**AVALANCE RISING** I promised both Avalance and hurt/comfort, and with this, I deliver on that promise. Hope you like it! - PV

Chapter 4:

- Now -

Walking away from the bridge of the Waverider, the celebratory chatter from the rest of the crew faded, and Sara gave Ava's hand a little squeeze as they lapsed into a comfortable silence. Ava appreciated the touch, and this easy, reassuring closeness she had with the woman beside her. She'd missed this, so much. So much. It had been more than a hole in her heart, when they'd been separated - it had grown into an ache, something tangible, physical, and Ava only understood the magnitude of it now that it was healing. Had healed. They'd made some real progress together as they'd navigated her purgatory, and the simple joy accompanying those accomplishments was intoxicating.

The soothing of that tension, however, unfortunately was not matched by a parallel easing of the other hurt that remained, and this fact became more and more clear to Ava as they put more distance between themselves and the bridge. She could feel bruises on and under her skin, in some places overlapping each other. Her limbs felt heavy, muscles utterly burned out. Ava was exhausted to the core. She felt like she had nothing left to give.

Sleep. What she wanted most now was a long sleep, somewhere safe, somewhere warm. Safe and warm - now those were two things she hadn't felt in two weeks, and as for sleep, well, that too had become a stranger, and the effects were taking hold.

"Ava?"

Ava started and realized that they had stopped in the hallway of the Waverider. Sara was looking up at her, a little furrow of concern in her brow. "Did you hear what I asked?" Sara said, giving Ava's and another light squeeze.

"Hmm? No, I - I guess I didn't." Ava hadn't even realized Sara had spoken at all. I'm still lost in my head. That thought scared Ava more than she cared to admit to herself, so she did her best to shake the notion and focus on her girlfriend.

"I just wanted to confirm whether you're staying here for the next few days," Sara said. "Of course, you're welcome to stay as long as you want," she added hurriedly, a small smile tugging at the corner of her lips before fading to a somber expression all too quickly, "But Gideon thinks it'd be best for you to stay under medical observation for a little while, and John wants to keep an eye on you in case there's any lingering demon-y effects, and your house - "

Sara ran her hand, the one not entwined with Ava's fingers, through her hair, her gaze cast off to the side, distracted as if stuck on a memory. After a second, though, she shook her head and glanced back up at Ava with a tight smile. "Your house still needs some cleaning up, but don't worry about that. I'll take care of it."

Memories flashed through her head, disjointed: a plant fallen to the floor, the vase cracked, the dirt within it scattered across the hardwoods. A chair on its side. A nearly-shattered window. A broken mirror - Ava winced, remembering - a broken mirror with her blood on the shards.

God, that all seems so distant now. That fight, when Neron had come, when he'd taken her… those wounds had been overwritten, and new bruises had colored over the old. It was these fresher injuries that now clamored for her attention - or rather, never let her fully tear her attention away - but for Sara, Ava realized, the images of that chaos-strewn apartment must be present at the forefront of her mind. A barely audible sigh escaped Ava's lips, but Sara noticed it, and she frowned, regarding Ava questioningly. Ava shook her head - as if that would be enough to keep the darker thoughts away - willing her features to form a half-hearted smile.

"Okay, so Gideon and John want me to stay here, but what about - "

Sara didn't let her finish, cutting her off with a kiss, unlacing her hand from Ava's and reaching up, placing it lightly at the base of Ava's neck, tugging her down as she stood on her toes to meet her. In a moment, the other arm was up around Ava's shoulders too, pulling her closer. The first kiss was quick, soft, and it was followed by a second - deeper, but still tender. Ava felt an urgency in Sara's movements, even as she detected an overlying sense of delicacy to the actions. Delicacy. Like I'm fragile.

Even though Sara was being careful, the physical contact reanimated the hurt in her body, and Ava winced. Sara felt it and started to pull away, but Ava stopped her with a touch, a hand on her arm, and this time it was Ava who tugged Sara into the kiss. Ava kissed her like she was trying to breathe her in, like Sara was oxygen that she had been deprived of for far too long.

