Chapter Text
Gideon didn't see much point in living any more, but she didn't see much point in dying either. The one relief would be that it would all be over...but even in life, it was all already over anyhow. She had died when she had killed her Keeper and been dragged, kicking and screaming the whole way, into prison.
Gideon's reality was bleak. But at least there were so many things she'd escaped from, things that couldn't get her here. Like sharp fangs in the side of her neck, and a saccharine voice telling her to stay still. Or being punished for using Cytherea's clothes for her nest, for it held the closest thing to a comforting scent that she knew. No more keeping house and waiting on her volatile lover's every wish. No more of being told she was a fuck up, no more stings from the electric whip.
And yet. There were things she'd miss so much, little things she didn't think her beaten heart had the strength to love anymore. Like the warmth of sunlight, or her precious stash of sick pornographies, or open space to run around in. Cytherea's frail hand in her hair, gentle for once. Brawling and trading insults with Harrow when they were both children. The strange, intoxicating feeling of being cared for or wanted in any small capacity, her Keeper serving her warm, tasty food at every meal. The one hug Harrow had given her, the pleading gaze in her dark eyes as she had said, "Don't go. Please." It was the last thing she had said before Gideon left.
She had been looking forward to today. Her leg had been injured in the final brawl with her Keeper, and some sort of doctor–a half-rate doctor to be sure, some overachieving med student who volunteered to help out at the prison full of werewolf ne'er-do-wells– was coming to look her over. Gideon couldn't parse the reason: maybe they were curious about what sorts of heinous crimes people did to end up here, maybe they wanted some flea-bitten mutt to lord over for the day, maybe they were a vampire and they wanted a meal as compensation. But whatever the reason, it would be more entertaining than the monotony of her life.
Harrow was doing this for two reasons: she owed a favor to Ianthe, and she wanted to touch bones. Ianthe worked at the lycanthrope prison mostly for the benefit of getting to feed off of any inmate at a moment's notice. The vampire's killings were getting sloppy, and so she begrudgingly took the job, got her blood through the prisoners, the killings stopped, and she successfully bucked the suspicion that had been cast her way. Ianthe was supposed to hire a doctor to come look at one of the mangy mutts' broken legs, but if she cashed in an old favor from her beloathed acquaintance Harrow(a fellow vampire and, more importantly, a mortician, which was almost as good as a real doctor of you really thought about it) she could pocket that hiring fee for herself. Upon hearing this, Harrow had grumbled, 'you hardly need the money, your family is so wealthy it's sickening.' Ianthe murmured cryptically that she had her reasons. Harrow was immediately suspicious because everything about Ianthe Tridentarius was bad news, but ultimately agreed. After all, Ianthe had pulled some strings for her in the past and she detested being in her debt.
Ianthe greeted her with a self-satisfied smile on her pasty face. All of Ianthe’s facial expressions slightly resembled a grimace, but Harrow was pretty sure that was just how her face was. It was always amusing for the older vampire to see a small, grumpy-faced mortician completely clad in black from head to toe. With the black gloves and the black cloak with the lace trim and the bones she wore in her ears(which probably weren't from the human cadavers she worked with, but who knows really), Harrow out-gothed even the most spooky of vampires.
“Your wounded mutt is the second cell on the left after you turn right from that first hallway. Be careful, Harry. This one's killed a vampire before, and she's quite a bit bigger than you…which isn't that impressive a feat, if we're both honest here. She also thinks she's funny, which is its own problem. Maybe you should take a tranquilizer with you.”
“I can handle myself, Tridentarius.” Harrow scowled, squinting her beetle-black eyes and scrunching up her nose.
Ianthe shrugged languidly, her golden prosthetic glinting in the sharp light piercing from overhead. “Suit yourself.”
