Chapter Text
There’s a football match on the screen above the bar. It’s a new addition. Something to try and make up for all the regulars that they lost when Ava…left. Beatrice is trying to ignore it, but the crowd is larger than usual. Especially for a Wednesday night. Energy is crackling between groups clad in the opposing teams’ colors. The tension between sports fans has never made sense to her. They care far too much about their theatrical battles. Why play at a war when one already exists?
Her face is flushed. Her clothes sticking to her. She knows she’s drunk, maybe more than shes ever been, but it’s helping. At least she thinks it is.
Ava wouldn’t want you like this. She wanted you to be happy. She wanted you to live your life, not to drink it away like the scum that killed her mother.
The thoughts come unbidden.
What would she say if she could see you now? Would she finally see you for who you really are? Unworthy. Unholy. Unclean.
She looks around, trying to calm her breathing. It’s too much, there’s too much noise. Too much light. Too many people. Her eyes slip shut, and she holds her beer tighter, knuckles turning white. The crowd is hot and alive, and rapidly closing in.
Deep breath…another… focus on the present
She hears bits of arguments breaking out amongst the fans at the bar next to her. Gossip shared between friends at the table behind her.
Breathe
A voice rings out louder than the others. “-and she thought she could win against Adriel?”
Her eyes snap open and immediately lock on a smirking man surrounded by his group of friends. They all laugh.
“Who was she anyway?”
Ava?
“-just some little girl with a hero complex.”
no
“Fighting in a war she could never understand.”
stop
“That bitch had it comin-“
The room drops out from under her as her fist collides with the man’s face.
“How dare you speak of her?” Shes growls and rears back in time to dodge a swing from the man. Her punch was sloppy, but effective. One more and he drops to the ground.
The crowd roars. Her movements feel slow and uncoordinated. Her focus reduced to simple actions. Her fist connects with a throat. She slips an uppercut. Aims another strike. Something slams into her kidney. The pain brings sudden clarity and she ducks the next blow. Half the crowd has erupted into an all out brawl. Broken glass, sticky floor, a man jumping over the bar. She only has half the mind to pity Hans before she feels a hand gripping at the back of her head and a table swings up to meet her face. Crack.
The first thing she registers is that she is moving, the force of the crowd pushing her forward. She’s on her feet, barely. All she can feel is pain and anger; anger so raw she can barely contain it. After days of emptiness, she feels alive again. Awake. She propels herself into the crowd. She doesn’t even try to evade the fists swinging her way, she doesn’t feel them. Her form is lacking and her feet stumble over the broken glass. Her returning punches lack discipline. She can’t even tell if she’s even winning this fight, and she doesn’t care.
Maybe this is just who she is without Ava. The girl had looked at Beatrice like she was something precious and beautiful. It made her feel like she could be more than this, more than a monster. A killing machine. Her gut wrenches. They say alcohol brings out your true personality, this must be hers.
Eventually she makes it out onto the street along with a rush of people fleeing the scene. A crowd of college age kids slip past her. They have fear in their eyes, and she realizes that it’s because of her.
All at once the fight leaves her, she nearly collapses under the weight of it. The street feels too big; the buildings too far apart. Like the sky itself is pulling away. She’s never felt so exposed. Gasping breaths cut her lungs. She coughs and tastes metal.
“Hey you bitch, you broke my nose!” A man pushes into the street, and strides towards her. Her heart stutters in her chest. She slips into a fighting stance on instinct. As the man draws closer, however, she does something she’s never done before. She runs.
She runs until she can’t breathe. Passed the crowded streets, and passed their apartment. Cobblestone turns to dirt and still she doesn’t stop. She runs until she feels like she can finally breathe again. Until she feels like maybe she’s beginning to understand Ava a little more. It starts raining at some point and she collapses under a tree.
The lake.
Their training grounds.
Their sanctuary.
They spent almost more time here than anywhere else. Shivers begin in her gut as the wind picks up. Pulling her knees to her chest, her eyes drift across the clearing.
Ava learning to do a cartwheel. Ava sprawled on the grass enjoying the sun and whining about something Beatrice had said. Ava smiling up at her as they wrestled even as Beatrice begged her to take things seriously.
For the first time since that day, the memories don’t draw blood. This place could never be tarnished. This place bore witness to them . Not the warrior nun and her trainer, but Bea and Ava. It is here that they became a team. As they grew from aquantinces to friends to something so much deeper than that. Everywhere she looks a new memory surfaces. Hundreds of moments that are entirely ordinary but altogether sacred. They are soaked into the ground, imprinted on the leaves, and they wrap around her in a bittersweet embrace.
She leans back and looks up into the branches of the tree. Abeis alba , the white fir, a strong tree with branches that were closely spaced; almost like a ladder. She had led Ava to it when she had begged to climb a tree for the first time. It also sported a crude little heart carved into the bark. At the time, Beatrice had been appalled on the trees behalf, but she couldn’t stay mad at Ava for long. Not when the girl had seemed so excited to participate in the tradition.
Bea had stopped her before she could add their initials. She almost regrets it now, as her fingers trace the shape.
Sitting against the trunk, on a bed of fallen needles, she feels a sort of kinship to the tree. Ava’s love had gifted each of them an open wound, one that may never heal. She is rooted in the emptiness that Ava left, unable to take a single step in any direction. Subject to the world moving around her. As if nothing had changed. She knows now that a part of her will always remain in this clearing. In the Alps.