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It had started because of a joke, and not even a particularly good one.
Harrowhark had tried, for the first time in a while, to make soup. It had come out quite awful, which was to be expected when it was Harrow who was cooking, and Gideon said– “It’s probably a good thing. I know what happens to people named Gideon when you give them soup.”
Harrow blinked up at her several times, eyes like black holes. “I’m sorry?”
“You know, on the Mithraeum?” Gideon replied, suddenly very worried she was about to be killed without the help of bone marrow in her soup.
“How do you know about that?” Harrow’s voice took on a frantic edge.
And only then did Gideon realize where she’d fucked up. She had always sort of assumed, you see, that Harrow knew Gideon had been there the whole time, in the back of her head, and that they had just agreed not to speak about it. They already had so very much to deal with otherwise, and that was something easy to– gloss over, at least to Gideon. It was now made very clear to her that Harrow had not known a thing.
“I was there, Harrow,” Gideon said carefully. “Um. I couldn’t– it wasn’t– I don’t remember everything, you know, but I could see what was going on most of the time.” She paused, and when she started speaking again, she found it very difficult to stop: “It was like… I was you, sort of, except obviously I wasn’t, I was still very much myself. And I wasn’t conscious the whole time. It felt like I was drowning, and every now and then I’d get dredged up. And I just had to watch, Harrow, it was awful. I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t–”
Gideon stopped herself. Harrow had taken on an entirely new expression, one she had never worn before– one no one had ever worn before, possibly. She looked away from Gideon towards the door and said implacably, “I’m going for a walk.”
Gideon watched her resolutely leave the kitchen, and listened as she very quietly shut the front door behind her.
Harrow walked down the winding path through the woods in a stupor. When she reached the dock, she stepped off the edge without ceremony, fully clothed. She stayed under and howled into the water until she absolutely couldn’t anymore. Then she ducked under again and stayed there until her lungs burned, until she flirted with drowning.
She resurfaced and saw stars. She clung to the ladder, gasping for air, taking in ugly, disgusting lungfuls of it, feeling very pathetic and sorry for herself, and then even more sorry for herself for feeling so pathetic. Her nose burned from the salt, and it was all she could taste. This did not come as a comfort like it usually did. She didn’t know if she would ever be comfortable again.
She had no one to blame but herself; she had been the one to put Gideon there in the first place. She had very conveniently not thought about the fact that Gideon’s consciousness might have been– conscious. To think, she had already revealed her heart and soul and every awful thing about her to this woman– she’d laid bare everything she thought necessary, and several things she didn’t– only for Gideon to have known it all the entire time.
It made her dizzy from fear. It made her wonder, desperately, why the hell Gideon had stuck around. How had she seen all the decaying bits of Harrow’s mind, the maggots eating away at her neurons, and decided to stay?
Harrow hauled herself out of the water and onto the edge of the dock. She took off her waterlogged shoes and set them neatly next to her. She hadn’t brought a veil with her, and her eyes were watering incessantly. She could not bring herself to go back inside the house.
Gideon gave Harrow thirty minutes, and that was rounding up. She got rid of the repugnant soup and then paced around the house frantically, and when she could not bear it anymore, grabbed her sunglasses and the first piece of black voile she found, and left.
She knew where to find her. Harrow always went to the same place when she needed to think, or when she needed to be alone, or when she needed to pray. Gideon figured she’d need all three at the moment.
Sure enough, Harrow was sitting on the edge of the dock, sopping wet and hunched over. She didn’t seem to be crying from anything other than sun exposure, which was some consolation.
Gideon sat down next to her. She held out the slightly crumpled voile, which Harrow accepted wordlessly and tied over her leaking eyes. They didn’t say anything for a long while; Gideon wondered whether she should have waited a bit longer.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Gideon asked.
“No,” replied Harrow, resolute.
Gideon waited. It took Harrowhark about twenty seconds to inhale and ask– “How much did you see? Could you–” she said this next part contemptuously– “read my mind?”
Gideon didn’t speak for a long few seconds. “In a way, yeah,” she said.
Gideon could not bear to look over at Harrow as she said: “Fuck.”
“I know. I just– I kind of thought you knew.”
“I should’ve,” Harrow muttered. “I found it convenient not to think about where you might have gone. I suppose I hoped you had been– fucking asleep, I don’t know.” She looked Gideon in the face. Her eyes were wide and depthless black behind her lace. She sounded terribly desperate when she said, “I’m so sorry.”
“You’ve already apologized,” Gideon reminded her gently. “I’ve already forgiven you.”
