Pride might appear out of the blue - I don't know how long you'll be able to find solitude here. [ considering they did that to him earlier! but with a quiet huff of a laugh, he moves to settle down where harrow is, gaze following hers absently to the actual church itself. ]
Well. I think they're rather sharp, in all of their edges, and they must have to be. Though, they aren't here to make friends - [ is he quoting something there ]
...in reality, I think you're quite right - they care, perhaps more than they'd ever want to let on to any of us. [ like.
Some of them are rather obvious about it, whereas others. . .
[But anyway, it's memshare time. A big ol' cw: suicide on this one!
You are Harrowhark Nonegesimus, ten years old, a tiny genius. You are the pride of every member of your House, though they are adults, every one of them, the youngest seventeen years your senior, and most octogenarians, and then your parents, even more proud, even though your mother almost never speaks and neither of them can stand to look at you for long even with their evident pride. There are no other children in your house except one, the brawny, angry red-haired girl a year older than you, the only one here who doesn’t look at you with a combination of awe and fear.
One day, you come upon the orphan girl in the tombs, next to the niche where they buried the braindead corpse she was found with, lugging about her stupid sword, a piece of garbage she found in the catacombs and has insisted on carrying everywhere with her ever since like she knows how to use it. She’s speaking to the burial niche, carrying on a conversation, telling it she loves it and calling it mum, and you utterly loathe Gideon Nav, so you taunt her for this and explode bone shrapnel in her eyes. And you fight, the way only two furious, love-starved children can. You taunt her, and she has you on your back, bigger and stronger, and she wraps her hands around your neck and chokes you until your vision goes black, and she says I bet my mother loved me a lot more than yours loves you as you claw desperately at her face. When she lets go, you aren’t dead, but you can’t even stand. You crawl away, and you throw up, and you lie there in the crypt with your neck throbbing unable to breathe, hands bloody, and you decide that you will die.
You have a few plans, for dying. You could go to the surface and walk and walk until your oxygen runs out, or you could smash the sealant to the crypts and suffocate, or you could simply stow away on a shuttle and drift off into the coldness of space. But even at ten, you are ever so goth, so instead you go to the one place you are not permitted, the place you have always been taught will bring about the apocalypse should it ever be opened. Every day in your prayers in the chapel you pray with bone prayer beads between your hands that the rock will never be rolled away, but you walk into the tomb, and you break the locks, and you roll away the rock with your bloodied hands, because you are every ounce the necromancer you were created to be.
And inside, you see something that makes you decide not to die after all. The thing inside the Locked Tomb that your family guards and worships and fears is a woman, frozen and dead, and she is beautiful. You sneak back the next day, and the day after, and you stare upon her, both in the thrill of the little you can make out of her beneath the ice she’s encased in and the thrill of the blasphemy you have done, the one thing even the Reverend Daughter is not permitted to do.
And then, when you leave the tomb, you see that smug, hateful little cuckoo Gideon, and she catches you, and she runs off before you can stop her.
When you next enter the familial chambers of Castle Drearburh, they are waiting for you. Your father, so stern and tired, your mother, as always, never speaking, and their elderly red faced cavalier primary, Mortus. They are so terrified of what you have done, and they are so kind. It is only that you have brought the apocalypse upon them, and more than that, you have proven the lie of their every justification of the events that brought you into the world. There is so much regret and sorrow in your father’s eyes as he delivers the instructions and helped Mortus onto his chair, and your mother is the most kind and gentle as she has ever been to you as she ties her own noose and then helps you tie yours.
You watch what they do, you owe them that much, but you cannot do the rest of what the Ninth House has asked you. You gazed upon the Tomb and decided to live. So you wait in the room with your mother and father and old Mortus, purpling and hanging from the rafters, and you wait, until you are discovered by Nav hiding outside the door.]
[ when the world returns back to normal, gu yun lets out a slow breath, one he didn't realize he was holding.
he felt it, harrow's emotions. there were so many things in that he couldn't even begin to understand - the tomb, the frozen, dead woman, the castles. the rituals, the bones.
but, some things translate from place to place. duty; the want for death. the curiosity. the look on her parents faces, kind, so kind, the regret in her father's eyes. the want for love from a parent who couldn't. suddenly, the brief hints of story she told him start to click into place.
what's so familiar is that final, haunting scene, in a bitter way that lurches his stomach in ways he'll never admit to.
gu yun's silent, as it fades out, for a long, long moment.
and eventually, when he speaks, his voice is deadly serious, quiet enough just to be heard, jaw tense and tight. ] Did you see it, too?
