"We have to move her." Moira said from somewhere behind me. It was dark and she was still in my lap, completely lifeless as I ran my fingers through her hair. The time she should have healed long since passed.

"Don't talk to me." My voice was hollow, and even as it rang in my own ears it sounded foreign, dead. I should have been thinking of a thousand heinous ways to kill her before Halloween rolled around. I should have been thinking of ways to make her suffer and regret. But I couldn't. I couldn't find it in me to give a shit right now about anything.

The idea that I could ever muster enough energy to care about anything ever again seemed farcical. I felt empty and completely alone, and it hurt more than anything else had hurt in the last few hours; the empty spaces where the parts of me she took with her used to reside aching and throbbing and stinging around the edges.

I picked Violet up and carried her into the house ignoring blur of faces crowding the hallway, only registering Vivien crying somewhere with detached recognition because she sounded like Violet when she cried. I left them all standing there as I made my way to Violet's room, laying her out on the bed and curling around her, the scent of lilac shampoo and rusty blood sharp in my nose.

I was so tired. I didn't think I'd ever felt so exhausted, so drained in all my life. I felt like I could sink down into the mattress and sleep for a hundred years if I just closed my eyes. There was a soft tap at the door, and fear froze me in place; they were coming to take her away from me, I was sure of it. Vivien entered quietly and pulled a chair over to sit next to the bed, extending a hand to take one of Violet's in it. Her clothing was still stained with blood and her face was red and blotchy from crying. "Are you going to take her away from me?"

"No."

"Thank you." I closed my eyes, pressing my face against Violet as I cupped her cheek, rubbing my thumb across her skin.

Her voice was on the verge of tears when she spoke again. "You loved her didn't you?" I looked up at her. "It's hard for me to understand how you could love anyone because of what you did. Ben thinks you can't; he thinks you're a psychopath, which makes you incapable of love. But you loved her." She nodded to Violet.

"Love her." I said harshly. "I love her, not loved her. I'll die too; maybe if there's anything after this we can be together, but even if there's nothing it's better than being here without her." Romeo and Juliet, how poetic I thought scathingly.

She was quiet for a long time, whether mulling over my words or grieving over her daughter I didn't really know or care. "You're not so unlike Thaddeus are you? Your parents both made you into monsters." I didn't say anything, just closed my eyes and hoped they'd never open again.

I woke to Ben and Vivien's voices, and at first I couldn't understand why they'd be talking next to the bed while Violet and I slept, but then everything clicked into place, and I felt a fresh wave of pain as my heart broke again. It was so easy to think she was alive. It was so easy because she wasn't cold, and she wasn't stiff, and she wasn't pallid, and if not for the ripped and blood stained clothing covering her and the lack of pulse she could so easily be sleeping.

"What do you think is going to happen to her?" Vivien asked Ben as I sat up. His answer was cold and clinical, and I wondered if being that way was the only way he could keep it together because he looked rough, even in the dim dawn light filtering through the curtains.

"She could get better right?" My voice sounded childlike and naive even to me, and I scrambled to justify it to their pitying eyes. "I mean she's not cold and stiff like a corpse should be, so maybe she could get better."

"If she was going to get better she would have by now, Tate." Ben said sympathetically. "She's got none of the markers of life that we retain. Her body may not be decaying like a human body would, but there's nothing there; she's gone."

His words had me on my feet before I even realized I was doing it. "Has anyone checked the basement? Maybe it's like the first time she died. Her body was empty, but she came back, and when we do it's usually in the basement, right? So has anyone checked?" I was vibrating on the spot, and when neither of them answered I dropped to the basement. "Violet!" My voice echoed harshly around the stone confines of the room.

I turned, raking the room with my eyes, looking for her. "Violet!" My footsteps slapping against the floor echoed as I raced around the maze of rooms. "Damn it Violet, come out!" I screamed, feeling anger course through me at her stupid little game; I'd drag her out of her hiding place by her hair if I had to. I swung around to check the crawlspace and collided with Ben.

"I waited here all night. Nothing." Ben's voice broke on the last word, and he bowed his head, brushing away tears.

"Very funny Violet. Come out, come out wherever you are!" I shrieked at the crawlspace door, positive that if I opened it she'd be sitting there smoking and smiling like a smart-ass.

