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I'm not sure where I heard it said, that memories are what keep someone alive once they're gone. It's not the kind of sentiment typical in a world where 'dead' and 'gone' only bear passing resemblance to each other.
But I know I heard it, once upon a time. Maybe I even believed it, Harrow, because I know when I fell on a spike for you, I had some half-assed notion you'd think about me sometimes. Probably with fury, at first, and then maybe later with something like softness.
Maybe you'd look at my sword and think, I wish Gideon was here to fight, because I still have no biceps or you'd see some girl in sunglasses and remember Gideon looked great in those. (Because I do.)
Maybe– no, my other maybes were pathetic, I'm not sharing them.
The point is, I hoped you'd remember, and that maybe a little part of me would survive that way, become part of you. You know, just some of my better tendencies, like a sense of humour, and the urge to work out.
Those first days, as I sank in you, as I flickered and stretched and faded out in your blood, your bones, the heart of you... those first days, I think you remembered. I wasn't present for them like I was for all the days afterward, but you must've remembered me. You must've thought about it. I know you thought about me, enough to decide to saw into your own skull and cut me out.
Because apparently hoping for a half-nostalgic twinge of fondness, one day in the distant future, was too goddamn much to ask. Instead, you remembered me for a handful of days, and then decided you couldn't bear to remember me at all. Couldn't bear to let even the tiniest part of me into you (and let me tell you, Nonagesimus, you'd be weird to be asking for just a tiny part).
And so you ignored whatever guidebook the old world gave you for loss, wherever I found out that memory is supposed to be necromantic in its own way. Like always, you did the opposite of what I wanted you to do, and you forgot me, instead.
I felt you forget me, Harrow. I felt it, because that's how I woke up. That's how I kept existing, inside you (and not even in the fun way). I felt it, because I was experiencing the world with you, having to rummage through your shit if I wanted to know anything at all. I was there, a ghost in the back of your head, forgotten.
It wasn't sweet. It wasn't reawakening to some bright new dawn. It was drowning and re-surfacing, endlessly, thinking I'd finally be allowed to fall beneath the water only to be dragged back out, choking, forced to keep facing the fact that you'd cut open your own highly-prized, war crime-begotten brain just to get rid of me. Just to make sure you wouldn't have to live another single day with me in it. Not even in your head. Not even in whatever burned-out husk you call a heart.
Harrow, if you'd forgotten me by accident, it'd still have hurt, but accidents are one thing. If years had passed, and whatever Lyctoral shit you were doing flooded your brain, washed out the musings you'd have been doing on my awesome hotness... I couldn't have blamed you, not really. What's seventeen years, to centuries?
But you forgot me on purpose. You cut me out and let me drown, and that kept me alive, instead of your memories.
I want to ask how you could think I'd want that, when I gave it all up for you, but I know better, because you didn't think about me at all. You just couldn't bear to be beholden to someone, even in the smallest way. You couldn't bear to keep perceiving me, even as just a tickle at the edges of your brain.
You didn't think about what I wanted, and then you removed your ability to think about me at all.
I died knowing you'd hate me for it, and that was enough, really. Being hated by you, that would've been enough. At least you hating me meant you were thinking about me.
You forgetting me? That, Harrow. That hurt like a bitch. And not even just because I was dragged out of the water, dragged out of your soul, choked and half-drowning. But because all I ever wanted was to have your attention, to be swallowed by you, part of you, undeniable. And then you couldn't even give me that.
I'm not just mad because you forgot, I'm mad because the forgetting dragged me back to life, stuck you as a pathetic half-Lyctor, made a mockery of my last gift, of you, of us. I'm mad because I wanted you to use me, use me and live.
But maybe, god, maybe there's something in me more pathetic than I thought, because when you forgot me, I realised maybe all I ever wanted was more than that. Maybe all I wanted was for you to use me and live and remember.
Maybe, in the end, if we'd had more time, that's what I should've said (along with, do some push-ups now and again, your arms are like wet noodles, and take care of my fucking sword, asshole.) I didn't think I'd have to ask something so simple, but then again, it's you. I should be used to being wrong.
So maybe I should've gone all the way, been just as fully pathetic as we both already knew I was. Maybe I should've looked straight at you before I fell on a railing and said the thing I didn't think I'd have to say.
Don't forget me, Harrowhark.