Chapter Text
As she settled in for bed, Gideon should have been on the top of the world. She had finally conquered her first dessert, the most imposing challenge standing between her and her dreams of complete culinary freedom, and had gone to bed with a belly full of warm berry pie. Not only that, but she’d been promised a sprawling comic book breakfast straight out of her childhood fantasies. She even had a puppy now, if only by proxy—which was better than actually having a puppy because it meant she only had to do the fun parts.
If she’d explained any of this to her childhood self, little Gideon would have jumped for joy and then punched Harrow right in the gob, consequences be damned. It would have been the best day of her entire life.
Instead of celebrating, she’d spent the whole night tossing and turning, trying desperately to calm an anxious brain that refused to shut up. All she could hear when she shut her eyes was the echo of what if, what if, what if. Each time she actually managed to drift off, she’d wake and spiral again, pulling the pillow over her head in a pointless attempt to block out the stifling mental static.
All that to say, she’d slept like utter shit.
Even so, she dragged herself out of bed at the buttcrack of dawn so she’d arrive promptly for her scheduled Ominous Breakfast Chat With the Former Reverend Daughter of Drearburh, During Which She Would Probably Get Dumped By Someone She Wasn’t Entirely Sure Was Even Technically Her Friend™. Her only hope was that she’d be able to talk Harrow out of it by distracting her with a pouch of Very Plain Bird Food For Girls™.
She was not optimistic. Blinking, she looked in the mirror at her sleep-tousled hair and the acne-studded blotch on her face from where she’d been snoring in a puddle of her own drool.
Suddenly, a new question arose: what the hell was she supposed to wear to her own execution?
She decided, stubbornly, that she wasn’t going to dress up to get acquaintance-dumped. Instead, she slipped on the loud, light pink floral button-up shirt that Nonagesimus had once told her she despised.
(From that day on, she had worn it about three times a week.)
She was confident that her wardrobe choice delivered the discrete and subtle message she hoped to convey: this is just another day, and, unlike you, I am a fun and colorful person who is absolutely not resisting the urge to shit myself from pent-up anxiety, and also fuck you in particular for doing this to me, Harrowhark Nonagesimus.
Once dressed, she hid in her room for two hours, pacing and doing press-ups, because if she stepped into the hallway and saw Harrow before the appointed hour, the resulting awkwardness would surely kill them both, and she’d never learn what had been wrong with her soup. This was a rare instance in which curiosity would not kill the cat—least of all because the cat really wanted to taste bacon just once before she died.
She arrived at Pyrrha’s exactly two minutes early. She then proceeded to stand behind a bush for one minute and fifty-nine seconds because she didn’t want to seem eager.
“Admiring the topiary?” Pyrrha asked, brows raised, as she opened the door.
“Yep,” said Gideon, who didn’t know what “the topiary” was, let alone that Pyrrha didn’t have one outside of her house—which was good because it meant she didn’t know that Pyrrha was making fun of her, and thus didn’t run back home with her tail between her legs before the whole ordeal even began.
Instead, she stepped into the foyer and walked through to the kitchen, only to come face to face with the most gorgeous table she’d ever seen—at least since the last time Pyrrha had fed her.
As promised, it was a full, hot breakfast with sunny yellow eggs, perfectly brown toast topped with a square pat of half-melted butter, and crisp, pungent bacon. Pyrrha had set out homemade preserves from the market, a dish of fresh fruit, and a steaming carafe of hot coffee. It was her perfect cartoon breakfast, and it was here, and it was real.
Oh, and Harrow was there, too, primly quarantined on the opposite side of the table, where she was glaring at a small bowl of dry granola.
“Alright, girls. The veg patch isn’t going to weed itself. Have fun,” Pyrrha said, slipping out the door and leaving Gideon alone with Harrow.
As Dve exited, she took all the air in the room with her. The kitchen grew silent. When Gideon pulled out a chair to sit, she felt the sound of it scraping against the tile in her back teeth. She shot a flicker of a glance at Harrow, who was watching her closely, jaw clenched.
Neither spoke. Neither ate. Gideon sure as hell wasn’t going to initiate anything. Harrow had called this dumb meeting. She could kick things off.
Once the silence became so dense and awkward that it threatened to consume them both, Harrow said, “Hibiscus rosa-sinensis.”
“What?”
“The flowering plant on your shirt. I recently read about it in a book.”
Gideon looked down at the loud, impossible-looking flowers on her obnoxious, Harrow-repelling shirt.
“Oh,” she said.
“They are edible and considered a delicacy in some regions.”
Gideon was fighting a silent internal battle. She was convinced this glorious breakfast was only a cruel prank and that, at any second, the universe would somehow take it away before she’d licked a crumb. She wanted to devour it, but the nervous writhing and churning sensation in her lower gut made it seem like a bad idea.
“They also have diuretic properties,” Harrow continued.
“Cool piss fact,” Gideon said, though what she was thinking was, ‘the eggs and meat smell very good.’ And was she hallucinating, or did the butter, which was slowly spreading over the still-hot toast, have a scent, too? She swallowed against her own rapidly forming saliva. Her stomach made a rude noise, and they both politely ignored it.
“There are over 200 varieties in the genus, all of which grow best in tropical climates.”
“Okay.”
The little square pat of butter slid off the toast. Even the condiments wanted to escape the tangible discomfort of this conversation. Gideon hoped Harrow sped it up before the fucking eggs flew away.
“The roots are unusual in that—”
“Right. This is all incredibly fascinating and completely relevant to my life, but I’m going to eat breakfast now.”
Before Harrow could rattle off another useless plant fact, Gideon took up her fork and, remembering her recent lessons about slowing down and savoring, brought a single, modest forkful of fluffy, butter-soaked eggs to her lips. It was the first taste of a childhood dream, and she took in every rich, buttery note and savored the thrilling pop of salt against her tongue. It was unexpectedly grounding, and she was relieved to have something to do with her hands.
