[greed got tired of texting, and they seem to pause at the question.]
Ah. Not entirely, but more that you're more motivated than several of the other participants.
[they're not always great at actually complimenting people or even really being nice but it's an attempt to say harrow's still one of the people that continues to impress them enough.]
[She knows he was just trying to compliment her. It's just her obnoxious way to turn compliments back on people.
Anyway, please do not let that be a reference to her banging a goth chick. When Takeru didn't get the prize it put the fear into her that she'd outed herself.]
. . . Am I? How odd that is, considering I don't even know what I'm fighting for.
[That's. . . not even a question she's ever given much consideration to.]
The Reverend Daughter of the Ninth House is no one's fool. The idea that I would be granted my fondest desires for nothing more than a peaceful stay and a little 'indulgence' is absurd. I cannot have failed to account for the danger, the possibility that more would be asked of me, the possibility of a trap or a betrayal.
But I agreed to be here, for the sake of one thing. I could have asked for anything else. I could have asked for the power to return to the Ninth House, the Tomb. I could have asked for the means to save my own life. Instead, I know that what I asked was related to - that which I must call the work, because that is all I know of it. [She knows what little she does from the writings of her former self, sternly warning her that she must not interfere with "the work" at all costs.] Whatever it is that the work is, I believed it important enough to agree. All I can do is trust that I have not misjudged myself. That it truly was worth these efforts.
[...that seems to be an answer they deem acceptable, a clawed hand coming up to wrap around their opposite arm loosely.]
To trust yourself is a difficult task regardless. And yet I believe you may not have been misled at all.
[they would say something about that, and they seem to turn their head toward her, but it's unfortunate that it's memshare week so harrow gets a treat, ending at "But if you can't, then you will be powerless to change the ending of this story."]
[I honestly don't know how to have her respond to this because shes from bone space and the concept that Greed is just a guy who has an office job is blowing her mind a little bit.
No, but. . . honestly. The part where he says they're just human, they're just lawyers, not heroes, startles her. Greed feels - like such an authority to her, automatically, and yet he's from a place so alien to her that she cannot really fathom it.
And yet she can relate to what he describes. The need to be perfect, to win, to prove oneself, and the utter hollowness that comes with that, whether it be in victory or defeat. The oddest part is the small, sad, longing part of her who wishes she had someone who had cared enough about Harrow Nonagesimus the person to have undone her pretensions before they swept her to the lonely halls of the Mithraeum, broken to learn that she was not the genius she believed after all, and without her genius there was so little point of her. No point, in fact, except for the work.]
I. . . you truly are a human. After Despair, I had thought. . .
[His reveal was more in line with what she'd been expecting, honestly.
. . . And then she realizes she probably ought not to have acknowledged it, that surely this was why he was texting her to begin with despite expressing that he preferred to speak in person.]
[harrow. honestly that's a mood though and i respect her. greed, on the other hand, seems to find that reaction interesting. are they annoyed that this happened? well, yeah, because they're the kind of person who really would love to never have to share memories with anyone ever. but simultaneously they seem almost-resigned to this.
she may get the feeling they're raising an eyebrow though from under their hood.]
Questionably. [what in the hell does that mean. but they do flex their clawed hand slightly. though, they're curious, and at least they're not really offended by that statement.] Are you disappointed?
No. [She answers immediately, to her own surprise, because she sort of thought she was disappointed. All of her Lyctoral teachers on the Mithraeum were so hateful, aside from the Emperor himself and even he - it pains her to admit it. He spoke so many kind words to her. He said that he thought of her like a daughter. He sat by her bedside during her convalescence. But the words and the actions never lined up with one thing - the Saint of Duty tried to kill her again and again, leaving her broken and traumatized in the aftermath, unable to sleep, and her God never lifted a finger to help her no matter how she begged. And her God had brought her to Canaan House in the first place, led her in her ignorance to committing the cardinal sin, though it seemed to have pained him to have done so.
She. . . would much rather have had a teacher who didn't bother so much with kind words and praise of her genius and access to advanced theorems, but rather one who wanted to teach her how to be a person. She's always had to scramble for that so very on her own.
But no, it doesn't disappoint her. It makes sense. Being "only" a human being. . . is a precious thing. It is so much easier, when you have left humanity behind, to discard the lives of other humans.]
I was surprised, but I also. . . understand now, a little better, why you are so resolute in your understanding of the value of a life.
[Not because he's just a human - plenty of humans are monstrous. She refers, instead, to the easy admission that is what he is and what he ought to be.]
It is as you say; my whole life has been in a lesson in the pursuit of power and perfection at the expense of all else, and it is a terrible thing to live with.
[And I'll give you her memshare now. I wasn't going to give you this one, because it is so deep in the fucked up bone lore and I didn't want to make Edgeworth deal with it, but I kind of have to.
You in a darkened, marbled room, in a cold green swimming pool. The door is bolted shut, held in place by your skeletons. Beside you is the looming, angry, distrusting figure of Gideon Nav. For reasons that are baffling to you she followed you here when you asked, but you know she is itching for a fight. You and she have fought so many times before - you grew up as children together, and your brawls were legendarily bloody, as nasty as two children who truly hate one another can be.
