quarter life decay / eden & larissa

After a long day of showing others all the different ways in which they could potentially kill her, Larissa's own training felt... silly. Virtually pointless in comparison, as it mostly consisted of her sitting in a room with Romeo while he politely begged her to be a slightly more approachable, kind person. Or at least pretend to be one for her interview.

"I'll level with you," he explained, "Xaahira is-"

"Delusional?" she interrupted, half-asleep with her chin resting in her palm on a too-plush armchair.

"She's going to play off of her confidence," he further explained, "Even in our warm-ups, she couldn't help herself from saying 'darling' when she answered a question and she goes after you in the lineup. So she has the advantage of knowing what you've done before she even has to go on stage."

What he was trying to say was that if Larissa simply went out there and answered the questions the way she wanted to answer them- as short and precise as possible- then Xaahira would have an easy time making herself look like the more interesting of their district. So, the answer seemed simple enough to Larissa: she'd just do the exact same thing, but first. She'd already decided on it quite some time ago, but couldn't let on to Romeo what her plans were for fear of him running to tell her to change it all up once he realized he was incidentally giving her trade secrets.

"I know what I'm doing. Promise. I'm going to have some alone time now," she cooed, standing. Romeo sighed. "I don't-"

"I'm going to have some alone time now."

With that, she was up from the chair, out of the room, and into the hallway. After too-long spent waiting on the elevator to come and fetch her, Larissa rolled her eyes and shoved the door to the stairwell open. Perhaps spending some miniscule amount of time doing something physical for her own benefit rather than the sad boy from 12 of the actual child from 7 was a good idea. At least in theory.

She was almost instantly cut off by a shadow of a boy, with stringy black hair falling in his face and an expression that quickly melted from quiet surprise to terrified realization at the exact same time Larissa's did. Four years was a long time, but she recognuzed him even before she knew she did. There was a familiarness to the stillness, the way he held his hands at his side in that instant before he saw her. It'd been so long since she laid eyes on Eden that she didn't fully understand it was him until he'd already turned and ran in the opposite direction, slamming the door in her face.

"Wha-"

She flung the door back open and stepped inside, giving chase for only a flight or two before managing to catch up with him. She asked him to stop politely once. Then she didn't give him the time to decide whether he wanted to or not, throwing herself across the landing just in time to reach him before he took to another set of stairs.

"This where you've been hiding all this time, rat?" Scurrying around stairwells, lurking in corners. It wouldn't have been surprising from what she remembered of him, but even still she doubted it. Four years living in the Capitol undocumented? He wasn't that lucky. Unless they'd gone ahead and turned him into an avox, which-

"How'd you even get in here? Huh?!" She grabbed a fistful of his shirt so he couldn't make another break for it.

She'd assumed the tackle would get the point across firmly enough, but now that she was thinking about it, Eden always enjoyed learning his lessons over and over again. Doomed to make the same decisions, the same mistakes. Run, run, run until cornered, and then chew through like the little rat he was. Larissa remembered him being taller before. Though, at fourteen, Larissa was still having to hike her knee up onto the kitchen counter to reach the second shelf. She wasn't too much taller now, nothing to sneeze at but not tall in any notable sense of the word. Still, the memory of the boy was live and in the flesh, and it gripped onto her wrist and began to squeeze hard enough that it made her try and resist- "Stop it!" What was the goal, break her arm? Her other hand grabbed at his in contest, aged strength and wisdom against freshly poured foundation and technique. When neither side seemed willing to easily budge, he bared his teeth.

God could he have been more of a gremlin? That's what they called the kids back home who usually only ever acted in defense, either because they were too small or too weak to fight blow for blow. They ended up resorting to some of the most bizarre and unsettling methods of gaining the upper-hand in the end, trying to twist off ears or rake their fingers across an eye. Sure enough Eden began trying to bite, and Larissa continued to struggle against him.

"I said stop, you weirdo!"

Summoning as much of her strength as she could manage, she tried to shove him away from her and into the wall.

"No fucking biting!"

She wasn't a gremlin, but she was more than petty enough to bite back if he tried it again, and she would make sure he got it worse than she did.

Her eyes glanced down at the card in his hand, at the 9 on its surface, and she made silent note of it.

Okay, maybe she hadn't gone about chasing him correctly before. Maybe he'd given him some reason to warrant fighting. But now the ball was in his park, she made her point: the goal wasn't to beat him, it was to catch him, and now he was caught.

He always would be, so long as he fucked with the Le Roux family.

There were a million things she could've said, each crueler than the last. She could've talked about the funeral. She could've talked about Echo. She could've talked about herself. But none of it felt like it would've mattered, so she stuck with the one thing she knew he could think about: himself.

"You're a coward for what you did."

Her aunt hadn't ever been the same after that year. The talk of the town, embarrassed, humiliated, and then she had to mourn another child afterward. For what? For this little shit who she tried to help to run away with his tail tucked between his legs to go hide out in stairwells and bite teenagers who noticed him? She let go of him and took a step back. If he ran again, fine. She was reporting the card anyway.

"And I-"

She gritted her teeth- "I know..." She knew he had his reasons. But she couldn't bring herself to say the words. She couldn't speak against them, not in this way. When it was about how long Beatrice took in the bathroom, fine. Or how Jackal literally refused to learn how to use a washing machine, sure. Even if it was in regards to how unbothered and unserious they all were, fine. But something like this, something like death... even if she understood it, she couldn't abide by it.

"But it'll stay broken until you fix it."

That, or he was dealt with. Only two ways it could ever be solved, unfortunately.