Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

day 1

The apartment is miniscule compared to the world Lilith grew up in and palatial compared to the rooms in convents she lived her adult life in.  There are two bedrooms, a decently-sized kitchen, even a tiny balcony with a view across the city.  Ava insists that she can see the tower of the convent over the rooftops of the nearer buildings, but Lilith can barely see them and she’s an actual full grown adult compared to a pipsqueak like Ava, so she knows Ava is lying.

“This is a terrible idea.”  She folds her arms over her chest and rolls her shoulders-- Jillian had found a way to disguise the metallic scales that had crept across her skin, but the wings still ache when she keeps them compressed and hidden away for too long-- and glares at Ava and Beatrice.

“I agree,” Beatrice says, mirroring her posture.  Ava, next to her, rolls her eyes and bumps her hip against Beatrice’s. 

“It’s just for a little while,” she says cheerfully.  She pops up on her toes and kisses Beatrice on the cheek, and Lilith regrets being so willing to help Beatrice save Ava’s life all those months ago.  Sure, maybe it was the right thing to do and maybe Lilith had made enough bad violent choices that she can’t really judge, but also: Ava’s incessant joy is annoying, and patience has never been one of Lilith’s greater virtues.

“I’m not doing this,” Lilith says, snatching the duffel bag at her feet up and preparing to teleport away.

“Stop.” Beatrice has always had a way of commanding respect, soft-spoken as she may be, and sure, Lilith has superpowers now and could just decide to ignore her and do what she wants, but instead she winds up dropping the bag and propping her hands on her hips, glaring right back.  “You need to lay low for a while and Mother Superion felt it prudent that you stay here until we--

“Make sure that you’re not going to kill everyone at the convent,” Ava interjects, which is stupid because if Lilith wanted either of them dead all she had to do was teleport them over an ocean and drop them in.

“--ensure that you can be trusted,” Beatrice carries on, which is also stupid because of course she can’t be trusted, even if she has every intention of helping the order, even if she won’t give them-- Beatrice and her stoicism, Superion and her calm, Ava and her fucking everything-- the satisfaction of knowing that directly.  “So that is what we-- all of us-- are going to do.”

“You can’t stop me from leaving,” Lilith says, only a little petulant.

“But you’re not gonna,” Ava throws back.  “Because you want to stay.”

“I do not,” Lilith says indignantly.

“Yeah, okay,” Ava says.  She curls a hand around Beatrice’s elbow, props her chin on her shoulder.  “Now that we’ve settled that, Bea, can we--”

“Ava,” Beatrice says, soft, exasperated, even as her hand comes up to cover Ava’s on her arm.  “We need to discuss--”

“But we have reservations,” Ava says, and Beatrice softens, and Lilith considers vomiting because they are horrible lecherous little cretins and they’re so in love it makes her want to walk into the ocean.

“If you both stop being so coupley and leave me alone, I promise not to do anything violent while you’re gone.”  It’s the absolute most she can promise, and more than she wants to offer-- she can already tell that she hates the next door neighbor and his loud music-- but if it’ll save her from having to witness Ava looking at Beatrice like she put the stars in the sky, she’ll take it.  Sure, they were separated on pain of interdimensional death for a terribly long time just as they admitted their love to each other, but also: they’re annoying, and Lilith is tired.

“Deal,” Ava says quickly, and yanks at Beatrice’s arm so hard she stumbles.  Lilith stares incredulously as the way that Ava bodily drags Beatrice-- the most lethal thing on two legs in the entirety of Europe except perhaps Lilith herself-- towards the door.  “Wifi code is by the door, food’s in the fridge, bye!”

Lilith stares after them as the door nearly slams on Beatrice’s foot with how quickly Ava hustles them out of the apartment and suddenly finds herself blessedly alone.  She glares at the door and swipes her duffel up, stalking to find her bedroom.  The first door she tries is obviously their room, judging by the one bedside table with a sloppy stack of books and a coffee mug and a baseball cap and the other completely ascetically unadorned, and she rolls her eyes and closes the door, only to slam to halt when she opens the other door to find a neatly made bed, a bedside table with an alarm clock and a neatly bundled-up charging cable and a tablet in a plain black cover.

She looks back towards the other room, with Ava’s fingerprints all over it, and then over again to this one, so painfully Beatrice it should have a nametag on it, considers the way they’re so absurdly in love it nearly glows brighter than the stupid halo and the fact that they’ve been living together since Lilith pulled Ava back through the portal three months ago, and lets out an incredulous noise.

“Unbelievable.”

day 2

The first two days are uncomfortable at a brand new scale.  

After Ava and Beatrice came home from their dinner, flushed cheeks and entwined fingers and Beatrice smelling an honest to God rose, to find Lilith sulking on the couch waiting for someone to explain where she was supposed to sleep, there had been a painfully long protracted moment where neither of them seemed to realize that this situation was only going to work if they shared a bedroom; Lilith had stared at them and the way Beatrice had flushed straight up to the tips of her ears and Ava had rubbed a hand over the back of her neck and announced that she was taking Beatrice’s room just because it was easier to move her shit than Ava’s.

The next morning, she’d woken and found Beatrice in the living room, well before sunrise, circles under her eyes and a cup of coffee cooling in her hands, and turned right back around and gone back to bed for another two hours.

Ava sleeps late, somehow, despite Beatrice being the world’s earliest riser, and shuffles out of the bedroom to the chilly silence in the living room, Beatrice engrossed in a tablet except when she casts mistrustful glances towards Lilith, who’s pretending to read one of Beatrice’s pretentious French novels and is instead considering teleporting herself to the Azores.

“Morning,” Ava mumbles, fingertips dragging along Beatrice’s shoulders, pausing to press a kiss to her hair on the way to the kitchen.  Beatrice looks up from her tablet, absolutely smitten as she watches Ava pour herself coffee and stretch, and Lilith earns herself a gold medal for not throwing a book at her.  

Ava curls into Beatrice’s side on the couch and Beatrice’s arm settles around her shoulders blindly, Ava leaning her head onto Beatrice’s shoulder and Beatrice adjusting her hold on the tablet until Ava can sling her legs over Beatrice’s.  Lilith un-earns her medal after only thirty seconds when she throws a pen-- not a book, thank you very much, she should at least get a silver medal for that-- at them.

She avoids them for the rest of the day, taking over the entire balcony for herself and lounging in the sun with her feet propped up on the railing, eating her way through Ava’s snack stash and reading more of Beatrice’s books, ignoring them when they announce that they’re heading to the convent.  

She successfully avoids having to deal with them all day and well into the evening, finishing a second book and starting on a third-- Beatrice, as obnoxiously uptight and overachieving as she is, has excellent taste in literature-- as the summer sun starts to slip down past the horizon when the front door unlocks and they tumble inside, Ava’s hands wound in the collar of Beatrice’s jacket and Beatrice’s barely managing to get the door shut before shoving Ava up against it.

Lilith cranes her head back to glare at them through the balcony door and clears her throat.  Either they don’t hear her, or Ava has some serious kinks to work out, based on the way she grabs for Beatrice’s ass right after Lilith clears her throat a second time.  Lilith rolls her eyes and stands up, stretches, teleports into the kitchen right next to them.  

Ava shrieks like a completely normal mature adult and Beatrice, less appallingly, has a more appropriate reaction of shoving Ava towards the door and swinging a left cross at Lilith’s jaw.  She lets the hit land-- it takes more than a punch for her to feel pain these days-- and raises an eyebrow, glares down at her.

“Lilith,” Beatrice huffs out, drawing herself up to her full height-- not that it doesn't her any good; Lilith’s always had that advantage-- and glaring, as if her mouth isn’t ruddy red and jacket completely askew from Ava’s hold on it.  “Seriously?”

“If you’re going to make me live here,” Lilith says with a huff of her own, glaring down her nose.  “Don’t do that.”

She considers staying to watch them both continue flushing red with embarrassment-- Beatrice particularly is too easy to rile up, and flushes red straight up to the tips of her ears-- but instead teleports back to the balcony because Ava is shoving her way around Beatrice with her intent to shove at Lilith written across her wide-open face.

Maybe a little awkward is worth it for the sake of annoying the hell out of the both of them.

day 10

Lilith, the note in front of the kettle reads in Beatrice’s precise hand, as neat and perfect as the rest of her.  Lilith stares at it appraisingly for long seconds, glances around the empty apartment-- their bedroom door is closed but the shoes by the door are missing and both of their sets of keys hanging above them are also gone-- and considers ignoring it.

