all this work gone to waste

[lipochrome]

Who: gideon nav and cr
What: a july catch-all
When: mid-late july
Where: the beach, cobra kai, gaze

Content Warnings: marked in comment headers, but expect death, grief, corruption, religious and family trauma

Comments

open to cr. cw: death, self-loathing, corruption, self-harm, gore

[lipochrome]

[ Washing up on Trench’s shoreline is as disorienting as the first time. Initially, Gideon doesn’t remember how she got there. She barely remembers that her name is Gideon, that her legs belong to her and are used for walking. She remembers being terrified of the water, but can’t recall why.

Making it up the shore is frustratingly difficult. The sand feels numb against her feet, and Gideon assumes it’s from the cold. It’s freezing out here – why does no one seem to notice? They’re all out in short pants and flimsy dresses. Someone offers Gideon some clothes, at some point, but it might as well have happened to another person, for all she notices. At least they’re black.

When all is said and done, she doesn’t even make it up to the boardwalk proper. Gideon Nav sinks into the sand that she hates that gets everywhere, and she checks her messages. She has – people. People that she knows, who like her, who are worried about her, right? Who will probably be along any minute.

Wrong.

Gideon remembers, with grim and horrible clarity, how he turned his back. How he did nothing as she struggled for air, betting her life on the fact that he loved her. That he would try, too.

There is a tremor in Gideon’s body that has nothing to do with the cold. It boils up, and over, and then she is laughing, and laughing, and laughing. What king loves his sword? What maker loves his bomb? She’s so stupid. (It’s so cold.)

The useless star sets, and Gideon has not moved, except to lie sideways in the sand, knees pulled up to her chest, still shivering. Sometimes, when she pulls or scratches at her skin, it sloughs all the way off, leaving nothing but patches of bone and muscle. (She wishes she could feel it.) She laughs. She tries not to touch anything.

She plans. ]

[terriblepurpose]

[In the wake of storms, there is wreckage.

It starts small. Paul fills his pockets with broken sand from the waterline the first day he goes back to the gouged and bloodied beach. The next day, he comes back with a pair of gloves and a bag. The day after that, he adds another bag, a pointed stick. He develops a rhythm, and a sunburn, and an ache in the back of his neck from keeping it bent, and time passes, as it always does.

When he sees the huddled shape in the sand, there's no way of making out if the still form is alive, or even human, let alone who they might be. He's found the bodies of Beasts along the shoreline, each one a horror, and he's done what he could to set them in order, melting carcasses covered in cairns of stone sanctified by incense, flattened silver coins laid over whatever passed for their eyes.

But the stick and bag fall from his hands as he steps closer, forgotten, his heart stuttering under the shiver that blooms down his spine.

He couldn't send her a message. He'd written a hundred of them into the glow of a screen and deleted them all, because he would tell her when she came back, and she would come back, because wherever her soul briefly caught, Gideon would find her way back to her Houses.

(And he burned flowers every night in the palms of his hands, sticky with his blood under the seething, judgmental moon, the ocean lapping at his knees, whispering her name to the water and the wind and the dark.)

Soft and low as the waves, he calls to her again:] Gideon?

[lipochrome]

[ There is a bloom of warmth in Gideon's chest when she hears her name, whispered over the beat of the ocean. He survived. He came back for her. Gideon thinks about turning around, or smiling, or calling his name in return. She could do something. Anything.

She remembers the feeling of his bare throat beneath a hand that does not belong to her, all fear and burning and burning. The chill washes over again, like the tide. Paul should never have been there. Gideon should have made good on her warning, instead of hoping Paul would be all right because it felt nice to have him around. Crushing on the Lyctor felt nice, too, and look where that got her.

Gideon sits up, because despite everything, it'd be far too embarrassing for Paul to see her like this. It's funny, how Gideon keeps trying to save face. For who? For what? He must already know. She laughs. She bites her tongue, hard enough to taste blood, and tucks her head between her knees. Deep breaths. One, two. ]

Sorry. [ Gideon manages to rasp, and then again, quieter: ] Sorry.

[ A chuckle, twisted into something ugly and humorless, and not something Paul would recognize from her. ]

I'll be all right. I finally worked out what I've gotta do.

[ It took her long enough. ]

[terriblepurpose]

[Paul crosses the black sand between them as she speaks, apprehension turning to a pang of fear at that awful, un-Gideon laughter. He goes to his knees at her side, hands coming up to hang in the air between them, not quite reaching for her.]

Don't be sorry.

[As if he can ask that of her. As if he could ask it of anyone. Paul is sorry. He's one of the sorriest things on this wrecked shoreline, and he still doesn't compare to the misery wrapped around Gideon like a caul.

