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ᴛʜᴇ ʀᴇᴠᴇʀᴇɴᴅ ᴅᴀᴜɢʜᴛᴇʀ ᴏꜰ (drearburh) wrote in valloic,
@ 2024-08-09 20:03:00

Entry tags:

!: action/thread/log, the locked tomb: gideon nav, the locked tomb: harrowhark nonagesimus

Harrowhark & Gideon

WHAT: A corpse breaks into Harrow's cabin
WHERE: Vallo Forest
WHEN: Today
WARNINGS: Suicide ideation, death, fun dead body things
STATUS: Complete

“I hate you,” she told Gideon in a sad, pathetic way that implied she didn’t hate her. Not even a little bit. Not even at all. Gideon smiled. She smiled and wrapped her arms around Harrow, too. And she tilted her head so that she could rest her cheek on top of the other girl's head. "Yeah, I know. And I hate you the exact same amount."

Harrowhark did the sensible thing anyone would do when they first moved into some estranged forest cabin in a world away from her universe, forcing her to leave behind duty and responsibility and break a promise: she had an emotional breakdown. Approximately one hour of pacing, coming up with a ludicrous plan that wouldn’t work, angry crying, a lot of seething fuck fuck fucks. The next hour involved quiet disassociation. The third had involved a nosebleed while she tried to put together some impressions of memories her soul hadn’t been present for but her brain had absorbed - because the body remembered everything, trauma lived within the body, coded into her skin and bloodstream and brain chemistry. After that, the hours blurred together. She did not sleep. She had a notebook where she wrote things, filling up pages with her cramped handwriting; all the quotes that she could remember, moments that were hers and moments that weren’t, something about wasps and mustache rides and did dogs truly have six legs, or was that one dog whose name she could barely remember an anomaly? Some pages had bloodstains. Her nose would drip on and off, though she was confident enough that it was fairly normal considering the mess her cerebrum had been through. Harrow didn’t know what to do with herself, alone like this, without anyone she knew and without purpose she couldn’t fulfill. She accomplished her basic necessities which included clothes (she’d been wearing this hooded cloak to hide herself in), and bottled water, and bones. And food too, she supposed, but the choices were overwhelming and the most adventurous she’d gotten was obtaining fresh bread from a nearby village and buying a stick of butter. The toaster wasn’t difficult to figure out. Her breakfast, lunch and dinner—because she’d been harped on about how three meals a day were absolutely vital—were buttered slices of toast. (She had tried peanutbutter, but it was too sweet and she didn’t care for the sticky texture it left in her mouth.) But she didn’t know what to do, and while this world seemed peaceful—she loathed it. So she wrote in her notebook, and tested the limits of her necromancy, and succumbed to the fact that her Lyctorhood was rendered void, which was a good thing except it gave her unanswered questions about Gideon Nav, a name no longer censored. Sometimes she wished it still was. It’d hurt a bit less, she thought. But that was selfish. Harrowhark deserved the hurt after everything she’d done. She’d sleep for a few hours to keep the madness away. Venture off to the nearby village when the sun was close to setting to look at the shops, and to marvel at things she did not know with a face that did not give away wonder. A shopkeeper must have assumed she was a malnourished child. She’d been offered a muffin from the bookstore’s cafe without cost. “It’s blueberry,” she’d been told. “I know what it is,” snapped Harrow, who knew what a muffin was but had never seen nor tasted a blueberry in all eighteen years of her life. With her black hooded cloak, blueberry muffin, and a book under arm, Harrowhark followed the path back towards the cabin. She’d built a fence around it—of bone—to make people second guess approaching it. There was a doormat by the front of the door that said GO AWAY, and while it had come with the cabin, it was a relatable sentiment and kept. That aforementioned door was, however, opened. Harrow paused by the threshold. “Whoever is in there,” she announced firmly with all the self-assuredness and pretentiousness of the Reverend Daughter of Drearburh. “Please know you have five seconds to exit before I make your entire spinal column into fucking jump rope.” Said threatened person stood up from the desk she was gently ransacking and raised an eyebrow. She was pretty sure that threat couldn't be backed up (anymore, at least), but it was still kind of nice to hear. The bone fence had made her curious, though it being in the middle of a forest seemed really