Post-Halloween

[we_bring_hell]

Harrow is working. Very seriously. She is not mooning over her new relationship with Gideon even a little bit; she has too much work to do.

She is, however, wearing a skull with accents of deep, almost black purple, with a starburst or floral pattern just below her temple, that she has never been seen to wear before.

Other than that sentimental embellishment, however, she is entirely focused on Obaeg's Toward a Common Haemographology. She is making copious notes in the margins--courting future simian fury--and thinking that she should have found this for Moiraine before they started working on her weave notation.

Comments

[we_bring_hell]

"Of course not, but nevertheless." It definitely does.

"You aren't going to bring it here, are you?"

[we_do_bones]

She shakes her head.

"I get the feeling that the next time we go through that door...we probably won't be back here until it's all over."

[we_bring_hell]

She nods, now completely sobered. "I agree with you."

Shr drums her fingers on the table. "Sextus wants us to pick the lock on one of the doors. The Sixth study. We'll have seven then."

They do not, technically, have the key to the Ninth, but if she couldn't reverse-engineer the theorem from the trial, she's no daughter of Anastasia.

[we_do_bones]

"That's the one with the regenerating ash, right?"

That door gives her the creeps, but it's probably because she'll forever associate it with the horrible sucking feeling of siphoning.

Her mouth twists. "And the Eighth aren't likely to share their keys."

[we_bring_hell]

She shakes her head. "No--the door with the blocked keyhole is the other remaining door. It belongs to the key no one can find."

"I don't believe the Eighth's keys matter anymore. They have the white--we have seen it--the black--I don't need it--and the grey. That is the one Palamedes believes we can fake."

[we_do_bones]

"Oh, right."

Honestly, there are way too many keys, doors, and permutations of who has or knows what for Gideon to keep track of. It's a good thing Harrow is such an unbelievable detail-oriented nerd.

She kicks a foot back and forth, just to have some physical outlet for her anxieties. "I know time is stopped there," she admits, "but I keep worrying about them."

Them is understood, she knows, as being Palamedes, Camilla, and Dulcinea. She doesn't give a rat's ass about the Third or the Eighth, and the Second can more than take care of themselves.

[we_bring_hell]

"Griddle," she says gently. Every so often, Harrow is reminded that Gideon is a better person than her.

"The preparations we make here will benefit the Sixth as well as us."

[we_do_bones]

"I know."

Her brain does, anyway. Her body and instincts, though, they're wired to fight, not retreat and plan. And there are times here when she feels...less than useful. "I just feel weird about it."

[we_bring_hell]

Harrow is a creature of patience and traps. She loves Gideon, however.

She lays a hand on her cavalier's bouncing knee, and gives her a troubled look.

"Would you help me with something? I'm afraid is rather trivial, but I'd like your assistance."

[we_do_bones]

"Yes," she says, instantly. "Anything. Point me at it."

It doesn't escape her notice that Harrow is giving her a direction where she can focus her energy, and she loves her adept a little more for it. "What's up?"

[we_bring_hell]

"Will you help shave my head?"

She runs a hair over the bristles, which have indeed escaped to an unruly micrometer more than Harrowhark's preferred tonsure.

"There is no one I would trust more with a blade."

[we_do_bones]

Gideon reaches over and runs her palm over Harrow's head, lets the bristles tickle the tender inner part of her wrist. "Yeah, I can do that."

She feels instantly better, having a task, and she's grateful to Harrow all over again.

[we_bring_hell]

Harrow smiles at the zing of Gideon's touch. She rises from the table and picked up her book. "Come on then."

It's been a long time since anyone but herself did this.

[we_do_bones]

"You don't need to finish what you were working on?"

She asks, but she's already swung herself off the table and into step just behind Harrow's shoulder.

[we_bring_hell]

"I was just reading," she says. "There's nothing particular to interrupt."

She reaches back to catch Gideon's hand, although she knows Gideon is following proper cavalier protocol and she is undermining it. But Gideon's hand is rough and sure and heavy, and she feels more certain when it's holding hers.

[we_do_bones]

Gideon's hand is always, always there. She twines their fingers and squeezes Harrow's just a little, just enough to say hey, you're holding my hand, that's neat.

"Do you have a razor in the room already?" she asks. "I know I'm great with swords, but even I wouldn't suggest them for this."

[we_bring_hell]

"Griddle, how do you think I shave my own head?" she asks.

