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When Gideon’s eyes fluttered open, she concluded that whoever had come up with the idea that being resurrected was like waking up from a deep, peaceful sleep was full of shit. The feeling was much more similar to a shuttle computer restarting after it had crashed, with different components coming back online at different paces—only that those “components” happened to be her vital organs rather than stupid navigation programs, and thus it hurt like hell.
“Fuck. Shit.” Gideon was convinced dying had been less painful than this. “Fuckfuckfuckfuckow.”
“You can stop screaming any moment now, just FYI,” a voice said softly. The words were familiar, very familiar, and had Gideon not felt like that damn spike was still lodged in her body, she might have felt proud. Without the ability or any desire to actually stop screaming, she directed her gaze to above her. Her head was comfortably resting on soft, warm thighs.
Harrow smiled down at her, face covered in blood sweat and horribly, horribly smudged paint that, Gideon thought with a grin, she wouldn’t have been caught dead with by anyone else.
“Oh. Hey. Didn’t… see you there,” Gideon mumbled, and then she turned her head to the side and threw up.
The next thing Gideon did with her newly acquired second chance at life was take a very long nap.
She didn’t remember much of the time her soul had spent floating around in Harrow’s subconscious, but hell, whatever Harrow had gotten into in the last few—Weeks? Months?—had worn Gideon down to the bone.
She wasn’t sure how long she was out. It might’ve been hours or days, with the occasional minute spent in a state that wasn’t asleep but also not quite awake, feeling a cold piece of cloth on her forehead or an extra blanket around her shoulders, or, confusingly enough, a weight on her chest.
When she really woke up, the rest of her body seemed to mercifully have decided to join her, and she no longer felt an urge to spit up any merely half-functional organs, so that was great.
She still felt a little warm, but that was likely due to the ridiculous amount of five assorted blankets she was swaddled in rather than a side-effect from the resurrection.
“Trying to squash me with blankets? That’s a new one,” Gideon mumbled groggily. Then the blanket moved next to her, scaring the shit out of her. Welp, at least the screaming had woken her up properly? There was no hiding her surprise when her gaze fell onto the petite woman that had caused the movement. “Harrow?”
“You’re awake.” Even the necromancer’s perfect paint job did little to hide her embarrassment—an expression that hilariously resembled that of a child caught with their hand halfway down the cookie jar. “I was just-”
“If you wanted me to take you to bed you could’ve just said so, y’know.”
“Sense of humor seems to be intact. No apparent brain damage aside from the one you were already born with,” Harrow hummed, glowering at her cavalier as her hand moved up to touch Gideon’s face. “Fever is all the way down, too. How are you feeling?” There was something like uncanny relief in her expression, hand resting on Gideon’s cheek way longer than necessary. The cavalier felt a flush of warmth, shaking her head at Harrow’s apparently poor fever detection skills.
“What, you worried?” Gideon asked, eyebrow raised all the way up to her hairline.
Harrow rolled her eyes. “Don’t flatter yourself, Griddle. Resurrecting you was just way too much effort to let you die again. I’m not doing this shit a second time.”
“Aren’t Lyctors supposed to be near-immortal and all-powerful or something? Why so stingy with your necromancy?”
“I am no longer a Lyctor,” Harrow said tersely. “I ceased to be when I untangled our souls.”
“Oh. That… makes sense actually.” The silence was heavy between them, and Gideon couldn’t bear it, so she attempted to lighten the awkward mood the only way she knew how: a joke. “So, now that you’ve figured it out, would you be able to do this again? Say I was pissed at you and wanted to really annoy you, could I just kill myself so you’d have to go through this whole exhausting process of undoing Lyctorhood a second time if you want me back? And, additional important question: if yes, can we call it soul ping-pong?” Her lips formed into a teasing grin as she nudged her adept.
Harrow made a noise that sounded a lot like she was about to lunge at Gideon—okay, maybe she’d gone for that joke a little too soon, but she hadn’t been able to help it. Laughter was how she dealt with most things.
