Chapter Text
“This is easily the worst planet I’ve ever been to,” Gideon complained. “And I’ve only been to four-- well, now it’s five planets.”
“This is a moon, not a planet. But the real issue here is the accommodations,” said Harrow.
Harrow’s face was unpainted so there was nothing to mask her blatant hostility as she glared at the elaborate marble fountain in the middle of the entrance hall. The fountain had been drained, but in the center was a statue of a well-toned adult man from the waist up, and a fish tail from the waist down. The figure held a trident in one hand and the shape of its pursed lips implied that it spit water when the fountain was operational. Harrow wanted to smash it.
The good news was this: both Palamedes and Harrowhark had been scooped from the River and deposited back into their respective bodies, which also put Gideon back in hers and ended that round of musical chairs.
The bad news was this: the recently revived necromancers were having a very hard time at being alive again and existed in a state of near constant fatigue. It became necessary to find someplace where they could recover, out of sight from both the eyes of God and the Blood of Eden.
“It makes sense to be here,” Palamedes said for what was possibly the fifth time since they’d arrived. He was obviously trying to convince himself as well as the former anchorites. He’d given up on trying to convince Camilla. “Coronabeth is right. No one will think to look for us here.”
“I can see why no one would want to come here,” said Camilla. Her voice was perfectly neutral, which made Palamedes give her a look that was half reproof and half amusement.
The good/bad news was this: they were hiding out in the unused vacation home of the Tern family. According to Coronabeth, the family had sometimes come here together when Naberius was young, but in more recent years ‘Babs’ had mostly used it for parties. This, at least, explained some of the interior design choices.
Past the marble fountain was a sweeping double staircase and high overhead was a domed glass ceiling. It was a mosaic of stained glass in every shade of the sea, and starlight filtered through it to fill the room with an eerie, blue-green glow. Corridors and doorways lined this main hall, with passages that twisted away from the eye and lead to unseen destinations. As they came further into the room and looked around, they began to realize just how many statues of the strange man-fish there really were. None were as large or as imposing as the fountain one, but they were spaced unevenly along the edge of the room, some standing on their own and some so small that they were raised up on pedestals for viewing.
“Not to sound ungrateful, but being here makes me wish that you had left me for dead,” said Harrow.
Gideon had been staring hard at the face of the fountain’s statue. She was pretty sure that it was carved in the likeness of Naberius himself, but she didn’t want to say it out loud and make it true. She shook her head and turned to Harrow. “Leaving me to live out eternity in your bony sock puppet of a body? Hard pass.”
Palamedes and Camilla shared a look. It was the mutual understanding of two people who had been trapped in close quarters with the bickering of Gideon Nav and Harrowhark Nonagesimus for far too long.
“I think I’d like to explore for a bit. Shall we meet in the kitchen for dinner in a few hours?” Palamedes suggested.
“Now that we’re finally off the shuttle, is it necessary to keep sharing our meals?” Harrow said peevishly. She nearly bit her tongue when Gideon’s hand came down on her head, ruffling her hair with excessive force.
“We’ll see you then,” Gideon confirmed.
Gideon waved cheerfully at the retreating Sixth as they went around the fountain and continued down the main hall. Palamedes skirted the staircase, regarding it reproachfully. It was unclear whether he was offended by the fish skeleton handrails, or just because they were stairs (the natural enemy of the necromancer). Camilla saluted her with two fingers and nearly smiled before she stepped out of sight.
Gideon idly combed her fingers through Harrow’s hair, somewhat fixing the mess she’d made of it. “How’re you holding up, nightshade?”
Harrow didn’t say anything. She was looking down at the floor, arguably the least offensive sight in the entire place, but there was a strange pensiveness in the way that she chewed slowly on her lower lip. Gideon still wasn’t used to this whole no-paint deal. And sure, she’d been stuck in Harrow’s body for almost a year, but it wasn’t like she’d gone looking in a lot of mirrors during that time. Gideon marveled at how Harrow’s dark lashes fanned over her flushed cheeks.
“Stop looking at me like that,” Harrow said at last. It came out more petulant than commanding.
Gideon tucked a curl of dark hair behind Harrow’s ear, indulgently allowing her finger to trace the shell and made that skin flush as well. Harrow lifted her chin to glare, but Gideon winked one coal-black eye at her. “I’ll look all I want.”
They had a brief staring contest. Harrow looked away first.
