Work Text:
When Harrow opened her eyes again, she was back on solid ground and her memories of what she’d seen while in the River with Alecto were blurred and fleeting. Trying to conceive them was like trying to hold water in her hands. But she knew it would come back, solidify, and she would be able to act on whatever it was she was supposed to be doing. Right now, her brain felt like a wrung out sponge. She’d spent too long in the River, she’d almost lost her sense of self. It was taking all her effort to stay conscious. Her entire body ached with cold and pain. It was in a terrible state. She was very nearly dead.
Harrow felt a level of exhaustion she wasn’t sure one person should ever have to bear. But none of that, the pain, the exhaustion, even began to compare to the grief that hit her full force as she came into consciousness. She wanted to cry as it washed over her again. How long was this going to hurt? Canaan House felt like millennia ago, and yet the pain of her loss was just as sharp as ever. Because she wasn’t supposed to be here, she wasn’t supposed to come back. She’d failed again.
There was no access to Lyctoral healing for her this time, and she was too weak to even access her regular necromancy. Or too sad, she wasn’t sure. All she knew was that if anyone so much as prodded her right now, her body would crumble to ash. It was held together by nothing more than a sense of anguish, that the vague knowledge that giving up now, letting herself drift apart, would be a waste of all that she’d cost. It was not a very comforting thought.
She was back in the tomb, right in the centre, laid out in the stone coffin, which was not nearly as comfortable as it had been in her River bubble. Someone had placed a blanket over her, though, which she was grateful for. It smelled familiar and Harrow felt tears pricking her eyes, although she wasn’t sure why.
Finally, looking around the familiar cavern that had haunted her dreams for so long, she noticed she wasn’t alone. The Saint of Duty was there, sitting on a little stool, reading a magazine. He had looked up when she stirred. Now he just waited.
Harrow flinched and scrabbled behind her for the sword, but it wasn’t there. She looked wildly around the tomb. There was plenty of bone here, but when she called for it, it didn’t answer. Not because she couldn’t do necromancy, but because this bone was spent, either through decay or something more deliberate, she wasn’t sure. There wasn’t time to investigate. Instead, she drew a blade of bone from her wrist without even flinching and threw it at Gideon the First’s left eye with all her might.
The Saint of Duty caught it with ease and rose from his stool, but didn’t approach. Instead, he placed the blade on the ground and simply stood there, with his arms held out, signifying that he meant peace.
“Hey kiddo,” he said, smiling with eyes that weren’t his. The voice was different too, far warmer and lighter than the gruff monotone she’d grown used to. Harrow felt a headache coming on.
“Who? What?”
“Ok, I don’t know how much you remember—”
“Assume that I can trust nothing of my recollection of what has happened to me since I left for the First House. And anything since—” Harrow choked and took a deep breath. “I don’t know what is real and what is not. I have been dreaming for a long time, I think.”
“Right well the most important thing right now is that I am not Gideon, I’m Pyrrha his cavalier, and I am not here to harm you, you’ve been in the River a while and we’ve been taking turns watching over you until you came back. We didn’t want to move you, G—Kiri—she thought you’d been taken by force.”
Harrow could only focus on one aspect of what she’d said.
“You’re the cavalier? How?”
“I was compartmentalised by accident. I could front sometimes, but for Gideon he just… lost time, he didn’t know I was there and now he’s dead. I never got to… no matter. The situation is this: I’m left piloting his body around. I get his healing, but maybe don’t throw anymore bone daggers at me,” she said.
Harrow sat there staring at this woman, this cavalier surviving inside her necromancer. That was supposed to be her. Dulcinea had been right. It was possible. It was possible, and Harrow had failed again.
She searched herself and knew without doubt that very little of Gideon remained within her. What did was such a tiny fragment it was more of a memory, an imprint on her own soul than anything else.
For the first time in a long time, her soul felt very alone.
She remembered that moment when she’d woken up, just before she’d plunged into the River with Alecto. She’d heard Gideon’s voice and assumed she was going to die again, that perhaps somehow it had worked.
“Gideon,” she whispered. If she hadn’t been sitting precariously in the coffin, she would’ve fallen to her knees and wept.
Pyrrha gave her a sympathetic look.
