A/N: So I wrote most of this about a month ago; basically everything up to where they get high, and then I kinda burned out I guess, and let it sit. But I always knew the ending, and the really the story is all about getting to that point because it was something that's been on my mind for a while, and I figured if it was going to happen it would be something Violet would do. And yes, I'm a huge Joy Division fan.
warning: Violet/Travis and Violet/Black Dhalia even though they're very brief scenes, but the rest of it is Violate. Also a slightly off-color joke about dead mexican nannies.
Prologue
On a long enough time line love isn't about sweet things, it's about pain: how much you can inflict and endure and still stick around is the only measure that really means anything. It's like a perverse game of chicken; the first one who bails was the one who never really loved.
Her weakness has always been her head and when she sees me it makes the "what if's" swirl and tumble. What if I hadn't raped her mother? What if I hadn't killed the gays? What if I hadn't killed fifteen kids and lit Larry up like a Roman candle one fine day? What if I hadn't lied about it all?
Eventually her frustration peaks and breaks like an orgasm and with the slightest glimpse of a stripy sweater she'll drag me to the bathroom or the basement and pull me apart in a literal, visceral way, the way her thoughts have been pulling her apart mentally.
We both knew after that Norman Rockwell charade of a Christmas that it would only be a matter of time before I was back where I belonged, bullshit forgiveness or not. But forever is a long time, and forcing her hand a little might cut down on the wait. So what if in minutes there'll probably be pieces of me strewn about the basement? It's a consequence of living in a place without consequences. So what about the pain? It makes her feel better, gets us closer to the point of not hurting each other to love each other.
She cuts a heart shape around my heart and it burns so much better than when I do it to myself; the tug and sting of the blade, the first drops of blood; it's a preamble, a ritual. She traces the cut with her fingers like a little girl drawing pictures in blood, and I'm already half hard from her weight on top of me, her taste in my mouth, and her fingers playing in the mess of it all because this is the closest we get to fucking anymore. "You know those martial arts films where the guy reaches in and rips out the other guys heart with his bare hands?" She's getting her talking done now because at some point she'll cut me for real and I'll blackout from the pain and she wants me to hear what she has to say.
I don't answer because shadows don't have voices, and even if they did I can't because she's shoved her panties in my mouth to gag me. "I asked Charles and my dad if it was possible and they said no. Well, my dad said no. Charles was huffing ether again and kinda passed out and fell on the floor before he could answer." She's looking forlornly at her bloody fingers, the gruesome evidence of her game of finger paints. "I wish it was. I want you to feel what it's like." I do; she doesn't believe me. The echo of her 'go away' still rips me apart better than any weapon she could wield. She's still the sad little dead girl as she sits on top of me and she lets out a sigh before her face suddenly suffuses with light and she looks at me.
"I might have to tie you down this time." Her voice is giddy, and I haven't seen her this happy in a long time, and any other time it would make my damn day, but this time it makes my stomach knot in fear because she's never had to tie me down; it's more enjoyable for both of us if the only thing keeping me here is my obsessive need to please her, to show her just how much I love her by bearing anything she can inflict on me.
"Not going to ask why?" She leans down and her hair fans against my face and I have to stifle a moan even around the fear as her body pressed against mine. "I was thinking what I'd really like to do is rape you, but even if I shove a fire poker up your ass you'd like it because it's me doing it, wouldn't you?" She leans back, feeling the growing hardness through my jeans. "Yeah. That's kind of a problem. But I could always just ask Patrick to do it." She's got her lips over my jugular and when she feels the panicked erratic thrum of my pulse at her words she plants a wet kiss over it. "Next time." She promises and there's a split second of blind relief before she makes her first cut and I scream around the fabric in my mouth. "Wimp."
I wake up on the basement floor to the wet slurping sounds of Thaddues eating, no doubt macking on one of my vital organs she'd tossed out on the ground. After some experimental prodding to see if I can feel whatever's missing, I make my way back upstairs to find her asleep on a bed left over from the last residents; pilfered, mismatched blankets and pillows around her. There's a sigh I can't stop when I push the hair out of her face, brush a finger across her cheek. She catches my wrist with her hand and tugs me down with her; her head resting in the nook of my shoulder, a hand resting against my heart because that's my weakness.
She fucks with my heart because she can't fuck me, and it feels like her hand is reaching inside of me and mangling what's left of that damaged organ into grotesque shapes.
Her dismembering me is purely for her amusement. This... this is the real punishment. Reminding me I could have this every night. Reminding me that she could have been happy here, with me. She'll sleep contentedly and I'll spend the night slowly filling with self-loathing and disgust until she tells me to 'go away' in the morning if I'm not smart enough to be gone by the time she opens her eyes.
