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The first night she met Palamedes—properly met him, that is—she’d been thinking about Gideon. She’s always thinking about Gideon, so this isn’t particularly surprising, but she hadn’t thought about him quite like this in awhile. She’s been starting to…not forget, because that’s impossible, but she’s been starting to feel comfortable in his body. He would want her too, she knows. He would have given her anything, if she’d asked.
But this night, after Camilla closes her eyes and Pyrrha is alone, she feels the absence of her necromancer like an irritating splinter. When she’d had control, before, she’d always been able to feel him, a quiet hum in the back of her mind. She’s never…been alone before. Not in a few thousand years. Not like this.
Gideon had never been particularly good at crying, and now that Pyrrha has control she’s even worse at it. His (her) eyes burn and his (her??) throat works and stings and smarts, but she doesn’t let any of that salt leave. She holds the screaming, roaring ocean of grief and want back, back, back and curls his hands, because they are decidedly his and not hers, into fists.
She’s getting ready to—she doesn’t know, punch a wall maybe?—when Camilla sits up.
Except it’s not Camilla at all.
Pyrrha hasn’t known the sixth house cavalier long, but she knows that she certainly doesn’t hold her body like that. Camilla Hect’s arms are bent at all the wrong angles, wrapping tight around herself, and she’s trembling. or, not trembling. Wait. She’s breathing—quick, harsh gasps like she can’t get enough air. Her eyes are closed, clenched tightly shut like she’s in pain.
If Pyrrha were nicer, she might have said something comforting. She understands what it’s like to lose your necromancer, after all. But Gideon’s throat is still burning with residual salt water and she’s not feeling particularly coordinated in his body at the moment, so she stays put, leans his head back against the wall and tries to steady her own breathing.
And then Not-Camilla falls over.
Not gracefully. Pyrrha might have laughed, once. Camilla pitches to the side like all her strings have been cut and then she’s wrenching, horrible, gasping, choking cries, and Pyrrha desperately wants her to stop.
She’s moving Gideon’s body before she’s even thinking about it, moving so she’s crouched beside Camilla, one hand outstretched to—
“Don’t touch her.”
The voice is Camilla’s, but the cadence is off, and there’s a command there that is distinctly arrogant enough that—
“Palamedes,” Pyrrha says in Gideon’s voice, the name unfamiliar because she’s used to it being a wistful exhale from Camilla and not something that her tongue has ever had to work out the sounds for. It does not come out wistful or gentle. She says it like an accusation.
Camilla’s body shakes again, but the kid is starting to figure out how to navigate it. His breathing steadies. He flexes Camilla’s fingers once, twice, three times. He pushes the body up into a sitting position and crawls away from Pyrrha’s still-outstretched hand. “Don’t,” he says. “Don’t touch her.”
He looks down at Camilla’s hands and swallows hard. Takes an unsteady breath.
“Okay,” Pyrrha says. “I won’t touch her. But you have to get her heart rate and breathing under control or you’re going to hurt her.”
Eyes that are unfamiliar glare at her from under Camilla’s sweat-soaked fringe. “I can take care of my cavalier, thank you.”
And that makes Pyrrha laugh. She laughs and laughs and then she starts to cry.
“You’re not allowed to die,” Gideon had told her in that low voice of his he usually reserved for threats, nearly a growl. His hands (hers now) had been on either side of her face, fingers in her hair, forehead pressed to hers. She doesn’t remember now what she looked like, then, but his eyes are so bright and real and right there. “Do you hear me?”
“I hear you,” Pyrrha whispers.
“I’m not going to kill you.”
“I know.”
She did.
He had kissed her hair, and held her and she’d felt safe. She’d felt so safe.
Then she’d burned. And screamed. And didn’t die.
She didn't die.
And Gideon had the fucking nerve to leave her here, all alone.
“This is infuriating,” Palamedes says to her, much later, once Nona is asleep and the house is quiet. “I feel like…I don’t know. I should be more comfortable with this by now?”
It comes out like a question because he knows she knows the answer.
“Are you asking me for advice?” Pyrrha says in a tone that she hopes indicates that she does not want him to answer.
Palamedes sighs. He sighs differently than Camilla does; he really lets all the air out of the lungs. The body sags a little at the relief of it. “Can you please just come here?”
Pyrrha is a damn fool. She goes. She brushes the hair off of Camilla’s forehead and looks down at Palamedes. “You told me not to touch her, once.”
He swallows hard. “I can’t find me anymore,” he says. “I don’t know where I am, most of the time.”
Pyrrha feels something like guilt or understanding or anger. She knows what it is. She doesn’t want to name it. She takes Camilla’s face in her hands, feels the staccato press of Palamedes’ breaths against her thumbs. “There you are,” she says. “You breathe differently than Cam. Take another breath.”
He does. Closes eyes that don’t belong to him. Gideon’s heart stutters. Pyrrha holds her breath, lets it out.
“Breathe,” Wake tells her, a long time ago. “I’m worried you’re going to pass out.”
Pyrrha has forgotten how to breathe. These aren’t her lungs, and this isn’t her body, and Gideon is—Gideon is—
“You’re bleeding,” Wake says soothingly. Her hands are firm and gentle and familiar, pressing, pressing, and oh, yes, Gideon is bleeding. Pyrrha is bleeding. A lot.
She tips Gideon’s head back, dizzy from the blood loss and the fact that after all these fucking years she’s still not used to the way this feels—like she can’t quite catch her breath, like she’s falling. Endless vertigo. Nowhere safe to land.
“Do you know who I am?” She gasps. She doesn’t mean to ask. But there it is.
Wake laughs, low and throaty. Pyrrha’s throat—Gideon’s throat—closes at the sound. “Yes, Pyrrha. I’d know you both anywhere.” The hands, blood-stained, move from the wound to Gideon’s cheek, caressing. Pyrrha leans into the touch. Kisses Wake’s knuckles. Tastes salt and dirt on her tongue.
“I don’t feel real,” she whispers. It’s a vulnerable moment she’ll regret, later.
Wake smiles, wicked-bright, sharp as steel. She leans down and presses the wound until Pyrrha screams. “There you are,” she says. “You sound different than him.”
Five months into whatever-the-hell their lives are now, Palamedes wakes in the middle of the night and finds Pyrrha standing under the blue-light. She’s let the curtain fall.
He steps up quietly beside her and she knows it’s him because he says, “do you think he knew, in the end? That you were there?”
“I’m not answering that, Sextus.” She doesn’t even want to think about it. She’d screamed for him, in the River. She doesn’t think he’d heard.
Palamedes takes her hand. It does feel like her hand, tonight, which is progress, she supposes. Or a back step. She doesn’t know. The whole thing is fucked.
“I can feel her,” Palamedes whispers. “When I’m here.”
“I know.”
He shivers, and Pyrrha has never actually seen Camilla cry, but she’s watched Palamedes break down once or twice, and it hurts more somehow. He’s a terribly familiar mirror.
Fuck, she loves them both. They love each other. They love her. And because she can’t say any of that, Pyrrha says, “you should go back to sleep.”
He doesn’t. He stands with her, in the blue-lit dark. They breathe, and they breathe, and they breathe.