A muscle in her shoulder twinged suddenly and Ava couldn't suppress a reactionary hiss of pain, and this time Sara did pull away, worry clouding her features.

"Let's get you settled in," she said, taking Ava's hand again. "You need to rest." She led Ava the remainder of the way down the hall to her quarters. "That's an order," she added as they came up to the door, glancing over her shoulder up at Ava, but her tone was soft, and the words were accompanied by a little smile that made Ava's heart flutter. There was so much care in that expression. It was so earnest.

Ava put her hands up in a tired mock surrender. "Trust me, Captain, I'm not resisting," she said, passing through the doorway.

Sara flicked a light switch, illuminating the room. The bed, which was where Ava turned first, was unmade, and looked like it had been left in a rush; the sheets were skewed to one side, as if they'd gotten caught on a foot trying to find the floor before being fully awake. Sara passed beside her and went to the dresser, pulling open one drawer, then another, rummaging through, grabbing a few assorted articles of clothing. After a minute she turned back to Ava, presenting a neat pile of folded clothes.

"For you to sleep in," she offered. "Pretty sure the shirt was originally yours anyway, and you either left it here on purpose, or I kept it for myself," she said, grinning wryly.

"Thank you," Ava said, taking the pile. She stared down at it, the garments folded, their edges clean, the fabric soft, and Ava was suddenly struck by how incongruous she felt, to the clothes in her arms. Her body, unwashed and beat up as it was, didn't match what they represented. Order. Comfort. Rest. Ava wanted nothing more than to welcome it, but at the same time, it felt foreign, and she hated that. Why can't things be like before? Why am I getting hung up on this?

"Hey, where'd you go?" Sara said, and Ava realized she had paused when taking the clothes. Ava forced another smile and reached out, tucking some stray hair behind Sara's ear.

"Nowhere, I'm right here." I'm here, I'm safe, Ava told herself. "Just got distracted for a second…" she trailed off. "I think I'm gonna take a shower first. You go ahead and change, I won't be long." The urge to feel the water running over her body, to feel clean and fresh and herself again, was suddenly rather intense.

"All right, I'll get the bed ready, then," said Sara. "I'm here if you need anything, okay?"

"Thank you," Ava said, nodding once at her, then turned and entered the bathroom, flicking the lights on and shutting the door behind her with an audible click.

Ava moved numbly, running a washcloth under water from the sink and pressing it to her face, then rubbing as though it could wash away all the exhaustion that she knew was clear there. When she brought the cloth away, she was leaning over, bent towards the mirror, hands bracing herself against the sink. Her reflection stared back at her and she studied herself, skin flushed red from the washcloth, eyes bloodshot from the tiredness, hair unwashed. Her jaw was a bit discolored along the left side - a bruise that hadn't fully healed. She wondered how long it would take, before the woman in the reflection was the one she remembered being, the one she recognized.

I look like I'm playing dress-up. The thought occurred to Ava as she compared the clothes she wore to the woman in the reflection staring back at her. The clothes were her own, a spare outfit she had left in Sara's closet, and they, like the pajamas Sara had handed her earlier, felt right now like everything she wasn't. They belonged on a differnt, Ava, an Ava whose back was a little straighter, who wore the blazer like armor, who matched their air of authority. Authority. It had been two weeks since Ava had had any authority at all.

Drawing in a shaky breath, Ava turned from the mirror towards the shower. She went to turn the knob, to get the water hot, but then dropped her hand. Better undress first, don't want to waste water.

Ava reached her hands up, grasping the front of her blazer, but when she moved her arms outward to slip it off her shoulders, her muscles tensed up, and she gasped sharply, dropping the fabric. Tears stung her eyes, though from the pain or the sensation of failure, she wasn't certain. Shoes. I'll start with the shoes and go from there.