Please know that when we say it’s your turn to do the dishes after dinner--

Lilith scoffs.  “Dinner” was an ambitious way to put it, as cooking was apparently the only thing that Beatrice has never managed to figure out.  

--it doesn’t mean ‘throw all the dishes and silverware in the garbage.’  We would appreciate it if you would simply rinse them and put them in the dishwasher instead.

Under the neatly inked B ending the note is a less-precisely scrawled seriously we are renting this place please don’t fucking throw away the dishes from Ava.

day 11

It’s late afternoon by the time she makes it back from her run, miles clicking away methodically as fatigue builds up and fades away, bitten back by whatever it is that heals her so quickly.  There’s a mild burn in her calves as she climbs the stairs, digging for keys and considering how much Beatrice would glare at her if she just used a claw to jimmy the lock open.  

The door swings open and she immediately drops her keys, right as Ava yelps out “Oh, shit,” and topples back from where she’d been straddling Beatrice’s lap on the couch, only saving the glass coffee table by phasing through it.  Beatrice scrambles up to standing, wiping at her mouth and clearing her throat loudly, as if Lilith didn’t just blatantly see that one of her hands had been creeping up Ava’s spine under her shirt or that there’s a hickey on the side of her neck.

“Jesus, Lilith, can’t you knock or something?” Ava phases back out from under the table and flops with a whump onto the couch.  Her hair is a disaster, clearly as much Beatrice’s fault as the fall’s, and her cheeks are ruddy, and Lilith is fairly certain the halo is still glowing in her back.

“I have keys,” Lilith says, rattling them for good measure.  She stops herself from slamming the door, but only barely.  “I could have just teleported in, you know.”

“Do not teleport into our apartment,” Beatrice says, shrill and entirely unlike herself, and Lilith folds her arms over her chest and raises an eyebrow and considers the possibility the Beatrice’s head might actually explode if Lilith needles about the fact that she just had her hand up Ava’s shirt.  It probably would, and would be worth it for the entertainment factor alone, but then Lilith would have a furious warrior nun coming after her.

“It’s not my fault you two can’t keep it in your pants in the common areas,” she says, throwing caution to the wind.  

“I-- we--” Beatrice splutters.  

“Lilith!” Ava yelps.  

“Next time you feel the need to have sex in the living room, put a sock on the door or something,” Lilith says indignantly, sweeping past the both of them and the way Beatrice has steam coming out of her ears and Ava is babbling nonsensically.  “I’m using the shower.”

She locks the door behind her and starts the hot water, fully intending to use it up.  Maybe some cold showers would do the both of them good.  It would certainly save the final shreds of her sanity.

day 19

The deeply familiar sound of Beatrice audibly swallowing her frustration-- she’d done it so often, before, when they were younger and things were simpler and Lilith’s life was still on track, when Mary would crash into trainings and wreak havoc or Camila’s cheer would distract her from lessons or Lilith would lose her temper with any one of the less worthy recruits-- is so deeply calming.  Lilith can hear her behind her, can practically see her pinching her nose and reigning in her irritation.

“Lilith,” Beatrice says calmly.  “Could you please, for the love of all that is good, not leave wet towels on the floor in the bathroom?”

Lilith, who is fully aware that she was the only person at the entire convent besides Beatrice who never once got a scolding for an improperly made bed or untidy quarters, who knows that Beatrice knows as much and is absolutely certain that Beatrice knows she left the towel there for the express purpose of annoying her, ignores her and flips another page in her book.

day 21

It’s late into the night, so late it’s almost morning, and Lilith can’t sleep.

It’s not new.  Since Adriel-- since she changed-- she’s slept less and less.  Her body needs it less and her mind refuses it, filled with uncomfortable thoughts and worse memories.  It was easier, almost, before Jillian had found a way to mask the visuals of the change, when she could see the monster in the mirror; now, she just sees Lilith, familiar and disappointing, with nowhere to hide.

She stares at the ceiling of Beatrice’s room-- her room-- for as long as she can before giving up and stalking out to the kitchen, intent on raiding Beatrice’s tea stash, but pulls up to a halt abruptly.  Ava is on the couch, one knee pulled up to her chest and chin resting on it, sitting in the dark and staring out at the window, a mug of tea on the table in front of her.  The halo, dormant and dark, still stands out on the skin of her back, only half-hidden by her shirt and glinting minutely from the edges of citylight that reach into the apartment.

Lilith freezes, and Ava reacts slowly, blinking slower over to where Lilith is standing awkwardly halfway between her bedroom and the living room.  It’s an improvement, objectively, to the way that she and Beatrice had been so on guard around her for so long, but the improvement itself is unsettling enough that Lilith’s skin crawls.

“Can’t sleep?” Ava says after a long moment.  

“Something like that.”

Ava offers half a smile, shrugs one shoulder.  “Same.”

Lilith stands uncomfortably for too long before sighing and halving the distance to the couch.  “Are you alright?”  

Not that she cares.  She doesn’t, she’s only here because there’s a war coming and the order doesn’t trust her at the convent full time and if there’s anyone who can keep her in line, as much as she hates to admit it, it’s Beatrice and the warrior nun who’s forgiven her more times than she deserves.  She doesn’t care about the fact that Ava looks troubled and is sitting alone in the dark at half three in the morning.

“Yeah, just-- insomnia, I guess,” Ava says unconvincingly.

“You’d think Beatrice would be better at wearing you out,” Lilith says, because fine, maybe she cares a little bit that Ava has looked exhausted since she came back, a weight dragging at her shoulders that has nothing to do with the halo fused to her spine and everything to do with a brewing war they don't know how to win that she so blatantly feels responsible for, even when she’s bursting with energy and besotted with Beatrice.  

Ava chokes on the inhale, eyes bugging out, and she glares at Lilith when she pounds none-too-gently on her back.

“Fuck you,” Ava croaks out.

“I don’t think it’s me you want for that,” Lilith says, rolling her eyes and continuing on towards the kitchen.  The kettle is still warm and she busies herself with making a cup of tea for herself while Ava is busy blushing about her lack of maidenly virtue in the living room.  She brings the kettle back with her and pours more water into Ava’s tea, settles as far away as possible on the couch.  It’s not that far-- the couch isn’t that big-- but the principle matters.

Ava curls her hands around her mug, plucks at the dangling label on the teabag.  Lilith watches, sipping on her tea before it’s cooled because she can-- being halfway to an interdimensional gatekeeper demon has some perks; teleportation and wings are the obvious ones, being able to drink scalding tea is a less obvious one-- and waits.  Patience was never one of her virtues, but she’s putting in the effort with it.  

“What’s bothering you so much?”  She’s putting in the effort theoretically, at least.

Ava sighs, unconcerned with Lilith as she so often is these days.  It’s almost nice, almost like before, in that brief time between mistakes, after Lilith had come back the first time and before she’d lost herself in the changes and found her way to Adriel and even more bad decisions; when they’d been at Jillian’s facility and Lilith had apologized and Ava had smiled and they had felt like friends for the first time.  

“Nothing’s wrong,” Ava says, and then frowns.  “I mean.  Minus the whole pending apocalypse, at least, I guess.”

“You’re a terrible liar,” Lilith says frankly.

“And you’re a bitch,” Ava says with precisely zero bite, and sighs again.  “It’s just-- things are good, you know?  We’re-- happy, even with everything.  Bea is just… you know, Beatrice.  She’s incredible, and I love her, and--”

“Yes, you’re both in love and living in disgusting loved-up bliss where I have to witness you about to have sex on every surface of this apartment.”  Lilith rolls her eyes, and Ava flushes, shifts uncomfortably.

“That’s the thing, though,” Ava says, staring down at her tea and picking at the string on the teabag nervously.  “We’re not-- we’ve never-- not yet--”

Lilith stares at her profile and the brilliant flush that’s spread down her neck-- her neck that has a hickey on it because apparently Beatrice is a biter, which honestly should not be surprising given how pent-up everything about Beatrice is-- and nearly drops her tea.  Ava clears her throat, sets her tea back on the table, climbs to her feet, paces and drags her hands through her hair and scrubs her palms over her face.

“Are you telling me,” Lilith says slowly.  “That you two were separated for ages after realizing you were in love with each other, and have been living together alone for two months before this, and haven’t once-- you haven’t--”

“I know!” Ava whisper-shouts.  “I know!  But I just--” She cuts off with a frustrated, strangled noise.  “I don’t want to push, okay?  She was a nun, for fuck’s sake.”

