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Gideon should have predicted the screaming match.
“You two have much to talk about,” Cam had stated before she saw herself out and locked the door behind her. “I’ll give you some privacy to do so.”
Gideon had experienced a lot of nopes in her life, but this might be the one that finally kills her…
Well, kills her again. This time with a bit more emotion and a bit less fence.
Once more with feeling, as the saying goes.
Less fence was preferable, at least. The emotional part, however?
“What the fuck were you thinking, Nav,” Harrow had yelled to start the conversation.
And then it all spiraled from there.
“What was I thinking,” Gideon asks incredulously. “What was I- Harrow, you are the one that went and gave herself brain damage, and you’re asking me what was I thinking?”
“That was necessary!”
“Like fuck it was,” Gideon spits out. “I gave you everything I had, my life, and instead of using it you tried to return to sender! I finally did something right, chose to do it, in fact, and you asked for a refund!”
“I couldn’t- “
“Oh, I know why you couldn’t let it stick!” Gideon runs her hands through her hair in aggravation. “Couldn’t let Gideon Nav be the hero for once. Couldn’t owe Gideon Nav a goddamn thing. To be beholden to Gideon Nav in life or death, that’s a worse fate than being a broken Lyctor for God.”
“Is that what you think?” Harrow's little ferret face scrunches up into what Gideon can only describe as pure horror, which was not what she was expecting, truthfully. “You think I went to Ianthe Tridentarius and asked for her help, the one who ate her cavalier willingly and unflinchingly, to lobotomize myself just so I didn’t have to remember owing you my Lyctorhood?”
Harrow takes a slow step forward and Gideon responds with a quick step back.
“Or is it, you think I chose the painful existence of not even being half a Lyctor, but a fractured broken one, just so I could repay you for it?” Harrow’s tone had grown sharper with each word and she had taken another two steps forward. Gideon was running out of room between her and the wall, soon enough she’d be well and truly cornered. “I have called you an idiot before, but you didn’t have to prove it furthermore to me.”
“Harrow, what-“
“Here’s the truth of it, Griddle,” Harrow continues, ignoring Gideon’s slight interruption. “I did not give myself brain damage to merely forget you existed and that I was beholden to you in regards to saving my life and allowing me to ascend. For starters, I couldn’t forget you. I tried desperately to forget you. I made plans to make sure no one, no one would utter your name in my presence lest it kickstart memories. It didn’t work.”
Gideon opens her mouth to retaliate because she remembers being forgotten quite well, thanks. Coming back to hear that your necromancer has been saying the ultimate cavalier sacrifice was done by Ortus Nigenad was a real kick in the balls.
“My memories of you were replaced with Ortus, yes,” Harrow states as if reading Gideon’s mind, which would have given Gideon the yikes feelings if she wasn’t also slowly starting to lose her shit. “But everything else remembered. If someone so much as began to say Gideon, mumbling but one syllable, I would crumble in on myself, be horribly ill, and not even know why. I carried your precious sword everywhere even though I hated it and it hated me. I carried it even though touching it hurt and I was useless with it. I did not know where the need came from, to carry the goddamned weight of your ridiculous two-handed sword while the rest of the Lyctors brandished rapiers, but it was of the utmost importance that I kept it with me and that I let no one else take it. In the end, getting rid of you in name didn’t matter. My mind lost sight of you but my body refused to let you go.”
“I don’t have to say it, do I?” It is a great joke, unfortunately it comes out all warbly so it doesn’t land.
“And I kept you, Nav,” Harrow put simply and Gideon bites her tongue in an attempt to regain composure. “Not just then. For years, I kept you from running away from me. You took every chance you could to escape and I thwarted every single one. Keeping you as a battery would’ve meant using you up. There would have been nothing left of you. You would cease to be in every way you could. The only thing that would have been left is my memory of you. And is my memory enough for a hero when we both know I’m insane? No, I couldn’t let there be nothing left of Gideon Nav for me to keep.”
“Nonagesimus- “
“But on top of everything - “
“Are you even trying?” Gideon tries again but she sounds hysterical to her own ears. Fair enough. Her back is up against the wall now, she had nowhere to go. She is trapped between the steel of the ship and the steel of Harrow’s stare. If she had a choice, trying to push herself through the wall seemed like the easier action of the two.