Harrow took Gideon’s initiative as permission to nibble on her granola, which blessedly halted the awful pseudo-conversation in its tracks. The room was filled with the sounds of cutlery scraping against dishes, chewing, and swallowing, which was somehow less awkward than the forced and stilted alternative.
There was only so much food, however—far more than even the ravenous Gideon could consume in one sitting—and the cacophony slowly began to feel ominous. The more metal scraped against ceramic, the closer they were to the need to break the ice.
As she slowly chewed her final corner of toast, Gideon made the choice to rip the bandage off for her own sanity. If this turned out to have been her last meal, she’d be alright with that. She set down her fork and caught Harrow’s eye, holding her gaze, and did her best to channel Pyrrha’s quiet intensity.
“Alright,” she announced decisively, arms folded on the tabletop, “We ate breakfast. Now, can you stop stalling and tell me why you’re mad at me?”
“What?” Harrow asked.
“You’ve been avoiding me for days, and you invited me here to “talk,” which means bad news, right? This is so fucking awkward. Just finish stalling already and get it over with.”
“Why on this world or any other would I be mad at you?”
“I don’t know, Harrow,” Gideon spat, throwing up her hands, “Why are you ever mad at anybody? I figured it was something stupid, like I was too nice to you while you were sick, or the soup was too hot, and it offended your delicate demonic sensibilities.”
“You are mistaken, Griddle,” she bit back in a way that did, in fact, sound pretty angry, but what the hell did Gideon know?
“Then, what?” Gideon pressed, “What am I supposed to think? You told me to go away, you started avoiding me at all costs—”
“When? You’re clearly fabulating Nav. It’s embarrassing.”
“Don’t play dumb, dummy.”
“I have not been avoiding you! I have been incredibly busy.”
“Yeah, busy avoiding me, though. It doesn’t count.”
“No,” Harrow shot back, her passionate retort exploding from her lips like a thing under pressure. She had risen to her full, not-very-imposing height, and her brows were angled so severely they threatened to leap from her face. In another life, this would have been the moment she set a hoard of skeletons on her to give her a wedgie.
Inexplicably, her voice was soft when she added, “I have been busy trying to repay you. Not just for the soup but for everything. Behold.”
Instead of explaining things further, Harrow stood. She moved to the ice box and retrieved a few glass jars full of liquid. Each had a series of suspended vegetables inside. She set them down in front of Gideon.
“Now I’m really confused,” Gideon admitted, lifting one and examining the murky contents.
“Pyrrha told me you enjoy pickled vegetables. I harvested them and prepared them with minimal assistance, though the smell of the brine made me wretch.”
“Harrow, you didn’t have to do that.”
Harrow said nothing.
Next, she moved to the windowsill and brought over a small, rectangular container filled with dirt. Tiny green sprouts were just beginning to peek out of the soil. Each segment was labeled, and while it was clearly Harrow’s handwriting, she’d obviously worked hard to keep her text neat and tidy, which was a small miracle.
“I have also been tending this herb garden for our kitchen, so you can cut fresh herbs while you cook.”
“I didn’t even think you liked herbs,” Gideon observed.
“I don’t,” Harrow confirmed as, finally, she moved toward the kitchen counter, where she retrieved a carefully folded cloth napkin. She held it sandwiched between two hands, slowing her pace as she approached the table. Taking a deep breath, she set it down wordlessly before Gideon, then took a step back, watching her.
Gideon’s brow transformed into a landscape of deep, horizontal ridges. She could understand pickles and herbs, but what the hell was she supposed to do with a napkin?
“The gift is inside,” Harrow explained, and that was when Gideon recognized what was happening. This was a present—a proper one, all wrapped up like in the stories. Even her deadbeat Daddy Undying hadn’t presented her with a wrapped parcel in his half-cooked attempts to buy her affection.
She reached down, grasped the corner, and revealed probably a dozen or so tiny red peppers. Each one had its own character and had been lovingly and painstakingly tucked into the cloth.
Perplexed, she took a pepper between her thumb and forefinger and turned it over and over, examining the perfect specimen up close. Admittedly, she felt a little dumb. Was supposed to… recognize them?
“I grew them for you,” Harrow revealed, her voice atypically small, “To cook with, or to eat, or to do with as you please. Along with the other gifts, they are an offering, and you’re well within your rights to stomp on them in front of me if you wish, but I hope that you won’t.”
“You grew these?” Gideon asked incredulously, suddenly looking upon the gift in a different light. “Like, in the dirt and stuff?” She glanced up at Harrow, then down at the peppers again.
“That is what I said, Griddle.”
“Harrow, that’s—”
“I’m not done.”
At last, Harrow sat, dropping her eyes to gaze at the terribly red, ripe peppers in front of them. She steeled herself, her shoulders growing taut, and boldly lifted her head, gaze steady.
“All my life, you’ve fed me, Griddle, and still, I’ve consistently failed to thrive. I am once again a disappointment, even after all the lessons we’ve learned, and I hope you understand that my recent struggles have nothing to do with—”
“Harrow—”
“No. Shut up, Nav. No condolences. I have more to say,” Harrow glared, then continued. “I owe you so much more than I could possibly hope to coax from the earth in a single week, but I hope you will accept these meager gifts—and one more substantial one.”
“More?” Gideon asked, overwhelmed by the unexpected kindness when she’d been bracing for a lashing for days. Had she forgotten her own birthday?
“As my final offering,” Harrow began, her voice terribly firm and assured, “I grant you permission to take these things and walk away from me.”
Ah, there it was. Gideon groaned.
“You released me from service months ago,” she reminded her, “We’ve been over this. I’m not going anywhere.”
“That was a formality, and neither of us was in our right mind at the time.”
“Speak for yourself. Just because you’ve never been in your right mind—”
“If you recall, we had just survived the Death of God and the complete destruction of the imperial paradigm. You had only just been resurrected. The blood sweat was still damp on the flesh of my brow,” Harrow swallowed. “It was natural for us to return to old habits for comfort, and I developed several negative ones in the intervening months. If Dve had not intervened, I’m not sure I would have noticed them for myself.”
