Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Ever since she was young, Ava found solace in praying. 

Not religious praying, not the ‘In the name of thy Father’ bullshit or the trite little ‘amen’ tagline that begs for blessings from an indifferent and frankly useless God, but praying in the most basic sense. Unfiltered, barely-formed expressions of desire, of pain, of emotions good and bad, all offered up and tossed into the ether, no expectation of fulfillment or response tied to any of it. 

She’d been doing it long before she even knew what it really was, before a brief stint in Catholicism had warped its meaning, before it became an intentional paradoxical act of rebellion against whatever Powers That Be that put her in this truly fucked-up situation. Even now, as she stares up at the dismal ceiling above her bed, Ava finds herself praying silently before the last dregs of her consciousness spiral down the drain for the night. 

She prays for a lot of things, because she wants a lot of things. Frances to choke on her own venom, for one thing. A basic-ass audiobook reader, for another. Use of her limbs would be pretty fucking nice, too. 

But none of those desires and hopes and dreams even come close to what’s at the top of her list, the thing she’s prayed for for over a decade now, an idea she’s been chasing ever since she opened her blood-crusted eyes to find herself trapped on this bed — escape. Escape that could come in one of two forms. 

The first: a life. 

Any life. God. Seriously, any kind of life. She can stay quadriplegic. She can stay wheelchair-bound. She just wants to get the hell out of this ironically godforsaken place, off of this goddamn bed, and live some semblance of a life outside in the real world. She doesn’t have to be coddled, she doesn’t need unconditional love. Just something, somewhere far away from here so she can experience the most mundane activities without any malicious nuns flapping over her head like the aggravating bats that they are. 

In her wildest daydreams, Ava conjures up an impossible scenario where genius tech billionaire Jillian Salvius — pioneer in neural interfacing and badass boss lady worthy of idolization — somehow stumbles upon this armpit of an orphanage, takes an immediate liking to Ava and her tragic handicap, and adopts her on the spot either out of the goodness of her heart or in some kind of charitable publicity stunt. Ava would take the latter, no questions asked. She’ll take the exploitation if it means she can access Dr. Salvius’s rad tech. She’ll beg for it if she has to.

But she’s not delusional; something like that would never ever ever ever happen. No one wanted her as a kid. No one wants her now. No one would ever want her for as long as she lives. 

So she spends more time praying for the second, more feasible form of escape: death. 

Preferably a quick and painless one, but hey, she’s getting less picky by the day.

Because, really, who can blame her for wanting that? She’s got the whole damn nightmare package: orphaned, paralyzed, verbally and emotionally abused by caretakers, crushed by boredom, force-fed Bible verses. She knew by the end of year one of her stay that no distant relative would be coming for her, and by year three that no stranger would ever willingly have her join their perfectly ordinary family. She’s a freak, plain and simple. Paralyzed, useless, completely dependent on others. And she’d learned from an early age that being polite, humble, and obedient really didn’t get her anywhere in life, especially not with these twisted old nuns. 

Which is like…yeah, fine by her. Less pretending, more getting under everyone’s skin; fuck niceties, let’s all be miserable together! But sometimes she imagines what it’d be like if she ended up in an actual care facility. Would she be praying for escape there? Would she be praying for death?

It’s a curse, really — to know what she’s missing out on and not be able to lift a literal finger to do anything about it. 

And it’s like…she doesn’t want to die. It’s just that she’s so fucking tired. Tired of fighting back against the nuns, tired of being angry at the universe, tired of living this half life and wasting away in a shitty bed in a shitty room in a shitty, shitty building, tired of wondering why she’s been kept alive for this long.

With a grimace and a sigh, Ava closes her eyes, ready to end another hell of a day. No, she doesn’t want to die. But she sure as hell doesn’t want to continue living like this.

None of that matters, though, because in the end, she doesn’t have a choice; she really is stuck here at the mercy of these miserable old crones for all eternity. The only actual escape she’ll get to experience is in her dreams, where she can imagine herself floating away from this wretched place, free from the confines of her body, just drifting away, afloat on the waves, being carried off into absolute nothingness —

“Ava?” 

— ah, damnit. 

She drifts reluctantly back to shore and opens her eyes again to the dismal ceiling.

It’s Diego, her latest roommate. He’s only a few months into his stay here, but Ava hadn’t expected him to stick around for even that long; he’s young and cute and has a cheeky smile fit for a pamphlet cover. Adoption agencies would probably snap him right up if he didn’t have the immune system of an infant.

In the sanctity of their room, however, behind closed doors when it’s just the two of them, he’s the complete opposite of a sickly orphan. He’s brighter. Kinder. Honest and open, somehow still clinging to that youthful optimism despite the soul-sucking nature of this place. And talkative. So, so very talkative and animated and goofy — a perfect match to her own energy, which Ava loves. 

But now, as he calls her name through the dim lighting and stuffy silence of the room, he sounds all subdued and serious and somber, which Ava doesn’t love. 

“Are you sleeping?” he asks in a hushed whisper.

As tempting as it is, she forgoes a sarcastic quip. “No, I’m awake.” Her response is met with a long stretch of silence. “Why? What’s up?”

Another minute passes before he speaks again, his voice somehow smaller. 

“You won’t…you wouldn’t ever leave, would you? You wouldn’t leave me alone here?” 

It’s a ridiculous question considering her condition, and a little out of left field considering they were cracking jokes and howling with laughter just hours ago. But he sounds scared, like this is a genuine fear of his that he’s been sitting on for who knows how long, and if Ava’s being honest, she knows better than to question the unpredictability of impossible scenarios. 

Shit. She’s not good at this. Comforting others, she can do easily — Diego isn’t her first younger roommate, and she’s had plenty of practice playing the older sibling role using sympathy and a bit of humor to cheer the others up when they were going through rough patches. But when it comes to her, her well-being and continued existence, Ava doesn’t really know how to balance self-repulsion and self-acceptance.

She wants to be cared for and cared about. She also can’t stand the thought of anyone being burdened with her weight.

“Well, where would I go, bud?” she asks, and then nods towards her body. “How would I go?”

“I dunno. I dunno, but it just feels like…” In the darkness, he seems to shrink in on himself. “Like maybe one day I’ll wake up and you’ll be gone.”

Ava frowns, caught up by such a possibility. If by some miracle she’s given an opportunity to leave, she would never do so without saying goodbye to Diego first. But she would definitely leave, wouldn’t she? She loves the kid, they’re practically siblings now, but she wouldn’t sacrifice her freedom to stay in this hellhole to keep him company.

Man, she’s the worst. Maybe it’d be better for her to die. No, fuck, that would still mean abandoning the poor kid.

“Nah. Nah, I’m stuck here,” she assures him. She hates how utterly defeated that statement sounds to her own ears. The reality of it sinks deep into her chest, a cold weight of dread pinning her even more firmly to the bed. “I’m stuck here, so I guess that means you’re stuck with me forever. Sorry dude, I don’t make the rules.”

That earns a short breath of laughter from the other side of the room, and Ava feels the tiniest bit better about it all. At the very least, she has someone who wants her around, someone who’ll miss her when she’s gone. 

That, for now, will have to tide her over.

Chapter Text

When Ava comes to, she’s walking. One foot moving in front of the other, steady pace, steady movement. Walking. On her own.

She can’t quite recall how or when that came to be, and every time she tries to remember, the memory slips away from her like a fading dream. It’s strange that it’s her head that feels useless now — full of fog and haze and not responding the way she wants it to, if at all — while her body, either from muscle memory or from some pent-up desire to haul ass in whatever direction it sees fit, is the one on overdrive. 

She looks down at her feet, at her body, in motion. She’s walking. She’s upright and she’s walking. 

Okay, so…miracles can happen, apparently? Jeez, all right. Sincere apologies for doubting the Big Man Upstairs.

And Ava doesn’t know what the fuck is happening or if this really is an act of God, but she’ll take it. She’s walking. She’s walking. The sheer absurdity of being able to do things on her own is almost incomprehensible to her. She’s moving her limbs. They’re like, actually responding to her brain! Wild! And she can feel things. Reach out and touch things and feel them under her fingertips. She can feel the rough pavement beneath her bare feet, the balminess of the air around her, the uncomfortable tackiness of her shirt sticking to her back —

Ava frowns down at herself. Orphanage clothes. She doesn’t remember walking out of St.Michael’s, and even though nothing is making sense right now, she’s pretty sure she would remember something as significant as that. She’s been dreaming of breaking out of there for years, and to achieve it through impossible means like this? There’s no way she’d forget that. 

But if she didn’t come from there, then where —?

Her feet stutter in their trancelike movement as she recalls a fragment of an image. A basement. A…church basement? Yes, that’s right; she remembers seeing a nun. Not a St. Michael’s nun, but still definitely a nun.

That’s all Ava can manage to piece together, and even that’s dissipating like smoke.

Smoke! She remembers smoke. Red smoke. Or was it mist? Hang on, did she…?

??? 

Huh. Huh. Did she smash some guy’s face in? Wait, no. Did he dissipate into red smoke? Was that part of the dream? She remembers thinking all of that felt too real to be a dream, but now with her mind clearing bit by bit, it sounds ridiculous. 

But then again.

She raises a hand to her face and wiggles her fingers. Well, if something like this is possible, she supposes anything can be. And, hey, whatever man. She’ll smash in a hundred faces in if it means she gets to keep this mobility thing going. 

She’s free. She’s fucking free! And she’s never gonna be imprisoned again.

*               *               *

Okay, so maybe she’s not doing so hot with this whole ‘autonomy’ thing. 

Which is like, totally expected, right? No one can blame her for fucking this up a little bit. She’s basically a goddamn kid, dragging her TV-educated brain around the streets of Spain as if it has any wherewithal to navigate a single real-life situation, acting like she isn’t a whole dumbass taking advantage of a glitch in reality. But she’s not about to slow down, not with Diego’s words ringing in her ears. 

This might be temporary. There could be a time limit. She could go back to being dead at any moment.

So, yeah. Screw it, let’s ball. 

And at least she has these, uh. Uhhh…powers? abilities? to keep her alive and mostly out of trouble, and thank fuck for them, because in the span of maybe twelve hours, she’s 1.) gotten hit by a truck, 2.) demolished a section of a sportswear store, 3.) assaulted a bouncer, 4.) almost drowned herself, and last but certainly not least, 5.) made a complete fool of herself in front of a bunch of older kids. 

It’s the last one that fills her with self-doubt. She might have superpowers, but since she’s trying to keep them on the DL, they’re pretty useless when it comes to human interaction — a skill just as unused and underdeveloped as her fine motor skills, clumsy and prone to embarrassing mistakes. At St. Michael’s, she oscillated between humorous snark towards the sisters and humorous sympathy towards whoever was stuck as her roommate. She doesn’t have a mode for ‘pleasant and interesting.’

But by god she wishes she can stop being so fucking awkward. These people are cool. They break into rich people’s vacation homes and take what they want and never apologize for living life. And man are they living. 

Parties. Booze. Drugs. Stylish clothes. Fancy meals. Fast, dangerous, thrilling lives. Everything Ava’s seen on those late-night shows that she and Diego used to watch at a barely audible volume when the nuns thought they were asleep. Everything she’s ever wanted to experience. 

And she’s so close. That life is literally right there within reach; all she has to do is tread carefully and say the right things to make these people believe that she’s normal and totes not an ex-quadriplegic with unexplained powers. 

Come on, she can do this. She can be chill. She can be cool. She’s her own person now! She can befriend a couple of delinquent nomads. Ava already has JC, seemingly their ringleader, under her thumb — all she has to do is fake normalcy just a bit longer so she can hook in the rest of his friends. Look, she’d managed to sway a handful of batty old nuns at the orphanage into being moderately nice to her. In comparison to them, getting these kids to like her? 

Easy peasy lemon squeezy.

*               *               *

Nope. Nope, nope, not easy. 

Not easy peasy lemon squeezy at all. 

Which is, if anything, annoying as hell. Because as soon as one thing starts to feel almost normal, the universe decides to take things to a whole new level of what the fuck to throw Ava’s whole world into chaos. 

Tonight’s edition? A fucking ghost in the middle of a rave. 

Her stomach roils uncomfortably at the memory, the skeletal face floating, disembodied, in the familiar ghostly red mist. It’s the third time she’s seen that unearthly mist but the first time she’s seen a face within it, and Ava isn’t one for dramatic words but she gets the distinct sense that it’s evil. 

Is it because she died? Is she somehow seeing dead people because she herself was gone for a hot sec? 

Her body jerks from an involuntary shiver, and her back prickles like she’s being watched. 

“Hey, you okay?” 

JC touches her shoulder and she nearly jumps out of her skin. 

“Shit. Sorry.”

“N-no, I’m sorry,” Ava stutters. “God. I’m just. Yeah, sorry.” A slightly manic laugh escapes her before she can stop it. “I…maybe it’s just, uh. Drugs? Drugs. I never had anything that strong,” she admits, though she’s almost a thousand percent sure that what she saw wasn’t a drug-induced hallucination. “So I think it just freaked me out a little.”

With an understanding hum, JC leans back against the kitchen cabinets right across from her as he looks her over with an unexpectedly sober gaze. Ava’s hauled herself up to sit on the counter, so her knees are level with his waistline and less than a foot away. For one truly insane second, she imagines him closing the gap between them, pressing against her, and pulling her face in for a hot, passionate —

She blinks. 

Man, chill out, hormones. I’m having a whole-ass crisis over here. 

