Author's Note: This was written for the AHS Exchange! It definitely tip-toes a bit out of my comfort zone, but I had so much fun writing this, honestly. I can't wait for the next exchange! Everyone was just freaking brilliant.
Warnings before reading: this is borderline non-consensual and involves femslash. If you are squicked out easily by those things, turn away.
As for CiYS readers, I PROMISE I'll get a new chapter up soon. Pinky swear! Loveeee yoouuuuu!
Hungry Sister
These first three years haven't been easy; at least not as simple as her parents have seemed to make them out to be. Since the one family had evacuated and emptied the house again, since her last encounter with him (his tears, his eyes, his mouth), Violet has spent the majority of her time sulking in her old empty bedroom (technically his too), a heartbroken and petulant teenager for eternity, with the rare occasion wherein she joins her family for holiday celebrations, or when she actually tires of her self-inflicted solitary confinement and she goes to seek out another soul to entertain her for a little while.
Her head and heart are persistently heavy with the weight of it all, everything that she's had to come to terms with, things she's still avoiding having to address. It's a hard pill to swallow – accepting the fact that your whole family is dead (on top of all the other shitty things they'd already been through), that she's dead, that they're trapped together in a space that grows increasingly smaller every day, and that the boy you … and what he had done. Where was she now, after all of it, with the promise of this Groundhog Day forever?
Some days are easier than others, though. But this is not one of those days.
She circles her hand into a tight fist against the hardwood, her body stretched out, stomach down, along the cold floorboards of her private space, the echo of her breathing soothing and wounding her all at once. Because when it's quiet, like this, like now, she can still hear him panting in her ear and the beat of her heart when he was near and that means remembering things and remembering is always the worst part of this inner battle.
Violet sniffs and whimpers, and she swipes fiercely at her wet cheeks, hating the way her insides turn to hot, tight coils upon thinking of it, of him, of everything they were. She wishes it would just end already, all the racketing emotions, with everything bouncing so furiously around inside her chest that she feels like she might explode from the force of it. She sits up suddenly, her hair swooshing around her face, and she lets out a scream into the silence around her, blood curdling and glass shattering, until she's out of breath and her throat is raw and her chest is aching.
No one comes for her. Then again, they never do.
Heaving, she collapses backward, her head connecting hard to the floor and she seethes and stares accusatorily at the ceiling through blurry tears. It was this fucking place, it would drive her crazy. And she's trapped here, broken forever, with all the worst fucking kinds of people. It wasn't fair. This isn't her life. It shouldn't have been, anyway. She should've tried. She should've been better. He had to fuck things up, even now; here he is, ruining her over and over and over without even trying to. She's so mad. So, so fucking mad. And the word is beginning to garner different definitions each passing day.
"What was that about?"
The cool voice is unfamiliar. Violet tilts her head to the side, a tear rolling down the side of her face and falling with a subtle plop against the wood, and she spots pale, smooth knees, and as her gaze drifts further up, she finds quite a womanly figure attached to a face she doesn't recognize. Her brows knit in confusion and she pushes up on her elbows. "…You're new."
The woman smirks, matte red lips and bright eyes, tilted round hips like she'll never get to have, and Violet's tummy flickers with a singular emotion: Envy. Hitching her skirt up with one hand, the other tucked behind her back, this intruder assumes a place across from Violet on the floor, and Violet inadvertently steals a peek underneath as she settles, her cheeks flushing at the flash of black lace.
"Not really," the redhead in disguise replies coolly, propping herself backward with splayed hands and stiff arms, breasts forward without trying. "I've been around for quite a while, actually."
"I've never seen you."
Her lips curl teasingly again. "You think you know everything about this place, just because you've been here for, what? A few years?" The laugh that falls out is deep and effortless, and Violet's mouth twitches into a frown. "There's a lot about this house you don't understand." Moira pauses, then smiles. "Yet."
Violet doesn't like her brand of condescension, doesn't like the way this woman seems so easily sensual in her just being; it makes her angry in a whole new kind of way. She's kind of relieved to be feeling something different instead of the same old throbbing hurt, and she takes it and goes with this fresh level of dissatisfaction, she revels in it even, and it reminds her of playing hate games with the cunty girls at school. "So, you're kind of a bitch, huh?"
"A bitch with a new pack of cigarettes." Withdrawing her hand from behind her back, she proffers a package of Marlboro Lights, and all the air expels from Violet's chest and her hand shoots out. Moira draws back with another womanly laugh, and Violet sneers at the sound. "Let's hear an apology, first. Then we'll share."
