WEEK 3

[grimgrinningghosts]

[Karolina and Mulan are dead. The first, and hopefully the last, deaths of your stay here. Hopefully their deaths won't be in vain. Your third week here starts on a solemn note, and the mood here has taken on a significant downward spiral. If it's any consolation (it isn't), you'll find that you have two new floors to explore...even if one of those floors has about twenty STAY OUT signs nailed to it.

23 guests remain.]

[SUNDAY MONDAY TUESDAY WEDNESDAY THURSDAY]

{ooc: Don't forget to turn in your week 2 AC! As we're now officially in full murdergame mode, AC from here on out is extended till Thursday.}

Comments

[toogoodforhim]

[By the time Lefou gets to the bottom of the stairs, his arms are shaking and his knuckles white where he's holding onto Anna. The strength that got him to the bottom of the stairs drains out of him as fast as someone pulling a drain plug when Elsa goes to her room. He carries Anna's body to her room, lying her out on her bed, and then just kind of. Slumps to the floor next to it. His arms and chest are covered in blood, in a young girl's blood, and he's about shaking out of his skin.

Think back to the war! Blood, explosions...

He thinks of Elsa, alone and covered in her sister's blood, holed up in her room, and aches with a chill from head to toe that's not because of her magic. If she hadn't come with him, she could have been... He could have lost her too. And the Host's words still burn at him.

If I find it, I'll have it delivered to you personally.

And what had he said?? Fine? Nothing about this was fine! Anna was dead, her head was missing, and he'd said if he found it - where the hell could it be?! It was a human head! His breath comes short and gasping, and he has to untie his bow to let air in his lungs, tilting his head back and staring at the ceiling as he tries to breathe. He can't do this- he can't, he has to get someone to clean up Anna, he has to check on Elsa and clean his shirt and start figuring out what to do with the body--

Sometime later, once the body is either taken care of or in more capable hands, he's outside Elsa's door, carefully attaching the notebook from his bedroom (with the pages he'd already scribbled on torn out, obviously) to the wall next to her door, with a pen hanging from it by a thread.]

((And I'll reply to this with a comment for the wake once the body is better sorted out.))

[yourghosthost]

[When LeFou next opens his room, he'll find the host there, delicately placing a hatbox on his bed.

Guess what's inside of it.]

[toogoodforhim]

[He stops so abruptly that he almost gags, tears in his eyes all over again.]

...do you even remember what it was like? To be alive?

[yourghosthost]

Unfortunately, I do.

Delicately phonetags

[capulion]

[Kiara could smell something off in the air practically all day. It was subtle enough to fly under the radar along with her usual companionate sense of dread and rage.

She realizes she should have paid better heed when she hears Elsa's scream. Her blood turns to ice and she's left just as frozen for she doesn't know how long. When she remembers how to move she's off like a shot and arrives in time to see Lefou at the bottom of the stairs...

Oh no.

Her heart leaps into her throat and she wants to throw it up. Its so gruesome. Not even an execution would be so brutal. Or had been, she reminds herself.

She follows him in a daze to Anna's room. Something feels hollow in her soul, far beyond having a missing half.]

She has a sister...

[toogoodforhim]

[He was so numb by the time that he reached the bottom of the stairs that he doesn't notice the lioness stalking him until she speaks up when they get to Anna's room. He gulps down air, trying to come back from the hyperventilating darkness clouding the edges of his vision, tears stinging his eyes.

He nods.]

Elsa- Elsa's going to need everything we can do for her-

[capulion]

Elsa.

[There's a strained anguish even in the softness of her voice. She sucks in a shaking breath and slowly presses her nose against Lefou's shoulder, purring softly in some attempt to soothe the both of them.]

You're very brave and very kind.

[pardonmylanguage]

[Tip is wondering why everyone's heading upstairs all of a sudden, but she stops at the bottom when she sees LeFou coming down. Holding a body.]

Is-is-what happened? [She might be shrieking slightly.]

[toogoodforhim]

[Lefou is barely holding it together but the body he's holding has no head and there's a scared 12-year-old.]

...Anna's gone. She went up in the attic and- Promise me you'll stay far away from there. Promise me, okay?

[pardonmylanguage]

[Tip nods hard several times.] Okay, yeah, definitely. Is-is that why her head...? [Isn't here, she wants to say, but she's still partly in shock.]