"She's not there Tate!" We glared at each other, each breathing hard before I felt what little hope I had in me drain out my feet, and the pain of loss almost dropped me to the floor. "We should bury her. Have a proper funeral for her, and bury her." He said distractedly.

"No." My voice was unequivocal; she wasn't going into a hole in the backyard like some dead pet. She wasn't going someplace I couldn't even see her.

"I just want to give her something with a little more dignity than being unceremoniously dumped in the crawl space." He snapped.

"I was trying to protect her."

"Yeah well you did a bang up job with that didn't you!"

"Hey, Father of the Year, I'm not the one who didn't notice she was dead for almost a month."

The aloof, controlled facade he usually wore dropped from his face with a punch to my gut, knocking the air out of me and doubling me over before the next blow landed, breaking my nose and knocking me to the floor. The room was filled with the sounds of grunts and ragged breaths and the flat smacking sounds of fists meeting flesh as we writhed beating away the pain of loss until we were both so spent all we could do was kick weakly at each other as we bled and bruised on the floor.

After the pain came the bitter anger, aided and abetted by a cheap bottle of whiskey and one too many sad songs on repeat. If she woke up now and saw me sitting cross-legged next to her clutching the bottle like a life preserver she'd smirk at me like she knew she'd won; her features would twist up in victory from knowing how much pain she'd caused me.

So I sat, letting the anger burn and simmer like the whiskey down my throat, in my stomach, wondering how I was ever so stupid to give her pieces of myself for safe-keeping when all she did was abandon them like child bored with their once favourite toy. I thought of all the ways I would hurt her for this when she woke up because I couldn't even think of the alternative. The door banged open behind me, and Chad and Moira walked in. "What do you two want?" I growled.

"What do you think?" Chad snapped, dropping into the chair that was Vivien's usual haunt. "We're here for the same reason you are."

I let out a mirthless chuckle. "Yeah, like you give a shit that she's dead. It just gave you a way to get out."

"I think that was directed at you Jezebel." Chad said bitchily as Moira scowled silently next to him. "Whatever, do you mind giving a us a few minutes alone?"

"What are you going to do?" I didn't trust them, or anyone really, with her. Ben and Vivien kept talking about burying her like it was the right thing to do, and Dr. Charles kept offering to turn her into Thaddeus. When he was shot down by her parents he came to me, saying that if I could lure Constance over here we could put her heart into Vi. He really didn't see it coming when I threw him out the window head first. Maybe if we could find a heart other than Constance's, but there was no way I would defile Vi that way.

He held his hands up in surrender. "Nothing." I glared at him. "Take a few minutes outside, get some fresh air, take a shower or something." He looked down pointedly at my arms, still covered in Violet's blood. "You haven't left since you checked the basement, and I know why, but she was my friend too." His bitchy veneer dropping for once. "I won't let anyone do anything to her."

"Fine." I disappeared, coming out in the Portico, sitting in the same arch, in the same spot where I had with Violet a lifetime ago when her dad caught her smoking. There was a thick deadening fog hanging in the air and any other time I would have revealed in it. I would have sat out here all night feeling each drop of water suspended in the air prickle my skin and imagined a future where Violet was out here with me. Instead all I had was a cheap bottle of whiskey and nothing else.

I didn't hear her come up behind me, just felt her fingers, cold, tracing up my back under my shirt making me recoil. "What is it with you and men that don't want you?"

"I like the challenge."

"Like being thrown away like a cum rag afterwards?" I offered.

I felt her nails bite into my skin. "She's dead. What does it matter anymore?" She hissed.

There it was, sharp and honest. She was never waking up. It didn't matter. When she was alive fucking Hayden would be the final nail in the coffin, the one thing that tipped the scale and would have put her forever out of my reach because I'd so spectacularly crossed the don't-fuck-other-people line the first time. Now though, it didn't matter, because the only place that I was fucking Violet was in my head and the prospect of forgetting my worries between Hayden's thighs was better than being nailed to this cross.

I slid down from the arch, cuffing her waist with my hands, pushing her into the brick and my lips against hers; lips that were harsh and scaly, and when she forced her tongue in my mouth I half expected it to be forked. I knew as soon as her lips touched mine this was pointless; she would never be who I wanted. Her lips would always be hard and bitter, and she'd never put a small, warm hand on my cheek as she kissed me like Violet had; never fold into my chest like it was her safe haven like Violet had. She'd never be the one; the one I got lost in the, the one I could push the world away with.