Lilith snorts into her tea.  “So was I.”

“What does that have to  do with--” Ava’s mouth snaps shut and she points dramatically at Lilith.  “Sister Lilith,” she says, delight spreading across her face and clearly distracting her from her own emotional melodrama because Lilith overplayed her hand and gave her something else to focus on and that something is Lilith.

“No,” Lilith says sharply.  

“Oh, yes,” Ava says over her, flinging herself back onto the couch.  “Tell me everything.”

“I will not,” Lilith sniffs.  She’s aiming for posh and disaffected and absolutely makes it work and doesn’t sound petulant in the slightest.  

“How old were you?”  Ava props her chin in her hands, eyes wide and ecstatic.  “Was it before you took your vows?  After?  Who was it?”

“Ava,” Lilith says, in that voice that generally makes people shit their pants, the one she learned from her mother.  

“Lilith,” Ava parrots back, because Ava has never been afraid of Lilith and it's as aggressively irritating as everything else about her.  “Come on!  I just told you-- it’s only fair.  One personal thing for another.  Even trade.”

“Oh my God,” Lilith mutters.  “I hate you so much.”

“Sure, whatever, who cares.”  Ava brushes her words aside physically, undeterred.  “Either you tell me or I start asking a lot of questions.”

Lilith glares at her, considering teleporting away just to get out of the conversation, and scrambles for a cutting response that will shut Ava up entirely.  She’s too slow, though, because Ava is back on her feet and pacing excitedly back and forth across the living room.

“I’m thinking it was before you joined the church,” Ava says, ticking off years on her hands and scrunching her face up in thought.  “You’re Lilith, you were the only nun in the order half as uptight as Bea, and you always were trying to be perfect.  No way you broke your vows.”  She pauses, slots a glance towards Lilith.  Lilith glares down into her tea and pointedly ignores her, which has the opposite of the intended effect because Ava gasps again, points at her, jumps up and down twice.

“It was after?” She slaps a hand over her mouth, eyes wide.  Lilith is sure that the halo is about to light up out of pure emotional overload based on how excitable Ava suddenly is.  “You badass, oh my God.”  

“Yes, thank you, I love talking about all of my failures, including breaking my vows,” Lilith says peevishly.  She’s going to murder Ava.  She’s going to murder her and no one could blame her for it, halo-bearer or not.

“Pfft,” Ava says.  “Half of the entire religion is horseshit and we have definitive proof, pretty sure that means stupid shit like vows of celibacy are useless.”

Lilith opens her mouth, ready to deliver a withering takedown, only to pause, her mouth snapping shut as she wonders why she is still embarrassed about having broken a vow that broke her first.  

“Oh,” Ava says suddenly, faintly.  She stands up straighter, hands falling to her hips, head tilting in that way it does when she’s putting something together.  Lilith moves to put her tea down, unsure if she’s aiming to lunge at Ava to shut her up or teleport to Moscow out of desperation, but Ava’s eyes are wide and understanding and it pins Lilith in place, halfway off the couch.  “Mary.  It was Mary, wasn’t it?”

The handle of the mug in Lilith’s hand crunches down into porcelain powder.  She barely catches the rest of the mug before it falls, sloshing a third of the tea that was left onto her shirt and the arm of the couch.

“Oh, shit,” Ava mumbles, hurrying into the kitchen and cutting the corner by phasing through the wall, presumably just to show off that she can master her powers while Lilith is over on the couch breaking mugs because she can’t control her own strength, and returns with a roll of paper towels.  “Here, let me-- the couch--”

“It’s a leather couch,” Lilith says peevishly, glaring at the wad of paper towels encroaching on her personal space and the arm attached to them.  She swipes them out of Ava’s hands and wipes violently at the arm of the couch and the tea spilled on it.  

“Yeah, but it’s a rental and if Bea doesn’t get her security deposit back on this place she’s gonna shit a brick.”  Ava stands awkwardly in front of Lilith, hands held out like she wants to help, and Lilith rolls her eyes and shoves the wad of used paper towels back to her.  “Gee, thanks.”

“Take them and stop staring at me like I’m going to break,” Lilith snaps.  Ava holds her hands up, pacifying, and rolls her eyes, takes the paper towels, discards them on the coffee table as she drops back onto the couch.  “Go away.”

“I live here,” Ava says, waving Lilith’s glare away.  “So, you and Mary?”

“Shut up.”  Lilith is going to murder her.  Holy war be damned.  They can win without Ava, surely.

“Was this-- when was--”

Lilith glares harder at her, wishing her stupid otherworldly superpowers included being a gorgon who could kill Ava Silva, specifically, with a look.  Unfortunately, the universe hates her and glaring at Ava does nothing but give Ava time to put her brain to use for once in her absurd life.

“After you came back,” Ava says slowly.  “Before the Vatican.  Right?”

“I despise you,” Lilith informs her, choosing to ignore the fact that she has teleportation powers and could have left this conversation at any point.  

“No, you don’t,” Ava says dismissively.  “You and Mary.  Honestly, I should’ve known.  The way you two were going at it when you were both chasing me down--”

“We weren’t going at it,” Lilith says, offended.  She was a sister warrior, the rightful next halo-bearer, trained from childhood to wield power and own it; she didn’t go at it with anyone, much less--

“How long did you love her?” Ava asks, derailing Lilith’s entire existence and setting it on a spiral.  “I know she and Shannon-- before--”

Ava cuts herself off, an unbearably sympathetic look on her stupid face and Lilith knows-- knows-- it’s because if she looks even half as stricken as she feels then Ava’s stupid gentle heart must be running into overdrive.

“It doesn’t matter,” Lilith says, voice thick and heavy.  The words catch and ache in her throat, lodging in her chest and freezing her in place.  “It doesn’t matter.”

Ava is quiet for long seconds, quieter than Lilith knew she was capable-- which is uncharitable, she knows, because Ava’s grown, just like they’ve all grown-- while Lilith drags herself back towards calm and away from the careening discomfort of the fact that Ava knows now, that she pulled Lilith’s thoughts from her head and read them as easily as Lilith had been reading Beatrice’s stupid pretentious novels.  

“I’m sorry,” Ava says eventually.  “That you lost her.”

“We all lost her,” Lilith says, venomous and furious, because venom is easier than grief, because fury is simpler than loss.  

“It’s not the same,” Ava says, and Lilith nearly crumples in on herself.  “I think about losing Bea and-- I can’t.  I don’t want to imagine it.  So I’m sorry.”

Lilith glares at her own knees, unable to meet Ava’s pity.  “Can we please go back to talking about the fact that you two have been together for months and still haven’t had sex even though you so clearly want to?”

Ava squeaks, slapping a hand over her mouth and also punching at Lilith’s shoulder.

“Oh, I’m sorry, my sex life is fair game but yours isn’t?”  It’s easier, so much easier, to put it away and lock it down and turn things back on Ava.  It’s easier to focus on the minor inconveniences of the fact that Ava and Beatrice are idiots than the landslide of loss and grief and guilt-- she should have stayed, she should have teleported back, she should have grabbed Mary and taken her with them all-- that is Mary.  “I have to live with you two, you know.  And you have a new hickey every other day.”

Ava slaps a hand over the bruise blooming on her throat, eyes bugging out comically.  “We-- I just--”

“Don’t want to push.”  Lilith rolls her eyes.  “Why not?”

“Why-- because I’m not a dick, Lilith, that’s why!”

“You’re in a relationship with the most buttoned-up repressed former nun in the history of the Catholic church and you think she’s going to make the first move?”  Lilith raises an eyebrow and shoves her now-empty, half-broken tea mug into Ava’s hands and stands, plucks disdainfully at the damp spot on her shirt from the tea she’d spilled.  “I always knew you were an idiot.  Nice of you to prove me right.”

She leaves Ava spluttering in the living room and teleports back into her own room.  Let Ava stew in her own emotions for a while.  It’s what she deserves after stirring up Lilith’s so rudely.

day 22

“Ava--”

“I’m gonna kill her,” Ava grinds out, phasing out of Beatrice’s grip and stalking across the apartment towards the balcony where Lilith is lounging in the sun, book ignored in favor of half-drowsing in the afternoon warmth.  “Hey!”

Lilith opens one eye as the balcony door slides open, too comfortable to bother sitting up.

