[wanda follows after henry, all too aware that he is the one in control of his memories. it isn't like when wanda traversed her own suppressed memories alongside agatha; at that time, wanda had kept all of it under lock and key. henry is clearly fully in control, here.
though she watches the scene of the family unfurl before her, she does have that very question: where is little henry?
something makes her look up, to the ceiling. somehow, she knows there's a second floor to this home.]
[He nods. There’s certainly no need to hide his presence up above them, hidden in the attic; a psychic with keen senses would be able to know where the younger version of himself nestles himself away, and Wanda is more than just a powerful psychic, after all.]
That’s right. I didn’t spend a lot of time with the rest of my family when we moved here. I was…
[He trails off, something about Henry’s pride making the word stick in his throat. But being in his head, his memory, the feeling resonates like a subtle vibration in the air: unhappy.]
Come on. I’ll show you.
[And just like that, the environment warbles, and instead of the cozy comfort of the living area, they stand on the wooden flooring of the attic above. The ceiling is high and mottled with unreachable cobwebs in the corner. But in the center of this place, lit by a small lamp, is a workspace propped atop a short table. A young boy of about twelve sits crossed-legged beside it, pencil in hand, sketching out something in a notebook. Textbooks sit neatly in a stack beside him. It’s apparent he was working on schoolwork, or at least just finishing up.]
I liked it up here, anyway. The company was better.
[And, on the other side of that squat table, glistens a handful of glass jars. Leaves and twigs can be seen from within, as well as little black, eight-legged creatures ambling up and down their new enclosures.]
[it's with a sense of uncertainty that wanda allows herself to follow after him, the warbling of the environment leaving behind an image of a family life that she, herself, longs to be embraced by again. and yet they stand here like opposites, perhaps, in how henry pulled away from it while wanda looked forward to it every moment she had been allowed.
to recluse himself from his family, he really must have been it — unhappy.]
I remember this.
[she says, quietly, approaching young henry and glancing down at his schoolwork.]
When you first arrived and you were caught in the rain weeding out the garden, I saw this. [back when they both hadn't made an agreement to not venture into each other's minds.] You kept spiders in glass jars.
[but that still doesn't explain something.]
How did you go from here to that other place? You had a family. A home.
[except wanda knows what it takes to put children in a clinical place. still, she waits for him to either tell her or show him.]
[If she draws close enough, she will see a young Henry sketching out spiders in the margins of his notes, too; it seems this infatuation with the arachnids had become a fixation and one he's never quite shaken off. Or ever wanted to.]
Unknown to the rest of my family, this house is where I discovered my powers.
[The lead of little Henry's pencil breaks, and he frowns down at it. With a wave of his hand, he brings a small, silver pencil sharpening floating his way. The lights flicker dimly overhead.]
And with discovery required practice. In secret. In ways they wouldn't have approved of.
[Here, she experiences flashes of disjointed memory. His sister, Alice, waking up from a nightmare in the middle of the night, screaming. His mother, seeing an illusion of black widows spiders crawling out from the drain of a bathtub. Even, unfortunately, the corpses of small, dead animals littered in the yard.]
[wanda likes henry. he is odd, but he's one of the few—or only—her age here in solvunn that shares aptitude with powers of the mind. she feels a sense of kinship, beyond that, to how she's always been labelled "weird", for henry too holds on to certain aspects of that, even as she sees the sketching of spiders in the margins of his notes.
but there's something worrying about all this.
with the flashes of what could (and should) be labelled as torturing ones family with these powers that he had to practice using. wanda would never force such a thing on her own family.
—which is why she takes a leaf out of agatha's book, and draws further in, towards a door out of the room.]
Let's go further in.
[an exercise in trust, this, she realizes, putting a handle to the door handle and pushing it open, further into henry's mind. his past, his memories, his motivations.]
[An exercise in trust, indeed. But he doesn't mind her taking charge, pushing that door open. He follows, even, knowing what will be there, but curious to see what she'll think.]
This was the night it all came to a head.
[And before her is a scene, should she open that door and push past the threshold. She's still in the house, and Henry follows quietly after, into the dining room. The radio plays a song.
But strewn on the floor is his mother's body, twisted with broken bones, eyes bleeding from being pushed back into her skull. She looks not unlike a doll, contorted and thrown aside by an angry child.
In the main hallway, leading out from the dining room, sounds of sobbing.]
The night before I was taken away. [A beat, and a concession that seems... cruel, for what its focus centers on.] In retrospect, I didn't think it through too well.
[the thing that wanda realizes, in this moment, amidst the sight of his mother's broken body and the sobbing of whom she can only imagine is his sister, is that henry didn't need to show her this.
she glances away from the sight, to stare at henry with hardened eyes.
there's something under the surface. something broken, but also marred with so much darkness, it's almost hard to place with henry's usual clean and neat demeanor.]
[How much time do you have, Wanda. Henry is a well of misanthropy and anger churning below the surface, and within that is so much cruelty he would just love to displace upon the world.
But she's asking about this moment specifically, isn't she? He meets her gaze with ease, blue eyes unblinking.]
I never wanted to be here, in this small town. As if moving here would have changed anything from before. And even then, it wasn't enough for my parents. My mother, especially.
[Her broken body lies before them, as if proof of that.]
They wanted to send me away. To "fix" me. As if I was just trash to be tossed out, becoming someone else's problem.
[wanda could sympathize, here and there, with henry’s plight, what with similarities churnign so close to the surface between them, but she gets it now — his selfish nature, that unrelenting want to just destroy because he can and nothing else. whatever would she have given to live in a home like his, to be delighted by the comforts offered in safety and familial warmth?
she glances away.]
