is it the whispering ghost that you fear the most?

[undonewithout]

Shameful as it is, the bathtub in Gideon's apartment still fills Harrow with an apprehension she knows is misplaced. This is not the Mithraeum; there are no threats lurking around the corner or waiting patiently just above the plaster of the ceiling, no need for wards on every surface and a wary eye at the door. Being aware of that doesn't stop the flutter in her chest or the twist in her guts as she tries to bathe, or limit the few seconds of panic she feels when rinsing her hair leaves her vision blurred with water, every inch of her waiting for rough hands on her shoulders and the hard push down.

She hasn't found a way to explain it to Gideon yet, to tell her about the Saint of Duty and his ceaseless siege against her, no reason for it she knows or can provide. She asks, instead, for her cavalier's protection, a seat outside the bathroom door and the black rapier in her hand. There are questions in Gideon's eyes every time--but every time, she nods and finds a chair.

Tonight has been quiet for them both, a simple dinner and a softly companionable few hours in the lounge, Harrow reading a book while Gideon sprawls on the couch, her headphones in and connected to the television. Once or twice, Gideon's fingers brush her ankle, and Harrow doesn't flinch away. As the show Gideon had been watching ends and the credits start to roll, Harrow marks her place and sets her book down.

"I was going to take a bath," she says when Gideon pulls her headphones from her ears. She worries her lip in her teeth. "Would you...?"

Comments

[wedobones]

"Yup," says Gideon, without hesitation. She sits up, draping the wire connecting her headphones around her neck. "I'll get my stuff."

She squeezes Harrow's ankle before she stands. "You want a cup of tea in there?"

[undonewithout]

Gideon's lack of hesitation eases Harrow's next breath, her expression softening for a moment as she watches her sit up and feels the firm pressure of her fingers around her ankle. She considers the question, and nods. "Please. Do we have more of the lemon one?"

[wedobones]

"Pretty sure we've got at least one bag left, yeah. I've put it on the list for grocery shopping when I get a chance." She pads out of the room, heading in the direction of the kitchen. The black rapier lives in the hallway but she doesn't grab it, yet. Instead, she heads in the direction of the kitchen, idly humming to herself as she starts to boil water, grabbing the mug that she's noticed Harrow prefers down from the shelf over the kettle.

[undonewithout]

"The only list I've ever seen you reliably keep," says Harrow dryly. As Gideon starts towards the kitchen, she watches her go, dark eyes lingering on the long line of her back and the faint hitch that remains in her gait. The charlatans at Darrow General were no bone adepts, and for all that Harrow's grudgingly accepted that some help is better than nothing, her fingers itch to re-mend the breaks in Gideon's leg, to weave again the new growth in the femur and patella until she can walk without limping.

She owes her more than that, but it's a start.

Going into the bathroom, Harrow turns the water on in the tub, letting it run and grow hot as she crosses the hallway and goes into her bedroom. She undresses quickly, ignoring the glimpse of pale skin and furrowed ribs that flashes in the mirror above her dresser, finding her robe and pulling it on. Back in the bathroom, she drops the plug in the drain and sits on the toilet, watching the tub fill.

[wedobones]

It's a few minutes until Gideon comes into the bathroom with a cup of tea in each hand and the rapier slung on her hip like it belongs there. Which she guesses it does, one way or another.

"Here," she says, setting the mug with Harrow's lemon tea on the side of the tub. "You want me to close the door?"

[undonewithout]

She looks back at Gideon when she appears in the doorway, cups of tea in her hands and a sword at her hip. It settles her in a way she can't examine too closely, not right now, and as she steps into the small room and sets the cup down on the edge of the bath, Harrow turns slightly, reaching for the bottle of bath oil. Silently, she pours a capful in, weighing the question, and her answer to it.

"Not tonight," she says, her cheeks warming. "Sit in the same place, but you can leave the door open."

[wedobones]

That's new, and Gideon is still and quiet for a moment before she nods.

"Okay," she says. She steps just out of the bathroom, back into the hallway and sets her tea down on the floor. She unbuckles her rapier and sits, settling the sword across her lap, her back against one wall and her feet on the other.

