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"Can you hear me?"
The voice cuts through the fog of her mind like a surgeon's scalpel. She tries to move, but something is wrong. Her whole body feels locked up, dead, distant, and no amount of telling her limbs to move is making them budge. She hears the shuffling of cloth on steel, a thud, and a soft, intelligible curse.
"Ah, one second. Sorry! Haven't done this in a while. Here you go."
She feels a quick tap on her forehead, pressure given and then quickly released, before something shifts within her. It feels like a full body release, like weightlessness. Like breathing clean air after a myriad of not knowing anything but weight in your lungs; relief . She tries to open her eyes, but realizes too late that it's a mistake. When before she couldn’t will her body to move even an inch, now one single twitch of her eyelids seems to expand, the tiny movement rippling across her entire body. All at once, her spine arches off the table in one jerking movement. She doesn't quite know what is happening with her legs, and she can't control it either way. After what seems like forever, her shoulders and the back of her head hit the table with a clang that sends sparks of pain down to her teeth.
The voice above her is saying something, but she can't really hear it. Cannot comprehend it, cannot understand through the sudden, blinding pain that shocks her system. She doesn't know why, but she knows she is no stranger to pain. Knows she has felt pain. Knows she has lived by it, in every bone, from every beating.
But she has never known anything like this. It just hurts . It hurts in a blinding, animal panic, like she's being choked and stabbed and burnt alive all at once. Like she had been lifted out of a place of fog and stuffy air, given one taste of freshness, then hurled bodily right into an inferno. She tries to scream, but despite the uncontrollable movement of her extremities her teeth remain locked together and it only comes out like "Ahhhhrrrghh." And then, "Hhhhhhhr."
She tries to scream, but it seems like only her body remembers how.
"Whoops! Maybe it will help if I…" a hand presses against her temple and in an instant, Gideon remembers.
She screams, one long note that cuts off ragged as her back arches again. Gideon doesn't have control of her hands, not exactly, but in her thoughtless, animal panic she tries to bring them to her face. A tiny, rational part of her mind knows she can't still be in the River, not with the bright light and the man–God, John, her Father—above her with his furrowed brow and his nervous fingers, but her body doesn't care. She can feel her mouth, full of water. She can feel her lungs, heavy and bursting. Not her mouth, not her lungs, but her pain. Her shame and her failure from her absolute inability to keep Harrow alive for one fucking day is a knife in her chest, only eclipsed by the memory of a billion tons of water pressing down. And she feels something deeper. Claws in her side. A massive stinger pulling out of her gut, the horribly wet sound of intestine hitting the floor. Her skull—not her skull—shattering against the wall, the brains splattered and reforming with a snap.
And: The last beat of a heart. An iron rod through her sternum. Her knee, shattered into pieces, her shoulder ripped open, the viscera of neck torn open, Harro—
“Shi—shoot, okay, too much, fuck I really am not titrating this correctly, wow, hang on a second.”
Above her, the Man Who Became God lunges out to slam his palm into Gideon's forehead. At once, her whole body goes rigid, and everything is gone again. She forgets. She isn't Gideon anymore, isn't a bomb, a spat out and undigested failure of a cavalier. She's just… meat. Hands press on her shoulders as she's eased back onto the table.
"Whoops, shit—fuck, shoot . Okay. Soul in, probably, and motor systems up and running, maybe a little too much. Wow, what an on switch. Okay. Okay let's dial that down. Slowly now. One second kid, I've got you."
"Hnnnnnnn," she feels herself whining, her body has resumed its convulsions, her spine arching again, twisting so far she hears a bone crack. Through the pain, she feels hands on her. On her face, her shoulders, running down her arms. Then: Full body tingling, pins and needles, the sudden deadness of her limbs returning. She feels her jaw unlock, slack now, scream forgotten. Finally, after what seems like ten thousand years in darkness, her eyes blink open.
"I've got you," the voice says, again. The sound is so close. It’s soft, almost warm. There's something about that voice that she wants to chase, that fills her with fear and revulsion and a deep, yawning ache for something she does not understand. She wants to lean into it. She wants to be consumed by it.
Her eyes can't make anything out at first. It is just a bright white expanse that stretches to every corner of her vision. The brightness seems to drill right into the back of her brain as she tries to flinch away, succeeding only in squeezing her eyes shut again. Something—a hand, maybe—strokes the side of her face and worries at her temple, tracing small circles right under the itch of her hair. Ever slowly, she opens her eyes again. She squints against the light, forcing herself to stare up into that blooming whiteness until the blank expanse begins to congeal. Above her, round, globular lights stare down inset deeply into a grid of white, square ceiling tiles, interrupted only by a blurry darkness that seems to hover directly above her. The shape shifts and slowly, as if over centuries, takes the shape of a man. His lips are moving.
