In Wonderland

READ: Author's Note

Hey guys-firstly, thanks for reading. Secondly, I was one of the many disappointed by the finale, and in the general direction that the story took around the point of the Rubber Man reveal. It's not that I wanted my ship to end happily ever after, because... they're Tate and Violet. Please.

It's that I thought that the show could have gone in an entirely different direction. The finale confirmed this for me. So-I decided to start writing an alternate direction for AHS, post Piggy Piggy. Some things are going to stay the same. Others will be radically different. The one thing I can confirm is that Tate will not be the Rubber Man. Oh, wait-I can also confirm that he's still a completely twisted, messed up kid who is not under any circumstances going to be a nice person. So. There's that.

Enjoy!

The thing is, he doesn't remember. And if he doesn't remember—doesn't even know he's dead, maybe—then… it doesn't count. He's a different person, so different from the blank-eyed boy in ugly school pictures, the one who sat in the library and stood in the library and killed the library.

But that's bullshit.

She's a smart girl; she has an IQ her father likes to brag about, a sense for the macabre that masks a brain for equations. This one's simple, really. X=Y. He may not remember, may not know. Yet he still likes Byron and birds, still preaches the wisdom of Cobain and Tarantino. He still wears sweaters like that and his hair like this, a perfectly preserved time capsule. And though she can't know this, he still smiles in a way that once sent shivers down his mother's spine.

She's a smart girl. He can't change in one way and remain so frozen in others.

Violet Harmon has never been one to indulge in fantasies, preferring harsh reality to the dreamland her parents cooked up. Through all of their fights and make-ups, the framed image of Vivien crying into her husband's shirt, Ben's arms looped around her waist—Violet watched with detached observations, never really there, never a part of it. And she wondered why people would do this, pretend one thing when while the other slaps them across their faces.

So then she met a boy; a boy who spends more time talking about why he likes birds than why he decided to blow somebody's brains out. When he was a little freaky—all offbeat and quirky and oh, where did those scratches come from?—she could dismiss it as her taste for darkness. A phase that she's sure she'll someday grow out of, like everyone does. Because she has time to grow. Time to change. Time he'll never get back.

There was this time—back before the baby and the affair and This House—back when Violet and Vivien were close. They spent the whole night watching this 20/20 special on "prison wives". Those fat bitches who marry serial killers, she thought, reclined against the sofa. And they were fat and gray before their time, a few dragging a couple of snot-nosed brats to the penitentiaries. Vacant-eyed, without a thought in the world of what their husbands had done. It didn't matter. Nothing mattered but them and their excuses and mommy issues.

But in the middle of the night, he says her name. She wonders if he wonders—how he got here, why he never seems to leave. But in what's become a pattern, she pulls back the covers and sighs, trading a guilty conscience for a not-warm boy in her bed.

For the first few days after, she can't return to school.

None of the students are the same, and very few of that old staff remains—with the exception of the one, the one who saw it and felt it all and wears the scars to prove it. He's enough, though. Enough to keep her hiding in her room, waiting with a sick sense of hope and anticipation for her parents to find out.

They never do, and with disappointment comes relief. She doesn't want to look him in the eye, doesn't want to think about the nights when things go further and further with biting teeth and sharp gasps, nails clawing dead skin. (What if I had sex with him? Is that even real sex? Come on.)

The worst of it is when the guilt fades into pleasure and it's all she can do to run downstairs—not grab something to eat anymore, for she's hardly hungry—and inform the parents that yes, she is still indeed alive. Then there's the nice surprise of dating the dead—undead? He's always around, always waiting, always willing to do whatever she wants, whenever she wants to.

He has this thing, he mutters against her skin one day. This thing about making them happy.

She doesn't bother asking who "they" are, and she doesn't mind forgetting about how far from happy she happens to be. Violet only presses his lips to her neck and his hand to her breast and reminds him to shut up.

The only time he doesn't listen is when, three days later, she tells him that she needs to go back to school, somewhere between kissing and pretending to converse.

