A/N: Just a small reflection of Hayden post-Afterbirth (Season 1), with an appearance from Tate. Oneshot.
"This is my family. You'll never be apart of it."
Ben doesn't have to say these words to her.
He doesn't even have to grab her and shake her a little and meet her charcoal eye-liner encircled eyes with his baby blues,
doesn't have to ridicule her in his flat angry tone.
He doesn't have to care anymore.
She's dead. The baby is dead.
He's dead. His wife. His daughter. His son. His child in Boston.
Their bodies are just headstones for their soul-entrapped purgatory in this hellhole of a house,
a living breathing inferno furnishing an everlasting nightmare.
It doesn't matter anymore.
Maybe that's why he's standing outside with Vivien in the gazebo,
embracing her as though they're old lovers in the aftermath of a war,
bringing her mouth to his in one of those
"continued from long ago"
kisses
you only see on seventeen-inch television screens in your college dorm,
stretched across floral blankets shoveling ice cream into your pie hole.
It's passion Ben could never provide for her.
Love he could never hold for her.
The only thing he can hold is her heart in his hand. And a bunch of bullshit.
It's symbolism, what he's doing to her right now
as she stares from the sink window in the tidy little kitchen with a hand pressed to her abdomen.
He's showing her the future of eternity.
It's power,
how they're enveloped in each other's warmth above her rotting corpse,
below white wood.
Below nails.
Below cold stinking soil.
With the bones of the house maid who accompanies Violet upstairs in Ben and Vivien's bedroom,
tending to a softly wailing Jeffery
protectively,
the guardians of the ghost baby.
A brief coursing of bloodthirsty envy runs through her veins-
she was only a few weeks along when Larry connected his shovel with her head.
If Ben could have just accepted their consequences,
could've just faced it...
could've just supported her...
could've just...
"Isn't everything just so fucking perfect."
She's holding a 10-inch knife stained with lemon juice contributed to Moira's pitcher of ice tea chilling in the refrigerator.
Tate is standing beside her. She doesn't even realize and doesn't even care.
"You'll just make it worse," he tells her, following her gaze.
Worse.
She chokes back a sickly laugh that trickles down her throat,
an abrupt pain in her abdomen reminding her.
Is there even such a degree? Can it get any deeper than this?
"Bullshit. I'm dead, damned and nobody loves me."
There is no worse.
Tate sighs as if she's a child and removes the knife from her reluctant hands.
"If I have to wait forever to get Violet back, I will. You? You're just screwed if you go out there and draw blood."
He sets the knife down and runs warm water over her sticky hands,
"Blood always starts the war."
She dries her hands on the dish towel draped over the lower cabinet.
"Heh. The little war here is over if you haven't noticed."
His deep brown eyes drift back over to the window.
Ben and Vivien are talking. Quietly conversing. There's a little stress harbored in her eyes.
"Is it?"
They stand side by side once more, staring out.
Hayden sighs.
"I thought when you die you don't feel any pain, but that's the only thing left."