Work Text:
Immediately Following the Death of the Empire
Gideon Nav expected the death of her father to be the end of her nightmare of an afterlife, as well as her princedom, miseries, and obligations. She expected the mess God made of her would die with his necromancy, that the web of his work holding her corpse and soul together would unravel and she would finally, finally perish properly. Gideon Nav Dying Time. Kill the engines! Buckets to kick, decomposing to do, motherfuckers to haunt, and whatnot.
No. That would be way too easy. Instead she blinked awake flat on her back on the battlefield of the First, feeling just as disconnected from herself as she did before, just as numb, and still bafflingly intact.
Harrowhark Nonagesimus leaned over her, overly long hair framing her face, wearing a completely impenetrable expression.
Before either of them could say a word, a gigantic snout loomed over Gideon. There was a rancid exhalation of air, and a purple tongue licked her slimily from chin to eyebrows.
"Harrow!" Gideon yelped. "What the fuck?!"
"God is dead," Harrowhark intoned, "And the lady of the tomb has blessed us."
Two Days After the Death of the Empire
The death of God created more questions than answers, and none were less expected than the problem of the eighty-two beasts Alecto summoned there on the beach, before walking deeper into the water and fucking off below the waves.
They ranged in size and color. All had four legs, small hanging tails, and muscular builds. Harrow kept trying to lead them into Canaan House to shelter them from the elements, but they remained unmoved and unbothered, even when she resorted to pushing with her full weight on their hindquarters.
Pyrrha was the only person with any knowledge on the matter. "If you want them to thrive, don't keep them in the Houses. Take them to a planet that's never been flipped," she said. She was sitting in what had once been the dining hall of Canaan House. Everyone had gathered around a table, except Gideon, who lurked in the background, stubbornly contributing nothing.
"I assume you have somewhere in mind," Ianthe drawled, playing with a strand of her stringy hair in a poor imitation of disinterest.
Paul interrupted. "Nonagesimus, you don't have to do this. Outside of the Houses, there are planets with members of their species already living there. They are often raised for their milk. It would be easy to find someone else to care for them."
Gideon stared at Harrow, whose chin was stiff. Gideon did not need to hear her answer. The Harrow she knew would want to stay here, on the First, where all the important choices were being made. The Harrow she knew wanted the company of dusty books and piles of bone fragments, not big, hairy behemoths that smelled awful, even to Gideon's mostly dead olfactory lobe. But the Harrow she knew was also the most stubborn idiot in the universe, and in the past two days her priorities had totally realigned to the wellbeing of eighty-two hooved creatures Pyrrha called cows.
Harrow had already made her decision. There was no reason for Gideon to be here, but because she was the second most stubborn idiot in the universe, Gideon would go with her.
Gideon pushed off the wall she was leaning against and walked out of the atrium. She needed some air. (Ha! She needed air like she needed another hole in her chest.)
Her body took her to the beach without thought. Debris from the battle still lay scattered around the area. A few of the cows stood ankle deep in the shore. Dominicus, somehow still burning, was inching into the water, casting everything in an eerie orange light.
Without her permission, her lungs stuttered, gasping for oxygen they could not circulate, the feeling jolting through her like electricity.
"Stop it," Gideon whispered to her corpse. "Stop."
***
Gideon could not sleep, but she found a random room with a bed in one of the least demolished areas of Canaan House and laid down anyway, rolling over on her side and closing her eyes. It wasn't long until the door creaked open, like she knew it would. Harrow warded the room, paranoid as ever.
The two of them were at a familiar impasse. They couldn't speak for long without it devolving into a screaming argument, but they also couldn't seem to keep away from each other. It was a lot like the entirety of their childhood.
Soft steps approached the bed, and Gideon scooted over to make room without a word. Harrow burrowed under the covers like a worm, pushing up against Gideon's chest.
"You didn't ask me," Gideon accused, after a few of Harrow's long breaths.
"Do you want to draft new laws and treaties for the Houses? Do you want to travel with Paul to the Sixth? Do you want to return to the Ninth?"
"No." No future felt good or right to her. She wanted nothing.
Harrow's arm inched up into Gideon's shirt like it did every night, and Gideon grabbed her wrist.
"Let me," Harrow implored.
"No."
"We don't know how stable this work is, now that he is dead. It could reverse at any time."
"Then let it," Gideon snapped, and rolled away from her.
The lungs in her chest stuttered for air once more.
Twenty-Four Days After the Death of the Empire
Plans were made without Gideon’s input, but to be fair, Harrow also had little choice in the matter. For someone who spent the last myriad living in the back of someone else's brain, Pyrrha was absurdly well connected. She called in a favor from a friend on an unflipped planet, far from the Houses, but not so far that traveling would be difficult. Gideon, Harrow, and eighty-two cows were loaded aboard a defunct Cohort ship, Pyrrha trailing along in a smaller transport vessel that had somehow come into her possession.
The planet itself was beautiful- a lush green with trails of blue covering the surface. Thick, grey clouds circled the atmosphere. They landed not far off of the equator.
Pyrrha had ample information for Harrow, including a map of the land they were allowed to let the cows roam. The only structure was a large wooden building that Pyrrha called a barn. “It’s meant to shelter animals,” she admitted, “But it will do just fine for now.”
It was more than fine- as a corpse, Gideon didn’t need anything, and Harrow treated all creature comforts with her typical wariness. Harrow’s problem was less with the accommodations, and more with the company. She seemed to be under the impression they would be left on some theoretical completely abandoned planet, and was disturbed they were located anywhere close to something resembling civilization.
“It’s ten miles to the nearest neighbors,” Gideon pointed out, and received nothing more than a glare as an answer. “Alright, alright. Guess I’ll be the one running our errands.”
Pyrrha rubbed her hands together. “On that topic, we need to discuss your cover. The people here are suspicious of the Houses. You are refugees from the war. You are normal people. These are normal cows. Gideon- in public, those speed holes need to stay covered. Harrow...yeah, maybe it’s best Gideon run the errands.”
“Maybe you should run the errands,” Gideon shot back, defensive of Harrow.
“You can’t call me every time you need something, but I’ll be on planet for the time being. So when shit hits the fan, yeah, call me.”
"Or Paul?"
"Don't bother Paul. They're light years away, why would you call Paul?"