What you must do now is more difficult. An hour earlier, Gideon found the preserved head of the murdered Seventh House cavalier among your belongings. It is not a shock what conclusions she came to before it was confirmed his death predated your arrival at Canaan House, but it did hurt.
You brought Gideon Nav here under duress, blackmailed, to pretend to be your cavalier primary, because you thought what you needed was a skilled sword by your side. Instead, you find that what you need is her trust. I need you to trust me, you had asked her, and I need you to be trustworthy, her response. Which. Fair. If you are to have her trust, you must now spill your secrets.
"Are we here for a reason," Gideon asks, her voice echoing around the marble halls.
"The Ninth House has a secret, Nav," you tell her, attempting to make your voice as calm and reasonable as you can. "And we could never discuss it, unless - this was my mother's rule - we were immersed in salt water. We kept a ceremonial pool for the purpose, hidden from the rest of the House. It was cold and deep and I hated every moment I was in it. But my mother is dead, and I find now that — if I really am to betray my family's most sacred trust — I am obliged at the least to keep, intact, her rule.”
Gideon blinked. "Oh shit," she says. "You really meant it. This is it. This is go time."
"This is go time,” you agree.
Gideon swept both of her hands through her hair, trickles going down the back of her neck and into her sodden collar. Eventually, all she said was, "Why?"
"The reasons are multitudinous," you say. "I had — intended to let you know some of it, before. If I had told you my suspicions about the Seventh House cavalier on the first day, none of this would have happened.”
"The first day?" she asks, incredulous. But, yes. The instant you saw him, you recognized that he was already dead, perfectly preserved as a living corpse, a technique only a powerful necromancer could achieve. A technique you are very familiar with.
"Griddle," you say. "I have not puppeted around my own parents for five years and learned nothing."
This only makes her angrier. "Why the hell didn't you tell me when you killed him?”
"I didn't kill him,” you insist. "Someone else did — blade through the heart, from what I saw. I only had to push the theorem the most basic bit before he came apart."
"No, you monster’s ass," says Gideon coldly. "I mean, why didn't you tell me you'd killed him before you sent Jeannemary and her necromancer down to the facility to look for the guy who was in a box in your closet? Why didn't you take the moment to say, I don't know, Let's not send two children downstairs to get fucked up by a huge bone creature.”
You exhale. "I panicked,” you admit. "At the time I thought I was sending you down a blind tunnel, and that the real danger was Sextus and Septimus; that either one might ambush you, and that the sensible solution was to take them both on myself. My plan was to get you clear of a necromantic duel. At the time I even thought it elegant."
The paint is dripping from Gideon's face. "Nonagesimus, all you had to do was delay, tell me you were freaking out. All you had to do was say that Dulcinea's cav was a mummy man —"
"I had reason to believe," you say, with not a little bitterness, "that you would trust her more than you trusted me." Gideon glowers at this answer. "I wanted to do enough research to present you with a cut-and-dry case. I had no idea what it would mean for the Fourth House." Your voice is a little emotional, thinking of the two dead teenagers. "The Ninth is deep in their blood debt and I am undone by the expense. I — I did not want to hurt you, Griddle! I didn't want to disturb your — equilibrium."
"Harrow," said Gideon, staring at you. "If my heart had a dick you would kick it."
You do not understand how this conversation is going so badly, how all of your explanations only make this worse. "I did not want to alienate you more than I already had. And then it seemed as though - " you have no idea how to admit this next part, the tiny, fragile growing atom of trust that had sparked between the two of you despite your lifeline enmity " - we were on a more even footing. Our — we — It was too tenuous to risk. And then. . . ”
"Harrow," says Gideon, slowly. "If I hadn't gone to Palamedes - and I nearly didn't go to Palamedes - I would have waited for you in our room with our sword drawn, and I would and gone for you. I was so convinced that you were behind everything. That you'd killed Jeannemary and Isaac, Magnus and Abigail."
You're stumbling even more. "I - I didn't. I don't. I would never have - and I know."
"You would have killed me," Gideon accuses.
"Or vice versa," you admit.
Gideon spends a moment weighing this over in her mind. "Okay. Question time, then. Who did all the murders."
You float in the water, thoughtful. "I can't say, sorry. That's not a fruitful line of inquiry. We're being pursued by revenants, or it's all part of the test, or one or more of us is picking off the others. The murders of the Fourth and Fifth may be connected, or not. The bone fragments don't match, naturally, but I believe their very particle formation points to - "
Gideon interrupts. "Harrow, don't make me drown myself."
"My conclusion," you continue, "if that if the murders are linked, and not the work of some revenant, it is one of us. We are the only living beings in Canaan House. Septimus has something of an alibi - "
"Yes, being nearly dead," Gideon grumbles. Her ridiculous affection for Dulcinea Septimus, the lovely invalid Seventh necromancer, is a source of constant irritation to you, but in this case she is correct.
"I admit I have downgraded her as a suspect in some respects. Logically, judging by ability and mind, it is Palamedes Sextus and his cavalier -" Gideon starts to interrupt, because again, to your irritation, your academic rival is seemingly. . . a good person, who could have put all blame on you if he had wanted to and instead chose to convince Gideon to give you the chance to explain yourself. "No, I realize neither has a fucking motive. A logical conclusion is worth very little without all the facts, which we do not have."
