the mortifying ordeal of being seen // s + e + a

A week in already and Eden's still a little shaky from Larissa. He’s been a little quieter since it. Pensive.

The thing is he knows objectively that he can’t go back to Eurydice, he doesn't even want to, but now there’s this little seed of doubt sown into his spine. He's caught wondering if he should want to. Maybe he should be feeling the need to go right whatever great cosmic wrong he's helped create. Maybe he should feel guilty about abandoning his sisters and ruining a family and leaving his mess behind.

It makes him sick to think about. It feels like a knife dragging along his sternum, tip-tip-tapping against his heart there. He's still not quite good with the wanting part of all this. He's slow to ask for things, slow to make menial decisions, slow to give his own opinions because it still takes him a while to actually figure those out. He doesn’t know what the right thing to do is, never has. It was always Steel’s job to decide those things. Eden’s only survived this long due to a series of strongly out-of-character acts of selfishness.

He feels selfish even now, here with his legs tangled with Avriel's in a futile sort of attempt to keep him still long enough that they can both rest.

Olete’s long dead. Leonora died an hour ago. The lights in the bedroom are dimmed and there's distant white noise playing over the ceiling speakers. Eden's splayed out over Avriel, face in the crook of his neck, letting his body weight do the rest of the grounding work.

He'd finally, finally convinced Avriel to lay down after all of his distracted puttering, he put his phone on silent and threw it in the basket with all the keycards, wrestled Avriel into the softest sweater he could and then flipped over the do not disturb sign on the suite's door. He knows at least that will work, they won't be bothered because Eden knows Gloria is just the tiniest bit wary of him. Enough to stay away for now. But he can tell all that restless energy stemming from Avriel is about to crest over again, just from the way his fingertips start to trace against Eden's shoulder faster.

He doesn't get this part. Never has, and probably never will. They're just kids - he gets that part, he's not cruel. And he was just a kid too. And kids die every day. That could've been him four years ago. Maybe it should've been him. Except, no, he's not allowed to think like that anymore. Where would that have put Avriel if Eden had gone into the 90th and died?

He's not saying that he wouldn't want to be mourned, just that he wouldn't have expected it.

But Avriel getting like this, devoting himself like this, he only ends up hurting himself and it's one of the rare things that makes Eden want to be stubborn and dig his heels in and argue. Avriel's done his time. He doesn't owe these people anything, and he certainly doesn't owe them this pain. They can't keep taking so much from him every year, it isn't fair.

All Eden does now though is sigh. He'll find them something to do, something just to distract Avriel or to help alleviate this unease, he can do that, even if it's just walking around the park, he'll glare at any encroaching cameras. They can take Storm too, because the kid's always been good at filling the silences that Eden leaves, and Eden tells Avriel as much, tells him to get dressed so they can go and Eden will collect Storm. It'll be fine. It'll be good. Eden rolls off of Avriel and kisses the side of his jaw in parting.

But as he pads across the apartments, he stops when he realizes they'd left the tv on. It's playing the day's reruns now - all those mutts killing all those kids. Eden reaches for the remote and clicks it off, focuses on the sounds of Avriel beginning to shuffle around, the creak of the tap running.

Storm’s room is empty.

Eden glances through the open door and sees the bed unmade. That's not too unusual for a teenager. The door though, is.

The rest of the apartment is quiet under the sound of Avriel's gentle living. Eden crosses the room to peek out into the hall and sees no one but the Avox stationed near the elevator. He looks to the other end instead, ignoring that thing he can't face yet, but it's empty that way too.

Where could Storm have gone? It's not like the building is all that big, and Eden doubts that Storm would have just wandered off into the bowels of city on his own. And listen, Eden loves the kid, but he knows that he doesn't have very many friends. Storm's stuck to Avriel most of the time, which means by extension he's stuck to Eden most of the time. So for him to just leave without saying anything?

Eden steps fully out into the hallway, frowning.

He doesn't like this.

And he'll only be a minute. He lets the door click behind him and goes to investigate, more confident with the significant lack of Le Roux's left in the building.

