Title: The devil in dreaming
Fandom: Warrior Nun
Characters/pairings: Jillian Salvius/Mother Superion; (not very positive) mentions of Duretti and Vincent.
Rating: T
Length: 825 words
Content notes: Some violence, envisioned character death.
Summary: Even the right choices can cast odious shadows on conscience, Mother Superion finds, her blood not yet ceased to boil with a vengeance denied...


Her hand had trembled then.

He was a friend, a father, chosen by God with the fingers of mortal men. He stood before her, all white and holy, though she knew his heart to be hard and heavy with filth — a heart she would happily pierce through if her certain condemnation for killing the pope brought punishment to he who murdered Shannon. How could God speak through the mouth of such a man who would slaughter her sisters for so little, for a measly seat above other men in such an immoral world that would allow for it to stand?

Her hand had trembled, holding tight at the base of the blade hiding in her cane — not out of hesitation, but of anger. However she struck the bastard down, it would still be too swift, too clean, too quick for the Judas.

But revelation came.

If not an innocent, Francesco Duretti was guiltless in the slaying of Shannon. Whatever tarnished his soul — perhaps as dirtied as Superion’s own —, sister Shannon was not amongst his sins. So was he spared, though the silver at the handle had cut into her skin with the force of her grip and she bled in flesh as well as in spirit.

The opulence of the Vatican twisted itself into the tortured trees of a sombre landscape; white gave way to black, to cloth cut from her own.

Her hand trembled even more as it held the gun and the truth during a confession hurried out in that voice once so familiar and now only hated.

Each word only worsened her wrath — her own name soiled by his vile breath (“Will you kill me, Suzanne?”), Shannon’s memory mocked by a cynical claim he likely believed (“I loved her too”)… And the coward wouldn’t even look her in the eye as she raised the gun to his forehead, just as he had not seen Shannon’s life seep away through the wounds he had inflicted or seen her desecrated corpse be carefully prepared for suitable burial.

She had not pulled the trigger then — but now, when he opened his eyes, thinking himself absolved, she shot him in the face and in the heart until there were no more bullets and no more trace of his treachery and the earth was drenched in his blood and his visage was blighted and her thirst was quenched.

“Suzanne!”

A hand covered her own, but she did not stop; her arm turned as of its own volition in the direction of the woman who had not been there, who should not have been there, and she fired one last time —

She shot up from bed, hair glued to her heated, humid body.

“It’s alright,” Jillian said, cupping her cheek, warm and quite alive beside her, naked and beautiful — loyal and truthful.

Her other hand sat lightly atop one of Suzanne’s, who only then noticed how tightly it had curled up into a fist while she slumbered. A vague pain traversed the joints of her fingers as she slowly released her ghastly grip, revealing the dents inside her palm left by her short fingernails.

Jillian examined them in the faint moonlight that painted parts of her comfortable bedroom with a delicate, almost affectionate hue, as gentle as the kiss she bestowed upon the markings.

“You were dreaming,” she whispered. “Dare I assume it was a nightmare…?”

Suzanne let her head rest against Jillian’s, feeling the cool air caress her own bare skin as her body relaxed.

“One not worse than the memory that inspired it.”

Jillian bit her lip, catching a glimpse of their discarded clothes in the corner.

“… No regrets, I hope.”

“One. I shouldn’t, it was the right decision, but…”

She trailed off, distracted by the sensation of Jillian sitting up beside her in the dark. With such terrible thoughts and morbid desires, would that woman recoil were she to touch her with her hurting, hurtful hands? Would she smell the blood in them and refuse her, that woman who stood so dangerously close to a nun who would not forgive, a warrior who revoked her mercy to those who begged for it?

Her hand trembled. It ached from her own unconscious action, yet yearning for the bliss it had received in that kiss, afraid to destroy it as she had done in that rage-driven dream.

Another hand found it, pulled it closer, inviting her to lie back down. She did not resist.

“We can’t change what happened…”

Jillian’s voice — low and loving in the silence of night as she lay there, near, hers when Mother Superion should have contented herself with a prayer book and a whip to the back instead — dissipated the remaining anger that had roused her.

Suzanne came closer, banishing violence and remorse.

“What happened brought me here,” she said, taking Jillian into her arms, scaring away the images of sleep with her love, “and I would not change that for anything.”