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gideon

[gideon]

Maeve has no idea what she's walking into.

She had offered, though, and Gideon is one of her closest friends, and so she has her bag slung over her shoulder, shoulders hunched against a bit of rain that pricks at her face as she walks toward Gideon's building. She'd thought her own arrival was bad, but the idea that Gideon is dead keeps rolling over in her mind and she doesn't know what to make of it, doesn't even know what to think.

But Maeve, for all her attempts to keep to herself and for every irritated word she spits out against people as a whole, she's also unwaveringly loyal to the people who earn it, to those who deserve it. And Gideon does.

So freaked out or not, she's headed there now, texting Steve to let him know she'll be out for the evening, she'll talk to him when she gets home again. She keeps up texting with him for awhile, passing the walk, letting him ease her anxiety a bit when he sends her a picture of a cute dog he'd seen at work.

She's pretty lucky with Steve and by the time she reaches Gideon's building, she's a little more relaxed. She doesn't know how long it'll last, though, and as she buzzes Gideon's flat, she brings her hand to her mouth, chewing on her ragged thumbnail.

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"Because...I knew something. That Harrow couldn't afford to get out into the air. So she was never, ever going to let me go." She sighs and lifts her mug, taking a sip of her tea. "So Harrow's parents were in charge. Reverend Farther. Reverend Mother. Which would have been fine, only, they'd been dead since I was eleven and Harrow was ten. She figured out how to...puppet then." She sets down her mug again. "Basically a huge bag of ass and Harrow couldn't afford me opening my mouth and giving the game away."

She shrugs.

"So I kept trying to run away."

"What?" Maeve asks, blinking. "She faked her parents being alive? For that long? How?"

That isn't even beginning to touch on how unfair it is to expect someone to stay just to keep a secret. Gideon should have been able to do whatever she needed, whatever she wanted, and while Maeve has promised herself she'll try to go into this all without judgment, it makes her a little angry on Gideon's behalf.

"I was eleven and she was ten," says Gideon, turning her mug against the table. "And we were seventeen and eighteen when we left for Cannan House." She shrugs. "She's the best necromancer of her generation. Of any generation, probably. She's..." Something in her face softens. "She's astounding."

"Wait, so when you say puppet, you mean..." Maeve pauses, takes a breath. "Like, literal puppets."

Because that's what a necromancer is. Maeve has read enough speculative fiction to understand that much and she has no idea what to think of that. What to say.

Instead she says, "What's Cannan House?"

"Yop. She did a good job on the faces but she kind of... botched it from the shoulders down." She makes a face. "Not good." She'd expected to feel more guilty telling Maeve this but maybe she'd broken the seal when she'd told the Warden.

"We were the Ninth House; Canaan House is on the First," she says. "It's where the Resurrection began." She picks up her mug and takes a sip of her tea. "Harrow was summoned. As the heir of her house. Her and her Cavalier were supposed to go and compete for Lyctorhood - undying saints who serve the King Undying."

"I... have no idea what any of this means," Maeve admits with a soft breath that might be laughter and might be something else. She's trying to follow what Gideon is telling her, but so far all she's got is that Harrow made literal puppets of her parents and then she and Gideon had to go somewhere to compete for something.

To serve some king. It all sounds like more pressure than anyone deserves to live with.

"That's because it's completely fucking absurd," says Gideon, huffing out a breath and taking a sip of her tea. "The Emperor became God. God became the Emperor. The most necromanciest necromancer of them all. We went to Canaan House because Harrow wanted to serve him. She went as an adept, and I went as her Cavalier." She tries to think of a simpler way to put it to Maeve. "Her sworn sword. Her bodyguard."

"What does that mean? For... for both of you? Serving someone like that?"

Maeve has no idea what this person -- Emperor, God, whatever -- was like. Maybe he was kind or maybe he was a shit, but either way, serving someone doesn't exactly sound like it's a good time. She can't understand wanting that, but she's trying to be openminded and remind herself that her life and Gideon's life have been very, very different.

"It's... complicated," says Gideon. She's telling Maeve a story in a vaguely linear fashion and she doesn't know if she's ready to spill what she'd finally figured out about the Lyctoral process. "For Harrow, it meant a chance to renew the Ninth to former glories. There's...not a lot that she cares about more than that." She rubs the end of her nose. "Do you want to skip to the end or do you want to hear what happened next? I was, you know...in it, so it's difficult for me to have perspective here."

"I want you to tell me whatever is important to be told," Maeve says honestly. It might be a lot of information, much of which she doesn't fully understand, but she's here for Gideon.

When it comes to her friends, there's not a lot Maeve won't do. Even if the information is hard to process, she's here to listen, she's here to be a support.

"I honestly don't know what's important anymore," says Gideon, a wave of tiredness spilling over her. She curls her hands around her mug and glances at her bedroom door. "Is it weird that I kind of want to tell you the whole stupid, awful thing, just so someone who wasn't there for it knows?"