Something had changed between them, and they both knew what it was: Gideon had the upper hand. Their relationship had always been defined by a power imbalance, but Harrow had, previously, always been the one in control. (Always, except for one night and one day, when they had stood on even ground.) Gideon sometimes took advantage of this to boss Harrow around in ways she couldn’t anticipate, like getting Harrow to finish a meal or to lie down for a nap.
After they had been settled into their new lodging for a few days, Gideon used her power to bully Harrow into taking a bubble bath.
“While you were busy being the ungrateful dead, my blasphemous bone baroness, I was out learning all sorts of worldly and learned things. The most prudent of this new knowledge being that the sonic only gets you to a passable level of clean,” explained Gideon as she rolled up one of her shirtsleeves. She dipped her elbow into the water to check the temperature and nodded in satisfaction. “The second is that baths are a good way to achieve both cleanliness and relaxation, which is something you really fucking need right now.”
“This is childish.” Harrow beheld the bubble bath with a level of remorse that someone else might reserve for a funeral. “And, given that you’re aware of my other encounters with submersion, unexpectedly thoughtless of you.”
“I did actually think of that, and I would like to counter with the fact that baths do not involve salt water. Also, I tried to create positive associations with this experience by the addition of lavender-scented bubbles and this bath idol.” Gideon held out her hand and offered Harrow a small, yellow mimicry of a bird with lifeless black eyes. When Harrow didn’t take it, Gideon shrugged and set it on top of the water, where it floated benignly among the bubbles. “Just give it a go? Five minutes tops, and if you hate it that much, I’m taking it.”
“Fine,” said Harrow.
Gideon, who had been prepared for a lengthier argument, fumbled her reply. “Well, good! Great!”
“Move, Nav.”
The bathroom they were in was more spacious than a bathroom had any right to be, even though they had set themselves up in what they were pretty sure was a guest suite. Gideon stepped around an ornate metalwork partition to give Harrow privacy with the claw foot tub, and she settled herself into a squat armchair. She propped her feet up on an ottoman and her eyes roamed over the navy tiled floors and walls, observing the decorative mirrors and iron embellishments with feigned interest as she tried not to pay attention to the discarded clothing that Harrow draped over the top of the partition, or the sloshing of water.
Eventually, Harrow stopped making noise and, after what seemed like a long time, she let out a soft sigh. Gideon felt her own breath catch in her chest.
“If you’re all good, I’m gonna...” Gideon made a get-up-and-go gesture, but realized that Harrow couldn’t see her. “Gonna go do a thing.”
Harrow still didn’t reply, but Gideon knew that she was listening.
“I need you to say something, so I can know you’re not drowning.”
Water sloshed again, then more quiet. When Harrow spoke, it was barely more than a mumble, but her words echoed off the tile. “Would you wash my hair?”
“Yeah, of course.” Gideon sprung to her feet and grabbed the ottoman. “I didn’t realize it was a bad day.”
“It’s not,” said Harrow, which they both knew was a lie, but it was the last that either of them spoke for a while.
Gideon perched herself on the ottoman and sat behind Harrow, noting with curiosity that the yellow bath idol still bobbed in the water. Her mind drifted in the fragrant, humid air as she lathered shampoo into Harrow’s thick black hair, now long enough to touch her shoulders again. She had done this often enough that the motions had made their way into muscle memory; her fingers tracing swirling patterns over Harrow’s scalp, massaging at her temples and the base of her skull, taking care to not get soap in her ears.
“Close your eyes,” Gideon told her before using the handheld shower to rinse away the shampoo, not knowing that Harrow’s eyes had fluttered shut the moment that Gideon started touching her.
Gideon couldn’t help but to be annoyed by how nice the training room was. Because of course a fancy cavalier bloodline family would have a fancy state-of-the-art training room. It was just as large as the one at Canaan House, but it was sleek and modern in a way that had even Camilla’s gray eyes looking a little green with envy.
Setting the necromancers up as sparring partners seemed like the natural thing to do, but it proved to be more successful than they’d anticipated. Camilla had started teaching Palamedes how to use the rapier the same day that he’d finished regrowing all of his meaty bits, so he at least had the basics down. Harrow tried to remain stubbornly uninterested (and Gideon was unwilling to force someone who would sometimes black out when she stood up too quickly), but her naturally competitive nature drove her to work harder now so that she could catch up to Palamedes. Together, they were a couple of trembling, wheezing, very bad sword fighters. But they were trying very hard, and Gideon supposed that the first step to being kind of good at something was to be very bad at it.
