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“Get in line, you big slut!”
The Body stiffened, as did Harrow, at the voice that echoed through the Tomb. As entranced as Harrowhark was of the Body, her chin snapped around towards the shout so fast that she nearly fainted. And through her blurred eyes— her whole body felt blurred, frayed, like someone had stretched each and every bone, sinew, and fiber to its breaking point— she saw a tall, white-clad figure, with a flash of startlingly red hair.
“Griddle?”
If Harrowhark had an ounce more energy, she’d have been embarrassed by the whimper of her voice. Even in this state, she could tell it sounded pretty pathetic.
But before Harrow could dwell on it, she found herself lurching forward unthinkingly, splashing into salt water. Her body creaked and wailed in protest at every movement. She didn’t know what had happened— how’d she’d gone from fighting Heralds in the depths of space to the Tomb. But whatever the case, her body had suffered terrible abuse in the process. A weariness permeated even her bones. As much as she hated sleep, right now she thought she could keel over and nap for approximately a millennium.
Still, she somehow managed to remain awake as she half-flailed and half-swam towards the upright, standing body of her dead cavalier. She staggered out onto the rocks, narrowly avoiding tripping over them. She panted. Blood trickled into her mouth, and Harrowhark realized her lips were still ragged. She forced the skin to close, but it took effort, far more effort than it should. Her head spun. Trembling, Harrow laid a hand on the cave wall to steady herself as she lifted her gaze to look into the eyes of Gideon Nav.
She’d hardly twitched during Harrowhark’s approach. Gideon usually wore all her emotions on her sleeve— an open book that Harrow could read at a glance. But now Gideon’s expression was as firm and unyielding as if it’d been carved from stone.
Her face was unpainted— and with a flash of despair, Harrowhark realized hers was as well— and she was dressed strangely. She was clad in a military uniform, but it was the opalescent white of a Lyctor. The white drained the color from her, casting a grey pallor over her skin. Even her golden-amber irises seemed dulled. A wreath made of bone rested on her head, and only the vibrant red color of her hair seemed unchanged.
“White—” Harrowhark gasped, still trying to catch her breath. “White is not your color.”
Gideon stared at her incredulously for a moment.
“No, white’s not your color, you I-only-wear-black-Mistress-of-Gloom!” she snapped. “I look good in anything. And in nothing, honestly.” Gideon shook her head and continued, under her breath: “Jackass. I can’t believe that’s the first thing you say to me. No: ‘Oh, it’s good to see you, Nav!’ 'I've missed you, Nav!' ‘Thanks for saving my life, Nav!’ ‘Hundreds of times, Nav!’”
Harrowhark screwed her eyes shut. Thinking was a challenge right now. Pain and exhaustion slowed her mind, while confusion clouded it.
“The white makes you— You look dead,” Harrow managed, opening her eyes again.
Gideon threw her head back and laughed in a way that bared far too many teeth.
“Newsflash, bozo: I am dead,” she sneered. “Have you already forgotten that I fell on a fence for you?! But what am I saying— duh, of course you forgot that. Even sacrificing my own life wasn’t good enough for you, huh? You were so unsatisfied with me, you had to purge every part of me from your mind.”
Harrowhark’s exhaustion was chased away by an energizing rush of anger.
“What?! You don’t know anything—”
She was interrupted by Ianthe spluttering out of the salt water, having finally made it to solid ground after the Body had tossed her into the pool. She stumbled onto the rocks near Harrow and Gideon, but kept her eyes warily trained on the Body.
“What the fuck is going on?!” Ianthe snarled to Gideon, before sparing a brief glance at Harrowhark. “Not that it’s not good to see you, Harry, but still what the fuck.”
Harrowhark did not feel like she was in any position to answer her. She barely understood what was happening either. Ever since she'd woken up, she'd just been operating wholly on instinct. The Girl in the Tomb, Ianthe, Gideon— just one after the other, and Harrow navigating them best she could, her mind jumping from conclusion to conclusion, trying to fill in the massive gaps in her memories, and spin together a narrative that had some semblance of coherence.
But there was only so much her fractured mind and broken body could handle at a time. So, it wasn’t until this moment that Harrow realized with a jolt that there were two other people in the Tomb, behind Gideon and Ianthe. She saw Camilla, although her hair had been shorn nearly to the scalp. And, with a surge of foreboding, looming in the shadows of the mouth of the Tomb, she saw Ortus—
No— Gideon. The other one.
Harrow took a panicked step back and nearly collapsed to the ground. It was only Gideon’s hands shooting out to catch her that kept her from clattering to the stones. The air of the Ninth was cold, but Gideon’s hands were worse than ice on Harrow’s arms. Gideon’s face creased with confusion as she looked at Harrowhark’s wild-eyed expression and followed her gaze towards Ortu— Gideon— near the Tomb’s door.
