[prp] blood ties (ezra + eve)

[cibarium]

It was almost closing time at Equinox and the place was even quieter and emptier than usual. While Julian smilingly spot-checked the lobby and worked on dishes in the back, Eve was taking a break to... sit. There was no tea. She didn't have her tablet out, or a book, or anything. She was just staring at nothing in front of her with her hands folded on the table. Clover was lying inertly at her feet, but looked up to her charge now and again for any cues.

shibrogane

 

[shibrogane]

"What's going on," asked Ezra, where he had come up behind Eve. "You've been strange since that email on the listserv."

cibarium

 

[cibarium]

Eve was visibly startled from whatever trance she had been in, and kept her gaze forward as she listened to him speak.

"I'm not a moonwalker anymore," she answered, slowly letting out the rest of her breath. Not even a hi, Ezra, which she'd been able to manage over the past handful of days when she'd seen him. But that had already been implied as much in the message. She wouldn't go about repeating it for the dramatic effect.

shibrogane

 

[shibrogane]

"There've been times where you haven't been a moonwalker before," said Ezra slowly. He sat down with her, dragging a chair over. "How did that happen?"

cibarium

 

[cibarium]

"The Spinel Lady." An Eve in a better mental state would have been able to add of course. Instead she gave a microsecond of eye contact. "She wanted to know how I summoned her. I wouldn't tell her, so she took everything."

shibrogane

 

[shibrogane]

Ezra was quiet for an awkwardly long time. "Oh," he said, finally. "How did you summon her?"

cibarium

 

[cibarium]

Eve swayed a little in obvious discomfort while clenching her jaw. She still couldn't bring herself to look at her son directly. "I shouldn't have pressed like I did, I was trying to help..." Her fingernails still had flecks of polish stuck around the edges, and she picked at them mechanically as her voice wandered around the topic. "Melany was talking about you, but that wasn't it, it was... her. Something about examining her feelings of guilt and responsibility did it."

There was a motion almost like a shrug, and Eve sighed, long and ragged. "I told her, Ezra." She almost looked up, but it was like the weight of her hair was too much to lift her head against. "She was going to kill Shiloh..."

shibrogane

 

[shibrogane]

Ezra caught Eve's hands in his without asking, realized what he'd done, and let them go. "Sorry," he mumbled, "impulse." The man had been controlling his impulses for so long; it seemed out of character to do something on impulse and then admit to it that way.

He dropped his bag next to his chair. It hit the hardwood with a thunk, because it was full of textbooks, probably. "She's killed Shiloh before," he said. "And she's always been... a little like you, to be honest. Not the Spinel Lady. Melany. She's always thought she was responsible for things she wasn't." The syllables left his mouth like they'd been dragged out, like teeth pulled with pliers. "You didn't do anything wrong, Mom," he said. "I'm sorry that this happened. But you know you didn't do anything wrong?"

cibarium

 

[cibarium]

Once, Eve had protested Ezra's touch. She wouldn't be inclined to anymore. Nowadays she occasionally thought about how she'd spurned his hand on her shoulder that day before the fairy ball. She was thinking about it now, right as her son compared Melany's feelings of guilt to her own. But Ezra's words, as much has he was struggling to say them, were doing something to give her more composure. She'd been tense around him for days, and now she wasn't so much. Now she was just disheveled and wilted.

At least she could look up.

"She said some things," Eve said.

shibrogane

 

[shibrogane]

"Melany says a lot of things," said Ezra. He leaned in, his elbows on his knees. "Less than half of them are true, and you shouldn't take them to heart."

cibarium

 

[cibarium]

Eve smiled a little, for just a second. She knew that, it said. Somewhere in her mind she was amused to see her own son dispense the sort of advice she would give people who'd experienced the kind of torment the Spinel Lady seemed to embody.

"She mentioned the Charter," she said, and her brow knitted up to add uncertainty to her current stew of emotions. "The thumbprints on a sheet... I wondered if she'd said it because I was involved."

The smile was long gone, replaced with a look that said Please tell me that's not possible.

shibrogane

 

[shibrogane]

Ezra did not tell her that it wasn't possible. He looked away, scratched idly at one of his healing scars. His fingernails on his burned hand had grown back well, which was probably a relief, since his preferred instrument seemed to be the guitar (at least, judging by the mix tape he'd sent Leila). It was still horrendous to look at, but not as bad.

"A lot of people contributed to the Charter," said Ezra. "Not all of them knew the whole story behind why it was being done. I wasn't around at the time to say whether you were involved or not, only that I wasn't, personally, on account of... not being around."

He hesitated, and then shook his head.

cibarium

 

[cibarium]

Eve leaned closer. "Is there something else?"

shibrogane

 

[shibrogane]

Ezra worried at his sleeve cuff now. "I've been alive for a very long time," he said. "A lot of that time was spent in constant pain. And I think... there comes a time when you just... you love someone. Not because they're good, or talented, or even because they're nice to you, but just because you know them. You know what makes them laugh or cry. I reached that point with Melany a long, long, long time ago."

He wasn't looking up. His fire-yellow eyes stayed on his shaking hands. "I've watched her sing to herself as she walked to practice, and I've seen her crying herself to sleep over finding a dead bird on her walk home from school, and I know how she likes her peanut butter sandwiches, because she hates jelly texture and would never put it on anything except a cookie she intended to bake. I don't think I'm capable of hating her.

"Except then she changed, and became something else, and the girl I loved was gone, but there was this thing wearing her face, and she stood in the same places and wore the same clothes and her smile was the same but there was nothing left behind her eyes but pain and hate and she was never like that." He took a shuddering breath. "And I'll never know what it would've been like to grow old with her, or to put a ring on her finger, or to see her perform Swan Lake, because she's ******** dead and it's just her corpse shambling around, mocking me, reminding me at every ******** opportunity that she isn't there anymore.

"They took my Melany, they hollowed her out, and left the shell behind like refuse. What she became, she built herself. What she did to Minerva Mercer was justice.

"I'm telling you this because... because if I find out that you were part of what took the girl I loved away from me and made her a monster..."

Ezra clenched his jaw, and looked away again.

cibarium

 

[cibarium]

"You wouldn't forgive me," Eve finished.

She'd shrank and wound up back to how she was when Ezra first spoke to her, and her eyes were lost behind her hair again. Every word he had said wasn't just a word, it was a reason.

shibrogane