“Do you know why she had your necromancer’s name?”
“Yes, and if you’re feeling up to it, I will answer all your—”
A voice in the outer chamber of the tomb interrupted them, a voice so familiar Harrow flinched and felt that instinctive annoyance, a frustration so unbearably fond, rising within her.
“Suck my dick, Tridentarius!”
Harrow didn’t even process whatever reply Ianthe made. She presumed it was Ianthe. Gideon always was stupid over Coronabeth. She jackknifed out of the coffin. Pyrrha only just managed to catch her and help her back to her feet.
“Ah shit, ok hold on, hold on—”
“Gideon! It’s Gideon, let me go, I—”
But Pyrrha held her in place, and Harrow was just too weak to fight back. Why wouldn’t she let her go to Gideon? She was out there; she hadn’t imagined it, had she? Pyrrha had looked around too, when Gideon yelled. She was out there, somehow, yelling obscenities at Ianthe Tridentarius. She was being very rude and it would make Harrow smile if even the use of those muscles wouldn’t hurt terribly.
“Kid—” at Harrow’s glare, Pyrrha sheepishly corrected herself “Harrow, is that ok? Harrow the thing is, Gideon, your Gideon, she’s—it’s a bit complicated, she’s very angry right—”
“She’s real?”
Pyrrha nodded sadly.
“Anger is her right,” she told Pyrrha. Harrow finally shrugged her off, but barely got two steps before her knees buckled and she had to lean on Pyrrha to remain upright. “I don’t expect you to understand. You don’t know her. Please don’t think you can get involved in this. I understand she will be angry with me. Gideon has harbored a rage within her for longer than I can remember, but I need to speak with her.”
“Right, but the thing is—”
Whatever the thing was, Harrow never got to hear it because at that moment Gideon strode into the room, dressed in white and gold finery. Harrow had never seen Gideon in white, she’d never seen her in anything but black, but she found she didn’t like it. It was unmistakably a Cohort uniform, probably once pressed and pristine. It was now crumpled and filthy. It was perfectly tailored, yet on Gideon, it didn’t hang quite right. She looked like she was playing at being a soldier, dressed to look the part, to put on a show. Harrow had never imagined Gideon actually joining the Cohort, but if she did ever entertain the idea, it would be Gideon in the heat of battle, her precious two-hander raised high as she bore down on her enemies. Gideon in the Cohort did not look like this, prancing around in gold-embroidered regalia, playing to pomp and ceremony. Gideon was always the furthest thing from ceremonious.
There was something off about her, something wrong. Harrow stared at her, searching for what it was about Gideon that was missing.
“Right then, Saint of Literal Motherfuckery, I’m here to watch over the empty vessel that was once our most Revered Ladyship. Lieutenant Babysitter Kiriona at your service,” she said, giving a little salute and approaching the island without looking up from some kind of rope bridge that had been set up to allow them to cross the water. She held on tight to the rope as if terrified of being dragged under.
She sounded like Gideon, but distant somehow. There was no smile in her voice. She strode with purpose, but she’d lost that cocksure strut of hers.
This Gideon, like the Gideon Harrow was familiar with, was angry, sure, but more than that she was unbearably sad. Harrow could see it. It was in the defiance that was once cocky, but was now desperate and tinged with misery. It was in the weary undercurrent in her voice. It was in the way that when she finally reached the island; she looked up, and met Harrow’s gaze, unsurprised. There was a tired anger in those sad, dull eyes.
Harrow pulled away from Pyrrha and launched herself straight at Gideon. Or this is what she tried to do. What actually happened was she made it forward three steps, flailed a lot and hit the floor with a muffled thump. When Pyrrha tried to help her, she howled and rolled away.
There was a scuffle then, as Gideon punched Pyrrha’s jaw so hard she stumbled away. She yelled a few choice words before returning to Harrow, where she lay sobbing on the ground. Harrow felt herself being lifted so carefully, like she was the most precious and fragile thing. She found she didn’t much mind being held that way, although she would never admit it to anyone. She was pressed against Gideon’s chest. There was no muffled thumping, just a hollow silence, which made the ache within her increase tenfold and she wept with all she had. She was held until the sobbing receded and then placed with care against the plinth that held the coffin.
