⋙ WHEN? april 8th, morning
⋙ WHERE? media room
⋙ WHO? @lovxrslane
The past week has gone by in a haze for Mal, the emotional toll of socialising and the whole business with the family having disabled them for at least three days thereafter. Charlie'd been staying with her the night after the party, but Mal can't say what happened the days after, since the majority have been spent sleeping or too lethargic to be any sort of decent company. And just after getting over the energy debt from the party, the Wexley had once again exploded with an attack on Sada Vang, and the reported attacker having been one of her closest friends, Ashton.
To say she's exhausted down to the bone would be an understatement.
And so she'd slept in, hoping that if she went down for morning rations the latest possible, she might avoid the majority of the building's residents so she could spend more energy trying to figure out fact from fiction, get a timeline of what had happened from all parties involved, a lot of fucking talking to people again. Just the idea of it is almost enough to make them turn heel in the middle of the stairwell to the Atrium and go the fuck back to bed, food be damned.
But the noise coming from the Atrium isn't regular. It's not the din and hum of people having breakfast conversations, of food preparation, of footsteps to and fro from the now-working lift. There's a panicked element to it, a buzz of something happening, a tension that immediately raises Mal's hackles and has her speed her pace down the stairs, opening the door to the Atrium to veritable pandaemonium.
People, covered in blood, people she loves, people she knows, and the dead—already eliminated—spread across the floor across the hall, starting from the W. "What happened?" Mal asks in a commanding voice, immediately slotting into an action-oriented, crisis-situation mindset. Her eyes move from Jeremiah to Roman and Charlie, to Ziggy's little sister and Sher, moving across the Atrium towards the Mr W with long, determined strides. Dark eyes take in the carnage, mentally taking note of the survivors and the deceased. Robert. Abigail. Tony. Eyes move to the final body, broken almost beyond recognition, formerly grey hair a deep crimson, suit torn.
Her entire world falls away, the sound around her goes mute, and even the smell of death refuses to register anymore as Mal's eyes are fixed on the mangled face of Tobias Wexley, milky white eyes staring away at absolutely nothing. There's no expression change from the caretaker, no tensing of their body, no thumping heartbeat. In fact, there's a decidedly lack of nothing as they stare, even breathing nigh imperceptible, still as a statue. Still as the mangled dead.
A voice addresses her from beyond the veil, and for a moment, Mal turns her head, eyes still staying on Tobias. "Yeah, okay," they respond out of instinct, voice monotone, without really registering what had been said or asked. "I'm going to check if there is anyone else who's injured or needs help." Like a robot, Mal turns on her heel to head out of the W, making her way to the media room.
Like on a puppeteer's strings, they find themself walking into the media room as far as the walls let them, stopped by the window and its drapery. It isn't until that moment that the world comes crashing back with such force it knocks her clean off her feet and she drops to her knees hard, before crumpling further while her breathing picks up, her head starts swimming, and her entire body starts uncontrollably shaking.
Grabbing onto the nearest thing she can, Mal's calloused hands find purchase in the curtains and brings them to her face, wailing and screaming into them like a woman possessed; it's not long before the fabric is soaked in tears. The wave of emotions are too much and too fast one after another for her to pick apart, it feels like something is trying to tear her apart from the inside, something she needs out, something she can't handle.
This isn't real, though. It's just not. It's not allowed to be. Every flash of Tobias' glazed over eyes has another wave of raw emotion threatening to drown her, and in her attempt to wish for time to stop, to turn back, for the world to stop lying to her, to stop taking like this, for her to stop being a curse that gets people killed, Mal doesn't hear the media room door open, doesn't hear muffled footsteps approach, doesn't hear a relatively unfamiliar voice address her.
