undonewithout | 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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

undonewithout

She is too slow still, addled in a way she should have known she couldn't afford. Compromised, more gravely than she may have ever been before. Harrow only realizes it once she's sitting, Palamedes frowning at her in a way that does nothing for the angular planes of his face--and then he reaches for her.

"No," she tries to say, flinching back, coming near to crawling up the back of the absurdly squashy sofa she placed herself on like a fool. She remembers rolling off the table in the presence of God, fleeing at the question she knew she could never answer. Hoping, like a child, she's not about to be asked it again. "You cannot, it's..." His fingertips find purchase then, his touch cool against her temples, and Harrow knows she is lost even before she sees the horror dawn in his eyes.

She can take no satisfaction in the quick jerk of his hands when she's finally let go, scrabbling further into the cushions at her back in a panicked attempt to avoid his reach again.

From:

wedobones

Gideon watches all of this play out in front of her like some kind of weirdo pantomime, and, as usual, she has absolutely no fucking idea what's going on. Her golden eyes dart between Palamedes' horrified expression and the way that Harrow is trying to dig her way into the stuffing of her couch like a panicky cockroach. Her coppery eyebrows draw together in a frown. "What?"

From:

hellonspectacles

Palamedes takes a breath, reasserting calm. He thought he’d known what to expect. He’d known the damage would be severe; he hasn’t expected it to be so clearly deliberate. Now he turns to face Harrow where she has scrabbled to the other side of the couch, gazing at her like she’s an uncontrollable child or a spooked horse. Absently, he taps his glasses against his knee.

“Someone has attempted to remove portions of the Reverend Daughter’s temporal lobe.” Though he’s speaking to Gideon, he hasn’t taken his eyes off Harrow. “Badly, I might add.”

From:

undonewithout

That badly is a slap in the face, but Harrow expected--and yes, from Sextus maybe deserves--nothing less. She knew he would see it, understand what she and Ianthe had done even if the particulars were closed to him, but to have the work revealed so nakedly still strikes her breathless for a moment. With Gideon just behind her, and Palamedes in front, there's nowhere for her to run. Momentarily, she considers constructs and bone sanctuaries, ripping a stud from her ear and working it into something to hold the both of them back, but something stays her hand.

"I had little time to craft something elegant," she says, her jaw tight. "Not without becoming further...compromised. It was a brute force solution, but it worked, and that is the more important thing."

From:

wedobones

Gideon has a horrible feeling that she knows where this is going, but she also knows that Harrowhark Nonagesimus has a very nasty habit of doing exactly the opposite of what she thinks she's going to do. "Harrow," she says, doing her very best to keep her voice level. "What did you do?"

From:

hellonspectacles

Palamedes watches Harrow for a long moment, the only sound the very faint tap tap tap of his glasses. Then he says quietly, almost gently, “You must be in a terrible amount of pain.”

He puts his glasses back on. “Even given your ability to heal yourself, these...modifications,” Pal has to suppress a shudder, “will kill you eventually. At the very least, they are likely to cause further deterioration. I think I can repair the worst of it, but I need a better look.”

From:

undonewithout

Harrow bristles at the gentle way he says it, the tenderness in treating her like a child, explaining in small words the things she already knows. "The pain is the penance, Sextus," she says, humiliatingly unable to meet his gaze for fear of what he'll see in her eyes.

She can all but feel Gideon's growing hysteria behind her as Palamedes keeps talking, the small shifts in weight and intakes of breath that suggest her erstwhile cavalier's on the verge of doing something ill-advised and stupid. Whatever it is would be a distraction, something she could use to shift the focus--but it would return. She knows the Warden of the Sixth too well now, again, to believe it'd be anything more than a brief reprieve. She still wants to scream, to run, fleeing into the streets of this strange world she still knows nothing about, but she makes herself nod instead.

"I permit this under the favor I granted your House, solemnized by the sanctity of the rock that remains ever unrolled," Harrow says, meeting his eyes at last as she unfolds herself from the corner of the couch and slides closer. "I will reveal to you only that which is necessary to achieve your aims, but in that, you will have my full honesty. Is that acceptable?"