[ earlier, he spoke to someone who didn't, in a similar situation. there's no pattern to it, here - it seems to be random - and... if harrow wants to avoid it, wants to not talk about it, gu yun will give her the out.
(but he can't shake the image, of that little girl who refused to die.) ]
. . . I only ask because there have been some that have been difficult for me to perceive. But in this instance, no. I remember that day clearly.
[Actually, come to think, there was one part of it that itched at her brain, one part that was - hmm. That even so far back, she can't - hmm.]
Well. There is one exception. I cannot recall how they found me out. My mother and father - they learned what I had done, but I have no recollection of why.
he nods along to her statement, then listens a bit longer, folding his arms. ]
...No recollection, hmm. [ gu yun tilts his head, trying to think. he doesn't know nearly enough about... literally anything in harrow's world to really even try to piece the context as to why. maybe it had something to do with that girl? the hateful little cuckoo, as she had thought. that seems logical.
but then again, bone magic! what does he know. ] Could it have simply been that you forced yourself to forget?
[ nnnnope nope nope, nope! let's steer the fuck away from that one. he reaches out almost instinctively, voice going a little sharper. ] Don't dig into it right now.
[ we're seeing enough illusions, all of us. the last thing harrow needs is to debilitate herself in the process of it. ]
that's enough contact for a second memory to kick in, and this time, it's harrow's turn to see a world that's not her own. ]
[ you're maybe five or six years old, and you're sitting on the roof of your house, pulling tiles off of the roof for no reason and tossing them to the ground. no one knows how you got up there, but at this point, your exasperated mother and father are both over your misbehavior.
you beam down at your mother. her face is a little bit fuzzy - gu yun's memory of the first princess is scattered, after so many years - and she's got a feather duster in her hand. you know that's not actually a feather duster, because it's got some kind of horsehair instead of feathers, and when she swats you with it, it hurts. you really don't want to be hit with that, so you lock eyes with your mother for a long, long while.
and then, your lower lip starts to wobble.
your mother makes an aggrieved noise. "Xiao Shiliu-" she starts, and you jump down from the roof and land in front of her, feeling tears well up in your eyes. ]
Mom, don't you like me anymore? [ you whimper, and your mother makes a noise and reaches out to catch you by the collar -- you deftly duck out of the way, as slippery as a fish, and feel the mischief running through your bones. "Get back here, you know you aren't allowed up there!" ]
Am I not the flesh that came from your body?! [ you yell back, pitifully, pathetically, jumping over something in the courtyard. you are six years old and your terrible mouth says things like this, even now. your mother chases after you - you make three more steps before she snags the back of your robes, and when she catches you, there are tears running down your cheeks, and any sign of mischief is gone. ] Do...do you want to change me out, for a better son? I'll be better, I promise, I'll be good.
[ you sniffle. (you are a very good actor, at six.) ] I only have one mother... [ and rub at your eyes with your tiny fists - ] ...If you don't love me, then I'll become a stray child... [ and your mother GROANS, the most aggrieved noise, as she sweeps you up into her arms.
"Xiao Shiliu, who taught you this trick!" she scolds, and your crocodile tears dry up in a second - you squirm and wiggle and knock the feather duster out of your mom's hands, and she sighs, reaching out to pinch your cheeks. it's a warm memory: though your hatred of that little feather duster remains, you've won a victory. one of the servants in the courtyard croons about poor, poor shiliu in the background, and fades a moment later.
