Chapter Text
Beatrice smashed through the warehouse’s back door, and jumped off the edge of the loading dock. Smoke was already pouring out of the building, and Beatrice coughed as the cold night air reached her lungs. Stumbling forward, she had to reach a hand down to the rain-soaked pavement to keep from falling over. Her body ached. This had been a trap. A deadly one.
Taking a deeper breath, Beatrice straightened up. She reached for her gun, but the holster was empty. Fuck. It was probably lost somewhere in the explosion and subsequent attack. Phone too. Looking around, there was no one in sight, just an empty loading dock and a quickly-burning warehouse. Of course, that changed a moment later.
“Beatrice!” Vincent slammed through the same door Beatrice exited. “You made it!” He ran forwards, with a relieved smile. His face was coated in ash.
“I did.” Beatrice was happy that at least someone made it out, though she still felt a certain unease. Why?
“Are you okay?”
“I think so.” She ached all over, but nothing pressing. It would heal. Vincent reached a hand out to her shoulder, trying to be comforting in a way Beatrice didn’t often see.
“You didn’t see anyone else, did you?” He sounded so genuine. Hurt.
“No.” Beatrice refused to believe they’d lost everyone, but her denial was becoming harder and harder to maintain.
“Good.” Vincent’s face shifted quickly, too quickly. Beatrice didn’t have time to react before the icy blade plunged through her stomach. She quickly pressed a hand to the wound, which quickly coated her hand in blood, before looking back up at her attacker. Her friend. Vincent. At least she had her answer, then. He was the traitor.
Time seemed to be moving in slow motion. Vincent looked as if he was saying something, but Beatrice couldn’t hear him. A flash of light glinted off his newly bloodied blade, her blood, and Beatrice heard a gunshot a moment later. It startled her, Beatrice wondered if she’d been shot, but instead, Vincent crumpled to the ground before her.
“Beatrice, let’s go.” Shannon pulled her into a car, as Beatrice’s vision began to cloud at the edges. What was going on? When did the car get there?
“It’s okay, you’re okay.” Camila’s whispers were unmistakable. Bleary and confused, Beatrice watched the warehouse burn, before it receded from view completely.
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“Well, now I kind of want you to kill him,” whispered Ava. She laid beside Beatrice in bed, even though there were four empty bedrooms in the massive estate. Apparently, Ava didn’t want to be alone, though Beatrice wasn’t sure she believed that. “Not only did he betray you, but he’s the one who stabbed you!” Beatrice remembered Ava running her finger over said stab wound, it was all-too-vivid in her mind.
“It’s not that simple.”
“Please don’t say ‘it’s complicated.’” Ava exhaled slowly. “I thought that was the point of explaining everything. I can handle it.”
“I know you can.” And honestly, Beatrice wasn’t lying. Ava’s resilience was surprising, even the face of her first kill. “And I am explaining. Sorry.”
There was a pause here, Ava was clearly waiting for Beatrice to continue. “He’s had his helpful moments, after the fact. Leads and information… It’s difficult to find an informant. So, when we found out he not only survived, but was still in the business, well… That’s hard to get rid of.”
“Why is it difficult?”
“Most criminals aren’t super fond of informants. Useful as they may be, the inherent disloyalty of it means they usually meet a swift end. Vincent is unique in that way, I suppose. He is like a cockroach.”
“Do you think he knows anything useful?” Ava asked in reply.
“I’m not sure. He better hope he does.”
“I know I’m supposed to be scared, and I know you want me to be, but it’s honestly kind of hot when you say things like that.” Further accenting her point, Ava reached an arm around Beatrice, pulling her closer beneath the covers.
Did Beatrice want Ava to be scared? That seemed reductive. Questionable. But fair. Maybe her constant warnings and caution didn’t fall on completely deaf ears.
“I worry about you glamorising this life. It isn’t something to covet, despite the perks… And I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t terrified about you coming to your senses and realising that I am, and I’m being completely objective here, a terrible person.”
“I don’t think you’re a terrible person. I’m not sure I could ever think that.” Ava’s words were kinder than Beatrice felt she deserved. The warmth of Ava’s body against her own certainly didn’t hurt either. “To be honest, I’m worried more than anything. I mean, it’s cool and sexy, but it’s also tragic. It’s absolutely heartbreaking, and I know I’m far from all the details. And yet, despite all that, you still found so much time to care about me. Not sure how that makes you terrible.”
“The long list of crimes is what makes me terrible.” Beatrice spoke tersely, more objective than she figured she should be about her own life. “Beyond just the killing, there’s been theft and betrayal, financial crimes, intimidation… The list goes on and on. It would probably be faster to list the crimes I haven’t committed.”
“Do you feel remorse?” A single question, Ava’s whisper in Beatrice’s ear. It almost lingered for a moment, hauntingly simple and eternally complex.
“I don’t know.” Beatrice wanted to answer yes, she wanted to answer no. She wanted to answer definitively but she couldn’t. Another common echo of ‘it’s complicated.’ “Sometimes. My enemies are not good people, Ava. That makes it easier. They’d just as soon kill me and dump my body in the ocean. Yet… They still have lives, loved ones… Remorse is a dangerous emotion in this line of work.”
“Dangerous how?” Though she only added two words, Ava’s fervent curiosity was painfully obvious.
“The night that you broke things off with JC, we robbed Adriel’s money-laundering front.”
“Yes, I know.”
“And when we made it to where the money was kept, there was an altercation. We were outnumbered, and forced into a difficult conflict.”