Violet gnashes her teeth, the addiction in her veins screams, making her livid and bleeding red in her eyes as she studies this new addition to her small world here. She hasn't had a single puff in months, Constance rarely if ever lives up to her word on delivery, she fucking needs it right now, and damn it, she'll sink that low if this skank will give her at least one. "Fine. I'm sorry I called you a bitch. Please?"
"There you go. Was that so hard?" After taking one for herself, she tosses the box into Violet's lap, and the younger girl scrambles to pluck out a cancer stick. Lighter pitched in too, and in seconds she's breathing in sweet nicotine and her woes dissipate on a blue cloud of thin smoke that makes the other woman hazy in her line of vision.
"Ohh, man," Violet blows streams out through her nose and closes her eyes, in absolute serenity for the first time in a long, long while. "I almost forgot how good this tastes. Thank you, seriously."
When she does open her eyes, Moira's leveling her with a look that seems innately familiar, like she should know what it means without having to ask, and it makes her blush, but she can't quite figure it out. "…What?"
The abrupt query rouses the older woman from wherever she had been, and she rolls a shoulder languidly, drawing in a drag that Violet mirrors. "Nothing." She waits for a minute, long lashes brushing her cheeks, then back up. "You're Tate's girlfriend, aren't you?"
It draws up bile from the depths of her empty stomach, and Violet fights the urge to dry heave. She had actually forgotten for a whole minute. It was glorious, and now it was gone. There's another reason to dislike this uncovered inhabitant of Murder House. "No," she says, bitter and clipped.
Moira obviously doesn't buy it, sees right through her with narrowed, catlined eyes and a perfectly manicured eyebrow slinks upward along her forehead. She sucks in another drag, blows it out in the direction of Violet's face. "Don't lie. Everyone knows about it."
"Fuck you." She steels herself, and Violet looks away before the water at her lash line can spill over. "You don't know shit."
Clucking her tongue, Moira leans in and brushes Violet's knee gently, and for a second Violet is caught off guard and twitches away. She spies out of the corner of her eye that instead of that sultry look the woman's been wearing for the scant moments they've spent together, there's something more akin to sympathy behind those eyes now. It makes her wonder immediately, "Wait- Did he kill you, too?"
Moira draws back with a louder, less-feminine laugh, almost a sharp bark, and her eyes glint. "Close enough," she chuckles and flicks her ashes on to the floor, and her eyes skirt toward Violet's bedroom window with a significant tilt of her chin. Violet thinks the woman's trying to give her a hint, but she's nonplussed to what it could be. Her gaze switches back, and Moira nods at the younger. "Did he do this to you?"
A surge of protectiveness rips through her, and Violet spits out a harsh negative before she can think of it. She settles back, remembering she doesn't have to stick up for him because he's a dick and screwed up her life and raped and killed her mother and deserves everything he gets and that includes all of her hate, so she relents and lets her melancholy slip back into the slump of her shoulders. She fingers the cigarette, sad to see it dwindling close to the filter. "I … kind of accidentally killed myself." Her admittance is sheepish, and she glances up to see the woman staring suspiciously, and Violet huffs. "What now?"
"Accidentally?" Moira scoffs, and Violet glares. "How do you 'accidentally' kill yourself?"
"I didn't—I don't know," Violet's on the defensive again, and she snubs the cigarette into the floor and tosses the butt across the room.
"Whatever," Moira mumbles off a bored-sounding sigh and dashes out her remainder as well.
"How come you've never shown yourself around here before now? You obviously died before we got here."
Moira lifts an eyebrow. "You so sure about that?"
Violet glowers. "What's that supposed to mean?"
She shrugs. "Others have died here since you've moved in – not just mommy, daddy, and baby brother." There's a hard edge to the woman's words, a callous implication, and Violet shifts uncomfortably in her place. Taking note, Moira smiles something sinister that makes her wonder where that mouth has been before, the ease with which her lips move indicates places Violet's never been and may never get to go. Eventually, Moira breaks into a taunting smirk and rolls her eyes. "No wonder that psycho's all over you. You'll believe anything, won't you?"
Flaring nostrils and scowling, Violet makes the decision to officially hate this woman, from dye-job head to home-pedi toe, and Moira seems to get that and eats it up like lunch with her shitty little grin. "And what do you know about it? It's easy to hang around in the shadows and take potshots about things you have no idea about, isn't it?"
