Archive of Our Own ^beta

Gideon opened her eyes.  Everything hurt, but especially her head but especially everything.  The room was painfully bright and there was the smell of fresh antiseptic.  She could not remember how she had gotten here or why, but hazy memories of pain and restraint flitted through her aching head and refused to resolve into any sort of coherent narrative.

She stifled a noise of pain as she struggled to move herself out of the bed she was laid in.  The bed was bizarrely soft, the blanket too heavy, her limbs too weak.  With a truly heroic burst of effort, she managed to roll herself over and out of the bed.  When the nasty spotty carpet of the floor rushed up to meet her, face first, impact ignited all the dull pain in her body to a bright storm of fuckery.

As she laid face down, breathing through her nose and making as little noise as possible, a door slammed open and she was suddenly no longer alone.  Large hands were taking hold of her and turning her over.  

The sudden movement catalyzed the pain into a dizzying overwhelm of her senses. Unfamiliar faces swam in her vision. They were speaking, and not in any foreign language, but she still somehow couldn’t make out the words. She grunted and her head lolled to the side. A different set of hands was suddenly holding her face up and forward, was saying something to her urgently. 

She jerked out of the hold.  She scrambled back, trying to put space between herself and her captors, but only managed to crack her head on something behind her. Again, pain bloomed across her awareness- too intense this time to bear, and her vision whited out.  

By the time the pain faded enough for her to be even partially aware, one of her captors had her in a bear hug, pinning Gideon’s arms to her sides with implacable strength.  They were speaking in her ear in a low voice.  It was a strange tone, not angry, or derisive, or commanding.  

She called the only thing she could think of, “HARROW, HARROW, HARROW,” but the words sounded wrong coming out of her mouth, her tongue felt too large, too unwieldy. 

She screamed and kicked and bucked, but the hold was unyielding.  The voice in her ear became more urgent but never lost that– what, gentleness?– even as she tried to bash the head behind her with her own.

The second set of hands took her face again firmly.  She could see (slightly more clearly) the face they belonged to, felt like she should know them- sharp features, eyes gray-or-brown-or-gray, but she just couldn’t, couldn’t place where she knew them from, couldn’t parse the soft words coming out of their mouth.

Their touch tingled on her skin and she felt the fight leaking out of her.  The panic that propelled her limbs and voice drained like sand through fingers, until she found herself once more completely leaden and immobile.  Even the fear left her mind, leaving a yawning emptiness. The voice in her ear was so, so soft. It didn’t make sense. Nothing made sense. For reasons she did not understand, tears began rolling down her cheeks. She kept calling Harrow’s name until even her voice gave out. 

After she had stilled completely, after maybe a few seconds or hours, she felt herself being shifted around in the arms that held her– one arm behind her back, one under her knees, and she was lifted up.  Darkness began closing in on her vision, and her last thought before it claimed her was the realization that no one had ever held her so gently. What the fuck.

It wasn’t the pain that was getting to her.   There was pain, obviously, boy fucking howdy was there pain. Every beat of her newly-grown heart felt like it was pushing hot lead through her veins.  Her existing skin felt like it wanted nothing more than to peel off her flesh and get the fuck out of here.  Yeah, no, there was pain.  But she could deal with pain.  The problem was that soon her brain would be melting, and her body simply refused to not panic about that.

Pyrrha’s hands clamped down on her shoulders as she bucked.  “Easy kid, easy. I know it hurts.”

And she would have told Pyrrha to shut the fuck up, and she would have told Pyrrha she didn’t care about the pain, but she was too busy going “aaaauuugh aaawwwwwwwwuuhhhh” and making horrible animal noises, and choking on the blood in her throat, so mostly she just kept doing that.

Gideon opened her eyes.  Her head hurt, and also kind of everything else.  Her throat felt raw like it did after a prolonged screaming match.  The room was a little too bright and there was the lingering smell of antiseptic.  She could not remember how she had gotten here or why, but she had hazy memories of a struggle, a fight lost badly.  Couldn’t make it fit together though.

She grunted as she tried to flex her limbs.  They were stiff, but she’d had worse. She was going to let herself rest just a little longer, get her bearings a bit, when she noticed she was not alone. Next to her in bed lay Harrow, looking worse than ever.  There was the tell-tale pallor of Necromantic over-exertion, of course, but also a gauntness to her features that suggested she had spent more than a little time without enough food or sleep or more likely both. 

Gideon’s mind supplied images of Jeanmarie’s perforated corpse.  Her mind supplied images of the Saint of Duty busting through the bone wards.  Cytheria cracking through the bone shell. The Heralds and their voracious thumb-munching.

They weren’t safe.  They weren’t safe here.  She had to get Harrow out.

Wincing, groaning, she got out of the bed.  Her legs were shaky, her head pulsed angrily at the change of elevation, but she still managed to stand. So far, so good.

She looked around the room.  It was spartan enough, just the bed, a bedside table, a lamp, and a trunk.  On the bedside table was what appeared to be a small selection of medical equipment.  (Suspicion fucking confirmed! Fuck this place for real.)  

On one wall was a door in a style she was utterly unfamiliar with, and on the opposite wall a large window.  The window plex was covered in used flimsy, which obscured the view outside, but still let sunlight through.  Her instincts told her the door was out of the question, so the window would have to do.