“Alright, everyone get out,” Gideon declared, bundling up Harrow closer to her.
Harrowhark let out an undignified squeak of protest, but Gideon didn’t release her. Frankly though, Harrow wasn’t certain that she was capable of standing on her own anymore.
“Me and Harrowhark are gonna talk,” Gideon continued. “Just some good, old-fashioned necro-cav bonding time.”
“Kiriona,” Ianthe warned, glaring at Gideon.
Harrowhark frowned, her confusion deepening.
Kiriona?
Gideon ignored Ianthe and jerked her thumb towards Camilla. “Paul knows what I’m talking about.”
Paul?!
Harrowhark’s eyelids half-fluttered shut, a hollow, creeping sense of dismay replacing her confusion.
Is this all a dream? Or a hallucination?
“Come on,” Cam— Paul?!— muttered to other-Gideon, and the two of them stepped out of the Tomb.
Ianthe, though, just crossed her gilded skeletal arm over her fleshy one and tried glowering at Gideon again.
“Whatever you’re doing, I don’t approve,” she snapped.
“Don’t get your panties in a bunch, we’re just going to chat.” Gideon rolled her eyes. “Now you too— get the fuck out. Go check on your sister or something. Corona’s gonna be fending off all those devils herself, trying to protect those Sixth House nerds.”
Ianthe curled her lip up. “And what about her? Are you also going to tell Alecto to ‘get the fuck out?’ Or is this when you ‘kill her?’ Or how about this is when you confess that that was obviously a lie?!”
Ianthe waved her hand towards the tiny island, where the Body, or ‘Alecto,’ as she called her, remained. Alecto had turned her attention onto a skeleton that was curled up in the crack between two stones near her. She was crouched down, staring at it, as if it was all that mattered and she was not hearing a word of the conversations happening around her.
Gideon eyed Alecto warily. “Well, I suppose I have no right to tell her to leave. This is her tomb after all. Just as long as the frozen creep stays over there.”
Alecto didn’t even glance in their direction.
“Okay, great.” Gideon turned her attention back to Ianthe. “You can go now.”
Even though Ianthe still looked irate, to Harrowhark’s shock, she listened to Gideon, throwing up her hands as she stalked out of the Tomb.
“Whatever. Not my problem,” she sniped from over her shoulder. "You go ahead and tell God then, why the Tomb is open. I’m sick of trying to clean up your messes!”
Once she'd gone, Gideon helped Harrowhark sit down on a large stone, although she kept Harrow’s upper arms in her powerful grip for a moment longer.
“If I let you go, are you gonna immediately fall over and crack your head open on a rock? Like a big baby that can’t sit up by herself?” Gideon asked.
“Fuck you,” Harrow hissed.
“As charming as always.”
Gideon let her go, and Harrowhark remained upright. Harrow lifted a shaky hand and drew it over her face. Gideon watched her from a half-crouch that kept them at roughly eye-level. Tense silence stretched between them as Harrow weighed the probabilities of this all being a figment of her imagination. When she determined the odds were likely in the range of sixty percent, she then took a moment to seriously consider if she cared— if she wanted to risk the fantasy ending by acknowledging its falsehood.
“Gideon, can I ask you something?” Harrow muttered finally.
Gideon heaved a long, loud sigh. “Fine. But only because you called me ‘Gideon’ instead of 'Griddle.'”
Harrowhark forced her eyelids to open so she could see her properly.
“Are you real?” she whispered.
Gideon’s mouth twisted into a harsh, mocking grin, but something in Harrow’s face gave her pause. Gideon’s expression softened significantly, and then she responded:
“Yeah, Sugarlips. I’m real.”
“Are you alive?” Harrowhark asked.
Gideon shrugged. “No. Kinda? As alive as I can be.”
She lifted her hands to the weird little scarf that was tied around her neck. As she pulled it away, she revealed a gaping red hole in the hollow of her throat. It didn’t ooze blood, but beyond that, it looked as fresh as the day it had happened. Harrow found herself reaching for it. Gideon’s skin shivered slightly under Harrow’s fingers as she grazed the edge of the gash. Then Harrow’s hand drifted down to hover over Gideon’s chest. She didn’t have to move Gideon’s shirt to know that she had another gouge right there, where the stake had pierced her heart. Harrow had seen that for herself when she’d pulled Gideon’s body off of the fence.
“Good aim, huh?” Gideon said with pride.
Harrow ignored her.
“You’re a revenant, then,” she muttered. “But… How…?”
Gideon spread her hands dramatically at her sides. “Wow, where to begin? You’ve missed a lot while you’ve been, what? Napping here in your girlfriend’s coffin?” Gideon lifted a finger and began counting off as she went along: “Well, first thing is, after you went night-night and left me to squash all those bugs myself, I found out I’m God’s kid. Crazy, right? Then the second thing is that we sank into the River, and I died again— Well, I died in you— Or you died— Well, actually I’m not sure what happened to you— But you were gone. Then I woke up again back in my own body. Pops did that for me, although I’m not totally sure how he managed it. And then, he named me Kiriona—”
“Wait,” Harrowhark cut her off.
