fiberglass and flowers / echo & eden

[calla]

E    D    E    N

They get back to One in the evening. The medic sleeps on the way back, but Eden doesn't. He fiddles with the end of his bandages and watches the world go by in flashes of colour until the sun starts to set and the buildings start to get taller.

Even the air changes as they go along. The District looks so different from the other side.

The Le Roux manor looks a little bit smaller.

Eden knows it's stupid, but he still digs his heels in when the gate opens and the driver stops. He'd only been in Four for five days, and one of those days was spent sleeping in a hospital bed, pumped full of enough painkillers that's he not even sure if he was asleep.

He didn't even get to see the ocean.

It's 9:04 and Eurydice calls Eden into the study where she's watching a replay of the tournament semi-finals on a little portable screen. He sees himself get stabbed in the chest three times before Avriel runs into frame and the footage stops.

Eurydice doesn't say much, just gives him this kind of look.

Eden gives her a look right back.

There's a weird dynamic there now. Eden's lungs stutter and there's that shock of pain again, right beside his heart. There was a blade stuck inside of him two days ago and everyone seems to be forgetting that. The nurse in Four told him to stay away from any strenuous activity or extra lifting for at least two months. Eden thought that was a nice sentiment.

He gets dismissed and avoids every other person in the house on his way to Echo's room. It's habitual - he feels off-kilter and off-balance and seeks out something familiar to soothe the sensation. He's barely even shut the door behind him before he tunes into the music blaring from where his sister's lying across her bed.

Some things never change.

Eden crosses the room in three steps and then falls onto the mattress beside her, face first.

If Echo wasn't hogging the pillow, he'd probably shove his face into it and scream. His skin feels wrong. The bass of the music makes his teeth vibrate even though it's really not that loud. He closes his eyes and sees a bloody fist. He closes his eyes and sees Avriel.

[alex 🐺]

E C H O L E   R O U X

Time’s no longer measured in swings of steel and drops of sweat on dirt. Time’s measured now in steps from the foyer to her bedroom. In the worn path on the elegant carpets from Eurydice’s office to the front door. In the hours spent at Eurydice’s side, a silent sentinel. A warning and a reminder.

She isn’t meant to be comfortable here. None of them are. There are ghosts of children lingering in shadows. Clothing and books that once belonged to Emerson and Emmett still hang on iron hangers. Echo sags under the weight of it all.

But they try. She tries. Tatton speaks to her in fits and starts. They mostly just share cigarettes and clothes. Cathy doesn’t talk to her at all. They’re intruders anyway. Parasites on an unwilling host. It’s hard for all of them.

Time’s measured in beats between breaths.

It's measured in sunrises and sunsets. In reminders that she's no longer in the pit. That she has a name and a family. Or something like that. Family's always been synonymous with disappointment. 

They drew straws for who would go to the tournament and Echo had drawn the short one. Fine, she could do guard duty. It was easy enough. And Eurydice doesn't seem to care when Echo tosses in her earbuds, cranking her phone's volume up to the highest level.

But four days without Eden wasn’t something that she had registered when he had left. They’d never been without each other for one day, let alone four of them. She felt his absence like a gnawing ache in her chest. She was sure she was piss poor company. Steel avoided her. And Echo just played her music as loud as she could. The decibels make her teeth hurt but calm the emptiness in her gut.

Eden comes back late on the fifth day. Far too late. She had seen what had happened and had heard the curse from Eurydice when he had fallen. It was followed by the familiar shattering of glass and tinkle of liquid. Probably a tumbler of whiskey meeting an early end against a wall. That always seemed to be Eurydice's outburst of choice. 

Time had slowed then. Echo could count each beat of her heart as she watched Eden lay on the ground before he was engulfed by the medics. She silently willed him to get back up. If Icarus had lived, would he have given it another go? Or would he have left the sun and the sky to the gods?

The medics looked like wasps in their stupid fucking outfits, swarming and undulating. A mess of white, far too much movement, and then he was gone.

