No Midnight Mercy ☾ (gxg)

21-bruised

A worried fist knocked at the apartment door.

Cecilia knew that Eden got off work around 6, yet she had not even arrived to the woman's house by 7. Cecilia had texted her to make sure she was alright, and then called her when she got no text back. When the girl did not pick up any of her calls, she began to grow worried.

And as she stood there at her apartment door, feeling both like a creep for showing up unexpectedly and also intensely worried at the fact that Eden wasn't answering the door, her mind began to feed her all kinds of worries.

"Eden," she called loud enough for the girl to hear if she was inside but quietly enough to not disturb the neighbors, since it was going on 10 P.M.

She huffed and raised her fist to knock again, but the door suddenly swung open. She sucked in a breath of relief when she saw Eden standing there, but the look of the girl quickly made her realize not everything was alright. It was obvious that she had been crying, with tear stains evident on her cheeks and her eyes bloodshot. She looked worn down and tired, and she was still wearing her sweater. Looking past her, she noticed the danish sitting on the counter, only a single bite eaten from it.

Her brown eyes averted back to hers, full of concern. "Eden... what's wrong?"

Eden turned away from her, leaving the door open for her to come in, and disappeared through the maroon curtain. Slowly stepping in, Cecilia gently closed the door behind her and took off her jacket, hanging it on the hook beside the door. Her boots clicked on the floor as she stepped through the curtain, seeing that the girl had already returned back to the apparent cocoon she'd made out of the bed. Every blanket and comforter was wrapped around her like a burrito, and she faced the window blankly.

Cecilia looked over to the halfway open closet and saw that her work uniform was still on its hanger, untouched. "Did you not go into work today?" she softly asked, stepping closer to the bed, unsure of how to approach the girl.

"No," she mumbled into her pillow with a cracked voice.

She glanced back to the uneaten danish and remembered that the girl had basically no food in her fridge. Turning back to her, she very carefully slid into the bed, crawling over to her and sitting behind her. She gently set her hand down on the bundle of blankets where she would assume the girl's hip would be, leaning over to look at her face. "Did you eat today?"

Eden shook her head and pulled the blankets closer into herself.

Cecilia chewed her lip and rubbed her side from over the cushion of blankets. "What happened?"

The girl blinked as fresh tears rolled down her face. She weighed it in her mind whether or not she even wanted to tell her what happened. It was all too much for her. But she realized that Cecilia deserved to know, anyways. "Ruth."

"Ruth?" Cecilia echoed in confusion. Her eyebrows sewed momentarily before she finally remembered who Ruth was. "Oh."

"She came here today," Eden continued waveringly.

Cecilia's eyebrows rose as she remembered the things Eden had told her about Ruth. She began to grow nervous. "What—what happened?"

Eden swallowed down the lump in her throat and sniffled, rubbing her nose into the blankets and wishing she could just melt into them. "She th-threatened me." Her face began to screw up as more tears fled her eyes, a sob silently shaking her shoulders.

"Threatened you?" Cecilia felt anger flash hotly through her. "What do you mean threatened you?"

Eden said nothing, only buried her face harder into the pillow and cried, wishing that it would all go away and that she could rewind the day and just hand over the apartment keys to Ruth so that she wouldn't have had to get aggressive with her. She wished she would have just complied to avoid violence like she always had to do with Ruth.