deercountry | 08 . family drama

[ Gideon grimly nods in agreement, relieved to not feel like an outsider for the first time all night. Family dinner is not a phrase she's confident she could even string together, and the concept itself makes Gideon feel...weird. She's not sure what else to call it. Empty, maybe? Or missing something. ]

Yeah. I can see why.

[ That last bit makes Gideon's eyebrows raise. ]

You don't? Then why are you here? [ Not said in the way that implies Gideon doesn't want Faith to be here -- she's glad she is. More like: why put yourself through this if you don't have to? ]

Well, for the month I do. They were worried about it being just as bad as the Octobers of the dream, and I didn't want to put my roommate in danger so I figured this place could use the extra fighters if it really was as bad.

[Faith would have been fine. Faith would have thrived in an apocalypse, she's the one that monsters have nightmares about, she's the biggest monster on the block. But obviously... Tara wouldn't. So they're here. At Willow's house.]

I'm friends with Ruby, Ange and Willow, but not... y'know. Inner circle or anything. Ozpin and I don't really get along. [Something something chased him out of his house with a crossbow and then hunted him halfway across Trench.]

[ Gideon nods, all sympathy. Whatever reason Faith has for disliking Ozpin, well, Gideon assumes it must be a good one. (It's so much easier to think of him as a creep than anything else. It's a hell of a lot further from wanting.) ]

Yeah, Ruby's cool. [ Gideon palms a leaf on one of the plants. They're all unfamiliar, as if this place is determined to say: you are not one of us. ]

Being inner circle's overrated, anyway. Probably means just more stupid dinners. [ Gideon makes a face, as if that fools anyone. ] On the Ninth, it meant you had to read shitty books and do extra prayer, which, ew, no thanks.

[Faith doesn't challenge her on it, though she knows there's a loneliness beneath it. She feels it too. Part of her even wants it from Gideon's own house, another place that seems to accept anyone, another place she's not been invited into. It's colder. But she's always preferred the cold.

The warm love and affection that these people can just express like it's free, like they don't want something from one another, it makes her want to hurl. It makes her want to run.

It's much easier to deal with when she knows she's being used.]

You know, I don't think I know much about your world. You and uh, Doctor Bones, the necromancer guy you live with, you're from the same world, right?

[She scrunches up her nose though.]

I do know what that's like. Went to a religious school. Being inner circle means having absolutely no personality, just joining this faceless masses and praying to some fucker who's not even listening. I used to cuss him out in my head. It was funny.

[ Gideon quirks half a smile, more rueful than it is amused. The Ninth isn't a school, but Faith does get it. Gideon has cussed out Harrow and the nuns and the Tomb plenty, and not just in her head.

Doctor Bones doesn't sit right, though, after everything Gideon knows. And saying that they're from the same world is a bit of an understatement. ]

Yeah. Doctor Bones isn't his name there, though. [ Obviously. ] We call him our Kindly Emperor, or God, if you wanna cut to the chase.

So I guess I've cussed him out, but mostly, I cussed out the fucked-up corpse buried in the center of my home planet.

[ Gideon shrugs, trying to make something fucked up seem a little more normal, a little less of a big deal. ]

So I guess things are better here than the Ninth, even if the dinners are weird as shit. [ a pause, and then, quieter: ] Hope it's better for you, too.

[She promptly stops walking because what the fuck???

There's a lot to unpack here, like, a whole lot. She doesn't exclaim her shock to the world, she doesn't even really react all that much, she just stops and stares in shock, processing the information presented.

Kindly Emperor? God?

And now she's stuck on a sneering voice in the back of her head saying "What did you expect, you naive idiot?"

It makes sense, really. God. She's been calling God "Doctor Bones."

She keeps walking.]

Guess that explains why he doesn't give out his name, huh.

[She's processing it. She shakes her head, just the slightest bit disbelieving. But she believes, for better or worse. As if only having just now processed it, she cracks a half hearted smile at the well wishes.]

I was in prison and it was still better than that place. Or maybe I just felt less powerless. [She shrugs, like that's not a depressing thing to say.]

What about... y'know, your house? Is it...? [Better? A family? Kindly?

Does God hate her as much as they told her he did?]

[ Gideon stops when Faith stops, and follows when she keeps moving. What else can Gideon do? The Sixth might be better at this kind of honesty, but it's still new to Gideon. The Ninth is a house filled with secrets, and right now, Gideon acutely understands why. ]

Yeah. It's, uh. John. His name.

[ Another secret, another betrayal. He's God. He's just some guy. He's too much for Gideon to comprehend, sometimes, and so she doesn't.

Worse than prison is a bleak assessment, and Gideon winces, unsure of what to say. She doesn't say anything, for a moment. For once, she's thinking.

Gideon thinks about training with Paul at dawn, about eating his bad-but-getting-better food, about doing her part to keep his hair as messy as possible. She thinks about Kaworu, floating off the roof in increasingly stupider ways, about the lizard they are raising together, about puns and piggyback rides.