Suddenly, as if seeming to remember herself, Gideon pulled away and straightened up, which felt to Harrow as if she was being wrenched in two. Gideon gave her a swift kick for good measure before turning to face Pyrrha, who was rubbing her jaw, but didn’t seem particularly angry.
“Just fuck off, ok?” Gideon snapped. “She doesn’t like to be touched, especially not by you strutting around in the body that tried to kill her on the daily. I knew I shouldn’t have let you drag me away. I should’ve been here when she got back. So just fuck off, this is Ninth business. Leave us alone.”
Whatever Pyrrha’s response was, Harrow didn’t hear it. Just that little burst of physical activity had sapped the remaining energy she’d had, and she felt herself drifting off again.
When she woke again, she was in her old room, and an overwhelming feeling of safety washed over her. She closed her eyes and desperately wished the past few years were a dream.
“I know you’re awake, Nonagesimus. I heard your breathing change. Plus, you’re screwing up your eyes like you’re trying not to cry. Pretty obvious. Also Mumfucker Prime and our very new friend Paul want to check on you. You should’ve seen Aiglamene’s face when Paul suggested accompanying you to the holy chambers of the Reverend Daughter, though what the fuss was about, I don’t know. It’s barely bigger than my cell. Funny, I always thought it would be fancier.
“They should’ve got Pyrrha to ask. Aiglamene seems quite taken with her, which is disgusting obviously. I’m hoping it’s just a Cohort thing, and they’re not gonna start banging. That will mess with my head beyond repair. Anyway, she didn’t stop me coming in. She likes me better than you, did you know that? Wild. You and I are going to have words, Nonagesimus. But I’m sure I’m breaking some ancient Ninth code of conduct, me a lowly serf being in the holiest of rooms in Drearburh, so like if you need me to fuck off, I will. We can duke it out somewhere else. But everyone was kind of scared you were about to drop dead in your sleep or whatever, so you need someone in here with you. Better me than Pyrrha, right? Pretending she knows a single shitty thing about us. Or worse, Ianthe, she’s practically been scrabbling at the door, desperate to get in here…”
Harrow knew when Gideon got like this, she wouldn’t stop talking until Harrow interrupted. Harrow rarely let her indulge in such rambling, and she didn’t want to stop her now, but she had to know.
“Are you real?”
Gideon stopped mid-sentence and scoffed. “Rude. What you think you’re having a nightmare or something?”
“How are you here?”
Harrow had to keep her talking, perhaps if she kept talking she would stay.
“Open your eyes,” Gideon demanded.
Harrow daredn’t. If she did and she was faced with an empty room, it would break her so completely she didn’t think she’d ever recover. “I can’t,” she whispered.
Gideon huffed and cursed under her breath. There was a shuffling and a creak of a chair. Harrow’s arm shot out to grab Gideon’s wrist before she could leave. The moment she made contact, she recoiled, sitting up and staring at the girl in front of her. She was so cold. Not frozen, but a deep absence of warmth, the kind you got when someone stopped generating body heat. A sort of cool rigidity, so removed from the warmth Gideon possessed in life. And yet she was still here, she still moved with all her grace, she clearly still possessed all the strength she’d once had. She may have been dead, but there was none of that wasting that she should have had. She was frozen in time, preserved. Harrow didn’t understand. This wasn’t what she’d wanted for Gideon, but yet she felt a faint hope begin to bloom in her chest.
She tried to quash it, and it broke something within her. She sat up on her bed, pressing herself into the corner. She curled up, pulling her knees up to her chest, and faced Gideon.
“You’re… what? Gideon!”
Gideon was rubbing at her wrist now, where Harrow had touched her. Her fingers dug into the skin there, but it didn’t discolour. There was no blood to be displaced.
She looked up at Harrow and smirked. Her eyes remained cool and dull. Harrow found herself desperately missing their golden warmth.
“Nope,” Gideon said, popping the p. “It’s Kiriona now, Kiriona Gaia. We best start with that. It took you nearly eighteen years to remember my name, before you purged it from your brain”
“I- what?”
“Kiriona,” Gideon said, drawing out the sound like she was speaking to a particularly stupid child.
