Chapter Text
Things don’t come back all at once.
The therapies seem interminable, but Jillian Salvius is careful and dogged. Some of the therapies Beatrice and Ava receive are nearly identical, but some are different. Ava is also receiving some kind of spinal neurotherapy to recover her motor functions. She’s not as she was, but she can sit up, take her own food, surf through news and current events on one of Jillian’s tablets.
She and Beatrice get caught one time chasing each other through the halls in two of Jillian’s neuroconnected wheelchairs, shrieking with laughter. Jillian seems annoyed, but not entirely displeased to see them in good spirits.
The others in the order settle into lives that are not too distant, so that they can visit somewhat frequently; Mary takes work as a carpenter, Lilith is a bit reclusive but seems to be studying ancient texts, Camila leads hunting tours in the mountains. Mother Superion seems to be working part time in a library somewhere nearby and occasionally working intellectual sparring lunches with Dr. Salvius in around her visits to see Ava and Beatrice.
The false bottoms in the boxes of their minds melt away a bit at a time. Beatrice remembers years of hard work and study; academics, martial arts, violin. She remembers a cold home, a disapproving family. She remembers a rebellious phase, in which she got herself the tattoo that lives on the small of her back; cheekily owning her status as sinner. The picture fades in slowly, like watercolors leaking through the underside of a paper.
Ava remembers her childhood, vaguely. A car accident that killed her mother and left her paralyzed in a bed until she was murdered by her caregiver and then resurrected by the halo. They are things she would have preferred to forget.
But they do remember each other. Beatrice remembers the first time laying eyes on Ava, and in spite of herself being struck by how pretty she was. She remembers treasuring each little time they touched hands. She remembers testing Ava, speaking bluntly and forthrightly to her, and being impressed at how Ava handled and accepted raw truth, even when it wasn’t terribly flattering. She remembers opening her heart to Ava, coming out to her, in tears confessing who she was, and the relief in her heart when Ava’s reaction was to tell her (and God, how fiercely she said it) “what you are is beautiful.”
They are constantly together, needing each other’s presence to feel grounded and right side up. There’s not much opportunity for the kind of intimacy they’d had while on the run together, but Beatrice supposes that it’s just as well while they’re busy reintegrating their old selves with their new ones.
Beatrice still wrestles with the matter of her faith. But she has come to rely less upon the words in the books and more what she trusts in her own heart.
After a few months, Jillian offers Beatrice a job, which she accepts for the time being, since she and others are expelled from the apostolic life and the Church has effectively washed its hands of them. They find a small flat in a dodgy area that offers a reasonable commute to the labs. Ava continues to improve, although Jillian confesses rather frankly that she doesn’t see any more demon battling in Ava’s future. But she can get about with a cane well enough, and with continued neurotherapy and physical therapy, she’s in good enough shape to terrorize the people at the lab with annoying pranks.
“You know,” Ava says over dinner one evening, “I was thinking that maybe the memory loss wasn’t just an accident of the failed merge.”
“Oh?” Beatrice stirs her stew and waits.
“Well, we needed to not be holding back from each other. That that was why it didn’t work. So, if we didn’t remember that we weren’t supposed to love each other, we just… did.”
“All right.”
“And… you know, I was quadriplegic for most of my life. If it had come down to giving up the halo, maybe my memories of that would have kept me from being willing to do it. Not wanting to go back to that. I mean, it wasn’t fun, you know.”
Beatrice looks at her. The logic is mostly sound. “I think you might have done it anyway. By the time we had gotten to dealing with Adriel, you had already become the person you are now.”
“We’ll never know,” Ava says with a lopsided smirk.
Beatrice gets up and clears the dinner dishes. Coming to know Ava all over again, in the present and in the past, has only strengthened her conviction; this is the love that she is meant to have, and that she deserves. At some point she will deal with the anger that comes from realizing what was stolen from her, and what she denied herself, but right now, she’s content. It hits her all at once that this is who she is, and this is her life. And at the moment, she’s craving closeness with Ava, the girl who’s turned her inside out more than once, who was there when she had nothing else.
She comes to where Ava sits at the little kitchen table, and touches her chin to tilt her face up. “Would you like to go to bed?” she asks.
“It’s a little early, but–” Ava suddenly realizes what she means. “Oh. Oh. Bed. Yes. Yes, Beatrice, yes, I would very much like to go to bed.”
Beatrice has not seen Ava move so fast since she got that cane.