“I didn’t know the– the scope of what I’d done, when I apologized then. I’m going to be making this up to you for the rest of my life, I can’t–”
“Harrow,” said Gideon, “shut up.”
Harrow shut up. Gideon wound an arm around her and tugged her to her side, which Harrow was largely unresponsive to. She was looking out at the ocean with the empty, thousand-yard stare Gideon hadn’t seen on her in ages. It made Gideon’s chest ache. It made her want to put her sword to real use for the first time in nearly eight years. For what, she wasn’t sure yet.
“I just don’t understand,” Harrow asked, frustrated.
“What?”
“Why you’re still here.”
Gideon wasn’t sure how to say, I lived behind your eyes for nearly a year and I only loved you more for it. She didn’t know how to say, You opened your skull to me and I wish every day you hadn’t but it means I know you as entirely as it’s possible for one person to know another, and I’ve only loved you more for it, and I don’t think it ever would’ve gone another way. She didn’t know how to say, I’m so fucking sorry, Harrow. I just want to take care of you. Won’t you let me take care of you?
So she didn’t say any of these things. Instead, she said: “I wish I could let you into my head, too. I wish you could see yourself through my eyes. You’d get why I stick around, then, I think.”
“Please don’t say that.” Harrow’s voice was barely above hearing; she sounded like a child.
“I know, I know. Nobody’s opening their brain up to anyone else anymore,” Gideon said.
“That isn’t what I mean.”
“I know.”
They didn’t say anything for a time, until Gideon grew tired from the sun and, frankly, tired of Harrow’s damp clothes soaking through her own. She said, “We should go back inside, love,” and stood up. Harrow took the hand she offered, and didn’t let go of it the whole walk home.
It stuck in Harrow’s mind for the rest of the week– it was going to be stuck in her mind for the rest of her life– and she could tell it was stuck in Gideon’s. The woman that used to be her cavalier kept looking at her like a very fragile, very sad baby animal she’d picked up off the side of the road. Harrow despised any pity directed towards her, on principle; she despised Gideon’s pity most of all, because she knew it came from a place of genuine love, and Harrow didn’t have the first clue what to do with that. She never knew what to do with love or care of any kind, she had received it so seldom. She received it constantly now, and at first instinct, she often shoved it away. The only thing that made her begin to stop was that, well– it made Gideon sad.
They didn’t talk about it again for several days, and half of Harrow was hopeful they might never talk about it again. They probably should have, but she was too embarrassed and hurt to start the conversation.
(In the first few days after God died, when the dust was still settling and they’d had a rare moment of free time, she’d sat Gideon down and said, I am insane. Gideon had tried to make a joke out of it– yeah, trust me, I know, but Harrow had persisted, No. I am mad. I hear things that aren’t real. I see things that aren’t there. I cannot trust my own mind. I am insane. I need you to know this so– so that–
Gideon had looked at her very sadly then, and Harrow hated her for it. So that I know what I’m getting myself into?
Harrow had cast her eyes away and nodded. Gideon had smiled, even more sadly, and hesitated a while before saying, I still love you. I’m still not going anywhere. Were you expecting anything different?
This had made Harrow weep for quite a long time, and Gideon had held her through it and then cleaned away her smudged paint afterwards, which nearly set her off again.
At least now she knew what Gideon’s hesitation was supposed to have been filled by. I know you’re insane. I saw the Body through your eyes. I heard the Secundarius Bell through your ears. )
Gideon, of course, was the one who brought it up. Nearly half an hour after they’d turned the light out, while Harrow stared at the ceiling and tried to quiet her thoughts enough to fall asleep, Gideon said, “I don’t really remember most of it, if that’s any consolation. It wasn’t my brain, so I would’ve had to go looking through your shit if I wanted to remember anything, and that felt like– like a gross invasion of privacy, so I never did. They aren’t my memories. I just remember what really stuck with me. With you. I don’t know.”
“Stop talking,” Harrow said.
“Sorry.”
Harrow shut her eyes. She asked, knowing full well she would regret it, “What do you remember?”
Gideon was quiet for a long while. “Do you really want to know?”
“Yes.”
The sheets rustled. Gideon said, “I remember the other Gideon trying to kill you. I remember when you tried to kill him. I remember… Cytherea’s corpse moving around. I remember bits and pieces of your conversations with Ianthe. I remember, um, God’s study. I didn’t get a lot of visual stuff, but I remember that. I remember…”
At Gideon’s hesitation, Harrow said forcefully– “Keep going.” She was full of sick curiosity. She wanted to know what would happen if she picked at this particular scab– or pulled out the stitches on this fatal wound.