Unsatisfied with the answer to that question, Gideon moves on to another, more terrible. "What do you know about the conditioner pathogen that bumped off all the little kids on the Ninth, that happened when I was little, before you were born?"
You're silent for a long time, and when you speak, it feels like some else's voice coming out of your mouth. "It didn't happen before I was born. Or at least, that's not precise enough. It happened before I was even conceived. My mother needed to carry a child to term, and that child needed to be a necromancer to fulfill the role as heir to the Locked Tomb. But we hardly had access to the foetal care technology available to other houses. She had tried and had failed already, and she was getting old. She had one chance, and she couldn't afford chance."
"You can't control whether you're carrying a necro," Gideon protested.
"Yes, you can," you said slowly. "If you have the resources, and are willing to pay the price of using them."
"Harrow," Gideon said slowly. "By resources, are you saying. . . "
"Two hundred children," you intone, weary. "From the ages of six weeks to eighteen years. They needed to all die more or less simultaneously for it to work. My great-aunts measured out the organophosphates after weeks of mathematics. Our House pumped them through the cooling system." Gideon is silent, but you can't watch Gideon as you explain this. You need to explain this as an academic, as theoretical. "The infants alone generated enough thanergy to take out the entire planet. Babies always do, for some reason."
You watch Gideon, staring at you, hold her knees to her chest and go under the water. She stays under as the long seconds tick by.
When she emerges, your voice is weak and hoarse. "Say something."
"Gross," says Gideon, vaguely. "Ick. The worst. What can I say to that? What the fuck can I say to all of that?"
"It let me be born. And I was -- me. And I have been aware, since I was very young, about how I was created. I am two hundred sons and daughters of my House, Griddle -- I am a whole generation of the Ninth. I came into this world a necromancer at the expense of Drearburh's future, because there is no future without me."
"Why leave me," she demands. "They murdered the rest of the House, but they left me off the list?"
"You were meant to die, Griddle, along with all of the others. You inhaled nerve gas for ten minutes. My great-aunts went blind just from releasing it and you weren't even affected. You just didn't die. My parents were terrified of you for the rest of their lives."
Gideon floats in stunned silence; you wish more than anything you could see what she was thinking, but you can't, you don't know. But when she asks the next question, it's the most terrible one she could ask. "And do you think you're worth it?"
To your credit, you don't flinch. "If I became a Lyctor, and renewed my House, and made it great again, greater than it ever was, and justified its existence in the eyes of God the Emperor -- if I made my whole life a monument to those who died to ensure that I would live and live powerfully --"
Your words echo, so portentously, through these marble halls; you can hear them hammering back at you, and they chip you away.
"Of course I wouldn't be worth it. I'm an abomination. The whole universe ought to scream whenever my feet touch the ground. My parents committed a necromantic sin that we ought to be torpedoed into the center of Dominicus for. If any other Houses knew of what we'd done, they would destroy us from orbit. I am a war crime."
You stand up, letting the water and paint drip away from you. "But because I was a perfect necromancer of their bloodline, Nav. . . I was able to open the Locked Tomb and roll away the rock. My parents couldn't have understood that, and that's why they died. That's why, when they knew I'd done it, that I'd rolled away the stone and gone through the monument and seen the place the body was buried - they thought I'd betrayed God."
"Are you telling me, that when you were ten years old, you busted the lock on the tomb, broke into an ancient grave, and made your way past hideous old magic to look at a dead thing, even though your parents told you it would start the apocalypse?"
"Yes," you say, calmly.
"Why?"
"I was tired of being two hundred corpses. I was old enough to know how monstrous I was. I had decided to go look at the tomb, and if I didn't think it was worth it, to open and air lock and walk, and walk, and walk."
"But you came back," Gideon says. "I told the Reverend Mother and Reverend Father what I'd seen you do. I killed your parents."
The guilt in her voice unmoors you - you're caught off-guard by it, never once suspecting that all of these years, she'd actually thought she was responsible for their suicide, or thought you blamed her for it. "My parents killed my parents, Nav. I should know."
"But I told them - "
You cut her off. "My parents killed themselves because they were frightened and ashamed. They thought it was the only honourable thing to do."
There's anger in Gideon's voice when she says "I think your parents were frightened and ashamed for a long time."
"I'm not saying I didn't blame you," you admit. "I did. It was much easier. I pretended for a long time I could have saved them by talking to them. When you walked in, when you saw what you saw. . . I hated you, because you saw what I didn't do. My mother and father weren't angry, Nav. They tied their own nooses. They helped me tie mine. But I couldn't do it. After all I'd convinced myself I was ready to do. I made myself watch when my parents - I could not do the slightest thing that my House expected of me. You're not the only one who couldn't die."
"Harrow," Gideon says again, her voice catching. "Harrow, I'm so bloody sorry."
This - this, you cannot tolerate. This you cannot live with. Your eyes snap open, and you grab Gideon by the shirt, suddenly furiously angry, and you shake her, wanting to scream.
"You apologize to me? You apologize to me now? You say that you're sorry when I have spent my life destroying you? You are my whipping girl! I hurt you because it was a relief! I exist because my parents killed everyone and relegated you to a life of abject misery, and they would have killed you too and not given it a second goddamn thought! I have spent my life trying to make you regret that you weren't dead, all because I regretted I wasn't. And you have the temerity to tell me that you're sorry? I have tried to dismantle you, Gideon Nav! The Ninth House poisoned you, we trod you underfoot, I took you to this killing field, and you pity me!"