“Gaia as in—”
“Oh yeah, that’s the next big reveal,” Gideon said with a somewhat cruel grin. “Your precious God is my father. I imagine that’s pretty chagrining, after the way you treated me. I always said I was special and look at me now, the most specialist dead girl in the universe.”
She really was dead. She was sitting there in front of Harrow and she was dead and gone. Harrow wanted to weep. How had things gone so wrong? She just stared at Gideon while the dead girl continued to bombard her with information, rambling like she was terrified to stop speaking.
“Do you like my uniform? I’m very important now. A Tower Prince. Although so is Ianthe, which makes it less cool. I made the Cohort too, First Lieutenant. So yeah, Kiriona Gaia, Crown Prince—which makes me way more important than Ianthe, by the way—and heir to the First House. All that bullshit. It’s a lot of names and titles and crap, but what it ultimately means is I outrank you now. You can’t boss me about anymore, though doubt that’ll stop you. I wonder if there’s some special divine punishment for treating God’s dead spawn like shit her whole life. Probably…”
Gideon was rambling, which meant she was very upset. But Harrow was struggling with all this information, with the fact that Gideon was here in front of her. She didn’t understand what was happening.
“Gideon—”
“Kiriona—”
“I’m not calling you that,” Harrow muttered. She wasn’t sure why it enraged her, but she’d erased Gideon from her mind, cut her name out of her brain so that she couldn't complete the process, consume her, burn her, lose her forever. The power that name held was unrivalled. She wasn’t giving it up now. “Why are you like this?”
“Excuse me? You made me. What, are you upset that it didn’t stick? That I remade myself after you obliterated me? Sorry if the bits of me you chewed up and spat out aren’t your pathetic Griddle, remember her? What was it you said? I don’t even remember about you most of the time. I’m such a sucker. I never believed that could be true, and yet I tried so hard to make you aware of me and it turns out, you really never gave a shit. You fucking erased me. I don’t know why you even bothered with all the torture when we were kids. You could’ve broken me with that. All you would’ve had to do was ignore me—”
“Griddle,” Harrow snapped, she understood that Gideon was upset, she did, but she was terrified of her current grasp on reality. She needed to understand what was going on. Shakily, she rose to her knees. Despite her apparent fury, Gideon bent a little so she could reach. Carefully, she stretched out and when Gideon didn’t push her away, she slipped her hand under the scarf to place her palm against the gaping wound. A shock ran through her, the pulse of a ward, but she ignored it. She was already crippled by pain what was a little more.
“Why are you like this?” Harrow asked again.
“Dead, you mean?”
When she spoke, Harrow felt the muscles of her neck pull in an unnatural fashion, as if they were moving after the fact. It was all wrong. Her voice was the same and unmistakably Gideon’s, but there was no rumble in her chest, no vibration under Harrow’s palm. The voice was coming from somewhere else and it gave it a distant quality.
“Yes dead, what happened to you? Why—how are you here?”
Harrow kept her hand on Gideon’s neck, terrified that if she let go Gideon would simply disappear, revealing that this was all some cruel trick of her imagination.
Gideon shrugged her off and began to pace around the small cell. Despite everything that was currently going on, it was strange to see Gideon in her room. She’d only tried to break in the once, when they were very young and she’d quickly run off howling when Harrow sent a construct three times her size, ambling after her. She’d always struggled to get the shape of them right back then, proportioning them like overlarge children, with heads and torsos too big, and skinny, bowed legs. They could still whale on Gideon easily enough.
Her cell had always been a place of isolation, a place for her to curl up in her solitude. Even the Body hadn’t shown up here in a long time, outside of her dreams. She wasn’t sure she liked Gideon being in here. She took up so much space. It made her feel cornered.
“You don’t get to interrogate me,” Gideon muttered. “I am so fucking mad at you, Nonagesimus. I should be the one asking questions. Like why the fuck couldn’t you just eat me? Was it really so bad to be beholden to me that you had to try to erase me from reality? And what you realised it wasn’t working, so you just checked out? Abandoned me in your skinny twig of a body? And then your freezer meat girlfriend booted me out, left me to drown. Good job dear old dad plucked me from the River and shoved me in here. I’m haunting my own fucking corpse. The Emperor’s construct, a revenant which is pretty fitting. Like mother like daughter, I guess.”
