Work Text:
For the first time in some while, Gideon did not find herself waking to the smell of mould. Rather, she was met with the faint scent of salt, still lingering on her unwashed skin from the previous night. Gideon tussled over in her sheets, shifting her head on the haphazardly arranged pile of pillows atop her crib. She allowed her body to stay sunken into the plush mattress; this was only the second time she had ever spent a night atop an actually decent one. Her bed back on the Ninth was much like Drearburh itself: cold, hard, unwilling to surrender even a moment of comfort. Comparatively, the mattress of the little cavalier crib — whilst small and a tad deflated by aeons sans use — was the height of comfort. Gideon wished she and Harrow had sorted all this out earlier if not purely so she could have slept on it sooner.
She flicked open her eyes, expecting to be met with a reverend daughter-shaped lump beneath the sheets in the bed perpendicular to her. Instead, the bed was empty, illuminated by a thin beam of dusty light which Gideon followed to a gap in a curtain on the wall. It was morning, and Dominicus was making its presence known whether Gideon wanted it to or not. She rolled over and looked around the room, still resistant to lift her head from the pillows. Around the room was a refreshing lack of notes, accompanied by a perhaps less-desirable lack of Harrowhark Nonagesimus. She had to crane her neck to peer into the adjoining room, only barely being able to make out the shapes of the cabinet and the window nook where she had been spending her nights prior. But a light shone from the doorway into the bathroom, cutting a rectangle of light across the floorboards broken only by the shadow of something — someone within the room.
With a pained groan, Gideon forced herself to lift from the mattress and shrug off her sheets, sitting up on her bed, her knees pointed roof-ward at an awkward angle due to the crib’s meagre altitude from the floor. Standing, she retrieved the shirt she had discarded over the bed frame last night and put it on. A sound came from the bathroom: that of its inhabitant noticing Gideon awakening. She heard further pattering as she approached, placing her hand on the ajar door and pushing it fully open, revealing the overwhelmingly white interior of the bathroom. Harrow stood opposite her by the sink, gingerly holding a small box in her ungloved hands. “You’re awake — good. It’s time for your paint.”
“That's it, really?” Gideon retorted. “We’re really just going straight to it like last night didn’t happen?”
“Sit,” Harrow gestured to a stool in front of the sink.
“Well good morning to you too, my lady of sorrows.”
She sat herself down on the stool facing the mirror and scooched closer so she could get a better look at herself. Her hair was a mess, as was her face, marked by blurry splotches where the pool water had failed to fully wash away her paint. Gideon licked her finger tips and ran them through the front of her hair, which floofed back down in mere immediate defiance. Before she had further chance to worry about her hair, Harrow appeared in the mirror behind her, her equally dishevelled face hovering over her shoulder. Dark grey-brown bags hung below her eyes, steadfast in spite of her getting eight hours of sleep last night. Something was different in her expression though, a lightness Gideon could not quite place, like all the muscles in her face had relaxed for the first time since she hit puberty. Their eyes met through the mirror for but a moment, Harrow swiftly shifting her gaze down to the box in her hands and flipping open its lid. Peeking over her shoulder, Gideon saw inside was Harrow’s personal store of sacramental paint, kept in small glass and resin containers tucked between clutches of fibre wadding. “I can do my own paint,” said Gideon.
“Just — hold still.” Harrow picked a weathered piece of wadding and a jar of black from the box and held them between her fingers, her other hand placing the box on the surface of the sinktop.
“I really don’t think I need you to do this for me anymore. I’ve been doing it fine by myself since we got her-”
Her sentence was cut off by the sudden sensation of Harrow’s fingers cupping her jaw, with a softness and gentility foreign to the both of them. This was not the touch of a bone-gauntleted knuckle socking her in the cheek, or of a clenched fist grasping her by her collar after a fight. This was tender . Harrow tilted Gideon’s face towards her, to which Gideon found herself putting up no protest. She was met with the grim, yet-unpainted face of Harrowhark the Ninth, staring back at her seemingly as dumbfounded as she was at her own actions. The two lingered for a moment, as if all pretence of social conventions or a dynamic between them had evaporated from existence. All that was left was two girls, sat staring at each other like children. It was the dark necromancer who broke the impasse, shaking her head and dipping her gaze back down to the wadding and paint nestled in her spare hand. With deft fingers, she spun off the metal lid one-handedly, letting it fall and placing the jar on the sinktop, all the whilst refusing to detach her other hand from Gideon’s face. She dabbed the wadding in the dusty black paint, held it up to hover besides Gideon’s cheek, and hesitated. It was only then — Harrow’s hand mere millimetres away from her — that Gideon noticed how much the dour girl was shaking. She gulped. “So, what’s this face called?” said Gideon, attempting to break the tension. “Insurmountable Darkness? Weeping Priestess? Bone-Nerd Vogue?”