[aboyandhiscar]

What in the--dude! [He catches LeFou just as he's leaving Anna's room, eyes going to the headless body and going back to him when he crumples to the floor. What!! What!!!]

Dude, what in the heck--is she--are you okay?!

[toogoodforhim]

[Well he doesn't look okay. He's pale as a sheet and shaking, and it's not until someone speaks that he realizes he forgot to close Anna's door behind him.]

She- I-

We can't go in the attic. You- you have to make sure everyone knows, there's something up there and it-- it--

[aboyandhiscar]

The attic? [He recalls seeing the KEEP OUT signs, but that means like, shit, to most people like him. But LeFou's making a pretty convincing case at the moment!!]

Why--[His eyes glance back toward the headless Anna, and he shakes his head, going to gently close the door.]--you know what, no, dumb question, think I can piece it together. Wasn't any of us, yeah?

[kindaruledatit]

[It's awful up there, people panicking, Star needing to be restrained before she does something terrible. Wendy's already by her wits end by the time she reaches the bottom of the stairs, and she spots the blood trail that leads her to Anna's room. But the sight of Lefou sitting on the floor, blood soaked into his clothes... it almost makes her sick.

It doesn't take much to feel sorry for him, for all of them. Wendy didn't even know him all that well, but that wont stop her from walking over, and slumping down beside him.]

...I'm sorry. [She doesn't know what for, it's just the first thing that comes to mind.]

[toogoodforhim]

[If he weren't panicking he would reassure her but instead what would normally be a laugh sounds like it's punched out of him.

Having a body next to him (a living one) helps calm him, or at least drag his mind off of the battlefield and back to the present.]

We could all have been... it could have been anyone who didn't listen to the warning.

[kindaruledatit]

[Despite the blood or maybe just because of it, she comes to rest her hand on his shoulder.]

....It could've been me. [After all, she had been thinking about doing so for weeks. The thought now made her physically cringe.] God, just... it's awful.

Wake

[toogoodforhim]

[It's not quite the laying in state fit for a princess, but eventually through collaborative effort Anna is laid out on one of the couches in the lounge, shrouded in a spare bedsheet. Her face is covered, too, by default - Lefou's on standby to make sure that anyone who wants to look is ready to see the state of her - and her hands folded atop her chest. The body looks peaceful. Whole, thanks to the red silk bow tied around her neck to cover the wound.

Lefou's wearing the waistcoat that Elsa made him, now, because even though it was blue the hues were more subdued than the black and golden flowers of his other. He looks somehow like he hasn't slept in six months.

His bow is missing.]

[terribibble]

[By the time Lefou is done getting Anna ready, Fiddleford is done with at least the preliminary process of cleaning up his room. That's given him enough time to get himself more or less under control and in a calm enough head-space to actually attend the wake at all. If Anna's ghost is still in this house -- and it's all but been confirmed by now that it probably is -- then it's the least he can do.

He isn't quite comfortable looking at the body but he's brought one of his own bedsheets and hung it over the mirror in the corner. It's only a token superstition when he hasn't covered any of the other mirrors but he wouldn't feel right not doing it all the same.]

I don't suppose we'll be allowed to stay with her all night, will we.

[toogoodforhim]

[Lefou can't begin to say how thankful he is for everyone who helped get the body ready. Because it wasn't just him, that's for sure, he knew where they should put her and the bow was his idea (for lack of another scarf), but he... did relatively less, after he got her to her room.]

...I asked the host. He said they would bury her in the morning, as soon as we all leave her alone.

[sixfingeredstan]

[Once Ford has given himself time to calm down from the boiling rage he'd felt up in the attic, and cleaned himself up—his turtleneck had been nearly soaked in the princess's blood, and is now laying over the side of the bathtub to dry—he finally emerges and proceeds to the lounge to pay his respects. His expression is long, to say the least, and tired. He feels like they've already been here months, but it's only been three weeks and already three people have died. He's seen three corpses too many, and the up-close and personal nature of the discovery of Anna's corpse is a heavy weight on his shoulders. It's not like he's never seen death before, but this is different. Three innocent girls are gone, for no reason.

He bows his head toward Lefou, and then steps up to stand over Anna's prone, shrouded form.]