She’s sitting on the bed, struggling out of her clothes, fingers fumbling with the buttons on her top. Beatrice comes up and sits behind her, and helps with the buttons, and then lifts it over her head. She unhooks her bra, and lays it aside. She slides her arms around Ava’s waist, pressing herself to her back.
“No halo,” Ava reminds her.
“Don’t care,” Beatrice says. “I just want to be close to you. Nothing more.”
She simply holds Ava from behind and kisses her bare shoulder, the back of her neck. Ava makes gentle whimpering sounds as Beatrice kisses her.
“You know,” Ava points out, “neither of us really knows what we’re doing.”
“I know.”
“Also you’re wearing too much.”
“I know.”
Beatrice pauses and gets rid of her top, then leans back into holding Ava, feeling something that, if possible, might be sweeter than what the halo gave them; her soft, human warmth. This person who defied the odds and is alive and in her arms. She kisses the side of her neck, relishes the feel of her skin. “Are you sure you want this?” Ava asks.
While they have been inseparable since their return from the Vatican, and have held each other close and kissed, shared a thousand tender moments, they have not taken things any farther than that. For a while it was lack of opportunity as they were bound to Arq-Tech. But even since moving into their flat, they have needed the time to settle into themselves.
So Ava’s question is really her asking Beatrice if she’s ready, if she has brokered a peace between past and present. “Perfectly.”
Beatrice runs one hand over the slope of Ava’s shoulder, down her arm, and back up. No hurry. Plenty of time to learn each of these lovely inches, she thinks.
“So are you good with our sin?” Ava asks wryly.
“This isn’t sin.” She kisses Ava’s shoulder, neck and then tilts her head to press her lips to the hinge of her jaw.
“Oh, no?”
“No. It’s trust.”
Beatrice settles back against the pile of pillows at the head of the bed, and Ava scoots backward to keep her back flush against Beatrice’s front. “Trust?” Ava’s tone is playful.
“Yes.” Resting her chin on Ava’s shoulder, Beatrice gazes down the front of Ava’s body. “You’re trusting me to love all of you, trusting that I will look at you and see something beautiful. You’re trusting me to touch you, to show you affection in places on your body that no-one else gets to see. It’s a gift, and you’re entrusting it to me.”
Ava’s body goes a bit loose. She tilts her head back and rests it on Beatrice’s chest.
Beatrice’s fingers continue to wander; through Ava’s hair, over her cheekbones, down her throat, down the line of tiny, faint blonde hairs on her stomach. “And I’m trusting you to tell me how you want to be loved. Whether what I’m doing is working. I’m trusting that you’ll be honest with me, that if you want something, you’ll ask me. I’m trusting that you’ll let me fulfill you, let me know your body. And that when the time comes, that you’ll listen when I do the same for you.”
“You know,” Ava says, relaxing against Beatrice, “when you were stroking my back that time, in the hotel, I wished you would do more.”
“I wanted to.”
Beatrice’s fingers trace across Ava’s chest and down the center. Ava catches her hand, kisses the back of it, and then simply holds it, looking at it. She turns it over and kisses Beatrice’s palm, and then the inside of her wrist, and then takes a finger into her mouth, envelops it, caresses it with her tongue. “Such beautiful hands,” she mumbles. “I want them on me.”
“Where?” Beatrice whispers.
Lacing her fingers through Beatrice’s, Ava takes both of her hands and places them to gently cup her breasts. Beatrice explores the feel of them in her hand; the weight, the softness, the tightening of the dusky skin around the nipples. She delights in gently squeezing, stroking and caressing them, brushing sensitive fingertips over their stiff peaks. They are exquisite. And so, too, are the soft sounds Ava makes in response to her touches.
“Is this what you imagined?”
“Uh-huh,” Ava says breathlessly.
Beatrice’s analytical mind never entirely turns off, not even in moments like this, as she notes and mentally catalogues how different touches elicit different responses.
“What else did you imagine?” she asks.
Ava hesitates.
“You can say. I probably imagined it too.”
“I imagined…” Her voice is breathy and small. “…your hand going down my pants.”
Beatrice remembers her own image of that, of feeling the impulse to touch her that way. “Can you take yours off, please?”
With a bit of wiggling and a little assistance from Beatrice, Ava kicks out of her jeans, and they land beside the bed, with her lacy underwear sticking out of them. Looking down at Ava’s body, Beatrice feels an ache, something fresh and new. “Beautiful,” she murmurs.
