Work Text:
I was five the first time I met her. I was slightly taller than the other five year olds, my hair slightly longer. That girl’s mother loved to make intricate hairstyles in her blonde hair, braids and twists falling down her back.
At that point, I had only just begun to work out that I was different. That I would not be in the same body tomorrow. That nobody else did that. That people like Sara Lance, running full pelt around the playground, would stay in their bodies every day of their life, whereas I would not. But I had only just begun to realise that, and, most of the time, I forgot. Most of the time I let myself fall head first into friendships, getting attached to people in a matter of hours.
Sara Lance was different from the rest of the children. She seemed older than everyone else, but, at the same time, younger. There was a light on her face, and I let myself get drawn in, as five year olds do. I ran, and she ran, and nobody could touch us. When we collapsed in a heap at the far end of the playground, her fingers reached out to touch the intricate braids in my hair, and, even at five, I knew that I liked that. I didn’t know how and I didn’t know why, but I knew that I liked feeling her fingers there.
And then she pulled them away. “Sorry, Ella,” she said, her voice high, childlike. Nothing like the voice I would grow to know. The name was the first reminder to my five year old self that it was not me she was making friends with. It was Ella, Ella with a mother who loved her and a father who would pick her up and spin her around when he got home from work. “Laurel says I shouldn’t touch people without asking.”
“It’s okay,” I said, because, at five, all I knew was that it was okay. I still didn’t know why.
“You were meaner yesterday,” she said.
“Am I nice today?” I asked, because I wasn’t sure. I wasn’t sure if she was talking about the body I had been in yesterday, or Ella yesterday, and all I could be certain of was today.
“Yeah,” she said, and I smiled.
“You’re sure?” I asked and her face broke into a confused grin.
“You’re weird,” she said, but it wasn’t in a mean way. Just in a teasing, endeared way. “Yeah. You’re nice today, Ella. Pinky promise.”
She linked our fingers together. After school, I went home.
I didn’t see her again for ten years.
The next time I did, though, I was in Abigail’s body, and I woke up with a crushing desire to kiss Sara Lance. For a second, I just lay there, thinking.
At fifteen, I had learnt not to get attached. I had learnt to forget the friends I made in previous bodies, but, somehow, I’d never quite forgotten Sara. I'd never left Star City, and so, every so often, I'd hear of her. As a kid, I couldn't do much about that, but I'd never forgotten her.
It wasn’t really surprising. I figured it was because, at the time, she’d woken something up in me. The knowledge that, no matter what body I was in, when I separated myself from the personality I had to take on, I only ever found myself attracted to women. It wasn’t like I was gay, although, deep inside, I felt like I was, maybe, a woman. But I couldn’t be certain. All I knew was that I liked women. Half the time that made me gay. Half the time, to everyone else, that made me straight. I wasn’t sure I was either, at least, not then.
But I knew that I’d never been able to completely forget Sara Lance, so, when I woke up with her filling my mind, for a second, I had to work out whether it was me or Abigail.
A quick search through her memories told me that it was Abigail. That Sara had been flirting with her for weeks in their Chemistry class. That Abigail, the only openly gay girl in their year, had finally called her out on it, and Sara had blushed, ducked her head, and stammered out an extremely un-Sara-like excuse, and hadn’t said a word to Abigail the rest of the class.
Abigail had found her, later, on the bleachers, and had been unhesitatingly kind, talking Sara through it. “Do you just like me because I’m the only out girl in our class?” Abigail had asked her, needing to know.
Sara had blushed again, looked down, whispered, “No. I think I like you like you. I don’t know. You’re pretty and funny and—”
And Abigail had kissed her, because everyone knew Sara, knew she was charming and popular and never, ever nervous, and if she was nervous, that meant this was real.
Abigail had kissed her, and Sara had kissed back, and that was two days ago and all Abigail wanted to do was kiss her again.