Ava sank to the floor, back against the wall, drawing her legs in criss-crossed and pulling at one of her heels. The shoe fit snugly, so she had to work at it, and this small exertion, too, put strain on her muscles. Every effort she underwent seemed to result in a magnified pain response from somewhere on her body, and when she finally managed to successfully free both her feet from the heels she'd been in, she thrust the shoes away from her with a grunt of frustration. Again, salt stung the corners of her eyes. As she reached up to wipe them away, her hand trembled. She was breathing heavily. This was supposed to help me rest, god-damn it, but how can I shower if I can't even take my fucking clothes off? She'd put them on just fine earlier, but sitting here now, Ava chalked that up to the euphoria she'd been overwhelmed with, the thrill of finally escaping purgatory and being back with the Waverider crew, back with the woman she loved.

Her vision blurred and she blinked more tears out of them. When her sight cleared, she found herself staring at her feet. They were bare - she hadn't been wearing any socks under the shoes. They'd been bare for two weeks, and they looked like it. There was dirt under the toenails, and smudges of wear on the skin. Ava took a deep breath and her body shook. Her vision blurred again, more tears threatening to fall, and Ava bit her lip, closing her eyes, bending her head back until it touched the wall.

"S-" she began, but a knot in her throat cut her off. Why now, why am I falling apart now?

Because everything went so fast after I woke up, and Sara was there, and I went to celebrate with the crew, and I was so relieved that it was finally over, and now… Now things were slowing down, now her mind was catching up with the state of her body. I have to deal with this now.

Ava swallowed, throat burning with the emotion she was choking down. When she had regained her bearings at least enough to speak, she raised her voice.

"Sara?" Ava called, eyes still closed, head still pressed back against the wall behind her. "Could you, um - " she faltered. 'Help me' sounded pathetic, and she couldn't bring herself to say it. "Could you give me a hand with something?" she tried.

The doorknob turned so quickly that Ava's first thought was wondering if Sara had been sitting outside the door the whole time. The door opened slowly, and Sara, now changed into pajamas, stepped into the bathroom. Ava watched Sara scan the room at eye-level, then find her, sitting with her knees drawn up to her chest, barefoot, still fully clothed on the floor. The expression on Sara's face when she saw her there nearly broke Ava's heart. Sara was at her side in an instant.

"Ava," she said, kneeling before her, lowering herself down to match Ava's eye level. "What do you - " Sara swallowed. "How can I help?" she asked softly.

God, it would be so easy to cry. To pull Sara close, to bury her head in the woman's shoulder, to let her arms hold her as she wept all the everything that she was feeling away. Ava was tempted, for an instant, and in that second, she almost lost the ability to decide, her emotions nearly welled over and made the decision for her, but then she subdued them. For now.

"I need you to help me - " Ava started, then laughed a little, though it didn't reach her eyes. "This isn't going to be nearly as sexy as it could on any other night," she interjected before continuing, come on, just spit it out - "But I need you to help me take my clothes off."

Why had that been so hard to say? Asking for help had never been Ava's forte, because asking for help meant that she needed help, and someone who needed help, well, that wasn't the image of a Time Bureau Director who had her life under control. But now it was said, and the words lingered in the air as Ava watched their meaning - and all that they implied - occur to Sara. Something hard flashed behind Sara's eyes, quickly - an emotion, a memory? Someone less acquainted with her would have missed it - but whatever that was, Sara pushed it away as she nodded. "Come here, it will be easier if you stand," she said, and with that, she gingerly helped Ava to her feet. When they were both standing, Sara let Ava's hand go for a moment, and turned towards the shower. Instead of turning the shower knob, however, she bent to start water for a bath instead.

"Gideon, stop the water when the tub is full, and keep it hot," Sara instructed the ship's computer.

"Yes, Captain," came the computer's cool response. Satisfied, Sara straightened up and returned to Ava.

