Disclaimer: I do not own American Horror Story.
So many years had passed since that night that Violet had lost count. When she'd sent Tate away, she had still felt alive. She had still felt meaning and motivation and all of the emotions that she had always felt. And even afterwards, for a little while, she had felt normal. Vivien and Ben were happy, and so was the baby, and, likewise, Violet pretended to be happy. In reality, however, she was in hell. It wasn't that she missed him; she would try to convince herself of that. Rather, she was simply lonely. There hadn't been any residents in the house in almost five years, and the days were blurring together, just as Moira had said that they would. She couldn't listen to new music, couldn't watch someone her own age having a life as she often liked to do. There was nothing, and sometimes she wondered if she wouldn't have been better off not knowing about everything that had happened, everything that Tate had done. She wondered if they couldn't have just all been happy there, if she could have had love n death and never been the wiser. It seemed preferable, but then she remembered that she would have not had real love, or real romance. It was all a lie, and this always brought her back to the same place in which she had started—hating the boy who, in spite of herself, she couldn't help but love more than anything in the world.
Violet sat in her room, where she spent most of her time, smoking a cigarette that she really didn't need any more and letting the blood from the cut in her wrist seep out onto her bed. It was deep, deeper than she ever would have made it when she was alive, but bleeding out gave her an escape, as sick as it sounded. Just as Hayden wasted hours stabbing Hugo over and over again, Violet would sit in that bed and die, over and over again until she finally got too tired to even reach over to grab the razor blade from her nightstand. Vivien had noticed, but she never said anything. It wasn't something she could control anymore. In body, her daughter was still just fifteen. In reality, however, she would be thirty-one the following month; this, she knew, even if Violet didn't, even if she had given up counting after her twenty-first birthday. The last one had depressed her so much…she hadn't spoken for weeks. It was the last big milestone in her life, and she realized then that it didn't really count. She would always be fifteen, forever.
Violet heard someone knocking on her door, heard a car pulling up in the driveway, but she didn't bother to move. She knew who it was—Vivien, of course. She was the only person who dared to enter, as Ben had long ago given up, insisting that only time would heal Violet. He was a shrink, but he'd never been a very good one, and she wouldn't talk to him regardless, not about the things that really bothered her. Because he didn't understand. He never would.
The door fell open eventually, and her mother walked through, looking just as beautiful as always. She couldn't help but be a little jealous, couldn't help but wonder what Tate really thought of her mother. Violet had never been very good looking, not by her standards anyway. She wasn't like Vivien. She wasn't very feminine, wasn't curvy or sexual in any way. For eternity, she was just a girl, never a woman. Had Tate enjoyed the awful thing that he had done? He must have, Violet decided. She would believe this always, no matter what anyone to her to the contrary. This one thing would always ring true in her mind, in her heart: Tate had been with Vivien, and that was the ultimate betrayal, no matter what his reasons behind it were.
"They're showing the house." her mother said, placing a hand on Violet's head. She tried very hard to ignore the slash in her wrist, tried very hard not to pay it any mind. The effort not to panic was deliberate, but it was futile. Regardless of how many times she saw her child this way, it would always frighten her half to death. But she was already dead, wasn't she? So that wasn't quite right. In truth, it was almost like dying all over again, though even that had been easier.
"Are they? I hadn't noticed." Violet's voice was monotone as she forced out the words, still staring up at the ceiling as she took a long drag off of her cigarette.
"I wish you wouldn't do that." The words were in vain, but she said them out of habit.
"I'm too old, mom. And I'm already dead, so what's the point in suffering? More than I have to, anyway." This was one of those days, one of those days when Violet didn't seem to care who she hurt, who knew that she was miserable. As long as Tate didn't see, as long as he didn't know how much he had hurt her, she could deal with all of the collateral damage later.
"Why don't you come and watch? I think they have kids, about your age." The smile she flashed was short-lived.
Violet diverted her eyes to her mother's face for just a moment, an expression of bitter disbelief securely in place on her eternally-young countenance. "Is that supposed to mean something to me?" It was worse than Vivien had expected. She had made her angry, and the fury wouldn't subside for a while, she knew. That was dangerous, especially when the houses darkness seemed to hang in the air around the young girl. She was so susceptible to it, attracted to it, in fact. She thrived within those shadows, and those times when she embraced it Vivien worried that she would be taken by it, like so many of the others. She was afraid that she would want to inflict that same pain on others, make them suffer with her. It was a natural thing, but it was too high a price to pay for company in their purgatory. Violet continued to rant, sitting up, her voice rising until she was screaming viciously, her voice becoming gravely. "Am I supposed to do to someone else like he did to me? Am I supposed to fall in love with some poor kid who doesn't know any better? Pull him into the darkness with me? I'm dead. Who cares where I am? But there's no point in trying to be alive. Why are you even here? You have dad, and Jeremy. You don't need to be here with me."
