Never, Forever
The greatest trick the devil ever pulled
was convincing the world
that monsters only play beneath us
The hardest part about it isn't passing time. He's been here long enough, far longer than her. Time isn't the issue although the words she uttered are every bit a matter of time.
People speak about never with such confidence when forever is still a fantasy. Until it's not.
And it changes into a nightmare because forever turns out to mean a crowded space in a house smack in middle of sunny, gorgeous, superficial California suburbia where history crawls along the walls in traces of gore and screams long gone.
No, he knows how to make forever meaningless. The problem is that the one he wants to share this eternity with seems determined to really sit it out.
But she's young and has only tasted death for eight months - not that he's counting – and he knows she'll come around. He's so certain of that until he isn't, until one of those moments creeps up behind him again and catches him by the hair, drags him to the ground, digging fists of icy desolation into his chest until he can't breathe.
Because it wasn't a lie when he told her she's all he has. He's not sure she understands, no matter how much she thought they were alike once. She's revoked that opinion.
It's been happening more frequently and there are days where he's sure the solitude will kill him. If his head doesn't get to him first. Psycho, schizo, insane, motherfucking crazy, whatever the label, the grey matter in the confines of his skull plays tricks on him when he's by himself. And that's a lot these days.
He doesn't know if there was ever a Good Tate and a Bad Tate, that bipolar thing he read about where people actually give them names or associate them with some angel devil dichotomy complex. He's pretty sure that's all crap.
He isn't able to tell if there's that kind of a disconnect inside because it's still just him. One body, one head, it could be twenty different personalities inside there and that wouldn't make a difference because he's the one doing the dirty work for them out here, in reality.
He's screwed up from the inside out, no denying and no fixing.
It's nice to pretend though that it could be that way. Like he's got little imaginary friends sitting on each shoulder, telling him what to think. Who to hurt. Who to love.
There would be one that remembers all the shit and revels in knowing the how and why, who craves a repeat. Who really, honestly believes that life in this world is a waste of breath. Especially for some people. It just takes the right kind of itch.
The other one shuts out all the crap and is afraid of loneliness, only wants someone to understand and cries for forgiveness nobody will give. Then convinces him he might find it anyway, in the embrace of the girl he wanted - still wants - to protect. Totally not true though, when he can't even help himself.
But even that Tate can't feel guilt.
There's days when he finds blood on his hands, slaughter soaking his clothes and he doesn't actually remember driving the shovel into Hayden's guts. Or the screwdriver through Travis and his pretty face. Or breaking the twins' bones on the basement walls until their laughter fizzles out.
On others he can and he takes a stroll through the details in his mind again and again, long after the ghosts rise again and know better than to stick around. It only satisfies him marginally. He's taken to staying in the basement anyway, the mess barely stands out with all the medical shit the old doctor has going on down here.
But he tries, he does. He wants to repent.
There's no other way when he wants to be the one that makes her happy and it's painfully obvious that it's not going to happen with the shadows of the past lapping at his heels. Too bad she never quite specified how the fuck he was supposed to pay for all of it.
Maybe time is the enemy after all when it decided to despise him too and refuse to turn back. Just far enough to unrape, unkill, unlie. It's not like he's asking for twenty-something years to get a shot at life again. He'd have never met her that way.
All it takes is enough clean slate to erase what he did that hurt her. Everything that can't be fixed now. It's the unwanted consequences he regrets.
Every sorry falls on deaf ears, he reads nothing but contempt at his repeated apologies and the dismissal burns deeper than gasoline feeding on flesh. She throws out the blackboard after his third chalked attempt of putting it into words.
Maybe he should write them in blood next time, it'll be harder to get rid of. She might even crack a smile at his insistence before slashing the wallpaper. He could decorate all the walls that aren't his or hers anymore. Some new family has repurposed the room.
On Halloween she walks out of the house at the crack of dawn and he almost chains himself up in the attic to suppress the urge to follow her. He knows she'll see him if he traces her footsteps. Invisibility won't shield him out in the real world where time still runs.
He wonders if it would be rage that she meets him with, though she's getting close to perfecting her stoic bravado. She's always been good at that, cold and cruel when she wants to be. Tearing the world to shreds before it can hurt her.
It leaves him so wound up that he doesn't set a foot outside the grounds and he knows it's fucking pathetic to sit around, waste his day of freedom waiting for her return. Just to know she didn't get hurt out there, in the world that's still in her era of life but no longer really his.
There's nothing he wants from beyond their property line anymore. He doesn't give a shit about material things. Oceans, bonfires and moonlight escapades are pointless, now that he's had a taste of sharing it with her. Only her.
Funny, how realizing that makes this all the more pathetic to be waiting here.
She's not looking for a repeat of that night together. It's not quite the same now that both of them are dead, not the easy-going, full-of-promise, romantic-getaway scenario when she's seen everything he is. The monster hiding in plain sight.
