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In the end, Harrow can’t recall how she makes her way to the Tomb. She feels its pull on her waning, exhausted soul, and she stumbles into chilled comfort. Her steps are that of a dying animal, unfocused and uncoordinated. In this moment, the embrace of the grave-bed is more comforting than anything her body has ever felt. She is dizzy and imperviously calm. Her breath slows in the cold. Every inch of her murmurs: finally, finally, finally.
She lays herself to rest in her beloved’s own resting place; she feels, in her numb fingertips, the crinkling pages of an awful magazine; she settles into the blissful, aching memory of love. The Body was the first Harrow adored; Gideon was the only Harrow felt adored by. These feelings intertwine, and they follow her into sweet sleep. They soothe her better than any anesthetic could.
When her eyelids grow heavy, a familiar frost brushes her cheeks; she hopes to look even a bit as beautiful as her Body once did. When her consciousness ebbs like the receding tide, she experiences easy peace; this was not a feeling she knew while alive. When Harrowhark slips away, it is free of struggle; she is never to be burdened again.
When she wakes, the disappointment is instantaneous and overwhelming. It is tremulous. It refuses to leave her. She cannot register anything outside of one constant: it sits heavy in her lungs like water, and she will never take another full breath for as long as she continues this facsimile of life. She allows her companions to drag her along because she knows she trusted them once, as much as the Reverend Daughter could trust anything. She does not speak for ages. She feels it takes years; more likely weeks. It is months come and gone.
When she finally talks, the only thing she asks is: “Why did you wake me?”
Gideon says, eloquently, “Huh?”
Harrow cannot find the energy to repeat herself.
As far as she can tell, she is in another bed on another ship. There are no blaring alarms, no flashing lights, and time seems to pass without passing — so she rolls over and lets unconsciousness take her. Before she goes, she senses the distant comfort of a warm hand against her back.
-
“Why did you wake me?” is every day's tolling bell. It sounds more than once if Harrowhark floats away especially much, forgetting when and where she is; more than twice if she gets so overwhelmed her soul threatens to evacuate her body. Today, so far, she has asked only the one time.
“You were drooling a bit,” Gideon claims, grinning her lopsided grin. “Really unbecoming. I couldn’t leave the Reverend Daughter like that in good conscience.”
“Don’t pretend to be so pious.” Harrow snuffles a small laugh. Her shoulders are one tired slump. She feels stiff with death even though she never truly died, even though she slept as livingly as her Body once slept. She thinks she would quite like to sleep again, but when she resettles her position in bed (which is where she is, she realizes), pressure encircles her wrist. This time, Gideon catches her.
"Hey," her cavalier says, soft and hesitant, “you think we could get some food in you?"
The idea of this makes Harrow want to puke on principle. She has not felt the ache of hunger since sleeping, since waking — since before that, too. "I am barely alive, Nav," she asserts, lacking regard for the immediate distress that crosses Gideon's features unnoticed. "I have no need for such things." Then, having said her piece, Harrow passes out through sheer willpower alone.
"What the fuck," Gideon whispers despairingly into the quiet.
-
“Why did you wake me?” Harrow fiddles with one fraying sleeve, fabric damaged to the point of softening. She will not take the garment off.
"I missed you," Gideon admits, too soft and too honest. This causes an old chasm in Harrow's chest to shiver open.
For one desperate moment, Harrow recontextualizes the words in an attempt to make them hurt less. In a universe calmer, safer, kinder, it could've been as simple as Harrow sleeping in late; as monumental as Gideon shaking her awake because the drought of her company became unbearable. This concept does not help with her bittersweet breaking — the longing that threatens to swallow her whole — so she dissolves the thought lest she succumbs to tears.
She does not talk much that day, but Gideon does. Gideon has always been talented at filling space — she would have made a joke about filling other things if only Harrow could voice her observation. These days, the conversations Gideon manages to carry with nothing are not so grating, because Harrow is nothing, and nothing is Harrow. Gideon includes her even when she drifts too badly to notice it. Gideon will coax her back only to ask her opinion on something inane (or, perhaps, it occurs the other way around). Gideon accepts nonverbal responses.
In this way, Gideon is very different from the hospital. She cannot imagine Gideon so cold, so clinical, so quick to ignore a single living thing. Clearly, this transfers over even when the thing in question could not be considered "living". Her cavalier's infuriating compassion knows no bounds.
