oh if you knew just what a fool you have made me

[undonewithout]

They find their way into the new shape of things over the next month. The barriers and boundaries, walking the tension between what Gideon desires and what Harrow can allow, all of it kept secret and safe within the walls of their apartment. It doesn't always work; there are fights and frigid silences, Gideon throwing herself into workouts as an act of aggression and Harrow immersing herself in a book or Sextus' latest draft of theories and theorems with as much pointed intensity. When it's successful, though, when all the fractured pieces of themselves come together into some temporary whole...

Harrow does not find it unpleasant. Not entirely.

She insists that they act no different than usual in public, still necromancer and cavalier, still as Ninth as they can be in a pre-Resurrection backwater. It's the only way it can work, and though Gideon makes no secret of her opinion, grumbling at home and out, trying to catch Harrow's hand or stand a little closer than ordinary, she bears it with an aggrieved stoicism that sets Harrow's teeth on edge and almost amuses her all at once. She harbors no illusion that Gideon's patience will last forever; this new change will soon find itself brayed to the world--or merely to the Sixth (bad enough, and Harrow already suspects the Warden and his Hand know some scrap of it anyway) and Maeve (even worse)--but for now something close enough to privacy reigns between them.

The one topic Gideon can't let go, refuses to let go despite arguments and at least three battles with constructs, is the idea of a date. The term isn't unfamiliar, nor the concept, but both strike Harrow as wholly unnecessary. They know what they are, what they've become to one another; that should suffice, and yet for her cavalier, it's only the beginning. She wheedles and pleads, starts dropping it into conversations at points both ludicrous and logical, and while Harrow will never admit to being worn down, she's intelligent enough to see that getting this out of Gideon's system may be the only way of shutting her up.

The one least liable to result in questions or a disapproving look from Sextus, that is.

Gideon picks the day, and Harrow the place. At the appointed hour, they set off for Petros Park, Harrow casting furtive looks at anyone they pass and keeping her hands tightly folded, her arms rigid to discourage any soft touch or brief tangle of fingers. "I forbid you from enjoying this," she mutters as they walk, when everyone else is out of earshot. "So wipe that smile off your face. You look like a loon."

Comments

[wedobones]

"I'm one hundred percent your problem, boo," says Gideon, grinning as she turns her attention to buttering her bread before she settles back, her plate on the blanket in front of her. "I didn't think it'd be this quiet out here."

[undonewithout]

"Do not remind me," Harrow replies, the brightness of Gideon's grin grating at her nerves and sinking warm into her chest at the same moment. She pauses, listening to the lack of sound around them; what noise there is is distant, mostly the growl of cars on the road that rings the park, easily ignored. "The trees must have an insulating effect," she says. "Not to mention the fact we're well out of the way of the more popular sections of the park."

[wedobones]

"It was a good choice," she says, tearing a piece of crust off her bread and chewing it thoughtfully. "I thought we could hang out here until you're sick of being in the sun and then we could go home and watch a movie in the air con?"

Gideon's hoping for more than a movie, but she also knows not to rush Harrow or push her luck.

[undonewithout]

Out loud, it sounds simple; it's just a few hours in the park with food, an evening at home watching something Gideon thinks of as entertainment and Harrow endures in the absence of anything better. To anyone else, it would be as easy as all that. It's only Harrow that feels the secret weight behind it all, the creeping sense of Gideon's unvoiced hopes. The humiliating reminder of her own inabilities.

She delays by taking a sip of water, then in trying a forkful of the rice. Eventually, she nods. "Let's see how the afternoon goes, Nav."

[wedobones]

"Fair," says Gideon, shrugging her shoulders as she chews. She's learning not to expect too much at once. They're getting better - Harrow's ended up in her lap on the couch or in bed a few times. She puts her hands where she's told.

[undonewithout]

Harrow keeps herself from looking too deeply into that shrug, assessing it as some kind of judgement against her. It's as difficult as she expects it to be, though at least the task of forcing herself to eat provides some distraction. She works her way methodically around the plate: rice, then fruit, then a sip of water; a bite of bread and a slim forkful of salad. The routine of it helps.

"It's still bizarre," she says after a few minutes, glancing up at the leaves above their heads, the green of them turned achingly luminous as the sun beats down. "Being this close again to Dominicus. To what isn't Dominicus yet, but will be in a myriad."

[wedobones]

"Honestly, I try not to think about it too much," says Gideon, shaking her head and taking another bite. "Because it bug-fuck freaks me out if I look at it too hard." She smiles. "Weird to think about what gets us from here to Canaan House. How the Resurrection happened, you know."

[undonewithout]

It's a more thoughtful reaction than Harrow expected, a complexity she ought to have seen in Gideon before but had somehow missed. The surprise shows itself in her face, just for a moment. "I agree," she says. "As much as I hate how...ancient it is here, how primitive, how disconnected I feel from everything familiar, it's still fascinating to see what it was like before catastrophe. Weird and terrifying, too, but interesting all the same."

