#omg this took so long jude im so sorry but here it is!! | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

unicyclehippo · 2 years ago

Note

wn prompt blood

for @possibilistfanfiction , joan of arc themed fic for you!

most of the time, you don't remember your dreams. they're hazy, forgettable for the most part. sometimes, a couple of bright details will linger, like that time you didn't put sunscreen under the straps of your swimsuit and went red there on either side. the next morning, the sunburn had been warm and itchy and you'd scratched at it all the next day. your dreams are like that. (your curiosity is like that, just on the edge of painful.)

sometimes, you dream of beatrice. it doesn't happen often and usually it isn't that exciting. once, she's a seagull, and dream-you had looked at it and went, oh there she is. once, she's a face in a crowd. once, she's a big old church. that had made you laugh, even in your dream, because like. yeah. thanks subconscious, you get it, she's a nun. when you wake up, you tell beatrice, breathless, as she makes you run and run and run. you were a seagull. you were walking down the street. you were a church. sometimes you save it for your recovery water-break, because you want to see the way embarrassment breaks across her face, hot and pink, when you say i dreamed about you last night.

what was i this time? she asked, once. a frog?

no, don't you get it? whatever you look like, you're beatrice. you're always beatrice.

tonight, you dream of beatrice and she's an angel. she's beatrice and she isn't. it's her face. it's her pyjamas, her legs lean and long, her hair loose around her shoulders, her stride as she walks toward you. but it's not her.

she stops in front of you.

you're in a dark room. it's super-dense and burning hot, like what you imagine being at the core of the earth would feel like - crust, mantle, outer core like the heaviest weighted blankets ever. beatrice is standing in front of you, so fucking pretty, and then she reaches out for you and you know, you know it's not her, because beatrice doesn't touch you when she wants to. and there's nothing here to teach you, nothing to learn, so she never would. she sits two inches from you on the couch, she sleeps with a pillow between you in the bed, she doesn't touch you when she slips past you to get to the fridge when you're washing dishes in the sink. she doesn't touch you because she wants to and you know this even though you've never spoken about it, never brought it up, because you're intimately familiar with not touching the things you want and while you don't understand what is stopping beatrice, exactly, you think it has something to do with hunger. you're hungry all the time; you want to eat the world, would, if you could. but she's a nun, and they don't get to want things, they take vows of chastity and poverty or whatever, and you don't know if there's a vow specifically about hunger but you wouldn't be surprised. eve and her apple, jesus and his fig tree. the day you came to life, you ate strawberries, a lot of them, as fast as you could. juice spilling down your chin. the day beatrice swore to protect you and took off her habit, her veil, she hadn't eaten anything at all.

you're in a dark room. it's super-dense and burning hot and beatrice reaches out her hands and you take them, even though it isn't beatrice (it looks like her, you want it to be her) and she pulls herself toward you and your heart is beating so fast fluttering at the base of your throat like you swallowed a bird (a swallow, ha!) and it's struggling, beating frantically to escape, and you don't know what to do. beatrice is a nun. beatrice is touching you. her hands are so warm. you've felt them before, burning against your skin when she takes you down (take me apart please, sister beatrice) onto the practice mat day after day after day. her hands are burning hot. her hands are gentle but they don't move normally, they move up your arms and the heat follows, like you're pushing your hands into liquid flame. up your arms. over your shoulders.

she brings you in for a hug.

an embrace. the thought is a little shaky, a little embarrassed even in your own mind. you've never been embraced before.

your faces are so close.

beatrice, you think.

she doesn't smile, doesn't blink. she stares into your eyes, warm and thoughtful and deeply sad, and that is beatrice, but you can't tell where she ends and where whatever this is begins. it's not beatrice. it's just wearing her face.

the swallow in your throat didn't escape in time. it stabs its beak into you and you're numb from the neck down, you're dead from the neck down. there's blood in your throat, hot and holy; you don't want it to be either of those things, you don't want it at all, you don't want to be bleeding, it's in your mouth and you're burning hot but you're frozen in her arms. you can't move.

