sisterdivinium

Title: Open wounds and grievances
Fandom: Warrior Nun
Characters: Shotgun Mary, Sister Beatrice, Sister Lilith
Rating: T
Length: 273 words
Content notes: Slight gore, implied internalised homophobia
Summary: An exploration of what Mary, Beatrice and Lilith perceive when we first see the halo in 1x01.

When metal tears the flesh open there is a sound — there are a hundred sounds, there are three.

It’s meat being ripped apart, tissue burning, tissue breaking, iron blood spilling out and a last breath of a cherished voice evaporating in the thick, filthy air, barely reaching Mary’s ear. She hears death and she hears treachery while that divine object which had so damned them shimmers and shines as Shannon fades away in her arms.

For Beatrice, the light sings a song of a demanding Heaven, promising her pardon at some point; perhaps when her own body is pierced and sliced into pieces, hollowed out of that same halo just as Shannon’s, perhaps then might her pride and passions be forgiven, granting her liberation of those her carnal crimes committed in spirit.

Lilith hears no anguish and no angels. She barely hears anything at all underneath a demonic drum hammering insistent and merciless against her insides, beating in her chest, bursting at her throat, blasting at her temples. Anticipation is pumped into her veins and the light that darkens Mary’s eyes and painfully reignites Beatrice’s purpose only appeases Lilith. Her prize — well-earned with the sweat of her brow, the grime on her bones and the tears of her sisters — her prize is finally in her grasp, her name at last worth pronouncing, and Lilith cannot hear anything else but the applause and the approval she fought so much to deserve.

Her name is spoken, her glory —

The walls collapse, the light is snuffed, and all the sounds are silenced as she closes her eyes and others, shut forever, soon learn to see again.