Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It wasn’t that Gideon Nav had anything against books. Obviously. She’d be in the wrong major if she did. But there’s a difference between good books and the books languishing on the shelves at the university library, which seemed to be mostly textbooks written by professors and old battered copies of classic literature that they never had the budget to replace. Gideon had rarely seen fit to grace the place with her presence and did not feel much deprived; you could find most things online anyway, if you knew where to look.

Unfortunately, what she couldn’t seem to find despite some very specific googling (with Boolean terms and everything!) was the stupid, pretentious little textbook that stupid, pretentious Professor Quinque wrote. The one required for her Shakespeare class. Really required, too, not just dropped into the syllabus in the hope some poor chumps bought it. Bastard. Like he’s the prevailing expert in Shakespeare or whatever.

So, cue the Canaan University campus library, the only place she could find a copy that didn’t involve her shelling out for it on Amazon and that sure as shit wasn’t going to happen.

The building was surprisingly modern given the abandoned-construction-site-chic the rest of the campus adhered to. They’d been in the process of remodeling when Gideon had been a freshman and it had finally opened for business late last semester. The big glass front wall glowed a tarnished gold with the sunset and the atrium was wide and airy, tastefully decorated with local art projects or historical displays or posters from various clubs. Once you took a few steps into the building, though, the broad avenues of light shrunk to dead-end alleys broken by tall shelves and shadows, like there was a physical wall between the outside world and this sanctum of musty academia. By the time Gideon reached the staff desk, the atmosphere was the same cold, dim gray of the concrete block student housing, by which she meant, that of a tomb with whitewashed walls and charming faux-wood accents.

And to complete the illusion, a skeleton was sitting behind the desk.

Okay, maybe that was a little mean. It was actually just some twiggy goth girl Gideon didn’t recognize, but between the fluorescents in the ceiling doing a shit job, the illumination of her computer screen, and the dark makeup around the girl’s eyes and mouth, Gideon had momentarily thought the library was run by the moldering corpse of some underpaid student employee like some hamfisted commentary on the future of print books. The girl’s face was pale and mostly put together of mean little angles that did genuinely conjure thoughts of sharp-edged cheekbone and mandible.

The girl looked up at her with ink black eyes and her thin mouth twisted in a faint sneer. “Can I help you?”

And Gideon was just staring like an idiot. It was understandable, of course, since she had just been frightened by a skeletal apparition, but still. Not very cool.

“Uh, yeah,” Gideon said, with all the grace and verbosity her English major brain could supply her. “I’m looking for a book.”

The girl raised her eyebrows like she was cocking a gun.

“Right, obviously,” Gideon continued. “A particular book, in fact. Romance and Tragedy in Shakespearean Tradition. By Augustine Quinque. He’s a professor here.” She added, as though that made it less lame and not incalculably more so. “Do you guys have a copy?”

The girl turned to her computer and typed something with quick, precise strokes. “Shakespearean tradition,” she scoffed as she did so. “A preeminent Shakespeare scholar right here at Canaan. I’m sure whatever he has to say is groundbreaking.”

“I know, right!” Gideon propped her elbows against the desk. “He acts like he’s Malone come again, but I swear all he talks about is Twelfth Night. Like, we get it, dude. You’re gay.”

The girl looked surprised, before her expression collapsed into something that gave Gideon vivid flashbacks of Aiglamene catching her crawling through her window in the dead of night. They had the same air of cool disdain, the same ability to make Gideon feel about two feet tall. No mean feat, considering this girl looked maybe five foot nothing with boots on. Gideon pushed away from the desk and straightened up to her full height to parry the blow.

With no change in the quality of her glare, the girl scribbled a call number down onto a scrap of paper and slid it across the desk. “The system says there’s one copy left. Better hurry.”

Then she turned away with the kind of confident dismissal that most people needed a couple of weeks of Gideon-exposure to work up to. Impressive.

“Uh, right.” Gideon took the paper. “Thanks?”

“It’s my job,” the girl said.

“All right. Cool. Thanks,” she said again, turning away toward the maze of bookshelves. Definitely a very normal interaction. Good job, Gideon.

She set to searching for the book, inexplicably nervous about returning to the desk to check it out when she found it. Once it became clear she was not going to find the book, she was even more nervous to go back and ask for more help. Which was stupid. The girl had even said so: this was her job. She didn’t have any reason to be an asshole to Gideon. Not when Gideon hadn’t been an asshole first and, for once in her life, she really hadn’t. And the book really wasn’t there, so it’s not like Gideon had much of a choice. Actually, fuck her, Gideon decided, as she stormed back to the front desk.

“Ready to check out?” the girl said, all easy-breezy-beautiful like she’d already forgotten Gideon existed.

“The book’s not there,” Gideon snapped. “You sure you gave me the right number?”

The girl’s face darkened in an instant and Gideon felt a ridiculous thrill of triumph.

She didn’t even check. “I’m sure.”

And the girl remained sure all through emerging from behind the desk and venturing into the stacks, Gideon half a step behind, and she was still sure when the two of them reached the place on the shelf the book should be. And it still wasn’t there.

“Still sure, O all-knowing library goddess?”

The girl tensed. Gideon swore she could hear her molars cracking under the strain. “It’s missing, clearly. Some moron probably stole it.” On the word moron, she shot Gideon a poisonous look out of the corner of her eye.

“Oh.” That sucked all the wind out of her righteous indignation. Shit. Gideon really needed that book. “I really need that book.”

“Very unfortunate for you.” The girl started to walk away.

“Hey, wait!” Without thinking, Gideon reached out to grab her shoulder. The girl flinched away so hard that Gideon was worried she might have pulled something. An apology was halfway out of her mouth when the girl rounded on her, eyes burning, face tinged faintly pink beneath the makeup.

“What?” she snarled.

“I—” Gideon swallowed. Now she felt like the asshole. But she refused to be daunted by this tiny library gremlin. “Look, can I just leave my contact information with you? In case you find the book?”

“Why don’t you just buy it?”

“And give Quinque the satisfaction?” Not to mention the price.

“This isn’t a service we provide.”

“Please?”

The girl narrowed her eyes. Gideon felt her ears go hot. She wasn’t sure how this counterculture gnome had reduced her to pleading so quickly.

After an eternity, the girl sighed. “Fine.” She took a pen from behind her ear, because of course she did, and shoved it at Gideon. “Write your name down. No promises.”