She thinks about Harrow, because Gideon is always thinking about Harrow, about the fragile peace that the two of them share, about the little divot above her lip, about how Gideon gets to see her first thing when she wakes up and last thing before she goes to sleep. About the question she wants to ask, so, so badly, and the fear that's settled deep in her heart over the answer being no.

And then there's God, and he's the odd one out, the only person Gideon does her best not to think about. Kaworu and Paul and even Harrow will love him, will call him Teacher, and she won't, and maybe that's the only thing that stands between their house and kindly. ]

Yeah. [ Gideon breathes, at last ] Yeah, I think -- I think it could be.

[ she offers Faith something that would be a smile, if it weren't so fucking bitter. ]

Except that I'm the one who keeps fucking it up, you know?

[If Faith followed God like he was a teacher and like she was a student instead of as a... friend? ~~Daughter?~~ Mercenary? Whatever it is that she is to him. If Faith followed God as a disciple, perhaps she'd be more inclined to judge Gideon for casually giving up his secrets.

But she doesn't know what's happened between them. And Gideon is her friend in a way that feels more honest and sincrere and secure. So, she trusts that Gideon has a reason to be resentful. After-all, Faith spent her entire childhood cursing her father. And her mother. And God.

The only one there for her was Malice, in the back of her mind, who wept at her misfortunes and begged for her to remember. Malice, who had slaughtered entire worlds.]

I guess his name just being kind of boring is as good a reason as any to keep it secret.

[She smiles, a little, still uncertain about what it means. And then Gideon says that, and Faith lets out a huff of amused familiarity. It's always complicated. More complicated than screwed up kids like them messing it all up, but she knows that feeling. It's a moment of empathy amidst the uncertainty.]

Yeah. I mean, I know the feeling. Don't know the full circumstance behind it, but... [She shakes her head.] You can't ruin it any worse than I ruined my home.

[ Gideon manages a smile back, hers uncertain as well, but also less bitter. ]

Yeah, you've got his number. I mean, we live in a house made from bones. John probably cramps his style, and he's the first to say that being God is ninety percent keeping up appearances, or whatever.

[ Sounds like an absolutely horrible deal to Gideon, but that's not for her to judge. God made His choices.

And oh, look, more unexpected camaraderie. Gideon Nav, noted parent-killer twice over, wishes for Faith's sake that she didn't get it, but...it's nice to know Gideon isn't alone, too. If she feels guilty about that, well, she'll just deal with that later. ]

I mean, I fucked up my first one pretty bad, too. [ then, because she knows how bad bad can get, she adds: ] If you didn't kill anyone, you're probably doing okay.

[That ammendment almost makes her laugh. It should, because it's hilarious, in the single most bitter way possible. If you didn't kill anyone... well, of course. Killing a human being is crossing a line, it's something you can never come back from, it's something you can never scrub your hands clean of, she will never ever be free of the smell of his body turning from a person into a corpse.

She opens her mouth to reply and the laughter comes after-all, and she shakes her head because it's not funny, so she covers her mouth like the dainty princess she's not.]

I did a bit more than kill someone. [And she'll leave it at that, because she's not pretending to be something she's not anymore.] It's not a happy story. Makes me come across as a real bitch, which I am, but... y'know.

[She shrugs, suddenly worried Gideon is going to turn to her and look at her with horror and judgement in her eyes and she won't be able to take it.]

A bit more than kill someone? [ Like what? That's, like, as bad as it gets. ] Come on. People die when they are killed.

[ Gideon's not going to ask what Faith did, of course. Not directly. That's personal business, and if she's learned anything from growing up on the Ninth, it's that talking about personal business sucks and you should never do it. ]

You're, like, a little bit of a bitch, sure. But I've met worse. [ Gideon sends yet another mental fuck off to Ianthe. ] I mean, you bailed me outta that dinner. That was a pretty nice move.

[Faith's silent, for a little while. Fuck it, might as well. She feels bad, like she's taken advantage of Gideon. It's only fair Gideon gets an idea of the kind of person she's dealing with.]

I was an assassin. [A personal attack dog. She puts her hands in her jacket pocket.] I was given power to help people fight the powers of darkness or whatever and I used it to kill a lot of people at the behest of this... guy.

The Mayor. He's... god, I don't even know how old he was. But he sold his soul a long time ago, became something... not quite human, not quite demon. He built this town over a gateway to hell, did business with monsters and demons so they could feast on the people to their heart's content. I... there was an accident, and I killed one of his deputies. Then I killed his right hand on purpose. All my friends started shunning me... [Or that's how she remembers it, anyway.] And when I showed up at his doorstep to kill him too, he was the only one who took me in.

The only one who seemed like he actually gave a fuck about me. The others left me to rot in this shitty unprotected motel, he gave me a full protected apartment, as many weapons as I wanted, and he kept me paid enough to get what I wanted without having to steal to survive.

So I killed and tortured people for him. 'Cuz that's how easy it is to get me to turn evil, I guess.

[Can you guess who The Emperor reminds her of?]

08 . family drama

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1/2

2/3 i lied

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