Harrow remains tucked under one warm arm. She is led — with distressing willingness — around their quarters. She is fed wasted resources; Gideon gleans her opinion on this with startling clarity from just one glance and says, "I know you don't think you need to eat, but it'd make your only friend feel a hell of a lot better if you did." So, Harrow acquiesces to a few more spoonfuls and does not find it entirely repulsive.
She sleeps, and she sleeps, and she sleeps; she remains unaware.
-
"Why did you wake me?" This is their routine, and sometimes it orients Harrow into her skin; sometimes it freaks her the fuck out of it. They've yet to decide which game they're playing today. Harrow always leaves the choice to Gideon, considering she's much too tired to remember about any other option. This might be what scares Gideon more than anything.
Gideon is scared. Gideon is exhausted. Her body has become one taut line. This does not excuse the mistake she makes, just as Harrow's feelings do not absolve her of damning them to cyclical motion.
She does not answer Harrow's question. Silence is accompanied by the same easy itch of ignoring a muster call. In the aftermath that follows, Gideon can never remember if she hadn’t heard Harrow or if she simply hadn’t cared enough to respond. Guilt gorges itself on her guts.
Harrow waits, the picture of patience, bony little hands folded in her lap. Perhaps she forgot to speak. Perhaps she drifted during the reply — or perhaps Gideon is now out of her reach; Gideon is otherwise content to leave her stranded. Perhaps Harrow was wrong to assume she had earned all Gideon’s warmth and none of her wrath. Harrow should be unforgivable; she should get hurt. She is not some helpless animal deserving of unconditional care.
She is being ignored. She did not think she would be —
For one stricken moment, Harrow feels dauntingly untethered. There is nothing to keep her in her body. She doesn't know the difference between being here and being gone. She doesn't know how to stay. She could disappear from herself and never return and never feel Gideon's heat contrast her iciness again. She is at the mercy of those who remain alive.
Something glacial coats her throat and stills her tongue. Today, she hasn't remembered many words she can say beyond the given five. She can't communicate her sudden need for help. She can't feel her hands. She can't feel her pulse, and it has been so long since she could.
Reality goes shaky, if there is one at all. In a daze, she watches her ugly corpse-hands clutch desperately at her own skin. Even the pervasive cold does not meet her now. There is nothing to be felt. Harrow is nothing, and nothing is Harrow.
She is not so certain she woke up after all. How might she discern such a difference?
“Harrow — Harrow, beloved, please —”
It’s the sharp-wet pulse of pain that finally gets her; a familiar sensation her body relies on in her absence. There is slick crimson spread across her hands, scant flesh underneath her nails, and strands of black-brown hair wound tight enough to cut off circulation in her fingers.
Well, shit.
Blinking blurry vision into focus, Harrow stares up at Gideon — who is tense, who has not made any move to touch her.
“I didn’t know,” Gideon says, apropos of nothing, franticness tinging her tone. Harrow’s fresh wounds ache in sympathy — or they ache because they’re fresh. Her grasp of language has yet to return in full, so she tips her head to one side and hopes that is enough.
It is not. Gideon exits the room in one hurried motion, filling Harrow with distant, clamoring fright — but she comes back with medical supplies. Gideon executes her explanations in a hush, and she does not return to her own aborted subject. She touches Harrow as gently as she can whilst accomplishing the task she’s set for herself. Harrow is shut out from any further glimpses of… that, no matter how hard she studies Gideon. The emotion felt has been firmly sealed away.
The energy around them goes funny. Harrow knows this means something; does not know what it is that she knows. They can’t linger much longer on the precipice of realization. They have to fucking face it — what Harrow did, what Gideon’s feeling. This causes a desperate lurch of panic to crawl up Harrow’s throat, and suddenly she understands.
One wavering hand reaches out to hold Gideon’s own, though the stretch makes her bandaged wrist protest its soreness. Finally, finally, finally: warm.
-
“Why did you wake me?” It is another weighted, woozy morning; Harrow is so sick. Her hair hangs in obtrusive tangles around her sunken face.
Gideon’s voice, snagging on desperation, finally snaps. “Harrow, why did you sleep? This isn’t fucking fair, stop asking me — tell me why you slept. Please.”
Harrow cannot answer: there are too many things she could say. Because to fall in love with the Body was only another way to fall in love with death. Because even after the Tomb accepted her and she found some solace in belonging, her original wish never went away. Because she was bone-achingly tired and could no longer live without the axis upon which she righted herself. Because it was there, because it was easy, and because she has known since her conception that she would be happier dead.
