thecapitol | (no subject)

WHO| Wesker and OTA
WHAT| Post-Death Reflection
WHERE| District 11 suites
WHEN| Morning after his arena death
WARNINGS| It's Wesker.

It was the silence that Wesker kept coming back too.

Among all the things that had happened, everything he had encountered thus far, it was the remarkable quiet that he lingered over.

He'd never realized just how accustomed to the noise he'd grown over the years. The screams of panic and fear, the rattle of gunfire, the incessant cries of the infected....

But here, now, standing in the suite he'd been - assigned - he marveled at the difference. At the sounds of life he'd forgotten.

The city below, muffled and distant through the glass. Hearts beating, strong and steady, relaxed in untroubled sleep, down the hall. The happy voices on the television, unwatched, but on behind him....

And there - somewhere close - of movement, of someone headed his way.

His lips pulled (his reflection smirked back). Perhaps it was, what was the word they'd used? His mentor. At last.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Howard's been making rounds through the rooms here, trying to decide if anyone's got a nicer suite than him (so far they seem a bit egalitarian, although the grass is always greener, he supposes). His own has everything he forgot he wanted back home, including a scale that tells him actually having a steady diet of luxury food to stuff himself on has let him put a few pounds back onto his emaciated frame. Ready access to toothpaste, medicine and soap has left him feeling like a teenager again instead of like some sickly old man's body trapping a teenager's brain.

Locked doors? He has no patience for locked doors. He's fashioned some lockpicks out of a pair of fancy Capitol tweezers and a dismantled pen in case anyone bothered to lock doors.

Granted, he also wasn't expecting to run into anyone. He listened at the door to see if he could hear anyone inside, and when he didn't hear anything assumed whomever was in there was sleeping or gone. Instead he comes face to face with Wesker.

Not much to do but wave a hand and meekly say "hi?"

Wesker turned from the window, slow and unhurried, as if he'd been expecting the boy. His face - eyes shielded by the dark glasses, mouth firm, but turned neither one way or the other - revealed nothing.

His nose, however, did twitch, flaring as it picked up the scent of fear.

Listening to the boy's pounding heart, he replied dryly, "I'll give you points for resourcefulness, but none for style." His eyes scanned up and down, sizing him up quickly. "Or smarts."

"I'm probably getting cocky with all the dying and coming back," he says nervously, lowering his hand. This guy looks, for lack of a better word, serious. And a little inscrutable, behind the dark glasses.

"So..." He tries to sound casual, but there's a slight tremor in his hands, so he shoves them into his pockets. "Good odds for District 11?"

He smiled then; a flash of even white teeth, that did nothing to warm him. If anything, it was all the more a warning.

"And you'd do well to remember it."

Howard takes the grin as a warning, but also as a cue. This guy's healthy. All his teeth are there and not falling out. In his own mouth, Howard pokes his tongue at the line of holes where some of his back molars once were.

"I should, um. I should show myself out, right?"

So he had some sense of self-preservation, that was something, Wesker supposed.

"A wise choice." His head tipped a fraction. "Perhaps next time we'll start with such."

Howard scurries out, shutting the door behind him quietly, as if on someone asleep.

Wesker watched him go, sniffing delicately as the last of the boy's scent faded, pushed from the room by the gently circulating air. Then, with a small shake of his head, turned back to the window.

Children. Wonderfully useful when handled correctly, but so rarely did he have the patience for it.