His investigation doesn't get very far. He enters stairwell and hears crash and a thud from down, down below.

He takes the stairs a couple at a time, maybe a little faster than what's warranted in a situation like this.

"Noooo." Little Storm trails off pathetically from the bottom.

Eden stares at him.

He can't understand most of what else he says, too slurred, too muffled, garbled enough that Eden actually starts to worry again. He kneels down, doesn't like the way Storm's sprawled, and looks him over for injuries.

He seems not not fine.

Eden holds his face in his hands, catching his head and supporting his neck when it lolls. Storm's crying, and Eden immediately looks him over again, certain now that he missed something the first time. What if Storm fell down the stairs and broke something? Delirium can be a sign of that, the body can go into shock if the damage is that bad. Maybe he tripped and did something to his ribs, but Eden doesn't want to poke and prod him in case that's the truth.

“Up.” He urges instead, taking him by the arms gently. Storm is taller than him now and Eden's been trying to keep him humble about it. He’s growing up gangly, it's getting harder and harder to see that little boy from tv in his face.

But it's obvious that Storm doesn't exactly want to get up. Eden just focuses on trying to keep his head from smacking against the railing when he flails and cringes away.

"Hey," Eden tries again, softer, not letting the panic bleed through too harshly, "Show me."

Show me where it hurts. Show me what you did. Show me what happened.

Eden catches Storm, trying to gently wrangle him while avoiding the way his gangly little limbs flail.

His entire being wants to recoil at the idea of restraining him, but Storm manages to get one unsteady hand up and out of the circle of Eden's arms and Eden just lets him halfheartedly skim his cheek with it, rather than risk grabbing his wrist and hurting him any more.

Eden lets Storm rest his face against his chest too, cupping the back of the boy's head and trying to make it seem like he isn't still checking for injuries.

He's a little unsteady like this. He's never strictly been the comforter. He was the little crybaby until he wasn't. Little until he wasn't. Eden knows how to help Avriel, but that's different. That's six years of learning and four years of cohabitation. This is a little more like free falling.

"Shhh." He says, the same little sound over and over again until the hiccuping quiets.

But between the spluttering and the voice cracks, Eden's alarm slowly starts to shift. Storm's not hurt. Not in the physical sense. This is just that plague Eden doesn't understand, the same one that Avriel has, where, as mentors, they end up caring too much about the names on their call sheets. Eden hasn't known how to deal with that in all the years he's been a part of a victor's life. He still doesn't know how to deal with it now. His specific brand of jaded apathy towards the subject is tired and entirely unhelpful. He knows that.

But Storm doesn't even know that Leonora's already dead. Eden's supposed to have his boys out of this place by now, distracting them and refusing to let them wallow, but here's his little Storm, practically beside himself. Whatever he's going through must start to seep into Eden via simple osmosis, because he starts to feel that familiar quickness of breath, that frustrated panic, he starts to flounder imperceptibly, so entirely out of his element, he doesn't know what to do.

Storm works himself back up again and Eden holds him, staring uselessly at the wall, then back up the stairwell.

It always comes back to the same thing.

He needs Avriel.

So when the little whistle comes from above, Eden doesn't quite believe it. Scout's developed a funny little habit of showing up only when Eden doesn't want it to. Usually right under Eden's foot. But he glances up now and spies the bone-white of its eerie little head poking out between the rail bars, watching them. They stare at each other over the sound of Storm's muffled sobbing and Eden feels something curl around the back of his neck, making him more and more uneasy.

Then it disappears, and Scout goes along with it.

Storm lets out a particularly pitiful wail and Eden shakes the trepidation off to focus back on him, bracing against the railing to stop them from slipping down any further. He gets one of his legs up on the stairs, but Storm's essentially decided to become dead weight, and his height presents a problem when Eden tries to move him again

The ninth floor suddenly feels much further away.

"You're okay, he won't care." Eden tries to urge him without sounding too dismayed, tries to plot the best way to fix this and keeps coming up short, "Back up, c'mon."