"To say hi to my good pal Paul. Also, Harrow needs to talk about theorems twice a day or she devolves into fits of ennui."
"Well, just stun her with your five necromancy facts."
Gideon turned to Harrow. "Have I told you about my five necromancy facts?"
"Regrettably, yes."
"Wow, way to wound a girl when she's already dead." That earned Gideon a disgusted huff, and Harrow stalked away to stare down a decrepit lump of barbed wire. Pyrrha stared at Gideon with an expression that had become familiar. "Don't you dare-"
"Have you thought about it?"
"What, you want me to let Numbnuts over there and Paul run experiments on me? I got enough of that from dear dead Dad, thanks."
"Whatever. I won't push it."
"You've said that before, but alas!"
"Well, you'll be rid of me soon enough, and you can deal with her on your own. I doubt she's going to give you an easier time about it."
"Oh, I'm used to her shit. Easy isn't in her vocabulary." Gideon raised her voice, though she was certain Harrow could hear their entire conversation. "Have you got that supply list? Somebody needs to do the shopping while you're fondling fences."
Twenty-Six Days After the Death of the Empire
Phyrra left before dawn on the third day, leaving Gideon alone with the cows, who seemed determined to trample her into Gideon flavored paste, and Harrow, who had some bizarre aura about her that caused the herd to part effortlessly in her wake.
Harrow had procured an absurd amount of books on bovine care, on top of the necromancy texts she already lugged everywhere. "First," she declared, "We mend the fence." She insisted on carrying and working with the barbed wire, which just figured, didn't it? Despite her impenetrable skin, Gideon's muscles were of more use, so she worked ahead of Harrow, digging and setting fence posts.
They didn't own the land, but they weren't hiding, either. Gideon had already made polite banter with the some of the residents in town, many of whom owned other, completely normal cows. In the future, they would need to fence the entire area, but Harrow wanted to focus on securing only what they would need for the first year.
All in all, it was nice to have a project that involved exactly zero bones. Gideon gathered larger than necessary bundles of wood, taking care to flex in Harrow's direction. Harrow did most of the talking- in lieu of a notebook, she monologued plans to Gideon. As the day dragged on and their pace picked up, they fell into a more comfortable silence. A late evening deluge finally drove them into the shelter of the barn, but by the time the moons crossed paths in the sky, Harrow felt comfortable releasing the cows to pasture.
Over the following week, Gideon found herself growing comfortable. The land was nice, and she fell into the habit of taking long walks to explore it. A densely wooded area divided the terrain, but most of it was rolling hills of soft grass. Pyrrha had warned long nights and the winter wasn't far off, but for now the days and nights were evenly split. Harrow seemed comfortable with the temperature, often shedding some of the outer layers of her clothes. It rained too much for Gideon's liking, but for someone used to the barren cold of the Ninth and sterile ships, all in all, this planet was a nice change of pace.
Harrow had what seemed like a never ending list of things to do for the cows, and no sense of routine. That left Gideon to take care of the human things. She needed nothing, but she had found that if she went through the motions, Harrow would follow her lead. She cooked bland, simple meals she could not eat at regular intervals, and after it grew dark, when Harrow burrowed into her books, she insisted she needed to retreat and rest her eyes. Without fail, a warm body eventually crawled beside her and stay there still until the sun rose.
The cows, for their part, seemed fine. Gideon had not acquired the cow knowledge necessary to judge cow moods beyond "oh god, that big fucker is about to stomp all over my feet", but they roamed, they ate, and most of all, they pooped. Every evening, Harrow examined them head to tail one by one. While Gideon refused to help, she also didn't let Harrow go into the pasture alone. Though the cows were completely unbothered, the cavalier in her didn't trust her tiny, spidery necromancer with a gang of massive creatures capable of her crushing her to death.
Everything went off without a hitch until Harrow stalked in front of Gideon one morning in the pasture, huffed an exaggerated sigh, hiked her shirt halfway up her torso, and turned around.
Gideon blinked. "Is this foreplay? Please Harrow, not in front of the children."
"I hate you. I need your assistance with something."
"So....this is foreplay?"
"Look, you dolt."
Silently rejoicing, Gideon leaned in closer, and immediately noticed the problem. A large, grey sucking insect protruded bulbously from the small of Harrow's back. "Oh, ick! Gross!"
"Well, don't just stare at it! Get it out!"
Gideon recognized the tick. Smaller forms had crawled up her legs during her walks, but dropped off when they found her inedible. They loved the cows, and Harrow pinched them off as part of her routine in the evenings, lecturing Gideon about the proper removal techniques from her books.
"How?! Won't it spray shit in your blood if I do it wrong?"
"You can't squeeze the body or the head. Pinch it at its mouth, near the skin."
Gideon leaned in closer to try and identify the head and grimaced. "This is gross. This is disgusting. Ick ick ick."
"Nav!"
"I'm serious. You really owe me one after this." She poked the tick and it wiggled its legs. She drew in a deep breath that she did not need, imprecisely grabbed at the tick, and ripped it away. "Ew ew ew ew," she chanted as she ran to chuck it in a bucket of water.
Harrow hadn't even flinched. "You have to check and make sure you removed its head. If there's any debris it could cause infection."
Gideon leaned in to stare at the small bite mark, trying not to think about how close she was. None of the hormones that would have been present in her living days were active, but part of her brain was still screaming about how close her mouth was to Harrow's skin.
"Looks fine," she finally declared.
"I'll need you to check the rest of the area I can't see," Harrow said. "We might need to this with some frequency, until the weather cools off."
"Yep. Cool. Yeah. That's totally something I can do. Yup."
Sixty-Four Days After the Death of the Empire
After a honeymoon period of staring deeply into their dumb brown eyes, Harrow encountered her first cow-related failure. She implemented a system of subpastures so they could rotate the cows around in separate groups for reasons that escaped Gideon, only to find they were completely incapable of moving the cows where she wanted them. As a consequence, she had begun to hate the cows, just a little bit. Through the strange emotional mechanisms that ruled their lives, this meant the cows were now Gideon's favorite.
"They need names!" she declared at lunchtime, sitting in the loft over Harrow's head while she worked, sliding a cracker into her mouth every few minutes.