“Nonagesimus?” Gideon asked
“Yes?”
“This gift sucks. You probably should’ve stopped at the pickles.”
“Nav,” Harrow snapped, clutching the edge of the table with pale knuckles. It became clear that she was taking this a lot more seriously than Gideon realized. “I am asking you to take notice of your habits as I have taken notice of mine. I want you to ask yourself why you’re here. I want you to be certain that it’s a choice.”
“What the hell?” Gideon shot back, her jaw dropping, “I’m here because my friends are here. Of course, it’s a choice. What the hell did Pyrrha say to you?”
“Nothing that you haven’t heard.”
Gideon’s mind immediately retreated to the strange morning when Harrow had been ill, and Pyrrha had listed off their greatest shames, pulling no punches as she reminded them of all the ways they’d hurt others—least of all one another. It had made Gideon yearn to be kinder, to strike some kind of balance, to give more life than she’d taken on Lemuria.
The labyrinth of Harrow’s mind had always been more complex than that. No matter what route she took through the maze of her grey matter, she always found her way back to guilt.
“Did killing my dad and bleeding all over me also distract you from the fact that I forgave you?” Gideon asked, “Because that’s definitely also a thing that happened. It was a pretty big thing. You cried for like a week. Kinda thought you’d remember that.”
“Forgiveness under duress isn’t true forgiveness,” Harrow said, “It’s desperation. That’s what I’m asking you to see, Griddle. Today, we are safe and well. Today we are fed. The time to make choices is now.”
“Then I forgive you again now,” Gideon shrugged without frills or fanfare, not even pausing for a moment to think, and Harrow shut her eyes tight to guard against the easy, almost casual mercy in her tone.
“I cannot ask you to spend the rest of your life defending the monster who I was, even to yourself,” Harrow went on, “I can only promise to change and hope you’ll still be here to see the result.”
“If you really want to change, you can start by believing what I say. I’m not some idiot who doesn’t know what she’s doing, alright? We both did some really atrocious shit, but I like to think of it as our atrocious shit.” Gideon grew quiet. “I mean, if you’re unforgivable, then, shit, Harrow. What am I?”
Harrow opened her eyes and looked at Gideon.
“The difference is that my part in ‘our atrocious shit’ was at your expense,” she said.
“I hit you back.”
“I made your childhood into a waking nightmare, stripping you of all innocence and agency.”
“Yeah, because your childhood was a barrel of laughs?”
“I had access to an immense well of power that could have been used for good, and I wasted that finite resource on subjugating and humiliating you for no material gain.”
“No, what happened was your evil dad kicked your shitty mum, so your shitty mum kicked you, and you kicked me because my evil dad and shitty mum weren’t there to kick your ass—not that they would’ve, anyway.”
“Do you not see that you deserved better?”
“It doesn’t even matter what we deserved because we can’t go back and get it, okay? We can’t. But we can wake up tomorrow and suck less, right? So, let’s do that.”
“How?”
“I don’t know. You could stop hating yourself for something somebody else did to you, for a start.”
It was incredible how well Gideon could read Harrow’s face. She could see realization dawning in her eyes and knew she was filing the thought away for later, dismissing it with a minute quirk of the brow.
After a few agonizing seconds, Harrow said, “My offer stands. I do not expect you to decide today. I thought you might want to think about it.”
“I have thought about it!” Gideon finally snapped, rising to her feet, now towering over Harrow, “I’ve been thinking about it since the stupid night you started moaning to me about leaving. Not to mention, for the past two long, shitty days, I thought you’d invited me here to tell me you were finally screwing off and leaving me here. And it was hell, if you even care.” Gideon sighed, shaking her head. “I want to be where you are, okay? On purpose. Can you believe me when I say that? Can you try?”
Harrow inhaled slowly and deeply through her nose.
“I did not mean to hurt you,” she said, “I have in the past, but I did not intend to now. And you should know that I do not plan to leave, though I would if you asked me to.”
“Well, I didn’t,” Gideon said.
“Understood.”
“We have this second chance, right? Let’s have fun. Let’s suck less. Let’s—I don’t know, let’s just finally be nice to each other. How about that?”
For a long moment, Harrow was silent, and though Gideon knew she was thinking, she couldn’t even pretend to read her thoughts. Frankly, she didn’t think her proposal—which boiled down to exhibiting basic human decency—required that much thought. Harrow’s hesitation was making her anxious, and she impulsively reached for a piece of fruit to shove in her mouth just as Harrow finally spoke.
“If you are truly copacetic,” Harrow began slowly, “I believe we can make this a more mutually beneficial arrangement. I can grow things in the sun, and you can prepare them in the evenings. Perhaps we can sit down for meals together. I have hope that, moving forward, if we both come to the table, we’ll both be fed.”
“Perhaps,” Harrow continued, her voice trembling minutely, “We can even become something resembling friends.”
Less than a heartbeat later, Harrow’s eyes widened, and she rushed to qualify her statement.
“I am not asking that of you,” she blurted out emphatically, her gaze intense, “Again, I am giving you a choice, and I realize I have not done that often enough in my life. I understand if you need time to decide.”
Gideon took all the time she needed, which turned out to be about half a second.
“Fuck, Harrow,” she sighed as she sat, face planting dramatically, pushing her forehead into the tabletop, “is that all this was about? You didn’t have to stage a weird plant intervention to ask me to be your friend, moron.”
“And how else should I have asked?” Harrow said coolly.
Gideon considered the hundreds of ways she’d attempted to ask Harrow the same question: Stolen muffins at midnight, an invitation to sit on the porch swing and talk about bullshit, a row of basins in her bedroom, the world’s most boring soup. None of it had been enough to get through to her.
