we_bring_hell | (no subject)

(no subject)

Nothing is wrong. Well, nothing new is wrong. It's just that sometimes you wake up and hate everything, starting with yourself and extending outward from there.

She has snarled at Gideon, banished Gideon to the distant past, and is now sulking about being abandoned by Gideon. She was trying to work on the Lyctoral theorems, but her bile got in the way, and now she's chewing on her interdimensional communication mechanism.

She is considering burning characters into her living bones while her cavalier is away and without a healer standing by, because she may be 90% of Gideon's self-control but Gideon is 70% of her self-preservation.

The Mountain Goats is blaring; Transcendental Youth.

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"No," she agrees. "But perhaps not today, at any rate?"

"There is nothing to stop me," she says, with a strange tone of voice, staring through the desk.

"Except not having your Cavalier with you," she says, and she shifts forward to perch at the edge of her seat.

"Who, as I recall, you promised never to leave here without from now on."

"I wasn't thinking about going anywhere," she says absently.

She looks up suddenly and catches Ingress's eyes sharply. "What would you do if you could do--anything?" she asks. "If you were bound by duty to neither your Companion nor the Underside? Truly at liberty to decide?"

Edited 2020-11-25 22:50 (UTC)

She smiles, answer ready to trip off her lips.

Only. It doesn't.

She doesn't have one. She sits up straighter, and the smile fades into a frown.

"I don't know, Harrow. I have- I have no idea."

Harrow's painted lips part, but she doesn't say anything at first.

Finally: "Perhaps it's a cruel question. I shouldn't..."

"No. No, it's a good question."

Ingress frowns.

"I just don't have an answer. It's not something I've thought about."

"I'm not sure I do either," she says. Lies?

Maybe.

Ingress sits there a moment, thinking.

"I suppose... I'd..."

What would she do?

"Travel? Visit all the worlds I could?"

"When I feel the way I do today," she says slowly. "It feels like my duties keep me. Tethered. To existence."

Her voice is quiet and rusty; choked, the way it gets when she tries to speak from her poor stupid heart. "When there is nothing I want. There is always what must be done."

"Except not here," she says quietly.

"Oh, Harrow." She leans forward. "It's not just restlessness, is it? Did something happen with Gideon?"

The note didn't indicate distress, exactly, but Gideon did leave.

She closes her eyes, her face crumpling wearily. "No."

"I mean, I was wretched to her, but she's used to that. She loves me."

"And sometimes, Ingress, I do not wish to be loved. Or touched. Or seen, in the way that Gideon alone seems to see me."

Ingress doesn't understand not wanting to be loved or touched or seen, but that's only because she's never not been loved and touched and seen, except for those few cold months in captivity when she was small.

She very much understands a friend being miserable, though.

"That must be hard. It makes me sad that you feel the need to disappear. I wish I could make things better for you."

"I know you do," she says in the same hushed voice.

But she doesn't deserve that, is the thing. And she doesn't know how to stop it, anyway.

She opens her black, black eyes. "It's like a spasm. An allergic reaction. Some foolish little thing strikes me and -- things I carry every day become suddenly unbearable."

"It will pass."

"Here." She stands up, reaching her hand out to Harrow. "Let's take a walk. Get you some fresh air. I have something I'd like to show you."

Ingress isn't sure what that is yet, exactly, but she'll figure out something.

She huffs out an irritable breath. "Alright."

She rises from the desk; takes Ingress's hand in her thin gloves one.

Oh! She thought there would be much more resistance than that. Poor Harrow must be miserable indeed.

Let's see. The garage isn't very interesting, Mr. Julia might be too much at once for Harrow, and she doesn't care for other animals, so the stable's out.

Unless.

When she and Lan Wangji were searching for Wei Wuxian and Harrow, they went through the stables twice. She's almost positive she remembers seeing something that Harrow may find intriguing.

"Is outside okay? It's a cloudy and cool day, it looks like."

"Alright," she says again, too weary and sick of herself to argue.

She waves at the skeleton to lock and ward the room behind them.

Ingress was going to let go of her hand once they were out of the room, but she keeps it tucked lightly within hers for a little while longer. Harrow seems to need a hand to hold today.

"We're going to the stables, but I promise, it's not to see a horse."

She leads Harrow down the stairs and towards the back door.

Edited 2020-11-26 03:53 (UTC)

"I shudder to think of what else there is in a stable to see," Harrow says acerbically, but follows docilely. It's easier to go along than fight, and unless she just wants to sit down on a step and never move again those are the options.

Ingress is more alarmed by Harrow's passive demeanor than by anything else she's done or said so far.

"Terribly cute fluffy things that strike horror into the hearts of all," she says, her cajoling a reflex at this point.

There are some benches scattered outside the stable, and Ingress leads Harrow to one. "Hold on a tick, all right?"

She disappears into the stable and a few moments later she comes out leading a thestral. She's not sure whose thestral it is, but the fellow caring for the stable today said it would be fine to take it out for some air. He even had some chunks of meat for Ingress to feed it as a treat.

"This is a thestral," Ingress says, bringing the bat-winged, skeletal horse closer - but not too close. "They're from Tom's world. You can only see them if you've witnessed the death of another."

"No issue there," she mutters quietly.

It is gorgeous. Harrow never went through a horsegirl phase, because horses are extinct and sometimes girl feels like a Protean bed she doesn't quite fit, but something like it kindles in her wasted necromancer's heart at the sinewy, skeletal body of the creature and its sable wings.

The thestral stirs and pulls closer, deeply interested; Harrow smells like blood at all times and in particular today.

Edited 2020-11-26 17:39 (UTC)

Ingress grins, relieved. If nothing else, she's been successful in giving Harrow a little distraction.

"Tom says people are scared of them because of their association with death, think they're unlucky." She strokes the thestral along its slightly slippery, smooth flank. "I think that's rubbish."

She holds the wax paper packet of raw meat out for Harrow. "You can feed it, if you'd like."

"Mm," she says. She takes the meat dubiously, which only concentrates its drakish attention on her. "Does it have a name?"

The mouth is more like a beak than a herbivore's mouth, and might be properly termed a maw. It steps deliberately closer and snaps a bit of the meat, incisors flashing. Seen from outside, with the proper sense of humor, it might be funny; two skittish, gruesome creatures approaching either with mirror images of skepticism.

Seen from Ingress' eyes, it's more like two unique and fascinating beings getting to meet in a most wondrous way. But Ingress is, as always, rather biased.

"Sedulus," she replies. She crosses her arms, watching with a huge smile, ready to step in if either of the two need her.

"The attendant said it could take a quick flight if it wanted. Sedulus likes flying, don't you, sweetheart?" Yes, Ingress is cooing at a thestral. Luna Lovegood would be proud.