Harrow "hmmm"d and rustled around in her piles of paper (real paper! that wasn't going to get old anytime soon!) for a particularly dirty sheet. "We do need a system of identification. I've been working on a series of symbols based on the groups they tend to accumulate in."
"Names, Harrow. You know Big Angry Bastard? I'm going to call her B.A.B, or maybe Babs, as a tribute to the blessedly deceased Naberius Tern."
"Well, she's hardly done anything to deserve that legacy."
"The red one is Gideon. Obviously."
"Obviously."
"Don't be bitter. There's what, eighteen black ones? We'll have Nonagesimus, Harrow the Second, Midnight Priestess, Inky Liege..."
There was scurrying sound next to her. Gideon whipped around and stared briefly into two yellow eyes of an unfamiliar creature before it turned tail and ran.
"Harrow?! Come here!"
It took a few moments of small grunts and mumbles of frustration before Harrow lugged herself over the edge of the loft. "What is it, Nav?"
Gideon pointed at the corner where she had seen the little beast. "What the fuck is that?"
The little thing was hardly the size of Gideon's hand, but it battered at hanging strips of leather with the intensity of a green cohort cadet.
"Oh," Harrow dismissed. "That. I found their nest weeks ago. It can hardly hurt you, Nav. It's their mother you have to watch out for."
"There's more? What are they?"
"It's a feline. Pest control. We should be happy they chose to make their nest here. They'll keep vermin out of our feed stores."
"We don't have any feed stores."
"We don't have any feed stores yet. When Dve returns, I'm planning on procuring some. Grass and hay are sufficient, but we can invest in different types of feed to improve milk production."
"Why do we want to improve milk production?"
"To harvest and sell, of course. We need to make more money if we plan to buy a bull."
"A bull?"
"A steer. A male...For reproduction, Nav."
"You want more of these things?!"
"Alecto chose to resurrect these cows, we're hardly going to let their line end here, are we?"
"When were you planning on telling me you want this to become a full scale cattle breeding operation?!"
Harrow's mouth knotted itself into a sneer. "Well, your grand plan is to drop dead any moment, so I don't see why I should waste any time explaining things you won't be around for."
"You're such an asshole. I'm naming one of the cows Asshole, after you."
The little creature, which had black and tan stripes, chose this moment to barrel to the edge of the loft and crouch down in front of Gideon's boots.
"It's about to attack you, and you deserve it," Harrow declared, dropping out of view.
The creature pounced, unleashing its wrath on Gideon's laces.
Sixty-Six Days After the Death of the Empire
"Cheeseburger."
"You cannot name a cow cheeseburger."
"Fine, then. Beesechurger."
"Call Dve. I'm going to board her transport vessel and fly it into Dominicus."
Seventy-Four Days After the Death of the Empire
The weather was growing colder, and horribly, Gideon could feel it. Every time she noticed it, panic crawled out from deep inside her. Harrow was right, but she had to ignore it. She ignored the smells around her, getting stronger every day. She ignored the gasping breaths that pulled out of her chest in the night, stifled so she didn't wake Harrow. She ignored the jolts of electricity that sometimes shot through her limbs, almost painful. She was a lifelong champion of repression- piece of cake. Corpses were weird, and she was already a very weird corpse, ergo, nothing to worry about.
Around noon on the day the first flurries of snow began to fall, she couldn't ignore it any longer.
It took Gideon a moment to notice what happened. She was fixing a gap in the fence and pulled too roughly at the wire, slicing a gash in the side of her finger. She cursed and stuck it in her mouth out of habit, then froze. Slowly, she pulled her finger out of mouth and stared at glistening blood, pulled out by suction.
"Well," she said soulfully, tasting copper. "Shit."
The blood stared back at her.
"Fuck you. Go back in."
The blood didn't listen. Typical. Harrow was going to notice. Harrow was going to freak the hell out.
Her grand plan was a thick pair of gloves. That was completely inconspicuous, she convinced herself. It wasn't that she didn't sense anything at all. She had always had some of her senses in her zombified state, however distant. It was chilly! Maybe she wanted gloves.
Harrow cast a suspicious glance when she noticed Gideon's new fashion choice, but didn't push the topic. That would only last so long. She needed an excuse. She needed time. She needed a plan.
Except she needed none of that, because when she removed the gloves several hours later to examine the damage, the cut did not lay open and inert like the wounds in her chest and neck had all this time. Instead, the edges were already forming back together, the skin red and puckered, the itch of healing distantly registering. Gideon froze to her core. It felt like her bones were shaking. It felt like she was dying again.
There was a vague buzzing her in ears. Harrow would be back from town soon. She needed dinner. Gideon moved like a puppet controlled by strings, heating water and cutting potatoes.
Steam rose from the water. The mother cat had come downstairs. It perched on the railing of one of the stalls, staring at her.
When she returned, Harrow gulped the hot lemon water Gideon made for her. It dribbled down the corner of her mouth to her chin and she did not bother to wipe it away. It gleamed in the electric lights of the barn.
On the whole, it was the most beautiful thing Gideon had ever seen. She rose without a word, climbed the ladder to the loft, and wedged herself into a corner, curling up like the wounded animal she was.
***
Harrow let her lie up there for three hours before announcing she was going out to the pasture. She waited a long moment for Gideon to rouse herself, to no result.
A distant part of Gideon worried, but another distant part justified that if the cows were suddenly going to turn murderous, they'd had plenty of opportunities.
Gideon lost track of time, but at some point noise from below alerted her to Harrow's return. There was clattering, sweeping, and finally, the thump of boots on the ladder. Normally, they slept in what had once been some sort of an office, the only room with a proper door. However, heat tended to accumulate in the rafters of the barn, and the loft wouldn't be a bad place to spend the night. Harrow must have agreed, or else not cared, because she wormed her arms through Gideon's, attaching herself to her back.
Harrow didn't say a word, just buried her face in Gideon's hair, and that brought a dry sob out of Gideon's chest, along with all of the things she'd been trying to push down all day. She turned around, almost smacking their heads together. "Please," she choked out. "You can't ask me any questions, okay? Don't ask me anything."
Harrow, uncharacteristically obedient, nodded solemnly.
From her deep pockets, Gideon pulled a needle and thread. Gingerly, she pulled off her sweater, shivering more from adrenaline than from the cold.
Harrow stared like she wasn't sure what she was looking at, like she hadn't been begging for this for ages. "The needle won't pierce your skin," she said slowly.