Harrow closed her eyes and tried not to tremble. Gideon had misunderstood everything so fundamentally, but then how could she have been expected to think anything else? Harrow didn’t know how to even begin to explain her actions. She wasn’t even sure she could. She’d acted in desperation, without even thinking of the consequences. She’d planned as far ahead as to put Gideon on pause while she figured out a way to save her at some far off point. But there was no plan, and there certainly wasn’t any consideration for what Gideon would go through. She couldn’t explain her actions, but perhaps she could explain why.
“Mother?” she asked instead.
Gideon scoffed and came back over to the bed. She sat down heavily, in the manner of someone who had grown tired, but there was a stiffness to it. An impression of tiredness, an approximation of fatigue. Harrow stared at her. Gideon’s current form may have been inexhaustible, but it was clear her very soul was weary.
“Yeah, that sucked. It turns out my dear dead mother was like a super powerful angry revenant. She was haunting my sword, and then Cytherea’s corpse, which was mega fucked up for me. I’m not sure where she is now. Pyrrha dispatched her but… she’s also a lying liar who lies. Wake, her name was. You were right about her, I’ll give you that. She didn’t want me at all. I was just a blood bag, essentially, a tool to open that fucking tomb.”
Harrow stared as suddenly a lot of things clicked into place very quickly. Gideon’s blood under her nails, her sword that had always hated her, her near immortality. Fuck. How much of Gideon’s resilience to her hellish childhood stemmed from her inherited divinity, and how much was an inherited stubbornness?
“The Sleeper,” she mumbled, as parts of reality finally started to align, the invasive ghost in her River bubble, all that nonsense about eggs. “She haunted me. She was a… soldier?”
“Yeah, a commander, top brass in Blood of Eden. She was working with those old bastard Lyctors to kill John. I’ll spare you the details, but I’ll tell you something; learning of how you were conceived is not fun, is it? Yours is worse because of all the child murder, but only just.”
Harrow took a long moment to process all that. Gideon used to go on about her mother frequently when they were children. She’d believed she was loved by her. That she was just a tool in her mother’s plans must’ve stung. Harrow ached for her. She was pretending to be unaffected, but Harrow could read the pain in her eyes.
“It wouldn’t have worked,” she murmured.
“Yeah it would. I would’ve been a big bag of baby blood. She wouldn’t have had any qualms about murdering me,” Gideon said, staring straight ahead to continue her charade that this information didn’t upset her.
Harrow frowned. She wasn’t sure that anything she could say would make things better, but she was curious as to this Wake’s plan. “And then what?”
“I dunno decorate the walls with my corpse, release your chilly babe, and kill God. Your sour old mentors thought of it,” Gideon said, leaning back against the wall. She sighed heavily, and it rattled through her chest.
“I don’t think it’s that simple. Alecto is no longer chained to the tomb, but John still lives. As powerful a force as your mother is, and trust me, I’ve met her revenant. She is intense, but I don’t think she would have been able to control Alecto. They were right, I think. Alecto maybe the only one powerful enough to kill John, but it was never as simple as opening the tomb.”
“Figures,” Gideon muttered. “Is that what’s she’s banging on about then? She came back a bit ago. It’s why I brought you up here, in case she tried to bite your face off again.”
Gideon was scowling now. Harrow was unsure where the animosity had come from. It didn’t seem to be directed at her.
“You dislike her? Why?”
Gideon shrugged.
“Dunno. She’s weird, intense, tried to eat your face, plenty of reasons.”
“Do you understand what she is?”
“Your ice lolly girlfriend?”
Harrow raised an eyebrow, and Gideon sighed, relenting.
“She’s like a planet, somehow? John made her into a person. His first attempt at making a construct, I guess. He hasn’t much improved in a myriad. He just shoves souls wherever he feels like it. Sucks. I think… I get why she’s so pissed. I’d give anything not to be this.”
“He’s not very good at saving people, is he?”
Gideon shook her head morosely. It was impossible, but Harrow swore her eyes were shining.
“Where is she?”
