All I Want is to Be Your Harbor [Closed]

[vissernone]

Who| Eva and Eponine, Eva and Timaeus, Eva and Eridan
What| Business as usual in Evatown. Team momming all up ins.
Where| Timaeus' penthouse, a Capitol cafe and the District 3 Suite.
When| Before the Aliens plot.
Warnings/Notes| Sexual abuse and prostitution in Eponine's thread.


She makes a point of checking on Eponine, bringing a little gift with her each time. She never presents it, but she always leaves it where the girl can't possibly mistake it for someone else's. Today it's a fine silk scarf, folded up into her pocket, with embroidery of elephants and birds on it. Not anything Eva would ever be interested in wearing, but the colors will look nice with Eponine's eyes.

She mostly wants to subtly remind Eponine that someone's watching out for her, that someone would notice if she tried to run again. She has no inclination to explore Eponine's romantic relationships, and as such won't rely on them. She needs to keep an eye on the girl herself.

And so every few days, she's at Eponine's District 3 door, patiently waiting.

-/-

By noon she's making another visit, this time to the winding labyrinths of Panemian penthouses. It's a path she knows well, and the people have seen her here often enough, since she was just a teenager with saggy skin around her belly.

It sickens her, to use Timaeus as her safe harbor. She isn't sure when the roles reversed, but sometime in the last year her tide of alcohol and bad decisions pulled her out to sea and washed him to the shore. It's not that she hates to rely on others, although she loathes that as well; it's that she should be taking care of him, as she did when he was just a child.

But she knows it cheers him up to visit, and he seems a bit out of sorts lately. She doesn't respect it, but she loves him, and so she coddles his melodramatic angst as best she can. And as such she shows up at his door every few days, having done her best to hide the injuries, to carry herself with a pride she has to artificially inflate.

Sometimes she just tells him that her back hurts when she slouches.

-/-

The bombing interrupted her prior plans with Eridan, and she imagined that the last thing the young Victor wanted to see of one of his favorite Mentors was her bruised and bloodied face. It's only once the piss-yellow of the bruises finally fade that she reschedules for their coffee date, for her attempt to give him advice. The whole affair seems rather laughable now. She should be the last person to be giving advice.

She arrives early, as always, and sits in the back of the cafe. Capitol citizens tend to give her a wide berth these days, although the clip in her hair, a beautiful glittering piece made of what appears to be a bird with its neck conspicuously broken, seems to attract some stray glances. She drums her fingers on her coffee mug and sucks the inside of her cheek as she waits, cursing her punctuality for always making her worry she's been stood up.

Comments

[vissernone]

"Tell me how you really feel, dear." Eva has no love lost for the old man. She remembers being presented like some sort of gift-wrapped pet to Timmy's mother, back when Timmy was hardly old enough to walk. 'Look at the hired hand I bought for you, darling, with that money from the Cassius bonus'.

"Do you think you're ready, though? To inherit?"

[neclectus]

"I've been ready for years," he sulked, sinking back into the couch with a sigh. "There isn't a single thing he can do that I couldn't, and he knows it. He just enjoys making me feel powerless. It makes him feel like he'll live forever."

[vissernone]

Eva leans forward and pats Timmy's knee. "You're still a young man. You'll have plenty of time to besmirch his legacy."

[neclectus]

"I'm 41," he told her, quite seriously. "I think... the ship, as it were, has sailed on that front. I'm not exactly ancient, but only people trying to flatter or soothe call me young, these days."

[vissernone]

"You better not exactly be ancient. I'm more than a decade older than you." She rolls her eyes. "What, you don't like me trying to soothe you?"

[neclectus]

"I don't like enjoying it," he hit back, frustrated and completely unsure of what to do with himself. He was so achingly bored, so impotently angry and empty, and he hated it. He was nothing more than a endlessly hungry pit, a hole...

He stopped himself, sighing and pushing a hand through his hair irritably.
"I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Eva, I-- I'm so angry, lately, and I'm not doing a very good job of hiding it."

[vissernone]

Eva almost makes a snappish remark about how she has no idea how that feels. But she doesn't, because she loves him - and more importantly, he loves her back. She can't bear to jeopardize that.

"And that's why you haven't been out in public lately."

[neclectus]

"I haven't been out much in public lately because I just don't see the point," he told her, quite matter-of-factly- though it didn't take long for his face to soften apologetically, his eyes dropping to the rapidly cooling mug of coffee in his hands.

"There's nothing out there I want. And nothing out there that wants me."

[vissernone]

"Oh, come on. You know that's a lie for melodrama. Besides, what is there inside that wants you and that you want?"

She stirs her coffee with her finger. It's a habit she only indulges in close company.

[neclectus]

"Oh, so you're trying to cheer me up by reminding me that no-one in here wants me either?" he laughed, sighing heavily and slumping back onto the couch. "I hope you're better at cheering up your tributes, Eva, I really do."

Still, he was smiling.

[vissernone]

"You're already looking more chipper than when I got here." She finishes off her drink and leans back, admiring the house. "And anyway. None of my Tributes get the special house calls you do."