Gideon scribbled her name and a contact number down on the scrap of paper, against the upright side of a shelf, and handed it back. “Hey, thanks,” she said, and meant it. “I really appreciate it.”

The girl took the paper stiffly. “I wouldn’t expect any miracles.” She looked down at Gideon’s hurried scrawl. “Griddle.”

Gideon blinked. “Um. Gideon?”

The girl looked back down at the paper. “Your handwriting’s atrocious.”

“That’s not the only atrocity these hands are capable of,” Gideon’s mouth said without consulting her brain.

The girl only stared at her, her eyebrows climbing toward her crop of dark hair.

“Okay.” Gideon was definitely blushing now. She had to stop herself from anxiously cracking her knuckles. “That was supposed to be a sex joke but instead sounded like a murder thing. So! I’m going to go now!”

“That would probably be best,” the girl said.

Gideon probably imagined the quirk of her lips. She spun around and didn’t look back to double-check, making for the front door like rabid ghosts were pursuing her. She didn’t slow down until she was back outside, the sunset turning her skin bronze and setting her hair aflame. She stopped on the sidewalk to get her bearings. Took stock of (and hurriedly discarded) the way her heart was racing.

“What the fuck.”

-

Gideon didn’t realize until after dinner, sitting in bed with a comic in her lap, that she had basically given the little library witch her number.

“Shit,” she said into the silence.

-

A couple days later, she was sitting down in the basement that doubled as her bedroom, playing video games, when the girl from the library just waltzed down the stairs. Gideon’s hands froze on the controller. She was instantly killed by an opportunistic sniper.

Once she managed to close her mouth, she asked, “What are you doing here?”

The girl walked over and settled herself on Gideon’s bed. Much closer than seemed appropriate, considering they’d met exactly once. The girl tucked her legs up underneath her and leaned against Gideon’s side. “I had to let myself in. You play your idiotic games too loud.”

“Uh,” Gideon said intelligently.

“Did you swallow your tongue, Griddle?” the girl said into Gideon’s ear.

Gideon felt narrow fingers under her chin as the girl turned Gideon to face her. Her eyes were still black as pits, but warm somehow, a welcoming darkness, and Gideon liked her miniscule smirk a lot better than her sneer. And in spite of popular consensus, Gideon wasn’t a total idiot. She could read a room.

“Want to check for me?” Gideon asked.

The girl rolled her eyes and, still smiling, leaned in—

Gideon’s phone alarm blared in her ear and she jerked awake, slapping at the screen until the sound stopped. Then she lay there, twisted in her sheets, the dream still warm at the fuzzy edges of her memory.

She threw an arm over her eyes. “Fuck,” she groaned.

-

“Cam, you ever use the campus library?” Gideon said over her plate of scrambled eggs at breakfast the next morning. Camilla had dragged her ass out of bed to go for a run before the sun had even risen, as she had every weekend since Gideon moved in, because she was some kind of monster.

Camilla piled food onto her plate, leaving some for Palamedes, who could not be roused before nine o’clock by even the wrath of Camilla Hect. Gideon always made enough breakfast for him anyway, just in case.

“I do not. Do I look like some kind of nerd?”

“Yes, absolutely you do.”

“Notwithstanding.” Camilla dropped into the rickety seat next to her. “Palamedes says their collection is terrible. (“See. Nerd,” Gideon said.) Did you go to the library?”

“Yeah.”

“And why would you do that?”

“To get a book, Camilla.”

Cam slowly placed a forkful of eggs in her mouth, her eyes never leaving Gideon, waiting. Gideon knew from experience she could go an upsettingly long time without blinking.

“There was just this girl there. Goth. Kind of a bitch. I was wondering if you knew her.”

“I’m obviously big into the goth subculture. Why? What are you going to do to her?”

“Nothing! It’s not like that.” Gideon tapped her fork against the edge of her plate, food untouched. She should have known better than that. Cam was too observant, knew her too well.

“Then what—” Camilla watched Gideon’s fidgeting with a surgeon’s eye and came to a conclusion. “Really, Nav? Didn’t you just break up with your girlfriend?”

“We didn’t break up!”

“You know that’s worse, right—”

“We weren’t together. Not really. So it isn’t breaking up.” Gideon didn’t really want to talk about this. She also didn’t really want to keep talking about the library girl and was regretting bringing it up. “Whatever. It doesn’t matter. It’s nothing.”

She pushed back her chair to stand and almost ate shit when Camilla hooked her ankle with one foot. She grabbed the table to steady herself. “What the hell?”

“What’s her name?”

“What?”

“The library goth. You’re not giving me a lot to go on.”

“Oh. Um.”

Camilla sighed and dropped her head into her hand, rubbing her forehead like she could soothe away a headache named Gideon Nav.

-

Gideon burst through the library doors that afternoon. As luck would have it, the girl was sitting behind the front desk again, decked out in funereal colors and silver-white jewelry. She startled up from a tome that looked like the girl needed a pulley system to lift it. Their eyes met; the girl’s narrowed in suspicion, but before she could open her mouth, Gideon jumped in and seized the advantage.

“Hey!” The tasteful cream tile of the entryway amplified her voice. She imagined a host of offended nerds throughout the library popping up their heads like prairie dogs. “What’s your name?”

There was a long moment where Gideon thought she wouldn’t answer, which would have foiled Gideon’s very well-thought-out plan. But then the girl called back, half a question: “Harrowhark?”

“Damn, really?” Gideon said. The girl’s—Harrowhark’s—lemon-pucker face soured even further. “I mean, cool! Thanks!”

Then she fled, leaving Harrowhark staring after her.

-

Gideon returned home triumphant. She threw open the front door, arms spread wide, and stepped from sunlight into the perpetual gray gloom that was Cam and Pal’s natural habitat. The door bounced off the wall, where Camilla had long since installed a guard to stop her punching holes in the plaster.

Camilla and Palamedes were both stretched out in the living room. Cam was using Pal’s bony shins as a table for her laptop and the rest of his ridiculously long, spindly body was draped over the rest of the couch. He had his glasses dangling from one hand and his head tipped back over the armrest, almost upside down, like he was trying to think extra hard by forcing more blood into his brain. Neither of them flinched at Gideon’s entrance, which spoke either to their supreme tolerance or the benefits of exposure therapy.

