while you were away /eden .91st

The coop gets out of hand very quickly.

Ever since he let Freckle in the house, the rest of the chickens don't respect him.

Eden's pretty sure they had at least tolerated him before, but now it's free-for-all mania and every time he steps out back to check on them they go after his ankles. There's a little reddish-brown one that he thinks is the ringleader, and in his head he's started calling it Jennie for reasons he doesn't want to look into.

But he knows Avriel would be sad if anything happened to them and his mouth would do that thing where it pulls down at the corners, moreso on the left side than the the right and it's one of Eden's least favourite expressions that Avriel does, so every morning Eden goes out and braves the beaks and pretends that his life isn't currently dictated by the whims of about half a dozen chickens.

At least Freckle stays on his side. Even though she usually stays back on the porch step wrapped in fleece and watching him with a smug look in her eye that a chicken really shouldn't be capable of pulling off.

Eden's pretty sure the chickens all hate him because he let Scout sit on his shoulder once while he was out on night watch and they'd stood huddled in the entrance of the coop, sending off waves of malcontent like Scout was some kind of little monster that was about to jump them all. Eden had turned to find Scout absently chewing on his hair but that was it.

Maybe the chickens just have worse paranoia than he does.

On the morning of the Bloodbath he feels shaky and strange and they all seem to pick up on it. He sits outside longer than usual, long enough that at least half of the chickens give up on tormenting him and start strutting up and down the lawn instead. Jennie's one of the ones that stays and tries to dig a hole into his shoe.

Typical.

Two kids have died already and from his place on the porch he can still faintly hear the tv. He watched about half of the interviews and he's already regretting it and he doesn't even want to think about what Avriel has to go through every year because he actually has to talk to them, not just watch them from miles and miles away.

Eden stands up so suddenly that the chickens all jump back, even Jennie. He marches himself back into the house and stops in the middle of the kitchen, frozen like he's stuck there. Another cannon sound from the tv makes him jump. His book is on the table because he'd been staring at it last night so he grabs it just for something to hold on to and then steps back outside, shutting the porch door so hard that the hinges rattle.

He pretends not to notice that and collapses back down on the stairs.

Jennie decides that his shoe is fair game again.

He stares at the E and the A and the S and the T on the cover in his hands and tries to associate it with the sun. He tries so hard that he ends up forgetting about the kids in the Capitol except he doesn't because he's just pretending, he's always pretending; sharp instead of soft, always waiting, shadowed, silent.

Sometimes when he can sleep, he'll have a dream that makes him think he used to be different, like he used to be like the sun.

He traces the words and tries to find the courage to open the book but it just sits there in his hands. He's never gotten very far in it - how could he? Isaac had offered to help him read but he always used books from the Le Roux library, Eden's never told anyone about this one even though it's the only one that matters. He doesn't know what Steinbeck is, but he knows what Eden is, because that's him.

Eurydice had asked him for a name and he'd given her the one he'd carried around the longest. 5 had handed it to him and he'd taken it but he didn't know how important it would turn out to be until he was standing in that office, in a den that made him want to crawl into somewhere small and never come out.

Maybe he's just always been a little afraid. Maybe the chickens can constantly smell the fear on him and that's why they act like that.

He doesn't think he's as scared as he used to be though, doesn't think that's really possible. He's not ten years old anymore, crying in the ring while his sister gets the shit beat out of her because she had sprung in front of him when it was glaringly obvious he was going to lose. He's not eight years old anymore, standing in a warehouse while his mother tries to sell him to an underground training program that never said what exactly they were training them for.

It certainly wasn't chicken wrangling.

Jennie's gotten a wedge of rubber sole in her beak and prances off with it like it's some kind of prize. The rest of the chickens gather around her to see. Maybe that means she's some kind of queen now. Like the bees.

Freckle clucks from her fleece in a way that sounds derisive.

"Jennie." He says softly, like somehow the chicken will recognize it, like somehow the real Jennie will come around the corner and tell him he's being stupid and sentimental.

The chicken just keeps walking. The yard stays quiet.

Eden stays quiet too.

He's had such a long string of good days that the bad one feels like a betrayal.

He can feel it coming the moment he wakes up, which is why he puts Freckle outside with the others and doesn't let her back in no matter how much of a fuss she puts up against the door.

The fact that he wakes up is the first clue that something is wrong.

It was dark when he closed his eyes and it's dark when he opens them, at least he knows he wasn't out for long. But it makes him feel off centre and sort of weird, sweat pooled along his back, like his head's too heavy and his body's too light. He didn't mean to fall asleep, it's usually worse when he does, but sometimes he hits a point where he can't be awake anymore and his consciousness decides to take a stab at being in the driver's seat and then subsequently crashes them both into a wall.

So from that first second, he knows it's going to be a bad day.

He doesn't go check on the chickens. He doesn't go water his potato plant. He goes upstairs to the bathroom no one ever uses and he tucks himself in the space between the bathtub and the vanity counter and presses his forehead to his knees.

He realizes right away that he should've brought the phone up with him because Avriel will try to call him today, just like he always does, and Eden already knows that he's not going to be able to move from his spot until his chest unfurls again and that's not due to happen for a good long while.