Harrow exited as swiftly as she could and followed her directions, boots clacking a severe rhythm on the stone floor. A few of the prisoners shouted at her, a few looked at her with sad and mournful eyes, and the majority didn't even turn their heads. Regardless, she wanted to get in and out as quickly as possible. This place was like a sad animal shelter commercial. She rounded the corner and saw the woman slumped in the corner of the cell, seemingly thumb-wrestling with herself. She was curled in on herself so that her face wasn’t visible, only the crown of red hair and her strong, freckled brown arms. Harrow latched onto this desperate hope that this was the girl she pleaded to stay with her, so long ago. Lord, let me see her face when she turns around. Let it be her–
She turned around, revealing her familiar face, defeat palpable in her golden eyes.
The creature in the cage looked to be the saddest girl in the whole world.
And she knew her, oh God she knew her, for how could she ever forget? Every drop of blood she'd swallowed during her childhood in Drearburh had come from this sweet morsel of flesh. Her most shameful memories were those of begging Gideon to stay with her instead of abandoning her to serve Cytherea. All the groveling in the world couldn't undo the lifetime of cruelty she'd forced onto Gideon. And yet she still lie awake in her coffin during sleepless days, thinking of how she could have made her stay.
"Griddle," She murmured, her throat tight, as if Gideon's strong hand had wrapped around it and begun to squeeze. Harrow's legs trembled, bones evidently turned to jelly at the sight of her old friend, her prisoner, her whipping girl. She clutched at the bars to keep herself upright.
Gideon's mouth flailed desperately for words, and her ability to take in air seemed to have evaporated in an instant. "Harrow," and then, "It's really you," Her face filled first with hope, a pleading look Harrow hadn't seen Gideon wear since she was a little girl, before steel and apprehension poured in and smothered it.
"What the fuck are you doing here?"
"I...I..." 'I am here to examine your leg.' she meant to say. She could not say anything when met with Gideon's golden gaze. Why was she behind bars? Were they treating her cruelly here? Crueler than she herself used to? Gideon couldn't run away from her here. She was trapped and thus, Harrow's once again. And all was right in the world.
"...you're the doctor." Gideon concluded, voice slow and guarded.
"Mortician." She answered automatically, and used the key she had been given to unlock the cell door.
Gideon laughed hollowly, still taut as a bowstring."Of course you're a fucking mortician of all things. And I bet you suck the blood from the corpses."
Harrow grimaced. Griddle had hit the nail right on the head with her guess.
"It's a...convenient arrangement for me. Where is your keeper?"
"I'm nobodies fucking 'kept thing' anymore." She snarled in a tone of voice that meant 'drop it' and that Harrow did not care to obey.
Harrow locked the door behind her, tucked the key into the deep pocket of her robe, and knelt down besides Gideon. She dug her fingers into the flesh of her arm, knowing that it was possessive and creepy and not caring. Harrow shuddered and curled in on herself like a penitent lying at the feet of their altar, grabbing fistfuls of Gideon's shirt. She sniffled and wept into the fabric.
"You left me behind," She whispered, her voice so fragile it was ready to crumple to ash in the sunlight. Hands skimmed through her shorn black hair, calloused and comforting.
“And look where that got me.” Gideon murmured humorlessly, still petting Harrow's hair. “Stop crying. And get off me.”
Harrow tightened her hold. And Gideon did not remove the hands in her hair.
Gideon was warm, sweet blood right under her skin. She was soft and solid, muscles rippling underneath the soft coat of fat. That coat was thin but new, she wasn't as starved as she was in Drearburh. It made her heart feel full of barbed wires to note that Griddle had lost that hungry look to her body that was a mark Drearburh had left on her, knots of muscles that were so corded and visible back then were softer and smoother now. Harrow could have clung onto her forever, Gideon’s hands in her hair. But she pulled away.
“You’re hurt. Your leg,”
Gideon ‘tch’ed, to which Harrow held out her hand and demanded, “"Let's see that leg of yours, mutt," she murmured quietly, coaxing Gideon to let her examine the injury. It was the 'mutt' that did it, the familiar insult tacked onto her words that pushed her over the edge towards obedience.
The gentleness with which Harrow cradled her wounded leg...as if it were something precious, a fragile porcelain egg she was trying not to shatter. Gideon had never been touched so tenderly in her whole entire life. She hadn't known just how badly she had been starving for it.