From:

hellonspectacles

A tiny smile curves at the corner of Palamedes’ mouth. It’s been nearly two months since someone called him Warden, or spoke to him with the self-serious formality of official House communications. As always, Harrow makes it sounds like they are negotiating contested territory and not discussing medical care—though perhaps, in this instance, the two are not so very different from each other.

“It is.” As he moves closer to Harrow, his gaze flickers up to meet Gideon’s. He can’t answer her question for certain; all he has are hunches, and he needs more data. And he needs it quickly if he’s going to figure out how to fix the damage before Harrow’s brain fluid starts leaking out of her ears again.

Again, carefully, he put his hands on Harrow’s head. In another time and another place, it might look like he’s bestowing a benediction—or conducting a mind meld. Beneath her skull, Harrow’s temporal lobes are like Swiss cheese, and there’s something else as well, something he doesn’t even need psychometry to figure out. The bone plates themselves are all wrong…

“She has re-written her memory centers,” he tells Gideon. “And shaped her skull in a way that ensures the brain cannot repair itself.” He thinks he knows why, too, and it’s dreadful, as horrifying as the Lyctoral process itself. But there’s no time to explain that, no time for Gideon to process it. Palamedes isn’t sure it’s his place to tell, anyway.

“Nonagesimus, the concept of penance is irrational,” he says with exacting patience. “I meant what I said before. We need to repair the damage.”

From:

undonewithout

Harrow shudders a little at the touch, no less welcome even though she'd invited it this time. Her eyes close as he assesses her, and when his voice breaks the silence between them, she has to work to remain impassive. Even these few facts, plain and clinical, are evidence enough of the greater work she'd tried to keep hidden. A muscle ticks, just faintly, in her jaw.

"Irrational or not, it is what I required," she says, though to be called Nonagesimus unlocks something inside of her, a relief at being that and not Harrowhark the First even for the space of a moment. It's enough that she doesn't reject the rest of it wholesale, though her pinched features sharpen further as she looks his way. An ache ripples its way from temple to temple, but it passes. "But to repair it is to undo what I have...to lose..."

She cannot say it with Gideon in the room, with Gideon anywhere in earshot, but it seems she must. Harrow fists her hands in her robe, steeling herself. "Wherever this is, I have been brought to it both in spirit and in flesh. It stands that repairing the damage here will carry over when I return to the Mithraeum, and if that is so, that will represent a failure of work I consider inviolate. It will..."

She cannot do this. She makes herself. "It will destroy what I have left of the soul of Gideon Nav."

From:

wedobones

It takes a moment for Gideon to sort through what they've both just said. Her brain is wrong and her skull is wrong and then Harrow says what she says and, suddenly, Gideon understands, with perfect, infuriating clarity. "Oh my God," she says. "You didn't. You did. Fuck."

From:

hellonspectacles

Palamedes pushes his hair back from his forehead with a quiet sigh. He’d guessed as much, but it’s another thing altogether to have his fears confirmed. If he was a different sort of person, he would have shouted, you didn’t have to. None of you had to. The thought brings him back to the fateful Canaan House laboratory where they had all last been together, to you lied to us and the horror of unnecessary bloodshed deemed holy.

It makes him furious, and it breaks his heart.

But Lyctorhood, whatever form it might take, is not actually the point at the moment. “Gideon,” he says, a quiet warning. She has every reason to be angry, but her anger will only make a delicate situation worse. Returning to Harrow he says, “The efficacy of your plan aside—and I’m not even sure I agree with your theory, by the way, but that’s a matter for another time—your conduct here should have no bearing on your existence at home, spiritual or material. We’ve not been transported wholesale into a new universe. Instead, the timeline has split; we’ve been sent one way, and another version of ourselves has been sent the other.”

From:

undonewithout

The incredulous fury in Gideon's voice brings on another wave of pain; not the kind that sends blood streaming from her nose or leaking out her tear ducts, but something deeper and more central. "Of course I did," Harrow snaps, the barest turn of her head all she can manage for fear of sparking yet another hemorrhage. "You would have been reduced. Consumed. None of us may have spared much affection for him, but we all saw what fucking happened to Tern. And I saw yet more, after."

Even now, she can't pinpoint the exact moment Ianthe's cavalier became just a battery inside her, when whatever remained of him stopped trying to fight. With the creation of her new arm, perhaps, or somewhere shortly after. But it happened, and it was only ever going to happen, and had Harrow remembered then what she'd done to herself, she thinks now that she'd make the choice to do it again.

