InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "Daddy is Meryl Streep."

ᴛʜᴇ ʀᴇᴠᴇʀᴇɴᴅ ᴅᴀᴜɢʜᴛᴇʀ ᴏꜰ (drearburh) wrote in valloic,
@ 2024-08-19 20:44:00

Entry tags:

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

Harrow & Gideon

WHAT: A talk about Alecto, and feelings, and there was only one bed
WHERE: Hopper Cabin
WHEN: Late night Saturday, August 17th
WARNINGS: Suicide ideation, lobotomies, corpse talk, but it's also very soft somehow
STATUS: Complete

"No, Harrow, it's perfectly normal to hate seven-foot ice queens who you've devoted yourself to," deadpanned Gideon, who would have tilted her head in that kind of 'duh' fashion if she hadn't been laying on her side and unable to do so. "You want to snuggle now, or what?"

Harrow was running on fumes, and espresso—which she recently learned was meant to be taken in minute doses, and not poured into a mug in proper coffee serving amounts. It could have certainly contributed to how frazzled she’d felt through the day and in Alecto’s presence; in her towering height and blood and chains. She was magnificent, and Harrow was in awe of her existence. And saddened by it as well, now that she knew what she knew. She did not know what it meant for them to have Alecto here. It did not bode well for this world to host her, and she worried about the temper tantrums. Worried about Gideon, whose adjustment to her was simply not happening. Their cabin felt stifling. It accommodated the two of them fine, but now it accommodated four of them and she had taken Gideon into her room because— Well, because. It offered privacy, and after a day of herding the soul of a rock away from dogs, and bringing her to the beach (Harrow came out of that experience unpleasantly sunburnt, nose and cheeks pink all evening), she craved a little privacy. Privacy did not mean she was alone. Privacy meant she was simply alone with Gideon. The room was a bit small, but a bit more tailored to her tastes now with black bedding and blackout curtains (unsurprisingly, also black), with the beginnings of a skull collection budding across any available surface. Harrow was exhausted, sitting at the edge of the bed, with a cup of actual coffee. It kept her hands warmed. “I gave you more than fifteen minutes.” "Turns out fifteen isn't enough," answered Gideon, currently holding one of those skulls and turning it in her hands. It wasn't enough that the ice tart had mysteriously shown up, the dead body that Harrow had loved since she was fucking ten years old. It wasn't enough that dear old dad ended up being the root cause of literally every bad thing in the universe. It wasn't enough that everything Gideon had thought was her own goddamned choice was only the result of some bullshit her dad did. Her entire life had been shitty. One shitty thing after another shitty thing. She'd done her best with it. After all, she'd developed a great sense of humor, and… well, that was about it. She couldn't even talk about a great ass, because that probably came from mom or dad anyway, so no credit to her there. But she'd finally made some friends, and they all died (basically). Then she found out she was the child of the Emperor. God. And now it turns out he's a giant piece of shit, too. She sat the skull down and turned to face Harrow. "You look like hell." “Stop, you really are making me swoon,” Harrowhark deadpanned, taking a sip of that hot, bitter coffee. No sugar. No cream. She did not care for the taste, truthfully speaking. It was harsh on her tongue, but she enjoyed its properties. Lyctorhood once allowed her to adjust her brain chemicals to help sustain days and days of no sleep, and now—now she had bean water. She licked her upper lip and held the mug against her lap, studying Gideon. Her black eyes were sharpened into a hard stare until they weren’t. Until they did this utterly rare thing and softened. “Would you prefer to sit or stand?” A smirk. "Since when did my preferences matter?" asked Gideon, immediately knowing that wasn't fair in the least. But it was how she felt. The one time she felt like she made a choice that mattered, that helped Harrow, it was based on a fucking lie and shouldn't have even been necessary. She could sit here and bitch about how she grew up, but she already forgave all that. Childhood trauma was just something she didn't have time for. She sat down next to Harrow before the other girl could answer as if that answered the question instead. Harrow thought it to be a fair jab. She could handle the sting. “Your preferences have always mattered,” she responded quietly, tracing her thin fingers around the rim of the cup, feeling the steam radiate from the dark liquid it held. “I have not been very good at asking about them, or respecting them. I have spectacularly failed at that, actually.” "Yeah, well," acquiesced Gideon, shrugging her