This is Halloween!

[we_bring_hell]

The Bar loves her holidays, but she is also capable of respecting religious strictures. That's why she put a lot of thought into finding a Halloween costume for Harrow that works with her face paint and general insistence on the monochromatic.

Harrow, for her part, is baffled by the white-pinstriped black suit and the oversized bow, but the gloves are very cool, and the buckled shoes suit as well. She has no idea what's going on but she can live with this.

The Bar seems even more unusually populated than usual, and there are a lot of gourds around. Hm.

Comments

[we_do_bones]

I'm not going to let it fucking touch you.

She feels bad when she wakes Harrow up in the middle of the night, sweating and panting from a dream where Harrow is splattered on the cold cement floor of the facility below Canaan House, or where Camilla the Sixth is skewered by dozens of horrible whips of molars.

Harrow has not minded, only coaxed her back to sleep, and Gideon owes her for that as much as anything else. Her smile is still tight at the corners, but her eyes are fierce even if they're also a little misty as she nods. "We are going to ruin their whole fucking life," she agrees.

"You could take that construct apart blindfolded with one hand behind your back."

[we_bring_hell]

Harrow has her own fears about the future, but she has not seen the bone construct that terrifies Gideon. And there's really only one dream she has anymore.

(I dreamt that I was perched atop a throne of human skulls
On a cliff above the ocean, howling wind and shrieking seagulls)

"We are the greatest necromancer the Ninth has ever produced, and the greatest cavalier," she says, as much a declaration of intent as a statement of ego. "I do not fear."

[we_do_bones]

"Pretty sure Nonius was better than me," Gideon says, with a passable attempt at her usual lopsided grin. "And according to Aiglamene I haven't done a single thing right in my whole benighted life.

"But Nonius didn't have you, so I guess we can call it even."

[we_bring_hell]

"Fuck Nonius," says Harrow dangerously. No one is allowed to wreck Gideon's smug shit-eating grin but her.

(Somewhere, the ghost of Ortus Ninegad shrieks into the void.)

[we_do_bones]

That brings the grin back out in full delighted force. "Reverend Daughter, if your flock could hear you now," she says, laughing.

[we_bring_hell]

"I have forsaken my vows for you, Gideon Nav," she says, shaking her head. "I have done much that would shock the congregation of Drearburh."

[we_do_bones]

"Yeah, but...how much fun are those vows anyhow?" she says, cheeky. "And Drearburh could use a good shock. Seriously. It'd be good for them, like taking a cold shower."

[we_bring_hell]

She shakes her head. "Oh, Griddle."

"Don't you think the surprises would run both ways? Once they got over the initial shock, they'd be in a terrible haste to make you the new Reverend Mother."

[we_do_bones]

She makes a distressed sound and looks at Harrow with dismay. "I hate everything about that, no. And they would hate it too! Crux would probably commit ritual suicide."

[we_bring_hell]

"Don't worry, Griddle," she says, squeezing her cavalier's knee. "I have no intention of returning to Drearburh. Lyctor or death, for me."

[we_do_bones]

"Let's make it Lyctor," Gideon says, frowning. "If at all possible. I don't want to be picky, but I'd rather live."

[we_bring_hell]

"Admit it, Nav. Now that you've debauched a nun, a Saint is the only thing that can satisfy you."

[we_do_bones]

"I wasn't the only one doing the debauching," she says, grinning. "I was a good girl before you took me to Canaan House and started flirting with me."

Flirting, arguing with, avoiding – it's all the same thing, right?

[we_bring_hell]

"By whose definition were you possibly a good girl?" Harrow demands. "You were wildly disobedient."

[we_do_bones]

"Misunderstood," Gideon laughs. "Marginalized. Surrounded by evil nuns. Innocent as the fallen snow."

[we_bring_hell]

"I will grant all of those," Harrow says. "But you still never did what anyone damn well told you to do except for Aiglemene."

"I did not want you to be good," she concedes. "Where would I be without your trouble-making, Griddle?"

[we_do_bones]

"Aiglamene was the only one who gave me anything worthwhile to do," she counters, then considers the ceiling in exaggerated thought.

"Probably stuck with Ortus in Canaan House. Good thing I'm a cool-ass rulebreaker who never ever listened to you."

[we_bring_hell]

"A touch," she says. "A palpable touch."

"You have gotten much better at following orders since I started giving you orders you wanted to obey, yes." They are joking around with serious things here; playing with live dynamite.

"Kiss me, cavalier."

[we_do_bones]

"I am at your command, my midnight marchioness," she says, and smiles as she leans down to gently kiss her necromancer's painted mouth.

[we_bring_hell]

She strokes Gideon's bright hair. "Hm, I'm pleased that was an order worth following," she murmurs.

"Or perhaps you have finally learned to be obedient."

[we_do_bones]

"Who knows?" Gideon wonders. "Try ordering me to do something stupid and see."

[we_bring_hell]

"Hm... fetch me a flower from the greenhouse, then," she says. "No roses."

[we_do_bones]

"Is that a...right away kind of order," she asks, more to tease than to stall for time. "Or a sometime this week, put it on your to-do list kind of thing?"

[we_bring_hell]

"My orders are never sometime-this-week tasks, Griddle," she says imperiously, a spark of mischief dancing in the dark wells of her eyes.

What could more romantic stupid than going out in the dark of night to search for a flower for your Stygian sovereign?

[we_do_bones]

She straightens and salutes. "At once, my shadowy sorceress." And she turns on her heel as crisply as any Cohort recruit to shove her way out of the crowd.

Outside, she takes a deep breath. The crisp air is cool and refreshing, and it's a nice break to be in the quiet grounds surrounding the Bar rather than in the middle of the crush inside. She takes her time, and saunters into the greenhouse with her hands in her pockets, looking around.

At first she thinks it'll be next to impossible to find a flower that isn't a rose – the small glass building is filled to the brim with them. Many are growing wild; it seems whoever first brought them has left, and no one has come along to continue their work.

She walks around, looking critically at each bloom before considering or rejecting it. She finds a large white blossom (the label names it Lilium_candidum, Madonna lily) with long graceful petals and stamens sticking out like tongues; its fragrance is faintly funereal and she thinks that will please Harrow, so she plucks one long stem and turns to leave, only to be arrested by a small patch of sweet-smelling purple flowers.

After a moment's hesitation, she plucks one of these as well and makes her way back to the Bar.

Inside, it seems louder and more crowded than ever; she makes her way through the crush back to Harrow and bows with exaggerated manners, offering the lily for her to hold.

"For you," she says, and then straightens to gently tuck the violet behind Harrow's ear, and smile at the effect. "That one's for me."