Chapter Text
‘I will show you fear in a handful of dust.’ – T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land.
I love you too.
“Ava, take my hand,” an ethereal voice called out somewhere in the distance, distorted by the ripple of light Ava was emersed in.
Her head felt light and all that remained was the feeling of Beatrice's hands on her. A voice followed her through the portal, the murmur of ‘I love you’ tethering her to some form of reality she was no longer a part of. Ava wasn’t even sure the voice hadn’t been made up by her mind. Likely it was her brain hitting rock bottom from the exhaustion that plagued her as Beatrice passed her through.
I love you too.
“Ava, take my hand you idiot,” the voice came again, firmer this time though it was still distorted.
It was at that moment her brain finally connected with her body just enough for her to lift her hand, reaching it out into the pool of rippling light. As soon as she had passed through the portal arc the pain had vanished, but with such graces came the hollow emptiness of knowing she was lost. Of knowing all that she had left behind.
It was stupid really, for Ava to think she had finally found her place among the sisters. In truth, her life’s joys were always fleeting and lost before they really began. Just like Beatrice. The girl with kind eyes, and a soft, stern voice that left her heart pounding like an entire drumline in her chest.
Suddenly she felt something gripping her hand and tugging her swiftly from the light's grasp into the open, vast sands of a new world.
“Ava,” the voice said. “Ava.”
She recognised it, Ava thought. That voice, ringing familiar like a distant memory.
“Kind of you to join me. It's bleak here on a good day.”
As her eyes blurred against the light of the sky above, a figure slowly came into focus. Black robes, set shoulders and… two glimmering shotguns.
“Mary?” she asked, voice breaking as the woman bled into sight. “You’re alive?”
“Baby girl I wouldn’t say alive,” Mary stated. “But I couldn’t say this is death either. If it is then the books have a lot of explaining to do.”
“Where are we? Can we not just slip out through some kind of Heaven’s door?”
“Heaven’s door?” Mary scoffed, letting out a low laugh. “Care to point me to anything in this Hell hole that isn’t sand? What about this screams Heaven to you?”
Ava cast her eyes around the place. It was vast and empty, dunes of soft cream sand lapping over one another like waves as far as the eye could see. “So no clubs?” she joked. “Could really do with a hard liquor right about now, take the edge off.”
Mary shook her head but bit back a smile that Ava still noted, one that was barely there. “No clubs. We need a plan. If I have to spend any more years here… I’m out.”
“Years?” Ava asked, concerned. Her throat suddenly felt as dry as the dunes that surrounded her.
“I didn’t fall here immediately,” Mary explained. “I was in another place, far more hellish than this one for a long time. A place where I didn’t age. Didn’t do much of anything. Then one day a hand pulled me here, and really, I’m not sure this place is much better.” She laughed humorously, kicking at the sand with her boot. “At least that place had something to look at other than sand.”
“So, the plan is to find a nice door so we can get on out of here?”
“The plan is we find anything that’s not sand. Though I’m starting to think there’s nothing else here.”
“Sandcastles?” Ava joked. Though really she was just using her humour to hide the fact she was scared. This place seemed endless, bland, and consuming in the worst way.
“There’s no water. Or food. You won’t feel hungry but you will still crave a roast dinner and coffee.” Mary began to walk past her. “Are you coming or not?”
Ava ran, trying to catch up with her. “Jeez don’t leave me here!”
“Then hurry up,” Mary called. “How about you catch me up on everything I’ve missed being in this place?”
“You really brought Mother Superion back to life?” Mary whistled.
“Yes. Not intentionally but the halo seemed to channel something.” Something Ava was still grappling to understand. The moment the halo had acted then hadn’t felt like before, instead of her channelling the halo it was almost as if the halo had channelled her.
“And Adriel is…”
“A pain in the ass,” Ava clarified. “But a dead one at that. The issue is his followers. I can’t speak for Lilith anymore… she seems to have strayed from him but whatever tainted her is consuming her. She has changed more than I can explain since you saw her last.”
“Lilith was always one for power. It’s just a shame the power she chose was not of our own light,” Mary said, carding the sand through her fingers as it fell to the ground. “How is Beatrice? You haven’t mentioned her.”
Ava swallowed thickly. “Oh, didn’t I?”