“Her name is Harrowhark,” Gideon announced as she kicked the door closed behind her.

And it was that, for some reason, that had both pairs of gray eyes snapping to her, one dark like fallow earth, the other luminously bright. Gideon froze.

“Harrowhark?” Camilla asked.

“Harrowhark Nonagesimus?” Palamedes clarified, settling his glasses back on his nose.

Gideon barked a laugh. “Her name’s bigger than she is.”

Neither of them even cracked a smile.

“What?” Gideon asked. “You guys know her?”

The two of them exchanged a look that was probably equivalent to several days’ worth of debate for normal people. Gideon didn’t feel left out—this wasn’t unusual—but she was starting to be a little worried.

“She’s in some of my classes,” Pal finally said.

“The fact you think I would buy that as the whole story is insulting. Spill.” Gideon knocked Cam’s feet off the coffee table and sat on top of it, settling her elbows on her knees. “What, is she crazy or something?”

“No,” Pal said, at the same time Cam said, “Debatable.”

Palamades glared at Camilla over his glasses. She shrugged. Pal went on. “No, she’s not. She can just be...difficult.”

“Yeah, I noticed. Real bitch to me for no reason when I went looking for a book.”

Pal leaned forward and flopped his long arms over the armrest. He gave Gideon a patented Palamedes Look, clear and even, that made it seem like he believed everything you said was of the utmost importance. It would probably make him a very good doctor, one day. In the meantime, Gideon squirmed on the low table and considered her escape routes.

“So you’re interested?” he asked.

“What, is that my type? Bitches?”

Camilla eloquently raised her eyebrows.

“I don’t know. She seems—” The word nice died in Gideon’s mouth. “She was kind of funny, you know?” Gideon folded her hands in her lap, popping her knuckles while she thought. She didn’t want to tell either of them about the weird dream and how she kept touching the fading memory of it, the memory of remembering it, with delicate fingers. About how it made something annoyingly warm and aching dig its way out from behind her ribs. It wouldn’t be good enough for Palamedes. Bad evidence. Not evidence of anything, really, except maybe something deficient in Gideon herself.

Palamedes opened his mouth again, to keep arguing probably, but Camilla flicked him hard on the knee. He glanced at her, then back at Gideon. He shrugged and dropped back down against the couch, waving a hand dismissively. “Follow your heart.”

Gideon rolled her eyes. “It’s not like I’m proposing,” she said.

“Yet,” Cam said.

“Microaggression. I have never proposed on a first date.”

Cam was still watching her. She was good at making herself unreadable when she wanted to be, but there was a crack in the carved stone of her face. A narrow sliver of concern. She was a woman of few words and Gideon could see she was in the process of sifting through the right ones, trying to decide how much to say. In the end, though, all she offered was, “Just be careful.”

Gideon felt a little prickle of unease. But she wouldn’t get any more out of them, even while they read her like one of her trashy magazines. They could be remarkably stubborn. So she smiled instead. “I think I can take her. Actually, I might have maybe threatened to murder her last time. On accident!” she said in response to another Camilla-and-Palamedes Significant Look.

“Well. You’ll probably be fine, then,” Camilla said flatly.

Gideon snorted and shoved at Cam’s knee. Her phone buzzed on the table next to her, so she snatched it and stood up, extricating herself from the aftermath of that weird conversation. As she opened the door to the basement, she said, “Figure out what you guys want for dinner.”

“Why don’t you ever have to figure it out?” Pal said.

“Because I’ll eat anything!” she called, closing the door behind her. She heard Camilla groan through the wood and grinned. Then she looked down at her phone.

Unknown Number: Do you plan on explaining yourself?

The smile dripped off Gideon’s face.

Gideon: uh who is this

Unknown Number: Who do you think it is, Griddle?

Gideon felt a punch of heat below her ribs, and it flared up her spine and fanned across her shoulders like trailing fingers. Huh. She started to type a response, deleted it, and started typing again before she realized Harrowhark would be able to see her doing it. She bit her cheek and fired back a text.

Gideon: are we at the nickname stage of our relationship already

Unknown Number: Hardly, considering we weren’t at the first name stage until this afternoon.
Unknown Number: What possessed you to cause a scene at my place of business?

Gideon snorted. Place of business, like she was some big shot lawyer or something not a student employee being paid pennies.

Gideon: mostly wanted to know your name. also kinda wanted to see the look on your face

The next message came through too quickly, like Harrowhark had already been halfway through typing it.

Unknown Number: If you were attempting to embarrass me, you failed. You only embarrassed yourself.

Gideon: not feeling super embarrassed here sunshine

Instantly—

Unknown Number: No.

Gideon: youre right that doesn’t fit. how about dark mistress?
Gideon: dismal duchess?
Gideon: querulous queen?
Gideon: cantankerous commander?

Gideon waited for Harrowhark to come back with some insult, to her intelligence or otherwise, but she didn’t. Her face grew warmer while the space beneath her increasingly stupid messages stayed blank and silent. She felt a little like she had walked off a cliff and hadn’t noticed the drop until she looked down.

Gideon: or how about harrow to keep things simple

Unknown Number: I don’t have time for this nonsense. Do not contact me again.

Gideon’s shoulders bunched like the words were a flail falling across her back. Her face felt very hot now and her hands were cold and she was typing out a response before she had a chance to think better of it.

Gideon: you contacted ME

Good one. Really got her.

There were plenty of other things Gideon wanted to say, like what’s your problem? or maybe I don’t have time for YOUR nonsense or hey, I’m sorry, I was just joking or even what about my fucking book? But none of them sounded good and all of them would, in fact, be contacting her and Gideon wasn’t about to push at someone who clearly wasn’t interested. Not like it had gotten her anywhere before, anyway.

She threw her phone on the bedspread, wrestled skinny little goth bitches to the back of her mind, and went to wash up for dinner.

-

Just past three in the morning, Gideon’s phone lit up with a notification.

Unknown Number: Harrow is acceptable.

Later, when the first beams of sunlight crept in through the one tiny window, Gideon blinked awake. She reached blindly for her phone to check the time and stopped. Peered at the message with bleary eyes. Then she wheezed a laugh, shook her head, and rolled over. She dropped back into sleep with a smile on her face.