Your anger, white hot, begins to give way to a swirling despair, a choking grief that overwhelms your core. "Strike me down. You've won. I have lived my whole wretched life at your mercy, yours alone, and God knows I deserve to die by your hand. You are my only friend. I am undone without you."
And at that, Gideon wraps her arms around you with that astounding strength of hers, and you hold your breath, and you prepare yourself to be drowned, to have the life suffocated out of you. For it to end this way, by the hands of the living representative of the crime of your birth, finally, finally, is such a relief.
As the seconds drag on, and you are not drowned, with dawning horror you instead realize you are receiving a hug. You thrash and claw against this new indignity, attempting to break free, attempting to tear her off you, and then you collapse, the fight gone from you with a suddenness and replaced with an exhaustion that is cellular. You lie limply and damply in her arms. She kisses you on the nose.
"Too many words," says Gideon. "How about these: One flesh, one end, bitch." The oath of a cavalier to her necromancer. You flush darkly, but Gideon lifts your head so you cannot hide away. "Say it, loser."
"One flesh, one end," you murmur weakly.
The memory ends. She blinks, a little unmoored by the momentary blip of the conversation, like she fell asleep for just a moment.]
That is what I fear now, not knowing what I aim to achieve. But I feel that - I must trust I have had a better understanding than my forebears of what is important.
[there are many things to say here. for one thing, greed has taken time to do research to all of the participants, so naturally they know about past events and people she's bound to. on the other hand, there's a difference between having everything on nice, organized little sheets of papers with diagrams and charts attached versus actually experiencing these things yourself.
but mostly, none of this surprises them. listening to harrow and seeing her memories not only adds additional context to the way she performs in this game but it's something they understand on a level they can't quite reach with other people. it was fifteen years of being raised by someone who didn't necessarily care to teach them how to be a person but shaped and modeled them into being someone who only cared about winning by all means necessary, about reaping accolades and having a perfect record.
it was never a wonder why, exactly, they became the avatar of greed. even though things have changed, and even though they value other things now, there are still those skeletons in the closet that cling to them and the almost-pavlovian response to reject help from others. there was still that very fragile little thing that could be shattered if the right person knew exactly what to say.
but admitting that seems foolish considering she's at least ten years their junior and also it's irrelevant, so they're going to cram their own thoughts and observations into their brain to think about later.
instead, they turn their head to give her another look.]
That acknowledgment alone shows a great understanding beyond what you've been taught, Miss Nonagesimus. It's a lesson that will continue to be just out of your grasp for the rest of your life and something you will always feel you don't quite understand. But your trust in that decision will be what allows you to pursue a goal you may not even know of until it comes to fruition.
There is one absolute truth to every situation. But what that is...you can only begin to find it by breaking down everything you know and re-examining it. I trust you not to forget that.
[Of course they aren't going to talk about their feelings. They did for about five minutes, and that's the extent to which they'll ever need to. She just feels innately a little bit that there's something about Greed that she understands, something that she admires.
She's been told to reexamine the rigid expectations of her while she's here, explore who she is and what she really wants out of her life, who she really wants to be outside of two hundred corpses molded into the perfect heir. And she finds that what she would really like to be is. . . someone a little like him.]
I will not. I will not waste the opportunity you've given us. Both for our wish, and also to find those who have been spilling the blood of others for the sake of their own.
[a hand comes up, a claw catching a bit on the fabric edge of their cloak's hood as they seem to think on something. in the end though there's simply a nod and even if harrow still can't see their face she will get a sense that there's great approval.]
Very well. I...realize some of you, and some of the Avatars as well, will continue to think that these trials are pointless. But so long as there are people who wish to find answers, they will continue to be held.
[Please don't lump her in with the people who decided Kaz was a Toblerone?
At first, she only cared because, well. Look at her. Without necromancy, with a progressively worsening brain condition, she was an obvious choice of victim. She wanted to find the person responsible for the murders and make a brutal example of them, to make clear to any other potential vultures that she was not easy prey.
And then someone who had been kind to her was hurt. And Harrow - has never known how to offer comfort or words of consolation. All she knows how to do is act. Some small part of her believed she could repair grief by delivering answers. Beyond that, why should she care? She's never felt her objections to murder were moral ones, merely - she is already two hundred dead children, two hundred and one ghosts bundled in one girl. She is a walking crime scene, and she is so, so tired. She isn't sure she'll be able to shoulder any more pain, but if pragmatism demanded it, perhaps she would have no choice.
Her conversations with other Avatars, other than him, had led her in various ways to believe pragmatism would demand it eventually.
She's thinking about something someone said to her recently. If you feel conflicted about something, that just means you had more than one important thing in your life, right?
If she wants to see the end of this without adding more debts to her tab, if she wants to get what she wants while continuing to protect the ones she cares about, without cutting herself into even more pieces, why shouldn't she?
It really does make sense to her, why he was assigned to this particular sin. He has encouraged her to become greedy.]
I do wish to find answers, so please continue to hold them. I see their use, so long as we - make better use of the time given.
