Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The bells tolled slowly, each note unspooling across the courtyard like a wound reopened. The sun stood high above the chapel, generous and unrepentant, its light spilling over the stone steps as though this were any other day. It felt cruel in its brightness. Grief should have dimmed the sky, but heaven refused to mourn with them.

Black garments whispered in the wind. Veils fluttered, rosaries clicked softly between trembling fingers. Faces were streaked with tears that caught the light and burned. Mourning clung to the air, thick and breathless, as if sorrow itself had weight.

“Sister Catharina served this church for many years,” the man in black said, his voice worn thin by age and memory. Each word arrived slowly, heavy with what could no longer be undone. “Though she has departed, she carried the church within her. May God and the good heavens receive her soul.”

Silence followed—vast, unbearable. Louder than any bell.

The crowd shifted. Some bowed their heads. Others clutched their rosaries as if afraid faith itself might slip through their fingers. It felt as though everyone present had lost something unnamed, something intimate, something they would never admit aloud. The warmth of the day mocked them. No sunlight could reach what had been hollowed out.

The priest stepped forward, his face drawn, his eyes dulled by remembering. He held a small box in his hands, careful, reverent.
“I believe this belonged to her,” he said quietly. “She left it behind. Sister Catharina loved to write.” His voice faltered. “I am sorry for your loss.”

The girl reached for the box. Her hands shook as though grief had found its way into her bones.
“Thank you,” she said—and stopped. The words tangled in her throat, caught between disbelief and despair. “I still cannot believe she is gone.”

“Neither can I,” the priest murmured. “Just last week she was with the children at the orphanage. Her laughter filled the halls.” He exhaled, long and weary. “It is difficult to imagine the walls without her.”

He left her then, alone beneath the unyielding sky.

The girl looked down at the box. Dust clung to its surface, undisturbed, patient. She wiped it away with her sleeve, her vision blurring as tears fell freely now. A fragile smile touched her lips—not joy, but recognition. Memory stirring.

Inside lay the artifacts of devotion: a rosary smoothed by years of prayer, a Bible heavy with notes and underlined passages, a small bottle of holy water sealed against time. Each object bore the quiet imprint of a life shaped by faith.

But beneath them rested something else.

An old notebook. Its cover frayed, its edges yellowed, as though it had survived by being forgotten.

Her breath caught as she lifted it. The weight of it felt wrong—too alive for paper and ink. As if it still carried a pulse.

When she opened it, the scent of old parchment rose to meet her. The handwriting inside was delicate yet resolute, slanted with intention. Prayers. Confessions. Longing disguised as devotion.

Tears soaked the page.

She pressed a hand to her chest and thought, not for the first time:

She is gone.

But her voice remains.

Around her, the mourners dispersed. Footsteps faded. The chapel emptied. Yet she stayed, rooted, holding a heart laid bare in ink. The rosary, the Bible, the holy water—they were symbols of belief.

But the notebook was a soul.

And as she turned the page, she understood: Sister Catharina had never truly left the church. She had only changed form—lingering now in grief, in memory, and in the hands of someone still alive enough to ache.

Chapter Text

February 1974

The convent walls breathe like lungs, stone pressing against me as if to remind me of vows I swore too young. I welcomed silence as my companion, but tonight silence feels like a predator. I kneel, and the floor bruises my knees, yet the ache inside is sharper. I do not yet know her name, but I feel the shadow of her arrival, like incense smoke curling before the flame is lit.

Silence had always been Catharina’s first devotion.

It lived in the convent walls, thick and ancient, pressed into the stone by centuries of bowed heads and folded hands. It settled into corridors and cloisters, seeped into the chapel like incense that never fully burned away. Silence was not empty here—it was dense, weighted, alive. It watched. It listened.

Catharina had learned early how to live inside it.

She had entered the convent young—too young to understand what it meant to promise her body and soul to something she could not see. She remembered the way the veil had felt when it was first placed upon her head, heavy and foreign, the fabric brushing her cheeks like a hand she did not yet know how to refuse. At the time, she had mistaken that weight for purpose.

Years passed. The habit became familiar. Her hands learned the rhythm of prayer, her voice learned when to rise and when to remain obediently still. She learned how to kneel without complaint, how to bow without thought, how to make herself small enough to fit into holiness.

And yet—beneath the discipline, beneath the quiet—something restless endured.

Catharina was tall, though she carried herself with a habitual humility, shoulders slightly bent forward as though apologizing for the space she occupied. Her face was pale, framed perpetually by the black veil that marked her as a bride of Christ. Her eyes were dark, contemplative, inward-facing. Those who knew her said she was devout, steady, unwavering.

They also said she was solitary.

She spoke little. She laughed rarely. Her thoughts remained sealed, guarded like relics behind glass. It was easier that way. Safer.

That morning, she polished the pews in the chapel, her movements careful and repetitive. The wood gleamed beneath her rag, reflecting the faint candlelight in soft, distorted shapes. She found comfort in the task—the back-and-forth motion, the way her hands could occupy themselves while her thoughts drifted just far enough to hurt.

The chapel smelled of wax and stone dust. Morning prayer had ended not long ago, but the echoes lingered, suspended in the air like breath held too long.

It was then she heard footsteps.

“Sister Catharina.”

She startled, turning quickly. Father Matthias stood in the doorway, his face flushed, one hand resting lightly against his chest as he caught his breath. He had always seemed too large for the narrow spaces of the convent, his presence disruptive in a way that was not unkind, but unavoidable.

“Father,” she said, bowing her head. “Is something wrong?”

“No,” he replied, smiling. “Nothing wrong. Only news.”

He stepped inside, his shoes echoing faintly against the stone. The sound fractured the silence, and Catharina felt it in her ribs, like a small crack.

“You have served faithfully here for many years,” he continued. “I thought it right that you hear this before the others. A new sister will be joining us.”

Catharina blinked. “A new sister?”

“Yes,” he said, lowering his voice as though the walls themselves might overhear. “She arrives before noon.”

The words should have pleased her. New souls were rare in places like this. The world beyond the convent walls was changing—faster, louder, less obedient. Fewer women chose silence anymore.

And yet something tightened in her chest.

“I see,” Catharina said softly. “I will welcome her.”

“I knew you would,” Father Matthias replied. “She will need guidance. You have always been… steady.”

Steady. The word settled over her like a verdict.

He nodded once more and left, his footsteps fading back into the corridors. Silence returned, but it felt altered now—watchful, alert.

Catharina stood alone in the chapel, rag still in hand. The polished pew reflected her distorted image back at her, stretched and broken by the curve of the wood.

A new sister.

The phrase repeated itself, over and over, pressing against her thoughts. Companionship was scarce within these walls, where solitude was both discipline and defense. She told herself the unease she felt was nothing more than anticipation.

And yet—

She set the rag aside and walked toward the altar, her steps slow, deliberate. The air was cool, heavy with the residue of prayer. Candles trembled faintly, their flames unsteady, as though they too sensed disruption.

She knelt.

The stone floor was cold beneath her knees, unyielding. She welcomed the pain. It grounded her. She closed her eyes and bowed her head, fingers laced tightly together.

The convent walls breathed around her, stone pressing inward, reminding her of vows sworn too young, promises made with a certainty she no longer possessed. She had welcomed silence once, invited it in like a companion. But now it felt different—predatory, circling her prayers, waiting for weakness.

She whispered words of devotion, but they returned to her hollow, echoing like unanswered calls.

She did not yet know the name of the woman who would arrive.

But she felt her.

The presence came to her not as a thought, but as a sensation—a shadow curling through the chapel like incense smoke before the flame is lit. A premonition. A warning. Something beautiful and terrible, indistinguishable from one another.

Her heart quickened.

She told herself it was nothing. Curiosity. Imagination. The natural stirring of routine disrupted.

Yet beneath the rationalizations, something stirred—hunger she did not yet recognize as such. Longing without an object. Fear without a name.

Catharina pressed her palms together harder, whispering, “Lord, forgive me.”

But the silence did not answer.

It pressed closer.

Chapter Text

February 1974

She has come. Victoria. Her voice is a psalm, but it unsettles me more than any hymn. I tell myself it is admiration, but admiration should not taste like hunger. When she smiles, I feel my ribs expand as though my body is trying to make room for something forbidden. I pray, but the prayers dissolve before they reach Heaven.

The bells rang for Terce just before noon.

Catharina stood near the threshold of the convent, hands folded neatly at her waist, spine straight, chin lowered in practiced humility. The stone beneath her feet held the cold of morning, though the sun had climbed high enough to spill pale light across the courtyard. Dust drifted through it, slow and deliberate, as though even the air observed discipline.

She had been waiting longer than necessary.

The sisters passed behind her in quiet pairs, murmuring to one another before catching themselves and falling back into silence. There was a subtle shift among them today—an expectancy they would not name. News traveled even where voices were restrained.

A new sister.

Catharina told herself her stillness was duty. That Father Matthias had asked her to welcome the newcomer, and she meant to do so properly. Hospitality, after all, was a form of obedience.

Still, her heart beat too quickly.

The outer doors creaked open.

Light entered first—thin, wintry, catching on the iron hinges before spilling across the stone floor. Then footsteps followed, measured but uncertain, as though the person making them had not yet learned the rhythm of cloistered ground.

Father Matthias stepped inside, his shadow long behind him. He paused, glanced around, and smiled when he saw Catharina waiting.

“Sister,” he said softly, as if greeting her too loudly might disturb the walls. “Thank you.”

She bowed her head. “Of course, Father.”

He turned back toward the doorway. “Come in, child.”

The woman who entered did so with care.

She was younger than Catharina had expected—early twenties, perhaps—and dressed plainly, her garments modest and unadorned, as though she had already learned to make herself smaller. Her hands were clasped tightly before her, fingers laced together until the knuckles paled. She hesitated just inside the threshold, eyes lowered, shoulders drawn inward.

Catharina felt it then.

Not recognition. Not desire.

A shift.

Something in the air altered, like pressure before rain.

“This,” Father Matthias said gently, “is Sister Victoria.”

Victoria lifted her gaze.

The moment was brief—proper, restrained—but it struck Catharina with a force she could not name. Victoria’s eyes were clear, observant, and unsettled, as though she were taking in far more than she let show. There was no boldness in them, no defiance. Only attention.

Catharina bowed. “Welcome,” she said. “May your devotion be steadfast, and your days here guided by grace.”

Victoria’s lips curved into a small, uncertain smile. “Thank you, Sister.”

Her voice was softer than Catharina had imagined. Lower, too. Not fragile—simply unguarded.

Father Matthias gestured between them. “Sister Catharina will help you settle. She knows the rhythms of this place well.”

Victoria nodded quickly. “I am grateful.”

Catharina inclined her head once more. “Please. Follow me.”

They walked side by side through the corridor, their steps echoing faintly against the stone. The convent smelled of wax and old linen, of herbs drying somewhere unseen. Catharina kept her gaze forward, her pace measured. She was aware—uncomfortably—of the presence beside her. Not the body, exactly. The attention.

“This way,” Catharina said, turning toward the novices’ wing. “Your cell has been prepared.”

Victoria followed, her movements careful, as though afraid of making too much sound. After a moment, she spoke.

“I did not expect it to be so quiet.”

Catharina allowed herself a small smile. “Silence is… cultivated here.”

“Yes,” Victoria said. “I was told as much. Still—” She hesitated. “It feels different once you are inside it.”

Catharina glanced at her then, briefly. “You will grow accustomed to it.”

“I hope so,” Victoria replied. “Though I confess—I thought silence would feel empty.”

“And does it?”

Victoria considered. “No. It feels… attentive.”

Catharina felt a tightening in her chest.

“That is a good way to think of it,” she said, after a moment. “Silence teaches us to listen.”

They reached the small cell prepared for Victoria. It was sparse, as all were: a narrow bed, a wooden desk, a crucifix fixed to the wall. Light filtered in through a single window, pale and unassuming.

Victoria stepped inside, her eyes moving slowly over the space. “It is enough,” she said quickly, as though reassuring herself.

“It is,” Catharina agreed. “If you require anything, you may ask.”

Victoria nodded. “Thank you.”

There was a pause—slight, awkward. The kind that comes when words have been exhausted too quickly.

“You will join us for Sext shortly,” Catharina said. “Afterward, there will be a meal.”

Victoria’s shoulders relaxed at that. “I am glad.”

Catharina turned to leave, but Victoria spoke again.

“Sister Catharina?”

She stopped.

“Yes?”

“I—” Victoria hesitated, then continued, “You seem… very certain here.”

Catharina did not answer immediately. “Certainty comes with time,” she said finally. “Or so we hope.”

Victoria smiled faintly. “Then I hope I am patient enough to earn it.”

—

The chapel was fuller than usual for Sext.

The sisters knelt in their places, habits aligned like shadows, hands folded, heads bowed. Victoria knelt near the back, posture careful, eyes fixed on the altar. Catharina sat several rows ahead, acutely aware of where the newcomer was—not by sight, but by presence.

The hymn began.

Catharina had sung these words for years. Her voice joined the others automatically, measured and obedient. And then—she heard it.

Victoria’s voice did not rise above the choir. It did not demand attention. But it carried—a steady, resonant undercurrent that wove itself through the harmony without force.

Catharina faltered on a word.

She recovered quickly, lowering her gaze, forcing her breath into rhythm. This was nothing, she told herself. A new voice always sounded distinct.