And she returns in the precious handful of minutes before the sun resurfaces for the new day, the orange glow of paper and tobacco moving through the gate. His lungs expand, sucking in air at the sight of her and he didn't even register that he stopped breathing.
The dimness doesn't cloak him though and her pale, willowy form stops halfway up the drive, hair falling over her collarbones. It's too late when he notices that she has seen him sitting on the steps, clearly waiting up.
He's forgotten to stay out of sight today, when their bodies are the most corporeal.
She doesn't speak but stays where she is, dragging on her cigarette. She takes her time while the sky behind her shifts from midnight indigo to the misty grey of morning. Autumn breaks with it but this is the West Coast and the leaves don't fall over here.
Her eyes drift over him, lazily almost and his second revelation is that he hasn't bothered to change his sweater in weeks. He's heard bloodstains are just the look for Halloween but it doesn't do much to credit his good behaviour.
It's an improvement though that she doesn't order him to go away or break eye contact. He expected her to say the damn words the second her gaze landed on him. But maybe she had that good a day, she doesn't seem to be in the mood for punishment.
She finishes her smoke, scraping her converse over sparks on the concrete. She doesn't press it into his throat with spiteful eyes, like he envisioned. Dreamed, hoped? He's reached whole new heights of self-deprecation.
If he was speaking in bipolar terms, there's that one Tate on the fringes of his mind, nudging him to grab her right then while she stands there unsuspecting and force her mouth open, demand answers or kisses or anything but her silence. The other Tate kicks him in the temple, reminding him of his promises.
He's not sure if they still stand because if you love someone, you probably shouldn't be thinking of wrapping hands around their throat.
So he digs his fingers into the tiles under his jeans, a silent anchor to remind him and mirrors her. Doesn't do anything. Daylight creeps over his face, making his eyes narrow and she walks past him like he's nothing more than one of the new cedar wood patio chairs that one of the residents decided to put out front.
Like nothing happened. Like she still means her never.
Her first anniversary comes and goes, he follows her still, always staying out of sight but she's grown increasingly flighty and he doesn't even know if she sleeps anymore. At least it's not in a bed. They're empty save for the living and they rarely stay long enough to break in the new beds before they're scared away.
He's not above grovelling but knows it won't do him good, not after the year of silence. He opts for sneakier ways. Gifts he leaves in places he knows she'll find them stay where they are, weeks after he's planted them. She's too smart to not know their origin, their purpose.
The ones she doesn't ignore, she destroys. The first letter is set on fire without a second thought and it's because she probably knows he's there, watching from behind the banister, waiting for the inevitable reaction.
Confirmation that more seasons will pass without a word from her.
The things that follow meet the same fate and he doesn't bother wrapping anything. She never reads the pieces of writing but at least her glare at the trinkets is more than indifference before she flicks open her lighter.
The glossy feather too, curling, blackening to dust in the greedy flame. She doesn't want to be reminded of anything they shared, least of all birds.
The carefully deposited packet of cigarettes, the ones that used to be her favourite, he watches her dump in her father's study. He starts running out of ideas after his twelth present try ends up in the trash.
So he retreats. He's not about to push her because that's not what people who are in love and care about the other person's feelings do. So he's heard. It's not what good people do and he's trying so damn hard to be that for her.
It should be impossible because they are stuck in one damn house but she doesn't see him. Doesn't want to see him trying to be better. Repentance - he even looks it up, tries to make sense of what it is she needs him to do and still comes up empty.
It's frustrating in a teeth-grinding, fist-clenching sort of way and doesn't make his plan to make things up to her go any better. His skin ends up drenched in red more often than before and it's a miracle Moira still does his laundry at all.
He thinks about trying to get Dr. Harmon to counsel him again. Reconsiders when he reminds himself of their last conversation. They've already covered what the shrink really thinks of him.
All shades of fucked up, no chance of salvation. He doesn't deserve forgiveness and mercy is wishful thinking. It makes him want to shove a fire poker down the man's hypocritical throat and rip him out of that reunited happy family fantasy he's been sharing with his dead wife.
But that's not taking responsibility for what he did. It's not paying for the pain he caused.
It takes more months of silence for him to make himself stop following her and punishing himself with seeing that her life goes on just fine without him. To draw back, limit his space back to the basement. Totally selfless, right?
Not that she sees it because if she did there should be a reaction. Nope, she's still adamant, sticking to never.
When even Hayden gets sick of being a bloody victim to his mood swings and keeps her distance, he takes to the crazy doctor's pharmaceuticals. Because there's only so much any not-quite-dead teen can do before loneliness and wretchedness and a whole lot of hate and hormones eat away at him.
It's hard to be the person he tries to be when there's nobody to show him how. She could. But she won't.