[they don't, at least. harrow is one of the people they genuinely assumes doesn't need the extra help, and also assumes that not giving her hints or handholding her way through will only inspire her to work harder.
or perhaps that's just another way the greed is talking by demanding that those they trust continue to push ahead and demand more from the people around them.
but, there's a nod.]
I realize these trials are actually quite unfair to you. Normally a trial will run for no more than three days, and an investigation is done prior to the first day. Once court is adjourned, there's time to investigate further. To cram everything into a mere nine hours is completely ridiculous, but it's still possible to do.
A question for you. Seeing how last week went, what would you propose to ensure a better use of your time?
[Me knowing all this, meanwhile Harrow throwing a fit because Sasazuka got a special item from him and she didn't.]
Redirect more quickly from theories that don't go anywhere. [Toberlones.] Make more efficient use of time. It is as you say - our primary constraint is time.
Precisely. And keep in mind that your killers are among you. They will do everything that they can to keep themselves from being caught, including presenting distractions or derailing your line of thought to send you on a new tangent. You must persist to keep proving what it is you've set out to prove.
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no subject
[This is a little unsettling to do to a naturally jumpy person, but it's fine.]
Do you mean to flatter me by telling me that despair comes naturally to me?
no subject
Ah. Not entirely, but more that you're more motivated than several of the other participants.
[they're not always great at actually complimenting people or even really being nice but it's an attempt to say harrow's still one of the people that continues to impress them enough.]
no subject
Anyway, please do not let that be a reference to her banging a goth chick. When Takeru didn't get the prize it put the fear into her that she'd outed herself.]
. . . Am I? How odd that is, considering I don't even know what I'm fighting for.
no subject
Let me ask you this then. If you don't know what you're fighting for, why do you continue to fight?
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The Reverend Daughter of the Ninth House is no one's fool. The idea that I would be granted my fondest desires for nothing more than a peaceful stay and a little 'indulgence' is absurd. I cannot have failed to account for the danger, the possibility that more would be asked of me, the possibility of a trap or a betrayal.
But I agreed to be here, for the sake of one thing. I could have asked for anything else. I could have asked for the power to return to the Ninth House, the Tomb. I could have asked for the means to save my own life. Instead, I know that what I asked was related to - that which I must call the work, because that is all I know of it. [She knows what little she does from the writings of her former self, sternly warning her that she must not interfere with "the work" at all costs.] Whatever it is that the work is, I believed it important enough to agree. All I can do is trust that I have not misjudged myself. That it truly was worth these efforts.
no subject
To trust yourself is a difficult task regardless. And yet I believe you may not have been misled at all.
[they would say something about that, and they seem to turn their head toward her, but it's unfortunate that it's memshare week so harrow gets a treat, ending at "But if you can't, then you will be powerless to change the ending of this story."]
no subject
No, but. . . honestly. The part where he says they're just human, they're just lawyers, not heroes, startles her. Greed feels - like such an authority to her, automatically, and yet he's from a place so alien to her that she cannot really fathom it.
And yet she can relate to what he describes. The need to be perfect, to win, to prove oneself, and the utter hollowness that comes with that, whether it be in victory or defeat. The oddest part is the small, sad, longing part of her who wishes she had someone who had cared enough about Harrow Nonagesimus the person to have undone her pretensions before they swept her to the lonely halls of the Mithraeum, broken to learn that she was not the genius she believed after all, and without her genius there was so little point of her. No point, in fact, except for the work.]
I. . . you truly are a human. After Despair, I had thought. . .
[His reveal was more in line with what she'd been expecting, honestly.
. . . And then she realizes she probably ought not to have acknowledged it, that surely this was why he was texting her to begin with despite expressing that he preferred to speak in person.]
no subject
she may get the feeling they're raising an eyebrow though from under their hood.]
Questionably. [what in the hell does that mean. but they do flex their clawed hand slightly. though, they're curious, and at least they're not really offended by that statement.] Are you disappointed?
1/2
She. . . would much rather have had a teacher who didn't bother so much with kind words and praise of her genius and access to advanced theorems, but rather one who wanted to teach her how to be a person. She's always had to scramble for that so very on her own.
But no, it doesn't disappoint her. It makes sense. Being "only" a human being. . . is a precious thing. It is so much easier, when you have left humanity behind, to discard the lives of other humans.]
I was surprised, but I also. . . understand now, a little better, why you are so resolute in your understanding of the value of a life.
[Not because he's just a human - plenty of humans are monstrous. She refers, instead, to the easy admission that is what he is and what he ought to be.]
It is as you say; my whole life has been in a lesson in the pursuit of power and perfection at the expense of all else, and it is a terrible thing to live with.
2/2
You in a darkened, marbled room, in a cold green swimming pool. The door is bolted shut, held in place by your skeletons. Beside you is the looming, angry, distrusting figure of Gideon Nav. For reasons that are baffling to you she followed you here when you asked, but you know she is itching for a fight. You and she have fought so many times before - you grew up as children together, and your brawls were legendarily bloody, as nasty as two children who truly hate one another can be.
What you must do now is more difficult. An hour earlier, Gideon found the preserved head of the murdered Seventh House cavalier among your belongings. It is not a shock what conclusions she came to before it was confirmed his death predated your arrival at Canaan House, but it did hurt.
