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

[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?"

[undonewithout]

"It means something," Harrow says, though she has to look away from that steady, golden gaze as she forces the words out. She remembers, now, scrawling those words on a scrap of paper, wrapping them around a ruined pair of sunglasses. There were reasons she'd entrusted that envelope to Tridentarius and not herself, but Harrow wishes she had it now to give Gideon, to show her...something. Instead, she takes a breath, her fingers twitching against the mug in a movement she considers and then aborts.

"And...I know you'll be there. If you can, you'll be there."

[wedobones]

"Damn straight," says Gideon. Something in her face relaxes, but she doesn't move away from the edge of the tub. She draws in a little breath. "Did I...Cam told me something. About my mom."

[undonewithout]

The change in subject should feel more like a reprieve, a granted if unworthy pardon, but Harrow's mind is barely soothed by what Gideon says next. She finds herself inhaling when Gideon does, matching her breaths to those of her cavalier as her brow furrows. "What knowledge would the Sixth have about your mother?"

[wedobones]

"She says there's this...group. A resistance? Against the Emperor. Blood of Eden." She rests her chin on the back of a curled fist. "They've got all these posters of this woman she reckons has to be my mom. Apparently it's a pretty strong resemblance."

[undonewithout]

"To call Blood of Eden a mere group is an interesting choice," Harrow says, each word crisp. "They are terrorists, Nav." Hect's view would be skewed on that front, her perspective warped; all at once, Harrow's back in that steaming jungle, watching Coronabeth Tridentarius muscle Judith back into that tin can of a shuttle and kick the lever to seal them both inside. The memory blends with Gideon's voice as she keeps talking, bringing new details to the fore, and Harrow's dark eyes go wide.

"Of course it was your mother," she says, blinking hard, shaking off the image in her head and pulling herself back to the present. "I saw a poster. In the shuttle, when Camilla and I...when we encountered one another after Canaan House. It gave me a nosebleed."

[wedobones]

Based on what Camilla had said, Harrow would think that. Gideon hasn't honestly decided what she thinks - about the emperor or anything like it. Gideon hadn't lied when she'd said that the only thing that mattered to her, the only thing that had ever mattered to her, is the girl in front of her.

"A nosebleed like you had when you saw me?" she says. "So I really do look like her, then?"

[undonewithout]

"The work wouldn't permit me to look at it in detail," she says, one hand unwrapping from the mug at last, her fingers reaching up to trace the healed lines of her incision in an unthinking, idle gesture. "Not without...I will not bore you by rehashing details of which you are aware. But I remember red hair. Lots of it, curls, and an expression like..."

A cold spike lances through her, an echo of the icewater terror she'd felt then, staring at a portrait she hadn't recognized but that frightened her on a level deeper than nearly anything she'd ever known. She represses a shudder, taking another sip of her tea. It's gone nearly cold, but she swallows a mouthful of it anyway. "Like her one goal in life was to snap my unworthy neck."

[wedobones]

Gideon's mouth twists into a thoughtful shape at that, her golden eyes fixed on Harrow's face. "I wish I knew anything about her other than that," she says, sighing. "I don't even know her name."

[undonewithout]

"Cam and the others were careful," Harrow says, looking at Gideon again, making herself focus on the brewed-tea color of her eyes. As punishments go, it's a weak one, barely enough to count, but there's still enough of an ache that settles in Harrow's heart to make it feel worthy. "They never shared her name, never gave up any details aside from those absolutely necessary. Not that I was in any shape to retain the information, had it been given."

Another memory scratches at the edge of her thoughts, a remembrance of too much food and too many toasts, glasses raised to Commander...someone. She can't grasp the details of it, not in full. It may not matter, anyway.

[wedobones]

Gideon frowns for a moment, closes her golden eyes and rubs one thumb between her eyebrows.

"Can I get in there with you?"

[undonewithout]

It's the first time Gideon's asked, though the question itself isn't a complete surprise. Harrow had seen it flicker at the edges of the other girl's expression on other nights, watched it surface and recede again in the light of her eyes. Familiarity doesn't keep Harrow from freezing, her body curling in a few more degrees in a kind of protective hunch. Her dark eyes track the slow rub of Gideon's thumb, the displacement and springing back of the patch of skin between her eyebrows.

"What? Why?" Both words come out abrupt and sharp, and Harrow's jaw clenches. She breathes in through her nose, out again. "You will overspill the tub, Griddle."