"Oh, I know enough about your boy," Moira coyly shares and leans back again, and Violet notices her prominent cleavage that she's strategically put on display. That, coupled with the tones she's chosen to utter such a statement, sends terrible ripples up her spine. "I've known little Tater Tot since all that horror, bloodshed, and self-loathing were just pretty glimmers in his shiny eyes." She looks faraway for a moment, and Moira's smile softens, though when she's sure Violet's a captive audience, that smile sinks into a darker look, and she shrugs with a slack expression. "But it didn't last long."
Violet stares, stunned and silent for a pregnant moment, considering the woman's words and whether or not it would be wise to engage. But curiosity, as it always does, it gets the best of her. "You … knew Tate when he was alive?" When Moira doesn't respond further, merely blinking in her direction, Violet swallows and presses on. "When he was a kid? Were you like his babysitter or something?"
The redhead exhales heavily and sends her gaze skyward, irritated by the dramatic hesitation, and she drops her head to hang low and peers under curled bangs at the girl across from her. "Or something," she finally drawls. Her arms begin to move then, palms pressing flat on the ground in front of her crossed legs, chest low, and Moira lifts herself up on to her knees and slinks a shifting movement forward, and Violet gets a sinking sense that she's prey in that moment. "Listen, I'd be more than happy to regale you with fairytales about your sweet boy, but I'd be lying if I said he wasn't always like that. The way he is now."
Violet doesn't want to believe her, there's a sick tug in her stomach that reminds her of when she first started unraveling all these dirty secrets about Tate, about this place, everything that led her to where she is now. But the way this woman stares, the cant of her head, the slight sway of her hips as she slides in just a little closer – it tempts her and she unconsciously bends inward.
"I want you to tell me," Violet breathes out sharply when Moira invades her personal space and comes in close, when she sniffs the air around her collar. "I want to know."
"Mmm, how does that old saying go?" Moira wonders on a whisper, her face rising so that she's nearly nose-to-nose with the younger girl. She watches Violet's gaze drop down to her ruby pout, then back up again, and her lips curve into a smirk. "Curiosity killed the cat, right?" She doesn't give Violet time to question or rebuff, pushes her mouth greedy into confused, chapped lips and darts her tongue inside to swirl with softer flesh when she gasps.
Violet makes a horrible noise and yanks her face back, hands shoving at Moira's shoulders. She's spitting mad. "What the fuck are you doing?"
"Oh, come on," Moira pouts and takes Violet's hands in a snap movement, pushes with probably more force than necessary so that she's collides against the wood and her head makes a pleasant thudding sound against the floor. She clambers over and settles atop the smaller waisted girl, pinning her to the floor beneath her. "I can count on both hands how many times you've eyeballed me since I walked in. I can practically smell you, honey."
"You're fucking crazy, get off me," Violet grunts and struggles, and Moira pushes her arms down harder. "I'm not gay."
Moira chuckles and leans in close, larger swells pushing against smaller. "Neither am I," she murmurs against the shell of Violet's ear and licks, and Violet squirms underneath her and bucks up with a tiny sound in the back of her throat that she wishes she didn't make unconsciously. "Doesn't mean we don't need certain things."
"I can handle those things on my own," Violet growls and jerks a knee again, trying to dislodge the woman's frame, but to no avail. "I'll scream."
"Do you promise?" Moira grins and digs her fingernails into Violet's tender upper arm, obviously relishes in how the younger hisses and winces and resists underneath. "Look, I'll be fair; let's make a deal."
"Okay. How about I won't fucking kill you if you get off me right now?"
"Or," she continues with a sneaky, conspiratorial air, and she rolls her hips forward with a sigh at the hard pressure. "You let me have this, and I'll tell you whatever you want to know, even things you'll wish you didn't."
Violet freezes, considers this deal, and the implications of Moira's offer, and that stunning look she's giving her now that holds her in place far more effectively than her lithe body. She juts her chin out, tries to save face. "Why should I believe anything you'll say? I don't even know you."
Moira shrugs and moves Violet's arms farther apart, stretching her wingspan out lazily, gaze examining as she studies the younger girl's torso carefully, considering. "Because I know you, and either way, I'm going to touch you, and I just thought I'd be nice and give you a little tit for my tat." There's a suggestion under there, obviously, and Violet snarls at this woman's daring. Squinting down at her, Moira finally relents, knowing she's not going to be winning this battle without sharing something substantial first. "That bitch next door is the one that killed me."
"….Constance?"