All I wanted to do was kiss her again. Desperately. The feeling of her touching my hair flooded back to me, and I wanted her fingers to tangle in it this time. I wanted to kiss her until I couldn’t breathe. I didn’t know if the want was more me or more Abigail but it didn’t matter. That day, I was more than happy to be Abigail, to sink into her personality and lose myself, if it meant wanting Sara in a way I was allowed.
At my locker that morning, Sara came up to me with a shy smile on her face. “I told my dad,” she said.
Abigail's memories told me that that meant she’d told her dad that she was bi. “It went well?”
“Yeah,” she said, pressing up on her toes until our faces were so close I couldn’t breathe. Her hand reached out to tug at a strand of my hair. Long and blonde. Again. “It went well. He was the only person I was worried about. He's the only person whose reaction I care about. So…”
“So…?” I asked.
“So I can kiss you here, now. I can be out. I don’t care about being out. I don’t care what anyone else thinks.”
“You’re sure?” I asked, and it was partly Abigail’s question, and partly mine.
“Oh,” Sara said, leaning in. “Definitely.”
And then she kissed me, and it was the only kiss that had ever felt right. I’d kissed hundreds of people. Innocent kisses from the age of about six. Less innocent kisses from the age of about twelve.
None of them had felt right.
This felt right.
Her hand came up to cup my cheek. Her fingers slid through my hair.
She pulled away too soon. I wanted more, wanted to ask her to do it again, but Abigail wasn’t needy. She was sure of herself, didn’t need reassurance that Sara was into her, so I just smiled down at her.
In chemistry, she drew patterns on my arm with her finger. At lunch, she dragged me over to her friends, introduced me.
As Abigail. Not as A. Never as A.
Her smile was bright, and she was fearless. I could tell some of her friends were surprised by the revelation, but some of them weren’t. Even the ones who were surprised took it in their stride. Sara’s confidence was obvious. Now that her dad knew, it was clear that she was completely secure in her sexuality, in a way that I didn't feel like I would ever be able to be.
I wasn’t jealous, though. She deserved it. She was the sun, even at age fifteen, and it seemed right to fall into her orbit, that everyone else would as well.
After school, she wanted to go back to my place. I could see a look in her eyes that I recognised. I’d had sex before, and I knew that was what she wanted. Abigail had also had sex before. But, from Abigail’s memories, I found out that Sara hadn’t, that, despite her many boyfriends and the swagger in her walk that made her seem like she had, she was yet to sleep with anyone, yet to pass that particular milestone.
Neither me nor Abigail thought it was a good idea. They’d been together two days. I shook my head, kissed her, told her it was better if we waited. She pouted, but didn’t argue any further.
I was relieved. I couldn’t take that away from her. I couldn’t take that away from Abigail. They deserved to experience that properly.
On the morning the news of the Gambit sinking broke, I was a freshman at Star City University named Carli, and I was blonde. I was always blonde when it came to Sara.
I had turned the TV on in her dorm while I was eating a breakfast bar when the reporter mentioned it. “Robert Queen, Oliver Queen, and Sara Lance. All are, tragically, presumed dead.”
My heart felt to my stomach. “No,” I gasped out, loud enough for my roommate to notice.
She looked at me with a quizzical expression on her face. “Did you know them? I thought you were from out of town. They’re from Star City.”
Carli was from out of town.
But I wasn’t.
Carli didn’t care about Sara Lance.
I did.
“No. I am. I just— it’s sad, isn’t it?”
“I mean, yeah, I guess. But you look like you’re about to cry, Car. It’s just some rich dude, his son, and his bimbo girlfriend. The world’s probably better off without them.” Her words were like shots to the heart. The reporter kept talking, and then she pointed at the screen. “See. That girl ran off with her sister’s boyfriend. What kind of girl does that?”
I wondered why she was focusing on Sara, instead of focusing on Oliver, on the man who had been the one cheating. A single tear rolled out of my eye before I wiped it away, getting up. “I need some air,” I said, turning the TV off.
She looked at me strangely, but didn’t protest. I got out of there as quickly as possible, running as far into the woods behind our dorm as I could before the tears came properly.
