Title: nothing in my heart but fire for you
Fandom: The Locked Tomb series - Tamsyn Muir
Characters: Harrowhark Nonagesimus, Hot Sauce, Nona
Rating: Low
Length: 1000 w
Content notes: SPOILERS for Nona the Ninth
Author notes: Title from "All Stripped Down", Tom Waits; also satisfies the "playground" square on my ladiesbingo card
Summary: Hot Sauce surprises Nona on the beach.




She finds herself on a narrow beach, merely a strip of dirty sand, a tumbledown jetty, and, past an unlit streetlight, behind a sagging chain, a playground. Behind her, an entire city moves and mumbles, arguing with itself.

This isn't her memory, but Harrow's mind never was entirely her own.

As she crosses the beach, the sand is cool and damp, like clay, against her bare feet. The breeze coming off the sea is colder yet, blade-edged with promises of frost. It's long enough past dusk that the water looks flat, gray, like scratched- and banged-up metal beneath swirls like dirty lace. Whatever moves beneath the surface now can't be as diaphanous as jellyfish, but must be solid, snub-nosed, with tiny eyes and several rows of teeth. It's very dark.

She ought to be cold, her skin prickled and shoulders hunched, but she isn't. As she nears the playground, she feels warmer yet. The playground is a sad little place: a dome-shaped climbing gym, two swings without seats, cracked pavement for skipping games. Still, it's more than Harrow ever saw when she was a child. When any part of her was young.

The gym is a dome, twice the height of a tall man, cris-crossed with bars and footholds. The horizontal struts are human femurs; the slanted uprights, tibiae. She runs her fingertips along one bone, then up another. The breeze whistles through the structure.

"Surprise," Hot Sauce says as she steps into view from behind the gym. She holds something cupped in her hands. Spitting sparks, it casts a strange light up along the girl's jaw and face. Her scars look flat and glossy like this, her eyes dark and deep, twinkling with the sparks' reflection.

Harrow goes still. "What is that?"

"Told you. Surprise." Hot Sauce extends her arms, offering whatever it is she holds.

A twig, sparking and spluttering, jammed into what at first looks like a pin cushion.

"I don't want that," Harrow tells her.

Hot Sauce cocks her head. "Yes. You do."

"I'm not her," Harrow says, rather than argue.

Hot Sauce shrugs. "Look like her. Talk like her."

She doesn't deny that, but she cannot agree, either.

"Take it," Hot Sauce says, "before it burns away."

It proves to be a heavy rubber toy in the shape of a cupcake. It was once garishly colored, but the hues have faded and leeched out. The rubber itself sports thousands of tiny cracks.

When Harrow blows out the flame, Hot Sauce claps. "What was your wish?"

"I didn't—"

"Follow me," Hot Sauce tells her without waiting for the rest of her answer. She turns to climb the dome. Harrow follows, recalling dimly that one does not disobey Hot Sauce. One doesn't want to contravene anything Hot Sauce says. This now strikes her as a good policy.

To keep her hands free for climbing—the dome is much taller than she earlier judged—she bites down on the rubber toy. It squeaks, so she does it again, pleased both by the noise and the rubber's responsive, chewy spring.

Her arms ache by the time she joins Hot Sauce at the top. They sit next to each other, facing the sea, their knees drawn up to their chests. She tucks the rubber toy between her feet. The night sky before them is unfathomably dark beyond the few, low clouds gone pallid and jaundiced, reflecting city's lights.

"I miss—" Harrow forgets herself. Recalling someone else, her mind goes a different shape. Her chest hurts, from breathing, from heartbeats. "I miss you the most. And Varun."

"He left when you did." Hot Sauce tips back her head to take in the clear sky. One eye looks over. "Seen him?"

"No," Nona says.

"Pity. He was epic."

"He was."

Nona is aware, vaguely, of all the things they aren't saying. Subjects and topics and secrets bump against each other, murmur and twist, but the silence they're sharing persists. There are words she doesn't know, feelings and theories, too. When the breeze kicks up again, she and Hot Sauce nudge closer together, their shoulders slotting, their heads resting against each other.

They've always fit well together. They did once, which makes for an 'always', so far as they're concerned.

To break a skull is easy as opening an egg, as kicking a clod of dirt. The fragility of what separates them—just some hair, a blood-warm scalp, and thin, porcelain-fine bone—makes Nona wheeze. Hot Sauce takes her hand and Nona shifts even closer. She buries her face in the curve of Hot Sauce's neck and shoulder. The burn scars are taut against her own skin, immobile.

"Wish you were here," Hot Sauce says, all her regal calm stilling the breeze and filling Nona's ears like honey and sunlight. She hears the words from the inside, where air gathers and forms, spills over the tongue. "For real-real."

Nona sniffles. "Me, too."

"This is alright, though," Hot Sauce adds. The good side of her face seems to move a little. At first it looks like the clouds are dispersing, but then Nona recognizes it as a smile. "Better than nothing."

"Lots," Nona replies. She squeezes Hot Sauce's hand as hard as she can. Hot Sauce lets her, despite the soft grunt of pain she gives out.

The others are crowding restlessly inside Nona. She breathes and counts to five, then again, clutching at Hot Sauce's hand the whole time.

"Don't need a birthday to have a party," Hot Sauce says. She kisses Nona's temple—no. It's not a kiss. It's a taste, a pressure, her lips against the weakest part of Nona's skull, an insistent reminder. It's not quite romantic, or it's everything romantic.

Nona twists toward contact, throwing her free arm around Hot Sauce, holding on tight, hoping to drag Hot Sauce with her through to wherever, whoever, she finds herself next.