Still, her ribs ached.

After prayer, the sisters filed out quietly. In the refectory, bowls of soup were placed along the long table, bread distributed evenly. Catharina took her seat, folding her hands as grace was spoken.

Victoria sat across from her.

Catharina noticed it only when she looked up—and then forced herself to look down again.

The meal passed mostly in silence, punctuated by the soft sounds of spoons and the occasional scrape of wood against stone. Catharina ate slowly, deliberately.

Victoria glanced up once, their eyes meeting briefly.

Victoria smiled—small, restrained, as though uncertain whether such a thing was permitted.

Catharina lowered her gaze immediately.

—

That evening, as dusk settled into the convent, Catharina found herself restless.

She walked the cloister corridors, fingers brushing the stone absently, her thoughts unmoored. The presence she had felt all day lingered—not intrusive, not loud. Simply there.

She found Victoria in the garden.

The herbs were still green despite the season, their scent sharp in the cooling air. Victoria knelt among them, sleeves rolled slightly, hands smudged with soil.

“I hope I am not intruding,” Catharina said.

Victoria startled, then smiled. “Not at all. I was told tending the garden helps one think.”

“And does it?”

Victoria glanced down at her hands. “It quiets me.”

Catharina nodded. “You will find many things here serve that purpose.”

They worked side by side for a while in silence. The earth was cool, damp beneath Catharina’s fingers. She focused on the task—on the neatness of the rows, the discipline of order.

After some time, Victoria spoke.

“May I ask you something?”

“You may.”

“Did you ever doubt?”

Catharina stilled.

“Doubt,” Victoria continued, quickly, “not of God—but of yourself. Of whether you were… suited for this life.”

Catharina answered carefully. “Doubt is not uncommon.”

“But you overcame it.”

Catharina looked at her then. Victoria’s face was open, unguarded—not desperate. Simply searching.

“I learned to live alongside it,” Catharina said.

Victoria considered this. “That seems harder.”

“It is,” Catharina replied. “But it is honest.”

Victoria smiled faintly. “I am glad you are here.”

Catharina felt something tighten, then release.

“So am I,” she said—and did not know why the words felt heavier than they should.

—

That night, Catharina knelt alone in the chapel.

The candles burned low, their flames unsteady. She folded her hands, bowed her head, and tried to pray.

The words came slowly.

Not resistance. Not refusal.

Just… delay.

She thought of Victoria’s voice, the way it settled into the hymns without force. Of her question. Did you ever doubt?

Catharina pressed her palms together harder.

“Lord,” she whispered, “teach me to listen.”

Silence answered.

And for the first time, she was not sure whether it was God who listened back—or something else entirely.

Chapter Text

November 1974

I watched her kneel today, her lashes casting shadows like stained glass. I whispered forgiveness though I had not yet sinned. Or perhaps I had—perhaps the sin is in the wanting, in the way my eyes linger too long. I feel as though I am already devoured, consumed by something I cannot name aloud.

November arrived without ceremony.

The air turned sharper, carrying with it the scent of damp stone and dying leaves dragged in from the courtyard. The convent did not mark the change aloud, but Catharina felt it in her joints, in the way her breath steamed faintly during early prayer. Winter crept closer each morning, patient and inevitable.

So, too, did the feeling she could no longer dismiss.

It began, she told herself, as vigilance.

A senior sister was expected to observe the novices, to guide them gently, to correct without cruelty. Attention, when properly directed, was an act of care. Catharina repeated this to herself often—especially now.

Especially when her gaze found Victoria.

They knelt together during Prime, the chapel dim and hushed. Candles flickered along the walls, their light catching in the colored glass above the altar. The saints gazed down in fractured hues—reds and blues falling across stone, across fabric, across bowed heads.

Victoria knelt two rows ahead.

Catharina did not intend to look. She never intended to look.

And yet her eyes moved there, again and again, as though drawn by gravity rather than will.

Victoria’s posture was reverent, careful. Her hands rested loosely against one another, fingers relaxed rather than clenched. She bowed her head deeply, lashes dark against her cheeks, casting thin shadows that reminded Catharina—unbidden—of stained glass, of light broken into beauty by constraint.

The thought unsettled her.

She lowered her gaze quickly, heart quickening.

Forgive me, she whispered silently, though she was not yet certain why.

The prayers continued, their words flowing around her like water over stone. Catharina recited them as she always had, her mouth shaping the syllables with practiced ease. But the meaning slipped. Her attention fractured, pulled forward, outward.

She felt as though she were watching something she should not witness.

Victoria shifted slightly, adjusting her balance. The movement was small—nothing that would have drawn notice from anyone else. But Catharina’s breath caught, sharp and unwelcome.

She closed her eyes.

This was foolish. Dangerous. She was allowing imagination to trespass where discipline should rule. She whispered another plea for forgiveness, quicker this time, more urgent.

I have not sinned, she told herself. I have done nothing.

But the wanting—quiet, insistent—did not recede.

—

The days grew shorter.

Work continued as always: cleaning, teaching the younger novices, preparing meals, tending the garden as it slowly surrendered to frost. Life within the convent followed its rhythms without deviation. And yet Catharina felt herself slipping out of step, ever so slightly, like a prayer spoken too late.

Victoria remained… unchanged.

That, perhaps, was the most disturbing part.

She was neither provocative nor careless. She did nothing that could be named improper. Her devotion appeared sincere, her humility intact. She learned quickly, listened attentively, accepted correction without resentment.

And still—Catharina watched her.

Not openly. Never openly.

Only in fragments: the bend of her neck during prayer, the careful way she folded her habit, the faint crease between her brows when she concentrated. These details lodged themselves in Catharina’s mind like thorns, small but persistent.

During Sext one afternoon, Catharina caught herself counting the rise and fall of Victoria’s shoulders as she breathed.

She pressed her lips together, ashamed.

This was not desire, she told herself. Desire was hunger, heat, urgency. This was something quieter. Something colder.

Attention, she insisted. Concern.

But attention, she knew, was not without consequence.

—

That evening, Catharina found Victoria alone in the chapel.

It was uncommon, but not forbidden. Some sisters sought solitude in prayer when the day allowed it. Catharina paused at the threshold, intending only to pass by.

Victoria knelt near the front, her posture unguarded, head bowed low. A single candle burned beside her, its flame steady.

Catharina hesitated.

She told herself she would not linger. That she would enter, kneel briefly, and leave.

Instead, she stood there—watching.

Victoria’s lips moved soundlessly. Her hands were clasped tightly now, knuckles pale. There was something earnest in the way she prayed, something almost vulnerable.

Catharina felt an unfamiliar ache spread through her chest.

She stepped inside quietly and knelt several pews behind her.

The stone was cold beneath her knees. She welcomed the discomfort, grounding herself in it. She bowed her head, closed her eyes, and attempted to pray.

The words would not come.

Her mind filled instead with images she had not invited: Victoria kneeling, Victoria’s lashes, the candlelight catching in her hair. These were not thoughts she could bring before God.

Her breath grew shallow.

Forgive me, she whispered, barely audible.

The plea felt premature—unearned. Forgiveness without confession. Absolution sought for a crime not yet committed.

Unless—

Unless the crime lay in the wanting itself.

The realization struck her with quiet force.

What if sin did not require action? What if it bloomed earlier—at the moment attention turned inward, possessive? At the moment admiration ceased to be neutral and became… selective?

Catharina pressed her palms together harder, as though she could crush the thought between them.

I have done nothing, she repeated.

But even as she said it, she felt hollowed out by the truth that followed:

I want.

—

She began to avoid Victoria.

Not entirely—that would have drawn notice—but in small, deliberate ways. She altered her routines, changed where she sat during meals, positioned herself farther away during prayer.

It did not help.

Distance did not diminish the pull; it sharpened it.

Catharina found herself listening for Victoria’s footsteps in the corridor, recognizing her presence without looking. She knew the cadence of her movement now, the faint hesitation before entering a room.

One afternoon, Victoria spoke to her unexpectedly.

“Sister Catharina?”

Catharina turned too quickly. “Yes?”

Victoria looked momentarily startled. “I hope I am not disturbing you.”

“No,” Catharina replied, too stiffly. She softened her tone. “What is it?”

“I wanted to thank you,” Victoria said. “For your guidance. You have been… patient.”

Catharina felt a tightening in her throat. “It is my duty.”

“Yes,” Victoria said. “But still—thank you.”

Their eyes met.

The contact was brief, entirely proper. And yet Catharina felt exposed, as though something inside her had been named aloud.

“You should return to your work,” she said.

Victoria nodded. “Of course.”

As she walked away, Catharina remained standing, heart racing, the echo of her presence lingering like heat on skin.

This must end, she told herself.

—

That night, Catharina fasted.

It was not required. No feast day demanded it, no penance assigned. The choice was her own.

She skipped the evening meal, retreating to her cell instead. The hunger came quickly, sharp and insistent. She welcomed it.

Hunger was familiar. Hunger could be mastered.

She knelt beside her bed, rosary wrapped tightly around her fingers. She prayed until her knees ached, until her stomach burned, until exhaustion dulled her thoughts.

Still, images intruded.

Victoria kneeling. Victoria’s lashes. The quiet devotion in her posture.

Catharina pressed her forehead to the floor.

“I have not sinned,” she whispered. “I have not sinned.”

But the words rang hollow.

She felt consumed—not by pleasure, not by indulgence—but by anticipation. By a desire so restrained it had turned inward, devouring her from the inside.

She rose shakily and lay down, sleep coming fitfully.

—

The next morning, during Mass, Catharina caught herself watching Victoria kneel again.

The familiarity of the act terrified her.

It was no longer accidental. No longer incidental.

Her gaze lingered.

She felt the moment stretch, thin and dangerous, until she forced herself to look away.

Her heart pounded.

This is how it begins, she thought—not with touch, not with confession, but with looking.

With wanting what one has no right to name.

She whispered forgiveness again, her lips barely moving.

The words tasted like dust.

And as the prayers rose around her, Catharina understood—with a clarity that frightened her—that she was already being consumed.

Not by Victoria.

But by the knowledge that something within her had awakened—and would not be put back to sleep.

Chapter Text

March 1975

Her singing pierced me.
Each note was a blade, each word a wound.
I thought of communion, of bread broken, of wine poured,
and I feared I was consuming her instead of Him.
My mouth filled with blood that was not holy.
I trembled, and I called it devotion, but it was desire.

By March, the cold had softened, though it had not yet released its grip.

Morning light entered the chapel differently now—less blue, more pale gold—settling on the altar as if tentative, uncertain whether it was permitted to linger. The stone retained winter’s memory, but the air carried the faint promise of thaw. The sisters noticed it in small ways: windows opened a fraction wider, habits adjusted, breath no longer visible during early prayer.

Catharina noticed it in her body.

She woke hungry.

Not the familiar, manageable hunger of fasting, but something restless and diffuse—an ache that moved rather than settled, that resisted prayer and discipline alike. She knelt longer in the mornings, whispered her petitions more fervently, but the sensation remained, coiled beneath her ribs.

She told herself it was the season. The body’s response to change.

She did not yet allow herself to name its true cause.

—

The choir gathered for rehearsal in the late afternoon, sunlight slanting through the high windows and pooling across the floor in uneven shapes. Dust drifted lazily in the air, stirred by movement and sound. Catharina took her place among the others, smoothing her skirt, her fingers trembling despite her efforts to still them.

Victoria stood at the front.

Sister Agnes had given her more responsibility in recent weeks—not out of favoritism, but necessity. Victoria learned quickly, listened carefully, and sang with a consistency that anchored the others. It was decided, quietly, that she would lead the Lenten hymns.

Catharina had not objected.

She told herself that leadership was not temptation. That sound was not touch. That beauty, when offered to God, remained pure.

Still, when Victoria raised her hand to signal the opening note, Catharina felt her breath catch.

The hymn began.

The first note struck cleanly, without hesitation, and Catharina felt it land somewhere deep—behind the sternum, beneath the skin. The sound carried weight, not force. It did not overwhelm; it entered.

Each note followed with deliberate precision.

Catharina sang, though she could barely hear herself. Victoria’s voice cut through the harmony like a blade through cloth, not tearing, but parting—exposing something raw beneath.

She thought, unbidden, of bread broken.

The image came with unwelcome clarity: hands at the altar, the soft resistance of the loaf giving way, the quiet finality of the fracture. This is my body, the priest would say. Given. Offered.

Her throat tightened.

The hymn continued, each phrase unfolding with careful restraint. Victoria’s voice did not waver. It rose and fell, obedient to the music, yet alive with something Catharina could not reconcile with reverence alone.

She felt pierced.

Not wounded in the way of flesh, but opened—each note pressing inward, finding places she had sealed with discipline and silence. Words she had spoken a thousand times now arrived sharpened, dangerous.

She thought of wine poured.

Of chalices lifted. Of dark liquid offered as salvation. Of mouths opening to receive what was not theirs to own.

Her stomach clenched.

Catharina missed a step in the harmony. She recovered quickly, but the effort left her shaking.

When the hymn ended, silence fell hard and immediate.

“Again,” Sister Agnes said quietly.

Victoria nodded.

They began once more.

This time, Catharina felt the sound not as intrusion, but as consumption.

She imagined it entering her mouth, filling it, staining her tongue. The thought horrified her. She pressed her lips together, forcing herself to breathe through her nose, as though that might keep the sound from entering her.