I sank down onto the ground, my head in my hands. It didn’t make sense for me to feel this way. I didn’t know Sara. I’d met her twice. And yet, it felt like someone had torn out my heart.
She’d left a mark on my soul, and, no matter how hard I tried to forget her, I was never able to.
Every couple of months after I was Abigail, I’d checked up on her. Just to see if she was okay. She always was. She'd always been fine.
Until now.
I had been due to check on her a couple of weeks from now, but there was no point anymore, because she was gone. Her light had been extinguished.
I felt a ridiculous amount of rage. Not towards her, but towards Oliver Queen. Playboy. Billionaire. Cheater. Douchebag.
He had taken her on that boat. Sure, she’d gone with him. But he’d taken her. And now she was gone.
I spent the rest of the day in the trance, retreating into myself, just letting Carli do what Carli wanted to do. Before I went to sleep, I tried my best to imagine a day that had gone well for her, but I knew, in my heart, that she would wake up with a pit of sadness in her stomach that she didn’t understand, and there was nothing I could do to stop that.
I was twenty-five when she reappeared, when it turned out that she wasn’t dead. Nobody was sure exactly where she had gone, but now she was back in Star City, working at Oliver Queen’s club.
I didn’t have any intentions to try to cross paths with her. I didn’t.
But then one day I woke up in Hannah’s body, and her plans that night were taking her to Verdant. Sara’s club. She was going be there, bartending and smiling and flirting and it was going to be torture not to interact.
Still, I wasn’t going to interact.
And then I rolled over and saw a man in her bed, a man, Hannah’s memories told me, she had met last night. A little more searching told me Hannah did casual sex, a lot, and had no qualms with it. That she had a draw full of sex toys, some that even I had never seen before, let alone used. That she was into anyone, man or woman or neither or both, and if she didn’t come home with someone that night, she would be disappointed.
Even so, I wasn’t going to make that person Sara. I wasn’t.
Despite the fact that it had been ten years, almost four thousand days, since we’d kissed. Despite the fact that I was desperate to kiss her again. Despite the fact that I desperately wanted it to be Sara, I wasn’t going to do that. I wasn’t.
When I got to the club with Hannah’s friends, I didn’t look at her. When I ordered drinks, I staunchly ignored her. I found a woman to make out with, and I kissed her, trying to ignore the fact that Sara was feet away. And then Hannah’s friend pulled me away from the girl, hissing in her ear. “That bartender has been staring at you all night. You have to hit that. She’s literally the hottest person in this club.”
“Which bartender?” I asked, at the same time hoping with all of my heart that she both was and wasn’t talking about Sara.
“Blonde one. Short. Stupidly blue eyes. She’s wearing a crop top. She’s showing her stomach and I genuinely think she has more muscles than like… every guy in here combined.”
I swallowed, because I didn’t need to access Hannah’s memories to know that she would never say no to that. She liked muscles. She liked blondes. Sara was both my type and hers. Neither Hannah nor her friend would understand if she didn't go up there. I could've run away. I could've made an excuse.
I didn't.
Instead, I slowly made my way over, every so often glancing up to see if her eyes were still on me. They were, every single time. They were so blue. I wanted to drown in her eyes.
When I finally arrived in front of her at the bar, she smiled. “What can I get you?” she asked.
I started to protest, my hand going nervously to my neck, pressing down on the skin there, because Hannah had a strict rule about not buying drinks at clubs, not wanting to waste her money on overpriced alcohol that was probably watered down, anyway, and then Sara’s hand was on my arm, reassuring, and my heart stopped beating. “Here. I'll choose for you. On the house,” she said, with a wink, sliding me a glass. “You seem like a martini girl.”
“Is that allowed?” I asked.
“Only for girls as pretty as you.”
I was pretty. I knew that. I was blonde—because, at this point, it seemed like a given. I was conventionally attractive. And, for the second time in my life, she was undeniably attracted to me.
