapon, but like a tidal wave. The creature doesn’t have time to scream. It unmakes, vaporised into nothingness by the sheer, terrified force of Ava’s power.

The silence that follows is deafening.

Ava rushes forward, dropping to her knees beside Beatrice, who is lying stunned on the ground. And then Ava sees it: tears. Silent tracks streaming from the corners of Beatrice’s eyes, cutting through the dirt on her cheeks. It’s not from pain. It’s from shock, from the profound humiliation of being caught off guard, from the terrifying realisation that her focus, her one immutable strength, had failed her because her heart was in turmoil.

“Bea? Bea, are you hurt?”, Ava’s voice is frantic, her hands hovering, afraid to touch.

Beatrice just shakes her head, a small, choked sound escaping her. She can’t speak.

“I’m sorry.”, Ava whispers, her own eyes filling with tears. She gathers Beatrice up, pulling her into a tight hug right there on the path, “I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have strayed from the plan. I forgot… I forgot everything you taught me. I wasn’t aware of the surroundings. This is my fault.”

She holds her, rocking her slightly, whispering apologies into her hair. Beatrice doesn’t push her away. She clutches at Ava’s jacket, her body trembling with the aftershock of fear and relief.

Across the path, Camila lowers her weapon, her face a mask of wary concern that slowly melts into a tentative, hopeful relief. She gives them a moment, standing guard over their fragile, public reconciliation.

*

Later, back at the swanky safe house, the mood is somber but softer. Beatrice is moving stiffly, a deep bruise already forming on her back from the fall.

“Okay, that’s it!”, Camila announces, putting her hands on her hips, “I cannot, in good conscience, let you sleep on that couch. You’re injured.”

“It’s nothing,” Beatrice insists, her voice quiet but no longer icy, “Just a bruise. I’ve had worse.”

“Nope. Not happening!”, Camila says, her tone leaving no room for argument. She shoots a meaningful look at Ava, “Doctor’s orders. You need a proper bed. Ava’s is plenty big enough for two. I’ll take the couch.”

Beatrice looks from Camila’s determined face to Ava’s hopeful, anxious one. The fight is gone from her. The fear from the canal is still too fresh. She gives a small, almost imperceptible nod.

“Alright.”, she whispers, and it feels like the first real crack in the ice that has frozen her for days.

*

Beatrice sits stiffly on the edge of the large bed, her face a mask of controlled pain. She tries to shrug out of her tactical jacket, but the movement pulls at the bruised muscles of her back and shoulders, and she lets out a sharp, involuntary hiss.

Ava is at her side in an instant, “Let me.”, she says softly, her hands already moving to help.

Beatrice flinches away, a reflexive gesture of self reliance, “I can manage.”

“Beatrice.”, Ava’s voice is firm, it’s the voice she uses on the battlefield, “Stop it. Just accept my help.”

Their eyes meet, Ava’s filled with determined concern, Beatrice’s with pain and a deep, lingering shame. Finally, the fight drains out of Beatrice. She gives in.

Ava’s touch is gentle as she helps Beatrice ease the jacket off her shoulders, her fingers carefully avoiding the tender areas, but goes no further. The intimacy of it, after days of cold silence, makes the Warrior Nun’s hands tremble slightly. She doesn’t want to overstep, doesn’t want to shatter this fragile truce. The jacket discarded, Beatrice sits in her sweatshirt, her head bowed. The nervousness returns to Ava, coiling in her stomach. Words feel too clumsy, too inadequate. So she does the only thing that feels right. She slowly sinks to her knees on the plush carpet, placing herself in Beatrice’s line of sight, looking up at her.

“Bea…”, she begins, her voice barely a whisper, “Our greatest strength… it’s never just been the Halo, or your training. It’s this. It’s us. It’s the fact that we understand each other. We’re supposed to be really good at communicating…” She swallows hard, her heart pounding. She looks down, joining hands -Beatrice doesn’t recoil- gathering her courage, “And I… Was really fucking shitty with that. I let my own fear build a wall between us instead of talking to you. I shut you out when you needed me to let you in, and I am so sorry. Seeing you on the ground tonight… I’ve never been so scared. Not of the Wraith, but of losing the person I love…”

The words hang in the air. Beatrice’s head lifts slowly. Her brow is furrowed not in anger, but in genuine, profound confusion. It’s as if Ava has just spoken in a foreign language.

“Ava…”, she says, her voice hoarse, “You don’t have to say that now…”

“Don’t have to say what?”, Ava asks, her own confusion now mirroring Beatrice’s, but then it dawns on her, “What are you talking about? You know I love you. I told you, by the arc... In the letter...”

Beatrice shakes her head, a tear finally escaping to trace a path down her cheek, “You said it… before. In midst of a war. Before a sacrifice. I have never doubted that you care for me deeply. But I… I understood. Those words, in that context… they were a goodbye. A final gift.”, she looks away, her voice dropping to a shattered whisper, “And then you said you didn’t want me. And that… that made sense.”

The pieces crash together in Ava’s mind. Beatrice hadn’t just been hurt by the rejection, she had accepted it as a correction, a retraction of the love confession she’d never truly believed was real to begin with.

“Oh my god, Bea...”, Ava breathes, her own eyes filling with tears. She reaches out, wiping Beatrice’s tears away, “No. No. Listen to me. I love you. I am in love with you. And I've been in love with you for like ages. What I said before I went through the arc… that wasn’t just a goodbye. That was me wanting to make sure you knew, you had to know. I love you so much, it terrifies me.”

She pours every ounce of her sincerity into her words, into her gaze, willing Beatrice to see the truth.

The older woman stares at her, the confusion in her eyes slowly dissolving, replaced by a dawning, awe struck wonder that is quickly swamped by a wave of overwhelming emotion. The rigid control she has maintained for days finally, completely shatters. A silent sob racks her body, followed by another. Tears stream down her face freely now, not just of pain or shock, but of a profound, disbelieving relief. She cries, because the foundation of her world has just shifted yet again, because the truth is more beautiful and more painful than the story she had convinced herself was real. She doesn’t understand the lie, but she can no longer deny the raw, honest love shining in Ava’s eyes. All she can do is sit there and let the tears fall, her hands clutching Ava’s like a lifeline.

*

The first light of a Viennese morning filters through the window, it's grey- it’s late February, after all. They wake up not in an embrace, but back-to-back, a silent testament to the careful truce they had fallen asleep in. The ice has broken, yes, the misunderstanding finally cleared, but a new, quieter distance remains, the space of a secret Ava is still holding tight.

Beatrice wakes first, the deep ache in her back a dull reminder of the previous night. For a moment, she simply lies there, listening to Ava’s steady breathing behind her. The simple joy of knowing her love was real, that the rejection was a lie, is a warm, fragile thing in her chest after a week of cold despair. But her sharp instincts, the ones that read battlefields and people with equal precision, sense the tension still coiled in Ava’s form. There is something else, something unspoken. She would wait for Ava to come forth on her own terms.

Slowly, tentatively, Beatrice turns over. She watches the line of Ava’s back, the way her sleep shirt has ridden up slightly. The need to close the last bit of space between them is a physical pull. She reaches out, her fingers gently grasping a handful of Ava’s soft cotton shirt, giving it the faintest tug, a silent plea for her to turn around.

Still mostly asleep, Ava responds to the touch, murmuring incoherently as she rolls over. Lost in the haze of dreams, she instinctively nuzzles into the warmth of Beatrice’s neck, her lips brushing a soft, sleepy kiss against the sensitive skin there.

Beatrice draws in a sharp, quiet inhale at the contact, the sensation jolting straight through her.

The sound, and the sudden tension in the body beside her, finally pulls Ava fully into consciousness. She freezes, the reality of what she just did dawning on her. For a long moment, neither moves. Ava’s eyes flutter open, her gaze fixing on the Divinium cross resting against Beatrice’s throat, focusing on its familiar shape and glow to ground herself. She doesn’t pull away.

They say nothing. The morning stretches around them, tentative and slow, filled with the unspoken. There is no urgent need to speak, to dissect or explain. The silence itself becomes a language. Beatrice’s hand, still fisted in Ava’s shirt, slowly relaxes, her palm flattening against the small of Ava’s back to draw her in closer. Ava lets herself be pulled, settling her head on Beatrice’s shoulder, her arm curling around her waist. They simply hold each other, allowing the quiet intimacy to soothe the raw edges of the night before, granting themselves this one, peaceful moment to just be, before the weight of the world outside their door inevitably comes crashing back in.

“I do too, you know…”, Beatrice starts, and because Ava doesn’t, she pulls back, and looks at her, puzzled, “… I love you. In case it wasn’t clear. I’m not sure, if you heard it, when I said it the first time…”

Ava’s puzzled expression melts away, replaced by a warmth that feels like the sun rising in her chest. A slow, breathtaking smile spreads across her face, knowing the only solace she harboured in her sterile prison in Reya's realm was not fake. Everything might have been fake there, except for Beatrice’s feelings for her. She hadn’t made it up. Ava simply closes the small distance again, resting her forehead against Beatrice’s neck, her eyes slipping closed as she lets the truth of it wash over her.

Chapter Text

The new intelligence is frustratingly vague. There have been local reports of Wraith-esque activity across the city, near the Prater, a permanent amusement park in the second district. It wasn't enough to move on, not enough to fight. They are stuck in a holding pattern in their beautiful Viennese prison.

Camila sighs, snapping her laptop shut, “Well. This is useless for now.”, she stretches, a determined glint in her eye, “I'm going to the Albertina. They have a fantastic collection of Monet and Degas. I'm not wasting a day in this city staring at these four walls.”

The offer hung in the air. A chance to do something normal. To escape the tension.

“I’ll come with you!”, Beatrice says instantly, already standing. The words come out a little too fast, her posture a little too rigid. The thought of being alone in the apartment with Ava, with all their freshly unearthed feelings raw and exposed, was suddenly terrifying.

“Yeah, me too!”, Ava chimes in, just as quickly. The idea of being left alone with a Beatrice who was now looking at her with soft, confused eyes instead of cold anger was equally daunting.

Camila looks between them, their eagerness so transparent it was almost painful. She shakes her head, a small, fond smile on her lips.

“No.”, she says simply, but firmly.

Both women stare at her.

“What?”, Ava asks, confused.

“No.”, Camila repeats, slinging her bag over her shoulder, “I am not spending my afternoon at an art museum with someone…”, she points a finger at Ava, “…who would look at a Monet and say 'cool water, dude' and then ask if the gift shop sells snacks.”, she then turns her finger to Beatrice, “And I am definitely not going with someone who would analyse the sightlines of every room, assess the crowd density for potential threats, and mentally calculate the tensile strength of the ceiling supports. I want to look at art. I want normalcy."

She walks to the door, retrieving her jacket from a nearby hook, pausing with her hand on the knob, “And more importantly…”, she adds, her voice softening, “You two have never, not once, had a single day of normal. You've had war, and death, and other dimensions. You finally have a city that looks like a postcard and a few hours with absolutely nothing to fight. So, for the love of God, figure it out. Go be awkward somewhere pretty. I'll see you for dinner.”

And with that, she was gone, leaving a ringing silence in her wake.

They stand there for a long moment, the weight of Camila's instructions pressing down on them. The excuse of a mission has been ripped away.

Ava takes a breath, seizing the initiative, “We could… I don't know… go for a walk? Since we’re… you know. Here.”

Beatrice nods, a little too formally, “A walk. Yes. That would be… acceptable.”

The late winter air is crisp as they step outside, the grandeur of Vienna unfolding around them. They walk without a real destination, the silence between them fill by the sound of their footsteps on the cobblestones and the distant melody of a street musician. The awkwardness is a physical thing, a third person walking between them.

After twenty minutes of meandering, they find themselves in a quieter square, a small, frozen fountain at its centre. The tension starting to feel suffocating.

Ava stops, turning to face Beatrice, “This is stupid.”, she blurts out.

The ex-nun’s eyes widen slightly, “I… what is?”

“This-”, Ava gestures between them, “We can fight demons and travel between realms but we can't just… have a day. Together.” She shuffles her feet, shyly adding, “Camila's right. We never get this.”

Beatrice's defensive posture softens, “I'm… not very good at this.”, she admits, her voice quiet, “The having a day part.”

“I know.”, Ava says, a small smile touching her lips, “Me neither. But we could… practice?”

She takes a small, hesitant step closer. 

Then another. 