It did not help.

Her mouth tasted suddenly metallic.

She swallowed hard, panic blooming. This is wrong, she thought. This is not what music is meant to do.

The hymn concluded again. Sister Agnes dismissed them with a nod.

Catharina did not move.

She remained standing, her hands clenched at her sides, her heart racing violently now. The room felt too bright, too exposed.

Victoria approached her hesitantly.

“Sister Catharina?” she said. “Are you unwell?”

Catharina flinched at the sound of her name.

“I am fine,” she replied too quickly.

Victoria frowned slightly. “You seem pale.”

“I said I am fine.”

The sharpness in her tone startled them both.

Victoria stepped back, chastened. “Forgive me.”

Catharina inhaled slowly. “No. I am—” She stopped. Chose her words carefully. “The music was… demanding.”

Victoria’s expression softened. “Yes,” she said. “It asks much of us.”

Catharina could not meet her gaze.

—

That evening was the first Sunday of Lent.

The chapel filled with incense and murmured prayer. Candles burned brighter than usual, their flames restless. Catharina knelt among the others, her posture rigid, her hands pressed together so tightly her fingers ached.

Communion approached.

She felt dread coil in her stomach.

When the time came, the sisters rose in orderly fashion, moving forward in practiced reverence. Catharina joined them, her steps measured, her eyes lowered.

Victoria stood ahead of her.

Catharina watched—despite herself—as Victoria knelt at the altar rail, her head bowed, lips parted slightly in anticipation. The priest placed the host on her tongue with careful precision.

The body of Christ.

Victoria closed her eyes.

Catharina’s breath caught painfully in her chest.

When it was her turn, she knelt mechanically, her thoughts in disarray. The host rested briefly against her tongue—bland, fragile—and she felt an unexpected surge of nausea.

As she rose, the taste returned.

Metallic. Sharp.

She pressed her lips together, swallowing hard. Her heart pounded so loudly she was certain others could hear it.

Back in her place, she bowed her head and trembled.

What if I am consuming the wrong body?

The thought struck her with devastating clarity.

She imagined Victoria’s voice entering her again, imagined herself taking it in, breaking it, claiming it as sustenance. The image sickened her.

Her mouth filled with the taste of blood.

She bit the inside of her cheek sharply, grounding herself in pain. The copper tang intensified.

She welcomed it.

Pain, at least, was familiar. Pain could be offered.

—

That night, Catharina could not eat.

She sat at the long table with the others, her bowl untouched, her gaze fixed on the wood before her. The smell of bread made her stomach twist.

Sister Agnes noticed.

“You will weaken yourself,” she said quietly.

“I am observing Lent more strictly,” Catharina replied.

Sister Agnes studied her for a moment. “Do not mistake severity for holiness.”

Catharina inclined her head. “Yes, Sister.”

But she did not eat.

—

Later, alone in her cell, Catharina knelt on the bare floor.

Her body shook with exhaustion, hunger, something else she refused to name. She pressed her forehead to the bedframe, her breath coming unevenly.

“I tremble,” she whispered, “and I call it devotion.”

The words sounded false even as she spoke them.

She pictured Victoria singing again—her mouth shaping the words, her breath carrying sound into the world. The memory ignited something sharp and undeniable within her.

“No,” Catharina whispered. “This is not devotion.”

She rose unsteadily and paced the small room, her rosary slipping uselessly through her fingers. Prayer offered no refuge now; it only circled the same forbidden center.

She stopped abruptly, pressing a hand to her mouth.

“I desire,” she said aloud—and the word landed like a confession she could not retract.

The realization did not bring relief.

It brought terror.

Desire was not passive. Desire wanted. Desire reached.

She sank back to her knees, trembling.

“God,” she whispered hoarsely, “if this is hunger, take it from me.”

But the silence remained unchanged.

And in that silence, Catharina understood that what pierced her was not the music alone, nor the sacrament, nor the season of fasting—but the truth she could no longer deny:

She had mistaken desire for devotion.

And devotion, once corrupted, could no longer be made pure by hunger alone.

Chapter Text

July 1975

I dreamt of her mouth pressed to mine.
I woke drenched in shame, fasting for three days, punishing my body as though hunger could erase longing.
My knees are bruised from prayer, but bruises are not enough.
I want penance that burns, penance that silences the heart.
Yet the heart refuses.

July arrived with heat that felt almost obscene within the convent walls.

The air grew thick, unmoving, pressing itself against stone and skin alike. Windows were opened wider now, though modesty demanded the curtains remain drawn. The scent of summer crept in regardless—warm earth, distant blossoms, something faintly sweet and rotting all at once.

Catharina slept poorly.

The nights offered no relief from the weight of the days. Her habit clung to her skin; her sheets twisted beneath her restless body. Prayer before sleep no longer soothed her. It only sharpened the edge of consciousness, leaving her alert, watchful, afraid of what waited when she closed her eyes.

When the dream came, it did not announce itself.

There was no warning, no corruption of setting. It unfolded gently, almost reverently.

She was kneeling.

Not in the chapel, but somewhere undefined—dark, warm, close. The space felt intimate in a way she could not place, as though walls had drawn nearer, as though breath itself had weight.

Victoria stood before her.

Not looming. Not dominant.

Simply there.

Her face was close—closer than Catharina had ever allowed in waking life. She could see the fine lines at the corners of her mouth, the slight parting of her lips as she breathed.

Catharina did not move.

She could not.

Victoria leaned forward.

The gesture was unhurried, inevitable. Catharina felt the distance between them vanish, felt breath mingle, felt—

Mouth.

Pressed to hers.

The contact was soft. Unexploitative. Almost tender.

And devastating.

Catharina woke with a cry lodged in her throat, her body slick with sweat, her heart racing violently. The room was dark, the air heavy, her sheets tangled around her legs.

She clapped a hand over her mouth as if to silence the memory, her breath coming in ragged bursts.

“No,” she whispered. “No.”

Her body betrayed her further—heat pooling low in her belly, her skin overly sensitive, every nerve awake and aching. The dream clung to her with cruel clarity: the warmth of Victoria’s mouth, the intimacy of the gesture, the horrifying sweetness of it.

Catharina bolted upright, gasping.

Shame followed swiftly, merciless.

She slid from her bed and knelt on the bare stone floor, the cold shocking against her overheated skin. She pressed her forehead to the ground, her fingers digging into the floor as though she might anchor herself there.

“I am unclean,” she whispered. “I am unclean.”

The words tasted ancient, biblical, heavy with condemnation.

Sleep did not return.

—

She did not eat that day.

Nor the next.

Nor the next.

Catharina announced her fast quietly, without drama, framing it as devotion rather than desperation. No one questioned her at first. Fasting was not uncommon, particularly in summer, particularly among those who sought discipline as refuge.

But this was different.

The hunger grew sharp and insistent, hollowing her out from the inside. Her head ached constantly. Her limbs felt weak, her vision occasionally swimming. She welcomed each symptom as proof that the body could be subdued.

If I starve it, she told herself, it will forget.

She prayed incessantly.

At Matins. At Lauds. Between duties. Late into the night. She knelt until the skin over her knees split and bruised, purple and tender beneath her habit. Each ache felt like progress.

Still, the dream returned.

Not always the same, but always close. Always intimate. A brush of breath. A hand imagined but never seen. A mouth again—too near, too warm.

She woke each time with the same sickening mixture of longing and horror.

Her heart refused to be silenced.

—

By the fourth day, Sister Agnes noticed.

“You are ill,” she said flatly, standing in the doorway of Catharina’s cell.

Catharina looked up slowly from her kneeling position. “I am devout.”

“You are weak,” Sister Agnes corrected. “There is a difference.”

Catharina’s mouth felt dry, her tongue thick. “I am offering this.”

Sister Agnes crossed her arms. “To whom?”

Catharina hesitated.

“To God,” she said finally.

Sister Agnes studied her face for a long moment. “God does not require self-destruction.”

Catharina lowered her gaze. “The saints—”

“The saints were not reckless,” Sister Agnes interrupted. “They did not punish themselves for thoughts.”

Catharina’s breath hitched. “Thoughts lead to action.”

“Not always,” Sister Agnes replied. “And action is not your crime.”

The words unsettled Catharina deeply.

“Eat,” Sister Agnes said. “At least a little. This is not obedience.”

Catharina nodded, though her stomach twisted at the thought.

“I will pray on it,” she said.

Sister Agnes sighed. “Prayer is not avoidance, Sister.”

She left without waiting for a response.

—

Catharina did not eat.

Instead, she intensified her penance.

She knelt longer. She pressed her knees deliberately against the stone until pain bloomed bright and sharp. She recited psalms aloud, her voice hoarse, her throat raw. She denied herself water when thirst burned, convinced that deprivation might cauterize desire.

Penance that burns, she prayed. Penance that silences the heart.

But the heart did not obey.

It beat steadily, stubbornly, each pulse a reminder of life she could not extinguish.

On the fifth night, she collapsed during Compline.

It was not dramatic. No fainting spell, no spectacle. Simply weakness overtaking her as she rose from kneeling. The world tilted; her vision darkened at the edges.

Hands caught her before she fell.

Victoria’s.

Catharina gasped at the contact, the shock of it slicing through her fogged consciousness. Victoria’s grip was firm, steady, entirely appropriate—and yet Catharina felt it like a brand.

“Careful,” Victoria murmured, her voice low with concern. “You’re shaking.”

Catharina pulled away immediately, shame flaring hot. “Do not touch me.”

Victoria stepped back, startled. “I only meant to help.”

Catharina pressed a hand to her chest, her heart racing again. “I am fine.”

“You’re not,” Victoria said gently. “You’re barely standing.”

“That is not your concern.”

Victoria hesitated, then nodded. “As you wish.”

She turned away.

Catharina watched her go, her vision blurring—not from weakness alone, but from something deeper, more corrosive.

The dream flashed in her mind again: Victoria’s mouth, pressed to hers.

She pressed her fists into her eyes, fighting tears.

—

That night, Catharina lay awake, too weak to kneel, too ashamed to sleep.

Her knees throbbed. Her stomach burned. Her heart refused every command she issued it.

She whispered, “Silence,” to her own chest.

It answered with longing.

She whispered, “Stop.”

It continued.

In the dark, she finally understood the futility of her efforts.

Hunger could weaken the body. Pain could mark it. Discipline could restrain it.

But the heart—untaught, undisciplined, aching—refused erasure.

And that refusal frightened her more than the dream ever had.

Chapter Text

December 1975

Her hand brushed my wrist.
Innocent. Accidental.
Yet I felt the Host dissolve on my tongue, and I wondered if it was her flesh I consumed.
I am starving, but not for bread.
I am starving for her.
I fear this hunger will devour me whole.

December arrived cloaked in ritual.

Advent candles were lit one by one, their flames small but insistent against the long darkness. The convent dressed itself in restraint: purple cloths on the altar, hymns softened, voices lowered. Waiting was sanctified here. Hunger was expected.

Catharina had never feared waiting.

Now it terrified her.

The cold returned sharply, reclaiming the stones, stiffening fingers and breath. She welcomed it. Cold clarified things. It punished the body without drawing notice, without intention. Cold could be endured without shame.

But the hunger did not recede.

It had changed shape.

No longer a diffuse ache, it had sharpened, gathered itself around a single point of awareness. Catharina could locate it now, precisely, like a wound she dared not touch.

Victoria.

—

The accident occurred during preparation for Mass.

It was nothing. That was the cruelty of it.

They stood side by side in the sacristy, laying out linens, fingers moving in quiet coordination. The space was narrow, their proximity unavoidable. Catharina focused on the task—folding, aligning, ensuring everything was exact.

Victoria reached for the chalice at the same moment Catharina extended her hand to adjust the corporal.

Their wrists brushed.

Barely.

The contact lasted less than a second.

Victoria murmured, “Sorry,” already withdrawing.

Catharina froze.

The sensation lingered—warmth against skin, shockingly intimate for its brevity. It was not pressure that undid her, not grip or insistence. It was the ordinariness of it. The way such a small thing could carry such weight.

Her breath caught painfully in her chest.

“It’s nothing,” Catharina said, though her voice sounded distant to her own ears.

Victoria nodded, her attention already returned to the task.

But Catharina’s body did not move.

The place where Victoria’s skin had touched hers burned, as though marked. She pressed her fingers together, trying to contain the feeling, to compress it into something manageable.

It did not obey.

—

During Mass, Catharina knelt rigidly, her hands clasped so tightly her knuckles ached. The hymns passed in a blur. The prayers rose and fell around her, familiar and yet newly fragile.

When communion came, dread settled heavy in her stomach.

She approached the altar rail with deliberate care, each step measured. She told herself to focus—to empty herself, to receive without interpretation.

Victoria knelt beside her.

Catharina felt her presence acutely, like heat radiating through fabric.

The priest moved along the line, lifting the host with practiced reverence. “The body of Christ,” he murmured.

Catharina opened her mouth.

The host rested on her tongue—thin, fragile, dissolving almost immediately. She closed her mouth, her jaw tightening as she drew back.

And then the thought struck her, sudden and violent:

What if this is not Him I consume?

Her heart lurched.

She imagined Victoria’s hand again, the brief brush of skin. She imagined that warmth dissolving in her mouth, imagined herself taking Victoria into herself—not as desire alone, but as sustenance.

Her stomach clenched painfully.

