(that’s what hands are made for)
Her hands are her best weapons. She’s trained them to be effective and never waver. Each strike is intentional, each curl of her fingers deliberate. They’re calloused with use, scarred with her failures. But they’re hers. Her weapons to employ, to rely on when there is nothing left.
She assumes, foolishly, that that is all they are for. That her touch is toxic otherwise, that she needs to turn them into things with purpose.
But her hands have never felt as deliciously aimless, as reverent, as they do when they wander Ava’s body.
She teaches her hands to covet again, to worship. She allows herself to touch, to feel the smooth stretch of skin under her fingertips. She presses her palm flat against Ava’s hip, feels them roll under her lifeline. She scratches small lines across her thighs, leaving little reminders that she was there. She drags a finger down the center of her chest like she’s genuflecting at the altar that is Ava. She feels Ava’s burning skin, feels the wild pulse in her wrist, curls her fingers into Ava’s shoulders and holds on until she certain they’re seared into the soft, unbroken skin there.
She traces each lifeline, each scar left by the divinium shards. She runs the pads of her fingers over them and lets them whisper I was made to hold you in my hands. She kneels before Ava and places shaking hands above her navel and wonders can you feel how these hands were made to touch you?
Her hands have been a weapon her whole life - a holy weapon of her own. Something to be feared, to shy away from, to mistrust. But Ava turns her hands over, presses them against her cheek - her jaw, her neck, her chest, her hips, her thighs - and Beatrice thinks her hands have never been as holy as they are now.