Beatrice doesn’t retreat. She just watches Ava, her dark eyes wide and uncertain.

Ava’s gaze flickers down to Beatrice’s lips, then back up. 

Slowly, giving Beatrice every chance to pull away, Ava leans in. It isn't a confident move, it is tentative, questioning. She presses her lips to Beatrice's in a kiss that is chaste and soft, lasting barely a second before she pulls back, her face flushed.

It was a shy kiss.

Beatrice stands perfectly still for a heartbeat, the ghost of the touch lingering. Then, a real, genuine smile -the first truly unguarded one Ava had seen in days- spreads across her face. It is a little wobbly, but it is real.

“Your practice…”, Beatrice says, her voice warm,  “Could need some improvement.”

Ava lets out a laugh, the tension finally breaking, “Oh yeah? Maybe you can show me back at the apartment.”, the Warrior Nun mumbles, bumping her shoulder against Beatrice’s, who -although blushing a little- nods confidently. She slips her hand into Ava's, lacing their fingers together. 

“But for now… Come on!”, she says, giving Ava’s hand a gentle pull, “I believe there’s a famous opera house around here somewhere. We can go be awkward in front of that.”

*

The tension has finally shifted from painful to electric. They are on the large, plush sofa that was facing Camila's pull out one, a tangle of limbs and soft, searching kisses. What began as tentative exploration has deepened into something more urgent, a silent language of apology and forgiveness spoken with lips and hands.

Beatrice’s fingers are in Ava’s hair, pulling her closer, as if trying to erase the distance of the last week through sheer proximity. The Warrior Nun meets her in her urgency, one hand cupping Beatrice’s jaw, the other splayed against the small of her back.

It is there that Ava feels it- a minute, involuntary flinch beneath her palm, a sharp intake of breath against her mouth.

Beatrice tries to mask it, surging forward to recapture Ava’s lips, but the other woman pulls back just enough, “Hey... Your back.”

“It’s nothing.”, Beatrice murmurs, her eyes still closed, trying to drift back into the blissful haze.

“It’s not nothing.” Ava’s voice is soft but firm. She shifts, her movements gentle as she guides Beatrice to sit up. “Come on. Let’s… let’s go to the bedroom. It’ll be more comfortable.”

They manage to untangle themselves and stumble the short distance to the bedroom, a quiet, charged journey. Beatrice sits on the edge of the bed, her breathing still slightly ragged. The lamplight casts a golden glow over her, highlighting the faint lines of pain around her eyes that she can no longer hide.

Ava stands before her, her own heart pounding, but not from passion anymore. From a different kind of nerve. This feels familiar, but in a reversed, distorted way.

A memory surfaces: the sterile room, the examining table, the replica of Beatrice coolly insisting on seeing her injuries. That had felt like a violation. This… this needs to be an offering.

With newfound courage, Ava kneels on the floor in front of her lover, placing herself at Beatrice’s eye level. She reaches out, her fingers hovering just above the hem of Beatrice’s soft sweater.

“Bea?”, she asks, her voice barely a whisper, “Can I… can I take this off?”

Beatrice stills. Her eyes sharpen with a flicker of old anxiety. The moment stretches, fragile. Seeing the hesitation, Ava quickly shakes her head, a soft, understanding smile on her lips, “No, no, that’s not- I don’t mean… that’s not what I’m asking for.” She takes Beatrice’s hands in hers, lacing their fingers together, “I just… I want to see. I want to make sure, you’re okay. Please?”

The rambling, earnest plea is nothing like the clinical command of the being mimicking Beatrice in the other realm. It is all Ava- full of heart and a desperate need to care. Tension drains from Beatrice’s shoulders. She gives a small nod, granting permission.

Ava’s touch is infinitely tender as she gently gathers the soft fabric. She never breaks eye contact, her movements slow and deliberate, giving Beatrice every second to change her mind. She gently lifts the sweater up and over Beatrice’s head, her eyes holding Beatrice’s through the entire motion, a silent promise in her gaze. Only once the sweater is off, dropped softly to the floor beside them, Ava’s gaze does finally, reluctantly, leave Beatrice’s eyes. She lets it travel down, a slow, reverent journey over her shoulders, before she slowly makes her way towards her back.

Her breath catches slightly at the sight of the dark, angry bruise marring the smooth skin of Beatrice’s back and ribs. It is a shocking, violent contrast.

“Oh, Bea…”, she whispers, her voice thick with emotion.

The Warrior Nun reaches for the same iridescent ointment Jillian had given her for the burnt flesh on her arm, its container cool in her hand. She warms a small amount between her fingers, her touch feather light as she begins to gently smooth it over the injured area.

This is the mirror scene, but inverted. Where the replica’s touch had been impersonal, perfect, and cold on herself, Ava’s is slightly clumsy, reverent, and warm. Where the replica had seen a task to be completed, Ava sees a person to be cherished. She doesn’t just apply the salve, she maps the injury with her fingertips, her touch speaking a silent litany of I’m here, I see you, I’m sorry, I love you.

Beatrice shudders under the touch, but this time it is not from pain. It is from the overwhelming vulnerability of being cared for so deeply. 

Ava works in silence, her focus complete. She tends to Beatrice with an affection that is its own form of worship, a silent promise that stands in stark opposition to the sterile cruelty of the dream realm. This is not about healing a weapon. This is about loving a person.

The moment is shattered by the sound of the front door swinging open and hitting the wall with a soft thud and someone making their way to the bedroom.

“Okay, so the Albertina was amazing, but my feet are killing me and I - WOAH!”

Camila freezes in the bedroom doorway, her eyes wide as saucers. She takes in the scene: Beatrice, shirtless, on the bed, with Ava behind her. For a single second, Camila’s brain clearly short-circuits, interpreting the scene as something entirely different.

She slams her hands over her eyes with a dramatic gasp, “Wow! Okay! You guys made up quickly! Should I- like, vanish for another two hours? Three?”, she rambles, her voice pitching higher with each word, “How long does this sort of thing usually take? I can go get a really, really slow coffee-”

“Camila!”, Beatrice's voice is a strangled mix of utter mortification and sharp command. Her face flushes a deep, spectacular crimson. In a move of pure, flustered instinct, she snatches the soft sweater from the floor beside her and hurls it directly at Camila's head. It’s not a gentle toss, it’s fuelled by sheer, unadulterated panic.

The sweater hits its mark, draping itself over Camila’s face and successfully muffling her next sentence.

“It's not what it looks like!”, Beatrice insists, crossing her arms over her chest in a futile attempt at modesty, her ears burning.

From behind the curtain, the nun’s muffled voice is skeptical, “It looks like you're getting a very attentive back rub!”

Camila peels the sweater from her face, her expression shifting from theatrical shock to genuine concern as she finally processes the details she’d missed in her initial assumption: the medical tub of ointment in Ava’s hand, the serious, tender look on her face, and most importantly, the shocking expanse of purple and blue bruising discolouring Beatrice’s skin.

“Bea!”, she says, all teasing gone from her voice. She lowers her hands, her face falling. “That looks... really painful. Are you okay?”

“It's fine.”, Beatrice mutters, her shoulders hunching slightly. The wish to disappear is now a palpable force in the room.

“She's not fine…”, Ava corrects softly, her fingers gently continuing their work, “But she will be.”

Camila nods, looking genuinely chastened. “Right. Sorry for, uh... bursting in. And for the... assumption.” She offers a small, apologetic smile, “I’m glad though, that you guys clearly worked out your issues.”, she gestures vaguely with the sweater still in her hand. Camila then drops it unceremoniously onto the dresser next to the doorway, and retreats, closing the door behind her, migrating to the couch, where the pair had been just ten minutes ago.

Ava lets out a long breath, a slow smile spreading across her face, “Well… That was arguably more traumatic than the Wraith attack."

A choked, half hysterical laugh escapes Beatrice. She drops her face into her hands, her body shaking with a mixture of humiliation and reluctant amusement. Ava leans forward to press a soft, reassuring kiss to the other woman’s shoulder blade, right next to the injury, “Now, hold still. Nurse Ava is on duty.”

*

The Prater unfolds before them like a neon drenched dream, a contrast to Vienna's historic opulence. The air itself is a sensory overload: the shrieks of laughter from the rollercoasters, the tinny carnival music from the carousels, the intoxicating smell of fried dough and candied almonds. The Wiener Riesenrad, the great Ferris wheel, turns its stately, slow circle against the night sky, its cabins glowing like fireflies, red. It is a place of pure, unadulterated joy, a world away from cathedrals and ancient tombs.

Their mission is to blend in, to watch for anomalous energy signature. And so, they do the only thing that makes sense: they become tourists.

Camila, trailing a few steps behind, watches as Ava drags a slightly hesitant Beatrice toward a spinning ride, called the ‘Sombrero’, “Come on, it’ll be fun!”, Ava insists, her eyes sparkling under the kaleidoscope of lights.

Beatrice allows herself to be pulled along, a small, genuine smile touching her lips as the world whirls into a blur of colour and sound.

From the scrambler to the bumper cars, they move through the park, a picture of a normal couple on a date. Or they would be, if not for their constant, subtle scans of the crowd, their postures always ready to snap into combat. And of course, their constant shadow: Sister Camila, of the Order of the Cruciform Sword.

The nun in question follows, munching on a bag of chips with a theatrical sigh, “You know, I think, I liked it better when you two weren’t talking. At least then I wasn’t a permanent third wheel on your date.”

Ava just laughs, linking her arm through Beatrice’s, “See? It is a date.”

The mission is almost feeling like a vacation, when the Warrior Nun’s smile vanishes. Her head snaps to the left, her body going rigid, “There.”, she says, her voice low and entirely changed.

Beatrice and Camila follow her gaze. Across the crowded plaza, a man stumbles away from a food cart. He looks unwell, pale and sweating. And clinging to his back, visible only to Ava’s Halo-enhanced sight, is a Wraith demon, a parasitic, shadowy form, its tendrils sunk deep into his shoulders, leaching his energy, making him sway on his feet.

The man staggers away from the bright lights and packed avenues of the permanent amusement park, heading toward the darker, wooded expanse of the Grüner Prater. The cheerful music fades, replaced by the rustle of bare branches. The well trodden paths give way to darker, quieter trails, dimly lit by occasional, widely spaced lamps. The pack decides to follow him.

They are fifty yards into the gloom, the sounds of the park now a distant hum, when a figure steps out from behind a large tree directly into the stumbling man’s path. The man collapses to his knees, the Wraith on his back shimmering with agitation.

The figure is tall, clad in dark, tactical gear that seems to absorb the scant light. She doesn’t move like a human. Her motion is a liquid, predatory glide.

She places a hand on the man’s forehead. Not to comfort him. To steady him. With her other hand, she makes a sharp, claw like gesture in the air. The Wraith doesn’t just dissipate, it is plucked from the man’s back with a sound like tearing silk. It writhes in her grasp for a split second before she clenches her fist, and it vanishes, consumed into nothingness.

The man slumps forward, unconscious, but alive, freed from the parasite.

The figure straightens up and turns slowly to face them. The weak light from a distant lamp catches her features.

Sharp, pale, with high cheekbones and utterly familiar. Her eyes glow with a faint, otherworldly crimson light.

Lilith.

A cruel, knowing smile plays on her lips, “Looking for me?”

The taunt is a gunshot in the quiet dark. 

Ava doesn’t think. She doesn’t strategise. A white hot fury, born of betrayal and the memory of Micheal getting his heart ripped out by her, erupts from her core. The Halo on her back screams to life, flooding the dim grove with blinding golden light.

“You!”, the word is a raw, guttural snarl.

She launches herself forward, not with phasing grace, but with pure, vengeful momentum. The air crackles around her, leaves whipping from the trees as she closes the distance in a heartbeat. Her fist, wreathed in searing Halo energy, drives toward Lilith’s face.

Lilith doesn’t flinch. She moves.

It’s not a block, it’s a contemptuous deflection. Her arm comes up, not to stop the blow, but to redirect it, her own form shimmering with a dark, violet energy that seems to drink the Halo’s light. She grabs Ava’s wrist, the impact sounding like a clap of thunder, and uses the Warrior Nun’s own force to spin and throw her into the trunk of a massive oak.

Wood splinters. Ava gasps, the air driven from her lungs, but the Halo heals her instantly. She pushes off the tree, her eyes burning with golden fire.

“Ava, no! Stand down!”, Beatrice’s command is sharp, tactical, but it’s too late.

