thecapitol | Here comes a candle to light you to bed

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Here comes a candle to light you to bed

Who| Wednesday Addams and you
What| Second place is just the first place loser. Also she kind of hates the Capitol.
Where| D7 Suites, Sublevel 1, the Roof
When| A day after the end of the Arena.
Warnings/Notes| Standard macabre Wednesday stuff.

I. Wednesday wakes up in her room, as everyone does, and takes a few moments to get her bearings. She throws away pretty bouquets, bright and beautiful, and figures out how to change her holographic window into a dark night scene with a full moon and bare tree branches swaying in the wind.

Then she can only do what feels natural. She goes to her bathroom and brushes her teeth and hair, braids it into her two sleek plaits. She scowls at her closet, at all the sparkle and embroidery and color, but then eventually settles on the least embellished dress in there -- it's black and simple, but there's still rhinestones on the white collar, and frilly ruffles along the hem.

She's equally as grumpy in the common area of the Suite, where she's forced to watch herself lose over and over again on the constantly-playing screen. She tries to find food, but it's all sweet and colorful, and none of it even moves or has eyes or occasionally emits a burst of flame.

Miserable, she finds a kitchen knife and sits at the table with her hand spread flat, sadly playing hand roulette to try and make herself feel better.

She misses the Arena.

II. She didn't really know what she'd find when she pressed the very bottom button on the elevator panel. It seemed worth it either way, since it couldn't be worse than the brightness and volume of the Lobby or anywhere else she'd seen so far.

It's not terribly surprising to find what looks like a large parking garage combined with a storage unit, but it's at least sort of dark and dank purely by virtue of being so far underground. It's the most comfortable place she's found in her time here, so she decides to stay a while.

Wednesday can be found here most of the day, sitting in a chariot by herself, curled up with her chin on her knees, quiet. She's sure that she probably shouldn't be here, but then they really shouldn't have given her access, should they?

III. The roof is only somewhere she dares venture after dark, once the sun is gone. The flowers disgust her, but if she sits in the right place and faces the right direction, she can see the mountain range in the distance, past all the city lights, and that's sort of comforting to look at, with the moon hanging low over the far off peaks.

Mother would like that, to go up that high and moonbathe.

Wednesday thinks about lost travelers and those crushed in avalanches, and she feels a little better, running her finger along the embroidery of the cushion she sits on, murmuring to herself.

"Who killed Cock Robin? I, said the Sparrow, with my bow and arrow..."

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Ermac had come up to the roof in search of somewhere quiet and still to try to regain full communication with his many souls. To an observer, he simply seems to be sitting cross-legged near the edge of the roof in deep meditation. With his eyes closed and the darkness hiding his decayed features, he actually looks like a normal person in leather robes. As soon as he realizes someone else is on the roof with him, his eyes snap open, casting a dim green glow on his face.

He stares at her in silence, studying her every movement. He'd watched the Arena footage, and found her to be a true oddity. Children weren't supposed to be that dangerous.

Éowyn has been in the stables, and the route back to the main Center passes through the sublevel. She smells of horse and sweat, a heavy, down-to-earth kind of smell that sits oddly on someone who holds herself so elegantly. Her hands are bandaged, her hair coarsely pulled back into a braid, and although it isn't obvious in the dark, she's been crying.

When she sees the figure in the chariot, she stops dead, her hand instinctively going to a sword that isn't there. When she sees who it is, her face tightens, her lips pressing together. If Wednesday had been an adult, that look says, Éowyn would happily have slapped her. At least.

As it is, all she does is say tightly, "It's you, isn't it? You're the one who killed Arya."

By the time the woman comes around, Wednesday manages to have procured some figs from the servants, short, not-as-fun Lurches, as she's come to think of them. She's eating them while sitting on the floor of her chariot, having relaxed a little to cross her legs lotus-style and lean her head back against the wall.

She only even knows who Arya is because of the constant footage playing everywhere, and she doesn't know why this tall lady even cares so much. It was a contest, right? Wouldn't she have killed the Arya girl too, if it meant not dying herself?

Wednesday looks up at her with an expression of confused disinterest, taking another bite of her fig. "Yes."

Wednesday has a talent for ignoring people she doesn't know or like, and the people sharing the rooftop with her are no exception. While she's no less dangerous, she does seem distinctly less happy here than she'd been in all the footage in the Arena.

There aren't any electric chairs here, and she's not allowed to play with axes outside of that gym place. The clothes and the food and the decorations are all horrible. She misses Pugsley and Lurch and Thing, has no one to play with. But most of all, she misses Mother and Father, their respective presences; how Father makes things fun and exciting and always has a smile and a hug. How Mother is so calm and lovely and makes everything right.

"Who saw him die? I, said the Fly, with my little eye, I saw him die," she continues, distantly aware of being watched, but not caring to address it. The patterns on the cushion are intricate, and she traces each flourish with diligence.

"We have watched many men die."

