the last truce we ever came to from our adolescent war

[undonewithout]

Whatever balance they might have had early on is lost in bits and pieces over the next week or so, replaced by chilly silences and sheer avoidance, each attempt at conversation--usually Gideon's--turning all too quickly into yet another argument. They keep it to a minimum around the Sixth, at least, but Harrow doesn't fail to note the looks traded between Sextus and his cavalier when some tense exchange inevitably occurs between Gideon and her necromancer. Slowly, both of them spend more of their days apart than they do together, retreating into their respective rooms and treating the common spaces as contested territory. Gideon goes on more runs than usual. Harrow even ventures out to the library a time or two, excursions that leave her miserably unnerved by Darrow's noise and bustle, half-blinded by the glare of the light from a star that's not yet Dominicus and may never be.

There's nothing surprising about the conflict; they'd been arguing since they both could speak, fighting well before Gideon could hold a sword or Harrow could craft a construct. Nothing could change that for either of them, not Gideon's miraculous return or the restoration of some little shred of Harrow's sanity, because it's as much part of them as anything else. They fight, because it's what they've always done. Anything else is an aberration destined only for a swift correction.

Knowing that doesn't keep Harrow from replaying lines from Gideon's letter in her head, doesn't stop her from watching her out of the corner of her eye when they can bear to be in the same room as one another, doesn't make her wonder what if in the middle of the night with a foolish and misplaced hope.

By now Harrow knows Gideon's schedule, more or less, the points during the day she'll have the whole apartment to herself and when she'll make a considered retreat to her room until having some meal forced on her yet again. They've not yet reached the stage of a tray left in front of a closed door, but she suspects it's only a matter of time. For now, the place is quiet, and Harrow slinks out of her room and heads for the lounge, a book in hand. Curling up in her hoodie, on the absurdly soft cushions of the couch, she starts to read.

Comments

[wedobones]

"Fuck. I always forgot what a raging bitch you can be," she snaps. "One flesh one end really didn't mean anything go you, did it? All of that shit you said to me right before I...right before. That was all fucking lies wasn't it? Undone without me? Bullshit. You just threw your toys out of the pram because you didn't get your own way. That's what this is - one big long Harrowhark Nonagesimus temper tantrum because you didn't get to dictate to me that one fucking time."

[undonewithout]

"Say it, you coward," Harrow all but shrieks, advancing on her--trying to, at least, managing only three steps before she stops again, dark eyes burning as she looks up into Gideon's face. "Right before you died and left me behind. If you can't even say it, what does it matter what I said to you beforehand? What does it matter that none of it was lies, unlike what you..."

She clamps her jaw shut over the rest of those words, the confession that wants to spring forth and would only lead to more tension and disquiet. Looking down at the book in her hand, Harrow exhales a thin, seething breath. "You will never understand."

[wedobones]

"Before I died and gave you what you wanted more than anything I've ever seen you want in my entire life, including your girlfriend in the Tomb." She stops then, and tilts head head. "Unlike what I what?"

[undonewithout]

"You know why I wanted it," she shouts back, her fury burning past the bizarre mention of the Body, the note in Gideon's voice that almost sounds like jealousy. "It was never your death I sought, but life! The life of the Ninth, an atonement for the ones my parents--"

She breaks off with an incoherent screech. This is ground they've tread before, and will over and over again no matter how long either of them live. After, even; it hadn't ever been death that separated them the first time, and Harrow knows with frightening certainty that whichever of them parts ways with life next will wait in the River out of sheer bloody-mindedness to resume their argument on their way to the farther shore. All they've ever done is tear strips off of one another, finding weak spots and exploiting what advantages they had. Until Canaan House, it was the only thing they knew--and there'd been no after until now, not for either of them.

Gideon stops, and blinks, and tilts her head, and when the question comes Harrow practically feels herself grow pale. "Unlike nothing," she says, looking away from the sharp focus of her cavalier's eyes.

[wedobones]

They've always fought, as long as Gideon can remember so this, at least, feels like something familiar. Harrow's said worse to her before. And then she sees the blood drain out of Harrow's face. To an outsider, someone who hadn't known their whole life, it would have looked like her face hadn't changed, but, to Gideon Nav, it looked like fireworks going off.

"Bullshit," she says. "What were you going to say, Nonagesiumus?"

[undonewithout]

"Nothing," Harrow repeats, more furiously than before. She can feel the race of her pulse, the panic clawing at her insides, and tries unsuccessfully to purge it. They know each other too well, too deeply, for her to have been that incautious even in anger; this is the price she pays for it now. Again, she looks beyond Gideon, black eyes searching for any possible escape.

"I would've thought you'd welcome the chance to avoid hearing me speak, Nav."

