Hey, teacher, leave them kids alone

[strikefirster]

Who: Johnny, Daniel, Ortus, Gideon Nav's Exquisite Corpse, Paul, Kaworu, Deku, Harrow, Maybe more?
What: Kidnapping, Forced Adoption, Getting these kids away from the Emperor
When: Shortly after boatgate
Where: The Bone House and Cobra Kai

Content Warnings: Probably references to Murder, Manipulation, Johnny Lawrence.

Prompts and Mingle will be in the comments.

Comments

cw: mentions of past suicide

[lipochrome]

[ Gideon used to think it was easy to die. It was a secret she'd kept for months, one she learned from someone ten thousand years her elder. You just check out. You just let it happen. You never have to see this: the work of people mourning you, words and objects collected to call you back, or at least trap your memory. Gideon does not take her eyes off the sword, or the things surrounding it, for a long moment.

(Harrow made herself into this. First Harrow, and now everyone else, and it would have been kinder if Gideon had driven the sword directly into each of their chests instead, wouldn't it?)

She barely registers Ortus until he's close by. When her eyes focus on his, they're shining damp. She's been crying so much lately. It's so embarrassing.

So embarrassing that she might as well go all in, and throw her arms around Ortus when he reaches for her shoulder, praying that she'll feel at least some of his skin or clothes against hers. ]

What, you thought a bit of water was going to keep me down?

[noniad]

[Ortus fumbles only slightly when Gideon tosses herself whole-heartedly into an embrace, and perhaps it is that her embarrassment is contagious, or that it is simply the state of Ninth House children to always have the faint cringe of wounded beasts to them at any offered hand. He knows not.

He knows that he has wanted this since he was younger than she was, when he would sometimes lie awake in the still hours before the bells called him to his training and attempt to convince himself that he had dreamed of a terrible mistake. That he would walk into a room, and someone would smile at him in rueful apology for their too long and inexplicable absence, and the holes in the heart of the world would be stitched shut.

She is only ever so slightly shorter than he is, and much sturdier. He holds her like a babe burbling around a mouthful of her own fingers in the cradle of his arms.]

I am a foolish man. [He says, softly, with tears seeping into the black around his eyes.] I should have had no doubt that even the sea would fall before you.

[lipochrome]

[ Gideon holds Ortus tightly. Cling might be more accurate, honestly, although she'd never admit that, especially not to herself. The pressure feels good, even while the finer aspects of sensation are still missing. Gideon can feel a hint of warmth, at least, and she's doing her best to count her blessings. Her skin is still cold to the touch, and she hopes Ortus doesn't mind. She doubts he'll say anything about it, at least. ]

Yeah, dummy. Thought you were supposed to be the smarter cavalier.

[ Thanks to all the books and stuff. There's no bite of sarcasm to Gideon's words. If anything, her tone is the opposite: a soft, nearly choked relief at being a member of a group. Part of an us, rather than an extra annoyance no one wants around.

Gideon doesn't move, not for a while. Instead, she tucks her head in the nook where Ortus' neck meets his shoulder, making herself as small as she can. She feels younger, like this. Tiny. She is eleven years old again, and this time, she is not rocking herself to nightmarish sleep inside an empty cell.

She should thank him. Or make a joke, or put Ortus at ease somehow. He must have been so worried. But what comes out instead, in a very small voice, is: ]

You kept my sword.

[noniad]

[Ortus does not mind being clung to. He does not mind Gideon hiding her face in the crook of his neck, bravado and levity fled from her voice. Tenderness rises in him as a bruise, a diffuse welling up of care, accompanied by a solemn responsibility.

She is offering him her trust once more, as bravely as she did when she told him the truth of her parentage, as she did when they spoke of what became of the Ninth House. He is as unworthy of it now as he was then, but he has begun to truly understand a thing that he did not, in the depths of the world that shadows them both still.

He is a fortunate man, to be given the privilege of making amends.]

Cleaned and oiled.

