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:

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..."

From:

hellonspectacles

“Very good. Thank you.” Now that Harrow’s head is freshly shorn, the half-healed sutures are even more visible than before, and the gravity of what Palamedes is about to do sinks in. He has been adapting his abilities to medical uses for most of his life, all but inventing a new form of necromancy in the process, but brain surgery is far beyond anything he has ever attempted.

Well, no turning back now.

“Harrow, I’m going to start by cutting along your sutures. Are you able to turn off your pain receptors?”

From:

undonewithout

The gentleness of Gideon's fingers makes her shudder, discomfort sitting low in her gut even as she responds willingly to the touch, letting herself be moved and positioned, the clippers an odd vibrating sensation as they track over her scalp. Locks of hair fall in her lap and she brushes them away, and when her head is bare again it feels almost like the lifting of a weight.

She does not judge the nervous edge to Palamedes' voice; if she hadn't been so panicked the last time, so desperate to get the process over and done with, Harrow might have had time for such uncertainty herself. That he speaks to her like a colleague is the more important thing, a respect she hadn't known she missed until it was found again. Even in a situation like this.

"I can," she says, sensing out the particular signature of the scar tissue and going deeper, disabling the nerve endings along the lines she expects the knife to follow. "Once you begin, I should be able to retard the Lyctoral healing factor as well, though that will take considerably more energy." If she doesn't, any work they do will be largely for naught.

From:

wedobones

Gideon is clenching her jaw so tight that her teeth hurt. Her fingers curl into fists. She stands back, giving Palamedes room. "I'm here, okay?" she says. She's not sure which one of them she's talking to.

From:

hellonspectacles

“You read my mind,” he tells Harrow, his hands steady when he rests one on her head and begins to cut the stitches with the other. Palamedes flashes Gideon the briefest of smiles. “Can you hand me gauze when I ask for it?” he asks her, thinking she might handle what’s to come better with a task to do.

With the stitches removed, Palamedes presses the knife into the still-healing scab. Blood pools up immediately; he presses through until he hits bone and traces the old incision. At this range, Pal is fairly easily able to close up the capillaries, though it’s still a more complex bit of necromancy than he has had a need to perform here in Darrow. He’s going to have a hell of a headache tomorrow.

“I’ll take that gauze now,” he tells Gideon. “Then I’ll be ready to detach the temporal bone.”

From:

undonewithout

It's a more careful and deliberate opening of her head than before, when haste had driven the application of hammer and awl, the cold kiss of metal against her frontal bone as Ianthe lined up and struck. Bizarrely, she can feel her body's urge to knit itself into wholeness as Palamedes cuts, severed vessels and layers of dermis vibrating with thalergy she has to hold in check. It takes every bit of the energy she expected, but there's a gloriousness to the effort, an expression of her power that sings a little bit in her veins.

Behold me, Griddle, she remembers herself saying, woozy with her own triumph. Feeling a trickle of blood run down from the incision, a leak Sextus hadn't managed to catch, she reaches a thin hand up, drying the trace to powder and brushing it aside.

From:

wedobones

Of all the times she imagined seeing the broken bones of Harrow's skull, this wasn't quite how she saw it happening. Her stomach lurches as blood wells up and it takes her a moment to reach for the gauze that Palamedes asks for. She holds it out to him, her fingers numb. She trusts him almost as much as she doesn't trust Harrow. It's enough.

From:

hellonspectacles

Palamedes takes the gauze with a murmured thank you and cleans up what blood there still is, leaving Harrow’s misshapen skull relatively clean. “I’m ready to lever out the bone,” he tells Harrow, a sort of calculated calm having descended over him. “Once I get a better look at what we’re dealing with, I’ll ask you to re-shape these…pressure points and do my best to clean up the damage beneath each one. That should stop the hemorrhaging, and allow you to heal naturally.” He almost smiles. “Whatever that means for a Lyctor, I suppose.”

From:

undonewithout

Keeping still so Palamedes can work, Harrow's aware of Gideon only as a presence out of the corner of her eye, shuffling hesitantly in to hand over the gauze before receding. For the task at hand, perhaps that's better; if Harrow cannot perceive her, cannot look at her, there's nothing to trigger the pain and the bleeding and complicate an already complex matter.

Palamedes hits the curve of her skull, wiping clean the bone and exposing the lines of new growth, the places marking where Ianthe's unworthy hand had put the saw at Harrow's demand. It's an exposure that sits ill within her now, another sign that they've progressed to a point where continuing is easier than retreat. Everything she had to do is about to be undone, and like a child, she fumes for a moment at the unfairness of the world before turning her attention to the calm instruction of Sextus' voice.

"Natural and unnatural are complicated terms when it comes to Lyctorhood, I've learned," she murmurs, her teeth worrying her lower lip. "Your plan makes sense. I'll help to guide you where needed, and...set right the things I've done." Inhaling slowly, Harrow unfurls the healed ridges of bone, drawing them back to re-expose the cut edges and loosen the panel enough to allow removal. Again, it takes effort, but less than she expected; her access to the Lyctoral well had unquestionably deepened, and it's a revelation that both thrills and disturbs her in equal measure.

From:

wedobones

Watching Harrow unravel her own skull shifts something foul and greasy in Gideon"s abdomen. She tastes copper. "Nope," she says, and manages to turn just in time to vomit noisly into her kitchen sink. At least she'd done the dishes this morning. "Fuck."