“I get it,” he says. “First time can be rough. I’m sorry; I should’ve really checked before giving you anything. Just got caught up in the moment, you know?”

Ava blinks some more. She’s the one who asked him for one of those pills. And then she had the audacity to pull him out of the club and drag him all the way back to the house; he’s the last person who should be apologizing. 

“You’re looking better, in any case,” JC continues, frowning a little at her untouched glass of water. “Like…much better. Like it’s already out of your system.”

She supposes seeing a terrifying demon face can do that to a person. “Um, well. Same goes to you,” she deflects. “Did you even…?”

“Oh, I don’t do any of that stuff,” he says. He grins as Ava raises an eyebrow. “I just know a guy who knows a guy, so I get some for Randall and the girls.”

“But not for yourself?”

He shrugs, loose and casual. “Had a bad trip once — not looking to risk that again.” 

“Huh,” she huffs out, managing a smile. “Guess that makes two of us.” 

“Liquor does a better job anyway,” JC adds, matching her smile. He circles around to the other side of the counter where they had pre-gamed before the club, half-empty top-shelf booze standing uncapped on the sticky surface. “Finish that water and I’ll fix you up something light, yeah? We can take it easy the rest of the night.”

Ava practically swallows the entire glass whole in her eagerness to join him.

Because you know what? There might be a lot of weird shit happening around her, and she might not understand how she’s even here right now, and none of this might be real come tomorrow, but right here and right now, none of that matters. She’s alive, she’s able-bodied, and she has the luxury of having experienced a bad night at a club. Even better, she’s ending said bad night next to a sweet boy who cares about her enough to make sure she’s okay. 

Whatever happens next, at least she has this moment.

Chapter Text

Ava had found the gigantic mirror in this bathroom a little daunting when she’d first entered to take a shower (a shower! how long has that been?), its crystal-clear clarity too illuminating when paired with the bright lights above. As thrilled as she is about being able to look at herself at any time now, there are some parts of her that she’s still embarrassed about seeing, like glimpsing a stranger’s naked body.

But now she stares open-mouthed into the mirror, craning her neck to scrutinize the unfamiliar marking on her back. 

What the fuck is it? 

It’s like JC said — a perfect circle, right smack dab in between her shoulder blades. She can’t imagine that anything from the car accident could’ve made such an imprint, but it looks old and healed over. Maybe it’s something the surgeons had done back then? Some kind of skin graft?

She rolls her shoulders a little. It doesn’t hurt, but there’s some stiffness around the area. 

She thinks back to the truck that’d hit her, the blinding pain of her smashed-up ribs and mangled leg that had healed and vanished in an instant. She thinks about the club last night, how quickly the effects of JC’s pill had worn off for her when everyone else was riding the high for what seemed like hours. If her newfound superpowers include rapid healing, then why is this thing still…? Wait. 

If it can stitch her leg together and sober her up in minutes and cure quadriplegia and fucking resurrect her from death, then —

Curiosity overcoming her self-consciousness, Ava pulls the towel off to examine the rest of her body.

Nothing. Not a single scratch, not a single mark anywhere. She pulls her leg up to look at her ankle, the one Diego had once said sported a gnarly scar that he’d traced and prodded, giggling when Ava screamed with pretend agonized pain. Nothing but smooth skin there, too. Even her back, which she knows for a fact was fucked up beyond repair, looks unblemished. 

Her eyes drift back up to the faint circle, unsettled. 

It’s not that she wants scars covering her body, and she for sure will take this miracle recovery over being paralyzed again, but there’s something inherently wrong with this picture, this erasure of her trauma. Like the accident that ruined her life and took her mother’s had never happened, like her suffering was all for nothing. For all of that to disappear and for this weird abrasion to remain…

She shivers, full-bodied and violent, the skin along her back crawling with unease. 

Ava rips her gaze away from the mirror and jumps into the newly adjusted shower, relieved that the water’s much warmer and gentler this time. 

Wash it away. Just wash all that shit away. Consider it a hard reset on her life. Who needs all that traumatizing clutter anyway? This is a golden opportunity to leave all of that behind, to forget about the accident and the orphanage and her useless body. 

She has more important things to focus on now. 

The cute boy making breakfast downstairs is at the very top of that list.

*               *               *

“We’re taking point tonight,” JC tells Ava as the two of them split off from the rest of the group. He whips out a fake press ID badge and holds it between two fingers like a magician about to perform a card trick. “You and me, we’re the infiltration team. We get in, snatch a security keycard, and pop the back door for the others.” 

“Ohh. Like an undercover mission?” Ava asks, giddy about being tasked with something so important. And she gets to partner with JC? Sign her the fuck up!

“If you choose to accept it,” he says with a grin, playing along. “We have to establish our cover stories, though. I’m thinking I’ll be…the young, up-and-coming reporter from a small town in the American countryside, raised by loving adoptive parents who taught me to always be true to myself and help those in need.” He extends an elbow for Ava to take. “And you’re my stunningly beautiful coworker slash plus one, here to dazzle everyone with your wits and charm and general intelligence.”

She’s already laughing halfway through his spiel. “You can’t just steal Superman’s backstory.”

JC feigns confusion with a raised eyebrow. “What? Superman? I was talking about Clark Kent.”

“Oh, shut up,” Ava says, slapping playfully at his arm. “You think you’re so clever.”

“Ha. Admit it, you do too,” he counters. He shoots her a sly smile, and her face burns under his attention.

There’s something magnetic about JC. Ava knows she’s not the only one to feel it — his posse of friends also seem drawn in, revolving around him even though he makes no effort to demand their attention or have them hang onto his every word. He’s got the natural charisma of a group leader, all confident and self-assured.

Plus, he’s hot and he’s kind and he treats Ava like a human being, the actual holy trinity that she’d sorely been missing out on. 

Listen. She’s a simple girl with simple needs. She’s just trying to collect every scrap of life experience as fast as possible at this point, and the universe tossed this gorgeous man into her path like a bone to a dog. What’s she gonna do? Say no?

They stop to line up at the entrance of a blocky, frankly boring-looking office building, and Ava’s about to make some snarky comment on its blandness before she’s stopped by the bold lettering displayed across the front. 

“Arq-Tech,” JC announces at the same time she drinks in the words. “Fancy biotech company means equally fancy party and fancy booze.”

But for once, Ava doesn’t care about the party or the booze. Arq-Tech. She’s at Arq-Tech! 

She thinks back to the articles she’d fervently devoured, the ones she had the sisters cut out and pin up on her wall next to her bed. She remembers wishing desperately for a neurolink chair to replace the crusty old one with the squeaky wheel that Frances was shit at maneuvering. And of course, she has her fantasy daydream about Jillian Salvius.

Maybe that’s actually…not so impossible now? Ava’s got unexplainable superpowers now, that’s bound to impress an esteemed scientist like Dr. Salvius. Maybe she can use those powers for research or something. And in return, she can take Ava under her wing, forge a new identity, pretend she’s a long-lost daughter or something so she can stay under her protection. 

Rich people can do that, right? They’re pretty much outside the law anyway. 

“Hey, don’t worry too much about the cover story thing.” JC’s voice cuts abruptly into her thoughts. “I was just joking; they don’t actually check that sort of thing. You’ll be fine if you just act natural.”

“Oh. Right,” she says, realizing that he’s mistaking her contemplative silence for nerves. 

No, that won’t work. Jillian Salvius would undoubtedly lock her up like some lab rat, and Ava wouldn’t have her freedom anymore. She wouldn’t have JC. 

She clears her throat. “Well, uh. What’s the plan for taking the keycard? Are we beating up a guard? Picking their pockets? Breaking into a guard station?”

“Let’s…stick with the second one,” he says. “One of us can distract a guard while the other takes his keycard. They’re usually clipped onto belts or kept in loose pockets, so it’ll be easy enough.”

Ava sees an opportunity. “Can I do the picking?” she asks. Distracting someone is easy, she’s been doing it her whole life and she has no doubt in her abilities. But she kinda wants to do something badass. Something with responsibility. 

JC regards her carefully and she tries not to look away. “You sure you’re up for it?”

“Hell yeah.”

“Then all right,” he says with a smile. “Follow my lead. Let’s see what you can do.”

Practically vibrating out of her skin with excitement, Ava lets JC lead her into the party. This is everything she could’ve ever hoped for. Crashing an Arq-Tech press party on a hot guy’s arm.

Absolutely nothing can ruin this night.

*               *               *

Holy shit. Holy shit, holy shit, holy fucking shit. 

What the hell is this place? 

A medieval looking shield that glows? A kid locked up in a sealed chamber? A Cardinal on the guest list? A motherfucking on-fire Minotaur guardian roaming around the hallways and cutting down intruders? 

What the fuck kind of fantasy novel death trap labyrinth did she stumble into?

As Ava cowers under a counter and frantically considers all 2.5 of her superpowers that could possibly take on a freaking monster, a more regretful question pops into mind: why the fuck did she try to open the door instead of walking through the wall to get to that kid?

Now terrified and annoyed at herself for triggering the alarm and the appearance of this hell beast, she scrambles away from its hulking mass as it demolishes everything in its path. Distantly, she hears shouting and what could be gunfire, but nothing seems to be slowing the thing down as it bears down on her with fiery claws. 

Oh, this thing so wants her dead. 

But there’s no escape and there’s no way she’s gonna get killed without a fight, so Ava does the only thing she knows how to do to trigger her superpowers: she acts without thinking. She grabs at one of Jillian Salvius’s glowing pieces of metal and smacks the bejesus out of the monster. 

Ava doesn’t know what shocks her more; the fact that she’d somehow managed to use her superstrength correctly or the fact that the blow from the metal actually killed the beast and made it disappear. 

Then she catches sight of herself on a glass cabinet and receives an even bigger shock. Her clothes, covered in dust and debris. Her face, terrified. Her back, …glowing? She stares, transfixed, at the unearthly light emitting from behind her. 

The circle. It’s the weird fucking circle mark on her back, now lit up like a ring light, bathing the room in an orange glow. She gapes at the faint reflection until the light starts to fade. Is this…somehow related to her powers? Is it related to how she came back to life? What the hell is it?

No time to think about it; she needs to get the hell out of here before that thing comes back. She’ll walk through all of these weirdly decked-out, badass-looking ninja nuns and the random-ass priest if she has to. 

But before she can push past any of them, something cold and sharp stabs into her neck and a blinding numbness overcomes her, dragging her down into inescapable blackness. 

Chapter Text

Ugh.

Nuns.

Always with the fucking nuns. 

It’s gotta be some kind of cosmic irony. It’s because Ava had grown up hating organized religion, because she’d relentlessly cursed whatever supposed higher power stranded her in that bed, because she’d gladly fistfight God in a parking lot if given the chance. Because she’d channeled so much raging negative energy towards the Catholic church, it’s throwing that energy right back in her face and practically handcuffing her to nuns for the rest of her newfound life. 

Literally handcuffed, she thinks as she considers the closed gates, with lock and key and bars and everything. Yet another Catholic establishment to get trapped in, except that this time, escape means surefire death by flaming hellhound.

Well, fine. Two can play that game; if she’s going to be stuck with them, she’s going to make sure they know that they’re stuck with her. Dial down on cooperation, dial up on sass: the Ava Silva Special. 

Because what is she supposed to do with all of this religious demon hunting mumbo jumbo? Take it seriously? As if. 

“You were chosen for a greater purpose,” Vincent tells her.

“You are God’s champion,” Queen Boss Bitch Mother Superion tells her. 

Eesh. Angels and Demons and Heaven and Hell and an honest-to-literal-god Halo shoved into her back. 

Like, really? That’s the source of all the weird shit that’s been happening to her? It’s kind of a bummer, if she’s being honest. Ava liked it better when she thought Arq-Tech was behind her superpowers, because science is way cooler than…ugh, religion . She’d take Diego’s wild clone theory over this Halo nonsense any day. 

And — look. She’s got nothing against this place. A secret sect of spy-esque nuns kicking ass and taking names to rid the world of ancient evil? Hell yeah. Good for them. From what Ava sees as she tours the church, these sisters are different, more human than the assholes at the orphanage, with actual personalities outside of worship. They’re younger, too. But also sharp and hardened, like they’ve seen some shit. 

Judging by the firepower in their armory (seriously, an armory in a convent? how do they think that that’s not blasphemous but Ava is?) and various scars and limps she’d glimpsed on some of them, they’ve seen some real shit.

And so all things considered, Ava doesn’t hate Cat’s Cradle too much. It’s got a sense of purpose. Of community, of sisterhood, of actual devotion. She can respect that. What she doesn’t respect is this unfair ultimatum: commit to this deadly cause and fight demons for the Church, or take her chances out there where a fire-breathing monster will hunt her down for sport. There’s no option where she gets to go back to that carefree country-hopping life with JC and his friends.

“You’d be safer with us,” Father Vincent says when she voices these thoughts. “Yes, you may have to compromise some freedom in order to train, but I promise that it’s for your sake as much as ours.”

“And I suppose there’s no option where I can just. I dunno, live a little while I do that?” Ava has to try. “Weekends off? Some vacation time?”

Vincent smiles down at her, exhibiting fatherly (haha) patience that she hasn’t received in a depressingly long time. “This isn’t exactly a 9 to 5 job, Ava. Demon attacks aren’t scheduled appointments, and missions can arise at any moment.”

Missions? As in life or death missions? Mmm hard pass. 

“Well maybe we can rework the whole ‘Warrior Nun’ thing. Like, instead of me leading them, they can just use me on an as-needed basis. Like…” She snaps her fingers, trying to think of a good comparison. “Like a…oh! Like a Seeing Eye dog! I point, they shoot, yeah? Teamwork makes the dream work.”