“Lilith, I swear to God,” Ava says, seething, practically vibrating.  The halo flares in her back, and Lilith’s body, filled with interdimensional magic that can’t help but react to the halo, tenses for a fight.  

“Ava,” Beatrice says again, a hand between her shoulderblades, surely about to get scalded by the halo.  “It’s not that--”

“It is, Bea!”  Ava grabs the book out of Lilith’s hands and flings it back into the apartment; Beatrice barely ducks in time and the spine of the paperback hits the wall with an uninspiring crack.  “Just because she’s-- you can’t just let her--”

“Can someone please tell me what this is about?” Lilith says, bored, even though she knows exactly what it’s about.  She’s not about to tell them that, though.

“Oh, what’s it about,” Ava slings back at her.  “You know exactly what I’m talking about, you shit.”

“I assure you I do not,” Lilith says, lying through her teeth.  

“So, what, someone else just walked into our apartment and ate the dessert I’d specifically bought for Beatrice?  Is that what happened?”

“It might even be possible that someone teleported,” Lilith drawls out, wiggling down more comfortably in the chair.  

Ava shrieks, like a banshee, like a demon, like a child, and lunges at her.  Lilith watches Beatrice grab her around the waist and haul her back inside and slide the glass door shut, watches until Beatrice has calmed her down enough that Ava has settled for glaring at her through the glass, and then hauls up the plate with the last few bites of tiramisu left on it and spoons one deliberately into her mouth.

The halo pulses out once with Ava’s yell and Lilith teleports to the rooftop, close enough that she can hear the crumble of plaster where the halo had surely cracked at least one of the living room walls, and settles down with her legs dangling over the side to finish the tiramisu.

She doesn’t hear Ava phasing up through the ceiling, doesn’t realize her mistake until it’s too late and Ava’s boot hits her back-- politely below the base of her wings, but only barely-- and sends her careening off the side of the building. 

Chapter Text

day 31

There’s something on the fridge.

Lilith pauses, halfway to the cupboard with Beatrice’s tea, and frowns at it.  Beatrice is meticulous about what’s allowed to be tacked to the fridge, presumably because Ava would, if left to her own devices, paper over the entire thing with takeout menus and useless mementos; instead, there’s an artfully arranged collection of photos, a few postcards, a half dozen novelty magnets that Ava is so delighted by that Beatrice’s supposedly iron resolve crumbled.  

And, now, there’s something new.  It’s bright and colorful, a circle divided into sections, with magnets reading trash and dishes and dusting and a thousand other inane things that Lilith refuses to care about.

She glares at it for a long moment and then carries on to the tea cupboard.  She lasts halfway through the water boiling before pivoting back towards the chore wheel and frisbeeing it out the open balcony door on her way back to her room.

day 33

The afternoon spent at Jillian’s lab is largely useless, but succeeds in what Lilith really wanted, which was to have her remove the masking technology for a few hours so her skin can stop itching under the hidden scales, and to get her out of the house.  She even drove instead of teleporting, just to add an extra two hours in each direction.  Beatrice and Ava had been on the couch all morning, a rare day off for the both of them, adorable and revolting with Ava’s legs slung casually across Beatrice’s lap from where she’d stretched out across the couch, one arm behind her head and Beatrice’s hand lazy on her stomach as they babbled incessantly about whatever surely-doomed plan they had for the coming apocalypse and traded horrifyingly sappy looks.

Lilith had tried to drown herself in a shower as a result, but the hot water ran out eventually.  It had been over an hour, and she was sure they’d have left or moved or done something to be less annoying, but instead she steps out of the bathroom-- towel left deliberately on the floor as payback-- and finds them in yet another compromising position on the couch, Ava blanketing over Beatrice’s form and hiking one of Beatrice’s legs up around her hip, mouth on her collarbone and Beatrice’s hand in her hair.

“I’m leaving,” Lilith announces loudly, loudly to cut through whatever heady stupidity they’ve lost themselves in.  To Lilith’s great dismay, Ava, who at this point is used to Lilith walking in on them, doesn’t fall off the couch and instead just lets out a frustrated groan and drops her head onto Beatrice’s shoulder and blindly throws a middle finger up at Lilith.

“I hate you so much,” she says, muffled into Beatrice’s collarbone.  Beatrice who has gone stiff as a board, hands yanked down to her sides, staring mortified up at the ceiling.  “Just once could you--”

“I’m leaving,” Lilith says again.  “I’m going to see Jillian.  I will be gone for hours.  Please get this--” she swirls one hand ineffectually towards them and the way Ava’s shirt is hiked halfway up her abdomen and one cuff of Beatrice’s sweatpants has rucked up almost to her knee, presumably from when she’d latched her leg around Ava like an uncontrollable heathen with bad taste.    “--out of your system in that time.”

She sweeps into her room, half-slamming the door because Beatrice hates it when she does that, dresses and ties her hair back, stalks back out to find them unmoved except that Beatrice has finally unfrozen and has her arms wrapped around Ava.

“You two are revolting,” Lilith informs them as she whooshes by on her way out.  

It’s been nearly ten hours since then, the late summer sun already set and the city quieting by the time she makes it back.  Surely they will have reached a point where they’ve stopped making out on the couch, or at least have had the decency to move it to their bedroom.  

The apartment is dark and quiet when she steps inside cautiously.  There are shoes and keys by the door, the only indication that they might be here, but it’s oddly silent.  Normally at this hour Beatrice will have settled into the armchair in the corner with a book and tea and her bloody rosary because she still, somehow, prays; Ava would be stretched out on the couch, feet propped up on the arm and tablet in hand.  But the living room is dark, the apartment silent-- not even the horrifying sounds of them kissing quietly that she hears so often that she will be haunted by it for the rest of her natural and unnatural life-- and Lilith pauses, breathes, shuts the door silently.

Her boots are quiet on the floor, claws on one hand extending slowly.  It’s been quiet for months, since Adriel, since Ava’s return, an uneasy quiet of a war on the horizon as they wait for dimensions to blur and some untold violence to cross over.  It’s been quiet, and Lilith has been lazy, lounging around this too-small apartment like a housecat, not training, not keeping herself sharp, and if something like Adriel is in the apartment and got the better of Beatrice and Ava she’s not sure she could take it on.

She slides through the entryway to the living room, the kitchen clear, and finds the door to their bedroom open like it so infrequently is-- the one measure of decency they apparently have, even if they can’t manage to keep it closed and keep their shenanigans behind it-- and the living room is empty.  

Claws on her other hand extend when the curtains by the balcony door flutter in the open air, and her eyes narrow, back aching with the need to let her wings free because they’re the best defense she has.  She keeps them sheathed, flexes her hands, steps soft towards the balcony door.

She pulls up abruptly and nearly screams out her annoyance because they’re there.  Asleep.  Ava sprawled across the lounge chair Lilith spends most of her days in, Beatrice corkscrewed into her lap and wrapped up in Ava’s arms.  

Lilith glares down at them, peaceful and asleep, and is sure her eye is twitching as much as the muscle in her jaw that aches the harder she clenches her teeth.  Of course they’re fine.  Of course they just fell asleep on the balcony and left the door unlocked so anyone could get in.  Of course they’re stupid and annoying and loathsome little cockroaches who she’d absolutely not been terrified had been hurt.

She stalks back into the kitchen and grabs a water bottle, wrenches the lid off-- water splashes on the kitchen floor, and she deliberately does nothing to avoid it, walks through it and tracks it through the living room.  She slices the whole top of the water bottle off, opening it wide, and glares down at the both of them before dumping the entire bottle directly onto Beatrice’s head.

She’s halfway back to her bedroom door by the time they’re upright and spluttering and realize it was her, the shriek of indignation from Ava and the louder-than-usual fury from Beatrice music to ears as she slams her door behind her.

day 41

“Lilith!” Ava pounds on the bedroom door, and Lilith glares at it from where she’s doing pushups on the floor and ignores her.  “I know you can hear me, you shit, so either open up or I’m phasing in.”

Lilith sighs and continues with her pushups, curious to see how long Ava lasts before actually phasing in.

Not long, apparently, because Ava appears through the closed door by the time she’s finished two more reps.  “You rang?” Lilith says without looking up.

“One day I’m going to punch the posh accent right the fuck out of you,” Ava mutters.  

“I count the days with great anxiety.”

“God, you’re such a dick,” Ava says, swinging a kick at her that Lilith teleports around easily, reappearing back in the same spot.  There’s no way Ava didn’t know that’s exactly what was going to happen, and Lilith takes it as confirmation that Ava is once again being melodramatic for no reason.  “We need to talk.”

