Chapter Text
As Ava led us down the hallways I couldn't help but find that painful feeling crawling back up my spine. Worry, that's what it was, and I was on edge, more so than what was expected. All day I had been worried, anxiety teasing me, this strange instinct that something was off about our plan. I still believed what I discussed with Mother Superion previously, that Ava was withholding something from our knowledge. Something vital, and where nothing scared me, that scared me.
We turned a corner and there it was. My chest tightened. Nothing. The arc was gone.
Yasmine and I stopped, the new recruit confused. “Where’s the arc?” She asked, and looked to me for an explanation.
I had none. “This is where Jillian Told us it would be…” I thought out loud. Were we led the wrong way?
“Maybe they moved it?”
“...No” They didn't move it, they couldn't have, no one would have known we were there but us.
I looked at Ava, the Warrior Nun still stood silent facing the wall, her back to us. “She lied about its location then.” Did Jillian lie? It doesn't make sense, she’s far too invested in this… my thoughts were racing, trying to find a logical explanation.
“What? Why would she do that?”
My thoughts exactly.
“Ava?” I asked.
And I knew… the second she faced me I knew she had an answer.
And there it was again, that feeling. That feeling like I had lost something important.
“Because I told her to.” She explained, flatly.
“I don't… I dont understand, Why?” Yasmine shook her head.
“Why?” Ava repeated, as if pondering the question herself. She walked closer toward us, and I had the urge to back away. To run. “Because things change when you realize not everything is about you.” She looked at me. With those big, beautiful, annoying, soft eyes she looked at me.
“I’m sorry, Bea, but that's the Warrior Nun’s job…. Right? They die so everyone else can live.”
They die? She dies? “Ava- Don’t.” I pleaded. Where were my words? They had vanished.
“I’m doing this so you can live your life." She said sweetly. "So live it. Okay?” There was the girl I knew, the stubborn naive girl with an impulse problem. The girl who would be reckless with her own safety if it meant ensuring mine.
Live my life?
“I won’t…”
I can't live if she isn't living.
“I can’t.”
“You can.” She said, like it would be that easy.
“I can’t.” I said again. I can’t. The thought alone of losing her… I wouldn't entertain it.
No, now was my moment, she was close enough, I moved to grab the crown from her side but the halo bearer was just as quick.
We grasped the weapon, and we both refused to let it go. But a tug of war never started, our hands remained steadily on the crown of thorns. If saving her meant never letting go, I would have never let go. Thorns would have pierced my skin for eternity before I let her sacrifice herself.
And then she pulled me in closer.
It's my job to know what's coming next, to be two steps ahead of everyone else, but then she was mere inches from my face, far too close, and my training failed me for the first time.
I could've taken it, I could have incapacitate her and taken the crown in one move. But I didn't.
And then, like it was as natural as preordained, her lips met mine, filling the small but vast space that remained between us.
Et quand j'aurais le don de prophétie, la science de tous les mystères et toute la connaissance, quand j'aurais même toute la foi jusqu'à transporter des montagnes, si je n'ai pas la charité, je ne suis rien.” If I have the gift of prophecy, and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.
And I was everything, and in no prayer, no verse, no service was I closer to heaven than when her lips touched mine. This is god I thought, this is higher power.
Do you know what it's like to be starving, to be freezing, and then know warmth, and then know satiation? That is what it was like, to feel her hands on my face, to feel her breath on breath. At last.
My thumbs grazed her skin, taking in the art of her being, trying to remember her and this with all of my senses, holding on to a moment like- like if I willed time enough, the seconds would cease to pass and this could be permanent.
And then she pulled away. And I knew that, despite my desire I couldn't hold on to her for forever.
She kissed my forehead, like a parent wishing a child goodbye. Please Ava, don't you dare say goodbye-
“In the next.” She whispered with a smile.
In the next... she said, not “in this life or…” just as certain as an end is certain, so was she in this. She was in my arms and then. And then she was not.