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[we_bring_hell]

You would need an advanced degree in Nonagesamics to realize that Harrowhark is ecstatically happy this morning, but even the layman can tell that her usual spikes are retracted somewhat. Not the spikes on her boots--Gideon liked these boots, and she has no intention of wearing anything else for a while. But the metaphorical spikes.

Aside from her boots she is back in her standard habit--black trousers, black long-sleeve shirt with the high collar. No gloves. Her hair is freshly cropped back to her scalp. Her face is painted with exceptional care, in what Harrow considers the sexiest pattern, because Harrowhark has opinions about things like that. This one is called The Chain and has considerable, immodest flourishes. She has edged the perimeter of the painted skull with midnight purples and deep blood reds, an even greater departure from propriety.

She is writing in her journal, and since she writes in code there is no way anyone can tell she has doodled One Flesh One End approximately one hundred times. She has been eating oatmeal, and by God she even ate the raisins.

Things are good. For now, for once, things are good.

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[blue_ajah]

A shining golden corona springs into existence around her as Moiraine grasps saidar.

She does nothing, yet, save to observe. She will not intervene unless it becomes necessary -- but if it should, she will be ready to do so in an instant.

Dark eyes are narrow as she studies Harrow and Gideon, striving to discern the nature of the connection between them.

[we_bring_hell]

"I am changing to Earth now," she says aloud. "One third of the way there, Nav."

The differentiation is harder; uglier, for Harrow. Her mind is filled with images of the earth reclaiming not just generic energy or life, but Gideon specifically. Gideon's niche on the Ninth. Gideon's bones hoeing snow-leeks for a century without respite. The taste of bile fills her mouth and makes her want to spit. Physically, she feels much better than channeling from Moiraine, but all she wants to do is stop and check on Gideon.

But if she loses the thread now, this was for nothing; as with the avulsion field challenge, that knowledge motivates and hardens her.

Earth, Earth to erode the difference between here and there. Earth to bring them together. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

"Two thirds," she says. "We're doing it, Gideon."

[we_do_bones]

Gideon is past any ability to respond, because when Harrow said I am changing to Earth the siphoning shifted and all she can do is fall over, pathetically, mouth open in a mute scream. The cold fingers of Harrow's siphon turn grasping; they grip her stomach and lungs, sink into her bones. Everything aches like a badly-healed fracture, everything spins and starbursts explode in her vision.

We're doing it, she hears Harrow say, from a distance, and she gathers herself, lurches into the connection like she's throwing logs on a fire. Air is burning in her lungs and every one of her nerves feels like someone has doused them with gasoline and lit them on fire and she's hollowing out, but there's plenty left. For Harrow, there's everything.

[we_bring_hell]

Harrow feels a trickle coming from her eyes. It's not blood, for once; she's crying.

Gideon, Gideon, Gideon.

She has to finish it.

Air now, to mark the edges and attenuate the spell to nothingness. She reaches for the delicate alveoli of Gideon's beautiful, powerful lungs; the cells carrying air through her blood.

Harrowhark has heard more than her share of death rattles on the Ninth, and she's not sure if it's her cavalier actually making that horrible sound or her imagination as she conjures thanergetic Air. All she knows is that it works, and the stoma in the air unfolds to reveal their room and the grey skeleton of perpetual bone, already hastening towards the portal. Rapidly, she ties it off and spins to kneel beside Gideon, slamming the door shut on further siphoning.

"We did it, Gideon, we did it," she says, checking her thalogram for the extent of the damage. Wiping sweat from Gideon's brow with the sleeves of her shirt. "You did it. You were perfect, fearless, incredible."

"Never again," she whispers. "Never again."

[we_do_bones]

It's a beautiful day, sunny and clear enough that Gideon had rolled up her sleeves earlier to cool off after her reps, and she has no idea how it got so dark so suddenly. She's broken out into a cold, full-body sweat, but her lungs are burning and her throat is desert-dry. Harrow's power reaches further, and things start turning off throughout Gideon's body like someone is hitting a series of switches.