You brought Gideon Nav here under duress, blackmailed, to pretend to be your cavalier primary, because you thought what you needed was a skilled sword by your side. Instead, you find that what you need is her trust. I need you to trust me, you had asked her, and I need you to be trustworthy, her response. Which. Fair. If you are to have her trust, you must now spill your secrets.
"Are we here for a reason," Gideon asks, her voice echoing around the marble halls.
"The Ninth House has a secret, Nav," you tell her, attempting to make your voice as calm and reasonable as you can. "And we could never discuss it, unless - this was my mother's rule - we were immersed in salt water. We kept a ceremonial pool for the purpose, hidden from the rest of the House. It was cold and deep and I hated every moment I was in it. But my mother is dead, and I find now that — if I really am to betray my family's most sacred trust — I am obliged at the least to keep, intact, her rule.”
Gideon blinked. "Oh shit," she says. "You really meant it. This is it. This is go time."
"This is go time,” you agree.
Gideon swept both of her hands through her hair, trickles going down the back of her neck and into her sodden collar. Eventually, all she said was, "Why?"
"The reasons are multitudinous," you say. "I had — intended to let you know some of it, before. If I had told you my suspicions about the Seventh House cavalier on the first day, none of this would have happened.”
"The first day?" she asks, incredulous. But, yes. The instant you saw him, you recognized that he was already dead, perfectly preserved as a living corpse, a technique only a powerful necromancer could achieve. A technique you are very familiar with.
"Griddle," you say. "I have not puppeted around my own parents for five years and learned nothing."
This only makes her angrier. "Why the hell didn't you tell me when you killed him?”
"I didn't kill him,” you insist. "Someone else did — blade through the heart, from what I saw. I only had to push the theorem the most basic bit before he came apart."
"No, you monster’s ass," says Gideon coldly. "I mean, why didn't you tell me you'd killed him before you sent Jeannemary and her necromancer down to the facility to look for the guy who was in a box in your closet? Why didn't you take the moment to say, I don't know, Let's not send two children downstairs to get fucked up by a huge bone creature.”
You exhale. "I panicked,” you admit. "At the time I thought I was sending you down a blind tunnel, and that the real danger was Sextus and Septimus; that either one might ambush you, and that the sensible solution was to take them both on myself. My plan was to get you clear of a necromantic duel. At the time I even thought it elegant."
The paint is dripping from Gideon's face. "Nonagesimus, all you had to do was delay, tell me you were freaking out. All you had to do was say that Dulcinea's cav was a mummy man —"
"I had reason to believe," you say, with not a little bitterness, "that you would trust her more than you trusted me." Gideon glowers at this answer. "I wanted to do enough research to present you with a cut-and-dry case. I had no idea what it would mean for the Fourth House." Your voice is a little emotional, thinking of the two dead teenagers. "The Ninth is deep in their blood debt and I am undone by the expense. I — I did not want to hurt you, Griddle! I didn't want to disturb your — equilibrium."
"Harrow," said Gideon, staring at you. "If my heart had a dick you would kick it."
You do not understand how this conversation is going so badly, how all of your explanations only make this worse. "I did not want to alienate you more than I already had. And then it seemed as though - " you have no idea how to admit this next part, the tiny, fragile growing atom of trust that had sparked between the two of you despite your lifeline enmity " - we were on a more even footing. Our — we — It was too tenuous to risk. And then. . . ”
"Harrow," says Gideon, slowly. "If I hadn't gone to Palamedes - and I nearly didn't go to Palamedes - I would have waited for you in our room with our sword drawn, and I would and gone for you. I was so convinced that you were behind everything. That you'd killed Jeannemary and Isaac, Magnus and Abigail."
You're stumbling even more. "I - I didn't. I don't. I would never have - and I know."
"You would have killed me," Gideon accuses.
"Or vice versa," you admit.
Gideon spends a moment weighing this over in her mind. "Okay. Question time, then. Who did all the murders."
You float in the water, thoughtful. "I can't say, sorry. That's not a fruitful line of inquiry. We're being pursued by revenants, or it's all part of the test, or one or more of us is picking off the others. The murders of the Fourth and Fifth may be connected, or not. The bone fragments don't match, naturally, but I believe their very particle formation points to - "
Gideon interrupts. "Harrow, don't make me drown myself."
"My conclusion," you continue, "if that if the murders are linked, and not the work of some revenant, it is one of us. We are the only living beings in Canaan House. Septimus has something of an alibi - "
"Yes, being nearly dead," Gideon grumbles. Her ridiculous affection for Dulcinea Septimus, the lovely invalid Seventh necromancer, is a source of constant irritation to you, but in this case she is correct.
"I admit I have downgraded her as a suspect in some respects. Logically, judging by ability and mind, it is Palamedes Sextus and his cavalier -" Gideon starts to interrupt, because again, to your irritation, your academic rival is seemingly. . . a good person, who could have put all blame on you if he had wanted to and instead chose to convince Gideon to give you the chance to explain yourself. "No, I realize neither has a fucking motive. A logical conclusion is worth very little without all the facts, which we do not have."
Unsatisfied with the answer to that question, Gideon moves on to another, more terrible. "What do you know about the conditioner pathogen that bumped off all the little kids on the Ninth, that happened when I was little, before you were born?"