...but that's not the end of this little trip down memory lane, either. a cw for child abuse
the next memory comes in hazy shades of brown and gray - your medicine isn't effective, yet, the dose not correct, and you can just barely see. all of a sudden, you feel the sun, hot on your face, and a hand wrapped tight around your arm as you're dragged out of your room and into the courtyard. it burns - your eyes are only freshly injured, now, just a few weeks after the accident at the black iron camp.
all you can do is stagger after your father, and this time, when you're crying, it's real. tears stream down your cheeks, but you don't say a word, this time, no wailing or shouting as your father drags you over to the small koi pond in the center of the courtyard, something you can't even really see. your head is pounding, your eyes are burning, and your father stops at the edge, and drops your arm.
he wraps the whip he uses on his horse around your neck. you feel it, then feel his hands on your head, forcing you down to your knees to look at the water's surface. the brightness make your eyes ache - his voice comes right next to your ear, and he's shouting. to you it sounds like he's barely talking. Look at you, the old marquis says, Look at your current appearance! Do you think you deserve to be named Gu?!
something seethes up in your heart. tiny, angry. your throat is constricted by the whip, and you take a huge, deep breath, grab at it with your tiny hands, and roar at the top of your lungs, "I can't see!"
your father doesn't appreciate your fury or the point you've made. he grabs the back of your head by the hair, and shoves you face first into the water. it fills your lungs, and you gasp, your senses flooded by it, choking you further - he holds you there, five seconds, ten, and then yanks your head back up. you gasp for air, your lungs heaving.
your father shouts, again, in your ear. "If you can't see, then submerge yourself until you figure out how to!" you're coughing and gasping, wheezing, and your father's voice snarls in your broken ears, "Either you will learn to stand up, or you will find a place to hang yourself. The Gu family would rather have no heir than raise a worthless child."
the whip's pulled back - you gasp for air, and your father drops his grip on you, leaving you soaking wet and coughing at the pond. your hands curl into fists, and you take a deep, trembling breath, and that phrase buries itself into your heart like an iron nail. ]
[I hate. This is contains both hanging and drowning, Sisi. Her two child abuse motifs. Why does it keep happening.
Anyway, she comes out of this memory pained and shaken. Her own parents had never raised a hand to her; rarely touched her at all, but when they did, their touch on her was gentle. The times that they would spend, submerged in the ceremonial pool, speaking in hushed ashamed tones of the secrets of their House, teaching her to recoil in horror at the crime of her own existence - she was brought in as a co-conspirator, a fellow participant, never spoken to harshly or reprimanded. When she was too small to swim, they would help her into the warm waters carefully while they helped her remember her prayers for her two hundred ghosts. She can also remember how they would teach her, guiding her hands while she practiced her art. No one else in the halls of Drearburh would dare harm the Reverend Daughter.
(Yet somehow she does feel she has childhood memories tinged with blood - violent scrapes, hands around her neck, fists slamming into her and blood beneath her fingers. But these are just phantom memories, inexplicable given her position, and must be a symptom of her madness).
It is a different sort of feeling. In a sick way, she prefers it - pain was always one way to cut through the numbness of her suicidal despair, though she can't - exactly - remember how it was inflicted, whom she inflicted it on. But in another - those gentle touches and teacherly guidance, rare and cold as they were, are so often her only solace, so often the closest thing she has to an awareness of having been loved.
When the memory ends, she reaches out towards him, the ghost of a touch on his arm.]
And that one? Could you see that one?
[Let them continue not to address it, only to understand.]
gu yun is silent when the memory ends. he stands ramrod straight, his gaze focused where it was before it even happened, hands flexed into fists at his sides. he has to take a conscious moment to force himself to stop it, uncurling his fingers from the white crescents he'd unwittingly dug into his palm. harrow can feel it when she touches his arm - every muscle in his body is tense.
he comes back to the present a moment later, glancing at her, and then, exhales. ]
Yes. [ yes, he saw it. ] I was a terribly behaved child.
[ he addresses the first part of it, first, with a sense of dry wit, a humorless huff of a laugh that follows. am i not the flesh from your body? what kind of a six year old says shit like that. gu yun is a terribly behaved adult (?) though, so, maybe nothing changed. ] Could you make out the First Princess's face?
It's been decades since I've even thought about that. I can barely remember what her face looks like - they passed away when I was nine. If this is based on my memory, then that makes sense.
[ ... ]
...It's the same for me. [ gu yun's truly representative of that pride crown on his hand. thinking about the idea that other people in this place could know about his secret makes him uneasy, defensive; it's why he's been more or less elusive this week, avoiding the rest of the participants here the best that he can. that harrow saw this - he's not thrilled about sharing any of it, really, but harrow is likely the best option. ]
I wonder if perhaps sharing these memories could help elucidate the things you don't remember - or, perhaps, the things that you can't. [ a pause. ] Though, I don't know if setting those things in the hand of relative strangers would truly help, nor if an answer could be sought. [ considering. ]
Whenever I think on it too deeply, or someone says something. . . challenging, I tend to have fainting spells and lose track of the conversation.
