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It was the silence that was confusing to Gideon.
Of course, she’d grown up accustomed to silence. Not the complete absence of noise, no. But the kind of quiet that sinks into the bones like a chill on the air. The kind of quiet that can only be sustained in a home where all the children have been killed, save two. A kind of quiet where even the discreet rattling of knuckle-bones and soft wheezing of ancient aunts could seem deafening. So, yes, Gideon Nav was used to silence.
But in the wake of everything her and Harrow had been through, why hadn’t they started screaming at one another yet?
Gideon stared at Harrow pointedly as Harrow stared at the wall, apparently as engrossed in that grey expanse in front of them as Gideon had been when Frontline Titties of the Fifth released its first full-color edition. Gideon stared, daring Harrow to look at her in the eyes (her eyes?), simultaneously trying to melt Harrow down into a puddle of goo with her stare while also terrified that taking her eyes off her for even a moment would make Harrow disappear. Harrow had always been the one to make pointed, surly eye contact with her, even as Gideon fought to avoid her soul-piercing gaze – so why couldn’t Harrow look at her now?
By all accounts, Gideon should be throwing a thermo-nuclear shit-fit. She should be screaming in Harrow’s face, shaking her scrawny little scarecrow shoulders, perhaps stuffing her little pinhead down a toilet bowl, but it was like the fight had left her body. She couldn’t make herself do anything – she could only sit stiffly next to Harrow on her cot in the cell she swore she’d never return to.
They had decided to go back to the Ninth, after it all went down. “Not forever,” Harrow assured her, in a voice that brooked no argument. “A brief visit. To regroup.” It turned out, when she had said “visit,” it didn’t mean that Harrow had actually intended to speak to anyone – she had briskly stepped off the ship and promptly disappeared somewhere deep within the bowels of the Ninth, clearly not wanting to be disturbed. And Gideon, not knowing what to do, had let her tired feet carry her to the only place on the entire doomed planet that had ever felt like hers.
It had been minutes-that-felt-like-hours ago that Harrow, having been completely absent for the past twenty-four hours, strode into Gideon’s cell, announced that they “needed to talk,” sat down on the bed and then promptly began her best impersonation of an uncomfortable statue. Gideon wasn’t sure if Harrow couldn’t find the words, or wanted her to talk first, or had maybe just began having an entirely silent mental breakdown. But someone had to talk eventually.
Gideon sighed, deep and long. Fuck it, she thought.
“So… do you think they moved my magazines to storage or—”
“I’m staying. But you may leave whenever you wish.”
Gideon spluttered, actually spluttered, the noise that came out of her sounding like the sound she imagined a bird being choked to death must produce. “I beg your fucking pardon, Harrow?”
Harrow’s jaw tightened and now she did turn to face Gideon, eyes flashing angrily. “I have duties here, Lyctorhood or no. There are things I must achieve to restore the House. But those duties are not yours, they never have been. So you have no obligation to stay.”
“This is unbelievable,” Gideon said, rising from the cot. She felt like the victim of some sort of cosmic prank. “Or, actually, it’s completely believable.” She chuckled mirthlessly. “Of course the literal end of the world could happen and you’d still be such a fucking little nun about everything.”
“Nav—”
“No, shut your stupid mouth, Harrowhark.” Gideon suddenly found she couldn’t control the volume of her voice, and she had the urge to do something stupid like flip over a table, but settled for kicking a rock with such force that it embedded itself into the wall (a distant, tiny part of her brain not overcome with rage filed this under “Cool Lyctor Super-Strength Things To Explore Later”).
“You realize you don’t have to do this, right? Your parents are dead, everyone here is going to die with no heirs, and you and I aren’t – I –,“ her voice broke off on the truth of their situation, “– why would you stay here and suffer? Why wouldn’t you just evacuate everyone off this dismal fucking rock and let it all finally go? God, this whole place is one long death rattle and you want to save it instead of just letting it die!”
Gideon collapsed back onto the cot, elbows sinking to her knees and her head in her hands, breathing deeply. “And I don’t know what’s worse, that you want to stay here or that you want me to leave.”