"Here, let's start with this," Sara said. She stood in front of Ava, reached out to grip the hem of the blazer, and helped ease the garment off her shoulders, walking behind her to tug it off. Ava shrugged and it slipped off more easily. Goosebumps rose on her arms as the skin was exposed, and Ava shivered involuntarily. Sara folded the blazer and set it on the sink, then turned back to Ava.

Ava got the sense that Sara was working very hard to keep her expression neutral, or at least to keep from reacting too strongly to what she saw, but she couldn't keep her jaw from clenching slightly, and though she knew Sara had seen at least this much already from when she'd found her in the hotel room, Ava also knew that Sara was re-processing the bruising on her shoulder, the raw skin around her wrists. Sara stepped around to Ava's side, close, her eyes fixed on something, and she lifted her fingers up to a swatch of skin on her upper left arm, which Ava could see in the mirror was mildly inflamed. The redness, she knew, was due to the injury there: a small black symbol, about three inches tall. A rune.

Sara's fingers brushed the rune, but when Ava flinched she retracted her hand quickly with a sharp intake of breath.

"That's no tattoo," she said, her tone hard, after a few seconds' pause. Ava shook her head no, then bowed it, eyes cast to the floor.

"Is it like this one?" Sara asked, indicating at the square of gauze they had secured with medical tape over the upper left side of Ava's chest, which covered another such symbol. When Ava nodded, Sara swallowed, then raised her eyebrow questioningly. "Can we remove the gauze for now? It would probably be best to wash the area."

"Sure," Ava said, and Sara peeled back the medical tape, then removed the gauze, which she placed in the trash. "We can get you clean dressing for it later," she said. "For the other one too, if you need it."

The other one. Ava's chest tightened, and she braced herself against the sink with one arm. Shit. How's she going to react when she sees -

"Hey," Sara said, the word laced with concern. "I'm right here," she said. "Don't go in your corner, okay?" Sara lifted Ava's chin with two fingers, until their eyes met.

"It's not just - " Ava started, then stopped. She saw the moment when Sara understood what she had been trying to say.

"It's not just those two," Sara finished for her. "There are more."

Ava confirmed her suspicion with a short nod.

"You're worried I'll - what? Freak out? Get upset?" Sara continued, prompting her quietly, and Ava lifted her gaze up to Sara's. Her girlfriend grasped her hands and held them reassuringly. "Ava, you've seen my body. You've seen the scars I have. I - I know our experiences are different, but listen to me when I say," she said, lifting their clasped hands between them for emphasis, "Nothing that he did to you will make you less beautiful to me."

Ava felt her mouth twitch with the hint of a smile, and Sara seized on that, pressing on. "And if you're worried about me not being able to - " she faltered for a second, searching for the right word - "not being able to handle it, well, I've seen my share of battle-worn bodies, many of them people I care about. Sometimes the body is mine. Now, I can't say that I like seeing you hurt, but - " Sara paused, and her even tone cracked a little, despite her efforts. "I hate it," she admitted. "Seeing you hurt and knowing you're in pain, and not being able to heal you, it's the worst thing, it's hard. But I am not going to fall apart on you," Sara promised. "I will help you navigate this. Now," she said, leading Ava towards the bathtub, "Let's do this together."

Ava was down to a black tank top and pants now, and they worked the former off first. Ava lifted the hem of the shirt about halfway up her abdomen, then higher, but when it came time to lift her arms above her head to twist it the rest of the way off, she found that she couldn't, and Sara stepped in to help, taking hold of the fabric and tugging the garment up and away.

Ava felt her face flush with - what? Shame? She knew that that didn't make sense, that her injuries weren't her fault, but still, the heat rose in her face, and her ears felt hot as her torso was exposed to the light. She was grateful when Sara didn't pause, but merely reached out to the button fastening Ava's pants. She glanced up at Ava quickly, and when Ava nodded, Sara helped her out of those, as well. When that was done, Sara folded them, and while she went to set them on the counter by the sink in a pile with the rest of the clothes, Ava finished undressing, letting the remaining articles fall to the floor in a little pile that she nudged off to one side with her foot.