The host dissolved completely.

Catharina swallowed hard, her throat tight, her mouth suddenly dry. She tasted nothing and everything at once.

Blood rose unbidden—she realized distantly that she had bitten her tongue.

The copper tang spread.

She pressed her lips together, trembling.

This is sacrilege, she thought. This is blasphemy.

And yet the hunger only deepened.

—

After Mass, Catharina retreated quickly, avoiding conversation, avoiding eye contact. She moved through the corridors like a ghost, her body present, her mind elsewhere.

She washed her hands repeatedly in the basin outside the sacristy, scrubbing until the skin reddened. The water was icy, biting. She welcomed the sting.

“You’ll hurt yourself,” Victoria said softly from behind her.

Catharina startled, the basin rattling slightly under her grip.

“I am fine,” she said.

Victoria hesitated. “You seem… unwell.”

Catharina turned, her expression sharp. “Do not concern yourself with me.”

Victoria’s brow furrowed. “I didn’t mean—”

“I know what you meant,” Catharina said, then caught herself. She softened her tone. “Forgive me. I am tired.”

Victoria nodded slowly. “If you need rest—”

“I need silence.”

The words came out harsher than intended.

Victoria stepped back. “Of course.”

She left quietly.

Catharina gripped the edge of the basin, her breath uneven. The water ran on, unchecked, until she forced herself to turn it off.

—

That night, hunger kept her awake.

Not the simple hunger of fasting—she had eaten, dutifully, forcing bread past her lips. This hunger sat elsewhere, deeper, gnawing with purpose.

She lay rigid beneath her blankets, staring at the ceiling.

I am starving, she thought, and the admission frightened her.

She pressed a hand to her stomach. It was full. Fed.

Still, the hunger raged.

Not for bread, she realized.

The truth unfolded with devastating clarity.

For her.

The word settled into her chest like a verdict.

Catharina turned onto her side, curling inward, as though she could make herself smaller, less capable of want. She whispered prayers into the darkness, her voice barely audible.

“Take this from me,” she begged. “Please.”

But the silence remained unmoved.

—

The days leading up to Christmas were heavy with preparation.

Victoria was everywhere—helping decorate the chapel, practicing hymns, assisting with the children from the orphanage. Her presence threaded through Catharina’s days relentlessly, impossible to escape.

Catharina watched herself unravel in small, controlled ways.

She avoided Victoria’s gaze, yet tracked her movement unconsciously. She positioned herself carefully to avoid contact, yet felt every near miss as keenly as touch. She interpreted everything now—every smile, every kindness—through the lens of her hunger.

It terrified her.

During choir practice, Victoria’s voice filled the chapel again, rich and steady. Catharina sang too, her voice thin, strained. The words of the hymn—O come, O come, Emmanuel—lodged painfully in her chest.

Ransom captive Israel.

Catharina swallowed hard.

She was captive to something far closer than exile.

—

On Christmas Eve, the chapel glowed with candlelight.

The air was thick with incense, warmth, breath. The sisters sang together, their voices rising in careful harmony. Catharina felt the sound move through her, stirring the hunger anew.

When the final hymn ended, she felt hollowed out—exhausted and aching.

Victoria caught up to her as they exited.

“Your singing tonight was beautiful,” she said softly.

Catharina stopped.

“Do not say that,” she replied, her voice low.

Victoria blinked, startled. “I only meant—”

“I know,” Catharina said, then exhaled slowly. “Forgive me. I am… struggling.”

“With what?” Victoria asked gently.

Catharina looked at her—really looked at her—for the first time in weeks. The candlelight caught in Victoria’s eyes, warm and concerned.

The hunger surged violently.

“With myself,” Catharina said.

Victoria nodded, accepting the answer without pressing. “If you need someone to pray with—”

Catharina shook her head. “No.”

The refusal cost her dearly.

—

That night, Catharina knelt alone, her knees aching against the stone.

She pressed her forehead to the floor, her body trembling with restraint. She felt devoured from the inside, as though the hunger itself had teeth.

“I fear this hunger will consume me,” she whispered.

The words felt prophetic.

She understood now that this was no passing temptation, no fleeting misdirection of devotion. This hunger had intention. It wanted to grow. It wanted to claim her.

And for the first time, Catharina feared not only sin—but survival.

Chapter Text

April 1976

I confessed today.
“I think I love her,” I whispered.
The priest said nothing.
Silence is heavier than penance.
I left hollow, carrying my sin like a stone in my chest.
I wonder if silence is God’s answer, or His condemnation.

April broke open slowly.

The frost receded at last, loosening its grip on the convent grounds. The garden stirred with reluctant green, shoots pressing through soil that had grown tired of holding its breath. Light lingered longer in the evenings now, stretching the days thin.

Catharina felt no relief.

She had delayed this moment as long as she could—weeks of tightening restraint, of careful avoidance, of prayer layered upon prayer until the words themselves felt brittle. But silence within her had grown too loud. Hunger had learned to speak.

Confession, she told herself, was obedience.

It was also surrender.

The confessional waited in the side chapel, dark and narrow, its wooden screen worn smooth by generations of hands. Catharina approached it with measured steps, her heart pounding so violently she feared it might give her away.

She knelt, the familiar creak of wood echoing faintly in the enclosed space.

“Bless me, Father,” she said quietly, “for I have sinned.”

The priest shifted behind the screen. She recognized his breathing, steady and patient. Father Matthias had heard countless confessions from her before—small failings, moments of pride, lapses in charity. This would be different.

“How long has it been since your last confession?” he asked.

“Three weeks.”

“And your sins?”

Catharina closed her eyes.

The words crowded her throat, clamoring, urgent. She had rehearsed this—phrases shaped carefully to remain vague, acceptable, survivable.

But the truth pressed forward, unmanageable.

“I have… harbored impure thoughts,” she began.

Father Matthias waited.

“They concern another person,” she continued. Her hands trembled in her lap. “Another woman.”

The priest’s breath paused, just perceptibly.

Catharina pressed on, panic rising. “I have fasted. I have prayed. I have done penance. But the thoughts persist.”

Silence.

She swallowed hard.

“I fear my devotion has been… misdirected.”

Still nothing.

The quiet thickened, pressing in on her from all sides. The confessional felt smaller now, the air stale.

She could stop here, she thought. Retreat. Accept a mild rebuke, a prayer, a warning.

But the truth surged up, undeniable.

“I think I love her,” Catharina whispered.

The words fell between them like something dropped and irretrievable.

The silence that followed was not immediate.

Father Matthias inhaled slowly. Exhaled.

Then—nothing.

No instruction. No rebuke. No comfort.

Catharina waited, her heart racing, her palms slick with sweat. The stillness stretched, each second lengthening unbearably.

“Father?” she ventured.

No answer.

The quiet became oppressive, almost physical. She felt as though she were kneeling beneath something immense, weight pressing down on her chest.

She had expected pain. Judgment. Even anger.

She had not expected nothing.

At last, Father Matthias spoke.

“Pray,” he said simply.

Catharina’s breath caught. “Pray… what, Father?”

Another pause.

“For clarity,” he replied. “And restraint.”

She waited for more.

It did not come.

“What penance should I perform?” she asked, desperation edging into her voice. “Tell me what to do.”

Silence again—longer this time.

Finally, he said, “Go in peace.”

The words struck her like a dismissal.

Catharina rose on unsteady legs, her knees stiff, her body numb. She murmured the closing words out of habit and stepped out of the confessional.

The chapel was empty.

Sunlight filtered through the stained glass, casting fractured color across the pews. The beauty felt obscene, unearned.

She stood there for a long moment, unable to move.

Go in peace.

The phrase echoed mockingly in her mind.

She felt no peace.

—

She walked the grounds aimlessly afterward, her steps carrying her without intention. The garden lay quiet, earth dark and damp beneath her shoes. Birds flitted in the hedges, indifferent to her turmoil.

Her chest felt hollow.

Not light—emptied.

She pressed a hand against it, as though she might feel the absence physically. It felt like carrying a stone where her heart should be.

Is this absolution? she wondered. Or abandonment?

She replayed the confession again and again, each silence magnified. The priest’s refusal to name her sin terrified her more than condemnation would have.

To name something is to contain it.

This—this was left uncontained.

—

That evening, she encountered Victoria unexpectedly in the corridor.

Victoria smiled when she saw her. “Sister Catharina. I was hoping to find you.”

Catharina froze.

“Yes?” she managed.

“I wanted to ask—” Victoria hesitated. “You seem… distant lately. Have I done something to offend you?”

The concern in her voice was sincere, unguarded.

Catharina’s chest tightened painfully.

“No,” she said quickly. “You have done nothing.”

Victoria studied her face. “Then what troubles you?”

Catharina looked away. “It is not for you to carry.”

Victoria nodded slowly. “Still—I am here.”

The kindness cut deeper than cruelty ever could.

Catharina forced herself to meet her gaze, just for a moment. The familiar hunger stirred immediately, sharp and aching.

She stepped back.

“I need time,” she said. “Please.”

Victoria accepted this without protest. “Of course.”

As she walked away, Catharina felt the stone in her chest grow heavier.

—

That night, she returned to the chapel.

She knelt alone, her posture rigid, her hands empty. No rosary. No book. Just herself, exposed.

“I confessed,” she whispered into the silence. “I spoke the truth.”

The silence did not answer.

She waited, her breath shallow, her heart pounding.

Nothing.

The weight pressed down on her again, unbearable in its vastness.

“Is this Your will?” she asked. “Or Your refusal?”

No response came.

She felt suddenly very small.

Silence, she realized, could be interpreted endlessly. As patience. As judgment. As indifference.

Or as permission.

The thought frightened her enough to draw a sharp breath.

“No,” she whispered. “Do not let it be permission.”

She pressed her forehead to the stone, tears burning behind her eyes.

“I am afraid,” she admitted.

The admission echoed softly, unanswered.

—

Days passed.

Nothing changed.

No guidance arrived. No correction. Father Matthias avoided her gaze when they passed in the corridors. Life in the convent resumed its careful rhythms, untouched by her confession.

Catharina felt herself recede from it all, moving through her duties as though underwater. The stone in her chest remained, unyielding.

She began to wonder if silence itself was the verdict.

Not mercy. Not punishment.

But exile.

To be seen and left unaddressed.

—

One afternoon, as she watched Victoria kneel in the chapel—head bowed, lashes casting familiar shadows—Catharina felt the truth settle into her bones with chilling clarity.

Confession had not freed her.

It had only confirmed what she already knew.

She was alone with this hunger.

And the silence—whether divine or human—offered no refuge.

Only weight.

Only waiting.

Chapter Text

August 1976

She laughed in the garden, sunlight caught in her hair.
I imagined weaving each strand into a rosary, imagined her mouth against mine, imagined Hell.
I cannot tell where Heaven ends and Hell begins anymore.
Perhaps they are the same place, and she is the gate.

August arrived bright and unrepentant.

The sun showed no reverence for vows or veils. It spilled freely over the convent grounds, warming stone, coaxing green from the garden beds, gilding everything it touched. The days stretched long and luminous, heavy with cicada-song and the slow hum of life continuing without permission.

Catharina felt exposed beneath it.

She moved carefully now, as though light itself might betray her—might illuminate the thoughts she kept locked behind prayer and discipline. Summer stripped things bare. There was no hiding from it.

She found Victoria in the garden by accident.

The herbs had grown wild despite careful tending, their scents sharp and overwhelming in the heat. Catharina had come to prune them, to restore order, to lose herself in something precise and blameless.

Victoria stood among the rosemary and lavender, sleeves rolled up, hands stained with soil.

She was laughing.

The sound startled Catharina—not because it was loud, but because it was unguarded. The laughter rose easily, freely, as though joy itself had slipped past the convent walls unnoticed.

Sunlight caught in Victoria’s hair, igniting it briefly—golden threads glinting against dark fabric. The sight struck Catharina with sudden force, sharp and breath-stealing.

She stopped short.

The moment stretched—Victoria laughing, head tilted back slightly, the light making something radiant of her that Catharina had no language for without sin.

And just as quickly as it came, the laughter faded. Victoria turned, catching sight of Catharina standing there.

“Oh,” she said, smiling. “Sister Catharina. I didn’t hear you.”

Catharina swallowed. “I was passing through.”

Victoria gestured toward the herbs. “They’ve grown unruly. I thought they might appreciate attention.”

Catharina nodded, her gaze fixed too intently on Victoria’s hair, still haloed faintly by sun.

“Yes,” she said. “They tend toward excess.”

Victoria smiled again, softer this time. “As do many things.”

The words lingered between them, unintended yet heavy.

Catharina knelt to begin trimming, her movements controlled, deliberate. She focused on the task, the scent of crushed leaves clinging to her hands. She told herself to breathe, to think of nothing beyond the present moment.

But her mind betrayed her.

She imagined taking a single strand of Victoria’s hair between her fingers.

Just one.

Imagined winding it carefully, reverently, as though it were thread spun for devotion. Strand by strand, she wove the vision further—hair becoming cord, cord becoming rosary. Something sacred fashioned from something forbidden.

The image unsettled her deeply.

She pressed her lips together, heart racing.

This is sacrilege, she thought. This is madness.

She forced herself to look away.

Victoria knelt opposite her, working in silence now. The garden hummed softly around them. Bees hovered lazily over blossoms. The world felt achingly alive.