From:

hellonspectacles

Gideon and Palamedes have grown close over these last few weeks, but sometimes he really misses his own cavalier. This is one of those times. “Gideon, pour yourself a glass of water and sit down,” he says without judgement. He knows he can’t tell her to leave, but he needs all his concentration, and that means he can’t be concerned about whether or not Gideon is going to hurl again.

The bone growth dissolves before his eyes, and Palamedes carefully removes the loose piece of skull, its edges slightly ragged. Did Ianthe not have the slightest bit of pride in a job neatly done? Beneath sits Harrow’s exposed brain—Palamedes has never seen a still-living human brain before, and for the briefest moment he’s merely fascinated. “Let’s start here,” he says, grimacing at a spot where Harrow’s skull has grown something like a bone spur that presses cruelly into grey matter. He readies himself with more gauze, prepared to staunch the bleeding with necromantic and material means.

They work their way through the injuries, Palamedes directing Harrow’s bone magic, repairing what he can and hoping that time will do the rest. Soon, his nerves evaporate—his fingertips sing with adrenaline, and his glasses grow streaked with blood sweat, and he can feel a headache squeezing at his temples, but it’s glorious. He marvels at his own handiwork and Harrow’s—her motives may have been tragic, her theory flawed, the long-term effects incalculable, but God, she’d been precise about what she’d tried to do.

From:

undonewithout

It was easier before, when she could send Ianthe behind a curtain once her part in things had finished. This time, Palamedes is there for each step, each reworking of bone and removal of the crude systems and constructs she'd designed. She resents it and is pathetically, desperately grateful for the assistance, all at once. As they work, Harrow can sense the pathways reconnecting, things beginning to slot back into place. Channels of power, once dammed, flowing free again.

She wonders, at one point, if she ought to call for a mirror. If she ought to see, half out of fear and half curiosity, if the color of her eyes has shifted. With Gideon in the room with her, resurrected by a power she still doesn't comprehend--but cannot see the hand of the Emperor in at all--it might be a useless concern.

They undo the last bit of damage, and Harrow lets out a breath as Palamedes sets the cut bone back into place. Almost immediately, her skull begins to knit itself together again, new bone blending with the old more perfectly than it had before.

"It's finished," she says, and there's a weariness to the words. Her scalp is laid back into place, the skin healing layer by layer, scabs forming and then flaking away to reveal new, pink skin. "But to know if it worked, if I am...whole again, for good or ill..."

Harrow turns only enough to find where Gideon's sitting, more than slightly green in the face. She looks at her, and there's no zing of pain in her head, no leak of blood or sense of something ripping. If it aches, it's somewhere else entirely.

From:

wedobones

Gideon had end up sitting on the floor with a glass of water between her bare feet and her head bent over her knees. Dimly, she's aware of Harrow speaking after a long period of silence and, when she looks up, Harrow is looking straight at her. "You're not bleeding," she says.

From:

hellonspectacles

Harrow begins to heal almost as soon as Palamedes’ hands fall away. Briefly he’s entranced, watching bone, and nerves, and skin knit together, leaving her skull smooth again, with only the slightest dusting of dried blood to show what they had accomplished.

Palamedes goes to the sink to wash the blood from his hands. He takes off his glasses, finds a dishcloth, dampens it, and presses it to his face. It comes away stained pink.

He smiles just a little when Gideon speaks. It worked. The realization thrills him and floods him with relief. “I’d like to come by tomorrow,” he says, all business. “To ensure no complications have arisen.”

From:

undonewithout

"Don't sound so disappointed," says Harrow, even though just then Gideon sounded anything but and all three of them know it. Her eyes still linger on Gideon's, uncertainty making the lines of her face look soft and almost tragically young beneath the lingering smears and smudges of paint. She looks away, finally, when Palamedes breaks back in with all his clinical brusqueness. His face is dotted with blood sweat, a burst vessel in his left eye staining the sclera a vibrant red, but there's little mistaking the relieved and triumphant expression he's wearing.

"That seems wise," Harrow says, echoing his smile with a flickering one of her own. "I'll note anything anomalous between now and then, and if an emergency arises...it's clear Gideon knows how to reach you." She hesitates. "Thank you, Sextus."

From:

wedobones

Gideon doesn't respond to that, her golden eyes on Harrow's face for a moment. Shaved bald, there's nothing to disguise or soften the sharp lines of her face. It takes a long moment before Gideon looks away. "I'll call you if we need you," she says. "Harrow can take my room tonight. I'll make up the spare tomorrow."

From:

hellonspectacles

Palamedes offers Harrow a wry quirk of a smile. "Thank you for letting me do the honors, Nonagesimus." He cleans his glasses against the towel--they come out still smudged, but serviceable enough to get him home--and puts them back on. "While not the circumstances either of us would have expected, it is good to see you again. Get some rest."

His expression softens when he looks at Gideon, who seems ready to come to pieces from her mix of emotions. The tension crackles between her and Harrow, and he is keenly aware that he only knows a fraction of all the complicated things they mean to each other. As he leaves the kitchen, he pauses next to Gideon and squeezes her shoulder. "You, too. And you can call for any reason."

Then he goes to collect his messenger back from the living room and make his exit.