And it was completely and utterly impossible to say no to her smile, not when she seemed to shine brighter than every person around her, not when I saw the way her eyes creased when she grinned, not when the sound of her laugh was like music to my ears. It was completely and utterly impossible to say no when she finished her shift, came around from behind the bar, and dragged me into the bathroom, her mouth hot on my neck, her fingers pressing inside of me.
She was smaller than me, but it didn’t matter. Hannah’s friend had been right. She was covered in muscles, every line of her body hard, lean, completely irresistible and ridiculously hot. She held me up like I weighed nothing, and it just made me hotter. Her fingers didn’t still once as I got higher and higher, until I came with a gasp, keeping hold of me as my body sagged. She withdrew them, and then she kissed me, so much more softly than I was expecting.
Than Hannah was expecting. We both expected her to be done with us, but she just kissed us again, her lips soft, melting us into her, and then whispered, “You got a place? Mine is kinda out of shape right now.”
I didn’t know then that when she said ‘her place’ she essentially meant the Arrowcave.
“Yeah,” I gasped. “I got a place.”
It wasn’t like Hannah to let herself be led like I did, like I let myself be let out of the club and into a cab, like I let her kiss me again as we drove, her hands going everywhere. It wasn’t like Hannah, so I resolved to give her memories that would suggest she’d been slightly more in control, slightly more dominating.
For then, however, I let myself enjoy it. I was in a body that was enjoying it, that was loving every touch. I’d been in bodies that hated being touched. I always respected that. It was nice to be in a body that was so open to pleasure, to being explored by hands with fingertips rougher than I was expecting.
At the time, I still knew nothing about Sara. I thought I did, but I knew nothing. I didn’t know why her fingers were so rough, why she was so toned. All I knew was that she was good at kissing and even better at sex, that a lot had changed since she was fifteen and wide eyed and inexperienced.
I’d changed a lot, too. Neither of us were the same, although, at the time, I didn’t know quite how true that was for Sara as well as it was for me.
Through it all, Sara was ridiculously sweet. At the same time, she was stupidly hot, stupidly generous despite the fact that we both knew this was a one night thing, despite the fact that she didn't need to be generous, didn't need to be a giver when she'd already pulled me apart once. She was relentless in drawing pleasure from my body, only accepting anything back when I begged her, when I pinned her to the bed and made her admit how badly she wanted me to reciprocate.
Afterwards, she was still remained sweet, softness tingling her features as tiredness overtook her, and it was hard not to feel like I was love in her.
“I feel like I’ve met you before,” she whispered.
I shook my head. “You haven’t.” And then I hated the lie, so I added on, “You’d remember Hannah Morrison if you’d met her before, I promise. Nobody forgets me.”
That wasn’t a lie. She had memories of people hitting her up after years, begging for more. She was an electric personality. Much more so than I was.
The bravado made Sara laugh, and she fell asleep with a smile on her face.
Seven months after I slept with her, Sara died. Again. This time for real. Sara Lance was gone, and I had to live without her, because she was dead. I would never see her again.
At least, that’s what I thought until I woke up in Ava Sharpe’s body. I knew immediately that something was different. I reached for her memories, and there was… nothing.
I reached for her feelings, and still nothing.
All I could find was procedures. Codes. Rules. Knowledge from her job. Besides that, there was nothing. She was a person. A person my age, but with… nothing.
No personality.
For the first time, I wondered about staying. If there was no person to erase, was that so horrible? I could finally settle down. Find someone. It wouldn’t be Sara, but that was okay, and—
My train of thought ground to a halt as Sara’s name brought something up inside me. It was a memory. Or, at least, a weak imitation of one. It was... somehow, not quite right. I knew that. I knew what real memories looked like, felt like. It had been implanted. But it was of Sara, very much alive. The second I nudged it, trying to find out more, everything exploded inside my head. Every bit of knowledge Ava Sharpe had about her. How she had sunk with the ship, become an assassin, become a superhero, had started time travelling, had destroyed time, had messed up.
