Title: Of relief
Fandom: Warrior Nun
Characters/pairings: Jillian Salvius, some Michael Salvius; implied Jillian/Mother Superion
Rating: T
Length: 485 words
Content notes: Mentions of some self-destructive habits, even if more metaphorical than truly literal.
Author's notes: This encompasses events from the end of s1 right until the end of s2.
Summary: Jillian finds that there is very little remedy she can apply to the markings her errors have left on her skin... But maybe there's something else.

It’s an itch, always an itch, and it crawls up from her wrist and it pollutes her veins, faithfully following the path left by the scars on her arm.

Jillian had trained herself not to scratch — not in company, not alone. She had trained not to allow herself any relief as long as Michael had none of his own, lost in the unknown, so out of reach even her imagination could not properly find him in her desperate daydreams. There would be no balm, no respite, not until she found him.

But the soothing spiritual cream that rescuing him was to rub over her sores never came.

When she saw that tall, strong man where once had been a sick little boy, the itch did not subside; it dug deeper, it drove her to madness in the sanctity of her solitude, while he and all her unexpected religious guests were fast asleep. So Jillian scratched and clawed and bled, devoid any ointment to flood and numb her open wounds.

All that talk of angels and god and other worlds and the itch only spread farther along her body, lodging itself into her very brain. Sacrifice and martyrdom and goodbyes and she having to act and think through the fog of that horrible itch tickling her senses and torturing her heart, corrupting her insides — but she had the guts, she had the will, and she marched on like those holy soldiers in blue habits, if lacking the ready remedy they had in their God.

Only sometimes could she forget: at a triumph, at a miracle, when her son’s now long, muscled arms pulled her into a boyish hug.

After he left with those women, only scabs remained.

When they returned without him, her skin burned. She would have hacked her arm off if she didn’t think she deserved the pain that came from it, a permanent reminder of her foolishness branded into her flesh, scalding her alive as when first she had tried to follow him into the ark.

She didn’t notice at first.

But something eventually covered her, calmed her, warm and inviting; the itch dimmed slowly, as if a lotion had been applied on top of her torment, and only later did she understand, when her hand had been stayed and her nails hadn’t raked into the scar tissue, that she had been pulled into a strange new embrace. It wasn’t Michael, it wasn’t forgiveness — it was a woman in black, who had herself carried scars never adequately healed until she had met death and conquered it; a woman who had herself been consumed from the outside in by her own tangible guilt.

And it was in this woman’s arms, in her unexpectedly soft touch, that Jillian could at last find something to dull the ache.

It was not healing and even her sharp scientific mind could not classify it yet… But it was something.