#John is *constantly* touching Harrow in HTN even when she's quite obviously upset by it.

[katakaluptastrophy]

Thinking about how Harrow was brought up knowing what she cost. That her price was the death of her House. How she had to be a perfect necromancer to prove to her parents that cost was worth it.

And thinking about who she asks for help when she is at her most desperate.

Harrow, who has never belonged to herself.

He reached out for your hands. You could not refuse him, and in any case had no choice of doing so; your body reacted long before your mind did, and the meat of your meat and the flesh of your flesh belonged to God.

Harrow, who only ever experienced love as a response to her worthiness.

Her most vivid memory of her mother was of her hands guiding Harrow’s over an inexpertly rendered portion of skull, her fingers encircling the fat baby bracelets of Harrow’s wrists, tightening this cuff to indicate correct technique.

And how that colours her entire perception of kindness. Of what those who try to love her want.

“I would like to give you something,” said Abigail Pent. This was to Harrowhark. She watched as the capable hands—strong, for a necromancer’s, beautifully formed and with very even nails—took a bit of folded paper from the table. She passed it to her Ninth colleague as though it did not hurt her to give away such precious material.

How John imagines Harrow as his daughter, but can only love her selfishly; her creation a mirror of his own sins.

You’d make a hell of a daughter, Harrowhark. I sometimes indulge in the wish that you’d been mine.

How Abigail, in loco parentis, having exorcised the children that weren't quite her's either so that she could help to keep Harrow safe, wants to comfort her but can't.

Abigail Pent took off her glasses and popped them down into the top fold of her robe. She reached out to touch Harrow’s arm, and Harrow flinched away; she winced a little in sympathetic apology, and removed her hand.

How Harrow is haunted throughout HTN not just by the actual ghost trying to destroy her, but by the memory of her parents, their touch, and by those who for better or for worse want to parent her. Abigail, who loved the children whose planet she was annexing - a fate Harrow viscerally feared. And John, who will show his love for his unexpected daughter by making her an undead construct. However well meaning, Harrow cannot conceive of parental love without possession, without an agenda.

The Emperor set down his tea and finished off his biscuit, and did that terrible thing that he did, on occasion: he reached over to touch your shoulder in that brief, tentative way, the lightest and swiftest of gestures, as though afraid that he might burn you. Your mother had guided your hands over bloating corpses. Your father had held down the corners of great tomes, and his sleeve had brushed your six-year-old-fingers as he showed you how best to turn their pages. Both of them had pressed a rough rope made of coated fibre into your hands—you recalled the pressure from their palms, their attempts to be gentle. When the Emperor touched you, your body recalled, unbidden, each rare and terrible touch committed by your mother and father.

How the one touch Harrow doesn't flinch away from is Ortus, who acknowledges his failure to protect Harrow and wants to make amends.

It was difficult to know what to do with this type of touch. It made her whole soul flinch, but at the same time opened some primeval infant mechanism within her, as though the embrace were a mirror: having someone hold up an image by which you could see yourself, rather than living with an assumption of your face. It was not like the touch of her father or mother. When she had first sat by the tomb in shivering awe, she had fancied that the Body’s ice-ridden fingers had shifted for hers, minutely. Gideon had touched her in truth; Gideon had floundered toward her in the saltwater with that set, unsheathed expression she wore before a fight, her mouth colourless from the cold. Harrow had welcomed her end, but suffered a different death blow altogether—and she had become, for the second time, herself. She untangled from Ortus, more reluctantly than she’d expected.

And now Abigail Pent and Ortus are (probably) dead. Gideon is John's daughter. The Body is Alecto, awake and on the move, meat loving meat.

Desperately hoping that in ATN Harrow and Gideon have an embrace without agenda where they are both simply themselves.