When nothing happened except the noise repeating, Gideon froze. Her eyes trailed back over to Harrow.
Growing up in the Ninth, Gideon Nav had thought she knew two things for certain: 1. Harrowhark Nonagesimus was a stone-hearted bitch, and 2. Harrowhark Nonagesimus did not cry. Probably physically couldn’t. Most likely she’d willed herself to be born without lacrimal glands, out of pure spite.
Both of those certainties were being thoroughly flipped on its head by that very same Harrowhark Nonagesimus sobbing into Gideon’s chest.
Harrowhark. Nonagesimus. Was. Sobbing. Into. Her. Chest. (No, saying it more slowly in her head didn’t make it any less weird.)
Gideon had an entire lifetime worth of experience with handling an angry Harrow. She could’ve dealt with that. But how was she supposed to deal with… whatever the fuck this was?
“I didn’t know you could cry, Bone Empress,” Gideon teased, hoping for an annoyed groan or a curse or maybe even—okay, that one was admittedly a reach—a small smile. Anything but this horrible sobbing noise.
But Harrow didn’t stop crying, so Gideon resorted to the most surefire way she knew to make her annoyed instead of upset. Namely, pulling her into a hug. Harrow tensed at the touch, but only slightly, before proceeding to bury herself deeper in Gideon’s chest.
“Uh… there, there?” Gideon’s arms clung to her, gentle circles on her back as she desperately tried not to focus on how terrifyingly small and vulnerable Harrow felt, like a twig that would snap in the next gust of wind.
“This isn’t necessary. I’m fine,” claimed the definitely un-fine twig (who surely wouldn’t have appreciated the comparison). “I’m fine,” she repeated, voice so quiet and broken that Harrow obviously wasn’t even fooling herself.
“Nice try, but you’re soaking my shirt, dumbass,” Gideon replied, a hand gently running through Harrow’s hair as she continued to sob into her chest. “What’s wrong?”
“What’s wrong?! What’s wrong?! Gideon, you’re a fucking asshole!” Harrow was trembling. Her entire body shook with sobs. “I watched the most important person in my life throw herself onto a spike!” Her hand went under Gideon’s shirt, found and traced the horrible scar where the metal had gone right through. Gideon just barely managed to stop the ‘my boobs are further up’-comment that her brain unhelpfully provided at the tip of her tongue. “I lost my mind grieving you, thinking I would have to go on without you. And now that I finally have you back, breathing, the first thing you do is joke about making me go through that again?! WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?!” Harrow clenched her fists, pushing them into Gideon’s chest.
“…okay, maybe that was a little insensitive.”
“YOU THINK?!”
“I’m… sorry?” Gideon mumbled, thoroughly overwhelmed with this whole mess. “For the joke. Not for saving your life.”
“Yeah, well, I’m starting to feel sorry for saving yours,” Harrow grumbled, but just when Gideon was starting to hope she would get the angry, manageable version back, shivering arms wrapped around her and Harrow returned to wiping off her face paint on Gideon’s shirt.
If there was one thing Harrowhark Nonagesimus was even less likely to do than cry, it was hugging someone.
“Are you, uh, feeling okay? I’m starting to worry you were replaced with a beguiling corpse while I was asleep. And now you’re, y’know, being controlled by someone actually capable of experiencing human emotions.”
“Fuck you, Griddle,” Harrow shot back, clinging firmer and firmer and firmer to Gideon. BA-DUMP, BA-DUMP, BA-DUMP beat her heart in Harrow’s ears, drowning out everything else as she wept. She felt the sweat on Gideon’s neck, warm breath brushing against her ear as her cavalier spewed the same kind of bullshit she always had—and always would, because she was real and she was right here in her arms and she wouldn’t just disappear on Harrow the second she woke up. Never again.
“If you’re offering, does that mean you’re finally over coffin girl?” Gideon joked with that horrible smugness in her voice that Harrow hated almost as much as she’d missed it.
“You are the most unbearable person I have ever known.”
“And yet you moved heaven and earth to get me back. I guess you agree that I’m just too hot to deprive the universe of me permanently.”