'beatrice,' you whimper.

she leans in and in and in and you didn't want the blood but if she kisses you it might be fucking worth it. her lips don't touch you; she leans sideways, going in for the hug? she's so close, the heat of her stings. your cheek, your ear. she pauses. you're burning up. she leans in. her lips touch the skin behind your ear. you burn.

the apartment is small. two single beds squashed against opposite walls. you wake up with blood on your lips, with a scream on your lips, with the smell of something burning high up in your nose. pressing your hand to your mouth so you don't throw up. you're sweating. the window by your bed groans when you shove it open, careful to press on the wood because if you shove at it, if you shove at the glass it'll break under your trembling, too-strong fingers, it'll shatter and cut and you don't want to hurt, you don't want to bleed, you just want to shove your head out the window and breathe.

elbows on the windowsill, head hanging over the edge, you do. you breathe. choke on feathers. cough once around the feeling. every bit of you hurts like it's been stretched out. like a growth spurt, the pain of growing into yourself; like the rack, like someone did this to you, pulled you to pieces and put you back together with nothing but the hurt to say it was done at all.

it's barely dawn. here, in the valley, pre-dawn is grey and green, all caves and growing things. it's startlingly beautiful, like everything else you've seen. you love being here. knee-high grass, apple trees, history. there are parts of town that you avoid; there's a red shimmer to them that you thought might be wraiths but over time, you figured out that it was history, blood on blood on blood, and there's something to the echo of it, the layering, that is terrifying. there's something to the rebuilding of it that is daunting, lovely, humbling. could you do that? see your house burn down, see your family struck down, and build on the same place? what about your broken back? what about your death, your resurrection? was that the same?

this morning, you hear church bells in the distance. turn toward the spire, the bells, the road that cuts up and out of the valley. you are going to leave this place. not today but soon.

beatrice is asleep still. you pull back from the window, shuffle to the end of your tiny bed and lean over, patting around for the socks that you kicked off sometime during the night. the floorboards are freezing, even in the balmy summer.

stepping into the bathroom, you close the door before turning on the light so it doesn't wake beatrice.

you don't lock the door, ever.

the first time you showered here, you'd slipped getting out of the tub. the side of it was slick with soap and you were still clumsy - are still clumsy - still figuring out how high to lift your leg to step over things. beatrice is accustomed to it, your imperfect depth perception, the way you stumble when walking down the street, over your feet, over the uneven pavement; she's not accustomed to hearing the thump of your dumb ass falling out of the bathtub and knocking yourself out when your skull slams into the bathroom counter. you got a concussion, a headache, and a new rule. don't lock the door anymore, beatrice had said when you crawled to the door and unlocked it for her, to stop her from trying to break it down. (don't scare me like that again, she hadn't said but you'd heard her, loud and clear.)

you lock it this morning. it clicks shut. the sound shakes down your spine. when you stretch, you can hear it in your ears, the click.

the mirror is brilliantly clear in the cool morning. you press up close enough to it that your breath puffs out, fogs the glass. it shows you a girl, long hair blonde at the ends, in the curls where the sun has burned it. she's scared, eyes wide. little curls of hair are plastered to her forehead, her neck, where it's sweat-damp.

'you're okay,' you tell her, whisper it. touch the mirror clumsily, touch her cheek. leaning your forehead to the cold glass, you kiss her. when you pull back, the imprint of your lips remains like a fingerprint on the glass. when you pull back, you see that she doesn't believe you.

that makes sense. the dream stings when you think about it. your skin stings. it should be pink all over, burned bright. your neck - your neck. you haven't let yourself think about it. you look at the girl in the mirror and she looks back and nods.

'it's not real,' the girl in the mirror says, and you don't believe her.

lifting a hand, you touch your cheek, drag your fingers back to your ear, press your hair back as you turn. there, behind your ear, your skin is a burning bright red. a circle, a kiss of flame, like the press of pursed lips. the pain eases. you watch as it heals; it doesn't fade, not entirely, but the red goes from flame to blood to scab to sting. you could pass it off as a scar from the car accident, you could pass it off as a birthmark. you could do these things, if beatrice hadn't dressed you in a habit, hadn't collected up your hair and tucked it away into a nun's wimple - veil? whatever. if she hadn't had her hands on you, directing you, training you. if she hadn't helped you brush your hair and gather it up in a very neat ponytail. if she hadn't hugged you, fingers on the back of your neck. if she didn't watch you like she was trying to memorise you, mostly because it's her job.

