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 turns her hand so she can catch Harrow's palm to palm, and leans forward to gently nudge her forehead against Harrow's thigh.

"Yeah," she says, eyes squeezing closed. "I think you're right.

"I could use time here, too. You know the level of warrior that just wanders around here, Harrow? I learned more in two sparring sessions than in my whole bout with Tern."

[we_bring_hell]

Harrow shivers, but lets her other hand fall to touch the bright red brush of Gideon's hair.

The feverish knot of feelings in her stomach begins to boil, but she can touch the flame for a moment. One (1) taste.

"Yes," she says. It means absolutely nothing.

[we_do_bones]

A shiver unfurls along Gideon's neck, through her shoulders, along her back, into her gut. The only other time someone had rested their hand so gently on her head, she'd been dying and unable to really focus on the sensation.

"That thing that killed Isaac and Jeannemary," she says, fiercely. "I'm going to be ready for it. I'll be better."

She looks up, golden eyes suddenly ferocious. "I'm not going to let it fucking touch you."

[we_bring_hell]

That brings her back down to earth; probably just in time. She strokes Gideon's hair carefully, trying to transmit comfort through her skin. She doesn't know if she's capable of it

(my heart's an autoclave)

but she is determined to try.

"We will take it apart, Gideon," she says, her voice husky. "We are the Ninth House. Bones hold no terror for us. We are charged to remember all that was lost. And we do not stint in our vengeance."

[we_do_bones]

Harrow says we and Gideon is swept under by a rush of gratitude as implacably endless as the ocean surrounding Canaan House. Her eyes sting and her throat closes as she leans her head back against Harrow's leg and into her touch like a dog who has just understood it will be petted instead of kicked.

"Fidelity," she whispers. "You better believe it."

[we_bring_hell]

Gideon, curled up against her. Gideon, sharing her warmth and breathing on her thigh through only layer of cloth. Gideon.

Emotions seethe up her throat, not all of them positive. They have orbited each other for too long, like the Ninth House and its barely-smaller satellite, trading places and swapping craters.

The pressure on her thigh blurs with Gideon kicking her legs out from under her--with her father lifting her up to reach the highest books in the library of Drearburh--with her father lifting her up to loop her noose over the rafter.

Her eyes begin to sting and she launches herself off the bed to the side, away from the touch. She misses it as soon as it's gone, and she begins to pace beside the bed, holding her elbows.

[we_do_bones]

Gideon sits up, head spinning from the sudden loss of touch and warmth and sensation, and swallows the words I'm sorry.

A clean slate, right?

She says, instead: "What's up?"

[we_bring_hell]

Inhale. Exhale. "Don't laugh at me," she says in a small voice, as a warning.

[we_do_bones]

Gideon sits up a little straighter, accurately recognizing that to tease the Reverend Daughter in this moment would be to sign her own death warrant. Confessions or no, Harrowhark Nonagesimus could and would still murder her so thoroughly no one would ever find her poor dead remains.

"I won't laugh at you," she says.

[we_bring_hell]

"I have been - very alone - for a very long time," she says. There's a lump in her throat, and every time she forces words past it more tears squeeze out of her.

"I was raised by Crux. and while he was kind... to me," she adds, acknowledging he has been horrid to Gideon. "He did not touch me if he could avoid it. He did not--dare."

Gideon knows; she had only Aiglamene. But at least there was an excuse for physical contact there.

[we_do_bones]

Gideon nods. She knows, maybe better than anyone else could. They grew up in each other's pockets, but almost no one ever touched Gideon aside from Aiglamene.

And Aiglamene's touches weren't so much caresses as 'a fist the same density as the rock of Drearburh slamming into the side of her head,' but at least it was something.

If Harrow is overwhelmed by even the slightest flavor, then...

She should probably just sit on her hands.

[we_bring_hell]

"I just get overwhelmed," she says, angrily wiping tears away. "You didn't--you didn't do anything wrong. I just get overwhelmed."

She settles back on the bed, near the head, and lays her hand back on Gideon's fiery hair tentatively. "This may come as a surprise, Griddle, but I don't like losing control," she says acerbically.

[we_do_bones]

Gideon watches her with no small amount of concern. "I am beyond surprised to hear that," she says, but it lacks any real enthusiasm behind it.

"Harrow, you don't need to –"

She flounders for words, and just looks up at her adept a little plaintively. Harrow can't handle even the slightest flavor, and Gideon would pour hot sauce into her mouth. Gideon is finding within herself a craving for touch and shared human warmth she'd never known existed, but that doesn't mean she should bulldoze Harrow's boundaries.

She made Harrow cry. She feels terrible.

[we_bring_hell]

She wriggles down, until her face is on a level with Gideon's. Her height makes her almost fit into the bed, and she kicks the pillows the rest of the way out of the way.

"Gideon. I am--" She reaches up to touch Gideon's face, her strong jaw, the curve into her neck. "Can I play a song for you?"

[we_do_bones]

"Sure," says Gideon, helpless. Harrow could ask her for any favor right now and she's reasonably sure it would actually be physically impossible to say no. She hopes, a little frantically, that Harrow doesn't want her to kill anyone.

[we_bring_hell]

Not at the moment.

She rolls over to the music device and inserts a familiar disc, then rolls back.

She looks into Gideon's eyes and puts a hand on her arm, feeling the reassuring power in her bicep, and bites her lip as the song plays.

Hand me your hand, let me look in your eyes
As my last chance to feel human begins to vaporize
Maybe it's the heat in here, maybe it's the pressure
You ought to head for the exits, the sooner the better

I am this great, unstable mass of blood and foam
And no one in her right mind would make my home her home
My heart's an autoclave
My heart's an autoclave

Her eyes plead to be understood; that she doesn't cry because she hates it but because she is full of poison and good feelings push it out into the air.

[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.