“We really don’t,” Lilith says, back to her pushups and putting on a great show of ignoring Ava.

“We super do,” Ava throws back.  “What exactly do you think the words take out the garbage mean?”

“That Beatrice has finally come to senses and dumped you,” Lilith says, just to get a rise out of her, and is already teleporting away before Ava’s foot swings forward again.  

“It means take the fucking garbage out,” Ava says, edging towards shrill with frustration.  “Why is this so difficult for you?”

“I’m sure I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Lilith gives up on the pushups and sits back on her heels so she can watch the way Ava gets increasingly more infuriated and shrieky as the conversation progresses.  She’s read almost all of Beatrice’s books and still isn’t involved in the meetings at the convent and beating up misogynists gets boring after a while, so she needs to find her entertainment somehow and if happens to be, theoretically, teleporting around the neatly tied-off garbage bag by the front door that Beatrice had left for Lilith to take out since she was the next person leaving the apartment that morning, then, well.  It’s really on them for not including her in their all-important war meetings.

“I’m going to kill you.”  Ava points at her, shrill and sharp.  “After this stupid war is over I am going to find you and I am going to kill you so slowly.  Don’t think that I won’t.”

“How many fights have you won against me at this point?” Lilith tilts her head and inspects her fingernails, just to be particularly annoying.  

“More than you, asshole,” Ava says, sugar sweet.  “Or do I need to go find that mace I smashed your face in with?”

“Ava,” Beatrice says, quiet and scolding, appearing in the doorway.  

“She started it!” Ava says, wheeling around to face Beatrice.  

“We should both know better by now than to expect anything else,” Beatrice, sounding exactly like every one of Lilith’s more horrifying tutors as a child, the ones who’d passed the pressure from her parents straight onto her even when she was barely old enough to understand what it meant, and Lilith swallows the urge to flinch.  Beatrice raises an eyebrow at her as one hand curls around Ava’s wrist, and Lilith stares back because Beatrice knows exactly what she’s doing.  

“Reverse psychology won’t work on me,” Lilith informs her, entirely maturely and not at all whining, because it won’t and she hates taking out the garbage anyways so there’s no reason she should have to be the one to do it.  

“Of course not,” Beatrice says in the exact same tone, and Lilith considers the possibility of dropping her over the Arctic ocean.  “Why would I think it could?”

She turns without waiting for an answer, not letting go of Ava’s hand and pulling her along, and Ava-- mythically powerful Ava, a superpower on two legs, Ava who thrice met a god who scared Adriel into submission and walked away-- lets herself be pulled along, because Ava is the most powerful being on the planet and is also completely whipped when it comes to Beatrice.

It doesn’t stop her from turning back to glare at Lilith and make a deeply Beatrice-unsanctioned gesture at her.

day 48

Lilith walks into the apartment and immediately teleports her bedroom, her scandalized yell lingering in the air behind her.  She slams opens her bedroom door just to slam it for effect, because that was more of Ava’s chest than she ever wanted to see.

The sound of them fumbling loudly in the kitchen, Beatrice’s mortified voice as she so clearly tries to stay calm while also half-yelling “Where’s your shirt, Ava?” is almost enough to make up for it.

day 50

Lilith flashes back into the apartment with a sigh and a roll of her shoulders.  She promised Beatrice she wouldn’t do it, but Beatrice and Ava are out at the convent, at some war huddle/training/planning situation or another that Lilith was once again not invited to in spite of her being the only other one they know who’s been to Reya’s dimension, and she’s handling her frustration in an extremely mature manner: wandering the city until she finds collections of gangbangers or scumbags harassing women and beating them up in empty alleys, and then teleporting back into the apartment explicitly because they told her not to.

They won’t know, but she will, and if she wants to be petty then so what.

“You said you wouldn’t do that,” Beatrice says, and Lilith’s claws flash out reflexively as she whirls around to find Beatrice standing in the entryway to the kitchen, hands in her pockets.

“What are you doing here?” Lilith says by way of response.  She flexes her hands and pulls her claws back in, shakes her hands out.  

“Ava is working on extending the range of the halo’s pulse with Mother Superion,” Beatrice says quietly and looking for all the world like she’s informing Lilith that, actually, Ava died yet again.

“Shouldn’t you be there bribing her with snacks and inappropriate promises?”  Lilith teleports over to the front door and take her boots off-- she doesn’t like walking on dirty floors and is not doing it because Beatrice and Ava asked her to-- and leans against the kitchen counter, watching as Beatrice turns slowly.

“She-- we thought it best if I wasn’t there,” Beatrice says, doing such an absolutely terrible job of masking the hurt in her voice that Lilith can’t help but roll her eyes.

“I see.”  She rolls her head on her neck, cracks her knuckles.  It’s been too long since she worked off some steam in a fight, even if not a single person was able to land a hit on her.  “I assume she told you it was for some reasonable-- by Ava standards, at least-- reason and yet you’re still here sulking because you took it personally.  Like an idiot.”

Beatrice bristles, shoulders stiffening and hands clenching visibly in her pockets, and Lilith laughs, hard and bright.  It draws a flinch from Beatrice and Lilith almost feels bad for a split second before deciding she doesn’t care.

“She said it was distracting,” Beatrice says, slipping back into her sulking posture, and Lilith deflates because a sad Beatrice is considerably less interesting than an angry one.  

“Given that she had a hickey on her collarbone this morning that definitely wasn’t there yesterday and that I absolutely cannot unsee, I cannot imagine how you could argue,” Lilith drawls out.  She wishes, suddenly, viscerally, that Mary were here.  Mary who brought out the best and worst of Lilith, Mary who was so reasonable that even Beatrice could never argue against her, Mary who would have taken one look at Beatrice and Ava and their absurd dancing around each other for weeks now-- months now-- and laughed so hard she cracked a rib.  

Her jab about the hickey gets nothing from Beatrice, only the barest flicker of tension between her eyebrows, and Lilith sighs.

“Either start talking or stop sulking, please,” she says.

“I’m not sulking--”

“You’re absolutely sulking and it’s pathetic,” Lilith says frankly, half because it’s true and half because Beatrice is so put together, so composed, so incredibly not pathetic that it’s a rare opportunity to land a hit like that.  

“I just--” Beatrice cuts herself off, mouth thinning into a straight line, hands appearing from her pockets so she can fidget with her own fingers.  It’s unsettling to witness, because Beatrice, Sister Beatrice, the best of them all, the one that even Lilith in her most honest moments could admit should’ve been the next in the succession after Shannon instead of Lilith herself, doesn’t fidget.  

“I just,” Beatrice starts again, settling herself with a sharp breath.  “I wonder, sometimes, if-- if she regrets it.  This.  Us.”

Lilith can’t stop the bark of a laugh that snaps out from between her teeth.  Beatrice flinches back, confusion written into the uncertain line of her jaw and the widening of her eyes, and Lilith laughs again.  

“I’m sorry,” Lilith says, absolutely not sorry at all.  “But are you stupid?”

Beatrice makes an indignant noise, quiet and dignified and so very offended, and stands up straighter, glaring at Lilith.  “I am not--”

“Are you joking, then?”  Lilith swipes at a tear forming in one eye, barely stopping herself from laughing more.  “She walked into a doorway yesterday because you stretched and she couldn’t stop looking at you.”  

A flicker of a smile flashes across Beatrice’s face, soft and dopey and honestly embarrassing to witness because Beatrice should have some measure of dignity and not find it endearing that the person she’s so in love with is such a disaster, and Lilith scoffs.

“Just because she finds it hard to focus on training instead of you doesn’t mean she doesn’t want you,” Lilith says with an air of finality.  

“But if she can’t even train around me, how are we meant to-- when we have to enter a real combat situation--”

“Somehow, I think the life-or-death circumstances of it all might help you.”  Lilith rolls her eyes and wishes she drank because she cannot imagine a stupider conversation to be sober for.  “Seriously, Beatrice?  She spent two years in another dimension with a god and you were all she had eyes for the minute she made it back.”

Her throat tightens for a brief moment, a cascading failure of what-ifs rumbling over her-- what if she had gone back for Mary, what if they’d had more time, what if she’d kept her fury and her head in check when Shannon died and spent more time with Mary, admitted to herself where her inability to leave Mary be came from and had at least had more than one too-short conversation, one too-short night when Lilith was only half herself and Mary was lost in her own grief before losing her-- and weighting down her overpowered shoulders.

