So Many Chances, Taken for Granted
For some reason, she ends up in the same quiet mountain town where she and- and The Halo Bearer, spent those months hiding out. Stepping off the train, there’s an ache in her chest as she remembers quiet mornings in the apartment, afternoons spent eating ice cream (c’mon, admit that I beat you today Bea, we’ve earned a treat), or just the day to day routine of a normal life, spent with someone special. For a moment, the joy and grief makes her dizzy, and she has to sit down on a bench until the emotion passes.
What can she say, she’s Catholic. Masochism just comes naturally at this point.
Beatrice has always been a bastion of self denial. She stripped herself down to the very core in order to become the perfect Sister Warrior. The perfect fighter, the perfect strategist. Now though, all it seems to have gotten her is a broken heart.
She keeps remembering that day. If she’d been a little faster, a little quicker dealing with the cultists, she could have gotten there in time to save The Warrior Nun (she keeps dancing around the name, afraid to touch it even in her thoughts). She knows that way lies madness, that there’s no turning back time, but at night her traitorous mind insists on supplying her with a constant litany of what if, what if, what if…
She doesn’t get much sleep these days.
The bar looks the same, somehow. It figures, she muses. Gods will rise and fall, angels fall from heaven and demons rise from hell, and bars will still be open.
Hans looks mildly surprised to see her walk in the door.
“If you’re looking for your old job back after walking out on us, I’d tell you not to bother, except you were the best manager we ever had here and the guy we hired to replace you is crap, so you could probably get it back anyway.”
Beatrice laughs, oddly glad to see a familiar face. It feels good, too, to not have to lie anymore about who she is. Now she’s simply Beatrice, instead of Sister Beatrice, undercover Sister Warrior and guardian of the Halo Bearer.
“Tempting as that is Hans, I’m just here for-“ Why is she here? She doesn’t particularly need a drink, and it’s not like her and Hans ever really were friends. “-I’m just passing through.”
He shrugs, “Suit yourself. I thought you’d gone and joined Adriel’s cult or something, what a shit show.”
He has no idea.
“So how’ve you been? Where’s A-“
“Fine.” She cuts him off before he can finish. “And I’m alone now.”
Whatever he sees in her eyes, he just shrugs. “Your landlady called a week ago, asking where the hell you were. I told her you’d been sent on a business trip, but she didn’t sound happy.”
Mrs. Noceda is an old, Mexican expat who is perpetually cranky but who hadn’t batted an eye at two girls in a one bedroom apartment, and on their first week had remarked that “you and your girlfriend are too tired all the time, young people never get enough rest.”
It was in retrospect a mark things to come how much they’d both hurried to disabuse her the idea that they were a couple.
“Thanks, I’m sure I can sweet talk her. And I’ll keep you informed about my job hunting, if I stick around.”
He mutters something that sounds like “flake”, but mixes her a free mocktail anyway.
***
Mrs. Noceda, it transpires is more than happy to have Beatrice back.
“You were a good tenant, always pay rent on time. Next time though I kick you out and sell your furniture at Sunday flea market. Probably get better price too.”
She sets up Beatrice in her old room, and so, without much interruption, Beatrice resumes her old life. Except now it’s not a cover for a covert operation of badass nuns. It’s just her life.
One day, a couple days after moving back in, Mrs. Noceda corners her on the steps.
“Where is your lady friend? She leave you?” This last with narrowed eyes that communicate exactly Mrs. Noceda’s opinion of people who leave their partners.
“She… had to go away for a while.” It’s getting easier to talk about, gradually.
Mrs. Noceda looks at her, then turns away with a “Well, maybe I will finally have some quiet.”, but later that afternoon, Beatrice finds a tin of shepard’s pie and some homemade tamales outside her door. Both are delicious.
***
It’s been two weeks since she moved back in, and Beatrice has been doing pretty well for herself. Turns out that her previous job at the bar paid pretty well, and with the Spartan way she lives, money hasn’t been a problem so far. The thing is, without actually working a job at the moment, she doesn’t know what to do with herself. She’d told the OCS that she needed some ‘time to get away’, but what exactly that looks like is beyond her.
So, she tries the only thing in her life that she’s always been incapable of doing:
She relaxes.
Tries to at least, it’s hard getting out of a lifetimes habit of constant vigilance and battle readiness. But she takes walks instead of runs, she reads novels instead of training manuals, and she takes naps in the park instead of constantly looking over her shoulder.
It even works. Sort of. Sometimes she goes whole days without feeling there’s a hole in her chest. The bad days are bad, but the good days start to get better. She wonders if this is what healing is.