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locked-tomb-shenanigans · 1 year

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Griddlehark AND friendship snippet prompt: Palamedes and Harrow deleted scene! Either a conversation about the (at that point still hypothetical) lyctoral megatheorem, or when Harrow goes to Palamedes for help after the avulsion trial.

Why was Palamedes so certain Harrow wouldn't hurt Gideon, even to become a lyctor?

I adore Pal and Harrow’s friendship and I had lots of fun with this, so thank you for the request!

I wasn’t originally going to do the Avulsion thing because technically I already wrote a fic about Avulsion from Harrow’s POV that features Palamedes and Camilla, but I thought, hm, that could be an interesting scene to do from Pal’s POV and it ended up spiraling into… a whole fic instead of a snippet, so oops. It’s not actually compliant with the other Avulsion fic which is on brand for me, honestly.

Harrow gets a little too emotional for that point in the story, I think, but that was interesting to play around with in a scenario where she’s (understandably) fairly distressed.

CW for brief mentions of suicidal ideation and death.

Putting most of this under the cut because it’s so long. Requests are still open if anyone’s interested!

Palamedes had been in the middle of figuring out the mechanics behind the winnowing trial—Camilla was remarkable, as always, but with the construct’s regeneration, her skills were achieving little except tiring her out—when his concentration was effectively pulverized by a series of rapid knocks on the imaging door. He jumped, as anyone would in a House where there had, very recently, been two deaths.

“Cam? Change of plans. We have a visitor,” he said over the speakers. He’d wondered if this might startle the intruder, but the knocking just got more obtrusive after this.

“Sextus, I know you’re in there,” the person finally said, and the relief was immediate. “Forget the trial. I have something of much greater importance to discuss with you.”

The person greeting him might have been dressed in all black, face obscured, but it most definitely wasn’t an assassin.

“Reverend Daughter.” If Harrow had wanted him dead, she would have killed him ages ago.

“Warden.” Harrow gave him a nod. “Enough with the pleasantries. We do not have time for this.”

Upon closer inspection, the Reverend Daughter didn’t quite look like herself. Her paint was messy and had melted off in parts, her hair was shorn significantly shorter—this seemed like a strange moment for a haircut—and her whole stance made her appear thoroughly frazzled. Even uncovering the bodies on the previous day hadn’t managed to set her in a state like this. Harrow worked one hand along her wrist, in a way he’d seen her do before. All of these things combined set Palamedes right back into a state of alarm.

“What happened? Were there any more deaths? Is Lady Septimus-”

“She’s fine, Sextus,” Harrow hissed, obviously unnerved, and he felt like he could breathe again. “It’s not her I’m worried about.”

Camilla silently moved to join them not a moment later, rapier promptly sheathed when she realized it was just Harrow. Palamedes pressed a filled water bottle into his cavalier’s hand before she had the chance to protest. She rolled her eyes, but took it before giving Harrow her full attention.

“Thought Gideon had learned not to leave you to your own devices after you fainted in the basement,” Camilla huffed, and Harrow outright winced. It was the most emotion Palamedes had ever seen her convey.

He mentally chided himself for not even noticing Gideon’s absence. He’d gotten so used to seeing them apart that it hadn’t even struck him as an oddity, despite the fact that Gideon hadn’t left Harrow’s side since the basement incident.

“Is your cavalier alright?”

“No.” Harrow looked away. “Her absence is no fault of hers. She… Septimus made the same suggestion to us that she made to you. Gideon insisted on offering herself up.”

Palamedes grew increasingly more horrified with each word.

“And you let her?” he all but yelled. Camilla’s eyebrows climbed all the way up to her hairline at the tone.

“There are things at stake here that you couldn’t even begin to understand,” Harrow hissed, working her fingers up her wrist again. “But I’m well aware this was a mistake. I will not risk her life or health again.”

“Considering how the trial works, I’d be surprised if you even got the opportunity to. She should be dead. Severely brain damaged, at the very least. And you let it happen.”

“Warden,” his cavalier tried, but he’d gotten too worked up over the matter to just calm himself back down.