After allowing the immunodeficient pair to exhaust themselves on novice swordplay, Camilla and Gideon took a turn at trying to bludgeon each other with morningstars. The archaic weapons had been mounted and displayed in one of the parlors and obviously weren’t meant for practical use, but there was no one to stop them from fucking around and finding out, so they did. The swordswomen yelled and ran laps around the room and did irreparable damage to a towel stand that had been minding its own business and really didn’t deserve what happened to it. Harrow and Palamedes sat on a padded bench, re-hydrating themselves and watching these antics with interest and concern.
Harrow took her eyes away from Gideon to stare at her own hands and slowly flexed them, clenching and unclenching her fists. The movement seemed off somehow, as though there were a lag between her thoughts and her body’s execution of them. “Sextus, how long did it take you to start feeling fully functional?”
“I’ll let you know when it happens,” said Palamedes, sounding both physically and spiritually exhausted. “I’ll offer you my condolences now. If Gideon decides to ask Cam for tips on the care and keeping of undead necromancers, she’s definitely going to recommend more exercise.”
“How practical,” Harrow said, with all the enthusiasm of a brick. She starting tapping her thumb against each of her fingertips, over and over, to see how long she could keep a steady rhythm going. While she did this, Harrow chewed on the inside of her cheek and tried to glance surreptitiously at Palamedes, but found that he was already looking at her expectantly.
“We’re long past owing any debts to each other, Harrowhark. You can say whatever is on your mind.”
As always, Palamedes’s earnestness took Harrow off guard, but she no longer judged him for it. She looked once more to Gideon and found her locked in a competition with Camilla to see who could walk the fastest on their hands. “Sometimes I get these-- flashes.”
“Flashes?”
“It’s difficult to explain. I’m trying to work out if it’s related to my shared Lyctorhood with Gideon, or-- something else.” As much as Harrow had come to trust Palamedes, she wasn’t ready to share what all ‘something else’ entailed. She didn’t think that she’d had any significant hallucinations recently, but she could never be completely certain, and it was better if only Gideon knew about them.
“Flashes, like impressions of feelings or memories that aren’t yours? Or maybe they are yours, but from a different perspective?” Palamedes smiled at the wave of relief and recognition in Harrow’s eyes. She was still perfectly stone-faced even without the skull paint, but her yellow eyes were expressive in a way that her black ones had never been. “Cam and I have been getting those, too. It will be interesting to see how our bonds manifest over time.”
“You think it’s going to get worse?”
“Interesting that you would say ‘worse.’ They’ve definitely been getting more frequent for us, but I think it’s convenient. The other day, I had an intense craving for pancakes, and Cam made a double batch without me having said anything about it.”
Harrow had no idea what a ‘pancake’ was, but she shelved that query for later. “That seems more like a coincidence. Couldn’t it be that you both just happened to want the same thing?”
“It could be, but it didn’t feel like it at the time.”
Harrow cracked her knuckles in agitation and started tapping her thumb to her fingertips again. “I can’t stand all this speculation. I need quantitative data, not just hunches and feelings.”
“Forgive me for stating the obvious,” said Palamedes, though he was certain that it wasn’t obvious to Harrow, “But have you tried talking this over with your Gideon?”
“I’m not interested in approaching my cavalier with this until I’ve collected more information. I don’t want to alarm her unnecessarily.”
“I thought we agreed that we weren’t going to call them that anymore.”
Harrow stopped tapping. She thought back to the conversation she and Palamedes had whispered to each other on the cramped shuttle they’d taken to this hell palace. The knowledge that their cavaliers had always been meant to die by their hand did not sit well with either of them.
[“Cam’s always been my best friend. I love her dearly,” Palamedes had said then. “She was never just my bodyguard. Don’t you think the same of Gideon?”]
“You’re right,” Harrow said. She watched Gideon lose the hand walking contest and fall flat onto her face, making Camilla emit a startled bark of laughter. Gideon rolled over and gave a thumbs up to show that she was alright, propping herself on one elbow to grin at Harrow from across the room. Her nose was obviously broken and blood was smeared over her lips and teeth. It was in this moment of weakness, when Harrow was overcome by a tightness in her chest from conflicting feelings of fondness and frustration, that she verbalized a question she’d been asking herself repeatedly: “If she’s not my cavalier, what is she to me?”
Palamedes, who must have been aiming for a nomination at living sainthood, gently nudged her in the right direction. “If you’re that uncertain, you should ask her.”
“I disdain your repeated suggestions of verbal communication.”
“I wouldn’t expect anything less of you. But, unfortunately, I suspect that we’ll all need to branch outside of our comfort zones, if we want to survive what’s coming for us.”
Harrow, who also disdained admitting when someone was correct twice in the same conversation, said nothing.