“I remember when you went to New Rho and I remember you thought it was beautiful. I remember when you… um, when you told God about opening the Tomb, and you knelt on that glass, and– fuck, Harrow.” The words were spilling out of her like she didn’t want them to, but she couldn’t stop. She sounded on the verge of tears, and Harrow couldn’t make herself turn and look. “I remember the Body. I remember her eyes. She had my eyes– his eyes, I guess. I remember how you always slept next to my sword. I remember how you hardly ever ate, and how you were so afraid, and–”
“Stop,” Harrow said thickly. “Enough. Please. I shouldn’t have asked.”
“I’m sorry,” said Gideon. “I’m sorry. I just– you know, the whole time, it was killing me, right? I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t do my one fucking job and protect you. I couldn’t even be your battery, you didn’t let me.” She paused. “I would’ve killed every single one of those damn Lyctors if I had the chance. Starting with the worse Gideon. He was a real dick.”
“Stop,” said Harrow weakly. Her eyes burned.
“No, I think you need to hear this. I lived in your head and I loved you more for it. I couldn’t ever have lived in your head and not loved you more for it. I always just wanted to– to take care of you, and you wouldn’t even let me do that.”
“You being the fuel of my Lyctorhood would not be taking care of me,” Harrow snapped. She finally turned to look at the other woman, who was staring at her in the dark with a type of intensity Harrow had only seen on her once before, maybe a million years ago, in the saltwater pool at Canaan House.
“It was the best I could do,” Gideon said. “It was the only way I could be useful.”
“I don’t want you to be useful. I don’t need you to take care of me. I’ve gone my whole life without anyone doing that, and I’ve turned out fine, thank you.” Gideon opened her mouth, and Harrow added, “If you say yes, actually, you do, I’ll fucking kill you.”
“I wasn’t going to say that.”
“Yes, you were.”
“I wasn’t. I was going to say, just because you’ve made it without anyone taking care of you until now doesn’t mean you need to keep going like that.” She hesitated. “Also, I object to you ‘turning out fine.’”
Harrow didn’t even want to think about what her face looked like then, as something inside her that had been hanging on by a thread for far too long broke, and she sobbed like she hadn’t in months.
She didn’t know how to stop being so surprised that Gideon kept coming back. She didn’t know how to stop waiting for the other shoe to drop, when it had been proven again and again that the other shoe didn’t even exist. She didn’t know how to kill the constant fear in her chest that Gideon would suddenly change her mind, or come to her senses, and leave Harrow alone.
Gideon did not leave now. The other shoe did not drop. Like she had before, more times than Harrow could count by now, she pulled Harrow to her chest. She cradled her head with one hand, and rubbed her back with the other; she was saying, “It’s okay. I’ve got you. You know, I’m glad you did what you did in the end, because I wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t. Being someone’s battery isn’t any way to love them.”
It made Harrow wretched. It, admittedly, made her feel much better. When she had calmed down enough to speak, she said, her voice a bit muffled, “I still don’t understand why you’re still here.”
Gideon sounded impossibly sad and old beyond her years when she replied– “You don’t have to understand. All that matters is that I am, and I’m not going anywhere.”
Harrow shut her sore eyes tight and pressed her forehead harder into Gideon’s chest. She fell asleep emptied of tears and feeling absolutely devoid of her dignity, but she could not bring herself to care.
Things did not change, exactly, in the following weeks, but Harrow became more aware of things that had already been happening. For the first time in her life, she finally fucking got over herself, and she let herself be taken care of.
It was not easy, but at the same time, it was the easiest thing she’d ever done. She let Gideon cook for her and bother her to come to bed when she’d been up late working for too many nights in a row. She let Gideon bring her back from nightmares and, eventually, even let her draw a bath for the both of them. She, of course, took care of Gideon in turn: she cut her hair when it needed cutting, and brought home magazines she had been humiliated to buy. She held Gideon, too, when she needed holding. All of these were things that had already been happening for ages, but Harrow leaned into them now, and was forced to admit she was better off for it.
Harrow’s love for Gideon was not something she could look at directly. She could only behold it in pieces, from certain angles, or else risk losing herself in the whole terrible expanse of it. She had lost herself in it before, and had been stuck there for quite a while. The Harrowhark of old could hardly have conceived of letting Gideon touch her. She hadn’t even considered the prospect of sleeping next to her.
But there was no use getting caught up in their history, Gideon said. It was over. It was done, and they could not undo it. They could only keep going. Harrow suspected Pyrrha had taught her that one.
Harrow did not get lost anymore.
One day, much later, while Harrow was sitting in the kitchen next to the open door, listening to the windchimes she’d hung outside and the birds and Gideon talking about nothing in particular, she realized she’d stopped waiting.