“This isn’t a contracting job either,” he says. His kind smile is still there, though it’s clearly struggling to stay on. “But all right. Maybe we can work something out.” 

Diplomatic. Vague. He hides it well, but Ava can sense the lie. 

She supposes he’s trying his best, trying to make the best of this clusterfuck of a situation. At least he’s sympathetic and understanding. Everyone else is acting like she’d intentionally desecrated their precious little Halo when really, she ’d been desecrated with it. 

A subtle warmth of energy prickles along her back as if the Halo opposes the accusation. Ava wishes she could glare at it. Is it…alive? Aware? It’s certainly reactive to danger, so maybe it can hear and react to her thoughts. 

Oh, she kind of hates that a lot.

And now that she knows what it is, it’s difficult to ignore the… feeling in her back. It’s not exactly a weight, nor is it physical; more of a presence, alive and active and settled inside her like a second heart — probably the most accurate comparison, considering it gave her a second life. 

But took away her freedom in the process, so it can go fuck itself.

And through all of his authority and sway, not even Vincent can magically make her problems go away. As Ava follows him across the ginormous campus of the church, it dawns on her that she’s gradually sinking into a feeling she’d sworn she’d fight tooth and nail to never feel again once she was free of the orphanage: resignation. Or acceptance, if she wants to put a positive spin on it (she doesn’t). 

There’s no way out of this place. She’s bound, through threat and arm-twisting obligation, to this Order and everything it stands for. 

Man, fuck Catholics. Seriously. 

*               *               *

Oh, fuck Catholics. 

Mother Superion especially. Lilith too, for good measure. Screw everyone in this fucked up place with their stereotypical lip service sympathy and general hypocrisy, their judge-first-ask-questions-later attitude, their refusal to listen to reason.

Fuck everyone except…well.

It’s a solid minute after her unprompted Nun Origin Reveal before Beatrice speaks again. 

“Come with me.”

Huddled in a corner with her knees drawn to her chest like a sulking child, Ava wants to refuse the invitation. For once in her life, she doesn’t want to move. 

She’s defeated: tired, confused, overwhelmed, and…and sad. She’d been berated in a way that she never has been before, which is truly saying something after the decade’s worth of horrible treatment she’d endured at the orphanage. But none of those nuns ever cut her with a magic sword or accused her of suicide, so that’s a fun new helping of trauma to add to the list. 

It’d seemed like Beatrice understood that — the least she could do is leave Ava to wallow for a bit longer.

“Come on,” she urges, gentle but insistent. 

Heaving out a giant sigh like this is the biggest inconvenience in the world, Ava melts out of her fetal position to follow Beatrice, forcing a quick smile to show that she’s just exaggerating her reluctance. 

They walk in silence through the maze of hallways, Beatrice’s steps even and measured, Ava’s clumsy and loud in comparison as she tries not to trip over the uneven flooring. In her blind desperation to get as far away from Mother Superion as possible, she’d wandered pretty far from the main part of the church — far enough that she’s not sure she would’ve been able to find her way back without Beatrice’s guidance. 

She trails a hand along the wall as they walk, taking in the cold, smooth stone through her fingertips. It’s an old and sturdy building, and Ava wonders how long it’s been here, how much history is packed into these halls. She wonders if this place will ever feel less like a prison and more like a home. 

“In here,” Beatrice says at last, leading them through a wide doorway. 

Ava recognizes this room. It’s the infirmary where she’d spent last night, curled up all anxious and sleepless in one of the dozen or so beds arranged in militaristic rows across the room. The one she’d occupied is already cleaned and made, all evidence of her stay erased. 

Beatrice motions towards a chair by the door, wordlessly requesting Ava to sit as she drifts towards one of the cabinets lining the adjacent wall. The chair creaks under her weight and she shifts nervously, boots tapping out staccato beats against the tiled floor. 

She gazes out towards the beds and imagines them all filled with wounded nuns, bleeding and groaning and dying. She imagines Shannon on one of them. 

She imagines herself.  

The cabinet door snaps shut and Ava jerks out of it to see Beatrice returning to her side, a first aid kit in her hands. “Oh,” she says, realizing what they’re in here for. “No, you don’t have to…”

But Beatrice is already opening the box and pulling out some kind of ointment and a pad of gauze. She taps the arm of the chair and Ava obediently rests her elbow on it, letting her examine the cut. It’s not a deep one by any means, and she can already feel it slowly stitching together from the power of the Halo — she supposes it just takes longer for the thing to heal these so-called ‘divinium’-inflicted wounds — but it stings like a bitch. 

The moist wipe Beatrice uses to clean it is cold but surprisingly soothing, as is the ointment she dabs on. “Lilith?” she asks as she caps the tube. 

Ava scoffs. “You can tell?”

“No one else would go this far to prove a point.” Beatrice presses the gauze against the cut and checks to make sure it’s fully covered before instructing Ava to hold it in place with her free hand. “A simple finger prick would’ve given you the same idea, wouldn’t it?”

“Yeah, well. She’s got it out for me, I swear. More than the others, I mean,” Ava grumbles. “Like a personal vendetta. Like I punched her grandmother or something.”

Beatrice is quiet as she neatly tapes the gauze down. She doesn’t speak until all four sides are secure.

“We have a system in place,” she explains. “An order of succession. Lilith was Next In Line for the Halo; she was supposed to get it the very night you did. Not only does she see you having it as sacrilegious, she also thinks she was cheated of a legacy.” Her eyes flicker to meet Ava’s for the briefest second. “Her family has been part of the Order for centuries. She comes from a long line of Halo-Bearers, so she has certain…expectations on her shoulders.” 

An unwelcome chill races down Ava’s back. A Halo-Bearer lineage? A whole-ass family devoted to this thing? Jesus. She holds back a shiver and resists the urge to roll her shoulders. 

“Hm. So it is like I punched her grandmother,” she jokes instead. 

A small smile pulls at the corner of Beatrice’s mouth. Ava watches it, hoping it stretches into a real one, but then she’s standing and walking away to return the first aid kit to the cabinet. 

Lilith, cutting into her as some fucked up lesson in vulnerability. Beatrice, patching up said superficial cut that probably would’ve healed within a few hours. A yin and a yang. Good cop, bad cop.

Ava slumps back into the chair, conflicted about this place. On one hand, she pretty much has the entire Order hating her guts for stealing their holy relic. On the other, she has a small but dedicated support system, fighting to protect and educate her to the best of their abilities. 

Beatrice and Vincent are nice, having shown Ava nothing but patience since she’s arrived despite the impossible situation they’ve all been put into, and it’s getting more and more difficult to throw that back in their faces. Whereas the others here only have faith in the Halo, those two seem to have genuine faith in Ava herself, something she’s never experienced before and doesn’t really know what to do with. Part of her wants to say fuck that, but another part of her wants to make sure their faith isn’t misplaced. She’s always wanted to fit in somewhere. To belong, to matter, to be welcomed and accepted. Maybe…maybe this is her chance.

No.

No, more than that, she wants to live. There’s still so much she wants to do, and this isn’t the place to do them or the people to be doing them with. Maybe she never quite fit in with JC and his friends, but at least she has freedom with them, no holy duty or deadly assignments weighing her down.

Here, she only has two people in her corner. It’s not nearly enough.

“Here.”

Ava blinks out of her daze to see Beatrice holding out a zip-up hoodie. It somehow smells both clean and dusty, like it’d been washed but left untouched for some time. “It’s supposed to get chilly tonight. Figured you should have something a bit warmer than that.”

Oh, damnit. She’s not just nice. She’s a freaking saint. 

“Thanks,” Ava says, voice hoarse. No, fuck. Why is she getting so emotional? This is like, the bare minimum! 

“How about we find you a better place to sleep tonight?” Beatrice suggests, leading them back out of the infirmary as she spares it a backwards glance. “This isn’t the easiest place to rest, is it?”

Ava can’t form a single wiseass remark. They all stick in her throat, unspoken, refusing to turn this moment into a joke. 

So she follows Beatrice mutely out of the room like a lost duckling, fidgeting with the new patch of gauze on her arm and trying to calculate how one person’s compassion can outweigh all the passive aggressive spite she’s collected these past few days. And she hates it. She hates that she had to come all this way just to get these tiny little morsels of basic human decency. That she had to hit the lowest of lows for someone to come and save her. That she’s still seen as an undeserving child, only receiving care and concern from the truly benevolent. 

She hates that she’d been surrounded by nuns her entire life and all of them combined could never scrape together a tenth the kindness that Beatrice had shown her in the last twenty minutes.

Most of all, Ava hates that it’s not enough to make her want to stay.

Chapter Text

Escape, Ava finds, is intoxicating.

To be trapped somewhere supposedly inescapable only to break free and do whatever the hell she wants? To be able to shove a fat middle finger in the face of everyone who tried controlling her? Liberating. Cathartic. 10/10 would recommend. 

But none of that, Ava finds, really matters at all if she ends up alone. 

There’s no point in freedom if she doesn’t have someone to share it with, especially considering she doesn’t know what the hell she’s doing half the time. Well, maybe she’ll figure it out eventually, but it would’ve been nice to figure it out with at least one person by her side. Someone to laugh with, someone to get lost with, someone to experience all of her firsts with. 

Preferably a tall, muscular, sensitive boy named JC, but whatever. Whatever! That ship’s sailed. She’s clearly not welcome in that group anymore. 

To be honest, she was an idiot for expecting anything more. She should’ve known that she’s not made for an ordinary life with ordinary friends, that she can’t share a single detail about her life with others without sounding clinically insane. She has nothing to contribute from her past. Nothing she can divulge about her future. No one who fully understands what she’s been through or what she’s going through right now.

She’s a freak — always has been, always will be.

Ava glares into the middle distance. It’s the Halo’s fault. The Halo and its weirdness and otherworldly powers and all the supernatural shit it brings to the table. All it had to do was bring her back to life and fuck off somewhere else, preferably into a host body that actually gives a shit about its cause. It didn’t have to stay in her and ruin her second shot at life. 

Miracles and fate and destiny. Shitty means to a shitty end. Of all the people in this world, why does she need to be burdened with these responsibilities? Hasn’t the universe asked enough of her already? Taken enough? Destroyed enough?

Her body aches with longing and loneliness. All she ever wanted to be was normal. Have a group of friends for a weekend outing. Be able to pick favorites, whether it be food or sports teams or songs or vacation spots. Hell, go to school, even. Go home. Have a home to go to. 

This second chance has the potential for all of that and more, and it sucks that it’s tied to all this Church bullshit. 

“Why couldn’t you just be a regular old mystical object that can heal quadriplegia and resurrect the dead?” she mutters. “Why do you have to be a Catholic one, huh?”

The Halo doesn’t answer, which is probably for the best because she’ll lose her goddamn mind if it starts talking back to her. 

With a tired sigh, Ava closes her eyes against the breeze floating in from the harbor and tries to force herself into the ‘acceptance’ stage of grief. She’s alone. She’s got kung-fu nuns and evil scientists chasing her. She’s got monsters trying to kill her. She’s alone and she’s going on the run, into the vast unknown.

This is her life now. It kinda sucks right now, but it’s still some kind of a life. 

That’s what she has to settle with — a free and happy life on the run or a safe and structured life that leads to unavoidable death. She can’t have the best of both worlds, no matter how much she thinks she deserves it.

“Would’ve preferred a no-strings kind of relationship, if I’m being honest,” she tells the Halo.

It blissfully remains silent.

*               *               *

Vengeance, Ava finds, really is about digging two graves. 

It’s almost profound, the way she actually feels something inside her wither and die the moment Frances goes limp against the wall, be it innocence or morals or the last bit of her sanity. The worst part is, she wasn’t even looking for this. God, if anything, she came here to save a life, not take one. 

But there’s a corpse at her feet created from her own hands, and now Ava has to use those hands to dig the two graves because she sure as fuck didn’t bring a shovel. 

The only way she manages to stay upright and above ground is by clutching onto Diego, small and frail and shaking but blessedly alive, and even then she struggles to maintain her composure because she killed someone and he saw her do it and god, Jesus, fuck , she killed someone. 

It was for him, she tells herself, squeezing the thought like a prayer, chanting it like a mantra — it was for him, for him, for him. They’ve always had each other’s backs. She would take a bullet for him. And she would, apparently, also fire one to protect him. A small price to pay, she tries to reason. 

As she lets Diego go, watching him grow smaller and smaller in the distance as he runs to safety (from her? is she the danger?) a sudden, insane urge comes over her. To call him back. To take him with her, far away from this place and all the horrendous memories that haunt the halls. He’s the only friend she’s ever had, and at this rate, probably the only one she ever will. With her, he’d be safe from these fucked-up murderous nuns. 

With her, he won’t be alone. 

But no — no, that’s just another dumb fantasy. He’s too young and too sick for a life on the road, much less a life on the run. Ava’s still pretty much a child herself; she can’t take care of a whole other person without any idea what the hell she’s doing herself. Plus, she has a monster tracking her down and too many dangerous parties involved trying to carve a weird metal ring out of her back. 

And now she’s taken a life. She’s a murderer. 

So she forces herself to turn away from Diego’s retreating form, dragging her uncooperative legs in the opposite direction towards the exit. Away from him. Away from Frances’s body. 

A violent chill races down her back, right over the Halo, and Ava shivers uncontrollably. 