The words stung more than Vivien had expected, considering she had heard them a million times before. It had gotten worse in the past few years, but she had been so convinced that she would be able to temper it. Sometimes, she wondered if Tate hadn't been right in thinking that bringing someone to the house for Violet would be the only way to save her. He'd been willing to do the job, been willing to slit that young boy's throat in order to make her happy, in order to give her some semblance of a future. And Vivien often thought that maybe he was right, but the idea of damning someone like she had been damned seemed too awful, too unforgivable. Also, she doubted that her daughter would ever be able to truly forget the boy who had destroyed their family, and then what would happen to that poor soul, if the two teenagers ever reconciled. He too would be alone, just like Violet and Tate were right then—broken hearted and useless.
"Come with me, Violet. You know how nervous I get when new people show up. I don't like it, and it's getting harder to chase them away. Everybody knows the stories about this place, and the people who come to look at it are usually after the kicks. They expect us now."
Violet looked at the woman begrudgingly as she watched the last remnants of the slice on her wrist close, as though it had never been there. The blood too dried up, evaporated into thin air. She wasn't real, and neither was her blood—the crimson that she bled for all of the mistakes that she had made both in life and in death. Unwilling, she got to her feet and led the way downstairs, careful to keep herself hidden from the living. They were already in the front hall.
The family was not what they usually saw coming through this place. They were nice looking, normal enough, and it made both women's hearts constrict. They seemed so happy, too happy to be in this deplorable place. There was a man and wife, just the same age as Vivien and Ben had been when they first walked up the front stairs of the Murder House, both with light coloring, bright blue eyes which they had passed on to their daughter who stood beside them. She was short, petite, but voluptuous for a girl her age. She looked older, though it was easy to see in her face that she couldn't be more than fifteen or sixteen. Her hair was long and blonde, lighter than Violet's, and her features were delicate. In a way, she was an embodiment of everything that Violet had always hated in her life; she was beautiful, happy, all smiles. The girl was light and airy—something that Violet Harmon had never been close to being in her entire existence.
"It's beautiful." The woman cooed, spinning in a circle, taking in all of the tiffany fixtures and the ornate wood work. "But what about the kitchen? That's what I want to see. Come on, Bethany. Hurry up."
The mother seemed just as young as her daughter, just as exuberant, as she rushed through the house that had once been the Harmon's home, and the home of so many others. Now, it was their prison. The husband stayed in the hallway, talking to the real-estate agent. He seemed serious, business-like. Vivien was reminded of her father, the way he had always been when she was a child. He'd been a lawyer, and had always had that certain way of speaking that made her envy his composed way of speaking, the way he always seemed to make people respect him without being the least bit intimidating. The thought made her smile, eliciting an eye-roll from Violet who not stood a few stairs below her.
"What, did you fall in love or something?" she question, making her mother's face fall.
"No. He just reminds me of someone." It was enough to make Violet want to run out the door, off the property, again and again, as many times as she need to, just so that she could show up at the back door and do it all over again. She recalled the first time she had ever done this, and it only made the fury build inside of her. Sometimes, it was a lovely past time, and it always made her tired enough to fade out for a while afterwards. Yet, because that was just her luck, it always, without fail, made her think of him. It made her remember how he had held her, how he had told her he loved her, told her everything would be alright. He'd promised that it would be him and her, forever. All lies.
"Too bad he'll probably either run off soon or die…or maybe he'll snap and kill them all. Then he can go to prison. That happens too, doesn't it? I'll have to ask Hayden. She's been keeping a tally." Though, in truth, not many people had died in the house since the Harmons. They'd had some success in protecting whoever came through, but there were always those few failures. One of them had resulted in the lingering ghost of a thirty-five-year-old insurance salesman and a couple of junkies that had snuck into the basement on the wrong night. Thaddeus had had his way with them. Last of all, there was Christopher, who Hayden had brought home from a club one Halloween. She always brought somebody back with her, and, usually, they got to go home. But Chris bore a strong resemblance to Ben, and she just hadn't been able to stop herself. She argued that death did that to a person, but few of the others agreed. Not even Tate had been able to justify it. He'd been a monster before he was killed, and so it was only natural for him to continue to be one afterwards. Therefore, to him, it seemed that Hayden must have always had that killer instinct, somewhere under all of the bravado and eyeliner, the girlish demeanor. She was a monster too.
The thing that surprised Violet was that Tate hadn't killed a soul in the time since she had sent him away—at least, not that she had heard of. He'd come very close to killing that boy the night that Violet had told him goodbye, and he'd thought seriously about gutting the people who came to take away Violet's body, once it had been discovered. But he hadn't and, to him, that seemed like huge progress. Even Ben said it was.