Maybe this had been the best way. The unfortunate truth was that you couldn’t ask someone to be ready to change. Harrow had to be the one to want it, the one to ask. Gideon could have screamed the subtext for a thousand years and it would have done nothing if Harrow wasn’t ready to hear it.
Maybe now, at long last, they were finally on the same page— except when it came to one thing.
Gideon opened her mouth, then shut it.
“What, Griddle? If you have reservations, it isn’t too late to—” “No, no. It’s just…just to confirm, you liked the soup?”
“What?” “Did you like the soup? That I made?”
Harrow furrowed her brow. “Yes,” she said, baffled, “It was fine soup. I would say it was the most agreeable soup I’ve had, if not one of the most agreeable meals. Rarely has someone taken so many of my preferences into account when assembling a dish. I had thought it was obvious. Why do you ask?”
“No reason,” Gideon shrugged, her lips relaxing into a smile, her eyes frantically searching the room for an easy change of subject, landing on the row of peppers in front of her. “So, uh, what kind of peppers are these, anyway?”
“I am unsure of their name, but I am told they hold a great deal of heat relative to their size,” Harrow explained.
“Harrow peppers,” Gideon said, “nice.”
“A small nibble should be sufficient to experience their full potency.”
“So, you’re telling me to shove six of them in my mouth at once?”
“If you do, I will not cry at your funeral, Nav. Don’t be a hero.”
“Why shouldn’t I be a hero? I’d be a great hero.”
“You might change your mind about that while you’re weeping in agony on the toilet,” Harrow rolled her eyes and stood, moving to stand right in front of Gideon’s chair, “Here.”
She took up one of the peppers and, clutching it delicately, brought it to Gideon’s lips, cupping her cheek in one hot, sweat-slicked palm. For a moment, Gideon froze, unsure what to do. She felt a ripple of pins and needles travel down the length of her spine before tapping into some primal instinct and biting the red, ripe tip off the pepper.
She chewed, more aware of the heat of Harrow’s lingering hand than the pepper, which hit her brain all at once. “Fuck, Harrow,” she gasped, rocking back against the chair. Suddenly, there was moisture coming from everywhere. Her eyes were streaming, and her crooked smile was on full display as she sniffed hard, breathing through her open mouth. She licked her lips, as eager to enjoy the fire as she was desperate to put it out, panting in her attempt to cool the flame.
Just when she thought she’d experienced the brunt of it, the heat hit her stomach, and she swore she could feel it radiating throughout her body. She was a sun. She was a supernova. Her heartbeat had sped up, and she had never been so warm.
And then she looked at Harrow’s face, so close to hers, all sharp edges and etched with raw focus and concern.
“Did you like it?” Harrow asked.
“It was amazing,” she said with a lopsided grin, though her tongue had gone half-numb, “You want a taste?”
“No,” Harrow said emphatically, eyes growing wide, “no.”
“Hey, your hand is—”
“Oh.”
Harrow removed her hand, and the spot on Gideon’s cheek where it had been felt noticeably cooler. Harrow stepped back. As she took her seat, her entire visage seemed to go softer all at once, as if some tension had evaporated in the warmth of Gideon’s blazing corona. She smiled a small, soft smile.
“So, what do we do now?” Gideon asked, taking a gulp of cold coffee from her mug in a final bid to cool the heat, “Braid each other’s hair? Make friendship bracelets?”
“I thought we could take a walk,” Harrow suggested.
“You’re suggesting exercise?” Gideon guffawed, “You’re really taking this ‘New Harrow’ thing seriously, huh?”
“Yes,” Harrow said, “Is this not what you wanted? To have fun?”
“Sure,” Gideon chuckled. She hadn’t expected Harrow to become exciting right out of the gate. A walk seemed like a good place to start.
“Then I thought I could show you Pyrrha’s garden. I’ve been considering a similar setup for our yard, but I’d need some additional muscle to execute it effectively, and I’m sure you have nothing better to do.”
“Hey,” Gideon smirked with a flex, “What are friends for?”
Harrow returned her smile, and it lingered.
They rose, pushed in their chairs, and, hip to hip, they wandered out the door and down the dirt-covered garden path toward a future in which, with work and time, things could grow.
—
Epilogue :: Six Weeks Later
The first time Harrow heard the term “flower arrangement,” she thought it was some sort of obtuse joke that she lacked the context to comprehend. It had never occurred to her that placing dead plants in a receptacle could require any sort of thought or talent.
That evening in the kitchen, as she attempted to place a series of cut flowers in a vase for the first time, she wondered if her upbringing had deprived her of the underlying skill set necessary for such a task. For years, she’d painted her face, never letting the black taint the white. Why did the simple ability to determine which flower should go where elude her?
They were flowers. They were visible. And yet, somehow, they were wrong.
The haphazard centerpiece might have been enough for someone, but not for Harrow. This was the final task on a long list, and once she deemed it complete, there would be nothing left to do but wait, and waiting was hell. It was better to fuss and work toward some elusive idea of perfection than sit helplessly and worry.
“Is this serviceable?” she asked Camilla, who was laying out the silverware, seeming to find contentment in the simple act of creating neat, identical table settings. Cam set down her bundle of spoons, took a step back, assessed the amateur arrangement, and immediately pulled out a knife—one of her absurd fishmonger-esque atrocities, not one of the blunt butterknives laying dormant on all the napkins. She trimmed a few stems, moved a few things around, then nodded.
“It is now,” Cam said.
Harrow blinked. Miraculously, it did look better.
“It’s all ratios,” Cam explained, pocketing the knife and taking up her spoons, continuing her tight circuit around the kitchen, “They teach every cavalier on the Seventh. I looked into it.”
“Thank you,” Harrow said, setting the arrangement in the center of the table and taking her time composting the abandoned bits of stem. Once she was bereft of formal tasks, she stood back, hands on her hips, and gave her head a single shallow nod.