It's better than most nights when I'm relegated to sleeping on the floor like a well trained dog.
"No way, she'll do it." The twins are having a muttered conversation as I close the basement door behind me. "You shouldn't have given her a choice."
"Shut up. She won't do it, and then she'll have to flash us." They're both looking up at something I can't see, and as I come out from hallway and into the foyer a lit cigarette drops at my feet.
"You're in the way." Violet's standing on top of the banister on the third story, looking down at the three of us. "Move." I hugged the wall, pulling a drag off her cigarette and watched as she outstretched her arms, took a deep breath, and tipped forward, executing a perfect tucked roll. I had to fight the terror rising inside of me, the instinct to try and catch her, brace her fall in some way. She straightened out and smacked into the floor with an impact that shook the house.
Predictably Moira appeared looking disgusted, shouting the twins out of the house before glaring at Violet's corpse and going to get her mop with an irritated cluck of her tongue. Her eyes were glassy and vacant as her blood slowly spread around the toes of my shoes until Moira came back and yelled at me to get her out of there and up to the bathtub where she could bleed without making too much of a mess. I ground out the cigarette on a patch of floor just to piss her off some more before hefting Violet into my arms with a muttered come on baby to take her upstairs, a smile quirking up my mouth; good thing she's dead, if she heard me call her 'baby' she'd smack the shit out of me.
I sat on the edge of the tub and watched the bleeding stop, skin reform, bones knit back together into smooth planes. When she was conscious she smiled up at me, small and sheepish, as I frowned at her. "Lemme guess, Moira's pissed?" She said weakly, closing her eyes.
"Yeah. Me too."
"Why?"
"Why the fuck do you think? I hate seeing you so small, and broken, and dead. All I ever wanted to do was protect you and watching that just reminds me that I couldn't save you and I couldn't protect you. Not that you don't know that; not that that isn't the reason you did it." Because it was, and she wouldn't insult me by denying it.
She let out a mirthless chuckle and twisted the tap, pulling off her blood stained clothes as she sat on the bottom of the tub. "Yeah, protect me from finding out that's your a dead psycho murderer and rapist. Thanks so much for protecting me from that truth."
"Enough." It came out as a growl; low and guttural. "I'm so sick of you harping on about that shit. Yes, I fucked up. It's not like I cheated on you, it's not like I can think back on it without wanting to crawl out of my skin. So don't sit there all high and mighty and act like I'm the Goddamn Devil when we both know you wouldn't give a shit if you could live in blissful ignorance." She glared at me over her shoulder, mouth moving to form spiteful words to throw at me before I cut her off.
"That night at the beach I couldn't get it up because thoughts of what I did kept surfacing and it made me sick. Because unlike your mother I didn't enjoy myself." The words were out of my mouth before I could stop them, and we both froze at their impact. Her face went blank with shock and then hardened into something frighteningly familiar; the same mask that twisted my features the morning I decided killing fifteen kids and lighting Larry up seemed like the best idea ever. I thought I might piss myself just like that pathetic little cheerleader.
I waited for her reaction. Screaming, tears, violence; whatever, nothing would have surprised me because my words were so far below the the belt they hit the floor with an audible impact, just like her body smacking into the foyer. Instead what I got was a tight and steady "go away", sending me back to the basement.
I'd appear, tear soaked apologies pouring from my lips, and she'd tell me to go away. Her voice a lazy refrain as she played cards with the gays. A sleepy whisper from between her blankets at night. All day. All night. For a week. It never got better; the tension just built and intensified until she made her move, and I knew when she watched him cut the back lawn like his bare chest was covered in chocolate sauce just begging to be licked off what was going to happen. I'm not surprised it's her solution because my heart is my weakest point, and she knows it.
So she's writhing in Constance's lap dog's lap playing on old fears, ripping up old wounds, and inflicting new ones that won't heal in a few hours as punishment for what I said. When he's finally inside her she collapsed against him for a second like he's the cure for all that ills her, and it's probably the most honest thing she's done in a while. Whatever. It doesn't matter why she's doing this. I watch because I can't not watch, because it's easier watching it than not knowing. Not knowing every little moan and whimper that escapes her lips and comparing it to the ones that pass her lips when it's us; not knowing every position he fucks her in.
They fuck and she cums and he cums and I'll kill him as soon as he's out the door because I'm the monster, I'm the one who deserves to be punished, and I can't kill her. She pecks him on the lips afterwards and sends him on his way with a few patient and polite words that usher him out the door, but leave it open for a next time. Three feet into the hallway I snapped his neck and watched him gasp once and expire on the hardwood floor. She didn't even look at me as I stood in the doorway for a moment afterward.