Ava stayed silent, with rapt attention. Beatrice continued.
“I was out of bullets. I needed to finish things off, quickly, because you needed me. So I closed the gap, and finished the remaining enemies with my knife… When combat becomes that close, you see a man’s eyes. Sometimes I’ve had to kill people I know, people I’ve socialised with, and met their wives… But a moment, literally a moment, of hesitation at a time like that… Well, that costs my life.”
“It’s them or you,” concluded Ava.
“Yes.” Beatrice frowned and she could feel her cheeks burn. She was happy Ava couldn’t see her in the dark, this was no way for a hardened criminal to behave. “And my callousness about it definitely adds to the evidence that I’m a terrible person.”
“Maybe…” Ava didn’t sound convinced. “But have you ever known anything else?”
“No.” That, Beatrice didn’t need to think about. This was her life.
“Well then excuse me if I’m not ready to commit to the ‘Beatrice is terrible’ line of thinking just yet.” Ava’s grin was audible. “Once this is over, or at least stable… Maybe you can take some time off. I’m not telling you to walk away, or to stay - hell, I’m not telling you anything. But I think you owe it to yourself to at least think about what you want. There’s a lot more to life than what you’ve been living, Bea.”
“I’m starting to realise that.”
“Good.” Ava rolled back over, onto her back, and Beatrice immediately missed her warmth. Sighing, Ava continued. “I still can barely believe it all. You’ve been weirdly freaked out since I’ve found out, and I just feel… I don’t know. I’ve lost so much of my life, yet I still find myself thinking ‘thank God, I still have Beatrice.’”
“You really think that?” Beatrice’s voice cracked on the last word, much to her embarrassment. Ava’s ability to express how she felt so calmly was enviable.
“Yes!” She grew slightly louder, exasperated. “You’re my best friend! You’ve always been there for me, and knowing now what you had to go through to do that… Well, I’m honoured in a way I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to repay.”
“There is nothing to repay. Like you’ve said, you’ve lost a lot because of me, and you should be furious that I’ve kept this a secret so long, even disregarding how much I’ve hurt you.”
“I am angry.” Ava’s words dropped back down to a whisper. “But I’m also grateful. As you seem to be so fond of saying, ‘it’s complicated.’” Sighing, Beatrice took a moment to reply.
“I get it.” Her own feelings were complex too, though she’d had a lot longer to deal with them. Ever since meeting Ava, she knew the right thing to do was to stay away, to keep her distance. Yet here they were, sharing a bed, despite everything. Beatrice feared her own weakness. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologise, please.” Ava’s tone was impossible to decipher. “I know you’re going through the whole selfless martyr thing in your head. You should have stayed away from me, you put me in danger, blah blah blah…” Beatrice frowned at the assessment, correct as it may be, and waited for Ava to finish her point. “And I will tell you this every fucking day if I need you. But I wouldn’t give you up, even if it kept me safe.”
The silence was very loud after that, but Beatrice couldn’t hear it over the pounding heartbeat in her ears. For someone with her rap sheet, falling apart over Ava was both completely surprising and completely predictable. She’d always fallen apart over Ava, only now she had a chance.
“Every time I imagined you reacting to the truth it was… Different from this.”
“How often did you imagine it?”
“Every day.” Beatrice paused. She felt like an idiot admitting it, but she was so damn sick of lying to Ava. “Well, not at first. But as we got closer, yes, every day.”
“And I was too stupid to see the clues.”
“Well, I was too stupid to see any clues that you might have… Non-platonic feelings for me.” Finally, Beatrice managed a smile, invisible in the dark but it felt nice all the same.
“So was I.” Ava laughed. “In hindsight, it must have been obvious. Even JC noticed, and you two never spent much time together.”
“Ava, I hope you don’t think I only maintained a friendship because I had feelings for you. I love being your friend and would be more than happy to be just friends. And, after everything, would consider myself lucky to be so…” Beatrice’s words tumbled out before she could stop them, a rarity in itself.
“I don’t think that.” Ava was far more succinct. “Honestly, that’s a bit cruel. Is that how you talk to yourself all the time?”
“I’m not answering that.” Beatrice turned onto her side, away from Ava and towards the empty room. To say she felt called out would be an understatement.
“So yes, then.” Ava clearly wasn’t so easily deterred. She moved beneath the covers, quickly wrapping herself around Beatrice. “Something for us to work on in the future, then.”
“Us?” Beatrice was hung up on a single word, but it was so much more than that. Us.
“Yeah, unless you object?” Ava didn’t sound like she was expecting an objection, and she didn’t get one. “Look, our lives are tied together right now regardless. But I have you, and I want you.” Her voice was an enticing whisper in Beatrice’s ear, and it drowned out some of her doubts. “This doesn’t need to be as complicated as everything else.”
“You’re right, it doesn’t.”
“I know. I’m always right.” Ava was such a snark sometimes. “But we should probably try and get some sleep. I have a patient to take care of… At least, before he gets interrogated.”
“Ava…”
“I can handle it. Seriously.” Her demeanour hardened a bit, in a way Beatrice hated. Unfortunately, she had to resign herself to a lack of control over it. That was difficult. “And I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t angry with him as well.”
“It might not be violent. I certainly won’t jump to it immediately if I don’t have to… I don’t get any joy from this.”
“I know, Bea, I know.” Ava pressed a kiss to Beatrice’s cheek, before settling into a more comfortable position. “Believe it or not, I’m not judging you. But we can talk more tomorrow. For now? Sleep.”