It was time to obsess over what everyone else was doing. Everyone else being—
“Griddle?” she asked, addressing the leader at the helm, who stood at the hob, giving the contents of a pan a stir. There was a visible crease of concentration in her brow, and her skin seemed a touch dewy with sweat. Harrow had seen that level of focus and passionate determination in her golden eyes before. She often looked that way while working with her swords.
“What’s up?” Gideon asked, glancing up from the stovetop, all traces of the forehead crease vanishing in a trice.
“Do you anticipate finishing the meal on schedule?” she asked.
“Genius takes time,” she assured her, grinning a debonair grin as she twirled the spoon between her fingers.
“I am asking how much time. I am afraid that she’s going to arrive and—”
“She’ll deal with it,” Gideon assured her, but there was an edge in her tone—something just a little guarded and defensive, and Harrow knew her too well to miss it. Clearly, Gideon was nervous, too.
Oddly, that tiny tell set Harrow’s own mind at ease. She took a deep, grounding breath just as the front door opened, and all her calm vanished and dissipated like a flock of startled birds.
She glanced around at the kitchen, which had seemed perfectly adult and orderly just a moment earlier. Suddenly, it appeared to be a half-cocked mess curated by foolish children with something to prove—which it was, but Harrow didn’t want anyone to know that.
“We’re home!” Palamedes called out from the foyer, and Harrow exhaled, relief flooding her system. She’d forgotten he’d gone out with the dog. There was still time.
Seconds later, the sound of claws clicking against kitchen tile filled the space as Fish came to take up her post at Camilla’s hip. Palamedes wasn’t far behind, flanking her other side.
“Is it safe to assume you have things in hand by now? What can I do?” he asked, then paused long enough to register that the room looked different than it had when he left.
“Flowers look great, Harrow,” he remarked.
“All of the credit for the arrangement goes to Camilla,” she said graciously, though the hint of a blush colored her cheeks at the compliment.
“Well, my compliments to the gardener and the florist,” he said decisively, briefly wrapping an arm around Cam’s waist as he moved behind and past her.
“There are too many people in here,” Cam intoned.
“Then it’s a good thing we invited one more,” Pal observed, and she pinched him, “But, really, what can I help with?”
“I’m not sure what else there is to do,” Harrow confessed.
“Here’s what you can do. Sit back, relax, and let me handle the rest,” Gideon suggested, moving her pan off the heat. She was clearly in her element, showing off her new skill with finesse.
The others in the room would all attest that Gideon hadn’t quite mastered every recipe she’d attempted over the past few weeks, but they’d chosen a tried-and-true menu for this evening, which left less room for error. It would be all of Nav’s greatest hits, with scattered contributions from the others—the bread Cam baked every week, salad greens harvested by Harrow, table linens laundered by Palamedes (which had been borrowed from a neighbor, but nobody needed to know that).
Harrow had come to love menus nearly as much as she loved the new routines that added a comforting rhythm to her days. Once, early on, Gideon had written out a pretentious supper menu for Harrow as a joke, trying to show off for her. She’d been caught off guard when Harrow thanked her for the courtesy.
To make a long story short, Gideon accused Harrow of making fun of her, Harrow fought back to defend her honor, and it took them nearly ten minutes of heated bickering before Gideon realized she’d been speaking in earnest.
There was now a slate menu board hanging in the kitchen next to the chore rota, where Gideon could scribble a sneak preview of the evening’s culinary offerings and assuage Harrow’s perpetual anxiety. It was one more way they were communicating. Over a very short period, it had become an anchor in Harrow’s life.
Now she began her days with ‘good morning, good morning,’ followed up with breakfast at Pyrrha’s, and ended it at the dinner table with Gideon. With those predictable bookends in place, she felt confident that she could survive nearly anything that happened in between.
She lacked that familiar confidence tonight.
How had the girl everyone feared would disappear become the willing host of a dinner party? Somehow, this night felt important. It would be proof that her promises to change had come to fruition—proof that she’d kept her word and stayed.
She just had to get through it first.
At the sound of a knock on the door, she straightened as if some unseen adept had mistaken her skeleton for a construct and given her a spine tug. “I will greet her,” she announced, although both Camilla and Palamedes had also moved to do the same.
The puppy beat them all there. She was barking and scratching at the door before Harrow even left the kitchen, manifesting the anticipation they all secretly felt. Camilla performed some sorcery, her deep voice commanding her quietly, and a second later, Fish was at heel, her little fluffy tail wagging frenetically behind her.
Harrow opened the door, and in walked Pyrrha Dve.
“Good evening,” Harrow said, prim and proper, as if she hadn’t casually insulted the woman over oatmeal earlier that very morning. The puppy was whining pitifully—the only thing she loved more than Cam was jumping all over Pyrrha—but she was trapped in a down-stay and wanted so desperately to be called a good girl that she didn’t dare budge.
“Smells great in here,” Pyrrha observed as she shut the door and stepped inside.
“Yeah, it does!” Gideon called back from the kitchen.
“Because I taught you everything you know!” Pyrrha called right back.
“Not true!” Gideon shouted again, “Harrow’s been getting me cookbooks from the library.”
“Must we scream across the entire building?” Harrow asked plaintively, her teeth on edge. Between the yelling, the whining dog, and the awkward clump of people gathered in the foyer, she was ready to call this evening a failure and pack it all in.
Oddly, her request seemed to break the ice. Suddenly, both Pyrrha and Palamedes were laughing, and even Camilla had shown the slightest twitch of a smile. Palamedes moved toward Pyrrha to initiate a hug, Cam released the dog from her mental prison, and Harrow used the distraction to take to the shadows and retreat back to the kitchen.
Communal suppers on the Ninth had been so easy. Their evening routines were based on a myriad of strict, unchanging tradition. Everyone had their assigned seat, and the hall was mostly silent until after prayers, at which time the air filled with familiar ambient sound.
Meals had been so predictable that even Harrow occasionally wished something interesting would happen to mix things up. One time out of ten, the interesting thing was a penitent faceplanting into their leeks during some sort of medical event. The other nine times, it was Gideon doing Gideon things.