The Halo. The supposed holy relic that just helped her kill someone. Kill a nun , no less. Among the wild array of emotions racing through her scrambled mind, Ava pins down fear, guilt, horror, and…the truly wildest of them all: the tiniest bit of satisfaction. 

She realizes it’s not just from vindicated revenge taken on her lifelong abuser, a sick sort of victory over killing someone who tried killing her twice, or any of the other multitudes of justified reasoning she has over taking Frances’s life. It’s also the belief that no one — certainly none of those Warrior Nuns trained to be good and pious and respectful of their sisters no matter what — has ever used the Halo for such a purpose. And it’s a vicious sort of satisfaction, like a petulant little fuck you! to an uncaring, impassive artifact embedded in her back. 

She feels sick. Twisted. 

But still, the feeling remains. 

Look at your miracle now, Vincent , Ava wants to say. Look at the ‘greater purpose’ I’m using the Halo for. Is this what you advocated for? Is this who you bet your nonexistent money on?

Astoundingly, it’s the Halo, not the Vincent in her mind, who responds to her thoughts. In the dim light of the hallway, Ava catches sight of the now-familiar golden light splashed across the walls behind her as the Halo inexplicably activates. She glances over her shoulder, expecting a threat, but she’s alone in the hallway. There’s no reason for the Halo to be glowing right now.

“Stop that,” she snaps.

It does.

“Screw you,” she adds for good measure as the glow fades away. 

In a weird way, she’s comforted by the fact that it’s somewhat under her control. If it was truly divine, if it actually opposed her killing Frances, then it wouldn’t have let her do it, right? It could’ve stopped her, somehow, probably. And it didn’t. 

The thought doesn’t provide much comfort nor does it give her any additional insight into what the hell the thing’s deal is. But for now, she’s not going to face any holy consequences or get struck down by a lightning bolt of retribution.

For now, Ava’s gonna have to take that and run with it.

Chapter Text

Not to sound supremely ungrateful, but Ava’s starting to get pissed off about these regenerative powers. Healing from bumps and scrapes is fine and all, but Jesus Christ what’s a girl gotta do to stay drunk around here?

She and JC are four shots in and though she was feeling fan-fucking-tastic a minute ago, that feeling is already starting to fade — the buzz dissipating, the dread creeping back in, the smile becoming a struggle to maintain. Given her size, Ava can only toss back so many consecutive shots before both JC and the bartender grow suspicious of her abrupt shift into an absolute tank, but at this point she’s about to phase into the liquor cabinet and sneak a whole bottle under her jacket so she can drink faster than the Halo can sober her up. 

Ha, what a blasphemous use of a holy relic that would be. 

But you know what? She deserves this. She deserves every beautiful second of this. She’s going to live her fantasy and run off (or float off, whatever) into the sunset with a cute guy by her side, and no one’s gonna stop her. She’s going to live, goddamnit. 

Because she’d spent too long praying for escape on a janky old bed in a janky old building, treated like garbage and talked to like vermin. Because she’d missed out completely on her youth and now she’s living in a body that’s grown and matured beyond recognition, starving for attention and new experiences.

Because she’s looking through the postcards JC’s so kindly picked out — all the places they could go together, all the places he’s already been — and gets overwhelmed with sadness about how there’s an entire world out there that she has twelve less years to see. And she’s thinking about all the other lives on this ferry and how none of them ever had to or have to worry about being paralyzed or abandoned or killed or hunted or arrested for murder and how fucking unfair that is because all she’s ever wanted was to be normal. 

So yeah. Fuck everything else. 

Sure, maybe she’ll have to spend the rest of her life looking over her shoulder, but she’s going to go ahead and live a life of paranoia in places she actually wants to be. She’ll answer to no one. She’ll be on her own agenda, doing her own thing, drinking whatever the fuck she wants —

“Another one already?”

Ah, shit.

Ava freezes with the shot glass halfway to her lips. She’d snuck back to the bar while JC went to the bathroom, thinking she could inhale another shot or two while he was gone; she’d forgotten that boys pee at the speed of light. “Uh,” she starts intelligently. “Wh-…uh.”

“You should take it easy,” JC recommends, half amused and half bemused. “Trust me, it’ll kill the mood if you start throwing up everywhere. Unless…really? You don’t feel sick at all?”

She laughs, high and thready, fresh out of lies to feed him. She’d already distracted him with half-truths and her orphan sob story, and she’s afraid to add anything more — whether it be real or fake — to her backstory in case she mixes up all the details she’d disclosed up to this point. His easygoing attitude and altruism is probably reaching its limits, and Ava can’t have him leaving her now when they’ve made it so far into her grand escape plan. 

Her mind speeds through a wild array of potential responses before landing on one she might’ve picked up from some trashy show or movie. “Watered-down booze, amirite?” she says, forcing a chuckle.

Bzzzt: wrong answer. JC’s been drinking the same shit she has. Too late to take it back now, though! And Ava watches, sweating bullets as JC gives her a careful, level look, waiting for his expression to turn sour and for him to start unraveling her bullshit and for his —

“Fair point,” he says, shrugging. 

Relief floods her body and she lets out a slow breath. Crisis averted for now.

But with that relief comes a creeping sense of clarity, too quick and self-aware for it to be anything but the Halo. Can you chill out with that? she tries to scold it. But it ignores her and continues sobering her up, and Ava could swear it’s doing it more quickly now that she’d told it off. Seriously? Grow up.

She forces a smile as JC orders another pair of shots for them to toast, fighting to act like she’s not having a one-sided argument with the world’s most annoying Biblical doughnut. 

“So, how about…” he starts, leaning in close with a grin like he’s about to share a secret. Ava almost misses the rest of this sentence, too busy freaking out over their proximity and trying not to stare at his lips. “We raid their storage room and find the unopened bottles of liquor, huh? Maybe something top-shelf?”

Ava grins back, hoping she embodies even half of the mischief and sexiness that JC does. “Another mission?”

“More like a heist,” he says, holding out a hand and wiggling his eyebrows. “You in?”

She looks down at his hand, an invitation to break some rules, to cause some chaos, to live life to its fullest. An offer to guide her through the mess of experiences she’d missed out on. An opportunity to escape from reality, even just for a little while.

She takes it.

“Hell yeah I’m in.”

*               *               *

Three hours and forty-eight minutes later, Ava finds herself alone, depressingly sober, and on the run for what feels like the billionth time since coming back to life. As usual, she doesn’t know where the fuck she is, wandering dazed and confused along unfamiliar streets as she tries to figure out her next move, penniless and directionless and friendless and…

And…

God, she’s tired. 

It’s not just the sleep deprivation, it’s not just from constantly being chased and tossed around by nuns and monsters. It’s not just this religious clusterfuck she’d been kicked into. 

She has nowhere to go. Every time she worms her way out of a tough situation, she’s left with nowhere to go and no one to turn to — burning bridges left and right, fleeing bars and churches and villas like a restless, flighty bird unable to find a perch anywhere. Even in places that offer sanctuary and safety. Even with people who offer warmth and love in exchange for simple truth. 

Guilt bubbles in her stomach. Her white knight finally gave up on her. Truth be told, Ava could see that coming from miles away, but she still hates that she was right — that he did have a limit, and she’d been enough of an asshole to push him over it. Even the kindest, most understanding sweetheart of a guy in the world can’t handle her brand of destructive insanity. 

She can’t get that image out of her head, of JC looking at her like she’s a freak of nature, like she’s the harbinger of all things evil, like she’s a toxic burden. The same way everyone’s always looked at her. 

…ugh. She’s tired. 

Ava trudges through the streets, passing gaggles of teens headed to the beach and couples with ice cream cones and families with excited children, feeling out of place now more than she ever has in her life. She’ll never have what they have; she knows that now. Maybe she can keep running, maybe she’ll eventually acquire that freedom she’d been so desperately snatching at, but it will never be with anyone. 

She knows now that she’s meant to be alone.

“Oi.” 

“You there. Yeah, you.”

Ava glances over towards the voices calling out to her: a pair of harmless-looking old men lounging on a bench, looking concerned and largely harmless. She hesitates, not wanting to slow down for small talk but also not wanting to draw suspicion by acting shifty. 

“You alright?”

“You lost, girl?”

She frowns at their questions — Portuguese, not Spanish. Oh shit, that’s right; this is Lisbon. Portugal. Not Spain. For the first time in twelve years, she’s in not Spain. 

The profoundness of the revelation fades in a flash when one of the men mirrors her frown, misinterpreting her silence. “Ah…tourist? English? Maybe you speak English?” He turns to his companion with a chuckle. “You talk to her, then. My English is shit.”

“So’s mine,” he responds gruffly. “Maybe we can try Spanish?”

“Portuguese is fine,” Ava interjects faintly, her voice thin and distant to her own ears. The words roll off her tongue, familiar yet muddled like remembering a long-forgotten dream. She hasn’t spoken this language since…since — 

— shit. 

She blinks hard. Exhales slowly. Swallows down a lump.

No, she has more than enough trauma to process at the moment, and she needs to focus on disappearing. Lay low for a few days in some remote location — away from other people, probably away from civilization as a whole just to be safe — and make sure that the fire-breathing monster is off her back before setting back out into the unknown.

If only she can get one other annoyance off her literal back. It’s a magnet for trouble and Ava doesn’t have the heart to keep fighting off all the horrors it attracts. 

At least she managed to rid herself of the trigger-happy clergy duo. Hooray for collateral damage and getting people killed left and right!

“Where’re you headed?” the man presses. “You look lost.”

“I’m…”

Collateral damage. Remote location. Ask them where to go to be completely cut off from society.

But she’ll need access to food and water. Or wait…does she? If she were to hole up in a cave, would she die of starvation, or would the Halo prevent that from happening? Does it heal self-inflicted damage? Ah, fuck it. She has a monster on her tail and no sword or vest or whatever the fuck to protect herself and the people around her. Hiding out in the middle of nowhere will have to do.

Ava clears her throat. These are just civilians and her Portuguese is shaky at best, so she forgoes the trauma dump and sticks with a rose-colored version of what she’s trying to accomplish. 

“I’m, uh. I’m looking to go hiking,” she says, inventing wildly. “I’m trying to get out of town — see some nature, or…or something. Any place I can do that around here?”

The two men exchange a confused look before unabashedly taking in her disheveled appearance and dirt-smeared clothing. At least she’s wearing sneakers to sell the story.

“Hm. Alone?” one of them asks. 

“I’m meeting up with some friends later,” she lies. “Big group. Yup, real big group. Of friends.” Stop. Stop talking. “I’m gonna…I’m not going like this , they’re gonna have a change of clothes for me, and we’re all going as a — a big. Um. Group.” Shut up, Ava!

They exchange another look as Ava waits with bated breath, heart hammering wildly as she prepares for them to call the police on her. Like a reflex, a sudden and unprompted warmth blooms between her shoulder blades. 

Jesus, not now, she growls at it. We’re fine. Stand down.

“There’s a path that starts from the northeast side of town. It leads into those mountains,” the second man says, pointing towards a mountain range in the distance. “Popular trail with the locals. It’s not easy, though. You won’t get far without the proper gear or outfit.” He gives her another pointed onceover. 

Ignoring the last comment, Ava squints in the direction of the mountains. She can’t see much beyond the first few peaks, but from what she can see, they’re barren and empty. Devoid of life. Perfect. Even the Halo seems to agree, cooling down at the thought of some peace and quiet for once.

Relieved to finally have a destination, Ava shoots the men a grateful smile. “Thanks,” she says, and departs swiftly before they start asking more questions she can’t answer.

So far, she’s failed at being a compliant quadriplegic orphan, a con artist, a Catholic warrior, and a world-traveling girlfriend; she supposes it wouldn’t hurt to give “hermit fugitive” a shot. 

At this point, what’s the worst that could happen?

Chapter Text

There’s something to be said about Mary’s persistence. It’s a different brand than Lilith’s, which is all deadly and swift and precise like an eagle swooping into a dive with its beak and claws poised for an instant kill. Mary more closely resembles a wolf, following its prey over long distances and wearing them down before moving in for the final blow. Slow and steady, like an unavoidable storm. Like impending doom.

Ava hears her uneven footsteps long before she appears at the top of the hill, limping and groaning and radiating pure annoyance. When she sees Ava perched on a ledge under a tree, hiding in its shade from the relentless sun, she mutters something that sounds a lot like “fucking finally” before slowly making her way over.

It’s been hours since the warehouse incident, and Ava had a hell of a head start into these mountains. She’s not sure whether to be impressed or terrified that Mary had somehow tracked her all the way out here while injured and alone.

But she’s like, pretty sure she can take Mary right now. If she can catch her off-guard, get in a good punch or two, maybe go for the bad leg, maybe muster up a super blast from the Halo, she can incapacitate Mary long enough to shake her off for good. Ava’s never had the best impulse control so she’s starting to lean towards the idea, but a small voice in her head nags at her to stand down.

She’s been taking the most civil approach here, maybe just hear her out this time?

Uhh no thanks. Recruitment sales pitches are so two and a half days ago; whatever Mary’s trying to sell, she can shove it.

Come on, she just watched Lilith die in front of her. Give her a break.

That’s clearly a them problem.

She died trying to save you, asshole.

Okay, well! No one asked her to! They’re the ones who inadvertently triggered the Tarask’s presence. Reap what you sow and all that shit! If anything, yeah, they almost got her killed, so it’s only right that Lilith sacrificed herself to right that wrong. 

Jesus, you’re beyond saving.

Scowling at herself, Ava crosses her arms like she can sulk the problem away. Like she can give a cold shoulder to her own voice of reason. Where’s this unwarranted concern coming from, anyway? Why should she care what these insane nuns are going through as they hunt her down like an escaped convict?