I knew Ava Sharpe was supposed to dislike her. But she hadn’t, because she hadn’t had any emotions. Fake memories couldn’t elicit real feelings. Ava Sharpe was supposed to dislike her. I didn’t. I was overjoyed. She was alive, and she was still shining. She was the Captain.
It felt like I was supposed to be there. I was blonde, because, of course I was. I had been, every time. I was a woman. I felt comfortable in that body. I spent the day in it, spent the whole day mulling over the possibility of staying, and she didn’t push back, not once.
In other bodies, when I’d considered staying, that thought had always triggered something inside them, and they’d fought against it. As soon as I felt that, I had always pushed the thought of staying out of my mind. I couldn’t do that to a person.
But Ava… Ava wasn’t a person. Her body welcomed me. It was like it had been waiting for me. I felt like I was more Ava than Ava had ever been, even after a day. I had always been A, but Ava… Ava felt like it was my name.
It felt right.
Her body was almost asking me to stay, begging me, pleading with me to make it a whole person—and I complied. I stayed. That night, I dreamt I was being born, dreamt I had finally been given my rightful place.
I knew, deep in my stomach, that this was where I was supposed to be. Where I was supposed to be for the rest of my life.
This body needed me, just like I needed it.
I woke up the next morning, in the same body for the first time in my life—and I became Ava.
The memories of how to do her job stayed, and I was thankful for that. If I tried, I could access the limited number of faux memories in her head. So, really, it wasn’t like she was gone. We were sharing one space. We were both Ava. The way she had been built: to be calm, measured, efficient, was similar enough to the personality I had had to create in order to survive.
There was one crucial way in which we were different, however: she didn’t know her memories were wrong. She’d never had access to any others, couldn’t have known hers didn’t feel like other people’s did.
But I did. So I surreptitiously searched, until, a year into my time as Ava, when I’d started thinking of myself that way, I finally figured it out.
Ava was a clone. From the future. Cloned to be a good leader, a good worker, a good agent. That was why she didn’t have any memories. Because she’d been created age twenty-five. Because she had no real memories prior to that. Because she’d been created hardly a couple of months before I became her.
After that, I no longer felt bad about having stayed. I was more Ava than she ever had been. She was a shell.
She’d been waiting for me.
I was Ava Sharpe. I liked the name. A year in, it still fit.
I was Ava. I was dependable, reliable, the perfect agent. I had more experience than anyone else in the Bureau. I had lived in the head of every sort of person. I knew how everyone ticked.
I had experience of a thousand more cultures than any other agent. I assumed Rip thought my experience came from the programming. I never told him anything different. I let him assume that.
For the first time in my life, I built connections. Not too many, because I had spent my entire life closed off, and I couldn’t open myself up that easily, but I made a few friends.
I got a girlfriend, and then lost her when she moved away.
I was sad for a few weeks, but at the same time, I felt a strange kind of joy, because, for the first time, the sadness was mine and mine alone. The old Ava’s memories never interfered when it came to emotions. They only ever appeared when I needed to know how to do something, and, at that point I knew every rule in the Time Bureau code inside out, hardly needing to refer to them at all.
For four and a half years, I just lived. I moved up the ranks, because I liked this job. I was using the unusual skills I had to help people. I had fallen into the job, and if I hadn’t liked it, I would’ve found a way to leave, but I did like it.
I liked being Ava Sharpe.
She was me and I was her and some of the time I found myself forgetting. And then Rip called us for a meeting, and told us that the Legends had returned to 2017, and with them, was Sara Lance. Rip told us they wouldn’t be a problem, but Sara’s file told me that that was unlikely.
And I was terrified. I’d known Sara for twenty-five years. I’d kissed her. I’d slept with her, and she’d never met me before. I knew I would still be undeniably attracted to her, probably more than I had been before, and I knew I was her type, and that was dangerous.
If I ever let on, she’d hate me. Despite the fact that I’d never done anything more than Abigail or Hannah would’ve done, it felt like an invasion of privacy.
