She's not great at this part. The standing around. The silence. The pretending to give a shit about old bones and older nuns.

But still—Gideon leans against the cold stone, one boot planted flat against the wall, arms folded in that way that looks casual but is actually structural. It's something to do with the boredom. Something to do with not falling apart.

She watches as Harrow marches past not unlike a very tiny bird in some very heavy makeup.
That's fine. That's normal. Harrow never talks to her unless she's doing that thing where she tries to weaponize vocabulary like it's a fucking sword. Gideon offers a jeer, feeling that it would almost be rude not to. The Corpse Bride 9000 mutters something about dying, as if Gideon doesn't wish for it daily.

She goes back to chewing. Jerky. Probably meat. Possibly something else. Doesn't matter.

She thinks about getting a workout in. Or a nap. Or a lobotomy.

And then—

Footsteps.

Again.

Harrow. Same stride. Same expression. Same stupid tightrope posture like she's balancing the weight of the whole House on her ribs.

Gideon watches her pass, and offers up another half assed comment.

This time, Harrow doesn't look at her.

This time, something in the back of Gideon's skull prickles.

She stands there for a moment, staring at the curve of the corridor long after Harrow disappears. Her jaw clenches around the strip of meat.

"…That was the same hallway," she mutters.

She doesn't say anything else. Doesn't chase.

But she watches the corridor like it might move again.

Like something might come back through that isn't Harrow.

Harrowhark walked the echoing halls of The Ninth in silence, her soft footfalls muffled against the stone floor. The torches sputtered low in their sconces, casting long, flickering shadows across the walls—like ribs stretching inward to close around her. She did not speak. There was no one left to speak to.

She reached her quarters with the weight of ritual: the ironbound door, the bone-carved key, the moment of hesitation before entering. Inside, the air was stale with incense and rot. Everything was as she had left it—cold, orderly, untouched by warmth.

Harrow sat on the edge of her cot, hands folded tight in her lap. Her gaze lingered on the far wall, where the wards had long since dimmed to pale blue etchings. She let out a breath she hadn't realized she was holding.

She was tired. Tired in her marrow.

She had passed Gideon in the corridor—twice. Not a trick of memory, not the déjà vu of sleeplessness, but twice. The same heavy stride, the same curl of her mouth, but it seemed that Gideon had noticed the oddity of it as well. The first time, there was the same air of blatant distain. The second, it was heavily muddled with confusion.

Harrow did not turn her back on her. She walked away like she always had—like cowardice was a prayer, and prayers might still matter.

Now, on the cot, she stared up into the ceiling's darkness and reached for the silence between heartbeats. She let it settle on her chest like a weight.

Please—don't let me dream of the hospital.

-

But Harrow did dream of the hospital. And like every dream of the hospital, she lost her footing in reality. It was as if this were her new and permanent world.

She opened her eyes to fluorescent light, again.

The ceiling was too low. The tiles were stained with slow, spreading rings of brown like dried blood diluted with bleach. The overhead lights buzzed a thin, insectile whine that threaded behind her eyes. The walls were the color of overcooked oatmeal, padded just enough to mock the idea of safety. The air reeked faintly of antiseptic and plastic, tinged with something older—something sour and skin-warm.

The room was five paces wide. It contained a cot with a plastic-covered mattress, a bolted-down nightstand with no drawer, a toilet behind a half-wall, and the chair that the nurses moved depending on how safe they thought she was.

She was still in the ward.

Not the Ninth. Not even the memory of the Tomb. Just the cot. Just the blanket that didn't warm her. Just the institutional quiet that had teeth.

She sat up slowly, the paper-thin blanket slipping off her shoulders. Her hospital gown clung to her like a shed skin. The texture of it under her fingers did not comfort her.

There was someone in the chair by the door.

Gideon.

Not the Gideon of bone armor and blade. This one wore a hoodie she hadn't owned in five years and jeans torn at one knee. Her boots were up on the edge of the chair like she lived there. Her arms were folded behind her head. She was chewing gum.

"You sleep like a corpse," she said.

Harrow stared. The meds hadn't kicked in yet. Or they had, and this was what it felt like now.

"You're not real," Harrow said.

Gideon blew a bubble and popped it with her teeth. "Neither are you."

Harrow's stomach twisted. "Then what are we doing here?"

"You're dreaming. Or you're awake. Flip a coin."

"You always haunt me."

"Then stop calling me," Gideon said, her voice light, easy, cruel.

"I didn't."

"Yeah, you did. Every time you whispered my name into a pillow and pretended you weren't crying."

Gideon stood and crossed to her. Her presence didn't shift the air. Her shadow didn't touch the walls.