Harrow wanted Gideon to shut up. Harrow wanted Gideon to keep talking for an hour or three or forever, if it just meant that she wouldn’t leave her again.
“Or maybe I was just sick of having you stuck in my body,” Harrow mumbled, more softly than she’d intended.
“That’s what she said,” Gideon joked, and Harrow broke into a groan. “C’mon, if you don’t want me to go there you need to not make it so easy. You didn’t have to word it like that.”
“Can you be serious with me for five fucking seconds?!”
“I don’t know,” her cavalier replied, and there was that annoying smugness in her voice again. “I’m actually pretty keen on being Gideon.”
“Griddle!” Harrow exclaimed, before adding “Please?” with a quiet sniffle.
“Okay. Okay. Sorry.” That her necromancer was willing to resort to politeness threw Gideon for a loop. “I’m just… bad at this.”
“No kidding.” Harrow glowered, but then—in a gesture that was so very unlike her that Gideon almost broke her poor attempt at appearing serious as her mind drifted back to the beguiling corpse theory from earlier—her gaze softened as she continued, “But I can hardly blame you. Handling emotions isn’t exactly my greatest strength either.”
This assessment was, undoubtedly, extremely correct—but that didn’t make it any less weird, coming from Harrow of all people. Whether or not she recognized her own flaws was hard to tell most of the time, but she sure as hell wouldn’t have admitted them to anyone else.
Gideon had no idea what to make of this.
“… So,” she reluctantly started, “what do you need me to be serious about?”
“I need you to promise you won’t die on me again,” Harrow whispered, immediately full-on sobbing again. Her nails dug so deep into her own palms that it drew blood. “Just- just don’t ever do that again. I don’t think I’d survive that.”
Her voice was awfully unsteady, and that terrified Gideon out of her mind. Seeing Harrow this vulnerable, this scared, this broken made her heart shatter into a million pieces. She would take the irascible ice queen over this any day.
Gideon went very quiet, thinking her reply through to a length she very rarely went to before speaking. A part of her really, really wanted to just lie to Harrow and tell her that of course she wouldn’t—but Gideon wasn’t immortal, and she also didn’t regret saving Harrow’s life. If she could’ve gone back to that moment, her choice would remain the same every single time.
She just wanted Harrow to stop crying, and to not let anything ever hurt her again.
“I can’t promise you that. But… I’ll do my best not to,” was what she finally settled on, more gentle circles drawn onto Harrow’s back as Gideon’s hands began to tremble. “And no more joking about it. That much I can promise.”
“I… I missed you, okay?” Harrow choked out between her sobs. “I missed you terribly. I couldn’t fathom the world without you in it. I’ve never felt such emptiness before.”
“You know I never really left you, right?” Gideon whispered, struggling to recognize her own tearful voice. This whole thing was getting to her a lot more than she’d anticipated. “Not just on a, like, emotional bullshit level, or because I swore before I accompanied you to the First House that if I died there I’d spend my afterlife haunting the hell out of your newly-immortal ass for revenge. I was always right here with you, as your sword. Which by the way, would’ve been a lot less difficult if you had more than three total muscles.”
“Fuck you Griddle,” Harrow sobbed, head still buried in her cavalier’s chest. She continued before Gideon had the chance to recycle her joke from earlier. “That isn’t the same thing. I couldn’t touch you. I couldn’t even hear your stupid voice.”
“You really did miss me, huh?”
“Not enough to repeat it,” Harrow mumbled, her sniffles thoroughly fucking with the picture of an uncaring attitude she was attempting to paint.
“Well, y’know, just in case that wasn’t obvious enough from what I did, I… I really care about you, Harrow. And I’m glad you got out of there alive. At that moment, that was the only thing I could think about—well, aside from how hard I wanted to bitchslap Cytherea, but that’s beside the point.”
The woman in her arms shook with another loud sob, and for a bit, they just laid there, holding each other as Harrow wept—and maybe Gideon did too, just a bit.