It made Gideon’s throat tight, the way Harrow cradled her wounded leg with the care one would show to something delicate. Harrow's bow-shaped mouth fell softly open, examining the bloody cavity that was in the process of crusting over. It had clearly been picked open many times. The bone was no longer visible, though the meat was still raw and visceral.
“Oh, please, the silver bullet isn't even in there anymore. You should see the other guy.” She grinned.
“You were shot?” Harrow hissed, her nails cutting little crescents into Griddle's skin, already a constellation of scars. There used to be less, last time Harrow had seen her.
“Only the one time.”
“Only one–for the love of God, Griddle! What do you mean only the one time?” Harrow, like all vampires, could not speak or hear the name of God, or of anything holy, without a bolt of pain going through her body. Her parents in Drearburh had taught her to worship the Lord anyway, and find holiness in the suffering. And so she did, and she never minded the pain. (Back when they were only little girls, if Gideon was feeling particularly angry with Harrow, she would say it over and over again, burning Harrow every time, not stopping no matter how much trouble she got in, no matter how much worse she made it for herself.)
“I mean,” Gideon said, very slowly, as if Harrow was a stupid child who didn't know anything about being shot, “That she only shot me once.”
“That is still bad, you imbecile!” She took Gideon by the shoulders and shook her furiously, as if she was trying to dislodge something stuck between her ribs.
“Yeah, but. Coulda been worse.” Gideon realized as she said it that it was true. It could have been worse. She could have died. Being dead would be worse than this. She hadn’t had any such attachment to life this morning. But now Gideon Nav wanted to live more than she wanted to die, and that had to count for something.
Harrow furrowed her brows and went back to her thorough examination of Gideon's leg. She wasn't used to working on living bodies, though she had perfected her skill of performing autopsies. She was never this delicate with the cadavers.
"You're lucky there's no damage to the bone. It's healing up nicely. You've always been good at protecting yourself." Harrow and Gideon loved fighting each other back when they were small. They loved making a game of blood feedings, seeing if Gideon could get away or beat Harrow in a fight so badly that she'd give up. They had fun. They needed each other. Harrow's cruelty only calcified when her parents committed suicide by staking each other right through the heart. Gideon had seen Harrow, in the moonlight streaming through the stained glass windows of the abandoned church the vampires took shelter in. Her small, shaking hands grasped around her own wooden stake. When she'd seen Gideon watching, she was so startled she dropped it. She did not pick it back up.
Gideon had to harden up after that. She would have died if she didn't.
"Whole lot of fuckin' good that does me." Gideon uttered, voice like smoke in the cold stone cell.
“It was your Keeper, wasn't it? She did this.” Harrow accused with her watchful dark eyes and sharp tongue. “And these.” She traced some of Gideon’s fresher scars. It was strange to be using them as evidence to condemn Cytherea, when they were entangled with the scars she herself had caused. It was as hypocritical as the God she used to worship.
“Why do you care?”
Harrow slowly lifted up her hand to cradle the side of Gideon’s face, thumb caressing the curve of her cheekbone. She bristled at first, but melted into the touch. She didn't mean to, it was just…it was just that Harrow’s hand was so warm, and she was being so gentle, and it had been so long since anyone had touched her softly. “Are you so foolish to think that I don't care for you?”
Lulled by the sensation, all of Gideon's viciousness and bared teeth softened. All that was left was a rather mollified creature with a gormless expression and golden puppy-eyes.
“She was nice, at first. She said she was going to take care of me, that I was…sweet, and good. She was so frail, I could have stopped her at any time. I coulda fucking torn out her throat when she fed from the wounds she sliced across me, when she made me spend my wolf transformations in a cage, when she f–when I fucked her. Harrow, I'm so fucking stupid. She was gentler with me than anyone had ever been before..." Gideon muttered, stubbornly not meeting Harrow's eyes.
"...Gideon, I spent my entire life destroying you. Of course you would have tolerated such cruelty for the opportunity to be...loved...after all, we deprived you of it so much you must have been starving for it. Come here, I'll be gentle with you this time–”
Gideon leaned in, unrestrained begging in her eyes. If she let herself, she would have been honest-to-god whining right now.
