[Image ID: A digital illustration of a child Harrowhark from The Locked Tomb trilogy. She is kneeling in dark robes and skeletal face paint, next to two taller figures doing the same. She holds a prayer beads made of bones, and her eyes are open and stare ahead of her. Bright red halos her head, with half of it jagged and sharp. Around her are shadowy black wisps reaching out to her. / End ID]
ok but the fact that harrow’s redemption arc is also gideon’s corruption arc. the fact that they come out of the pool scene nodding in agreement despite having come to two wildly different conclusions. the fact that their one moment of real open honest communication still somehow ends in a horrible irreconcilable disconnect.
like. harrow wants gideon to start walking beside her at the same time as gideon masters walking a half-step behind. harrow wants to share the bed the one night gideon sleeps on the cavalier cot harrow comes to fully understand and accept that treating gideon as a subordinate was wrong and unfair, at the same time as gideon stops thinking of herself as harrow’s rightful equal.
it’s fucked up it’s horrible and harrow is too caught up in all her feelings to see it until it’s too late and gideon has still just barely begun to figure it out.
i. i just. she could have lived for her but she didn’t know how.
because to do that, to acknowledge that that was even an option, she would have to view herself as being as worthy of life as harrow. and she didn’t. she didn’t and she couldn’t. it didn’t even occur to her. she could have lived for her but she didn’t know how.