So, when we got a warning that the Legends were in the Bureau, I did the only thing I possibly could think to do: I pretended to hate her. I insulted her and I belittled her and fought against her every word.
Her eyes blazed, and she was no longer the sun, she was an exploding supernova, bright and beautiful and a million times more dangerous. Her voice dropped with venom as she talked to me, and I told myself that that was how it was supposed to be.
I ignored the fact that I’d been dropped into her life so many times, more than I’d been dropped into anyone else’s, like I was meant to be there. I ignored the fact that Ava had been there, exactly where I’d needed her, with direct access to Sara.
I made her hate me, and I never hated her, no matter how much she broke the rules.
I wanted to break this rule I had set for myself.
I didn’t.
For two months, I stayed cold, full of anger, directing it at her every opportunity I could.
But, by the end of the two months, it was killing me. Everything in me was screaming that pretending to hate her was wrong.
I wondered if there was really someone up there, guiding us together. I couldn’t pretend to hate her anymore, not when I’d spent so much of my life thinking of her, and the way she lit up everyone around her.
I stopped antagonising her, hoping that we could just be friends.
And then, in response something shifted, and something changed behind her eyes. The embers behind them burned down, her expression softening, and when she saw me, she would smile, and all I wanted to do was kiss her.
I wanted to feel her again.
I couldn’t feel her again. It was wrong. I knew too much about her. How she kissed. How she looked when she came. Every line of her body.
And then I slipped up. I let on to the Vikings that I wasn’t interested in men, and I could see her eyeing me up, and I groaned internally, because she had this look on her face, this look that I had seen when I was Hannah.
It was dangerous. I was prey.
The fire behind her eyes shifted again, smouldering, molten hot.
She made it pretty obvious over the next couple of weeks that she wanted me. I was studiously oblivious, but I couldn’t help it if occasionally she managed to coax a smile out of me, managed to make pink rise on my cheeks. I couldn’t control that.
Mostly, we talked via call, and it was just about bearable.
And then, one day, when I was on the Waverider, she grabbed my arm, and before I knew it, I was in her bedroom.
“Sit,” she said, pointing at her bed.
“What?”
“Sit, Ava,” Sara said.
“Why?” I asked, but I still did it.
“Because I can’t guarantee privacy anywhere else, that’s why.”
“Why do we need privacy?” I was growing increasingly more nervous, my fingers twisting in my lap as I looked up at her.
She crossed her arms. “Because you’re into me and you’re holding back and I want to know why, since it’s pretty obvious I’m into you, too.”
My mouth fell open. I should’ve been expecting her to be this forward, but I wasn’t. “I—”
“Don’t say you’re not into me. I can tell the difference between someone who’s not interested, and someone who’s holding back, and you’re the latter. So, what gives, Sharpe?”
I stood up. “I can’t do this. We can’t do this. We’re… not right for each other.”
Sara stepped closer, and I felt like I couldn’t breathe. “What does that mean?”
“It means…” I sighed, my hands pressed nervously to my neck. “It means I know too much about you.”
Sara was in the middle of waving that off—“I know that, you idiot, you’re always talking about my file—” when her face scrunched up. She pointed at my hand. “That. That’s your nervous thing, right?”
My heart sped up. I wanted to escape, but when I moved towards the door, she blocked me.
“Don’t go, Ava. I’m trying to work something out. I’m— did we meet before? Before you were at the Bureau? Did I— fuck did I forget you, is that why you’re like this? I slept with a lot of people in my twenties—”
“No!” I said. It was horrible. I needed to leave. I shouldn’t have ever stayed in this body. I had to leave her, go back to moving every day, because it hurt so much. “No. Sara—”
“Wait,” Sara said. “No. Wait. I got it. There was this girl. Before I died. She did that same thing. Actually, she was kinda like you.”
The name slipped out from between my lips before I could stop it. “Hannah,” I breathed, and then I gasped, my eyes flicking upwards to see confusion in Sara’s eyes. “Fuck.”