"I have everything I need, I'd just like you to do it." She hands Gideon her book so she can unlock the door without letting go.

"I've never even let Crux do it, you know," she says in a low voice.

[we_do_bones]

"Wait," she says, when the door swings open. A tug of her hand brings Harrow back to her; she bends her head and kisses her adept, long and sweet.

(They've done...a lot in the last few days. They neither of them have any secrets left from the other, but this is intimate in a way Gideon doesn't know how to parse and desperately does not want to fuck up.)

"Okay," she says, after a long moment, and releases Harrow, her heart thundering in her chest. "That's all."

[we_bring_hell]

Harrow kisses her back whole-heartedly.

She's anxious about it herself, but Harrow will always grasp the thistle, given the chance. She's been thinking about this, and now--when Gideon needs to feel useful, and trusted, and important--is the perfect time to deploy it.

She is a creature of patience and traps.

She holds the back of Gideon's head, fingers tangled in her untidy mop, and doesn't let go for a moment even when the kiss breaks. "Okay," she says, with an answering smile and a bite of her lip.

She unbuttons her high-collared black shirt on the way to the bathroom, stripping down to her camisole and stopping to remove her boots.

[we_do_bones]

Gideon, the moron, can't let this perfunctory removal of clothing go unmarked; she wolf-whistles as she saunters after Harrow into the bathroom.

[we_bring_hell]

"Idiot," she says fondly. She's getting accustomed to Gideon liking to look at her; to not being able to ignore her naked skin. It's a counterbalance to the way she always feels about it.

Barefooted, she pads into the bathroom and waves at Gideon to follow. She takes out the kit that came with the room; a block of soap that produces a lather so creamy and light it's probably sinful to use, a wooden bowl, a soft brush. A shining cut-throat straight razor; no safety blades for the Ninth House.

Every time she looks at it she gets flashes of her own kit, back in Canaan House; the human leather case, embossed with the jawless skull of the Ninth. Her mother's razor, handle etched with the nine-pointed star of the Nova line. She shakes her head, clearing it.

"You can do this, right, Griddle?" she asks. "I know we never made you shave yours."

[we_do_bones]

That deep affection in Harrow's voice soaks straight through Gideon's chest and idiot heart and into those bones Harrow has promised to take care of for ten thousand years. It's all still so impossible, so unanticipated: she takes each new proof of love and squirrels it away, writes it onto her ribs, transcribes it with each swing of her sword.

Every night she tries to prove to Harrow what she feels. Every morning she wakes up feeling even more.

"Sure," is what she says, however, toeing off her own shoes and following Harrow inside. There were more than a few crones on the Ninth whose hands were too shaky to use a straight razor and who were more than happy to provide Gideon with multiple instances of penance. She whistles low at the blade in the kit, though: the Ninth razors were never this sharp and new.

"How do you want to do this?"

[we_bring_hell]

"I usually stand before the sink," she says. There's a hand mirror in the kit she usually uses to do the back.

"But I am open to suggestions. As I said--I haven't had another person do it in a long time. Should I sit? You're so tall."

My mother did it when I was in the bath, she almost says, but it lodges in her throat.

[we_do_bones]

Gideon hums a thoughtful hmmm, looking at the bathtub and the sink, before going to Harrow and picking her bodily up to sit her on the edge of the sink.

"There," she says, pleased with herself. "Now we've got the water right there and I won't be bending down the whole time."

This cuts the height difference by...a lot, and Gideon steps forward between Harrow's knees and puts her warm hands on Harrow's hips. "Does this work for you?"

Leading. Oh yeah.

[we_bring_hell]

Gideon picks her up like she's weightless, and instantly she feels light-headed with sudden lust, dizzied by the lack of control and half-ready to yank it back. It's ridiculous how Gideon can unman her so easily. She feels uncomfortably aware of her body, the bite of the counter on the back of her knees and the flex of her hips as Gideon moves closer; the scholar's hunch of her back that clicks audibly as she straightens up and folds her shoulders back, moving her hands to support her on the counter.

Gideon can benchpress her and Gideon is her ancient enemy and Gideon has a sharp knife in her hand. There is a part of her that loves this, and there is a part of her that has held control for seven years that is screaming like an air-leak siren in the recycled atmosphere of Drearburh.

"Y-yes," she says. She has been a martyr to her blush reflex since she and Gideon got together, and without her high-collared shirt, Gideon doesn't have to study her ears; it goes all the way down her pigeon chest.