"It will," Gideon insisted. "Please. Just try."
Harrow scurried away, back down the ladder, but it was just to flick the lights back on. It only illuminated the lower floor, but it cast enough of a hue up to the loft to work by. She coaxed Gideon out of the corner, a lighter in hand. She ran the needle through the flame.
"Don't bother," Gideon muttered, which went ignored.
Harrow lined the needle up with the flesh of the neck first, pinching it closed in her hand. "You have to tell me if this hurts," she said, applying pinprick pressure.
Gideon closed her eyes. She could feel the ghost of Harrow's breath on her skin. She could feel the beginning of the needle piercing her flesh. She could feel the wind as she jumped. She could feel metal through her chest. She could feel blades on her skin, teeth growing from her muscles, poison gas burning her lungs, choking her.
Not a single thing was funny, but she laughed anyway.
"It always hurts."
One Hundred and Eighteen Days After the Death of the Empire
The cows did not fit in the barn. There were twenty-eight stalls for one cow each, and the rest huddled outside under the sheltered roof of the building. That was fine, Harrow insisted, her tone betraying distress. Considering the chill of Drearburh had never killed either of them, even as skinny children and not massive bovines, Gideon was inclined to agree.
"Next year, we'll have space for them all," Harrow declared. She created a complicated stall rotation system based on her assessments of health that Gideon kept pretending she didn't understand, so she couldn't be expected to implement it.
Thankfully, they had more of less worked out how to maneuver the cows. Maybe they had figured out Gideon and Harrow had their best interests at heart, and that being led often meant food or a warm place to sleep, but Gideon didn't want to give them that much credit.
Something about sharing a barn with the cows and the cats, was starting to warm the bottom of Gideon's nonexistent heart and annoy her in equal measure. The animals had begun to impose themselves onto Harrow and Gideon's little routine.
For instance, there was at least one wake up call every time Dipshit was inside. Late at night, she woke the whole barn with distressed bellows that only subsided when Harrow (not Gideon, she hated Gideon) led her to the door to see the rest of the herd. Only then would she retreat back to her stall until the sun rose.
"Take her off the rotation. Clearly, she'd be happier outside," Gideon suggested, only out of concern and not at all because she was sick of losing her human blanket with a functioning circulatory system during the coldest parts of the night.
"She's one of the youngest out of the whole herd. I won't leave her exposed night after night," Harrow insisted. How she had any idea how old the cows were, considering they were all pre-Resurrection artifacts, was beyond Gideon's comprehension. She suspected it had very little do with estimated age at all, and instead with the blatant favoritism Harrow showed to Dipshit, who often hung her head low so Harrow could lazily scratch her ears.
Gideon did not have a favorite cow. They were at worst, an inconvenience, and at best, entertainment. Forming a genuine attachment to any of them would be silly. However, there was a particularly bold cow named Snow Leek who tended to gallop along the fence line and chew on the hem of Gideon's shirts. She'd also once pooped directly next to Harrow while she was furiously scribbling notes, so focused it took fifteen minutes before she wrinkled her nose and looked around for a culprit.
The cats were worse than the cows. There were four little cats, as well as the mother, Lady. Harrow was fond of Lady, who had taken to perching next to her at night while she read, occasionally stretching out and splaying her paws across the pages. Once Gideon caught Harrow running her hand down her long black fur, though she insisted she was simply dislodging a piece of hay. The striped little cat Gideon first encountered was called Cat. She was the most reclusive, and could be best identified by loud thumping noises from the loft, throwing around her four pounds of weight like an anvil. There were two blotchy russet and black cats, Mischief and Mayhem, who seemed to like the cows the most. They were usually outside, climbing trees or circling the herd, sometimes darting in closer for gentle sniffs. Finally, there was Alabaster, a white cat with a red-brown spot around one of his eyes. His favorite place to be was wherever Gideon was trying to step. On the occasions she tripped over him, he unleashed pitiful wails as if she had intentionally kicked him.
With all these troublesome animals, it was a miracle they were able to get anything done. Still, they had managed for a large stretch of time on their own without any major disasters. Gideon found herself vaguely proud of what they had accomplished, but more than a little suspicious trouble was on its way.
Trouble found them one afternoon, when Harrow returned from town with more hay and bad news.
"There's a storm coming. We need to bring the whole herd inside tonight."
Gideon immediately said goodbye to her plans for the evening. "Can we even fit all of them inside?"
"I have contingencies for this. We'll put pairs in the stalls, then fill the aisle and the office. You and I will sleep up in the loft- we're likely to get trampled if we don't. We should round them up as soon as possible- the wind is already picking up."
Sure enough, the second Gideon stepped outside, the change in temperature was apparent. Harrow handed her two lengths of rope, the kind they had started to tie around the cows' necks whenever they needed to lead them. "Let's do two at a time, if possible," she urged.
Gideon went for the most difficult cows first, worried that Harrow might be overwhelmed. She didn't need to worry- today, at least, the cows seemed eager to be led to the innermost fence surrounding the barn, huddling together much closer than they normally did. Some didn't even need to be roped, following their friends. Within an hour, there were no more cows to be found in the fields.
Harrow interrupted Gideon's move to open the barn doors. "I only count eighty-one."
Gideon quickly took her own count. "Shit. Who's missing?" Harrow pulled a list from her pocket and began to check them off one by one, but before she finished Gideon cut her off, "I think it's Snow Leek. I don't see her. I didn't get her, did you?" Harrow shook her head. "Okay. Cool. Uhhh...you start leading the rest of them inside, I'll go look for her."
Harrow ignored Gideon's suggestion and followed her back out to the pasture. They checked along the fence line first, worried she might have become stuck in the wire, somehow, or worse, escaped through a hole. Harrow was the first to finally spot her, close to the edge of the treeline.
In warmer weather, a pond there provided a convenient place for the cows to cool off. However, since the last time Gideon had seen it, it had frozen over with a sheet of ice. On the far end of the pond, standing chest deep, was Snow Leek, who had fallen through.
"It's okay, girl!" Gideon called. "We'll come get you!"
"She's not shivering. Hopefully, she hasn't been in there very long. She doesn't seem distressed," Harrow observed.
"No, she doesn't, the dumbass. Okay, what can we do? I don't want her to go deeper."