“Yeah…” Sara said, slowly. “Hannah. Do you know her? Fuck, you’re not… you’re not related, are you? You do look kinda similar. Tall. Blonde. Pretty. Fuck. Did I fuck your sister? Is that why—”
“No. Sara. That’s not. She’s not related to me. I don’t know her. Not really.”
“Then how do you know that we fucking slept together, Ava, because, unless Rip is a total creep, I’m pretty sure that’s not in my file! How do you know that?” Her voice has raised, suspicions suddenly on her face, and I hated it.
I sighed. If this went terribly, I could use the memory flasher on her, and then move on, and no-one would have to know. I could let go of this life, cut the tether, and move on. “Because you gave me a martini on the house, and then you— you fucked me in the bathroom. Because you kissed me by your locker. Because you touched my hair once and I’ve spent the past twenty-five years thinking of you.”
Sara’s expression had turned to one of confusion.
“I did… what?”
“I met you when we were five and then when we were fifteen and when we were twenty five and… I didn’t look like this. I looked a little like this. I was always blonde and white and a woman. But I didn’t look like this. You’ve kept appearing in my life, and you’ve been stuck there, Sara. I’ve never been able to stop thinking about you. I know it sounds crazy and I know you think I’m crazy but… I’ve met you in three different bodies. This is the fourth one. I stayed in this one because there was… there was no-one here. Ava Sharpe wasn’t anyone until I came along. She was a clone. She didn’t have memories.”
Sara had been silent the whole time, and then it was her turn to collapse on the bed. “I’m sorry. You’re saying that… you’ve had four different bodies? So, what, your consciousness has… been transferred three times? I can… just about get that.”
“Not exactly.”
“Not exactly?” Sara asked.
“I change more often than that. Or I used to.”
“How often?”
“Every day.”
“Of your life?”
I nodded. “Or, until I became Ava. She was… she was waiting for me. Every single thing about her is me. She didn’t have a personality before. If you’re into me, then it’s me. Not her. I used to just be A. Now I’m Ava. Or… I kinda feel like I’ve always been Ava. I don’t know. I’m sorry.”
Sara pinched the bridge of her nose. “You’re saying… you were Hannah when we slept together. And… my locker… so… Abigail?”
I nodded. “And I was Ella, although I doubt you remember that. We were… very young.”
Sara shook her head. “No. I do remember. You were super nice for like one day and then you completely blanked me. It was traumatising.”
I felt heat rising in my cheeks. “Sorry. I hadn’t learnt to behave like the person I was that day. I just… wanted to be friends with people I liked. And I liked you.”
“You liked me?” Sara asked, and there was a hint of a smirk on her face.
“I mean— yeah.”
“You still like me?” Sara asked, raising an eyebrow.
“God, Sara, it doesn’t matter! I… I was obsessed with you.”
“You said you’ve met me three times in twenty-five years, Ava! I… can’t know what it was like to be… you. But I think if that were me… I’d hold on to the only constant I’d ever known. I get it okay. I kept turning up. It’s not surprising you… you cared. That’s not obsession. That’s just feeling, Ava. You just… didn’t get a chance to know the difference. Obsession would be… stalking and finding me in every body. You didn’t do that.” Sara sounded exasperated, but I still didn’t give in.
“I checked up on you. After I was Abigail. I checked up on you every couple of months. To see if you were okay.”
And then Sara’s face softened even further, doing the exact opposite of what I expected. “You checked up on me? God, Aves, that’s so cute. No-one ever checked up on me.”
I wanted to stamp my foot. She didn’t get it. She didn’t get why it wouldn’t work.
“Sara! We can’t… we can’t do anything! I mean… anything more than what we did. Which I shouldn’t have done, I shouldn’t have—”
“What? Forced me into it? Because if I recall correctly, I initiated things both of those times.”
“But I—”
“Did what? Did exactly what those people would’ve done? You think it would’ve been a good idea not to kiss me on day three of my first relationship with a girl?”