It's easy, well easier, to retain some arrogant disinterest in the whole thing when I reduce it to the simple equation of punishment. But then that little moment of honesty floats back up to the top of my brain, breaking the fragile surface tension and everything sinks around it. I take the pain of it out on the walls of the house until my hands break and bleed, until they're nothing but useless hunks of meat.
When dawn arrives it brings anger to replace the pain, and it feels like home to me; safe, comfortable, known, easy. I find the useless piece of filth that she took into her bed having a tea party with Lorraine's little girls. They shriek and cry when I drag him off to feed him to Thaddeus a few times and they probably won't come out for weeks after this. As Thad is smacking his lips over his corpse for the third time I hunt up Hayden and kill her just for good measure, just because she brought him here.
The only thought in my head when I go looking for her is to punish her; to make her hurt a little like she made me hurt because I could deal with the punishment, just not her liking it. But where I find her isn't where I expect to find her, and not who I expect to find her with. She's in the backyard laying on the grass, her little brother held safely against her chest by her arm as he sleeps; I've never seen her hold him before. When I walk up my shadow casts a pall on them both and it would be ironic if it wasn't so fucking tragic, and I wonder what it is about this house and women and babies. "Did you ever dream about us having kids?" I know it's a sore spot even if she won't admit it; a whole different set of "what if" questions she'd rather not think about.
I don't bother keeping my voice low and it wakes the infant up, making him fuss and squeal in her arms, and she doesn't answer until she's gotten him quietly entertained with his little hand wrapped around her finger. "Before I knew you were dead, yeah. Little girl fantasies about what kind of life we'd have together when we grew up and got away from here." She smiles at me, all cruelty and too-white teeth, because she can knock me down and make me feel like shit and all she needs to do it is truthful words. "What do you want?" She asks, turning her attention back to the baby in her arms.
"Planning on fucking the empty-headed pretty boy again?" I don't even bother trying to conceal the bitterness in my voice.
"I don't know. Maybe. It's definitely put me in a better mood." She looks it. She's not wearing her usual million layers, and her movements are free and easy, relaxed. I hate it.
"Suit yourself, but I doubt Travis will be so willing to fuck you again if I'm watching. Actually I doubt anyone will after what I did to him."
I see her cheeks pinch up from a smile as she's looking down, tickling the little ghost, and I think it's for him but I know it's for me when she looks up and I see how predatory it is. "We'll see." She's got victory and viciousness all over her face because it's always more fun when the other person fights back, when they want to hurt you just as much as you want to hurt them, and I'm giving her exactly what she wants.
"Yeah, we will. Maybe he'll teach you how to give a decent blow job."
"Maybe. Then again, if your dick ever makes its way back into my mouth the only thing you'll be thinking about is how I learned no matter how good it feels." Her words were like a cold bucket of truth right to the face. I'd always think of her with him; the way she probably thought of me and Vivien.
"Of course we could just stop this now. We both know you'll come back at some point." I offered, trying to keep my voice hard, and not quite being able to accomplish it.
She leaned in, grazing my ear with her lips. "You're right, I will. Right now though I just want to hurt you for that because the thought of it makes me sick. You know what I did after you left me in the bathroom? Spent an hour dry heaving into the toilet because I was so disgusted that I still wanted you."
So we spent the afternoon sitting and sniping and I wonder how she could look at her brother with unaffected affection and the second her eyes snapped to mine there's a blazing ocean of hate in them. It amazed me how she could flip the switch like that, black/white, like it was two different people in the same body. It made me wonder if the one thing that was supposed to redeem everything was really what set her loose; what made her just as bad as me.
By the time she went in the house I was ripped to shreds by her wielding nothing more deadly than a kid and acting maternal. She'd made me hate the fleshly bag of baby that oozed on her because he got what I wanted; her touch, comforting, and loving, and protecting. She made me hate myself for not saving her because she wouldn't grow up now. She made me feel guilty at my secret glee for keeping her here. The worst though were the strange new longings that came into play, ones that could never be fulfilled; perfect versions of the desires that ripped us apart.
We're down to olives; a solitary jar left over from the last owners sitting forlornly in the fridge until she decides to fish them out of the half-empty jar with a lone piece of Mrs. Montgomery's finest silver service. She'd just successfully speared one when Hayden walked up and groped me through my jeans as she sneered at Violet. Her face was totally impassive as she plucked the olive off the fork in her hand. She chewed, swallowed, and stabbed Hayden in eye with it before picking out another olive with her fingers and watching the psychotic whore writhe and scream on the floor as she clutched at the piece of cutlery protruding from her face.