"If we break up the ice, maybe we can lead her out of the water."
"Alright. Okay. I've got this," muttered Gideon, more to herself than Harrow. With a second thought, she took a running leap and cannonballed onto the ice, landing with a deep thud and a crack. The crack, however, was not from the ice as intended but instead- "My arse!" she screamed.
"What?!"
"Fucking hell! What the fuck!? I just broke my arse!"
"That's impossible!"
Gideon rolled around on the ice in misery, holding her aforementioned backside. "Tell that to my arse!"
"What were you even doing?!"
"Breaking up the ice!" Gideon cried. She rolled back towards the dirt, where Harrow grabbed her and placed her hands on her rear. "Harrow!" Gideon yelped.
"It's broken."
"I told you that!"
"We knew the impenetrability was losing its power, but I had no idea it was this bad. I'm sorry. I can fix it, but we have to contact Paul. They need to see this."
Harrow admitting they needed anybody scared Gideon a little bit. She flopped over and managed to struggle into a position that could not by any stretch of the imagination be considered standing, but at least let her shuffle away from the edge of the pond painfully. "You're the worst. Snow Leek, Harrow's coming back with the axe. We're gonna get you."
"Yes, an axe. Great thought. If only you'd had it two minutes ago." Harrow gazed at the scene before her, shaking her head. "I'll return quickly. Don't make this worse while I'm gone."
One Hundred and Nineteen Days After the Death of the Empire
Paul somehow arrived within a day, nearly beating Pyrrha, who was delayed by the weather. They accepted the tea Gideon made and Harrow's short tour, regarding each cow with a polite nod, before launching into work poking, prodding, and interrogating Gideon with fascinated rigor.
Occasionally, Harrow cut in with commentary. "She's been breathing. She doesn't even know she's doing it, but it happens all the time now."
Paul fished out some sort of contraption, pressing it to Gideon's chest and positioning her hand to hold it in place. "Show me how you're breathing."
"I breathe like normal," Gideon declared, stubbornly refusing to do so.
"Nothing about this is normal. Take a breath and hold it for as long as possible."
Gideon complied, because the sooner Paul examined her, the sooner Harrow would be allowed to fix her ass. She'd only made about a dozen dirty jokes about it so far, which was a good indicator of deeply uncomfortable she was.
"How is her basal temperature?" Harrow demanded. "Has it risen?"
"Hardly, certainly not in any way I think is significant. Do you suspect it fluctuates? That would be remarkable without a functioning circulatory system."
Gideon made a gesture with her arms meant to indicate that she was, indeed, remarkable, which was ignored.
"Now that it's colder at night, I thought-" Harrow cut herself off suddenly, blushing furiously, presumably because she was about to admit she spent every night spooning Gideon. She changed the subject slightly, "She sleeps."
Gideon let the air out of her lungs with a dramatic gust. "I do not." This was news to her. Surely, she would know if she was sleeping.
"You snore."
"I do not!" Gideon looked down at the instrument she was still holding. "The little needle is in the yellow spot. Is that a good thing?"
"Oh, I just wanted to see how long you would go without talking," Paul said, dodging the instrument with ease. Damn Camilla's reflexes. "How long do you think she's sleeping for?"
"I've observed it four times. It's not for long, but twice I noted rapid eye movement."
"Fascinating. That's good, Nav. Your neural pathways must be reforging themselves. Your brain has always been my biggest worry if we were to attempt resurrection, but it appears your body is already taking care of that part for us."
“Do we even need to do anything?” Pyrrha asked. “How do we know her entire body won’t just fix itself?”
Harrow looked ready to throw a fit, practically vibrating with tension, but Paul considered this, fingers going to the bridge of their bare nose. “When Blood of Eden had it, the body was in stasis without a soul. Incorrupt, but certainly not living. We don’t know how much of the soul is present- some fragments almost certainly lie with Harrow. Part of the Emperor’s work was bonding Gideon’s soul to her body. We don’t know that won’t deteriorate as well, over time.”
“So what, I could just slip back out of my body?” Gideon fought the urge to shudder.
“I doubt it, but anything is possible at this point. There are too many variables, and too many unknowns.”
“Well, can’t we just wait and see what happens?”
“Do you want to take that risk, of your body and soul becoming separate again? If we leave it to that, who knows what could take over your body?"
At this, Harrow’s trembling reached a crescendo, and she exploded. "I will not commit the indelible sin again! Have we learned nothing?!”
“Indelible seems a bit of a misnomer, considering our circumstance,” Paul replied, unshaken. "But you're right. I think we should cast that method aside. Whatever is deteriorating, her healing mechanism is trying to compensate for it. We don't need to do something drastic. I believe all we need to do is jumpstart it, so to say."
"I'm not an engine," Gideon snapped.
“What kind of necromantic intervention would even be possible, if we don’t know what we’re dealing with here?” Pyrrha asked. “Is anything safe?”
“Nothing is truly safe. There isn’t a choice without risk, but I’m inclined to be proactive here. We have many options, but the choice isn’t mine to make. Or yours, Reverend Daughter. Nav, the choice is yours.”
Gideon shifted uncomfortably. "Well, for starters, if someone could fix my ass now, I'm more than ready."
Harrow rolled her eyes, but with a twist of her wrist, a jolt, and a snap, Gideon's tailbone was in its proper place. It was still sore, but end of that persistent pain helped Gideon clear her head and gather her thoughts.
"Okay, Pops tied my soul to my body, right? Can't we just re-tie it? Double knot it, so when whatever he did goes away, I stay here?"
With this, Harrow shot off the floor of the barn with a scream, startling Gideon so badly she fell off the bale of hay she was sitting on (thankfully, front first).
Harrow towered over her. "If I do that, if we can work out how, I won't undo it."
"I don't want you to undo it."
Harrow grabbed Gideon by the sleeve of her shirt and pulled. Gideon scrambled up and let Harrow tug her out into the night, snow crunching under their feet. Harrow backed her up against the side of the building.
"Do you even want to live?"
"Well, it doesn't feel like I have much of a choice at this point."
"Don't dodge the question. What. Do. You. Want?! Do you even like being here?"
"Do you?"
"Yes!"
"Do you…you don't seem…?"
"What, happy?" There was a rare note of humor, hysterical, in her voice now. "When have I ever been happy? I am where I want to be. Are you?"