[wedobones]

"All I've ever wanted is to know what's going on in your head, you fucking hag," snaps Gideon, and then a thought dawns on her. A tradition. A way to get something approaching the truth past Harrow Nonagesimus' teeth. Gideon wheels away from her into the kitchen and grabs the only salt in the house, the large container of table salt that she uses for cooking. On the way back, she takes hold of Harrow's upper arm and jerks her towards the bathroom.

[undonewithout]

"Lies," says Harrow, who's lost track of the number of times Gideon's expressed everything from disinterest to outright revulsion at the thought of knowing her inmost thoughts, her most private feelings. Tridentarius would've eaten them up--all those long nights spent in the gaudy decadence of her Mithraeum bedroom, and Harrow had known Ianthe was just hoping for some break in her--but Gideon? They'd only stopped being strangers to each other out of necessity. It had never been by choice.

Gideon turns and starts for the kitchen, and Harrow bolts. She refuses to run, not within the walls of their apartment, but her pace is something much faster than leisurely. She makes it as far as the hallway, as far as within sight of her bedroom, before Gideon grabs her. So fast she's barely conscious of it, she extends the keratin of her fingernails on the opposite hand into claws, wheeling to slash at any part of Gideon within reach as she tries to pull from her grip. "Let me go!"

[wedobones]

"Not on your fucking life," snarls Gideon. Harrow's nails catch her forearm, but Gideon has been hurt far more than that, far more than that by Harrow, so she doesn't let go. In the bathroom, she all but throws Harrow away from her, slamming the door and locking it behind them. The room is small enough that she can stay between Harrow and the door as she turns the taps and starts filling the bath.

[undonewithout]

"I should've gone for your fucking face," she spits in return, kicking and pulling as Gideon--always stronger than her, and she hates it--hauls her away. She staggers as she's thrown into the bathroom, catching herself on the lip of the sink and turning, eyes black with hatred as she sees Gideon press the lock on the doorknob. She rips a stud out of her ear, ready to unfold it into a weapon, a construct; in a space this small, the fight would be over brutally quickly. It's only then that she notices the container resting on the lip of the tub, the one so obviously taken from the kitchen. The weight of realization hits her all at once, heavy and terrible.

"Absolutely not."

[wedobones]

"Definitely happening," says Gideon, picking up the container and clicking it open, upending it to pour a stream into the still filling bathtub. "It's the only salt in the house." She sets it down. "Get in."

[undonewithout]

"This isn't even your tradition to uphold," she argues, regretting ever having mentioned it at Canaan House, ever bringing Gideon into the kind of confidence an immersion in salt water required. It was a space to let forth secrets and confessions that would be unspeakable otherwise, a place with specific rules and limitations that could never be carried forth into the light. Harrow doesn't let herself think about how that makes it perfect for this moment now. "You insult me and you insult my mother and father by this perversion of it."

Gideon orders her in, and Harrow grits her teeth, tossing down the stud in her hand. It unfolds into tiered panels of bone, a wall that makes the small space even smaller, curving to the wall and cutting Harrow and the sink off from Gideon and the tub. "Go fuck yourself, Griddle."

[wedobones]

"Why change the habit of a lifetime?" She rolls her eyes when Harrow throws up the wall of bone. "You're a lot of things, Nonagesimus, but you've never been a coward."

[undonewithout]

Harrow seethes on her side of the wall, pacing the few steps she's able to take within her little self-imposed cell. "I'm still not getting in that water. There's no point to it, and if you used what little brain you have, Griddle, you'd see that too."

She sits, folding herself up into a small black bundle on the tile floor and glaring in the direction of her cavalier. The bone may be opaque, but Harrow can still sense Gideon's presence on the other side, steady and patient.

[wedobones]

Gideon kills the taps and peels off her sweats, stepping into the lukewarm water in the tub. She stands with it lapping around her shins.

"We can't keep going like this and you know it, Harrow. Get your ass in the water." She closes her eyes. "I'll talk if you do."

[undonewithout]

"I despise you," she says, her voice full not of venom or hate but something shamefully weaker, a note that sounds altogether too young and too tired. Harrow listens to Gideon move and settle in the tub, the water making a quiet noise around her body. She looks down at her hands, takes in the way they already shake, and curls her fingers into fists until she feels the sharp bite of her nails slicing into her palms. The cuts heal as soon as they're made, but the memory of the pain, at least, lingers.

With effort, she stands, letting the panels of the bone wall fold in on themselves again, reducing until the chip of bone they'd come from is small and inert again, resting on the tile floor. Harrow looks at Gideon in the tub, her eyes burning, another hideous blush creeping along her cheeks and down her neck at the sight of her in nothing but boxers and a shirt, the lean muscle of her legs on full display.