But now, Echo can hear his familiar tread. She could hear his steps in her sleep and had memorized the way he breathed. He walks to Eurydice’s study, but he doesn’t linger. Reverberations of the tournament bounce off of the mahogany walls. Clang off of the framed portraits and slam against the statues lining the walkways as if it hasn’t been on repeat for days. She knows he’s headed for her room as the door, barely open but an invitation nonetheless, moves against the carpet without a sound. Eden is always so quiet.

It closes loudly and that should be Echo’s first indication that something must be really fucking wrong.

Her brother collapses on the bed next to her, facedown, and all she can see is the way that his back rises and falls. He’s sagging under the weight of it too.

“That bad, huh?” Echo doesn’t bother turning down her music. They can whisper through the noise, anyway. They can speak beneath the chords and chorus.

She tries for a joke, turning on her side and peering down at Eden. Okay, so maybe she had been waiting for him, but whatever. At least he was alive and whole. Ish. 

“It’s a good thing that cats have nine lives. Lion’s too, E.”

*quote inspo: jay kristoff - empire of the vampire*

[calla]

E    D    E    N

Eden lies there and wonders what it would be like to just not move. He's starting to lose air, his face is flat against the mattress, and that's when the fireworks kick in. There's flashes of colours under his eyelids and his lungs are starting to burn and Eden counts along to the tempo of Echo's music when his head starts to get fuzzy.

Eden just grunts in reply to his sister. Because yeah, the tournament was absolutely that bad. There's a hole in Eden's chest, how could it have been anything but?

He turns his head to look at Echo, to half-heartedly glare at her, and the air comes flooding back. Eden feels lightheaded. He wants to tell Echo what had really happened in Four, that the stabbing wasn't even the beginning of it, but when he opens his mouth, nothing happens.

It's hard on days like these.

It had been different when it was just the three of them - just Eden and Echo and Steel. Even though they weren't called that back then. But still, it comes in flashes. Eden would hold Echo's hand and braid Steel's hair and tell them both about a worm he'd seen on the sidewalk that morning.

Then the words came less and less until they didn't come at all. Maybe it's the stress that does it, maybe it's the pain, he doesn't know. He's not good with change, but somehow his life has been full of it. Steel told him once that he never shut up as a kid, but no matter how hard he tries, he can't remember that.

It just feels cruel now.

He says nothing to Eurydice during the entire first year. He asks Steel to wrap his hands and doesn't say anything else for a month. He laughs at Echo and then stays silent for the rest of the week. He goes to Four and gets stabbed and Avriel's name is right there under his tongue but he can't make himself say it. It makes him want to shake himself.

Some days are worse than others, but it doesn't feel like there's any rhyme or reason to it anymore. Sometimes the smallest things set Eden off and he goes from mostly nonverbal to completely. Sometimes it happens and there's no reason at all.

His fist thumps against the mattress, but the sudden movement makes his chest twinge. He huffs instead, rolling onto his back and staring at the ceiling so he doesn't have to see the sort of searching look Echo gives him.

Eden rolls his eyes at her joke, and it helps him feel a little more normal. There's still a bit of unease. He's never been self-conscious of his silence before.

He reaches over to change Echo's music to something more soothing. The screaming gets cut off by a song with strings and a little bit of piano, the melody flowing through her headphones and settling around them softly.

[alex 🐺]

E C H O L E   R O U X

The mansion had become a sanctuary of sorts. A sanctuary without safety. They were in the lion's den, so was that ever fucking safe?

So maybe it was more like...a really nice hotel. There was food and clean water and clothes and a bed without the threat of fleas or random stabbings.

But it wasn't a home. That words was stolen from the rafters and the stairs and the bones of the house when they ran red with the blood of the heirs. Echo joked to Steel that they were the spares now. Steel didn't much care for the joke, just clenched her jaw and rolled her eyes.

Echo turns to glare at her, opening his mouth to spit out a retort that was weeks in the making. He closes it, though, and Echo feels her heart sink in her chest, deflating. He hadn't been that close to saying something in days, but instead, he punches the mattress and flips over, landing with a dull thud. She can see a flicker of wine-colored beige underneath his t-shirt. If she didn't know any better, the shirt looked like one of hers. Figures. 

