Title: Kindred stars
Fandom: Warrior Nun
Characters: Ava Silva, Mother Superion
Rating: T
Length: 654 words
Summary: Ava and Mother Superion might have opposite points of view on some things, but they find that sunlight warms both of them just the same.


Ava had always liked the sun, the way it would enter that grim room all slanted and instil some amount of outside life into its stagnant air.

They kept the place purposefully dim, perhaps in order to spite her, but Ava only loved it more, cherishing with doubled fervour that golden light which so seldom caressed and ignited her insensitive skin.

When, on the contrary, her caretakers exposed her to a vicious sunlight so that she would burn from her simple pleasure and be “taught a lesson” in excess, Ava had trouble feeling anger at her ill-treatment — she still much preferred that painful clarity to those horrid, solemn shadows of the religious orphanage. If ever God were to speak to her and prove her wrong for doubting Him, chances were He’d do it in the miracle of light rather than in that dull, dusty darkness she had been confined to since childhood.

Wasn’t that how the Bible started things off, anyway? With light?

For Mother Superion, her prayers would begin before sunrise and only end after sundown. Sunshine was little more than a natural clock meant for keeping score of her hard work in sculpting those simple girls from their common clay into holy weapons such as she had been.

The hot hours, the minutes, the very seconds entrenched themselves in her funereal black robes, sunlight pricking enough at the discoloured, delicate skin of her scar that she felt as if her face were being cut again and again under His eye — a constant, agonising reminder of His justice searing into her guilty flesh.

To think she had once burned from the inside out…

A piece of the sun had all but lodged itself in her back then, spreading light into the devil’s abysmal darkness, emanating from within her to bless the innocent and smite the perverse… But now there was only eternal night, her habit as black as her hollowed soul.

Ava took her time in understanding she had also been elevated to the stars — that some of her beloved golden light inhabited her body now. The mysterious halo that had brought her back to life could allow her to shine on others as those timid sunbeams had shone on her, filling them with her own hope and strength and courage.

Mother Superion had resented that blindness which seemed so much as ungratefulness; Ava had resented her burrowing so far within the darkened depths that she couldn’t illuminate her even when realisation hit.

Then came the plague, then came the poison, and the sun was suddenly an enemy and the shadows of death claimed that broken woman before Ava could stretch out her hand one last time and convince her to bask in the brightness alongside her.

Still she embraced her slowly cooling corpse, as if the star within her could lend its shimmer to that older twin which had long ago withered and fallen from Heaven. When Superion reopened her eyes, infused with Ava’s love, even the garish flames of the pretend angel’s curse washing the place in sickly yellow could not distract her from the real source of enlightenment in her arms.

A new glimmer emerged from the deep, pulled by that humble supernova, flickering in time with it.

Here was the miracle, even if the voice Ava heard was that of a mother instead of a father; here was forgiveness, even if it was bestowed by a daughter.

They would both be grateful for the sun rising another day, standing together side by side with their other sisters to greet it — before it was devoured by a vengeful, unfeeling galaxy in the end.

Still, even dead stars continue to cast their light upon us — and when Suzanne gazes at the sword now, she weeps not for her own failings but smiles instead at the warm remembrance of her own redeemer, watching over her in the afterlife somewhere, readying her return.