Title: Wherever it leads
Fandom: Warrior Nun
Characters: Jillian Salvius
Rating: G
Length: 856 words
Content notes: Features some light pondering on religion, lighter still concerning death.
Author notes: Takes place somewhere during 1x09
Summary: Jillian reflects that sometimes there is no telling where a map will ultimately take us.


She who so fiercely sought to evade death now found some ironic amusement at the prospect of finding her answers within a tomb.

Jillian had let Kristian ramble about the Medici map unbridled, caught up in enthusiasm as seldom she saw him express — an eagerness unknown even during the private unveiling of any one of her own marvels until then. It would seem that his faith in her, however great, could not resist its initial calling; he was enraptured by the heavenly, seduced instantly by the very whiff of supernatural miracle.

But then she, too, must confess to fascination and hope the likes of which only the saintly and the devout must experience. The thought of these otherworldly bones, located in whichever chamber Kristian pointed to, after traversing with a finger numerous corridors and passages which the cartographer had drawn, excited her beyond words. By crossing those underground alleys, by risking encounters with sundry a holy but unhappy ghost whose remains were laid to rest in Vatican soil, those intrepid nuns would guide her to that most desired of destinations: the future.

A future, it was true, just as uncharted as her entire voyage had been from the beginning, but surely shining bright and blue — shining as her son did in the presence of that all too-human angel Ava Silva had proven herself to be.

… Or perhaps nothing had been so gratuitous as it appeared. Perhaps Michael had been her compass throughout it all, guiding her uneasy steps through the thick darkness of ignorance, supplying her with his “angel’s” blueprints even in his unrelenting sickness.

Jillian was yet undecided on the matter of God, but there might have been justice in divinium being named so; there had likewise been humour in how all her seeking and travelling and sweating and sacrificing would end (if the nuns were correct) at the tomb of Adriel just a country away. If a God had designed this outcome, Jillian Salvius would have to admit how dramatically fit it was that her son’s life was to be found in a man’s grave. Perhaps God was not all that different to humans, were He to exist, playing pranks a tad too painful and pulling strings a tad too strongly as people were so prone to doing to themselves.

Yet divinity frightened her, having mocked her so many times before.

Michael spoke in ciphers, Michael spoke of angels and invisible doors and predetermined events as if he could read from and decrypt some invisible atlas. Jillian was not unaware of the usual fate reserved for those who spoke in the language of beyond — persecution, martyrdom at the hands of the impious or, worse still, by those who most vehemently professed the same creed as the visionary — and she would not suffer a conversion until all was done and the illness won. She would not concede until she stepped into the portal and braved the unexplored and unimagined with Michael in her arms and eternity at their feet. She might believe in God, then, with a shake of the hand done in person, with the scaffolds and the pyres and the guillotines all safely left behind and her son blessed and protected by the entity who had so illuminated his path to salvation. Only then might she shed her suspicions and kneel and pray and cry as the most ardent of disciples.

Still, if there was a map to navigate the necropolis, to inspire the doubting Kristian Schaefer with newfound faith, to lead a secret squadron of rogue warrior nuns through a maze underneath the pope’s very nose, leading her own ambitions to a satisfying close, Jillian knew all too well there would be no such document on the “other side”; the intuition and intelligence which had brought her this far might fail her there, confronted with forever in practise and not just in her comfortable theories.

She looked upon Michael and the drawing he was in the process of colouring, some esoteric but loving rendition of two figures holding hands in front of a gaggle of smaller silhouettes. One was bedecked in white, much as Jillian herself usually was, while the other donned full black and wore a kind of symbol around its neck. Their faceless heads were unsurprising given the young child’s lack of skill, but such eerie lack of detail did not make the couple less charming, surrounded and supported by those other friendly blue blotches.

Jillian did not venture to ask him what or who the figures represented — she so often plagued him with questions about his art, as so much of it offered her the keys to her science, that it seemed a welcome kindness to let him enjoy himself in his activity for once, when they were already so close to having their wishes granted anyway.

He looked up at her and smiled. She caressed his cheek.

If the curious drawing was to inform their future in some way, she would soon find out — when the doors opened and they crossed into those lands unknown and promising which held the secrets to the end of all suffering.