Gideon the Ninth, Chapter 31

[we_bring_hell]

Harrowhark stands in the hallway and watches the Third retreat, her brow furrowing a wrinkle into her paint. She has an uncomfortable feeling she's been underestimating Ianthe Tridentarius all along, and her head whirls with being suddenly hurled back into the unforgiving meatgrinder of House politics.

But the secret is out and she is vindicated; she did not kill Protesilaus Ebdoma, and Dulcinea Septimus is a liar.

She hears the unmistakable footsteps of Gideon Nav joining her, and forgets all that. She turns in a swish of black cloth and says, “Follow me.”

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[we_do_bones]

Gideon has zero experience with being a comforting presence, especially with Harrow, but some instinct keeps her still while Harrow moves, while the song begins to play, while Harrow settles down again, nearly close enough to kiss. She's confronted with the bizarre desire to drag Harrow into her arms and cuddle her close, the way a child might cuddle a doll or stuffed animal.

She doesn't understand it, but what's to understand? She feels like a key in a lock, like she was built to be right here, like her arm was designed to have Harrow's hand rest lightly on it.

So she listens to the words, and she studies Harrow's face, and she, very carefully, as though Harrow were a wild thing that might skitter away any moment, leans forward to deliberately press her mouth to Harrow's forehead.

[we_bring_hell]

Harrow lets out a breath, not quite a sigh; not quite a sound. Melts inward toward the bulk of her cavalier.

She feels as if she has been preparing for this night for as long as she's been here; not just rehearsing her secrets and learning to live with her tears, but listening obsessively, cataloging, building a library of shorthands in her vast Nonagesimus memory. To be able to say:

Like this. It feels like this.

When I try to open up to you I get completely lost
Houses swallowed by the earth, windows thick with frost
And I reach deep down within, but the pathways twist and turn
And there's no light anywhere, and nothing left to burn

She buries her face in Gideon's chest, trying to ignore the topsy turvy hiccups of less pure emotions mixed in with the comfort.

[we_do_bones]

Harrow is as light as a broken bird; Gideon's two-hander feels like it has more heft. It's easy for Gideon to slide an arm under Harrow's shoulders and to shift herself up a little, to drag her adept in so Harrow can pillow herself on the hollow of Gideon's shoulder and curl, if she so chooses, along the length of Gideon's body. Gideon has spent her whole life training to be able to take a hit; she can take this, too.

Once she's settled, she keeps one hand firm on Harrow's shoulder and slides the other under her own head, and takes a deep breath, fascinated by the way Harrow's head rises and falls with her chest.

"So are they trustworthy?" she says, finally, tugging the conversation back to where it had paused. "The people here?"

She's not at all sure about Moiraine Sedai, but she wants to know what Harrow's determined; she's been here longer.

[we_bring_hell]

This feels good. Not too much; no rising boil. Just held. She closes her eyes and feels not exactly anything except safe, warm; space turned firm and strong around her instead of cold and thin.

"Yes," she says. "The ones I have met have all been... friendly. Some have been friends."

"I spoke of the House of Arch. Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji--they are both warriors and adepts, and they love each other. They only just figured it out," she says, with a tone of voice that is downright hypocritical under the circumstances. "They have been confidantes and comforts."

[we_do_bones]

"Good for them," Gideon says, absolutely unaware of the deep irony of what she's saying.

"I met them. Wei Wuxian twice, Lan Wangji once. I snapped at him," she confides, feeling apologetic about it all over again. "He was extremely nice about it.

"Wei Wuxian...I liked him. We sparred out by the lake."

[we_bring_hell]

"He would be. He was very kind to me when I was... hurting," she says, waving away a vast complex of garbage emotions in a single word. "And they helped me consecrate my makeup."

"They do not get along with Moiraine Sedai, but I try to maintain neutrality. I like her quite a lot, and she has much to teach me."

[we_do_bones]

Gideon hmmmmmmmms in what she thinks is a neutral way but which is actually extremely skeptical.

She's not sure what to make of Moiraine Sedai; she just knows she doesn't exactly trust the woman. The two young men are earnest and honest, and Ingress was the same, but Moiraine...?

"I met her, too," she says, after a moment, fully convinced that she has reserved judgment despite the obvious evidence to the contrary.

[we_bring_hell]

"She is very reserved and composed," Harrow says, with a twist of smile. "And powerful. And ruthless, I think. She told me, 'death is lighter than a feather; duty is heavier than a mountain.'"

"But she is kind in her cautious way. She has trusted me, and given me good advice, about magic and about Warders and about... about my inheritance." Harrow stills, as she prepares herself to say something extremely embarrassing. The pattern is perhaps becoming obvious.

"If I had had a mother who was... who was not what my mother was," she says carefully. "She is what I would--imagine."

[we_do_bones]

She truly cannot conceive of a less maternal figure than the Reverend Mother, so she just nods.

"You must have trusted her, if you brought her into Canaan House," she says, and wonders at a world where Harrow was so worried about her she risked bringing a healer from a universe away.

[we_bring_hell]

"I was desperate," she says. "I thought I had broken you."

She does not try to look in Gideon's face; it would be embarrassing for both of them. She stays curled where she is, cradled and pressed against the simply ridiculous number of abs Gideon seems to have fit into her long torso.