Oh. Oh, it better not be the fucking Halo. Giving her a conscience. Making her care. By god she’ll rip it out with her bare hands if it’s gonna start manipulating her thoughts and feelings. 

“How the fuck did you find me?” she asks when Mary’s close enough.

Without a word or a glance in her direction, Mary tosses a folded piece of paper into her lap. Ava smooths it out to see a sketch of her own face. It’s almost unsettling how accurate it is, and for a second, she’s too stunned to act bitchy.

“Did you draw this?”

“No,” Mary scoffs. She lets out a long breath, hunched over, bracing her hands against her thighs. “Street artist. Had to pay 10 euros for that shit.”

Which is still pretty remarkable; Ava could never describe a person’s face with enough detail to produce this kind of recreation. She traces her fingertips along the lines, taking care not to smudge them, and smiles to herself before she can stop it. It’s her. A drawing of her. Proof that she existed, that she was here.

After a beat of consideration, she asks, “Can I keep it?”

Mary just scoffs again, so Ava pockets it. 

Then she hops to her feet, brushes herself off, and throws an absent-minded wave over her shoulder. “Cool. Bye now,” is all Ava offers before marching off in a random direction. Anywhere away from an OCS member is the right direction. 

Though she doesn’t give Mary the satisfaction of looking over her shoulder, Ava keeps her ears open as she walks away, trying to gauge how far she gets before Mary starts following her. 

She makes it maybe thirty meters before she hears an exhausted sigh from behind and the limp picks up again, steady and inevitable. 

God, these fucking nuns. 

*               *               *

Sometimes, she forgets that it’s there. 

When it’s not giving her super strength or saving her from getting kicked off a cliff, Ava kind of forgets that there’s a hunk of heaven-sent metal just chilling in her body. Because in its dormant state, the Halo is just that: a hunk of metal. Weightless and undetectable, insignificant and forgettable. Out of sight, out of mind — at least, until a situation calls for literal divine intervention and it flares to life. 

There’s something poetic about that, she’s sure, but it’s hard to find the poetry in something that’s actively fucking up her life. 

Because for her, it’s not just a power booster used to fight demons and praise Jesus or whatever. For her, it’s a constant reminder of what she’d lost and what she’d gained, both the good and the bad…mostly the bad. It’s a homing beacon for monsters. A forced sixth sense for seeing demons. A fucked-up heirloom that killer nuns would hunt her down to reclaim. A goddamn burden. 

It’d landed her here, deep in the mountains of who-the-hell-knows-where, lying next to a dying fire on a rocky floor in some random cave, trying and failing to get some sleep in case tomorrow is an even more chaotic day than the previous six. And it’s not so much because of the uncomfortable floor or the untrustworthy cave-mate with the divinium knife, but more so because she can’t stop thinking about all the death she’s witnessed in the past few hours.

Lilith getting dragged to hell for trying to shield Ava. Frances dying under Ava’s own hands. And it’s the Halo. It always traces back to the stupid little ring in her back. 

“I killed someone,” Ava says into the darkness without preamble, surprising even herself with the sound of her own voice. “With…using it. The Halo.”

A part of her hopes that Mary’s fast asleep and didn’t hear her speak, while another part of her prays that she’s awake and caught her sudden confession. Either way, her words are met with a long stretch of silence that seems to go on and on forever, punctuated only by the distant cacophony of bugs outside of their cave. 

Ava’s drowning in the sound, practically falling into a stupor from it, when Mary finally sighs out two words. 

“On purpose?”

Which really isn’t the response she expected. 

“No,” Ava says quickly. “Well, I-I dunno. Maybe? I mean, she killed me first, so like, I wanted her dead, obviously. So I…she had it coming, probably, but I didn’t…b-but —” She trails off and picks up on a different train of thought. “W-why, is that common? Accidentally killing someone with the Halo?”

Mary shifts in her spot, boots thumping against the ground as she adjusts her position. “No, because the people who usually get it are prepared for that boost. They know how to fight and they know how to control their strength. You don’t. That’s why I asked.”

An indignant retort rises to her tongue, but Ava holds it. Mary has every right to assume that, and she’s entirely correct; it’d happened because Ava didn’t know how to control it. 

“She was a nun,” she adds quietly. 

Mary hums. “Is that the part that’s weighing on your mind?”

“N-no. Well. I don’t care that she was. They never really did anything for me, and she was the worst of them all.” 

“So what about this is bothering you?”

Ava blinks into the darkness, struggling to wrap her brain around what Mary’s asking. Obviously it’s that she took a life. That she’s capable of killing. That she went against a Commandment that even a heathen like her can easily follow. 

That the Halo gave her enough of a boost to help her kill a member of the clergy.

But really, it’s…it’s that —

“That none of it makes sense.” 

Her words echo around the cave, the frustration in them ringing clear. Mary doesn’t respond, waiting for an elaboration, so Ava swallows, mulling her words over. Because when all’s said and done, she still can’t bring herself to believe in all of this. The hard evidence like demons and Tarasks and divinium, sure. But faith? Miracles? 

“All this bullshit about fate and the Halo ending up in me because it was ‘meant to be,’ or whatever,” she says haltingly, not sure whether Mary is the best or worst person to be confiding in about religious shit. “Why me? Why not literally anyone else in the world? I mean, like, if it’s really that powerful and all-seeing, it would’ve known, right? That I could do that? That I would? And it’s just…is it just okay with that? Where does it draw the line? Is there a line? At what point does it —?”

“Ava.” Mary cuts in, voice heavy with exhaustion. “You’re focusing on the wrong thing.”

“I’m…?” She pauses for a second, mind racing, wondering what the hell she’s supposed to be focusing on, but then draws a spectacular blank. “Huh?”

“Why did you kill her?”

Oh. “Because she tried to kill my friend. And then tried to kill me. Again.”

“So it was self-defense. You were trying to protect someone.” 

“Well, yeah, I know. But I didn’t have to jump to killing —”

“Didn’t you?” 

There’s a hint of anger in Mary’s question, sharp and distinct in comparison to her sleepy tone from seconds ago. Ava snaps her mouth shut, recalling what she’d heard about Mary’s mother, about sacrifice and its relation to both incarceration and freedom. But this is hardly the same…is it?

Mary sighs, audibly reigning herself in. “Look, I’m not saying murder is the answer, or that you should go and become some avenging angel Batman vigilante or anything.”

“Batman never kills,” Ava interrupts quietly.

“But sometimes these accidents happen and sometimes it’s not all bad,” she presses on, ignoring the comment. “Now, you say this so-called nun was going around killing kids? Maybe then it stands to reason that the world is better without her, right? For you, yes, but also for everyone else she might’ve murdered down the line.”

She breathes out slowly as she takes in Mary’s words, realizing just now that she’d been suppressing this exact thought. How Diego would’ve died that night if it weren’t for her. How she almost didn’t go back to St. Michael’s for him, how close he came to sharing her fate, how there would’ve been no Halo to resurrect him. 

If she’d arrived even a few minutes later, it would’ve been his death she’d be beating herself up over.

Shit. Shit, now her throat’s closing up and tears are pooling in her eyes and she can’t stop thinking about how Diego is safe and alive because she loved him enough to return and save his life, but no one had loved her enough to come and save her. She scrubs hard at her eyes, willing those thoughts out of her head with violent ferocity. 

“Sometimes” Mary continues, either unaware of Ava crying or choosing to let it go without comment, “it’s good to have a little penance about all the bad shit we do in the name of good. But when it gets to the point of drowning yourself in that guilt? Not gonna help anyone, I can tell you that right now.”

Ava nods before remembering that Mary can’t see her. She manages to whisper a strangled “yeah” that definitely gives away the fact that she’s choking on tears. Mary still doesn’t comment on it, which Ava has to appreciate. 

“Well, is that it? Got everything you want out of that crazy little head of yours?” she asks. “‘Cuz I’m about to close this confessional and go to sleep, if that’s alright with you.”

“…Not really,” Ava admits. “But for now, probably yes.”

With a grunt, Mary shifts again, most likely rolling over so her back is to Ava, shutting her out for the rest of the night. Totally fair. 

Ava shifts too, rolling onto her side to relieve the aches and pains building up in her back, and immediately sinks into a deep and dreamless sleep. 

*               *               *

Ava doesn’t want to admit it, especially since she was highkey tricked into coming here, but there’s no point denying it now that Mary’s gone back to the Cradle.

She loves this town. 

Like, really loves this town.

It’s secluded and quiet, sure, but that’s a charm point in and of itself, tucked away on a beautiful mountainside away from the chaos and commotion of the city. And the people are kind — both as individuals and as a whole — humbled and humanized through their shared trauma, slowly but surely working together to rebuild their fractured community. 

They get it. They get what it’s like to live through a truly horrifying ordeal, to come out of it changed and damaged with little to no faith left in humanity. What it’s like to support each other through it all, choosing trust and forgiveness in a world that rarely rewards that sort of vulnerability. What it’s like to appreciate the smallest, most insignificant pleasures that life has to offer because, maybe one day, they won’t get to enjoy it anymore. 

And they get her , somehow. Mary hadn’t specified just how much OCS lore had been divulged to these civilians, but they seem to know enough about the leadership mantle to understand that Ava has inadvertently become the new Sister Shannon. But unlike the Order, they don’t chide her for not living up to the title, nor do they push her to shoulder the role so she can help others the way Shannon had helped them. They know that she’s not just a normal girl, but they also accept that she’s not a self-sacrificing hero. 

No one here expects her to be someone she’s not. 

Oh, and the food. Lord, the food. JC’s cooking was great, but (no offense, dude) none of his stuff holds a candle to the dishes Mateo whips up at his restaurant. 

Between all of that and the genuine comfort Ava’s experiencing in god knows how long, she ends up sticking around way longer than one more night. As a matter of fact, almost a whole week flashes by before she remembers that she was trying to get the hell out of this entire country and off to a life of anonymity and freedom. 

She’s well aware that nothing’s really forcing her to leave; Mary had promised she wouldn’t give away her whereabouts to the Order, and Ava believes her. And at this point, she’s pretty sure Mateo’s more or less adopted her — she’d been sleeping in the underused breakroom above his restaurant since her second night here.

But she can’t stay. She has more to see, more to do, more to experience. So it’s with a heavy heart but firm resolution that she announces to Mateo that she’ll be leaving town first thing in the morning. 

“Are you sure? You know you’re welcome here as long as you’d like,” Mateo says. 

His invitation is so open and honest that Ava’s tempted to accept. Maybe one more day. Maybe a week. A month. Two months. A year —

“No,” she says forcefully, more to herself than to him. “No, thank you, but I have to — I should — I can’t stay. Not forever.”

He smiles, kind and understanding, as he notes the reluctance in her voice. “Come, then. You should take some extra clothes. And some snacks for the journey.”

Well. She’d never say no to snacks. 

He leads her to a closet in the back room of the restaurant, its hangers full of mismatched jackets and sweaters. “Lost and found,” he explains. “Take anything you’d like. No one’s come back for these in years.”

Ava grins. More clothes to choose from. It’s not exactly department store shopping, but she likes being able to browse through a rack of clothes and select one that best fits her preferences. She suddenly misses Chanel and her impeccable taste and style, the way she can scan through a selection and pull together an outfit that perfectly embodies Ava. 

Behind her, Mateo puts together a small bag of snacks and water, and Ava politely pretends not to notice as he slips in some cash in one of the pockets. 

“Do you know where you will go?” he asks.

“Not really,” Ava admits, thinking of postcards and gum and going with the flow. Before, the idea had been thrilling and exciting, but now that option seems more daunting than anything. “Maybe just head to a port or train station and decide from there.”

Mateo hums, neither approving nor disapproving. She’s found him a little difficult to read at times, his neutral pleasantries a little too effective at hiding his true feelings, but she’s almost certain he’s never judging her. Maybe calculating, but never judging. 

Her fingers brush against leather, smooth and tough, and fixates on the sensation. She pulls out a leather jacket, relatively new but clearly worn often enough to break in the leather. 

Behind her, Mateo chuckles with approval. “That one. That one was my wife’s,” he says with a smile, more fond than sad. 

Ava can’t help but laugh. “Seriously? Dude, your wife had style.”

“She did.” Shit. Now he sounds sad. “She was always…ah, cooler. Compared to me, at least. More spirit, more risk. She used to tease me for being soft-hearted.” 

“That’s not a bad thing.”

“No, no. Of course not.” 

With wordless prompting from Mateo, Ava tries on the jacket. It’s a great fit, comfortable around her shoulders, warm but not too stuffy. She runs out to the floor to check herself out in the mirror next to the bar. 

She looks badass.

Oh, she looks like a sexy badass. 

Mateo follows her out, regaining his smile as he sees Ava’s elation. “It suits you. No, no; please keep it. I insist. It will only collect dust here.” He gestures to a framed photo tucked away on the corner of the bar — it’s of him and a kind-looking woman, both of their heads bowed, mid-laugh. “That’s her. Elena. She liked living fast and loose, always so rebellious. I like taking things slow. Finding happiness in the little moments, you know?”

Ava nods, somehow relating to both of them. 

She stares at the photo, at their joy, and a deep sense of sorrow washes over her. It’s like every time she turns a corner, death is there, waiting. Death that occurred in the past. Death that’s happening in the present. Death that will inevitably take place if she doesn’t do something to stop it. 