"Oh, Ava," Sara said quietly from behind her, and Ava turned and saw two things: one, her own naked body in the mirror; and two, Sara, now presented with the unfiltered reality of the situation, taking it in.

The first thing that came to Ava's head was, well, it looks as bad as it feels. Which was to say, it looked pretty bad.

Ava's entire torso, and much of her legs, looked like a morbid watercolor art piece of blacks, blues, greens, and purples, the color at any given point depending on its stage in the healing process. A particularly nasty bruise ran up her left side, starting at her hip and extending up over her ribs and beginning to wrap around to her back. Her back itself had not escaped the same fate, either; it, too, was a mottled patchwork of bruised skin and muscle. The question for the majority of her body seemed not to be whether or not it was bruised, then, but rather a matter of how deeply. Ava suspected a cracked rib or two, and potentially some bruised vertebrae, but she couldn't be certain. Gideon can scan me tomorrow.

The hardest thing for Ava to see in this unflinching light, though, wasn't the glaring evidence of the beating she'd endured these last two weeks; she'd been in combat situations before, for the job, so seeing bruises was nothing new, though admittedly the scale of this was far beyond anything Ava had ever experienced. No, the hardest thing to take in - for herself, and Ava suspected for Sara as well - was the runes.

The one on her chest, where the gauze had been. The one on her arm. Both of these, Sara had seen. Now, she saw the rest.

One above Ava's right knee. Another, on her left shin. And three, there were three more on her back. One was low, near the base of her spine, off-center by about three inches; another was a little bigger, towards the left near the center of her back; and the third, the last one, up high, behind the slope between her neck and right shoulder.

Oh, Ava. That's all Sara had said, and in that moment, Ava was so incredibly grateful for the woman before her. Ava knew her well, better - she'd venture to say - than most, and she knew that Sara, for all her excellent leadership skills and team management abilities, still sometimes struggled with the tendency to speak first, think later. That was not so, now, and Ava appreciated it. She's probably worked out a hundred different ways she wants to kill him, Ava thought. And questions - the not knowing the how behind all this... well, Ava could imagine what she'd be thinking, if the two of them were swapped, and it was Sara who had been made to look like this. I'd be going out of my mind not knowing. All that, and she managed to keep her reaction to 'Oh, Ava?'

I don't deserve you, Sara Lance.

After what felt like hours, though it was in all likelihood no more than a few heartbeats, it was Ava who broke the silence.

"Carved."

Sara started a little, tearing her gaze from the injuries that wracked Ava's form. "What?"

"The runes. Like you said, definitely not tattoos."

"Ava, you don't have to - " Sara tried, but Ava kept going.

"He used a good old-fashioned knife, no demonic magic involved there. That came after."

"After?" Sara echoed. She was frozen where she stood, by the sink, as if moving would topple something that neither of them knew how to reconstruct. She seemed to be waiting for Ava to stop, but Ava wasn't done.

"Once the rune was drawn, he cauterized the wound with a spell. It burned the rune in, like a brand. Then he went back over the lines with this charcoal-paste mixture. It was thick, like paint, but grainy, definitely magic-adjacent, but I'm not sure exactly how." Pause. "The logistics of the charcoal wasn't exactly at the forefront of my mind, at the time," she commented softly.

"Will the charcoal wash out?" Sara said, her tone matching Ava's. Ava shrugged, then nodded.

"It would fade after some time, so he'd reapply it," she said hollowly.

Sara had done an admirable job masking her reactions thus far, but for some reason, that comment broke the facade, and for an instant, her expression was a hurricane. Anger, horror, hurt, sorrow - all of that, and more that Ava couldn't immediately identify, flashed behind her eyes, with an intensity that struck Ava to the core. She'd only known Sara in the time after the woman had proclaimed herself a "reformed" assassin, but Ava knew of that part of Sara's past, and for an instant, Ava could picture what that must have looked like. She knew that none of these negative emotions were aimed at her, that they were wholly focused on Neron for all that he'd done, but in that second, Sara looked absolutely formidable. She looked dangerous.