“It’s called ‘Shut Up, Moron,’” said Harrow, before finally presing the wadding to Gideon’s face. For once in her life, Gideon obliged. The paint felt surprisingly cool against her skin, and much smoother than any of the paint she had been supplied with. Harrow blotted a great big circle of black on the hollow of her cheek, drawing into the corners of her mouth. Once complete, she turned Gideon’s face with the hand still locked below her jaw, presenting her unadorned cheek with blessedly minimal protest. In focused silence, she went about painting with a sense of care that had been missing when Harrow had first held Gideon down and given her a sacramental paint tutorial all those years ago. Each blot of paint was a pat rather than a punch. If Gideon didn’t know better, she’d say it was almost pleasant; being laboured on, touched, caressed by the wadding. She considered the moment, the strange intimacy of the painting, the serenity of her first morning waking up without her necromancer at her throat or vice versa. The events of the previous night still felt unreal; part of her genuinely believed she had hit herself on the head fighting the construct that killed Isaac and everything since had been the fucked up hallucinations of her dying brain. But as Harrow dabbed black on her eye socket, Gideon knew this had to be real. The coolness of the paint, the unabating smell of saltwater on her skin, the deep, dark eyes of her necromancer staring intently at every curve and slope of Gideon’s face as she worked. It must’ve been the realest thing she had ever experienced. Every time she had worn the sacramental paint prior, it had been out of obligation — its application an inane chore that wasted her time and caused her face to break out. Even when Harrow had applied it for her, it was usually accompanied by a chorus of whining and complaining and shuffling around uncomfortably from Gideon. But this time she was quiet — and still. The only part of her that dared move was her heart, which she now became aware was beating out her fucking chest.
Harrow leant back for a moment, admiring her handiwork. Gideon glanced at her face in the mirror: inky splotches were swathed on her cheeks and eye-sockets and over her lips. With a nod, Harrow set down the black jar before tearing her hand away from her cavalier’s jaw to wash the wadding under the tap, leaving Gideon longing for its return.
“So uhh, how long have you been up?” said Gideon, making smalltalk.
“An hour or so,” Harrow held the wadding under the water, before squeezing it dry into the bowl, “I needed to get a skeleton to run something to the Sixth for me.”
“Well hey, at least you hadn’t run off to go end up half dead in the facility again.”
“I can’t afford to leave you — not now.” Harrow shifted slightly; she was practically sat in Gideon’s lap. She retrieved a second jar from the box, this one the familiar alabaster of bone. “You’re my cavalier; wherever I go, we both walk in-step.” Squeezing the wadding out one last time, Harrow dipped it into the white paint and turned back to face her canvas. She went to place her hand on the side of Gideon’s jaw again, but stopped a few centimetres away, instead looking at her with a nod. Gideon responded in kind, and with her approval, Harrow placed her fingertips along the side of her jaw and tilted her head upwards to begin plastering her skin with white. She began on her chin, swiping the paint along the major bones of her face. Gideon parted her lips to say something, but an adjustment of Harrow’s fingers on her jaw quieted her as she angled her head to grant better access to her cheekbones and temples. The two soon began working in a sort of harmony; as Harrow would move from one spot to another, Gideon would tilt her head accordingly, Harrow’s hand less pushing and pulling her than simply guiding, trusting in Gideon to intuit her intention. This was the most painless application of the sacramental paint she had been through, and their teamwork made it the quickest as well. As Harrow painted on the finishing touches, Gideon found herself almost sad it was over.