Gideon takes her lack of reply as something else. An angry, throbbing hurt splits open her chest. “What? You like the gored-up memory of me better than me alive? Is that it, Nonagesimus?”
This, finally, wedges a splinter of feeling into Harrow.
“No!” The sudden harshness of Harrow's voice feels as if it tears the lining of her throat. “There is not one universe in which that is anywhere close to the truth, Griddle.”
“Then what the fuck is it?” Gideon softens a little, sensing something forthcoming in Harrow. Harrow feels it too. Her hands shake. The words rise up like bitterest bile, no matter how hard she tries to bite them back.
Without any ability to gather herself, she says it the only way she knows how: “I wanted to remain buried, insensate, in perpetual rest with closed eye and stilled brain."
Gideon surely withholds an inappropriate comment about Alecto. She does this because she sees Harrow’s face and does not know what to make of it, except that she appears devastated. There is more to this than the Body.
“Okay. Go on.”
The liquid in Harrow’s lungs wants out. The churning sensation is uncomfortable, and she is afraid. Its expulsion will be ugly. She will cough up saltwater, sputtering all over, and it will ruin both of them.
She does not know how to say it. She does not want to say it. She knows her Gideon needs to hear it — which is, ultimately and always, enough.
“I wanted to die,” she elaborates, turned away in an absolute refusal to watch what this turns Gideon into. Unstoppered, unceasing confession pours from her lips. "I was calm. You knew me when I was alive — I was never calm — but there was nothing to lose anymore. There's nothing to gain now. It felt so good to be nothing, Gideon. I needed to sleep, and the tomb was my bed, and you — you said we could talk once I was buried." Delirious, a drowned thought drifts to the top of her mind. "Did I look beautiful?"
Gideon, hoarse and shaky: "You looked dead, Harrow."
They fall into silence. Harrow is still trembling and her brain is so loud. "I told you I deserved to die at your hand," she creaks. "The Reverend Parents told me I deserved to hang myself. You know why I opened my beloved’s Tomb the first time." She halts for her tears. "That feeling never went away, Gideon — and yet I am awake. You took my choice from me. Why would you do such a thing?”
Oh. Oh. Gideon looks at Harrow and sees herself in her stead. Suddenly, familiar facts rearrange. It clicks. She understands what they’ve been doing all this time — the anger at being saved, the inability to let go, even when it would be easier for the one already dying. Waking Harrow is not something Gideon could ever apologize for; what else is there to say but the truth?
"Because I love you. Because I cannot conceive of a universe without you in it. Because there is no me without you."
"There is no me without you," Harrow echoes. Her sob rattles in her throat; so does the compulsion to ask her question, ring her bell, sound her alarm. She is drowning. Her neck has snapped. She is sleeping in the Tomb. She longs for that dead space more than anything. She longs for help. Remarkably, she longs for help.
Gideon knows. She always does. Quieter, she admits: "I didn't know that I could wake you, Harrow. I just needed us to be close. I needed to warm you up because as long as I'd been gone, you'd been freezing. I needed your body to know I was there.” She faces Harrow, eyes shining and serious; Harrow feels the gaze as physically as a touch to her skin. “I never left you, and I wanted you to be warm."
This promptly guts her. Fat, fresh drops of saline leak from her eyes unbidden. They cling to the bridge of her nose; they dampen her torn and stinging lips. Something between a choke and a gasp rips from her lungs. “You wanted—?” she whimpers, nonsensical, head spinning.
Gideon shushes her kindly. Gideon pulls her in as one pulls in the corpse Harrow never stopped being. Gideon lets her, without shame, spill saltwater. Harrow’s finger-bones dig into her shoulders just to have something to hold. Harrow sobs until she empties and lies there unmoving.
“I was there. I had it.” When Harrow’s words knock together, they produce a sound decidedly hollow. “I cannot have it again, not like I did, because it was already perfect. It was right. I was — surrounded by my loves.” Tears slip down her cheeks as she echoes Gideon’s long-dead sentiment: “‘We can’t go home again’… I cannot be so selfish, and yet I am still dead.”
"…I know," Gideon says. She does not know how to combat this belief; it can’t be tonight’s issue, either way. It would be too much.
"I'm sorry I couldn't be alive. For you."