-

Gideon might have to reverse her opinion on the campus library, given the number of times she’d been there in the past week. Given that she was there yet again, like a dog with bone, walking up to the circulation desk. Maybe the library just needed better PR. Come for the books, stay for the infuriating goth chicks. There, they could have that one for free.

Though, maybe Gideon should hold off on the advertising campaign until she saw how this worked out.

Harrow was not at the desk. No one was. It was possible she wasn’t in yet, or that she’d already been in, or that she just didn’t work today. It wasn’t like Gideon had checked. She had just decided to drop in, because she was very cool and smooth and because it had worked before. She leaned forward and drummed her fingers against the counter, wondering if it was worth it to wait, or if that just made her creepy. Probably creepy. Plus, she had class soon.

Gideon blew out a long sigh. This was stupid. She didn’t even know if Harrow was interested. Probably she wasn’t. Probably what Gideon needed was for Harrow to turn her down, so Gideon could shrug her shoulders and say she had given it the ol’ college try. Better to know one way or the other than let herself dangle in the middle.

There was a rustle in the stacks. Gideon abruptly remembered there were other parts of the library and, likely, there were other duties for would-be librarians than sitting and staring out into space. Gideon checked her phone, decided she had enough time to really cement the “creepy” angle, and went to go peek down the aisles.

Lo and behold, there was Harrowhark Nonagesimus in all her monochrome glory, black jeans, black jacket, and tall black boots that probably accounted for a quarter of her body weight. She was shelving a cart of books like they had personally offended her and didn’t hear Gideon approach. Okay, easy. Ask her out, get rejected, get a pity burrito on the way home. Like ripping off a bandaid. Still, Gideon had standards and she took the opportunity to lean against the shelf, arms crossed, one foot kicked behind the other, before she said, “Hey, Harrow.”

Harrow dropped the book she was holding. She twisted around to face her attacker, murder in her eyes, but Gideon barely registered that before autopilot kicked in and she stooped to pick up the book. She was grinning when she rose, which didn’t assauge the murder-vision as much as one might think. “Sorry,” she said.

Harrow scoffed and wrenched the book out of Gideon’s hands. “I still don’t have your book.”

“I know. Shockingly, I have a totally separate question.”

“I’m sure it will be riveting.” Harrow wedged the book onto a too-full shelf, leaving an inch of spine sticking out between two thicker volumes, and turned back to Gideon. “Get on with it.”

“Oh, uh.” This was exactly how she’d thought the conversation would go. She should have been prepared. In her defense, it was surprisingly difficult to string words together under the full weight of Harrowhark Nonagesimus’s glare. “I was wondering if you, uh, wanted to go out some time, maybe?”

Nailed it.

Gideon braced herself for cool rejection, or mockery, or any of the other typical responses. She could commiserate with Palamedes after class and treat the library like a glowing nuclear wasteland and get on with her life. What she hadn’t counted on Harrow’s was face freezing into an unblinking death mask or the hollow, airless quality to her voice when she asked, “Why.”

“I mean. Like, you know, a date?” Shit, was Harrow not gay? Harrow had to be gay. Gideon hadn’t whiffed that hard in a while. “We could get coffee or something? Get to know each other. You can rag on Shakespeare some more.”

Harrow’s cheeks colored. “I don’t appreciate being mocked.”

“I’m not making fun,” Gideon said, frowning. “Like if you don’t want to, that’s cool, whatever. But I’m serious.”

“Oh.” Harrow’s hands curled into desperate fists at her sides. Her eyes rounded. A little crease tucked itself between them, which almost distracted Gideon from what she said next. “Oh, that’s so much worse.”

Gideon’s brow furrowed. “What—”

There was a massive, reverberating bang from the front of the library, like someone had managed to throw both of the heavy double doors open wide enough to bounce off the glass-paned walls. A physically impossible gust of wind whistled down the aisles, plastering Gideon’s hair to her head and rustling the pages of the unshelved books. Gideon whirled around, flinging out an arm to keep Harrow behind her.

Before Harrow could offer any explanation, a deep, sonorous voice boomed through the building. Gideon took a step back as it rolled down the aisles like a wave and crashed over her. She swore she felt the floor rumble. There were going to be so many noise complaints.

“Let whoever speaks such folly ready themself for the voluble wrath of Ortus Nigenad!”

What? The fuck?

“Shit,” Harrow hissed. One second she was safe behind Gideon and the next she was ducking under Gideon’s arm and hurrying out of the dubious cover of the stacks. She cast a near-panicked look toward the entrance. Then she realized Gideon hadn’t moved. “Come on! Before he sees you.”

“Who? What’s going on?” Gideon trailed after her, poking her head around the edge of the shelves.

“Nothing you need concern yourself with.” Harrow grabbed Gideon’s arm; her hands were furnace hot and her scratchy little nails dug painfully into Gideon’s skin. She was trying to move her by force, and failing. “Just—get—out of here.”

“And just leave you here by yourself?” Gideon didn’t know what was going on, but from the sound of that entrance, a dragon had just stormed into the library. She wasn’t just going to run.

“He isn’t here for me.

Gideon’s next question was answered before she could ask it. A man stepped into view. A very large man, tall and broad and heavy, marching toward them in black boots and long black robes. He had a hood pulled up to shade half his face, but Gideon could make out a crisp deathshead mask in white and black paint. He stopped in the middle of a little cluster of study tables, threw the hood back with a flourish, and leveled one accusing finger at them.

“Gideon Nav!” he declaimed in that same powerful voice.

“Uh,” Gideon said. She bent to Harrow’s ear. “Is he from the theater department?”

“Yes,” Harrow sighed. “He is, actually.”

But the man wasn’t done—

“Behold, contender for my lady’s hand; a champion arises from the dust of ages past.
Hark, wretch, as I lay this honorable challenge before thee, and bid thee prepare for swift defeat.”

Gideon blinked, looking into the man’s round, sad face and said, “What the fuck are you even saying to me right now?”

He frowned a little and looked at Harrow.

Harrow groaned, fingertips pressed to one temple so hard it must have hurt. If looks could kill, the man would have been a smoking crater by now and Gideon herself dead of shrapnel wounds. “Don’t look at me like that,” she snapped. “This isn’t supposed to be happening.”

“Still not clear on what this is,” Gideon said.

“Nav, just—just go.”

“My lady, I—” the man protested.

“Shut up, Ortus.”

Gideon snorted. “‘My lady’? What is this, 2009? You forget your fedora at home?”