[wedobones]

"We can let some water out and dump some salt in, if you want," says Gideon, aware of how needy she sounds right then. "I just..." How to admit to feeling so weirdly vulnerable, when she's spent a lifetime trying to hide exactly they from the girl in front of her. "Need you." She blushes miserably. "I'll keep my underwear on."

[undonewithout]

The pleading whine in Gideon's voice is humiliating, the helplessness in her eyes a rebuke. They're things her own weakness have opened the door to, all those momentary touches and midnight crawls into Gideon's bed, the wounded-animal comfort she's sought that's softened her beyond repair. Both of them have forgotten themselves, forgotten their place and their history, regressed further than they should thanks to the ancient ways of this foreign city. If Crux were here, if her parents were alive and well, if...too many things, the best they could hope for is a swift correction to set them back on their intended courses.

It has to end, but all Harrow can think of is the flush on Gideon's cheeks and the helpless way she says I need you. A knife twists in her gut, in her chest, lances of pain and disgust that tighten her jaw and stiffen her spine. Slowly, she moves forward in the tub; slowly, she reaches for the plug, lifting it to let the water drain.

"Leave your underwear on. You don't need to get the salt."

[wedobones]

She'd been convinced that Harrow was about to say no, and, when she says yes, for a moment, she isn't entirely sure what to do. She peels her t-shirt over her head, stands up and pushes her sweats down and then climbs into the tub in her shorts and bralette.

"I just wish I knew where I come from," she says, settling in the tub with her legs bent and her back against the enamel edge of the tub.

[undonewithout]

Harrow watches the descent of the water line while Gideon hurries out of her clothes, her face burning at the tense feeling of shock that pervades the room in the wake of her acquiescence. She replaces the plug as Gideon steps in behind her and keeps herself rolled tightly forward, the water lapping at the taut, thin curve of her back with each of the movements behind her as Gideon settles. Her mug rattles on the edge of the tub, forgotten.

"You were birthed on the shuttle," she says, though the old story rings more hollow now, given the scant details the both of them have towards a fuller picture. "Your pod flung free when it crashed on the Ninth. Whatever rebel base or colony planet your mother came from, you never set your feet on its soil."

[wedobones]

"That isn't what I meant," says Gideon, tipping her head back to look up at the ceiling. "I wish I knew who my parents were. Like...it's almost worse to know a tiny bit, you know?"

She looks at the tight line of Harrow's back. "You can...you know. Lean back. If you want."

[undonewithout]

"Lack of evidence never stopped you from gross confabulation before," Harrow says, remembering finding Gideon sitting by a niche at five, twelve, seventeen, telling the bones within every mediocre detail of her life. Of arguments that burst into fights, Gideon's Maybe they were important answered by Harrow screeching Prove it and raising skeletal hands to drag her to the ground.

She'd never expected Gideon to be right; even now, the idea seems impossible. Slowly, Harrow worries her cuticle with the bitten edge of a fingernail. "But I can...see how just a crumb of the truth could never be enough. Learning it now, when there's nothing to do but know it."

Harrow can hear Gideon breathing behind her, slow and even, quiet in the moments after her suggestion--or offer, or request. The scant few inches of space that lie between the two of them are a thing she's keenly aware of, a void easy and impossible to cross. The danger she'd feared here, in her vulnerable state, hasn't come to pass--but in concentrating on that she'd made herself blind to other hazards.

"I'm fine," she says, staying still and hunched, her face aflame.

[wedobones]

"I just wanted someone to want me," says Gideon, draping one arm along the edge of the tub. "Whatever that looked like." A muscle in her jaw tightens as she looks at the tight curve of Harrow's back, the nobbled line of her spine. She'd woken up that morning with Harrow curled into the small of her back, but the other girl had pulled away the moment that she'd woken up. "Turn the light out if you want," she says, her voice husky. "But come here? Please?"

[undonewithout]

The rough sound in Gideon's voice makes her shudder, a twitch of muscle that ripples through her and then out. She speaks of wanting and being wanted, offering the dark as a shield, an excuse not unlike the ones Harrow keeps on her tongue when she presses to Gideon's back in the night or feels the brush of her fingers at the nape of her neck as she reads on the couch. It's too much. It's everything.

"Gideon," she says, warning.

Reaching up, she pulls a stud from her ear and throws it blindly, does it before she can tell herself to stop, flinging an arm and hand out of the polished disc of bone. It lands short, requiring extra articulation to reach the panel on the wall, but after only a minute the lights switch off, their small bathroom plunged into a soft grey darkness. Harrow unfolds, moving back, leaning against her cavalier.