Catharina felt herself pulled inward, toward memory, toward imagination she could no longer govern.

She imagined Victoria’s mouth against hers.

The thought came unbidden, vivid and terrifying. Not the dreamlike softness of sleep, but something sharper—daylight-bright, undeniable. She imagined warmth, breath, the devastating nearness of another body allowed too close.

Her breath hitched painfully.

She imagined Hell.

Not the inferno of sermons and scripture, but something quieter, more intimate: endless wanting without relief, love stripped of grace, beauty turned into torment by proximity. She imagined standing there willingly, unable to turn away.

Her hands shook.

Where does Heaven end? she wondered desperately. Where does Hell begin?

The boundaries had blurred beyond recognition.

Once, Heaven had been obedience. Silence. Clean lines between right and wrong.

Now, Heaven looked perilously like longing.

Hell looked like separation.

The realization horrified her.

Victoria spoke suddenly, breaking the spell.

“You look tired,” she said gently.

Catharina flinched. “I am well.”

“You don’t have to pretend with me,” Victoria replied, not accusing, simply observant. “I know this life can be… heavy.”

Catharina’s laugh came out sharp, humorless. “This life is chosen.”

“Yes,” Victoria said. “But choosing something does not make it easy.”

Catharina looked at her then, really looked. There was no guile in Victoria’s expression, no manipulation. Only concern. Familiarity earned through months of shared silence.

That was what made it unbearable.

“I do not struggle,” Catharina said, too firmly. “I am faithful.”

Victoria nodded, though her eyes searched Catharina’s face as though looking for something unsaid. “I believe you.”

The affirmation cut deeper than doubt ever could.

—

That night, Catharina could not pray.

She knelt, as she always did, but the words would not assemble. Her thoughts returned relentlessly to the garden—to laughter, to sunlight, to the way imagination had betrayed her so easily.

She pressed her palms together until they ached.

“Show me the boundary,” she whispered. “Show me where You end and I begin.”

The silence did not move.

She thought again of Heaven and Hell—not as distant realms, but as states of being. Proximity. Absence.

Perhaps they were not opposites at all.

Perhaps they were the same place, entered by different doors.

And Victoria—unwitting, radiant—stood at the threshold.

The thought filled Catharina with dread and reverence in equal measure.

She rose slowly, feeling unsteady.

If Victoria was the gate, then Catharina had already crossed something without realizing it.

Not with her body.

But with her heart.

—

In the days that followed, Catharina oscillated between resolve and collapse.

She avoided the garden. Then found herself drawn back to it. She spoke less, prayed more, slept poorly. Her dreams returned—not always explicit, but always centered, circling the same forbidden gravity.

She told herself she must choose.

But choose what?

Faith without love felt like desolation. Love without faith felt like damnation.

There was no path that did not wound.

One evening, as the sun dipped low and the garden glowed once more with dying light, Catharina stood at her cell window and watched Victoria walk below, her figure briefly illuminated before disappearing into shadow.

The sight filled her with longing so acute it bordered on grief.

“I cannot tell anymore,” Catharina whispered to the empty room. “I cannot tell.”

The confession felt truer than any she had spoken before.

Heaven. Hell. Devotion. Desire.

The words had lost their edges.

Only Victoria remained distinct—terrifyingly so.

And in that clarity, Catharina understood the true depth of her conflict:

She was no longer afraid of sin.

She was afraid of choosing—and discovering that whichever door she opened, she would be lost.

Chapter Text

January 1977

I watched her sleep during prayer.
Her breath was steady, mine was not.
I asked God to kill the part of me that loves.
He did not answer.
Perhaps He cannot.
Perhaps He will not.

January returned like a reprimand.

The warmth of autumn and the false mercy of winter festivities had passed, leaving behind a cold that felt corrective—sharp, unadorned, exacting. The convent welcomed it without comment. Cold clarified. Cold disciplined. Cold punished gently but persistently.

Catharina welcomed it too.

She needed something unambiguous.

The chapel was dim during early prayer, lit only by a few candles that trembled against the dark. The sisters knelt in long, silent rows, heads bowed, bodies arranged in familiar submission. Breath rose and fell softly, a communal rhythm shaped by years of repetition.

Catharina knelt near the aisle, hands clasped tightly, spine rigid.

Victoria knelt across from her.

The prayers stretched long, the words murmured low and even. The hour was early, the cold deep. Fatigue weighed heavily on the body. Catharina felt it in her limbs, in the ache behind her eyes.

She glanced up once.

Victoria’s head had dipped lower than before. Her shoulders had slackened slightly, her posture softened by exhaustion. Catharina realized, with a jolt of recognition, that she was asleep.

Not deeply. Not collapsed. Just—resting.

Her breathing was slow, even. Peaceful.

Catharina’s chest tightened painfully.

She should look away.

She did not.

Victoria’s lashes rested against her cheeks, unmoving now. Her mouth was relaxed, lips parted just slightly. There was no artifice in sleep—no vigilance, no restraint. It stripped a person bare.

Catharina felt exposed by witnessing it.

Her own breath had grown uneven, shallow. She drew it in sharply, then forced herself to exhale slowly, counting under her breath.

This is wrong, she thought. This is trespass.

Yet she could not stop looking.

The sight undid her in a way no imagined transgression ever had. There was nothing erotic in it. Nothing overt. And that was precisely its danger.

Love, she realized dimly, did not always announce itself with fire.

Sometimes it arrived as reverence.

Her throat burned.

She lowered her gaze abruptly, shame flaring hot and immediate. Her hands trembled where they were clasped together.

I cannot be trusted, she thought.

The realization came with brutal clarity.

She could not trust her eyes. Her thoughts. Her heart.

She needed intervention.

—

After prayer, Catharina lingered until the chapel emptied. She waited until the last footstep faded, until silence reclaimed the space fully.

She remained kneeling.

Her knees protested sharply against the stone, but she did not shift. Pain anchored her. Pain reminded her that she still possessed some authority over herself.

She bowed her head and spoke—not formally, not carefully.

“Kill it,” she whispered.

The words startled her.

She tried again, steadier this time. “Kill the part of me that loves.”

Her breath shuddered as the admission left her lips.

She did not ask for guidance. Or forgiveness. Or strength.

She asked for eradication.

“I do not need it,” she continued. “It serves no purpose. It only corrupts.”

The silence pressed close around her, heavy and unmoving.

She waited.

Her heart pounded painfully, each beat loud in her ears. She imagined something descending—grace or judgment, she did not know which—to cauterize what burned inside her.

Nothing came.

Her mouth felt dry. She swallowed hard.

“Please,” she whispered. “I cannot carry this.”

The candles flickered. Shadows shifted along the walls.

God remained silent.

Catharina bowed lower, pressing her forehead to the stone. The cold bit sharply into her skin.

“Perhaps You cannot,” she said, voice trembling. “Perhaps You will not.”

The possibility hollowed her out.

—

From that day forward, Catharina began to withdraw.

Not abruptly. Not dramatically.

Carefully.

She altered her routines again—this time with intention. She volunteered for duties that kept her apart: late-night cleaning, early morning preparation, tasks that required solitude rather than cooperation.

She stopped seeking Victoria’s presence even accidentally.

When their paths crossed, she kept her responses brief, her gaze lowered, her voice neutral. She did not linger. She did not smile.

Victoria noticed.

“You’ve been avoiding me,” she said one afternoon, quiet but direct.

Catharina stiffened. “That is not true.”

Victoria studied her face. “Have I done something wrong?”

The question cut sharply.

Catharina answered without hesitation. “No.”

“Then why—”

“Please,” Catharina interrupted. The word came out strained. “Do not ask me this.”

Victoria hesitated, then nodded. “As you wish.”

She stepped back, giving Catharina the distance she seemed to require.

The relief was immediate.

So was the grief.

—

At night, Catharina lay awake, staring at the ceiling, her chest aching with something she refused to name. The hunger had not lessened; it had only turned inward, compressed into something denser, more dangerous.

She had asked God to kill love.

Instead, love lingered—wounded, cornered, but alive.

She wondered if this was punishment.

Not fire. Not condemnation.

But endurance.

—

One evening, as winter deepened its hold, Catharina stood in the cloister and watched snow begin to fall. The flakes drifted quietly, settling without sound, erasing sharp edges, smoothing everything into sameness.

She pressed a hand against her chest.

Her heart beat steadily.

Unrepentant.

“I am trying,” she whispered. “I am trying to choose You.”

The words felt brittle.

God did not answer.

And in that silence, Catharina understood the true shape of the rupture:

Withdrawal did not free her from love.

It only isolated her with it.

And love—unanswered, unacknowledged—did not die.

It waited.

Chapter Text

May 1977

She whispered my name like a hymn.
My ribs cracked open.
The devil crawled inside.
Or perhaps it was love.
Or perhaps they are the same.
I felt everything at once: sin, salvation, hunger, grief.
I am undone.

May arrived quietly, as though ashamed of its own abundance.

The garden bloomed without restraint—petals unfolding, vines climbing where they were not meant to climb, fragrance thick enough to cling to skin. The convent did not celebrate this excess, but neither could it suppress it. Life pressed forward regardless of discipline.

Catharina felt it everywhere.

She had grown adept at distance by then. Her withdrawal had become practiced, nearly graceful. She spoke when necessary, performed her duties without fault, prayed with the appearance of focus. To anyone watching, she seemed recovered.

Inside, she was splintering.

The hunger had changed again—not sharpened, not dulled, but widened. It had become vast, indiscriminate, capable of holding too much at once. She no longer trusted her own reactions. Everything felt like threat.

Everything felt like revelation.

It happened in the chapel, late afternoon.

The hour was quiet—too early for evening prayer, too late for the hum of daily labor. Light slanted in through the high windows, warming the pews, dust drifting lazily through the air. Catharina had come alone, seeking not comfort but containment.

She knelt near the back, her hands folded, her gaze lowered.

She did not hear Victoria enter.

She became aware of her instead—of presence, of proximity—like a shift in pressure. Her spine stiffened instinctively.

“Catharina.”

The sound of her name—soft, measured—reached her like a hymn sung too close.

Victoria had not raised her voice. She had not spoken loudly enough to echo. The name was offered, not claimed.

It split her open.

Catharina’s breath left her in a rush she could not control. Her chest constricted violently, pain flaring beneath her ribs as though something had cracked there, something brittle finally giving way.

She turned slowly.

Victoria stood a few paces away, hands clasped before her, posture hesitant. There was no accusation in her face. No demand.

Only care.

“I didn’t mean to intrude,” Victoria said quietly. “I thought you might be here.”

Catharina could not speak.

Her heart thundered painfully, each beat sending shockwaves through her body. She felt exposed, flayed—every layer of restraint peeled back by the simple intimacy of being named.

“You’ve been distant,” Victoria continued, her voice low, careful. “I wanted to know if I had… hurt you.”

Catharina’s vision blurred.

The sound of her name still echoed in her chest, reverberating against bone and memory. No one had spoken it like that before—not gently, not deliberately, not as if it mattered.

The devil crawled inside her then.

Or perhaps it was love.

The distinction no longer felt meaningful.

Her hands trembled in her lap. She curled her fingers inward, nails biting into her skin, grounding herself in pain.

“You should not speak to me like that,” Catharina said finally, her voice strained, barely steady.

Victoria frowned. “Like what?”

“Like—” Catharina faltered. The language failed her. “Like you know me.”

Victoria’s expression softened. “I do know you.”

The words struck harder than any accusation.

Catharina rose abruptly, the movement unbalanced. She took a step back, then another, as though distance itself might save her.

“You do not,” she said. “You cannot.”

Victoria took a small step forward, then stopped, respecting the boundary. “Then help me understand.”

Catharina shook her head. Her chest ached fiercely now, pressure building, unbearable.

“I am not—” She broke off, swallowing hard. “I am not what you think.”

Victoria’s voice dropped further. “I don’t think anything,” she said. “I feel.”

The word detonated.

Catharina felt it all at once.

Sin—hot and immediate, a transgression she could no longer deny.

Salvation—the possibility, terrible and radiant, that this feeling might be holy simply because it was true.

Hunger—aching, endless, no longer metaphorical.

Grief—for the life she had chosen, for the life she was losing, for the life she could not imagine surviving either way.

She pressed a hand to her chest, gasping.

“I cannot,” she whispered.

Victoria did not move. “I’m not asking you to.”

The restraint in her voice—its care—undid Catharina completely.

Tears burned behind her eyes, unspilled but relentless. She turned away, her body shaking now, breath coming in ragged pulls.

“Please,” she said. “Please leave.”

Victoria hesitated.

Then, softly, “I will.”

She paused, then added, “But know this—I did not mean to be your wound.”

The words landed gently.

Too gently.

Catharina sank back to her knees as Victoria’s footsteps retreated, fading into the quiet of the convent. The sound of her leaving felt like loss made audible.

She remained there, kneeling, long after the chapel emptied again.

Her ribs ached as though something vital had been broken open and left exposed to air. She pressed her palm against her chest, feeling the frantic rhythm beneath.

“I am undone,” she whispered.

Not ruined.

Undone.

Unmade.

The categories she had lived by—devil and God, love and sin, salvation and damnation—had collapsed into one another, indistinguishable. She could no longer tell which voice spoke within her.

Only that it spoke her name.

And that it sounded like a hymn.