Was she? Gideon didn't want to be anywhere else. Everywhere she had ever been was poisoned. She only wanted one thing.
"I want to be with you," she said. She tried, as hard as she could, to let the truth of her words show.
"You don't. You don't want to stay with me. You want to rot."
"I don't."
"You won't let me do anything. You won't let anyone. I've been asking, and you don't even think about it."
"I can't!"
"What, think? That much is obvious."
Desperately, Gideon grabbed Harrow by the wrist, shaking her head. "No," she said. "Please, Harrow...I just...I can't. I can't do it again."
Harrow looked ready to flee into the night, but she didn't shake Gideon's grip away. Slowly, as if not to scare her, she lowered her hand on top of Gideon's. "I will be cautious. I will be gentle. I won't do it like...he did. I won't do it like I did, before. You can trust my work. I know I'm out of practice, but the Sixth is here to work with us."
"I trust you. This isn't about your necromancy. I know if anyone could do it, you and Paul can. It's not that I'm not...terrified. I am. I don't want to end up...worse. At least if I die, when I die, I'll do it in my own body."
Tears wound down Harrow's face. "Aren't you listening to me? You don't have to die."
"You can't promise that."
"I can try! You can let us try!"
"I don't think I can do it," Gideon admitted. "I don't think I know how to do it anymore. I gave it up, okay? It's done."
"It's not!" Harrow implored. "Swear it to me, that you'll let Paul and I do our best to bring you back from the dead. If you swear it to me, I will do everything in my power to bring you back wholly, or else let you leave in your own body."
Something in Gideon broke. She was terrified, but Harrow had worn her down. She had no more arguments. She couldn't fight both her body and her friends, not any longer.
"Okay."
"Okay?"
"Fine. Yes, you can try."
Harrow surged forward, pressing herself to Gideon, but darted back before she could hold her in turn. "Come," she said. "We shouldn't waste any more time than we already have."
One Hundred and Nineteen Days After the Death of the Empire
"It's flesh magic. We could always contact Ianthe-"
"I'll chop off my leg before I let Tridentarius touch it."
"I'll grow you one back, nice and gold, to match," Harrow threatened, without looking up from her scribbling.
"Even better than friendship bracelets," Pyrrha added.
In Between
She is born on a ship, in a room as dark as the place she came from.
Paul drags a scalpel through Harrowhark's work, breaking it stitch by stitch. Gideon wants a new hole, strangely hesitant to reopen the old one, but Paul disagrees: "I'm afraid it's best if it goes in the way it came out." They are firm and steady, re-checking their supplies like it's nothing more concerning than a shopping list.
For all her bravado, Harrow is terrified. Gideon can see it in the way she chews the inside of her mouth, and the tremor in her hands. Gone are the new practical black overalls of the past few months. Instead, she wears her old practical black pants and robes for the occasion, though the face paint hasn't made a reappearance.
Pyrrha, for her part, is on cow and necromancer duty. Paul anticipates their work could take all day and well into the night. Gideon will be too preoccupied to make sure Harrow takes care of herself, and given the work they'll be doing, she'll need someone to keep an eye on Harrow's wellbeing.
Gideon's job is to not die all the way, or, at the very least, make a halfhearted (ha!) effort to push blood around her veins again. She isn't looking forward to it. In fact, if she had a digestive system, she suspects she would be shitting bricks.
Someone is handling her roughly, first tapping her back, then slapping the bottom of her foot. She screams.
First is her heart. Harrow's hands are in her chest, where she has wanted them for so long. She is stretching the veins, pulling muscle into existence. This, at least, does not hurt. After several long minutes of work, Paul fingers the organ, checking that everything is correct.
Now it's time for the fun part, which will very much hurt. What remains of Gideon's blood has been sitting stagnant in her body for a very long time. It needs circulate.
Paul strokes the heart with a finger, trying to urge it into movement. They have some sort of a machine that will shock her, if needed, but Gideon is oddly sure it won't come to that. She thinks of the electric impulses that have been shooting through her body for months now, urging towards impossible life. Sure enough, with the briefest push from Paul's finger, the muscle begin to move.
Someone is swiping over her body methodically with a cloth. She is cold. She has never been so cold.
The two necromancers work in tandem as she lays there, gashed open, new heart exposed to the world. She knows now that for ages Harrow and Paul have been planning to undo web of work John had used to get her up and walking.Now they are executing their plan, unraveling things layer by layer, reinforcing where they need to.
Gideon knows she is making noise- the pain is getting worse by the minute. There is no time to comfort her, but she isn't the sort of person who needs that sort of thing, anyway. It isn't how she was made.
Someone is crying.
It is Harrowhark who does the soul work, of course. Gideon only sort of understands it. They will not be a Lyctor, but just as some of Gideon's soul rests in Harrow, Harrow is tying Gideon's soul to her body with a bit of her own. It's the only part of this whole ordeal that doesn't seem like complete garbage, that part of Harrow is becoming a part of her, her gift finally reciprocated.
Gideon expects to feel it, the moment Harrow finishes her work, when her soul is reattached the way it's supposed to be, but she only knows because Harrow's hands fall to the floor, an exhausted, satisfied look on her face.
There is more to do. All the bits of her body need to be turned on and brought back into sync, now that there is blood flowing again. This is the marathon of the resurrection, Harrow and Paul racing against the clock to get everything working again. It will not be easy, but the worst of Gideon's work is done.
She is taken into the light. A face looms above her. It is the only time she will ever see it.
"Sleep."
"Alright, Ninth. Good work. You can pass out whenever you want. We'll take it from here."
That would be nice if she had any control over that sort of thing, she thinks, before promptly passing out.
She is placed into another womb of sorts. Before she can get comfortable, there is a great thrust, and she is suspended in space as the world spins around her.
After
For a long time, or a very short time, Gideon existed with barely a dream or thought. Every so often she became aware of something- voices...fingers on her chest and neck...someone holding her hand. Once, a sharp laugh that itched in the back of her mind- she knew that laugh- before she slipped away again.
The first thing she latched onto properly was the sensation of sharp pinpricks on her foot. She kicked reflexively, and a lump shifted off of her. She blinked open her eyes to find herself in Paul's dimly lit bedroom on the ship. Glowing, mismatched eyes blinked back at her. Alabaster, that bastard.