"So tell me," Maeve answers. She might not understand all the nuances and all the details, but she's here to listen. "Sometimes you need to, you know? Just... get it all out there with someone who cares."

That's pretty rich coming from her, considering she likes to keep everything to herself and doesn't like the idea of burdening her friends with her bullshit. But on the flip side, if someone she loves wants to talk, she doesn't consider it a burden or bullshit.

Gideon smiles, faintly, shifting her leg under the table so that she can nudge Maeve's knee with hers.

"It's a really shitty, ridiculous story," she says. "So, the necromancers were all...in competition, I guess? And Harrow promptly fucked off and left me to my own devices, but only after she'd told me that I couldn't talk to anyone, so there I was - robes, skull paint, the whole nine years. Looking like a complete Bone nun douchebag. And, remember, I'm not a proper fucking cavalier, so I was just...faking it for all I was worth."

"Why couldn't you talk to anyone?" Maeve asks. "It's kind of fucked to tell you that."

Especially if Gideon was all alone. Alone and trying to fake something and unable to talk to anyone at all. That sounds painfully lonely and while Maeve is used to loneliness, she still thinks it sounds awful.

"She didn't trust me not to put my foot in it, I guess. Plus she's got a tendency towards being a massive fucking control freak." The twitch of the corner of her mouth is almost fond, even if she is still angry. "Anyway, eventually, we worked out that we had to...complete trials so that we could earn keys? The first one was fighting this big bone construct, a really ugly fucker. And Harrow has to be..in my head for it. Use my eyes. It felt fucking weird."

And, as it turned out, had been a huge fucking spoiler for what was eventually going to happen.

Honestly, that doesn't sound like a proper friend, someone who doesn't even trust Gideon to speak, and Maeve's mouth tightens a little, but she tries to cover it with a sip of her tea.

"That sounds bloody awful," she says honestly. "Having someone else inside you like that. You had to fight with her inside your head like that? Why?"

Maeve doesn't do a great job of hiding the look on her face and Gideon smirks, picking up her own mug.

"I needed to know where to hit it to beat it," she says. "And I can't normally see thanergetic signatures because, you know. Not a necromancer." She sips her tea. "But I could see them with her in my head."

"Maybe this is a stupid question, but why didn't she do the fighting herself?" Maeve asks. "Why is it necessary to get into someone else's head and have them do all the hard work?"

What if something had happened to Gideon? Something that couldn't be undone? Maeve swallows as she realizes something had happened to Gideon and maybe it was only Darrow that had been able to undo it.

"Because it needed doing with a sword," says Gideon, her smirk crooked, her hands curled around her mug. "And her arms are basically noodles."

She shrugs.

"Anyway. That was only the first test. They got worse."

"Maybe she should lift weights," Maeve replies, knowing it isn't fair, knowing she's going to have to at least fake liking Harrow at first. Nothing she's heard so far makes her seem all that special, except the fact that Gideon likes her.

But Maeve knows how easy it is to like someone just because they've always been around.

"So they got worse and you had to face them all?" she asks.

"Don't think I haven't told her that," says Gideon. She shakes her head. "We didn't do all of them. Harrow didn't see the point if someone else got there first - it there wasn't a prize at the end of it." She remembers the realisation that they could have gone through the Avulsion room and found nothing at the end. "Pal and Cam did all of them, I think. Except there was one that...Pal wouldn't do." Her eyebrows draw together at the memory. "We did that one."

These are other names Maeve knows only in passing, from Gideon having mentioned them before, and she knows at least one of them is in Darrow already. Pal, she thinks, but she also doesn't know that many people.

"Why not?" she asks. "Why wouldn't he do that one?"

And why did Gideon have to do it in instead? Is that the thing that killed her? Maeve doesn't know that she wants these answers.

"Because he figured out the cost before he did it," says Gideon. "It basically...okay. So there was this box at the end of this...tunnel. And a field that like...stripped life away? And the only way to get from one end to the other was to draw on a source of thalergy - like...life energy - outside the force field. Pal reckoned he could do it, but it would probably have ended up with permanent brain damage for his Cav, Cam." She rolls one broad shoulder in a shrug. "Either Harrow thought she could get through without that...or she didn't bother to think about it."

For a moment Maeve can't say anything. She sits there, her rapidly cooling mug of tea held between her hands and all she can do is just look at Gideon. At her friend across the table, sitting there, talking about someone risking her like that without even thinking about it.

"What the fuck?"

It's the only thing she can think to say. She wants to march down the hall to Gideon's room and pull this girl out of the bed and kick her square in the bloody teeth. She doesn't. She stays put, but only because she doesn't think Gideon would want her to do anything.

"It's okay, man," says Gideon, her voice lighter than the expression on her face, the look in her tea coloured eyes. "I'm like...ninety percent sure that my brain is totally fine. It hurt like a fucking bitch, though." She rubs her face with her hands. "So we got through that and then...people started dying. All around us. Necros. Cavs. Dropping like flies."

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