There’s a brief flash of a moment, where Beatrice looks sympathetic, looks worried, looks like she wants to do something absurd like tell Lilith she’ll be okay.  Lilith hasn’t doubted for a second that Ava must have told Beatrice exactly what she figured out about Lilith and Mary, because Ava is terrible at secrets and worse at discretion.  There’s no way Beatrice doesn’t know, and Lilith clears her throat sharply, pushes back against the even the potential of sympathy from Beatrice.

“Regardless,” Lilith says, squaring her shoulders and pulling herself up to her full height so she can pull the advantage back to her side of the kitchen.  “You--”

“We haven’t had sex,” Beatrice blurts out, and then claps a hand over her mouth, ears flushing an almost unhealthy-looking scarlet, and Lilith considers teleporting to Japan.

“Oh, God,” Beatrice mutters, pressing her hands over her own cheeks and staring down at the floor.  “I can’t believe I-- to you--”

“Trust me, I didn’t ask for you to tell me that, either,” Lilith says.  She folds her arms over her chest and leans back against the counter again.  

“I just,” Beatrice says, and then sighs, rubs at her forehead, sighs again.  “Every time I think we’re going to-- I mean-- she just.  Stops.  Every time.  I think she wants to-- but she stops every single time.  I don’t understand what I’m doing wrong.”

Lilith stares at her, wondering which of all of her multitude of sins got her stuck here, in this apartment, somehow having to listen to the both of them lament this non-problem to her because they won’t talk to each other.  She just stares, mouth half open and absolutely about to explain exactly how stupid they’re both being, but Beatrice is talking again.

“I obviously don’t want to push her into anything she doesn’t want.”  She’s pacing now, even though the kitchen is absolutely not big enough to pace in.  Lilith even politely pulls her feet back so that Beatrice won’t trip over them, not that she gets any thanks for it.  “I understand that everything about our relationship is…unorthodox.  And that she spent so long paralyzed, and was thrown into this whole world with the halo and the order and Adriel and Reya and-- I understand all of that, and I respect it.  If she said she wasn’t ready, I would obviously not think anything of waiting.  But she seems to want to-- every time we-- but then she just-- stops.”

She draws up to an abrupt halt, dead in front of Lilith.  “What if it’s me?” she says softly.  “What if she just doesn’t want-- with me.”

She starts pacing again, not waiting for Lilith to answer.  “I don’t know why I’m telling you,” Beatrice mutters.  “Of all people-- Camila would--”

Lilith, mouth half open, shuts her mouth and frowns.  Well.  If that’s how Beatrice wants to be, then Lilith certainly isn’t going to help.  

Beatrice’s phone rings from where it’s charging on the counter, Ava’s name flashing onto the black screen-- because of course fastidious, repressed Beatrice wouldn’t even have a picture of her on her phone-- and Beatrice freezes in place.

“What do I do?” she says, as helpless as Lilith has seen her since Ava was dying in her arms all that time ago.  

“Why would you ask me, of all people,” Lilith parrots back at her, childish and petulant.  Beatrice blinks at her, realization dawning, because the only person worse at hiding her emotions than Beatrice is Ava.  

“I’m sorry,” Beatrice says, so sincere it makes Lilith want to vomit.  “That was-- I’m sorry.  For saying that, and for unloading on you.”

“You should answer.”  Lilith points at the still-ringing phone.  “Else your girlfriend might have a panic attack.”

Beatrice smiles, small and steady, and unlocks the phone before it goes to voicemail.  Ava’s voice sounds cheerfully on the other side, so loud that Lilith can hear it, because Ava is loud in everything she does, in her voice and in her actions and in the way she loves Beatrice so much it makes the halo on her back look like a night light.  

“--picking up food, do you want Indian or Lebanese?”

Beatrice smiles wider, that soft smitten smile she gets when she and Ava have been apart for more than five minutes, and Lilith scoffs aggressively-- too aggressively, perhaps-- and rolls her eyes.

“I’m leaving,” she says loud enough that Ava can almost definitely hear, shoves her feet back into her boots.  Maybe she can find more assholes to beat up.

Beatrice is speaking softly into the phone, soft and in love, as Lilith ties her boots, and Lilith scoffs again.  

“Lilith,” Beatrice says, phone clicking as she sets it down on the counter, and Lilith freezes. “I’m sorry for what I said.  I-- we were friends, once, I know.  And Ava has forgiven you.”

Lilith stands up slowly, turning slower, ready to bolt if Beatrice takes this so far as to be sweet to her.

“I don’t know if I’m there yet,” Beatrice carries on.

“Oh, thank God,” Lilith mutters, and Beatrice laughs, the same quiet restrained laugh she always had at the convent.

“But I do want to-- try,” Beatrice says.  “It might take me a while, but that’s no excuse to be unkind to you.”

Lilith stares at her, unsure of the direction this veered into.  “Why?” she blurts out, like a completely intelligent person.

Beatrice shrugs, inhales slow, exhales loud.  “Because even if I don’t like the choices you made, a part of me can understand them.  Because we all should have seen how you were hurting, after you came back.  Because you’ve put up with staying with us for weeks just because it was Mother Superion’s condition and you could go anywhere in the world but you haven’t.”

She shrugs again.  “Because you were my friend, once.  You were Ava’s friend, and all of ours.  And you came back to us.”

Lilith flinches back, but Beatrice doesn’t move, doesn’t retreat, doesn’t push or pull or ask for anything from Lilith.  She tilts her head to one side, calm and easy, like Lilith isn’t completely at a loss of what to say because of all of them, of everyone she’s ever hurt, Beatrice was the one she was sure would take her hatred to the grave.  Not because of the order, or Adriel, or Mary, but because Lilith hurt Ava, and Beatrice loves Ava so much it fills entire buildings and some things are unforgivable.  

“I--” Lilith starts, and then stops.  Her hands flex into fists and release, claws extending and retracting with the movement, again and again.  

Beatrice smiles at her, quiet and small, and takes one step back, and then another.  “Ava is bringing home dinner,” she says, as if Lilith isn’t suffering from the worst mental whiplash of her life.  “If you’d like to join us to eat.”

Lilith lets out a mildly undignified noise and then rubs at her forehead, sighs, shakes her head.

“Talk to her, will you?” she says instead of speaking to anything else Beatrice has said.  “Just-- talk to her.  You’re both stupidly in love with each other, which I would know because I had to watch you say goodbye.  So talk it out.”

She could offer more detail, she could, could explain the miscommunication, the stupidity of it all, the absolute insanity of the fact that of the three people in this apartment she’s somehow the one most in-tune with what’s happening in Ava and Beatrice’s relationship.  She could, but she’s not a saint.  

Besides, some things need to be figured out on their own.  She toes out of her half-tied boots and brushes past Beatrice, ignoring her entirely when she asks half-heartedly for help with setting the table for dinner.

day 51

Beatrice is normally awake when Lilith comes out in the morning, already on her second cup of tea for the day and engrossed in her tablet.  Today, though, the kitchen is cold and empty, the living room just as empty, and Lilith raises an eyebrow towards their closed bedroom door.  Maybe Beatrice finally got her shit together enough to talk to Ava, in which case Lilith is personally of the opinion that she deserves a Nobel prize.

She shuffles into the kitchen and to the tea cupboard, setting the kettle to boil before pulling down the tin of Beatrice’s favored breakfast tea.  There’s just enough left for one cup, and she casts a glance back towards the closed bedroom door, back to the tea, and then helps herself to all of it before deliberately putting the empty tin back into the cupboard.

An hour later, when Beatrice finally makes her way out with Ava in tow and Lilith is already out lounging on the balcony with another book, Lilith counts her breaths until Ava’s indignant “Lilith!” echoes through the apartment, and smiles at the sky and teleports away.

Chapter Text

day 53

Lilith teleports up to the roof, unable to sleep after her conversation with Beatrice earlier in the week.  Her skin crawls uncomfortably, as much at the fact that her appearance has been masked for so long-- just like her wings, the scales start to ache and itch the longer they’re hidden away-- as the fact that Beatrice, of all the people who she’s hurt who should never care for her again, is considering forgiveness.

She’s about to sit on the edge of the roof, legs dangling over the side like always, when the balcony door slides open below her, and she rolls her eyes.  There really isn’t a moment of peace from either of them.