Harrow cradled the back of Gideon’s head. She flinched when the hands made contact with her scalp, but did not pull away. Harrow clutched her tight to her chest and wrapped her bony little arms around her middle.
It would be so easy to kill her right now. Gideon was practically lying down, unguarded, her eyes closed. Her oldest enemy had her hands in her hair. She was fucked. All her survival instincts went right out the damn window where Harrow was concerned.
With her hands tousling through Gideon’s hair, Harrow asked the inevitable question.
"What did you do to end up here?"
Gideon's shoulders clenched and curled inwards as she assumed the stance of someone ready to turn tail at the first sight of an exit. But she had done it and she would have done it again, would have done it ten thousand times.
“I killed her.”
Harrow clutched tighter. “Good.”
“I fucking hate cages.” Gideon whispered, resting her head on Harrow's shoulder and digging her fingers into Harrow's flesh.
Harrow moved one of her hands to lie atop one of Gideon's. It was shaking. They were both shaking.
"I cannot accept watching you wither away here. I will have you as a thrall. I would feed from you. You would live with me and I would take good care of you and allow no harm to come to you.”
Gideon’s jaw felt softly open, and she blinked as if to check she wasn't dreaming. "Like old times?"
"I would take good care of you this time. No more cages.”
“Then, oh, hell yeah. Hell yeah, get me out of this place,” Gideon said frantically, not realizing she was smiling until she felt her eyes crinkle up and her face start hurting. She helped Harrow to her feet, as she extracted the key and unlocked and opened the door made of metal bars.
Harrow took Gideon’s hand firmly in her own. Her hand was so tiny and fragile, and she could so easily crush it with a squeeze. Every step she took led her farther away from the cell behind her. If Gideon didn't look back, she could imagine it collapsed as soon as it escaped her field of vision, destroyed without her there to fuel it.
~~~
Ianthe was distracted from her thrilling trashy romance novel–it was completely and utterly awful, just how she liked it, scoffing at the gall of it all. Distracted by the peculiar and jarring sight of Harrow holding the hand of the woman whose leg she was supposed to check on. Ianthe hadn't thought she’d live the day to see Harrow voluntarily hold hands with anyone. And if by some miracle she had, she thought it would at least be a rotten corpse. That, at least, made sense for Harrow.
“Ianthe Tridentarius. I will be purchasing one of your inmates as a blood thrall. You will give me her papers and tell me how much you have valued her at.” Harrow said matter-of-factly.
Ianthe’s jaw had dropped, and she’d put down the novel she was reading face down– a pair of librarians Harrow knew would be irked at the potential damage to the spine.
“I sent you in to look at her leg and now you want to keep her? Harry. Be serious. You've got a myriad of corpses to feed from, and you want to waste your money on a damaged thrall with an attitude problem and a murder conviction?”
Harrow couldn't tell whether the older vampire looked more amused or appalled by this development.
A growl brewed low in Gideon’s throat.
Harrow squeezed her hand and she reluctantly settled down.
“Did you feed from her while you were down there? That's very naughty of you, Nonagesimus, you're not employed here.”
“I did not feed from her.” She said. Gideon could practically feel the air go thick with Harrow's condensed frustration.
"You're really keeping her and you haven't even sipped her blood yet...I hadn't thought you would be the type to purchase a plaything. There are easier ways to get someone to warm your bed at night.
"Gideon is not my plaything."
“What is she then?” She made eye contact with Gideon, her lavender eyes full of playful malice. “Are you her pet?”
“Fuck off.” Gideon snapped, hands curling into fists as she lunged forward to bare her teeth in Ianthe's face.
“Hm. You've got your work cut out for you training your blood bag how to behave. Here are her papers, the price should be listed there.” Ianthe handed her a sparse packet of stapled papers.
Harrow scanned them, skimming through information she already knew by heart: Gideon’s birth date, blood type, full name. She noted the line that branded her with loss of heat, meaning that like most other werewolves, she’d once undergone regular heats before the full moon to ease the pain of a wolf transformation, but no longer did. She came across the price of taking Gideon as a thrall, furrowed her brow, and dug furiously in her pockets for her wallet. She forked over her credit card and paid.