"What?" He blinks, as if he's some high school drop-out versus some high school murderer. Pretty lies he tells himself, she figures. "No. I mean"—and there's a catch to his voice—"are you sure you're feeling okay? You took a lot of pills, Vi. Like…" His eyes shift from side to side, but they always do that. You can't even tell if you're lying, she thinks, rubbing a thumb over his lower lip. "A lot."

"Yeah, well." She shrugs, gruff and short. "I think I made it. And Mom's gonna lose it if she gets a call from school about me going off the grid. Lose it even more," she adds, thinking of Vivien's gaping mouth, the way she clutches her stomach and hums to herself and oh yeah, eats brains.

He rocks back against the bed, springs creaking with weight that he shouldn't have. Are there places like this, off the property? Places where he would be more than thin air, places where she could show them how perfectly trained her psychotic boyfriend is?

Then again—they've yet to have sex, maybe because she's somewhat afraid he'll disappear when they do. (Of course, with that logic he should have at least gone transparent from half the things they've tried.) But looking at him, at his never-aging body and pretty face—"my gift" his mother calls him—she can imagine just staying here. All day. Never wanting anyone else to see him, to ruin it.

Sometimes, when she's really bored, she listens in on those therapy sessions. It's odd, because he has to know that she's there. Yet every now and then, he lets slip to Ben—and maybe he is less of a liar to Daddy dearest than he is to the rest of them—a hint of the boy who could've killed fifteen in one go.

"Come on, Vi," he pleads, somewhere between submissive and possessive. He runs his fingers over her arm, tracing her scars. There's that moment of calculation, the one he lets slip so rarely—the flicker of his eyes, measuring the dilation of her pupils and the quickening of her breath and the million things that tell him he's on the right track. It's almost sociopathic.

"Stay." Tate has many talents, one of them being his ability to stitch seven layers into one word. "With me. Fuck them, Violet, do you really have to—" His kiss is soft and sweet, just as he very wrongly predicts she wants it. But oh, it is a good kiss, more warmth than fire. His tongue skims her lips, teasing—and she's close to giving in the way he wants her to.

The weird thing is—and she's not as horrified by this as she first was, more angry than sad—that it's this part of him that interests her the most. The part that thinks about what he does, the part that designs every little move to manipulate. The part that, even when he doesn't know it, is twirling her about like a puppet ballerina.

Make no mistake; Violet Harmon is not a vacant-eyed prison wife.

"Stop it," she hisses, shoving him aside. Her hand dashes across her forehead, down her face. "Do not—for one second—think that that works with me." Tate leans away, cringing like its habit from a girl half his size. But there too is the excitement, the challenge in the twitch of his lips. Violet's hands wrench his shoulders, her fingernails cutting into his skin. Like an anchor, like she's trying not to cut free but bind tighter. "Don't even try it." Her voice slickens; she guesses, in that moment, at his weakness. "That's not what I want."

"Really?" Gone is apprehension as he pushes forward, his face in hers, excited and pleading and ready. A little sick, lusting more for some basic, childhood need than her. "What do you want, then?" His fingers tangle in her hair, and she drags those nails down his back. "Just tell me. I'll do anything."

She doesn't go to school that day.

Over the next few days, she learns things about him. Learns that he wants to make her happy, will do anything to gain a smile… But that's not all there is. Sometimes, if she's really lucky, she'll say or do something to catch a bit of the other him. The one that isn't in control of anything, but wants to control her.

She's not sure why she seeks that side out; whether it's to prove that it's there, or see what he might do. There are times when she thinks about what it would be like: teasing that other person for all of eternity.

What's he going to do when she's gone? She doesn't bother with that question, doesn't worry. It's been seventeen years, and all he does is lurk and pretend that he's alive, maybe scare a few people here and there. He'll be fine without her. Anyway, she doesn't want him trapped in this cycle of being so… nice.

It's not good for him.

