#1flesh

gideon has a knack for sensing when someone is staring at her. people might stare because of the hair,  but more likely it’s because she’s so ungodly gorgeous. the tinkle of the café bell alone is not enough to snag her attention, but in the corner of her eye she sees that the black crow that has strolled inside stopped dead and seems to be fixated on her. so, she glanced up, expecting someone needing assistance, and instead found a terribly familiar hag.

it all happened in about three seconds, not enough time for harrow to turn tail, so instead they just locked eyes while gideon’s expression grew a grin and harrow’s went stony.

she flips a hand towel over her shoulder and starts reeling in an imaginary rope lassoed around harrow, pulling her in until she’s right at the bar counter. she leans both hefty arms over and tilts her head, strands of bright red falling out of place.

IT’S PROBABLY THE GREATEST THING TO EVER HAPPEN TO GIDEON. it’s greater than when she got her hands on a whole stack of new comic books with girls wider than they are tall. its greater than a huge hot meal with extra servings and dessert to match.  

you see, gideon has gotten home earlier than expected, that is to say, earlier than she told harrow she would be. she wanted to bring home dinner and surprise her ( or ruin her evening ) by showing up a whole day early. she expected harrow to be off somewhere with her nose in a book or pondering a bone or something; not adorned in a shirt a few sizes larger than her that definitely belongs to gideon looking like a deer in headlights.

gideon smiles.

GIDEON SHOULD NOT BE AWAKE. she died yesterday, or came so close she got a whiff of stinking death coming to peel her soul from her used-up body. it felt like someone poked a straw in her insides and sucked out everything that made her alive, then stuck fishhooks into all her nerves and yanked. but gideon is alive, and that is good enough.

in theory, she should’ve slept for a week straight after the avulsion challenge, but instead she found herself rousing the following morning to a quiet shuffling around the room and peeled her heavy eyelids open. a headache rammed against her skull and the paint felt crusty over her poor pores. she shifted, elbow digging into the mattress to try and draw herself into a sitting position an unpleasant push to her right shoulder.

there’s some vicious lance of delight at doing something harrow hadn’t accounted for, embarrassingly similar to the childlike glee of managing to win. she always dug her grubby little nails into those infrequent times she’d pull one over on harrow, and when the fallout was unpleasant, it was still nice to know she’d pissed her off.

now, there will be no fallout. it is only gideon, the envy of all cadavers, in all her vampirish glory that she hadn’t even asked for. and harrow isn’t holding the leash anymore.  

she touches a hand of waxen skin to her chest in feigned shock, tilting her head toward harrow so the wound in her throat yawns.

it was within her grasp. she could feel the beating heart of her life rousing in the palm of her hand as she watched the ninth shrink through the window of the escape pod. it should have worked— she had always believed, for no apparent reason she can define in hindsight, that if she made it off the planet, she’d be free of harrow forever. her leash would be cut and she’d be on her own to carve out a life for herself.

what happened instead is that harrow hunted her down. she wasn’t even gone a full day, just long enough to get a taste of freedom before it was crushed to dust. harrow did not just thwart her escape attempt, but she proved that even making it off planet isn’t enough to escape a paranoid, obsessive, power-hungry hag who gets off to killing any avenue of relief gideon might get a whiff of.

from where she lay facing the wall, she rolls onto her side to instead eye the cell door.

gideon dozes lightly, just skimming the surface of sleep when she feels a weight sink into her lap. she jolts out of her doze, embarrassingly a name slipping off her tongue—

“ harrow? ”

gideon nav has attracted a second shadow. her first balances a rapier with a posture aiglamene might make her eat her sword for, and the second looks like a poised vulture. she shoots her a look over her broad shoulder.

thunder ripples over the black horizon as gideon prays the traction left on her sneakers is enough to keep her from eating shit running home. she’s soaked to the bone by the time she stuffs her key into the front door and throws it open.

she kicks off her boots and leaves them to be a tripping hazard before harrow’s morning classes. her jacket follows next, and she drapes it on the dusty ass lazy-boy that came with the place as she disappears into the hallway.

her shirt is halfway off by the time she flicks on the dim bedroom light, and she hastily shoves it back down wide-eyed upon realizing her bed is occupied.

a thin shadow wrapped in the cushy orange comforter gideon knows harrow wishes was hers even though it clashes hideously with her aesthetic. it’s the most comfortable thing either of them own.

she flicks the light back off hastily before her thoughts catch up with her. she stands in the cracked doorway for a moment, certain harrow must have woken up. for some reason it is very important to her that harrow isn’t disturbed. probably because she’ll act like a huge annoying bitch about it.