secret heart.
violet/olaf. (after hostile hospital, before the end.)
obvious warnings- underage romance.
She imagines that, if she could invent anything, she would craft him a heart out of scraps of alloy and loose screws she finds in her back pocket.
She even once thought, failing that, she would give him her own.
"Your soul," she mutters, eyes shut and imagining the layout of his face against the black underside of her eyelids, where though her lashes little pinholes of light have begun to streak in and across. "is such a dark, pitiful thing."
The sheer impossibility of it was what made it special. Violet could never forget about the man without a conscience who had tried to kill her but not hurt her, tried to marry her but not touch her. Those unacknowledged feelings make her ache with tenderness and nostalgia that she regrets as soon as they appear.
The memories they shared were sentimental but unromantic. Violet can't shake the thought of his peppery breath that was once so close to her whenever she smells wine. And she recalls the way they'd get so close to brushing up against the others arm or leg, but one would pull before they'd touch. Both afraid someone of what the small contact would unleash.
She recalls how innocent she used to feel, and how strange that he had taken that innocence away without ever touching her. It was like a game, run and he will always chase you. It was similar for him - chase her and she won't stop running, won't give you the chance to do something horrible to her.
Olaf also recalls things about her on certain nights. When he is sober enough to wonder, and drunk enough to not care. Like the hurt that would always flash for an instant in her face after he did something devious. Or some similar secret emotion she'd betray to him for only a moment before hiding it away again.
He also thinks about cheaper things, like the cherry roundness of her lips and the white untouched flesh of her neck. But then he feels shamed as a dog found with his nose in the trash, and forces the feelings down as he opens another bottle of wine.
Violet never was romantic and that's a good thing, because it was certainly no romance. And they can't have a happy ending, because those aren't real.
Not for people like them.