She giggled like a school girl when I pushed her up against the fridge, a hand tracing its way up her spine, and whispered love you too in her ear. I felt like repeating her move when Ben stormed in and slit Hayden's throat so she'd come back good as new, but before I could he sent me to the basement. By the time I got back he was in full-on dad/psychiatrist mode lecturing Violet.
"You need to deal with you grief and anger in a healthy way Violet."
She spared him one insolent glance as she fished another olive out of the jar. "Stop being so fucking provincial. I mean really, who gives a shit? She'll be good as new in a few hours."
"Who will be good as new?" Asked Vivien suspiciously as she walked through the back door, making me devoutly thankful I crept back upstairs invisibly. The last time Vivien saw me, despite the fact it was completely accidental, Violet spent an afternoon turning my eyes into puddles of goo. She'd cut. I'd blackout. She'd wait until I was conscious and cut again. She said the resulting mess in my sockets felt like half-formed Jell-O, but didn't taste as good. Moira finally got sick of listening to me screaming and killed both of us to put an end to it.
"Hayden." Violet smiled at her dad and walked out, leaving Ben and Vivien to scream at each other in privacy.
People watching. It's her new favourite hobby, at least when everyone with a dick she's not related to is ignoring her. She does it from the window of her old bedroom, a pair of battered binoculars slung around her neck. "I know you're there." She mumbles something under her breath that might be 'creepy mouth breather', but I let it go.
"What are you doing?" She gives me a look that says stupidity should be punishable by death. I rephrase. "Why do you watch them?"
"Because I'm bored. What do you want?"
"My shirt back."
She looked down, fingers tripping down the line of buttons sewn into the flannel. "Really?" She looked up through her lashes, all coquettish pout, and totally called my bluff.
I don't say anything because it's humiliating that it has to come to this; pathetic excuses to share a few words, to make her acknowledge my presence without killing me, and that's probably her whole reason for being a thief. "So want to tell me about the neighbors?"
The chair she's got tilted back thunks onto the hardwood, and she shrugs, lights a cigarette, looks out the window, and turns into a statue. I follow her eyes to see Constance and Michael walking down the street. I'm disappointed to see her still alive. You'd think the abomination would make his homicidal tendencies useful and kill her like one of the nanny's fertilizing her rose bushes in the backyard; apparently for stunning blooms nothing beats Dead Mexican.
My neck is still craned to look out the window when I feel her fingers dig into the flesh under the cleft of my jaw and the lit cigarette searing my ear canal as she shoves it in. "Asshole."
She's gone before I can apologize. Again.
I can hear her in the living room talking to someone, and as I stride in I see harsh pink lines developing on her shoulder where she's clawed her nails at an itch, marring the pale flesh. But what stops me in my tracks is the man standing next to her eye raping her as she gives him her best wide-eyed innocent seductress routine. She smirked at me as she walked out, book clutched in her hand. It's a game to her, and to my dad who's watching her ass as she walks out, but not to me.
When he takes a step to follow her I take a step in front of him, and when we end up in the basement it's eleven years of life, and even more years of afterlife, and Violet that fuels me as I hack him into pieces with the same axe I nearly chopped that bitch in half with to protect her the last time. By the time I'm done I'm drenched in sweat and my pants are soaked in blood and it's patricide at it's most satisfying. I felt good, light, afterwards; at least if I couldn't make progress with Violet I could with my dad. Dr. Harmon would be proud.
I almost skipped to her room, and when I walked in I was halfway through asking her if she was up for a game of chess before I was assaulted by the scent of sex heavy and cloying in the air. She cums watching me while I'm standing too shell-shocked to move in the doorway, taking in the black hair and old-fashioned stockings of the woman she's got between her legs lapping at her pussy like it's the fountain of youth.
She lets out a muffled scream as I slit her throat and kick her body out of the way like the useless fuck puppet she is, smearing blood over my belt and zipper as I work them down and pull Violet's legs apart.
Even if she wasn't sopping wet already she's slick with blood and there's no resistance when I push inside her. "What? You got something you wanted, and I got something I wanted." It's an argument held in whispers and moans, points punctuated by the sharp snap of hips and the digging in of nails.
"What if I hadn't killed Hugo? What then?"
"I've already fucked one rapist, what's one more?" The words are bitter and she spits them in my face.
"Shut up." Her tone and that word off her tongue makes my stomach churn. "I'm not that."
"Yes you are."
"Stop it. Please, Vi." It's a whine that she's heard and I've said too often, and I feel her flinch as my tears drop onto her skin. "I-" She doesn't give me a chance to finish before her tongue slips into my mouth, urging me into action, and it's slipping into old patterns of twining her fingers into mine and her wrapping her legs around me guiding me to the spots she needs me most.