The sound of glass shattering in the bathroom startled Gideon, but she was put at ease when it was followed by Harrow’s annoyed cursing. A spasm would sometimes take Harrow’s right hand and she’d dropped more than a few things since coming back from the dead, but swearing at inanimate objects meant that she was probably fine.
“You got it, cannibal queen?” Gideon called from the parlor of their guest suite, where she was doing push ups. Sure, she could exercise anywhere, but it felt unlucky to be away from Harrow for too long. Gideon knew that she wasn’t alone in this feeling; she wasn’t sure if Camilla allowed Palamedes to use the bathroom by himself anymore.
Each of the suites had a different ocean-inspired theme, and Harrow had selected the one that she considered the least offensive. Most of their suite was colored navy blue with white accents, from the walls to the furniture to the ceiling, but Gideon knew that it was more than the dark hue that appealed to Harrow; it was the decorative swirls of real sea shells that were embedded artfully in the walls and around the door frames. Their pale color and dry texture reminded her of bone, and she would sometimes catch Harrow lightly brushing her fingers over them as she passed by.
“My esteemed vampiress?” Gideon said, a bit louder. She could hear the tap in the bathroom still running. When Harrow didn’t answer, she got up from the floor.
Gideon found Harrow on her knees before the remains of a smashed drinking glass. She held one of the larger pieces in her palm and was staring at it, and at the bright blood that beaded on her skin as she slowly curled her fingers around its sharp edges. Harrow steadily tightened her grip on the glass until her hand trembled with the effort and blood dripped down to her elbow, not flinching when it hit bone and not stopping until she noticed Gideon’s calloused fingers squeezing her wrist.
“Let go, Harrow! Fuck-- please!”
Harrow gasped and opened her hand, letting the glass fall back onto the tile. She hadn’t realized that she’d been holding her breath and now sucked in lungfuls of air to make up for it. Gideon hauled Harrow onto her feet, away from the glass and over to the sink, where she thrust Harrow’s hand under the tap to rinse away the worst of the blood. She stood behind Harrow, arms reaching around her, and her chest pressed to Harrow’s back.
“Fucking fuck,” Gideon said emphatically. She continued to swear as she pulled splinters of glass from Harrow’s hand, trying to do it quickly enough to beat the regeneration. It would be a bigger problem if Harrow’s skin healed over the glass and they had to cut it out.
As the cool water ran over Harrow’s hand, she watched her skin stitch itself back together. Gideon gently rubbed the rest of the blood away, checking carefully for any missed glass shards that could be stuck under her newly healed skin. After a thorough inspection was conducted and she was pat dry with a towel, Gideon finally let Harrow have her hand back.
“Alright. How does that feel?”
Harrow flexed her hand and watched the pink scars fade into nothing. She looked into the mirror over the sink and locked eyes with Gideon, who nearly had her pinned in place. Harrow could feel how tense Gideon was and realized with a horrible growing awareness that she had scared her. “It’s better. Thank you, Gideon.”
Gideon nodded stiffly, her chin bumping into Harrow’s head. She swallowed. “Why did you do that?”
“I wasn’t sure if I would feel it,” said Harrow, hating how stupid it sounded when she said it out loud. “I’m sorry, for worrying you.”
“Cam said that Pal was having trouble telling the difference between hot and cold. Is it like that? She said that exercise seemed to help.”
“I don’t know. Maybe. I’m not going running with you in the mornings.”
“It’s not like I go running because I enjoy it,” Gideon grumbled. She broke their staring contest first this time, lowering her head with a sigh until it came to rest on Harrow’s shoulder, and bracing her hands on the sink.
Harrow stiffened on instinct, but she forced herself to take in a slow breath and relaxed on the exhale. It was a little easier to do this sort of thing without Gideon looking directly at her, so Harrow inclined her head and let it rest lightly on Gideon’s. She wondered if this was something that all friends did with each other-- it was hard to tell when she only had one. (Maybe two if she counted the Sixth; Harrow thought of them as a single unit.) Where was the line between friendship and something else, and would Harrow know if she saw it? Would Gideon?
“Tell me what you need,” Gideon murmured, “I want to know what I can do for you.”
Harrow was grateful that Gideon couldn’t see her face just then. She waited until the heat faded from her cheeks to lift her head, and then Gideon raised her own. Their eyes met in the mirror again and Harrow wondered if Gideon hated having black eyes the same way that she had. Although, it was possible that Gideon had always hated her eyes.
“Would you sit with me while I write?” Harrow asked. Gideon’s eyebrows raised in surprise and she felt compelled to explain herself. “You-- Your presence is-- grounding.”
