The first time it happened, it was practically nothing. Just a flicker, barely a beat or a moment. One second, she was suspended in nothing, the next, she had the tiniest perception of... something. Here and gone, just as quickly.
The second time was a little more subtle, a little easier to acknowledge. It was like the first rays of sunlight peeking over a ridge at dawn. Here and gone again, not quite as quickly as before.
It kept happening. Each time stretched a little longer, felt a little closer, like if she reached out far enough, she could touch it. She wasn't sure what it was until one day she was.
That feeling of wakefulness was upon her again, an itch at the back of her brain. Light surrounded her, and everything tingled. She recognized the feeling of being, of existing, but it felt muted.
A moment.
That's all it was, just a moment, but it made her heart explode in her chest, kick-started her back into reality, into life.
She watched from behind the bar as Beatrice chewed on her pen, gaze a million miles away and deep in thought.
What a beautiful moment.
And just as quickly as before, Ava was ripped away and thrust back into darkness.
It wasn't always the same.
Sometimes she'd find herself watching the accident from the outside. Watching as the drunk driver careened into her and her mother, watched their car flip on its side and skid across the intersection. She would watch as the paramedics pulled her, broken and crying from the wreckage. Watched as someone was taken away under a white sheet. One thing always remained in this moment: she could never see her mother's face.
Sometimes she'd return to a feeling: helplessness, loneliness, suffocation. She'd find herself, trapped, encased in the concrete bricks inside Jillian's lab. A voice in her ear, calling to her, guiding her, grounding her. She'd burst through the other side, light blazing around her, reaching out to her savior and falling. Falling, falling, falling back into darkness.
Sometimes it was fear. The way she would flinch whenever Sister Frances would enter the room. Watching Sister Crimson point Mary's shotgun at Beatrice. The divinium shrapnel exploding from Michael's corpse and infecting her, draining her, pain ripping through her. But nothing hurt so much as that her look of devastation, the absolute grief, in Bea's eyes.
Other times she'd return to see her first death, watching as she took her final breath. She'd find herself reaching out, slipping her hand into her own, an echo of a memory in her fingers. It gave her a strange sort of comfort. She knew this was only temporary, but the her that was dying, who had longed for death, didn't. She didn't know how wrong she'd been, how much she'd had to live for after her death. How selfish she had been.
How selfish she still was.
Ava's favorite flickers, though, were filled with love.
She craved those scenes when she was dancing with Beatrice in the bar, smiling and free, even if just for the moment.
She wept at the beauty of the softness of the expression on Bea's face whenever she looked at her and she thought Ava wasn't looking.
The pain Beatrice shared with her.
The softness of her lips.
The tenderness of her smile.
Beatrice.
Beatrice existed in all of her favorite moments, in all of her lives she lived and those yet to come.
Her heart even beat her name: BeaBea. BeaBea. BeaBea.
It thundered and cried, railing at the cage of her ribs, begging to be set free.
And Ava would think "maybe this time."
But this time never came.
So she took would she could get.
Watching Beatrice as she worked.
Sparring with Bea on the lakeshore.
Following Beatrice home through the winding alleys of their little town.
Sitting next to Beatrice in the mess hall at Cat's Cradle.
Saying goodbye.
Saying hello.
Watching her kiss her picture goodnight.
"Hello darling," Ava always cries when she hears the sadness in Bea's voice. The acceptance and resignation. "I miss you."
She's healing.
They both are.
Ava reaches out, brushes a strand of hair behind Bea's ear, even though she knows it's not actually real, not actually happening. She pretends like she can feel it, like Bea can feel it. She pretends that as she cups Bea's face, she leans into it.
It's right there. Almost. So close.
She watches herself fade away and falls back into darkness.
Ava's heart hammers, the feeling of wakefulness upon her again, the light just behind her eyelids.
And she remembers again, remembers the first time, all the befores and afters. Remembers the almost sensations, the experience of near existence. It always reminds her of those years she'd spent trapped inside her own body, always there, but never quite there--somewhere between waking up and being haunted.
Only she was the ghost.