[He saw her on the verge of an episode in this conversation, didn't he - but then when he dropped it, she sees to have completely forgotten it happened.]
In any event, Despair has confirmed they can undo whatever has happened, if I choose.
It is something that could be dangerous to you, here. [ debilitating. a weakness. gu yun knows that intimately - it's why he says it, stating the blase fact of it. ] Being able to avoid those situations may help keep you safe.
But, there are consequences, too. [ obviously. who only knows what she might uncover under there - and if she's ready to deal with whatever might be there. if that trauma could be worse. ]
I suppose the question comes really down to this: are you willing to face whatever you might find?
Yes. [This echoes her own thoughts on the matter.] This week in particular, but also - the fact that, during the events that happened to myself and the other three last week, my condition endangered them as well does not sit with me.
However, there is. . . you see, when I awoke after my convalescence, I had anticipated that my condition would worsen. I had written instructions to myself.
I remember those instructions very clearly. [She'll recite one of the lines that has echoed in her head ever since.] "By the time you read this you will not recall the writing thereof, as the Harrowhark of the writing will be dead and gone. Her resurrection constitutes a fail state and must be avoided at all costs. Break troth with me, and from beyond my destruction I will brand you Tomb heretic, cut off utterly from that which lies on the frozen altar, asleep and dead; removed from the adoration thereof, and any promise of part in her resurrection."
. . . So no, I suspect I do not want to face whatever is buried there.
gu yun frowns, listening carefully to what harrow recites to him. even with the context of the memory, a lot of it doesn't make sense, so give him a moment to take it apart and try to get down to the deeper meaning.
which. hm. ]
Can't think of anything more indulgent than ignoring explicit instructions from yourself and doing something anyway. [ this comment comes as dry as the gobi desert. he's deep in thought, though, tapping his fingertips against the inside of his arm. ]
I'll raise you this - here, none of you all have any sort of special powers, no matter how good you were at them. That your affliction has followed you here is unrelated to that. [ likely because its something disabling; gu yun's intimately familiar with how much that sucks, so he doesn't bother saying more than that on it, skipping on to the main point. ] All of those threats you have passed upon yourself have no meaning in this place, because there's no way to follow through upon them outside of the context of your homeland.
That being said, when we return from this place - [ when, for sure, not if, ] - that is when you will likely have to face those consequences, so they are only delayed.
Whatever you choose, whatever you will, weigh those factors carefully. [ a pause, and then. ] ...If it were me, I'd likely do it.
[ that curiosity would eat him alive, honestly, so he'd do it in a heartbeat. ]
. . . I take the threats from myself as less literal, and more intended to make me understand the importance of the instructions. [Gu Yun saw in her memory the tomb, what was inside - how it made her want to survive.] As another might swear by God, or by their ancestors' graves.
[The meaning she takes from this is just that she has forbidden herself from undoing what she has done.]
When I awoke from my convalescence, before I was given the missives I had written to myself, I was in a state of . . . I suppose the appropriate word would be despair. [Something like a wry smile.] I have always hated being told to do, even by my own self, but in that moment it was a relief. To have instructions to follow. To have something around which to build my life, to have meaning to pursue. Without it, I very much fear I would still be lying in that hospital bed, gazing out onto the stars for days and weeks on end, unable to bring myself to leave it.
[She pauses for a moment.] Since coming here, I feel that I have to some degree recovered a ghost of who I once was. I no longer feel so apathetic, without purpose. There are things I care to do for myself, regardless of whether it is an instruction I have given. I could choose to defy my own orders.
And yet, given the depths of despair I had fallen into without any understanding or reason, and given my own missives, I do greatly fear what may lie within there.
Did I ever tell you that I do not know my own wish? I have no recollection of what it is I bargained for in order to come here. It was the old Harrowhark who made that deal.
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Pride might appear out of the blue - I don't know how long you'll be able to find solitude here. [ considering they did that to him earlier! but with a quiet huff of a laugh, he moves to settle down where harrow is, gaze following hers absently to the actual church itself. ]
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[The screaming book and statues.]
