Chapter Text
“I’m sorry.” The wiggly Splat character on the screen freezes mid-pantomime, and Ava’s attention is turned to the woman she is damn near sitting on. The lights are dimmed almost to nothing, the bright animation colors splashing all over them, a large patch of purple streaking across Bea’s face. Ava fiddles with the collar of Beatrice’s t-shirt, running her fingertips along the miniscule ridges and smiling at the obvious heave of the woman’s chest.
“For what?”
Bea grabs her hand and lowers it to the top of Ava’s knees thrown over her own. They’ve been inching closer and closer for the last hour and the only way they could be closer now would involve taking off clothing.
“For this morning.” There’s remorse in her voice but it’s stiff, like she’s apologizing for kidnapping her for the greater good (again).
“Thanks, but do you know what you’re actually apologizing for?” Ava leans in and lifts a hand back up to Bea’s face, stroking her cheek. She needs to hear Bea say it, to hear Bea acknowledge Diego as hers. As much as it made her skin crawl to admit, Lilith had been right, Ava never explicitly told Bea that she’s Diego’s other mother, so she had tried to make it abundantly clear to the world, or at least the bar, that Diego is theirs without question; dropping the word ‘your’ when talking to Bea, telling people how happy she is to be back so they can be a family, etc. And now, she feels that ache returning from this morning, only able to be relieved by the reassurance that the love of her life is fully on board.
“I’m apologizing for upsetting you. Something I said obviously affected you negatively and caused you to leave. I never want you to feel like that. This is your home, too. You should never feel as though you cannot be here.”
There it is again. Sincere, but vague. She’s sorry Ava felt the need to leave, yet continues to have no clue why. The hand still on Beatrice’s cheek applies a little pressure, forcing the other woman to face her. Ava’s going to have to break it down to a preschool level for a woman who can speak at least six languages. “Bea, I was upset becau-”
A wail sounds from the bedroom and Ava inhales, closing her eyes as she tilts her forehead to meet Bea’s shoulder. An ache runs through her for the days before the fight with Adriel, before the portal, before she spent fifteen years alone but never really alone . Those days are a whisper in her mind and no matter how hard she strains, she can’t hear them clearly anymore.
Hiccups develop in his cries and she knows she has to get to him soon, or he’ll start screaming. He hates hiccups. She’s up and on her way to the room before her body can convince her to stay instead.
“Hey baby boy, it’s okay, mommy’s here.” Ava’s hand finds his tummy and rubs softly to get his attention, his cries lowering to whimpers and sniffs, his eyes still filled with tears. She lifts him out, and brings him out and over to the changing table in the living area. With practiced ease, Ava unsnaps the bottom of his onesie, followed by the snaps on his diaper, waiting ten or so seconds before uncovering him. She is not in the mood to be peed on.
“You’re already so good at this.” There’s admiration and self-doubt all over the words as they pass Beatrice’s lips, a tone Ava has heard from her own mouth, but never Bea’s. The other woman takes the spot on the far end of the table, stroking his sparse hair to calm him while Ava goes about changing him.
“Well, he was a newborn for six months so…” She grabs another wipe and makes a second pass over Diego to make certain he’s good and clean before starting to snap the new diaper together. Even after his crying fit, Diego is barely awake, still essentially a sack of potatoes, and Ava takes full advantage of this to insure he’s well covered. She’s learned the hard way that leaving gaps exposed can lead to nasty blowouts later. The snaps are much nicer than the pins she used in the other world, faster too.
“He was what?” Another clue that Beatrice really hasn’t figured it all out yet. Ava huffs a laugh.
“Aging-wise. I did the math once. Full honesty, I asked someone to do it for me.” Last snaps on his onesie are finished and she lifts him back to her chest, hoping he will just fall back to sleep. “And we calculated that roughly every 16 days there, I aged one day biologically, give or take a few due to disturbances from a black hole. His aging sped up a bit once he was no longer… inside me. Just about twice as fast as me.”
They mosey back to the middle of the room and Ava can only imagine the thousands of processes running in Bea’s mind. Sweet, loving, intelligent Bea finally, hopefully, doing the math and coming to the conclusion that there has only ever been one person for Ava. Fifteen years or a million, it would only ever be her. Ava sneaks a peek at Diego’s face, now smoothed out in sleep the way only children can accomplish.
“Ava.”
“Hm?”
“When, uh, when did you…. When was he conceived?” Bea cheeks are reddening and she is boring holes into the hardwood with her eyes, lips in a tight line. She's counting, then double counting, then counting again, Ava knows it. She's counting backwards over and over with the information she's just been given and any second now is going to reach the final conclusion. Ava bounces Diego a little as she waits. “How did you get him?”
“Well, when two people love each other very much, and one has pretty damn decent coc-”
“AVA! That’s not- I know how- I meant-” Bea blushes even harder, sputtering. “I meant- because that would mean-”
She grinds to a stop, a robot with a paperclip stuck in the gears. All anyone can do when Bea is like this, is wait. Diego has gone completely limp, dead weight Ava’s now aware is a little heavier than the day before. She takes a second to marvel at the speed that he grows on Earth, hoping he doesn’t grow too fast.
“I don’t understand.”
Bea isn’t whispering anymore but she’s still not quite up to a regular volume. She sounds like a child being told about atoms and the space between electrons. As if she’s been trying to digest the sum total of the world’s knowledge.
“What’s to understand? You came inside me like… a hundred times, Bea.”
“It wasn’t a hundred! And you said it was okay!” Bea comes to life again, whisper-yelling and flailing for a way to grasp where the conversation has taken them, not sure she fully understands what Ava is saying still. Or scared that she does. Ava merely shrugs.
“I thought it was.” The television blinks to the screensaver, a random stock photo of fall leaves changing the light from psychedelic to autumn tones, darkening the room in the process. “Or well, I assumed it was. I mean, I was dead after all. Guess I figured it wasn’t possible since I never got my period after pulling the Jesus trick.”
They both know that under regular circumstances, Bea would tell her off for the blasphemy but the older girl is still in shock. “But, but what about JC?”
Ava laughs, and looks down at her son again, watching his little fists open and close in his sleep. “You really think one barely successful tryst in a janitor’s closet is going to outdo what we did almost every day for two months? Okay, sure, you could say there is always the possibility. Or you could take a look at the kid and see that he looks just like you.” She glances between the two and chuckles lowly. “It’s almost infuriating actually. I spent forever growing him in that other dimension, time dilation and all that, and then what felt like forever bringing him into the world. And he comes out looking just like you! What a slap in the face, honestly.”
Ava knows Beatrice can’t even find the words to argue. Ava spent months looking at his tiny face, seeing little of herself and so much of Beatrice, even when his features scrunched up to cry or when he stared at her as he nursed. The shape of his eyes, the rounded cheeks, the way he pinches his brow in concentration. All Beatrice.
In Reya’s Realm, the sight of her son would often make her homesick. So strongly did she ache for a woman she had known less than a year, that it rivaled the early days in the orphanage, when all she could do was cry for her dead mother and the life she would never be able to return to.
“You’re saying that he’s…”
Ava slides across the hardwood so she’s right in front of Beatrice, nudging the other woman’s foot with hers until Bea looks up, the leaf-glow reflecting the gold flecks in her eyes.
“Yeah Bea, he’s yours. He’s your son.”
Beatrice’s legs give out and she sits on the floor, hard. Her knees come into her chest and she wraps her arms around them.