A/N: My first AHS fic so don't kill me please.
Violet is in her room. Thinking about time.
When she was young, she loved time. Wanted more. She'd been the little girl on the beach with the high shrill voice- "Mommy, just five more minutes, okay?" or at the playground- "Daddy, I want to stay here a little longer" and then she got older and in the habit of locking herself in her room and hating the call of "Violet, dinner's ready" so then it became the simple "I need more time!" that everyone yells when they need space. Like Violet always had.
She takes a breath. Calms down. Won't do her any good, fretting and worrying and making her pulse race.
And as she got older she began to hate time because it meant she would have to live longer. More minutes of frustration. More hours of tears. More days of that horrid mind-numbing silence that settles in your brain, makes you want to just hide all day in the attic and smoke and do nothing else for the day or maybe the rest of your life.
§§§
Tate is outside Violet's room. Listening to her breath rise and fall, making sure she's okay. Thinking about the end of the world.
He wasn't like the brace-faced supergeeks back at Westfield, sharing their conspiracy theories about aliens or zombies or however they thought dear old Earth would come crashing down. (Like the world had not ended ages ago when humanity popped up.)
He'd just never given thought to shit like that.
But being in the Murder House is a little different. Of course dying, coming back as a ghost, falling in love, nearly getting your heart ripped out of your chest- that sorta changes what you think about.
Tate would put his money on an atomic war.
Humanity. "Filthy goddamn horror show," he remembers with a faint smirk, how right he'd been- humanity would be the one to really destroy Earth for good. What else? Aliens? Of course not. Humans don't care if they're already fucking up the earth. Why wouldn't this filthy goddamn horror show give a shit if they really and truly killed it?
He knows what it's like to kill. He knows how good it feels.
Tate's always hated people but he can't deny that killing a whole world, well, it holds some intrigue.
§§§
At the end of her human life she'd begun to despise time. It goes without saying; it is not like suicidal humans love the idea of eternal life.
Violet shivers. She will not think about the word eternal.
A filthy word because it reminds her of where she is. What she is. Who she's with.
She's taken to daydreaming by her window. It's nice here on the sunny days because she can see out of the Murder House into the sky and it's nice on the sad cloudy days because if Violet were a day it would be raining.
She understands why people write books. It's daydreaming on paper, tangible, and you get rich and famous.
Maybe Violet could write a book. Something sweet and fluffy about real love (no wait she can't write about that because it hurts) or a happy family (but what is that really? she's never truly been in one) or something simple (except for the fact that everything now is so complicated and confusing that she doesn't know what she'd write).
What people really would want to read about would be a dead girl trapped in a house full of ghosts with a boy that she hates who happens to love her. But like hell she's going to put that shit on paper.
Violet sighs slowly, lethargically. She's going to go back to daydreaming now because reality is too much and all she has is disgusting, terrible time.
§§§
Maybe it would be a bomb, thinks Tate. He's lost in his imagination now, bodies flashing in his eyes. A big fucking bomb that lands in the middle of Westfield, decimating anything and everything that it sees because humanity needs purging.
God, the picture in his mind- it feels so right.
It would be like Westfield all over again but better, so much better. Everyone- everything- just a drop of a bomb and fucking BLAM, yes, and they're all gone. The bodies that he'd see afterwards, twisted, mangled- oh Jesus, like Westfield-
Tate is aware of himself panting aloud (thank god no one is listening, he sounds like a pervert). He chokes himself off and silently checks to see if Violet heard him. The door is closed but she is quiet in her room, and he moves back to his spot outside.
Actually. Would the bomb get him too? Get the Murder House? A bomb like that, with the power to turn the mansion into dust and ashes. It could sweep past the Murder House and poof, they'd all burst into tiny little particles that couldn't even see the bodies and the gore. Kinda sad to think about it: the world ending and Tate missing the view.
And if that happened- would he die, would he live, Tate doesn't quite know. Sure his body would fly apart but that's what happens when a ghost kills himself. He'd die for a time and then the demonic angel of ghost death would come back to revive him, knit his worthless body back together.
If he would die that would be fine too. Seems funny now to think about thinking about death. A while ago that was all he had wanted, like everyone else here: to leave the Murder House and go to the afterlife.
(This was an afterlife, yes. Not the one anyone had wanted.)
(Tate doesn't want an afterlife, he wants "life" to stop and death to stick.)
Violet shifts in her room; he can hear it.
(He's be okay with an afterlife if she was in it.)
§§§
And time now is pain. Each second ticking by, insanity.
She had cut her wrists and swallowed the pills because she thought that maybe time would be stopped. How ironic.
The first time her guardian demon (because she still can't say his name) had stopped her. Brought her back to the living. Continued time.
The second time, well. It had worked and it hadn't.
If Violet had know that suicide, real and successful, would have given her an infinite amount of time, she would never have done it.