“No.”
“She’s… good. Still kicking ass,” she said, clearing her throat.
“Why are you doing that?” Mary questioned.
“Doing what?”
“Blushing like a twelve-year-old that just held someone’s hand for the first time.”
“I’m not,” Ava scoffed.
“Don’t deflect, you’re bad at it. Always had such an obvious tell. I would suggest never taking up poker when we return.”
“Fine. She’s… uh… probably not all that great right now. Beatrice didn’t want me to leave.”
“Warrior nuns die, Ava. It’s awful but Beatrice will be prepared. She knows how to keep her distance, to protect herself from emotions. We train for it.”
Ava averted her eyes. Protect herself from emotions, something they had both failed in. “We train for a lot of things, it doesn’t mean we don’t sometimes screw up.”
Mary watched her cautiously. “The two of you grew close?”
“I need to get back for her,” Ava said. “I have to.”
“You love her,” Mary realised. “And Beatrice?”
She wiped her tears as she sat up, laughing. “You know I always thought I was in love with-”
“The guy you ran off with? The one I had to chase your ass after?”
“Yes. JC was the first time I opened my eyes to the possibility of that. There I was, so poorly sighted by being trapped for years, confined to that damn bed that I thought he was everything. I thought I loved him.”
“You didn’t?”
“I mean, I was attracted to him. I have eyes,” Ava joked. “And it was hot, passionate.” Even if the one time they had sex on the ship had been.. subpar. “It was something, but it wasn’t love. Intoxicating. With Beatrice we were stuck working in that bar, sharing a bed some nights. Every morning she was there I would wake up to her breath tickling my nose and it took everything in me not to kiss her.”
“As much as you love her, Beatrice is closed off. She’s committed to her place as a sister. She would never-”
“We kissed before I came here,” Ava admitted.
“You kissed Beatrice?” Mary asked, astounded.
“I think she told me that she loved me, but I was already through the portal so maybe that was my imagination. Can’t hurt a gal to dream though, right?” She grinned.
“Sorry, I’m still wrapping my head around Beatrice finally letting down those walls. The girl is like Fort Knox. Do you know how long I’ve waited for her to mess up?” Mary chuckled. “I can’t believe I missed that.”
“Yeah, so that’s what you missed.”
“And Jillian’s son spent years here?”
“Time passes far faster in here than it does out there.”
“Then we should start looking for a way out.” Mary paused. “Did the sisters not try to take the halo from you?”
“I offered but Beatrice refused. She hoped that passing me through would save my life.”
Mary shook her head. “First you kiss, then she willingly throws away the one thing she is meant to protect.”
Ava hadn’t thought of it like that prior. “Do you think she still has a place with the order?”
“She’s their best fighter. Mother Superion wouldn’t dare part with her,” Mary assured.
As the days passed to weeks, then to months, Ava began to dwell on how on Earth Mary has made it through this for years and retained her sanity. There was no one… nothing here. There were no sights to take in, no food to eat, and no people to meld with. She remained shocked that Mary had done so alone for so long. Mary was the only comfort Ava had here, other than her memories that danced behind her shut eyes to sleep.
There was apparently no such thing as nightfall in these lands. Instead, the sky remained cream and bright, overbearing even as sleep weighed down upon them. It made Ava crave the small things, things she never even realised were a gift to behold.
Two years passed. Bland days filled with nothing but walking to keep their minds active. Sometimes they fought, snapping at one another or pushing their bodies into the sand as they tussled, Ava screaming when it all grew to be far too much.
Some days it was Mary helping her down from a crazed edge. Others it was Mary slipping into tense but quiet breakdowns. Ones they would later never speak of, too painful to recall.
The passing of the two years was like watching an hourglass that was never set to end. Slipping, slow and vast, never filling the glass below.
She woke before Mary, stretching her legs out and wiping the sand from her jacket she laid down whenever they rest to sleep on. A makeshift pillow of the most depressing form. It was uncomfortable yet provided more luxury than awaking to sand in her mouth and eyes, grainy and sore.
However, as she ran her hands through the pale sands, she noted something. As her halo burned in her back a breeze took some of the granules. Barely there but nudged by the air. The sand blew from her palm, scattering delicately across the dunes in one direction.