She stares at the photo, at Mateo’s late wife, and wonders how in the hell the Order expects someone like Ava to assume the Warrior Nun mantle. Not even Shannon could save this poor woman. She couldn’t even save herself.

Since learning about the Halo’s presence in her back, Ava’s felt several variations of fear towards it — fear of dying via the Tarask, fear of getting trapped in some demon-fighting book club, fear of having this power source carved out and returning to her lonely, bedridden, quadriplegic life. But now, a new sort of fear creeps in, one that she’d never expected would overcome her disdain for the whole Halo-related responsibility track: fear of failure. 

Which, like, doesn’t even make sense. She’s leaving all that shit behind. 

Right? Right. 

She never asked for this. They know that. Accepted it by now, probably. She doesn’t owe them anything, and she certainly doesn’t owe them her guilt. 

…Right?

“Ava.” 

Mateo’s voice snaps her out of her spiral. He’s looking at her with a serious expression, his eyes focused and somber, and she gets the sense that he just read her like a book. 

“I know it’s difficult to commit to something you are unsure of, something you don’t believe in, especially when it is a matter dangerous enough to lose your life. And you — I can tell you have a lot more life to live.” He rests a warm hand on her shoulder, a comforting and paternal gesture that Ava unconsciously leans into. “But maybe if you look at it another way, perhaps see it as a way to ease your conscience or tie up loose ends before you start a new life…maybe then it will not seem so terrible to help them.” 

“It’s not…w-well ‘terrible’ is…” she stutters, “…harsh but accurate, I guess. It’s not that I don’t want to, though! Not really. There’s just so much I haven’t done and I don’t even…I don’t even know who I am yet. And if I don’t know who I am, how am I supposed to know how I fit into this demon hunting gig?” 

He hums, contemplative. “They didn’t provide you with any guidance on that?”

Ava grimaces, barely holding back a mocking scoff. “I don’t really agree with their take.” 

Mateo hums again and sinks back to his unreadable neutrality as they fall silent. 

In the lull, Ava turns back towards the mirror and gives her reflection a hard once-over. Ratty secondhand clothes, messy hair, dissatisfied scowl, leather jacket — definitely not the image of some religious hero bearing the literal halo of an angel. At least, not a Church-sanctioned image. 

Then she considers Mary, cursing and lying and killing and riding motorcycles and toting around her namesake shotguns and looking badass as hell. Mary, offering Ava the same sort of freedom she has at the OCS, coming and going as she pleases, having her own life outside of the mission. Mary, putting her foot down in front of Vincent and asking for what she deserves. Utilizing her necessity. 

Ava shifts her shoulders, liking the weight of the jacket. It brings her back to another time, to another borrowed jacket given to her by a kind stranger, to another fatherly presence hovering protectively behind her. Instead of dread, the memory is accompanied by an unexpected sort of nostalgia.

She catches Mateo’s eyes in the reflection.

“You’re considering it,” he states. He doesn’t even elaborate on what she could be considering, but she knows he’s read her mind again. 

“Crazy, huh?”

“Mm, not really. They are good people, and so are you. It’s only natural that you’d want to help each other.” He hands Ava the bag of snacks and offers a smile. “And you are also soft-hearted like me, no?”

That has her mirroring Mateo’s smile. “Guess I am.” Then she rolls her eyes. “Ugh, it feels awful. How do you live like this?”

“Years of practice,” he chuckles, “you get used to it.”

She doesn’t really want to get used to it, not if it’s going to make her throw away a chance at freedom and limitless possibilities for an honest-to-god crusade, but she figures it’s probably for the better. Because in the end, it’s not just about running away from monsters and nuns and evil scientists that’ll have her looking over her shoulder. Ava’s pretty sure that if she gives up on them now, this whole chapter will become the biggest ‘what if’ for the rest of her life, eternally tying her down to this ignored opportunity that could later lead to unneeded regret.

“Yeah, I’ll consider it,” she concedes with an annoyed sigh, neither committing nor dismissing. “But if I’m gonna, then there’s someone I have to go see first.”

Chapter Text

In a strange but satisfying turn of events, Ava marches into Arq-Tech and demands an audience with The Great Dr. Jillian Salvius herself. 

Maybe in a different life, Ava would be over the moon about this development, this unfathomable and hilarious power play. A dumbass, scruffed-up nobody like her, striding into a pristine facility that’s probably never seen a speck of dirt and insisting to see the smartest person in the goddamn world. Laying waste to a spotless lobby and blasting away security guards like she’s some kind of supervillain throwing a temper tantrum. 

But she can’t afford to stop and take in the irony of the situation, too busy feeling immense annoyance and a tiny bit of rage about being hunted like an escaped experiment, especially considering that the thing that Jillian’s hunting defies all laws of science that she could possibly understand. 

And, it turns out, she fucking doesn’t! She just wanted to use Ava as a fucking generator to power her weird-ass portal device.

Jesus. One of the most renowned researchers in the biotech field and the only one studying interdimensional portals, and not even she can figure out what the hell the Halo is. Which is like…come on, man. Ava was counting on this gazillion-dollar lab and the genius running it to identify some useful deduction about the Thing™ in her back, so if she can’t find her answers here, then what the hell is she supposed to turn to?

Religion? Ha. Haha. 

All of this is so anticlimactic, if she’s being honest. One second, she’s entering a potentially dangerous partnership with the world’s greatest scientist slash arch nemesis, and the next, said scientist is hardcore giving up on the chase and sinking into what looks like depressive hopelessness over Ava’s uselessness. 

And she gets it, kind of. As Jillian reveals her true motivation — personal, not greed or ambition — she’s looking more and more human, desperate not for fame or glory but for a cure to save her family. 

Michael. 

The boy behind the alarmed door, the boy who’s just as trapped as she used to be; locked behind the limitations of his own body, unable to escape and live freely. 

Ava looks around at the glass walls, and towards the lonely bed in the center of the room. A fishbowl. The boy as the goldfish.

It’s like looking in a mirror, or rather, some kind of foil — Michael, pumped full of the one substance that can hurt her, and Ava, carrying the ancient artifact that can activate it inside of her body. He could kill her. She doesn’t know how, she doesn’t even know why she thinks so, but that’s the first thought that comes to mind when she sees his body glow with the particulates.

Next to her, Jillian’s phone rings loudly from her pocket and Ava jerks back to the present. 

“Sorry, I have to take this,” she mutters. 

Behind her, Michael pouts. “Can Ava stay?” he asks. 

Jillian hesitates in the doorway. She glances at Ava, who’s been throwing temper tantrums left and right since entering the building, and then back at her son, clearly very, very lonely and starving for a change in company. 

When Jillian turns back to Ava, she tries to help by offering a nonchalant shrug. “I mean. I’m cool with it if you are. Scout’s honor I won’t go Hulk mode in here.” 

It’s not a very convincing scout’s honor, but Jillian’s phone rings again and she melts under Michael’s pleading look. “All right. I’ll be back as soon as I can,” she says as she leaves, both a promise to her son and a warning to Ava. 

Unbothered by the mild judgment, Ava plops herself down on the floor next to him and flips through his coloring books before peering over at his artwork. “Whatcha drawing?”

“Me,” he says simply, looking down at his arms as he draws with the sky blue colored pencil. “The divinium in me. I want to remember what parts of me are glowing.” 

She chuckles at the innocence of his fascination, but at the same time, a deep sort of sadness embeds itself into her heart at his desire to document this phenomenon. He understands the gravity of his condition, how his mother had to resort to unearthly methods to keep him alive. He also understands that this is a temporary and fleeting sight, that Ava’s not sticking around, that he probably won’t see her or his glowy skin ever again. 

Her mind drifts to Diego. He also loved to draw, creating countless masterpieces for and of Ava that the sisters tended to toss away unless she begged and pleaded with them to pin at least a few on the wall next to her bed. She wonders if he’s gotten a new roommate yet. She wonders if he likes them enough to draw for them too. 

Her throat tightens. 

“Hey, don’t forget about your eyes,” she suggests, forcing the emotions away. He looks up, confused, and she points to his face. “Your eyes are glowing too, dude.”

He blinks rapidly, bemused, and shoots up from his seat to race to one of the glass walls. In the reflection, she sees his glowing eyes widen and his jaw drop. 

“Whoa,” he says, a wide smile splitting across his face. “That’s so cool.”

“It’s very cool,” Ava agrees. “You’re like a superhero.”

Michael looks back at her with a giant grin, full of unhindered joy, and she feels a pang of guilt race through her. It’s not just drawing — he also shares Diego’s poor health condition, and she aches for them both. All this healing power jammed into her and she can’t transfer any of it to the people who actually need it. To kids just like her, trapped and lonely and longing for freedom. What a goddamn waste. 

She can’t take it out. She can’t transfer these powers onto anyone else. She’s the only one who can wield the power of the Halo.

Which means…ugh. 

Maybe she really does need to go back to the OCS and help them sort out their shit before she can really be free. Whatever conspiracy theory Mary was going on about with the cardinal and Shannon sounded like it’d go a lot faster and smoother if they had Ava and the Halo (mostly the Halo, let’s be real) on their side. Maybe that’s the way she can be useful. Maybe that’s how she’ll keep this second life and these abilities from becoming a complete waste.

Which means…ugh.

She needs to go back to Cat’s Cradle. She needs to willingly return to combat nun central, after she’d ran away, after she’d marked herself as a coward, after she’d gotten their star member killed. 

Ah, dread. Absolute dread.

At least their whole philosophy is forgiveness, right? They’ll have to accept her when she literally comes crawling back to them because 1. they need the Halo, and 2. because they’re all about redemption. Probably.

Either way, all of that drama is gonna have to wait. Because for now, she’s going to take the time to color in this Winnie the Pooh book next to this adorable, lonely kid until Jillian comes back.

*               *               *

There’s a pattern forming, and Ava’s not sure how to feel about it. 

Part of her thinks it’s kind of funny, the way she keeps voluntarily coming back to these places she previously desperately wanted to escape from: St. Michael’s, Arq-Tech, and now Cat’s Cradle. The other, more cautious part of her starts to grow suspicious. Why do circumstances keep pushing her back to these places where she once felt powerless and trapped? Is it some kind of fucked-up test? Is it supposed to be a sign? Or is it just a simple coincidence? 

Whatever it is, she’s somewhat comforted by the notion that she always returns with more power and control than when she’d left, able to blow away literal and figurative demons with the raw energy of the Halo. 

She’s ready. She’s pumped up and she’s gonna kick ass and she’s gonna be the white fucking knight to this rapidly-deterorating Order. She’s gonna swing this glowing sword at some evil reject nuns and look so badass doing it. As if it’s responding to her enthusiasm, the Halo powers up, bathing the walls behind them with a muted golden glow.

Next to her, Mary groans softly. “Can you relax? Get that thing under control; this is supposed to be a stealth op.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Ava says nonchalantly while vibrating with excitement. “I’m just pumping up for a fight.”

“Did you not just hear me say ‘stealth’? We’re gonna be in and out, we’re not trying to fight anyone.”

“Just in case! Gotta be ready, right?” Mary doesn’t dignify that with a response, so Ava pokes at her from another angle. “What about Vincent and Beatrice? You said they were reassigned, but does that just mean like, they were demoted or something? Got the night shift? Custodial duties? Do we need to bust them out of the dungeon?”

“No, they were transferred. Beatrice to Malaysia, Vincent to America.”

That stills her. “Wait, they’re gone? Gone gone? Out-of-the-country gone?”

“See what happens when you take your sweet time crawling back here?” Mary grumbles. “Got all three of us marked as traitors and for what? Just so your dumb ass can enjoy Mateo’s fideuá for a few extra days?”

“Hey!” she shoots back, even though that’s exactly what she did. “I was busy with other stuff too! I got Arq-Tech off my back, didn’t I? And I figured out my shit; I’m here helping you out.”

Instead of praise, all Ava receives is a skeptical look. “Yeah, and let me guess. You’re only here to ‘help us out’ with this one thing and you’re hoping to bargain yourself out of our business forever, right?” Mary chuckles drily as Ava pouts in response, her guess landing true. “Figured.”

“Your idea,” she mumbles.

“That is not what I told you to do.”

“Close enough!”

“It really isn’t.” 

Mary holds up a hand before Ava can retort, too abrupt for it to be anything other than a warning. They huddle in the shadows as footsteps approach and then disappear down an adjacent hallway, neither of them daring to breathe.

“They’re not coming,” Mary breathes as they restart their trek to Shannon’s room. “We’re on our own and there’re about fifteen of Duretti’s lap dogs here armed to the teeth and ready to kill you on sight, so how about we try not to attract attention?”

“Fine,” Ava mutters. Then, after a thought, adds, “I’m sorry. About getting you all reassigned.” 

They walk in silence for a while, the apology floating awkwardly between them like a sad and deflated balloon. Mary waits for another pair of footsteps to fade into the distance before speaking. “Actions have consequences,” she says simply with a shrug. “In this case, it wasn’t just yours. All three of us decided to go against Duretti’s orders on our own; that’s not something you have to apologize for.”

“But you guys went against him for me, didn’t you?” 

She shrugs again. “We all had our reasons. It’s not just about you — there’s also the mission. The Halo. The Order as a whole. You might’ve been the catalyst for things going to shit, but none of us agree with how it’s being handled.”

“Gotta say, I’m not a huge fan of the ‘wanted dead or alive’ thing either.”

“Debatable if they want you at all,” Mary scoffs. “Just the Halo.”