At that, Harrow actually made a small, wounded noise. It was so quiet that Gideon wasn’t even sure if she had heard it. She looked up, and Harrow was staring back at her, her eyes glassy. “Griddle, I don’t want you to leave.”
“You said—”
“I said you may leave. Because I know you won’t go unless I tell you that you can. So, I’m telling you, I don’t want you to feel chained to this place anymore. I thought that was what you wanted.”
“Harrow,” Gideon croaked, not even capable of caring about how watery her voice sounded. “After everything, why would I ever want to be apart from you ever again?”
For a long moment – finally – they just looked at each other.
And then Harrow raised her hand towards Gideon’s face and Gideon, Dad-damnit, she flinched. A thoughtless reaction, one baked into the marrow of her bones. The body holds memory, after all. The body is a dumb beast. Gideon knew Harrow wasn’t about to hurt her, knew this touch wasn’t of the dangerous variety. But her body remembered the bone shards flying towards her face, the nails raking across her cheeks, those spindly little fingers around her throat. So, she flinched; and Harrow shattered.
The (former?) Reverend Daughter scurried from the cot like an injured animal, even as Gideon’s instincts kicked in and she tried in vain to catch Harrow’s ankle before she got away. Gideon swore she heard alarm bells blaring in her head, a shrill announcement screeching, “Warning! You fucked up! Warning! Of course you did!” Her stupid body, this ignorant, fleshy thing, had betrayed her again. And immediately she knew, she knew deep in her gut, she had to let Harrow know it wasn’t her fault—it wasn’t her fault that Gideon’s body remembered even as her heart forgave. Who could blame either of them for not knowing how to be gentle with one another?
“Harrow, come here—”
“No.”
“Harrowhark Non—”
“Nav—”
“My crepuscular—”
“Stop it.”
Harrow stood in the corner of the room, folding herself into the wall as if she was actively trying to phase herself through it. Her tiny frame was vibrating ever so slightly, her jaw clenched, her face a stony mask of resistance. But beneath the mask, beneath the almost-imperceptible shaking of Harrow’s clenched fists—beneath the carefully controlled exterior of her necromancer, Gideon could see a gathering storm that threatened to swallow them both.
“I do not wish to, to—I can’t come near you if you don’t—”
“Harrow, it’s because you surprised me, if you would just listen—”
“No, you listen, Nav!” Harrow spat, a shade of the Reverend Daughter of their youth speaking through her. “How can I possibly expect you to trust me, to feel safe next to me?! How am I supposed to be near you when we both know how deeply I have sinned?” She grasped at her hair, tugging it at the roots, which brought Gideon to her knees on the cot, reaching towards her. She wanted her to stop, didn’t want Harrow to hurt herself; she knew, and the knowledge made her sick, that she would rather Harrow hurt her instead. After all, she had spent her whole youth as Harrow’s punching bag—what was one more round in the ring?
“I don’t know why you died so I could live. I don’t know why I deserve to get you back. I don’t know why you would even ever want to see me again after everything.” Harrow’s voice came out breathy and shrill, her hands trembling before she took one clenched fist and knocked it against her head as if to wake herself from a nightmare. “I—I don’t deserve this,” she gasped, not seeming to notice as Gideon slowly rose from the cot, cautiously approaching her like one would a spooked horse. “I don’t know why, after all this time, after all these years, you should think me a person worthy of anything besides punishment and scorn! How can you want to stay by my side? How can you—”
“Love you? Yeah, I know,” Gideon said matter-of-factly -- because if she didn't say it now, when would she be brave enough to say it again? -- taking Harrow’s bony wrist in her hand.
Harrow’s whole body became still as the Tomb.
"Don’t—” she whispered.