Chapter Text

September 1977

I kissed her in the chapel.
Just once.
Just enough to damn me.
I did not sleep that night.
I did not pray.
I did not regret.
My lips still burn, and I wonder if this fire is Hell or Heaven.

September arrived without ceremony.

The heat loosened its grip slowly, reluctantly, as though summer were unwilling to relinquish its claim. The air grew thinner, clearer. Mornings carried the faint promise of coolness, evenings settled gently instead of clinging. The convent breathed differently now—less burdened, less strained.

Catharina did not.

She had learned, over the months, how to carry her fracture without drawing notice. How to move through the hours with the correct posture, the correct silences. She had mastered restraint so thoroughly that it had begun to resemble peace.

But peace, she knew, was not absence.

It was tension held without visible collapse.

She had not spoken to Victoria since May.

Not truly.

There had been necessary exchanges—measured, impersonal, carefully supervised by circumstance. Their eyes did not linger. Their hands did not touch. The space between them had become disciplined, almost ceremonial.

And yet—

Catharina felt her everywhere.

In the cadence of hymns.
In the rustle of habit fabric passing in corridors.
In the quiet, dangerous spaces where prayer failed to fill the room.

The hunger had gone underground.

It no longer announced itself with ache or imagination. It waited. It observed. It endured.

So did she.

—

The chapel was empty when it happened.

That alone should have warned her.

It was late afternoon, the hour suspended between duties. Sunlight slanted through the high windows, muted by dust and glass, painting the pews in pale gold. The air smelled faintly of incense and old wood—familiar, comforting, dangerous.

Catharina entered without intention.

Or perhaps intention had entered her first.

She knelt near the altar, not in her usual place, but closer than she allowed herself lately. The stone beneath her knees was cool, grounding. She folded her hands and closed her eyes.

She told herself she would pray.

She did not.

Her thoughts drifted, as they had learned to do when unguarded. Not toward fantasy—she had burned that pathway down months ago—but toward memory. Toward voice. Toward the sound of her name spoken gently, reverently.

She inhaled slowly.

“Lord,” she began, then stopped.

The word felt insufficient.

Footsteps echoed softly behind her.

Her spine stiffened.

She did not turn.

She knew.

Victoria did not speak at first. She moved quietly, as though afraid of disturbing something fragile. When she knelt beside Catharina, the sound was barely audible, but the shift in presence was unmistakable.

They knelt together in silence.

Catharina’s breath became shallow. Her heart began to race—not violently, not panicked, but insistently, as though it recognized a moment approaching and could not be persuaded otherwise.

Minutes passed.

Victoria spoke first.

“I didn’t expect to see you here,” she said softly.

Catharina opened her eyes, fixed her gaze on the altar. “Nor I you.”

“I come here when I don’t know where else to go,” Victoria replied.

The admission was quiet, unguarded.

Catharina’s hands tightened together.

“You should be careful,” she said. “This place is not… neutral.”

Victoria smiled faintly, though Catharina could hear it in her voice. “Neither are we.”

The truth of it settled heavily between them.

Silence returned—not empty, but charged. The air seemed to thicken, as though holding its breath with them.

Catharina became acutely aware of proximity. The warmth of Victoria’s body. The subtle shift of fabric when she breathed. The shared stillness of kneeling side by side.

It felt intimate beyond reason.

“You’ve been avoiding me,” Victoria said at last.

Catharina exhaled slowly. “Yes.”

“May I ask why?”

Catharina hesitated.

She had rehearsed many answers over the months. None of them felt possible now.

“Because I do not trust myself,” she said finally.

Victoria turned her head slightly. Catharina felt the movement like a touch.

“With me?” Victoria asked.

Catharina swallowed. “With what I feel.”

The words rang in the chapel, soft but irrevocable.

Victoria did not respond immediately. When she did, her voice was careful, but no longer distant.

“And what do you feel?”

Catharina laughed quietly—once, breathless, without humor. “You know.”

Another pause.

“Yes,” Victoria said. “I do.”

Catharina turned then, compelled despite herself.

Victoria was watching her openly now. There was no pretense in her expression—only something steady and intent, something that refused to be dismissed.

Catharina felt stripped bare beneath that gaze.

“This is wrong,” she said.

Victoria nodded. “Yes.”

The simplicity of the agreement startled her.

“It cannot happen,” Catharina continued. “Not here. Not ever.”

Victoria did not argue. “I know.”

“And yet,” Catharina whispered, her voice breaking slightly, “you are still here.”

“So are you,” Victoria replied.

The truth of it was devastating.

Catharina’s chest tightened painfully. She felt the familiar fracture widening, restraint giving way under the accumulated weight of months, years.

“I have prayed for this to end,” she said. “I have begged for it to be taken from me.”

“And?” Victoria asked gently.

“And it has not,” Catharina said. “I am still here. Still wanting.”

Victoria’s eyes softened. “So am I.”

The words were not a confession. They were a recognition.

Something inside Catharina shifted then—not desire, but permission. Not permission granted, but permission claimed. The understanding that restraint had done all it could, that obedience had reached its limit.

She did not move at first.

Neither did Victoria.

The moment stretched, delicate and terrible.

Catharina rose slowly to her feet. Her legs trembled, but she remained upright. Victoria followed, mirroring her movement unconsciously.

They stood facing one another, close enough now that distance felt theoretical.

“This will damn me,” Catharina said quietly.

Victoria’s voice was barely a whisper. “Then let it be your choice.”

Catharina closed her eyes.

She thought of Hell—of fire and judgment, of sermons whispered into childhood. She thought of Heaven—of light, of grace, of union beyond comprehension.

She thought of neither clearly.

What she felt was immediate, human, terrifyingly present.

She opened her eyes.

She leaned forward.

The kiss was brief.

Almost chaste in its restraint.

Their lips touched once—soft, deliberate, devastating. No urgency, no hunger unleashed. Just contact. Just acknowledgment.

Just enough.

Catharina pulled back almost immediately, breath shuddering out of her chest. Her lips burned where Victoria’s had been, heat flaring sharp and insistent.

She felt altered.

Not undone—but irrevocably changed.

Victoria did not reach for her. She did not speak. Her eyes were dark, her breath uneven.

Catharina stepped back.

“I cannot stay,” she said.

Victoria nodded. “I know.”

Catharina turned and left the chapel without looking back.

—

She did not sleep that night.

She lay rigid beneath her blankets, eyes open, staring into darkness that felt newly intimate. The memory of the kiss replayed relentlessly—not embellished, not distorted. Just exact.

The softness.
The heat.
The certainty.

Her lips still burned.

She pressed her fingers against them, half-expecting pain, half-expecting absolution.

Neither came.

She did not pray.

The words would not form, and she did not force them. For the first time in her life, she did not kneel out of habit or fear. She lay still and let the night pass over her.

She did not regret.

The realization came quietly, without triumph or terror.

She had crossed a boundary.

She had not been struck down.

Somewhere, bells marked the hours.

Morning approached slowly.

Catharina wondered—not for the first time, but for the first time without panic—whether the fire on her lips was punishment or benediction.

Whether Hell and Heaven had ever been separate places at all.

—

When dawn finally broke, pale and restrained, she rose and washed her face. Her reflection looked unchanged. No mark betrayed her.

And yet—

She carried the warmth with her.

She would carry it always.

Chapter Text

February 1978

She wept in my arms, saying she was afraid.
I told her love is not a sin.
I lied.
I do not know what love is anymore.
Only hunger, only grief, only the ache of wanting what I cannot keep.

February came sharp and watchful.

The cold returned without softness this year, brittle and exacting. Snow lingered longer than expected, crusted along the edges of paths, refusing to melt. The convent felt tightened by it—doors closing more carefully, voices lowered, routines held closer to the body.

Catharina noticed things now.

How glances lingered.
How silences thickened.
How absence itself could be counted.

She had learned, since September, that sin did not announce itself with thunder. It arrived quietly, then waited to be noticed.

And it was being noticed.

Not the kiss—no one had seen that. Not the words exchanged in the chapel, or the heat that lingered afterward like a brand. But something had shifted in her, something perceptible even to those who could not name it.

She had stopped praying aloud.

She still knelt. Still bowed her head. Still moved her lips when expected. But the words had lost their interior echo. They no longer rooted themselves in her chest.

She feared that absence more than any reprimand.

—

Victoria unraveled first.

Catharina saw it in the small things: the way her hands shook slightly during hymnals, the way her gaze dropped too quickly when spoken to, the way her laughter—once easy—arrived late, brittle at the edges.

Fear clung to her like a second habit.

It happened one evening after compline.

The corridors were quiet, most sisters already retired. Catharina was returning to her cell when she heard a soft sound—breath catching, muffled, uncontained.

She followed it without thinking.

Victoria sat on the stone bench beneath the narrow window at the end of the corridor, shoulders hunched, hands covering her face. She was crying—silently, desperately, as though sound itself might betray her.

Catharina stopped short.

She should have turned away.

She did not.

“Victoria,” she said softly.

Victoria looked up, startled. Her eyes were red, lashes wet, composure shattered.

“I’m sorry,” she said immediately. “I didn’t mean for anyone to see.”

Catharina crossed the distance between them in three steps.

“What happened?” she asked.

Victoria shook her head, breath uneven. “I don’t know how to carry this,” she said. “I feel like I’m always being watched. Like every movement is wrong.”

Catharina’s chest tightened.

“By whom?” she asked, though she already suspected the answer.

Victoria hesitated. “Everyone.”

Catharina sat beside her without thinking. The stone was cold beneath her skirts. She reached out, then stopped—hesitated only a moment—before pulling Victoria into her arms.

Victoria collapsed into her immediately.

Her sobs broke free then, sharp and uncontrollable. She pressed her face into Catharina’s shoulder, clutching at the fabric of her habit as though it were the only solid thing left.

“I’m afraid,” she whispered. “I don’t know what they see. I don’t know what they think.”

Catharina wrapped her arms around her fully, decisively. The contact felt both natural and forbidden, devastating in its simplicity. Victoria’s body shook against hers, warm and fragile.

“Breathe,” Catharina murmured, her lips near Victoria’s hair. “Just breathe.”

Victoria obeyed, slowly, unevenly.

“They asked me questions today,” she said between breaths.

Catharina stiffened. “Who?”

“Sister Agnes. Mother Superior as well.” Victoria pulled back slightly, enough to look at Catharina’s face. “Not directly. Nothing I could answer. But I felt it.”

The weight of it settled heavily between them.

“They are watching,” Catharina said quietly.

Victoria nodded. “I know.”

Catharina’s heart pounded painfully. She brushed a hand along Victoria’s back in slow, deliberate motions, grounding them both.

“You must be careful,” she said. “We both must.”

Victoria’s voice broke. “I don’t know how.”

The words undid her.

Catharina felt the ache swell—hunger braided with grief, longing sharpened by imminent loss. She wanted, desperately, to promise safety. To offer something unambiguous.

Instead, she heard herself say, “Love is not a sin.”

The lie tasted bitter even as it left her mouth.

Victoria looked at her, searching. “Do you believe that?”

Catharina held her gaze.

“Yes,” she said.

She did not know if it was true.

She did not know if love—whatever this was—could be separated from consequence, from ruin. She only knew that telling the truth in that moment would destroy Victoria utterly.

Victoria exhaled shakily, leaning back into her embrace. “Then why does it hurt so much?”

Catharina closed her eyes.

Because love here was not allowed to be whole.

Because it had no future.

Because it was already being mourned.

She held Victoria until her sobs quieted, until her breathing steadied, until the world outside their small circle of warmth intruded again.

Footsteps echoed faintly at the far end of the corridor.

Catharina’s arms tightened reflexively.

Victoria felt it and pulled away at once, wiping her face quickly. They stood, separated by inches that felt suddenly vast.

“We should go,” Victoria said, her voice steadier now.

“Yes,” Catharina agreed.

They parted without another word.

—

The watching intensified.

Catharina felt it during meals—eyes lifting too quickly, conversations stopping mid-sentence. She felt it in the chapel, in the careful spacing between sisters, in the subtle reassignments of duty that kept her and Victoria apart.

Nothing was said.

Nothing needed to be.

Silence, she had learned, was how judgment prepared itself.

She stopped touching Victoria entirely. No comforting gestures. No shared tasks. Their interactions became strictly necessary, strictly observed.

The absence hurt more than proximity ever had.

At night, Catharina lay awake, replaying the moment in the corridor—Victoria’s weight in her arms, the sound of her fear spoken aloud. She pressed a hand to her chest, feeling the ache spread, diffuse and constant.

I do not know what love is anymore, she thought.

If love was sacrifice, she was offering it daily.

If love was truth, she had failed.

What remained felt less like devotion and more like hunger—unending, unsatisfied, sharpened by restraint.

She wanted what she could not keep.

And she knew, now, that wanting alone could be enough to condemn.

—

One morning, as Catharina passed through the cloister, Mother Superior stopped her.

“Sister Catharina,” she said pleasantly. “Walk with me.”

Catharina complied, her pulse quickening.

They walked slowly, measured steps echoing faintly against stone.

“You have been here many years,” Mother Superior said. “You are devoted. Reliable.”

Catharina inclined her head. “I strive to be.”

“Yes,” Mother Superior replied. “And yet devotion can… shift.”

Catharina said nothing.

“There are attachments,” Mother Superior continued, her voice mild, “that masquerade as care. As charity.”

Catharina’s hands clenched at her sides.