After a little stumbling, and a lot of fiddling, she made her way over to the window and got it open.  It wasn’t that high up and the ground below looked like dirt.  Yeah, that would work.

Carefully, carefully, she pulled the covers off of Harrow.  Carefully, carefully, she scooped Harrow up in her arms.  Harrow mumbled and twitched, but remained unconscious.

She walked them both over and set Harrow on the ledge.  Seemed like the safest way to do this would be to hold Harrow’s arms, scoot her body out and dangle her momentarily so that she was as close to the ground as possible when Gideon let go.  So that’s what she did.

Harrow, of course, chose this time to wake up.  She shrieked and clung to one of Gideon’s arms with both of hers.  She was hissing words at Gideon, but for some reason she couldn’t make it out, except that her name was repeated, many times and with great urgency.

“Fuck, Harrow, just let go!” she tried to say, but it came out… weird.  Harrow did not seem to want to let go.

Luckily it didn’t take long for Harrow’s strength to give out, and for her to drop ignobly to the earth below. 

The door to their room opened and the Saint of Fucking Duty barged in, because sure! Why not!

“See you in hell, old man!” Gideon slurred as she lifted up both middle fingers. She then flopped backwards out the window, hit her head on the ground, and was promptly knocked unconscious.

“The difficulty,” Paul said, “will not come from undoing His work on your body.”  They gestured to the board that they and Harrow had been furiously scribbling at for days.  There was a silhouette of Kiriona’s body, with calculations and details and notes about every organ and system she had (or hopefully soon would have).  Kiriona thought the biceps were too small, but otherwise had no opinions.

She nodded anyway.  “Uh huh.”

Paul tsked. “Well, no, that’s not quite right.  Undoing His work on your body will be phenomenally difficult.  Technically impossible.  But between our minds, you and Harrow’s partial lyctoral sympathies, and your innate durability, we can– more or less– force the rest of your body to stay in one piece while we replace or repair systems and organs individually.”

“Sounds fun.” Said Kiriona.

“Oh, yes, it will be agonizing and grueling on all involved.”

“Will it be excruciating?” she asked.

“Extremely.”

“Arduous?”

“Arguably.”

“A shitsh-”

“If you are both quite finished,” Harrow interrupted unfairly, as Kiriona was obviously not remotely finished, but whatever. 

“Right.  The problem- the biggest problem, is going to be your brain.”

Gideon opened her eyes.  She didn’t feel great, but it was mostly just her head at least. The room was not too bright and it had a very faint chemical smell she couldn’t place.  She could not remember how she had gotten here or why, but then she noticed that there was a bone cuff tethering one arm to the bed railing, and what seemed to be bone shackles with a chain between them to hobble her legs.

Everything suddenly made sense.  She must have just fucked herself up during an escape attempt. Again.  Since she was (for some inexplicable reason) warm and comfortable, she decided she should get what rest she could before Harrow came back to mete out her punishment.

Nap time.

When they had started the work, when it was just the pain, Kiriona had steeled herself and held to the reasons they were doing this. She thought about her flesh, whole and warm and truly hers again. She held to the fragile look of hope on Harrowhark’s stupid face.  She thought about actually fucking eating. 

Step one had been building her heart, which involved the two necromancers sticking their hands in her speed holes, yanking out the teeth one by one, and then building a new ticker from scratch.  The heat of their hands seared her insides, felt like it was getting torn open again and again but this time the blades were on fire and covered in acid and/or maybe also ants.  But, no, that was fine, that was cool.

Step two had been forcing the heart to beat. An electric jolt seized her chest over and over, as cold, congealed blood was forced through (mostly collapsed) blood vessels.  And that was great too, because it was at this point that they needed her to be breathing, and all the screaming definitely helped her remember to do that.

Then came the vital organs, and the digestive system, and the glands. Fun fun and more fun! As her secretomotor processes came back online, her body began squirting out accumulated toxins through creative and novel egress points.  The air was rank with her toxic sweat, her eyes leaked sludgy tears.

Gideon opened her eyes.  There was a strange, lingering pain in her head and body. She could not remember how she had gotten here or why, but had the strange feeling of… being cared for?  She thought maybe she’d had a nice dream, but the truth was that her dreams just weren’t that nice.

There was a figure sitting next to her.  It was someone with a stocky build and warm brown skin.  Her mind supplied only one possible identity.

“Mmom?” she slurred.

The figure looked up suddenly.

“Mom,” she (tried to) say again, “mom, I looked for you. I looked for your bones.”  She could tell that her words were barely intelligible, if at all. Her tongue felt wrapped in cotton, her teeth not where they should be, her voice coming out of her like cold molasses.

Her mother was saying something, but Gideon could still not understand. “Couldn’t find you, but I knew,” she continued, shaking her head, “knew it was you. No, didn’t know. Don’t want to know.  Hoped.  Mom…”

She reached out a hand, which her mother took in both of hers instantly. She stopped talking, though, realizing Gideon couldn’t understand.  Instead she was staring silently, with a look Gideon could not begin to parse.