Harrow leant back, her fingers slowly tracing down Gideon’s jaw, savouring every moment of contact before finally slipping off. For a moment, Harrow just looked at her silently — an artist stepping back to drink in their tour de force. Gideon looked into the clear glass of the mirror, and was met with a painted face, strong cheekbones and jawline with an accentuated darkness around the eyes that really made them pop. Gorgeous. Hot. Straight from the pages of Butch Babes Bimonthly. Gideon ran a hand through her hair and smouldered. Harrow packed her paint away back into the little box. “It’s called ‘The Veil of Constancy,’” she said, answering Gideon’s question from earlier like it had just been asked.
“Huh?”
Harrow shook her head. “The face; it's the only one you’ve ever been taught, but you’ve been doing it wrong.”
“Yeah?” Gideon peered in the mirror, the only differences she found being the quality of the paint and the care of the application.
“Here,” said Harrow, suddenly leaning in very close — agonisingly close, “you mess up the lip.” She raised her hand to Gideon’s face again. “You paint the top right,” she pressed a thumb to the middle of her lips, dragging it down to the lower one, “but you don’t mirror it on the bottom.” Harrow smudged the paint along Gideon’s lips, parting her own in a subconscious mimicry, punctuated by husky, trembling breaths. Gideon would’ve been breathing equally heavily if it weren’t for the fact that her whole body was frozen solid, paralyzed by Harrow’s touch. Satisfied, the adept stopped smudging, but refrained from removing her thumb. Rather, she looked up and stared Gideon deep in her eyes for what felt like an eternity, piercing her with the gaze of those deep, black pools. All of a sudden, she was no longer the esoteric necromancer of the Ninth House, no longer the baleful teenage ruler of Drearburh, no longer the two hundred sons and daughters sacrificed incarnate. Harrow the Ninth was just a girl — and so was Gideon.
The two of them sat there — embroiled completely in one another — till the beaming shaft of Dominicus’ light managed to crawl its way onto the bathroom tiles. It was bright, inordinately bright, so bright that every corner of Gideon’s Ninth-conditioned brain screamed at her for reprieve, but she dared not don her glasses — not even for a second.
✻ ✻ ✻
Pulling her shirt over her head, Gideon had reconsidered donning her top from last night. It was still damp and darkened with water stains, and the distinct smell of salt lay heavier on the fabric than it did her own skin. She tossed it aside, into the wooden chest she had been using as a laundry hamper the past couple weeks, and opened up her cabinet. Before her lay a sea of black — combat pants, muscle shirts, robes, even underwear. She slipped on her bandeau and grabbed a top from a hanger, putting it on and tucking it in beneath her belt. She retrieved her robes and draped them over her forearm before instinctively reaching down for where she kept her boots at the foot of the cabinet. She failed to find them, however — she had tossed them somewhere in Harrow’s room last night amidst the hustle of readying her new sleeping arrangements. She turned to go look for them, stopping as she passed the door to the bathroom where Harrow now sat, deftly applying her own sacramental paint. The door was only slightly ajar, but was open enough that Gideon could see her necromancer focused intently on bathing her face in blacks, whites and greys. Her face in the mirror was a harsh shadow, the bones only beginning to be painted across her cheekbones. Part of Gideon wanted to wait there, to stay and just watch Harrow’s every movement; the swiping motion of her hand with fresh wadding, her eyelids flinching as her strokes neared her sockets, the rise and fall of her chest as she breathed in and out. A tilt of Harrow’s head in the direction of the doorway spooked her, however, and Gideon slinked off into the shadows of her adept’s room.
Escaping into the dusty bedroom adjacent, Gideon swore under her breath, scared she had been caught ogling Harrow like an idiot. The curtains were still drawn, leaving the room in a dim darkness broken only by the few columns of light shooting out from behind the fabric. Gideon slinked past Harrow’s wardrobe, a sinking feeling in her stomach arising as she recalled what she had found there the day prior. Part of her wanted to check again — ensure Nonagesimus was hiding no further body parts or fresh cadavers of the other guests of Canaan House. But she steeled herself — as cavalier, it was part of her duty to her necromancer to trust her implicitly. For today at least, any further wardrobe-located secrets would remain undiscovered.