“I told you the cost of my life. I told you no matter what I did, that cost would never be worth it. I could do everything right. I could become a Lyctor and bring the Ninth House back from the dead and it still wouldn’t be enough. And you forgave me for it all. I held your leash, I branded you for the Ninth, I would’ve been the cause of your death as an infant if you weren’t who you are, and you met that with forgiveness. You have taken everything I have ever given to you, every lash, and you said ‘sorry.’ Then you apologized again because you once said all you ever wanted was for me to ask, and the thing I asked for in the end, you couldn’t do. You died, instead. I cannot emphasize enough how much I did not ask for you to die for me.”
“I wanted -“
“It’s wrong.” Harrow is now invading Gideon’s personal bubble. They are nose-to-nose and Gideon can feel the ghost of Harrow’s breath with every word. “The process is all wrong and yet you still chose defiance. You are my only friend and I was undone without you. Three days is all I managed, and even then I was confined to a bed. When I first woke, I asked God to undo it, to bring you back, and God said He was not enough. I couldn’t stand it.”
“You did what -“ The octave at which this is asked, Gideon amazes even herself for reaching it.
“You think this is because I was mad at owing you the power I sought for at Canaan House. You think I am trying to do something about the debt. What you don’t seem to understand is this: whatever debt I owe is worth more than I could give, for all my life I have been beholden to Gideon Nav.” Harrow leans out of Gideon’s space, as though she didn’t just make the universe’s largest mic drop. “I am sorry I thought that obvious.”
“Harrow,” Gideon says and her voice cracks as she does so. She takes a long, steading breath before diving back in. “In what world was I supposed to find that obvious?”
“Nav- “
“Nope.” Gideon raises a hand to emphasize the nope factor of the nope demand. “Gideon Nav Talking Time, my turn to unsettle you via monologue, Gloom Mistress.”
Gideon pushes herself off the wall and now it is Harrow who takes a step back.
“Alright, maybe I was wrong about your reasons,” Gideon starts, and Harrow immediately understands what Gideon meant by making her unsettled. “It doesn’t change how I feel about the whole thing.”
“Griddle - “
“I chose to do what I did, Nonagesimus,” Gideon states quietly, but firmly. Harrow’s face morphs into one of anger and anguish. “I know. I know it’s not what you wanted. I know it’s the worst thing I could have possibly done to you. But I had to, and I would do it again. I don’t regret a damn thing about what I did, but I know it hurt you and for that I’m sorry.”
Harrow has gone and collapsed on the floor, which is just as well. If Gideon hadn't backed herself into a wall she would have been in the same position moments earlier.
“Of course it hurt you.” Gideon feels a phantom pull in her knee as she kneels before Harrow’s crumpled form. “Two hundred souls stolen for you without your permission. Another two took themselves in front of you without your permission. And one more, given to you willingly but without your permission. I’m so sorry. All you want is life and all life has given you is death.”
Harrow looks at Gideon with indescribable pain in her eyes and sobs.
“Everyone forces their decision onto you and you bear the weight of them,” Gideon continues. “I know you do. I felt it and got a taste when I had to bear the weight of your decision on me. It was so hard, Harrow, looking in the mirror and seeing you but it was only me. I tried provoking you in any way I could and nothing worked. I was stuck in your little sick stick body. All I wanted was to yell at you and I couldn’t. I wanted you and you weren’t there.”
Gideon pauses to take a large breath before launching into her end. “I understand, in a sense, the need to do something, anything, to get someone back. I- I don’t- You hurt me too, though, Nonagesimus, because you took my choice away and made me play your game again, but without you. You were gone when I had given everything to keep you alive. Then I fought like hell to keep your body intact and comfortable because you weren’t here. I was in control of your decaying meat sack, and everything was going wrong, and I couldn’t even cuss you out about it because you were off Dad knows where. I understand your intentions now, but it hurt. It still hurts.”
“Perhaps, that’s just what we do,” Harrow whispers. “We can’t just be normal about this. Not when all we know is how to hurt each other.” There is a beat before Harrow admits in despair, “I don’t know how to do this.”
“Neither do I, Bone Empress.” Gideon gives her a sad smile.
“I don’t know how to do this,” Harrow repeats. She looks over her knees at Gideon, eyes still wet with tears. “And we have so far to go, so much to do.”
“Yeah,” Gideon agrees. “A whole ass war to win.”
“I don’t want to hurt you anymore, Gideon.” Harrow squeezes her legs with the little muscle she possesses.
“Goes both ways,” Gideon says. “Maybe we can learn.”
“It is going to be painful.”
“As pulling teeth, but when has that ever stopped us from trying?”