Title: Two circles
Fandom: Warrior Nun
Characters/pairings: Jillian Salvius/Mother Superion
Rating: T
Length: 1564 words
Content notes: Conversations involving minor character death; religious themes.
Author's notes: This is situated somewhere post-s2.
Summary: Being in a lover's arms, an instant Mother Superion could never have anticipated has her looking back now that she has suitable company to brave her memories.

She shouldn’t be here.

Suzanne allowed for one hand to feel the soft, sensuous fabric beneath her exposed body—cotton of the finest quality, placed upon a mattress whose comfort inspired such voluptuousness that it would make the brightest angel turn away from Heaven just to lie upon it. There was nothing of the rough, coarse bed Suzanne had slept in, prayed in, cried in and seethed in since her youth.

Unfamiliar luxury and wealth surrounded her.

Ostentation was not visible in the overall sobriety of the room but in those few details: the expensive perfume lingering all around, the select pieces of art adorning the walls… She feared an unearthly hand might come and cover them in ominous writing as to forewarn Belshazzar of impious doom—and what was she if not the honoured guest at this opulent feast? Bedecked in pearls of sweat and coated in desire, was she not a sorry apostate, having at once broken with her obedience, her poverty and her chastity?

Her vows had not so vehemently been shattered since…

The gunshot. The mark. The halo. The fall. Skin torn open again, again, again, for blood to wash her every sin. She should tremble to wear a cross around her aching neck.

A hand caressed her cheek.

It pulled her away, banishing at once the fear of retribution with its tenderness.

In the dim light, Suzanne’s eyes met those of Jillian Salvius, lying just as naked in that their nest of indulgence Mother Superion had not been able to reject when first invited to partake in its pleasures. Any resolve she might have had to abandon her blasphemous insubordination was forgotten in that touch, in that look.

“You’re pensive. Pained, even,” Jillian said in a low voice, running a gentle thumb over her lover’s cheek. “I regret being the cause of it.”

Suzanne took her hand. She kissed its palm, she kissed its knuckles.

“It’s not you who brings me pain.”

“God…?”

“... Myself.”

Jillian sighed and crept closer, fitting against Suzanne’s neck and shoulder.

“The feeling of being the sole instigator of my own misery is one I am fairly acquainted with as well,” she said. “But one that results in nothing in the end. It’s best to try not to entertain it… Even if I know Catholics to be quite attached to their guilt.”

Suzanne managed a genuine little smile at the jest, soon afterwards accepting the comforting kiss Jillian offered to her lips.

“I know. I’m just often not wise enough to stick to that resolution… As I imagine you aren’t either.”

Jillian rearranged her weight, propping herself up on an elbow and raising her other hand in the air for a theatrical gesture.

“You caught me.” She regained a more solemn, sad expression. “It’s always easier said than done, pretending like dooming someone I loved isn’t entirely my fault.”

She met Suzanne’s gaze again. “It’s only when I’m with you that it even seems possible to move forward.”

The stare was more intimate, more secret than any touch; though they would make love, their bodies had not yet grown used to expressing love outside of the act. The scientist’s coldness and rigour as well as the nun’s stiffness and discipline yet conducted them, prohibiting certain types of contact that would serve other pairs of lovers as easy vocabulary.

But Jillian and Suzanne still spoke through other means—through their irises darkened by passion, deepened by recognition.

Truth inhabited those eyes, glistening and immediate.

So it was that Suzanne knew Jillian was not exaggerating; so it was that Jillian knew she had the same effect on her partner as Suzanne had on her.

They stared deeply. Hands hesitant turned bold against the interdiction of habit, daring to trace the adored outline of a cheek, a jaw, a mouth, a neck. They lay open and vulnerable; they lay in focused prayer.

“... He’s in heaven,” Suzanne assured her, soft but confident.

Jillian nodded. She didn’t believe, but Suzanne’s faith comforted her all the same.

“... And so is she,” the nun went on, looking away.

Even curious about the addition, Jillian resigned herself to eye the woman beside her with reverent encouragement; she would not commit the indiscretion of trying to pull at the curtains to see what hid behind them, no matter how much she longed to know—there had been much too much tearing of curtains and unspeakable horror revealed in other occasions.