out of place for anyone she knew. Still, it kind of had that awkward feeling slash reminder of home, so she'd decided to snoop and find out more. Don't leave a door to a house in the middle of nowhere unlocked if you don't want curious visitors, right? The good news was that being in an unfamiliar situation had literally been her entire fucking life to this point, so she was at least equipped to handle it with panache and confidence. First she'd been the only child other than Harrowhark on Drearburh, the only red-headed person in Drearburh, then a last-minute Cavalier Primary for Drearburh, then kind of flirty with a 10,000 year old necromancer pretending to be a 17 year old necromancer, then dead, then piloting Harrowhark's body for maybe an hour or two, then dead again, then a revenant latched onto her original body (fucking finally something good-ish). Now an unknown forest who knows where. But the immediate question was, how did Harrohark know what a jump rope was? She was pretty sure the girl had never done a day of cardio in her life. Though if she did, it would definitely be a spinal jump rope. "How about you come in here and try, my somber sovereign?" she answered, setting down the… metal box(??) she had picked up to examine. Harrow dropped her book. The muffin was still in her hand but that was, well, squished; soft chunks of sweet bread and baked berry seeping between her thin fingers. She was insane again. She was insane, or this was a trick. If those two scenarios were false then the third would imply that this was real. And she ached for it to be real. Her throat clogged up. Her tiny heart thumped rapidly against her ribcage as if it was drawing enough power to burst through her bones and chest. “Prove that you’re real,” she shot out, demanding as ever, the desperation in her voice an utter embarrassment she had no time to feel self-conscious about. Harrow stepped inside, flipped on the main light to get a better view, and she noticed the waxy sheen of a body that did not need to breathe. Her stomach sunk. “Prove to me that you’re—” She stopped, choking on the words. Her nostrils flared. When she blinked—furiously, because she was an angry little bitch but not at her, just at everything else—her eyelashes came away damp. "Come on," answered Gideon, turning slightly. "This ass can't be duplicated." Based on the shouted threats, she'd already deduced that this wasn't the not-Harrow Nona person, and was at least her Harrow again, but that didn't rule out that the Big Slut wasn't around here somewhere. And if Gideon knew anything, Harrow had loved that corpse her entire life. Though hey, now she had something in common with it. She stepped out of the kitchen area, raising up a pair of fingers. "Two things, Harrow. One, am I going to have to fight the icy bimbo, and two, did you know you have a bit of pastry all over your hand?"” Harrow did, in fact, forget she had pastry all over her hand. She was dazed and had looked upon that… ass. Mostly in stupor, because she still hesitated to believe that this was actually happening. She looked over to the once-muffin in her grasp and uncurled her fingers, crumbs clinging wetly to her while most of it fell to the floor. “You wouldn’t win against her,” she answered, finding her voice again. “And why would you want to fight—” And then she lost her voice a second time when she saw the wound carved into Gideon’s chest. Harrow knew that wound. She had been staring at it numbly when she pulled her off the iron spikes. Why hadn’t she held it together enough to at least mend the flesh? Why did it have teeth? C-- and N-- got married right over there, you can't see it now 'cause of the rubbish. I made flowers grow for them out of the garden, but they came out...weird. Some of the roses had teeth. Colum Asht, with his eyes replaced with teeth and tongue. The stoma at the bottom of the river, with teeth and tongue. Harrow didn’t know the correlation but there must be something there. Her small feet stormed across the short square footage of the cabin, and she took Gideon by the lapels of her suit. She said nothing. Knowing nothing of Harrow's internal dialog (another lifelong problem), Gideon just raised an eyebrow as she was sorta bodily grabbed - Harrow wasn't strong enough to actually move her. Plus she was sure her body was more dense than usual now, on top of that. "Because, dumb ass, I finally got you back and she fucking took off with your starstruck feinting bullshit. And now here we are. Which is. Where? I know I didn't get drunk and forget the trip." “Alecto isn’t here,” Harrow told her quietly, and if she was then Harrow didn’t know where. She didn’t seem concerned with Alecto. She was studying the wounds, and