So on the days when she wants him and can't stand him, the days she spends yelling at him where Mom and Dad can't hear, shoving him up against the basement wall or twisting his arm or even slapping him once, she reminds herself that she's just toughening him up. Making him what he used to be, but better. It has nothing to do with the fact that a part of her hopes he might react.

Violet doesn't know where these feelings came from, stormy and tense. Within days, a week, she's gone from depressed and weepy to spiteful. There's a sort of high that comes from a change that fast, and sometimes she lies in bed and smiles. Because they won't get the better of her, those parents.

She doesn't bother trying to get their attention. They're all wrapped up in that baby—those babies—and their problems. Dad gravitating between being Dr. Ben Harmon, husband of Vivien, father of Violet—and Ben, that guy with the mistress. Not a teenaged mistress, though Violet manages to make a few quick remarks suggesting so. But that bitch was what? Four, five years older than her?

She sees her. Lingering. Watching Vivien from dark corners, mouth open and glossed and strangely vampiric. Like she wants to suck the life out of Mom, the lives.

For a heartbeat, Violet's mouth snaps open, drawing a breath to scream for Vivien. Whether to protect or be protected, she is not sure.

The bitch—I don't even know her name, she realizes—raises a finger to her lips, and somehow that undoes this young, young girl. She does not scream, does not act. She notices, so briefly that it passes her by like a speck of dust, that Vivien never reacts. To her. To the raccoon-eyed creature. To anything they do or say.

But because Violet is nearly as practiced at denial as her dead boy, she dismisses it and moves on to the next room.

Later, that night—and it doesn't seem like a matter of pressing importance, nothing does anymore—she finds her in the basement. Just as whorish as she imagined, with her scarlet-painted mouth and bound hair. Maybe, if she didn't already hate her, she would kind of like that this girl's living up to expectations, going all Glenn Close on a man who kind of deserves it.

But Vivien—for all her neglect and obsessing and little things that make Violet want to scream—doesn't.

"You have ten seconds to get the fuck out of my house before I call the cops." She reaches for her pocket, for the waiting cell phone.

Up close, she isn't so pretty, purple pooling underneath her eyes like bruises. She twirls a strand of hair around her finger, pops her lips like she's smacking gum. "I don't think I can, sweetheart. Maybe you can tell that slutty old maid to make up a bed for me? I think she'd listen better to you." Batting her eyes, she adds with honeyed innocence, "You're a lady of this hell hole now, aren't you?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," Violet states baldly. "I don't really give a shit. Just—get out."

There it is again—that creeping, foggy confusion, the same thing that overwhelmed her in those first few days after… the attempt. This feeling that she doesn't know everything she thinks she does. And the bitch smiles, stretches luxuriously against the wall.

A sliver of moonlight, streaming in from the window, catches her arms. Violet bites her lip until it might bleed, until its red like those dark marks patterned over that girl's limbs.

And in a move too perfect to be accidental, the bitch wipes at a bloody nose.

"She won't listen to me," she continues, as if Violet hasn't spoken. "The redhead. Do you think that hair's a dye job? It can't be natural. Anyway." She sniffs, pawing at her nose again. "Shit, this thing just gets me sometimes. Sorry. So, like I was saying, she won't listen to me. She'll listen to you—a teenager—but she won't listen to me. Want to know why?"

Regaining her footing, Violet smirks. "Because you're what, twelve? I didn't know my dad had a thing for little girls. But I wouldn't put anything past him—"

"I am not a little girl!" Suddenly she's screaming, those eyes widening and those teeth coated with blood. Violet can't help but cast a glance upstairs, hoping that her mother doesn't wake. Another dead baby is the last thing they need. "I am a woman." Fists trembling, she forces herself back against the wall, crossing one leg in front of the other. Her lips press together before she bursts out laughing. "I mean, I was old enough for him to get me pregnant, right? That has to count for something."

Pregnant. She's pregnant. Oh, God.

"You're lying," she says automatically. She's still herself enough to know otherwise. Violet's listened to, believed in too many lives in too short a time to not recognize the truth.