“Come here, Gonad, you still need a collar." Ianthe smirked.
Gideon stayed rooted where she was, growling slightly at Ianthe, the evil uncooked spaghetti noodle. Harrow grabbed her by the wrist and tugged her forward. "Go on, Griddle."
Gideon listened (reluctantly) and let Ianthe fit her with a leather collar, turning up her chin and squirming the entire time. Ianthe handed an empty leash to Harrow, who clutched it in her fist, and she clipped the other end to the collar.
"Already becoming a lap dog." Ianthe scoffed as she did the buckle.
"Don't talk to her like that." Harrow snapped.
"Struck a nerve there, Harry?"
"As of now, she's not yours anymore. And as her Keeper, if you have qualms with her, you have qualms with me.”
As much as the whole situation made her blood boil, Gideon’s heart pounded to see Harrow being protective over her.
“Well, if you're going to be like that about it. Here's a book I'm legally supposed to give you. You can throw it out as soon as you get home.” Ianthe snatched a book from a pile underneath her desk and tossed it towards Harrow.
It was leather bound and embossed with the words, A PRACTICAL GUIDE TO KEEPING A WEREWOLF THRALL by Abigail Pent, the nice edition that was supposed to be for Ianthe as one of her perks as a guard. The ones she was supposed to give out were shitty paperbacks, but she never read the damn thing because it was dull, so she wouldn't miss the high quality one if she pawned it off on Harrow. Ianthe was just nice and saintly like that. Everyone was always remarking on her kind and generous personality, and praising her for her lack of lecherous behavior, irritating nicknames, and snide remarks.
“Keep in touch, Harry. Our interactions are always entertaining.”
Harrow grumbled, as both the other women knew she would, and swooshed out of the room dramatically with her black cloak and dour expression.
~~~
They stepped out into the parking lot–it was nighttime, of course, Harrow wouldn't go out in light of the sun. Gideon hadn't seen the moon in months. Wolves didn't actually howl at the moon, much less werewolves–that was a stupid myth–but goddammit if she wasn't feeling the urge to awoooo at the giant glowing space orb right about now. She hadn't seen the sky in fucking forever.
“Let's rid you of that awful collar, Griddle,” Harrow hissed, and reached up towards Gideon’s neck. She bent down in order to give Harrow easier access. Harrow slipped the buckle out of the holes in the leather, slowly and deliberately.
“Harrow.” Gideon said seriously. “Is that seriously your fucking car?”
“Which one?” Harrow asked, as if she didn't already know.
“The fucking hearse.”
“It came with the morgue.” The vampire said, unlocking the car to her actual fucking hearse, what the fuck, and motioning for Gideon to get into the passenger seat. She obeyed and Harrow sat in the driver's seat. Gideon was surprised her feet reached the pedals.
God, none of this felt fucking real. She was free and she was alive and she was riding in a hearse with Harrowhark Nonagesimus, who she would have sworn she would never see again as long as she lived.
Once the door shut to her car, Gideon hugged her with impressive force, melting atop her and burying her face into the crook of her neck. Harrow had frozen like a deer in headlights. She couldn't remember the last time she'd been hugged. Gideon had completely collapsed on top of her like a puppet with its strings cut. "Fuckin' thanks, my midnight haggette...just...thank you," She muttered into Harrow’s shoulder, voice sounding like it might break. Harrow tentatively lifted her arms and wrapped them around Gideon. "You're safe now. You're all mine."
"You want me?"
"I want you.”
Gideon bit her lip to suppress a grin. She quickly pulled herself away from Harrow as if she were made of scalding iron, and pressed her face against the window.
Harrow started up the car and it rumbled to life beneath them both, and began to lurch into motion.
Gideon watched with starry eyes as the world she hadn't seen in months–years, if you didn't count seeing it through the windows of Cytherea’s home–rolled by, so much more bright and dazzling than she had remembered. She had the sense that nothing could get her now. She was unkillable. Safe.
Yeah, safe. That was the word she was looking for.