A/N: As The World Falls Down is done and of course, I have another AU idea. Violet sees Tate when she is visiting her mother in the hospital and she cannot stop thinking about him. When he shows up on her doorstep and asks her to help him, she cannot help but comply. Get ready. Violet is alive as is Tate. The house is not haunted as we know it in the show, but it does still have a sinister character to it. The Rubberman incident did not happen. Vivien is in the mental hospital as she was in the show, but the reason is not her rape.
May The Devil Come
She really did not want to visit her mother in the hospital.
She scoffed at the euphemism for what the place really was – a place for people that society labeled as crazy. She couldn't help but wonder if they were just different and because of that, because they threw off the chains of normalcy, because they dared to embraced a life other than what people deemed acceptable or proper, society got frightened and locked them away like a child would lock his closet to keep the monsters from getting him while he slept unawares. Different and crazy were not necessarily the same. She always felt different, but she wasn't crazy. Or at least she didn't think she was.
"Come on, Violet."
Her father motioned her down a grim hallway which was painted a stark, unforgiving white and was crowded with sharp metal carts loaded with medication, syringes, and gauze pads. She nodded to the nurse on call – an old, wrinkled woman with a smear of lipstick on the corner of her mouth who was wearing threadbare scrubs with horrible, huge flowers on them – who returned her gesture with a less than enthusiastic wave. She dragged her feet behind her father, feeling more and more uncomfortable as she passed the rooms that held the poor souls she had been thinking about.
Who gets to decide who is crazy and who is not? What if the normal people are actually the crazy ones?
Because in her opinion, she wasn't sure if she knew who was more in their right minds.
Behind one room she could hear screaming. The next one was deathly silent. She didn't know which was more terrifying.
She did not know what compelled her to look up from the cracked linoleum floor.
But she did. And at that moment was when it all changed.
Several months ago, her mother had had a gruesome miscarriage and as much as she tried to hold it together, Violet knew something was wrong with her mother.
She didn't talk as much and when she did, it was a soft whisper rather than the loud laughter that Violet was accustomed to. It was almost as if her voice was slipping away from her and soon she would have no voice at all, all sound consumed by the immense sadness that now was engulfing and devouring her soul.
She stared off into space a lot and Violet would have to try harder and harder to snap her out of it each subsequent time. Her father had even less luck than her. She would stare for hours outside the kitchen window, but Violet was sure she didn't hear the birds or saw the flowers swaying in the wind.
Doctors told them she was depressed – which came as no surprise to either of them – and Violet even yelled in one doctor's face that even she could tell that and she didn't even have a high school diploma yet. That visit didn't end so well.
The revolving tray of medications on their kitchen table did nothing and she just ended up flushing them down the toilet because well, what was the point?
So finally, her dad broke and checked her into a mental hospital, hoping to get her the treatment she needed. Violet wasn't happy with the decision, but what else could they do? Their love and support and frustration and pleading weren't enough.
So there they were, visiting her at least three times a week in a small room that was anything but inviting and comforting.
This time was like the ones before – cold, awkward, upsetting. She hated coming to this place because it only reminded her how fucked up her family was. Her dad grieving over a wife who might as well be dead and a daughter who has lost not one but both her parents to Prozac and sterile needles and misery.
But then she looked up and saw two eyes looking back at her.
She was overcome with the feeling that something had been set in motion, could feel it racing towards her, and that she had no control over it whatsoever.
He was about her age, maybe a year or so older. He had blond hair that fell into his eyes, a sharp mouth that was curved into the hint of a playful smirk, and cheekbones that could cut butter. His face filled the entire window and he was so close to the glass that she could see the slight condensation of his breath.
His eyes, dark as chocolate, nighttime, and coal all rolled into one. They were the embodiment of shadows, of scary things lurking in the sinister dark of the night. They pierced right through her and shivers ran down her arms and hairs stood up on the back of her neck. It felt like all the breath had been sucked out of her lungs.
How could one look induce such a complex, dizzying, deadly array of emotions? She had never experienced anything like it.
She couldn't help but stare back, entranced by the contrast of the ugly, cold hospital with this boy's beauty. Someone that beautiful didn't belong here. The hospital was powerless to keep him from standing out, like a sunflower in a field of dandelions. He was born to be noticed.
She was rooted to her spot and she was positive her mouth was hanging open in shock and awe, but she couldn't bring herself to care right now. She felt like she was locked in his gaze forever and to be completely honest, she wouldn't have minded.
"Violet! Where are you?"
Her dad's voice physically shook her out of her trance. She tore her eyes away and broke into a run down the hallway, her heart pounding and her breathing feeling much too labored for the amount of exercise she was doing. The world felt out of balance, like she had spent too long spinning with her arms out like she did as a little kid and now she was lying on the grass watching the ground tilt.
Who was he?
And more importantly, what did he want from her?
"Hey, mom. I missed you." She gave her mother a kiss on the cheek, but she got no response back. She sat in the chair across from her mother and her doctor, who gave her a sympathetic look.
"Hi, Viv, how are you doing?" Her father took her hands in his and just held them, like he did every visit. She thinks it's because he hopes she can feel his love radiating out of his palms.
"Fine." Her eyes were unfocused and tired and Violet knew this was going to be a bad visit.
"So, Dr. Harmon, I wanted to give you an update on your wife's progress…"
As they devolved into scientific lingo that Violet had no desire to try to understand, her mind wandered back to the boy behind the window. She crossed her arms as she usually did when she was thinking about something and she turned to look at the rain hitting the windows on the opposite walls.
By the end of the visit, she didn't come to any conclusions except for one.
She wanted to see him again.
A/N: What do you think? Reviews make me smile!