Harrow made a sound like a dying animal. Ortus straightened his spine and turned back to Gideon. He spoke very slowly and every word hit like a blow. “Do you intend to pursue my lady Harrowhark?”

“Why is that any of your business?”

“I am—”

“Ortus, I swear to God—” Harrow snarled.

“—her ex. And on those grounds, I challenge you to a trial by combat. Prove your worth, Gideon Nav.”

Chapter Text

Prove your worth, Gideon Nav.

Gideon didn’t know about all that.

“I’m not gonna fight you, dude,” Gideon said. It’s not that she’d never been in a fight before. Aiglamene’s life would have been much easier, and teenage Gideon much less grounded, if she hadn’t. But she didn’t usually fight people who looked like they’d be most comfortable sitting in an armchair by the fire, translating the Iliad by hand. Not to blow her own horn, but Gideon worked out. Gideon played rugby—used to play rugby, anyway. Gideon took great pride in the circumference of her biceps and the fact that Cam, when she wanted a sparring partner, could only beat her ass some of the time. It wouldn’t feel right to punch this guy, even if he was literally asking for it.

“You’re not?” The paint between Ortus’s eyebrows wrinkled into anatomically-incorrect bony ridges. “You would yield?” He cast a look to Harrow again, who had taken three steps to the left to remove herself from the potential PvP zone. Harrow’s face gave nothing away. One hand was clenched so tightly in the hem of her shirt that her knuckles stood out white, but she kept her expression blank and carefully wasn’t looking at either of them.

Gideon and Ortus turned to her like they expected her to arbitrate, both waiting for some sign of what to do. After a silent moment, her eyes flicked to Gideon—briefly, the lightest touch of her attention—and away again. There had been something in that bottomless expression. Gideon glimpsed it only for a moment in the black depths of her eyes, some leviathan rising only long enough to hint at something vast and terrible and old. Something—tired.

And then she snapped back to Ortus, anger flashing like sun on the waves, obscuring what lay below. “Of course she yields, Ortus. Obviously.”

“Now, hang on,” Gideon started. Yielding sounded a lot like losing.

Ortus glared at her like Gideon was something he’d scraped off the bottom of his boot. He advanced on her, one step, two, and his presence seemed to expand, leaving her no avenue of escape.

“Thou art a coward as well as a blackguard; face me with honor or surrender thine suitor’s rights.”

Gideon barely heard the suitor part. If everyone wanted to act like asking a girl out was them getting married, fine, their business. It was coward that stuck in her teeth.

“All right, you know what? Fine.” Gideon rolled her neck from side to side and brought her hands up to guard her face.

“Nav, this is juvenile,” Harrow broke in. “You don’t have to do this.”

“No, I’m gonna.” Gideon didn’t look away from Ortus. He was bigger and heavier than she was, but he moved with the slow deliberation of a tectonic plate and looked clumsy to boot. She could take him. “Come on, you community theater-ass Yorick understudy. Fight me.”

Ortus didn’t grin with triumph or menace or otherwise posture like the assortment of douchebags that had goaded Gideon into fights in the past. He didn’t even give Gideon the satisfaction of responding to her insult. He merely nodded, once, and she caught a glint of steel in his eye, like a sword unsheathing—rusty, perhaps, but sharp enough to cut.

Gideon was going to be so late for class.

“My lady,” Ortus said. “If you would be so kind?”

“Absolutely not.” Harrow spoke to Ortus, but was still looking at Gideon and did not quite manage her earlier iron-shuttered expression. “I did not ask for this and I will not encourage it.”

“As you say,” Ortus conceded with a dip of his chin, not dissuaded in any way. “To the floor. No disarms, no exceptions. Ortus Nigenad,” he announced in his clear, ringing voice. He widened his stance like he thought Gideon might just hurl herself at him, but he didn’t advance. He seemed to be waiting for something. “Call,” he said finally, a little exasperated.

“Uh. Gideon Nav?”

Another nod. “Begin.”

Gideon darted toward him. She wasn’t going to dick around; one swift shot to the gut would probably double him over and she could go from there. And maybe then she could ask Harrow what the ever-loving fuck was going on.

Ortus didn’t move. He didn’t flinch away from Gideon barreling toward him. All he did was take a deep breath and spoke with a power that shook dust from the light fixtures.

“‘Tis a fool who underestimates her foe—”

A wave of force struck Gideon mid-step. It stopped her dead, Ortus still well out of range. It flattened her hair against her skull. It probably would have sent her ass-over-tits to the ground if she hadn’t managed to throw her forward foot behind her, bracing with a ripping squeal of rubber on tile. Gideon grit her teeth against the onslaught, tendons popping in her neck, straining to move.

“—for brute strength is no match for the power of the WORD.”

The final syllable was a concussive shotgun blast to the chest. Gideon’s feet left the floor entirely. The shockwave flung her back down the aisle and wrapped her around the metal shelving cart. It flipped with a clang! and Gideon went down hard on her back, a small avalanche of books tumbling down on top of her. She lay there, ears ringing, a bright column of pain where her spine should be. And then the book Harrow had stuffed onto the shelf came free and landed squarely between her eyes.

“Ow! Fuck!” Gideon swung her arms up to cover her face. In the same movement, without even a pause to catch her breath, she rolled to her hands and knees. It wasn’t a decision. It probably would have been the smart move to stay down, actually. But—to the floor, she thought, and grabbed a shelf to drag her body back to its feet.

Gideon turned and found Ortus where she’d left him. He looked mildly stunned that she’d gotten back up, and his frown deepened when he saw her grin.

“That all you got?” she called back to him. “I’ve read better poetry on bathroom stalls.”

Ortus’s face twisted with indignation. Gideon couldn’t tell under the paint, but she would put money on his blush. He moved toward her, cutting off that end of the aisle. Gideon threw a look over her shoulder to judge the distance to the other exit. Ortus took another deep breath. She ran.

“Thou ought not speak of what thou dost not understand, for my tradition has a long and storied past.”

Gideon let the blast propel her. She almost blew clean out of her row and deeper into the stacks, but she hooked one hand around the end of the shelf and swung herself desperately into the lee. She flattened her back against the wall. The shelves rattled behind her, books falling in the floor in her wake. She held on tight as the sound buffeted her like a fierce wind.

“I have train’d under greater wordsmiths, and have been published in the campus journal this winter past.”