“For fuck sakes,” Gideon muttered, “She’s in the Tomb ranting about some bullshit, weeping over piles of bones. Like I said, intense. I was more worried about getting you away from her... she didn’t seem to care about that. Sucks for you, I guess. Now you can know how the rest of us feel when you’re more into bones than people.”
Gideon was quiet for a moment.
“I… she wasn’t really talking in any way I could understand. It was mostly screaming. I think she wants to go home. I don’t know how I know that. She grabbed my arm, before I tried to pick you up and she was yelling but… pleading. Dunno why she thought I could help. Let me guess, you want me to fetch her for you, so the two of you can run off on another jolly adventure together.”
“Not yet,” Harrow said carefully. “Is she alone?”
“Ugh, no Pyrrha is with her.”
“I will need to speak to her. I need to understand what I saw in the Tower, and perhaps… but none of that matters right now. What I want is to understand why he made you like this.”
“No idea. Probably something to do with the mess of a soul you left for him to work with. The chewed up, spit out parts of me weren’t top quality material to work with,” Gideon said.
“Then I am sorry,” Harrow said quietly.
“Yeah, you really—what?”
Harrow had never apologised to Gideon before. Her transgressions were far too great for her to ever erase them with words. But she could try.
“I tried to apprehend the process, but too much time must have passed. The process had started. A part of you became part of me and cannot be separated. Even when I’d purged you from my memory, we were so intrinsically linked that you broke through eventually. I failed you again.”
“Would it really have been so bad to accept my sacrifice? I didn’t do it for glory or to one up you. I didn’t die just so you couldn’t repay me. There was no owing. You didn't have to erase me so as not to be indebted to me.”
“Would it have been so bad?” Harrow screeched. “It was the worst thing I have ever experienced. I lost you. I lost you and I couldn’t have gone on without you. I know you were trying to save me, but without you, I would’ve been lost, anyway. I had one chance to save you and I took it. It was never about owing you. I already owed you everything. There is nothing I can do to erase that. And I wouldn’t want to. That kind of cost cannot be erased, but if you let me, I will do everything in my power to repay you.”
“It hurt,” Gideon whispered.
Harrow crept closer.
“It hurt so much. Not the dying, that sucked. But after, before I was fully gone—”
“When I was burning you up?”
“No. That bit… that felt good,” Gideon murmured, and her eyes shone with wonder as she remembered the experience.
Harrow flinched at that. She hadn’t considered what it felt like for Gideon. To her, it was the greatest sin she could have ever committed. She assumed for Gideon being consumed would’ve felt like burning alive.
“I didn’t want to die, of course I didn’t. If we could’ve beaten her without it, of course, that would be better. But we were all going to die. I made a choice, under duress sure, but I would make it again. I’m sorry that it hurt, I'm sorry that it was such a cruel thing after everything that made you, but I died knowing I was giving you everything you wanted and you took that—”
“Everything I wanted! You really have no idea—”
“Harrow, I was happy. For the first time in my life, I felt like I belonged, like I was a part of something. You didn’t take anything from me, you didn’t force my hand. The moment it was done, I was free Harrow. And I chose to stay, to become part of you. Even now I can feel my soul trying desperately to escape this flesh prison, because do you know what? When we were together, when we were supposed to be impossible to part… I. Was. Happy. I was wanted. And you ripped me away. You drowned me in the well of your mind and it was excruciating.”
It took a lot of effort, Harrow wasn’t sure what the hell had happened to her body while she wasn’t in it, but she was fairly certain her stomach was full of sand and a significant number of her bones had been broken multiple times at some point, and despite healing they hurt. Ignoring this, Harrow pulled herself off of the bed and fell to her knees before Gideon.
Gideon’s reaction was immediate. She carefully picked Harrow back up, but after a moment’s hesitation, allowed her to stay close. “You’re not well Nonagesimus, you need to rest.”
“I will rest eventually, but I will not close my eyes again and succumb to unconsciousness before making several things clear.”
Gideon waited.
“I am sorry that I let you believe your life was worth so little to me. I am sorry that I let you think attaining Lyctorhood was more important to me than you. It wasn’t at all. I never wanted it, not like that, not if the cost was you, not if it was anyone, but never if it was you. Did you think, in that moment when we discovered what it meant, did you believe I would’ve done it?”