[wedobones]

It's one of her favourite things - whenever you manages to accidentally surprise Harrow.

"Definitely interesting," she says, knowing that she likes it better here than Harrow probably ever well. "I never really paid attention but we don't know much about what lead up to the Resurrection, right? Like...what He was doing before?"

[undonewithout]

"It had nothing to do with swords, so of course you never paid attention," says Harrow, but there's a brief flash of warmth in it. Her expression grows serious, her fork toying with one of the remaining slices of fruit on her plate. "We don't know," she confirms. "Climate apocalypse, some kind of terrorist incident. People fleeing what became the First. The Sixth might have more of the details, given their control of the Library and the status granted thereunto, but even their records have to be sparse."

[wedobones]

"Maybe we're better off not knowing?" says Gideon, eating the last bit of her lunch and setting her plate down. "Teacher seemed to know and I don't think it was doing him any good?"

[undonewithout]

"Very little did Teacher any good at the very end of things," Harrow says, thinking not just of the Teacher Gideon remembers but the one from her twisted Canaanite dreams, wandering the halls and eager--overjoyed, even!--to die. It's a thought too cold for a time like this, too steeped in horror, and Harrow makes herself put it away after a minute.

"I never thought I'd agree with you on anything," she continues, taking one last bite of salad, "especially where knowing things is concerned, but you may be right about this." She looks over at Gideon, and the faintest glimmer of a genuine smile appears on her lips. "Do not tell the Warden."

[wedobones]

"That I'm right or that you agree with me?" asks Gideon, a ghost of the same smile on the corner of her mouth. She reaches out her hand to take Harrow's empty plate. "If you're done with this, there's dessert, too?"

[undonewithout]

"Something worse than either," says Harrow, her voice momentarily as sepulchral and forbidding as she can make it. She smirks. "That sometimes, we're better off not knowing a thing."

Gideon reaches for her plate and Harrow picks it up, handing it to her. The plate is large enough, heavy enough, that their fingers don't touch--though she wishes, with embarrassing suddenness, that it had been otherwise. Her cheeks grow warm again, her brow furrowing just slightly at the offer. "What did you get for dessert?"

[wedobones]

She notices Harrow's blush, doesn't mention it but wonders what's caused it. She unzips a chilled compartment in the picnic bag. "Chocolate ice cream for me. Lemon sorbet for you."

[undonewithout]

"From that place by the beach," says Harrow, recognizing the label on the small containers as Gideon takes them out of the bag. "No surprise there."

She picks up the sorbet, taking a spoon from Gideon when it's offered. Her first spoonful is small, just a taste to prime herself for the rest; the citrus is bright on her tongue, more tart than sweet. It's exactly what she'd want.

[wedobones]

"It's the best on," says Gideon. She pauses before she takes her first bite, just watching Harrow for a moment. There's a joy she'd never anticipated in just watching her girlfriend enjoy little things.

[undonewithout]

"Except when you eat too much and spend the night clutching your stomach and groaning," Harrow counters, then takes another spoonful. "And then refuse to let me try and ease it, even though I'm...mostly certain I could."

She looks up then, realizing Gideon's been watching her rather than eating. The light flush still lingering on her cheeks deepens another shade. "What?"

[wedobones]

"It's the mostly that concerns me," says Gideon. She shrugs, her cheekbones flushing. "I just like the way you look when you're enjoying something."

[undonewithout]

It's a perfectly innocuous statement, but something about it makes Harrow's stomach flip just slightly. "Oh," she says, and curses her ineloquence. "I suppose it's been...rare, until now."

Drearburh had never been a place of comfort, whether by design or choice. It's Darrow's gift and curse that it's so completely different.

[wedobones]

"Yeah," says Gideon, nodding. Honestly, before Darrow, she'd hardly seen Harrow smile and, when she had, it'd had usually been to do with either necromancy or her cavalier's suffering.

"It suits you."

[undonewithout]

"Nav, you are veering perilously into sentimentality," Harrow says, though the look she gives her isn't as sharp as it might have been, less tinged with exasperation than it would be if they weren't alone right now. She eats a few more spoonfuls of her sorbet, one eye on Gideon the whole time.

"Home, or..." she says, or starts to say, setting her cup and spoon aside. "We could stay longer. It's quiet here."

[wedobones]

"I don't mind it out here," says Gideon, finishing off the last few spoonfuls in the tub and setting it down. "It's cool in the shade. We could stay for a while, yeah. I'd like that."

Which doesn't always make a difference but she's getting used to saying it, all the same.

[undonewithout]

Harrow looks at her--the play of sun and shadow on her skin and in the bright copper of her hair, the flash of her utterly un-Ninth eyes, the easy way she stretches out on the blanket--and something stutters in her heart. "We can stay," she says. "I'd like to, also."

[wedobones]

There's something unfamiliar in Harrow's face just then and Gideon takes a moment to try and figure it out. Ultimately, though, she just leans in and presses a kiss against Harrow's cheek.

"I really love you," she says.