She cums again with her head pressed back in the pillow and the muscles in her neck straining, and as her walls convulse around me it's just too much and it feels a little like Sepukku following her over the edge. "Go away, Tate." It's barely louder than her breath, but it's enough, and I find myself in the basement before I can blink.
"I hate you." She's in the living room watching the same movie that the son of the current tenants is watching with his girlfriend curled on the couch. The new family won't last any longer than any of the other families, they just won't be staying permanently.
She pats the floor next to her with a smile quirking up her lips, and I sit down, throwing an arm around her shoulders as she nuzzles her face against my neck. "I hate you too." She says in tones dripping with sweetness because it's our I love you now. "Still think you'll wait forever?"
"Yes." I force the words out through gritted teeth and turn my attention to the couple on the couch, watching how he whispers things in her ear making her laugh. They become too lost in their own little world half-way through the movie to notice it, and I'm not sure if it's jealousy or pity burning in my stomach as I watch them.
"They're not like us, or I guess we were never like them." She says, breaking into my thoughts.
"Yes we were."
"Yeah, well I hardly think his dirty little secrets include being a mass murderer and raping her mother."
"Fuck you. You know you could have raped and killed every member of my family and I wouldn't have held it against you. Shit, I don't hold it against you that you've whored around with half the house. I don't even hold it against you that you told me to 'go away'. You know why? Because I fucking love you, and I hate that you don't love me enough to forgive the bad shit I've done like I've done with you because that's what love is: forgiving someone's flaws and mistakes."
She's still got her arm wrapped around my waist and her face nuzzled against my neck, and I have the fleeting desire to push her away from me, but it's gone in an instant because it's like Christmas getting to hold her like this. She waited until my breathing steadied to speak again, and when she did it was in a strained whisper. "I hate this."
She's already got tears in her eyes that she tries to hide as she walks away, pulling her hand free from mine as I try to keep her with me.
The house was empty by the time Halloween arrived; the latest tenants not even lasting until Fall.
I was curious where she went every year; she'd never leave before sunset and when she stumbled into the house at sunrise it was usually all she could manage to drag herself to some quiet corner of the house and slit her wrists so she didn't have to deal with the after-effects of whatever she'd put in her system overnight.
This year I followed her.
She ended up in a shitty neighborhood joining a crowd of thousands as they made their way into one of the smaller sports stadiums. As soon as we were inside I could hear the rhythmic thumping base lines like the beating heart of some giant unseen beast; could feel the excitement of the crowd manifest and fill the tiny spaces between the bodies pressed together.
She ducked into a bathroom and I leaned against the wall waiting, trying to relax against the panic of being surrounded by so many people. When she reappeared she walked up and without a word opened her hand to offer me a small pill decorated with a happy face, more Alice in Wonderland than any of the teenaged girls in the lingerie-store approximation of it prancing around. I dry-swallowed it before I even asked what was.
"Ecstasy." She answered simply, adding neither explanation nor illumination.
"What's it going to do?"
"Depends. If it's MDMA and not god-knows-what then you'll feel pretty euphoric for a while, like everything is great; no anxiety or fear or anger. It's kind of an upper like coke, but not as intense."
"If it's not?"
"Kill yourself. It's better than being sick as shit all night or accidentally overdosing. Last year I woke up in a body bag when I got a bad dose. Sucked."
"Great. So I'm either going to turn into a Care Bear or die. Wonderful."
"Maybe you should have asked what it was before you took it."
I scowled at her. "Do you always come here?"
"Yeah."
"Why?" I watched a half dozen cops walk through the hallway and had to resist the urge to disappear.
"Ask me again in a couple of hours." She said distractedly as her eyes followed mine. "Don't worry, no one will notice you, and definitely not them. They don't get involved unless someone's openly doing drugs or getting in a fight."
A half hour later I could feel it coming on, the creeping sense of contentment, warming up all those forgotten parts Violet used to before our lives turned into such a shit show. I was probably smiling like an idiot as she led me through the crowd towards the front where a DJ was working furiously at a set of decks, but the feel of her hand in mine was sending jolts of pleasure through me and I couldn't help it.
I let it roll through me, let it carry me along, and for the first time alive or dead, I didn't feel so different, or separate, or alone. I finally got it, why she came here, why she liked this high. She could forget she's dead for a little while and just be, and not have to deal with what remembering means. I could feel it peak in my veins and suddenly it was unbearable, the infinitesimal separation between our bodies as she was pressed against me. I needed more. I needed to feel her skin, to feel inside of her, but even that seemed insufficient; I wanted to melt into her body, to become a part of her.
