Open Post: The Arms of the Emperor are Never Idle

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon spends her mornings in the practice yard, bright and early, despite the cold. She jogs and stretches to get her blood pumping and her muscles warm before she draws her sword, and then after drills she brings Tally her coffee, and then after that it's back to more sword—unless Tally hauls her off to some other activity, which she pretends to hate but is secretly devastatingly grateful for. The absolute worst part of this place is all the time. Endless stretches of time, with barely any work to be done.

In some ways it's just like the Ninth—except on the Ninth she knew her exits. They were few, sure, and near-impossible, but she knew them: buy her way out, fight her way out, trick her way out, or truly earn it.

None of those apply, here.

She breaks for lunch, and wanders the halls trying to locate various Clues and Mysteries that might end up giving her a way out, and mostly just finds people. More and more people.

She's not antisocial. She likes the people here, more than she's openly liked anyone in her life, individually or as a group. But a gnawing restlessness keeps her on the move rather than letting her time fill up with idle conversation as so many here do. She's always hunting for something to keep her busy, to wear out her body so that when she sleeps her mind is forced to rest rather than serving her a lovely buffet of the worst things she's ever seen and even worse things she hasn't, the things she was yoinked away just in time to miss.

Sometimes it even works.

[This post is open in perpetuity until something happens to make me close it, at which point I will edit it and say so! Feel free to find Gideon in the morning doing sword drills, or tooling around inside, opening and closing drawers and trying peel the wallpaper off in case there's flesh underneath.]

Comments

[tallyyoungblood]

Tally's pretty reflexes make it easy to step out of the way, though she just kind of ends up on Gideon's left without really knowing what she's supposed to do next. Should she try to push Gideon over? She decides to go for it, coming at her from the side with both her hands out. She's nervous, though, about touching Gideon deliberately like this, and doesn't use as much power as she should.

[ninth_cavalier]

It's not a terrible effort--but Gideon sees it coming a mile off, and shifts her weight. Nothing fancy; she just crosses her arms and absolutely refuses to be moved.

[tallyyoungblood]

"Damn, you are strong," Tally complains. She takes a couple steps back, resetting. "Who taught you to fight?"

[ninth_cavalier]

"The Captain of the Ninth's guard," says Gideon. "Aiglemene." There are a lot of things she could say about Aiglemene—that she would be ashamed of soft Gideon was being with Tally; that she would kill Gideon on sight for leaving Harrow's side, magical kidnapping Mansion be damned; that she was the person who showed Gideon the closest thing to love she'd ever had, just by giving her an inch of freedom and control. "Fanatically devoted to the House, about two hundred years old,¹ but damn can she swing a blade."

¹ She's eighty.

[tallyyoungblood]

"Bubbly," Tally says, starting to circle around to try and push her over again. She knows Gideon can hear her, but maybe she can distract her enough to do something. "Is swordfighting part of, like, Ninth littlie school?"

[ninth_cavalier]

"Wouldn't know," says Gideon, and then drops into a sideways leg-sweep, trying to knock Tally's feet out from under her. "Never really went."

[tallyyoungblood]

Tally's distraction plan has totally backfired with all the thinking about Gideon as a littlie, and she falls over with a yelp.

"You didn't go to school?" she asks, pushing herself up onto her elbows. "Were you off being totally tricky instead?"

[ninth_cavalier]

"We didn't have school," says Gideon, offering her hand again. "Would've seemed pretty poor taste, I think, funneling the two of us into an empty school, all those rows of empty desks. And Harrow would've had private tutors anyway, even if there had been more kids, so I guess they just decided to toss some lessons my way, too." If Tally grabs her hand, she's going to immediately trip her over again the other way to see how she catches herself when falling forward.

[tallyyoungblood]

Tally's plan is totally working. She mentioned Harrow! Tally tries not to look excited about this.

"So there were only two of you?" she asks, taking Gideon's hand while she talks. Of course, she trips. She instinctively relaxes again, but crash bracelets definitely don't make you fall on your face, so she's not used to the angle. At the last moment she sticks her hands out, but she still catches the edge of her chin on the floor.

When she touches it, it's sticky and warm, so she knows she's bleeding. The pain makes her totally bubbly, everything around her shiny and clear. All at once it hits her that there probably isn't a non-sad reason that Gideon only knew one other child, and also, less importantly, that Harrow definitely isn't an older woman.

[ninth_cavalier]

"Ah, shit," says Gideon, immediately. She doesn't wait for Tally to take her hand, this time, just hauls her up by the arm and cups the side of her face, turning her to see how bad it is. It's hard to tell, with the blood covering it, so she casts around for something to clear it with, and comes up with one of the cloths she uses to clean and oil her sword—clean, thankfully, and tucked in one of the pouches at her belt.

She'd been distracted by all this—Ninth talk. What was she even teaching, here? How to bust your chin open on a hard floor? "Sorry," she mutters, gently blotting at the split in Tally's skin. "This is—there are probably better ways to get at the basics."

