Title: Signs of Life
Author: valerie37
Rating: FRT
Characters:Violet Harmon, Tate Langdon.
Word Count: 1035
Themes: Angst, Romance.
Disclaimer: I don't own these characters or American Horror Story.
Notes/Warnings: Discussion of suicide. Character death. Spoilers for up to Season 1, Episode 6. A look at how it could have gone down if Violet actually is, as the theory goes, dead.
Summary:Violet's suicide attempt succeeds.
Tate was searching for a pulse. A heartbeat, through her wrist, her chest, her neck. He'd never been good at this. Hell, he could never even find his own.
He listened at her mouth, watched her chest, praying it would begin to rise and fall. It didn't. Violet was incredibly still. "No, no, no, no," he whispered, shaking her, slapping her face. "Wake up. Wake up. Violet. Please."
She didn't.
He screamed for help, his voice ringing through the empty rooms. No one was coming. He was alone, lying in the shower, Violet's body on top of him. And she was gone. No. No. She can't be gone.He curled around her and made himself as silent and still as she was for a long time.
At last, he shut off the water and untangled himself from her. He stared at her, so cold, so still, and backed out of the room before the full horror of it could seize his heart. No, no, no. This can't be happening. This isn't real.
The hall he'd dragged her down too slow was quiet now, and empty. Like he himself wasn't even there. He thought it would be nice to collapse, to suffocate right there, a pool of water from his soaked body eating through the floor, but air still cycled relentlessly through his lungs. Each respiration was torture, each breath she'd never get to take.
His hands found the doorway to her room and he leaned against it, pressing his face against the wooden frame. Here was the room where they'd compared their scars, where he'd confessed his love on a chalkboard. Here was the room she'd never enter again.
Tate rounded the corner and looked up. His stomach dropped.
She was there.
The look on Tate's face shattered Violet's heart into even tinier pieces than before. He'd saved her, he'd brought her back—he, a ghost. He didn't know that he'd kept her in a realm that wasn't his.
He stumbled towards her. "Violet…"
"I'm sorry," she told him as he embraced her.
They clung together, soaking wet, and collapsed in a cold puddle on the floor. Tate couldn't reconcile this image—the real, walking, talking Violet—with the cold one in the bathroom, but it didn't matter. He hung on for dear life. He didn't care if she was living or dead. She was his. Always.
He moved back just enough to look at her. "Don't leave me," he choked through the lump in his throat. "Please don't leave me."
"I won't," she said.
"You promise?"
Violet looked at him. Were those tears on his face, mixed with the water? She couldn't deny him. Regardless of how much she felt she wanted to die.
"I promise."
Exhausted, they fell asleep tangled on the floor. She woke up under the covers in her bed, still damp but warmer now, at least. She heard bird calls. It was morning. He was gone.
He'd left her before sunrise that morning, knowing she needed time alone. He walked into the bathroom again and she was still lying there, beginning to dry now, still motionless. Still dead.
Tate sat on the cold floor. It made sense, in a way. The house had always been special. Those who had died on its grounds were never truly gone—they walked freely every day. Tate had seen them himself.
It made sense. But it didn't make it any easier.
He looked up at the body of the girl he'd loved, still loved. He knew what he had to do.
Violet got up that morning, went to school, like any other day. In the library she thumbed over worn spines until she found the book she was looking for, a book on birds, of all things. She checked it out, brought it home. In her room her hands lingered over the pages, the worn little check-out card on which he'd written his name. The last book he'd checked out when he was alive. It was a piece of the puzzle, a hint at the mystery behind Tate's eyes, even if she didn't yet understand where the piece fit.
Because how could someone who held her so tenderly have done something so terrible?
He buried her body in the backyard of the house, wrapped in a sheet, next to the pretty gazebo Dr. Harmon had built. He wanted to mark the grave somehow, but he knew he couldn't. For him, it was marked by the rectangle of light high above his head, emanating from Violet's bedroom window. Beyond those walls, that's where his girlfriend slept. Unaware of the fact that she was sleeping down here, too.
Tate crept up to her room and peeked in before he entered, not wanting to disturb her. She was lying on her bed, reading a book.
He said, "I like birds too."
"Violet? Something's changed in you, toward me. You're distant. Cold. I don't know what I've done, but…I'll leave you alone from now on, if that's what you want. Is that what you want?"
She was silent.
"And you wanna know why I'd leave you alone? Because I care about your feelings more than mine."
She couldn't speak.
"…I love you. There, I said it. And not just on some chalkboard. I would never let anybody or anything hurt you. I've never felt that way about anyone."
She tilted her head towards the bed. "Come here."
He climbed up carefully, like the mattress was made of glass. She wrapped an arm around him, though it broke her heart. Lying there on the bed, she felt selfish and small. Forget Constance. She couldn't let Tate cross over. She couldn't let him go.
He couldn't tell her. Not her family, either. He had to protect her, somehow, from learning her fate. He'd do anything to make her feel alive. But in the back of his mind, there was panic. He'd failed to save her. The one he loved was dead.
In the back of her mind there was panic. A ghost had saved her. The one she loved was dead.
They lay in silence and listened for heartbeats, for any signs of life.