It was so strange that now, in this new, peculiar life, Gideon doing Gideon things had become the familiar, comforting background noise in a loud, unpredictable world.
“So?” Gideon asked, coming to join her at the table.
“So what?”
“How did she… seem?”
“Typical,” Harrow said, clipped.
“I meant, like, was she hungry?”
“I cannot look at a person and know if they are hungry,” Harrow said, then paused. She rearranged her brow, looked up at Gideon, and asked earnestly, “Can you?”
Was there yet another sense she was missing as she moved through the world? At this point, it wouldn’t have surprised her. She barely knew when she was hungry, though she’d recently become better at noticing the cues. Camilla had said the consistency would help.
Gideon, apparently, was too busy going through her own inner struggle to provide a sufficient response. All of the fingers of one hand were threaded through her hair, tugging it from the root, and she sighed like the dog signed when no one was available to throw the ball.
Very quietly, she said, “I just hope she likes it.” Her words were almost like a prayer.
“She would be a fool not to,” Harrow assured her breezily, “She said herself that she taught you everything you know. If she doesn’t enjoy your meal, then it reflects poorly on her and her tutelage. Our company is intelligent. Everyone present will see that.”
Gideon raised her brows even as her lips remained in their pouty frown. It wasn’t clear if she believed her, but she still seemed to take some odd comfort in the assurance.
“I will put a swift end to your misery,” Harrow decided, rising to her feet in a confident contrast to Gideon’s sagging hunch, “I’ll fetch them.”
Harrow returned a moment later with the rest of the crew in tow. Palamedes seemed to have done his duty as the opening act, handling the mandatory small talk so they could all move on with their lives. Blessedly, the gathering now felt lived-in rather than stilted and forced.
At the sound of Pyrrha’s approaching laughter, Gideon sat up in her chair, likely looking far more eager than she’d intended.
“Alright, alright,” Pyrrha said at the tail end of her chuckle, settling into her seat, “Let’s show some respect for the chef. Take it away, boss.”
As Gideon stood and doled out the meal, Harrow held her breath, moistened her lips, and got to work. Her role, she decided, would be to observe the others with the same relentless vigilance the puppy used when tracking the food. Her body remained stock-still as her eyes traveled from face to face, taking in every word and gesture and filing it for internal analysis.
She noticed several things.
First, she noticed that Palamedes was keeping the conversation going—and that, in between serving snark, Camilla periodically kicked him in the ankle to remind him that he was supposed to be eating.
She noticed Pyrrha complimenting the food—and the way she occasionally changed course and took credit when Gideon looked like she was about to catch on fire from too much praise. She filed that trick away for another day.
And she noticed Gideon as she burned crimson at the positive response to her gastronomic choices (and pretended she wasn’t dropping morsels for the dog).
Noticing the others yielded an unexpected benefit for Harrow: the realization that absolutely nobody was watching her.
There were no worried glances in her direction or comments about things she might want to try. Nobody made suggestions or asked her if she was still hungry. Absolutely nothing she hadn’t asked for found its way onto her plate.
The absence of concern was a sign of trust, which made it so much easier to trust herself—a trust that was only possible because she trusted the chef.
She trusted Gideon
The problem was that Gideon clearly did not trust Gideon. Harrow had acknowledged a guarded, anticipatory quality to her conversation and body language all dinner long. She assumed it was the same anxiety she was feeling herself.
Despite the compliments and empty plates, Nav’s heightened posture did not abate. If anything, she became stiffer as the meal wound down, her laughter becoming falser and more stilted. She kept glancing toward the ice box. She was perched on the very, very edge of her chair and wouldn’t stop fiddling with her butterknife. Several times she looked like she was about to speak, then took it back.
As the final forkfuls were devoured, there was talk about retreating into the living room. Before anyone could so much as scoot their chair back, Gideon stood up, nearly knocking her chair over backward. She dropped her knife in the process, which clattered to the floor end-over-end, landing with a startling clatter.
All eyes turned to her, even the dog’s, and the whole room froze as if they were waiting for her to make a toast. For a fraction of a second, it seemed like she might.
Instead, her eyes grew large and she said, “Uh. I made a dessert.”
Pyrrha’s face erupted in a grin.
“Look at you,” Dve remarked, leaning back in her chair with a slow nod of approval, “Way to take the initiative, chef.”
“Yeah,” Gideon said stupidly, fighting to keep her disobedient lips from curving into a smile. She bent quickly to grab the knife, deposited it on the table, and then shoved her hands deep into her pockets, “Do you guys want it now, or…?”
“How’s this?” Pyrrha offered, “Let these guys clear the table, we’ll all take a minute to digest, and then we’ll come back for round two. Come sit outside with me for a few. You, too, Harrow.”
While Cam and Pal rose to do the dishes, the trio made their way out to the porch swing. They piled onto the seat just as the suns were beginning to set, squished up together on the bench, arm to arm and thigh to thigh. While Harrow’s feet didn’t quite touch the ground, Gideon and Pyrrha propelled the swing in tandem, rocking back and forth with perfect synchronicity.
The scene made a stunning triptych: portrait of three people who were finally trying.
Even two months ago, the idea of either one of them sitting this close to Harrow would have been absurd. Tonight, Harrow didn’t even squirm when Gideon placed her large, calloused hand over her own, sandwiching it atop her thigh. Meanwhile, Pyrrha’s arm was thrown over the back of the entire bench, draped neatly over their shoulders like a sinewy shawl. There was a slight breeze in the air, and Harrow could hear the sounds of the noisy night pollinators on their way to tend to the garden. She could almost feel the moon breathing, sustaining life.
If they remained there in silence, rocking in the open air, she could have fallen asleep where she sat, stomach full and body safe. It wouldn’t have been the first time. She scooted closer to Gideon, allowing her to support some of her weight. Gideon’s body straightened, and she looked down at Harrow and smiled.
Before Harrow could shut her eyes, Pyrrha cleared her throat.