“We trust you to discern properly,” Mother Superior said, stopping at last and turning to face her. “Do we not?”

Catharina met her gaze steadily.

“Yes,” she said.

Mother Superior smiled faintly. “Good.”

She walked on.

Catharina remained where she was, the words echoing like a verdict already written.

—

That night, Catharina knelt alone.

For the first time since September, she tried to pray.

The words came haltingly, uneven.

“I do not know what I am doing,” she whispered. “I do not know what You ask of me.”

Her voice wavered. “I only know what I cannot stop wanting.”

The silence pressed in, familiar and merciless.

She thought of Victoria’s tears. Of her fear. Of the lie she had spoken out of love, or cowardice, or both.

Only hunger remained.

Only grief.

Only the ache of wanting what she could not keep—and the growing certainty that wanting alone might be enough to destroy them both.

Chapter Text

June 1978

She pulled away.
She said she could not bear the guilt.
I said nothing.
I watched her walk into the chapel and disappear.
I mourned her as though she had died, though she still breathes.
My grief is a tomb, and I am buried alive.

June arrived already in bloom.

The world had no patience for restraint. Roses split themselves open along the garden walls. Vines crept where they were not meant to grow. Bees pressed into blossoms with desperate devotion, drunk on abundance. Even the air seemed swollen with scent and heat and promise.

Catharina felt nothing bloom.

She moved through the days as though through a graveyard that only she could see—every corner marked by memory, every silence ringing with something that had once lived.

She knew it was coming.

That was the worst part.

Victoria had grown quieter—not frightened now, but resolved. Fear trembles. Resolve does not. Resolve arrives after grief has already done its work.

Catharina saw it in the way Victoria held herself—straighter, more distant. In the way she no longer lingered in shared spaces. In the way her eyes avoided Catharina’s with something like mercy.

Mercy can be a kind of violence.

The moment came in the late afternoon, when the light softened and the convent exhaled into stillness. Duties were finished. The corridors lay hushed, their echoes careful.

Catharina found Victoria in the cloister, standing near the archway that led to the chapel.

She was not crying.

That alone made Catharina’s chest ache.

“You wanted to speak to me,” Catharina said softly.

Victoria nodded. “Yes.”

They stood facing one another, the space between them precise and deliberate. No accidental closeness. No reach of hands.

Victoria’s face was pale but composed. There was something final in her stillness that frightened Catharina more than tears ever had.

“I can’t do this anymore,” Victoria said.

Catharina did not ask what she meant.

“I can’t carry the guilt,” Victoria continued. Her voice did not shake, but it thinned at the edges. “Every prayer feels like a lie. Every silence feels like deceit.”

Catharina swallowed hard.

“You are not guilty of loving,” she said automatically.

Victoria shook her head. “Don’t.”

The single word stopped her cold.

“Don’t say it again,” Victoria said quietly. “I need to believe that stepping away is the right thing. Please don’t make it harder.”

Catharina felt something tear—not loudly, not all at once, but deeply. As though a seam she had been holding together finally gave way.

She opened her mouth.

No words came.

“I thought,” Victoria went on, “that I could live with it. That if I were careful enough, faithful enough, God would… understand.”

Her mouth curved briefly, bitterly. “But I don’t think this place allows for understanding.”

Catharina nodded once.

She knew that truth intimately.

“I don’t want to become someone I don’t recognize,” Victoria said. “I don’t want my faith to rot from the inside.”

Catharina wanted to say mine already has.

She did not.

“I’m sorry,” Victoria whispered.

Catharina watched her lips form the words. Watched the space open where something should have been said in return.

She said nothing.

There was no defense that would not sound like pleading. No assurance that would not feel like theft. To speak now would be to bind Victoria to suffering she had already chosen to escape.

Victoria stepped back.

Just one step.

It felt like a door closing.

“I will be distant,” Victoria said. “Not unkind. Just… gone.”

Catharina nodded.

She watched Victoria turn away.

Watched her walk down the corridor toward the chapel—toward the place that had both sanctified and ruined them. The light from the open doors caught Victoria briefly, outlining her figure in gold.

Then she stepped inside.

The doors closed softly behind her.

Catharina stood alone.

—

She did not follow.

That was the measure of her love.

She remained where she was, rooted to the stone floor, her body heavy and unresponsive. The air felt too thick to breathe. Her chest burned with a grief so sudden and total it left her stunned.

This is what death feels like, she thought.

Not the absence of breath—but the absence of return.

She walked back to her cell slowly, deliberately, as though speed might shatter her entirely. Every familiar corner felt altered now, emptied. The convent had not changed.

She had.

That night, she lay on her bed fully clothed, staring at the ceiling. The hours passed without shape. Sleep hovered just beyond reach, unwilling to claim her.

She did not cry.

Grief, she learned, did not always arrive with tears. Sometimes it arrived as a crushing stillness, a weight that pressed down until even breath felt optional.

She replayed the moment endlessly—not searching for a mistake, but for something she might have salvaged.

There was nothing.

Victoria had chosen survival.

Catharina remained.

—

Days passed.

Victoria kept her word.

She was distant, polite, unreachable. Their interactions became formal, restrained to the point of impersonality. No shared glances. No unspoken understanding. If grief lived in Victoria, it was sealed away behind discipline.

Catharina mourned alone.

She mourned as though Victoria had died—not dramatically, but thoroughly. She mourned the sound of her laughter, the intimacy of shared silence, the warmth of proximity. She mourned the version of herself that had existed only in Victoria’s presence.

That self was gone.

Buried.

Still breathing, perhaps—but unreachable.

The chapel became unbearable.

Catharina avoided it when she could, and endured it when she could not. Every kneeling felt like pressing against the lid of a coffin from the inside. Every hymn sounded like a eulogy for something unnamed.

Her grief did not fade.

It settled.

She carried it like a stone inside her chest, heavy and unyielding. It changed the way she walked, the way she spoke, the way she prayed—if what she did could still be called prayer.

She knelt one night, alone, long after the others had gone.

“I am buried alive,” she whispered.

The words echoed faintly off stone and wood.

She pressed her forehead to the floor, her body folding inward.

“I loved,” she said, the confession tearing at her throat. “And I was not allowed to keep it.”

The silence answered as it always had.

Catharina understood then that grief was not something to be endured and passed through.

It was a place.

And she had been sealed inside it—alive, breathing, unseen.

Chapter Text

October 1978

I fasted for seven days.
I tried to purge her from my blood.
I drank only water, but she was in every drop.
I am not holy.
I am hers.
Even in absence, she consumes me.

October arrived stripped and exacting.

The garden surrendered its color without resistance. Leaves browned, curled, fell. The vines that had once reached greedily toward the sun receded into themselves, brittle and bare. The air sharpened. Morning frost kissed the stones like a warning.

Catharina watched it all with a distant calm.

Decay, she thought, was honest.

She had chosen the fast deliberately.

Seven days—not symbolic, not theatrical. Simply exhaustive. Complete.

She told no one. She accepted the bread at meals and set it aside untouched. She lifted the cup and let it pass her lips without swallowing. She drank only water, measured and sparing, as though excess itself were a sin.

She believed—desperately—that hunger might do what prayer had not.

That the body, starved enough, would forget.

The first day passed easily. Hunger felt purposeful then, almost righteous. It focused her thoughts, sharpened her resolve. Her body obeyed, drawing inward, conserving itself.

By the second day, her limbs grew heavy. Her head ached faintly. She welcomed it.

Pain, at least, had direction.

By the third, her thoughts slowed. She moved carefully, conserving energy, answering questions briefly. A few sisters noticed her pallor.

“You look unwell,” Sister Agnes remarked once, her gaze sharp and lingering.

“I am fasting,” Catharina replied evenly.

“For what purpose?” Sister Agnes asked.

Catharina met her gaze. “Clarity.”

Sister Agnes said nothing, but the silence felt appraising.

By the fourth day, hunger ceased to feel like absence.

It felt like presence.

Her body burned constantly, an internal heat that did not warm her but hollowed her out. Her hands trembled. Her vision blurred at the edges. She drank water obsessively, yet remained dry, parched beyond remedy.

And everywhere—in the slow pulse of her blood, in the ache behind her eyes—was Victoria.

Not as memory alone.

As saturation.

She tasted her in the water.

Each swallow carried something unmistakable—warmth without flavor, familiarity without image. The shock of it made Catharina choke the first time it happened.

She pressed the cup away, breathing hard.

Get out, she thought. Leave me.

Victoria did not leave.

By the fifth day, Catharina could no longer kneel without effort. Rising from prayer became an act of will. The chapel swayed subtly when she stood. Candles flared too bright, then dimmed too suddenly.

She welcomed the weakness.

She believed she deserved it.

She whispered prayers that no longer asked for removal, only for annihilation.

“Take me apart,” she murmured one night, forehead pressed to stone. “Take everything that wants.”

But even as her body weakened, the truth grew stronger.

She was not being emptied.

She was being distilled.

Everything unnecessary fell away—habit, doctrine, fear of punishment. What remained was raw and undeniable.

Want.

By the sixth day, she was summoned.

Mother Superior’s voice was gentle, which frightened her more than severity.

“Sister Catharina,” she said, folding her hands on the desk between them. “Sit.”

Catharina obeyed, her movements slow, deliberate. The chair felt too solid beneath her, the room too still.

“You have not been eating,” Mother Superior said.

“I am fasting,” Catharina replied.

“For how long?”

“Six days.”

A pause.

“That is not customary without guidance,” Mother Superior said.

Catharina said nothing.

Mother Superior studied her carefully. “You have changed this year.”

Catharina felt the words land like stones.

“You are thinner. Quieter. Less… present.”

“I am present,” Catharina said, though even to her own ears the claim rang hollow.

Mother Superior’s gaze sharpened. “You are present to something else.”

The accusation was not spoken.

It did not need to be.

“We have noticed attachments,” Mother Superior continued calmly. “Intensity that exceeds charity. Grief that exceeds propriety.”

Catharina’s pulse thundered in her ears.

“You are being watched,” Mother Superior said plainly now. “Not with cruelty. With concern.”

Catharina laughed softly—once, involuntarily. “Concern is rarely so patient.”

Mother Superior did not rise to the provocation. “Tell me,” she said instead, “what are you trying to purge with this fast?”

Catharina’s vision wavered.

She thought of water. Of heat. Of a name that still echoed in her chest.

“Myself,” she said.

Mother Superior regarded her for a long moment.

“That is not holiness,” she said gently. “That is despair.”

Catharina lowered her gaze.

“I am not holy,” she whispered.

The admission felt like relief.

Mother Superior sighed. “You will eat,” she said. “You will rest. And you will meet with Father Matthias.”

Catharina nodded.

As she rose to leave, Mother Superior added, “You belong to God here, Sister Catharina. Remember that.”

Catharina paused in the doorway.

“Yes,” she said.

But even as the word left her mouth, she knew it was incomplete.

—

On the seventh day, her body betrayed her.

She collapsed in the corridor just outside the chapel—her knees buckling suddenly, her vision narrowing to a tunnel of light. Strong hands caught her before she struck the floor.

Voices blurred together.

Someone pressed water to her lips.

Someone called her name.

Catharina surfaced slowly, the world reassembling itself piece by piece. She lay on a narrow cot in the infirmary, the ceiling unfamiliar, the air sharp with antiseptic and herbs.

She felt strangely calm.

Empty, yes—but not purified.

When she was alone again, she stared at the wall and laughed quietly.

“I drank only water,” she murmured. “And you were in every drop.”

The truth settled finally, heavily, without resistance.

She had mistaken holiness for absence.

She had believed that devotion meant erasure.

But love—whatever name it went by—had not required permission. It had not waited for sanctification. It had claimed her fully, body and blood alike.

She was not failing to be holy.

She was refusing to be honest.

The realization hurt more than hunger ever had.

“I am not holy,” she whispered again, without bitterness now. “I am hers.”

Not in possession.

In imprint.

In consequence.

In irrevocable belonging.

Even in absence, Victoria consumed her—not as fire, not as sin, but as something that had already been taken inside and could not be undone.

Catharina closed her eyes.

For the first time in years, she did not ask God to take it away.

She let the truth remain.

Chapter Text

March 1979

I wrote this letter with trembling hands.
I do not know if she will read it.
I do not know if God will forgive me.
I only know I loved.
And love, once tasted, cannot be forgotten.
It lingers like wine on the tongue, like blood in the mouth.

March came with thaw and ache entwined.

The snow withdrew reluctantly, leaving behind mud and soft ruin. Paths once certain grew treacherous, the ground giving way underfoot without warning. The convent smelled of damp stone and thawing earth, of something long buried beginning to breathe again.

Catharina felt the season in her bones.

She had not planned to write.

The paper lay untouched for days on her small desk, blank and accusing. Ink dried in its well. Each night she told herself she would leave it so—that silence, after all, had been her discipline. Silence had been demanded. Silence had been survived.

But silence had not saved her.

The letter began without ceremony.

Her hands shook as she dipped the pen, excess ink trembling at the nib. She paused, steadying her breath, waiting for resolve to arrive.

It did not.

She wrote anyway.

Not her name. Not a salutation. Just the truth, stripped of address.

I do not know if you will ever read this.

The words looked fragile on the page, too exposed. She almost tore the paper then, heart racing at the sight of her own handwriting—proof of intention, of trespass.

She did not tear it.

Her hand cramped as she continued, letters uneven, slanted by the tremor she could not control.