“N… ‘n I knew.  Knew you loved me,” once Gideon started,  the confessions kept pouring out of her– all the hopes and secrets she used to tell to the skeleton she had arbitrarily decided was hers. “I love you too.”

Her mother surged forward then, pulling Gideon into her arms.  One arm wrapped around her shoulders, and the other put a hand on the back of her head– like she was loved, like she was precious– and held her against her chest.  Gideon lost it then, began sobbing uncontrollably into the warm body that held her.  

Her mother shushed her, and rocked her how Gideon had always imagined she would.  Her mother was speaking again, and Gideon still couldn’t understand, but could hear the tears in her voice.  It was an alien sensation, this comfort and care.  It felt like it was unraveling her, like she would cry out everything inside of her and be left hollow.

And it did, a bit. But mostly it left her exhausted. As Gideon began nodding off again, she was able to parse just a little of her mother’s words.

“You’re OK, kid, you’re OK,” her mother said, “you don’t need her. You never needed her. I’ve got you.”

Before she went back under, she had the strangest sense that she had made some terrible, shameful mistake.

“The problem-” Paul said, “the biggest problem, is going to be your brain.”

“Ain't it always.” said Kiriona.  When Paul didn’t rise to the bait she continued, “OK, so what’s wrong with my brain now?”

“Everything,” they said, “Literally everything.  The changes He made to your body are obviously not conducive to actually living in it– the sealed sebaceous glands, the false windpipe, et cetera. But the changes he made to your neural tissue are, frankly, catastrophic.  Made not just so that you wouldn’t need to use your central nervous system for cognition, but so you physically couldn’t.”

“Uh huuuuuh,” said Kiriona, as the familiar weight of dread settled in her useless dead stomach, “Why? More efficient zombie?”

“Difficult to say. In a normal revenant, cognition (such as they have) is all animatic- done by the soul.  Hence why they can maintain a semblance of intelligence while attached to inorganic objects.  However, if a revenant is bonded to an organic body with a compatible nervous system, it will generally make use of it. This is called neuroanimaic enthronement.  This can result in decision-making and cognition closer to what the soul would have had in life.  Ie, it makes a smarter revenant.” 

“Motherfucker,” chimed in Pyrrha, “he wanted to keep her loyal.”

There was a pause before Paul spoke again, and that dread in Kiriona’s gut grew. “No, I doubt that was the intention. Enthronement comes with very little risk of contamination from the host tissue.  If he has been mucking about in your memories– which as discussed is still an if– he could do so cleanly whether or not you were thinking with your own brain.”  Paul caught Kiriona’s eyes as they continued, in much the same voice Kiriona was certain they would use to deliver a terminal diagnosis, “The much more likely explanation is concern that full enthronement could have triggered your body’s extremely aggressive regenerative abilities.”

“Oh,” said Kiriona, “He scooped out my brain to keep me dead.”

“‘Encrypted’ would be more accurate than removal, but yes.  Essentially.”

“Cool,” said Kiriona.  A hush came over the room as all present contemplated the distance between what had just been discussed and the idea of ‘cool.’  Cool was lightyears away. Cool was galaxies away.  Cool was in another fucking dimension from the Emperor of the Nine Houses taking an electric eggbeater to his daughter’s brain just to make sure she stayed dead.  

Kiriona said again, “Cool.” 

And then she said it a third and fourth time, hoping that it would help, but somehow it did not.

Gideon opened her eyes.  Damn, that was a crazy headache.  She didn’t know where she was or how she got there.  Honestly kind of concerning!  She was in a bed. Sitting next to the bed was an almost-familiar person, speaking into a handheld recorder.

“-aracterized by profound disorientation, distress, and heightened emotion. After these episodes pass, the patient shows profound improvements in cognition, communication, and memory compared to her state before it began.  Curiously, though, these improvements carry over very little to her state in the next episode.  So far, she has demonstrated severely impaired verbal expression, and possibly no verbal comprehension.”
“Are you saying I can’t talk?” Gideon said, “because I can definitely talk.”

They clicked off their tape recorder, only now noticing that Gideon was awake.

“Kiriona,” they said, “good afternoon.  How are you feeling?”

“Who’s Kiriona,” said Gideon, suddenly way more concerned.

They clicked the tape recorder back on.

“Fascinating,” they said, which in no way made Gideon less concerned, “can you tell me your name?”

“Gideon Nav.”

They nodded, “Gideon, then.  Hello.  Do you know what day it is?”

“Nuh-uh.”

“That’s alright. The local calendar is a bit of a pill anyway,” they had basically the most calming smile Gideon had ever seen. Too bad they absolutely would not stop saying extremely uncalming things. “Do you know where you are?”

“In a bed.”

“I’m taking that as a no.  Do you know who I am?”

Gideon squinted, “Camilla Hect’s inexplicably even hotter sister?”

The person in the chair laughed, and so did another person that Gideon hadn’t noticed was even in the room.  The second person was a woman leaning against the wall. She was huge and had a not-so-recently shaved head and a rack that looked weirdly youthful for the wrinkles on her face.

“Something like that,” said the one in the chair, “Call me Paul.”

“‘Kay,” said Gideon, squinting at the other woman.

Paul tipped their head, “Do you know who that is?”

“Yeah.  She fucked my mom.”

