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[we_bring_hell]

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.

Comments

[we_bring_hell]

It takes a few minutes for Harrow to return; when she does, she doesn't comment on her absence, just settles herself back into the chair with the dignity of an empress or a cat.

"I am vile company today," she says abruptly. "I don't wish to hurt you or anyone."

[herald_ingress]

Ingress nods. “I appreciate that. You don’t have to be my company. You can do your tasks, and I can be your company, silent and thick-skinned.”

[we_bring_hell]

"Why?" Harrow demands. "What do you put yourself through it for?"

[herald_ingress]

“Put through what, exactly? Being there for a friend when she’s in a bad mood?”

She shakes her head. “Harrow, when you’re friends with someone, you’re friends with all of them, even the not so pleasant parts. I’m your friend, and I’m not putting myself through anything.”

[we_bring_hell]

Harrow stares at her desk wearily.

"Has time gone on stopping for you when you visit, once it began to?"

[herald_ingress]

“Yes. Every time, so far.”

[we_bring_hell]

"it is a blessing, of course." She frowns, in contradiction to her words.

[herald_ingress]

“I wouldn’t be able to come as often,” she agrees. “Or stay as long.”

[we_bring_hell]

"It is undeniably convenient," she murmurs. "Yet sometimes I feel that it dilutes urgency."

[herald_ingress]

"I can see that. If I had pressing matters beyond day to day, I would feel that way, even with time stopping."

[we_bring_hell]

"The things I have to do are important," she says, "but on any given day they can be... delayed."

She drums her gloved fingertips on the desk. "Yet not indefinitely."

[herald_ingress]

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

[we_bring_hell]

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

[herald_ingress]

"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."

[we_bring_hell]

"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?"

[herald_ingress]

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."

[we_bring_hell]

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

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

[herald_ingress]

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

Ingress frowns.

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

[we_bring_hell]

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

Maybe.

[herald_ingress]

Ingress sits there a moment, thinking.

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

What would she do?

"Travel? Visit all the worlds I could?"

[we_bring_hell]

"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.

[herald_ingress]

"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.

[we_bring_hell]

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."

[herald_ingress]

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."

[we_bring_hell]

"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."