She coughed once and felt faint, but she kept herself conscious through sheer force of will. And probably also through sheer force of bewilderment.
“You’re saying that God, John Gaius, is your father?” she said slowly.
“Yeah. That was point one, weren’t you listening?” Gideon scowled and leaned closer to Harrow. “As it turns out, I’m actually super-duper crazy special, probably even more special than you are, Reverend Daughter. So don’t you feel stupid now for rejecting my sacrifice.”
Harrowhark pushed aside this absolute bombshell of a revelation as anger returned, kindling a familiar, invigorating heat in her gut.
“You’re right, you dolt. I didn’t want your sacrifice,” Harrow hissed.
Gideon scoffed and began to pull back, but Harrow grasped a fistful of her shirt, halting her. Her heart was in her throat, nearly choking her, but she still forced the words out.
“But not because your sacrifice was unworthy of me. But because I was unworthy of your sacrifice.” Harrow’s eyes stung with sudden tears. She tried futilely to blink them away. “You deserved to live, Gideon Nav. Certainly more than me. But then you died anyway… and the only way I could think of to preserve your soul— to keep my Lyctorhood from devouring it— was to cut it out. That is why I forgot you. Not because I wanted to forget. But to keep what part of you alive I could.”
Gideon was silent for several, long painful moments, her expression unreadable.
“Yeah, well you did a shit job at it,” Gideon said finally. “I hardly know how to hold a two-hander anymore. I’ve been tottering around like a five year old for the past six months, trying to relearn it. Ugh, literally my favorite part of me, you stole and ate. You just got your grubby little hands on it and wouldn’t give it back. Classic Nonagesimus.”
Harrowhark’s heart dropped, and her face crumpled.
“I am sorry.”
Suddenly, she was being crushed against the muscular panes of Gideon’s chest. Harrowhark panicked for a fraction of a second, thinking she was being smothered— not that she wouldn’t deserve it— before she realized that Gideon had just wrapped her in a bear hug. Her cavalier’s arms held her tight.
“Oh my God, Harrow, don’t cry. That was a joke. I was joking. Well, not about forgetting about how to use a two-hander. That is tragically true. But I’m much better than a five year old. In fact, I think I’ll probably be back to my old self soon with just a few more weeks of training. I’m not even really mad about it anymore. Oh, but you know what I am mad about— what the fuck did you do to my sword?! You coated it in bone? Seriously, bone?! Why is it always bone with you? I mean, I know that’s your whole thing, and I respect that, but come on, man, it’s a fucking sword. That’s not good for the blade. Also, why did you not lift weights when I specifically told you to?! Oh— well, wait, since you forgot me I guess you would have forgotten everything I ever told you…”
“Can’t— breathe— Griddle—“ Harrowhark wheezed.
“Oh, oops. Yep. Sorry.”
She released Harrowhark. Gideon rocked back on her heels and awkwardly rubbed at the back of her neck as Harrow inhaled deep lungfuls of air, her dizziness easing. She realized she was still clutching Gideon’s shirt like her life depended on it, and Harrow let go of the fabric, her face hot. She wiped away the few tears that had fallen onto her cheeks, and Gideon thoughtfully pretended not to notice.
“...I hope you know that I died for you because I wanted to die for you,” Gideon continued in a gentler voice. “I mean, I didn’t wanna die, but I wanted you to live more. And we’d put up a hell of a good fight, but we were backed into a corner. What else was there to do?”
Gideon shifted her weight as if she wanted to move closer again, but was uncertain if she should. Harrow braced her palms against the rock she sat on to help her stay upright, and to give her something to do with her hands so she wouldn’t cling to Gideon again. The pull of the lapping black wave of unconsciousness was stronger now in Harrow’s mind, but she struggled against it.
“At least, I didn’t like die-die, I guess. Thanks to you," Gideon said, offering Harrow a small, crooked smile.
Harrowhark’s eyes drifted closed.
“Yeah, well… I wanted the last dance,” Harrow mumbled through her growing exhaustion.
Gideon laughed a much softer and kinder laugh than earlier. “What the fuck does that mean? Do you even know how to dance, Harrow?”
But Harrowhark’s weakness had finally won out. As she slumped over, Gideon’s strong arms reached out to catch her again.
“Alright then, pass out to escape having the conversation. Another classic Nonagesimus move. Enjoy your nap.”
The last thing Harrowhark felt was Gideon tenderly brushing a bit of her wet hair off of her forehead, and the warmth of Gideon’s breath on her cheek as she whispered to her:
“But you know, darling, if I’m being honest, I’d die for you again, if I had to. Whether you wanted me to or not.”