shoulders. She didn't have a good metaphor for how she was feeling at the moment. Fuuuuuuuck, was this what depression felt like? No way, she wasn't going to fall into some kind of self-loathing, hate-everyone hole. After all, she may have had to give up her room to the blonde bimbo, but the trade-off was that she was in Harrow's room. And that was something Alecto didn't get to have. It was weird. She was jealous of Alecto, she knew she was jealous of Alecto, and she didn't give two shits if anyone called her on it. She was allowed, all right? Sure, now she knew how fucked up things were for the other dead bitch, but Gideon earned her place. Alecto just took a long nappy nap. "You know what the fucked up thing is?" she asked, her mind wandering. "If Cytherea didn't kill our friends and just told us what was going on, I think we'd have backed her." That was… certainly a hypothetical scenario to chew on. Hurt Harrow’s brain to do it, quite frankly. “You assume that everyone would have blindly believed her,” she pointed out, feeling that funny and uncomfortable burn in her throat she loathed to recognize when a conversation needled at a grossly emotional topic. Cytherea’s name made her blood pressure spike higher than this blasted caffeine, and she chose to stand to set the mug elsewhere. When she returned to the bed, she sat a smidge closer to Gideon. She recalled all the times she was forced to sit or rest beside Ianthe and how conscious she’d been to make herself so much smaller; pin her arms to her sides, shut her legs, avoid any physical contact with their bodies. Her arm brushed against Gideon’s. So did her leg. It did not bother Harrow. “I’m—sorry, about how fucked it all is,” Harrowhark expressed honestly, exhausted by what Gideon would just surely refer to as fuckery. “I know how much it meant for you to have someone out there that would claim you. I wanted to tell you the moment you told me you were his daughter.” Harrow had a point, but fuck, if a lyctor showed up and explained things - with Dulcenia in tow, it might've been pretty convincing. After all, she was the first person who was actually nice to her, so there's probably a bit of bias there. Even if it was because of her eyes and obvious connection to the Emperor. But at the same time, Gideon was pretty sure living for 10,000 years made you pretty crazy, anyway. She was oblivious to the touch, though, since she couldn't actually feel things. Downside of being sorta dead. "Yeah, it was nice to feel like I was wanted," she agreed. Which kind of referenced both Cytherea and the Emperor, somehow. But she shrugged again. "But at least I know now, so that'll have to do." Harrow’s mouth opened, and a noise came out, and it was an unintelligible noise because her brain and heart weren’t often synchronized. She quelled the temptation to overthink her words into dust and chose to simply say them. “You are wanted,” she told Gideon, fists tightly clenched over her lap. “You are wanted, and needed. I lived what felt like a lifetime without knowing you existed, and I was worse off for it.” Gideon's head turned towards Harrow, with a look of confusion, disbelief, and maybe a tinge of aching tossed in for good measure. It wasn't often that she had nothing to say within two seconds of someone saying something. Her mouth opened and closed twice, an obvious war on her tongue for what she wanted to say. Harrow had changed a great deal since leaving Drearburh, but so had she. Just went to show that place wasn't good for anyone. Finally, instead of a barb, Gideon just moved further back on the bed and moved to lay down. "You clearly need some sleep. Come here." “Is it because, as you say, I look like hell,” Harrow intoned, “or is it because you think there must be some excuse for saying what you just heard?” She’d specifically make coffee to avoid the silly notion of sleep, but with Gideon laying down as if she was setting an example of how to properly use a bed, Harrow felt inclined to—well, mimic. The black slippers she wore were discarded onto the floor and she joined her, opting to lay on her side to face her for the sake of making proper use of space. It wasn’t a particularly wide mattress. Harrow mostly also wanted to look at her. "Can't it be both?" Gideon was a little annoyed she'd sussed it out so quickly. "Look, you're gonna kill yourself if you keep this up, and then I'll have to babysit Earth." She smirked at the thought of that, but but her hand on Harrow's waist. "Just rest, all right? I'll keep watch over you and make sure you sleep if I have to tie you down." She waggled her eyebrows. "Maybe I'll tie you down anyway." That was an interesting thing to say. Harrowhark’s eyebrows furrowed, and she looked at Gideon with intense hyperfocus. The hand on her waist felt bigger than what it was; she often flinched at the mere idea of