"I am nothing without you, Nav. I hope you know that. I emptied my fear and hatred out on you, and you took it, and never flinched. You were indomitable, and I wasted your strength on digging ditches and escape attempts."

"You should have been my cavalier long ago."

[we_do_bones]

"You say the sweetest things," says Gideon, profoundly embarrassed despite Harrow's tact. She's flushed red to her ears, and she doesn't know what to say.

But Harrow is baring herself and it seems only fair that Gideon do the same, or, barring that, at least accept her confessions with the solemnity with which they're offered. "Harrow, there's no universe where you're nothing. If I'd never been born, or my mother had never fallen into the Ninth, you'd still be incredible."

And then, because she can't not: "It would just be a much less interesting, much less hot universe."

[we_bring_hell]

"I won't argue with that," she says.

After a long, lazy pause: "I could sleep like this, I think, although it is objectively the stupidest way to make use of the available surfaces."

To wit: laying half on and half off of both beds, with a jumble of dishes at one end, the lights on, and no pillows or blankets.

[we_do_bones]

"We should probably clean up," suggests Gideon, who doesn't move and seemingly has no intention of doing so.

[we_bring_hell]

Harrow hmms and burrows in closer; her already ridiculous temperature seems to spike.

The skeleton on the stand in the corner stirs and creaks forward to deal with the dishes and rescue the pillows Harrow kicked off the bed.

[we_do_bones]

It's like cuddling a radioactive bomb. Gideon's chuckle rumbles through her chest as the skeleton does their chores for them.

"Do you want me to move?" she asks, after a moment. Her own bed is perpendicular to Harrow's and as much as she'd hated the thought of sleeping at Harrow's feet before, she finds she no longer minds.

On the other hand, she's pretty damn comfortable right here.

[we_bring_hell]

The skeleton is not programmed with any particular theorem, so in truth it's Harrow doing the chores through mental puppet strings instead of her own bony hands.

It drops the pillows a little further up the bed from Gideon and creaks to the light switch, and back towards its stand, and only once it has fallen still again does Harrow respond.

"This is fine," she says. "For tonight, at least." And if Gideon doesn't regret cuddling the world's boniest hot water bottle.

"I don't want to lose track of you, Griddle."

She rolls over though, rotating within the circle of her cavalier's arms into a classic little spoon position; she is becoming uncomfortably conscious of Gideon's mix of hard muscle and soft flesh pressed against her face and front side, and theorizes it will be better facing the other way. Her shoulder blades, sharp and raw though they may be, are certainly less sensitive than her chest.

[we_do_bones]

"Like you could," says Gideon, embarrassed by her own relief. As a distraction, she drags herself and Harrow up the mattress so she can slide a pillow under her head and curl around Harrow like an overprotective calyx.

They lie there together in the big warm dark, Gideon counting Harrow's breaths as they push her back gently into Gideon's chest, and after a long while, Gideon says:

"Did you try to kill me, back on the Ninth? With the shuttle?"

[we_bring_hell]

She's very nearly lulled to sleep, Gideon's powerful form backstopping, her breath grazing over the stubble of her tonsure. And then the question goes off like a forgotten landmine. Harrow goes very still.

"No. That wasn't supposed to happen. Not to you, not to Ninegad."


"He was supposed to be discovered and returned. Stripped of his title and given penance. We had... arranged it."

[we_do_bones]

"But – then –"

If not Harrow, trying to off Gideon finally and spectacularly, then who?

[we_bring_hell]

"Crux," she says, in a voice like a weary sigh.

Crux was the only person who took care of Harrow after her parents decided to exit existence; yet Harrow knows perfectly well he was beastly to literally every other person on the Ninth.

"He meant it for Ortus, not you. Ninegad and I were perfectly agreed that he had no business going to Canaan House, but Crux..."

Crux, who had sold his soul with the rest of them but was the only who didn't direct his guilt onto the child they created; who instead created a monument to service where his conscience should be and washed his hands of it.

"He could never bear any sign of disloyalty."

[we_do_bones]

So that was it. The rotten old seneschal with his implacable fury and grasping devotion to his House had sent Sister Glaurica's ghost screaming back to the Eighth, and now Silas Octakiseron knew too much.

She doesn't say so. If Harrow heard what Silas had told Gideon, she'd be straight through the door in her nightdress with a sack of emergency bones and a very focused expression. “What a dope,” Gideon says instead. “I was never loyal a day in my life and I still saw you in the raw.”

[we_bring_hell]

Harrow exhales.

Gideon's arm is draped across her like a safety belt on a shuttle, Harrow's hands clasped loosely around the wrist, the powerful hand flat against her stomach, unbelievable in its span.

On the whole, it is not necessarily any less... disturbing... than facing the other way.

"Go to sleep, Gideon," Harrow says in a slightly strangled voice.

[we_do_bones]

Likely to her adept's surprise...

Gideon does.




And for once, she doesn't dream of anything.

[we_bring_hell]

Harrow takes longer to get to sleep, but eventually her mind and body quiet enough to let her go.

She has the same dream she always has.

I dreamt that I was perched atop a throne of human skulls
On a cliff above the ocean, howling wind and shrieking seagulls
And the dream went on forever, one single static frame

Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name.