"Don't touch me," Harrow said.

Gideon paused. "Didn't plan to." She sat on the edge of the cot, the institutional mattress dipping just slightly, and looked Harrow dead in the eyes. "You don't sleep to rest. You sleep to run."

"And yet you're always waiting for me."

"That's the thing about ghosts," Gideon said. "We don't need a key to get in. Especially when this place already has your name on the door."

She leaned back, the cot creaking beneath her weight—or the suggestion of it. "You keep pretending this place isn't real, like it's some sad little purgatory you got dropped into by mistake. But I gotta be honest, Harrow: you fit in here better than anywhere else."

Harrow recoiled, just slightly. "This isn't me."

"Could've fooled me." Gideon's voice was still flippant, but something cold glittered under the surface. "Wards on the door. Blank walls. Silence. It's just the Ninth with all the incense scraped off."

She looked around the room like she was seeing it for the first time and finding it almost familiar. Her grin dimmed. "Maybe I belong here too."

Harrow blinked. "You're not—"

"What? Real?" Gideon shrugged. "We've been over that. But I'm here, aren't I? You made room for me. Maybe this place fits me the same way it fits you. Cramped, ugly, but… honest."

She paused, mouth pulling to the side. "At least here no one pretends you're holy. Just broken."

Harrow's voice came out small, sharper than she intended. "Then why are you always in my room, if you belong here so much? Don't you have a place to be? Why do you make me feel like I'm losing it?"

Gideon's smirk faded into something quieter. "Maybe I am why you're losing it. Or maybe I'm just what's left when you stop trying so hard to keep it together."

She leaned forward, elbows on her knees. "You keep thinking I show up to punish you. That I'm some symptom. But maybe I'm just here because this is the only place you don't lie to yourself. And maybe I keep sitting in your room because it's the only one that doesn't pretend it's not a cage."

The door hissed open.

Dr. Ascher stepped into the room, clipboard in hand, eyes sharp behind wire-rimmed glasses. Her presence always seemed to drain the color from the walls further, as though her authority bled into the plaster.

"What's going on in here?" she asked, her voice cool and clipped. Her eyes flicked past Harrow and landed—impossibly—on Gideon.

Harrow froze. Her heart slammed once against her ribs, then again.

Dr. Ascher looked directly at Gideon. "You need to leave."

Gideon raised an eyebrow. "Yeah? Make me."

But she was already rising. Not vanishing. Not dissolving. Rising, like a real girl, irritation scrawled across her face.

Harrow stared at the two of them, her mind buckling.

"You— You can see her," she said. It wasn't a question. It was a falling floor.

Dr. Ascher didn't even blink. "Of course I can. This is still my ward."

The world tilted. Harrow clutched the edge of the mattress like it could anchor her.

Gideon glanced over her shoulder as she walked to the door, muttering, "Always the killjoy."

She didn't disappear. She opened the door. She walked out.

Dr. Ascher made a note on her clipboard without looking up. "You're due for group in twenty minutes. I'll send someone to escort you."

The door shut behind her.

Harrow was still staring at it like it might bleed.

-

I wasn't supposed to be in her room. Not really. Not officially.

They keep me in a different wing—anger management, risk group, the girls who break mirrors and mean it. I've been here for eight months, give or take. Enough time to stop pretending I was just visiting.

Dr. Ascher says I've got impulse control issues. She says it like it's a polite diagnosis, like it doesn't mean I lose time and come back with blood on my knuckles and a new ban on pencils.

Whatever.

I visit Harrow because she thinks I'm not real. It's fucking hilarious.

She looks at me like I'm a ghost and talks to me like I'm a goddamn prophecy. She flinches when I sit too close, like she's afraid I'll vanish if she blinks wrong. It's addicting. I don't know what that says about me.

Probably nothing fucking good.

But it's funny. It's funny because she stares through the orderlies like they're made of air and acts like I'm the hallucination. She thinks I'm here because of her. Like I sprung fully-formed out of her skull like a bad dream with great hair.

I've got my own file, Harrow. My own locked door. My own pills in the little paper cup every morning. I'm here because I put a girl's face through a vending machine three weeks before intake. Yeah, really. Glass. Everywhere. I'm here because when I'm mad, I don't think—I act. And I don't stop until someone pulls me off or I run out of things to hit.

So maybe she's not wrong. Maybe I'm not real real. But I'm real enough to get court-mandated therapy, real enough to be told I'm a fucking danger to myself and others. Real enough to get kicked out of Harrow's room by Dr. Ascher like a bad dog with a god complex.

Still, I go back. Because she's interesting. Because she's made up a world; one she's spilt little bits of into this one. Because she hates me. Because no one else here ever looks at me like they're trying to solve a riddle in the shape of a girl.

