ᴛʜᴇ ʀᴇᴠᴇʀᴇɴᴅ ᴅᴀᴜɢʜᴛᴇʀ ᴏꜰ (![[info]](https://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} drearburh) wrote in ![[info]](https://www.insanejournal.com/img/community.gif){kind=small} valloic,@ 2024-11-18 11:52:00 |
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Gideon & Harrowhark
WHAT: Harrow experiences a first good birthday
WHERE: Hopper Cabin in Vallo Forest
WHEN: November 15th
WARNINGS: References to child genocide and terrible reasons why people procreate
STATUS: Complete
ART CREDIT: Could not find artist, just on Pinterest
"Actually." Slow exhale. "I just love you. Is that okay?"
WHERE: Hopper Cabin in Vallo Forest
WHEN: November 15th
WARNINGS: References to child genocide and terrible reasons why people procreate
STATUS: Complete
ART CREDIT: Could not find artist, just on Pinterest
"Actually." Slow exhale. "I just love you. Is that okay?"
The Tomb I will serve till the end of my days, and then see me buried in two hundred graves.
Harrow would always tire of being two hundred souls. The Tomb hadn’t been worth it. Continuing the line hadn’t been worth it. Nothing had been worth it. But her opinions of her conception did not alter her reality, and she had spent every remembered birthday—aside her eighteenth, she’d been on the Mithraeum too busy trying not to die—in mourning for those two hundred lost. She’d pray with her knuckle rosary, she would fast, she would light a candle for every one of them, she would speak their names from the ledger of the dead so she would know their names and their ages.
She did not live her life in Vallo the way she had in the House of the Ninth. They had no First Bells, no ritualistic morning contemplations to abide by, no Seconds Bells, no sermons, and she led no services. Her life in this little cabin in the woods with Gideon was so simple, and there’d been some growing pains in adjusting to what the societal norms were but overall—Harrow enjoyed it despite the guilt.
She went in public with an unpainted face almost every day.
Sometimes she wore gray clothes instead of black.
Her hair was long enough to put into a small ponytail.
She did not pray. She did not fast. She liked blueberry muffins and some music. The Ninth House enforced the traditions of living simply and only serving, that personal likes and preferences came last, but now she was learning more of how it felt to discover what she liked. There was a sense of liberation and accomplishment that came with that, but also—guilt.
Today she was nineteen, and guilt was all she felt. Harrow should have found black and white paint to properly bless. She should have given herself a sacred skull design to honor her house and to honor the souls sacrificed to conceive her, and she should be writing their names on paper from memory. She should not be sitting on the swinging bench on their porch at dawn, cocooned in a blanket to protect herself from the chill air of the morning, nursing a mug of hot coffee.
It was selfish. She was selfish. The coffee was black and sweetened with a splash of sugar, which she was learning to enjoy. She was an absolute abomination. The birds outside sang a morning song and she liked to listen to it. Harrow sipped her beverage, and told herself, once again, that she was completely awful and undeserving.
For all of the introspection that Harrow might've been going through, Gideon didn't really have any of that to deal with. Sure, she'd had just about the same upbringing (minus all the sacrificed kids, but plus all the regular beatings) but for her it had been pretty fucking easy to just put it all behind her and move on with life. She hated holding grudges or dealing with guilt - it was so much easier to just handle it immediately. Or at least as soon as possible. Too much energy otherwise.
Today, though. Today was special. It was Harrow's special day. They'd talked in advance of it and Gideon knew it wasn't the happiest day in the world for her girlfriend but again, Gideon felt that it was time to put that shit in the past and try to find some god damned joy in her life. Gideon-shaped joy, even.
So, yeah, there was a scrambling sound on the patio roof, then Gideon jumped down in front of Harrow. She smiled brightly as she held up a singular cupcake, black as night, with a skeleton-shaped candle. She'd picked it up at Slayer's Cake and had cared for it like it was fucking literal gold to keep it from getting damaged.