The battle is joined. It is not a fight of skill, but a cataclysm of opposing forces. Ava is a tempest of radiant, righteous anger. Every strike is meant to obliterate. Lilith is a vortex of calm, ancient power. She doesn’t attack, she absorbs, parries, and counterstrikes with brutal, effortless efficiency.

Ava phases, reappearing behind Lilith to deliver a kick that would shatter stone. Lilith anticipates it, dissolving into shadow and reforming a foot away, her laughter a low, chilling sound. She lashes out with a whip of condensed darkness that wraps around Ava’s ankle and yanks her off her feet, slamming her into the ground.

“You’re stronger.”, Lilith muses, her voice a bored drawl as she watches Ava struggle against the binding, “But just as predictable.”

The Halo flares, burning away the dark tendril. Ava surges upward-

“ENOUGH!”

The voice isn’t Beatrice’s. It’s Camila’s. And it’s followed by the distinct, high frequency hum of the Cruciform Sword, its blue light now adding a third colour to the violent tableau. She stands poised, the blade held steady, aimed at Lilith. Beatrice is at her side, a Divinium knife in each hand, her body positioned between the two warring forces.

“The next move isn’t hers, Lilith.”, Beatrice says, her voice ice cold, “It’s ours.”

For a moment, it seems the battle will simply expand. But then Lilith does something unexpected. She lowers her hands. The violent energy around her winks out. She looks from Beatrice’s determined face to Camila’s unwavering blade, and finally to Ava, who is panting, glowing, and ready to spring again.

A slow, patronising smile spreads across Lilith’s face, “Still playing at being heroes. How quaint.”

She takes a single, deliberate step forward, utterly ignoring the weapons pointed at her.

“I didn’t come here to fight you.”, she says, her gaze sweeping over them before locking directly, intently, on Ava. The amusement vanishes from her eyes, replaced by something grim and absolute. She takes a step closer, the air growing cold around her. The playful taunt is gone, stripped away to reveal a chilling seriousness.

“The Holy War isn’t coming.”, she states, her voice dropping into a register that feels like it vibrates in their bones, “It is here. And you are losing because you’re fighting the symptoms, not the cause.”

Her words are so Reya coded that it makes Ava’s blood curdle.

“So, Halo-Bearer. Have you figured your part in the war out yet? Or are you still waiting for a sign?”

*

The silence back in the apartment is deafening. It’s a thick, heavy thing, pressing down on them around the small kitchen table. Beatrice leans over a tablet, replaying the few seconds of clear audio they’d captured of their former Sister Warrior’s voice, before civilians had crashed their party and Lilith teleported away.

“Have you figured your part in the war out yet?”, Lilith’s distorted voice hisses from the speaker. 

Beatrice taps the screen, pausing it, “It has to be a clue. A taunt, yes, but Lilith doesn’t waste words. She’s pointing at something. If we can just-” She stops, finally noticing the absolute stillness of the other two. Camila is staring fixedly at the wooden table, her jaw clenched. Ava is pale, her hands clasped tightly in her lap, her gaze miles away.

“What is it?” Beatrice asks, her voice softer, the analyst mode switching off, replaced by concern, “What’s going on?”

Neither woman answers. Camila shifts uncomfortably. Ava doesn’t even seem to hear her.

“What aren’t you telling me?”

The silence stretches, taut and unbearable. Finally, Camila lets out a shaky breath, the sound unnaturally loud in the quiet room. She can’t bear the weight of it anymore. She looks at Ava, a silent plea for permission in her eyes, but the Warrior Nun is still locked in her own private horror.

“It’s Reya.”, Camila blurts out, her voice strained. She looks at Beatrice, her eyes full of apology and dread, “Ava… Reya came to her. In a dream, or something. Reya told her she was what was missing to win the war. Ava… Ava thinks it means she has to sacrifice herself. Again.”

The words hang in the air, sucking all the oxygen from the room.

Beatrice doesn’t move. She doesn’t speak. She simply processes the sentence, each word a hammer blow. Her carefully constructed composure, the analytical wall she’d built, shatters into a million pieces. Her eyes dart to Ava, searching for a denial, but finds only a guilty, terrified confirmation. Without a word, Beatrice pushes back from the table so abruptly her chair screeches against the floor. She turns and walks, then almost runs, to the bedroom, shutting the door behind her with a quiet but definitive click.

Ava flinches at the sound. It’s worse than if Beatrice had screamed.

It takes Ava a few minutes to gather the courage to follow. She finds Beatrice standing ramrod straight at the window, her back to the door, staring out at the darkening Viennese street. Her arms are wrapped tightly around herself.

“Bea…”, Ava whispers from the doorway.

“Why?”, the word is quiet, flat, devoid of all the anger Ava expected. It’s worse. It’s hurt, “Why would you keep that from me? That is… that is arguably the most crucial piece of intelligence we have. And you gave it to Camila.”

Ava’s own dam finally breaks. The guilt and fear she’s been carrying for days pours out, “Because I couldn’t!”, she cries, her voice cracking, “I couldn’t bear to put that on you! The second I heard it, I felt sick. All I could see was your face… your face if you knew. How you’d freak out. I thought… I thought, if I could just handle it alone, if I could find another way…”

Beatrice turns around slowly. Her eyes are red-rimmed but dry, shining with a pain so profound it makes Ava’s breath catch, “So you shut me out. You were cold. You let me think…” She trails off, the memory of Ava’s rejection flashing in her eyes, “You let me think the worst. Because you thought that was better than this?”

“I was trying to protect you!”, Ava insists.

“I don’t need protection, Ava, I need a partner!”, Beatrice’s voice rises, Ava has never heard her speak so loudly, “I am rational. I don’t freak out. We could have faced this together. We could have tried to understand what it actually means instead of you just… deciding it meant death!”, she takes a step closer, and the raw hurt in her voice is unmistakable. “And you told Camila. You let her carry that with you, but not me. That… that hurts.”

The truth of it lands on Ava with the force of a physical blow. She had been so focused on the grand, tragic gesture of her potential sacrifice, she hadn’t seen the smaller, more intimate betrayal. She’d chosen to share her burden with a friend, and in doing so, had excluded the one person she was sworn to stand beside.

“I’m sorry.”, Ava breathes after a while, the words utterly inadequate, “I was so scared. I didn’t know what else to do.”

Beatrice just looks at her, the anger receding, leaving behind a deep, weary sorrow, “We face things together.”, she says, her voice barely a whisper, “That is the only way any of this works. No more secrets. Promise me.”

“No more secrets. I promise.”

Chapter Text

The stone walls of Cat’s Cradle usually feel like a shield. Tonight, they feel like a cage. Beatrice sits alone in the archives, the silence a heavy weight after the emotional tempest of Vienna. A single lamp pools light over the text she hasn’t read a word of in the last hour. Her mind is a whirlwind of Lilith’s words and Ava’s devastating secret.

The air in the room changes.

It is not a sound, but a sudden, profound absence of it. The faint, ever present hum of the ancient building’s electricity vanishes. The rustle of a mouse in the walls ceases. The very dust motes hanging in the lamplight seem to freeze in place.

Beatrice’s head snaps up, her soldier’s instincts screaming. Her hand flies to the Divinium knife at her belt.

A figure stands across the room.

They have not entered. They have simply appeared from the shadows between the bookshelves as if they were always there. The form is both solid and impossibly shifting, light and shadow woven into a semblance of a person.


It is Reya.

The entity does not move. Their gaze, ancient and utterly alien, is fixed on Beatrice. It feels less like being seen and more like being dissected, every thought and fear laid bare and examined under a cold, dispassionate lens. Beatrice’s grip on her knife tightens, but she does not draw it. She knows, on a primal level, that it would be as useful as a feather against a tsunami.

You, the word is not a sound that travels through the air. It forms directly inside Beatrice’s mind, a vibration of pure meaning that carries no tone, no emotion.

Beatrice forces her voice to remain steady, though her heart hammers against her ribs, “What do you want?”

The deity’s head tilts a fraction. The movement is unnervingly precise. 

You are the anchor. The rational mind. Yet you are unmoored.

The statement is not an accusation. It is a simple, clinical observation.

“You showed Ava a weapon and told her our world is next. You filled her with a terror she felt she had to bear alone. Why?”

The truth is not kind. It simply is.

The entity’s form seems to flicker, the shadows around it deepening. 

The Warrior Nun’s heart is her greatest strength and her most profound weakness. It clouds her judgment. Yours does not.

“So you came to me?”, Beatrice asks, disbelief colouring her tone, “Why?”

To provide clarity. The key is not a weapon to be spent. It is a catalyst to be activated. 

Reya takes a single, silent step forward. The temperature in the room drops several degrees. 

She believes her purpose is sacrifice. It is not. Her purpose is evolution.
The Halo must become more. She must become more.
And you, you must ensure she does not choose the simpler path. The path of martyrdom.

Guide her. Or all will be lost.

The message is delivered with the same flat finality as a verdict. The entity does not wait for a response. Their form begins to unravel, the light and shadow pulling apart like fraying thread.

The tide does not wait for you to understand it, comes the final thought, echoing in the suddenly expanding silence. 

It only waits to drown you.

And then they are gone.

The air rushes back into the room. The faint hum of electricity returns. The dust motes resume their lazy dance.

Beatrice is left standing alone, her grip loosening around the hilt of her knife, the deity’s chilling words etched into her mind.

The weight on her shoulders has not lessened. It has changed, transformed from a burden of fear into a terrifying, unequivocal responsibility.

*

The memory of Reya’s visit hangs around Beatrice like a shroud, the deity’s words echoing in her mind with the force of a divine command. 

Guide her. Or all will be lost.

She doesn’t approach Ava immediately. They still need to file reports on the Lilith sighting. They move through the familiar routines of the Cradle like ghosts, the unspoken truth a wall between them. Beatrice waits until the official duties are done, until the evening quiet has settled over the stone corridors.

She finds Ava in her room, sitting on the edge of the bed, staring at her hands. She looks up as Beatrice enters, her expression a mixture of hope and dread.

“Bea? Are you… are we okay?”, the question is small, vulnerable.

“We will be…”, Beatrice says softly, closing the door behind her.


She doesn’t sit. She stands before Ava, her posture not of a lover, but of a messenger bearing a crucial dispatch. 

“But we need to talk. About Reya.”

Ava’s face tightens, “I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t have-”


“It’s not about that. Ava… Reya didn’t just come to you. After Vienna. After we argued. They came to me. Here. In the archives.”

Ava goes perfectly still. All the colour drains from her face, “What? Are you… Are you okay? What did they do to you?”

“They gave me a message. For you.”, when nothing comes back, Beatrice continues, “Ava, you were wrong. Reya wasn’t telling you to sacrifice yourself. They were telling you to evolve.”

Ava stares, uncomprehending. “Evolve? What does that mean?”

“The key isn’t a weapon to be spent. It’s a catalyst to be activated.”, Beatrice repeats Reya’s words verbatim, each one feeling like a live wire on her tongue, “Your purpose isn’t martyrdom. Your purpose is to become more. The Halo must become more. You must become more.”

She sees the confusion and hope in Ava’s eyes.

“Reya came to me because they believe your heart- your love, your fear for us- will make you choose the simpler path. The path of sacrifice. They believe my mind…”, she taps her temple, “Can guide you past that. They told me to ensure you do not choose to die. They told me to help you learn how to truly live. How to maximise the power you hold.”

“Reya didn’t come to demand your death or mine, Ava. They came to demand your evolution. And they’ve put that task on both of us.”

*

Because Beatrice can’t sit still, and Reya was not quite forthcoming with the information on how exactly the evolution of a halo bearer was to be achieved, she spends most of her time in the archives. The air is thick with the smell of dust and old paper, a familiar scent that usually brings her comfort. Now, it smells of desperation.

Ancient texts are piled high around her- treatises on angelic lore, crumbling scrolls on divine energy, heretical manuscripts about otherworldly realms. She cross references everything, her notes a frantic web of arrows, question marks, and underlined phrases like “potential symbiosis” and “consciousness expansion.” Her world has narrowed to the pool of light from her desk lamp, the puzzle of Ava’s survival the only thing that exists.

A shadow falls across the parchment she’s studying. She doesn’t need to look up to know it’s Ava. She can feel her presence, a quiet, anxious energy disrupting the focused silence.

“You’ve been in here for two days…”, Ava’s voice is soft, tentative, “Almost nonstop.”