And you still were sent away.
[not as his parents had planned, perhaps, but in another way entirely. the walls dissolve from the warmth of mahogany and the orange glow of lamps, like paint dripping down from the ceiling—white and cold static.]
[The scene begins its transition, the walls dripping, dripping, revealing only white walls and the fluorescent buzz of the light above. The hallway shifts and then solidifies completely.]
The government did, technically. But...
[Footsteps echoing down the hall, distant, but drawing nearer.]
He had us call him "Papa." Would you like to meet him?
[the place feels familiar in essence alone, in how it is a place devoid of any human warmth; meant to be only a place to contain subjects at the mercy of the government or, in her own experience, scientists with a streak towards committing war crimes.
in her case, wanda is grateful that von strucker never had her and pietro call him anything remotely close to ‘papa’. the idea alone, for henry’s experience, sounds dreadful.]
Sounds like a sick man. [she’d like to put a ‘name’ to a face.] Show me.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
though she watches the scene of the family unfurl before her, she does have that very question: where is little henry?
something makes her look up, to the ceiling. somehow, she knows there's a second floor to this home.]
Are you up there?
[she can feel it—feel him.]
no subject
That’s right. I didn’t spend a lot of time with the rest of my family when we moved here. I was…
[He trails off, something about Henry’s pride making the word stick in his throat. But being in his head, his memory, the feeling resonates like a subtle vibration in the air: unhappy.]
Come on. I’ll show you.
[And just like that, the environment warbles, and instead of the cozy comfort of the living area, they stand on the wooden flooring of the attic above. The ceiling is high and mottled with unreachable cobwebs in the corner. But in the center of this place, lit by a small lamp, is a workspace propped atop a short table. A young boy of about twelve sits crossed-legged beside it, pencil in hand, sketching out something in a notebook. Textbooks sit neatly in a stack beside him. It’s apparent he was working on schoolwork, or at least just finishing up.]
I liked it up here, anyway. The company was better.
[And, on the other side of that squat table, glistens a handful of glass jars. Leaves and twigs can be seen from within, as well as little black, eight-legged creatures ambling up and down their new enclosures.]
no subject
to recluse himself from his family, he really must have been it — unhappy.]
I remember this.
[she says, quietly, approaching young henry and glancing down at his schoolwork.]
When you first arrived and you were caught in the rain weeding out the garden, I saw this. [back when they both hadn't made an agreement to not venture into each other's minds.] You kept spiders in glass jars.
[but that still doesn't explain something.]
How did you go from here to that other place? You had a family. A home.
[except wanda knows what it takes to put children in a clinical place. still, she waits for him to either tell her or show him.]
no subject
[If she draws close enough, she will see a young Henry sketching out spiders in the margins of his notes, too; it seems this infatuation with the arachnids had become a fixation and one he's never quite shaken off. Or ever wanted to.]
Unknown to the rest of my family, this house is where I discovered my powers.
[The lead of little Henry's pencil breaks, and he frowns down at it. With a wave of his hand, he brings a small, silver pencil sharpening floating his way. The lights flicker dimly overhead.]
And with discovery required practice. In secret. In ways they wouldn't have approved of.
[Here, she experiences flashes of disjointed memory. His sister, Alice, waking up from a nightmare in the middle of the night, screaming. His mother, seeing an illusion of black widows spiders crawling out from the drain of a bathtub. Even, unfortunately, the corpses of small, dead animals littered in the yard.]
no subject
but there's something worrying about all this.
with the flashes of what could (and should) be labelled as torturing ones family with these powers that he had to practice using. wanda would never force such a thing on her own family.
—which is why she takes a leaf out of agatha's book, and draws further in, towards a door out of the room.]
Let's go further in.
[an exercise in trust, this, she realizes, putting a handle to the door handle and pushing it open, further into henry's mind. his past, his memories, his motivations.]
no subject
This was the night it all came to a head.
[And before her is a scene, should she open that door and push past the threshold. She's still in the house, and Henry follows quietly after, into the dining room. The radio plays a song.
But strewn on the floor is his mother's body, twisted with broken bones, eyes bleeding from being pushed back into her skull. She looks not unlike a doll, contorted and thrown aside by an angry child.
In the main hallway, leading out from the dining room, sounds of sobbing.]
The night before I was taken away. [A beat, and a concession that seems... cruel, for what its focus centers on.] In retrospect, I didn't think it through too well.
no subject
she glances away from the sight, to stare at henry with hardened eyes.
there's something under the surface. something broken, but also marred with so much darkness, it's almost hard to place with henry's usual clean and neat demeanor.]
Did they do anything to upset you?
[what else would explain this?]
no subject
But she's asking about this moment specifically, isn't she? He meets her gaze with ease, blue eyes unblinking.]
I never wanted to be here, in this small town. As if moving here would have changed anything from before. And even then, it wasn't enough for my parents. My mother, especially.
[Her broken body lies before them, as if proof of that.]
They wanted to send me away. To "fix" me. As if I was just trash to be tossed out, becoming someone else's problem.
no subject
she glances away.]
And you still were sent away.
[not as his parents had planned, perhaps, but in another way entirely. the walls dissolve from the warmth of mahogany and the orange glow of lamps, like paint dripping down from the ceiling—white and cold static.]
Who took you in?
no subject
The government did, technically. But...
[Footsteps echoing down the hall, distant, but drawing nearer.]
He had us call him "Papa." Would you like to meet him?
no subject
in her case, wanda is grateful that von strucker never had her and pietro call him anything remotely close to ‘papa’. the idea alone, for henry’s experience, sounds dreadful.]
Sounds like a sick man. [she’d like to put a ‘name’ to a face.] Show me.