the teeth, and it was probably best to at least ask for consent before she dared drag a finger at the edge of the wound but she did it anyway. “And this was not her doing. Apparently it is—a thing that happens, this place will pull you from your universe for whatever reason. Griddle, who the fuck did this to you?” She knew the answer, deep in her bones. She knew. But she needed Gideon—god, it was Gideon—to say it. "Alecto's a dumb name," quipped Gideon, not willing to let it go that quickly. "But all right, good. As for the wounds? Me, you were there. I made the hard choice. Unless you mean my speed holes, those are a bit of Edenite fuckery patched up by dear old dad. Or you mean how'd I get here? Fuck if I know." It'd been too long since she'd been called Griddle. Or not long at all, time was really hard to follow when you're bouncing back and forth from death. It softened her expression considerably. And she was multitasking brilliantly, because she was still absorbing what Harrow said about this place - so they were stolen from home? All right, so no dad, no Alecto, no Ianthe, no Blood of Eden, no Crux. Sounded pretty all right. “About your wounds, you idiot,” snapped Harrow in a tone that would ordinarily be menacing and evil if it weren’t for the fact that her mouth wobbled. The sclera of her eyes looked suspiciously bloodshot. “About why they—they look like that, and if you refer to them as your speed holes a second time, I’ll scream, Nav.” This was wrong. This was all wrong. This was not part of her plan and she couldn’t even confidently say she remembered all the fine details of The Work. “I was supposed to fix this,” she added, quietly and angrily, fingers digging into the white fabric of these foreign clothes. “I’m sorry.” Gideon barked out a short, quick laugh. "How, by giving yourself another brain swirlie? Yeah, Ianthe told me about that." She was teasing, sure, but it kind of hurt that she'd rather just forget about Gideon Nav than, dunno, figuring shit out and doing something about it. Can't fix a goddamn thing if you don't even remember what you're supposed to fix. But it was fine, because Gideon knew she was never going to be first. She just wanted to matter, that was all. "Look, it's good. I'm here. I'm me. Stronger, tougher, faster. Invulnerable, blood turns to ash, the whole thing. You don't have to be sorry about anything. I made my choices on my own." Harrow’s expression hardened at brain swirlie and Ianthe, as if Ianthe was anyone to make assumptions as to why she’d done what she’d done. Her frown was so deep, so pronounced that it may as well be a scar etched into her face forever. “Nothing’s good,” she clipped out and bit back because you’re dead. Admitting that was still terrible and still hard and in the face of her walking corpse, she couldn’t do it. She dropped her hands and straightened her posture to glare into those cloudy gold eyes. “And I applaud you for thinking you had a choice in this, truly, as if you weren’t forced into it.” Blowing out air with a dismissive sound, Gideon just shook her head. "No one can really force me to do anything. You know that." Dropping the bravado just a bit, she just pulled herself loose from Harrow and looked past her, just over her shoulder. "I chose. Not you, not Cytherea, not even God. And it's because I'm a selfish bitch. Always have been, probably always will be." What she left unsaid was her own internal dialog. Because I wanted to matter to you. From that moment in the salt pool, your face when you thought about the tomb bimbo. That lovely smile I'd never seen before. I knew you'd never choose me over her. So I chose me to help you live. So I would mean something. "So yeah. It's good." She shrugged, as if that explained everything. Her eyes stung. Harrow had to step back and turn her back towards her, dabbing at them with as much discretion as she could before her face became a horrid, blotchy mess. The Reverend Daughter of Drearburh had never been a horrid, blotchy mess but her time on the Mithraeum had stripped away her pride, her dignity, made her vulnerable in a way that was raw and unbecoming. The Reverend Daughter of Drearburh was also a bit dead in her own way, and now it was just her, a more embarrassing abomination than before; Harrow, the former Ninth Saint, a parody of who’d she once been. It was pointless to pray, but a part of her prayed for Abigail Pent. Prayed for her to pop up and give an indignant No, a scolding parent to rip her away from a bad dream. But this is the reality of what she’d done - her actions, their supposed choices, and all the consequences. I would have let you keep my body, she could have said. You could have kept my flesh and bones and blood. I