Miss Anna. We never met, but I know you were the light of your sister's life. I pray that you find peace in the afterlife.

[He lowers his chin and closes his eyes, saying a quick kaddish in his head. She wasn't Jewish, but Ford feels like the sentiment would still be appreciated. Not that he's even religious, really, but some customs stick, and this is one of them.

When he's done, he turns to Lefou, stepping away to allow others to pay their respects.]

Thank you. For taking care of this.

[defyingfrigidity]

[It's a little shocking, how one single event can completely undo a year's worth of good, hard work at improving yourself. One moment, and Elsa went from a woman happy to show off for her new friends to shutting herself away in her room. Again.

For a while after the makeshift wake began, Elsa is nowhere to be seen. It's safe to assume she's in her room of course, because anyone passing by her door will absolutely notice the frost creeping out from under it and the way the temperature surrounding it drops a good twenty degrees or so. There's no hint of her crying inside, but... well. Elsa's had thirteen years to master the art of not letting other people hear you even as you sob until no more tears come out.

She does leave her room eventually though, later on when she thinks there might be less people out. And.... god, unsurprisingly she looks like a mess. Thankfully there's no hint of her sister's blood on her dress - the perks of being able to magic away and re-summon your clothes - but the way Elsa carries herself is so heavy that it's a wonder she can stay upright. And her face... there's no spark in her eyes, no hint of anything. Just a dull blankness.

She doesn't stop to talk to anyone when she reaches the lounge. She'll just head right over to where Anna's shrouded vody is laid out, and after a moment to take it all in, to let it really register that this is her dead sister, her expression twists into a look pf all-consuming grief, and she collapses on her knees at the side of the sofa, hands curling tightly into the fabric of the sheet separating her from her sister.]

I'm sorry... I'm so sorry...

[It's so soft, it's barely even a whisper.]

[folkscallmewander]

[Wander doesn't have a tie or a solemn enough dress to wear to the wake, much less flowers or anything appropriate to give Anna. Being among the last to leave the attic, his legs were shaking when he returned to his room to lie facedown on the bed.

Grop, why did it have to be Anna? She had gone in without their noticing, what if she was calling for help when the ghost got to her? Was it during the night? Should Wander have gone in on Monday afternoon when the others were nearby to rescue him? Now Anna was the one given the wake when it could likely have been himself. Elsa had lost a sister and Wander could have prevented that. How could he face anyone knowing that?

He stays in his room for a while. The door is open in case someone needs him.

But he would be less useful if he locked himself away for the rest of the day. There are things he has to tell Anna before she's taken away. He arrives at the wake to fight off the urge to sit back and be everyone's comforter, but he manages to walk up to the couch, rest his arms on the bedsheet, and takes a long look at her hands.]

I'm real sorry. [Most of the blood appears to be cleaned. She looks as if she was only resting.] It shouldn't have happened to you. [Why did they leave her body like that?] Wish I could've been there earlier to help.

[First Karolina, now Anna, why can't they stop these tragedies from happening?]

[capulion]

[This is not at all the kind of death ceremony Kiara is used to, but she's doing her best to adapt. The blood is cleaned up and Anna's body is made somewhat peaceful, now. She's quiet and moves softly and slowly out of respect for the moment.

Lefou looks like a dead monkey walking. She nudges his hand when she sees him.]

You did a good job.

[wannagetsmote]

Hey.

[Maui had been in the kitchen in the midst of the chaos. He'd learned of the princesses passing through whispers and shouts. Turns out, when reeling from a traumatic experience, people really seemed to paint a vivid picture.

Elsa would have to be tended to shortly. Right now, Lefou was closest. Maui hadn't once spoken to the man, and in some ways, it felt wrong to even approach him after he had witnessed something like that.

But if not Maui, then who?]

Tell me what you need.

[toogoodforhim]

[He can't breathe, he's covered in blood that's not his, his arms still feel heavy and warm like he didn't just set her down.

What did he need? He needed to go home, he needed to stop thinking about the war, he needed- he needed Gaston, to tell him to stop crying and be a man, to leave him alone and distract others from talking to him, from seeing if he's okay.

No.

Lefou turned his face up (and up and up and up) to look at Maui, and reached out with one hand.]

I need- I need-- [His voice cracks.] S-stay with- with me... Please-