He furrows his brow a little as he puts the pieces of the puzzle together. Even just thinking was different now; he could converse with his souls as easily as he could other people and draw on centuries of collective experience, but now he was essentially alone. Every questions he asked his souls was met with, at best, murmuring and the occasional word or fragment of a reply.

Wednesday's stature, clothing, even her way of speaking seemed to suggest that she wasn't from common stock, and his souls manage to whisper something that sounds like it could be 'aristocrat.' That, or 'smells of rat.'

"You are a noble, aren't you, child?"

She looks up only when she's directly addressed, and she frowns, mostly because she doesn't like being referred to as child. Everyone here seems to know her name, and she doesn't really like that either, but at home, most people at least conform to propriety and ask her what her name is.

"There were noble Addamses," she says, her expression blank in the face of glowing eyes and hidden features. "Mad Addams, Cousin Turncoat, Princess Millicent, Uncle Slackzel. Lady Penelope and Long John Addams, Father's grandparents six times back, were nobles too, but they gave that up to be pirates instead. But we don't have nobles where I'm from, it's not considered very modern. And after Cousin Turncoat and the war, well."

Wednesday doesn't elaborate on that.

"Anyway, that's not even how the poem goes. After the Fly is the Fish."

He waves a dismissive hand at her.

"And the beetle makes the shroud."

He frowns when none of the names sound familiar to him. He'd at least heard of most of the major families in Earthrealm, Outworld, and Edenia, but 'Addams' brought nothing to mind.

"Which war?"

Her pout is more at being cut off than anything else, adults are always so eager to have children stop talking.

"The Revolutionary War. There were a few others, he was a professional traitor, but that was the big one. Now America doesn't have any nobility at all, and so none of the American Addamses can have titles, can they?"

It seems simple enough to her. The branches of the family in Europe, some of them still lug around the name Lord or Lady, and occasionally a cousin will marry into one of the withering royal families, but most of the noble ones are dead, buried out in the garden among everyone else.

Death treats everyone as equals.

"American? Then you are from Earthrealm."

A formerly noble family in America could escape his notice, especially if they weren't active in the Netherrealm War. He gets up from his seat and approaches her. This was an interesting specimen, if nothing else, and he wanted to know more.

"Were you trained as an assassin?"

The Arena footage didn't lie; this girl knew what she'd been doing, even if her size was obviously an obstacle for her.

She doesn't recoil, barely reacts except to look up at him, her round face pointing almost skyward to compensate for how he towers over her. She blinks impassively, takes in the detail of his face that she can see a little better now that he's come closer.

Wednesday doesn't offer any detail, doesn't talk about her many and varied experiments. She only raises her eyebrows a bit.

"No."

"Then you are a natural."

From a distance, he sounds normal, but up close it's easier to hear what almost sounds like two or three other people speaking quietly in unison with him.

"A shame, we think. You could have been legendary if you had a mentor."

Competent was fine for serial killers and hit men, but mastery was essential to having your name whispered in conversations held in dark rooms by people who made their living off society's dark underbelly.

Her nose wrinkles, both in response to his voice and the idea of being a 'shame', in any sense of the it. Honestly, Wednesday would much rather be a serial killer than an assassin, but it's not the worst back-up plan in the world.

"I'm only ten. Mother says there's plenty of time for these things after college. Besides, there's not much point in focusing on it before Mother and Grandmama finish teaching me witchcraft. A Frump woman is nothing without her gifts, especially if I want to follow in Calpurnia Addams's footsteps."

Little lines appear on her forehead, and she amends her thought.

"But I'd like to make it longer than she did before I'm burned at the stake."

"There are Earthrealmers still opposed to magic? We thought it was accepted after the Netherrealm War."

The idea of burning someone at the stake for witchcraft is bizarre. It's like burning someone for being a gifted physician, or a particularly good craftsman. Sorcery was a particularly useful talent, especially in regards to combat and conquest, but not worth executing someone for in of itself. He'd even met a few native Earthrealmers who openly used sorcery; one of them had even been considered a hero in that realm.

"We think it will be difficult to practice witchcraft here. Even our powers have been...restrained."

"Why do you keep calling it that?"

Wednesday's face sparks with a sudden curiosity. She's never heard of realms referred to that way -- there's the realm of the living and the realm of the dead, and that's all, as far as she knows. Maybe there's more and they haven't been found, but she doesn't know how this man would know them.

"I'm not supposed to practice without Mother or Grandmama. They said there's too much of a risk of burning the house down or summoning an apocalypse."

"It is one realm of many. We hail from Outworld."

He nods his approval of the Addams women's decision.

"We have heard of sorceror's apprentices bringing destruction on themselves while practicing."

He'd been called to clean up the aftermath of one such suspected incident. They could only speculate on the cause, since there had only been demons, burned paper, and a very mutilated corpse by the time they'd arrived, but magic gone wrong seemed to fit.

