Secrets and Sins

1. She's back

~Ava~

Ava woke with a gasp on the cold hard ground.

She flexed the fingers of her left hand, grasping a few strands of grass, damp from the morning dew and looked up at the slivers of blue sky through the branches of a tree above her. Tears prickled at the corners of her eyes and she let them fall. They weren't exactly happy tears, there were too many other emotions whipping through her, but Ava pushed them down, she was home.

Finally.

She knew it had to have been at least several months since she was sucked into the portal after the penultimate battle with Adriel.

Several months since she was blasted with hundreds of shards of divinium that should have killed her.

Several months since she had said goodbye to Beatrice.

Bea.

Would she see her again? Did she wait for her even after Ava had told her not to? She knew it was selfish, but fuck did Ava hope she had. The thought was suddenly interrupted when a white-hot agony surged through her body.

Fuck.

With a groan Ava lifted her head, her shredded black tunic was absolutely soaked with blood. The sharp and unrelenting pain radiated up through her torso, stealing her breath away.

Oh, great... she only removed the divinium, never mind the gaping wounds or anything.

To add insult to injury she was also paralyzed, the Halo completely drained after the return home. Laying her head back flat on the ground, she fought off the blackness at the edges of her vision, passing out right now would be less than helpful.

Ava rested for a moment before looking around again, she needed to work out where she had been spat back out. By the looks of it, she was lying haphazardly in the middle of a trail, one hand on the gravel and one on the grass verge. There was the babbling of a creek somewhere by her feet and the mature trees growing on either side shaded her from the rising sun.

Something about the surroundings seemed vaguely familiar.

Ava tried to remember what she had been thinking about when she had left the Otherside, Reya had said to focus on something as clearly as possible to anchor her back to her own world, but her memories felt fuzzy, like looking through frosted glass.

As she puzzled over her location, she realized she could hear the gravelly crunch of footsteps approaching quickly from down the trail to her left. Ava rolled her head towards the noise, a raspy cry for help on her lips as the figure got closer.

A loud gasp punctured the silence of the still early morning air.

"AVA?!"

Relief flooded her body as the woman Ava had missed more than anything rushed to her side.

So despite the pain searing through Ava's body, she offered her a crooked grin.

"Oh, hey Bea."

Bea's beautiful and slightly terrified honey brown eyes were the last thing she saw before succumbing to the darkness.

~Beatrice~

It had been a fortnight since Beatrice had arrived in Switzerland, settling back into the life herself and Ava had set up for themselves after the fight at the Vatican. Her sisters at the OCS had agreed to give her the time she needed to grieve for the Halo bearer. Beatrice had left them rebuilding their ranks after the decimation Adriel and his followers had caused.