He watched the family drive away from the attic window, remembering when it had been Violet and her parents who had been in that car—the new family coming to see the Murder House. He remembered what she had been wearing, how she had come looking for her mother's dog and had ended up in the basement. She hadn't been afraid, he didn't think, but he hadn't been sure at the time, not until she had asked what had happened to the last homeowners. When she heard the story, he remembered that she had smirked in a way that surprised even him, told the real-estate agent that they would take it. She had found it fascinating, even then, when she hadn't known the truth about the place, about the dark secrets that it concealed behind its walls. She had been brave, been strong, and Tate had admired it, envied it.
He could hear her voice moving through the halls, telling Vivien to leave her alone. Years ago, he had taken to watching her from a distance, from places where she wouldn't be able to see him. He liked to listen to her too, in spite of all the pain and havoc it wreaked for him to hear her voice, feel her presence, and not be able to touch her or even speak to her. The last time she had kissed him, when she'd vanished from under his hands, he was sure that his heart would never heal. He would never be callous again, because, when he looked at his hands, instead of seeing weapons, blood and carnage, all he saw was Violet—the way that his hands looked and felt when they slid over her skin, the way she had once smiled at him when his hand would come to cup her face. He wanted to see that, to feel it again someday, but he never would if he tainted the thoughts with blood. He would never have her if he let the demons control him.
Violet was locked in her room again, and Tate began to worry, like he always did. He could see her changing, and it terrified him. She was not soft like she had once been, was not as kind as he had known her to be. She was darker now, as though the darkness that had always been marked in a small corner of her soul was expanding, just as his own had. He had once been good too, he thought, but something had changed. It had been pain and suffering and anger and resentment that had changed him, that had allowed those despicable monsters to grow and flourish in his heart. It was the unjust nature of the life that he saw around himself that had made him incapable of feeling pity or regret. But that had all come flooding back to him when she had sent him away. He felt nothing but regret, nothing but sorrow and pity for what he had done to her and to the others in the house.
As for the kids he had killed at Westfield, he realized that it had not been a mercy killing, not as he had intended for it to be. For so long, he hadn't even been able to remember what he had done. He had thought, been convinced, that it was all a dream. But it had been real, and he could see that now. He could accept it. The thought tortured him. Worst of all, Violet knew the truth, knew every gory detail. She had all along, but it was not until she had discovered what he had done to Vivien that she had refused to be with him. She had told him that she still loved him, but that wasn't enough. Would it ever be enough?
He wondered as he stood in the shadows, peaking out through the closet door and watching Violet light another cigarette. She'd started to cut herself again. She'd broken her promise to him, yet he knew he had no right to be angry at this. He had broken promises too, more than he could count, and so it seemed fair, righteous even, that she should break her one and only promise to him.
With the touch of a button, music played through the house, the sounds of Violet's alternative bands filling his ears. She sang along as she inhaled the smoke, then exhaled it, causing it to waft from her nose. She always look like a dragon when she did this, so fierce and unbreakable But Tate had seen her broken. The way she was now was not her; it was something else, something that he was growing to despise. He missed the old Violet, the Violet that had always had so much spirit, who had loved him, loved her parents. He missed the Violet that he had tried to save, the Violet that had told him to go away. Even then, she had been different.
It would be her last night in that room. The people who had come to see the house had decided to make an offer, and there was no competition. This room would be, just as Violet had wanted, someone else's room. And she could watch them do all of the things that she would never get to do. Then, as she lay on the bed, a thought slipped into her mind. What if her mother was right? What if she did need the interaction with the living? She didn't like the girl who had come to see the house very much at all, but beggars can't be choosers. And, perhaps, it would be fun. Perhaps, the girl would be afraid of her. This notion played to the more vindictive side of Violet's personality, the darkest parts that made her want to elicit fear from others. It was the only part of death that suited her, yet she always suppressed it. But it was decided now, and the thought was growing like wild fire through her mind. She could learn to enjoy playing with the living, just as she had with that first boy. She recalled how he had looked at her oddly as she shuffled through her room, how she had been able to smell his fear as she told him that she was a ghost of her former self. He never would have been interested in her, but Tate couldn't see that. He loved her, and so he assumed that others would too.
But he was different, Violet would always note. His quirks were what had made him right for her in so many ways. He could accept her oddities because he had so many of his own, some of them much like hers. Violet hated to admit it, but she was more like Tate than she had originally thought. Years of solitude, of being nothing but a corpse, had brought that side of her to the surface and, while she didn't like it, she didn't really care to fight it.
Finally, she understood what made him so insane, so crazed, not that it mattered. Of course, it would never make a difference.