“No,” Gideon admitted. “You’re a bitch, but not like Ianthe.”
“I would never have done it and in the situation we were in, I would’ve gladly forfeit my life to save yours, in that I do understand why you did what you did, and I hate it, but I do understand.”
“It was my duty to protect you.”
“And that in itself is a cruelty I have thrust upon you. The notion that you are only worth your life, if you are useful, so I am sorry. And I'm sorry for erasing you. I missed you impossibly so, even though I couldn’t remember you. I missed you so much that in the moments I was dying, you came back to me and even though I was thrown into grief that I hadn’t even begun to process, I was glad to die with my memory of you intact and the chance that you could be saved out there. I did not erase you because I thought I owed you. I erased you on the fraction of a chance that at some point in the nebulous future, I could figure out how to save you.
“I had no plan, no idea beyond desperate hope. I selfishly locked you away in the recesses of my mind, just like I selfishly kept you on the Ninth all those years, because I cannot conceive of a life without you. Gideon, you are everything to me, my best and only friend. I meant what I said. Without you, I am undone. I don’t know how to love you without locking you away, keeping you like a precious trinket, something to be held at a distance and admired. It’s not right. You are so, so precious to me, but I cannot squirrel you away in the recesses of my mind, preserved and unchanging. That’s not love. I want to be better, to learn better. I want to love you actively and if you… I don’t deserve it, not even a little, but you are a better person than I and I… if you’re willing, perhaps it could be something reciprocal?”
Gideon was shaking her head slowly, but Harrow didn’t take it as refusal. Especially when Gideon started rubbing at her ears. Harrow pulled away so she could sit up and look at Gideon properly. Gideon was staring at her agape, so Harrow powered through. This was the most humiliating thing she’d ever done, and the sooner it was all over and Gideon had cast her aside, the better.
“I am sorry that I hurt you again. I’m sorry it felt like rejection to you. It really wasn’t. But you’re here, you’re almost whole. Let me help you,” she murmured, reaching out and running a hand over the front of Gideon’s shirt. She knew what was beneath the buttons, from the absence of that once familiar beat.
“Help me?” Gideon said, staring at her in confusion.
“Let me figure it out, resurrection. Let me give you back your life.”
“You can’t. I gave it to you. I don’t want it back. I don’t deserve it. I failed you so completely. I am a useless fucking cavalier. I stood by and watched while you underwent months of torture at the hands of my fucking father—”
“You have never failed me,” Harrow said solemnly. “You Gideon Nav are the best of all of us. But you’re wrong. If you think to love me means sacrifice, that is a mistake. If you want to love me, then live,” she implored.
Gideon blinked like she hadn’t even considered the idea. And that hurt Harrow’s heart, but it was hardly surprising.
“Do you really love me?”
“Yes Gideon, I… yes. I love you. I have hated you, despised you for no other reason than you were there and I had all this hate in me. But I have loved you for just as long. I saw the shape of you long ago and I saw that it was good and I hated that too. I loved you first when we were children and you were the brightest thing in Drearbruh. I was drawn to you even then. And after, I loved you from afar and I missed you and I channelled that into my hatred. I was so, so cruel to you and I delighted in hurting you because I couldn’t bear to see you happy, not if it wasn’t with me. I am the most awful person, and you should want to destroy me, but yes, I love you and I think I always have.”
Harrow pulled at the golden buttons then, knowing right now in the state she was in, there was absolutely nothing she could do for Gideon. Even at her full power, she couldn’t achieve this, even as a Lyctor she couldn’t do this. But her ridiculous idea had worked, and now she had time to figure it out. When Gideon nodded, Harrow carefully unbuttoned the ridiculous dress shirt and looked upon the space where Gideon’s heart once lay. In the past ten minutes she had learnt an awful lot of information, and in amongst Gideon’s rambling and bluster there were a lot of important points. She could almost see the shape of it, make out the path she needed to travel.
