Chapter Text
“I’m going to burn it to the ground.”
Gideon didn’t even glance up from the book spread across her lap to look at her wife standing at the front windows and glaring through the blinds at something in the darkness. Gideon already knew what she was looking at. The same thing she’d been glaring at almost every night for the last three weeks.
The new bar and nightclub that had been built just down the street where the residential properties became commercial. Gideon couldn’t say she was the biggest fan either. It was loud and people were now outside their house at all hours of the night. She hated it actually. She’d had to sit down for a minute when she realized. It was happening. At 29, she had matured into one of those adults that hardly ever went out after 9 in the evening and got way too excited about shit like a new blender or when a new fancy grocery store opened near their house.
She had accepted it though. At least she was a boring adult with a steady job and a sexy wife. Everything else was whatever.
“I don’t think we can afford the bail to get you out,” she drawled, licking her finger and turning the page. There was some rustling and she could practically feel her wife’s eyes on her.
“Does this not drive you to distraction?” Harrow hissed, frowning deeply at her when Gideon finally deigned to look up at her.
“That’s your job, sugarlips.” She shrugged and Harrow scowled hotly, making Gideon sigh. “Of course I hate it, but we can’t burn the building down. Harrow,” she reminded. Her wife might really do it, so it was best to gently remind her that arson was illegal. “If you go to prison, I’ll wait for you, but I’m not gonna be happy about it,” she huffed and across the room, Harrow rolled her eyes before stalking over and plopping herself down on the couch beside Gideon, who lifted her arm and let her wife burrow into her side. “The place is still new, I bet it calms down in another week or so." She pressed a kiss to Harrow's temple. She grunted and as they fell into silence, they could hear the dull thump of music echoing from down the street.
~ ~
It did not calm down. 2 weeks later and Gideon was grumbling to herself as she got out of her car after work, slamming the door angrily as once again her front yard was full of broken beer bottles and empty cigarette box trash. She stomped inside and threw down her bag before changing and then going back outside with a trash can and some gloves to pick it all up.
She was still working on it when Harrow pulled up and climbed out of her car.
"Hey," she grunted as Harrow walked up the sidewalk.
"Do you need any help?" she asked.
"No, I think I got it all," Gideon grunted before picking up the trash can and heading toward the door with Harrow on her heels. "I'm getting real sick of this shit," she declared, dropping the trash can and pulling off the gloves. "I think it's getting worse?!" she snarled, more to herself than Harrow, who sat her bag on the island and sat on one of the bar stools.
"I believe you are correct, beloved," she mumbled. "Now can we burn it down?" she asked and Gideon couldn't help but snort, and looked over at her wife. Her lips were pulled into their average frown, but her eyes crinkled at the edges and Gideon knew she was only trying to turn her mood around.
"I've been thinking…," Gideon started, leaning over the counter on her elbows in front of Harrow, and she had. She had been thinking about this very hard for the last week and how best to broach the subject with her wife. Especially after last week when they woke up at 2 in the morning and Gideon had been forced to chase off a drunk man pissing in their bushes and yelling at the windows with a decorative broadsword she had hanging on the wall of the gym room. Harrow cocked a brow, waiting silently for whatever Gideon was going to say.
"What do you think about moving?" she asked and then both Harrow's brows shot up.
"Moving?" she repeated and Gideon nodded.
"Yeah. Things are already kind of bad and as popular as that bar is, I can't imagine they're not going to build anything in the two empty lots next door. Liquor stores or whatever… might as well get out now." She shrugged.
Harrow pursed her lips, eyes unfocussed and Gideon knew she was deep in thought. So patiently, she waited, adding only "We also wouldn't be neighbors with Silas anymore…"
"It certainly has merit," Harrow quickly said and Gideon smirked. “There are neighborhoods much closer to the school and the offramp to go downtown to the museum…" she trailed off. Gideon could practically see her going over the map of the town in her brain. “I would make sense to move…” she said but Gideon could sense the but that was about to follow that statement.
“But…?” she cut it off at the pass and Harrow’s mouth twisted with uncertainty, eyes looking somewhere past Gideon’s right arm. Then she mumbled something quiet enough that even Gideon, with her years of learning to deduct even the most grumbled of her wife’s murmurings, didn’t catch it. “What?” she asked and Harrow grunted.
“I would miss it,” she said, only a little louder and Gideon blinked.
“Oh,” Gideon said, and then Harrow was looking at her, curious and maybe a little guarded.
