undonewithout | while my blood's still flowing and my heart still beats

Entry tags:

gideon,
sextus

while my blood's still flowing and my heart still beats

“But I was stabbed through the stomach!” Harrow shouted over the howling wind and the sick clatter of the tentacle disgorging another shower of plex slides. “What’s happening out there?”

There was little time for Magnus or the Lady Pent to answer the question, or for Harrow to remain where she was, curled in a rictus of agony on an ancient mattress, though right then she might have cherished the indulgence of either. She allowed herself to be helped upright, Magnus coaxing her hand gallantly--and foolishly, always foolish in his gallantry, and how could she have forgotten that about him?--into the crook of his arm to keep her close. They followed Abigail out of the room and into the hall, past the drifts of bloody snow collecting in the corners and dusting the humped shapes of furniture already half-buried. That much, she remembered from before, the cold and the snow and the sheer broken loneliness of Canaan House; what was new were the twisting pink organs making incursions nearly everywhere, and the bits of debris they were leaving behind. As much as she could, Harrow slowed her steps, dawdling to a degree she would have never permitted of herself before in the hopes of examining them, acquiring information even as they continued to flee.

There, a window shaded over with a thin film of tissue, the veins within blue and fat with blood. In one corner, a pile of rusted syringes half-burying an inert skeleton. In another, a pulsing tube split as though cut with a scalpel, releasing specimen containers full of cloudy fluid, something small and lumpen suspended within. It was all disgustingly physical, unnervingly medical; when her foot brushed against a heap of oblong pills, scattering them with a rattle, Harrow startled.

“Keep moving,” said Magnus as one of the tentacles behind him shuddered, emitting a gush of watery blood that sluiced over the floors, freezing slick in spots. Even frozen, the stench of it was meaty and obscene. “No time to take in the scenery.” Harrow looked up as though chastised from the skeleton she’d been examining--not a First House construct at all, those were Drearburh tools in its bony hand--and closed the distance between them, falling back into step with both shades of the Fifth. She’d had no right to pull them in, to cast them or any of the others as actors on her now-besieged stage. Their ghosts deserved the current of the River, swift passage to whatever shores lay beyond--but somewhat pathetically, she was glad of their presence anyway. “Where is this room?”

It was not the question she should have asked of the myriad already on her mind, but the more she remembered of the real Canaan’s halls, the more Harrow recalled there were safe places and unsafe, doors she’d catalogued that first day and sorted into one category or another. The mental map she had of them was faded now, fractured, and as she turned corners and scuttled down corridors, Abigail and Magnus only a step or two ahead in their heavy coats, she wished for a pencil and a piece of flimsy. Anything to begin setting another part of her mind to rights, after all that was lost.

“Close by,” said Abigail, turning her head so the words would not be lost in the increasing screech of the wind. “The others will be there already, if all’s gone according to plan--take my hand, we’re heading outside.”

Like the trusting child she’d never been, Harrowhark reached for Abigail’s mittened hand, and the world broke once more. The terrace she’d been about to step onto deliquesced into nothing, melting away beneath her feet, the howl of the wind turning into the rush of water, sweeping her away. It was the River, and not the River, a current of darkness taking hold of her and dragging her down; Harrow again tried to take the reins of her power and pull, finding that same butt-fuck nothing from before happening again. There was no escape from what this was, just a swirl of--

She is ten and standing on a chair, coarse-woven rope in her hands. Beside her, three bodies step in unison into the empty air, that final, frantic walk she imagined for herself so many times already--and now, of all times now, she cannot make her feet obey the command to move.

She rolls on the floor of the Mithraeum, hands bracketing the blade protruding from her stomach, broiling in the hot air and yet shivering at the same time, her blood smearing against the walls and the tile, dyeing the ridiculous fabric of her robe a red only the Cohort could admire. From somewhere far beyond, the incessant sound of the klaxon rings, and rings, and rings…

She feels a ripping inside her head, a pain that blanks out all else except for the sudden flash of golden eyes and for a second, Harrow, you look at me, and I look at you, and the experience is deeply fucking weird for us both.

When the world crashed back in, it revealed nowhere Harrow recognized. The scuffed brick of a wall swam into her field of vision, metal cans lined up against it; she could feel something equally hard propping her upright from behind, the ground firm and flat underneath her. All of that was hazy beneath the pain radiating outward from the blade still lodged inside her, the hilt pressed close to the small of her back. If she screamed, it was a sound she was used to by now, thin and animal in its agony. She slumped to the side and lay there, cheek against the gritty surface of the pavement, grasping for the threads of her power to close the wound and stabilize the damage, panting with the effort. Faintly, she could feel the blade move, a shuddering lurch of metal pushed this way and that by tissue regrowing at a rate she could not in this state comprehend.