[undonewithout]

She had expected surprise, maybe even some kind of protest or joke, something loud and brash and unbecoming of the Ninth but utterly typical of Gideon. Something she could be irritated by, and let that fuel her until she closes the door yet again on mentioning her brother Lyctor or the peril he'd brought to the rooms and corridors of the Mithraeum. Instead, Gideon gives her a quiet shock and an easy acceptance, and it's Harrow who ends up surprised. And grateful, too, a pathetic wash of feeling that disgraces her even as she feels a little more tension bleed out of her chest.

As Gideon leaves the bathroom, distracted by the process of setting up outside the door and settling in, Harrow slips out of her robe and steps into the water, sinking until she's covered up to her collarbones. Her head goes back, her neck resting along the rolled enamel lip of the tub. She closes her eyes, her face relaxing, for a moment, into something softer and more peaceful.

[wedobones]

She's still getting used to the idea of Harrow's bare skin, after a lifetime of chin to floor black and, when she looks up in time to catch a flash of pale skin, she flusters a little. She covers by clearing her throat and reaching for her tea cup.

[undonewithout]

Harrow stays just as she is for a moment, letting the warmth of the water soak into her, soothing her. Compared to Gideon's scalding showers, Harrow's bath is no better than tepid, but it's still warmer than sponge baths and sonics on the Ninth; still a luxury. Gideon clears her throat, and Harrow cracks open one eye, turning to look at her. She catches the easy bend of her body, the line of her wrist as she picks up her teacup, and something about it makes the corner of her mouth go up.

Carefully, she sits up, reaching for the mug balanced at the corner of the tub. "Thank you, Nav."

[wedobones]

"For what?" asks Gideon, her expression mild and open. She looks up at Harrow, her cheeks flushing faintly at the sight of the bare curves of Harrow's shoulders as she reaches for her tea.

[undonewithout]

"The tea."

It's too pat an answer, incomplete and overly simplistic. There might not be salt in the bath this time, but Harrow looks at the open, golden gaze of her cavalier and feels the pull towards honesty anyway. She takes a sip from the mug, letting the tartness wash over her tongue, reminded as always of how constant an example of caring just that taste has been--from the Marshal to Gideon, and all spaces in between.

"And for...this. Sitting out there, while I'm in here."

[wedobones]

Gideon sips her own tea and rolls one shoulder in a shrug.

"You asked," she says. "It'd be pretty dicky to say no. I took my first bath at Canaan House. Baths are fucking awesome."

[undonewithout]

"I know you took a bath there, I found an inch of water in the tub once I woke up and thought there was a leak."

Retreating into nitpicking is easy, giving voice to an irritation Gideon can easily believe Harrow's carried with her since Canaan House, and the argument it sparks would be enough to carry them through this and into the rest of the night. It wouldn't mean anything except that it's a chance to bicker, to fight like they always have and always would. It's comfortable, more so than the terrible drive for honesty that claws at Harrow's throat now. She coughs once, delicately, a low throat-clearing sound that tells her she's about to choose, that she isn't going back.

"More accurately, I mean that you guarding me is...I understand it's a pointless proposition here. In Darrow. I am thankful you do it anyway."

[wedobones]

That's a very particular word choice and Gideon looks up at Harrow, her cup cradled between her two hands. She tilts her head, her coppery hair falling across her eyes.

"What am I protecting you from, Harrow?"

[undonewithout]

She sees Gideon process the statement, weigh it and come to a conclusion--or just another question--and when she moves her head and her hair falls in her eyes, Harrow's grateful for the shield. The question is the one she'd seen cross Gideon's face before, read in the hesitation of her glance or the set of her shoulders when she'd opened the door again on other nights, after other baths. There's a different weight to it, now it's finally put into words.

"The fractured ruin of my own mind, perhaps," she says, and the bluntness of it, the naked truth, shocks her into a moment's silence. The mug trembles in her hand, and she cups her other around the base to steady it. "I am not...things on the Mithraeum were not tranquil. Beyond the threat of the Beasts, I mean, or the incessant fact of my training. Times like this, like...now, are moments where that's harder to ignore."

She swallows hard. "My brother Lyctor, the Saint of Duty, found me a threat. In his view, I had to be neutralized as quickly as possible. By any means necessary."

[wedobones]

A muscle ticks in her jaw. She's shocked by the heat of the rage that blooms inside her ribcage. Suddenly, she's gripping her mug so tightly they putting it down feels like the right choice.

"You're scared of taking baths because someone was trying to...hurt you?"