“That’s it? ‘Oh’? You don’t think that's ridiculous?” she asked and Gideon dropped her chin into one of her palms.
“Nope. This is the first place we ever bought and lived in together and we’ve been here for 7 years, so we made a lot of memories here,” she bobbed her head. “I get it.” She slid her other hand across the island to hold Harrow’s left, her thumb swiping back and forth across the facets of her wedding ring, sliding it around and letting the black band tattooed beneath it peek out. “But we can make new ones in a new place, that doesn't have a bar across the street with obnoxious clientele leaving their garbage in our yard or pissing in my lilies,” she grunted and Harrow made an agreeing sound. “So….?” she asked, cocking her head and Harrow grunted.
“I would still prefer to just burn it down,” she grumbled. “But it’s probably not going to get better. We can start looking. Gideon whooped and stood up straight.
“I’m gonna text Corona, ask if that weird guy friend of hers can help us out.” she pulled out her phone and Harrow made a face.
“Tern?” she asked and Gideon nodded.
“He is a real estate agent,” she shrugged.
“He’s slimy,” Harrow grumbled.
“They all are, babycakes,” Gideon reminded before leaning over the counter and pressing a kiss to her forehead. “Besides, we have to sell this place before we can get a new place,” she said and Harrow grunted, already thinking about the nightmare of packing and moving their things.
~ ~
"How's house hunting going?" Cam asked, toweling off after stepping out of the gym shower a few weeks later.
"Eh… it's going," Gideon admitted, running a comb through her hair. “We’ve got a few prospects we’re gonna go look at this weekend and someone made a pretty good offer on our place the other day, more than what we paid for it and have put into it over the years.”
“Are you going to take it?” she asked and Gideon nodded.
“I think so. Harrow is still kinda meh about the whole thing but… she also hates change. I mean, really hates it. I think once we get settled in a new place and she gets all her bits and baubles set up how she wants and establishes a new routine, she’ll be happy,” she said and Cam nodded. “Also, she does not like ‘babs’.” Gideon said and Cam snorted.
“That does not surprise me,” Cam said, pulling on her shirt.
“He does his job.” She shrugged and finished packing away her boxing gear. “Now I have to go home and help Harrow clear out the attic. We got a lot of junk up there we haven’t touched since we moved in... actually, we have a lot of junk period and it's taking a lot longer than I thought it would to sort through it.”
"You a pack rat?" Cam accused and Gideon scoffed.
"Not me," she said, accusing without naming names.
Cam nodded and they parted with a wave.
Predictably, Harrow, never one to be idle, had already weaseled her way into the attic. At least, Gideon assumed she had when she stepped into the garage from the driveway to find the attic door open and the ladder down.
“You up there, my caliginous cutie?” she called, one foot on the ladder. It was followed by the thumping sounds of someone moving about quickly in the space above her. With a few short steps, Gideon popped her head into the attic in time to see Harrow hurriedly shoving things into a box before freezing and looking at her like a raccoon, caught in the act of digging through the trash can, including her wide-blown black eyes in the dim space. “You realize that I have to ask what’s in the box now, right?” she smirked, hauling herself up the rest of the ladder. Harrow frowned at her, but it wasn’t her normal, ‘I love you but you’re annoying as fuck’ frown. This one looked more worried, almost sad and that piqued Gideon’s curiosity. “Are you okay?’ she had to ask because for Harrow to look even a little sad was something.
“I’m fine. I simply was getting a head start on these things we put away in here,” she said, holding the box closed.
“And what’s in that box?” Gideon questioned, pointing a finger at the small and moth-eaten box in question. It fit in Harrow’s lap and looked like it had fallen out of a moving truck and then down a hill and into a lake. She didn’t recognize it. “Pictures from extramarital affairs, are they as hot as me?” she asked with a grin and that almost melancholy look on Harrow’s face vanished in the blink of an eye, turning to a heated scowl. “IM KIDDING” Gideon held up her hands when it looked like Harrow might vault across the attic and drop-kick her back down the ladder. Still, she didn’t seem eager to hand over the box, but she did.
Gideon pulled open the flaps, nose wrinkling at the fat layer of dust that threw up into the air.
“Oh…” she stopped upon seeing the contents of the box.