"Happy Birthday, bitch!"
Harrow almost choked on her coffee. She was startled enough to where some of it spilled—thankfully on the blanket only—but she was quick to steady herself, both hands clutching it as if it were in severe danger. She had heard the sound above. She could have sworn it was some fuzzy woodland creature and not Gideon Fucking Nav.
“Griddle,” she hissed, pointing towards the entrance of the cabin that was literally right there. “We have a door that you can—when did you even get up there??”
"Not long ago, I went up the back and then over." She shrugged off the distress about her chosen form of entrance. "People like surprises on their birthdays. Or some shit, I don't know."
She tromped up to the porch and offered the cupcake triumphantly to the birthday girl. "It's vanilla."
If Gideon’s aim was to surprise her then she succeeded, though she wasn’t entirely sure that was the kind of surprise normal people desired on their birthdays. Harrow’s heart eased to slower beats after a deep breath in, followed by a deep breath out. The coffee was set onto a small, nearby table by the bench, which meant her hands were free to take that tiny offering.
She knew dessert was customary for birthdays. This would be a first.
“This is unnecessary,” she murmured, scooting more to the side to give Gideon the hint to sit and maybe cuddle. “But… thank you. For the cupcake. Not for giving me a heart attack from leaping off the roof.”
"You're welcome for both anyway," answered Gideon, plopping herself onto the bench without much need for prompting. She also stretched and put her arm around Harrow to sit comfortably and for the brief moment she thought about using her longer legs to rock the bench back and forth, but immediately figured that would make chowing down the cupcake a bit harder.
If Gideon ever took the time to think things through, she probably would've realized that she could just rock the bench gently, but she certainly didn't often think things through. Thought to action, no processing required. She was convinced that was one of her more charming features.
"You think everything I do is unnecessary," she continued, tilting her head towards Harrow's. "Why?"
“Not everything,” Harrow countered with a murmur, studying this cupcake and this candle that was in it. Aesthetically speaking, it was the perfect dessert for her; small, the color of depression, and in a flavor she could stomach. The candle Gideon had chosen was appropriate.
The sick dread and guilt of the day was joined by a fresh wave of warmth, the gentle flutter of butterflies coming to life in her belly. “I suppose in this context, I will emphasize that you do not need to make extra effort for me. But you are a stubborn idiot,” she sighed, swiping a piece of frosting onto the tip of her finger, “and I like you, so I will allow it.”
She gave it a small, tentative lick to confirm the flavor, and then sucked the rest of it off.
"Thanks for the allowance," answered Gideon, purposefully not making any comments about her sucking up the icing. Might've watched closely, but didn't say anything. "But yeah, look, I do this shit because I like you, too. Even if you're a huge nerd with a thing for bones."
With the tease at the end, she used the hand she had around Harrow to tickle at her ear for a moment.
Harrow tried lifting a shoulder to block her fingers from further assault, huffing in affectionate exasperation. “Nav,” she warned, settling more comfortably against her cavalier’s side. “I do hope you’re not jealous. Your bones are my favorite bones.”
Her head tipped back to look at Gideon better, mouth curling into a tiny, damning little smile.
"That's both fucking sweet and terrifying, because I've seen what you do to bones," joked Gideon, smiling right back at her.
This was nice. Chilling on a swinging bench thing, cool temperatures outside, snuggled up against the most important person in her life. Gideon could get used to this as long as she still got opportunities to fight things and use her sword from time to time. Aggression and sarcasm were her strengths, after all. She couldn't let them wither away.
Echoing her own thoughts, she let her arm drop down around Harrow to hold her close instead of just across the top of the bench. "This is nice."
“It is,” agreed Harrow, but what she didn’t say was and I don’t know what to do about it.