Finally, as the trembling ceased and the sobbing quieted down, Gideon slowly untangled herself from her necromancer so she could lean down to gently wipe the tears off her cheeks. The total lack of protest she was met with was deafening. Her fingers came away wet and white and smelling like acid.
“Can I ask you something?” Harrow whispered, breaking the silence that was stretching out between them once more.
“You just did,” Gideon teased. “And why are you asking me for permission to speak? Even without Lyctorhood, you’re still Reverend Daughter. ‘I can do whatever the fuck I want’ and all that, remember?”
The sniffles returned, and Gideon absolutely hated her life as she resumed drawing circles. Making Harrow sad was hard, making her cry was near-impossible, and yet Gideon seemed to have acquired a special talent for pushing every last wrong button by accident—no matter how well-hidden and difficult to reach it was.
“Why do you care about me, after how much I hurt you? After everything I put you through?” Harrow asked quietly, unsuccessfully attempting to retreat out of the hug as Gideon continued to hold her tight. “You should hate me, and not… not give your life to save mine.”
The words, spoken quietly, reverberated in Gideon’s ears as if they’d been shouted. The words left unsaid, the ones that were merely ghosts of a whisper between the lines, were downright deafening. Harrow’s eyes were hollow as she drowned in the way she saw herself.
‘You already hate yourself enough for both of us,’ was what Gideon wanted to say, but didn’t.
“What, you’re not buying that I did it mostly because I wanted to avoid being haunted by the nerd facts ghost?” Another empty joke. If Harrow hadn’t been so busy hating herself, it would’ve been easy for her to see through the thin veil and right at the pure desperation behind it. But then Gideon did the impossible and, instead of fleeing further into her humor safe zone, she forced herself out. This was a conversation they needed to have, and she had to stop derailing it. “I did hate you. When we left the Ninth, the last thing I wanted was to care about you. In fact, the Gideon that boarded the shuttle a couple months back would’ve laughed in your face at the thought. But, well, life is a bitch like that sometimes. Fighting for your life together will inevitably lead to you not wanting the other to die, unfortunately.”
“But-”
“Harrow, I know we’ve already established that you’re bad at the whole ‘Gideon talking time’, but please let me finish the one time that I’m actually putting in the effort to be serious with you.” Gideon put her walls up sky-high as she did a terrible job of convincing herself she was upset at being interrupted rather than plain unable to hear Harrow put herself down any further. “I spent more of my time at Canaan House realizing that maybe I did care about you than I’m comfortable admitting, but the pool was the last straw. There was no way I could listen to you calling yourself a war crime and asking me to drown you and ever look at you the same.” Gideon’s grip on Harrow tightened, the terrible thought that she might vanish at the mere mention of the event remaining nothing but. “And, as much as I hated it, the only fucking thing I could think in that moment was ‘Damn, this girl needs a hug. And also therapy. Mostly the therapy.’”
“But none of that makes it okay that I-”
“Of course it doesn’t,” Gideon interrupted her again. “I’m not saying you’re forgiven. But, listen. As hilarious as the thought of having you grovel for my forgiveness for the rest of our lives is… all I want is to move past this whole bullshit. And I don’t think I have to forgive you in order to move forward with you. Because, and I know this is gonna be a shock for you, it was one for me… that’s something I want. I just want to stay with you, our respective extensive loads of baggage be damned. There’s no me without you, remember?”
“I…” Harrow was sniffling even more now, and Gideon was terrified she’d said something wrong and made things worse again. She’d known beforehand that she was shit at this whole comforting thing, but she was doing so much worse than she’d expected. “If that’s really what you want, I’d like that, too. For lack of decent judgement on my part, I actually enjoy having you around.”
Gideon exaggerated a gasp. “Harrowhark Nonagesimus. Are you actually saying nice things about me? Man, I gotta mark this day in my calendar, for anniversaries and stuff.”
“Griddle, can you not make this weird?”
Gideon cocked her head in amusement. “Midnight Hagette, I have your snot and face paint all over my shirt. It’s a bold assumption on your part that this ever wasn’t weird.”