The shelf behind her moved. It slid, just an inch, and she stumbled, her feet skidding across the ground. Too much more of that and she’d be crushed like a bug between it and the shelf opposite, and while that wasn’t to the floor, she thought it might be hard to win a duel with multiple broken bones.

“That was a weak-ass rhyme!” she screamed over the gale.

The shelf stopped slipping. Holy shit.

“Rhyming past with itself?” she continued, white-knuckled onto the faux wood. “Real master of wordplay over here.”

The wind died down to nothing, leaving Gideon panting in the sudden hush.

“Be silent,” came Ortus’s voice at a normal volume. And, “I’m under a lot of pressure here.”

“Tough shit, buddy. You started this,” Gideon said. “And archaic phrasing for the aesthetic is a cheap gimmick.”

Ortus roared again. Judging by the sound of it, he was getting closer, stomping down the aisle toward her. She didn’t really want to know what a sonic blast of his verse felt like at close range. She ducked into the next row over, almost crawling to stay below his eyeline, and hoped Ortus couldn’t hear her over his tirade as she scrambled back the way they’d come.

When she popped out the other side, there was Harrow, watching all this transpire with a kind of fierce resignation. Her eyes boggled when she saw Gideon and Gideon flipped her a peace sign in return before rounding the corner and taking a run-up toward Ortus’s broad back.

He almost caught her. He had just started to turn when Gideon jumped. She put one foot on a low shelf and pushed off for the extra height before planting both boots between Ortus’s shoulder blades. He fell with a cry and a painful gasp. It’s possible he met Gideon’s old friend the shelving cart on the way down. It would have been very cool of her to land on her feet, or maybe do a sick handspring to get clear, but Gideon wasn’t Camilla Hect. The merciless forces of inertia decided now was a good time to make her look like an idiot. She flipped straight over top of Ortus, couldn’t get her feet under her in time, and so they both went down: Ortus with the dignified solidity of a crumbling mountain, and Gideon rolling and flopping like a fish until a shelf stopped her by helpfully socking her in the ribs. Ow.

Gideon dragged herself up onto her elbows, hissing through clenched teeth. Get up. She just had to get up. She couldn’t just stay here on the ground, wheezing, vulnerable. What if Harrow saw? Embarrassing. And there was the chance that Ortus might stay down and that would be the end of it. But she saw his bulk shift, roll, start to rise. She groaned, pulling herself to her knees. She needed to get out of the line of fire or else things were going to get ugly.

Ortus didn’t give her the chance. He propped himself up on his hands and knees and threw another pummeling verse at her.

“Finally, a challenge worthy of my work; I do respect your tenacity, Gideon Nav.”

With half her brain, Gideon noted that he’d dropped the fake-y Old English thing. The other half was focused on trying to throw herself behind one of the shelves. Probably should have been using more than half for that part, but whatever, she was going to take a victory where she could. As it was, she only managed half a dodge. She scrambled partway into cover and then abruptly remembered that the shelves were, in fact, shelves, and not walls. The words rushed toward her from between the gaps like a dozen fists all landing at once, throwing her up against the opposite shelf, firing a few loose books after her like missiles. She took another hardcover to the face in the process.

Skull clanging like a church bell, Gideon slid down to her knees and watched Ortus’s large, somewhat blurry silhouette get to its feet.

She needed to stand up, to move before the inevitable couplet put her out of her misery, but everything was distant and rubbery. She couldn’t make her limbs obey her. “S’not even poetry,” she mumbled.

Ortus stopped. “Excuse me?”

“Where’s the imagery, y’know?” She clutched at the shelves and managed to drag herself, barely, to her feet. Ortus’s eyes burned into her from above a row of biology textbooks. “Poetry’s not just saying words fancy, man.”

“Because you’re some kind of expert!” Ortus spluttered.

“Aw, what’s the matter? Can’t handle some friendly criticism?”

Ortus’s face darkened. He cleared his throat.

Gideon braced.

“Prepare for your defeat, you ignorant brute—”

The gale built again. The force of it pressed Gideon flat and she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t fight against it anymore. She was pinned, and the shelf between them—tipped—

“—and gather what little dignity you still have.”

And the pressure was gone. Silence rang. Gideon sucked a breath into her half-collapsed lungs, saw Ortus’s confused grimace, saw the shelf still teetering—

Her face split in a savage grin. “You broke your meter,” she said. And then she launched herself at the shelf with all the force she could muster.

Her weight was enough to stop it, to push it back to center, and its own momentum was enough to keep it going. She caught a glimpse of Ortus’s terrified, paint-smeared face before the whole shelf went down on top of him, and then the next, and the next, like a huge set of dominos. She went down with it, splayed on top of the mess, feeling the slow-motion avalanche rumble in her molars until the last shelf hit the ground with a resounding crash.

Whoops.

She started to laugh, a low, choking sound that was murder on her poor, abused ribs. “How’s that for the power of the word, asshole?” she gasped.

Gideon composed herself just in time to see Harrow wading through the carnage toward her. She was trying to maintain her stone-faced expression, but watching her slip and slide over a pile of books, hissing curses, dispelled any lingering air of dignity. Gideon rolled onto her back and sat up, wincing.

The first thing she could think to say was, “You really dated that guy?”

Harrow scoffed. “I manifestly did not. He kissed me once in second grade, I pushed him down, and after he was done crying he decided to follow me around like a miserable dog. I have tried everything I can think of to convince him his time is better spent elsewhere, but he tragically feels some manner of responsibility for me.”

“Cold,” Gideon said. She stood carefully, mindful of every place her body protested. Harrow ducked past her, climbing onto the shelf and shoving aside the books underneath. “We should probably get some help to get him out of there.”

“No need,” Harrow said. Before Gideon could ask what she meant, Harrow reached down between the shelves and pulled out a fucking human skull.

Gideon might have screamed a little. The records are unclear, and even if she had, that would be a perfectly reasonable reaction to seeing human remains before noon on a Tuesday, so like, mind your own business.

Harrow turned her head slightly, revealing the faint quirk of a smile, and then lobbed the skull at Gideon’s chest. “Catch,” she said simply.

She very nearly fumbled it, but it seemed super disrespectful to just let it hit the ground, and she managed to hold on. She’d never held a skull before. It was a lot lighter than—

“What the fuck,” she said. “This is plastic.”