This was not their first nice moment here in Vallo. It was not their second, or third; it was one of many, and now that they had more or less settled into a routine, she hadn’t really thought to reflect on it before this. Gideon’s death and resurrection didn’t feel as fresh as it used to. Now she had the constant privilege of waking up to her, and that simple scenario alone hadn’t been anything on her radar before this strange little world and its strange little island. Maybe in some foolish dream, perhaps—or realities she cooked up in her fractured little head, like with coffee shops and divine balls thrown to gain her favor.
She peeled the liner off the cupcake and bit into the spongy bread part of it, though the angle was awkward and she could not escape getting icing on the tip of her nose. Harrow made a small noise of distress. “Griddle,” she grumbled around her small mouthful. “Help me.”
To her credit, Gideon didn't make a comment about her missing a bit of icing with her mouth. The amount of restraint being applied here should be lauded. She did, however, start off on the wrong foot. "It's just a little bit of icing, you don't need--" Then she realized it wasn't a need and she finished, lamely. "Oh.OH."
With all the grace and charm she could muster, Gideon turned her face towards Harrow and moved in to gently suck the little bit of icing off the tip of her nose. Probably a bit more lip work than was needed, but it got the job done.
She pulled away and grinned. "Saved you once again."
Harrow’s noise of distress increased and then died down in defeat because, yes, she wanted help cleaning her nose (like maybe Gideon had thought to bring a napkin in her pocket), but she should have completely expected the liberties taken to accomplish the task. She wasn’t mad about it; she quite contently accepted the reality that her girlfriend (what a strange, wonderful term to get used to) was very extra, as the slang goes.
“I refuse to swoon,” she stated primly and offered Gideon a bite of the cupcake. It felt odd to be the only one eating it, even if she knew it was meant for her. “Anyway, I—” Harrow stopped, chewing the inside of her cheek in thought. “I am at a loss as to what I should do today. I’ve no responsibilities, but it feels like I should… do a responsibility.”
Like praying on shards of broken glass in penance, but the only thing the Ninth House prayed for was the Locked Tomb that was now very much unlocked, with its rock rolled away.
"I'm a responsibility," crooned Gideon, taking a bite of the offered cupcake. Then, through chewing, she added, "Do me."
Knowing that incredibly clever response wasn't really the answer that she knew Harrow was looking for (if Harrow was actually looking for suggestions), she offered a half shrug with her opposite shoulder and swallowed.
"I mean, there's no rules that you have to go do something on your birthday. I guess you could go to work if you wanted, but fuck me that sounds like a waste of the day." She blinked quickly and raised an eyebrow. "We could go see a movie and eat popcorn and makeout in the dark."
“All that sounds pleasant,” said Harrow. “Including the doing, as you so eloquently put it. But the responsibilities I was thinking about were more of—punishments.”
Admitting it felt odd. Part of her was stuck in her Ninth House ways of suffering. Suffering and depriving oneself of wants was a way to show full devotion to the tomb, and it was ingrained in Harrow to always remember how she came to be and the cost of her existence. She should recite the two hundred names. She should paint her face. She should kneel. She should fashion knuckle-bones into a rosary, and submit herself to a house that was more or less extinct even if it didn’t exist here.
“I was conceived to serve my House and to restore my House,” she spoke quietly, brows furrowed and mouth set into a moody frown. “I cost them their two hundred children. I have nothing to show for it. Instead I am having a cupcake with you, and I am enjoying it. I shouldn’t.”
"I've told you a million times, you gotta stop paying for your parents' choices," was the answer, accompanied by tightening the embrace a bit. "They got desperate and decided to do what they did, not you. And you don't even know if it was actually necessary or just hedging their bets, even. Fuck, I was conceived to…"
Gideon let that hang in the air for a second, kind of squinting one eye and thinking for a second. "Double fuck, I don't even know. To get into the Tomb? Defy God? Just pure spite? I spent all that time trying to connect with my mom and it turns out she didn't give a shit about me, either. I was just gonna be a tool. I think?"