She let me pull her from the crowd, guide her invisibly past security guards trying to stop people from doing exactly what we were doing. Her hands were already fumbling at my belt when I pulled her down on top of me on the grimy floor, lips and tongues and fingers finding patches of bare flesh to kiss and caress. "I love you... so much." I was sure I had never loved her more than I did in this moment, with her hands pushed up under my shirt feeling my heart beat for her, and my hands in her hair, cradling her face to mine. The irony that we could only let go and really be together while totally fucked up wasn't lost, but it didn't matter either.
I could feel the tears leaking out the corners of my eyes as her cunt enveloped me because it was too much feeling her plush and wet around me, feeling the beating of her heart through her. She'd always been the little dancing flame at the center of my world since I first saw her and behind the red canvas of my eyelids I could feel her flare white hot and bright, blotting out everything else. She feels like home and I never want to feel anything else. I keep her wrapped in my arms, holding her as close as I could as our hips rocked and thrust, only half-aware of the words tumbling past my lips into her ear.
She sounded like a wounded animal when she came, her breath shallow and erratic like she might hyperventilate, and I could feel everything that's happened blur, shift, and shatter. It doesn't mean anything, it never did, because this is the only real thing, and if I have to spend forever without her I'd die piece by piece, until one day I wouldn't even be a memory to the eternal inhabitants of Murder House. She shivered and shook against me, her face contorted like she was feeling the most euphoric pain, and as her body pulled me along over the edge with her time and space twisted, warped, and collapsed in on itself.
Her walls were still twitching around me, breath rough, and fingers clutching at me like I'm the only thing tying her to life when I feel the wetness from her eyes washing the sweat from my skin. I kiss away her tears and they're salty and bitter like they contain all the pain she has inside of her. I let her cry because she needs it, because she's been holding it in for too long, and I cry with her.
Somewhere in the back of my brain I know it's the drugs amplifying everything, but it's all there and latent anyway. I love her and she loves me and we need each other like we need to breath. I don't need to hear her say it because I can feel it radiating out from her, and even if we go back to hurting each other tomorrow that love will always be there, and one day it will stop hurting and just be this, forever.
We stayed on that grimy, sticky floor until the music stopped and the nauseating pull of the house drove us to our feet to stumble home. I kissed the palms of her hands, the scars on her wrists, and lastly her lips before I slit her wrists and then mine.
She was awake, her back to me, fingers gripped around the edge of the bed, when I woke that afternoon.
"I hate this."
"Me too."
"I don't want to be like my parents."
I was so thrown by the non-sequitur I couldn't help my stupid response. "Huh?"
"My mom. She took my dad back after he cheated on her, and he just keeps hurting her. I never wanted to be weak like that; I resented her for it, and now I'm no better."
"It's different, Vi." I felt fear circling, ready to strike. "No matter how long forever is, I promise I won't hurt you again." I sat up behind her, pushing aside her hair to kiss the nape of her neck, willing her to believe my trite words.
"No, it's not. We do it all the time." She walked out.
She was in the bathtub, the smoke from her cigarette mingling with the steam in the air creating a thick miasma. It was the first time she'd called me to her in... well, ever. I could feel my heart thrashing against my ribs as I stood a few feet away from her.
She didn't look at me. "You said you'd stay away from me if that's what I wanted because you care about my feelings more than yours. If I don't have sex with anyone else will you leave me alone? I mean really leave me alone, and not just follow me around invisible?"
"For how long?" She looked over and I saw the tears glazing her cheeks. Forever. She wanted forever. She didn't need to say it. "No."
She sat up, wrapping her arms around her legs and burying her face in her knees. She looked so small, so broken, and exhausted; I don't think I'd ever seen her look so completely drained. "Please, Tate."
I knelled down next to the tub, reaching a hand out to touch her shoulder; she flinched away like it was something disgusting, something that made her stomach churn at the thought of. "Please don't ask me for this, Vi." My throat was painfully constricted, my mind racing with words, pleas, half-formed and feverishly incoherent.
"I don't want to be here. I wish I had died, really died when I took those pills, and not been trapped here. I shouldn't even be a memory to anyone alive anymore." I reached my hand out again, and this time she allowed it, but she was just gone, some place I couldn't reach her with words, and she felt more like a ghost is imagined to than the warm soft girl she should feel like.
"Maybe we'll get lucky and someone will tear the house down, or burn it down and then we'll all just disappear; maybe forever won't be that long because I hate this. I hate being stuck here, loving you and hurting you and not being able to have you. The whole fucked up mess, I just hate it and I don't want to deal with it anymore."
"I love you." It came out broken and quavering, the words scratching my throat raw on their way out. "Look at me." She raised her head slowly, finally lifting her lids to look up at me. They held no light in their depths, just flat, glassy dead eyes. "We don't have to be this way, Vi."