Looking back over the cavalier crib, she was welcomed with the sight of an unruly pile of sheets and pillows. Peeking out from underneath them was the mattress, upon which was a faint Gideon-shaped stain, doubtlessly caused by a mix of saltwater and sweat. She made a mental note to get them changed sometime — that is, if she lived long enough to spend another night here. Harrow’s bed was equally messy, the sheets and blankets un-tucked and drawn towards the pillows, as if the occupant had bundled themself up in a foetal position. The two nightstands on either side were littered with knucklebones and tibias; a jawbone sticking out of an open drawer, jarring it open. Gideon neared and unwedged it, tossing the bone aside and leaving the drawer ajar before her. Her hand hovered over it, the temptation to open it lying strong in her mind. But before she could, she was interrupted by the sound of feet pattering on the floorboards behind her.
She spun round and was met with the sight of Harrowhark the Ninth, face emblazoned with a fresh coat of black and white paint. She rolled her eyes at Gideon’s attempted snooping, before crossing to her cabinet, opening it and retrieving her black vestments and robes which she tossed onto her bed. She bent down to retrieve her shoes, reminding Gideon of why she had entered the room in the first place. Ducking her head beneath her crib, Gideon spied her boots splayed out on their sides, just barely within her reach. She reached out and grabbed them, sliding them along the floor toward her, grabbing them, and getting back up. Harrow had walked to her bed, and was in the process of quietly arranging her garments, Gideon catching the moment of her pulling a new top down over head and down her torso. Despite having seen her fully undressed back in the last trial, it felt nonetheless scandalous to see Harrow’s exposed, unpainted skin, even for just a split second. Gideon turned to stare at the wall — in part out of respect for her adept’s privacy, but mostly to hide the hot red flush that had arisen in her cheeks.
“So, uhh… what's the plan for this morning, chief?” She chirped over her shoulder, rubbing the back of her head with her hand.
“Waiting,” said Harrow.
“Wh- just… just waiting?” Gideon looked back.
“Mmhmm.” Harrow was slipping her robes over her arms onto her shoulders, shrugging with each until her robes were draped over her in a satisfactorily gothic fashion. “We await for Sextus to reply to my missive.” Gideon raised an eyebrow. After all the ground they had covered yesterday, all the momentum that had been built up, all the things that had been revealed and confessed — they were just gonna sit about? This was not like the proactive, ever-committed Harrowhark Nonagesimus she thought she had known these past few weeks.
“We don’t have some door to go open? No facility death traps to fuck about in?”
“We might,” replied Harrow, “but we’ll have to wait and see.” With this, she sat down on the side of the bed and simply waited . Gideon sighed, shrugged her shoulders, let her boots fall to the ground to be put on later, and dramatically flopped herself down face-first onto Harrow’s bed.
“I don’t wanna wait,” murmured Gideon like a petulant teenager, her voice muffled by the mattress.
“Well you will,” Harrow ordered. “I doubt the Sixth will slouch in returning a message, anyways.”
“Why couldn’t we just go talk to them in person?” said Gideon, “The stairs up there aren’t that bad.”
“It’s not the stairs that worry me, Griddle.” Harrow looked wistfully towards the gap in the curtains to where the light poured in — Gideon peered up at her from the mattress. “I don’t want us to put ourselves at risk out in the open unnecessarily. From now on we stick to the shadows; we only go where we need to, when we need to. That means no more pointless breakfasts in the hall, no more doting on the Seventh. Harrow turned to Gideon and attempted to soften the harshness that had risen in her voice. “You are my cavalier, and I your necromancer. And I refuse to put you in harm’s way superfluously. One Flesh…”
“... One End ,” answered Gideon.