“Do you not fear me? Declares the Lord,” A voice asked, echoing through the skies. “Do you not tremble in my presence? For I have placed the sand as a boundary for the sea. An eternal decree, so it cannot cross over it. Though the waves toss, they cannot yet prevail. Though they roar, yet they cannot cross over it.”
“Jeremiah, Five: Twenty-Two,” Mary said aloud.
“What?”
“The voices, I hear them too.”
“There’s more than one?”
“Two,” Mary clarified. “There has only ever been two. Always bible verses when they do appear, or a single word. This one was new though, they have never spoken of sand before. When I heard them before it was to warn me someone would arrive.”
“Does that not seem odd to you?” Ava asked. “We’re surrounded by sand.”
“Of course, it seems odd. Though I am yet to see a wave or drop of water in this place. You think I haven’t looked? The sands could be metaphorical just like the supposed tides.”
“I think you didn’t know what to look for,” Ava whispered to herself.
“Hey, if you think you’re smarter than me after a couple of years stuck in this place, go ahead. Knock yourself out. There’s nothing,” Mary challenged, sitting up in the sand as she dusted it from her hands and legs.
“No, that’s not what I’m saying,” Ava said.
“Then what are you saying?”
“That whoever those voices belong to may have known we would be here. That I would be here. Time passes differently in the realms, if they could connect how do we not know that these voices don’t know at least some of our future.”
“It’s possible, but it’s just as likely the timelines are fused somehow. Or exist in their own space not relative to one another at all.”
“That doesn’t make sense though, for the two to interact, for Jillian’s son to… There must be some tie other than the portal.”
“Which means what?” Mary asked.
“You said you were pulled here from another realm, right?”
“Yes.”
Ava paced back and forth, the gears of her brain turning. “Then what if you were pulled here to help me back? You said the voices have already been saying things. What has been said?”
Mary spent the next hour recollecting strange and random biblical verses to her.
“For I have placed the sand as a boundary for the sea. An eternal decree, so it cannot cross over it. Though the waves toss, they cannot yet prevail. Though they roar, yet they cannot cross over it,” Ava repeated, the voices helping her with the parts that were missing from her brain, foggy and disjointed. “Maybe that’s our way out?”
Mary sighed, resting her head in her hands. “It’s not a way out. The entry is about obedience, Ava. God compares the obedience of the mighty sea, with the rebellious character of Earth’s people who are far less powerful. The sea never breaks its boundary; it obeys God in all its movements. But humans are not obedient like tides.”
“The seas are no longer obedient though,” Ava whispered. “With global warming, they change, violently. They rise. They decimate.”
“But is that not God’s will?” Mary asked. “The sea could be God's warning; humans are tarnishing Earth.”
Ava shook her head. “It could be, but what if whoever is speaking is telling us that the boundary has a weak spot? That the boundary is susceptible to disobedience just as humans are?”
“And how would we know that?” Mary laughed. “Do you see any neon lights with ‘exit here’ signs flashing above us?”
“No, but look,” Ava said, resting the sand in her palm again. She held it there, waiting.
“Another magic trick?” Mary teased with a scoff.
“Just shut up and watch,” Ava chided. They sat there for minutes, Ava not moving a muscle until her halo glowed, the sand blowing from her hand toward the same direction as before.
Mary stared at it; her brow raised. “Do it again,” she instructed.
Again, Ava balanced a dusting of sand on her palm, watching as it blew once again, across the same route.
“It could be a compass,” Mary said. “The halo working in some way.” Mary stood, grabbing her jacket. “Come on, we shouldn’t waste any more time here. I would kill for any food right now. Hell, I’d even take years old ramen without the flavour packet.”
Ava followed her, heading in the direction the sand blew.
They continued for weeks, trekking until she was sure that she had lost her mind. “I was wrong,” Ava said weakly. “There’s nothing in this damn place!”
“There’s no breeze here,” Mary argued. “The air is stiff, and your halo is interacting with the sand somehow.”
“She’s right,” a woman’s voice said.
“Not another bible verse?” Ava yelled out, snapping at her exhaustion.
Before she could get another retort in, two images appeared before her. Their forms appeared as blurred lights, growing like a flame on a wick until two forms merged in their place.