Eden seemed to be constantly evolving new ways to not say what he meant. This time was no different.

Or maybe it was.

Her music changes and Echo can't help but roar. Maybe the house was bleeding into her, spores of the Le Roux family taking root and festering in her veins.

"Hey, asshat! I liked that song." Echo's expression softens as she looks at Eden. Like, really looks at him for a moment, dark eyes narrowing. Seeing nothing telling, she flops on her back in much the same fashion as he had. They were totally related. That and a thousand other small things proved that simple fact. "This—this one is good too, though." She admits to the ceiling. 

She registered that her outburst was toeing closer old wounds that they could slice and tear open on the way to resolution, but who the fuck has time for that?

"D—d'ya wanna talk about it?" Their shoulders and elbows touch and Echo can remember doing this when they were younger, after just weeks with Shadow Cat. They would try to see shapes in the stains on the walls. Echo always saw sharks. She'd never even seen the ocean. 

"Or not talk about it? Or just lie here?" She was rambling, of course she was. But that was only because with all of Eden's silence, she felt like she had to do enough speaking for the two of them. Like she was in charge of filling the space with words.

Maybe she should stop doing that. Maybe she shouldn't steal his words when he didn't have that many to begin with. 

[calla]

E    D    E    N

The music's nice. It's helping a little.

Echo barks at him but she settles just as quickly. Eden still has to avoid her gaze though, he stares forward and tries not to look as guilty as he feels. He presses against his chest and feels the raise of the bandage under his shirt.

"D—d'ya wanna talk about it?"

He shrugs and feels his shoulder bump hers.

It's hard to explain. He's holding the gun in his hand but he can't pull the trigger. His teeth worry his lip and the words tumble around and around and around.

What would he even start with? That dinner from two years ago? The balcony? The trip to Nine with Eurydice last year?

He tries to think about telling his sister about someone holding his hand so gently, saying his name so softly, and feels his face start to heat up. He loves Echo, but he knows she'll take it and run. Every time Avriel showed up on the television she'd be snickering at him.

But Eden might just explode if he doesn't do something about this feeling. His chest feels funny but not from his injury this time - it felt weird before that. Maybe he's just brave enough now; he's riding off the best sleep he's ever had and that was only because he'd been knocked out on painkillers for thirteen hours. It wasn't because of Avriel lying beside him, arms around him, heartbeat under his ear.

It was the morphine.

Besides, Avriel is too personal. It's a name, but sometimes it means more than that. Eden had mouthed it over and over again on the ride back to One, tried to get used to the feeling of the syllables, but he didn't say it. He still doesn't say it. It's too familiar and Echo will clock him for it immediately.

He works himself up to something less conspicuous.

"...Baptiste."

It's barely even audible over the sound of a violin, but Eden regrets it almost immediately.

It's not much of an explantation, it's barely even an answer, but Eden can feel Echo's eyes on him and he knows his face is red so he turns it into the bed again, knocking against her shoulder to breathe in the duvet. His tongue burns and his heart is pounding, his fingernails dig into his palms and he squeezes his eyes shut even though it's dark already.

It's like waiting for a hammer to fall. One word sends him near spiralling and it's so quiet for a moment that all Eden can hear is his own ragged breathing.

[alex 🐺]

E C H O L E   R O U X

It’s usually a touch from Echo that stills Eden, along the veins of his wrist, but it’s only a glance this time and he settles deeper on the bed, as if the mattress could swallow them both whole.

Living with the Le Rouxs was a perennial lesson in how not to drown, but Echo knew that she was only fighting against the current, trying to keep her head above water.

She’d never stopped to ask Eden what it was like for him.

“....Baptiste.” he says, barely audible and it takes everything, absolutely everything in Echo to not react. All that passes across her face is the minute raise of her eyebrows because damnit, she’s only human. But then she turns to him, laying on her side with her arm under her face as he buries his head in her comforter, and a smirk dances along her lips.

She sucks her lower lip in, triumphant, biting back a smile that would earn her a bruise to her arm and probably a punch to the tits if she continued to gloat, even with his head buried in her sheets.