She releases one of Violet's arms and points to her eye, unmarred and pretty green. "She shot me." Her head bows toward the window again, and she refastens her hand around Violet's limb, and Violet follows her gaze toward the pane of glass to find daylight fading fast. "She buried me where your father built that tacky gazebo."
"Why would she—" Violet's words die on a hard inhalation and she tries to sink her chest back into the floor, unsure of when this woman found time to slip a hand up her shirt. "What the fuck—"
"I shared, you share," she lilts and shoves a hand up higher, firmly cupping one of the small mounds. With half a smirk, she tilts her head, watching Violet's rapidly changing expressions. "You're cute when you're mad, has anyone ever told you that?"
Someone has, and it scares her a little when her insides throb over it. "Why are you doing this?" It comes out shakier than she wanted it to, she feels like a victim and Violet hates the broken sound of her own voice.
Moira hesitates in her mindless caressing and squeezes instead, trailing her fingertips over a hardened nipple before she withdraws her hand completely and smoothes both palms up Violet's covered chest. She takes in the small beads of water pooling in hazel eyes and she sighs, exasperated. "Do you know how pathetic you look, sulking around here, day in and day out? With that," she touches the middle of Violet's pouting mouth, pulls the lower lip down with her fingernail, "miserable look on your face? And all because of that psychotic moppet that sobs your name while he jerks off under your floorboards?"
Both hands resume an idle exploration, there's no longer a need to restrain the younger girl who seems compliant beneath her now. "I'd like to just say it's because I'm bored, and horny – which isn't a lie – but there's more to this than that, and I think you know it." One hand reaches up to run tantalizing trails down Violet's neck and collar with fire-engine colored nails, while the other skirts further down, past her tummy, dipping boldly under the elastic of her tights and cotton panties Moira already knows to be the shade of Easter pastels. "You could be happy, Violet. I've seen it in your eyes sometimes, when you think no one's looking. You've just gotta… give a little."
Her digit slips between the folds with ease, the girl's so wet she almost slides too far and misses, and Moira can't help but smirk down at the red-faced teen at her discovery. "Now, I thought you said you didn't want this?"
"Get. Off," Violet grits through clenched teeth, those tears threatening to spill. But she only rewards Moira with another sharp gasp when she prods at her clit dangerously.
"I'm only trying to help you," Moira presses in close and grinds a wet patch into Violet's thigh while pumping a single finger into her. She hums against the soft skin of the younger girl's neck, small kisses, a fat wet line trailed up under her jaw, and she's pleased by Violet's acquiescence as she arches her neck back to give her space to work. "So, what else do you want to know?"
"Tell me about Tate," Violet interjects with little hesitation on a shaky pant, her eyes closing, as she tries valiantly to ignore the supple press of the other woman against her body and focus solely on the warm clenching of her stomach and below, the satisfying tug she's so welcome to absorb. She tries to see his face behind her eyelids instead, like when she's revved up and has to let it out by herself and her fingers aren't quite as long as this woman's or as rough as his. For a heartbeat, she misses him terribly, and her chest cinches up. "I wanna know about him, what he was like. Tell me something."
The woman purses her lips and almost pauses in her indolent fingering, but she mulls her request over and instead raises her thumb and presses it to the bundle of nerves that makes Violet moan aloud and jostle her hips unsteady. It must be worth it, because Moira eventually allows, "Isn't that a little peculiar, for me to tell you about him as a child while I'm fucking you?"
"No," Violet grounds out and hitches her breath as Moira diddles her in firm circles that make her restless. Her brain jumps from idea to idea behind the lusty fog settling over her, and she finally settles, with a tightening in her groin that scares and disgusts her, "God—the day. The day he killed those people. Tell me about that. Were you there?"
Moira adds another finger without warning, and Violet gasps and spreads her legs to accommodate. The woman thinks, then breathes deep and revels in the sinking of her fingers up to the knuckle inside this girl. "Yeah, I was there." She tries to remember the facts to coincide with her manipulation, and she pushes down hard on Violet's clit as she recalls aloud, "The boy was all gone by that time, there was nothing good left in him. I don't know if even you could've saved him by that point. He hated the world, and everyone in it, spare his siblings – and half of them were already gone, thanks to mommy dearest."