“What is happening,” she tried to say yet again, though it came out garbled and choked, her teeth slick with the blood welling up from her throat. Harrow retched, spitting out a clot, a globule of scarlet all the brighter against the dull grey of the concrete. It cleared her airway enough to let her drag in another ragged breath; then another, and still more after that. Her vision grew dark around the edges, but Harrow focused, helplessly, on the fact she was still breathing. From somewhere behind her came the sound of running footsteps.

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Of course Harrow struggles to her feet without help. It should hurt her, but it doesn't - sometimes, she thinks that her body is all scar, and the only things that hurt her are the places where she's not completely healed over yet. It's a process. It'll come. Still, her necromancer is finally standing in front of her again, and that's not nothing. She stands for a moment, making sure that Harrow isn't just going to totter right over again but, once she's got to her feet and seems at least superficially solid, Gideon pulls out her phone and texts Sextus that SHE'S HERE and SHE KEEPS BLEEDING and GET HERE AS QUICKLY AS YOU CAN PLZ.

It's amazing how good it feels to have a sword in her hand again, even if it's not hers. Not either of them.

"What happened to my two-hander?" she asks. She knows it doesn't matter, right now, but the question feels important. "Last time I...saw it...you had it."

Harrow watches Gideon type away at some kind of screen she takes from her pocket, small and portable, though her energy's devoted more to remaining upright than in wondering what she might be writing--and why, and to whom. She doesn't like the sick flash of guilt that rushes through her when questioned about the sword, one hand going instinctively to the bone scabbard welded to her back despite knowing she'll find it empty.

"It was given back to me," she says. "After." Her stomach lurches at the memory, recalling God's kindly face as he delivered her the sword and those first disgusting weeks of trying to wield it. Hating it, loving it, unable to touch it but unable to conceive of being apart from it for any length of time. She chances a look over at Gideon and ends up rewarded with another ice-pick jab of pain to somewhere just behind her right eye. "I...kept it with me. From the Erebus to the Mithraeum, I held it in safekeeping."

She knows better than to put hands on Harrow again, so she just starts moving, slowly, in the direction of her apartment building. "I'll explain everything once we're inside, I promise, but...can we start with why the fuck you keep bleeding? Can't you...you healed the stab wound."

That Gideon doesn't seem to register anything she'd just said about the sword is a disturbing surprise, but one that's passed over quickly enough by the thing that follows. Her steps falter, the world reeling for a moment. "Do not ask me that," she says, jaw tight. "Ever."

She can feel the start of another bleed, directing energy at her capillaries to shut it off before it's obvious. It's fast, but not fast enough; Harrow ticks her head to the side, reflexively, at the sensation of blood pooling in her ear canal. "And the stab wound...healed itself. I expended no energy in doing it." Her tone is unguarded, naked enough to reveal her own confusion at that fact. Gathering the begrimed skirt of her robe in one hand, she keeps walking.

"It worked then," says Gideon, her arms all but aching to reach out and catch Harrow when she stumbles. She can't help but think of the way Ianthe and Cytherea had healed. Like it was nothing. Like it didn't even matter. "And we're back to you not telling me anything. Cool. Cool cool cool cool." She tugs at her phone and texts Palamedes. Again.

"Something happened in the transition from where I was to...now," she says, inwardly disturbed by the suggestion it might be otherwise. That it might be that, because she knows with full clarity what Gideon means. There had been pain as she'd healed, but it had been with the same ease as when Ianthe sliced through her hand with her cavalier's old knife: a flicker only, whereas when the same had been done to her she'd nearly passed out. That was the trade in being half a Lyctor, being fractured, and if she no longer had that...

The work cannot be lost. She will not permit it to be.

Gritting her teeth as Gideon mutters to herself and takes the device out of her pocket again, Harrow turns the corner in stoically stubborn quiet.

"This is us," says Gideon, reaching out with her free hand to graze Harrow's bloodied sleeve as she fumbles for her keys. She lets them in and heads for the elevator. Even though it's only one flight she doesn't trust Harrow with stairs yet. "Wait. What do you mean?"

Gideon's fingers catch momentarily on the flowing sleeve of her robe, and Harrow only just keeps from flinching away. She follows her into the building, a place in far better condition than anywhere she's seen before; there's no crumbling walls or hazardous floors here, nor the uncanny preservation of a place like the Mithraeum. What disrepair there is simply makes it seem habited.

As they step into the elevator, Harrow tenses. It's as much from the smallness of the space inside as the fact Gideon chooses now to become annoyingly observant. "Damage of that scale should have taken...effort," she says, tasting the lie at the back of each word, the hint of everything unsaid. "I had a fucking sword through my gut, Nav."