Beatrice doesn’t look up, her finger tracing a line of faded Latin, “The answer is here somewhere. It has to be.”

“Bea…”, Ava hesitates, shifting her weight, “I feel like we’re… I don’t know. Drifting. Again. And I know it’s my fault. I’m the one who started this. But… I miss you. I miss us. The… the easy part. The romance. The lightheartedness. I feel like I got a taste of it in Vienna and now it’s just… gone back to this.”, she gestures at the fortress of books, a symbol of the war that never leaves them.

Beatrice finally lifts her head. She looks tired, but her gaze is intense, “The love isn’t gone, Ava.”, she says, her voice low and earnest. “It is the foundation. It is the reason I am in here. But I cannot… I cannot focus on dates and romance when the foundational theory of your very existence is a question mark that could lead to your death.”, she gestures at the chaotic spread of research, “The priority is keeping you alive. Everything else is a luxury we cannot afford to indulge right now.”

The words are harsh, but they are true. Ava sees the raw fear behind the scholarly facade, the love expressed not through kisses, but through relentless, terrified research. She nods, her shoulders slumping in understanding. The mission comes first. It always has.

“Okay.”, Ava whispers, “Okay, I get it.”

The Warrior Nun takes a deep breath, deciding to clear a different battlefield. 

“But there’s something else I need to say. I need you to hear this, and I need you to believe it.”

She steps closer, into the pool of light, forcing Beatrice to really look at her.

“What I said to you… that day in the hall. That I didn’t want you. It was the biggest lie I have ever told. There has not been a single day since I came back, not one day since you kissed me after receiving that letter, that I haven’t wanted you. That I haven’t desired you. The thought of you… of us… it’s a constant. It’s almost embarrassing, how much I want you. So please…”, her voice cracks slightly, “Please don’t ever think that that wasn’t real. It was a stupid, desperate lie to protect you from a truth I thought was worse.”

The academic tension drains from Beatrice’s posture. The scholar recedes, and the woman remains. She looks at Ava, really looks at her, seeing the vulnerability and the fierce, desperate love behind the words. A slow, deep breath escapes Beatrice. She reaches out, not for a book, but for Ava’s hand. Her touch is gentle.

“I believe you.”, she says, her thumb stroking Ava’s knuckles, “And I… I feel the same.” A faint blush colours her cheeks, a rare admission of that part of herself, “But this-”, she squeezes her hand, then gestures to the texts with her other, “This is how I love you right now. This is me fighting for you. Can you understand that?”

Ava brings Beatrice’s hand to her lips and presses a firm, lingering kiss to her palm, “Yeah-”, she says, her voice thick with emotion. “I can. I hate it a little… but I can.”, she manages a small, watery smile, “Just… don’t forget to come up for air. Your fighter needs her strategist. Not just her scholar.”

Beatrice returns the smile, a small, tired, but genuine thing. “I won’t.”, it’s a promise.


For the first time in days, the chasm between them doesn’t feel quite so vast.


The love is still there, just fighting a different kind of battle.

*

The words echo in the silence of her room, a torturous, beautiful mantra. Similar to Beatrice’s words from weeks ago, the ‘My feelings for you are absolute’.

I feel the same.

Ava lies on her bed, staring at the stone ceiling, but all she sees is Beatrice’s face- the blush, the unwavering eye contact, the gentle touch. The moment should feel like a victory. It should feel solid. Instead, a cold knot of doubt tightens in her stomach.

What does that mean?

For her, desire is a straightforward, physical language. It’s the ache in her hands to touch, the heat that pools low in her belly, the specific, vivid fantasies that leave her breathless. But Beatrice… Beatrice speaks in subtext and strategy. Her “I feel the same” was an admission, a seismic event, but was it a translation of Ava’s raw want? Or was it something else?

The doubts swarm, dressed in the ghost of Beatrice’s habit.

Maybe for her, ‘the same’ means a profound, spiritual connection. A meeting of souls. Maybe the physical part is just… a consequence she’s willing to accept, not something she actively craves. That would explain her ability to throw herself at books instead of trying to fix what was broken between them.

Ava tries not to think about this.

But the thought is like a dash of cold water. She remembers the fervent, devoted nun Beatrice had been. That kind of conditioning doesn’t just vanish. What if Beatrice’s desire is a quiet, intellectual thing, while Ava’s is a roaring fire? The imbalance feels terrifying. She doesn’t want to be a temptation Beatrice wrestles with, she wants it to be a wanton, mutual destination.

The insecurity of being too much, claws at her. She needs to know. She can’t build a life on a beautiful, ambiguous phrase. But how does she ask without sounding like she’s demanding a performance review of Beatrice’s desire for her?

The question forms, clumsy and scared in her mind: Bea, when you imagine us… what do you see? What do you want to see?

It’s not about doubting Beatrice’s love. It’s about fearing their definitions are written in different languages. And as she lies there, chasing sleep that won’t come, Ava knows she has to find the courage to ask for a dictionary.

*

In the war room the four of them- Mother Superion, Yasmine, Beatrice, and Camila- are a closed circle of grim faces, the heavy oak door shut against the rest of the convent. This is not a report for the general ledger. This is a confession of a looming apocalypse.

Beatrice leads the debriefing, her voice a low, steady monotone, a stark contrast to the storm of information she delivers. She does not use her hands. She does not look away from Mother Superion’s increasingly stony expression. The honorary Sister Warrior begins with the foundation: the true, devastating nature of Ava’s injury from the Umbra, the Halo’s frighteningly slowed regeneration, and Jillian’s chilling analysis of the cellular degradation. She lays it out not as a medical curiosity, but as the first crack in their primary weapon’s foundation.

Then, she unveils the first secret. She tells them of Ava’s private audiences with Reya, painting the sterile, terrifying realm and the entity’s cryptic pronouncement. She delivers the words that have haunted Ava: Your willingness to do what is necessary. She confesses Ava’s interpretation -that it was a demand for another sacrifice- and withholds the subsequent, self-destructive isolation that belief caused, the wall Ava built between herself and Beatrice out of a misguided need to protect her.

Camila casts her eyes down guiltily, when Beatrice’s gaze flicks to her.

Then, Beatrice reveals the second, more recent visitation. Her own. She describes the entity’s sudden, silent appearance in the archives of the Cat’s Cradle, the way the very air stilled. She repeats Reya’s corrected message verbatim, each word dropping like a stone into the silent room: the war is not coming, it is here, Ava is not a weapon to be spent but a catalyst to be activated, her purpose is evolution, not martyrdom.

Finally, she delivers Lilith’s taunting question- Have you figured your part in the war out yet? -framing it not as a threat, but as a dark echo of Reya’s demand, a confirmation from an unexpected and hostile source.

She does not offer theories. She does not ask for guidance. She simply presents the facts, the terrifying puzzle in its entirety: the injured warrior, the ambiguous deity, the taunting fallen sister, and the absolute, non negotiable imperative to transform the halo bearer into something new, with no instructions on how to do it.

When she finishes, the silence is absolute. Mother Superion’s hands are clasped so tightly on the table that her knuckles are white. Yasmine looks pale, her historian’s mind undoubtedly reeling through every text she’s ever read and finding them all woefully inadequate. The weight of it all, the cosmic scale of the threat, the immense pressure now on Ava, and the terrifying responsibility placed on Beatrice, settles over them, a suffocating mantle. They are no longer just fighting an enemy. They are trying to orchestrate a miracle.

After Camila and Yasmine leave, the silence feels deeper and more profound than before. Mother Superion does not move for a long moment, her stern gaze fixed on the empty space where the others had been. The weight of the revelations hangs tangible in the air between them.

Finally, she turns her head, her eyes finding Beatrice’s. There is no anger in her gaze, only a deep, weary resolve.

“So.”, Mother Superion says, her voice low and measured, cutting through the quiet, “The choice has been made for you.”

Beatrice meets her gaze, her own expression carefully neutral, though a storm brews beneath the surface.

“The few weeks you requested to… familiarise yourself with Ava, staying in your old room…”, Mother Superion continues, the words deliberate, “Are no longer a possibility that was granted to you and that you can now recoil from. You understand this. We cannot let Ava go. Not now. Not until this threat is understood, and until she has mastered whatever evolution that… entity… demands of her. Her safety, and the world’s, depends on her being here, where we can protect her and where you can do your work. Where you will do your work.”

She leans forward slightly, her hands flat on the table, “The offer I made to you before you left for London stands. But now, it is not an offer. It is a necessity. We need you here, Beatrice. Not as a visiting consultant. Not as a former sister finding her way. We need you leading the combat training, strategising our response, and interpreting this… divine mandate. We need you on official terms.”

Beatrice holds the older woman’s stare. She sees the logic, the ironclad necessity of it. To fight for Ava’s future, she must first surrender her own. The irony is not lost on her. She thinks of Ava’s confession in the archives, of the desire that now has to be indefinitely postponed, the fragile normalcy they glimpsed in Vienna now seeming like a distant dream.

She takes a slow, deep breath, the weight of the convent’s stones feeling as if they are settling directly onto her shoulders.

“I will accept.”, she says, her voice quiet but clear, devoid of any hesitation., “I will lead the combat group. I will stay at Cat’s Cradle and do what must be done.”

Mother Superion gives a single, grave nod of approval, but Beatrice isn’t finished.

“However...”, the newly reinstated Sister Warrior continues, her tone firm, drawing a line in the stone dust between them, “I will be drawing a salary. I will be retaining my own quarters in the town, once the immediate danger has passed.”, she meets Mother Superion’s gaze unflinchingly, “I will give the OCS my mind, my skill, and my loyalty. But I will not give it my entire life again. Not this time. Ava and I… we will need a space that is ours. Not the Church’s.”

The statement hangs in the air- not a rebellion, but a declaration of a new kind of fidelity. A commitment that encompasses both duty and a hard won selfhood.

Mother Superion studies her for a long moment, and a faint, almost imperceptible smile touches her lips. It is not a smile of amusement, but one of respect.

“Agreed.”, she says simply.



She recognises that this version of Beatrice- the one who serves out of choice and love, not obligation and vow- is the strongest weapon they have.

*

The clatter of training staffs and the sharp shouts of drills usually provide a perfect, orderly rhythm for Beatrice’s mind. But not today. For days, her thoughts are a chaotic storm- Ava’s tearful confession in the archives (I have desired you every day), the terrifying, intoxicating echo of her own reciprocation, and the fact that this mutual wanting arrives alongside an ultimatum: evolve the Halo or face annihilation. Her focus is a blade, sharpened and honed solely on that impossible task.

But the previous evening, Mother Superion had granted her wish. The permission to have a life, a small apartment away from the sacred stones of the convent, is given.

And now, the carefully constructed dam in her mind breaks.

It happens over breakfast. They sit across from each other at the long refectory table, a silent island in the quiet hum of the morning. Ava shovels scrambled eggs onto her toast, her brow furrowed in thought about the day’s training. Beatrice tries to formulate a new tactical approach based on an obscure text about resonant frequencies.

Then she looks up.

Ava leans forward slightly, reaching for the salt, and the neckline of her top, a simple, soft grey thing Beatrice has never paid much mind to, dips. It is a v-neck, lower than she’d realised. The movement reveals the elegant line of her lover’s collarbone, the smooth, sunkissed skin of her chest, the faint shadow between-

Beatrice’s breath hitches. Her entire train of thought, a complex web of strategy and ancient lore, vaporises.

All she can think about is their mutual confession.


The apartment.

A door that closes.

A space with no crucifixes on the wall, no vows hanging in the air, no sisters walking the halls outside.

A space that can be theirs.

The image is suddenly, violently vivid: the soft morning light in an unknown room, falling across a rumpled bed. Ava in that same top, her skin warm from sleep. The freedom to reach out and finally, finally trace the path her eyes are now desperately trying to avoid. The freedom to let her fingertips learn the geography of that revealed skin without the crushing weight of holy consequence.

A jolt of pure, undiluted want, so potent it is almost painful, shoots through her. Her face flushes with a heat that has nothing to do with the tea in her cup. She quickly drops her gaze to her oatmeal, her appetite gone, her heart hammering against her ribs.

For days, her only desire was to unlock the Halo’s secrets, to find the key to Ava’s evolution in some dusty tome. Now, all she can think of is the key to a rented apartment. She wants to research the soft sounds Ava might make in a quiet room. She wants to strategise the best way to map every inch of her with her lips.

She wants to evolve, not as a warrior, but as a lover.