"I know. I just can't... no matter how much I want it something in me won't let it happen."
I rested my hand on the back of her head. "Is this what you want, really?" She closed her eyes and nodded.
I wanted to be angry at her, after everything we were back to this, but I couldn't find it in me. My tongue felt thick and heavy, swollen, inside my mouth and unable to form words. I pressed a kiss into her forehead, and left her there.
I could hear her, somewhere off behind me. The familiar broken sobs. However long I'd been down here - months probably if I really tried to mark time - she was crying. A constant soundtrack as I traced down the blood blue line of vein from elbow to wrist again, splitting it open.
It resealed before my eyes. Perfect smooth skin down to the scars I'd died with. No matter how deeply I dug the blade in, it healed. No matter how many times I cut, it healed.
And that stupid bitch never stopped crying. Her voice raised to a pitiful wail, echoing around the stone confines, reaching a crescendo with a pathetic, warbled where's my baby? The old white rocker clattered to the floor as I shot out of it, Thaddeus and Lorraine's little girls scurrying for cover as I searched the source of the voice, hurling an old brass lamp at her head when I found her. It landed with a sickening smack, knocking her to the ground. Her eyes were wild with fear and shock as I flipped her over and fitted my fingers around her fragile throat. "Where's my baby?" I mocked back at her.
"Tate?" Her voice was weak and raspy and more of a croak than anything else, and I smiled down at her because even though she'd forget it in five minutes I wanted her to know it was me killing her. "Where's the baby you made me?" Her eyes were swimming in tears, tracking down the sides of her face as my fingers tightened convulsively at her words.
"I hate you! You were always the mother I wanted Nora, and you don't give a shit, do you? Look at what you did to your husband. Look at what you did to Thaddeus, to me. This whole fucked up hell is your fault. You can't touch someone's life without destroying everything good in it, and you don't give a shit about anyone but yourself; about anything other than what you want." She flailed and finally stilled; lips blue, eyes stained red with blood as I screamed at her.
"God, you're so hot when you're like this." Hayden whispered from the doorway, voice heavy with lust and malice. She sat down behind me on top of the dead woman and pressed herself against me.
"What do you want?" I managed through clenched teeth.
"Hmmm..." Her hand trailed over the front of my jeans. "to fuck." I almost vomited at the thought of it.
"Go find Ben." I spat, and pushed her off hard enough to make her head crack against the cement floor.
"How many more ways is she going to break your heart before you finally get it?" She shrieked.
Before I could say anything we both heard it, the unmistakable sound of a gunshot ringing through the air close by, and then the hysterical cries of a woman. There were footsteps and shouting above us as people ran outside, Hayden forgetting about our argument and joining them. I came out of the shadows in the attic, not wanting to run into Violet.
I looked out onto the yard from the window and saw Constance screaming over the bloody body of a child in her yard. I didn't feel anything about it; he wasn't mine, I was just a sperm donor. If I was going to get sentimental I should cry over every time I jerked off into a pair of Violet's panties. My eyes roamed over the people gathered on our side of the fence until a flicker of movement on top of the garage caught my attention. She had chosen her spot well. The shot was close, maybe fifteen feet, and she was hidden by tall shrubs from people on the ground on our side.
"What do you think you're doing?" I asked as I sat down next to her. She still had the rifle held loosely in her hand.
"Experimenting." She was shaking with the adrenalin running through her system. "I wanted to know if he could die." The others were drifting back into the house one by one.
"Well he looks pretty dead." He wasn't moving and Constance hadn't tried to throw him over the fence in a last ditch effort to save him, so I could only deduce that her shot had been fatal. "When did you learn to shoot? And where did you get the gun?" I pulled it gently from her hands; it was a weight I missed.
"Moira taught me with your old BB gun." I smiled at the memory of stalking empty soda cans around the back yard pretending to be Davy Crockett. "Anyway, that one Moira found years ago. She kept it."
"Did she know what you were going to do with it?"
"Yeah. She's the only one though."
"Why?"
"I'm pretty sure my parents would have freaked out if I killed him, even if he's the antichrist, and even if he's my half brother and your son via rape. They're pretty old fashioned about killing kids." She muttered it, not meeting my eyes the whole time, and I knew she was lying. I felt a sick sense of fear rising up inside of me and I couldn't understand why.
"And if you hadn't killed him?"
"Didn't." She said with her eyes locked on the scene in the neighboring yard.
"What?"
"Didn't kill him." She pointed over the fence where he was twitching and Constance's wails of despair were turning to ones of joy. "Well that's good to know." She said simply.