The other woman’s eyebrows shot up.  Paul reached for a clip board that Gideon hadn’t previously noticed and began scribbling furiously.

“That is true!  Well spotted.  Do you know her name?”

“Nope.”

“That’s alright. That’s fine. Do you know how you found out about her- erm, relationship?”

“I dunno, a while ago I guess.”

“Do you know how you two met?”

“Trick question, never met.”

“Wow,” Paul said, finally putting their pencil down, “That makes profoundly little sense.”

“Yeah,” said Gideon, “I get that from medical professionals a lot.”

That was around when Harrowhark fainted the first time. It was understandable, expected even.  They’d been at this for hours and she’d been dripping blood sweat since about ten minutes in.  Kiriona struggled against Pyrrha’s hold, trying to sit up, calling her name in a slurred voice.  Paul took their hand out of her open windpipe.

“Stay down,” they commanded, “Pyrrha, hold her steady.  We expected this.  I’ll get the IV.” They stripped off their bloody gloves and hauled Harrow’s limp form to sit in the chair set aside for just this reason.

Thus started the two and a half extremely great hours where Kiriona was a revenant glued to a half-resurrected sack of gunk and agony, while Harrow got fed enough fresh blood to make up for what she’d been sweating out.  Kiriona found herself deliriously jealous of Harrow: pale and slumped in a chair, getting nice clean alive blood while Kiriona had to ungunk her own shitty death blood through her eyes, or whatever the fuck was happening right now.

But on the plus side, there was no needle in her arm. Yet.

Even after Harrow had regained consciousness, Paul insisted that she sit a little longer, consume some kind of rehydration drink.  Which, despite the extreme pain Kiriona was experiencing, was honestly fine, on account of how much she didn’t want the next part to ever happen.

But soon, all too fucking soon, it was time.  Harrow climbed up on the table, lay herself next to Kiriona, and took her hand.

“Ready?” asked Paul.

“No,” said Kiriona.

“Yes,” said Harrow.

“I guess ,” said Kiriona.

“Good enough,” Paul put one hand on Harrow’s forehead, and the other on Gideon’s, “let’s begin.”

Gideon opened her eyes. Her head hurt. She was standing in a dim, unfamiliar room, at the foot of a neatly made bed. She could not remember how she had gotten here or why, but Harrow was holding her hand and leading her towards the head of it.  So ok.

“Come on,” Harrow said, tugging on her hand urgently, “you need to lie down before-”

Gideon pulled her hand away, and looked around the room, as if that would make anything make any sense.

“Harrow, what?”

Harrow narrowed her eyes at Gideon, frustration blooming plainly across her unpainted face.

“Oh for the love of- Nav. Listen to me. I will explain everything but I need you to lie down.”

Gideon sort of wanted to punch her?  But also wanted an explanation more than she wanted violence.

“What the fuck! What is happening!  What is that fucking look for?”

“Griddle, you entire ass!” she snapped, “I told you this would happen! Now get in that damn bed before I put you in it myself.”

Gideon bared her teeth at the challenge.  “Fuck you.  You didn’t tell me shit!  You never tell me shit!   You expect me to just shut up and obey, well I’m not-  I won’t-  I-”  Her words petered off as she realized just how disoriented she actually was. How had they gotten off the First?  How was she alive?  Hadn’t Harrow- hadn’t Harrow done something? Suddenly, confusion and annoyance was replaced with true fear.  She felt dizzy.  Sick, almost.

So of course Harrow took this opportunity to summon two extra long and freaky bone arms from the bed frame to manhandle Gideon down onto the creaking mattress, reclined against a pile of worn out, lumpy pillows.

She fought, of course, she thrashed and kicked and screamed every expletive she knew at Harrow, but the arms held her fast.

Harrow sat at the foot of the bed. 

“What did you do?” Gideon asked finally, letting her head thunk back against the wall.

“I have done what the Emperor of the Nine Houses declared to be impossible.  I have unspoken the eightfold world.  I have passed through Hell to reclaim what is mine.  I have achieved true resurrection.”

And OK, yeah, that made sense.  That checked out. But it didn’t mean she had to like it.

“Well fucking bully for you.  What’s wrong with me?”

Harrow laced her own fingers together, fidgeting, clearly uncomfortable.  “You have been experiencing… episodes.  Periods of profound unsettlement.  Temporary but pronounced mental infirmity.”

“Wow. Nice work.  Extremely cool side effect that I love to experience.”

Harrow said nothing.  Gideon got madder.

“No, really, I mean it.  This is on a whole new level of Nonagesimus bullshit, you know that?  Sure, just carve up your brain, carve up my brain, carve up everyone’s brains!  Anything to not owe one to the disgusting cuckoo.”

She expected Harrow to snap back at her, maybe yell, maybe shut her up.  But instead she just made steady eye contact, voice steely and said, “Nav, I will accept your ire and judgment, which I deserve and more. But I will not idly listen to you disparage your worth to me, not abide by your willful ignorance to my motivation in restoring you.  We don’t have the time it will take for me to convince you of your value to me, let alone the value you should have for yourself. But you’ll return to your senses soon enough.”

“Go fuck yourself, Harrowhark.”