It surprised me, a little. They aren't so bad. I should hate it if I were. . . made to bear witness to such alarms as well.
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Well. I think they're rather sharp, in all of their edges, and they must have to be. Though, they aren't here to make friends - [ is he quoting something there ]
...in reality, I think you're quite right - they care, perhaps more than they'd ever want to let on to any of us. [ like.
like harrow? ]
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[But anyway, it's memshare time. A big ol' cw: suicide on this one!
You are Harrowhark Nonegesimus, ten years old, a tiny genius. You are the pride of every member of your House, though they are adults, every one of them, the youngest seventeen years your senior, and most octogenarians, and then your parents, even more proud, even though your mother almost never speaks and neither of them can stand to look at you for long even with their evident pride. There are no other children in your house except one, the brawny, angry red-haired girl a year older than you, the only one here who doesn’t look at you with a combination of awe and fear.
One day, you come upon the orphan girl in the tombs, next to the niche where they buried the braindead corpse she was found with, lugging about her stupid sword, a piece of garbage she found in the catacombs and has insisted on carrying everywhere with her ever since like she knows how to use it. She’s speaking to the burial niche, carrying on a conversation, telling it she loves it and calling it mum, and you utterly loathe Gideon Nav, so you taunt her for this and explode bone shrapnel in her eyes. And you fight, the way only two furious, love-starved children can. You taunt her, and she has you on your back, bigger and stronger, and she wraps her hands around your neck and chokes you until your vision goes black, and she says I bet my mother loved me a lot more than yours loves you as you claw desperately at her face. When she lets go, you aren’t dead, but you can’t even stand. You crawl away, and you throw up, and you lie there in the crypt with your neck throbbing unable to breathe, hands bloody, and you decide that you will die.
You have a few plans, for dying. You could go to the surface and walk and walk until your oxygen runs out, or you could smash the sealant to the crypts and suffocate, or you could simply stow away on a shuttle and drift off into the coldness of space. But even at ten, you are ever so goth, so instead you go to the one place you are not permitted, the place you have always been taught will bring about the apocalypse should it ever be opened. Every day in your prayers in the chapel you pray with bone prayer beads between your hands that the rock will never be rolled away, but you walk into the tomb, and you break the locks, and you roll away the rock with your bloodied hands, because you are every ounce the necromancer you were created to be.
And inside, you see something that makes you decide not to die after all. The thing inside the Locked Tomb that your family guards and worships and fears is a woman, frozen and dead, and she is beautiful. You sneak back the next day, and the day after, and you stare upon her, both in the thrill of the little you can make out of her beneath the ice she’s encased in and the thrill of the blasphemy you have done, the one thing even the Reverend Daughter is not permitted to do.
And then, when you leave the tomb, you see that smug, hateful little cuckoo Gideon, and she catches you, and she runs off before you can stop her.
When you next enter the familial chambers of Castle Drearburh, they are waiting for you. Your father, so stern and tired, your mother, as always, never speaking, and their elderly red faced cavalier primary, Mortus. They are so terrified of what you have done, and they are so kind. It is only that you have brought the apocalypse upon them, and more than that, you have proven the lie of their every justification of the events that brought you into the world. There is so much regret and sorrow in your father’s eyes as he delivers the instructions and helped Mortus onto his chair, and your mother is the most kind and gentle as she has ever been to you as she ties her own noose and then helps you tie yours.
You watch what they do, you owe them that much, but you cannot do the rest of what the Ninth House has asked you. You gazed upon the Tomb and decided to live. So you wait in the room with your mother and father and old Mortus, purpling and hanging from the rafters, and you wait, until you are discovered by Nav hiding outside the door.]
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he felt it, harrow's emotions. there were so many things in that he couldn't even begin to understand - the tomb, the frozen, dead woman, the castles. the rituals, the bones.
but, some things translate from place to place. duty; the want for death. the curiosity. the look on her parents faces, kind, so kind, the regret in her father's eyes. the want for love from a parent who couldn't. suddenly, the brief hints of story she told him start to click into place.
what's so familiar is that final, haunting scene, in a bitter way that lurches his stomach in ways he'll never admit to.
gu yun's silent, as it fades out, for a long, long moment.
and eventually, when he speaks, his voice is deadly serious, quiet enough just to be heard, jaw tense and tight. ] Did you see it, too?