They both seem to struggle with words, so Beatrice in Ava’s ear, “Show me where you wanted my hand.”
Ava’s hand slides down between her thighs, settling there a little uncertainly.
“I see,” Beatrice says, and she can’t keep the teasing from her voice, “very good. Will you show me how?”
“Show you how?”
“Show me how you imagined me touching you.”
Ava hesitates, and Beatrice gently tugs at her nipples. Ava whimpers, and then begins to demonstrate.
Beatrice observes, mesmerized by the way Ava touches herself. Her touch is delicate. She uses only one finger, a gentle, focused touch, circling the nerves that please her the most. Beatrice watches carefully, continues to kiss and softly bite her neck and stroke and play with the breasts in her hands. “Oh, Beatrice,” Ava sighs.
“Thank you,” Beatrice murmurs. “Thank you for showing me. Thank you for sharing that with me and trusting me with it. May I try?”
Ava pauses, and Beatrice lifts Ava’s hand up to her lips, and tastes her fingers. Ava, she thinks. It tastes like Ava. Beatrice considers it, compares it to other tastes, finds it similar to many in one respect or another but entirely unique.
She trails her fingers down to where Ava’s hand was a moment ago, dips a finger in, finds that wonderfully sensitive bud, and explores it slowly, gently, navigating circles as Ava had done, and feeling her body flex and stretch with the enjoyment of it. And those sweet, agonized sighs, Beatrice could listen to them for hours.
“My purpose here,” she says softly, “is not the cookie. Or rather, not only the cookie, nor even primarily the cookie.” She luxuriates for a moment in giving Ava more of this pleasure. “It’s an exercise in trust. I do want to know this bit of you, very very well, but I mean to linger in and learn all of you. And I want us to trust that the exercise will conclude where we want it to.”
They shift now, and Ava lays on her stomach, and lets Beatrice explore. She discovers that the backs of Ava’s knees are sensitive to kissing. She touches, strokes up the backs of her thighs, her backside, her spine, and kisses in the center of the halo scar. Ava’s body arches underneath her. Beatrice chuckles. “It appears that moment wasn’t about the halo. You’re just sensitive there.”
Ava moans happily. “Do it some more,” she urges.
Beatrice indulges her, in turn indulging herself and her desire to please the woman she loves. After a bit, she shifts Ava onto her side, curls herself behind her again. Ava complains, “You still have pants on.”
Beatrice quickly remedies this and resumes her position, delighting in the fit of their bare legs against each other. “Your body is a marvel,” she says, moving her hand down the side of Ava’s ribcage and down to her hip. “The expanse of skin, the tributaries of nerves, the…” She breaks off to kiss her shoulder blade next to the halo scar. “…the magnificent, unique ways you feel things… the flow of blood to your cheeks, your lips…” Her fingers encounter goosebumps at the top of Ava’s thigh. “The ways it tells me that I’ve done something right… sweat glands… the miraculous gift of erectile tissue…” Her fingers brush over Ava’s stiff nipples and then down between her thighs again, to where she’s gloriously wet. “The thickness of your breath, the pulse in your neck… it’s all of you that I want to have trust and vulnerability with. We were made for it. The phenomenon of biology is designed for righteous love.”
She’s never felt so sure of anything, of her own humanity, of how that humanity is divine in its own way, as she is now, holding Ava’s trembling body in her arms, coaxing her gently to a climax that is slow, delicious and filled with both of their sighs. “And there,” she murmurs in Ava’s ear, “is your cookie.”
Ava laughs, and it’s loose and joyful. “God, I love you.”
“I love you more than I can express,” Beatrice responds.
“You did a pretty good job expressing it just now.” Ava does a bit of awkward shifting and scooting to turn over and face Beatrice, to kiss her and enjoy their closeness. “We have a lot to learn,” she says. “Will you let me learn you?”
“Of course.”
Memory has made their love rich. Pain has bound them. They care for each other’s wounds. They seek each other’s joy. It may be, Beatrice muses, that Ava is right; that their memory loss was a blessing, was the right thing at the right moment. As they begin another tender communion, with Ava asking her own gentle questions of Beatrice’s skin, she is convinced of it. Sin is a construct. Trust is a miracle. Love is divine.
And God? God is a footnote in a book buried in a church basement somewhere, for study later on, perhaps, when she tires of worshipping his creation.