The firm rebuke in Palamedes' voice quiets her, too, and Harrow tries to breathe as she listens to his explanation, her brow furrowing at the conjecture he draws. "A split timeline? Warden, that is unnecessarily and complexly metaphysical, the energy alone..." She shakes her head. "I assumed it was the River, frankly. Another elaborate projection." Here, she pauses, a shred of the old Harrowhark--or the new, or some conglomeration of both--emerging as the corner of her mouth quirks briefly upwards. "Something of more solid construction than even yours."

From:

wedobones

"We're not talking about this now," says Gideon, through teeth clenched so tight that her jaw aches. "Because he needs to help you fix your fucking brain. But we are going to talk about this later, you absolute asshole, and how you have taken every single decision I have ever made in my life and threw it back in my face just to see if it would fucking bruise." She turns her attention to Palamedes, her golden eyes fixed on his face. "What do I do to help?"

From:

hellonspectacles

“What do you think I’ve been trying to figure out for the past six weeks?” says Palamedes, something sparkling briefly in his eyes. “There’s more, too—improbably, we do maintain a sort of loose connection to our other lives, though I can’t figure out how to harness it to any use. When we’re done here I’ll show you my notes. And in exchange,” now he really needs to stop himself from grinning, “you can tell me about my construction and how the hell you know anything about it.”

The contingency worked Again, Palamedes wants to shout, this time in relief. But now is really not the time.

He raises his eyes to meet Gideon’s and gives her a nod of thanks. Harrow hasn’t actually agreed to anything, of course, but it seems better to give her fewer opportunities to object. “Help me take her to the kitchen.” He takes a breath, not quite believing what he’s about to say. “I need to open her skull."

From:

undonewithout

"Six weeks," echoes Harrow, half in astonishment and half a little ruefully; it's difficult not to think of that as placing her at a disadvantage, even with the peek at his notes he promises. "And if the connection is strong enough to be evident and yet so tenuous it's of null importance...another paradox." She sees him grin, the lines of his face shifting from awkward to striking in an instant, and recalls the way he'd looked at their last improbable reunion. "You have a deal, Sextus."

His focus returns to Gideon, to the matter at hand, and Harrow can't help feeling as though there's a constriction there, the closing of another trap she hadn't known she'd sprung. "I can stand unaided," she says, the acid in her tone more for herself than either of them, a last protest against a concession she already knows she's making. With what dignity she can muster, she maneuvers herself out of the couch and up, wobbling only slightly as she finds her feet.

From:

wedobones

Palamedes at least acknowledges her, and that goes some way to tamping down Gideon's incandescent rage for a few. She straps it all down. For now, at least. When Harrow stands up and totters, she rolls her eyes and reaches out to just steady her with one hand on her elbow.

"Look," she says, quietly. "You're the one who said you weren't going to be a stranger to me, anymore. So let's just...leave my immortal soul or whatever out of it for a while and just be in the here and now and let me be your fucking cav, okay? Please."

From:

hellonspectacles

"Very well," he says to Harrow with the slightest hint of an eyeroll in his voice, gesturing for her to lead the way. He picks up the first aid kit and the towels and takes them along.

In the kitchen, he points Harrow to a chair, and then approaches to again examine her scalp. With a grimace he says, "Gideon do you have some scissors? And a razor?" A sigh. "Emperor's bones, Nonagesimus, who helped you with this? And please note that I'm using helped in the broadest way possible."

From:

undonewithout

It was the old Harrowhark who had said that, and believed it to be true. Who'd grudgingly needed it to be, as danger piled up around them and the mystery of Canaan House only deepened. That Harrow had done the work, and left the person she was now with the aftermath; the notes and directives, the lack of trust in her own mind, the pain of remembrance. And yet, here, those Harrows had collapsed in on one another; no longer Harrowhark Prime and Secundarius, if she ever had been either, just one person in need of being made whole again. Whatever the cost later on.

When Gideon's fingers grip her elbow, she doesn't pull away. Steeling herself for the blinding pain, she manages, finally, to turn and look up at her cavalier. "Okay," she says, with effort. "We set that aside, because you were...are...my cavalier, Nav." She has to look away then, working through the pain as Gideon walks her to the kitchen, shutting off capillaries again to staunch the bleeding before it becomes apparent. When directed to a chair, she sits without protest, aside from a wary flicker in her dark eyes when Palamedes questions her again.