He remembers coming back from the sea, the ruin that it made of him. He remembers, with black shame, his trembling and hideous vulnerability.

It's not going to be like that for her. He won't let it be.]

What are you going to do?

[Nothing good. He doesn't need to look into the future to know that. The way she said it left no doubt. But the specifics matter.]

[lipochrome]

[ Ordinarily, Gideon would lean into the offer of touch. Or she'd wrap and arm around Paul's shoulder and squeeze, or muss his hair. Now, though, she only curls in closer on herself, as if shying away from it.

She won't be able to feel his touch. She doesn't want to be reminded.

It's a while before Gideon answers, long enough that Paul would be justified in doubting if she even heard him. ]

Do you remember when I told you that He -- [ was my father, Gideon tries to say, but the words burn in her throat, and all she can do instead is choke out a syllable of that not-laughter. ] -- I told you some assholes wanted a bomb.

[ now she turns to him, golden eyes wet, shining. ]

They made me to kill Him. But instead I thought I could play happy fucking family. And look where that got me. Look where it got you.

[ Gideon laughs, and she laughs, because look at her. Look at them! Pathetic. ]

I'm going to stop pretending I'm something I'm not.

[ Paul saw her, in Faith's body. Gideon is positive he did. He must know that Gideon is a battery, a bomb, a sword. A tool to be used, and didn't it feel good to pretend that God thought of her as anything else? But that's not how the world works. There are people who are tools, like she is, and there are people who wield them. She might as well go ask Crux to be her best friend. ]

[terriblepurpose]

[Paul's hands curl into loose fists as she speaks, draw together at the wrists as he draws them back towards himself but leaves them canted up in the air. The gesture is suspended somewhere between supplication and someone carefully holding some incredible volatility steady.

He does remember that day on the beach, and how lightly she spoke of the consumption of cavaliers, how she tried to roll the circumstances of her birth off of her like droplets of water. He remembers her child's face tucked against his softer shoulders, her eyes like apocalypses in the frame of a door, the glint of silver at her neck, and a hundred thousand other moments that wove them together between them all.]

I remember you telling me to stay away from him.

[He should regret not listening. He does regret so much that followed it, with all the sour-slick murk of shame, but - she was there, and he can't regret that.]

I didn't listen to you. [He smiles, then, as crooked and unbalanced as his voice is, and he even breaths the ghost of a laugh before:] It was good advice.

[It still is, but he knows he never would have followed it. He knows that she won't either, so long as he's here, the gravity of all he's done demanding an answer sooner or later. Who is he to stand in the way of her vengeance?]

I never told you what we talked about, that first time, him and me. [He loosens a hand from its invisible bond. He bridges the space between them to brush her huddled shoulder, gently, like the precious thing she is.] We talked about you.

[He's her brother.]

cw: mild suicidal considerations

[peripheries]

[Kaworu doesn't often leave the house, but when he does, he goes to the beach.

He sits on the shore in the sand, letting the waves slowly lap at his bare feet like a gentle caress. Maybe it is. He can't help but wonder what it would be like to return to the sea. All life here comes from the sea. There's a comfort in a return to the womb. A world without pain, uncertainty, or even boundaries.

It would take only a few steps and then the sea could have him. It all returns to nothing in the end.

Something moves further down the beach and he poises himself to flee. Then he sees who it is and his stomach fills with a reactive mixture of relief and acidic guilt.

He's been waiting for her if he's honest.]

Gideon?

[lipochrome]

Kaworu?

[ She didn't expect to find anyone here. She saw the messages: Anna is coming for them. Everything went wrong. Gideon wasn't the only person who died. (She left them, after promising not to, because she's a liar, liar -)

For a moment, the surprise of his appearance is enough that Gideon can feel the sand between her fingers. The feeling is fleeting; the cold and the numbness relentless.

Gideon wants to reach out, to rush over and pull him close. But that's the problem, isn't it? She keeps wanting that, and all it ever does is hurt people.

She turns back towards the sea. ]

I'm sorry. I should never have -- [ she swallows. Shouldn't she be crying? Shouldn't she feel more than a cold, empty nothing? ] -- I'm going to make it right.

[peripheries]

I tried to save you. I... promised myself to Mariana if I could save you and...

[His voice breaks off, lost to a more violent wind that whips across the shore from the sea. He wants to apologize. And not just to her. But there's a childish hope that if he does, the words will travel on that wind to everyone that he wronged on that boat and on the beach.

But he can't.

Instead, he just hangs his silver head in shame.]

[lipochrome]

You shouldn't have had to.