you let your hair fall back into place. it covers the mark, mostly, when it's loose like this and it doesn't hurt anymore. if anything, it tickles; the skin feels sensitive and warm, feels more alive than the rest of you. that feeling fades too.

you flush the toilet. you wash your hands. you climb back into bed.

from the other side of the room, beatrice says, 'time?' sleepy, sad.

you laugh. it had been the best day of your life, finding out that beatrice liked sleep more than prayer, more than breakfast, more than anything. when she's curled into bed, blankets bundled around her, pillow pressing lines into her skin, you don't see a nun, you don't see god's weapon; you see a girl, sleepy and warm, you see someone who is dozingly selfish, who allows herself the small comfort of the snooze button. fondness light on your tongue, you look over at her, at the grumpy misery of rousing, and tell her, 'you can sleep more, bea. i just had to pee.'

'thank god,' she mutters and shoves her face into her pillow.

the thing in your dream had not been beatrice. it looked like her, it walked like her, it had seemed like her, a little beyond skin deep. you think of being mad but you're not. it makes sense. you can't think of a single thing it might have looked like except her.

an angel came to you in your dreams, and it looked like beatrice.

days pass. everything carries on the same way it has for the last few weeks. you work your shifts at the tiny cafe, bad at making coffee but good at making people smile. also, surprisingly good at math. you get to use a lot of puns, get to flirt with a lot of the customers. after work, you meet beatrice for training, running up and down stairs until your lungs burn. then sparring. you're improving, fast.

the news plays stories of a crisis, a virus. boils. hospitals filled with pain and hurt. the news shows images of him. you see men on their knees, you see people stretching out their hands to touch the hem of his white robes, you see the little army falling into step behind him and you ask beatrice to teach you how to use the sword.

'i'm ready.'

'you're angry. you can't afford to be angry.'

'the halo is powered by my emotions, right? i promise you, the anger helps.'

beatrice holds onto the sword. there's a sliver of blue where she's pulled it from the sheathe, just a little. divinium has never felt like anything before and you don't feel anything now when blue light washes through the room but you hear, behind your ear, a sigh.

'we must control our emotions, ava, or they will control us. anger is not what will win this war. remember what sister melanie wrote, remember what the rest of the warrior nuns wrote. you must move past these feelings.'

'fine. teach me how to do it, then. but i will need the sword too. isn't that what we're doing? isn't that why we're hiding? so i can train? that's the only thing that can hurt him, bea. i need to know.'

she teaches you. of course she does. but she watches you like she can see through you, like your skin is glass and she can see through to the scared girl with her skin on fire, with a bellyful of fire.

it happens like this.

three days after the dream, you are walking home smelling of coffee grounds, sneakers gritty with them. there's a sting on the inside of your wrists where you caught the steam wand because you were distracted, too busy making a joke at the pretty boy waiting for his drink, and the halo healed it instantly to a glossy red but it itches. you scratch at it.

across the street, there's a couple. a girl and a guy. they're walking together. his arm hangs around her shoulders. a wraith hangs around his. there's a kiss behind your ear, there's a voice and the voice is the kiss and it's also the light glinting off the knife as he adjusts it in the pocket of his jacket and it's the knowledge that cracks between your shoulder blades like a glowstick that he will hurt her, that she'll be found in this alley tomorrow by police, that she'll bleed out overnight.

your feet stick to the pavement.

beatrice likes this town. you like this town. you don't want to leave.

what happens, you ask the angel, if i do nothing?

the angel doesn't answer. it knows what you know. you can't do nothing.

you follow them. you follow them because there's a voice searing into your head that tells you to, because there's heat in your spine like a molten rod keeping you upright, keeping you walking. but mostly, you follow them because coming back to life has been a fucking joy—the beach, the sun, the sand, running, becoming, fucking, eating, drinking, dancing, singing, laughing—and that stops, it stops when someone stabs you. it stops when adriel presses you back against rock and sinks his hand into you, tries to kill you. you follow them because there's a girl who is about to be killed and it doesn't have to happen.

beatrice will be mad. she will forgive you.

the alley opens into a little square space between the buildings. there's one of those big dumpsters and a cluster of wooden pallets. there's a couple leaning up against the wall; they look like lovers and for a second you wonder if you were wrong, seeing the way he has her pressed up against the bricks, the way her head tilts back, the length of her neck arched, eager, her hands on his shoulders, fingernails biting into the leather of his jacket. but then you hear it—'no!'—and see it—light, the glint of it, the knife—and you race forward. grab him by the back of his jacket and wrench him away.

he crashes into the dumpster, unmoving.