touch while craving it like water, and this time she let her thirst be sated. “Griddle,” she began, the omen of a question with how she enunciated that nickname. Harrow thought about their interactions from before Vallo and their interactions now, how familiar it all was, but there was something different about it too. It warmed her face on top of that pesky layer of sunburn. “Are you flirting with me?” Those were mortifying words. And before Gideon snapped back with a response, she pulled her head back as if she already received rejection. “If the answer is no, don’t laugh. I will throw you off this bed.” Gideon snorted, as if daring her to try and toss her off the bed. "Of course I am, dumbass. You think this jealousy thing is all for show?" She didn't add that she flirted with Harrow all the time, which usually resulted in being called an idiot, a pervert, or both. Which wasn't really wrong, either. "You still gonna toss me off the bed?" “No,” said Harrow, blinking in bewilderment. The warmth seared its way in different directions; up to the tips of her ears, and down towards her neck. “No, you can—you can stay. Wait. You’re actually jealous?” Looking back, yes, one could assume that Gideon’s use of language could certainly imply some insecurity, and now she was realizing how utterly stupid her question was. "No, Harrow, it's perfectly normal to hate seven-foot ice queens who you've devoted yourself to," deadpanned Gideon, who would have tilted her head in that kind of 'duh' fashion if she hadn't been laying on her side and unable to do so. "You want to snuggle now, or what?" It hadn't really bothered her too much that she couldn't physically feel anything as a soul riding inside a corpse (even if it was her own corpse) until now. She couldn't feel Harrow's breath, or the warmth of Harrow's skin, or really fucking anything and right now, that sucked. And Corpse Gideon couldn't provide any warmth in return, either. Double suckage. Harrow decided that she did, in fact, want to snuggle. Saying the word snuggle was also not part of her vocabulary so she opted to switch onto her back, and she took hold of Gideon’s arm to make sure it was deliberately set across her midsection. She had this atrocious feeling in her stomach, this fluttery sort of sensation that made her nervous, and she idly wondered if she had a terminal condition in that area. She took in a sharp breath and closed her eyes. They opened back up upon her slow exhale, staring at the ceiling. “Then I suppose I should clarify that I know now the difference between loving someone and being in love with them,” Harrow said, her voice low and pensive. “You know I was very young when I laid eyes on her for the first time, and in my head I… made her into something I needed her to be. I will do everything in my power to ensure her retribution because it is what she deserves, and John Gaius is beyond earning forgiveness.” Her teeth worried her bottom lip a little, and decided to follow that up with: “But you do not need to be worried about her. Not in that sense, Gideon.” The most immediate recognition was that Harrow had said Gideon. Not Griddle. Not Nav. Definitely not Kiriona Gaius, because she wasn't comfortable using that now, either. Her dad was guilty of some really, really fucked up stuff. Honestly, so many people in Gideon's life had done some really fucked up stuff. That was going to be dad's legacy, wasn't it? Her thoughts drifted back to the present, though. She'd enjoyed the cute little way Harrow had chewed at her lip for a moment and the things she'd said. So she leaned a little closer and asked a question without any cursing mixed it. "So what's the difference between loving and being in love, then?" “That question is a trap,” Harrow accused hotly, quietly, turning her head to face Gideon once again—and not seeming too startled at the space that wasn’t existing between their noses. The flutter in her stomach increased tenfold, and she was almost sure she should look into her internal organs and assess if she needed medical attention. “I suspect it—it varies,” she mumbled after. “From person to person.” But she knew. She knew it meant something to want to leave behind the Ninth House and the Locked Tomb if it gave her a chance to save Gideon’s life. She knew it meant something if she did not want to fight the end of the universe if it meant Gideon wasn’t in it. Harrow was the architect of her own self-fulfilling prophecy: she could not perceive a universe without Gideon Nav in it, and became undone because of it. Now she had her here, a bit broken and a lot dead, and so close to undoing what had been done. “You were in my body. Do you remember the letters I wrote to myself?” "A parry, then a diversion. You did learn something from me," answered Gideon, with a slight nod of her head - but only just slightly, she