[ earlier, he spoke to someone who didn't, in a similar situation. there's no pattern to it, here - it seems to be random - and... if harrow wants to avoid it, wants to not talk about it, gu yun will give her the out.
(but he can't shake the image, of that little girl who refused to die.) ]
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. . . Yes, that one I can. Have you come upon someone who cannot see their memories?
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[ sweats in pcs in progress ]
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[It is Molly, tho. Because otherwise, yikes.]
. . . I only ask because there have been some that have been difficult for me to perceive. But in this instance, no. I remember that day clearly.
[Actually, come to think, there was one part of it that itched at her brain, one part that was - hmm. That even so far back, she can't - hmm.]
Well. There is one exception. I cannot recall how they found me out. My mother and father - they learned what I had done, but I have no recollection of why.
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he nods along to her statement, then listens a bit longer, folding his arms. ]
...No recollection, hmm. [ gu yun tilts his head, trying to think. he doesn't know nearly enough about... literally anything in harrow's world to really even try to piece the context as to why. maybe it had something to do with that girl? the hateful little cuckoo, as she had thought. that seems logical.
but then again, bone magic! what does he know. ] Could it have simply been that you forced yourself to forget?
[ that's how healthy people deal with trauma! ]
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[She hisses in sudden pain, touching her hand to her frontal lobe, a dreadful headache pounding there.]
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[ nnnnope nope nope, nope! let's steer the fuck away from that one. he reaches out almost instinctively, voice going a little sharper. ] Don't dig into it right now.
[ we're seeing enough illusions, all of us. the last thing harrow needs is to debilitate herself in the process of it. ]
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[Her breath steadies, and she closes her eyes.]
Yes. Thank you.
[After a moment. . . ]
What were we speaking of?
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[ haha
that's enough contact for a second memory to kick in, and this time, it's harrow's turn to see a world that's not her own. ]
[ you're maybe five or six years old, and you're sitting on the roof of your house, pulling tiles off of the roof for no reason and tossing them to the ground. no one knows how you got up there, but at this point, your exasperated mother and father are both over your misbehavior.
you beam down at your mother. her face is a little bit fuzzy - gu yun's memory of the first princess is scattered, after so many years - and she's got a feather duster in her hand. you know that's not actually a feather duster, because it's got some kind of horsehair instead of feathers, and when she swats you with it, it hurts. you really don't want to be hit with that, so you lock eyes with your mother for a long, long while.
and then, your lower lip starts to wobble.
your mother makes an aggrieved noise. "Xiao Shiliu-" she starts, and you jump down from the roof and land in front of her, feeling tears well up in your eyes. ]
Mom, don't you like me anymore? [ you whimper, and your mother makes a noise and reaches out to catch you by the collar -- you deftly duck out of the way, as slippery as a fish, and feel the mischief running through your bones. "Get back here, you know you aren't allowed up there!" ]
Am I not the flesh that came from your body?! [ you yell back, pitifully, pathetically, jumping over something in the courtyard. you are six years old and your terrible mouth says things like this, even now. your mother chases after you - you make three more steps before she snags the back of your robes, and when she catches you, there are tears running down your cheeks, and any sign of mischief is gone. ] Do...do you want to change me out, for a better son? I'll be better, I promise, I'll be good.
[ you sniffle. (you are a very good actor, at six.) ] I only have one mother... [ and rub at your eyes with your tiny fists - ] ...If you don't love me, then I'll become a stray child... [ and your mother GROANS, the most aggrieved noise, as she sweeps you up into her arms.
"Xiao Shiliu, who taught you this trick!" she scolds, and your crocodile tears dry up in a second - you squirm and wiggle and knock the feather duster out of your mom's hands, and she sighs, reaching out to pinch your cheeks. it's a warm memory: though your hatred of that little feather duster remains, you've won a victory. one of the servants in the courtyard croons about poor, poor shiliu in the background, and fades a moment later.
