#hello 911 I have massive brain damage

[chryza]

How do I explain why I’m obsessed with Horn and Harmonie

To understand their relationship (though in canon they are kept away from each other deliberately) you must first recognize that they once were other women. They were named Rita and Rosalie and they were young and idealistic and they loved each other as they dreamed of becoming defenders of Victoria like their beloved mentor. To leave behind the world of pointless garden parties and plotting nobility and actually do something worthwhile.

And then their mentor died in disgrace, catalyzing the inexorable destruction not only of their dreams but of Rita and Rosalie themselves.

I think for a while Rosalie tried to hold onto the dream she had of nobly defending her country, but the illusion of grandeur she’d held for her mentor was shattered. If even the person she looked up to the most was motivated by greed, had used her to do so, then what was the fucking point? There was still Rita, incorruptible Rita standing against it all like a fortress, but she was the outlier. By the time the Victorian army began pressuring her to join their intelligence network she already constructed a worldview that everyone, including herself, was merely a pawn in others’ games. She became Harmonie easily—Rosalie had been dead for a long time anyway.

Rita spent ten years, if not more, most likely believing her friend had died or disappeared. Sure Harmonie could have kept in contact with her but it was so difficult as a spy to maintain relationships, and surely Harmonie would never do anything to endanger her best friend. Rita carried on bearing all the weight of their dreams—she wasn’t affected by their mentor’s death after all. She went on believing there were still generals worth looking up to, officers in the Victorian army who were as pure in ideology as she.

The tempest platoon was that dream, I think, for Rita made manifest. She knew the army was corrupt, but she could cut through the rot and defend the people of Victoria against that corruption.

The County Hillock barracks and Dublinn didn’t just kill her friends and comrades—it obliterated her faith in her dream. Rita Skamandros died in County Hillock and all that was left was Horn, the last remaining member of the Second Tempest Platoon. There was no faith, no dream, only a festering rage and a raw guilt that forced her into living for her fallen comrades if nothing else.

The rub of all of it is that Harmonie is both the reason she was imprisoned, and the reason she was alive. It was the joint schemes of both Harmonie and the Elocutionist that brought the Spectre Force to County Hillock. It was Harmonie who coldly assessed that Horn was worth something to Dublinn alive. Perhaps her actions were driven by sentiment anyway. She stuck her neck out for Mandragora too, after all.

And at the end, both safe now at Rhodes Island, what reckoning awaits them? Horn, the shell of a soldier putting on a front of normalcy in a desperate attempt to conceal the fury and sorrow that drives her? Harmonie, running from everything in her life since Horley’s death finally face to face with the past she tried to leave behind?

Perhaps there is some atonement waiting for Harmonie and perhaps there is some comfort waiting for Horn. Horn just wants to protect something and Harmonie finally can be saved. Harmonie isn’t the idealistic girl she once was, she’s a cunning and manipulative schemer who is still so often blinded by sentiment nonetheless. There is still something left perhaps of that old life she tried to kill—her darling Rita. They are enemies now. The list of things Harmonie has done that hurt Horn is long, but there is reconciliation to be had, to be wanted. There is still something to save.