Shrugging, she tightened her one-armed hug on Harrow even further. "Point is, we shouldn't give a shit-soaked sock about what others intended for us. Our lives are ours."
“God,” Harrow groaned, scrubbing a hand across her forehead. “We truly both have entirely fucked</i> up stories behind our conception.” She’d known the facts, yes, but she felt utterly stupid to have finally connected the dots and see the correlation. If anyone could relate, it was Gideon. Gideon, who just handled everything so much better than she did. She truly did not know how the Ninth House molded someone this good despite its horrors and loneliness.
“And I know you are right,” she continued tiredly, sighing as she dropped her head onto her shoulder. “You always are when it comes to these things. I have lived my entire life with the weight of this knowledge, and I am… trying to learn to let it suffocate me less. It is the first time I’ve found some kind of peace on this day, and that is because of you.”
She bit into the cupcake again because it was her birthday cupcake, and it was from Gideon, and she loved it.
"I love you saying that I'm right," joked Gideon, then paused. The first part of that sentence had come out so smoothly and felt good saying it. Chicken-fried fuck, why did that just now occur to her that she'd never actually said that, like directly for real. Just always danced around it, maybe just seeing how Harrow'd respond?
She took a deep breath and rested her cheek on top of Harrow's head. "Actually." Slow exhale. "I just love you. Is that okay?"
Harrow went quiet, and her eyes—staring off towards an innocuous spot of the forest around them—slowly went wide. She said nothing at first. A breeze blew through the bone wind chimes, making a click-clack of a song. There was an odd tingle she felt, starting from her toes and swimming up towards the crown of her head and she couldn’t understand why her body was doing that.
Gideon was always making her feel things she couldn’t usually explain.
She stretched her cupcake arm across Gideon’s midsection, tucking her face into the warm crook of her neck. “You have terrible taste in women,” Harrow pointed out, whispering the words across her skin. “But I love you too.”
Gideon started to open her mouth and completely ruin the moment by telling Harrow that she actually liked the way she tasted, but in a moment of maybe being less of an idiot, she stopped herself and just soaked in the embrace. The forest seemed a little brighter today, now that she thought about it.
"Best birthday ever?" she asked, continuing to kind of fold herself into a snuggle with Harrow - even though the bench wasn't really the best shape for it. Or at least not from a side-by-side sitting position.
Harrow lifted what was left of the cupcake and lovingly pressed it into Gideon’s cheek, a mush of icing and crumbs.
“The absolute best,” she smirked, pressing a kiss to her other cheek. The weight of being two hundred corpses did not go away, but the load felt lighter. Easier to carry. She was loved, explicitly, for the first time, and she didn’t think it could get any better than this very moment. “Thank you, Griddle. You are very sweet.”
"I am now," answered Gideon, with a chuckle. She brushed away what she could from her cheek and was inwardly glad that the cupcake had gone over well and shit, everything else. Part of her gut was telling her to enjoy the good stuff before the other shoe dropped. Life and/or Vallo was sure to put things on its head before too long.
"I'll give you about fifteen more minutes of sweet cuddling before I scoop you up and take you inside for birthday orgasms," she added, nodding her head once to show that it was a determined future.
“Say you love me again and we can bypass those fifteen minutes,” Harrow said with utmost severity one may have diagnosing terminal illness. The coffee she’d been nursing earlier was cold from neglect, its existence forgotten.
She swiped the last bit of icing from Gideon’s cheek and popped her fingers into her mouth, staring expectantly.
Without hesitation, Gideon scooped Harrow into her arms and stood up in one fluid motion. Sure, it was a bridal carry, but that was a bit more intimate than throwing her over a shoulder.
"Oh, I love you, Harrowhark Nonagesimus, and you're going to love what's about to happen."
She smiled victoriously as she pushed the door of the cabin open with her foot and strode into the bedroom. Gideon didn't really have a lot of "good days" to count off, but this one was topping the list already.