Saying her name brings up another clot of stuff, coppery and thick at the back of her throat. She swallows it back down.

"I meant what did you mean about the transition?" says Gideon. "And you still haven't told me why you keep bleeding? Are you hurt, Nonagesimus? Because if you are and you're not fucking telling me..." Pal will be here soon. He'll figure it out. She shifts her grip on the sword in her hand, teeth shifting musically.

"I am not hurt," Harrow says through gritted teeth, pushing her spine further into the corner of the elevator as it starts to ascend. It's a swooping, uncomfortable feeling, and she's glad when it stops. "And I told you not to ask me that. If you cannot keep silent, I can and will fuse your jaw shut. You know my capabilities."

As the doors open again, she sweeps past Gideon, choosing at random the direction in which to turn. "I had access to only a shred of my power in the River," she says as she walks, building an answer to the other issue, one hopefully enough to limit Gideon's probing. "My soul was there, my body was left on the Mithraeum, where someone clearly...interfered with it. And then I was here, which is very clearly neither. Something happened, something that evidently affected my abilities, and I am at a loss as to what."

Which doesn't really answer any of Gideon's questions, but Harrow fused her jaw shut once when there were thirteen and fourteen and it's not particularly an experience that she wants to relive. Rolling her eyes, she turns in the opposite direction to Harrow, going to the front door of her apartment and shouldering it open. "This way, dickhead."

The look Harrow gives her is black and foul, murder etched in the pinched and narrow lines of her face even beneath the sweat-smeared ruin of her paint. It's worth the zinging jolt of agony that has her digging her nails into her palms until it passes. With as much dignity as she can muster, she stalks back down the hallway towards the open door.

God, she'd missed that look on Harrow's face. Even though it was usually a prelude to some kind of cruel and unusual punishment, at least it had always meant that, for a moment, Harrow was completely focused on her and whatever shit she'd just pulled. Something settles and clicks back into place in her chest.

Through the door, she drops her keys on the table by the front door.

"I'll get you clean clothes," she says. "You can't stay in what you're wearing. You're gross."

"I don't need your clothing," Harrow snaps, but it's delayed, distracted as she is by her surroundings. Growing up, she had spent as little time as possible in Gideon's cell, at least when Gideon was in it; she knew it as a narrow bed and a sink inset along one wall, scattered bits of mess and flimsy, foul pornographies hidden beneath her thin mattress. The rooms she's led into now are larger, vaster and more comfortable than anything at home or even amidst the ossified opulence of the Mithraeum, but--unlike either of those places--all of it is suffused with something undeniably Gideon.

It should make her head hurt, but the ache, she finds, comes from a different place entirely.

She takes hold of her robes and shakes them, focusing on the blood soaked into the fabric, gathering the energy of it in her mind. In an instant, it skeletonizes, drying to a powder--as do the stains on her shirt and trousers, all of it flaking off at once and drifting to the floor around her feet. "There. It's passable, for now."

"Whatever," says Gideon, going into the kitchen and clicking on the kettle, leaning against the side. It's then that she realises that she still has the rapier in her hand. She's spent seven months wanting Harrow here, mourning her loss and now she's been in her company for ten minutes and wonders why the fuck she ever missed her.

"I know you've got no joy in your fucked-up, desiccated little heart," she says. "But you could at least try and look pleased to see me."

They'd started to make progress at Canaan House. And it feels...shit, frankly. To remember the things that Harrow said to her right before she died and see no evidence of them on her fucking face.

It hits her as solidly as if she'd been punched, as accurately as she knows Gideon can strike, and the barrier of a wall between them only makes it worse, somehow. Better, too, because it hides the sudden flash of pain that crosses her face, grief folding in on itself again. This time, there's no mattress to collapse onto, no horrible comfort to be found in the hands of the dead; Harrow grits her teeth and hisses out a breath, forcing it away.

"Griddle," she says, each word dredged up from the memories she'd tried to suppress, weighted now with a meaning that pains her. "I barely even remember about you half the time."

That sinks through Gideon like a stab wound, and she has to force herself to put the rapier down before she does something unforgivable with it. If she steps to the side, she can see Harrow through the kitchen doorway, so she does, her eyes fixed on her.

"You said I was the first flower of your fucking house," she says, her voice numb, dead. "You said...Fuck it. When could I ever trust a thing you fucking said to me? You fucking...You fucking broken promise."

Palamedes sits in the Barton University library surrounded by a veritable fortress of books when the text comes in. On the whole, he has come to like his phone, appreciating the practicality of instantaneous communication and the unexpected way it can build familiarity. But sometimes, he thinks that he should really leave it at home so that his research cannot be so easily interrupted.

He sighs when he sees Gideon’s name, expecting some joke or half-serious accusation about how he spends his time. But the message is something altogether different.

