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"You know," Gideon says, as Harrowhark comes out of their shared bathroom after removing her paint, at the end of a day that's been way too long, "I know I never mentioned it before, but I think I'd like to start using your full name more often. I mean, yeah, on a guy Harrowhark would be like, ancient academic with a fuck-off waist-length beard or something, but on you, I think it's... elegant."
"I wasn't aware you even knew the meaning of that word." Harrow raises one eyebrow, a thin, dark, winged line against her pale skin, as she lounges against the edge of a window-frame, one hand bent sharply at the wrist to press against the sill as it bears her weight.
The bone juts out visibly above the bend, just below the stretching hem of her sleeve. She's still too thin, still fragile like a sparrow in spite of all the sparring practice Gideon's been doing with her lately, and sometimes Gideon wonders if her bones might be hollow like birds'. Harrowhark would probably snark at her even more if she said that. Not that she minds being snarked at - sometimes she even enjoys it, and snarking back - but Harrow's trying to react that way less often, nowadays. So it's better not to tempt her. Not all the time, anyway.
"Hey!" Gideon protests laughingly. "Just because I'm not elegant, doesn't mean I don't know what it looks like."
Harrow smiles, ever so slightly, one corner of her mouth curling up. "Very well. Go on?"
Gideon does. "Come on. You know as well as I do that Nonagesimus is a burning trashfire of a Niner number name." Harrow's other eyebrow joins the first. "But the rest? Your parents did at least that one thing right when they saddled you with such a lengthy moniker, my penumbral princess." She pauses, just for a moment, the first traces of uncertainty creeping into the tension of her jaw as she sees Harrowhark respond to the mention of her parents by holding back a flinch, so used to concealment that only Gideon knows her tells, and that from long years of watching her. She doesn't apologise. Not yet.
"So would you..." Gideon clears her throat. "Would you mind if I used it?"
Harrowhark pauses, looking pensive.
Gideon is silent, having learned that her Harrow likes a little time to weigh her words whenever possible - at least, the words that matter. She's spent too long snapping out quick and hurtful retorts; this quiet reflection is another sign of her attempts to break some of her nastier knee-jerk habits, and how well they've begun to succeed. Gideon, too, has been trying.
You can't rebuild, renew, a relationship as fraught as theirs, more haphazardly maintained than Aiglamene's bad leg, in a tiny fraction of the time it took to build it that way to begin with. But they're working on it. Together.
"Honestly," Harrow says, slowly, "I'm... less than fond of it myself. You and Ortus were the only two people who ever called me anything else, prior to the Lyctor trials. If you remember, my mother and father also used my full name, and rarely anything other than that." She takes a breath, closes her eyes briefly, and continues, a tiny crease of concentration appearing between her brows as she does. "However..."
"However?" Gideon echoes, resisting the urge to get to her feet and stroke the crease away - physical contact was still an uncertainty between them, and all things considered, neither was really used to it, in the same ways that they weren't yet entirely used to affection in place of attacks. Physicality had been rare and avoided by almost everyone on the Ninth House, and what there had been had been combative at best, the clash of swords and bones. Sister Glaurica had been an exception with her fawning over Ortus, but then, she'd never really been a Niner anyway.
Gideon still felt unexpectedly shy, sometimes, even just thinking about touching Harrow. And hot. Couldn't forget hot. She often wondered how she'd managed to ignore how gorgeous Harrowhark had grown up to be. Maybe it was the endless face paint. She looked so much better without it.
"However," Harrowhark repeats eventually, "there is the possibility that I could... get used to that. And it might be one more thing to use as a new start." A deep breath taken in and pushed out hard, her thin chest visibly rising and sharply falling. "I suppose I'd always know... if you chose to call me by my full name, since you never would have done it before..." She stops, unable to force herself on, unused to the idea of openness and honesty about her problems or the problems of her House, and presses two fingers of one pale hand to her forehead.
Gideon gives in to her need to touch and stands up, moving over to her lady, lightly touching her shoulder to ask permission and receive it before sliding one big hand into Harrow's hair at the back of her head, cushioning her skull from the wall. Her hair has begun to curl at the ends lately, another change from their time on Drearburh, and Gideon loves it. Her own hand is almost as big as the back of Harrowhark's head, and she splays it caressingly amongst soft, feathery locks of dark hair, tugging lightly at a couple of them when they end up between her fingers, just for the sensation and the fun of seeing them spring back.
"You'd always know?" she prompts, leaning in to breathe in the scent of the other girl's hair and seeing Harrowhark shiver, very slightly, at the sensation of Gideon's breath against the crown of her head. Gideon will always be taller than her lady. Some days she likes it because it makes her feel protective; other days she finds Harrow's fragility worrying. Today is a day for protectiveness.
Harrow pauses for another moment before setting her jaw, just a little, and saying, "I'd know ... I'd know it was real. That it wasn't happening solely in my own mind."
The edge to her voice, the insecurity Gideon knows only too well ... both of these make her want to fold the smaller woman into her arms entirely and hang on tight. Knowing the kind of battles they have had to fight together, and may have to fight again, just strengthens that need.
For now, she settles for sliding the hand in Harrow's hair down to wrap one arm around her slender shoulders, stroking her thumb across the black fabric that covers most of the clavicle and onto the skin at the hollow of her throat, rubbing lightly at a little white face paint that Harrowhark must have missed when removing her mask, massaging it into porcelain skin, watching her thumb circle, just enjoying the ability to touch her this way.
"That's good," Gideon replies at last, and Harrow tilts her head back, just slightly, enough to look up into her eyes. "Because I am, you know. And after all the hassle we had sorting things out, I'm not going anywhere."
Harrow's eyes are soft. "Not if I have anything to say about it, you're not." Her thin lips stay slightly parted after she has spoken, and Gideon meets her bird-bright dark eyes and can't resist. She leans down to kiss her girlfriend and, just for now, lets herself forget that she spent so long trying to get away from Harrowhark Nonagesimus.
That doesn't matter anymore.