Work Text:
Do you all see what I see? What I know? What I see?
She asks every night. She never gets an answer. She knows the answer, which is no.
Today is a bad day. It is always a bad day.
Once, she asked Webby what it all means. Why it was always Black Friday, why Ethan always had to die, why people killed each other over an ugly doll. Webby had no answers. She said to have patience. Tomorrow will come, she’d say, be patient.
Tomorrow… what is tomorrow?
Tomorrow will come. Tomorrow won’t come. Tomorrow, come today. Tomorrow is today is yesterday is tomorrow. Tomorrow is then, now, later. Today is then, now, later. Time stands still, repeats the last twenty-four hours. When will tomorrow come for real?
Be patient.
Each day, she wakes up with good faith. Maybe today is different. Maybe today different choices are made.
Today is never different. Today is always a bad day.
Each day, there’s bad blood and Cross. Each day there are two doors, not one, to the Black and White. Why don’t they listen?
They just don’t listen. They say ‘crazy’, ‘weird’. They think she can’t hear. She can. Why should those adjectives invalidate her knowledge? Why doesn't she persist?
The Wiggly in the bag with the pins is threatening. It does not like her and she does not like it. The magic hat helps. Maybe the movie calms her, too. Nothing can harm her. Not the greedy people that killed Ethan. Not the nurse and her friend. Not the evil woman in the cape, until it is stolen.
Without the hat, she knows. Without the hat, she thinks clearer, is less complacent. She’s been through this before; time creeps to midnight, from midnight to midnight, to the same midnights over and over again, without change, without any difference in outcomes.
Be patient.
She has been patient. But today is a bad day, tomorrow is a bad day, yesterday is a bad day. The same bad day.
She wants to have a good day. It cannot be Black Friday forever. It should not be Black Friday forever. She wants to go out of the mall. She and Lex and Ethan are going to California.
California.
Could she stop Wiggly, stop the Black and White, stop the endless Black Friday?
It would be nice to go to California.
What if tomorrow comes to break the dawn and take the night away?
She cannot stop it. So she endures.
Can she get up again with good faith? See Ethan and Lex? Face the overwhelming evil inside the mall and live through it? By the time tomorrow comes, she will have forgotten and get up in a bad mood, because tomorrow is a bad day, because tomorrow is today, and because she will have to wear the bag with the pins that holds the evilest spirit in the world.
But she doesn't wear that bag now. She stands outside. The mall burns. People burn. Not everyone; she does not, Lex does not.
Nine.
Always the same events, without end. An inevitable ending.
Seven.
Always the same object hurling towards Hatchetfield, for impact after a midnight never passed.
Five.
And she wonders and hopes.
Three.
Two.
“What if tomorrow—?”