abandoned my duty for you. I could not let you die. I wanted everything to burn without you. When all I could remember was everything without you, even she wasn’t enough to make me want to live. Instead, when she turned back around to face her with a blazing look of sudden determination, Harrow closed the distance between them again. She wrapped her arms around Gideon’s middle and hugged her as tightly as her non-muscled arms would allow. “I hate you,” she told Gideon in a sad, pathetic way that implied she didn’t hate her. Not even a little bit. Not even at all. Gideon smiled. She smiled and wrapped her arms around Harrow, too. And she tilted her head so that she could rest her cheek on top of the other girl's head. "Yeah, I know. And I hate you the exact same amount." The old Gideon would've remarked at the clear signs of tears trying to fall. That the Reverend Daughter didn't cry. Then again, she also always had greasy paint on her face, too. This was nice, though. It didn't even require climbing into a salt bath first, so that was a thing. "You know I missed you a fuckton, right? Like, I was even talking to you about all the shit I did with your body like you were there to listen." Harrow’s eyes screwed shut. She didn’t have the right to say the same, to say that I missed you too after rewriting her memories. She hadn’t known what it would have done to Gideon aside from halting the absorption process—which had been a purely experimental theory, and at that point she felt as if she had nothing to lose—and now she felt the truth. She felt it in the odd and vague impressions of memories. Heralds, her bloodied reflection looking with golden eyes, and new… thumbs? Something about thumbs. Someone’s body bursting into crimson dust. But Gideon had been there, hadn’t she, the whole time—she’d known everything, saw everything. Or at least almost everything. “My brain remembers some things,” she whispered, her own cheek pressed against the unwounded part of her chest. Harrow loathed the fact that Gideon did not have a heartbeat or a regular body temperature, that she could not hear her lungs take in a breath. Somehow, as if she had another reserve of strength hidden away, she tightened her hold. Harrow, who had always been so afraid of touch, who craved it like water, was hugging her as if nothing could pry them apart. When her eyes slowly re-opened, trying to focus her blurry eyesight to the wooden panel of the wall across from her line of vision, she then said, “I did not intend to lock you up.” "If you keep apologizing, I'm going to worry you did some permanent damage to that brain of yours." Gideon's voice held some soft concern, which was at least a little unusual for her. "I forgive you for everything, yeah? I know you'll always do what you think is best, even if I think it's the fucking worst. And everybody knows I'm not the smart one - just the hot one. The strong one. The cool as shit one. Debatably the bad ass one. But not the smart one." The funny thing was, she hadn't ever felt locked up? To be fair, she wasn't even sure what she'd expected to happen after she tossed herself onto some spikes. Honestly, it had been a dumb decision, what if Harrow had to be the one to do the fatal blow or whatever? She just wanted to be a Good Battery for her, and willing, you know? Oblivion was probably the stupidest expectation but it was actually kind of cool, in a way. Free room and board and way more interesting that watching the Ninth House processions, for damned sure. “How can you just—forgive?” Harrow asked, baffled and tired, reeling her head back enough to look at her face; her dead face that held all those stupid, ridiculous expressions she hadn’t seen in over a year. She opened her mouth to say more. She wanted to say something like you tried to escape me eighty-seven times and you couldn’t even escape me in death and I fucked up, but I’m going to fix this, I’m going to fix you, and then you can finally leave me. It pained her to hold back. Harrow did it anyway. She bit her tongue and swallowed. “There is a government building I should bring you to,” was what she said instead, because that was practical and needed to be done. "There's the Harrow I know. Let's go do some bureaucracy. Though you're really testing the limits of the forgiveness I just mentioned." Gideon briefly wondered if this government might be related to the patrolling guards she'd ducked in the forest. Maybe it'd be better to leave that part out if anyone asked. Unless they were Blood of Eden. Then all bets were off. She owed some assholes for fucking with her body. You'd think consent would be a thing. With that, she gestured to the still-open door. "Dark and Foreboding Necromancers first."