The scientific method—brave, unapologetic, calculating, building up hypotheses to mercilessly shoot them down in experiment after experiment—was wholly unsuitable. This was a new mode of investigation, for the object of her study was not some infinitesimal, unfeeling mass of atoms under her microscope but a very alive, very remarkable whole woman whose secrets and treasures could never be exposed by crude prodding under the garish light of science. No, the method was altogether different, demanding Jillian trade her clear, rational distance for an intimacy and proximity that accepted no restraint.

With this particular subject, after spending so much time looking at other people through the thick lenses of lab goggles, Jillian could revel in learning new knowledge in a new way—knowledge available only to her, exclusive and all the more valuable... Sacred.

Her patience bore fruit.

Mother Superion—serious, mysterious, the owner of a life much dissimilar to that led by the Suzanne lying naked and entangled with her now—had had no need of looking upon Jillian to find the query etched in her countenance. She likewise made no attempt to cover with an invisible veil all that she now risked letting Jillian see; she had so often provided confessions to unworthy, uninterested ears that putting herself into much warmer, loving hands was an irresistible temptation.

“My own mentor, long ago,” she explained. “She pointed me towards the path I should have followed... But I failed her. I killed her.”

Jillian frowned. She did not try to force Suzanne to turn her head back towards her, but the tone of her voice, doubtful and firm, compelled the errant nun to do just that.

“Killed her? Why do I feel you say this the way I’d say I killed my own son?”

And when they looked upon one another again, Jillian found a strange image staring back—the ghost of a young woman, emerging from memory and pulling with her the entrails of time, a crimson, dripping rosary bound tight around her neck.

Suzanne began to speak.

She told her of honour, she told her of pride, chosen to bear the halo, a champion; she had been anointed in light, bathed in the glory of reciprocal faith, believing in a God who believed in her, who had chosen her as His general. She spoke of power and passion, of a cause greater than all, carrying Heaven’s shining banner on her very flesh.

... And she spoke of perdition, of the rotten apple grown within her own Eden, the treacherous serpent living in her own breast.

The gunshot. The mark. The halo. The fall.

Jillian listened.

“It’s been less of a burden now, after... Ava. There’s no changing the past,” Suzanne reasoned through a melancholy smile. “And, somehow, that same past has brought me here. It gave me the girls... It gave me you.”

A wee smirk drew itself upon Jillian’s lips.

“When my scabs start begging for me to pick at them, that’s my reasoning as well,” she said.

But before aching remembrance could be swept away by present and future joys, one insistent shadow remained. It dirtied the nun’s skin and pricked at Jillian’s fingers when she caressed a once scarred cheek, stretching itself far and malevolent from where it lodged in Suzanne’s back.

She had kept it from Jillian’s view as best she could, but all had been said. It must now likewise be brought to light.

Suzanne shifted slightly.

“Didn’t it...?”

“... I don’t know. I never dared to look or touch since.”

She would not have borne it. Not alone. Not before.

Suzanne turned slowly, letting her eyes rest upon a small statuette depicting the Virgin with chipped edges in her faded colours, standing upon a nearby piece of furniture. It seemed to watch her right back, unblinking, peaceful, reassuring.

Superion breathed in sharply, in suspense, as shy fingers began to trace a delicate circle over her back, running over her shoulder blades, over bits of her spine. When it was complete, they gave way to lips, pressing themselves at the centre of the imaginary drawing, and soon afterwards Jillian’s arms encircled her, pulled her close, holding her in place as more faithful kisses littered her shoulder and neck.

“It’s odd how our scars have the same shape in our hearts,” she whispered between one act of devotion and another. “Two devils in the form of a circle.”

Suzanne caught one of her arms and covered the actual scars it carried with love of her own. She turned around to face their owner.

“It’s easy to invite devils in by savouring our sorrows.”

“Let’s leave them behind and savour something else, then,” Jillian said, kissing her, kissing her, kissing her.

They chased away the weight of sin as day began to chase the stars outside.

It was clear that those were riches of another sort; there was nowhere else for Suzanne to be instead.