And because she still thinks I'm a figment, and I think that's the funniest thing in the world.

--

The hallway felt longer than usual.

Harrow walked with the orderly at her side and the silence in her throat. Her thoughts trailed behind her in the air like threads dragging in bleach. The vinyl floor squeaked under their shoes. The walls pulsed with beige sameness. Somewhere far off, a radio played something tinny and upbeat, like irony come to life.

She kept replaying the moment—Dr. Ascher's eyes on Gideon. The command. The compliance. The door.

She had seen her.

She had seen Gideon.

It wasn't supposed to be like that. Gideon wasn't supposed to be real. She was supposed to be… Harrow didn't even know anymore. A delusion. A possession. A memory too mean to leave.

She stole a glance at her reflection in the observation mirror as they passed. She looked pale. Undead. Stripped of myth and bone and glory. Just a girl in a paper gown, trudging through the antiseptic present.

Her hands were shaking.

"What did it mean?" she whispered.

The orderly didn't answer. She hadn't meant to speak aloud.

What did it mean if Gideon was real? What did it mean if she wasn't?

And worse: what if they both were?

———

Dayroom 3B – 11:15 AM

The chairs form a limp circle, like a broken spine. Harrow picks the one nearest the door and folds herself into it like something pressed between pages. The overhead lights are too loud. Everything is too loud.

Across from her, Ianthe lounges like a feral cat that's learned to smile. Her fingers twirl a contraband hair tie, knotted with something the color of dried blood. Her name tag hangs half-off her hoodie like she's molting.

Next to Ianthe, Coronabeth hums softly under her breath, one hand fluttering against her collarbone like she's checking for a heartbeat. Her eyes dart to Harrow with too much sympathy. Harrow hates it.

Judith is already sitting perfectly upright, hands folded on her lap, expression impassive as an ancient coin. She never speaks unless the therapist calls on her. She always looks like she's trying to memorize the exits.

Dr. Cortland—the therapist—smiles like someone taught her how in a seminar once. "Let's check in. Harrow, would you like to start us off today?"

"No."

There's a pause. Standard operating silence.

Cortland tilts her head. "Maybe just a word for how you're feeling?"

Harrow's eyes flick to the chair beside her. It's empty. It's always empty. Except it's not. It was full this morning, during meds. Someone kicked her chair and whispered something rude in her ear. It echoed.

"Disoriented," she says eventually. "I think."

Cortland nods, jotting it down. "Thank you."

"She means Gideon again," Ianthe says, already bored, already grinning. "She means her invisible girlfriend."

"She's not—" Harrow's mouth snaps shut.

"Honestly," Ianthe goes on, eyes glittering, "it's getting exhausting. One minute she's just a hallucination, the next we've all known her for years. Harrow, sweetie. She roomed with me before she ever sat next to you in group."

"You're lying."

"I wish I were," Ianthe purrs. "She borrowed my deodorant. Once. Traumatized me for life."

Coronabeth interjects gently, "We don't have to mock each other's realities."

"Oh, please, Cory," Ianthe scoffs. "It's not her reality. It's ours. She just conveniently forgot."

Harrow's heart claws at her ribs. She wants to scream, to scratch the linoleum off the floor until it bleeds truth.

"She didn't exist until a week ago," Harrow says. "I would've remembered her."

Dr. Cortland leans in slightly. "It sounds like you're experiencing a dissonance in memory. That can be very destabilizing. Do you feel threatened by her?"

"No," Harrow says. Then: "Yes. Maybe. I don't know. She won't go away."

"Because she lives here," Ianthe sings.

"She doesn't. She didn't." Harrow's voice fractures like a bone under pressure. "She—I—She looks at me like she knows me, and I don't—I don't know her."

The group is quiet for a beat too long. Even Judith shifts slightly.

Then Coronabeth says, soft and trembling, "Sometimes I forget things too."

Ianthe laughs, sharp as glass.

Harrow curls in tighter on herself, eyes fixed on the chair beside her. Still empty. Still not.

Cortland lets the silence hold for a moment longer before gently shifting the conversation.

"Thank you, Harrow. That sounds very difficult. Let's come back to that if you'd like later. For now—Judith? How about you?"

Judith's posture stiffens even more, if possible. She looks straight ahead, not at anyone in particular.

"I've been keeping to schedule," she says. "I've completed my journaling every morning and evening. I have not had any further… disturbances."

"Good. And have the noise episodes lessened?"

"I've learned to ignore them," Judith says. Her jaw twitches. "I assume they're not real."

"Even if they feel real?"

"They're irrelevant," Judith says flatly.