A few minutes passed, Harrow still sat on the edge of her bed, fashioning a new piercing out of a small chunk of bone. Gideon groaned, tossing and turning impatiently on Harrow’s bed. Despite having spent every waking moment at Drearburh sitting about in the dark waiting, she was unable to sit still. Every moment she spent idling about doing nothing was another that the deaths of Magnus and Abigail, the deaths of Jeannemary and Isaac, went unavenged. Inaction felt like betraying them — leaving their deaths unavenged. Dust landed on Gideon’s head, finding rest amongst her fiery hair. “Fuck!” Gideon yelled, flipping herself over and giving the bed an impotent thump in frustration. Harrow didn’t even spare her a glance. Gideon huffed and threw herself to her feet. She began to pace, for no reason other than to feel she was doing something — anything . As Harrow continued working away at the chunk of bone, turning it into a bird skull earring to replace one of the ones she lost during the last trial, Gideon wandered the room: messing with the curtains, kicking at the walls, opening and closing doors and drawers. Occasionally Harrow would glance up and roll her eyes at her impatience. It took everything in Gideon’s being not to flip her off and call her a weedy little hypocrite, amongst other obscenities. She put on the robes she had tucked under her arm; she took them back off again and discarded them in a corner by the main entrance door. She even considered going and digging through her luggage for the porn mags she had stashed below her socks, although decided against it — now was not the time to be getting worked up anymore than she already was.
So instead, Gideon opted to work out, get her body warmed up and ready for whatever bullshit would inevitably be thrown at her in the day to come — that is, if Harrow and her ever managed to actually leave their room. She started with some simple stretching: lunging forwards, lifting her legs behind her back, crossing her arms over and turning her torso. Soon, she was lifting small weights she had been supplied with by the Canaan House skeletons, pacing between her room and Harrow’s as she went. Next she dropped to her hands beside the cavalier crib and began doing push-ups — fifty normal, fifty with claps. On her seventy-eighth push-up, Harrow — who had finished re-piercing her ear, as evident by the small trickle of blood dripping from her earlobe — snapped at her.
“Could you try not making so much damned noise?” she said.
“Yeah, sure,” said Gideon, making a conscious effort to clap louder in between each push-up. Harrow rolled her eyes for what must’ve been the hundredth time that morning, before standing up and walking past her cavalier towards a bookshelf on the other side of the bed. From it, she retrieved a book that was lying face down on one of the shelves — a small grey hardcover, mostly featureless beside a simple silvery-white embossing along the border of the cover. She went and sat down on the crib facing Gideon, taking a moment before sitting to find the least stained spot on the mattress. She teased it open and flicked past a couple pages, beginning reading from what looked like the middle of the book. It was probably just some old tome on necromantic theory or imperial history titled something like A Necrohistorian’s Guide to Bones: Volume LXIX or something else equally drab and mind-numbing. Nevertheless, as she continued her push ups, Gideon chose to make small talk by asking about her necromancer’s chosen reading material. “What are you reading today, my dismal flower?” she said, between exasperated huffs.
“Hardcore romance-erotica” replied Harrow cooly. Gideon collapsed mid-push-up and slammed her face nose-first into the floorboards.
“Wh- really?” Gideon cried out in a mix of a shocked laugh and a wince of pain.
“No, you dope,” Harrow looked down at her from over the book, its cover purposefully obscuring a smirk at Gideon’s reaction, “it’s one of the Sixth’s notebooks on the facility — I borrowed it after Hect dragged me to their quarters yesterday.”
“By borrowed do you mean with permission, or are we resorting to petty theft?”
“Obtaining permission is superfluous. Sextus insists we collaborate — this is simply just the pooling of information.”
“So you are stealing!” Gideon said sardonically as she rose to her feet, still rubbing her now bruised nose. “Oh, how far the Ninth House has fallen! Maybe Silas is right to call us-”
“Silas Octakiseron is an overzealous sycophant.” Harrow interrupted her, casting a chastising glare at her for her japery. Gideon blew a hair out of her face and laughed Harrow off, turning to the archway which connected Harrow’s room to her own. She raised her arms and found purchase to grab hold of in the woodwork, using it to lift herself off the ground and start doing pull-ups. Sweat dripped off her exposed skin, the heat of being so much closer to Dominicus causing her to get much hotter than she ever did working out on the Ninth.
“Are you planning to return it, at least?” Gideon asked, gesturing her head towards Harrow’s book. “Is that what this whole letter business is about?”
“Maybe and no. The letter is about our next course of action. Sextus has identified the location of another lyctoral laboratory — one of the ones that the Seventh had a key for before Octakiseron stole it.”