Ava purses her lips together, unable to turn that into a quippy joke. Because…yeah, that tracks. To an almighty power like the Church, Ava’s not even the main objective — she’s the bag that’s holding the stolen jewels, a disposable receptacle that can easily be tossed into the Catholic Dumpster alongside all the other heretics and heathens that dared get in the way of their agenda. 

They never wanted to convert her or mold her into the Warrior Nun. All along, they just wanted the Halo, and apparently she’d pushed their buttons hard enough for them to resort to murder in order to retrieve it.

Damn, she’d underestimated just how good she is at being an annoying little shit.

Speaking of annoying little shits and the Halo…

Ava doesn’t know how she knows, but there’s a different sort of energy to it here. It feels a little lighter on her back, a little more in sync with her. Less foreign. At peace. Resonating faintly with a sense of familiarity that Ava’s pretty sure doesn’t belong to her. Like it’s happy to be back at Cat’s Cradle.

The thought amuses her for some reason — the Halo expressing its contentment about coming back here, like it has preferences and favorite places. For a divine weapon, it sure has some simple desires.

Welcome home, she thinks at it fondly, and then immediately grimaces. Ew. What are they, friends now? Gross.

The sense of familiarity grows the closer they get to Shannon’s room; it’s like playing the world’s weirdest game of hot and cold, following the barely-there feelings of a semi-sentient artifact. But the stronger that feeling gets, the more assured Ava becomes that they’re on the right track, that Mary’s guess about a secret, Halo-Bearers-only room is correct. 

Hm. Is she doing what she thinks she’s doing? Is she putting her faith in the Halo? Trusting it? Letting it guide her? Strangely, she finds that she doesn’t mind all that much. Maybe it’s right. Maybe it’s wrong. Whatever the outcome turns out to be, it’s got her back. Hopefully.

Well, we’re about to see, she thinks as they round the corner and the open door to Shannon’s room comes into view. Okay, dude. Showtime.

Chapter Text

Through the messy, destructive, and almost comically conspicuous (but otherwise successful) plight from Cat’s Cradle, Ava learns three new things about the Halo. 

First: it’s strong as shit. If Ava thought the blast she emitted in Arq-Tech’s lobby was explosive, the one she’d unintentionally triggered in Shannon’s room was a goddamn nuclear bomb. She’d blasted aside furniture, blew out a window, and sent everyone and everything — herself and a fucking shotgun blast included — flying in all different directions. Under the right circumstances, this thing can probably blow a freaking crater in the earth. File that one under ‘pretty freaking cool.’

Second: its unconscious protection isn’t limited to her safety anymore. Before, it had activated only when she was in danger, reacting instinctively to cover her ass before Ava herself had even sensed the threat. It had never jumped up to protect anyone else around her no matter how hard she tried to channel its energy, but now…now apparently it’s willing to listen. At the very least, it’d listened enough to protect Beatrice from certain death. She’ll take it.

Third and most unsettling: it has a limit. Like, it can be depleted if she uses it too much, which is so totally not what Ava had expected from an apparently divine artifact. This is supposed to be a freaking angel’s halo, infinite in its power, unbound by the laws of human physics. For it to run out of juice and leave her immobile is a terrifying prospect, and experiencing firsthand how that feels has made her aware of an even more terrifying truth. 

The Halo didn’t resurrect her, at least not permanently; it’s been working nonstop all this time to keep her alive, using part (if not most) of its power for that sole purpose, every second of every day. If she were to lose it, she wouldn’t just go back to being paralyzed. She’ll go back to being dead.

Which isn’t the most comforting discovery to make right before being asked to push the limits of the Halo’s power to the very edge…but then again, when has anything ever been made comfortable for her?

And it’s too late to back out. She’s made her decision; she went back to the Cradle to get her answers, to find her purpose, and she’s got one now. This is the field she’s decided to sow. The hill she’s decided to die on. Like, probably literally die on.

Because there’s really no way to spin this Warrior Nun schtick into a positive endowment. It’s baffling to Ava just how deceptive and downright cruel this Next In Line process is, how all of those sisters who signed that journal had passed on the legacy by jamming this wretched thing into each other’s backs like some fucked-up death baton, glorifying the relay by giving it some catchy little title and leadership rights to a super secret sect of demon hunting nuns. 

All those girls died for this thing. 

And for what? Honor? Devotion? Faith?

Restless and anxious, Ava shifts on the sofa, rolling over onto her side to try and find a more comfortable position. She’s supposed to be resting, maybe getting some much-needed sleep, so she can go back to training on the wall with Beatrice and risking her entire life in the hopes that the Halo won’t run out of batteries before she makes it out of the stone.

But she can’t settle her mind, thinking about duty and obligation and morality, thinking back to that dingy little bedroom at the Cradle — the room assigned to the Halo-Bearer, militaristic in its minimalism. The room that was so freshly parted with Shannon that her personalizations still covered the walls and desk. Her notes. Her sketches and paintings. She was an artist. She was a person. 

Ava’s back prickles, the Halo feeling colder and heavier than usual.

Was that her fate? To be riddled with supernatural shrapnel as a sacrifice to some Higher Power, some almighty Greater Good? To be remembered only as some crusader, one of many to pass, one of many to come? 

…Would she even be remembered?

She’s a fluke. An outlier. She didn’t volunteer for this like her predecessors. She wouldn’t be surprised if her chapter in this lineage was completely erased, her struggles cut out like a tumor to keep the tradition pure and holy — just like how the Halo had erased all of her scars from the car accident to turn her into an unmarred vessel fit for its purpose. 

That’s all she’s ever been good for. Being used. Abused. 

Then forgotten.

She almost startles awake as the sharp sound of a turning page cuts through the air — Beatrice, somewhere in the room, busying herself with a book while she waits patiently for Ava to recuperate. Reading, of course, like the nerd she is. She could’ve left the office to wait elsewhere while Ava rested, but she seems to have taken her earlier promise to heart. We will never leave you . 

Managing to keep her eyes closed through the sudden sound, Ava fixates on it, on Beatrice’s quiet presence, on her decision to stay by her side. She thinks about the devotion Beatrice shows to the Order, to the Halo, and by extension, to Ava. She thinks about the tearful confession she’d made earlier in this very room and everything that was said and not said, about the pain that had shoved her onto this road, about the pain that keeps her on it. 

She thinks about Beatrice’s voice in her ear, guiding her through her darkest fears, about Beatrice catching her, arms solid and strong and unwavering around Ava, hands soft and gentle and warm against her face. 

Legacy and glory and heroic epics be damned; none of that shit matters in the end if she has even just one person who’ll remember and appreciate how she lived and what she died for. If she’s going to risk her life, let it be for this ragtag group of scrappy fighters who believed in her from the beginning, not for some holy cause that’s trying to rid the world of demons. 

And it’s this thought that finally lulls Ava to sleep, tugging her down deep into a dream that feels more like a memory — into a cold and empty church where a lonely figure collapses to her knees in agonized grief.

Chapter Text

“…What do I do with my hands?”

Through the reflection in the mirror, Beatrice stares back at her blankly, not understanding the question.

“My hands,” Ava repeats, frowning down at herself. “They look weird just hanging by my side. Do I clasp them in front of me? Or behind my back? Should I be holding like, a rosary or something? A Bible?”

“Do whatever’s comfortable.”

“Well, what do you usually do?”

“Does it matter?” Mary interjects from the door, her and Camila already halfway outside. “This isn’t a Halloween costume; you don’t need props or authenticity.”

“All right, all right, jeez.” With one last look in the mirror to adjust the uncomfortable collar, Ava follows the others out of the dressing room and onto the streets of Rome, feeling bulky and off-balance in two layers of clothing and a floor-length skirt swishing around her ankles. 

Welp. She’s made it. She’s a nun. 

Okay maybe not really, maybe not even close, but she’ll be damned if she doesn’t pull off the getup. She blends seamlessly in with the others now, just another sister — no, Sister Warrior — on her way to the Vatican to fuck shit up. It’s a mission, real and dangerous and probably life-threatening, and Ava’s a key player in turning the tides of this millenia-old battle against demons and wraiths.

If only Frances could see her now, dressed all pious and fighting evil for the Catholic Church — she’d probably have an aneurysm and die again at such a blasphemous sight, and Ava smiles to herself at the thought. All this ‘fight for the greater good’ nonsense is still too slippery for her to properly grasp, but she can always appreciate some rightfully earned spite. 

“Left,” Camila whispers from behind her, somehow sensing that Ava isn’t paying attention. “Make a left up here.” 

“Thanks,” she whispers back, swerving to her left to lead them purposely through an archway and into a busy plaza, puffing out her chest as she does both to appear more leaderly and to straighten out her posture to look more nun-like.

That’s right, she’s leading a mission. She can’t be getting distracted and shoving imaginary middle fingers at Frances’s grave, lest Mary or Beatrice think she’s goofing —

“Ava.”

She starts at Beatrice’s sudden warning. Holy shit, did she just read her mind? Have they advanced to telepathic communication from all those hours of training? 

“Walk normally,” she says, looking down pointedly at Ava’s feet. “You’re skipping.”

“Wh-…oh. Hah, didn’t even notice.”

“You’ve got a knack for treating deadly missions like fun little adventures, don’t you?” Mary comments from behind, and Ava knows without turning around that she’s rolling her eyes. “Can you — Hey! You’re still doing it! Knock it off.”

“Sorry!” With tremendous effort, she forces her feet to take even steps with normal stride lengths, resulting in an exaggerated and stilted sort of march that has everyone groaning and sighing. “Betcha wish you gave me some props now, huh?” Ava asks, grinning back at Mary. She receives a flat look in return. 

“This plan won’t work if you blow our cover,” Vincent says, somehow maintaining his patient tone while looking one-thousand percent done with Ava’s shit. “Stay focused.”

“Yessir.”

“It’s another left at the fork up ahead,” Camila whispers.

“Yes ma’am.”

See? She’s doing great! Everyone clearly respects her and she definitely knows where she’s going and this mission is off to a flawless start. 

Honestly, though. Ava’s not a complete idiot. She’s well aware that this isn’t a fun little adventure and that she needs to maintain her cover — they’re infiltrating the Vatican with a bag full of weapons and explosives, not sneaking into a press party at Arq-Tech. One mistake could mean imprisonment for treason and terrorism. 

Or worse, death by crushed-in-the-walls-of-a-thousand-year-old-tomb. 

A chill shoots down her back, and Ava rushes to quell it lest she activate the Halo’s hair-trigger protectiveness. It’s fine. She’ll be fine. They’ll all be fine. Just a little…explosion to get into the catacombs, a bit of blind phasing, a quick melting of some ancient bones. Easy peasy. 

“Easy peasy,” she says under her breath, and tries to make herself believe it as they move deeper and deeper into the heart of the city. 

*               *               *

Well, you know what? She’d be lying if she said she wasn’t expecting this.

Like, looking at it logically, they’re deep underground in an ancient catacomb, there’s 20 feet of solid stone in between them, and there’s probably enough supernatural energy buzzing around to fry even a simple radio. It’s no wonder the earpiece in Ava’s ear fizzles and cuts out completely as she rounds the Tarask skeleton, its divinium contents probably the last straw for the delicate wiring in Jillian’s tech. 

She was expecting it, but that doesn’t mean Ava had prepared for just how terrifying the silence would be. She’d come to rely so heavily on Beatrice’s voice, her clear directions, her constant presence even when she wasn’t talking, her…well, her everything. 

The panic is immediate and, dare she say it, paralyzing, and while Ava wants to say she handles it like a champ, she truly and utterly freaks the fuck out. 

Because there’s a time limit and if she runs out, she’s gonna get stuck in a fucking wall and probably get horribly crushed and suffocate and…holy shit, what if she doesn’t die from that because of the Halo’s healing powers and she just suffers endlessly from the weight of the stone around her and the awful sensation of constant asphyxiation drives her completely insane? 

And now she’s about to spiral into a full-blown panic attack.

Okay, okay, okay, breathe. Breathe, damnit. Just keep going straight. One foot in front of the other. That’s all it is, one foot right in front of the other. Her inner voice struggles to keep its chill, growing shaky and hysterical the more she tries to hold it together. She needs something more calm, more rational. She needs Beatrice. 

Ava forces a deep breath. If she can’t have the real thing, maybe she can just imagine it. 

Okay. All right. British accent. Gentle cadance. Something something…breaking through her fears. Something about never leaving her alone again. Maybe something about tapping into her emotions. And maybe something about finding —

Family.

She frowns as an unexpected voice, not Beatrice’s, flickers at the edge of her brain. 

Through it, I found a family.

Shannon. Standing tall, resolute, and alone. Radiating blank, detached resentment towards the mission, the Order, the Warrior Nun title. Lamenting over her found and lost family. 

The Halo is a burden.

Ava almost scoffs to herself. Uh, yeah, it sure as shit is, Shannon. But at least you signed up for this, right? At least you knew what you were getting yourself into.  

Though it’s arguable that Ava also signed up for this, this hastily constructed plan of phasing through what feels like five thousand kilometers of ancient rock in order to melt some bones that may or may not be the solution to all of their problems. But the difference is that she was relentlessly chased down by this obligation until she agreed; Shannon willingly went looking for it.

Still, she meant every word of what she said back at Arq-Tech — Ava doesn’t want this burden to go to anyone else. If this is what it takes to end this demon-hunting mission, if this is how she buys her freedom, if this is how she keeps Beatrice and Mary and her little family from dying as Next In Line, then she’ll do it. 

Because despite it all, underneath the bitterness and resentment, there’s one more significant underlying emotion she feels towards the Halo: begrudging gratitude. 