[undonewithout]

When directed at Harrow, Gideon's anger has always been offensive, reactionary; an explosion of action, flying words and limbs and the trembling point of a sword. The tight control of her voice now is a shock, the careful movement of her hand as she sets her mug down, a sight that sinks through her like cold stone. She slips a little lower in the bath, her cheek resting against the enamel, her hands raised to keep her mug above the water.

"I understood him as a threat from the first instance," she says. "I am not naive, Griddle, compromised though I was. I will admit it took longer than it should have to comprehend how...wholly vulnerable I had become."

[wedobones]

She can't bear it - the thought of Harrow defenseless because she wasn't there. Abandoned by her sworn sword. But, in the end, Harrow had only been there because Gideon wasn't.

"Vulnerable because of what you did to your head?" she asks. There might not be saltwater in Harrow's bath, but she can feel something trembling between them, anyway.

[undonewithout]

"In part," says Harrow, and though Gideon might not mean it as a rebuke, she feels the sting of one anyway. "Perhaps if I'd been at full Lyctoral strength, I'd have acquitted myself better when he came for me in the kitchen, but after that..."

She chews on her lip, looking up at the bathroom ceiling. It's an instinctive gesture, a firing of muscle memory and trauma, even though this room is as far from her Mithraeum quarters as she could possibly get. "He broke my wards," she says, her voice low and heavy with shame. "Obliterated them. He stripped the thanergy before my very eyes, Nav. I was in the bath. One moment I had the illusion of safety, and then even that was gone."

[wedobones]

Gideon can't imagine how that would have felt. She'd known Harrow her whole life and she still hasn't seen her bare skin until Canaan House. The idea of her naked and vulnerable and attacked pisses Gideon off so fast and hard that she's breathless.

"That's why you don't want to be in here alone," she says.

[undonewithout]

She can't do anything but nod, raising her mug to her lips again with a careful, tight movement. The tea grounds her in the moment, reminds her where she is, and she's humiliatingly grateful for it.

"I fought him," she says. "With everything I had, everything I could think of, but it still...I was still defeated. The injuries could be dealt with, but the knowledge of that failure, the awareness that next time would be worse...I couldn't bear it. I cannot now."

[wedobones]

Gideon listens to all that with her jaw clenched tight and, when Harrow stops talking, something sullen and shitty settles in her chest. It's reminiscent of the way that she'd felt after Jeannemary died - like she's crammed neck to navel with dusty garbage. She should have been there. Harrow shouldn't have had to do any of that on her own.

Slowly, she gets up onto her knees and shuffles across the small space between them so that she can sit down right next to the tub, leaning her chin on the rolled enamel edge. She takes care not to let her eyes dip, fixing them on Harrow's face. "There won't be a next time," she says, softly. "And, if there is, well. You won't be on your own, will you?"

[undonewithout]

The last thing she expects is for Gideon to come closer. More of that tight-jawed control from earlier, yes; storming away to start a grim series of drills with the rapier or press-ups seething with repressed fury, certainly. Gideon angry at something that isn't her is a rare experience, but not so uncommon Harrow doesn't have some sense of what her response will be. So when, instead of any of that, her cavalier gets to her knees and shuffles forward, eyes carefully fixed on the tile wall just behind the tub, something in Harrow's chest lurches and starts, a startled, staticky whine playing for a moment in her head.

Her only thought is that she looks like a penitent, and though Harrowhark Nonagesimus is a saint through the grace of the Necrolord Prime, Gideon Nav could never worship at her altar. No matter what understanding they've come to here, what truths both of them have confessed, that much is always going to be true.

Harrow stays still as death as Gideon keeps approaching, her hands frozen around the mug, her knees drawn up and her back curved in a protective hunch. When Gideon's golden, burning eyes find hers, Harrow tamps down hard on two opposite urges: to scrabble from the tub and run, and to move closer and choose a thing that could well be her doom. The soft promise, low and steely, sends her head into a spin. It takes her a moment to find any response at all.

"You cannot promise that for certain," she says. "Not as things stand outside of this place. But here...no. I won't be alone."

[wedobones]

"Point," says Gideon, her chin still leaning on the edge of the tub, her eyes still levelled on Harrow's face. "But as long as I've got anything to do with it, I'll be there, Harrow. One way or another." Her jaw tightens a moment. "One flesh, one end. I don't know if it means...anything anymore, but it means something to me, okay?"