And then it was gone, as quickly as it had come, the torrent of emotions behind that expression fading - or being pushed away, Ava couldn't entirely tell - and being replaced with just one: care. "Let's get you clean, and see what we can do about it, then," she said.

Sara helped Ava step into the bath, and Ava lowered herself in, letting the welcome heat of the water envelop her as she sank down. The water had been clear, but as she settled, Ava already saw swirls of dirt and something darker - the charcoal mixture perhaps - beginning to cloud it.

Sara disappeared for a second, then re-materialized at her side with a large, soft sponge in one hand and a bottle of bath soap in the other. "Where do you want to start?" she asked.

Ava thought for a second, and her eyes slid from Sara to the bottles of shampoo and conditioner on the side of the tub. "Actually, the hair, if we can," she said.

"If we can? Your wish is my command," Sara said, going for the hair products. She put some shampoo in her hands as Ava ran her fingers through her hair. She didn't get far, there were too many knots for that, but it got the job done, wetting the hair enough for Sara to apply the shampoo. Sara knelt at the side of the bathtub and encouraged Ava to lean her head back. "I've got this, you just relax," Sara said, and as she started working the shampoo into Ava's hair, gently massaging her scalp as she did so, Ava finally let herself begin to.

Forty-five minutes later, the water was no longer anywhere close to clear; instead, it was entirely fogged up with lather from Ava's now-clean hair, and soap from the sponge. The water temperature hadn't gone down at all, and Ava wondered - somewhat absently, as Sara pressed the sponge down over the rune in the middle of her back and ran it over the skin - whether Gideon had a hand in keeping the water from cooling.

Ava hugged her knees and was bent over them, baring her back to Sara, who worked the sponge over the raw runes methodically. Ava knew she was being as cautious as she could while still actually cleaning the wounds, but she couldn't help but flinch as one motion put pressure on one of the vertebrae she suspected to be bruised.

"Sorry," Sara said immediately. "I'm almost done with this one, then just one more to go." Ava nodded, head bowed, staring at the way the ends of her hair splayed out and drifted slowly in the water. She was so tired. Almost. You're almost there.

There came a small splash as Sara submerged the sponge, squeezing it out, re-soaking it, then lathering it up with fresh soap. "Ready?" she asked after a few seconds.

Ava closed her eyes, bracing herself. "Yeah. Go ahead."

Sara brought the sponge up to the final rune, the one behind her right shoulder, and pressed down, slowly moving the sponge across the skin. Ava inhaled quickly, unable to contain her reaction as the area immediately both stung and ached with a soreness that seemed to extend down to the bone. Right hand still holding the sponge to the area, Sara put her other hand on Ava's left shoulder, and Ava reached her hand up to hold it.

"I know it's bad, but it'll be over in a minute, and then it will be clean, and it can start to heal. In the meantime, when it hurts, squeeze my hand as hard as you want, okay?"

"Okay," Ava said, somewhat numbly, and with that, Sara resumed working the sponge over the rune. New lines of black colored the water as the charcoal paste began to wash away, and Ava watched it made patterns in the water. She focused on her breathing. In, then out, then repeat. Again. Again. She concentrated on regulating pacing, depth of breath, but it was a meager distraction at best, and when the rune stung again, Ava squeezed Sara's hand tightly as if it was a lifeline.

After a few minutes, Sara stopped moving the sponge over the skin, but instead of standing or telling Ava she was finished, she hesitated. Ava wasn't looking at her face, but she could feel a question forming.

"What is it?" she asked, lifting her head, which felt heavier than usual on account of the waterlogged hair. She glanced over her shoulder to Sara, who was looking intensely at the final rune.

"This one, it's, um…" she sighed. "It's deeper than the others. Would you happen to know…do you any idea why?"