'oh my god, oh my god,' the girl says. 'oh my god, he has a knife,'

which you should really take off him, but she's shaking and you feel strong, vibrant, brave, lovely. you feel like a knight, in your coffee-stained sneakers and your ugly little polo shirt that beatrice picked out of the thrift store for you. you feel like a knight, saving her life.

'i know. can you walk?'

'i - yeah, i - oh my god, he was going to kill me,' she says, and sags against the bricks, and you catch her before she falls.

'can you run? he won't stay down forever.'

'i think you knocked him out.' then, her eyes catch on something over your shoulder and go wide, terrified. 'his eyes are black, why are his eyes black?'

she shrieks when he lurches toward you both; you push her behind you and kick him in the nuts, staggering him for a split second, and walk the both of you back to the alley, telling her to go, to run away.

'why are his eyes black? what the fuck do you want, luc! what is wrong with you?'

'luc? that's his name? it's a long story but basically he's possessed.' ooh beatrice is going to kill you for this. 'i'll fix it. it's not his fault, i'll fix it.'

'possessed? what do we - do i call the cops?' she shrieks again, wraps her arms around you as you duck and pick up a two by four, jab it at him in a poor imitation of the sword fighting beatrice has been drilling into you.

'just run, just go. i'll fix it,' you tell her again, and you must sound confident because she turns and runs.

this isn't like the first time. you are not newly alive, you are not weak, you are not confused. you are afraid, still. the wraith throws himself at you; you twist free - thank you, bea - and punch him in the face. knuckles crack against his cheekbone, an awful sound. the two by four breaks across his shoulders. you hit him until there's red spilling out of him; only then do you stop, because you've done it, the wraith is seeping out, but you don't have a divinium knife, you don't have anything that can help.

the angel kissed you in your dream, it told you everything you needed to know in that moment and every moment folded into one; the angel is the kiss, is the sky and the sun rising over the valley, is the centuries of blood in the dirt, is the wine and the tang and the knife and the light. it didn't say anything at all. it told you everything.

burn.

he stands, wrathful, wraithful. drives his shoulder into your stomach and pins you against the wall; the corner of the brickwork slams along the full length of your spine. you are held there; you cannot move. in another life, you are pinned to a wooden post. ropes itch around your wrists. in another life, he kills you there.

burn, the angel told you.

the halo ignites. the alley fills with light.

when you get home, it is with red knuckles and a tear in your ugly polo shirt. beatrice is waiting for you in her training clothes.

'i used the halo,' you tell her. 'i'm sorry.'

she was ready for this, because she's ready for almost anything, but she's not happy. the apartment is packed up quickly. you shove all your clothes into one bag—your shirts with hers, your pants with hers, your underwear with hers—and finally the guilt catches up with you because yes, it would have fucking killed you to walk away from the alley without helping but now you have to run and you are dragging beatrice with you.

there are church bells in the distance and know this is the day you were thinking of. looking out the window over your bed, you see the church and its spire, the road that cuts up and out of the valley. behind you, the phone rings. beatrice snatches it up and holds it to her cheek.

'we have to leave,' she tells someone on the other end of the line. mother superion, probably. 'ava used the halo.'

they have questions for you.

you used the halo? yes.

there was a fight? yes. a wraith. a girl was going to die.

did it get away? no. you destroyed it.

how? without divinium? the halo burned it up.

how? i don't know.

why?

'why, ava?' beatrice asks, bitterly frustrated.

you are done with packing. drop the bag onto the floor at the end of the bed and sink down onto it. it creaks under your weight. you stare down at your hands; they are healing, slowly. your stomach aches where he slammed into you, and inside too, guts churning unhappily under beatrice's disappointed stare. your shoulder blades burn as the halo works.

your back doesn't hurt; the halo healed that first, like it knew that you would fall apart, like it knew you wouldn't be able to make it home if your back hurt like that.

beatrice is waiting for you to say something like, i saw the wraith and i had to do something. something like, i've had enough of running. something like that. you could tell her that. it's true, mostly, but she squints at you, suspicious and unnerved, and you know it isn't true enough.