Violet knows that part of the story. Dysfunctional family makes lost boy lose his shit. She's agitated and wants more, jerks her hips as she asks, "But before that?" She breathes through her nose and wants to open her eyes, wants to be hopeful, but can't bear the idea that someone else is making her thrum like this and she knows what kind of expression the woman is probably wearing, sinister and snickering, like everyone else that knows more than she does. So she pretends instead. "Was he—"
"Salvageable?" Moira scoffs and tickles a crooked finger inside the girl, makes her hips jump, and she presses her pelvis down hard against Violet's hip bone to find a little release for herself. "Maybe. He was always good with his sister and brother, and he was polite boy. Quiet, usually, unless it was a bad day." Violet starts to find herself pacified by this line of reminiscences spilling out of Moira, but when the woman's tone changes, Violet's stomach flip-flops and she sinks into that dark spot again that is always reserved for him. "But he got so broken along the way. People can only take so much of what life shoves down their throats. And this house doesn't help."
Moira starts rocking against her, times her pumps with her grinding, likes that rhythm better. "You wouldn't believe all the gear he had hidden in this room, under his bed. His own private collection, like he was preparing for battle. He must've been planning for a while. I remember months before that, he'd come home with a new one every so often, clean it up real nice, and I knew," she breaks for a moan and cants her hips, Violet follows her fingers up, "that he was up to something."
"He didn't sleep that night before. He stayed up, jerked himself off a couple times. I think it turned him on, thinking of what he was going to do; you know how he can get." Moira huffs it lasciviously into Violet's face with a dirty smile, and Violet turns away, resisting the urge to sob out loud over these twisting feelings and these revelations that Moira's pouring into her. "He did a few lines of cocaine, some crystal meth, to get himself ready, because he knew like we know there was no way he could get the job done without a little extra kick, first. I saw him grab the gasoline—"
"There was fire?" It legitimately startles Violet, pulls her away from the warm tugging inside, because she didn't know this part of the story.
Moira tilts her head back and laughs, more breath than noise, and she lifts just enough to pull down Violet's tights and underwear in a swift motion, bunching them at her shins. When Violet's eyes pop open at the sudden movement and she makes a move to complain, Moira shoves her digits back into the warm sticky hole with a smirk at how quickly Violet clams up again, her teeth clicking loudly when her jaw snaps closed. "My hand was cramping up. Now, where was I?"
"Fire," Violet exhales and closes her eyes again; wills herself into Moira's memories like she belongs there with him too, wishes she could've seen his face because she feels like then she'd really know it all for sure.
She chuckles, brings unhurried circles to Violet's nub, her other hand pushes her shirt up to expose white pale skin and a lilac bra. "So, he got the gasoline from the shed. It was all actually kind of cute, in that maniacal Ted Bundy sort of way he can be; all decked out in his mass-murdering finest, ready for his war, and then he was out the door." She scratches from under the swell of Violet's breasts down to her navel, leaving thin red marks in her wake, and Violet arches up into them with a whine. "About an hour later, mommy got a phone call that her boyfriend had been set on fire and the wanted man who attacked him looked an awful lot like her baby boy."
"God," and Violet isn't sure for herself if she's bemoaning the scenario her imagination conjures or the hard press of Moira's dutiful fingers, but she shakes her head against both and presses her cheek and temple into the floor beneath her, writhes underneath her, because she knows this part of the story coming up and hates the ending, but she's got to hear it out all over again. Maybe something will change, this time.
"Well, then it was all over the news; fifteen shot and killed at Westfield High," Moira's breath catches when she rubs into a good spot along Violet's thigh. "Tate came home, he smelled like the beach – you've been there, right?" And Violet can remember it vividly off the woman's call of her recollection, the scent of the waves and of him, the sand under her back, and she thinks of him on top of her instead. Wonders if he went there first, reflected upon what he did to look for penance, or if he went there to delight in his accomplishments. She tries to remember his epiphany about high school counting for nothing in this world, but Moira's drawing her back to earth with words and skillful hands. "He went upstairs and just waited for it to happen. The inevitable—"
"Harder," Violet suddenly instructs with a tilt of her pelvis into Moira's pushing, pulling fingers, and the woman obliges her with a secret smile.
"He sat on his bed and waited, didn't move while his mother cried outside his bedroom door, she begged for him to change," Moira winds her free hand under Violet's head, cradles and clutches between thick ashen locks, tries to get the girl to look up at her but she is unwilling and unable, too lost in what's coming – in her coming. "But he won't. He can't. It's too late."
Violet gives a little cry and clenches her eyes closed that much tighter, presses her lips together to keep her breath held in, feels it filling and building. "The S.W.A.T team came barging in, like something out of a movie," Moira leans in and her hips are jerky and she's damp all over, just like Violet. "But he wasn't afraid. He grabbed for a gun, and the room just popped all over," she can start to feel Violet's insides spasming and gripping and clutching and she moans against her cheek, "It was right here, where you are now; they riddled him up and down with holes and he bled all over, it was everywhere."
