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

[undonewithout]

The comment utterly confuses her, the walled-off look on Harrow's face opening back up and slamming even tighter in quick succession. She keeps her head down, her eyes on the tight twist of her hands as they rest against her shins. The question that follows isn't an improvement, but it's at least halfway comprehensible.

"It's fractured," she admits after a moment. "Still. Everything is...new and old, all at once. I dislike the lack of precision."

[wedobones]

"Yeah, I bet," says Gideon, trying to think about it in a charitable way. "For months when I first got here all I dreamt about was the way you looked the last time I see you." It feels like admitting her deepest, darkest secret. "Can I...I really want to touch you."

[undonewithout]

"The last time you saw me was the stuff of nightmares," Harrow says, though she can't sustain the force she needs to make it sound contrary. Not when she's thinking about it too, how she'd been woozy with effort and exhaustion, bleeding and feeling the edges of her necromancy beginning to fray. There's no distance to the memory to make it easier to bear, and for a moment her arms tighten around her bent knees, her back hunching.

She unwinds one hand then, slowly, and holds it out. Her stomach twists, her face burns, but she waits for whatever happens next.

[wedobones]

Gideon takes Harrow's hand, threading their fingers together. It's a small contact; it's enough.

"The last time I saw you, you were fucking amazing," she says, and means it.

[undonewithout]

Harrow can't say anything to that, whether to argue or agree. Her silences have always been calculated, acts of choice rather than the dumb fact of being lost for words; not so, now. Her fingers grip Gideon's tightly, trembling a little.

"You were the best of us all." She remembers saying it, or something like it, so long ago--and only a few days prior. Her breath hitches once, before she forces it to smooth.

[wedobones]

"I was a piss poor cavalier, and we both know it," says Gideon, the corner of her mouth twitching when Harrow squeezes her hand. "But I would have done anything for you by the end. Still would." Her thumb grazes along the length of Harrow's. "Never gave a shit about the Ninth. Still don't. But you, Harrow...fuck. It took me so fucking long to work it out..."

[undonewithout]

"We're not in the water, so I can't admonish you for lying, but you are."

Keeping hold of her hand, Harrow slides a little further up the bed, away from the edge and closer to where Gideon's lounging in the center. It's a matter of inches, a foot or two at most, but it's still closer than she'd been. When Gideon's thumb runs over hers, she feels her nerves firing without reason, sparking with an electricity that embarrasses her. "It took too long," she agrees. "Too long for you to realize, for me to do the same. For us to understand it. It took...we know what it took. And damn us both for that."

[wedobones]

"Yeah, you're right."

Her cheeks heat slightly when Harrow slides closer, even though there's still blanket between them, their joined hands the only point of contact between them. "But we're here now and we get to decide what we want it to be."

[undonewithout]

"And we will," she says, and finds that she believes it. She watches Gideon's face, some part of her still fearing a stab of pain in her head or a torrent of blood as a punishment for her daring, but there's nothing like that now. "It will take time, but we've been granted that. I do not love this place as much as you, but I am grateful to it for that particular gift."

[wedobones]

Tentatively, like she barely trusts herself, Gideon lifts their joined hands and barely brushes her lips against Harrow's knuckles.

"It's never going to be home," she says. The fact of that means different things to them, and she knows it. "But we can make something here, Nonagesimus. Something that doesn't belong to anyone but us."