Really, it's not so difficult to believe. Dad, knocking some student up in a twist of irony. Violet scratches at her pocket again, this time searching for missing cigarettes. That's one thing she's always had in common with her father—a tendency to snatch for a distraction at the first cut.

The only difference is that she turns to smoking and he turns to edgy, vulnerable, crazy girls. Of course, she thinks, hearing Tate rustling about her room. Even that difference has faded into nothing.

"You think you're gonna be my new mommy?" Violet's mouth twists, a shadow of the smile Tate Langdon once earned over Kurt Cobain and Morrissey. "Fuck my dad. Have his kid. None of it really matters, right?" She takes a step closer, more careless now than confident. "He mentioned you once." Maybe she's a better liar than this pretty little psycho; she's ready to find out. "Said that you were, like, a classic head case. Completely delusional. That's probably why he liked it. 'Cause he's kind of sick, you know?"

This girl, rather than shrinking or breaking or doing any of what Violet expects—she laughs. Giggles, actually, presses a hand over her mouth to contain that violent, bubbly hysteria. Blood seeps between her fingers, dark and clotted. Violet Harmon is not afraid of blood; the gore is not why her stomach turns.

"You've got it." There's a gurgle to her throat as she chokes on her insides, coughs delicately. "You know. There'll be a couple of babies running around here, but neither of them will be mine. And you know why."

Violet clutches that phone for dear life, as if calling the cops will make any difference.

"How is it?" She coaxes, licking her lips. "I mean, I've never really been into younger guys—as you can tell—but he's…" Worse than either of us, is their silent agreement. "Different. If, you know, having a body count is different. Or maybe it's the hair?" Trying her luck, she snakes out a hand, and Violet almost allows contact before lurching backward at the last minute. "Look at you. Judging me. We all know what you're doing in there—with him. To him."

"So you're moving on from my dad?" She's scrambling, grasping for straws. "Stalking me now? I don't know about Dad, but I'm not a big fan of people watching."

The monster-bitch runs a hand through her hair, leaving a slick, metallic-scented streak in her ponytail. "My name's Hayden McClaine. You'll probably need to know that when the cops show up." Glancing down at Violet's still-clutched phone, she adds, "Not for this. But you already know that, too."

Don't ask questions you already know the answers to.

"Don't get too angry." There's more than a touch of sincerity to her words. "He isn't going away; I'll make sure of that. And I don't want anyone hurting him—anyone but me. You understand." Violet may as well be a statue, silent and listening, but never really absorbing what this thing has to say.

What Violet Harmon felt when she discovered her boy's dirty, dirty deeds is called a breakdown. More than that, even—a collapse. Eventually, had she let herself, she would have healed. She would not have been the same person, but she would have healed. She wasn't broken.

Tate Langdon and his kisses and the things he wants from her, the things she wants from him… These things have stressed her mind, sent little cracks through the woodwork. And now, looking at something part Ben's fault, part the house and part her own little future, Violet Harmon breaks.

It's just a chip off her young sanity. No big deal, really. Except bruises heal and cracks mend; once something breaks in the murder house, it's never back together again.

"I mean," Hayden grins, all beauty of what could have been. "You can't really judge him for what he did to me. Not when you're screwing Pumped up Kicks over sixth period."

Violet snaps, all reflex and little thought. There goes Tate's most recent lesson, used without a thought because she doesn't really believe, doesn't want to believe. "Go away!"

It isn't a scream, an order. She bleeds desperation like Hayden bleeds hunger.

Two words are enough to make the boogeyman disappear; but not forever. And nothing will be enough to kill the thoughts flying through Violet's head, the confirmation that her father's a horrible person, the implication that he's much more.

Hayden does have a point, of course. Why get mad at Daddy when Tate hasn't even washed the blood off his hands?

Because she can; because she's too tired to care. And despite her exhaustion, Violet Harmon walks up the stairs; slips into bed; and wakes Tate for another round of disguised lying.