The irony is not lost on her. The freedom she fights for arrives, a wonderful prospect of a sliver of normalcy, and the woman who is sitting across from her, is blissfully unaware that her choice of breakfast attire has just started a holy war in Beatrice’s soul.

The frustration is a physical ache, a buzzing under her skin that the ancient texts cannot soothe. For hours, Beatrice tries to focus. She stares at diagrams of energy fields, at translations of prophecies, but the words blur. All she sees is the memory of Ava’s collarbone, the feel of her tongue in her mouth, the phantom semblance of a future that now feels tantalisingly close, yet still out of reach. The scholarly focus that has always been her refuge is gone, burned away by a raw, simple need for contact.

She needs to do something about it.

Beatrice finds them in the training hall. Ava and Sister Dora are a whirl of controlled motion, staffs clacking in a rhythmic dance. Beatrice’s eyes lock onto Ava -the sweat on her temple, the focused set of her jaw, the powerful shift of her muscles. The sight doesn’t help her concentration.

It shatters it completely.

“Ava.”, she says, her voice coming out tighter than she intends. Both women halt, staffs lowering, “A word. Now. It’s urgent.”

Ava’s brow furrows in concern, “Is everything okay? Did you find something?”

“In the library. Now, please.”, Beatrice doesn’t wait for a response. She turns on her heel, trusting that Ava will follow.

The freshly reinstated Warrior leads Ava through the stone corridors, not toward the main library, but down a narrower, older hallway lined with forgotten storage rooms. Her heart is a wild drum against her ribs.


This is reckless, irrational, and she doesn’t care.

The moment she ushers Ava into a dim, secluded alcove stacked with dusty crates, the pretence collapses.

Ava opens her mouth to ask another question, but Beatrice doesn’t let her. She crowds her against a stone wall, her hands framing Ava’s face, and crashes their lips together.

It’s not a gentle kiss. It’s pent-up longing, fear, and desire unleashed in a single, desperate act. For a second, Ava freezes in surprise against her. But as she melts into it, her hands coming up to clutch at Beatrice’s shoulders, she breaks the kiss just enough to breathe the words against Beatrice’s lips, her voice a husky whisper of confusion and desire.

“Bea… Where is this coming from?”

It’s not a rejection. It’s a plea for understanding, an acknowledgment that this isn't their usual careful dynamic from the days before.

Beatrice doesn’t answer with words. She answers by closing the distance again, her kiss shifting from a desperate crash to something deeper, more intentional. It’s an apology, an explanation, and a promise all in one. A soft, desperate sound escapes Ava’s throat as she kisses her back with equal force, the question lost to the simple, overwhelming truth of the connection. This is what she has been craving, this raw, real connection.

One of Ava’s hands slides down Beatrice’s arm, her cool fingers coming to rest on the small of her back, right, where the fabric of her shirt doesn’t reach anymore.

Beatrice flinches. Hard. A sharp, involuntary gasp breaks the kiss.

Ava jerks back, her eyes wide with instant remorse, “Your back! Oh my god, Bea, I’m so sorry, I forgot-”

But Beatrice is already shaking her head, her breath coming in short pants. “No, it’s not- it’s not that.”, her voice is husky, thick with a need that surprises even her. She doesn’t let Ava pull her hand away. Instead, she grabs her wrist and firmly guides her hand upward, pressing Ava’s palm flat against her own chest, right over her rapidly beating heart.

Ava’s eyes darken with understanding, her cool fingers flexing against the warm cotton of Beatrice’s shirt. She feels the frantic rhythm beneath her palm. Slowly, tentatively, she lets her hand slide lower, her touch a question.

Beatrice’s breath hitches again, but this time Ava knows why. The ex-nun gives a tiny nod, her eyes locked on her lover’s.

Ava’s hand cups her breast through the fabric, her thumb brushing over the peak that is already taut and eager. Beatrice’s head falls back. The sensation is electric, overwhelming. Grasping at the opportunity, Ava ducks her head, her lips finding the base of Beatrice’s throat. She kisses a hot, open mouthed trail up the column of her neck, each press of her lips drawing a broken sound from the woman in her arms. Beatrice’s hands fist in the back of Ava’s training shirt, holding on, as her world narrows to this sensation, to the feel of Ava’s mouth on her skin and her hand on her breast.

But it is the sound that undoes them both, a low, wanton moan that tears from Beatrice’s lips, unfiltered and utterly desperate. It’s a sound neither of them has ever heard her make, a sound that speaks of a need so deep it borders on pain. Ava freezes at the sound, her own breath catching.

The reality of where they are -the dusty alcove, the thin veil of privacy, the sacred ground of the convent- crashes back into her with the force of a physical blow.

It is Ava who stops. She pulls her hand back as if from a flame, her own breathing ragged.


“Bea… we can’t… not here.”, her voice is a mixture of desire and anguish, “You don’t want this here. And I… I’m not sure I can stop if we keep going.”

Beatrice opens her eyes, the world swimming back into focus. The dusty alcove, the distant sounds of the convent. Reality. She sees the conflict on Ava’s face, the mirror of her own. She takes a deep, steadying breath. She doesn’t know it either. If she can stop.

“I know…”, Beatrice whispers finally, her voice raw, “You’re right.” She reaches out, tucking a stray strand of hair behind Ava’s ear, her touch now gentle, where it was frantic moments before, “But I am beginning to understand that bottling this up… it doesn’t work either. It becomes a distraction. A liability.” A faint, self-deprecating smile touches her lips. 

“And yes, I’m aware... Not so long ago, I was a nun.”

Ava lets out a shaky laugh, laced with some of her insecurities from days before, now was the best time to ask, “Okay… Just so we’re super clear on what the liability is- We’re talking about…?”

Beatrice matches her gaze, a sudden confusion evident on her face, “Do you want me to spell it out?” The former nun can’t believe that Ava really needed to hear this after what just happened.

Ava’s breath hitches, bracing herself for what was about to come. She then nods.

The confusion on Beatrice’s face clears, replaced by a look of intense focus. She decides she will meet the question with the honesty it deserves. She doesn’t whisper. Her voice is low and steady.

“Sex, Ava.”, she says, the word short and simple and turning Ava’s mind into jelly. “I am talking about having sex with you. That is the liability. The desire to feel you beneath me. To feel your skin against mine without any barriers between us. To know what it feels like to be inside of you.”

She doesn’t break eye contact. But as the echo of her own blunt words hangs between them, a flicker of doubt crosses her features. The courage that propelled her forward recedes, and the reality of her confession -and her past one- crashes down. Her brows furrow slightly.

“Is that…”, she starts, her voice losing its steady certainty, dipping into a more vulnerable register, “Is that not what you meant when you-?”

“Yes.”, Ava interrupts, the word bursting out of her. She reaches for Beatrice’s hands, holding them tightly, her own insecurities vanishing in the face of Beatrice’s rare uncertainty. “God, yes, Bea. That’s exactly what I meant… It’s just… a little hard to let my brain go there sometimes.”, she admits, her thumb stroking Beatrice’s wrist, “When my incredibly hot, incredibly serious girlfriend spent the last six years as a nun. I did not want to assume.”

Beatrice is perfectly still, her mind reeling with the admission, her own included. 

“So… What happens now?”, the Warrior Nun asks then.

Where does one go from this conversation? Especially, when Ava cannot really think about anything past what was offered to her seconds ago.

“We find the balance.”, Beatrice says eventually, the strategist in her re-emerging, but with a new goal, “We acknowledge this. We don’t shut it away. We just… manage it. Until we have a door to close... Outside of this convent.”



What is being said barely registers. Ava is still hung up on Beatrice’s choice of words.

I’m talking about having sex with you.

To know what it feels like to be inside of you.


The sentences landed not in Ava’s mind, but low in her stomach, a hot, liquid pull. Beatrice had just mapped out their intimacy with the same focus she’d use for a mission briefing, and the frankness of it is more arousing than any touch had been. Hearing Beatrice say that she wanted her the same way Ava wanted her and also creating a timeline for it- it was too much to process at once. 



Until we have a door to close.


The phrase is a promise, a threat, a prayer.

All the frantic energy from moments before doesn’t disappear, it condenses, transforming from a wildfire into a steady, burning coal in her core.


The most controlled woman in the world had just declared herself out of control when it came to Ava, and the responsibility -the sheer privilege of that- leaves her speechless.


The world tilts, as the woman who had once taken a vow of chastity was now planning its dissolution around her.




“Okay.”, is all Ava can manage, as her gaze matches Beatrice’s wanting one.

Chapter Text

For days, Beatrice has moved in a fog of frantic, fruitless research, the cryptic command -the Halo must become more- a maddening loop in her mind. The texts are useless. The theories, dust. Alone in the deepest, oldest archive, a chamber so dark the shadows seem to drink the light of her single candle, she finally hits the wall of her own limitations. Her hands, usually so steady, tremble as they rest on an ancient, blank vellum page.

A thought, heretical and desperate, forms. 


They came before, when the silence was profound. When my mind was… open. 


She closes her eyes, not in prayer to a Christian God, but into the void, focusing every ounce of her will, her need, her fear for Ava, into a single, silent plea directed at the cold, alien emptiness Reya seems to inhabit. 


Show me. Please. I cannot guide her, if I do not understand.

The air does not change, it unmakes. The candle flame snuffs out, not from a draft, but because the very concept of combustion ceases to exist for a fraction of a second. In the absolute, suffocating blackness, a figure weaves itself into being not two feet from her, a tapestry of liquid shadow and captured starlight. Reya stands, their form both there and not, their ancient, dispassionate gaze fixed on Beatrice. Without a word, without a sound that travels through air, they extend a hand that seems to be made of condensed nebula.


Every instinct in Beatrice’s body, every ounce of her training, screams at her to recoil.

But the scholar, the strategist, the woman drowning in love and fear, reaches out and takes it.

The world dissolves.

There is no sensation of movement, only a violent, nauseating reconfiguration of reality itself. Stone and shadow tear away into a maelstrom of screaming light and colour, and then-

Silence. A silence so deep and ancient, it feels like the first thing God ever made.

Beatrice stands on a vast, obsidian plain under a sky of churning, molten gold and violet. Jagged, impossible mountains pierce the heavens in the distance, and the air thrums with a raw, terrifying power that prickles against her skin. Before her, a colossal forge, not of iron and bellows, but of crystallised energy and concentrated starlight, burns with a silent, white, hot fury. Figures -beings of light and shadow, their forms shifting and indistinct- move around it in a solemn, cosmic dance. And at the heart of it all, suspended in the crucible of the forge, is a nexus of pure, screaming potential, a wheel of incandescent power that beats like a heart. She watches, breathless, as the beings channel the very fabric of that realm into it, weaving laws of physics and miracles into its structure. This is not creation, it is a fundamental act of cosmic engineering, the birth of a singular, universe altering tool. She sees the moment it cools from a chaotic star into a perfect, intricate circle, its surface etched with patterns that make her mind ache, humming with a latent, infinite song. It is both a weapon and a bridge, a lock and the means to open it.

The vision shatters, returning them to the oppressive silence of the dark archive. Reya’s voice forms directly inside her skull, flat and absolute. 

You see? It was not made. It was woven. From the potential of that realm. Its energy is not finite. It is a conduit. 


The entity’s gaze feels like it is peeling back the layers of Beatrice’s own memories, showing her Ava laughing, Ava crying, Ava fighting. 

It draws from the world around it. But it is bonded to the bearer. Their life force is its anchor. Their spirit, its compass.

A final, devastating insight slams into Beatrice’s mind, accompanied by a flash of Ava’s face contorted in fierce determination, then in heartbreak, then in joy. 


And strong emotion… love, rage, despair, hope… it is not static interference. It is a surge.


A catalyst that forces the conduit to widen, to draw more, to become more. 

The key does not turn for a limp hand. 


It answers only to a heart that is screaming.

The memory hits Beatrice not as a recollection, but as a physical force, knocking the air from her lungs.

Reya is gone, but their final words echo in the new, profound silence of her mind. 

It answers only to a heart that is screaming.

And she sees it. 

The pieces, once scattered and misunderstood, snap into a perfect picture.

It has always been different for Ava.

They had all chalked her initial, explosive control of the Halo to panic, to a survivor’s instinct- but it was more than that. It was a conversation.

While every other Warrior Nun had to learn to command the Halo, to wield it through discipline and prayer, the Halo had simply... listened to Ava. It had responded not to training, but to her rawest emotions: her fear when they took her, her fury when she fought, her joy in those first moments of freedom.