Any idea. Yeah, I have a few.

"That was the first one he did," Ava told her after preparing her thoughts for a second. "The runes, they each mean something different, something related to whatever spell he was doing at the time." Sara regarded her evenly; Ava knew that Sara had likely suspected this, but in all the time they'd been here, she hadn't asked what they meant, and again, Ava was grateful to Sara for seeming to know, intrinsically, what to seek answers for, and what answers could perhaps wait until another day.

This one, though. Ava understood. This one was different, and it made sense to wonder why.

"The others, he'd make the marks and cauterize them, then paint on the charcoal mix, and if the spell started to fade, he'd reapply the charcoal and that seemed to rejuvenate the magic," Ava informed her. "But this one…" she tried to concentrate on forming the words, instead of remembering the experience of what she was describing. It was a difficult line to walk. "This one he did on day one, and whenever it started to wear off, instead of just adding more charcoal mix, he'd - " she faltered, and finished more quietly than when she'd started. "He'd re-carve it," she said.

This time it was Sara that squeezed Ava's hand, for a long time, not painfully, but enough to convey to Ava that she heard her, that she was so sorry, that she was here to help her get through this now. Once Ava's words had sunk in, Sara asked, slowly, "What does it mean?"

Ava turned back to stare at the edge of the tub in front of her, and she heard the drip-drip-drip of the sponge being wrung out one last time, then set aside. Then, Ava felt Sara's arms around her shoulders, Sara's lips pressed against the crown of her head, kissing her softly, before resting her head in the crook of Ava's neck, holding her in an embrace, not caring that the water from Ava's body was soaking through the pajama t-shirt that Sara wore.

"Awake," Ava answered, her voice barely above a whisper.

"What?"

"The rune. It means 'awake.' He kept me awake." The entire time, the whole two weeks, Ava had either been kept awake through the entire ordeal, or trapped in her personal purgatory. Sure, that time in purgatory had been a rest of sorts for her body, but for her mind, there had been no escape. No respite. It was the reason she was so tired, why the exhaustion felt like it had taken root in her bones and settled there, unwelcome yet unyielding.

It happened quickly, like a tendril of a spiderweb snapping under the weight of a too-heavy creature treading upon it. One moment Ava was fine - well, not fine, not nearly, but she had her breathing under control, she had worked her mind to a point of vague numbness, where she could at least allow her brain to rest. She was as calm as she could be, given the circumstances.

And then, she wasn't.

A silent sob shook her shoulders, then another, then another, and when she sucked in air it made a hurt kind of sound, and her vision blurred thick with tears that fell hot into the soapy, dirty water. Sara's hand left her shoulder, and suddenly the water around her rose collectively. It took Ava a few seconds to realize what had happened: Sara had stepped into the tub with her.

Sara lowered herself into the water behind Ava. She hadn't taken off her pajamas, and they clung to her skin as she eased herself down. She parted her legs and put one on either side of Ava's hunched form in a V-shape, cradling her. One arm, she snaked around Ava's midsection - gently, gently - and the other, she ran through the woman's hair. Ava let herself be pulled back until her head rested on Sara's chest, and the steady rise and fall of Sara's breathing was a rock in the tempest-tossed sea that Ava felt like she was drowning in.

Sara didn't try to tell Ava to hush, or ask her any more questions. There, in the hot, muddled water of the bath, Sara simply held Ava as she cried.

"I'm here," Sara whispered as Ava's body shook, and the water lapped at the curves of the bath. Over and over she said it, until the shaking stopped, until the breathing resembled something close to regular, until Ava finally drifted into sleep. Sleep in the bathtub? Under normal circumstances, it was never even within the realm of consideration, but here, now, Ava found herself unconcerned by it. She knew Sara would keep her head above the water. She always does.

As Ava fell asleep, Sara continued saying the words, like a mantra - like a promise, though whether it was to herself or to the woman in her arms, she eventually couldn't tell anymore.

"I'm here, I'm here, I'm here."