It brought her a life, a purpose, a new way to see the world. It brought her this family, as dysfunctional as it may be right now, and she can’t fully appreciate all of them without accepting how she’d come by them. Lilith, willing to die for her. Camila, steadfast, kind, and always forward-thinking. Mary, moaning and groaning as she fulfills the older sister role. Father Vincent and Jillian, somehow still supporting her through all of her flaws and fuck-ups. And Beatrice…and Beatrice…

…ugh, damnit. Ava misses her voice. 

Even more so when her limbs suddenly start to feel like jelly, a familiar sensation that indicates that she’s about to run out of juice very, very soon. Swallowing down renewed panic, Ava screws her eyes shut and forces her legs forward, trusting that she’s still pointed in the right direction because, really, what the hell else can she do? 

She’s not going to get stuck in here. She’s going to make it into that tomb, melt the shit out of those dusty old bones, phase back out to her friends, and celebrate so hard with them. She’s gonna get out of here alive and live out the rest of her life doing whatever the hell she wants. She’s gonna rid the world of demons and save the rest of the OCS from the burden of the Warrior Nun title. 

One of those thoughts must’ve done the trick — a small spurt of energy trickles out from the Halo, one final push to carry her through the rest of this awful stone. 

And she does it; she makes it through the wall.

She enters the tomb.

She meets the angel.

And it all goes to hell.

Chapter Text

Fuck. 

Shit. 

She’s fucked up. She’s fucked up real bad. 

How could they have gotten it so wrong? How could she have gotten it so wrong? It wasn’t even just wrong, it was completely, utterly, devastatingly backwards. 

Because he’s alive. He’s alive and terrible and cruel and totally fucked in the head. He’s a thief and a manipulator and a killer. He’s the motherfucking devil. They were lied to. 

They were lied to by the one man they trusted. 

And all Ava can do is watch in horror as that man stands by, a casual observer to the chaos unfolding in front of him, letting one of his most trusted soldiers — his confidante, his friend — get mobbed by a horde of possessed civilians. She wants to move, to spring into action, to dive in and pull Mary from the stampede and tear Adriel and Vincent to shreds with her bare hands. But the crowd is surging forward and Ava can’t move or budge or lift a single finger, much less a whole sword.

Suddenly someone grabs her collar from behind and everything vanishes in a cloud of suffocating smoke. Then she’s stumbling backwards across hard-packed earth; Ava trips over her own feet and nearly falls on her ass from the sheer force of the unexpected pull, but someone catches and rights her before she does. 

Lilith. Using her newfound hell-born teleportation powers. 

Ava has no idea where they are. It’s dark and all she can see is dirt and a low hill and maybe a treeline in the distance. The only thing she knows is that they’re no longer in the Vatican, that they’re not remotely near the city, that there’s only four of them here, and that —

“We have to go back.” 

Her voice rings out hollow and empty in the darkness, largely ignored by everyone still trying to get their bearings. Somewhere to her left, Camila groans as she fights the queasiness that accompanied the teleportation that Ava managed to largely suppress. To her right, Beatrice flicks on a flashlight. 

With the illumination comes renewed energy. “We have to go back!” Ava repeats. She whirls on Lilith, gripping at her forearms like she can trigger her teleportation that way. “Take me back. Take me back! We need to go get Mary!” 

But Lilith doesn’t move, expression blank and impassive, her eyes flickering back and forth from Ava to a spot over her shoulder. To Beatrice. Ava whips around in time to see her slowly shaking her head. 

“Wh-? N-no, what do you mean? Why ‘no’? We have to go back!”

“We can’t. There’re too many of them,” Beatrice says, her voice a detached kind of calm. 

“Too…? So? That doesn’t matter!” Ava tugs at Lilith’s arms to emphasize her words. “We just have to get through enough of them to grab Mary! Lilith, come on!”

In a move so quick and sharp that Ava completely misses it, Lilith twists out of her grip and regards her coolly. “Beatrice is right,” she says simply. And nothing more. 

“Well we can’t just leave her there,” Camila chokes out, sounding close to tears or possibly already crying. “We can’t leave her to die.”

“No, we can’t! Lilith!” Ava snarls, grabbing at her again. “Let’s go! The longer we wait, the harder it’s gonna get for us to fight through that crowd. What the hell, come on! What’s wrong with you! Why won’t you help me? Let me fix this! Let me do one thing right!” Her voice breaks on the last word, and her eyes start to burn as she glares up at Lilith. Shit. No. Now’s not the time. She needs to do this before she completely breaks down.

“Ava…” Beatrice lays a gentle hand on her shoulder and Ava jerks violently to shake it off. “They’re not going to kill her. She’s too valuable of an asset to lose; they’ll want to keep her alive for any intel she might be able to provide.”

Ava bristles at the matter-of-fact tone, and she doesn’t even try to hide the shaking in her voice as she rounds on Beatrice instead. “You mean they’ll torture her for information. Right? How is that any better? How can you be okay with that? How can you just leave her to —?” 

“Do you honestly think I’m okay with that?” Beatrice snaps back, tone scathing and harsher than anything Ava’s ever heard from her. “Of course I want to go back for her! We all do, but that’s not a battle we can win, and you’re someone we can’t afford to lose. You know Mary, she wouldn’t want any of us risking anything on her behalf.”

“She’ll kill you if you get yourself caught,” Lilith agrees quietly. “Worse, she’ll kill the rest of us for letting you do something so stupid.” She rolls her eyes. “Personally, I wouldn’t stop her.”

Why this of all things — Lilith making a lame joke and playing the good cop — is the thing that finally breaks Ava, she doesn’t fucking know. But suddenly everything that just happened hits Ava straight in the chest like a sledgehammer, knocking the breath out of her lungs and driving her to her knees. 

And before she knows it, she’s crying. God, she’s on the ground and crying , sobbing and hiccuping uncontrollably like a child as she relives the last thirty minutes in nauseating flashes. The tomb. Being trapped. Adriel grasping at the Halo through her. Vincent betraying them. Mary disappearing under the mob.

All of it her fault. 

That’s what she finds herself blubbering, barely comprehensible. “It’s all my fault,” she repeats over and over, choking on tears and snot and all of her fuck-ups that’d led them all to this catastrophic turn of events. She’s aware of the others kneeling down beside her, surrounding and comforting and soothing, but she’s numb to it all, buried too deep in suffocating failure to feel their touch or hear their words.

They trusted her to lead them. They put their faith in her , an inexperienced idiot who threw together a haphazard plan that released a supernatural homicidal maniac into the world, a selfish nobody who refused to return their sacred weapon like a toddler hoarding a toy, a wannabe badass who couldn’t even protect the tiny family she’d grown to love so much. They trusted her to lead them and she let them down in the worst way possible.

“— can’t stay here, we’re too exposed.” Lilith's voice drifts in through Ava’s wallowing. “— need to get somewhere safe before —”

“I know,” comes Beatrice’s clipped reply, jarringly close to Ava’s ear. “Just…one minute.”

Shit. She’s holding them back. They’re waiting on her to finish her breakdown so they can get moving. Jesus Christ. What the fuck is she doing?

Heaving out a long, shuddering breath, Ava drags a sleeve across her eyes and fights to compose herself. “S-sorry,” she gasps out before struggling to her feet. The ground lurches a little beneath her and more than half her weight ends up on Beatrice, but with her support she manages to stand without faceplanting. “Sorry. I’m…I’m good. Let’s go.”

The three of them stare at her for a long second, clearly torn between sympathy and duty, between giving her more time to properly freak out and getting her to relative safety. But with Ava glaring back at them resolutely through red, puffy, watery eyes, they have no choice but to resort to the latter. 

There’s a brief squeeze on her arm: Beatrice, still pressed to her side to hold her up. “Then let’s get moving,” she says, taking a beat to level a careful look at Ava before turning towards the other two. “We need to get a car.”

*               *               *

It turns out ‘getting’ a car actually translates to Camila ‘hotwiring’ and ‘stealing’ a car.

It’s a fascinating process, one that barely takes thirty seconds and involves a lot of stripping and crossing of wires that Ava would normally have eight thousand questions about, but they’re all silent and antsy as they wait for Camila to coax the engine to life. 

That silence and antsiness linger on as they pile into the stolen car and swerve onto the road, Beatrice driving with Camila shotgun, Lilith and Ava stiff and tense in the back seat. She’s not sure where they’re headed, she’s not even sure if they know where, but Beatrice is navigating the streets with purpose and neither Camila nor Lilith are chiming in with suggestions, so Ava figures that they’re following some pre-planned contingency plan. You know, the one for when a brainless Halo-Bearer accidentally frees the devil himself and unleashes eternal evil into the world. 

Part of her, the rational part that’s struggling to stay afloat in the tidal wave of guilt, knows that she’s being unfair to herself. No one here expected a flawless plan from her, much less a flawless execution of it. They’d followed through with it anyway, even Beatrice, and really, if Beatrice couldn’t foresee this, who the hell could?

They were all flying blind. Putting their faith in foggy recollections scribbled into an heirloom journal, stories and legends passed through so many hands that it’s no mystery how the truth got twisted around. But to miss the fact that Adriel’s alive? That he’s evil as shit? It seems like a significant detail to misinterpret. 

A nauseating jolt flashes through Ava’s body. If he’s not the fabled angel and if it’s not his halo, then what the hell is inside her right now? What is this…thing that’s keeping her alive?

Maybe she wasn’t thrilled with the idea of having an angel’s halo in her back, but even that was preferable compared to this utterly terrifying mystery. She suddenly feels wrong, somehow. Unnatural. Like she shouldn’t be here. 

Ava glances out the corner of her eyes towards Lilith, who’s spent the entire ride so far staring blankly past the two front seats through the windshield, barely blinking. Maybe she feels the same way, coming back from wherever she was, acquiring unearthly powers through an equally terrifying mystery and stumbling through the uncertainty of it all. Maybe they’re more alike than Ava wants to admit.

As she watches, a flicker of irritation crosses Lilith’s face, growing until it forms the familiar annoyed expression Ava had come to recognize.

“What,” she bites out. 

Ah. Good to know at least a little bit of the old Lilith remains. 

“Nothing,” Ava says quickly. 

“You keep looking at me, so obviously it’s not nothing.”

“I’m not —” she starts, but then reconsiders. What’s the point of lying? “I just, you know. Wanted to say that I’m sorry.”

Lilith doesn’t take her eyes off the road, her mouth thinning to a line, but takes a thoughtful minute before responding. “We’ve already established that it’s not your fault,” she says, not unkindly but with a certain amount of sternness. “Stop blaming yourself; there’s nothing you could’ve done. We were all deceived.” 

“Yeah, but.” Ava swallows thickly. “I dunno, I feel like. I could’ve — I should’ve listened to you,” she stutters, “when you told me not to go into the tomb. You were right.”

At that, Lilith scoffs. “Don’t be stupid, even I didn’t know what I was talking about. It was just a…” Her face morphs into a grimace. “A feeling, I suppose. An instinct. None of us had all the pieces.”

“We still don’t,” Ava mutters. “Everything we thought was true turned out to be a lie. A cover-up. It’s all a fucking mess and I don’t know what’s real anymore.”

“Then imagine how the rest of us feel,” Lilith snaps. She shifts her eyes off the road long enough to shoot a look at Ava, not quite a glower but close to it. “You’ve known about this world for, what, a week? Ten days? Please. The rest of us have devoted years to this cause. Lost friends. Family. Ourselves.” Her eyes flicker up to the rearview mirror, where she no doubt meets Beatrice’s eyes. “You think your beliefs were shaken, then you know it’s really fucked for us.”

A dense silence settles inside the car, overwhelming and almost tangible. No one reprimands Lilith for her language, and no one confirms nor denies sharing her crisis of faith. 

Well, this night is just jam-packed with twists and turns. Accidentally releasing the devil. The potential start of an apocalypse. Both Beatrice and Lilith dropping f-bombs within hours of each other. 

I have that effect on people, Ava remembers telling Mary all smug and proud, and her heart aches. Mary should be here with them. She’d be shell-shocked for sure, reeling from Vincent’s betrayal and raging over Shannon’s assassination, but she’d channel a rational sort of anger. Focused and grounded as always.

Risking the consequences of getting caught again, Ava glances once more at Lilith. A disciplined and by-the-book soldier, ambitious to a fault, and properly trained to bear the weight of the Halo — everything Ava isn’t. An uninvited, baseless thought crosses her mind, then, that if Lilith had the Halo, she would’ve found the bones — not Adriel — in the tomb as they’d expected. It doesn’t make any logical sense, but for some reason she can see it clearly in her grief-addled mind.

Sensing Ava’s gaze, Lilith rolls her eyes and opens her mouth to berate her again, but Ava beats her to it. “You should’ve gotten the Halo that night,” she whispers, “not me.”

Though her jaw clenches like she’s trying to formulate a response, Lilith doesn’t offer one — that in and of itself is more of a response than anything she could possibly say in agreement or disagreement. 

It’s not about who deserves it more; they both know better than that now. But the what-ifs and potential outcomes hang between them, the real, the imagined, the probable, and the impossible all mixing together into one glaringly obvious need: Mary to be alive. 

Come on. For the first time in a long-ass time, Ava closes her eyes and prays. Come on, come on, come on! Tell me this is a bad dream. Tell me everyone’s alive and safe. Tell me I didn’t just doom the world. Just…one little sign, please. 

Of course, no such sign comes. Not even the Halo sends her a reassuring pulse, either too spent or too exasperated to bother. 

Which begs the question…

…why the fuck did it end up in her?