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_bring_hell]

That shutters the good humor in Harrow's face. "I will not be poisoning you for any experiments, Griddle."

"Does it trouble you that I give you orders, truly? It is one reason why cavalier-adept relationships are... fraught."

[we_do_bones]

"What? No. I'm kidding, mostly."

She would like to see what drunk feels like, but she's not exactly clamoring to lose her focus and ability to fight, so it's all fine.

(And she did, uh...accidentally have some of Ingress' mudslide already.)

"You're the brains of this operation, I'm just the muscle. I'm comfortable with that."

[we_bring_hell]

"You are my heart," Harrow murmurs. "And if you truly wish to drink or forgo your paint while we are here, I will not begrudge you."

"Only it is not the standard I would expect of Ortus, or another cavalier I did not love."

[we_do_bones]

"Oof," says Gideon, now feeling extremely guilty about her little joke. Not up to the standard of Ortus? That hurts.

"Harrow, I'm not planning on taking advantage of your feelings for me," she says, which is still and extremely weird thing to be saying. Harrow loving her is great, amazing, wonderful, but still only a drop in the bucket of their long acquaintance. She reaches to tuck the violet a little more securely behind Harrow's ear. "I know how you want me to look and behave, and I'm not gonna just throw all that in your face. It may not mean anything to me, but it means a lot to you. And that's all that I need to know."

[we_bring_hell]

"I am trying to 'loosen up'," she says quietly. "I do not wish to be a tyrant."

[we_do_bones]

"You are plenty loose," she says, encouragingly. "You're wearing a costume! You let me put a flower – a purple flower – behind your ear! You kissed me in public! Let's not get ahead of ourselves, Reverend Daughter."

She leans to kiss, not Harrow's mouth, but her cheek, softly, like a knight greeting her maiden. "Would I love you if you were a tyrant, fool?" she asks, so that only Harrow can hear. "Does that seem like a Gideon Nav thing to do?"

[we_bring_hell]

"I like my flower," she murmurs, just for Gideon's ears, and squeezes her hand.

[we_do_bones]

The thing is, Harrow is a tyrant, and Gideon honestly prefers it that way. She doesn't need to make the decisions, she just wants to be involved if they're going to allow grievous harm to Harrow's body, or her own. She's not sure what she would do if Harrow suddenly started acting like...not Harrow.

Since that night in the lake, and even more so since they returned from the Ninth, Gideon has sometimes looked over at her adept to see Harrow watching her with a hunted expression like she has just been handed a precious egg for safe-keeping and is surrounded by egg-hunting snakes.

But it's fine. It honestly is. If Harrow could have scared her away from Harrow, she would have had to manage it a long time ago.

Gideon's gaze travels to the flower and back to Harrow's face, and she smiles in satisfaction. "You look pretty," she says, honestly.

[we_bring_hell]

The thing about egg-hunting snakes is that if Harrow finds one she is going to twist its head three hundred and sixty degrees and nail it up as an example to the others. The thing is, increasingly she realizes she needs to worry about cracking the egg herself, from holding it too tight or getting distracted and being careless.

The thing is, Harrow's most hateful enemy has always been Harrowhark Nonagesimus. And in Gideon she has, perhaps, an ally against that tyrant at last.

"I don't know what I think about the stitches," she says, with an light in her eyes that gives the lie to every word she says. "It makes me imagine a world where flesh wizards used facepaint instead of us."

[we_do_bones]

"The stitches? Not the blue skin?"

She holds up a forearm and rolls up her sleeve; indeed, it goes all the way up. She arches her eyebrows, deeply skeptical. "I look like I just died of hypothermia."

[we_bring_hell]

"Is that not makeup?" she asks,

Well, now she's just curious about how far the blue goes. "Or a poorly maintained flesh construct. If I had a flesh construct -- which I would not -- I would take better care of it."

[we_do_bones]

"I don't think so," she tells her.

(She thinks it is cosmetic, at least.

She hopes.)

But that just makes her think of poor dead Protesilaus the Seventh, and she makes a face. "You're right," she says, lightly. "Sounds a little too Seventh for you."

[we_bring_hell]

"Did I ever tell you I have an ancestress from the Seventh House?" she says.

It's apropos of nothing, but the gift for Wei Wuxian left it on her mind.

[we_do_bones]

"No way!"

She's genuinely surprised, and interested. Harrowhark Nonagesimus, related to a flesh magician? This is the kind of scandal that truly drives the Ninth House gossip mill. "Who?"

[we_bring_hell]

"Korenna Saba. It was four thousand years ago, on my mother's side."

She asks the bar for a glass of water, and parsimoniously stirs in sugar. "She had a short and ill-fated marriage to Pelles Novena, who was Reverend Father briefly. She was an artisan of the Seventh House, the usual whirlwind pilgrimage romance."

[we_do_bones]

"Wow."

She pulls a barstool out and sits beside Harrow, allowing her knee to nudge Harrow's leg as she does. "That is...surprisingly romantic for the Ninth."

But it ended badly, and that seems a lot more on-brand.

[we_bring_hell]

She squeezes a lemon into the glass as well. "It does happen." Ortus's mother being a more recent example.

"Well, he died in the first six months, and she returned to Cypris even before their offspring were decanted, so of course the Ninth historians have never forgiven her. But she did present a proper weregild before she left, and laid no claim to the heirs, so she was perfectly respectable by her own standards, I suppose."

"The flute she made of his femur lay in storage among our lesser heirlooms for generations."

[we_do_bones]

"That's...nice."

Creepy as shit, maudlin as all get out, 100% Ninth all the way down. "Please don't make a flute out of my femur, Harrow."

Although admittedly it seems like a better fate than to hoe the rows of snow leeks until her bones finally dissolve to dust.

[we_bring_hell]

"I would not," she assures her. "It was well-meant, I'm sure, but lost on the Ninth. I retrieved it on our recent visit and gave it to Wei Wuxian for his birthday; no one will miss it."

"But if I become a Lyctor, your bones will surely lie in the Mithraeum someday."

And if not, their bones will either be left on the First or be shipped back to the Anastasian Monument.

[we_do_bones]

This is getting a little too maudlin for her: she's not afraid to die, but she hates the idea of Harrow navigating all those thousands of years alone.

"At least that way you'll always have me nearby," she says, with a slightly forced smile.

[we_bring_hell]

"I do not intend to be separated from you," Harrow says calmly. "But never mind, Griddle. I only meant to tell you some dry Ninth history, not start worrying about your bones again."

"I am pleased Crux was able to find the flute; it is astounding the kind of relics you can collect in ten thousand years."

[we_do_bones]

"There's gotta be some weird-ass stuff down there," Gideon agrees. The Ninth was low on funds but high on ancient, shitty treasures.

"Bet Wei Wuxian liked it, though. It seems like it hits just the right...note."

(Magnus isn't around, so she doubts she'll get even a pity laugh, but it had to be done.)

[we_bring_hell]

Harrow looks at her blankly. "Pardon?"

[we_do_bones]

She huffs a long sigh. Harrow has many fine qualities, but a sense of humor isn't really among them.

At least, not for dad or sex jokes, which are pretty much the only kind Gideon knows. "Never mind."

[we_bring_hell]

"I told him it was from both of us," she says. "That was appropriate, wasn't it?"

"He seemed to draw conclusions from it--accurate conclusions, but I don't want to encroach on your privacy."