Beatrice’s mind races, connecting every impossible feat. Resurrecting Suzanne. They had called it a miracle, a once in a generation event, because she also had been a former bearer of the Halo. But what if it wasn’t a fluke? What if it was simply Ava’s will, her desperate refusal to accept that loss, so powerful it commanded the Halo to do what was thought to be impossible? Or travelling through the arc from Reya's realm. She didn't force her way through, she focused on a memory- a memory of love and connection- and the Halo made a path for her. It wasn’t a door she kicked down, it was a door that opened, because she asked it to.

It hasn’t just been a tool, it has been a part of her she resonated with from the very first second.

The truth was not that Ava had been chosen by chance, but that the Halo had been waiting for her- for a bearer who wouldn’t try to master it, but would simply feel with it.

And most recently, the incident in Vienna.

Beatrice had been so focused on her own shame- the humiliating shock of being caught off guard, the tears she couldn’t control, the chilling proof that her focus, her greatest weapon, could be shattered by a wounded heart. She had seen Ava’s explosive power as a loss of control, a dangerous variable born of panic.

But now, she sees it. Truly sees it.

It wasn’t a loss of control. It was the Halo operating at its most fundamental, most primal level. It was the perfect proof of everything Reya had shown her. Ava’s heart wasn’t a vulnerability, it was the core of her entire power system.

Ava hadn’t summoned the energy. She hadn’t calculated a frequency or channeled a specific amount. The sight of Beatrice on the ground, vulnerable and surprised -because of her, because of their rift- had unleashed an emotion so pure and so potent it was a physical force. A love so fierce it was indistinguishable from terror.


A heart that was, in that exact moment, screaming.


And the Halo, that ancient conduit woven from the fabric of another realm, had answered. It hadn’t just responded: it had widened. It had become more. The sheer magnitude of Ava’s fear for her, her love for her, had acted as the ultimate catalyst, forcing the Halo to draw on a deeper, more raw well of power than ever before. It hadn't been a technique. It had been a reflex. The most powerful instinct of all: protection.

The irony is so profound it steals her breath. For weeks, she has been scouring ancient texts for a manual, a ritual, a forgotten prayer- some external, intellectual key to evolution. She has been treating the Halo like a piece of Divinium machinery to be reverse engineered.

But the answer has always been there, burning in Ava’s chest. The answer is Ava. Not her discipline, not her combat forms, but her boundless, all-consuming heart.

The key to evolving the Halo wasn’t in a book, it’s in the very thing that makes Ava Silva the most dangerous and beautiful person Beatrice has ever known: her capacity to feel, deeply and completely, without reservation.

The path forward is no longer an academic exercise. It is an emotional one. And it is infinitely more frightening. To guide Ava, Beatrice must now learn how to harness a storm.

*

The stone steps leading to Ava’s room feel different under Beatrice’s feet. They are no longer just a path through the convent, they are a threshold between one understanding of the world and another. The cold, academic terror is gone, replaced by a wonder, a deeper understanding for the woman she loves. She carries the vision of the celestial forge within her, the image of the Halo’s birth seared onto her mind, but it is the final insight that propels her forward.

It answers only to a heart that is screaming.

She finds the door to Ava’s room slightly ajar, a sliver of warm lamplight cutting across the dark hallway. Pushing it open, she sees Ava sitting on the edge of her bed, staring at her injured arm, as if it belonged to a stranger. It, now healed, still carries a faint scarring. The only one on Ava’s body, beside the one on her back. She looks up, as Beatrice enters, her expression a mixture of weariness and a deep, quiet confusion.

Beatrice crosses the room, her movements deliberate and calm. She stops before Ava, looking down at the woman who holds a universe of power in the cage of her ribs. The silence stretches, but it isn't cold. It is full, heavy with unspoken revelation.

Slowly, Beatrice sinks to her knees on the stone floor, placing herself almost at Ava’s eye level. She reaches up, her hands -the same hands that just touched the fabric of another realm- gently framing Ava’s face. Her thumbs stroke over the arches of her cheekbones, a touch so reverent it makes Ava’s breath catch.

“I understand now.”, Beatrice whispers, her voice thick with an emotion too vast to name.

Ava’s eyes search hers, confused, “Understand what?”

“The Halo.”, the words are simple, but they hold everything, “I’ve been looking at it all wrong. I’ve been treating it like a lock to be picked. A system to be hacked.”

Ava’s gaze holds hers, a silent question.

“It’s not...”, Beatrice continues, her voice gaining a soft, wondering certainty, “We were training you wrongly before. Ever since you came back from the dream realm- Have you ever felt like you needed to recharge the Halo? Like before?”

Ava simply shakes her head, not knowing where Beatrice was going with this. She thought it to be because she had never used it to its limits since her return.


“It’s a part of you. You’re more tuned in. Maybe your time in Reya’s realm has something to do with it- It isn’t only an extension of your will, not anymore. It answers… your heart. The connection is clearer now.”

Beatrice leans forward, wrapping her arms around Ava and pulling her into a tight embrace. The younger woman melts into it, her body fitting perfectly against Beatrice’s as she buries her face in the fabric of her shirt. Beatrice holds her, one hand cradling her head, the other splayed across her back, feeling the dormant, silent weight of the Halo beneath her palm.


She holds her like she is the most precious, powerful, and fragile thing in all of creation. 


Because she is.

“I need you to tell me something.”, Beatrice murmurs into her hair. She draws back just enough to look at Ava, “That day by the canal. When the Wraith came for me. In that moment, before anything happened… You said that you were afraid to lose the person you loved- How did that feel?”

Ava’s breath hitches. She closes her eyes for a moment, transported. The memory is a fresh wound and a well of power.

“It felt…”, she begins, her voice a raw scrape, “It felt like my heart was being ripped out of my chest. It felt like the entire world was ending because you were in danger. It was… a scream. Inside me. A scream that said ‘no, not her, never her’. It was so loud, Bea. It was the only thing in the world. And then the Halo just did its thing- poof.”

There’s a long pause.

“I summoned Reya today…”, Beatrice let her hands travel to the Warrior Nun’s back, palm pressed to where the Halo sits, “They told me your heart was the key, that your emotions weren’t a weakness, they serve you as a catalyst. Like the energy to transcend through dimensions, because of a connection, you did that. That was your first Halo evolution exercise- I saw, how your Halo was forged, how it was woven. It’s based on the very material Reya’s realm is made of, and it feeds off of emotions. You don’t feed off the Halo’s powers- it feeds off of you.”

Ava’s eyes are wide with a shock that is not fear, but the vertigo of a fundamental truth finally slotting into place.

Some puzzle pieces of her existence merge together then:

The frustrating failure of the Halo that day at Jillian’s, when she was practicing putting the Crown of Thorns on Adriel. Even when he was not near it and wasn’t draining its power- but Beatrice was. It took one look at Beatrice, with her smile that was full of faith in her, and she was undone for. She couldn’t control it, she just fell. The unresolved feelings.

The Halo’s whine in the sterile emptiness. When she first awoke, being stripped of her life on earth, without anyone, without anything. Loneliness.

Its comforting hum when Beatrice, the real Beatrice was near her in the dream realm. She then realises something profound: the Halo wasn’t malfunctioning back then. It felt Beatrice’s presence, it knew the depth of her heart better than her own mind. Love.

All of the moments suddenly rearrange themselves into a brilliant picture.


“All this time…”, the revelation is a tidal wave, “Bea... When the Halo would activate in the dream realm, when you were near it- It was my love for you.”

And Beatrice doesn’t think that Ava will ever be able to top this way of telling her I love you.

The honorary Sister Warrior brushes her lips against her lover’s. A sacrament. A seal upon the truth that has just been spoken. It is soft, lingering, and full of a love so deep, it feels like a force of nature. 

When she pulls back, she holds the woman she loves, the living conduit, and makes a silent vow.


Her job is no longer to teach her combat moves.

It is to stand beside her, to love her, and to learn how to help her master her emotions.

*



Back in the silence of her own room, Beatrice does not immediately return to her books. She stands by the narrow window, watching the moon cast long shadows across the courtyard. Her mind, so long focused on external texts and ancient languages, turns inward.


Ava’s heart is the catalyst. Strong emotion widens the conduit.


The theory was sound. The evidence was irrefutable. The incident by the canal was the prime example: a surge of protective love so potent, it had become a physical force. But that was a reactive event, born of panic and desperation. To harness this, they needed more. They needed control. They needed to understand the spectrum.


How does one practice feeling?


The question is absurd on its surface, but to Beatrice, it is the ultimate tactical problem. She couldn’t train Ava’s heart with drills and repetition. But she could create the conditions for it to explore its own power.


Her own words to Ava echo in her memory: We need to find the balance. We acknowledge this. We don’t shut it away. We just manage it. Until we have a door to close.


The two paths -the cosmic and the personal- suddenly, irrevocably merge in her mind.

The key to evolving the Halo is to deepen Ava’s connection to her own emotions.

And the most powerful, the most complex, the most accessible emotion is how much Ava feels for her.

The former nun then realises: their romantic connection isn’t a distraction from the mission. It is also a part of it.


To help Ava master the symphony of her power, she needs to help her master the symphony of what is between them as well.

Every tender glance, every charged touch, every moment of intimacy… it isn’t just personal.


It is preparatory.

It is calibration.


I need to make her feel safe enough to be vulnerable, Beatrice thinks, her strategist’s mind already mapping the terrain.

And I need to show her that her heart isn’t a liability- it’s the source of her strength.


The plan forms with crystalline clarity. The first step is to create a space where that connection can flourish without the pressure of the convent, a controlled environment for emotional exploration.

The thought of what that intimacy might naturally lead to -the touch, the closeness, the trust, the vulnerability and perhaps sex- brings to the surface a dozen fantasies she’s already had, images of tangled limbs and breathless whispers that have stolen her focus in the quietest moments of research lately.



That part is not a tactic at all. That part is entirely, wonderfully personal.



*

The war room hums with a low-grade tension that has become its default state. Maps of Europe are plastered with pins and annotations, and the central screen displays a real time satellite feed overlaid with energy signatures. Mother Superion stands at the head of the table.

“The activity is sporadic, but undeniable.”, the superior states, her voice cutting through the murmur. “Flickers of Umbra energy are being reported from three separate locations: a disused metro tunnel in Prague, the catacombs beneath Odessa, and the Roman ruins in Nîmes. The signatures are weak, but they match the pattern we saw before, in Marseille.”

Camila, seated at a terminal, zooms in on the data. “It’s like they’re… testing the fences. Probing for weak spots. They don’t stay long enough for a proper lock on, but they’re definitely there.”

The room’s attention instinctively shifts to Beatrice, now she was their commander. On official terms.

The unspoken question hung in the air: What’s the plan?

Beatrice’s gaze is fixed not on the map, but on Ava, who stands slightly apart, her arms crossed, watching the data flicker with a new, unsettling understanding in her eyes. The head of the combat unit sees the slight tension in the Warrior Nun’s jaw, not with nervousness, but with a simmering, contained energy.

“We should deploy.”, Sister Dora says first, her voice firm, “Strike fast before they can consolidate. We have teams on standby. We can be in Prague in under three hours.”

A few murmurs of agreement ripple through the assembled sisters. The old logic is compelling: see the enemy, hit the enemy.

Beatrice finally speaks, her voice calm but carrying an unfamiliar weight that silences the room, “No.”

All eyes turn to her. Mother Superion’s eyebrow arches, “No?”

“We will not deploy.”, Beatrice says, turning to face the room. Her posture is no longer that of a soldier reporting to a commander, but of a strategist presenting a new paradigm, “Chasing these flickers will not do anything. It’s a distraction. A drain on our resources. We scatter our forces, run ourselves ragged across the continent, and for what? To show up just in time to watch another wisp of shadow vanish? We do not know how to defeat them, not yet. And Ava is not immune to their power.”

“So we do nothing?” Dora challenges, though her tone is more confused than confrontational.

“We do everything.”, Beatrice corrects, her gaze sweeping back to Ava, “But we do it here first.” She walks over to the main screen and points at the erratic energy signatures, “This is noise. This is not the tide Reya warned us about. We are not going to spend our time bailing out the water with a thimble.”