Harrow’s dark eyes pinned Gideon down, just as surely as the bone arms.  Gideon hated her.  She hated her cryptic sanctimony, her imperious bearing, her I-know-something-you-don’t bullshit.  But most of all she hated how Harrow’s reply took 100% of the wind out of her sails.

“Rest. Recover,” she said, “and then fuck me yourself, idiot.”

After Kiriona had said “cool,”  enough times, she said, “So what’s the play? We decrypt it?”

“If we found a young mathematical prodigy, trained them up as a necromancer, hope they were also a prodigy at that, helped them complete the lyctoral process, and left them to study mathematics for the next 400 years while Harrowhark and I dedicated ourselves solely to the workings of the brain, we would have a middling chance of figuring out exactly how to repair the damage to your neural tissue safely and completely.”

Kiriona blinked, “OK but to be clear, that’s not the plan, right?  We’re not doing that?”

“No,” Paul said, “we are not doing that. I just wanted to establish the circumstances necessary to do this the careful way.”

“Great.  Good. Love to hear it,” said Kiriona, loving nothing about this whatsoever, “can we skip the dramatics and actually discuss what will be happening?”

Paul sighed and moved to a clear portion of the board and began laying out a diagram that made absolutely no sense whatsoever.  They explained in detail the way that necromancy knows the soul to interact with its memories, compared to currently accepted theories of how secular science thinks nerotissue accomplishes the same ends.  They explain the parts of Kiriona’s soul and memory currently bound up in her revenant self, and the part that should be in her brain, and the parts that remained dormant in Harrow’s primary animatic structure. (“Her soul zone?”  “Yes, her soul zone.”)  Then they drew even more lines between these things that made the whole diagram even less comprehensible.  They used words like “psychometric resilience” and “de-indexing” and “psuedo co-enthronement.”

Finally Paul said, “did that make sense?”

Kirion said, “Not remotely.”

Harrow spoke up, finally, her face betraying no emotion, but her hands twisting and wringing the fabric of her skirt, “They wish to break you further. They wish to destroy the existence you have in hopes that your body will be able to reconstruct the broken pieces into a viable mind.  They wish for you to risk annihilation.”

“Harrowhark, that’s not-” Paul started, but Kiriona interrupted.

“No, no, I get it.  My body’s good at healing, but it’s been tricked into not doing that.  We’re going to scromble my brain into itty bitty pieces and just kinda hope that my incredible miracle bod can glue it all back together in the right order.”

“OK, well,” said Paul, “that is somehow even less accurate than what Harrow said.  I feel like neither of you are grasping-”

“Don’t care,” Kiriona said, “let’s do it.”

Gideon opened her eyes.  There was an unpleasant pressure in her head, and a ringing in her ears.  She seemed to be alone in a small commissary, seated at a table.  In her hand was a small, white oblong object with a bite taken out of it. The white part was rubbery and soft, but something in the middle was crumbly and yellow.

She swallowed the bite of food that she belatedly noticed was still in her mouth.

“What the fuck,” she asked, extremely reasonably.

There was no one else with her in the kitchen, there was one door, and a window over the sink. A laminated piece of flimsy sitting on the table in front of her.  She picked it up and read:

Dear Gideon and/or Kiriona and/or Incoherently Screaming Lunatic,

If you’re reading this, it means you don’t know shit about fuck!  You are mega-confused, you are thoroughly discombobulated, you are feeling like your recent memories have all just fucked off and melted out of your head.  Well, congrats, you figured it out. That’s exactly what happened.  Hooray!  You’re severely brain damaged!

Least you freak the fuck out, let me assure you that eventually you will faint dramatically like the dumb asshole you are and shortly thereafter remember everything. In the meantime, don’t jump out any windows, don’t push anyone else out of windows.  Maybe don’t start fights at all, even though I know that’s going to be really hard for you.  Just try to chill out and do nothing stupid until this is over.

I know you can’t do that, champ, but I’d really appreciate it if you’d at least try.

Best,

You (but less brain damaged)

“What? The fuck!?” Gideon asked again.  

Then Harrowhark Fucking Nonagesimus peeked her head through the open doorway and into the room. Her face was unpainted, alarmingly unveiled, and she was wearing what appeared to be an actual fucking t-shirt.  She opened her mouth as if to ask a question, then looked at the paper in Gideon’s hands, and the abandoned food orb rolling across the table, and shut her mouth again.

“Harrow!” Gideon said, “What, and I can not emphasize this enough, the fuck.”

In a move that answered no questions whatsoever, Harrow came and kneeled at her feet.

“I love you, Gideon Nav,” she said, “I love you, I want you. I want you to be with me. I want you to be whole and safe and happy.   You matter to me, and you matter to others.”

Gideon, by now, had moved past the zone of What The Fuck, into the realm of wordless boggling.

“You are my best friend, and you are the being in all the universe that I love and desire beyond all others. My life is only bearable when you are in it.”

Gideon stood up abruptly, pulling her hands away from the freaky fake (or maybe hallucinated) (or maybe brainwashed) Harrow.

“Right, sure,” said Gideon, “cool.  Neat.”  She looked around the room for any exit besides the one that Harrow had come through.  That was when she noticed the regenerating bones barring the window, which had not been there before Harrow entered.  She tried to keep her breathing steady, she tried to keep it subtle as her gaze honed in on a kitchen knife, left out on the counter.