“No, but—”
“I’ve seen so many weird things, Ava.” As she said that, she stood up, stepped closer, her hand resting on my waist. “So many weird fucking things. I’ve seen an endless number of weird things. Aliens and magic and monsters and demons and meta humans and you think that this would scare me.”
“I had sex with you, and you didn’t know it was me.”
“It’s not like I knew Hannah,” Sara said. “You were just a girl. I didn’t know any different.”
I swallowed, ducking my head. “I’m just a girl,” I said, my voice small.
“No, fuck, Ava. That’s not what I meant. You’re not— you’re not just a girl anymore. I care about you, Ava. I like you. I like you in a way I haven’t liked anyone in a long time.”
“Sara…”
“You know when the last time I liked someone this much was?”
I shook my head. Her hand was still on my waist, and I wasn’t sure if I’d ever breathe again. “No,” I whispered.
“Well,” Sara said, pressing up on her toes, her face impossibly close. “She was called Hannah, and we only spent one night together, but there was something about her—and then I called her back a few months later, and she just… wasn’t the same. She wasn’t you.”
Her eyes were wide, and one hand had come up to cup my face. “I think I’ve been looking for you my whole life, Ava, and you’ve been getting closer and closer and I kept going away, kept dying or leaving but the point is, I really really want to kiss you, Ava. Can you let me kiss you? Please?”
“You already kissed me,” I whispered. “We already did that.”
“Yeah,” Sara said, reaching up to tuck some hair behind my ear. “But, I haven’t kissed you like this, yet. You said this always felt like the real you. Let’s have another first, Ava. A real first.”
“We can’t—”
“Who says, Ava? Who says we can’t? You, because you think you ‘betrayed my trust’ by kissing me once when I had only just figured out I liked girls and desperately needed the affirmation, and by sleeping with me and honestly giving me one of the best nights I had had in a long time? Giving me a good night when I needed it more than anything, when everything was crashing around me and I just needed someone to make me feel good for a night and hold me until I woke up?”
“I—”
“Shh,” Sara said, her finger on my lips. When I stopped talking, her finger moved to trace the outline of my mouth. “Do you want me to kiss you right now, Ava?”
All I could do was nod. It was the only thing I could say. I’d been drawn to this woman for as long as I could remember, since before I even knew what want was.
“You’re in this body for good, right?” I nodded again, dumbstruck. “Good,” she said, then pressed her lips to my cheek, before pushing me lightly backwards, until I was sitting on the bed again, and she was in my lap, her weight familiar in a way it shouldn’t have been. “I don’t want to wake up next to a stranger.”
“Wake up?” I asked, my voice weak.
“Mmhmm,” she hummed, her fingers on my chin, tilting my head so she could kiss my neck. “You did this thing with your tongue when you were Hannah,” she said, biting down gently on my skin, “and I want to see if you still got it.”
I pulled her face away. “This isn’t weird?”
Her hand came up to cup my face again. “Oh, baby,” she said, and the name stirred something inside of me, something that made me want to melt into her and never let go. As she spoke, she stroked her fingers over my cheek. “It’s more than weird. But I don’t care, okay? I died, Ava. I think you’re still less weird than me, yeah?”
“I don’t think so,” I mumbled.
She rolled her eyes good-naturedly, rolled her hips against mine, muttered, “God, shut up, you idiot,” and so I did, and she kissed me, and the supernova exploded behind my eyes, on every bit of my skin that she was touching, in my stomach and in my heart and it felt like something had solidified.
Somehow, I knew that, even if I tried, I wouldn’t be able to leave this body tonight.
Sara had let down an anchor inside of me, and it was like something finally clicked, like this what was supposed to happen the whole time, like thirty years of my life had been leading to this, to Sara’s tongue sliding between my lips, her hands slipping up under my shirt. “Let me care about you, Ava,” she murmured against my lips. “Stay with me, and let me do that. I need this.”
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll stay.”