'i had a dream.' the words come out rough and untidy. you had shoved them deep down and now you are flailing to find them again, one at a time. 'three nights ago. an angel. it came to me, i guess, i think. and today i heard it again. or, today was what it had been talking about.'

beatrice frowned. she was standing across the room, in the corner, because she had tucked herself away there with all her anger neatly packed away and hadn't moved since.

'an angel came to you. spoke to you?'

'sort of.'

'sort of,' she repeated. the words would have been sharply spoken, if beatrice weren't so careful about their placement. the sharp edges didn't come anywhere near you but you knew they were there. 'what does that mean? why didn't you mention this before? you know i am trying to help.'

'i know, i know that. but i don't believe in angels, i don't believe in god. so, yeah, i didn't fucking mention it because it's insane and i'm freaking out a bit.'

'ava.' beatrice says your name so softly, so kindly. you suspect she's forgotten that she's holding the phone to her cheek, that her mother superion can hear her. 'it was just a dream.'

words can deceive. when you talk, you translate, and it has to be a little bit of a lie every single time because nothing that is said is ever what it is. the space between those two things are filled with faith, a certain amount of trust, that strains when the distance between what is said and what is (could be) grows greater. i am ava, you say to anyone in the world, and they will believe you, little faith required. i spoke with an angel, an angel spoke to me, an angel wore your face and came to me in the night and pressed its holy lips against my skin. how much faith would be required to accept that?

words are not enough.

so you take her by the hand and lift it to your cheek. something flickers in her eyes—you wonder, briefly, if she had the same dream, if she had been in your dream worn by an angel, or if she's just had this thought all by herself, unholy, human—and slide her fingers to the spot behind your ear. beatrice's eyes go wide, then narrow. she pulls you forward. twists your head to the side and lifts your hair out of the way.

'you've been wearing your hair down,' she says, steel on her tongue; arrow, fire-starter. you burn. 'you've been hiding this from me.'

you drive away.

well, beatrice drives away. she rents a car with an ID you've never seen her use—secrets upon secrets upon good intentions—and you leave. past the church, up the road out of the valley. you shiver as the town disappears behind you, feel ghostly fingers against your spine.

she drives to a little town a few hours away.

you buy new clothes, leave the car where the rental agency will pick it up again.

beatrice takes you to the station and buys tickets for the next train. this town, this afternoon, is wet and blue. beatrice drags you into the bathroom and the dull light drips through a small window up near the roof and you are reminded of when you dropped the sword into the river and it had sunk to the bed. the light spilled out when you reached for it, like the sword was cutting a hole between worlds, and divinity spilled out cold and blue into the water. you need to look different, both you, just in case. you paste bleach into her dark hair to lighten it. she cuts your hair as neatly as she can within the confines of a time limit and a cramped bathroom. when she's done, your hair falls just beneath your ears. curls a little.

beatrice stares at you like she's seen a ghost.

'what? did you fuck it up?'

she frowns, because you swore, because she doesn't fuck anything up. 'no.'

'bea.'

'we don't know much about joan of arc.' beatrice reaches out a hand toward you, a little helpless, a lot awed; she flinches back before she touches you. 'most historical documents agree that she was a great speaker. either she had a lovely voice or that she was compelling.' her eyes trace the line of your hair, the line she had drawn. your eyes trace the line between you, the one she doesn't cross. 'she had dark hair cut short. and a mark behind her ear.'

'she died.'

beatrice nods. 'burned at the stake. for heresy.'

you don't want to die. ever since the dream, you've been tasting blood. you haven't told beatrice that and you won't. something is coming and you're scared.

