#touchstone.

[ . . . ] the picture comes to her by chance; she’s on her way back to her room, camera in tow, when she stumbles across david in the inner courtyard, the sun filtering down through the glass atrium to paint him in light -- and she just raises the camera and snaps the shot on instinct, and it's almost too late because just as the shutter closes he pushes off the wall and starts across the courtyard ( presumably to greet her mother ) and she chases him with the lens, snapping only a few more shots before he disappears. later, scrolling through the photos, she finds they’re all blurred -- some at the edges, some altogether -- and the only one that captures the moment ( captures david the way she saw him, framed in light and at rare ease ) was the first. 

meta prompts ; accepting.

uncaged.  eve doesn’t have many natural fears, per say – but the ones she does have weigh on her, are of significance for the way they shape her actions and her thoughts. probably the most obvious of them is being caged: because while she was raised as a captive thing, as a penned-in creature, breathing recycled air and knowing even the basics of the outside world only through a tablet-screen, she’s had almost ten years of freedom since – and she would fight tooth and nail and blood to keep from being locked behind four walls without a way out again. granted, she is much harder to cage these days ( by purpose ) but there will always be people who hunt her – at least until the war is well and over for good, and maybe even then too – and she will always have a hatred of cages. 

in a similar vein to this, eve experiences what she considers to be mild claustrophobia, but which is in actuality a certain degree of circumstantially-based scopophobia: an aversion to being watched, stemming from her time as a lab rat. still, she’s often the target of long glances and watchful gazes; it’s something she’s learned to bear with sheer stubbornness and a certain amount of bravado. when the weight of too many eyes on her starts to be more than irritating ( when it starts to become suffocating ) she removes herself – either to her room, or to some more remote, private place for a while. just long enough to catch her breath. 

eve also fears ( in a way that is bone deep; that is soul-shakingly vivid ) watching a loved one be hurt or die for her: having to let someone she loves stand in her way, to protect her. it’s partly what drove her so hard to improve as a fighter, to go from a wild-thing with claws and teeth, no skill and all instinct, to someone who can keep pace with legends – with her mother, with lucian; with david, who was both mentor and then later a relentless training partner. she relishes being able to hold her own, and protests the idea of being whisked away to safety or told to abandon a fight while others fight in her stead. she trained to be capable of defending herself, of holding her own ground – and also to be able to protect what she loves in return. she never wants to watch david ( or her mother, or lucian, or asher ) lay their lives down in her stead, not again. 

and, maybe the last ‘fear’ eve has ( though she hesitates to call it that; it’s more like – a thought, a passing dark cloud on the surface of her consciousness that she ignores if possible ) is that she will never really belong anywhere: she, this hybrid thing, mishmashed miracle child of two bloodlines that seem determined to hate each other, no matter how the times change. when she was younger, she found herself too often trying to align herself to the lycans in lucian’s pack, trying to mold herself to fit seamlessly into the casual camaraderie and physicality of the lycans that surrounded her – but it was not a perfect fit, and was never going to be. and the covens? they are not famous for their open-mindedness so much as their staunch stances on blood purity. her mother’s people would have turned on her ( had, already, once ) for being an abomination; and lucian’s kind could only be trusted when they were in alliance, and sometimes not even then. it felt for a long while in her early years of freedom like there would never be a place ( a den, or a coven; a pack or a clan ) that did not serve only to remind her that she was not quite one of them. 

canon. 

[ . . . ] there's a box sitting on the table beside her bed, and the folded card atop it says only her name and nothing else -- but the letters that form eve are written in such a bold, familiar scrawl, it doesn't matter that he didn't sign his name. when she opens it, there's the necklace -- simple, elegant; she puts it on and the cool metal practically sings against her skin for a second before it warms. it's pure silver; she knows it instinctually -- and yet it sits harmlessly against her, winking in the light, the delicate chain draped over her collar bones to suspend a tantalizing tear-drop charm teasingly close to the valley between her breasts. there's a sort of inherent inside joke there: she who is immune to silver despite her genetics, and a necklace worn in plain sight to remind herself ( and anyone else who might forget ) that she is made different, made better, by what she is; a reminder that their scorn doesn't make her any less of a marvel. lucian and her mother have maybe given her other pieces for various reasons, and she has a small jewelry box of things she uses for those upscale parties that she doesn't necessarily enjoy, but this chain -- it's her favorite, and it's the only piece that she wears all the time. 

( it's the only piece she takes with her when she leaves. )

she's wearing it when david finds her in prague, an anchor she never gave up -- a declaration she never let herself forget. a promise she never took off.