Gideon wasn't going to ask. Her plan was to just keep going back to the beach, as many times as it took, bringing fuck-off huge academic tomes and pulpy romance novels and doctor equipment, as if a dead friend is someone you can summon. Maybe she'll still do that. Paul says that Palamedes is gone, as in never coming back, and Gideon cannot believe that. So she won't. Kill us twice, shame on God.
Paul begins to tremble, and it takes Gideon half a moment to realize he is crying. Not openly, not really, but more than anyone on the Ninth ever dares to. She pulls him closer, so that her shitty black t-shirt can catch his tears, so that Paul knows he is not alone in a big, rotting house, with a grief he blames himself for.
"It's not your fault," Gideon whispers, low and soft and close, an answer to those apologies. She makes a few more circles and says it again. "It's not your fault." She'll say it as many times as it takes for him to believe it. She will say it to him for the rest of his life, and the one after that, and the one after that.
(Once upon a time, there was a little girl who needed to hear those words, and nobody said them to her until it was far too late.)
"Besides," Gideon says, when she thinks Paul is ready to hear it, "We don't really know where he's gone, or how long he'll be away. This is Palamedes we're talking about. He and Cam already made plans to cheat death once. You really think he wouldn't have a backup?"
This would all sound incredibly saccharine and sappy if they weren't talking about the nerdiest necromancer of Gideon's generation. Maybe it still is, but Gideon doesn't care. Paul shouldn't have to bear this loss all by himself.
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Paul begins to tremble, and it takes Gideon half a moment to realize he is crying. Not openly, not really, but more than anyone on the Ninth ever dares to. She pulls him closer, so that her shitty black t-shirt can catch his tears, so that Paul knows he is not alone in a big, rotting house, with a grief he blames himself for.
"It's not your fault," Gideon whispers, low and soft and close, an answer to those apologies. She makes a few more circles and says it again. "It's not your fault." She'll say it as many times as it takes for him to believe it. She will say it to him for the rest of his life, and the one after that, and the one after that.
(Once upon a time, there was a little girl who needed to hear those words, and nobody said them to her until it was far too late.)
"Besides," Gideon says, when she thinks Paul is ready to hear it, "We don't really know where he's gone, or how long he'll be away. This is Palamedes we're talking about. He and Cam already made plans to cheat death once. You really think he wouldn't have a backup?"
This would all sound incredibly saccharine and sappy if they weren't talking about the nerdiest necromancer of Gideon's generation. Maybe it still is, but Gideon doesn't care. Paul shouldn't have to bear this loss all by himself.