“Well,” she said, “You made your own plate and cleared it. I’ll be the first to admit I had my doubts, but I didn’t know either of you half as well then. And you know what? I like being proven wrong. Now I know you know how to rise to the occasion in a big way. You’re a pair of weirdoes,” she said warmly, “but I’m glad to know you.”
“Thanks?” Gideon said.
“Don’t mention it,” Pyrrha smiled, “Thanks for giving me a chance.”
It grew quiet again. The loudest sound was the high-pitched keening of the swing creaking back and forth, back and forth.
“So,” Pyrrha said, “Do you still want to get rid of me?”
Creak. Creak. Creak. Creak.
“Don’t both speak at once,” Pyrrha smirked.
“I mean,” Gideon said after an awkward pause, “I can’t speak for Harrow, but I don’t completely hate you.”
Lately, Harrow and Gideon had spent many evenings outside after dinner, discussing books or projects and sharing tales from their lives. Pyrrha often came up in their conversations, for better or for worse. Harrow could say with confidence that this was the closest Gideon had ever come to saying something nice about Pyrrha Dve.
Luckily, Pyrrha took the statement in the spirit in which it was intended. She laughed once, amused.
“I do want to know what you’re thinking, Harrow,” Pyrrha emphasized, “Because I was thinking your girl might be ready to take over breakfast for me.”
Harrow instantly averted her gaze and began tugging at her fingers.
“If you wanted to get rid of me, Dve, you needed only to ask,” Harrow said, her steady voice betraying her bone-deep humiliation. “I have no interest in darkening your doorway if I am no longer welcome.”
She’d transferred her little pepper plant to the ground weeks ago, and her herb garden now lived in the kitchen window. The only reason she’d continued going to Pyrrha’s was because she’d made her believe she was welcome there.
How long had she secretly despised her presence?
“I’m going to stop you right there, Nonagesimus,” Pyrrha said as if she could hear her spiraling, “I’m not kicking you out. You’re welcome anytime I don’t have a sock on the doorknob, and I mean that. I’m only saying, you’ve got a pretty fantastic cook living in your house, and one of the fleeting joys of domestic life is staying in your pajamas until the last possible second.”
“I will not presume that Gideon wants another responsibility, and you shouldn’t, either.”
“It’s not really a responsibility. I’m making breakfast anyway, so it’s no big deal,” Gideon shrugged, “I know what you like, and it’s not like you even eat that much.”
It was no comfort to learn that two of the most important people in Harrow’s life were merely willing to tolerate her if necessary. When had she reverted to the habit of mindlessly consuming—consuming energy, consuming time, consuming space?
Suddenly, the meal she’d just finished felt too heavy in her stomach. She could feel the uncomfortable fullness with every heartbeat. Between that and the rocking, her mouth filled with her saliva, and she worried she would be sick.
“I can procure my own breakfast,” Harrow said suddenly, “I don’t care for dessert. Continue without me.”
With that, she squirmed out of her seat and stalked off toward the back of the house. Though it was getting dark, she knelt beside the little raised bed she’d started out there, fruitlessly searching for the weeds she’d vanquished earlier that morning. She sighed pitifully at her peppers, brows drawing tightly toward her nose as she wrapped her arms around her abdomen. She’d been so prepared to call this dinner a success, and it had to end like this.
“Hey, Harrow,” Gideon called as she rounded the corner, and all Harrow could do was sit up straight, square her shoulders, and try to make herself bigger in self-defense.
Pyrrha was right behind her, muttering, “My bad, my bad, my bad.”
“I don’t understand why you can’t follow a simple instruction. Was ‘continue without me’ unclear?” Harrow snapped at the ground. “For your sake, I regret that it’s too late in the evening to find a translator who speaks fluent imbecile. You’ll have to read my body language,” she said, turning away.
“I’m not the imbecile. Pyrrha’s the imbecile,” Gideon shot back mildly, coming to sit on the lip of the raised bed.
“Guilty,” Pyrrha confirmed.
“She wasn’t trying to get rid of you. She was trying to invite herself over to our place.”
Harrow said nothing.
“A woman can only make so much toast in her old age,” Pyrrha said, shrugging. “Can you blame me for trying to delegate a little? Plus, I could be off base, so correct me if I’m wrong, but I didn’t think eating breakfast together would be a big hardship.”
“It’s not,” Gideon said, “You do things for your friends. Friends spend time together. And we’re friends, right?”
Humiliatingly, Harrow’s lower lip began trembling of its own accord.
“You have to ask?” she questioned softly, a note of genuine hurt in her voice.
Gideon turned around. “Hey, Pyrrha,” she said, “Can you fuck off for a second? Thanks.”
To her credit, Pyrrha did, in fact, fuck off, muttering all the way. Once her footsteps retreated, Gideon bumped Harrow with her knee.
“Hey,” she said.
“What.”
“We talked about this.”
“About what, Griddle? I require far more specificity.”
“About you believing me, remember? When I say things?” Gideon prompted, “Why is your first instinct to assume I’m lying?”
“I didn’t assume you were lying, I merely assumed—” Harrow trailed off. What had she assumed? She licked her lips. “I assumed a lack of enthusiasm,” she said, “I don’t want you to say things because you feel coerced.”
“The point is, you assumed anything. I know I don’t always say things perfectly, but sometimes, you don’t always hear things perfectly. Like, if I say ‘it’s no big deal,’ it shouldn’t be my fault if you hear ‘I don’t give a shit.’ and walk away all mad.”
Harrow, who had never lived in a world where people said exactly what they meant, found this observation perplexing. Every conversation she’d ever had required a hundred calculations and hypotheses under the surface.
A thousand times, she had pummeled Gideon with a hoard of skeletons to say ‘I love you.’ A thousand times, she had sharpened and slung the cruelest words in her arsenal to say, ‘You are the most important person in my life.’ Gideon had always replied in the same bloody, vicious language of barbs and bruises.