“I… urgh. I despise that that’s a fair point.” Harrow sighed, but she still avoided meeting Gideon’s eyes. “I know sorry doesn’t fix shit, but I- I still am. I’m so, so incredibly sorry Gideon. For everything.”
“I mean, you did give up immortality to save my life, so… you’ve got that going for you.” Gideon ruffled her hair. “I think we’re gonna be okay. Not today or tomorrow, and probably not for the next three or so years… but we will be.” The certainty in her voice was soothing. Harrow felt a soft kiss against her forehead.
“Gideon, I-” She bit her lip, deciding that this was hardly the right time, and to instead make another attempt at wiggling out of the embrace. “I should probably stop hogging your bed and go sleep in mine.”
“You’re not going anywhere. If you want a nap, you might as well take it here. This is an excellent nap-bed. And I know what I’m talking about, considering I’ve been sleeping here for… however many days. 10/10, would nap again. Besides-” at that, Gideon winked at her, “-who am I to deny a pretty girl sleeping with me?”
Harrow didn’t even end up saying anything chiding, her mind too caught up on the ‘pretty girl’-part to fully register the rest of the sentence. It was beyond ridiculous how giddy the words made her. Harrow wasn’t twelve, and this probably wasn’t intended to even have meaning beyond Gideon’s stupid joke. But Harrow also knew that her hair was a mess, and she could only imagine how her face looked right now, her sunken cheeks covered in dried tears and snot, face paint a dirty gray instead of the blacks and whites in the spots where it wasn’t gone entirely. And yet Gideon called her pretty without as much as missing a beat.
Gideon flopped onto her back, heaving Harrow onto her chest before she had the chance to protest.
“Damn, you somehow feel lighter than the last time I picked you up. I didn’t think that was possible. What, was the Emperor’s food somehow even more shitty than what we had back at the Ninth? No wonder you gave up Lyctorhood.”
“I don’t know why I missed you so much,” Harrow said, because that sounded better than ‘I haven’t been eating right.’
“You’re gonna sleep immediately, because damn, you look like you haven’t rested in weeks, and once you wake up, I’m gonna whip up some breakfast. No backtalk.”
“But-”
“I said no backtalk.”
“You were literally dead until a couple of days ago! You should be taking it easy!” Harrow protested.
“Yeah, well, and you should be eating. One of us is gonna get the short end of that stick, and I refuse to let it be you.” Gideon smiled past the taste of paint as she pressed another kiss to Harrow's forehead. “-for once,” she added cheekily. Harrow slumped into her embrace. The lack of comment surprised Gideon. Had she not heard? “Y'know, like you did with your height? Because you're short?”
Harrow just grumbled something unintelligible into her chest, and Gideon sighed. “Sorry, sorry. That was bad, even for me. I’ll think of a better one, give me a second.”
Harrow groaned. “I might have to redact my earlier statement regarding no further brain damage. I’ll have Camilla check in the morning.” Then she gently squeezed Gideon’s shoulder. “And Nav? I’m… grateful that you care.”
At that, Gideon benevolently decided to spare her, saving the new height joke she’d thought up for a later annoyance.
“‘Course I do, dumbass. I didn’t save your life just to let you starve to death.” A blanket was stretched over Harrow’s shoulders, then Gideon’s arms found her back again. “Sleep well, Gloom Mistress.”
“Shut up,” Harrow mumbled, and then, “No. Keep talking, please.”
“I’m getting very mixed messages here, but your wish is my command, Night Boss,” Gideon teased, before proceeding to rattle off an impressive list of ridiculous new nicknames she’d supposedly come up with whilst floating around in Harrow’s subconscious, but that she might as well have been making up on the spot.
She droned on with that terribly obnoxious, annoying voice of hers as Harrow’s eyes closed, lips formed into a small smile.
Head on Gideon’s chest, wrapped in her strong, warm arms, Harrow drifted off. BA-DUMP, BA-DUMP, BA-DUMP went Gideon’s heart, and Harrow was at peace.