Stay awake, she tells herself, a little distantly worried about not being able to feel her left arm. If she loses it, Harrow loses it, and she can't, won't. The portal opens in the air and it feels like it opens in her gut; she retches and shudders and refuses to close her eyes.

Except she must have lost it for a second, or something, because a door slams and everything goes black, and when she manages to focus her eyes again, it's on Harrow, kneeling by her side.

She feels like absolute shit. She feels like she's been stomped on all over by the entire contingent of Ninth House skeletons; she feels as sick as if she'd accidentally seen Crux naked. "Don't cry, Nonagesimus," she says, except her vocal chords are refusing to work, and it comes out more like the ghost of a dehydrated whisper.

"You're gonna ruin your make-up."

[blue_ajah]

She moves in a flurry of silk skirts, dropping to her knees beside Gideon Nav and reaching for her arm.

"Give me a moment, Harrow; you must not touch her, only for a moment--"

Golden light flares, and bright silver threads of Spirit race over Gideon like a spider's web as Moiraine Delves.

She would be surprised at what she finds, except that she has seen something like this before. What might have killed another will apparently not kill Gideon Nav, not today.

As she has done previously, Moiraine sends Healing over her to relieve stress and support her system, balancing and lessening the shock she has just endured with the rush of weaves of Air and Water. She pulls back, then, and waits.

[we_bring_hell]

She draws away and meets her skeleton, coming out of the portal; when she turns back to Moiraine and Harrow, there are two of them.

"Is she all right? I saw damage to her lungs and bones, but nothing that won't heal. Nothing obvious, anyway." Her teeth worry a pink patch on her lower lip.

"We should put you to bed," she says to Gideon; apparently that is what the skeletons are for. Nonagesimus turndown service.

[we_do_bones]

Whatever Moiraine does tingles and flushes her with warmth; she gasps like she's been ducked underwater and is overtaken by a great, racking cough as something unpleasant in her lungs starts knitting itself together.

"Trying to get me in the sack," she says, idiotically, trying and failing to push herself up; she ends up faceplanting into the grass. "With skeletons –? Guess I'm getting boned."

She laughs, a little hysterically, and tries her level best not to pass out again or to freak out about how her brain is apparently short-circuiting. "I'm fine."

[blue_ajah]

“Yes, I believe she will recover without difficulty,” Moiraine says, serenely.

“Rest and food will help.”

[we_bring_hell]

"Shut up, you yellow-eyed idiot," Harrow says without rancor. The two skeletons position themselves at either end of Gideon to carry her through the portal.

She turns to Moiraine. "I would very much like to debrief with you--shut UP, Gideon!--about this, but I must see to her first. Will you be here a little longer?"

[blue_ajah]

“I shall. Come and find me when you are ready,” she says.

“Rest well, Gideon. Light illumine and protect you both.”

[we_bring_hell]

"Thank you," Harrow says, and follows the skeletons through the portal, closing it behind her.

[we_do_bones]

Gideon, who shut her mouth at Harrow's scolding – smart, Nonagesimus, in her current state there's no way she'd be able to resist a 'debrief' joke – manages to flip a tired thumbs-up to Moiraine before the skeletons cart her through the portal and into their room.

"Wasn't I just here?" she wonders; she feels drunk and hurt and like every single one of her cells tried to make a break for it at the exact same time. The skeletons place her on a bed, which is nice, they don't just dump her onto it or something, and she tries very hard not to throw up at the motion.

"Whoa. Nice party trick."

[we_bring_hell]

She's in Harrow's bed; Gideon's is still full of swords. Harrow sits down beside her on the edge and takes her hand.

"Rest, Griddle," she says. "You'll be all right, but just let yourself rest for once. I'll send up food."

Never again, she thinks. But she knows if she really has to, never again will become one more time. And she feels loathsome.

[we_do_bones]

"Harrow," she says, and her hand grips her adept's, a little loosely despite how hard she is trying to squeeze it. "Harrow, I'd do it again. If you need me to, I'll do it a hundred more times."

It comes in a rush, all broken words and impossible promises, but even dipping close to that edge again, just for an experiment, just because they wanted to try something hasn't convinced Gideon that this isn't exactly what she's supposed to do.