With a guttural sort of noise that she's afraid to admit sounds like his name, Violet comes fiercely and her nails dig into the wood until her fingertips might bleed, her hips thrust up and she quakes all over from the strength of it, him burned behind her eyelids and it's almost like she can feel that life liquid pooling underneath her, like she might sink through the floor and wallow into it with him, and she hasn't come down from her high yet to be disgusted by that notion.
Moira is pleased with her work and sits back for a moment to observe the flushed, heavy-lidded girl heaving breaths beneath her. Like the cat that ate the canary, she runs her tongue across her lower lip and gives one last hard push of her fingers before she withdraws and lifts them to her mouth to suck them clean, one by one, savoring. "And there's your fairytale ending, princess. Was it everything you hoped it would be?"
It only takes a few more seconds for Violet to gather her bearings and remember where she is and that she just let some strange woman ride on top of her and put her fingers in her and unfolded upon her the exact last moments of his life and she came right where he died, and she's never felt so sick in her existence. Vomit itching up her throat, she shoves at Moira and she topples off of her and on to her bottom, and Violet rushes to drag her clothing back into place, to recover what little is left of her pride.
She opens her mouth to speak, and Violet beats her to it. "Get away from me," she hisses.
"Not even a thank you?" When she hears Moira start to rise up to her feet, Violet looks up and sees her standing there, hovering above her, looking haughty. "You're really a lot like him, you know that?"
Seeing red at the comparison, she maneuvers into a kneeling position. "Stay away from me," Violet commands, wishing her voice was a little stronger, with a brandished forefinger. Moira wraps her fingers soundly around the intruding digit, smirking playfully when Violet jerks out of her grasp. "Don't ever come near me, don't ever touch me again, or I swear, I will kill you."
Moira narrows her eyes at Violet's blushing visage. "Don't get mad at me because you got off thinking about your boyfriend murdering a bunch of kids from his school." With a sneer, the woman looks down at the floor beneath them, she shakes her head, musing, "That was a pain to clean up, and no one thanked me for that either."
There's a significant moment that she looks down into Violet's eyes, and Violet can't figure out what the woman's searching for. But she turns with a brusque huff and runs her hands down the backside of her skirt as she saunters away, casting a look across her shoulder when she reaches the portal. "Try to be a little more considerate, Violet, and just stop hiding out in here. You know how it upsets your mother."
She twists the knob and swings out, and Violet eventually sinks to the floor again and curls over into herself, tears she had been fighting burning free at last. It isn't until later, when she has finally peeled herself from the bedroom floor and goes to the bathroom to clean herself that she puts it all together in horror and throws up everything into the toilet bowl until she's an empty, heaving mess. She is embarrassed and mortified and violated, and it's on the tip of her tongue to call out for him and have him there by her side to soothe her and (in a darker space that she knows is what tempts her to him) avenge her.
But she refrains and instead showers, tries to scrub it out, cry it out, digs out a lost razor blade from the linen closet and wants desperately to cut it out into new patterns on her sleeve – but she can't bring herself to do that, either.
Come the early morning hours, she seeks the now aged woman out, finds her in the laundry room and the sudden rage that tears through her is roaring in her ears and compelling her forward. Yet Moira doesn't bother trying to explain herself or inquire as to her own intentions, simply eyes the girl over and only thins her lips and folds the towels and turns away like it isn't important.
It is so dismissive a gesture and Violet fists her hand hard around the tiny blade until fresh blood drips from her palm and she realizes in that moment that she can't go the distance, that she isn't that kind of monster, doesn't think she wants to be, and she is disappointed.
A muffled sound, a cry, and several loud, repetitive thuds and bangs and crunches echo from the room behind her before she's even made it through the hall. Violet whirls and dashes back to find Moira's slumping figure at the foot of the washing machine, her head bashed in and wholly concave on one side, blood and brain matter coating the mouth of the machine.
She's wary upon entry, cautious as she skirts about the splattered baskets of tainted linens and steps between Moira's crooked legs. Violet bends to study the violent wound then turns with trembling fingers to run over the edge of the lid. She swipes at the bloody remains, and her bemused smile is unconscious as she fingers the sticky red mess and knows that while he is not here now, he certainly was before, and she doesn't feel as bad about it as she thinks she probably should.