SHE’S HERE. It wouldn’t take a genius to figure out who Gideon means, though Pal does happen to be one. SHE’S BLEEDING. He’s out of his seat in an instant; frankly, it would take a hell of a lot of blood to send Gideon into a panic. Palamedes leaves all his books behind, knowing they will be re-shelved, knowing that he will probably get glares from the library staff next time he visits. But he just doesn’t have the time.

coming, he shoots back, swinging his messenger back over his shoulder and hurrying out of the library. at barton. waiting for bus. he adds a few minutes later, having, for once, entirely abandoned the usual formality of his texts.

Palamedes all but leaps off the bus at his stop and races to Gideon’s apartment, where he raps hurriedly on the door.

"I know the promises I have made, and the promises I have broken," Harrow says, nearly breathless from the slap of Gideon's words. Her fingernails bite again into her palm, their ragged edges cutting deep enough to draw blood. Yet more flows out of her nose, her dark eyes locked on Gideon's golden ones and neither of them willing to look away. "The guidelines by which I have made myself live. How dare you, of all people, you, blight the covenant I have made."

She can feel the sick and horrible truth sitting in her chest, waiting to be spat into the open. If not for the knock on the door, Harrow thinks it might have come forth, in all its excruciating detail. Instead, she makes herself look away. "Get the fucking door."

"One flesh one end my ass," snaps Gideon as she stalks out of the kitchen and pulls the door open. Relief stabs through her at the sight of Palamedes on the threshold. "She's in the lounge. Maybe you can get some fucking sense out of her. I'm below that, apparently." She turns and heads for her bedroom. Harrow might have sorted her own clothes out but Gideon's? Are gross.

Palamedes is reminded, briefly, of the first time he had met Gideon. When he and Cam had told her how long Harrow had been in the Facility, she had been frantic in a cavalier-ish sort of way, equal parts furious and determined to find her necromancer. A dry smile ticks at the corner of his mouth. “I appreciate your faith in me,” he deadpans, darkly amused by the idea that Harrowhark Nonagesimus would listen to sense.

Gideon’s clothes are unsettlingly bloody, though, so his humor is short-lived. Steeling himself for what he might see, he steps into the apartment and goes where Gideon directs him.

He’s not at all ready for what he finds—Harrowhark the First in all her furious glory, pearlescent robes gleaming over what looks like a breastplate of bone, her face streaked in blood. It’s all enough to leave even Palamedes Sextus frozen in his tracks.

She had last heard that voice in the River, the bubble he'd created--better and more solidly than hers, though it still pains her to admit it. Hearing it now imparts no further proof of her surroundings, no clear evidence that this is anything more than another construct, another space in non-space as the necromancer stepping through Gideon's front door had put it to her once. Harrow wonders, half-madly, how many papers he's managed to write on the subject by now.

Sextus sees her then, and freezes, astonishment glinting in the clear grey of his eyes. Harrow stalls too, layers of memory jostling for space in her head; the true and the constructed, reality and unreality crashing in on each other and turning nonsensical the evidence she's beholding right at this moment. The rushing in her ears sounds like water, but as she feels the warm drip of it along her skin, and yet more flowing from her nose--again, and at least Gideon's left the room this time--Harrow knows it isn't.

"I wasn't cognizant of the way I lied, last time," she says, her voice nasal and clogged with the blood flooding her sinuses. "I did know you in that life. I will know you in the next one. But how, Warden, are you here?"

Nothing Harrow says means anything to Palamedes—which is too bad, really, since it sounds extraordinarily like a compliment. That hardly matters, anyway, not when there’s suddenly blood dripping out of her nose and ears, further making a mess of her face and staining the transparent white of her robes.

“Haven’t the slightest idea,” he says with the kind of sing-song false conversationally eventually adopted by all medical practitioners. “I’m working on a theory. Sit. Gideon!” This he calls over his shoulder as he waves Harrow towards the couch. “Get me a towel and—Emperor’s bones, please tell me you have some kind of first aid kit!”

"Of course you're working on a theory," she says, and even beneath the blood and the bewilderment, there's a kind of resentful sincerity to it. Reluctantly, she shuffles towards the couch, clearing blood out of her ear and wiping her nose on her hand--undignified, but it works, the blood powdering away a moment later--as she goes. The sound of Gideon's name makes her wince, a needle of pain lancing through her head as she sits.

A moment later Gideon appears from her bedroom dressed in clean sweats and a t-shirt, her feet bare and her hair pushed back from her face. She's got a couple of towels in her hand, plus the first aid kit from under her sink. She holds them out to Palamedes. "She keeps bleeding despite healing a fucking stab wound and she's too much of a dick to tell me what's the matter."

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