There is nothing but pain in Eden's chest.
She is laying on her bed, chest upwards towards the ceiling. Her red hair is fanned out on the pillow underneath her head, like a flick of flames on a white canvas. Her emerald eyes stare blankly, lashes fluttering as she waits for Constance to return.
The stairs leading her room creak, announcing Constance's upcoming arrival. After a few moments Constance O'Malley enters the room, a glass of water in her hand alongside a vile of something a bright fuchsia color. It's a small vile, and Eden has been drinking nothing but it and water for a past week.
Constance places the glass on the counter, using one arm to gently guide Eden into a sitting position. Eden's muscles quiver, completely unable to hold her weight without someone else assisting in the process.
Once Eden is upward, Constance grabs the vile with both hands. Slowly, she works the cork from the top of the vile, making it let out a faint 'pop'. Instantly, the smell of lavender enters the room, but Eden knows better than to be fooled by the smell into thinking it tastes anything but putrid.
"Drink," Constance encourages, pressing the edge of the vile to Eden's lips. Constance then places her hand onto the back of Eden's head, gripping faintly before tipping Eden's head backwards in order for the vile's contents to enter her throat.
It burns as Eden swallows, leaving a scalding trail down until it's in her stomach. Even there, Eden can feel it bubbling within her, an unsettling side-effect that's worth it's otherwise transcendent healing properties.
Constance helps Eden take a gulp of the water at her bedside before helping her lay back down. Eden is silent through the entire process, not knowing what to say to Constance that won't further run a wall in between them.
Throughout her entire life, Eden had considered her Constance a lot of things: Loving, intelligent, hard-headed, brutally honest, a bit of a cheapskate, and a fondly nicknamed 'old lady' by her and Fern - but a liar had never been one of them.
It had taken some days of thought for Eden to come to this conclusion about Constance. A collection of clues that had led to one question: Am I really your daughter?
Eden remembers how Constance's mouth had tighten painfully at the question, almost as if she had thought about lying before she had shaken her head. Tears gathering in her irises as she stared at Eden's crumpling face, bloody and pale from the excursion at the church.
No. The woman who Eden thought was her mother for the last eighteen years wasn't.
It hurt worse than the vargulf's teeth digging into Eden's arm, or having to watch Peter's face get torn from his body. A kind of pain that couldn't be healed with antibiotics or magic remedies that brought boys back to life.
A pain from betrayal would never really scab over - could never be entirely forgiven no matter how much time passed.
Constance had spent hours at her bedside that night. Telling her the story of her conception and how Eden had never met her parents before their demise. A orphan even before birth.
It happened the way most love stories do.
With a young girl who fell for someone she shouldn't have. A reclusive nobody who had met the green eyes of a boy in high school after a calculated smile had been sent in her direction.
The girl was swept up in his lies, overlooking the signs she had been taught to avoid since birth. She was just happy that someone paid attention to her, that she had found someone who didn't care about a family like hers.
She had been played, and when he had gotten what he wanted, he had left. Leaving Eden festering within the girl's underdeveloped womb for eventual discovery.
He didn't return. Not even when the girl begged or pleaded. Not even when Eden was discovered by her after many tests - all positive, of course. He had disappeared like the shadows from which he had been born in - never seen or heard from.
So, the girl used magic to bring him back. Used every spell for true love she could find. Working herself to exhaustion for a boy who had only used her willing body to pass down a dying line of creatures haunting Celtic stories for centuries.
A spell, done in the third trimester, was her mother's demise. Too much power for her body to withstand. Eden's mother had been found dead in the woods by Constance, eyes staring up at the sky as if still begging for the boy to return to her side even in death.
Eden had been found miraculously alive, outside of her mother's womb, swaddled in a pile of leaves a few feet away from her mother's corpse. A force of malevolent darkness Constance had mistaken for a gift from God at the time. She had been too blinded by the sudden death of her sister and the relief of having her niece alive, to ever rationally think through that night.
So, Constance raised Eden as her own alongside Fern. Letting the years pass and never correcting Eden when she had been learning to call her mom. For she believed that the loveless conception of Eden would do more damage to the girl instead of having her live a lie.
Eden's mother had been named Eve - and so Constance had named her Eden - after the garden.
"I will check on you in another hour," Constance spoke, voice gravelly. She sounded like she had been gargling with glass. "I think you should-"
A knock on the front door made Constance pause. Then, the older female was frowning and heading out of Eden's bedroom, steps heavy as they descended to the ground level of the home.
Roman and Peter's voices were loud from downstairs, yet Eden couldn't make out what they were saying. She didn't need to guess because before long they were heard coming up the stairs, an excited air surrounding their footsteps before Eden's bedroom door was opened.
Every time Eden looked at Peter, she always caught a glimpse of his lifeless body on the floor of the church. It was a scene she was trying to dispel from her mind, but it would take time she knew. A type of trauma added to the list of others she was hoarding these past few weeks.
Neither Roman or Peter knew about Constance's deceit. Eden wasn't sure how to tell them when she still trying to process the information herself. In all honesty, she wasn't sure she could get through the story without either sobbing or screaming. So, Eden decided that remaining silent was the more appropriate method until she could contain her emotions once again.
"Get up O'Malley!" Peter shouted, teeth flashing as he grinned wide. His hair was all over the place, collecting around his eyes and shielding the vibrant blue.
"What's wrong?" Eden asked, letting Roman move her slowly to the wheelchair in the corner of the room. It was something Constance put her in whenever Eden had to use the restroom, since the woman couldn't possibly carry Eden all by herself.