She turns to fully address the room, her conviction a palpable force, “We have the tools to build a dam right here.”, she looks at Ava, her expression softening from commander to partner, “We were wrong before. Ava’s connection to the Halo is fundamentally different. We’ve been thinking about it backwards. It’s not a tool she wields. It’s an extension of her will. Her emotions.” 

Ava meets her lover’s gaze, a silent communication passing between them. Beatrice’s faith is a shield around her.

“Running her from one hotspot to another will only exhaust her.”, the honorary Sister Warrior places her hands flat on the table, leaning forward, “So, we change the game. We stay. We train. But we do not train Ava for combat. We train her for connection. Ava needs to understand this new dynamic without the pressure of an active battlefield. She needs to master the symphony, not just learn to play the loudest note.”

Mother Superion studies Beatrice for a long moment, then her eyes shifts to Ava, “And you? What is your assessment, Warrior Nun?”

Ava uncrosses her arms, standing straighter. The weight of the room’s expectation is heavy, but Beatrice’s belief is heavier, “Beatrice is right.”, she agrees, her voice clear and sure, “I need to learn how to listen first. How to turn what’s inside me into the very thing that can stop them.”, she offers a small, wry smile, “I need to get to know the new software before I try to run the program.”

A contemplative silence falls over the war room. The strategy is unorthodox. It requires patience in the face of a visible threat. It requires faith.

Finally, Mother Superion gives a single, sharp nod, “Very well. We fortify our position. We monitor the flickers, but we do not engage. Our primary mission shifts to support Ava’s training.”, her gaze lands on Beatrice, “This is your operation. I hope you know what you’re doing.”

The heavy oak door of the war room swings shut behind the last sister, muting the sound of retreating footsteps and leaving behind a silence that feels both heavy and fragile. Beatrice remains at the head of the table, her fingertips resting on the cool wood. The ghost of her own unorthodox strategy seems to linger in the air.

Mother Superion does not move from her position, her hands folded over the head of her cane that she doesn’t require anymore. She watches Beatrice, her expression unreadable, “This is a significant risk you are asking us to take, Beatrice. Standing down, while the enemy probes.”

“It is the only path that isn’t a guaranteed defeat.”, Beatrice replies, her voice steady but softer now that they are alone. She draws a quiet breath, squaring her shoulders, “There is another component to the strategy, Mother. One I needed to discuss privately.”

Suzanne’s eyes narrow slightly, a silent command to continue.

“I need to take Ava out of the convent tonight. It is a necessary exercise for her calibration.”

The air in the room shifts. Mother Superion’s lips press into a thin, unamused line. She lets out a short, quiet breath that is almost a sigh, “Beatrice.”, she says, her tone laced with a deep, weary patience, “I am granting you considerable leeway. Do not insult my intelligence by dressing up a personal desire as a tactical necessity.”

Beatrice’s cheeks warm, but she holds her superior’s gaze, her own earnest and unwavering, “It is tactical. Her power is inextricably linked to her emotional state. To her humanity. Her entire world for years has been a single room in the orphanage, then a battlefield and now this convent. She has no baseline for normalcy, for peace. How can she learn to control a power fuelled by life, if she never experiences it?”

She takes a step closer, her voice low and intense, “This isn’t about... personal desire. It is about giving her an anchor. A single, tangible memory of something good and simple to hold onto. It will focus her. Ground her. It will make her more effective, not less.”

Mother Superion studies her for a long, silent moment. The skepticism in her eyes doesn’t vanish, but it is joined by a flicker of something else- faint understanding, perhaps even a shred of pity for the monumental task before them. She sees the fierce, logical strategy in Beatrice’s words, but she also sees the young woman beneath.

A long, slow sigh escapes Suzanne. She shakes her head almost imperceptibly, a gesture of surrender to the inevitable.

“Very well.”, she concedes, her voice dry, “Your ‘calibration exercise’ is approved. You are to return by noon tomorrow.” She holds up a hand before Beatrice can react, “But if you sense so much as a whisper of something wrong, you get back immediately. Is that clear?”

The relief that floods Beatrice makes her lightheaded. She straightens up, snapping into a crisp, formal nod, “Perfectly, Mother. Thank you.”

*

Beatrice leans against the sun warmed stone of a windowsill, her phone glowing in her hand. A tiny, private smile plays on her lips as she finalises the details, her thumb hovering over the ‘confirm reservation’ button for a small, family run pensión tucked inside the walls of Ávila. The thought of it -a whole night- sends a thrill through her so potent, it feels illicit.

She doesn’t hear the soft footsteps.

“What’s got you smiling like that?”

Beatrice jolts, quickly locking her phone and shoving it into her pocket. Her head snaps up to find Ava leaning against the opposite wall, a curious, playful grin on her face.

“Nothing…”, Beatrice says, a little too quickly. She tries to school her features into neutrality, but the ghost of her smile betrays her.

Ava pushes off the wall, closing the distance between them, “Liar. You had your secret plan face on. The one you get when you’re figuring out a new fighting move. But you were smiling at your phone. Spill, Bea.”

Beatrice hesitates, the carefully constructed secret feeling fragile under the weight of Ava’s bright, curious gaze. The joy of the surprise wars with the sudden, overwhelming desire to share just a piece of it with her.

She takes a breath, “I was just… making plans. Mother Superion has approved an off-grounds exercise for us this evening.”

Ava’s playful grin falters, replaced by mild interest, “An exercise? What kind? Recon? Low-profile patrol?”

“No… Nothing like that.”, she pauses, gathering her courage, “I thought… we could have dinner. In the village. In Ávila.”

Ava’s eyebrows shoot up. Her head tilts, “Dinner? You mean… like, at a restaurant? Just the two of us?”

Beatrice nods, a faint blush warming her cheeks, “Yes.”

Ava’s eyes widen, the confusion clearing for a dawning, hopeful realisation, “What, like… like a date?”, she asks, her voice dropping to a whisper, as if saying the word too loudly might break the spell.

Beatrice meets her gaze, her own shy smile finally breaking through completely, “Yes.”, she says, her voice firm and full of a quiet joy, “I also get to take you on dates, Ava.”

The change in Ava is instantaneous. A brilliant, breathtaking smile breaks across her face, pure and unadulterated. It’s not the excited squeal Beatrice half expected, but a deep, radiant joy that seems to light her up from within.

“Oh!”, she breathes, the sound full of wonder. She takes a small, almost hesitant step closer, “Okay. Yeah. A date. I’d really like that.”

She’s trying to play it cool, but the happiness is spilling out of her, evident in the way she can’t stop smiling, in the soft blush on her own cheeks. It’s a perfect, quiet mirror of Beatrice’s own feelings.

“Good.”, Beatrice says, her voice warm, “Be ready by five? I’ll pick you up by your door.”

Ava nods, still smiling, “I’ll be ready.” She turns to go, then glances back over her shoulder, the playful glint returning to her eyes, “Don’t be late.”

And then she’s gone, leaving Beatrice alone in the corridor. Her hand finds the phone in her pocket, her fingers brushing over its screen. The secret of the reserved room, of the entire night that awaits them, is still safely tucked away. But the promise of the date -the first one she’s ever planned- is now a shared joy, and it feels even better than she imagined.

*

For a long moment Beatrice just stands there after her shower. The reality of the evening settling over her. 


A date. A real, planned, sanctioned date.

A date that could lead to-


Beatrice tamps down the flutter in her stomach, locking the fantasy away in a deep, secret part of herself.

The night would unfold as it should. She would ensure it was perfect for Ava.

Whatever happened… would happen. 

Her hands, usually so steady, feel unaccountably nervous, as she reaches up. With deliberate care, she brushes through her wet hair. Dark and definitely longer than most would guess, it unfurls past her shoulders, falling in soft waves down her back. It feels strangely freeing, a weight lifted, she never pays much mind to this simple action. She runs her fingers through it, the ends brushing against the middle of her shoulder blades, a sensation both unfamiliar and thrilling.

Next, she goes to the small, utilitarian washbasin in the corner. From a drawer, she retrieves a single item she purchased on a rare, solitary trip into the town two weeks ago, a secret hope tucked away in a paper bag. A tiny tube of mascara. Her hands are precise, her breath held, as she applies it with the same focused intensity she brings to maintaining her weapons. The effect is subtle but transformative. It darkens her lashes, making her eyes seem even deeper, a fraction less severe.

Then, she turns to the oak chest of drawers. Her heart gives a peculiar, nervous flutter. She opens the second drawer, where her few civilian clothes are folded with military neatness. Beneath the soft sweaters and practical trousers lies something else.

She pulls out a small, carefully folded bundle of black lace and silk. It is a bralette and matching briefs, the most beautiful set she owns. She bought it on that same trip, a silent, daring act of faith for a future she wasn't sure would ever come. The lace is delicate, the silk cool and sinfully soft against her work roughened fingers. It is utterly impractical and entirely for her. A secret. 

As she puts it on, she makes a quiet, conscious distinction. This is not a presumption. She does not wear it with the explicit expectation of being seen, of the night culminating in that ultimate intimacy. The thought of that, of Ava seeing her like this, sends a jolt of both thrill and terror through her. No, this is something different, something just for her.

This small, secret luxury is an act of reclaiming a part of herself long buried. It is for the woman she allows herself to be tonight, if only beneath her clothes. It is a private armor of femininity and desire, a tactile reminder that she is more than just a warrior. It makes the prospect of the date feel more real, more sacred. It is her own quiet way of honoring the occasion.

After drying off her hair, she finally stands before the small mirror. The woman looking back is both familiar and entirely new.

Her hair is a cascade over her shoulders, framing a face where her eyes seem softer, yet more intense.

Her clothes are simple, but they feel like hers, chosen for a purpose other than duty or war. 

A slow, private smile touches her lips. She looks like a woman going on a date. 

*

On a different corner of the convent Ava stands before the small, slightly tarnished mirror herself. This reflection feels real, feels hers. The air around her is sweet and intoxicating, scented with the perfume she’d splurged on in Vienna -a bold, captivating blend of jasmine and amber that feels like a declaration.

Her hands move with a careful, almost reverent focus. This is still so new. The sweep of the eyeliner is not yet instinctual, but a deliberate, practiced motion she’d seen in a magazine and painstakingly replicated in the mirror. The dab of gloss is a calculated risk, a shiny, sticky experiment that makes her pout her lips just to feel it. It isn’t about hiding or transforming. It is about the profound, simple joy of adornment. Each stroke is a discovery, a small, defiant celebration of a face she was never supposed to see grow older, a body she was never meant to have agency over. It makes her feel, in a quiet, personal way, like she belongs to herself.

Then, the main event. She pulls on the top she’s never gotten to wear. It’s a deep, wine red velvet, soft as a sigh. And it is, undeniably, low-cut. The neckline dips gracefully, hinting at the swell of her breasts, drawing the eye in a way that is both elegant and utterly intentional. She’d seen it in a thrift shop window in Switzerland and bought it without a second thought, a bolt of daring hope that someday, there would be an occasion for it. 

She smooths the soft fabric over her waist, a nervous, excited flutter in her stomach. 

A silent question she is desperate to ask Beatrice: Do you think I’m beautiful like this?

She takes a final look in the mirror. The woman staring back is radiant, a little vulnerable, and fiercely hopeful.

She is not the Warrior Nun, not a halo bearer.

She is the woman who got a second chance at life.

The knock on her door is firm, precise.


Beatrice.

Ava’s heart leaps into her throat. She takes one last, steadying breath, the scent of her perfume wrapping around her like a promise, and goes to open the door, jacket already in hand.

*

The passenger seat of the borrowed sedan car feels like a throne. Ava sinks into it, the world outside the window softening into a blur of golden hour light and ancient stone walls. But she doesn’t see the scenery. Her entire world has narrowed to the driver’s seat.

Beatrice is a study in focused calm, one hand resting lightly on the steering wheel, the other on the gear shift. The fading sun catches the loose strands of her dark hair, setting them alight with a chestnut glow. It’s her hair that Ava notices first. Freed from its usual severe knot, it falls over her shoulders, a dark, soft cascade that moves with the slight turn of her head. It’s the most undone the Warrior Nun has ever seen her, and the simplicity of it is utterly captivating.

Ava’s gaze traces the line of Beatrice’s profile- the strong, elegant slope of her nose, the focused set of her brow, the quiet part of her lips. She isn’t just looking; she’s memorising. She sees the tiny, almost imperceptible dash of mascara that makes her lashes seem to sweep her cheeks, a secret rebellion that makes Ava’s heart squeeze.