It feels like there's twine wrapped around his lungs, tight in some places and loose in others. The crick in his neck from being on the couch fades but the strain across his shoulders doesn't. His eyes go dry from not blinking, focused on a little spot where two of the walls meet because if he doesn't focus on something then he'll get swept away and drowned, the chickens are going to go hungry and the potato plant is going to die even though it has to die anyways. It’ll die without leaving anything good behind just like he will.

Sometimes it's hard to believe that this time last year he could've been in the arena, possibly dead. Probably dead. But then sometimes he finds himself sitting like this, losing hours at a time and staring at the wall without really seeing, and then it doesn't seem so strange. His mind goes somewhere else but his body stays put and that's the worst part. It's not the panic that gets him, but something close to it. Not the heaviness, but the pressure, like there's a giant vice around him and every time he exhales it gets tighter.

He tries to hold his breath but it makes little black spots dance across the wall, so he stops.

Easier said than done.

He chokes on the first inhale because suddenly he can't remember how to breathe properly. He's back on the bathroom floor but it's a different bathroom, the lights are harsher and it smells like salt and he's bleeding from his temple and about four other places. He's just stabbed a kid and he's about to get stabbed back and he knows he should be more upset about the second part than the first but the wall changes and morphs and he's staring at a girl with a sword through her chest except the sword is in Eden's hand, and then it's near his heart and then it's nowhere at all.

It's in him, he is the sword, the sword is him and Eden is nothing but four letters pressed together into a weapon.

The phone starts to ring downstairs and- and Eden digs his fingernails into his palms. It stops and then starts up again, stops and starts, and Eden is trying so hard to get up so he can answer and hear Avriel's voice because that would make this all go away but he can't he can't move and then the house goes silent again except for a keening sound which he doesn't realize is coming from him until it stops too.

He's playing the waiting game until either Eurydice or Cathy shows up on his doorstep and finishes what he started.

He pretends he's not paranoid when he goes outside but he is, when he goes into the coop he looks over his shoulder and every time the clock in sitting room chimes he gets up and checks all the locks on the doors and the windows.

He hasn't been further than the sidewalk in front of the house because the one time he tried to go past it there was an old woman who looked at him for a little too long and it rattled him so much that he spent the rest of the day in the attic with Freckle under his arm.

And he wants so badly to be normal. He wants to be boring.

He wants to be able to walk down the street and say hello to the grocer but he can't because he's a mess. He's tried to hide it from Avriel but he knows it hasn't been working because Eden guards his bedroom at night for fuck's sake and that's so out of the realm of normal that it would make him laugh if he could get the air to.

Because it is, at least, a little funny. There's a whole folder hidden under two blankets and a box in the space under the stairs that details every single way in which he is not normal.

He's shaky and cramped and his joints are all locked up, he's cowering like a child during a thunderstorm even though he knows it's sunny and it would be so simple to just pick himself up and move on but there, in the moment, it is the least simplest thing in the world.

The shower curtain flutters in the stale air and Eden isn't sure how long he's been sitting there on the tiles, his only clue is the way his feet are numb, the way his body aches from barely moving and his sinuses burn from barely breathing.

There's water damage in the ceiling, in corner of the room where the shower is and it suddenly steals every hyper-focused shred of Eden's attention. It eats away at the plaster like it doesn't belong. It shouldn't be in a house like this, where the owner tinkers better than he walks and fixes things like it's what he was made for. Just look at Eden - he's shivering on the floor, but he's being fixed. He's only been in Nine with Avriel for two months but he can feel it happening, slow like a season change.

He keeps staring at the ceiling because the ceiling looks the kitchen table, with all those rings from Avriel's coffee cup that held the coffee he'd let Eden try except it'd been so gross he spat it out in the sink and Avriel had laughed, but not in a mocking way. It was soft, almost like the laugh he does when the chickens try to chase Eden across the yard, but a little bit different.

He'd passed over the sugar and Eden nearly dumped the whole bowl in but it didn't help, it was still disgusting.

He poured it into Scout's open mouth when Avriel wasn't looking.

For whatever reason, thinking about the coffee seems to help. He can taste it suddenly, like he took one of the beans and crushed it between his teeth and coated his mouth with the bitterness.

With the current situation he's in, it's immensely unfair.

But it's also enough for him to push his legs out, every joint popping with the motion, and he grabs the vanity counter and tries to make himself stand with the grace of a newborn fawn.

He gets as far as the sink and then sticks his head under the tap to get the bitter-coffee-fear taste out from behind his teeth.

He's too ashamed to face Freckle so he shuffles around the corner to Avriel's room, stumbling once and then twice and catching himself on the bannister. It feels like his feet are made of lead, like there's cinder blocks around his ankles. He can't lift his arms so when he gets inside he just sits back down on the floor beside the bed and presses his face into the part of the quilt that hangs over the mattress.

He waits there until the feeling passes, the phone rings again but it stops abruptly, like whoever's calling changed their mind halfway through. It's dark through the window again but there's no telling if it's because no time has passed or if it's because a whole day has gone by and he missed it.

It'd be nice if the window was open, but it's okay that it's not. The fresh air isn't worth listening to the sound of the chickens go hungry and when he thinks of that the guilt comes back tenfold.

He'll wait there just a little longer, he promises, presses his forehead to the quilt so hard that the stitching leaves a pattern in his skin. Just a little longer and then he'll go out and face the poultry wrath and all the consequences of it.

Just a little longer.