Gideon bit back a smile and she was obviously trying very hard not to tease Harrow about her request. She let go of the sink and took a step back, releasing Harrow. “As you wish. Let me get this cleaned up and I’ll meet you on the couch. No-- don’t help, miss I-can’t-feel-glass-right-now.”
“Pain,” corrected Harrow.
“What?”
“I could feel it, but I couldn’t tell it was pain.”
“Huh,” said Gideon, which meant that she was deeply concerned. She grabbed a hand towel and knelt next to the mess on the floor. “Go on. And no more pain tests, got it?”
After a final glance at the glass and blood, Harrow nodded and all but fled the bathroom. This, she thought, was probably the most contemptible thing about herself: she knew that she was responsible for every bad thing that had ever happened to Gideon Nav, by either direct or indirect action. She knew that if she really cared about Gideon, then she should cut her free. But Harrow had always, selfishly, desperately dug her claws into Gideon and she couldn’t make herself stop, even now. It was like catching a falling star and hanging on even though it burned, even as her hands crushed it into so much ash and stardust.
Harrow couldn’t understand why Gideon continued to tolerate her. More than that, she couldn’t understand why Gideon so often showed her kindness like this. She didn’t know why, after she’d curled up on one end of the couch with a pen and her new diary, Gideon sat right next to her and pulled a blanket across both of their laps.
Writing in her diary was something that Harrow usually preferred to do in privacy, but she always wrote in her personal cipher anyway, so she supposed it didn’t matter if Gideon watched her. It seemed especially pointless to fret over when Gideon opened a pulp novel that she’d found Anastasia-knows-where and thumbed through the pages to find where she’d left off. For a while, the narrow space between them was filled with the sounds of flimsy being crinkled and the scratch of Harrow’s aggressive handwriting.
“You didn’t have trouble like this, when you came back from the dead,” said Harrow. Their knees were touching under the blanket and she felt uncomfortably aware of every muscle in her leg, but she couldn’t make herself move away.
“Nope. Maybe it has something to do with being a necromancer. Or maybe it’s because I was never in the River like you two,” Gideon mused. She hooked her ankle around Harrow’s and smiled when she jumped a little at the contact. “Don’t worry. We’ll figure it out.”
In the middle of the night, Harrow started awake. Her heart pounded out a rapid tempo in her chest, making her entire frame shake, and she was breathing too quickly. Though Harrow couldn’t remember what she’d been dreaming about, she had an urge to check on Gideon.
Moving silently, as was her modus operandi, Harrow left her bedroom and went into the parlor. There were other guest bedrooms in the suite, but whether it was out of habit or because of paranoia, Gideon slept in a nest of bedding on the floor. She had situated herself so that anyone entering or leaving the suite would have to trip over her.
Gideon moved restlessly in her dreaming, her face pinched into a frown. She had tangled herself in the sheets and now thrashed in them, sometimes crying out half-formed words. Harrow considered that perhaps she’d heard Gideon and woken up, but knew that wasn’t quite right. She crouched down next to her head and, with a whisper of a touch, she brushed her fingertips over Gideon’s brow.
“Gideon,” Harrow said softly. When that didn’t work, she pinched Gideon’s cheek and said her name again.
Gideon’s hand snatched Harrow’s wrist and her eyes snapped open, wide with panic. She blinked a few times, her eyelashes dewy with tears, and slowly focused on Harrow’s upside down face.
“You’re okay,” whispered Harrow. “You’re alright. Go back to sleep.”
Gideon nodded dumbly, her fear exchanged for exhaustion, and she let go of Harrow’s wrist. She turned away, not bothering to untangle herself, and closed her eyes.
Harrow should have been satisfied with this, but she still felt uneasy. She wondered what it would take to get Gideon to start sleeping in one of the beds. She wondered if the bed was really the issue here, or if it was the itch she felt under her skin when Gideon was too far from her. Harrow knew that she wouldn’t be able to sleep when she went back to her own room, so... she may as well commit to not sleeping. She went into her bedroom, only to return a moment later with a pillow and a duvet.
Gideon stirred to semi-wakefulness again when Harrow disturbed her nest. She noticed movement and heat and, although she realized on some level what was happening, she didn’t believe it until she turned her head to look over her shoulder. Harrow had lay down alongside Gideon. She glared, appearing as threatening as anyone could with bedhead and wrapped in a duvet. Gideon blinked slowly at her. Then, she smiled and turned away, slipping easily into a dreamless sleep, as smoothly as a blade into water.