It Cuts off the Exits, if you let it Spread
A Date, as it turns out, means meeting Dina at a coffee shop and just…talking? Beatrice still isn’t quite clear on whether this is a romantic thing or not, but it does feel good to have met a friend. So she listens to Dina talk about growing up in the States, somewhere Beatrice has never been.
“The mountains out west are something, so different even from here.” She gestures at their picturesque surroundings. “I miss it sometimes, but I needed a change.”
“Why did you leave?” Dina seems so self assured, it’s hard to think of her ever needing to leave a place.
“My ex.” Dina’s ususally bright eyes dim a little. “She had to leave, and that meant leaving me too. After that, I just had to get away.”
“Too many bad memories?” Beatrice knows she shouldn’t pry, but suddenly she needs to know.
Dina shakes her head,
“Too many good ones.”
A Lump forms in her throat, and Beatrice takes a sip of her tea to clear it. Dina seems to notice.
“Hey, you okay? Sorry for bringing the mood down.”
“No it’s fine, It’s my fault really. I’ve just, I lost someone too.”
“Ah,” a sympathetic sigh, “Sucks being left behind, doesn’t it?”
“Yes,” It really does.
There’s a long silence, during which Beatrice is certain she’s ruined any chance of a normal conversation with this girl, before Dina smiles.
“Well, I for one am glad you’re here. Maybe…we can help each other feel less lonely?”
“A little less lonely,” and oh, she is so tired of being alone. She’s never been truly alone before, not like this.
“Well,” Dina leans across the table, taking Beatrice’s hand, “I’d sure love to see you again, hopefully under more cheerful circumstances. What do you say?”
Beatrice takes Dina’s hand and wonders exactly what she’s getting herself into. She tries not to think of bright eyes and a beaming smile, lit from within by holy light.
“Yeah, Okay”
***
Beatrice once had a conversation with Lilith and Camilla in which the topic of attachment and broken vows came up. Lilith, still the devoted halo candidate back then, had treated the whole idea as anathema (which, Beatrice supposed, it technically was). Camilla had argued that god understood them as human creatures, with human needs. Beatrice had thought the idea of breaking her vows not so much unconscionable, as unimaginable, It simply wouldn't have happened. After all, she'd joined the church to find a refuge from all that.
How wrong she'd been.
Now that she's no longer a nun (and oh, it's still so weird to imagine that), she's free to persue any attachments she wants. Yet something has always held her back until now. It's not exactly that she's afraid to love again, it's just that she's weary of all the things that could go wrong for her. C'mon Bea, you can't be afraid to put yourself out there! Live a little! Still she's always tried to not let fear define her, and so she agrees to see Dina again.
This time, they meet in a park, not too far from the library. It's sunny, but with a cool breeze blowing. Beatrice spends more time than she's proud of trying on different outfits. She abruptly misses having some advice on that front (Oooh! This top is really cute Bea, annnd, it makes your tits look great). She shakes it off. Definitely the wrong time to be dwelling on Av-on the Halo Bearer. She is a free-wheeling secret-ass-kicking-(ex)nun, and she is going to go on a date, and she is going to enjoy it, god dammit (this last thought earns her five hail mary's that she chants to herself as she gets dressed).
***
They have lunch at the park, and it’s perfect. Dina is completely at ease, and some of that calm rubs off on Beatrice somehow. So she stretches out on the grass and listens to Dina talk about the mountains of home, and what it’s like to ride a horse. She forgets, for a moment, about the OCS, and Adriel, and what she’s lost.
Forgets even, who she’s lost.
“So anyway, I know the States are for shit right now, but It wasn’t all terrible,” Dina concludes. “How bout you?”
“What about me?”
“Well, I know hardly anything about your past, and you know all about mine. Fair’s fair.” Dina leans in, suddenly a breath away from Beatrice, her voice dropping into an almost whisper. Her breath takes Beatrice’s away.
“Well,” She says, “My parents shipped me off to boarding school when I was 14, I spent all of primary school being taught by nuns, and I’ve seen every country in the European Union.”
“Okay, well now I really want to know.”
“I don’t think you do.”
They really are quite close now. Dina has an adorable constellation of freckles on her cheeks. Beatrice counts them.
“So, If I don’t want to hear about your adventures all over Europe, I think a close second would be really wanting to kiss you.”
Practically touching now. Beatrice can feel herself fighting it. Can feel too the voice in her head telling her to just let go. She's spent a lifetime fighting that voice and all it brought her is pain. Maybe it's time to heed it.
The kiss, when it happens, is hesitant at first. Beatrice can't pretend to have much experience, but after a moment she relaxes into it. A part of her realizes what this means for her, to be kissing a girl in broad daylight, all her shame and fear swept away. Dina cups her face, kissing her again and again and dragging tiny gasps of pleasure out of Beatrice.
And Beatrice feels...wrong.
Her body is alive like she's rarely felt before, she's finally shedding the fear and shame she's carried with herself forever, and Dina is unquestionably a good kisser. And yet, and yet...
“They can’t beat us Bea, not together”
A voice, a voice in her ear, not in her head, and Beatrice jerks back, looking around for the source, for Her. But there’s no one even near her, only Dina, who looks puzzled and a little hurt.
“Sorry, should I not have…?”
“No your fine!” This girl does not deserve to feel bad over whatever is going on in her head right now. “I just, I don’t think I’m…
“Your not ready yet.” Dina says gently, far more gently that Beatrice deserves, but she gets it.
“Precisely.” God, why is she so formal all of a sudden? “I think, I think I need to go.”
“Oh Okay…” And Dina looks crestfallen now, And she hates herself for making her like this, but she has to go, now.
She leaves Dina there in the park, all but running for home, looking around again for the source of that voice. But of course there’s no one. She’s alone
***
She kept a small altar in the apartment, a crucifix, a bible. A connection to home, to her sisters. Now though, it just seems bizarre to her. She stares at it for a full minute, chest heaving tears running down her cheeks, furious.
All those years of praying, all those years of fighting, and for what? What has it given her? An empty apartment and a hollow life, and a girl she can’t bring herself to kiss properly. Fucking pointless, all for fucking nothing.
With a scream, she sweeps the altar clean. The crucifix falls to the ground, shattering, and all of Beatrice’s resolve shatters with it. She falls to her knees, sobbing now.
“Ava,” She gasps, finally speaking it aloud, the name on her lips like the god she turned her back on, “Ava where are you? Ava Ava Ava,”
“Ava...”