"Is the Outworld like Hell? I've never heard of it. But I wanted to see Hell and I died and I didn't even get to see it!"

It's clear that Wednesday isn't pleased about this turn of events. She'd died and it wasn't even like an atheistic sort of nothingness, it was a fake death where she just came back, and she feels cheated by it.

"Exactly. So I don't do any witchcraft without them. But I like to practice, after school usually."

"No. It is....more like your Middle Ages. We are familiar with your technology, but sorcery and strength rule in Outworld."

He raises an eyebrow, intrigued that she seems so fascinated by the concept of Hell. Most Earthrealmers would ask if there was a heaaven, in his experience, and would almost inevitably be disappointed to hear that he'd never heard of any realm that matched the description of it.

"We have been to 'Hell.' It is the Netherrealm."

"Oh. You would have liked the Arena, then. I liked it. I wish I could go back there."

She seems genuinely dejected about not being allowed to live in a rotting deathtrap instead of a luxurious city, as much as she ever seems to express any one particular emotion. She does look back down at the cushion with a sense of sadness, though.

Her interest piques again when he tells her of going to Hell, and she looks back up at him with her brow knit slightly. "You've been? Is it as nice as they say, are the lakes of fire that good? What about the moaning of the damned?"

"You did well there."

This child was unusual in a way that he appreciated. Most children craved comfort and safety, which threatened to make them weak and spineless as adults. He'd be very interested to see how this one turned out in ten years.

"Indeed. The land is made of brimstone, as well, and the moans of the damned never cease. We have heard that it is ruled by two fallen warriors killed by an Earthrealm god's foolishness. A powerful necromancer ruled much of it before them, but he was recently killed. His soul never reached the Netherrealm."

Éowyn moves a couple of steps closer, to get a better look at the girl in the dim light of the sublevel. "She ought to have won," she says at last, rather curtly, and closes her eyes. "I had hoped she might. And not only so I might have another chance to strike down that traitorous cur who now calls himself Victor. You could not at least have killed him too? I weakened him as best I could."

After a moment, though, she repents of her sharp tone. After all, the girl in front of her is just that - a girl, by the looks of her younger even than Arya. If Éowyn, who struck down the Witch-King and fought in the Ringwar, fell to Black Tom, then how can she blame this child for doing the same?

Yet that doesn't kill the bubbling resentment inside her. It only brings the remembrance that it is misaimed. It is the Capitol who drove them to it, and the Capitol who killed Arya... and Black Tom who betrayed Aragorn to his death and saw Éowyn fall.

She doesn't apologise, but when she speaks again, her voice is a little less harsh. "Did it upset you, to do it?"

"Thank you. I still lost."

Actually excited by the visual of Hell, Wednesday smiles. It's not a pleasant smile so much as one made of glee over such misery and pain -- it stretches over her face oddly, as if she simply wasn't designed to smile at all. She scoots closer to the edge of her seat, leaning forward for more details.

"I bet it smells like sulfur and death and filth! And Satan's minions crack their whips and you can hear the demons swinging their swords!" She sighs. "I really wanted to visit."

"I tried," Wednesday protests, wrinkling her nose. "And I don't think it matters who you want to win. I'm not going to let someone kill me just because you like her better. I don't even know you."

She huffs and harrumphs and takes another bite of fig, red juice pooling in one corner of her mouth like blood until she wipes it away with a pout. The woman keeps talking, and Wednesday rolls her shoulder indifferently, her face blank again.

"No. She was trying to kill me too. It's not as if I chased her down for the thrill. She came looking for a fight, and she lost."

Freshly returned from a fitting, a meeting with some TV producers, and an entirely too light lunch, Gritta's out from beneath Jason's gaze and intent on doing something for herself. That something being sneaking a quick snack. She's padding into the kitchen as quietly as a lady of her stature can, but stops short and watches with a faint alarm as Wednesday plays with knives.

"...that's going to upset someone." Not her, not particularly. She'd hardly dare do the thing herself, but who is she to judge someone's hobbies? Especially the hobbies of someone so talented in the art of murder? She'd been watching the arena recaps. She knew. But it's the sort of thing that's liable to set Jason off and no one wants that.

Wednesday can only pause, knife tip wedged slightly in the wood of the table, and look over her shoulder at the person speaking. Then her brow knits in confusion, because Wednesday has a very extensive knowledge of monsters, and this doesn't appear to be any of the ones she knows.

"What are you?"

The question is innocent, but thanks to Wednesday's demeanor, it comes off unpleasant, stand-offish. But there's nothing except curiosity in her eyes.

Wednesday's tone gives her a moment of pause, but just a moment. She's been asked the same question much less politely since her arrival here. Being the bigger person here is easy. (And not just because of her weight.) She stands a little straighter, head lifted.

"I'm a Shadow Monster. From the Shadow Line." Which is a perfectly true explanation, but probably explains very little. Still, she watches for the young girl's reaction.

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Here comes a candle to light you to bed

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