...but that's not the end of this little trip down memory lane, either. a cw for child abuse
the next memory comes in hazy shades of brown and gray - your medicine isn't effective, yet, the dose not correct, and you can just barely see. all of a sudden, you feel the sun, hot on your face, and a hand wrapped tight around your arm as you're dragged out of your room and into the courtyard. it burns - your eyes are only freshly injured, now, just a few weeks after the accident at the black iron camp.
all you can do is stagger after your father, and this time, when you're crying, it's real. tears stream down your cheeks, but you don't say a word, this time, no wailing or shouting as your father drags you over to the small koi pond in the center of the courtyard, something you can't even really see. your head is pounding, your eyes are burning, and your father stops at the edge, and drops your arm.
he wraps the whip he uses on his horse around your neck. you feel it, then feel his hands on your head, forcing you down to your knees to look at the water's surface. the brightness make your eyes ache - his voice comes right next to your ear, and he's shouting. to you it sounds like he's barely talking. Look at you, the old marquis says, Look at your current appearance! Do you think you deserve to be named Gu?!
something seethes up in your heart. tiny, angry. your throat is constricted by the whip, and you take a huge, deep breath, grab at it with your tiny hands, and roar at the top of your lungs, "I can't see!"
your father doesn't appreciate your fury or the point you've made. he grabs the back of your head by the hair, and shoves you face first into the water. it fills your lungs, and you gasp, your senses flooded by it, choking you further - he holds you there, five seconds, ten, and then yanks your head back up. you gasp for air, your lungs heaving.
your father shouts, again, in your ear. "If you can't see, then submerge yourself until you figure out how to!" you're coughing and gasping, wheezing, and your father's voice snarls in your broken ears, "Either you will learn to stand up, or you will find a place to hang yourself. The Gu family would rather have no heir than raise a worthless child."
the whip's pulled back - you gasp for air, and your father drops his grip on you, leaving you soaking wet and coughing at the pond. your hands curl into fists, and you take a deep, trembling breath, and that phrase buries itself into your heart like an iron nail. ]
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Anyway, she comes out of this memory pained and shaken. Her own parents had never raised a hand to her; rarely touched her at all, but when they did, their touch on her was gentle. The times that they would spend, submerged in the ceremonial pool, speaking in hushed ashamed tones of the secrets of their House, teaching her to recoil in horror at the crime of her own existence - she was brought in as a co-conspirator, a fellow participant, never spoken to harshly or reprimanded. When she was too small to swim, they would help her into the warm waters carefully while they helped her remember her prayers for her two hundred ghosts. She can also remember how they would teach her, guiding her hands while she practiced her art. No one else in the halls of Drearburh would dare harm the Reverend Daughter.
(Yet somehow she does feel she has childhood memories tinged with blood - violent scrapes, hands around her neck, fists slamming into her and blood beneath her fingers. But these are just phantom memories, inexplicable given her position, and must be a symptom of her madness).
It is a different sort of feeling. In a sick way, she prefers it - pain was always one way to cut through the numbness of her suicidal despair, though she can't - exactly - remember how it was inflicted, whom she inflicted it on. But in another - those gentle touches and teacherly guidance, rare and cold as they were, are so often her only solace, so often the closest thing she has to an awareness of having been loved.
When the memory ends, she reaches out towards him, the ghost of a touch on his arm.]
And that one? Could you see that one?
[Let them continue not to address it, only to understand.]
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gu yun is silent when the memory ends. he stands ramrod straight, his gaze focused where it was before it even happened, hands flexed into fists at his sides. he has to take a conscious moment to force himself to stop it, uncurling his fingers from the white crescents he'd unwittingly dug into his palm. harrow can feel it when she touches his arm - every muscle in his body is tense.
he comes back to the present a moment later, glancing at her, and then, exhales. ]
Yes. [ yes, he saw it. ] I was a terribly behaved child.
[ he addresses the first part of it, first, with a sense of dry wit, a humorless huff of a laugh that follows. am i not the flesh from your body? what kind of a six year old says shit like that. gu yun is a terribly behaved adult (?) though, so, maybe nothing changed. ] Could you make out the First Princess's face?
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[Hmm. That's different.]
. . . Others this week have seen things I cannot see. Things I would never allow anyone to see.
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It's been decades since I've even thought about that. I can barely remember what her face looks like - they passed away when I was nine. If this is based on my memory, then that makes sense.