She's Harrow's cavalier; that means she does what Harrow needs, even if Harrow doesn't want her to. "It's okay, Harrow."

She says it like saying Harrow's name might be able to erase some of that haunted expression that was in Harrow's face as she bent over Gideon on the grass, as she sits here now. "It's okay. You didn't break me. And it wouldn't matter if you did. You know that, right?"

[we_bring_hell]

"It would matter, you absolute maniac," Harrow says, looking appalled.

"Gideon Nav, look me in the eye and understand. The Ninth has not had a cavalier like you in a thousand years. If I threw you away for a-a-a-a experiment, may I be horsewhipped from the door of the Tomb to the top of the bore."

[we_do_bones]

"Who," says Gideon, grinning a little, even though it hurts, because Harrow is being nice to her and that's still too much of a novelty to pass up. "Who would even try, Crux would cry himself silly. I'm your cavalier, you dweeb; it's my privilege to break myself for you."

She shifts, winces, lies with the bald-faced confidence of the very tired and criminally earnest. "This! Nothing. I barely felt it. You can't get rid of me that easy, Reverend Daughter."

[we_bring_hell]

"I would conjure a skeleton to do it to myself," she says. "And another three to hold Crux back."

She strokes Gideon's hair as if it could warm her hand like the color promises. "But do you know what we have now, Griddle?" She smiles, knife-sharp. "A way out, if all else fails. I won't do it again for practice or for fun, but if it's a choice between half-killing you or letting us both die completely--we have a way out."

She runs an ungloved finger along Gideon's jaw. "Thank you for doing your paint properly. You looked very dashing." Until Harrow knocked the dash out of her.

[we_do_bones]

Her defenses are too low for bluster; Harrow runs a warm finger along her jaw and she shivers at the touch. Even that hurts – everything hurts – but it hurts in a way she's all too familiar with, like the ache of an old injury flaring up in the rain.

"Part of the gig," she wants to say, but it comes out as more of a murmur half into the pillow. Harrow's hand on her hair, Harrow's touch along her face; it's about as far from when Dulcinea Septimus did the same thing as its possible to be even though Gideon knows, academically, it should feel the same.

"Worth it." If it gives them an escape. If it gives Harrow an idea. If it helps Harrow; it was worth it, it's all worth it. Like an idiot, Gideon reaches for the hand at her jaw and presses her mouth to the tips of those fingers. Chivalric, she thinks, dazed. ...Or otherwise.

"If you keep being nice to me," she says, tired, "I'm gonna start getting used to it. Go nerd out, Nonagesimus. I'm fine."

[we_bring_hell]

Gideon kisses the tips of her fingers, and Harrow can't breath, like it's her own lungs she wrung out. Her own bones turned to sand.

She stands up as if the bed is on fire.

"I'll send you food," she says, speaking incredibly quickly. "Get some rest."

She makes it to the door, trailed by one of the skeletons, and halts. "And Griddle?" she says. "Maybe you ought to get used to it." Her expression is intent and dangerous, before she shuts the door.

[blue_ajah]

When Harrow makes it downstairs into the bar, she will find Moiraine ensconced at her usual table with tea, a carafe of spring water, and a plate of fruit, cheese, and an assortment of crackers and breads.

The Aes Sedai does not appear to be concerned about waiting, and is perusing a book. Closer examination reveals that it is a journal of some sort.

[we_bring_hell]

Harrow stops at the Bar first, sending the skeleton back upstairs with a tray, then moves to join Moiraine. She slips wearily into a chair.

"Thank you for your help," she says quietly.

That was... mortifying. But educational.

[blue_ajah]

"You are welcome."

She pushes the food toward Harrow, and indicates both the water and tea with a single graceful gesture.

"How is Gideon?"

[we_bring_hell]

She pours a glass of water with a steady hand. "She is well enough. I have ordered her to rest."

"She is too reckless with her own life," she says with a frown.

[blue_ajah]

“Or trusts your judgement,” the Aes Sedai murmurs.