I do not know if this is permitted. I no longer know what permission means.

She stopped, pressing the heel of her palm against her eyes. Memory flooded in—not dramatic, not kind. The corridor. The garden. The chapel light. The sound of her name spoken softly enough to undo a life.

She breathed through it and kept writing.

They taught us that love must be ordered, named, contained. They did not teach us what to do when it arrives without instruction.

Her throat tightened painfully.

She had lived for years inside restraint, believing that desire could be disciplined into disappearance. She had starved, prayed, withdrawn. She had obeyed every visible rule.

And still love remained—quiet, persistent, unrepentant.

I tried to unlearn you, she wrote. I tried to erase the sound of your voice from my blood. I tried to become smaller than what I felt.

Ink blurred slightly where a tear struck the page.

She wiped it away with the edge of her sleeve, leaving a faint smear—imperfection preserved.

I failed.

The admission steadied her.

She realized, then, that the letter was not for forgiveness.

It was for continuity.

So that what had lived might not be extinguished by silence alone.

I do not write to ask for anything. I would not dare. I write because what is unspoken rots.

Her hand slowed, the words growing surer.

They are watching me more closely now. They call it concern. I have learned the language of watchfulness—it is gentle until it is not.

She thought of Mother Superior’s measured gaze. Of questions asked without answers allowed. Of duties reassigned, paths diverted.

Exile, she knew, did not always require departure.

I may be sent away, she wrote. Or I may remain and be emptied. I do not yet know which is worse.

She paused again, the room heavy with late-night quiet. Outside, something shifted—ice breaking somewhere unseen. Water moving again after long stillness.

She resumed.

I do not know if God will forgive me.

The sentence sat stark and naked.

She had waited years to feel repentance arrive like fire.

It never had.

She had only this—memory warmed by truth.

If forgiveness means forgetting, then I do not want it.

Her heart pounded as she wrote the next line, fear and relief braided tightly together.

I loved you.

The words looked impossibly small for what they carried.

She leaned back, breath shuddering, as though she had just crossed a threshold she could not see but felt unmistakably behind her now.

I loved you without permission, without future, without safety. I loved you knowing it would cost me everything I was taught to protect.

She thought of the chapel again—the kiss, brief and devastating. How it had not undone her faith, only clarified it into something unrecognizable.

Love, once tasted, cannot be forgotten.

Her hand moved almost without her now.

It lingers like wine on the tongue—warm, staining, unmistakable. Like blood in the mouth, metallic and alive, proof that something has been broken open.

She stopped.

The metaphor frightened her with its honesty.

She let it stand.

There was nothing left to explain.

The letter did not end with blessing or farewell. It ended with acceptance.

I do not ask you to remember me. I only ask that you know I was real.

She set the pen down carefully, as though any sudden movement might undo what she had done.

Her hands ached.

Her chest felt strangely light.

She folded the letter once. Then again. Each crease felt ceremonial, deliberate. She slipped it into an envelope she had hidden beneath her mattress, sealing it with nothing but pressure—no wax, no mark that might draw attention.

She did not address it.

Not yet.

Perhaps not ever.

She held it for a long moment, pressed against her sternum, feeling the steady beat beneath.

“I loved,” she whispered into the quiet.

The words did not collapse her.

They held.

Catharina rose and knelt by her bed—not in supplication, but in habit softened by familiarity. She did not ask for absolution. She did not beg.

She sat with what remained.

Love did not leave her mouth clean.

It left a taste—rich, indelible.

And even as the night deepened, even as uncertainty gathered thickly around her, Catharina knew this much with unwavering clarity:

What had been tasted could not be untasted.

What had been loved could not be undone.

And whatever judgment waited for her—human or divine—it would find her changed, but not ashamed of having felt.

Chapter Text

August 1979

I placed this letter inside my Bible, between the Psalms.
If someone finds it, let them know: my sin was not in loving her.
My sin was in believing that love was the devil’s disguise.
I mourn what I could not keep.
I yearn for what I cannot name.
I grieve for the woman I was before I knew her, and the woman I became after.

August arrived heavy with endings.

The heat returned not as promise but as weight, pressing down on stone and skin alike. Cicadas sang relentlessly in the afternoons, their sound a kind of lament that never quite resolved. The convent endured it with practiced patience—windows opened, habits lightened, prayers unchanged.

Catharina felt each day pass like a held breath.

She knew before it was spoken.

Victoria’s departure did not come as scandal or sudden rupture. There was no dramatic confrontation, no whispered accusations carried through corridors. The announcement was small, carefully phrased, as though it might vanish if not given too much air.

Victoria would be leaving the order.

She had discerned, the Mother Superior said. She had prayed. She had sought counsel. The words were familiar, well-worn, meant to reassure.

Catharina heard them as if through water.

They gathered in the chapel when it was announced, the sisters seated in orderly rows, their faces composed. Victoria knelt at the front, head bowed, hands folded. She looked smaller there—contained, already halfway gone.

Catharina did not look away.

She watched Victoria rise when called, watched her speak words Catharina could not hear clearly. Something about gratitude. About guidance. About uncertainty named honestly.

Victoria did not look at her.

That, too, was mercy.

Afterward, life resumed.

As it always did.

But something had shifted irreversibly. The convent seemed to hollow out around Catharina, spaces widening where Victoria’s presence had once anchored them. The garden felt too open. The corridors too long. Even the chapel—once refuge, once ruin—felt altered, as though something sacred had quietly withdrawn.

They did not speak privately.

There was no final confession, no exchange of promises. Catharina understood this instinctively: to speak now would fracture what little composure remained. Love, stripped of future, learned restraint at last.

On Victoria’s final morning, Catharina rose before dawn.

She watched from the cloister as Victoria crossed the courtyard with a small bag in hand, her steps steady, her posture composed. The sky was pale, undecided. The world held itself in suspension.

Victoria paused at the gate.

For a moment—just a moment—Catharina believed she might turn. That their eyes might meet one last time, unguarded.

She did not.

The gate opened.

Then closed.

Catharina felt the sound settle into her chest like a seal being pressed.

Victoria was gone.

—

Catharina remained.

That was the shape of it.

She remained through the heat of August, through the quiet speculation that followed Victoria’s absence. Some sisters spoke of disappointment. Others of courage. Catharina listened without comment, her face neutral, her heart split open and carefully hidden.

No one asked her directly.

No one needed to.

She moved through her duties with a steadiness that surprised even her. She prayed when required. She sang when expected. Her body remembered obedience even when her soul no longer mistook it for salvation.

At night, she returned to her cell and allowed herself to feel the full weight of what had been lost.

Not just Victoria.

But possibility.

She had imagined, once—not consciously, not boldly—that something might endure. That love, named or unnamed, might find a way to coexist with faith.

She knew better now.

Some truths do not integrate.

They separate.

—

One evening, when the air cooled just enough to breathe easily, Catharina sat on her bed with her Bible open in her lap.

The letter rested folded beside her.

She had carried it for months, its edges softened by touch. It had followed her through seasons of fear and clarity alike. It was no longer a question whether it would be sent.

It would not.

She opened the Bible deliberately, turning pages by feel until she reached the Psalms. The paper whispered softly beneath her fingers.

Lament. Praise. Anger. Longing.

Everything she had ever felt was already there.

She slipped the letter between the pages and closed the book gently, as though tucking something fragile to rest.

“If someone finds it,” she whispered into the quiet, “let them know.”

She pressed her palm against the cover.

“My sin was not in loving her.”

The truth felt settled now—not defiant, not defensive.

“My sin was in believing that love was the devil’s disguise.”

She thought of all the years she had spent warring against what had only ever wanted to be acknowledged. Of how easily holiness had been confused with denial. Of how fear had been mistaken for faith.

She did not curse herself for it.

She mourned.

“I mourn what I could not keep,” she said softly.

Victoria’s laughter.
The sound of her name spoken gently.
The warmth of a presence that had never asked to be worshipped—only recognized.

“I yearn for what I cannot name.”

Not a future. Not reunion.

Just the shape of something true that had existed, briefly, fully.

“I grieve for the woman I was before I knew her,” Catharina continued, her voice steady despite the ache rising beneath it. “And the woman I became after.”

Both were gone now.

What remained was quieter.

Wiser.

Lonelier.

She lay back on the bed and stared at the ceiling, the Bible resting against her chest. The Psalms pressed faintly through the cover, their presence reassuring in its familiarity.

Catharina would remain here.

She would grow old within these walls. She would pray, perhaps differently now. She would tend gardens, teach novices, sing hymns whose words she understood too well.

She would carry love without display.

And sometimes—often—she would ache.

But she would not call it evil.

Outside, the cicadas sang into the deepening night.

Catharina closed her eyes.

Love had not saved her.

But it had told her the truth.

And that, she knew now, was its own kind of grace.

Chapter Text

She was given Catharina’s things because there was no one else.

That was how it was explained to her—quietly, without ceremony. Sister Catharina had no family willing to claim what remained of her life. No letters addressed outward. No objects of value. Just a small collection of belongings shaped by use rather than worth.

And the girl—no, the woman now—had been hers.

Not by blood. By constancy.

Catharina had held her hand when the nights were too long at the orphanage. Had braided her hair with careful fingers. Had listened when fear arrived without language. Had stayed when others rotated out, reassigned, forgotten.

“You were her family,” the Priest said gently, as if that settled everything.

So the belongings were placed into her care.

A Bible, worn soft at the spine.
A bundle of papers tied with string.
A diary, leather-bound, edges darkened by touch.

She took them without understanding what she was accepting.

Only that Catharina had once belonged to her in the way adults sometimes belong to children—steadily, without promise, without leaving.

—

Years passed.

Life unfolded the way it does when it has permission to move forward. The girl was adopted—into a family kind enough, distant enough. She learned new rhythms, new prayers, new ways of speaking that did not involve stone corridors or bells.

But Catharina never left her.

Not as a wound.

As a presence.

She kept the diary unread for a long time. It felt private, almost alive. As though opening it would mean crossing a boundary Catharina had never explicitly invited her to cross.

She read the Bible first.

That was where she found the letter.

Between the Psalms.

Folded carefully, deliberately, as though waiting for hands that would not be afraid of it.

She read it once.

Then again.

Something in her chest opened—not pain, exactly, but gravity. The words did not confuse her. They recognized her. They spoke of love misnamed as sin, of hunger mistaken for evil, of a life lived honestly too late.

One name appeared again and again.

Victoria.

The name tugged at something distant, half-remembered.

She asked her adoptive mother about it one evening, casually, as if it did not matter.

The room went very quiet.

“That name,” her mother said slowly, “belongs to my sister.”

The world tilted.

“She left the church decades ago,” her mother continued. “No one speaks of it much. She’s… unwell now.”

The girl did not understand the shape of what she was stepping into.

Only that she had to go.

—

Victoria did not know she was dying when the girl arrived.

She knew she was tired. She knew her body no longer obeyed her the way it once had. But death was still an abstraction—something that happened gradually, politely, somewhere else.

She did not recognize the girl at first.

“I’m sorry,” Victoria said, her voice thin but courteous. “Have we met?”

The girl shook her head. “No. But I knew someone who knew you.”

Victoria smiled faintly. “That seems likely. I’ve known many people.”

The girl hesitated, then reached into her bag.

“I was given this,” she said. “After Sister Catharina died.”

The name landed between them like a bell struck once.

Victoria went very still.

“She… died?” she asked.

“Yes.”

Victoria nodded slowly, as though absorbing a truth she had prepared herself for without realizing it.

“What did she give you?” she asked.

The girl placed the diary into her hands.

Victoria stared at it.

She did not need to open it to know.

Her fingers trembled—not from weakness alone, but recognition.

“Oh,” she whispered.

She opened it.

The handwriting shattered her.

Catharina’s voice rose from the page exactly as it had lived—measured, aching, disciplined to the edge of rupture. The years unfolded with terrible intimacy: restraint mistaken for holiness, love mistaken for damnation, silence mistaken for obedience.

Victoria read without stopping.

Tears slid down her face, unchecked, unstoppable.

“She stayed,” Victoria whispered hoarsely. “She stayed.”

The girl watched quietly, her chest aching with something she had not known how to name before now.

“She believed you were right to leave,” the girl said softly. “But she never believed you were wrong to love.”

Victoria pressed the diary to her chest.

“I thought,” she said, breaking, “that leaving would make me clean.”

Her breath hitched. “It only made me lonely.”

The girl said nothing.

She understood now why Catharina had loved Victoria. Not romantically, not abstractly—but as one loves someone who reflects the truest self back, without disguise.

Victoria looked up at her, eyes shining.

“You were hers,” she said suddenly. “Weren’t you?”

The girl nodded.

Victoria smiled through tears. “Then she was not alone.”

That knowledge seemed to settle something in her.

Victoria died three days later.

The diary remained open beside her bed.

—

The girl returned the letter to the Bible.

She placed both back together, just as Catharina had left them.

And for the first time, she understood the inheritance she had been given:

Not scandal.
Not sin.
But testimony.

That love is not erased by distance.
That faith does not survive by denial.
That some lives are only fully understood when they are handed, intact and trembling, into the hands of another.

Catharina had loved.

Victoria had loved.

And the girl—once an orphan, once held steady by quiet devotion—carried their truth forward.

Not as burden.

But as witness.

Between the Psalms, it waited.

And it was finally read.