She glared. He blinked innocently and walked with softer paws up onto her stomach, roosting on her chest so her face was full of cat breath and fur.
She could hear voices in the next room. She knew she should say something and draw their attention, but before she could muster the effort, a wave of exhaustion swept over her. Never in her life had she needed to sleep so badly. She couldn't have fought it if she tried. She rolled over into a more comfortable position, displacing Alabaster. The last thing she felt was him resettling on her back, revving up his stuttering purr.
***
This sleep was different. When she woke, she knew it had been a long time, at least half a day. She knew she had dreamed, though she could not remember what about. There was a small hand in hers- Harrow or Paul. A long time ago, Cam's callouses would have given it away.
Gideon tried valiantly to say "Hey." Whatever came out of her mouth was incomprehensible and sounded like she'd been drowned, dragged over rocks, and had all her organs plucked out then stuffed back in. That was about how she felt, too.
There was shifting on the bed and weight on her torso as the person straddled her. Hopefully Harrow, then. A hand pressed itself to her cheek, feather light.
"Don't speak," Harrow demanded. "Can you open your eyes?"
Gideon could do more than that. She shot upright, blinking rapidly against the light to find Harrow's inquisitive coal-black pupils trying to stare her into oblivion.
There were a hundred things Gideon wanted to say, some of them funny, some of them sexy, some of them humiliating, but instead she pulled Harrow into something resembling a hug.
Words poured out Harrow faster than Gideon could keep up with. "...didn't want to disturb your Circadian rhythms...could risk hemorrhage...at least seems stable...have to unhand me, Nav...the Sixth is worried..." but Gideon just gripped her tighter. Slowly, Harrow stopped struggling and lowered her head to press her ear against Gideon's pounding heart.
One Hundred and Eighty Two Days After the Death of the Empire
Gideon Nav's New and Improved Five Necromancy Facts
1. Grand lysis was evil and should never again be attempted. Proof: While Palamedes Sextus was annoyingly determined whenever he set himself to a task, Gideon's working theory was that Camilla Hect's nerves of steel had fused with these traits to make Paul completely incorrigible. Gideon could not sneeze, piss, or take a shit without being questioned relentlessly about it. They wanted to take her vitals no less than twenty times a day, and new measurements were still being added to this routine whenever new problems presented themselves, which happened often.
2. Her suspicions had been correct. Resurrection fucking sucked. She needed more naps than a toddler, her muscles had atrophied during what turned out to be her 33 day coma, and reforging her nervous system fucking hurt, no matter how much Paul insisted it shouldn't.
Even eating, the thing Gideon had been most excited for once she had a living body (well, second most) was, of course, a total bust, because she was a wretched creature in a cruel and uncaring universe. Food looked good to her, initially. It always had, even when half her brain was offline, but digestion was a different story. She could barely keep anything down, and even when she did she found the sensations of having food in body hard to reacclimate to. The whole experience had put her off food entirely, so badly that even Harrow had taken up the task of encouraging her to eat. It was a disturbing role reversal that at least led to Harrow herself eating more frequently, as bribery.
3. Alecto was an absolute double dick for not resurrecting Gideon, as she had clearly mastered the process beyond what Harrow and Paul were capable of. While there was no telling what state the cows had been in previously, Gideon often looked at them and their magnificently functioning four-compartmented stomachs, combusting with jealously. Paul kept insisting everything was going as well as could be expected, and there was no reason she shouldn't regain full functionality, over time.
4. If there was any doubt, any theory to the contrary, Gideon had been truly, genuinely dead. Things were different, in life, in a way that she had never known before she had a point of contrast. She never knew how much feedback she got from her living body all day, the tiny aches and tweaks and signals. Her limbs sometime took great pains and efforts to move, nothing like the fluid, frictionless movements of her death. Emotions were, at once, the worst and the best. She was no longer numb. If anything, she was oversensitive, trying to recalibrate her emotional balance. She had cried more in the past few weeks than she had in her entire eighteen years before.
In Gideon's absence, life at the barn had changed drastically.
For one thing, Paul and Pyrrha seemed incredibly comfortable around the barn and performed cow tasks to Harrow's rigid standards. No one said anything, but Gideon suspected Harrow rarely left the ship during her convalescence, and the others had clearly risen to the occasion.
The ship itself had turned into a hub for the humans as well as Alabaster, who seemed determined to never go outside again. Now that Gideon was mobile, Paul reclaimed their bedroom, but there were two other bedrooms to shelter in, as well as a kitchen, common room, and a bathroom with a sonic. Gideon didn't mind washing in water, even preferred it, but Harrow seemed especially pleased with the sonic.
These were some of the positives in her second go at life. Other positives included- Harrow seemed to want to kiss her now, as on a few occasions she had pressed her lips to Gideon's forehead when thought she was sleeping. Gideon wanted at some point to upgrade to conscious mouth kissing, but she would very much like to gain control of her digestive track before doing so.
This brought her to final new and improved necromancy fact:
5. Being alive, as it turned out, was on the whole a lot better than being dead.
Two Hundred and Fifty Five Days After the Death of the Empire
Gideon was assaulted by the air itself, the moment she stepped out of the ship.
"Something is wrong. The air is...sticky! There's something in it."
"That's the humidity, Nav."
"It's disgusting. I want to go back to the Ninth."
"No, you don't."
"No, I don't." Gideon pulled her shirt over her head.
"The radiation is going to fry your skin."
Gideon flexed.
"Fine. Burn then."
The cows didn't seem to mind the heat. Snow Leek bounded up to the fence as she saw them approach.
Paul was already in the pasture, refilling the water trough. "Where's your shirt, Nav?" they asked, once they were within earshot.
"Enjoying the view?"
"You're going to burn."
Gideon groaned and pulled her shirt back over her head. She stood a chance against Harrow alone, but she had long since learned she was powerless when the two necromancers ganged up against her.
Many of the cows had begun to dry off as time went on. Only about a dozen or so were still producing milk, but Gideon had grown quite adept at milking, managing to collect much more than they had the first few months from fewer cows. There was something meditative about it. While Harrow insisted the cows had never hated her, Gideon was sure that once she returned the pasture, the cows had responded much better to her presence. She still refused to go near Babs- Pyrrha could deal with her- but she enjoyed the process of milking the others.