Tentatively, she reached out, placing her fingers into the wound. A sharp pain shot up her arm, but she ignored it. Gideon let out a little gasp, unnecessary, as she didn’t breathe. Harrow wasn’t looking at the gaping wound, she was looking into Gideon’s eyes. She kept her other hand on Gideon’s chin, forcing her to hold her gaze. She placed her hand where Gideon’s heart once was and there it was, just for a second. It was always in the eyes. It was just a flicker, but Harrow knew it intimately. For a brief time, this soul had been one with hers. And now she could find it, trapped inside the prison of its own corpse. It was reaching for her, and she could feel herself responding to that call. The unfinished bond. She thought back to those few moments she could remember outside of the agony of her grief, when they had been one. She had erased it from her memory, but it was back. She knew the very shape of Gideon and she had a hint of an inkling of an idea of how to proceed.
“I will figure this out,” she whispered. “I will resurrect you. And if you want, I will spend the rest of our existence trying to give you that feeling of belonging you want. And when we die years from now, I will entwine my soul with yours again, and even in death, shall we never be parted.”
As Harrow looked upon Gideon. She knew she hadn’t been mistaken earlier. There were tears in her eyes, giving them a shine reminiscent of their usual gold. Bringing her back would likely be an impossible task. But this was Gideon Nav, her best friend, her cavalier, the missing part of her soul. Everything about her was impossible. What was one more impossibility?
As much as Harrow longed to keep her hands in the place where Gideon’s heart had been, she was really very exhausted. So she reluctantly withdrew and re-buttoned Gideon’s shirt. She smoothed her hand over it, lingering there for a moment, before sitting back on her heels.
“So er… when you say you wanna love me actively?” Gideon said, waggling her eyebrows horribly.
“Nav, you absolute hog.” Harrow thumped Gideon weakly in the chest, but she only smiled when Gideon caught her hand and tentatively entangled their fingers.
“You’re the one with a kink for corpses—”
“I’ve changed my mind. You don’t deserve to be resurrected.”
“Ah, you wanna keep me on ice, keep these lips extra chilly, I knew it!”
“I will resurrect you just so I can throttle you to death,” Harrow said, but she couldn’t summon the usual coldness she used to affect superiority.
Gideon just chuckled, unfazed. Her laugh wasn’t as warm and rich a sound as Harrow remembered, but it was more honest, more real.
“Your hands are probably too small.” Gideon gave them a squeeze as if to prove her point. It was a good point. Harrow’s hands were dwarfed by Gideon’s strong, but gentle hands.
At that, Harrow let go of Gideon’s hand and reached out, first to Gideon’s neck. She didn’t even flinch. She was so unimpressed by Harrow’s threats. Then Harrow moved her hand up to Gideon’s cheek, cupping it tenderly. Her skin still had that same coldness, but it was softer here, and not at all unpleasant. As Harrow kept her hand there, she felt it warming under her touch.
When Gideon didn’t resist, Harrow pulled her closer, and finally pressed her lips to Gideon’s. Gideon’s eyes fluttered closed and she let out a sigh, despite not needing to breathe. It was the sigh of someone who had finally gotten a moment to rest after decades of hardship.
Harrow tangled her other hand in Gideon’s fiery hair and kissed her again. She pressed her lips to Gideon’s, like Gideon was her only source of air. Despite the desperation Harrow felt, the kisses were surprisingly chaste, both she and Gideon approaching it tentatively. It was as if they’d finally been handed everything they'd ever wanted but had grown up in a cruel and unforgiving world and they were both terrified of it all being snatched away again.
But Gideon’s hands were firm and strong on her waist. She was real and solid beneath her, and she wasn’t letting go.
So Harrow kept pressing those tentative yet tender kisses to Gideon’s lips and as she warmed under Harrow’s attention, it felt like she was coming to life under her touch. It was utter nonsense of course, no kiss was that powerful, but Harrow let herself indulge, kissing Gideon until they were just bumping into each other, pressing their smiles together, so giddy on the feeling of overwhelming love.
Finally, she pulled back to look at Gideon again. She was grinning stupidly at her.
“Bet you never thought you’d get any action in these most hallowed of bedchambers, huh? So what do you reckon, best corpse you ever kissed?”
Harrow could have shut her up with harsh words, but she was tired of words. They had hours ahead of them to talk, properly talk, like they’d been avoiding their whole lives. Instead, she tightened her grip on Gideon’s hair and pulled her back down. She’d just discovered the most effective way of shutting Gideon up to date, and she was going to utilise it thoroughly and often.