"I know." Gideon bites her lip. “For — for what it’s worth, Harrow… I’m happy you’re awake, anyway.”
They lull into another pause. Gideon rises to grab glasses of water because Harrow won’t take any otherwise. Harrow is wounded by her brief absence. Gideon makes her drink enough she’ll only have half a headache in the morning and feels some measure of satisfaction for it. This barely conceals the gaping maw of her agony. Harrowhark wants to die; Harrowhark is dead because she has nothing to gain from being alive; Harrowhark is a wounded creature in her lap, practically fed by pipette.
At a loss, her hands make their way to Harrow’s deadened clumps of hair. It would take ages to unknot without causing her pain; thus, Gideon takes ages. Impossibly slow, she pulls apart strands that soften by her tender touch. Being thoroughly occupied allows her mind to wander.
“…You hurt yourself, Harrow,” she says. Never has Harrow heard a fact imbued with such sorrow. “And before you did, I had no clue. Knew you weren’t always present, knew you relied on me, knew the question you clung to meant something, but I didn’t know — I’m sorry.”
Harrow shakes her head in refusal and feels little pinpricks of pain across her scalp where her hair is being held. Gideon seems to think this is the worst thing to happen to either of them, ever, and smooths it over with one warm hand. She lingers on Harrow’s forehead, and a similar touch alleviates her headache; shields her eyes from the intrusive lights. Gideon is controlling what she can, and in doing so, she has ended up being undeservedly considerate.
“No.” Harrow doesn’t follow up — pulls away to sit alone.
“No?” Gideon teases, though her tone is heavy.
“Yes,” Harrow confirms, lips twitching. Her words trip over themselves in her mouth after already expending herself on so many. Every elaboration comes out kind of like: “You — I didn’t — don’t be sorry, you shouldn’t, I wasn’t… I’m sorry.”
In this, Gideon does not tease, does not make a single move toward doing so. Harrow is reminded rather achingly of the way Gideon has included her all this time. She is endlessly attentive where it matters most.
“How ‘bout no more apologies?” Gideon suggests, tentative. “I didn’t notice what you weren’t able to communicate, and… that’s just how it was. What we did. I’d never fault you for that, and…”
“No,” Harrow murmurs, “no, I didn’t — you — I don’t, never, I… never. Not you.”
“Shh,” Gideon soothes. “Okay. I hear you. We can work it out together, later. I’ve got you now.”
Harrow takes a tremulous inhale; finds her lungs have not drained completely, but it is easier to breathe. When she feels the cold’s familiar gnaw, her shiver is not so much a reaction as it is instinctual. Gideon’s face pinches in concern. Harrow does not have to fight the urge to scowl — because she does not feel it. Hm.
“C’mere?” Gideon offers.
Harrow clambers into steady arms. She is gripped protectively. Her synapses fire, and she feels that: a small ball of something hot and human. She thinks, maybe. Maybe I am. Maybe I could be.
She has not fallen asleep comfortably since she died. Aided by the gentle repetitive motion of hands in her hair, she manages this feat. Harrow is at peace once again, and her heartbeat needn’t slow for it.
Her insides have long since become ice. She is sculptural with flesh stretched over; she is also the hollow crunch as layers melt into thin sheets. For a moment, she departs from crystallized relief. She presses senselessly into Gideon’s side and is received without a second thought.
Distant comfort is no longer so distant. It swells within her like a lovingly stoked fire. She sleeps.
-
The morning, when it dawns: they are limb to entangled limb. They are dozing, and they are thawing out frigidity. Harrow feels the frostbite in her fingertips more than she sees it when she cradles Gideon’s face. They maneuver around each other in comfortable silence for a long while — before something in the air crisps slightly.
Gideon readies herself to speak. It is with her next words that something changes between them — that, each day, Harrow must process it a little more.
“Why did you sleep?”
Harrow blinks up at her, hazy and slumber-soft, before her mouth unhinges with an easy trust. Her words are water from a pitcher, trickle from a stream. Gideon holds her hand and does not tell her it is warm. Gideon presses a kiss in front of her ear and feels tufty hair brush her skin. Gideon folds Harrow’s form in toward her chest — embraces her and keeps her there, safe. Her girl is so small.
In this moment, languid and plaintive — for the first time, aloud — Gideon Nav expresses pride in Harrowhark Nonagesimus. Not for the first time, Harrow cries.