“I wanted to throw it away before you saw it. It didn’t seem like something you’d want to keep…” Harrow mumbled and Gideon frowned, still looking at the contents. It was full of dirt and dust, clinging to a stack of papers and photos. Her file from the orphanage was at the top. She didn’t bother opening it. As a teen, she’d read it over and over, hoping for some new information but the pages inside always remained the same.
Gideon Nav - D.O.B: 7-25-1993
BT: AB-
Mother: Deceased
Father: Unknown
Taken into state custody: 7-25-1993
That was it, along with some witness statements about her mom dying and giving birth in that gas station bathroom with only the attendant there to bear witness to her half hallucinations and muttering of ‘Gideon’ over and over again.
The worst part lay beneath. A pile of photos. A lot of them, old Polaroids.
“I can’t remember the last time I saw this box.” She reached inside and dug out a handful of the photos. “I don't think I ever showed you these either, have I?” Gideon asked, glancing up at Harrow, who shook her head.
“What are they?”
“The orphanage and adoption agency or whatever that had me, liked to take photos on the day they dropped you off at a new home, for posterity when it worked out, ya know? This was the day you joined whatever family.” She dug through the photos and then flipped one around. A very young Gideon, Harrow would know those eyes and hair anywhere. She was standing on a front porch with a trash bag and smiling at the camera. ‘97 was scratched into the bottom in faded pen.
“This was the first one they sent me to. The couple couldn’t get pregnant. About a year into having me, they did and they gave me back…”
Harrow’s eyes whipped up to look at her and Gideon could feel them burning holes into her face. She tossed the photo into the box and flipped around another.
‘99
“They hit me,” Gideon tossed out casually before chucking it too into the box, not daring to look at Harrow as she did.
There were three photos for the year 2000.
“Kid they already had didn’t like me and we fought till I gave him a bloody nose, so they sent me back… uh, moved to another country and these ones were drunk all the time and I ran away twice before the state took me back” She pointed at each photo as she told Harrow the reasons it didn’t work out.
The pictures continued, like a flipbook. They could see in real-time as she grew taller and broader and the smile disappeared entirely.
“Ahh and the year I turned 18 and left state custody.” She held up the last photo, printed, of her, flipping off the camera outside a bus station. “Yeah… we can throw all this shit out…” she mumbled and tossed it into the box, closing the lid and lobbing it down the ladder to the garage floor before finally looking at Harrow. “Don’t look at me like that, Harrowhark,” she sighed.
“How am I looking at you?” her wife asked, knowing damn well how she was looking at Gideon. Those big, black, doleful eyes searing into her flesh.
“You know how,” she grunted, grabbing another box. “Like my childhood physically hurts you.”
“It does,” Harrow said and Gideon’s jaw clenched. “Knowing how much it pained you, pains me, beloved,” she reminded, reaching out and laying her hand over Gideon’s on the box between them, making her stop and look up.
“Yours wasn’t exactly a summer picnic,” she reminded and saw the twitch in her wife’s jaw. She turned her hand over to hold Harrow’s
“No,” she admitted. “But there's nothing to be gained in a comparison of our struggles, they were very different and impacted us differently.
“And between us, we each have one shitty parent and one dead parent…” Gideon smiled and Harrow rolled her eyes. “You have Ortus at least… I guess that means you win,” she said.
“This is not a competition, Gideon,” Harrow said flatly.
“Of course the winner says that,” she mumbled, trying not to let Harrow see her grinning.
Harrow reached out and smacked her.
"Ow," Gideon huffed, rubbing her arm.
“Are we beating up on Gideon?” A voice suddenly called from below and Gideon jerked, smacking her head on one of the roof beams, and hissed.
“We always are,” Harrow called and then Jeannemary and Isaac’s heads popped up through the opening.
“What are you two doing here?” Gideon grumbled, rubbing the back of her head.
“Harrow invited us to come help you with the trash and stuff. Mom and Dad and here too…. They brought a casserole,” Isaac informed them.
“Magnus and his damn tasty casseroles,” Gideon shook her head. “You invited them?” she looked at Harrow who nodded.
“I informed Abigail that we were cleaning out the attic today and had a lot of things to throw away or pack and she volunteered her family to come help,” was the answer as Harrow crawled over to the ladder, shooing the two teens out of her way so she could climb down.
Despite the pain in her head and the digging through her tender childhood only a few minutes earlier, there was a warmth spreading through her chest that their friends had come over to help them.
“Gideon, I brought a casserole!” Magnus called up to her and Gideon chuckled.
“I’m coming!” She moved toward the ladder after Harrow.