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llovelyclouds:

Gideon limped over near the dusty flowerbeds. WHAM—WHAM—WHAM— She didn’t have much time, but she only had one shot anyway. She struggled out of her black robe and thought about taking off her shirt, in one mental blurt of panic, but decided she didn’t need to. She peeled her gloves off her wet red palms and rolled up her sleeves for no reason, except that it gave her something to do with her shaking hands. She made her voice as calm as possible: in a way, she was calm. She was the calmest she had ever been in her entire life. It was just her body that was frightened.ALT
feel responsible for you, and need you to promise me you’ll live.” “Gideon decided that for me,” said Harrow. She was not really afraid; it was only that her hands were, and were shaking independent of her feelings.ALT
“Good!” said her cavalier. “You can stop screaming any moment now, just an FYI. Now—first make sure nothing’s going to ice Camilla—I meant it about not wanting an afterlife subscription to Palamedes Sextus’s Top Nerd Facts.”ALT
“Oops! It’s me again, never doing what I’m told,” said Dulcie. “One more moment, please.” Harrow said, curt with bemusement, “Hurry up and go. If I ever stand before Palamedes Sextus again, I have no desire to explain to him why I put Dulcinea Septimus back in danger.”ALT
“Fuck you, Nav—” “Harrowhark,” said Gideon the Ninth. “Someday you’ll die and get buried in the ground, and we can work this out then. For now—I can’t say you’ll be fine. IALT
Magnus said, “Have you—” “Someday I’ll die and get buried in the ground and you can take it up with me then,” said Harrow, and found, after all, that she was not really speaking to them. “Until then—I am afraid that I have to live.”ALT
“If it were me,” Magnus said, “I’d go home, and live, and live for her.”ALT
“Good,” said someone, so savagely that it sounded like a new voice altogether. “Good. Die. Die for her … it’s the only goddamn good you’ll ever do her. It’s all any of you ever knew how to give her. You could have lived for her … but you didn’t know how.”ALT

live for her / die for her

(Gideon the Ninth, Harrow the Ninth, Nona the Ninth)