[He may not have taken to most of Captain Aiglamene's lessons, but proper maintenance of a blade was not one of them. Simple, factual words, accompanied by the slow, careful stroking of her hair, that red-hot hue cool to the touch.]

We kept all of your belongings. Your garments, your trophy, your [an exceeding delicate pause] periodicals. All is as you left it, save for its place.

[He had taken care of all of it, a thing he had not thought to question until it was done, animated by the same spirit that subtly bears him up to support her weight as if an unshakable pillar. He has never felt more his age.]

[lipochrome]

That's better than Harrow could do. Did you know she doesn't even know what a pommel is? I was in her brain for nine fucking months, and she never even bothered --

[ Gideon cuts herself off there. While she could go on forever, this is tremendously stupid. There's a fragile undercurrent of gratitude to her voice though, a soft, almost shy quality.

She buries her face deeper, her words now muffled. Nothing can hurt her, like this. ]

It's called porn, Ortus. You can call it porn. You gotta know your genres, man.

[ And that's an important one, with many distinct and valuable sub-genres. He should be proud of her. She's doing literary criticism. That's what this is.

(It's a way of being preserved. They kept her around, without cutting open anyone's head, and it does something warm and strange and frightening to Gideon's chest.) ]

[noniad]

[The turning of Gideon's thoughts back to Harrowhark, her insistence on her prurient materials being called by their crude name, the bubbling up of her ever-insistent will even in her uncharacteristic timidity - these things Ortus takes as vouchsafes of her well-being. They have a new, precious quality from their absence, his budding familiarity with her manner and person highlighted starkly by her departure.

The depth of his breath moves them both, his capacious rib cage expanding in all directions before he heaves a wide, slow, and weighted sigh. When it has passed, she is settled a degree more securely in his arms.]

Your pornography [he pronounces, with an air of long-suffering relief] has been preserved.

[If it pleases her to hear him say it, he will say it. He would utter any crude inanity she wished in this moment, though he does hope she will not prevail on him to do so.]

They are safe. As are you. [He thinks his paint may be smearing into her hair when he turns his chin slightly; he thinks she will not mind overmuch.] All is well.

[lipochrome]

[ It is nice to hear Ortus pronounce pornography, all things considered. That hint of suffering is more familiar to her than almost anything in this place. It's very of the Ninth, but recast in a way that sounds like home, rather than hurt.

The Reverend Mother and Father could not give Gideon this. Aiglamene couldn't, and Crux never wanted to, and neither did the cloisterites. But here, safe in the arms of the elder cavalier, Gideon lets herself think that this is what it's like to be part of the Ninth, instead of its scapegoat.

(It's not like that at all. It's better.)

Still, it might be nice to heard Ortus try and say titties. Gideon better not push it, though. ]

Yeah. [ Through a smile: ] Thanks.

[ Gideon pulls away after a long while, and only barely. Just enough to see him. ]

I can't believe you're here. Sensei Lawrence isn't getting on your nerves?

[ He's the best Sensei around, of course, but even Gideon knows he might not exactly be Ortus' style. ]

[noniad]

[ Ortus is very near to reluctant to let her pull away even that much. He shares in the common Ninth discomfort with such closeness as this, but he has not felt it here. Only gratitude still, overflowing, and so it is that when she does look at him it is still plain as if stamped upon his features.

Even the mention of Sensei Lawrence cannot dim it, though Ortus does his best to affect more suffering at his name. He understands, dimly, that there is a role to be played.

(He remembers. Brothers jostling each other with sharp elbows, sisters wrestling in the halls, the hushed but fearsome arguments over trivialities. All the things the last children of the Ninth grew in want of, while he retreated inward, but no more.) ]

I have found him bearable, if, at times, perhaps over familiar, and crude, and possessed of many unusual habits of both deportment and demeanor, to say nothing of his diet.

[ He brings a hand to her shoulder and squeezes it, firmly. Perhaps too much so, in overcompensation. ]

He came to transport us from the house, and of great help to myself, and to Lady Harrowhark, and all others he has taken in. I forgive much in the name of my gratitude.

He missed you, too.