"Motor systems, check. Next time I’ll bring you back slower, sorry about that. Need to get you used to it—we’ll go joint by joint next time, I've isolated it to just your cranium now, nerves are cut off below the hyoid, should give you a bit of a break. Now the soul… I've anchored you down pretty good, all spit and blood and paste, you know, so you should be glued down pretty tightly, but you never really know until you—wait. You can hear me, right? Say something if you can hear.”
She squeezes her eyes shut again. It's all too much, and she doesn't understand anything. She can't move, and she's not jerking like a fish on a line anymore, but everything still hurts. Not in the same burning, all consuming fire as before but a new, strange ache that feels like it started right in the middle of her forehead and is spreading outward. Everything is too bright, too much. She does realize, distantly, that she has been asked a question and been commanded to respond, and another even more distant part of her understands that the man above her is not someone she can disobey.
But when she opens her mouth, the only thing that comes out is a whimper.
“Alright. Don't worry about what I said. I think you’re here. If you're not, well. Something's definitely in there and I do not really want to know what it is if it's not my daughter. But I do really think it's you, I'm pretty sure I would know if i hadn't grabbed the correct—wait. You know what, don't worry about that. Forget everything I just said. Yikes! I’ve got you.”
She makes another sound, somewhere in between a grunt and a sob.
"Great! You're doing great. It's not easy to come back, especially not after... anyway. You're doing good. Focus on that. Focus on my voice. Now, let's try this. Blink twice if you can hear me."
It takes her a bit to understand, and even longer to crack her eyes open. The man is still above her, one dark splotch against eyesearing brightness, his forehead creased and his eyes too shadowed for her to make out. Then she closes her eyes. Opens them. Closes again. She realizes, in the soothing darkness, that she doesn't remember how many times she's opened them so far, and so she opens then closes them again more for good measure. Then twice more.
"Oh!" The voice, which she is only now understanding as directly connected to the man, seems almost flustered. "Alright that's enough. Ah—you can stop now, stop now , yes alright. You're doing good, I've got you. Now open—don't close, just keep them open. Open. Good. Wait—okay. Good job. Oh I wish Mercymorn was here, she would have you up and moving without all this fuss—but good. Good job. Now look at me."
She forces her eyes to the man above her. It doesn't work great, her vision blurs and doubles and she hears herself make a soft, retching sound as a hand steadies her chin. She can see his mouth moving, can hear his words—soft words, soothing—and she longs for more of it, the starvation urge of hunger. Eventually, she manages to bring both her eyes into focus and he breaks out into a smile as quiet words of praise drop from his lips like jewels.
It makes her feel… she doesn't know how it makes her feel. She doesn't understand, except that she would be willing to go to the ends of the earth to see that smile, to hear those words and know they are for her.
"Right there, you've got this. Good job, kiddo."
Then, two fingers appear in front of her face.
"Follow my fingers."
She jerks her eyes to follow them, first to her right, then up and down. Back to center. Then to the left, then up and down again.
He smiles. "Good. Good! Coordination is coming back. You're doing fine." He pats her cheek, and then falters. "I do really hope it's you in there. This would be so embarrassing if I'm talking to a—nevermind! Great bedside manor John, this is why you only worked with corpses, they don't tend to care when you--shoot, I'm doing it again. Okay kid. Focus on me. I'm going to try to wake your vocal cords up a bit, and I'm going to ask you a series of questions. I want you to do the best you can to answer them. Blink twice if you understand."
She blinks, twice, and when he smiles she wants to crawl inside of it, all those white teeth.
"Good! Excellent. Alright… here we go. Really digging deep here, I haven't done an A and O screen since I moved over to research. Now what a time that was, but we can discuss stories later. I'm sure you have your own to tell." As he speaks, his hands find her throat. His skin is warm as he traces up and down, pinching something before pulling away. At first the touch feels blunted, just the memory of feeling, but as he works the skin seems to come alive under his hands until his little taps and pinches feel just as real as his hand on her cheek. "Alright kiddo, first question. Who are you?”
She opens her mouth, startled by the ease of it, before she closes it again. She is suddenly aware how dry and cracked her lips feel, her mouth, her throat and lungs. She takes in a breath, blows it out slowly. It doesn't quite feel right, not like how she remembers breathing is supposed to feel.
"I..." her tongue seems to stick to the roof of her mouth. "I don't. Know," she manages to force out, each word falling mangled at her feet. She realizes with a startling panic that she doesn't know, actually. She just knows that she wants to know, if only so she can tell him.
One hand comes to brush against her temple, the other reaching to cradle the back of her skull. "That's alright. It's hard, coming back." Fingers work in her hair, half petting, half tracing the lines of her skull. "Here. Just a little. Slowly, here you go. I did it all too fast before, and I'm sorry. I’m not in the best frame of mind, I admit it, and I made a mistake. It's not your fault. I've got you, here you go. Close your eyes."