[ Gideon's voice takes on a force, almost harsh edge. There's an anger there, and it's all directed inward, like a spike through the chest. Gideon digs her nails into her forearms, arms crossed in front of her chest, and she hopes she feels some pain, any amount of what she deserves. Anything. ]

I should have known. He never wanted me, even from the start. He just wanted a sword. I should have told you to stay away. Parents aren't -- they're not for people like me.

[ People being a generous term. She was an asshole to even try. ]

[dohaeris]

[it isn't easy for sansa to make sense of what she sees out of her left eye, jumping as it does from bird to bird. she sewed herself a few eyepatches to keep it shut during the day, still she does her best to scan the beach for any of the casualties returning. the least she can do is bring them robes and tailor them as she does for new sleepers, (though she will not do this for the emperor, wherever he may be).

she is relieved to see gideon; though they did not know each other as well as they might, sansa is fond of her (she supposes gideon knows her about as well as her friends in the vale, which is not a comforting thought). she throws a pair of trousers destined for the vale on top of the robes before she heads down to the shore, her most elaborate chatelaine strapped to her thick leather belt, matched to her sturdiest eyepatch. she wears a charcoal dress with cap sleeves, and the buckle of her needle necklace glitters with dark bloodstone.

above her, ravens and seagulls and a few odd ospreys whirl in uncharacteristic murmurations. occasionally one lights on her shoulder and leaves again.

gideon does not look well, but she is here, and she can be healed. sansa smiles tentatively as she approaches.]

Gideon? It's good to see you.

[it's one less death weighing her down like steel.]

[lipochrome]

[ Gideon doesn't register the unusual birds. She barely hears Sansa's voice. It's as if the other girl is speaking through a pillow, or from the bottom of a mine shaft. Gideon doesn't even turn to face her, at first. Why should she? Sansa is relatively un-fucked over, and that's probably thanks to the fact that neither of them know each other all that well.

Belatedly, she realizes Sansa has said it's good to see her. Good? Gideon laughs, a small, breathy ha that has absolutely nothing to do with mirth. ]

Hey. Yeah, sure.

[ Gideon doesn't return the smile, but she doesn't tell Sansa to go away, either. ]

Sorry. As you can see, I'm not... doing so hot. [ Another laugh, as bitter as the first. That's the understatement of the myriad. ]

[dohaeris]

[sansa's smile tightens. she should've known to bring her blood hound. if she'd been able to use her powers properly, she would've seen it.]

I came to help.

[she did. she clutches the robe and trousers and looks away for a moment.]

Winter?

[her omen appears, a snow-white raven that seems to swoop down from nowhere. he doesn't much stand out from all the other birds.]

Will you fetch Knight down here, please?

[he circles gideon briefly as she speaks.

"Of course," he says, and flies off.

sansa holds out the bundle of clothes.]

I brought clothes for you. I can make more if you come with me. There's food, too.

[she has a sinking feeling it's not going to be that easy.]

[lipochrome]

[ In any other scenario, Gideon would be touched by the offer. She's still new enough to people giving a shit about her that every moment of it is precious. Now, however, it just feels empty. Hollow. What good are the clothes? What are they going to fix? It's useless to try to dress up a bomb. ]

I can't.

[ Come with. Can't bear it. Can't do what she was supposed to, not even once. ]

I have to kill him.

[slayerskiss]

[It's not the first time she's felt someone severed off of her like a tumor. Although, in both cases, Faith knows that she was the disease. She didn't remember the girl before her. Every instance she could think of, replaced by someone else.

But she felt her, like a shackle against her throat, a few times. When she had that kid, Paul, in front of her and she was ready to kill him, it was this girl who yanked her back. When she tried to scream at Johnny to get to safety - to get away from Willow - a girl that she trusted - was that the slayer or the cavalier? Was there any difference at that point? When she killed Willow, she felt like they were moving as one for the first time since they'd been merge.

She understands the girl before her now, far deeper than she ever asked to, and she knows that the cavalier understands her too. She had front row tickets to the rot within her as it was revealed for all to see.

Which is a bit awkward.

She approaches her. A name ghosting her lips.]

...Gideon.

[That's her name. And she owes it to her to remember it.]

for kaworu

[lipochrome]

[ Gideon leaves God behind, on the beach. She goes home.

The house is a near-empty, haunted thing. The bone-whorled floorboards creak under her feet. Wind whistles hollowly through an open window. Was this place always like this? As old, decrepit, and pathetic as the Ninth?

That's not a question Gideon can, or should, answer. There's only one thing on her mind right now, and it's this: she needs to get her brother the fuck out of here.

She goes room by room, knocking gently on each door before peering in and asking: ]

Kaworu? It's me. It's Gideon.

[peripheries]

[He's sitting on the bunk bed, wearing one of Paul's hoodies. Despite Paul's thin build, it's still too large on Kaworu, making him look smaller and younger than he is.