“Sorry, I have to,” Gideon shrugged, desperately trying to keep the tremble out of her voice, taking Harrow’s other wrist gently in hand. “Got to, actually. I love you, Harrow. Sorry if that makes you sad, or if you can’t understand, or don’t like it, but I love you, so you’re going to have to deal with it.” Suddenly Gideon couldn’t suppress a tiny grin, even though it seemed like the wrong time. It was like an inappropriate laugh at a funeral, but still, Gideon couldn’t stop it happening as the long-held truth tumbled out of her. “I mean, fuck, Harrow—I think you might even hate me a bit for loving you, but it’s not going to stop me. If anything, it just makes me love you harder.”
Harrow squeezed her eyes shut, equal parts petulant and dismissive. “I don’t believe you.”
Gideon snorted, abandoning Harrow’s wrists to grab her chin, nudging it upwards. Harrow’s eyes opened, her own gold irises boring a hole through Gideon’s skull.
“Yeah, you do,” Gideon said, her grin widening despite her best efforts to hide it. “You’re a lot of things Harrow, but you’re not stupid. So, you know I love you like I know that you love me—and we don’t have to pretend anymore like it isn’t true in some stupid attempt to go back to the way things were. I promise you that.”
Harrow reached for the sides of Gideon’s face, her fingertips landing on her cavalier’s cheekbones as if they were made of glass. Her thumb grazed Gideon’s jaw, causing them both to shiver.
“But I hurt you, Griddle. So many times, so many different ways, it’s—it’s unthinkable to me now. But I’m afraid that it could happen again, even if –” She paused. “Even though I love you. Because I do. But I’m worried I just hurt what I love.”
Gideon studied her necromancer and took inventory of her face as she had what felt like eons ago in Canaan House. Her fingers came to rest in the tangled curls at the nape of Harrow’s neck, a small gasp escaping Harrow as Gideon gave them a gentle tug, a reassurance that they were here, this was real, that what she spoke was truth, and that Harrow had to listen.
“Listen, Harrow,” Gideon sighed. “I don’t care if you hurt me. Because I know you, remember? And you know me. And I know we’re going to hurt each other sometimes, because we grew up in a miserable shithole with skeletons for company and the only entertainment we had was trying to kill each other, and then you lobotomized yourself because God didn’t get you a grief counselor, and then we had to kill God together, and that kind of shit takes a long time to heal. So, I’m telling you now—hurt me all you want. Use a femur to whack me in the kneecaps. Tell me that my biceps need work. Force me to launder Pyrrha’s dirty underwear. Just don’t ever fucking forget me. Okay? Never again. You have to remember me.”
“Gideon Nav,” Harrow intoned, her grip on Gideon’s face suddenly becoming strong and steady, “I promise you now I will never forget you. I could never forget you. When the end eventually comes, your name will be the last words on my lips; when I go to the River, I pray your eyes are the last thing I see.”
Gideon smiled (not feeling sorry at all about it now) and leaned down so that her lips almost grazed Harrow’s. “I know, honey. Now can you stop making vows and kiss me instead?”
It felt completely appropriate to Gideon that, in the second before they shared their first kiss, Harrow was rolling her eyes, even as a faint blush betrayed her cool exterior.
Gideon swore the world stopped turning for a moment.
She wrapped one arm around Harrow’s waist, another coming to rest on the back of her neck as Harrow’s own fingers clutched with bruising strength around Gideon’s jaw. Her grip may have been strong, but Harrow’s kiss was soft (who knew that Harrow could be soft, Gideon mused) and all-consuming, causing the room around them to blur into the background. Everything was them, Gideon and Harrow, Harrow and Gideon, finally abjuring the violence of their past for the tenderness of their future. A future, Gideon thought. What a concept.
Eventually, they broke apart, Harrow tucking her face into the crook of Gideon’s neck, Gideon’s fingers gently raking through Harrow’s hair.
“Griddle?”
“Mmmph?” Gideon responded; she had meant to reply “Yes?” but found that her body and brain had become some sort of unstable love-jelly incapable of forming words.
Harrow placed a soft kiss to the underside of Gideon’s jaw before she found her eyes and used that same “brook-no-argument” tone to say, “Let’s get the hell off of this planet.”
Gideon’s face once again split into a wide, wicked grin that made Harrow’s spine tingle in delight.
“Babe, I thought you’d never fucking ask.”