But this felt different, somehow. This felt... real.
Ava wiggles her toes, feeling the cloth of the sheets slide over her as it made that little swishy noise.
She registers that she's comfortable.
The softness beneath her was like nothing she'd experienced as of late.
Content. Happy. Cozy.
Sensations.
Actual fucking sensations.
Ava's eyes nearly pop open at the realization, but she's not quite ready for whatever this moment or fantasy is to become real. Once it does, it can end.
Ava isn't ready for it to end.
So she wraps herself in the sensations: the comfort, the coziness, allows herself to bury herself inside of them.
And the warmth!
Ava curls into that warmth, feeling a lot like that stray cat she'd sometimes feed as it would languish in the sun--all fat and happy, content to do nothing as the world passed by.
Something tickles at Ava's nose, but she's too absorbed in the ability to experience sensation again that she's forgotten something is responsible for causing the sensation.
It's light, small and soft, moving with the timing of her breathing. Ava giggles a little, enjoys the way the tickling feeling speeds up or slows down with the rise and fall of her chest.
The tickle is accompanied by a smell, comforting and familiar. Fresh, like the cold mountain air in Switzerland. Salty. Hints of well worn leather. Beneath all of that, something warm, something... delicate. Something that she's never had a name for, but loved, craved. It smelled like home to her.
A puff of air reaches her cheek and Ava smiles, curls even closer into the warmth that radiates all around and through her.
A kiss is dropped onto the crown of her head and she feels arms tighten, bringing her closer, a sleepy murmur reaching her ears.
Ava knows where she is now, knows when.
Spain.
After they had to flee the Alps, leave their little life and the bar and Hans behind without a second glance, without an explanation or goodbye.
After Mary... was lost to them. Ava nearly chokes at the thought, her throat tightening.
After traveling for hours to be met with chaos and destruction and Vincent.
Ava remembers now.
Bea was drugged, less reserved. Ava was angry, worried and volatile.
She had refused to leave Bea, refused to believe she was OK unless she was within her sight. Ava's eyes never strayed from Bea for long.
They compromised by agreeing to share a bed--Ava's anxiety soothed by the familiar, Beatrice just happy to sleep off her drug induced haze.
She remembers waking up with her head on Bea's breast, Bea's arms wrapped tightly around her. She barely breathed for fear of Beatrice waking up and finding herself in this position.
Ava knew how she felt, knew how Beatrice felt. And Ava knew Beatrice knew how they both felt, but religious guilt and parental trauma created deep scars and internalized homophobia.
Ava might have been new to living but she wasn't new to self-loathing.
Those arms draw her still closer as a nose is buried in her hair, inhaling deeply. Ava feels a tear drip into her hair, the wetness jarring while the chest beneath her cheek begins to heave with a quiet sob in the space between them.
It takes Ava a moment to realize this isn't how the memory goes.
It takes Ava but a moment longer to understand this flicker is different.
The arms loosen, shift. One hand curls around the back of her neck, strokes through her hair. The other disappears, but Ava can hear more muffled sobs, feel shoulders shaking with the weight of crashing grief.
Her heart breaks to know Beatrice is hurting.
Ava finally opens her eyes, finally lets this moment become real.
She was wrong.
This flicker is not Spain.
It's their apartment in the Alps--their tiny shared bed, their ratty furniture and threadbare blankets.
It's home.
Tears shine in Bea's beautiful eyes and Ava leans forward and kisses them away, salting her own wounds.
"Ava?" Her name is a whisper, a prayer.
"Bea." Ava answers, just as quietly, lest she shatter this moment.
"Ava. I miss you so much, darling."
Ava cups Bea's cheek, Bea's hand reaching up to cover her own.
"I miss you, too, Bea."
Ava leans forward and presses their lips together, savoring each second.
Their foreheads rest together, they breathe each other in.
Ava knows, and Beatrice does, too.
Ava leans forward again to press a kiss to Bea's forehead and falls.
Falls, falls, falls.
Back into nothing.
Back into darkness.
Oh, how Ava wished she were real, solid. How Ava longed to exist again as more than just a memory.