"Their involvement was limited to only what was necessary," she begins. "Assisting in opening my skull, exposing the brain. Guiding me as to where and what I needed to...alter. I needed someone with the expertise in flesh magic I lacked, though it pains me to admit it." It's all too inscrutable, a roundabout answer reeking of petulance. Harrow takes a breath, already anticipating the explosion--on two likely fronts--that her next words will trigger. "Ianthe Tridentarius."

From:

wedobones

Ouch. Even with the correction, that stings. Still, she walks Harrow into her kitchen and helps her settle in a chair, leaves the towels and first aid kit on the table. "Scissors in the drawer," she says, and she's on her way back to the bathroom to grab the electric clippers she uses to keep the back and sides of her hair in order, a fresh disposable razor too, and then she hears what Harrow says next. "What. The actual. Fuck." The last time she'd seen Ianthe Tridentarius, she'd been bleeding from the stump of her severed arm, flailing around like a half trodden roach. Insanity flaring in her muddy, watercolor eyes. "Why?"

From:

hellonspectacles

“What?” Palamedes says in almost the exact same moment as Gideon. “God and all his Lyctors at your disposal and you choose Ianthe Tridentarius.” This observation he mutters under his breath, mostly for his own benefit. No one could deny that Ianthe had surprised all of them in the end, but to Palamedes she’s still a second-rate flesh magician that no one should trust anywhere near their brain.

At least the mediocre handiwork makes it easy to see where they cut into her before. The scar itself is angry, hair grown tufted around it. “I’m going to shave your head, Harrow,” he warns. “From there, I will need your expertise to remove your temporal bone. We don’t exactly have the necessary tools available otherwise.”

From:

undonewithout

"Neither God nor the three remaining of his Lyctors were known to me then," she retorts. "Not at a level I could trust. Nor was Ianthe, I admit that freely, but she was a...manageable quantity." She turns to look back at Palamedes, black eyes taking in the expression on his face and the scissors in his hand. "Had you been an option, Sextus, and had I thought you'd assist if you were, I'd have chosen you. Ianthe is nowhere near your caliber. Even at full Lyctoral strength."

Gideon had asked why too, with a level of shock and anger backing the word that demanded an answer. It's a harder one to give, and Harrow turns back to her slowly, delaying the inevitable need for her response. "I asked her," she says at last, voice low and slightly halting, "because she knew what it was to be...fractured. To have lost."

Harrow lets that linger in the air for a moment, then gives Palamedes a nod. "I can unravel the new bone growth, when necessary. It should allow you to lever out the necessary panels and expose the brain again."

From:

wedobones

"Oh. God." Gideon's stomach lurches sickly, her lunch threatening to make a reappearance and she turns on her heel and heads to the bathroom, grabbing the things that Sextus asked for. "I'll do it," she says, when she comes back. "Shave her head, I mean." She isn't likely to be that useful once Harrow's brain is open to the air, so she might as well pull her weight now. "All of it, or...?"

From:

hellonspectacles

“I appreciate the vote of confidence,” Palamedes deadpans. But he knows Harrow doesn’t give compliments easily—and frankly, she has been rather free with them today. He would have never agreed to such a thing in the first place, but he’s glad to have been thought of.

“All of it.” He nods in answer to Harrow’s assurance, and then takes himself and the first aid kit over to the sink. The tools are minimal, but he washes what’s there and hopes it will be enough.

From:

undonewithout

Gideon offers to shave her head, the sound of it abrupt and a little hurried to Harrow's ears. She bites back another barb, a reminder that the razor isn't sharp enough to cut my throat, Griddle or a sniping is this the precious cav duty you were so eager for? She tries, belated as it is. As the clippers turn on, buzzing low, Harrow bends her head forward and closes her eyes.

From:

wedobones

She's used to the sight of Harrow shorn; Harrow has been wearing her hair cropped nun short their whole lives. Gideon does a careful, thorough job, tilting Harrow's head this way and that with the gentle press of her fingers. She does a thorough job and, when she's done, Harrow's dead crow hair drifting around her bare feet, she steps back and kills the clippers. "There..."