He was ready to leave. He needed to leave. He'd actually managed to turn away from Mary's wondrous whisk, until he heard their voice speak once again, this time stronger, and more determined. It felt foreign, different. This wasn't the voice they'd used last he'd seen them, in their intimate moments, when nothing more than the softest of whispers would graze his cheek. He didn't know how he felt about it, he didn't know how to feel about how they had addressed him. Mulciber. Have they ever called him that? Larkin wasn't sure.
He stopped dead in his tracks, his back still to Maryse, staring straight at the wall that faced him. He let himself regain himself for a second before he turned back around. And there they were, their eyes blaring, as he took in Mary's appearance. They'd changed, even it was slightly. Their cheekbones had matured, and they'd changed the way they did their makeup. The last of their baby cheeks were gone too; their jawline was thinner.
He remembered what Maryse had been like at Hogwarts. They were sweet, but Mary was also violence. They were everything wrong with the world but everything that made it worth living. They were sin and they were virtue, but mostly they were the apple Larkin had bit into with no thought for reason and property.
He felt trapped in their eyes; he couldn't move now that they'd caught him. He hated this feeling. He had become in less than a minute the very prey he played with before delivering the kill. His reason was not more present than when he was just a teenager; who had he become in this moment?
Finally, he found the courage to speak back.
"I don't want to talk to you, Maryse."
Maryse. Their full name. That's what he'd always called them. He hadn't liked 'Mary', or 'Mar'. It was too common. Maryse was unique, Maryse was like the butterfly on their neck, delicate but imposing. Maryse was a name fit for a queen. Why had he called her that?
Larkin was the devil. He was dark, and poised, and all-knowing. He was the puppeteer, the master of minds. He wouldn't - he couldn't - lose his control here.
But he was drowning, and there was no sign of land.