[ ... ]
...It's the same for me. [ gu yun's truly representative of that pride crown on his hand. thinking about the idea that other people in this place could know about his secret makes him uneasy, defensive; it's why he's been more or less elusive this week, avoiding the rest of the participants here the best that he can. that harrow saw this - he's not thrilled about sharing any of it, really, but harrow is likely the best option. ]
I wonder if perhaps sharing these memories could help elucidate the things you don't remember - or, perhaps, the things that you can't. [ a pause. ] Though, I don't know if setting those things in the hand of relative strangers would truly help, nor if an answer could be sought. [ considering. ]
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[Hmm. Well.]
Whenever I think on it too deeply, or someone says something. . . challenging, I tend to have fainting spells and lose track of the conversation.
[He saw her on the verge of an episode in this conversation, didn't he - but then when he dropped it, she sees to have completely forgotten it happened.]
In any event, Despair has confirmed they can undo whatever has happened, if I choose.
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[ .....
a part of him wonders, at the unknown power of the avatars. at the sudden possibility. ]
....Do you want to know, Harrow?
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[But, in response to that statement.]
That is the question, isn't it?
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he weighs it over, thoughtful. ]
It is something that could be dangerous to you, here. [ debilitating. a weakness. gu yun knows that intimately - it's why he says it, stating the blase fact of it. ] Being able to avoid those situations may help keep you safe.
But, there are consequences, too. [ obviously. who only knows what she might uncover under there - and if she's ready to deal with whatever might be there. if that trauma could be worse. ]
I suppose the question comes really down to this: are you willing to face whatever you might find?
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However, there is. . . you see, when I awoke after my convalescence, I had anticipated that my condition would worsen. I had written instructions to myself.
I remember those instructions very clearly. [She'll recite one of the lines that has echoed in her head ever since.] "By the time you read this you will not recall the writing thereof, as the Harrowhark of the writing will be dead and gone. Her resurrection constitutes a fail state and must be avoided at all costs. Break troth with me, and from beyond my destruction I will brand you Tomb heretic, cut off utterly from that which lies on the frozen altar, asleep and dead; removed from the adoration thereof, and any promise of part in her resurrection."
. . . So no, I suspect I do not want to face whatever is buried there.
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gu yun frowns, listening carefully to what harrow recites to him. even with the context of the memory, a lot of it doesn't make sense, so give him a moment to take it apart and try to get down to the deeper meaning.
which. hm. ]
Can't think of anything more indulgent than ignoring explicit instructions from yourself and doing something anyway. [ this comment comes as dry as the gobi desert. he's deep in thought, though, tapping his fingertips against the inside of his arm. ]
I'll raise you this - here, none of you all have any sort of special powers, no matter how good you were at them. That your affliction has followed you here is unrelated to that. [ likely because its something disabling; gu yun's intimately familiar with how much that sucks, so he doesn't bother saying more than that on it, skipping on to the main point. ] All of those threats you have passed upon yourself have no meaning in this place, because there's no way to follow through upon them outside of the context of your homeland.
That being said, when we return from this place - [ when, for sure, not if, ] - that is when you will likely have to face those consequences, so they are only delayed.
Whatever you choose, whatever you will, weigh those factors carefully. [ a pause, and then. ] ...If it were me, I'd likely do it.
[ that curiosity would eat him alive, honestly, so he'd do it in a heartbeat. ]
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[The meaning she takes from this is just that she has forbidden herself from undoing what she has done.]
When I awoke from my convalescence, before I was given the missives I had written to myself, I was in a state of . . . I suppose the appropriate word would be despair. [Something like a wry smile.] I have always hated being told to do, even by my own self, but in that moment it was a relief. To have instructions to follow. To have something around which to build my life, to have meaning to pursue. Without it, I very much fear I would still be lying in that hospital bed, gazing out onto the stars for days and weeks on end, unable to bring myself to leave it.
[She pauses for a moment.] Since coming here, I feel that I have to some degree recovered a ghost of who I once was. I no longer feel so apathetic, without purpose. There are things I care to do for myself, regardless of whether it is an instruction I have given. I could choose to defy my own orders.
And yet, given the depths of despair I had fallen into without any understanding or reason, and given my own missives, I do greatly fear what may lie within there.
Did I ever tell you that I do not know my own wish? I have no recollection of what it is I bargained for in order to come here. It was the old Harrowhark who made that deal.