"Letha is having her baby," Peter said, and Eden felt a warmth enter her chest for the first time in the past few days. "We knew you wouldn't want to miss it, so we're bringing you."
"I look like a mess," Eden complained half-heartedly. She was wearing nothing but a white tank-top and a pair of loose pajama pants. Her nipples are poking out from under her shirt, and her hair was disheveled in a way that wasn't flattering.
Peter was quick to poke her cheek as Roman wheeled her from the room. "What else is new?"
The two boys helped lead Eden's wheelchair down the staircase, ignoring Constance's unapproving gaze from the doorway of the kitchen. She tried to catch Eden's eyes, but Eden refused to let her get even a second of her attention.
After situating Eden in the back of the car, they drive towards the Godfrey Institute. Eden is only able to turn her head a fraction to look out the window, not wanting the strain her still sprained muscles and risk being even more useless.
Once at the institute, Roman removes her from the car slowly, tan coat tightly wrapped around his lanky body. He gives Eden a gentle look as he places her into the wheelchair, before he's glancing down at her chest, and grinning brightly. Eden shoots him a glare, which he just laughs at. Leave it to Roman to be a pervert when Eden can't slap him for it.
Letha isn't anywhere to be found whenever they enter the building. Instead, Roman leads Eden and Peter towards a room. It's all white, and it instantly stings Eden's eyes as there's no segway between the walls and the ceiling. All white - all perfectly in order.
Moving Eden's chair to sit in front of his and Peter's, Roman lets out a soft sigh. Eden wishes she could grab his hand in her own, only if to calm his nerves for a second. However, Roman seems to have his own idea on how to calm himself down, because he's reaching into the inner pocket of his coat, pulling out two cigars.
Peter notices it and huffs out a laugh, shaking his head. "Nice touch."
Eden rolls her eyes at their antics, before asking. "Can we even smoke in here?"
Roman stops for a moment, cutting off the edge of the cigar. He then shrugs his shoulders, "I'm gonna own the place. Who's going to stop us?"
This seems to be enough for Peter, who drags his nose up the cigar, inhaling deeply. Eden watches silently as Roman sucks in his first drag from the cigar, a white smoke puffing from his lips and caressing the once clean air of the room.
Peter takes the lighter Roman hands him, quickly lighting the cigar and taking five large inhales. Eden watches as Peter blows the smoke into the air, it creating a random shape before fading away.
Above them the intercom goes off, asking for a Doctor Day to the OR.
Roman leans back with a sigh, before musing, "Uncle Roman,"
Peter laughs, brushing a dark hair from his cheek. "God help us,"
It goes silent for a moment, before Eden is speaking. "Anything from Destiny?"
Roman blows out his inhale, green eyes saddened. He shakes his head, "Dead end."
It's not the first time Eden has heard these words leave Roman's lips in regards to Shelley's disappearance. It still hurts every time though - knowing that someone as soft and as beautiful as Shelley is alone in the world. Hurt or worse, no matter how much Roman denies the chance.
Peter seems to voice this. "You even still sure she's out there?"
Like always, Roman is quick to reply. "I know she is. It's like in the fall, you know, the dreams the three of us were having? I see her sometimes in dreams."
As the words leave Roman's mouth, he's shaking his head, correcting himself. "Not-not in dreams. I've been trying it on myself."
Eden shares a look with Peter, raising an eyebrow at Peter's blank look, Eden asks. "Trying what on yourself?"
Roman makes a motion with his middle and index finger, bringing them away from his eyes and forwards, indicating he's been using his compulsion on himself. At this, Eden startles.
"You - Roman are you insane?" She hisses, and once again wishes she could slap the piss out of him. She can almost imagine the red handprint on his cheek - oh how she loves him, but he just seems to love to push every button she has.
"I look into the mirror and I tell myself to see her, and things cloud over but there's...light," Roman says, shaking his head. "And the light's an angel, and the angel's her. It's her. She's trying to tell me something, but I can only just hear her. What she's saying is..."
"Is?" Peter prompts.
"You must make your heart steel." Roman replies, and his voice has a strange echo to it. "What do you think that means?"
Eden is silent, as is Peter, both of them trying to come up with an answer. Peter sits forwards then, eyes going distant for a moment. Roman is quiet, not seeming to notice Peter's strange behavior, but before Eden can comment on it, it's gone.
"Can you make yourself cluck like a chicken?" Peter questions, which startles a laugh from Roman, before Peter is shaking his head. "I don't know."
Roman goes to open his mouth when something sharp is igniting in Eden's brain. A ringing that's so loud her arms move on their own accord. They fling towards her head, ignoring the screaming of her muscles as she presses the sound away from her eardrums.
"Eden? Hey, what's wrong?" This is Roman, who's hand is warm on her arm, trying to get her to drop her arms as to not injure herself more.
However, the ringing isn't stopping and Eden knows the only way to get it to is to go where it wants her. So, she stands upwards, every new muscle tearing as she stumbles towards the door leading into the back room of the hospital, where the ringing is the most violent.
Letha is dying.
Eden can feel blood in the back of her throat, and she falls to her knees. There's an alarm going off in the building now, amongst the loud ringing that's making Eden feel faint. Blood is dripping from the corners of her mouth, overflowing as she tries to hold back the heat in her throat.
Roman and Peter are standing beside her, and they seem to know. They have to because Eden isn't sure she can tell them that Letha's dead.
It turns out she doesn't have to.
"Maternity one. Cancel Omega. Patient is deceased. Security clear the area."
Eden opens her mouth to scream.
Scarlett covers the floor at her feet.
eden's story was told a bit in this chapter, don't worry
if you're confused it'll all be explained in more detail later.