So, that’s what this is all about. A boy. Okay, Echo can totally work with this. She wasn’t particularly skilled with the ways of romance and preferred the subtle art of swordplay to foreplay, but she could definitely work with awkward boys and their repressed feelings. She’d had enough practice.

“The moody Victor that came to dinner?! Did you see him in Four? Why are you so—did something—? Something happened! Something….good?” She pauses, taking a deep breath and shoving Eden’s shoulder. “Oh, come on, E, you have to give me more than just a name.”

She wasn’t above begging, which Eden knew full well.

But this—this was so good. They deserved happiness. Eden deserved happiness. They all did.

[calla]

E    D    E    N

Eden hears Echo shift and he already knows he's messed up.

His face is so hot that it might as well be on fire. Echo's already on a tirade and Eden's just trying to focus on breathing. He shouldn't have even said anything - not because it makes his heart pound, but because it makes his sister preen.

That moody Victor, Echo says incredulously, and Eden jabs her once in the ribs, quick but not very hard. Avriel isn't moody. Echo's the moody one.

Echo's the moodiest person Eden knows. And he lives in the Le Roux house.

He peers up from the blankets but puts his face in his hands, hiding. He peeks through his fingers at Echo and she's got that look in her eye - a dog with a bone, she'll wait here all night until he gives her the answers she wants.

Eden's not sure which one he dreads more; Steel's stubbornness or Echo's insistence.

He glares at Echo from between his knuckles. She pushes against his shoulder and he moves with it, absorbing the motion and rocking back. It makes his fingers bump against the stitches along his temple, then they stick and stay there. Eden presses his fingertips against the little thread, moving along it and feeling through the zig zag pattern. The first one is a little crooked from where Avriel started. His hands must've been shaking.

Eden can probably take them out soon, the wound's scabbed over, but he doesn't know if he wants to. The medics that Eurydice sent had done all his other stitches so straight, in perfect little lines, they looked like something a machine would make. After the scene in the bathroom, Eden had stood in front of the mirror and stared at the Avriel's uneven work for a long time.

He's not sure if being stabbed through is something his sister considers a good thing, so Eden just shrugs again, still pressing against the stitches. It starts to ache a little bit, his fingertips turn white from the pressure. He knows Echo will rewatch the tournament footage later, and now she'll notice Avriel running into the ring right before the broadcast cuts and then she'll have even more questions.

His one word's given him a little bit of confidence, but his tongue is still sandpaper and he doesn't even know where to start. He's overwhelmed by it. One hand on his cheek and the other on his forehead, the warmth seeps through like he's a furnace.

[alex 🐺]

E C H O L E   R O U X

Ten beats feel like ten thousand. Ten breaths feel like knives in her throat and ash in her lungs. She can feel her heart like an echo in a cavern, bouncing back on itself as the blood pounds in her ears as she waits. 

Eden shoves her back before cradling his face, his bright red fucking face (always a giveaway). Then his fingertips find their way to the sutures that look like railroad tracks along his scalp. She hadn't asked about them. He wouldn't give her answers anyway. He would take about it when he felt like it. That's how Eden was.

She licks her lips before she responds because she knows that it is not just Eden perched on a razor’s edge. It’s always been Eden and Echo, even long before they carried these names like stitches on a shirt, protecting their heart with embroidered words meant to signify who they’ve become.

If he’s dug his own grave, then Echo is there with him jockeying for space in the six-foot-deep hole, dirt under her fingernails as she clings to her brother.

"Fine," she exhales in a long breath, speaking at the ceiling. The Le Roux before her—Emerson—had a terrible taste in interior decorating and the canopy bed adorned with golden curtains still stood exactly where it must have been when she had been living. She can see holes from blades that must have been thrown upwards while Emerson was bored in bed, practicing her aim.

Eden always excelled at the game of patience so she had no choice but to give up and declare him the victor before it had even begun. She'd never win, anyway. "So, are we gonna see more of him around One? Or is he something like a long-distance pen romantic pen pal?"