“--what’s wrong?” Ava’s voice floats up, gentle and careful, and Lilith freezes in place.  

“Nothing’s wrong,” Beatrice says, just as gentle, just as careful, and if Lilith could teleport without them hearing her or noticing the flash she absolutely would.  Unfortunately, she’s stuck, and for the first time is noticing that there is, in fact, no roof access for this building.  “I just--”

“What is it?”  There’s the sound of fabric shifting, unsteady exhales, steadier inhales.  “Please, just talk to me, will you?”

Lilith fights the urge to teleport down and knock their heads together, frustration already boiling over just for ten seconds of listening to them.  Absolutely appalling that the future of humanity and the entire planet lays in the hands of two imbeciles who can’t string together one single coherent thought between them.

“I love you,” Beatrice says, like a moron, and Lilith nearly slaps her own forehead.  

“I love you, too, babe, you know that,” Ava says, easy as anything.  God help them all if Ava is the one who makes this conversation happen at all.  “But you’re not okay, I can see it.  Is it because--”

“It’s not you,” Beatrice says hurriedly.  Lilith swallows the yes it is that she wants to yell out and wishes the apocalypse would start now if it would save her from this situation.  “I just-- I don’t want you to ever do anything you’re uncomfortable with.”

There’s a momentary pause, one where Ava is surely making the stupidest thinking face known to man.  “I know,” Ava says slowly.  “I’ve never-- what’s going on?”

There’s a long, painfully protracted silence, one where Lilith is absolutely certain that the halo is about to let out a burst of power at any second because nerves make Ava’s control slip and even Lilith is getting nervous waiting for Beatrice to respond.

“Is it--” Ava starts in a small voice, and then stops, breathes in audibly, exhales.  “Since Lilith’s been staying here, and she took your room.  Are you-- does it bother you that we’re sleeping in the same bed?”

Lilith actively bites down on the inside of her own cheek to stop from yelling at how abominably stupid they are.

“I know we’re taking things slow,” Ava carries on in that same small voice, and Lilith doesn’t need to be in the same room as them to know that she’s making that sad puppy face, the one that Lilith would almost be impressed with if she did it for manipulative reasons but no, that’s honestly just how her face works when Beatrice is anything less than one thousand percent happy.  “I can sleep on the couch--”

“No!” Beatrice says, so sharp that even Lilith nearly takes a step back, but there’s no sound of movement from the balcony, no indication that Ava even flinched.  “I mean-- no, please, I don’t want that.”

“But you’re not saying that isn’t the problem,” Ava says, unsteady.  “Just tell me, please--”

“I love you,” Beatrice says abruptly, and Lilith rolls her eyes so hard that she gives herself a headache.  

“Beatrice,” Ava says, tired and aching.  

“Nothing is wrong,” Beatrice says, lying so terribly that even dead destroyed Adriel is probably rolling his eyes at her.  “I promise.  I don’t want to sleep without you.”

“Something is bothering you,” Ava says stubbornly.  “I know you, Bea, I know that something is wrong.”

There’s a long silence, one where Lilith is sure that they’re looking lovingly and sadly into each other’s eyes and both considering how lucky they are for their terrible embarrassing relationship.  She nearly teleports away just to escape the suffocating weight of their sappy uselessness; it’s only the fact that the sound would absolutely alert them to the fact that she’s been up here the whole time and she’d have to sit through another one of Beatrice’s lectures that stops her.

“It’s me,” Beatrice says eventually.  “You’re--incredible, and you’re just-- good, at being in a relationship.  I’m still learning.”

Ava lets out an incredulous noise that, thankfully, masks the snort Lilith is unable to stop from escaping her.  “Bea, babe,” Ava says.  “I have no idea what I’m doing.  I spent most of my life before you in an orphanage run by people who hated me.  I’m new as hell to this.”

“But you know how you feel,” Beatrice says carefully.  “I’ve only ever been good at ignoring what I feel, not-- doing anything with it.”

“I love you,” Ava says, firm and serious and entirely unlike herself.  “There’s nothing wrong with you, okay?  I love you and the fact that you organize the takeout menus and make up your half of the bed even if I’m still asleep and that you dust the tops of the light switches--”

“They get dirty just like everything else!”

“-- and that you think that that’s a totally normal thing to think about,” Ava carries on, sounding for all intents and purposes like she just listed out actual endearing qualities instead of a bulletproof set of reasons why Beatrice is absurd.  “And I love us, okay?  You’re great at this.  Give yourself some credit.”

There’s a small noise that could come from either of them but Lilith knows, without a doubt, that it had to come from Beatrice and that idiotic besotted look she gets on her face when Ava manages to do something reasonable like make tea without burning it or do the laundry without staining all the whites pink.

She can’t take it anymore.  Lilith grabs up an empty beer can-- no telling how it got up there, given the lack of roof access, but she’s not about to look a gift-distraction in the mouth-- and flings it northward.  It hits the next building over, probably scaring some poor soul to death, but it’ll be enough to distract them, and she teleports back to her room.

Unbelievable.  Humanity is doomed.

day 54

The apartment is quiet when Lilith comes back in from the balcony after having finished her book.  Perhaps they’ve both left, heading back to the convent or wherever it is that they go, leaving her with some peace and quiet.  She steps more fully into the living room and sighs, rolls her shoulders, lets her wings unfurl and stretch.  If Beatrice were here, she’d give Lilith a look, the one she gives her when Lilith does something that they both know is to intentionally annoy her, but Beatrice isn’t here and it feels good to let them extend and relax.

She pulls them back in after a long minute and heads to the kitchen, and finds that Ava is doing the dishes, headphones in and shoulders jerking in what, presumably, she considers to be dancing.

Lilith considers ignoring her as she strolls into the kitchen, intent on making another cup of tea for herself.  She’s done her best to ignore both of them since having unfortunately unheard their pathetic conversation on the balcony, lest she do something charitable like explain to them both how stupid they’re being and make them think she’s gives a shit.  

Instead, because Ava is using the sink and Lilith can’t refill the kettle until Ava is done using the sink, she steps up behind Ava and dumps her mug into the sudsy water from over Ava’s shoulder, splashing water up all over Ava’s front.

“What the-- Lilith.”  Ava has found a way in recent weeks to say Lilith’s name exactly like a curse, and it’s startlingly hilarious to witness every time because halo or no, Ava full of anger and glaring up at her is like watching a mouse stare down a panther.  “Are you fucking serious?”

Lilith shrugs languidly in that way that she knows irritates Ava to know end and strolls away, sacrificing her need for tea in favor of escaping before Ava does something absurd like expect her to contribute to washing the dishes.

Something wet slaps into the back of her head.

Lilith’s claws extend instinctively, wings nearly bursting out, and hse pivots and catches what is apparently the wet sponge before it hits the floor.  Ava’s headphones are around her neck, sudsy fists planted on her hips and a glare that would scare anyone who wasn’t Lilith into submission twisting her face.

“What is your problem,” Ava starts, seething, and Lilith considers the sponge in her hand and flings it back at her before she can finish.  It hits Ava full in the face and Ava shrieks like a child.  “Seriously?”

“You threw it first,” Lilith says archly.  “What did you expect?”

The halo starts to hum ominously, light building behind Ava in a dangerous glow, and Lilith folds her arms over her chest and arches an eyebrow.

“You’re really going to risk calling a tarask here because you can’t handle a sponge?”

Ava freezes, breathes, clothes her eyes.  “You’re right,” she says sweetly, and then launches herself across the small kitchen and slams a shoulder into Lilith’s stomach.  

Air bursts out of Lilith’s lungs explosively, because Ava is the only person on this planet carrying power from the other realm and the only one who can do any damage to her, and crashes into the fridge.  She plants her feet and latches her arms around Ava’s stomach and heaves, flipping her weight and sending her crumbling down onto the floor with a yell.  

Ava scrambles to her feet and Lilith dodges smoothly around her, grabbing a wet dishtowel from the countertop and flinging it at Ava.  It slaps straight into Ava’s face and she balls it up and hurls it back at Lilith, scooping the sponge up and throwing that as well.  Lilith dodges the towel but the sponge slaps wetly into her cheek, and she lets out an indignant snarl, dunking the sponge in the water and teleporting behind Ava so she can crush it atop her head.  

She teleports away, intent on dunking another towel in the water for extra ammunition, and reappears by the sink only to find Ava-- Ava who could always manage to figure out where to be to catch her teleporting, like an asshole-- waiting for her with a newly-dunked sponge; she smiles sweetly again and smashes it into Lilith’s face and throws a balled-up towel that misses her and sails towards the front door right as it opens and Beatrice steps inside.