Nothing got him quite as upset as the thought of harm coming to Dulcinea or Camilla. Even the slightest risk of permanent damage to his cavalier’s brain or other body parts would have been enough to make Palamedes back away from nearly anything, regardless of protests on her part. And the risk here hadn’t been slight.

“Necromancer and cavalier are supposed to protect each other, Nonagesimus. I know you did the calculations in advance. Why would you do that to Gideon, knowing the risks?!”

“Well, maybe I fucking miscalculated!” Harrow exploded, hands clenched into shaking fists. “Is that what you want me to say? That I’m an utter fool who underestimated a threat and overestimated her own capability to take care of it? That I’m undeserving of my cavalier?”

“I wasn’t trying to say-”

“The one thing I need you to understand,” Harrow interrupted him, teeth clenched and voice like ice, “the only thing that matters, is that I would kill myself before letting Gideon die for my benefit. Even at her insistence, I wouldn’t have done the trial if I hadn’t thought I could-” She took a deep breath, and looked upset enough that Palamedes briefly worried she might cry. “I am the greatest necromancer of my generation, and all I seem to manage is failing people.”

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have spoken to you the way I did,” Palamedes said, at a loss for what else to say. That Harrow’s relationship with Gideon wasn’t the same as that between him and his own cavalier didn’t mean Harrow didn’t care. It had been an unfair assumption to make. Seeing her now, showcasing the most emotion she had in their entire stay at Canaan House, it was blatantly obvious that Gideon mattered to the Reverend Daughter—maybe more than anything else did.

He knew he’d trust Harrow with his life, then.

“I don’t care about apologies. Just promise you will help her.”

“Of course I will help Gideon. I’m honestly offended that was ever in question.”

“You did just blow up at Nonagesimus,” Camilla commented dryly, one eyebrow still raised.

Palamedes crossed his arms. “I’m not the kind of person who abandon a patient, especially not a friend, over a squabble. You know this.”

His cavalier just shrugged. “She doesn’t.”

“I suppose I owe you an apology, too,” Harrow said quietly. “My outburst was inappropriate and uncalled for. I should have a better handle on my emotions than this.”

“There’s nothing wrong with showing you care,” Palamedes tried, because as much as he would have liked to spend a therapy session or twenty going over why Harrow believed emotions were a weakness to be avoided at all costs, they unfortunately did not have the time right now.

“Well, what are we waiting for? Let’s fetch the medical equipment and see what we can do for her,” Camilla said, and started walking back in the direction of the hatch before anyone else had the chance to say anything.

“She’s right, you know. We should-”

“I’m not coming,” Harrow said, and before Palamedes could protest—which he had been planning to do, and vehemently so—she added, “I can’t bear to face her. Not after I nearly got her killed.”

“You will have to, eventually.”

“I know.” Ashamed as she looked, the Reverend Daughter almost seemed like a child.

With how mature she acted—with the severity of someone who had to carry the world on their shoulders at all times—it was easy to forget how young Harrow still was. She was Palamedes' equal—maybe even his superior—in many ways, but she was still a teen, under tons of pressure and with an amount of responsibility on her head that should by all means have been reserved for an adult twice her age.

“Be there for her as soon as you’re able to. She needs you just as much as you need her, even when she won’t admit it.” Palamedes glanced over at Camilla before turning his full attention back to Harrow. “And, Reverend Daughter?”

“Yes?”

“Our ongoing debate about which one of us is the better necromancer aside, I truly don’t believe that all you do is fail people. Not everyone is able to ask for help when they need it. Pride is a nasty thing. You made a mistake, but you’re able to own up to it and do better in the future. That’s an admirable trait. Academic rivalry or not, I’m glad to have you as my friend.”

“We’re not friends,” Harrow insisted, because of course she would.

“Sure we’re not,” he said, and very nearly laughed.

#RIP Cam standing in the middle of this convo #the locked tomb #tlt #Griddlehark #harrowhark nonagesimus #palamedes sextus #camilla hect #Gideon nav #gtn #Gideon the ninth #tlt fanfic #gideon x harrow #tlt fanfiction #eleena’s writing shenanigans #prompt writing #long post #asks #mayasaura #might actually post this one to ao3… we’ll see

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