Nonetheless, Harrow followed her gaze, first to the window, then to the knife.  She stood up and sighed. “Nav, please, listen to me…”

Damn, letter-writing asshole Gideon was right, she was absolutely not getting out of this without a fight.

Harrow’s hand tightened in hers as Paul began their work.

In a weird way, it would have been better if the experience of having her brain melted had maximum sucked right from the start.  It would have been even more better if it had just been more pain.  But no such luck.  It just started with a subtle sort of dizziness.  Then unexpected memories started flitting through her mind.  Escape attempts, punishments, training injuries, finding a bug.  Boring, everyday things.

And then the memories started to leave.  She felt the departure of each one, piece after piece of her mind became the troubling impression of absence.  She chased each one, trying desperately to reclaim what was being taken.

“Please,” someone grunted, “please stop fighting me while I try to save your life, if it wouldn’t be too much trouble.”

“Fuck,” said K██████ passionately, and distantly proud of herself for not sticking a ‘you’ behind that ‘fuck’.  She definitely did not stop fighting, though.

Then the bigger pieces started going.  She wouldn’t be able to tell you what, exactly, those pieces were, only that they were important, fucking critically fucking important parts of her actual brain.  And they were leaving her.  They were being carved away.

It was too much.  It was way too fucking much.  Why was this even happening? What could possibly be worth this?

“Stop, stop!” ███████  screamed, “Put it back, what the fuck! STOP.”

The person touching her head looked at her with their terrifying gray-and-brown-and-gray eyes.

“Kiriona” they said, “it’s too late. There’s no stopping here.  We finish the work, or this body is no longer a viable vessel. We finish or you pass on.”

“Sounds good” ███████ said, “sounds great!  Fucking bye!”

“Gideon,” said a voice next to her.  

███████  turned, she looked into dark eyes she could barely recognize. In the barely coherent shreds of her consciousness, ███████ knew three things.  ███████ knew she loved her. ███████ knew she hated her. ███████  knew she would obey.

Gideon opened her eyes. Her head didn’t feel great, but her arm hurt in exactly the way they did when she just got the shit smacked out of it for having a poor off-side guard.  In her hands was a worn plex bottle full of an unfamiliar green substance.  She seemed to be in a gymnasium of some sort.

“One of Samael’s moves,” said a complete stranger standing in front of her, “he called it the Ninth House Spank, which ‘Stasia hated, obviously.”  The stranger was tall, and stacked, and neither sweaty nor out of breath, which seemed unreasonable to Gideon, who was deeply both.  The stranger seemed to notice her confusion.  

“Kid?” she asked.

“Who, me?” asked Gideon.

“Yeah, you,” said the stranger.

“My name’s Gideon.”

The stranger raised an eyebrow, “cool.  My name’s Commander Pyrrha Dve.  Let me know when you’re ready to start again.”

“When I’m- what?  No!  What the fuck is-” Gideon blinked, “Commander?”

“Uh huh, yep. In fact... your commander.”

“In the Cohort?”  Gideon said, suddenly looking around the gymnasium with a great deal more interest.

“Obviously.”

“Then- why can’t I remember you?  Why can’t I remember any of this?”

“Advanced training,” her officer said with a shrug, “we limit your personal memories so that you can focus entirely on your physical development.”

That made sense.  That absolutely made sense.  That sounded so normal and Gideon believed it entirely.

“Fuck yeah,” she said, lifting her sword, “let’s go, Dve.”

“I feel it imperative that you understand what the recovery process may look like before you agree,” said Paul, “or rather, understand how much about the recovery process we simply can’t predict.”

“What’s there to know?” Kiriona said, already clearly checked out, “You fuck my brain up good and it either unfucks or it doesn’t. I live, or I die, or worst case scenario I’m a vegetable and you gotta fight Harrow on pulling the plug.  But I won’t be there for that, so whatever.”

“Charming yet compassionate as always, your Highness. And also not remotely accurate.  Your body will heal.  That’s more-or-less a certainty.  Your brain will, with similar certainty, heal beyond basic life-sustaining functionality.  But the rate, and the process, and the totality of that recovery is unknowable.”

“Meaning…?”

“That’s what I’m telling you.  I’m telling you I don’t know what that means. You could lose memories from before your death, or from after your death.  Temporarily or permanently.  You could lose your swordsmanship. You could forget how to speak. You could become an entirely different person.”

Kiriona said nothing, but thought about how much she would prefer dying for good to any of the above options.

“Or… You could wake up the next day fine. There is simply no established precedent to which we can refer.  We don’t know.  We can’t know, unless we try.”

Harrow stood up and swept out of the room as imperiously as her t-shirt/sweatpants combo would allow. 

“Nonagesimus!  Harrow!” Kiriona, as always, followed after her.

Harrow was already crying by the time Kiriona caught up.

“If I asked it,” Harrow said, “if I asked, if I begged, would you stay like this, for however long it took us to find a way to restore you safely?”

“Yeah,” said Kiriona, hating herself, “I would.”

“If I asked you to let me bind you as a normal revenant, to an object, innate and inert, would you let me?”