You're silent for a long time, and when you speak, it feels like some else's voice coming out of your mouth. "It didn't happen before I was born. Or at least, that's not precise enough. It happened before I was even conceived. My mother needed to carry a child to term, and that child needed to be a necromancer to fulfill the role as heir to the Locked Tomb. But we hardly had access to the foetal care technology available to other houses. She had tried and had failed already, and she was getting old. She had one chance, and she couldn't afford chance."
"You can't control whether you're carrying a necro," Gideon protested.
"Yes, you can," you said slowly. "If you have the resources, and are willing to pay the price of using them."
"Harrow," Gideon said slowly. "By resources, are you saying. . . "
"Two hundred children," you intone, weary. "From the ages of six weeks to eighteen years. They needed to all die more or less simultaneously for it to work. My great-aunts measured out the organophosphates after weeks of mathematics. Our House pumped them through the cooling system." Gideon is silent, but you can't watch Gideon as you explain this. You need to explain this as an academic, as theoretical. "The infants alone generated enough thanergy to take out the entire planet. Babies always do, for some reason."
You watch Gideon, staring at you, hold her knees to her chest and go under the water. She stays under as the long seconds tick by.
When she emerges, your voice is weak and hoarse. "Say something."
"Gross," says Gideon, vaguely. "Ick. The worst. What can I say to that? What the fuck can I say to all of that?"
"It let me be born. And I was -- me. And I have been aware, since I was very young, about how I was created. I am two hundred sons and daughters of my House, Griddle -- I am a whole generation of the Ninth. I came into this world a necromancer at the expense of Drearburh's future, because there is no future without me."
"Why leave me," she demands. "They murdered the rest of the House, but they left me off the list?"
"You were meant to die, Griddle, along with all of the others. You inhaled nerve gas for ten minutes. My great-aunts went blind just from releasing it and you weren't even affected. You just didn't die. My parents were terrified of you for the rest of their lives."
Gideon floats in stunned silence; you wish more than anything you could see what she was thinking, but you can't, you don't know. But when she asks the next question, it's the most terrible one she could ask. "And do you think you're worth it?"
To your credit, you don't flinch. "If I became a Lyctor, and renewed my House, and made it great again, greater than it ever was, and justified its existence in the eyes of God the Emperor -- if I made my whole life a monument to those who died to ensure that I would live and live powerfully --"
Your words echo, so portentously, through these marble halls; you can hear them hammering back at you, and they chip you away.
"Of course I wouldn't be worth it. I'm an abomination. The whole universe ought to scream whenever my feet touch the ground. My parents committed a necromantic sin that we ought to be torpedoed into the center of Dominicus for. If any other Houses knew of what we'd done, they would destroy us from orbit. I am a war crime."
You stand up, letting the water and paint drip away from you. "But because I was a perfect necromancer of their bloodline, Nav. . . I was able to open the Locked Tomb and roll away the rock. My parents couldn't have understood that, and that's why they died. That's why, when they knew I'd done it, that I'd rolled away the stone and gone through the monument and seen the place the body was buried - they thought I'd betrayed God."
"Are you telling me, that when you were ten years old, you busted the lock on the tomb, broke into an ancient grave, and made your way past hideous old magic to look at a dead thing, even though your parents told you it would start the apocalypse?"
"Yes," you say, calmly.
"Why?"
"I was tired of being two hundred corpses. I was old enough to know how monstrous I was. I had decided to go look at the tomb, and if I didn't think it was worth it, to open and air lock and walk, and walk, and walk."
"But you came back," Gideon says. "I told the Reverend Mother and Reverend Father what I'd seen you do. I killed your parents."
The guilt in her voice unmoors you - you're caught off-guard by it, never once suspecting that all of these years, she'd actually thought she was responsible for their suicide, or thought you blamed her for it. "My parents killed my parents, Nav. I should know."
"But I told them - "
You cut her off. "My parents killed themselves because they were frightened and ashamed. They thought it was the only honourable thing to do."
There's anger in Gideon's voice when she says "I think your parents were frightened and ashamed for a long time."
"I'm not saying I didn't blame you," you admit. "I did. It was much easier. I pretended for a long time I could have saved them by talking to them. When you walked in, when you saw what you saw. . . I hated you, because you saw what I didn't do. My mother and father weren't angry, Nav. They tied their own nooses. They helped me tie mine. But I couldn't do it. After all I'd convinced myself I was ready to do. I made myself watch when my parents - I could not do the slightest thing that my House expected of me. You're not the only one who couldn't die."
"Harrow," Gideon says again, her voice catching. "Harrow, I'm so bloody sorry."
This - this, you cannot tolerate. This you cannot live with. Your eyes snap open, and you grab Gideon by the shirt, suddenly furiously angry, and you shake her, wanting to scream.
"You apologize to me? You apologize to me now? You say that you're sorry when I have spent my life destroying you? You are my whipping girl! I hurt you because it was a relief! I exist because my parents killed everyone and relegated you to a life of abject misery, and they would have killed you too and not given it a second goddamn thought! I have spent my life trying to make you regret that you weren't dead, all because I regretted I wasn't. And you have the temerity to tell me that you're sorry? I have tried to dismantle you, Gideon Nav! The Ninth House poisoned you, we trod you underfoot, I took you to this killing field, and you pity me!"