It's like death to beg for pity, to ask it of the girl in front of her. She can't, and she wants to, and the struggle of it shows all too clearly in her face.

[wedobones]

There's that look on Harrow's face, that flush creeping across her cheekbones again. Gideon can't even begin to fathom what's going on, and she can't keep doing this. It's too much. She's too tired.

"Get in the water, Harrow. We're doing this."

[undonewithout]

“You have no conception of what you’re asking of me,” she lies, knowing that of the two of them, it’s Gideon who’s always been the more clear-eyed when it comes to things like this. To feelings, and the capacity to open oneself up enough to allow someone else an unobstructed view.

Harrow looks towards the door, thinking once more about running, about setting a skeleton—a hundred of them—on Gideon before she can get out of the tub and give chase. Instead, she shrugs out of the hoodie, letting it fall to the floor, strips off the socks she’s wearing, stands there in her shirt and her trousers, steeling herself. It’s only three steps to the tub, but each of them feels like shedding a layer of protection.

After testing the water with one thin, bare foot, she steps in, one hand pressed to the wall above the tub to keep her balance.

[wedobones]

"Whatever it is, we'll figure it out together," says Gideon, because she honestly does believe that. "We bring hell, remember?" Harrow steadies herself against the wall as Gideon sinks down onto her knees in the bathtub, the fabric of her t-shirt floating against the muscles of her belly and, without thinking, like she had that day in Canaan House, she holds out her hand.

[undonewithout]

"We showed them what the Ninth House does."

The memory aches, that reminder they'd come so close to solidarity, managed it for a handful of moments before it was gone again. She'd made herself into a necromancer alone, afterwards, and cheated herself into thinking that was better. Gideon sinks into the water, shirt billowing up as it had in the Canaan House pool, although there the dark had masked the glimpse Harrow gets now of taut skin and defined muscle. Her flush deepens; she is no flesh magician, and has no wish to be, but she still understands the sight of a body beautifully crafted.

When Gideon extends her hand, at first Harrow can only stare, her face young and narrow and her expression unsteady. Slowly, she lets go of the wall and reaches down, her fingers sliding over Gideon's.

[wedobones]

Gideon's hand closes around Harrow's and, inexplicably, she finds herself squeezing her necromancer's slim fingers.

"You're definitely blushing," she says. "Sit down and tell me what the fuck is going on."

[undonewithout]

Helplessly, she lets herself take strength from that squeeze to her fingers, even a form of comfort despite wondering if she deserves either. "I know I'm blushing," she says, because the presence of the saltwater sanctifies this place, demands her honesty no matter how reluctant she is to give it. "I'll...I don't want to tell you, but I will. I promise."

It's awkward to sit, but she manages, sinking into the water of the tub and feeling it seep through her clothes. It's not the same as the River, nor the pool from before, a warmth and brackishness to it, the grains of salt that hadn't dissolved forming a grit at the bottom of the tub. Letting go of Gideon's hand, Harrow turns until her back is to the faucet protruding from the wall, leaving Gideon the smoother, wider end to lean against. She watches her, dark eyes taking in every angle of her face, every bright spark in her flame-colored eyes, the soft fall of her red hair.

"Why did you miss me?" she asks. She knows the answer already, having heard enough of it from Gideon's own mouth, having regained her own memories of how complex and fraught their connection had been, but approaching from this angle is the only thing she can manage. "Those seven months after you...when you came here. Why, out of everything, was it me you were waiting for?"

[wedobones]

Once Harrow settles, Gideon does too, fitting her back into the end of the tub, her knees bent, her hands floating over her lap. Harrow asks her question, and Gideon tilts her head back against the tile, trying to put something complicated into words.

"One flesh, one end, bitch," says Gideon, a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. "What's the point of me without you? A Cavalier without a necromancer?" She worries her lip with her teeth. "It was more than that, though. I...I've never been without you, Harrow. My whole life, you've been there."

[undonewithout]

"Your whole life was immeasurably poorer for having me in it," she says, letting the statement rest in the air between them. "Everyone feared you. Everyone hated you. Including me. The things I did to you in life were bad enough, but in death..." She looks at a point beyond Gideon, a complexity of emotions running over her face. "You should never forgive me for that. Not..."

Harrow's throat locks up on love me, the words too immense to say so early. "It should break our bond, not have you seeking to make it stronger."

[wedobones]

"My life would have been shitty on the Ninth no matter what happened," says Gideon, her voice low and level, her golden eyes fixed on Harrow's face. "At least with you around, I got to be the centre of someone's attention sometimes." Her jaw works for a moment. "Tell me you didn't feel it in Canaan House...things start to shift between us. Tell me it was in my head."