didn't want to headbutt Harrow. "But yeah, sorta. You wrote it in some kind of fuckin code and I was just in a backseat, so it wasn't like I could see and understand everything. And sometimes I wasn't watching at all." Her eyes widened for a second as she remembered something. "Ah, shit, I think we lost them all when things went to hell on the Mithraeum." A small, damning smile curled her lips for about three impressive seconds. Harrow delighted in the swordplay comparison. These little things—the things that would have ordinarily made her scoff or roll her eyes, she missed these. “We did,” she realized now that she thought about it. “But the reason why I brought it up is because… well, while writing those letters, I knew the biggest challenge I would be facing is the will to live. I threatened myself. I weaponized her against me, knowing I would make myself a world without you.” Her teeth went back to hemming and hawing her lip. Harrow, ever the coward, looked back up towards the ceiling. The daughter it once belonged to had stuck these plastic little stars to it that glowed at night. She rather liked them. “It took me losing you to realize that the only thing keeping me together was, strangely,” and Harrow took that moment to swallow before saying, “you, and not her. So in a world without you, all I had was her. And oftentimes, she was not enough.” Gideon furrowed her brows for a moment, her lips moving as if she were counting silently. She'd never been so… flattered in her life. If her body worked right, she probably would've blushed. But at the same time, she wasn't one hundred percent certain she really understood anything other than that she really was wanted and needed. Still, she needed some clarification. "Okay, I'm not smart enough to follow all of that. Is 'her' the pre-brain scramble you, the post-brain scramble you, Alecto, or someone else? And remember, you're the one that made this complicated. It doesn't sound like it matters too much, though, because I like to know I won." Harrow rolled her eyes so hard she could have damaged an optic nerve. “For fuck’s sake, Griddle—” She switched back onto her side due to the fact that it was easier to grab Gideon by the shirt and shake her. Or attempt to shake her, but she was physically letting out some frustration even if her strength was comparable to a feral, soggy kitten. “Her is Alecto,” she scowled, the muscles in her face contorted into a mean and glaring expression. “I left the Ninth House behind, and Alecto behind, to save you. Nothing else mattered but you. I rearranged my frontal lobe two days after losing you in hopes to preserve you and undo what he, your wretched sperm donor, claims he cannot undo. I made the conscious decision to defy the man who calls himself God because I refused to believe there wasn’t a way. Do not underestimate the horrors I would commit for you, Gideon Nav.” Then she really did try to throw Gideon off the bed, which was futile and senseless but she felt righteous enough to do so. Physically unmoved by the attempt, mentally Gideon was kind of over the moon. Harrow was so fucking hot right now. To the point that if her heart was working, it would've sped up a bit right then. Instead she let the attempt go on for a few more seconds as her smile widened, soaking in what she felt was the best kind of attention. A riled-up Harrow was a force to be reckoned with and she loved it. After a few more seconds, when it felt like Harrow was going to give up on the physical stuff, Gideon used her loose arm to grab Harrow and pull her incredibly close. She stared directly into those dark eyes for just a moment before whispering softly to her. "This is how meat loves meat." Then she gave Harrow a gentle nibble on the nose. On top of being pathetically out of breath, Harrow’s face cycled through a roulette of emotions. First was surprise. Second was confusion. Third was offense. “You are an absolute oaf,” she sputtered out, voice a few pitches too high, her hummingbird heart thumping so insanely that she might soon suspect the beginnings of cardiac arrest. “You nincompoop, you—you are infuriating.” Then all the tension that had kept her face taut melted into this tender fatigue, and that streak of bitchy ebbed. “And you exhaust me,” she claimed, and cupped Gideon’s cheek. "Somebody needs to." Gideon moved her hand atop Harrow's and she leaned her face into it, closing her eyes for a moment to try and imagine what it felt like. It didn't really help, because the only frame of reference she actually had was, you guessed it, her imagination. With a purse of her lips, she put her forehead to Harrow's and lowered her voice to something far less boisterous than usual. "Sleep, Harrow. I'll still be here when you wake up, then you and Atreus can fix this. Because if I'm going to kiss you, I want to fucking feel it."