Disclaimer: I don't own American Horror Story or any lyrical content in the story. Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk, and Steven Morrissey and Johnny Marr are the respective owners.

A/N: Plot bunny that nibbled until I wrote it. A series of very short chapters linked together by fantastic band The Smiths (the lead singer of whom, to quote our very own Violet, is "cool and pissy and he hates everyone and everything.") Some lyrics may be taken out of context to fit with the theme of the chapter. All of my other fics are on hiatus but I've become absolutely consumed by AHS and Violate so had to write this. There are twelve chapters in all, all written and just in need of polishing. I'm new to the fandom so forgive any mistakes. I hope you enjoy and it'd be lovely if you could review :)

M RATING FOR LANGUAGE

Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now

Violet lies halfway down the bed, her legs dangling off the end. She hasn't done this in awhile, not since Adelaide had hidden under there and grabbed at her ankles. But now she reasons that she has nothing to fear, not since she turned into the thing that goes bump in the night.

She takes long, slow drags from her cigarettes and watches the smoke linger in the air above her face. It drifts around, having nowhere else to go. Her iPod is on full blast and the doors and windows are firmly shut; it was a preemptive move, stemming from the fact that she had known that once she lay down she would never want to get back up, even when her mother or Moira inevitably shouted at her to turn it down.

"…and heaven knows I'm miserable now…" Morrissey croons.

"Right there with you," Violet mutters, saluting the iPod dock with her cigarette.

She remembers sitting in this room with Tate, so long ago, comparing their scars with The Smiths blaring out in the background. She was such a fucking cliché, the archetype of the depressed teenager, and had been right up until the night she had thrown handfuls of pills down her throat. Although in fairness that had less to do with depression and more to do with finding out her boyfriend was a mass-murdering ghost. Those kinds of discoveries really fuck with people's heads. There had been worse discoveries to come, of course, but she wasn't thinking about that today.

"You've been in the house too long, she said, and I, naturally, fled…"

Violet glares at this lyric. She knew it had been coming; she has a wide capacity for remembering lyrics and pays more attention to them than anything she had been taught in school since moving to Los Angeles. But still, it kind of felt like the song was mocking her. Of course she's been in the house too long, she can't fucking leave. It takes a tremendous effort to even move beyond a certain part of the garden, although Moira promises her that this will get easier with time. The realisation that this was the only freedom she could aspire to, being able to stand on a little patch of grass, had relegated her to her room for days.

"Are you done listening to your depressing emo shit?"

Violet rolls her eyes. Seems like Hayden is bored and making the rounds. Most of the others in the house have the decency not to materialise in personal spaces. There are two notable exceptions to this, and one of them is standing at the end of her bed. Violet isn't in the mood for a sparring match, though she can't let the woman's astounding lack of musical knowledge go without correction.

"It's not emo, dumbass."

Hayden scoffs. "Whatever. I'm just here to tell you that your boy toy is smashing up the basement again."

"So go stop him." Violet replies, ignoring the involuntary lurch her stomach still does whenever Tate is brought into the conversation. "He's not my problem." Anymore, she adds silently.

"He's really upset," Hayden continues, uncovering Violet's sore spot and scratching at it until it bleeds. That she can do this with words alone is almost impressive. "It began when you started playing your music."

Enough.

"Go away," Violet says, and a second later she is alone to consider why it hurts her so much that Tate still thinks of her whenever The Smiths are playing. It sucks for him, really, because they're a great band. She knows how he idolises Kurt Cobain; maybe she should play Nirvana and really get his back up.

The decision lies half-formed in her mind as she listens to the rest of the song.

"In my life, why do I smile at people who I'd much rather kick in the eye?…"

This makes Violet smile, not because she relates to it but because of how much she subverts it. If there was someone Violet wanted to kick in the eye then by God she would kick that person in the eye. None of that false-smile bullshit, she would make her feelings clear.

In most cases, at least. There's a young man currently wrecking the basement that she would very much like to kick in the eye, but while she is by no means smiling at him, she can't hurt him either. Not because she doesn't want to (she wants it so much it burns) but because in order to hurt him she would first have to be in the same room as him, and that isn't something she's figured out how to do yet.