She closes her eyes. As the man's thumbs stroke over her temples, Gideon comes back to herself. Not like before. Not all at once. Her chest feels a little tight, and everything hurts—but gone is the animal panic. In its place is an almost terrifying calm.
"Gideon," she breathes out. The name feels strange on her lips.
Above her, the God Who Became Man smiles. "Yes! Yes you are. So strange really, after ten thousand years hearing that name used for someone else, but yes. Gideon."
Lying there on that metal slab, Gideon feels something inside her swell.
Then: "Harrow," Gideon whines, ashamed by how pitiful she sounds. "Where is—"
"Oh! Harrow. She's… we aren't quite sure where she is. We weren't sure where you were, for a long time. But don't worry. I have my best people out looking for her. Let's just focus on you, okay?"
Gideon nods. The movement feels strange, like one movement has been broken down into fifteen individual motions of her neck and skull.
God speaks again. "You're doing very well, Gideon. Do you know what happened to you?"
Gideon squeezes her eyes shut. It all feels muddled. "The—the River," she grunts. Then her eyes snap open. "You!" Gideon chokes out. She remembers, with terrifying suddenness, the great splatter of blood. The Lyctor, collapsed on the floor with her chest a mess of red and God, his hands stained with it. The scene comes back to her: te other Lyctor... Augustine? And Ianthe. Wake. Gideon (saint edition), and his shadow cavalier.
She feels boxed in, trapped. She tries to cringe away from God, but her muscles only allow her to twitch. Even so, he flinches away as if stung.
"You killed…" Gideon's mind has to search for a bit. "Your own Saint," is what she settles on, eventually. Above her, the Emperor's face creases in a way that she does not understand.
"Yes. There will be time later, to explain fully… but yes. I killed her."
“I—” God starts to say something else, but there’s static in her brain and Gideon can’t make it out. His brow is furrowed, the great abyss of his eyes like a dying star, and his hands fall away from her. Gideon realizes, suddenly, that she doesn’t want to know more. She doesn’t care about the Saint, or the reason, and she only tangentially cares about the story. The face of the Emperor Undying creases into a frown and Gideon feels like she’s falling. A great and burning shame has started building just under where her heart should be.
She wants to take back everything she said in the last thirty seconds and undo it. She wants to crawl back into her Father’s soft words and gentle praise. She wants to unmake the devastation that she has, somehow, wrought onto God.
Above her, he suddenly looks like only a man. He opens his mouth, closes it. Opens it again, before he hunches forward and holds his head in his hands. It takes her a moment to realize that he is crying.
Gideon does not know what moves her. She does not know anything—in that moment, she forgets her fear. She forgets the coldness of his eyes, the brutal efficiency with which he dismantled Mercymorn's thoracic cage and threatened everyone else with the same. She only sees him sob, and longs for the strange warmth of her Father's smile, and she reaches for it in the only way she knows how. Her arms lifts. Joint by joint it moves. John doesn't see it. His face is still buried in his hands as Gideon brings her hand up to touch his. She tries to grip his fingers but her dexterity fails her and her arms flops to the side.
John catches her hand and winds his fingers between hers. His skin is cool and dry except for where it is wet with tears.
"I'm… sorry," Gideon manages to say. She is no stranger to the image of grief. No stranger to loss. The longer she's awake, the longer she feels herself, the more memories come back. Back on the Ninth, when fever or sickness or senescence had claimed the congregants, she had watched others' murmured goodbyes. She had watched them comfort each other, and she had been utterly locked out of the strange ritual of care. When she wasn’t longing for the connection, she used to find it strange. Embarrassing, even, to be party to such a ceremony as comforting.
But here, as God brings his lips to kiss her knuckles, she thinks she understands.
"I'm sorry," she says, again. The words come easier now. Her mouth remembers. "I know you. Cared." Gideon doesn't know, not really, not at all. But as God's eyes widen, as his hands tighten on hers and he breaks out into a watery smile, she finds it doesn't matter.
"Thank you," he says. She feels his hand. She feels hers. She sees her hand, gray and dead and unmistakably hers. Then she squeezes lightly.
"You're a good kid, daughter of mine," her Father says, and Gideon feels something in her break.
She doesn’t know if she is. She’s never been anyone’s daughter before, except for those horrible minutes between hearing her mother call her a bomb, and the second Saint’s bullet exploding the corpse’s brain. She’s never been a good kid either, not ever. She’s never even tried. She’s never even had the opportunity to try.
But here, with God above her and their hands wrapped together, Gideon realizes that she can try. For the first time in her whole miserable life, she has the chance be good, and a kid, and a daughter. The realization makes her forget the pain. She forgets the dead weight of her limbs, smothering her doubts with the desperate, single minded hope of the starving.
She will chase his honeyed praise until she drowns in it, and maybe then, she can be happy.