And with every week he doesn't see, hear, touch her, he's starting to forget why it matters so much to prove his worth. Getting high takes the edge off, at least. He always comes around from it somewhere on the floor. One time, he's so out of it that the bullet holes re-open and through the haze, he registers that he's bleeding out on grimy concrete.
That's how he figures his self-control has really gone to shit.
He comes around from oblivion in a crimson puddle that is all his own for a change. He doesn't need to look to know his body back to hiding the evidence of his crime and still, it feels like he's been perforated all over again. The pain is dulling but the memory clings.
Clearing the spots in his vision in the absence of light, he blinks once, twice and when he still sees her leaning against the opposite wall after the third time, he rises up on his elbows. Just like that, he feels stone-cold sober again.
She's here. Actually, voluntarily and he sure hopes he's not dreaming. Probably not though, she's wearing too much to be a dream. It could be autumn again already, he can't really tell anymore from down here.
"You look like shit," she says, arms crossed under the oversized knit cardigan.
It's a miracle he finds his voice at all, after weeks of not using it and utters a sound that's not quite affirmation. She doesn't notice or doesn't care about his struggle, sliding down into a crouch, resting elbows on her knees. He spots a hole in the fine meshing of her tights stretched across the knee, his gaze snagging on it for a second before finding her face again.
He can't stop looking, has this crazy intense need to memorize everything about her again. That line of her nose sloping into the gentle curve of her lips. The dark intelligence behind her eyes, fixed on him. Delicate ankles attached to thin legs, holding her weight.
"You're wondering why now?" she clarifies.
"Am I?" he manages to sound less like newly risen from the dead and pushes until he's sitting upright.
She cocks an eyebrow. "I'm assuming you still have brain cells that work with all that shit you take these days."
The answer feels like a sucker punch to the gut because it means one of two things – she's been spying on him just as he has followed her or she's been asking around. It only took two damn years.
But he knows best how meaningless time can be in their eternity.
"Maybe," he concedes, still trying to read her face.
"It got boring when you stopped."
And she shrugs against the brick, like all of this was never a big deal. Like playing cat and mouse is all they've ever done and she never screamed those two words in his face that broke him. Broke her just as hard, a ragged fissure straight down the centre that she hid under layers of loose sweaters and distance.
But forever is a long time to hurt and everyone gets sick of it. He's been there before.
He tilts his head just a bit, weighing her explanation, "You're still bad at lying."
There it is, the glint of challenge in her expression and it's never felt better, knowing he can rile her up like that with the simple truth. It's more of a reaction than he's gotten since that night.
"We can't all be pathological liars, Tate," she reminds him with cool finality and there's just something about the way his name rolls off her tongue…
It's out before he can process what he's said. "I never lied about being in love with you."
Hazel eyes slide shut, she sighs at his response. There's quiet for a long time and his words hang in the dust before settling on the ground between them, limp and worn.
"I know," she murmurs and when her gaze slides to him again, it's sharp, ready to cut deep, "I didn't come here to forgive you. I think what you've been doing is stupid and doesn't make you less of a lying, manipulating, disturbed shithead and none of it means that you're fucking sorry for what you did. You're not making up for anything and all your creeping around is not regret, it's just what you think I want from you. Like how you thought I needed someone to be with that wasn't you. Or needed me to think I wanted to die with you. It's all bullshit, it doesn't work that way. But I'm tired of waiting for you to get that."
And isn't it just spectacular, how his perception of being good for her doesn't match up with hers at all? Still, he ventures that what she's saying ultimately means one thing.
"You don't want me to … leave?" he questions, ever so articulate.
"I did," she detaches from her position, crossing the space to settle her knees on either side of his legs, pale skin dipped in the testimony of his penalty, "Until I stopped denying that you won't just disappear. Not for real anyway. I knew you were there when you followed me around. You can't haunt a ghost, idiot."
She's so close, after all this time. He could count her lashes, every speck of darkness in her iris, if he wanted to. He can barely keep his hands planted on the ground, is putting in far too much effort not to reach out and feel her skin against his.
Even if the new revelations throw him.
"You…"
"Yeah," she brushes the curtain of hair behind her ear, "I sensed you."
"So why?" he repeats the question, still too far from grasping the reason why she didn't call him out on it months ago. Didn't tell him to go away over and over until he had no choice but to vanish completely. Violet smirks back at him.
"Don't ask questions you know the answer to."
And then she's leaning forward to catch him by the lips and it's everything he wants, still means nothing. He shuts the hell up, forgets that he had any questions. Blocks out the voices in his head that call for all the things she's accused him of.
They're sensations he's gone without for too long, he's not going to think about the whys just yet. Between pulling her closer, sliding his tongue against hers and catching the silk of her hair in his fingers, he realizes.
Time wasn't working against him. The house has nothing but forever to give.