“Ava!” Beatrice says, in her properly scandalized voice, wet towel hanging from her shoulder.  Lilith swipes soapy water away from her eyes and smirks down at Ava, because whether or not she won the fight Ava’s the one getting yelled at and looking distraught in that way she always does when BEatrice is annoyed with her.  “And you!  Both of you!”

“Why are you assuming I had anything to do with this?” Lilith says as poshly as she can.  “It’s not my fault your girlfriend is a little gremlin--”

She doesn’t get to finish, the towel suddenly in Beatrice’s hands and a dangerous glint in her eyes as she twists it into what is in fact likely a lethal weapon.  Uh oh.

Lilith teleports away to the bathroom and scrambles for the door, barely managing to close and lock it before the trailing end of the wet towel snaps against it.  She slumps against the door and lets out a sigh, and resigns herself to hiding in there for at least an hour.

The upside, at least, is that if she’s in here then they don’t have access to a bathroom.  She swipes water off her face and smiles.  It’s the little victories.

day 56

“That’s it!” Lilith snaps out, throwing her book down and not even able to appreciate the fact that the both of them flinch from where they’re curled up on the couch.  They don’t even bother looking embarrassed anymore when she walks in on them trading lazy kisses on the couch.  “I can’t deal with this anymore.”

“I beg your pardon?” Beatrice extracts herself from Ava-- mostly, at least; her hand stays on Ava’s leg like it was made to sit there-- and sits up straighter, leveling her with a look that would send most people running for the hills.  Unfortunately for her, Lilith isn’t most people, and she’s only a tiny bit afraid of Beatrice.  Not that she’ll ever give her the satisfaction of knowing that.

“Yeah, what the hell?” Ava wrinkles her nose, stares curiously up at Lilith, her arm curling easy around Beatrice’s shoulders as she sits back and stares up at Lilith.  She doesn’t even have the decency to look slightly intimidated, because she’s an absolute gremlin and if she didn’t have a halo in her back Lilith would’ve dropped her from the stratosphere weeks ago.

“You two,” Lilith says, seething.  “I swear to God--”

“Do we still swear to God?” Ava says conversationally.  “Like, theologically speaking.”

“Well, one could argue that even aside from the power Adriel leant the Vatican that religion has historically given large facets of humanity comfort, so whether or not it’s real--”

Lilith lets out a frustrated yell and lunges for the both of them, teleporting all three of them to the rooftop pool two blocks away and dropping them in it.

“What the fuck,” Ava half-yells, half-gargles, flailing around like the particularly uncoordinated spidermonkey she is.  

“Lilith!” Beatrice gasps out as she surfaces.  

“You two,” Lilith says sharply, pointing at the both of them from where she’s standing on the edge.  “I am sick and tired of walking in on you almost having sex all over the apartment.”

“It’s our apartment!” Ava bellows.  The halo glows in the water, dangerously bright, bright enough that Beatrice is distracted from glaring at Lilith to swim over and curl a hand around Ava’s wrist, murmur something soft and calming and probably revolting in her ear in an effort to calm her down so she doesn’t summon a host of demons down on them.

“And you have an entire bedroom and yet you two refuse to spend any time in it except to actually sleep, because you haven’t had sex yet and don’t know how to talk like adults about it!” Somewhere, distantly, Lilith wishes wryly that her mother could be here to witness this latest fall from grace.  If the demon blood and scales and wings didn’t disappoint her into an early grave, then surely doing something so uncouth as yelling at her friends about their sex life on a stranger’s rooftop would absolutely do it.

“Lilith!” Beatrice hisses out, just as Ava splutters incoherently.

“No!” Lilith snaps out, so irritated that her control wavers and her wings burst out of her back.  She points one wing at Ava with a snarl.  “You are so convinced that because Beatrice was a nun she couldn’t possibly also be a mature adult who knows whether or not she wants to have sex, never mind the fact that she left the church for you.”

Ava gapes at her and nearly slips underwater in her indignation, and Beatrice blushes up to the hairline, determinedly glaring at Lilith instead of looking at her partner.

“And you!”  She whips her other wing around to point at Beatrice, so fast it waves ripples into the water.  “You’re so worried about the fact that Ava’s life before the halo was in a hospital bed that it somehow has escaped your notice that the second she had a chance she fucked that pathetic festival bro in a closet on a ferry and that she looks at you like she wants to eat you alive.”

“Lilith!” Ava yelps, now redder than Beatrice, and she lunges towards the edge of the pool, halo glinting as it lifts her out of the water.  Lilith is faster, though, launching herself back with a powerful stroke of her wings.  

“What, you’re telling me she didn’t know?  You two tell each other everything--”

“Of course she knows, you dick,” Ava says.  “But that doesn’t mean it’s any of your fucking business--”

“You thought I didn’t want you?” Beatrice says, completely derailing the way Ava’s stalking towards Lilith, and Lilith folds her arms over her chest with a smug smile when Ava nearly falls over with how quickly she turns around to face Beatrice, who’s treading water and looks completely stricken.  “You thought that I didn’t want to-- that--”

“I didn’t want to push,” Ava says with a groan, dropping down to sit on the edge of the pool and dropping her head into her hands.  “I just--I didn’t want to assume, you know?”

“Ava,” Beatrice breathes out, propelling herself across the pool with smooth strokes until she’s right in front of Ava.  Lilith wants to leave, wants to be as far away as possible from their sappy terrible everything, but if she leaves then there’s no way they’ll actually finish this fucking conversation and she will never know a day of peace so long as she lives with them.

That she can teleport to anywhere in the world and live wherever if she so chose is not a factor that’s willing to entertain, and she resettles her shoulders and pulls her wings back, glares harder to make up for it.

“You really thought I didn’t want you?” Beatrice says softly.

“To be fair, apparently you thought I didn’t want you, either,” Ava says, finally dropping her hands from her face.  They fall limp into her lap, and Beatrice reaches for them immediately, because of course she does.  Few things in a world of disappointment have disappointed Lilith as much as the way that Beatrice, the best of them all, is so utterly besotted with Ava of all people.

“You’ve been through so much,” Beatrice says by way of explanation.  Her hands curl around Ava’s, release, settle on the soaked denim of her jeans.  “And you’ve always been so open about what you want.”

One of Ava’s hands lands on the side of Beatrice’s neck, slides up, drags along her cheek, and Lilith sighs forcibly and redirects her glare up at the sun.

“Shut up, Lilith,” they both say in unison, and if she smiles then so what, it’s not like they’ll notice, not with how busy they are gazing adoringly into one another’s eyes.

“I’m leaving,” Lilith says to the sky.  “I will not be back until incredibly late tomorrow afternoon.  Please be adults and handle this situation accordingly before I get back and, going forward, be decent enough to keep it in your bedroom, for God’s sake.”

She teleports back to their balcony before either of them can say anything, fully intent on keeping to her word and heading to Jillian’s villa-- she can take the masking off, and fly around the countryside until her wings no longer have kinks in them from being pulled in for so long, and have a decent’s night sleep in one of the nine thousand bedrooms without having to worry about walking in on them making out on the couch when she needs to use the bathroom.

“Lilith, you bitch,” sounds distantly from the other rooftop, Ava shrieking out her indignation at the fact that Lilith left them there on a stranger’s building, and Lilith smiles, bows at the figure flipping her off from two buildings away, and disappears into the apartment.

Maybe living here isn’t so bad after all.

day 58

It’s been a day and a half, but just to be sure Lilith makes sure to stomp loudly up the stairs and also to rattle her keys in the lock before opening the door cautiously.

There are shoes by the door, keys hanging from the wall, and she peers further into the apartment, ready to teleport away the moment she sees them tangled up on the couch or in the kitchen or up against a wall, but there’s nothing.  She closes the door behind her, lets out a sigh of relief, sets to making herself a cup of tea.  Maybe she can finally have some peace without having to worry about Ava and Beatrice and their not-sex life taking over the apartment.

She’s halfway to her bedroom when what is unmistakably Ava’s voice rises and cracks through the door, the “Fuck, Bea” so loud Lilith nearly drops her tea.  A rhythmic creaking follows, a quick crescendo until it’s unavoidably loud, and Lilith stares with the utmost contempt at their blessedly closed bedroom door.

Living here is terrible.