while you were away /eden .91st
Oct 14, 2022 21:28:24 GMT -5
Post by tick 12a / calla on Oct 14, 2022 21:28:24 GMT -5
e d e n .
"i can't pin down what
people want from foreign objects
products like me."
During the training week there’s nothing but highlights and replays on. The odd greatest hits marathon. Maybe an interview with some kind of expert where they sit in front of a shiny background and analyze a blood splatter from five years ago just to see how much force the little kid from 8 put into his swing so they can print the number out on a bunch of t-shirts and sell approximately three of them.
After the first four hours of it, Eden takes to sitting on the couch with Freckle on his lap and flicking through the channels too quickly to actually catch anything worthwhile.
He knows that Freckle probably isn't allowed in the house but yesterday morning he opened the back door and she almost bowled him over with the way she rushed in. When he tried to shoo her back out she made a fuss and tried to climb on his back and so he left it alone. She likes to be carried up and down the stairs and sit on his lap when they watch tv, Eden likes the company and the way she plants herself in the front window and loses her shit when the same man with the same little dog walks by every evening.
It's a win-win.
In Nine they have a whole channel dedicated to their tributes and that one is Eden's second favourite channel. Sometimes if you let it run long enough you can catch blurry footage of Wednesdae Drummond and his bloody sword but Eden only tunes in to watch the giant dog with the three heads he had to face. It's not that he's rooting for the dog, but he always has to flick the channel before the end of the fight.
He likes the 62nd and the 63rd but he hates the 64th. The 68th makes his skin crawl and he studiously avoids every game that starts with a 7. The 82nd is tame enough to not bother him but he refuses to watch the 85th even though it's usually right before the 86th and he likes to see the snow in that one. The 88th pops up a lot because the broadcast is aimed at Nine and Eden's already seen it enough times that he can predict the dialogue but he can only stomach it off and on.
He'd thought seeing Avriel on the screen would mean that Eden would miss him less but it doesn't.
“Adieu.” Avriel whispers.
“GUNBULLET!” Little Storm Adroxis screams back.
They've switched over to the current tributes now that the training scores are out and the interviews are done. Eden knows nothing about this kid but he already likes him and that means he'll have to watch the rest of the games from behind Freckle's feathers.
The screen rolls Storm's stats along the bottom but they mean nothing to Eden. He traces the A-D-R-O-X absentmindedly into the arm of the couch before he realizes it’s the same set of letters stamped onto the gun in the closest that Avriel probably doesn’t know that Eden knows is there.
The first thing he’d done after Avriel left was a full sweep. It was the third once since he’d been in Nine, but the only one he’d done during the daylight. And it was more out of paranoia than distrust. The Le Rouxs were fond of hanging swords everywhere and even the ones that were decorative weren't really decorative.
Before, he’d sit in the doorway of Avriel's room and wait for him to fall asleep, and then he'd either pick a room to sit in and catalogue or he'd sit at the kitchen table with a sightline to the front door and keep watch until the sun came up.
He doesn't leave anything anywhere. He doesn't move anything. He uses the same bowl for the cereal he eats and then he washes it and puts it back right away. He exists in such a way that if someone didn’t specifically know he was there, they’d never be able to tell.
Eden's not technically supposed to be there anyways. Clare promised that she'd spread word he died in the warehouse fire.
But it had been the same with the Le Rouxs. He didn’t sleep in the bed. The closet stayed empty. He locked every door behind him and even though Eurydice tried to gild him up, the only thing to his name was the tattered paperback he hid under the mattress and he was more than fine with that.
He doesn't like when Avriel tries to give him things. It makes him feel too-warm inside, like someone took a whole matchbook and set in on fire in his stomach. The dark blue mug that Avriel left on the counter is still sitting there and sometimes Eden will catch it in the corner of his eye, then he has to go sit down and let Freckle peck at the birds on his hands.
Avriel’s tried to get him in the guest room more than once but every time, without fail, Eden ends up outside of Avriel’s door before the hour's up, one ankle over the threshold with his back straight up against the wall.
Sometimes he wonders if he sleepwalks, because he usually doesn't remember ending up there.
Now that Avriel's gone though, there's no point in guarding his room. On the first night, Eden takes Freckle and they lie under the kitchen table and listen to the sound of the rain together. The second night, Freckle gets a bed of towels in the ensuite sink and Eden folds himself into the bathtub. He makes a space for himself between the furnace and the wall, then between the couch and the coffee table. He tries to lay flat on the attic floor before immediately going back down to the wooden bench on the back porch.
He considers the coop one night, but it's Freckle who eventually decides against it.
Funny, he had thought, he's spoiled her enough that she won't want to go back there, so when Avriel comes back their jig will be up.
Freckle suddenly jerks her head down and jabs her beak into the remote, changing the channel from Charleston Gallows' grimace to a panel of brightly painted people discussing the flora expectations for the arena. Eden glares at the chicken without any real heat and she just fluffs herself and settles further into his lap.
One of the panel members starts talking about the glorious superba and the likely odds that one of the tributes will try to eat it and end up dying a horrible painful death.
Eden thinks of blackberries and mushroom-rocks and hopes that Storm is smarter than his mentor when it comes to eating random things off the ground.