She seemed to relax. She stretched her legs out and lit a cigarette, watching as his movements became more pronounced, until he finally sat up as Constance fussed over him. "Go inside Violet." She looked at me defiantly and I grabbed her hand to pull her down off the roof. "Come on. We're going inside." Her hand was slick with sweat and slipped from mine easily.
"Go ahead. I'm staying out here." I was about to drag her forcefully into the house because we didn't have time for this shit when a tight smile lit up her face. The blond haired boy was sitting up and glaring at her, looking murderous. She waved, flipped him off, then disappeared, immediately reappearing on our side of the fence directly opposite him.
I scrambled down and nearly tackled her. "What are you doing?" I hissed in her ear. "Go inside. Now." She laughed and fought against me. For the first time in my life I felt real, palpable fear because I didn't know what he was capable of doing if she couldn't kill him, and she didn't care. "Please, Vi. Please go inside." I begged her and she stilled, looking up at me with wet eyes.
"No, Tate." Her voice was soft and sad, but unyielding. "I don't want to be here." Her eyes flicked away from mine and her voice with falsely blithe when she spoke. "Hey kid. How are you feeling?" I heard him clambering over the fence and felt the waves of hate pulsing off of him as she approached us.
He didn't say anything, just stood and watched, his blue eyes cold, but more knowing than any ten year old's had a right to be. She moved towards him and I redoubled my grip on her. I wasn't sure if the house would be strong enough to keep her alive if he killed her and the idea of being without her was nearly crippling. The tears came, thick and viscous, as I frantically whispered in her ear. "Don't leave me. I need you, Violet. I love you. I don't care what it takes, whatever you need to be happy here I'll do it. I can't survive without you."
She stretched up on her toes. "Me either. That's why I'm doing this. I love you, Tate. I'm sorry for everything." Her voice was so tender, so full of love, that all I could do was clutch at her as she kissed me.
"Go away daddy." His voice, clear and emotionless, rang in my ears as I found myself in the house. I ran to the nearest door, trying to wrench it open, but it wouldn't give. I was scrabbling at the latch on one of the windows when I saw him stab her and her crumple to the ground. There was screaming somewhere in the house as he kept plunging the knife in. She didn't fight if she was still alive after the first blow, and he didn't stop until he seemed to bore of it and Constance helped him back over the fence.
As soon as he crossed the property line the house no longer held me prisoner. I ran out, collapsing next to her, pulling her onto my lap. "Come on Violet. Wake up. Wake up!" I was screaming, crying, shaking, praying. Vivien appeared and threw herself over Violet's chest, sobbing, Ben trying to pull her away. Moira was next, and I rounded on her. "What the fuck were you thinking? Why did you help her?"
"Please come back to me." I muttered it, cried it, begged it a thousand times as I sat there shaking and my tears washed her skin of blood. My fingers searched for any sign of life and found none. I was only vaguely aware of shouted argument between Ben and Moira raging behind me. When I finally looked up it was to see Constance watching, before I could plead for her to send that thing back over to finish me off too she turned on her heel and disappeared into her house.
I'd just have to wait until Halloween, then. I leaned down, kissing her lips, making a promise. "I'll find you."
A/N: My thing with Michael is that since he's borne of the house/tate he has some of the same qualities, sort of like how you can have a parents eye or hair color. But that's not to say he can't die; maybe, maybe not. Maybe the way that Violet tried was just not the right way. On the other hand, if Billie-Dean is right then he's more than the house (I have to say i found the whole story line ridiculous, but whatever), so he might be able to kill the inhabitants if it's possible.
Anyway, I have been dying to use the term "fuck puppet" for like ever. Well ever since I read it in Christopher Moore's A Dirty Job because that's really how I see both the Dahlia's. Having read TheDevotchka's The Noble War I'm totally convinced that Tate was unable to perform on Halloween because he was so traumatized by his experience with Vivien, so to me it's like cannon now. Mystery solved! Anyway, I did ignore the downsides of taking Ecstasy; I kinda just let them experience the upside of that drug. Reviews are always appreciated :)
Fic Rec's:
If you have not read the amazing Iris by shootingstella read it immediately. It blew me away, and I could fangirl over it like a lot. Brilliant explanation for why Michael has blue eyes and not brown/black ones like Tate. I eagerly look forward to each update.
Also The Curve of Her Lips by Scarlettwoman710 and ohyellowbird, which I think we're all reading anyway, but is something I'm totally addicted to and their writing makes me green with envy. And I have to say please, please, please don't end it after the 8th. chapter.
And lastly 100 by Captivation. Another wonderful AU of an older Tate/younger Violet that I'd love to see another chapter of.