'heresy, huh?' you grin at her. 'sounds like my kind of girl.'

beatrice washes the bleach out of her hair. you help her, sink your fingers into her hair—the line between you is diminished, beatrice allows you to cross it sometimes, when you need to. she still doesn't touch you—and wash her clean. it's the same sink where she cut your hair, changed you. does it feel like a baptism for her? you don't believe in that sort of thing but she does and when she lifts her head out of the sink, you know that something has changed.

you're sitting on the floor of the bathroom, back against the cool tiles, and watching her dry her hair, her ears, with one of the tea-towels you'd randomly shoved into the bag while you were packing. your hair is short and it tickles your neck. you scratch at the mark behind your ear and blurt out, finally,

'it looked like you. the angel, i mean.'

beatrice stares down at you.

'oh. angels are Asian?'

you burst out laughing. 'maybe? but i mean it literally looked like you. like you. like,' you wave a hand at her. 'it was you, i mean.' you feel hot all over. nothing to do with an angel.

'oh,' she says again.

beatrice drags her fingers through her hair. you watch carefully. you've seen her plenty of times now without her veil (wimple?), seen her after a shower, rubbing the wet out of her hair with a big, fluffy towel. you have always looked away. now, she's using a teatowel that you hate—it never seems to dry the dishes, just moves the water around, and you'll be glad to chuck it out now that a little of the bleach has stained the corner of it—and you can't look away from her careful hands, the way she gently squeezes the towel around her hair, working down to the tips.

'i'm sorry for not telling you.'

'i understand why you didn't.'

'do you?'

'you thought i wouldn't believe you. that an angel spoke to you.'

she says it so carefully but wonder spills out from the words anyway. she believes, she has faith. it fills the space between the words, bright and blue and lovely.

'no. after - after him,' you say, because beatrice has asked you never to speak his name in public, 'i think we're all a little more open minded about things like that existing.'

'then why?'

the tiles are cool when you rest your head back against the wall. you stare at her—gentle hands, the slope of her neck exposed, all her hair gathered to the other side, the way she holds herself, more relaxed now that you have a plan but set, prepared to leap into action if the door slams open, if they find you here. the black sweatpants she found here in town, the comfy slouch of her sweater. travelling clothes, new clothes. when she squeezes water out of her hair, a droplet falls to the cuff of her new sweater; you wonder if the bleach has all washed away, or if the sweater will stain. there's a chain around her neck; the OCS cross hangs heavy at the end of it, hidden beneath her clothes. the only thing you can see that reminds you of sister beatrice.

'mostly, i wasn't sure how you'd take it. if i said, i dreamed about you last night.' you've said those exact words to her before. you have never said them like this. she doesn't need to ask what she was—seagull, frog, face in the crowd, church—she was herself, she was more than what she lets you see of herself. beatrice's cheeks pink. you smile at her, a bit wobbly. 'and i didn't want to listen. i don't want to listen. to it. to an angel. when has that ever been a good thing for the person listening? when has it ever ended well? i just - i want to be normal.' the last time you said that, mary kicked you off a cliff. you broke so many bones that you couldn't move for a long time, and your vision stayed fuzzy well into the next day. you brace for a lecture—not everything is about you—or worse, another kick, a knife to the back, unworthy, but beatrice only looks at you. 'i don't want to die.'

the towel hits the floor with a wet slap.

beatrice kneels. she lowers herself to the floor, to her knees, to your side. she clasps your wrist. her fingers are cold, slippery with water. you shiver, twist, so that you are holding her hand. so that she is holding yours.

'i won't let that happen.' her mouth goes flat, eyes determined, and with her other hand she touches your cheek, turns your head. moves your hair away from the mark; for a long time, she stares at the mark. you wonder if she knows what you haven't said. you kissed me. you pressed your lips to my skin and i burned and burned and burn. she must, she must. she presses her thumb to your skin—cold thumb, hot brand—and you jerk toward her, a broken, hot sound in the back of your throat. you cannot stop yourself; you didn't know until it happened that you were capable of such a noise.

beatrice's eyes go wide. she doesn't take her hand away. she presses again and this time you are prepared. cheeks hot, you look away—stare resolutely at the pipes beneath the sink, the curve of the metal, the ugly break in the wall where the pipes disappear. beatrice swipes her thumb over the mark and then takes her hand away. it is heresy, you think, when she says,

'i don't want you to die either.'

#omg this took so long jude im so sorry but here it is!!#warrior nun #tagging my stories #prompt fill #avatrice

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