Work Text:
then
Gideon had wandered into the library in search of entertainment. Part of her accepted that a place like Canaan House was unlikely to stock the sort of high-quality, low-priced literature that Gideon preferred and had regretfully decided to leave behind in favor of packing her two-hander. Still, Gideon reasoned it was a big library and she was in no mood to be particularly picky; there had to be something.
While in her heart of hearts, she hoped for either comics or dirty magazines of the non-imaginary variety, she'd settle for some trashy romance novels written by people with literary pretensions and enough friends in high places to make the pretension stick.
Fate having a sense of humor much like Harrow's, she discovered classic poetry instead.
It was everything she could have asked for, provided she'd wanted to torture herself: if it was dirty, it was short; if it was romantic, it was long and ended with falling rocks that killed everyone before the first kiss or hand-holding. If people pined for fifty-seven pages (Gideon counted), on page fifty-eight, the object of their affection would become cavalier to their trashy rival who was trash and worst of all seemed utterly uninterested in hatesex.
Gideon read comics. The cruelties of the written word were not unknown to her. She'd dealt with cancellations, character assassinations and creators simply not understanding that what readers wanted should count for much more than what they, the characters's humble creator, had intended to happen.
Classic poetry opened her eyes to how coddled her literary life had been until this point.
To preserve what was left of her sanity and her ability to experience joy again at some nebulous future point in time, she selected what purported to be an instruction manual for those wishing to inflict poetry on their enemies rather than facing them in clean, honest, bloody combat.
It served its purpose well: she fell asleep not ten pages in.
If not for the side-effects, she might have started making plans to smuggle it with her when she left (a joke: Gideon suspected leaving this place would involve a body bag at best and a tragic, doomed romance at worst).
If you were to die, (standard opening #9, because of course it was)
I would water the flowers (a promise or statement of future actions)
someone else had planted on your grave (the twist and/or turn, transforming the previous promise or statement in a subtle, romantic way. Supposedly.)
(A lie, of course; the Ninth House was not a house of gardeners and anyway, Gideon would never be so foolish to expose her vulnerable parts to frostbite merely at the off-chance of spiting Harrow's soul, if only because in doing so, she might inspire Harrow to actually come back, which was a big steaming bowl of 'no, thank you'.)
(Gideon's act of spite and petty revenge would be to live well and read comics and fight people and eat ice cream, and generally have herself a great time.)
*
now
Harrow possessed not a single poetic bone in her body. If she had, she would have probably ripped it out and regrown it.
Even so.
If you were to die (always go with the classics)
my brain would go full galaxy (arguably an accurate description of attaining Lyctorhood)
and then I'd start blowing up stars (ditto)
(Gideon had the depressing thought that if, say, Ianthe were to hear this latest effort-slash-momentary-lapse-in-judgment, she would pronounce it 'romantic', but then, Ianthe regularly addressed Harrow as 'Harry', which was a depth even Gideon had never sunk to, so.)
(If they ever made this whole mess into a movie, it had damn well better be a romcom, was Gideon's point, and her actress had better look damn good with a rapier.)
(And there should be an actual sex scene, if only tastefully implied by a truckload of innuendo after.)
(And puns.)