fiberglass and flowers / echo & eden

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*

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. 

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.