But it’s more than that. It’s the way Beatrice drives- competent, assured, but without any pretence. It’s the way a single, delicate silver chain rests against the collar of her cream coloured sweater. It’s the quiet intensity she brings to this simple act.

Ava is mesmerised, not by grandeur or flash, but by this profound, breathtaking simplicity. This is Beatrice without the armour. This is just Bea. A woman in a soft sweater, with beautiful hair, taking her on a date.

The realisation hits Ava with the force of a physical blow: she has never seen anyone more beautiful.

It isn’t a beauty that shouts, it’s a beauty that settles in the soul, quiet and deep and true.

She watches Beatrice’s hand, resting so casually on the gear shift. It’s a capable hand, one she’s seen wield blades and offer comfort in equal measure. Without a word, without breaking her gaze from Beatrice’s profile, Ava reaches over. Her fingers gentle, but sure, slide beneath Beatrice’s. She lifts her hand from the cool plastic of the gear shift and brings it down, placing it palm up on her own jeans-clad thigh.

Beatrice’s fingers twitch once in surprise against Ava’s leg. But then, instead of simply resting there, Beatrice’s hand moves. In a slow, deliberate rotation, she turns her own hand over, so her palm is now pressed firmly down against the denim. Her fingers curl, just slightly, their tips pressing into Ava’s inner thigh. And then, her thumb begins to move -a slow, rhythmic, back and forth stroke.

The air leaves Ava’s lungs in a soft, silent rush.

The gesture is possessive. Intentional. It is no longer a passive acceptance of touch, but an active claiming of it. The slow, deliberate stroke of Beatrice’s thumb is a language all its own, and Ava’s body translates it instantly. Her mind, treacherous and swift, flashes images of Beatrice touching her the same way on a very different occasion.

The thought is so vivid it makes her dizzy. God, I want her. The realization crashes over her, not as a gentle wave, but as a riptide. It’s more than just attraction; it’s a deep, physical ache, a nervous, thrilling panic that makes her skin feel too tight. This small, silent gesture has torn down a wall, and all she can see on the other side is the breathtaking prospect of Beatrice’s body covering hers, of that quiet focus and those capable hands exploring her in the dark.

She is, suddenly and overwhelmingly, nervous. Not with the fluttery anxiety of a first date, but with the raw, thrilling terror of wanting someone so much it feels like standing on a cliff's edge.

Beatrice keeps her eyes on the road, a faint smile on her lips. Her hand remains, a warm, searing weight, her thumb continuing its gentle, maddening stroke as she drives. The only time it leaves is when she needs to shift gears. The separation is brief, a matter of a second or two, her movements efficient and practiced. But as soon as the task is complete, her hand unerringly finds its way back to the exact same spot on Ava's left thigh, the pressure of her palm settling back into place as if drawn by a magnetic pull, her thumb immediately resuming its slow, hypnotic rhythm. Her focus is now split, irrevocably, between the road ahead and the seismic shift happening in the space between them.

*

The sedan rolls to a smooth stop on a cobblestone street in the shadow of Ávila’s immense walls. The restaurant, a warm glow spilling from its windows, looks inviting and intimate. Ava moves to unbuckle her seatbelt, hand already on the door handle, but a soft word stops her.

“Wait.”

Beatrice is already out of the car, her movements fluid and purposeful. She rounds the front of the sedan, a silhouette against the golden stone, and opens Ava’s passenger door. She offers her hand, not with a flourish, but with a simple, innate grace that makes the gesture feel both natural and profoundly special.

“Thank you.”, Ava murmurs, her fingers slipping into Beatrice’s as she steps out, the cool evening air a contrast to the warmth of Beatrice’s touch.

Inside, the restaurant is all low, wooden beams, the air rich with the scent of garlic, paprika, and roasting meat. A waiter approaches, menus in hand, and begins to speak in polite, slightly formal Spanish.

Before Beatrice can even open her mouth, Ava leans forward, a bright, easy smile on her face, “Buenas noches. ¿Tienen una mesa para dos, por favor?”, her Spanish isn’t just correct, it’s fluid, native sounding, infused with the natural rhythm and warmth of the Iberian Peninsula.

Beatrice gently squeezes her hand, a soft, grounding pressure, “Under the name Silva.”, she adds quietly in English.

Ava’s smile widens, and she turns back to the waiter, seamlessly switching back, “¡Ah! Por favor, disculpe. Parece que tenemos una reserva a nombre de Silva.”, her tone is light, playful, as if sharing a delightful secret with him.

The waiter’s face breaks into an immediate, genuine grin, utterly charmed, “¡Claro que sí! Por aquí!”, he leads them to a cozy corner table, clearly already smitten with the pair, handing them the menus.

Once they’re seated, Beatrice looks across the table, her expression one of soft amazement, “You’re gifted with languages.”, she says, her voice full of genuine admiration, “Your accent is perfect.”

Ava lets out a bright, incredulous laugh, leaning forward over the small table, “Me? You speak like… five hundred languages. You’re literally a human Rosetta Stone. I just picked up Spanish from TV and from being here.”

“It’s more than that.”, Beatrice insists, her thumb gently stroking the back of Ava’s hand which still rests on the table, “It’s an ear. A talent. I learned through study. You… you just absorb it.”, she pauses, her dark eyes holding Ava’s, “I’d like to hear you speak Portuguese sometime. Your mother tongue.”

The request is so tender, so intimate, that Ava’s playful smile softens. She looks down at their joined hands for a moment, then back up, her eyes glistening slightly in the candlelight.

“A minha casa é onde estás tu.”, Ava says, her voice dropping to a near whisper. The words are different now, softer, more melodic than the Spanish. They flow like a gentle stream. She translates them, her gaze locked with Beatrice’s, “My home is where you are.”

The air between them stills. The clatter of the restaurant fades into a distant hum. Beatrice’s breath catches. The simple, beautiful words, spoken in the language of Ava’s lost childhood, land with the weight of a vow. It’s more than a display of a linguistic gift: it’s a offering of her heart, raw and true.

Beatrice doesn’t have words. Instead, she brings Ava’s hand to her lips and presses a soft, lingering kiss to her knuckles, her eyes closing for a brief second. The gesture says everything her voice cannot. When she finally lowers their hands, she doesn’t let go, instead lacing their fingers together again on the wood of the table. The connection feels as vital as breath.

The waiter returns, and the spell is gently broken, though not shattered. Ava, with a final, soft glance at Beatrice, takes the lead again, her voice a warm, engaging instrument as she converses with the waiter about the specials. She asks about the mero a la sal -the sea bass baked in a salt crust- and whether it’s truly as flaky and flavourful as the legends claim. The waiter, utterly disarmed, launches into a passionate description, his hands painting pictures in the air.

Beatrice watches, utterly captivated. This is another side of Ava she’s only glimpsed: not just the impulsive, joyful girl, but a woman who can command a room with effortless charm, who can connect with a stranger in an instant. It is a different kind of strength, one born of an open heart rather than a disciplined will.

Their food arrives, a magnificent spread centred around the whole sea bass, presented dramatically at the table before the waiter cracks open the golden, hardened salt crust with a small hammer, releasing a cloud of fragrant, herb infused steam. The skin peels away to reveal perfectly white, flaky flesh. They share everything, feeding each other morsels from their plates. A piece of the delicate fish, lifted carefully from the bone by Ava. A plump, garlic infused shrimp from Beatrice’s plate of gambas al ajillo, her eyes wide as she watches for Ava’s reaction.

It is during a lull, as they are sipping a crisp, local white wine, that Ava’s gaze drifts past Beatrice’s shoulder, her expression turning wistful.

“You know...”, she begins, her voice quieter. “For all those years in the orphanage, stuck in that room, I used to dream about this. Not… not this specifically.”, she clarifies, her eyes finding Beatrice’s again, a universe of meaning in her look, “But… a life. A normal life. A stupid, simple, boring date. Going to a restaurant with someone who looks at me the way you’re looking at me right now.” She gives a small, self-deprecating shake of her head. “I used to think it was the most impossible dream in the world.”

Beatrice feels the words pierce through her, a sweet, sharp ache. She understands impossible dreams. She has lived a life constructed around denying her own. She squeezes Ava’s hand.

“It’s not boring.”, Beatrice says, her voice firm with conviction. “There is nothing simple or stupid about it. And it’s not a dream anymore, Ava.” She holds her gaze, allowing every ounce of her own certainty to show, “This is real. I am real.”

“I know,” Ava whispers, her voice delicate, as to not break the spell, “That’s the best part.”

*

The lingering sweetness of flan still on their tongues, they step out of the restaurant into the cool, clear night. The ancient city walls are bathed in a soft, golden light and the cobblestone streets gleam under the lampposts. A comfortable silence settles between them, filled only by the echo of their footsteps and the distant murmur of the city.

They walk without a destination, their hands linked, swinging gently between them. Ava lets her head tilt, resting it against Beatrice’s shoulder for a moment as they stroll. She can’t stop looking at her- at the way the moonlight catches the elegant line of her neck, at the quiet contentment that has softened the usual focused intensity of her features.

Beatrice feels the gaze and turns her head, her dark eyes finding Ava’s. There’s a question in them, and a deep, unwavering affection. They stop walking, pausing in a small, secluded plaza overlooking the illuminated walls. The world seems to hold its breath.

“You’re staring.”, Beatrice notices, her voice a soft caress in the quiet night.

“I can’t help it.”, Ava whispers back, her voice full of awe, “You’re just… so beautiful tonight. All the time, but especially tonight.”

Beatrice’s gaze doesn’t falter. It drifts down, just for a moment, taking in the elegant dip of the wine-red top, the smooth skin it reveals, before returning to Ava’s eyes. A slow, appreciative smile touches her lips, “The feeling is entirely mutual.”, she says, her voice dropping to a husky, intimate register, “That top does… remarkable things for you.”

Ava’s breath hitches, a thrill shooting through her at the blatant, warm appreciation in Beatrice’s tone. She answers by leaning in, closing the small distance between them. She feels the vibration of her Halo, neatly hidden under her jacket.

The kiss is slow, and deep, and tasting of white wine and shared happiness. It’s a kiss that speaks of time and peace, of a future unfolding right here on this cobblestone street. Beatrice’s hand slides from Ava’s jaw to the nape of her neck, her fingers pulling her closer, sighing into the kiss.

When they finally part, they don’t go far, their foreheads resting together.

They stand like that for a long moment, wrapped in each other and the magic of the Spanish night, the ancient walls standing silent witness to a love that feels -for the first time- truly, completely theirs.



*

They get into the car and a sudden realisation hits Ava.


It’s over soon.


The engine is off, the only light coming from the distant glow of a streetlamp, painting the interior in soft shadows. Ava watches Beatrice slide the key into its place, the finality of the gesture making her chest ache. The date is over. The magic is supposed to end here, with the drive back to the convent.

She can’t let it.

“Wait.”, Ava says, her voice soft, but urgent. She unbuckles her seatbelt, the click echoing in the silence.

Beatrice turns to her, a gentle question in her eyes, “What is it?”

Instead of answering, Ava leans across the centre console. Her hands come up to frame Beatrice’s face, her thumbs stroking over the mascara darkened lashes and the high curve of her cheeks. She doesn’t give her time to process, to question. She just closes the distance and kisses her. It’s fuelled by the desperate desire to stop time, to stretch this perfect night into forever. It’s all lips and shared breath and the faint, sweet taste of their dessert. Ava pours every ounce of her want, her fear of this ending, into the kiss. Her fingers slide into the incredible softness of Beatrice’s unbound hair, holding her close.

Beatrice makes a soft, surprised sound against her mouth, but it melts instantly into a moan of surrender. Her hands come up, one tangling in the hair at the nape of Ava’s neck, the other gripping her waist, pulling her as close, as the console between them will allow. She kisses her back with equal want, equal need, a silent agreement to this stolen moment.

They break apart, breathless. The air in the car is thick and warm.

“I don’t want to go back yet.”, Ava whispers, her voice ragged, “I’m not ready for this to be over.”

Beatrice’s eyes are dark pools of desire in the dim light. A slow, secret smile plays on her kiss-swollen lips. She brings a hand up, tucking a strand of hair behind Ava’s ear, her touch tender.

“Good.”, Beatrice murmurs, her voice a low, thrilling promise, “Because we’re not going back to the convent.”, she lets the words hang in the air for a heartbeat, watching the confusion bloom on Ava’s face. 

“I booked us a room. For the night.”