“Yep,” said Kiriona, hating Harrow too a little bit.

Harrow put her hand on Kiriona’s nasty dead cheek.  Kiriona could barely feel it.

“What do you want to do?  What do you want to happen?”

Kiriona put her nasty dead hand over Harrow’s.

“I want to be literally anything but this.”

Gideon opened her eyes.  The room was dark, and she didn’t know where she was.  She stepped out of the bed she was lying in and the floor creaked audibly.

“Gideon?” Harrow asked. Harrow, who was lying in the bed she had just left.

“Harrow,” she said, voice rough, “something’s wrong, I don’t- I can’t remember-”

Harrow reached out to flick on a battery powered lamp kept on the bedside table. The warm light of the incandescent bulb cast a dim glow on both their faces.  Gideon peered at her, taking in the way the gaunt points of her face had softened a little.  How the nature of her gaze had become warmer, though no less piercing.

“You’re disoriented right now, correct?” said Harrow, with a gentleness Gideon did not currently know her to be capable of, “you don’t remember where we are?”

Gideon nodded mutely.

“It’s alright,” she continued, “this happens to you on very rare occasions.  I promise it will pass.”

Gideon was quiet a long time.  Finally she said, “Am I wearing a ring?”

“Yes.”

“Is it a wedding ring?”

“It is.”

“Are you wearing a wedding ring?”

“I am.”

“Is it because we’re married?”

“That would seem to be the case.”

“To each other ?”

Harrow huffed and tipped her head, “would that be a problem?”

Gideon shook her head, “Nawp.”

“In that case, would you please return to our bed, which is our marriage bed, which we share as we are married to each other?”

“Yawp.”

Harrow sighed, but pulled down the covers and patted the Gideon-shaped indentation.

Slowly, mechanically almost, Gideon climbed back into her side of the bed. Harrow pulled the stack of worn blankets back up over them both. 

“When does it, you know,” Gideon lay there stiffly and stared holes in the ceiling, “get better?”

“Not long.  After you rest a bit.  Sleep usually.”

“Oh.” Gideon continued staring at the ceiling.  Sleep was about the last fucking thing she wanted to do, in an unfamiliar place, with a weirdly, creepily nice Harrow.  The silence stretched.

“Gideon?”

“...Yeah?”

“May I touch you?”

“If I’m your wife I don’t think you need permission to touch me.”

“Arguable, but never mind that. Would you like me to touch you?”

“...Yeah.”

Harrow put a hand gently on Gideon’s shoulder and urged her to roll over to face the window. Then Harrow tucked herself up close against Gideon’s back, and draped one arm over her shoulder.  Harrow was… spooning her?  Gideon felt like she didn’t deserve this.  She felt like she should be the big spoon, probably, due to her bigness. She felt warm. She felt stupid. She felt safe. She felt like she could die (again) just like this and have no complaints.

Then it got worse.

“Close your eyes,” Harrow said, brushing her fingers across Gideon’s face to enforce her command, “relax. Everything’s alright.”  Her other hand came up to the back of Gideon’s neck and began rubbing little circles right at the base of her skull.  Involuntarily, Gideon’s whole body unclenched at once.

“What…” she asked, “what the fuck? Is this some kind of Lyctor shit?  Are you flesh magicing me?”

“No, you dolt,” Harrow murmured, voice warm in a way that Gideon had never, ever heard, “I just know what you like.”

“Oh.”

The rubbing of the thumb became the skritching of nails, slowly making their way up her neck and onto her scalp.  Harrow was right.  She really, really liked that.  She let out a noise that she hoped was going to be some kind of alluring moan, but was actually more like a whimper.

“Go to sleep,” Harrow said, “you’ll feel better in the morning.”

She wasn’t sure she believed that.  She wasn’t sure she believed any of this.  But the drowsy comfort of Harrow’s touch could neither be denied nor resisted, and it didn’t take long until Gideon was asleep once more.

The dark-eyed girl was crying a watery pink mix of blood and tears. The dark-eyed girl was stroking ███████’s face. For some reason, ███████ was surprised to realize that she could feel it.

“It’s your choice.   It should have always been your choice. I’m so sorry. Say the word and we will send you across the River, and I too will follow.”

“Auuugh faaaahhhhhckkkkk,” ███████  replied to that extremely fucked up offer.

The woman who was holding ███████  down spoke then, “with all due respect, fuck that noise.”

Both girls attended the woman.

“Fuck losing anyone when you have a chance to save them.  Scared, Your Serene Highness?  Suck it up.  Life’s scary.  But you two deserve to actually live it.  You, Gideon, you deserve to touch your girlfriend and feel it.  You deserve to get fat on dessert.  You deserve to live.”

“Who,” said ███████ with a great deal of effort, “are you?”

“Someone who loves you, dipshit.  Someone who’s going to find you if you get lost.  Someone who’s going to pick you up if you fall.  Someone who’s going to hang onto your pieces if you break, and help you put them back together.  But you’ve got to let us help you.  You’ve got to trust us and you have to stop fighting .”

“I don’t want to,” said ███████.

“I know,” said the woman.

“It hurts,” said ███████.

“I know,” said the woman again.

“I’m afraid,” said ███████.