Perhaps Harrow was the one who needed the imbecile translator. Her tongue felt large and ineffective in her mouth. She was afraid if she spoke, it would be nonsense—or worse, cruelty. She said nothing.
“I do it, too. I did it with the menu thing a couple of weeks ago,” Gideon emphasized, “But at least I’m trying to get better about it.”
“I am also trying.”
“Then, do you think you could stop assuming for, like, one minute and listen?” Gideon begged, “not just to what I say, but—can you try to listen to what I do?
Harrow shook her head, confused.
“Come on, Harrow. You’re not that oblivious. I make you dinner practically every night. I hang out with you on the swing and let you drool all over me when you fall asleep. I even leave out the bread for you so you can eat it crunchy-style. You really think I do all that because I secretly hate you and want you to go away?”
“But Pyrrha—”
“—is old as hell and has no fucking tact to speak of,” Gideon continued. “She’s the same asshole who introduced herself to me by telling me she fucked my mum. She doesn’t mean to be a jerk. She just comes off like one sometimes. Maybe I do, too. I don’t know,” Gideon sighed. Perhaps without realizing it, she’d begun squeezing Harrow’s hand very tightly, but it didn’t hurt.
Harrow almost wished she’d squeeze harder.
“Listen, Nonagesimus,” Gideon continued, “I know you, so I get why you normally see the worst in people first, but I guess, at a certain point, I just assumed I’d stop being people.”
All at once, Gideon let go of Harrow’s hand, leaving it cold and gently throbbing. Sighing, she pushed the heels of her palms into her eyes.
Harrow recalled her recent vigilance at suppertime—how noticing what people were and weren't doing had led to peace of mind in an otherwise stressful and uncertain situation. Perhaps that was the key to translating Gideon's intentions moving forward. She would recall the warmth of her large, rough hands as she looked for the kindnesses.
That, she realized, would require her to trust her own experience of reality, which was easier said than done. Perhaps that was something she’d be ready to discuss in the future, but tonight wasn’t the night.
She supposed there was always breakfast.
Bereft of words, Harrow removed her palms from her eyes, looked Gideon in the face, and responded in Nav’s language. She reached for her hand, turned it over, and gently planted a soft kiss on her palm before folding her fingers over it.
“Yeah, Harrow,” Gideon smiled, “I forgive you. Ready to head back in?”
Harrow nodded.
The first thing they encountered as they walked back around to the front door was Pyrrha on the swing, smoking a cigarette in the waning light. She looked eerie, all swathed in smoke, her gaze far away. When she noticed them, she gave them a little wave and snubbed it out.
“Kiss and make up?” she asked, to which Harrow instantly replied, “No,” at the exact same time that Gideon said,“Yop.” Pyrrha just raised her brows and gave her head a shake. Neither of them provided further context. Instead, Harrow took a step forward, standing directly across from where Pyrrha sat.
“I would like to continue eating breakfast with you,” she declaimed, “Whether it is at your home or ours is inconsequential.”
“Great,” Pyrrha said, “Then at the end of the week, I’ll host you two for pikelets.”
Harrow blushed in anticipation. She could already imagine the terrible cacophony once the two of them started singing and dancing on pikelet day.
Perhaps this change in routine wouldn’t be as detrimental as she assumed. Maybe her bookends were just moving a little further apart, which meant there’d be more space in between for stories.
“But first,” Pyrrha continued, “I was told there’d be a dessert?”
When they walked back into the house, Camilla and Palamedes were on the floor in front of the living room table with mugs of coffee, working on another puzzle. Fish’s head was resting in Cam’s lap, but she lifted it up curiously as Harrow, Gideon, and Pyrrha stepped through the door.
Thrilled at the return of her friends, the puppy got up and jogged an enthusiastic loop around the three of them, only stopping when Gideon tackled her to the ground.
“Hey, chef, dishes or bowls?” Pyrrha asked as Gideon wrestled the dog, oblivious to the world around her.
“Oh, uh,” Gideon said, wincing as the puppy licked her eyeball, “Bowls for everyone but Harrow. Harrow gets a plate.”
“Got it,” Pyrrha said, heading into the kitchen to set up.
“Why do I get a plate?” Harrow asked as Gideon flipped over onto her stomach, allowing Fish to play king of the mountain on her back.
“I made you something different,” Gideon muttered into the floor.
“Why?”
“So you wouldn’t have to sit there and lie about liking something sweet and mushy to avoid hurting my feelings,” Gideon explained, and suddenly everything she’d said outside came into stark, crystal-clear focus.
Listen to what I do, she’d said, and Harrow had, but this was the first time she recognized the bigger picture. There was a grander lexical pattern to the small acts that had touched her deeply over the past several weeks.
A slice of bread in her bedroom. No meat in the soup. A different dessert.
Roughly translated: I love you, I love you, I love you.
Harrow looked down and found Gideon’s hand with her eyes. Even though the dog was perched atop her bum, her fingers were still clenched around Harrow’s tiny, impulsive kiss, as if she could keep it safe if she held it tightly enough.
Rather than drowning in her guilt, Harrow found herself excited by the prospect of drafting a missive in response—a thoughtful favor, a book from the library, a particularly handsome flower from the garden for her lapel. She might not be fluent in this new language immediately, but all Gideon had asked was that she try.
It was only recently, in Pyrrha’s kitchen, that Harrow recognized that trying and succeeding could be mutually exclusive. In this case, if she failed, at least she would fail kindly.
“Are you coming, or should I dig into this thing myself?” Pyrrha asked, popping her head out of the doorway.
“Coming! Coming!” Gideon called back from underneath the dog. Once she’d pushed her off and stood, she looked at the others. “You’re all coming, right?”
“Sure.”
“We wouldn’t miss it.”
“Of course, Griddle. Don’t be foolish.”
Even little Fish produced an enthusiastic ‘Boof!’
“Great,” Gideon grinned, and they all followed behind her, to love her in her own language.