Fanfic / it's about the bones

"So, Nova," Gideon says, too lightly.
There's a rueful new edge to the corona of her eclipsed eyes. A guardedness in her stance, as though Harrow may be another a bomb walking.
Harrow has never needed or wanted Gideon's trust, anyway.
"About that whole cavalier thing."

A The Locked Tomb fanfic by oriflamme.

Two hundred children of the Ninth House were murdered in an attempt to conceive the perfect necromancer who could lead the House back to glory. Instead, one of the children to be sacrificed, a foundling named Gideon, was awakened to her own necromantic power and became the greatest necromancer anyone had ever seen. The leaders of the House adopted her for their own and named her their heir.

Their actual child, with no necromantic potential, was left out in the cold.

Harrow Nova has spent her entire life learning the sword, because she never had the potential to be a necromancer. Despite her violent hatred of Gideon Nonagesimus, she will become her cavalier even if it kills both of them. She does indeed become her cavalier, even if largely by default after an assassination attempt, and goes with Gideon to Canaan House.

Somehow, Gideon manages to make Harrow a Lyctor instead of herself. This confuses everyone greatly.

Now, on an ancient space station and surrounded by even more ancient Lyctors, Harrow has to learn how to become cavalier and necromancer both. In this task, she is trained by Gideon the First, the Saint of Duty, who seems to have sudden bursts of personality shifts that often involve hugging Harrow.

Honestly, everything would be perfect for Harrow if not for her dead necromancer constantly narrating her life.

Can be found here.

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This fic provides examples of:

• Adaptational Context Change: Harrow being a Lyctor is an entirely different context here, since she was the cavalier. God treats this as mildly mysterious, Mercymorn and Augustine treat it as horrifying, and the Saint of Duty stoically treats it as the greatest gift they've ever been given.
• Anti-Mutiny: This is what Crux saw his assassination attempt as. He wanted to burn out the corruption he saw as Gideon, infesting the very heart of the House.
• Belligerent Sexual Tension: In-universe. Ortus' poem about Matthias Nonius includes a lot of suggestive language between him and a Lyctor he's fighting, to Harrow's disgust. That Lyctor was in fact Gideon the First, and Ortus got a lot closer to the truth than anyone realized.
  (There's this part in the Noniad, book five, that goes something like ' I am the Emperor's Hand; do not you persist in this combat; matchless am I with the long blade, etc etc, [loved your work, Ortus but goddamn], Nonius, wounded full sore, spat blood and gave him a grim smile; nor did the sword in his hand shake. Boldly he answered the saint –'
  And by this point, Harrow, you were ordinarily in the Throes, and I nodding along gravely with all my brain cells turned off, but that time you guys had this snitty argument about how Matthias Nonius never actually fought a Lyctor, and why was Ortus writing this close combat so suggestively, anyway, and you challenged him to a duel wherein both of you somehow claimed to be fighting for the sake of Nonius's honor in the middle of my damn study, and neither of you let that argument die until the day Ortus did.
  You won the battle by default, but would have lost the war. This is the one man in the world who could tell you truly that you fight like Nonius come again - like gravity itself changes its rules for you.
  Say what you will about Gideon the First, but he has dangerous taste in caliginous flings. It's like stress relief for him, I guess. Chalk that one up for Ortus, the man knew a rivals-to-lovers arc when he saw one.)
• Death Seeker: Gideon, apparently, was even worse about this than in canon. When she was given the whole explanation of her power and the two hundred children, she immediately rolled away the Rock of the Tomb in an attempt to die.
  Gideon: Remember that one time when we were kids and your parents told us we were two hundred dead babies, and we both took it astonishingly well?
• Don't Think, Feel: Gideon absolutely refused to ever use a necromantic theorem, and only learned the terminology enough to keep Harrow's parents off her back. Instead, she just did everything by feel. This, it should be noted, is absolutely impossible, to the point that the only other person in ten thousand years who has done it is God.
  Necromancy is like nine-tenths vibes.
  (I made Palamedes cry with that line. Really. You were off lurking ominously in your throes of paranoia at the time, but he looked at me like I'd slammed his hand in an airlock door. It actually felt a little mean. I apologized.)
• Easily Forgiven: Mercymorn tries to assassinate Harrow, and God only stops her at the last second. He then proceeds to do absolutely nothing to punish her. Harrow isn't exactly happy about this.
• Eye Color Change: Gideon's necromantic potential awakening as a baby was marked by her eyes turning from gold to black-in-white, like God's. Then when she made Harrow into a Lyctor, Harrow got those same eyes, which confused everyone to no end.
• Foreshadowing:
  • Pretty much everything to do with The Body.
    Why are you here now? I want to ask her. But you're ignoring me again.
    Maybe that's for the best. Otherwise, you might notice me capitalizing the Body.
    When you do notice, I'm gonna need you to get really cool about a lot of stuff really quickly.
    Like. Hoo boy.
  • Harrow can produce saltwater on command. That's not actually a necromantic ability.
    (Note to self - should probably look into the whole saltwater body fluids on demand thing. I'm not sure why it keeps happening. Definitely not part of the whole perfect Lyctor thing I anticipated.)
  • Mercymorn calls Harrow a "cuckoo." Cuckoo birds steal into the nests of other birds and pretend to be something they're not. Yeah, she wasn't calling her crazy.
  • Ianthe is repeatedly getting worn down by her incomplete Lyctor transformation. It turns out that, with Harrow being a success this time around, the Saint of Duty has been trying to kill her. Both Gideon and Harrow are horrified that they never realized it.
• Healing Factor: Harrow's healing actually works correctly this time around, because she's a perfect Lyctor despite having come at it from the wrong way around. Furthermore, it's implied that Gideon had her own when she was alive. When she gets her body back, she sees the giant hole in her chest and fixes it in a blink.
• In Spite of a Nail: The events of Canaan House apparently went reasonably close to canon, including the part where Harrow became a Lyctor. Which shocked everyone because she's the cavalier, and that should absolutely not be possible.
  God: You went backwards? Good lord.
• Master Swordsman: Harrow is a stick with no muscle and less weight, so she had to compensate by becoming the best with the sword.
  You walk in with the sacred chain of the Ninth House's first cavalier looped ready in your offhand, and the Saint of Duty stirs from his coma from the neck up, his soft green eyes as always cataloging you on God's behalf.
  Without the chain, you are the finest cavalier the Ninth House has ever produced. They might as well have stamped 'violence is my passion' on your forehead at birth. He never dared to tell you, because you intimidated the piss out of him, but Ortus used to base Matthias Nonius's finishing moves off of yours. Your neuvième to riposte is quite literally the stuff of song, Harrow.
  [...]
  With the chain, you are the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. Naberius Tern wishes. That boy never saw you coming.
• Parental Substitute: Gideon repeatedly lampshades that the Saint of Duty is giving Harrow more parental approval in two days than she previously got in her entire life. Pyrrha, in particular, loves Harrow, and takes possession of the body with increasing frequency to train with her.
  "Well done," the Saint of Duty says, still amused, and in that shock of amusement his voice sounds entirely transformed. He sets you on your feet when you give another feeble, bewildered kick, and then - horror of horrors - he sets a broad hand on your head and ruffles your hair.
  "Now do it again."
  By the time you stumble around, shell-shocked and quite frankly traumatized by the first display of parental affection ever inflicted on you in your life, the Saint of Duty has extracted a pair of smoked-glass shades from one of his pockets. With more personality than he's expressed in weeks, he beckons you with a flip of his hand.
  "Bring it, kiddo."
  So you bring it.
• The Quiet One: The Body never spoke to Gideon for years, and rarely spoke to Harrow except to give her very quick warnings. Gideon is rather surprised when she suddenly starts speaking full sentences.
  Absolutely none of this is making sense. The Body refused to speak to me in anything but monosyllables for most of my life. And yet the second she started haunting you she got all chatty. She is talking over your crisis, okay!
• Red Baron: As usual, the Saints get titles.
  • The irony of Mercymorn being the Saint of Joy gets brought up.
    Sure, you get the vague hint that Mercymorn isn't your biggest fan. But as it turns out, Mercymorn isn't a big fan of anything at all, really. She lives in a constant state of irritation with everything around her. When Teacher mentions in passing, during one of your tea parties, that he intended for the titles to refer to the cavalier rather than the necromancer, you slump so visibly with relief that God offers you another biscuit.
  • The new Lyctors are too young to have titles yet.
    Harrow the First, ninth of his necrosaints, his sacred Hand, harbinger of the Rising River, Saint of to be determined.
    (I've been workshopping ideas. Saint of Mojo? Saint of Biceps, for peak irony? Jeannemary, I know you'd back me. Ain't nobody got me like best teen Jeannemary got me.)
  • Harrow does think of a decent one, while in the one place that Gideon can't hear her thoughts.
    Gideon's pleased little smile only widens. Her sad eyes are Harrow's eyes, as black as Drearburh. "Because, dark chrysanthemum of my heart," she says, "ancient Ninth House proverb - ride or die."
    Saint of Devotion, Harrow thinks. She releases one hand, and Gideon anticipates her, hauling Harrow in by the link that remains. She wraps her arms around Harrow, and Harrow hooks her skinny arm around the back of Gideon's neck, and they hold each other as they fall like stars.
• Role Swap AU: "Harrow Nova" are the most common form of this in the fandom, since it was literally suggested in the text of Harrow the Ninth.
• Time Abyss: All the older Lyctors, of course, but then there's The Body, who thinks of them as ants.
  "I do not care if you're 10,000 years old, I grew up in the Ninth House and I am not afraid to beat up old people!" I snap.
  "4.5 billion," the Body corrects, absently. She advances toward me with the inevitability of an avalanche.
  Naturally, I reply, "Come again?"
  "I am 4.5 billion years old, infant," she repeats, and when I gawp at her she seizes me by the mandible once more, one hand holding me up on my toes as she studies my face, as bored of my shit as ever.
  "Okay, I'm pretty sure that's unrealistic," I say. "Like, I'm no Sex Pal, but I'm pretty sure anyone that old should be dust."
  The 4.5 billion year old Body haunting our metaphorical dick pauses to gaze off over my shoulder with a look of sudden, unspeakable hunger. "Dust. What I would give to be dust!" she marvels, which is a totally normal thing to say.

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