When she returned from storing the milk, Harrow and Paul had nearly finished their work. Gideon laid out in a patch of grass near the barn, shifting slightly for Mischief each time she walked by, performing her solemn cow observation duties. Eventually, she dozed into a nap, only rousing when Pyrrha tapped her arm with her boot. "Sup?"
"Paul's making lunch. Wanna come help?"
"Nah, go start it without me," Gideon mumbled. She wanted more time in the sun.
Two Hundred and Ninety-Eight Days After the Death of the Empire
At long last, Gideon's great plan had come to fruition.
She unveiled her work on a table, which was also one of her great creative pursuits. Sure, the top slanted slightly, but she had made it with her own two hands. (And also Paul's. And also Harrow's, when Gideon needed her to hold it steady so she could sand down the bottom of the legs one more time.)
This effort, however, was all her own. It sat there in all its pale yellow, slightly slimy glory.
"I don't think it's supposed to look like that," Paul observed. "Or smell so strongly."
"Cheese stinks! That's what it's known for," Gideon defended.
"Cheese does stink," Harrow echoed, charitably.
Paul leaned down for a closer look and grimaced. "Doesn't it need to mature at cool temperatures?"
"Yeah, that why I buried it."
"You buried it?"
"Out back, behind the water troughs."
"For how long?"
"Two months."
Pyrrha poked the side of the cheese, and bravely brought her finger to her nose. "That doesn't sound right, but I don't know enough enough about cheesemaking to dispute it."
"Whatever. You're all haters who don't deserve to taste my cheese."
A chorus of responses retaliated-
"I can't say I want to taste anything of yours."
"I forbid you from eating that, Griddle."
"We worked so hard to bring you back to life..."
Before Gideon could defend her pride, Mayhem appeared out of nowhere, leapt onto the table, and began to vigorously lick the cheese. "Oh, shit," Gideon yelped, grabbing her beneath the armpits.
Harrow swiped the cheese off the counter and carried it to the the trash compactor. "Better luck next time, Nav. Maybe on your second try you can make use of the ship's cooler."
"You planned that, Harrow," Gideon accused, lifting Mayhem up to stare her down. "I don't know how you convinced the cat to do that, but this is your fault. I'm onto you."
Mayhem licked her lips, showing no remorse for her crimes, as usual.
Paul barked their short, vibrant laugh. "Well, at least someone liked it."
Three Hundred and Sixty-Nine Days After the Death of the Empire
At long last, Harrowhark's great plan had come to fruition. She checked the communicator every half hour, waiting for the confirmation that her long awaited bull was on its way.
"It'll be interesting to add a male to the mix," Pyrrha observed over breakfast. "We've had quite the trend going, with the exception of Paul, of course."
"Alabaster's a boy," Paul pointed out. "Haven't you seen his cheeks?"
"Uh, haven't you seen his balls?" Gideon added.
"Well, hush up," Pyrrha scolded. "Don't let him hear that, or he'll feel excluded. He's very sensitive, you know."
Gideon leaned to down to watch Alabaster as he writhed under the table on his back, eyes crossed. "He doesn't seem too concerned."
Pyrrha refilled her plate and held out a hand for Gideon's without asking, because sometimes, on very rare occasions, she was simply an excellent person. Gideon added half a pikelet to Harrow's plate and proceeded to drown her own stack in honey.
Gideon's efforts to feed Harrow were for nothing, though. When she returned to the kitchen she didn't even sit down, nearly vibrating with excitement.
"What time will they arrive?" Paul asked, coming to the same conclusion as Gideon. Instead of answering, Harrow shoved a piece of flimsy into their hand. "Oh."
"What now?" Pyrrha asked suspiciously.
"It's from the First," they said, and began to read, "Today, much in the manner of the resurrection following the death of the emperor, several hundred beings materialized on the shores of the First. We believe them to be ancient creatures called sheep. Their fur has value as a material for clothing. In an effort to keep the blessings of Alecto together, we humbly request that you accept these creatures into your care. Please respond promptly."
"Sheep?" Gideon said skeptically. "Hundreds of them? How big are they, Dve?"
"We'll need more shelter, for sure. We may need to call in some favors, in town," Pyrrha said.
"Do we even have favors in town?" Paul asked. "I didn't know we were that popular."
"You're not. I am. You know me, I can be persuasive. Maybe you could offer some medical care for the locals, if you're sticking around."
Gideon was startled. Sure, Paul had been staying with them for a long time, far longer than she had expected, but she assumed those days were reaching their end.
"Don't be silly," Paul dismissed. "Of course I'm staying." Pyrrha seemed as surprised and pleased as Gideon, but Harrow had no reaction at all. "I'll go write a response, unless you you'd like to, Harrow. It would helpful to delay transport for a few days so we can put up some fence. We need more grazing land."
"We should get a dog," Pyrrha declared. "Maybe a few. They're good for herding. Roping isn't going to to cut it."
"A dog?" Gideon questioned. The number of animals was rapidly spiraling out of control. Alabaster yowled under the table, as if he sensed Gideon's affection was going to become divided. "Where would we even get a dog?"
"You've seen them in town. There are usually a few outside the tavern."
"Those fluffy things are dogs? Where are their other legs?"
"The dogs here don't have arboreal limbs, Nav, and the fur is for..." Paul began to explain, but Harrow pulled Gideon's attention with a hand on the back of her neck.
"Are you all right with this?"
"Are you really asking? Sure, why not? But if your girlfriend keeps gifting us animals, we're eventually going to need a bigger place."
Harrow's gaze grew distant, almost pensive. "I wish we knew why she chose these creatures, and what she intends."
"We'll see her again one day, and maybe she'll have an answer for us then," said Pyrrha. "We should collect the sheep in person. I could use a visit to the Houses."
"Well, I'm good," Gideon responded. "Alabaster and I can stay and watch the cows." She nudged him with her foot. "Will you help me out, buddy?"
Paul shook their head and reached down to pick the cat up, stroking his back. "He's never helped anyone a day in his life. I'll stay with you."
The edges of Harrow's mouth pulled up in a way that told Gideon she was fighting a smile, before she looked down and noticed the extra pikelet on her plate.
Harrow rolled her eyes. Gideon pushed her own food around innocently. Can't blame a girl for trying.