Harrow made a noise that might have been a small, rusty laugh. She was still rummaging through the books. “Were you expecting real bone, Griddle?”

“I don’t know! Why is real bone less likely than a Party City prop? What happened to Ortus?”

“He’s gone.”

A small pile of bone-themed decorations later, Harrow found what she was looking for. She extracted the items with a frown and leaned back to examine them. At first Gideon thought they were just a couple chunks of black rock, heavy by the way Harrow handled them, although that wasn’t saying much. But as Harrow turned one over in her hand, Gideon saw the straps and the dangerous-looking spikes and realized she was holding a pair of tremendously nasty weapons.

“Knuckle-knives,” Harrow said thoughtfully. She slid herself back down off the shelf and stood beside Gideon. “I have no idea where he got them, as he certainly didn’t have the skill to use them, but they’re yours now.” She deftly plucked the plastic skull out of Gideon’s hands and shoved the knuckle-knives at her. Gideon could only stare down at her, uncomprehending.

Harrow sighed. “You won them, Nav. Like—like, loot?” she said, as though the word physically pained her.

“Uh, right. Sure. I mean.” She tucked the knuckle-knives into the crook of one arm, mindful of the blades, and made an attempt to smooth the wrinkles out of her shirt. “I thought the prize was getting to take you on a date?”

Harrow flinched, which was confusing and more than a little upsetting. Gideon had been rejected plenty of times, but she’d never had a girl look so thoroughly pissed off about being asked to coffee. “You—you would—” she sputtered, face coloring. Eventually, she bit out, “Why would you want to do that? After all this?” She swept a hand to encompass the destruction around them.

“Pretty sure I did all that because I wanted to take you on a date, genius. Like, don’t get me wrong, this whole thing was super weird and your reaction to it has been weirder, but I thought that was the deal.” Gideon nervously ran her thumb over one of the knuckle-knives’ sharp points. “I mean, if you want.”

Harrow turned away from her to take in the complete mess Gideon had made of her place of business. Gideon calculated escape routes in the prolonged silence.

“Well, there’s no point in you coming back here.” The words hit Gideon right in her bruised ribs, but before she could respond, Harrow continued. “I’m almost certainly no longer employed here, so your usual exacting method of locating me isn’t going to work anymore. I’ll contact you.”

“Oh,” Gideon said. “Oh! Okay! Yeah, you have my number and everything. Sure. Just, y’know, let me know when you’re free. Or I can let you know when I’m free. Either one.”

“Griddle.” Harrow snuck a glance out of the corner of her eye and Gideon felt heat shoot straight up her spine. “Aren’t you late for class?”

Oh, shit.

“Oh, shit. I gotta go.” She bolted gracelessly across the sea of books, hoping she didn’t fall and impale herself on the knuckles where Harrow could see her. Once she was out of the danger zone, she turned on her heel and kept jogging backwards, raising one hand. “Text me!”

Harrow shook her head, but graced her with an anemic wave in return, and Gideon smiled all the way to class.

-

Gideon threw open the front door, already speaking. “My friends, I have—ow, fuck—” The door bounced off the wall and caught her hard on the hip. That was one of the few places that had escaped earlier bruising, so at least she was symmetrical now. “I have a date,” she finished.

Camilla looked up from the game she and Palamedes had spread over the coffee table, eyes lighting on the purple splotch on her jaw. “With Harrowhark?”

“With Harrowhark,” Gideon confirmed. She threw her backpack in the corner and collapsed into the deflated beanbag chair she had paid ten bucks for at a garage sale last year. No one else ever sat in it, because “it’s two-thirds empty, I might as well sit on the floor,” or “I don’t want fleas,” or more likely, because they didn’t appreciate luxury. It was useful when the others took up the entirety of their one couch with homework or projects or whatever the hell it was they were doing now. Gideon hissed when it traitorously failed to cushion her aching limbs.

Immediately, Pal’s attention was on her. “Are you all right?” he asked, already rising.

Gideon waved him off. “I’m fine, I’m fine.”

She was fine. And she knew from experience that enduring Palamedes’ poking and prodding would be more excruciating than just sucking it up.

Camilla, well aware of Gideon’s allergy to medical attention of any kind, had turned back to the game—something that involved both a regular Bicycle deck and a deck of Uno cards, plus Gideon thought she’d once seen the Death arcana shuffled in. If there were rules, they existed only in their heads and, probably, an impenetrable notebook buried under two feet of fire hazard on Pal’s desk. Camilla placed the six of hearts on one of three piles in the center of the table (Pal groaned) and said without looking up, “Did Harrow get the hit in before or after she agreed to go out with you?”

“What?” Gideon gently touched her jaw. “Oh, no. This wasn’t her.”

“Must have managed to win her over, then.” Camilla deigned to look impressed.

“Obviously. I’m very charming. Not that I think Harrow’s ever thrown a punch in her life. I would probably need an anatomical drawing to explain the mechanics.”

Palamedes snorted. “That’s very likely.”

Camilla hummed, considering. “Yeah. She’s more of a biter.”

Gideon very graciously let that one slide. She stretched her legs straight out in front of her and started probing the muscle of her thighs, wincing whenever she massaged a tender spot. She really was fine; she was always a quick healer.

Palamedes played a green 8 from his hand and, with the patience of a saint, said, “So Gideon, care to explain why you look like absolute dogshit?”

Gideon grinned. She ran them through the duel with a great deal of gesticulating and a poor attempt at Ortus’s sad baritone. She might also have elided just how close she had come to ending up a pile of cheap, plastic bones. Pal looked worried enough already. “Harrow must have been standing there thinking ‘wow, Gideon is so strong and hot, I definitely have to go on a date with her now,’” she finished. “Also I totally trashed the library. It was awesome.”

Palamedes and Camilla exchanged a dense look.

“Oh my god,” Gideon moaned. “Can you both stop doing that? What now?”

Palamedes took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “We were worried something like this would happen.”

“You were worried I would get into a one-sided rap battle for my life?”

“We were worried,” Camilla clarified, “about Harrow’s evil exes.”

Palamedes raised his eyebrows at her, but she slapped down a reverse Uno card and he said nothing.

“Her what now,” Gideon said.

“Harrow’s string of evil exes,” Camilla said.

“You keep saying that like it’s a totally normal thing I’m supposed to know about. Also, Ortus didn’t seem evil?” Gideon said. “Just kind of intense, and like he should spend a little less time at open mic night.”

