Work Text:
Harrowhark the First doesn’t remember waking up. She doesn’t even remember dreaming. All she knows now is the feeling of cold bathroom tiles pressed against her knees and the dryness of her own mouth. Harrowhark heaves and shivers and her face is all wet and she makes a pathetic, confused sound, the only semi-coherent thought in her head being What the fuck is going on?
Harrowhark’s ribcage is splintering apart, it seems. Maybe she’s dying. Maybe some illness has finally figured out how to be faster than her cells’ attempts at regeneration. She can’t seem to remember how to use her lungs and her heart has the rhythm of a four-year-old attempting to play drums in their kindergarten band class. Is that a thing? Harrowhark the First wouldn’t know. Harrowhark the First didn’t grow up with other kids, except for one stupid face of one stupid girl who did the stupidest fucking things right up until
Right up until
Harrow the Ninth manages to lift herself just enough to get her face over the toilet just in time. The acid burns her tongue as she retches, again and again until nothing’s left and then a couple more times just for good measure. The smell makes her gag once or twice more.
Harrow slides off the toilet ungraciously and faintly registers the pain of her forearms hitting the floor. Her forehead rests there now, too, and she sucks air in through her teeth, a strangled, haggard sound, and then, somehow, she exhales without sobbing, she thinks, but that victory doesn’t last long as her body draws a short breath in against her will and pushes it out with a small something akin to a hiccup, followed by a long, drawn-out whine that can’t even keep its stupid goddamn pitch. Harrow rolls over onto her side and she’s all alone and she’s two hundred and one corpses stuffed into a small, frail sack of skin and they’re all beating the shit out of each other.
“Nonagesimus.”
Harrow goes quiet. She lies there, pathetic, foetal, cliché, perhaps, and she doesn’t dare draw one single breath.
“Get up.”
Her knees sway as she slowly, carefully, rises, trying hard to keep her eyes away from the contents of the toilet, lest she start throwing up her organs. Her hand finds the edge of the sink and she leans onto it.
“You can stop screaming now.”
Harrow wasn’t screaming. But it sounds like a pretty decent idea right about now.
“Splash your face.”
Harrow manages to find the tap and lets the lukewarm water run and obeys. It’s not particularly helpful, but at least there’s less vomit on her chin now.
“Good. Drink.”
Harrow just stares at the stream of water.
“You’ve just lost your body weight in fluids, dumbass. Granted, that isn’t a lot, but it’s still a rather upsetting ratio.”
“I don’t need that.” Harrow croaks. “I’m a Lyctor. Dumbass. And you’re not even real.” She turns the tap off and turns around and is right. Nobody’s there.