All those posters or pamphlets that she got about suicide victims, the ones who couldn't kill themselves with their shiny photoshopped tears- saying that they ended up glad to remain with the living. They wanted more time.
Violet tries to laugh but it ends up being a dry sob.
How ironic, she'd have traded places with any of them.
She fucking hates irony.
§§§
If the bomb wouldn't kill them- if Murder House kept standing despite everything. No, wait. If it destroyed Murder House but if he was hiding in the basement, safe and away from it all.
(With Violet.)
Yes, just like that- the war raging around them as he cries out her name, everyone else forgotten- he, charging up to her room, pulling her down to the basement, a hero as he tucks her under a table-
And then the bomb will drop, and he'll hold her tight, keeping her safe. The rattle of guns, screams of humans, explosions of bombs: it's like Tate can hear it all now, even though he's still outside Violet's bedroom door.
She would try to never outwardly show how scared she'd be. Her eyes, they'd probably go all big but she'd still keep up the composure of a girl who didn't care. Tate could hold Violet tight, wrap his arms around her and press her to his chest so she wouldn't have to see anything.
Tate imagines the bomb vaporizing the town, razing the buildings to the ground. Sweeping up to the front door of the Murder House and he'd hear the screams of the other ghosts as they're blown apart.
Then silence would follow. Most certainly. Violet would have had her eyes squeezed shut but she'd open them, whisper "is it over?" and he'd slowly let her go. Tate would stand up, inhaling the air, and walk out of the basement with her hand in his.
The world would be spread open in front of them, the Murder House's power broken. Tate would help her up and they'd walk out onto the streets of rubble, stepping past the corpses. They would find a house together, one that hadn't been decimated, settle down. He could paint her more black roses and she could smoke as much as she wanted, he wouldn't mind.
It's a great thought but it's a fantasy.
(Yeah, perhaps Tate should be a bit worried about the fact that his new favorite daydream is the world ending. But he's a psychopath anyways.)
§§§
Violet has heard that time heals all wounds. A lie. Time numbs your wounds. Nothing can heal wounds, not truly.
Time is soupy and thick and heavy, it is not medicine or stitches.
And now she's had fifteen years of it.
Fifteen years since the attempts and the cutting and the death and the rape...
Fifteen years since Tate.
She inhales (in and out in and out in and out).
He's outside her door, as always. Violet doesn't have any real proof but she knows he's there. Tate thinks that he's sneaky, but fifteen years means that there is plenty of that accursed time to watch his habits.
Hey. I'm Violet. I'm dead. Wanna hook up?
It's like the cutting scars on her wrist (she stopped cutting a few years ago. If she wants pain now she can just kill herself and come back after a while) that Violet knows won't heal. She's the kind of girl whose scars refuse to heal.
Then again, this particular scar named Tate... maybe Violet isn't letting it heal.
Her mother has forgiven him. Violet was not told of this. But she heard because Tate isn't the only one who hides behind doors sometimes. Wounds, Violet thinks, are maybe those things that you understand will hurt but don't mind.
(It sounds more coherent in her head, to be honest.)
She pushes herself off of her bed, pulls on her shoes. Violet can't explain why she throws open the door to find him, because she doesn't want to.
(It sounds more coherent in her head, to be honest.)
Violet blames it on time.
"Hey," she says.
He flickers into view, like a buzzing neon sign, and Violet wonders if she's crying because her eyes are kind of itchy and wet.
Because here it is: the day that she's been waiting for, both of them are waiting for. There was never really a day that went by after the first year that Violet hadn't known she would forgive Tate. The rage of the first year had felt good, given her a reason to feel alive, but she's not alive so fuck it.
"Hey," replies Tate very quietly. "Are you okay- you're, um-"
"I'm fine." Violet hugs herself. "I've just been thinking."
He offers her the slightest of smiles. To be honest, Violet had expected a more shocked reaction from him. But to be fair, fifteen years is a long time.
"Me too," says Tate, voice edged with wonder.
It's good this way, though. She doesn't want too much drama.
So Violet eases herself to the floor where Tate is sitting. She doesn't smile.
"You ever think about, like, the apocalypse?" he asks.
Violet used to. Time. She shakes her head no. Everything in her eyes is hazy.
Slowly Violet lifts two fingers up to her mouth, miming holding a cigarette up to her lips. She flicks her eyes at Tate.
She hadn't expected him to understand her but he does. His hand comes up, fingers clenched around air like a lighter, raising the invisible fire to her invisible cigarette. Tate grins. It feels important.
Okay, Violet thinks. I can do this.
"I was thinking about what would happen if the world ended," Tate says.
"Tell me more."
So he does and Violet closes her eyes. The wounds are numb but they don't hurt even if they won't heal.
She pretends to smoke her cigarette and listens to Tate go on about the end of the world, as if it hasn't happened yet (it has, and it started when she sat down next to him barely a few seconds ago).
She'll blame it on the time.
(It sounds more coherent in her head...)