“No, all Harrow’s exes are very evil, unfortunately.” She propped her chin on her fist in thought, though her expression didn’t change. “You’re probably going to have to defeat all of them, if you’re serious about this.”

“All of them,” Gideon repeated. This was turning out to be a lot more complicated than she’d banked on. She’d nearly gotten pulverized today. Some of her bones were still vibrating with the echoes of Ortus’s shitty poetry. She pressed her thumb into a sore spot on her knee, weighed it against the fraction of Harrow’s smile she had glimpsed in the library.

This was so stupid. But hey, she’d already kicked one dude’s ass; what was a couple more?

“How many, exactly?” she asked.

Cam glanced over at Palamedes. He hummed, tapping his fingers against the tabletop. “Five?” he ventured.

Cam nodded. “Five sounds right.”

Gideon blew out a long breath. Definitely stupid. But—only four now. Gideon sank deeper into the beanbag chair, resting her head back against the wall. “How do you guys even know all this?”

Palamedes shrugged. “She’s in my anatomy course.”

-

Gideon was dozing over a half-written essay when her phone buzzed like a minor explosion against her desk. She jerked awake and flailed to keep from tipping backward in her chair, sacrificing her (completely worthless) energy drink in the process. At least it didn’t go all over her keyboard this time.

“Shit, shit.” She jumped to her feet and snatched her phone away from the spreading puddle. The notification froze her in place, while her drink oozed over the edge of her desk.

The Tomekeeper: I would like to establish further details about our meeting.

Suddenly she was wide awake. She should figure out a way to bottle lesbian crush jitters for her next all-nighter. She tapped out a response one-handed while she dug through her hamper for a towel.

Gideon: sure lol go for it
Gideon: you can just call it a date you know

The Tomekeeper: My description was adequate.

Gideon: ouch

It was fine. She was staying positive. She definitely wasn’t thinking about the line up of spurned goons waiting to stomp her teeth in for wanting to go on one, single date with a girl who, suddenly, didn’t seem all that interested. Gideon mopped up her mess and then passed a cruel and unusual amount of time watching Harrow’s response bubble appear and disappear, the ellipsis mocking her with its cheerful bounce. She pressed her knuckles into her knee to stop her leg from bouncing in time.

This was taking too damn long.

Gideon: can I just call you?

Another interminable minute, without even the stupid ellipsis for company. Then—

The Tomekeeper: If you must.

Gideon was already hitting call. Harrow let it ring a couple times even though Gideon knew she had the damn phone in her hand, that bitch.

“What?” Harrow demanded when she finally picked up. Encouraging.

“Look, Nonagesimus, don’t do me any favors, okay?”

A chilly silence. Gideon could feel the phone giving her frostbite where it touched her skin. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”

Gideon lost the battle against her restless legs and stood, pacing in the narrow space between the stairs and her desk. “That shit I said earlier about you being a prize, that was stupid, okay? If you don’t want to go out with me, just say so.”

“I haven’t said anything of the sort,” Harrow said, voice rising.

“Harrow,” Gideon sighed. “You called it a meeting.”

“I—” Harrow cut herself off. Gideon wondered briefly where she was. What her room looked like. If she was tapping her short-bitten nails, counting down the seconds until she could hang up. “I take your point.”

Gideon’s shoulders dropped. She dug her fingers into her hair, twisted. “Right,” she said. “Well, don’t let me keep you. I’m sure you need a solid eight hours of hanging upside like a bat in order to withstand the sun, so I’ll—”

“Griddle, would you shut your mouth for ten seconds and let me speak?”

Gideon shut her mouth.

“I would—I am not so faithless as that. We made a deal.”

“Wow, sweet talker,” Gideon said. Six seconds. Not bad.

“You are actually incapable. Fine. Listen to me.” Harrow’s voice took on a commanding edge that cut down Gideon’s rebuttal in its tracks. “I will be at the Cohort at 2 pm this Saturday. I will be there for at least half an hour. I will be doing this of my own free will. If you can manage to wrap your feeble mind around the concept, you are welcome to join me.”

Gideon’s phone started to ring.

“Understood?” Harrow asked.

She pulled the phone away from her face and glanced at the screen. The caller ID read “MILF ALERT!!,” bookended by two wailing siren emojis. Not a great time, she thought wildly, and before she registered making the decision, she rejected the call.

When Gideon put the phone back to her ear, Harrow was quiet. Then, with something Gideon might almost have called uncertainty, she said, “Griddle?”

Gideon’s brain lurched back into gear. “You sure know how to charm a girl, Nonagesimus,” she said, going for breezy and landing squarely in strangled. “I’ll be there.”

“You will?” Harrow said, her pitch rising in surprise. “I mean. Good. Excellent.”

Gideon laughed. She still felt a little unsteady, her heart still awkward and loud in her chest, but the ugly tension was leaking out of her like a pricked balloon, leaving behind a mostly-pleasant hum of bemused anticipation. “Are you gonna pencil me into your calendar?”

“No,” Harrow said stiffly.

“You’re doing it right now, aren’t you?”

“Oh, go to sleep, Griddle.”

“Good night, O my most ghastly girlboss. Sweet dreams.”

Harrow made a choked noise and hung up.

Gideon snorted and flopped down onto her bed. The Cohort, huh? She wasn’t looking forward to explaining that to Deuteros. Even less so to Dyas, who would give her shit about it for at least the next month. But it hadn’t seemed worth it to argue with Harrow, even if she’d wanted to. Plus, employee discount.

Her phone buzzed in her hand. She grinned, wondering if Harrow wanted to give Gideon further orders. Maybe to tell her to wear a feather in her cap and to sit at the table behind her to throw off suspicion.

MILF ALERT!!: Gideon, darling, are you busy?

The fantasy curdled in her gut. She held the phone tightly, thumb hovering over the keyboard for several long seconds. She considered deleting the message. Turning the phone off. Chucking it across the room.

Gideon: sorry was ordering food. whats up?

MILF ALERT!!: Just wanted to hear your voice. But I’ll talk to you later. Enjoy your dinner ;)

Gideon grimaced, a sick guilt settling in her stomach like molten lead. She locked her phone and draped her arm over her eyes, pressing herself into the darkness, and made herself think of Saturday and coffee instead of mocking birdsong laughter.