“I know, I know, I know. But you can do it. Take a deep breath, kid. Let go.”

███████  took a deep breath.  ███████ stopped fighting.  The person touching her head restarted their work, and ███████ was destroyed utterly.

Gideon opened her eyes.  She rolled her neck, hoping to clear up the ache in her head.  She was sitting on a couch.  Harrow was also sitting on a couch.  Harrow was sitting on a couch very, very close to her.  In each of their hands were five small cards of flimsy.  Each flimsy card had a number and a symbol, some in red and some in black.  Sitting on the ground across from the couch was Camilla Hect with a new haircut and the Saint of Duty with a new boob job.

“Nav?” asked Camilla, “did you get all that?”

Gideon asked, “Hect?”

Next to her, Harrow put a hand on her leg. Maybe-not-Camilla sighed and set their flimsy cards down on the ground.

“Really?” they said, “ right after I finished explaining the rules?”

“I’ll go get the letter,” said the Saint of Duty, standing.

Gideon boggled, and considered panicking, but then Harrow took one of Gideon’s hands in both of hers and just held it gently.  

“It’s alright,” she said, “just breathe.”

Gideon boggled harder, but she did breathe, and for some reason this helped.

The Saint of Duty came back, handing a larger sheet of flimsy to Gideon and placing her beloved tinted glasses reverently back on her face.  Gideon mumbled a quiet, awkward thanks, and began reading.

Hey good looking!

If you’re reading this, it’s your lucky day.  I have a little bad news and a whole lot of good news.  

Bad news first:

You have so much amnesia, my friend. You are amnesiatic as a motherfucker.  But this problem is going to fix itself in a few hours tops, with literally no effort on your part.  Do not even sweat it.

Now the good news:

You are not on the Ninth. You are at least 300 light years from the Ninth. You have not been to the Ninth in years.  In fact no one has been to the Ninth in years.  Not even Harrow.

Next, your neighbors rule.  On one side is Paul and Pyrrha, who you probably think are Camilla and Gideon The Worst.  Or you think they are complete strangers.  Who knows!  Either way, don’t worry about it.  They will both be happy to kick your ass with any weapon you so wish.  A+ do recommend. 

Neighbor on the other side is Gilbert Gillain I Don't Play I Slay and his wife Agatha Free Before The Thunderstorm Atarangi.  Gilbert knows the dirtiest jokes in the entire universe, which he will tell at any opportunity.  The thing is though, he is old as balls and doesn’t know which jokes he has already told you or not, so right now when you also don’t remember shit will be a great time to enjoy them all.  Agatha will feed you lolly cakes.  Lolly cakes can not be explained, they can only be experienced.  You should experience them.

Then there’s Harrow.  You can kiss Harrow.  Harrow wants to kiss you.  Harrow might want to do more than kiss you.  Play your cards right and you may even touch Harrow’s boob.

You can go outside!  The sun is visible! There’s a sausage cart! These things are cool, trust me. There are also dogs, which are kind of a mixed bag.

The following food are great beyond mortal reckoning:

• Ice cream

• Fish and chips

• Any kind of chips

• Also any kind of fish

• Chocolate BUT ONLY MILK OR WHITE NO DARK NO MOCHA

• Tacos, again preferably fish

• Sausage, in all forms

• Pies, in this order of preference: meat, fruit, cream/custard/pudding

Anyway, that’s all I got.  The world is your extremely confusing oyster. I believe in you, champ!

Love,

You (with almost no brain damage)

PS- to confirm that it’s actually me, I have included an inscription of great personal importance that only the true Gideon Nav will understand.

Gideon looked back up at the Saint of Booty.

“Turn it over,” said Pyrrha.

She did so, eyes widening at what she saw.

The art was crude, true.  Obviously done in her own unskilled hand.  But there was no mistaking what it was recreating: the very best panel of the very best comic in her old collection.  A beautiful two-page spread from The Adventures of Captain Getpussy, Volume 3.  Here was the enchanting smirk on Getpussy’s face.  There was the powerful spread of her legs.  In the center was the delicate cascades of Lieutenant Muff’s hair over Getpussy’s thighs as the Lieutenant ate the everloving fuck out of her Captain's snatch.  Gideon knew then, in her heart, that this letter could be trusted.

She turned to her left, to meet Harrow’s soft, trepidatious gaze.  She looked forward to where Paul inspected their nails with middling interest. She turned right to meet Pyrrha’s raised eyebrow.

“I have been made to understand,” Gideon said, “that there’s an old man telling dick jokes?”

Pyrrha barked out a laugh and offered her hand, “Good choice, kid.  Excellent choice.”

Harrow collected Gideon’s flimsy cards and her own and passed them over to Paul, who was re-assembling the deck.

“Delightful as that sound,” Paul said to Harrow, “back to discussing my sister’s theory of Post-turrisinal barathronic displacement?”

“Yes,” said Harrow, “obviously.  Do enjoy your puerile nonsense, Nav.”  She sounded like she meant it (wow), and then turned to kiss Gideon on the cheek (WOW!!), before standing and going to collect a messy pile of research materials.

Gideon took Pyrrha’s hand without hesitation and did indeed enjoy her puerile nonsense.