Ianthe fake-coughs into her sleeve. "Auditory hallucinations," she mutters, with exaggerated enunciation. "Someone's got the DSM under her pillow."

Judith doesn't respond.

Cortland, already used to this dynamic, simply turns to the next.

"Coronabeth?"

Coronabeth folds her hands, smiling with effort. "I've been… okay. I think."

"You mentioned you were having trouble with boundaries."

Coronabeth nods. "Yes. I've been trying not to fix everyone. Not to take responsibility for—um. Everything. I've started writing down when I have the impulse to intervene. I try to sit with it for thirty seconds. It's harder than I thought."

"She made me tea," Ianthe mutters.

"It was lukewarm," Coronabeth says defensively. "And I didn't ask you to drink it."

"You left it on my bed with a note that said, for when the walls start talking again, Cory."

Coronabeth flushes. "I was trying to be kind."

"Try harder."

Harrow tunes them out.

The voices warp into underwater static, rising and falling in nonsensical rhythm. Her gaze drifts again to the chair beside her—empty, yet full of shape. Of familiarity.

She didn't exist before. But she did. Or she should have.

Gideon's voice comes to her in fragments. Something about pudding. About push-ups. About how boring everything is in here except Harrow.

Harrow had told her to go away last night, and Gideon had just said, "Make me." Like it was a game they always played.

Like they had history.

Harrow clenches her fingers in her sleeves until her knuckles ache. If the others remember Gideon—if she was always part of this place—then what does that mean?

Was she the one who broke?

Did someone put this thing in her head?

She feels Cortland's eyes on her again. The therapist is saying something now. Something about triggers. Or the importance of naming thoughts without attaching to them. Something warm and useless.

Ianthe is talking again. "You know what my trigger is? People who pretend to forget things they just don't want to deal with. It's insulting. Like the rest of us are props in your little breakdown."

Dr. Cortland interrupts, calm but firm. "Ianthe, we're not here to judge each other's experiences."

"But we are here," Ianthe says sweetly. "Some of us more than others."

Harrow stares down at her lap. The lines on her palms look like they were drawn by someone else. She hears Gideon's voice again—sharp, familiar, almost fond.

You're really losing it, huh, Bones?

She doesn't look up.

Coronabeth is still talking, trying to smooth things over. Harrow hears the same old song about empathy, progress, forgiveness. It sounds like gauze over an open wound.

Then Ianthe leans forward slightly, smug and poisonous. "Sometimes I wonder if they switched us at birth. I got the codependency, and she got the personality disorder."

"Ianthe," Coronabeth whispers, scandalized.

"I mean it with love," Ianthe says, and winks at Harrow.

Harrow doesn't smile. She doesn't move. But something in her sharpens.

She turns slightly, just enough to make her voice carry. "Is it common," she says coolly, "for sisters to get committed together, or is that just your thing?"

The silence that follows is almost luxurious.

Ianthe blinks. Coronabeth's mouth opens and closes, helplessly.

Judith exhales once through her nose.

Dr. Cortland clears her throat. "Let's try to keep comments directed at our own experiences."

"I am," Harrow says. "I'm experiencing a profound sense of secondhand embarrassment."

Ianthe grins—too wide, too fast. "There she is," she says. "Took her long enough to wake up."

"I was trying to dissociate in peace," Harrow mutters.

"Aw. Did I interrupt your inner monologue?"

"No. That was Gideon."

Ianthe's smile falters for a moment, just a flicker.

Coronabeth shifts uncomfortably. "Harrow, maybe—maybe you should talk to her. If she's still showing up."

"I do talk to her," Harrow says. "She won't shut up."

"She's very charming," Ianthe says. "For someone you keep insisting doesn't exist."

Harrow stares at her, hollow-eyed. "So which is it? Am I imagining her, or am I just conveniently forgetting she ever existed?"

Ianthe just smiles again.

Coronabeth looks like she might cry.

Dr. Cortland holds up a hand. "Let's take a breath, everyone. We're not here to interrogate each other's perceptions. Let's refocus—Camilla? Do you want to share next?"

From the far side of the circle, Camilla looks up. She's barely spoken this whole time, sitting with her arms crossed, eyes sharp and unreadable.

She shrugs once. "Not much to share."

Dr. Cortland encourages her: "You mentioned last week you were having some distress about people watching you?"

Camilla's jaw ticks. "It's not distress. It's just true."

Then she glances at Harrow. "Some of us see things. Doesn't mean we're wrong."

Harrow blinks. Their eyes meet for half a second too long.

And just behind her left shoulder, someone chuckles.

It's soft. Familiar. Dry as dust and salt.

Harrow doesn't turn to look.