[tallyyoungblood]

Between the pain and Gideon touching her face, Tally's so bubbly it's coming close to falling off the roof. She can clearly recall everything: her conversation with Magnus, Gideon looking at her in the woods, the way it felt for David and Zane to kiss her. It hits her like another fall to the floor that with concern in her eyes and her hair falling over her forehead, Gideon is kind of good-looking.

"Um," she says. "No, it's totally fine. I've taken worse, definitely. I just need medspray. Or whatever Rusties use for medspray. And then we can keep going." She reaches up to guide Gideon's hand to catch a drop of blood that had escaped down the column of her throat. "It's bubbly-making."

[ninth_cavalier]

"Right," says Gideon, who doesn't know what medspray or whatever the Rusties might use for medspray is. She catches the drop of blood Tally is guiding her toward, and then stands there like an idiot for a minute just cupping her face before she remembers one of them has to find something like that. She puts the cloth in Tally's hand and ducks out of the room, opening doors (always opening doors!) until she finds a bathroom, in which she also finds what looks like a medical kit of some kind. She grabs it and pops back into the room. "We could maybe, like, put something soft down, too," she suggests, kicking herself for not thinking of it sooner.

[tallyyoungblood]

Tally's not too flustered to note that Gideon is also flustered, and it makes her heart kick up in her chest again. She hopes Gideon thinks her flash tattoo is just spinning from the pain. Or maybe not?

When Gideon comes back, she sorts through the first aid kit and finds old-fashioned Rusty adhesive bandages, and sticks one to her chin. It's totally not pretty-making, but Tally hopes it makes her look dangerous.

"Oh, really?" she says, heart sinking a little. "I mean, I promise I can take a little blood. Don't treat me differently just because I'm pretty. In fact, I heal really well because I'm pretty."

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon raises her eyebrows. "I mean, if you insist," she says dubiously. "You're about to be rolling around on the ground, though, and I don't particularly want to bruise your spine or some shit, fast pretty healing or no."

[tallyyoungblood]

"Am I?" Tally asks, raising her eyebrows, then relenting. "Okay, well, I guess it would be totally brain-missing to get hurt for no reason. Then you'll also be protected. For when I totally push you over."

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon gives her a grin. "Bring it on." She looks around. "Do they, like—make stuff you can put on the ground for this?"

[tallyyoungblood]

"Like yoga or gymnastics mats, maybe?" Tally had never been super into sports, but her parents had let her try all kinds of stuff. "I bet mansion-la will give us some if we ask nicely. Even a rug would help, probably. I guess the problem is just finding a drawer or closet or whatever that's big enough."

[ninth_cavalier]

"Oh, I've come across plenty of closets," says Gideon, for whom this would be a joke if she knew about closeting. She wanders out to one, thinks about rugs, and slides it open. "Huh."

When she comes back into the room, she's carrying a large rug rolled up over one shoulder. She drops it onto the floor, and it unrolls to reveal bright orange shag.

[tallyyoungblood]

"Okay, I know you have a total problem with the word, but that rug is ugly," Tally laughs. She squats over to touch it. "Soft-making, though. We can totally roll around on this."

[ninth_cavalier]

"We sure can," mutters Gideon, and then moves to stand in the center of the rug, taking her push me over stance. "And I don't have a problem with the word ugly. A lot of stuff, including this rug, is ugly. I have a problem with you and your softcore pornopticon society applying it to everyone who hasn't been surgically engineered to inspire protective lust or whatever."

[tallyyoungblood]

None of this hits Tally as hard as it used to. "You say "protective lust" like that's not another way to say love," she points out. "But yeah, this rug is uglier than any human being, I agree with that."

She decides to go for overwhelming force this time, and runs at Gideon, thinking about momentum and her new- pretty strength.

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon's about to protest that it's the engineering part she's objecting to, not the protective lust part--she gets protective lust, she's all about protective lust--when Tally barrels into her, shoulder first.

She drops, partially because this is what she intended anyway--but only partially; she's also legitimately winded. She twists as she falls, rolling on one shoulder and back up to her feet in one smooth motion. "Right," she says, trying to hide the winded part so Tally doesn't get cocky. "That bit's next: getting back up. Ideally in a way that doesn't skewer you on your own sword, which is also why we're going without it for now."

[tallyyoungblood]

Tally watches Gideon's chest rise and fall with her quickened breath with satisfaction, then realizes she's staring and looks up at Gideon's face instead.

"That was, like, totally acrobatic," she says admiringly. "I can tell you've practiced a lot."

[ninth_cavalier]

From someone less Tally, that would be a deeply condescending thing to say; from her, Gideon has no real idea what to make of it. "You get good at it pretty quick when the alternative it getting stabbed," she mutters. "Can you, uh. Roll?"

[tallyyoungblood]

Tally gets on the floor and does a quick roll, not wanting to have to practice it right after being knocked over just yet. "Like that, but after you knock me down? I feel like a cat," she giggles. "I meant it, though, you're good at this stuff. Obviously." She gets back up again.