complexfemalecharacter

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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"What was that?" Maeve asks.

She tries not to let any wariness to creep into her tone, although she worries she might not want to hear the response. Everything Gideon says just creeps closer and closer toward being the reason she died and Maeve is still trying to figure out how to settle with that.

"I figured it out," she says, turning her cup by the rim. She doesn't look at Maeve for this part. "Lyctorhood. The megatheorum. Well, not the theorem, but I knew what I had to do." She swallows, lifting one hand to ruffle her fingers through her hair. "I never sword the oath that Cavaliers swear to their necros because, you know. Not a real Cavalier. But I knew what it was by then." She raises her mug in a lazy toast, her amber eyes flicking to Maeve's face. "One flesh. One end."

"Well that doesn't sound good," Maeve answers, the dry tone disguising what she really feels. At least in part, she hopes, because by now she also knows Gideon knows her well enough to have her figured out. The dry, smart-ass remarks are as much armour as her jewelry and her makeup and all the black she wears to make herself appear more intimidating.

"So what?" she asks. "You figured it out and you... sacrificed yourself? To stop someone who wanted to kill a god?" Maeve doesn't believe in god, she doesn't believe in an afterlife or anything like that, and she sure as hell doesn't think a real, physical person can be any sort of god either.

Gideon nods. She still doesn't look at Maeve - looking up right then feels like it expose too much, like stripping naked in the middle of the kitchen.

"It was the easiest thing in the world in the end," she says. "All I had to do was fall, and know that I was dying before her. So I wouldn't have to watch if she did."

She didn't help but think about Pal and Cam right then.

"Jesus Christ," Maeve says and she releases her mug finally, rubbing both hands over her face. Like with Sean, she wants to be mad. She wants to get up from the table and shove Gideon and ask her why she would do something so fucking stupid, but Maeve knows she doesn't understand Gideon's world properly.

"And now she's here and she's pissed at you?" she asks as she drops her hands.

"Sort of," says Gideon. "She's been angry with me about something our whole lives though.". Two hundred dead children wasn't her story to tell, so she keeps that part behind her teeth. "In this case, she sees it less as a suicide and more as a murder and she...went to some fucking extreme lengths to stop the process completing."

"And did she?"

More and more, Maeve doesn't know what she thinks of Harrow. The way it sounds, if someone had treated her like that, Maeve would have walked away and never looked back. But she's always had an easy time in cutting people off. She's been on her own for so long, she knows she would never keep someone around if they couldn't be kind.

Except she kept Otis around, no matter how bloody stupid he got.

"She did," says Gideon, something sullen smoldering in her golden eyes for a moment. "Rolled a stone over me. Don't know what I think about it yet. But... It was the one thing I ever really chose in my life and she couldn't even let me have that."

"Why do you care so much about her?" Maeve asks and she regrets the words the moment they're out, but they're out there anyway. She can't take them back and she doesn't think she really wants to.

"It doesn't sound like she gives a damn about you," she says honestly. "It sounds like she was lonely and selfish and kept you around because she needed you, but never gave you anything in return and that's a shite way to be a friend."

It's a question that Gideon doesn't entirely have an answer to. She'd started to realise something on the First, something that had felt formless and painful until a couple of hours ago when she'd seen Harrow for the first time in months and something coalesced. She rolls one shoulder.

"I love her." Her coppery eyebrows draw together. "I'm in love with her."

"That doesn't mean you have to put up with being treated like..." Maeve trails off and gestures. "I love my mum, but I still wouldn't let her live with me again. Not after all the shit she did."

It isn't exactly the same, but in the end, Maeve still thinks manipulation and abuse are what they are. Romantic love, familial love, people just use it all as a reason to treat someone like garbage and she doesn't think anyone needs to put up with that.

"Things started to change, before," says Gideon. She lowers her head to rest in her hands. "I've...got to believe they can keep changing. Maybe they can't." She looks up at her friend and rolls one shoulder in a shrug. "But I've got to try."

Maeve hates that she can understand exactly what Gideon is saying, but she can. She does. She'd wanted Erin to change so badly that she'd let her back into her life even knowing it probably wasn't going to be any different than before. She'd done the same with Sean. All these people who have disappointed her, abandoned her, and she just keeps grasping at them.

So she nods, chewing her lower lip before she says, "Just make sure you're not the only one trying."

She nods and then, after a moment, she slides her hand the table, turning it palm up and wiggling her fingers at Maeve. "I promise," she says, with a lopsided smile. "Cross my heart."

[gideon]

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