Your anger, white hot, begins to give way to a swirling despair, a choking grief that overwhelms your core. "Strike me down. You've won. I have lived my whole wretched life at your mercy, yours alone, and God knows I deserve to die by your hand. You are my only friend. I am undone without you."
And at that, Gideon wraps her arms around you with that astounding strength of hers, and you hold your breath, and you prepare yourself to be drowned, to have the life suffocated out of you. For it to end this way, by the hands of the living representative of the crime of your birth, finally, finally, is such a relief.
As the seconds drag on, and you are not drowned, with dawning horror you instead realize you are receiving a hug. You thrash and claw against this new indignity, attempting to break free, attempting to tear her off you, and then you collapse, the fight gone from you with a suddenness and replaced with an exhaustion that is cellular. You lie limply and damply in her arms. She kisses you on the nose.
"Too many words," says Gideon. "How about these: One flesh, one end, bitch." The oath of a cavalier to her necromancer. You flush darkly, but Gideon lifts your head so you cannot hide away. "Say it, loser."
"One flesh, one end," you murmur weakly.
The memory ends. She blinks, a little unmoored by the momentary blip of the conversation, like she fell asleep for just a moment.]
That is what I fear now, not knowing what I aim to achieve. But I feel that - I must trust I have had a better understanding than my forebears of what is important.
no subject
but mostly, none of this surprises them. listening to harrow and seeing her memories not only adds additional context to the way she performs in this game but it's something they understand on a level they can't quite reach with other people. it was fifteen years of being raised by someone who didn't necessarily care to teach them how to be a person but shaped and modeled them into being someone who only cared about winning by all means necessary, about reaping accolades and having a perfect record.
it was never a wonder why, exactly, they became the avatar of greed. even though things have changed, and even though they value other things now, there are still those skeletons in the closet that cling to them and the almost-pavlovian response to reject help from others. there was still that very fragile little thing that could be shattered if the right person knew exactly what to say.
but admitting that seems foolish considering she's at least ten years their junior and also it's irrelevant, so they're going to cram their own thoughts and observations into their brain to think about later.
instead, they turn their head to give her another look.]
That acknowledgment alone shows a great understanding beyond what you've been taught, Miss Nonagesimus. It's a lesson that will continue to be just out of your grasp for the rest of your life and something you will always feel you don't quite understand. But your trust in that decision will be what allows you to pursue a goal you may not even know of until it comes to fruition.
There is one absolute truth to every situation. But what that is...you can only begin to find it by breaking down everything you know and re-examining it. I trust you not to forget that.
no subject
She's been told to reexamine the rigid expectations of her while she's here, explore who she is and what she really wants out of her life, who she really wants to be outside of two hundred corpses molded into the perfect heir. And she finds that what she would really like to be is. . . someone a little like him.]
I will not. I will not waste the opportunity you've given us. Both for our wish, and also to find those who have been spilling the blood of others for the sake of their own.
no subject
Very well. I...realize some of you, and some of the Avatars as well, will continue to think that these trials are pointless. But so long as there are people who wish to find answers, they will continue to be held.
[so don't treat them lightly, they mean.]
no subject
At first, she only cared because, well. Look at her. Without necromancy, with a progressively worsening brain condition, she was an obvious choice of victim. She wanted to find the person responsible for the murders and make a brutal example of them, to make clear to any other potential vultures that she was not easy prey.
And then someone who had been kind to her was hurt. And Harrow - has never known how to offer comfort or words of consolation. All she knows how to do is act. Some small part of her believed she could repair grief by delivering answers. Beyond that, why should she care? She's never felt her objections to murder were moral ones, merely - she is already two hundred dead children, two hundred and one ghosts bundled in one girl. She is a walking crime scene, and she is so, so tired. She isn't sure she'll be able to shoulder any more pain, but if pragmatism demanded it, perhaps she would have no choice.
Her conversations with other Avatars, other than him, had led her in various ways to believe pragmatism would demand it eventually.
She's thinking about something someone said to her recently. If you feel conflicted about something, that just means you had more than one important thing in your life, right?
If she wants to see the end of this without adding more debts to her tab, if she wants to get what she wants while continuing to protect the ones she cares about, without cutting herself into even more pieces, why shouldn't she?
It really does make sense to her, why he was assigned to this particular sin. He has encouraged her to become greedy.]
I do wish to find answers, so please continue to hold them. I see their use, so long as we - make better use of the time given.
no subject
or perhaps that's just another way the greed is talking by demanding that those they trust continue to push ahead and demand more from the people around them.
but, there's a nod.]
I realize these trials are actually quite unfair to you. Normally a trial will run for no more than three days, and an investigation is done prior to the first day. Once court is adjourned, there's time to investigate further. To cram everything into a mere nine hours is completely ridiculous, but it's still possible to do.
A question for you. Seeing how last week went, what would you propose to ensure a better use of your time?
no subject
Redirect more quickly from theories that don't go anywhere. [Toberlones.] Make more efficient use of time. It is as you say - our primary constraint is time.
no subject
Precisely. And keep in mind that your killers are among you. They will do everything that they can to keep themselves from being caught, including presenting distractions or derailing your line of thought to send you on a new tangent. You must persist to keep proving what it is you've set out to prove.