When he raises his head, seven red eyes blink at her in, uncanny and uneven. Then at the sight of her the others close, leaving two wide red jewels taking in the sight of her.]

Gideon. Why are you back...?

[lipochrome]

[ He's so small. So alone, and Gideon just let him come back here.

The eyes don't frighten her, at least. Gideon crosses the distance without a second thought, and if he lets her, wraps Kaworu in a tight, near-desparate hug. Her skin is ice-cold, but the rise and fall of her breath at least indicate that she's alive. ]

I came back for you. Duh. We're [ we, not you ] getting out of here.

[ Finally. ]

[peripheries]

[He slinks away slightly, dropping his head and leaning against the wall. Then he's pulled away his little refuge, wall torn down by Gideon's ever impressive biceps. He buries his face in her shoulder. He barely notices that it's cold. He doesn't even care.]

I don't... know. I don't know how to be any place but here.

[lipochrome]

[ Gideon gently sets her chin atop Kaworu's cloud of silver hair, as if to tuck him in, or to shield him from a world that neither of them really know how to live in. ]

I don't, either. [ she admits, low and gentle. ] Where I came from... it was a lot like this house, I think.

[ A cold, empty grave. filled with ghosts and mourners and those who would look away.

Gideon swallows, readying herself to do something terrifying and terrible. ]

Would you... wanna learn? With me?

for pyrrha

[lipochrome]

The first person Gideon sees, when she returns to the house that was never really a home, isn't her brother.

The tall, wiry-muscled outline of Gideon Original still sends a spike of secondhand anxiety right into Gideon's chest, even though Gideon the Elder was never sent to kill her, specifically. But it's not easy, riding out someone's fear-induced insomnia, day in and day out.

Gideon doesn't have her sword with her, but she does have the knife that did not kill God, and she reflexively folds her hand over it.

"Don't try any shit," she enunciates carefully, announcing her presence. "I'm really, really not in the mood. Also, I'm only here for Kaworu." She's not here for any weird old person nonsense, specifically. She wants no part of that, thanks.

[martyrofduty]

Pyrrha doesn't relax given the twitchy nerves in front of her. Her hands stay where they are, not reaching for the gun she shot John with. It's visible, that sign in a place like this that discourages fucking with her. An assault on the house would not surprise her.

Gideon Nav's appearance doesn't surprise her. Alecto's (John's) eyes. Wake's hair. It's surreal to see someone so thoroughly a blending of those two people, two people she has loved intensely, two people she has also in recent order shot in the face. Pyrrha isn't making it a hat trick.

"If that's Kaworu wants to," Pyrrha answers.

She cannot claim long association and deep knowledge. The same is true for this child she's only met in someone else's body. For a moment longer, she says nothing more, weight in the air as she gazes at this child that could have been hers. "It's good to see you," she says, her lips curling into something of a smile.

[lipochrome]

"He'll want to."

Gideon doesn't waste any time firing back. There's a fuck-you edge to her voice, a tone that she would have gotten from her mother, if she knew what her mother's voice sounded like.

Gideon the Crusty does not draw a weapon. Instead, her namesake deploys something far, far worse: a smile. It's so unlike the stern, stoic Lyctor that Gideon had seen filtered through Harrow's eyes that she balks a little. Uncertainty is dangerous, though, in this place, so Gideon has to ask, "Which one are you?"

The necromancer, or the dead cavalier?

[martyrofduty]

Pyrrha slightly inclines her head. She trusts Illarion's knowledge of his own child. Kaworu has always been a temporary housemate. Still, the standard holds. Pyrrha will not prevent Kaworu from leaving, any time he wishes. She will also not allow anyone, not even this child, force it on him. Same as Pyrrha will not have it forced upon Gideon Nav.

Pyrrha knows what the question means. She knows the simple answer. After ten thousand years, she's still living in Gideon's skin. Not simply physically. Here, she takes his name. She keeps his mannerisms. They are comfortable, and sometimes they too are her. The cavalier and her dead necromancer. "Right now, I'm Pyrrha," she says.

brief nsfw

[lipochrome]

"Great," Gideon says, in tones that suggest she does not think this is especially great. Still, it could be worse. Pyrrha didn't try to kill Harrow. She did fuck Gideon's mom, which is weird and bad to think about. That smile could mean anything.

(Gideon won't entertain the idea that it means Pyrrha is happy to see her. How can someone be happy, after ten thousand years? She's been burned by old people once. She's not about to get burned again.)

"Cool. Well, I'm Gideon." Since they're doing introductions. "But more importantly, I'm Kaworu's sister. You're into, like, duty and shit. You know that means something."

There. Common ground. This is totally a conversation. Gideon is doing so well, here.