“Hypocrite,” heckled Gideon.
“Hush. I have no idea how Sextus intends for us to get in there, however, unless he plans for us to duel the Eighth, which I highly doubt. Octakiseron wouldn’t cooperate even if we won a fair fight against his cavalier.” Harrow lifted her eyes from the notebook to look towards the main entrance door to their quarters. “And I’d prefer not to put ourselves in harm’s way out there without knowing exactly what our plan is.”
“So we’re waiting on him to tell us how the hell we’re getting through this door?”
“Mmhmm” affirmed Harrow before turning her nose back down into the grey notebook nestled between her palms. Gideon grunted and heaved as she continued her pull-ups, the ancient wood of the archway creaking and groaning alongside her, worrying Gideon slightly that it would soon collapse under her weight. Being honest with herself, it felt nice to know that for once she wasn’t the only one left in the dark about what was going on. Harrow had made a fine show of how serene and patient she was being, but Gideon suspected that below that veil of sacramental paint Harrow was just as desperate as she was to just get fucking moving already.
“This is refreshing, at least,” she said, “now we both get to feel useless and ignored for a bit.” As usual, Harrow remained still and seemingly focused on her reading, although a quick glance from her and a twitch near her eye told Gideon the comment had stung more than she intended it to.
“I was not intending to neglect you our first week here,” said Harrow, “or at least not fully.” She folded the book closed and held it in her lap. “There were much bigger things going on than I could trust you with at the time — things you are now much more familiar with.”
“And so what, it took us having our cutesy aquatic heart-to-heart for you to start trusting me with all this?”
“No. I wanted to start trusting you ever since the first trial — ever since you showed me how willing you were to fight for our cause, even if you didn’t yet understand why.” Gideon hopped down from the bar as Harrow spoke. “Hells, Griddle, I’ve been wanting to trust you since back on the Ninth. I was just arrogant — narrow of sight and mind.” Their eyes met as Gideon neared, sitting down on the cot beside her necromancer.
“But now there’s no more secrets, right?” said Gideon. “If we trust each other now, that means we tell each other everything.”
“Correct. And I hope I held good on that last night. The trials, the children of the Ninth, the Locked Tomb — I bore all to you, Gideon .” For a moment Gideon’s mind was swimming at hearing Harrow say her name, a reaction which she attempted to glaze over with one of her signature retorts.
“Yeah, you sure did bear all,” she snickered. Harrow smacked her across the arm with the book.
“Can you reel in your bullshit for a single second, Griddle?” Harrow looked at her, her dark eyes immediately disarming any innuendo or humour that remained within Gideon. “As you well know, the situation here has devolved beyond the point where I can venture by myself to the facility and you can meander around making eyes at the other houses. At least five to six people have died and all the other houses seem content with making our lives a living hell. We can not afford to not take our trust seriously — to not take our relationship seriously.” Harrow’s voice was intense, as was her stare, which grew increasingly piercing as she went on. “You are the only mortal person I trust. Not Crux, not Aiglamene, not Ortus or the nuns — You . I’ve known you since the day I was born; we’ve grown up by one another’s side. And despite all those years of me treating you like inhuman trash, you’ve shown me that you are still willing to put your own life at risk for me and our house.” Harrow grabbed the sides of Gideon’s face suddenly, holding her there as if to prevent her from escaping the intensity of her gaze. Gideon reflexifly grabbed Harrow’s arms in return. “There is no one — no one — who I’d have beside me but you .” Gideon’s brain was static. She didn’t know how to respond — she couldn’t think of a single witty retort even if she wanted to. Instead, she just leaned forward and touched her forehead to Harrow’s, both of them closing their eyes and holding one another on the small bed. When Gideon finally broke the silence, it was to repeat their oath.
“ One Flesh… ”
“ ...One En- ”
A loud knocking sound rang out from the main entrance door, startling the two of them. Before either of them had the chance to respond — or properly dignify themselves out of one another’s arms — the door opened to reveal Palamedes the Sixth, flanked by Camilla and Harrow’s skeleton from earlier.
“Good morning, Ninth. We have a door to open."