“I must no longer accept,” she said slowly, “being a stranger to you.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” said Gideon, sudden sweat prickling the back of her neck, “yes you can, you once told me to dig myself an ice grave. Stop before this gets weird.”
There’s an order to this that I can’t figure out how to establish, because these particular ideas are so layered that I want to quote several things at once, and those things have their own stuff going on. While sort of doing a better job of explaining my feelings on this than anything I could type. Truly, my position here is redundant.
But we’ll start here, because here is the start.
Gideon and Harrow are weird.
They are very, very weird.
There are rules about that, though.
- Don’t talk about the weird.
- Conceal, don’t feel. Don’t let it show.
Gideon and Harrow are not allowed to look at what they are to one another, because there’s nothing good that can come from it. It’s better to hate each other. Harrow the villain, Gideon the pest. These are easy roles, and as long as they fit into them, the world keeps turning smoothly.
Except they change worlds, and the roles don’t fit anymore. They’re collaborating. Regardless of motive, they’re working together and not actively trying to ruin the other one’s day just to feel something.
It isn’t a slow-burn Something There situation; the jump between Gideon planning her nuptials with Harrow’s murderer and trying to pry open a steel hatch with her bare hands is nonexistent. There have been no real positive changes in the relationship at the time of Harrow’s disappearance. Things are mostly as they always have been, and what they’ve already created is enough to blast every one of Gideon’s adrenal functions into overtime.
But they don’t have to examine that. There is no reason to observe that dichotomy.
Until someone dies. They’re as inured to their treatment of each other as they are to death – and this death shines a light on the humanity that they’ve both spent their entire lives running away from.
In the thick dimness of the room she watched the black-garbed girl in front of her struggle around a thing that had settled over them like a net; a thing that had fused between them like a badly broken limb, shattered numerous times, healing gnarled and awful. Gideon recognised these strictures all of a sudden: the ropes tying her to Harrow and back to the bars of the House of the Ninth. They stared at each other with shared panic.
Gideon does not want to care about her jailer. She doesn’t want to belong to the Ninth. All it’s been is crap and pain and painful crap, and she’s tried 87 times to get away from it, and this is supposed to be the final, 88th time.
But it’s under her skin anyway. She skulks around Canaan House noting every Ninth behavior she commits, and when she has the chance to abandon Harrow to the unknown, she doesn’t take it.
Please don’t bring that up ever, though.
They can’t be human to each other. If they treat each other as human, something has to change, and if something changes –
If they’re not enemies, what do all those layers of entrenched life add up to? If it’s not used to fuel perfectly healthy hate, what does it become?
That’s a total nope on examining any of that, thanks.
Here’s the thing: Harrow decides that things have to change, and shares that information. She asks Gideon what the steps are. Gideon wants sleep and food. Harrow lets Gideon sleep in (give or take some clock accuracy), brings her food, and does Gideon’s makeup while she eats.
That happens immediately.
You turn the page in the book – the literal, physical book – and that is the scene that is happening.
They are fucking weird, and in complete denial of it for the sake of their mutual sanity. It’s just that then murders start. It’s a bit of a shift. Once murders start, Harrowhark places more of an importance on life than sanity because why worry about what you don’t have.
It terrifies both of them for a reason; it’s big and scary and not a single fucking person has ever shown them how to have a healthy relationship. Do Not Break Glass is written all over the illusion that they’re nothing to each other, and Harrow is the one who first takes an axe to it.
Which is especially great, given everyone’s favorite quote.
“Oh, Griddle!” said Harrow pityingly, in the silence. “But I don’t even remember about you most of the time.”
Actually, no. It gets even greater thanks to what follows that line.
They stared at each other. There was a lopsided smile tugging at Gideon’s mouth, unsuppressed, and looking at it made Harrowhark’s expression slide into something even moodier and more petulant.
You do, tho.
Clarification to the rules: One party can acknowledge the state of weird as long as it’s being weaponized.
Gideon is not allowed to matter to Harrow. That’s weird. Like Harrow not being an evil bitch is weird. But Harrow can be an evil bitch being annoyed by Gideon. That’s cool. That’s normal.
By which I mean that they have been weird all over each other from the start, and yes, it is awkward.
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