Even if she wasn't a bitter, angry harpy, she'd never fill that hole in my heart where Violet lived; no one would, because the cruelest thing Violet ever did to me was make me love her. I pulled away and wiped my lips across my sleeve trying to remove any evidence of my betrayal before I left her there hissing like a pissed off animal.

Chad was alone when I walked back in, quickly glancing over Violet's prone form to make sure she was just as I'd left her, the disgust at what happened outside roiled in my stomach, clawing its way up my throat in a mess angry words, an errant 'bitch' pushing its way past everything else and out my lips.

I took a pull from the bottle, trying to wash the rest down before they exploded out of my mouth, forgetting for a moment that Chad was there before he made himself known with a sarcastic, disbelieving noise in his throat. "Shut up. Just shut up."

"What are you so pissed off at her for?"

"After all the times she hurt me you're asking me that? Why did she even do it? I mean, we all knew she'd come back."

"Maybe she liked hurting you. Maybe she thought if she hurt you enough you'd finally stop loving her, and then you'd leave her alone. Maybe she wanted to see if she could be as bad as you. Maybe she wanted to see if you were really the monster you were in her head." He finished with an irritated huff.

I felt my anger shrivel at his words and sat down hard on the floor. I picked at the frayed edge of my jeans, contemplated the half empty bottle held in my hand, tried to blot out the kiss with Hayden, tried to ignore his litany, and failed. "Is that really why?"

Chad scoffed. "No."

"Then why?"

"Because you kept upping the stakes. Kept inflicting new wounds before the old ones could heal, and hurting you was better than hurting herself because she wasn't the one who deserved to be hurting. She hated it, but she hated being tortured with the knowledge that Vivien enjoyed it, that she'd never have kids, more. But you're the man of action aren't you? Killing, raping, hurting... if there's a problem you try to fix it in the worst way."

"Then what should I have done, huh?" The anger rising once again. "I didn't see you seeking me out to tell me how to fix things or make her happy, or shit, just telling me to back the fuck off because she was your friend and I was hurting her after all the times you two spilled your guts to each other over a bottle of wine." My voice rising with my anger. "So tell, what the fuck should I have done here, Chad?"

"You should have stayed the hell away from her, like she wanted you to from the start, and not after she had to beg you for it because by then it was too little too late. You should have waited for her to come to you when she was ready, and when she was you should have showed her that you still loved her, and given her a reason to trust you not to break her heart. Again. Because whatever slights she inflicted on you were nothing compared to how you betrayed her. Your heart may have pieces missing, but hers was shattered, so don't sit there and act like a victim. You're not." He stomped out, slamming the door behind him.

I kept up my lonely vigil all night. The alcohol flipping my anger for crushing grief and regret at some point. It was Vivien who broke the news to me that they'd bury her the day after at sunset. I just nodded and sat down on the bed, taking Violet's hand in mine and holding it until we were alone again and I could press it against my face and let the tears I was holding in cascade down my cheeks. I couldn't stop them, and she wasn't coming back.

"I never thought I'd have to do this." My voice was muffled by my hands covering my face as I sat next to Vi on the bad, Chad standing somewhere behind me waiting for me to move so that he and Vivien could get her ready for burial.

I'd spent the night with her, alone, and I felt her slipping through my fingers a little at a time as each minute ticked by. In an hour all I'd have is memories of those gift months spent together before everything turned sour and spoiled; of those weeks spent in her bedroom and the attic after she died exploring her body; of halloween.

I'd almost begged Ben and Vivien to bury me with her because Halloween seemed so far away. I fleetingly thought about whisking her down to the basement to Dr. Charles, taking him up on the offer to repeat his life's finest achievement, of somehow luring someone who wasn't Constance here so we could put their heart inside Vi and she'd live again. Desperate thoughts of a desperate man because whatever asshole coined the phrase It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all didn't know dick about love; no one who ever felt this would say that.

"You can stay if you want." He offered, but I shook my head. If I had to stay and watch it would become horribly real in a way I'd been hiding from since it happened.

"Can I just have a minute?"

I waited until I heard the door close softly behind him to crawl forward and cradle her face in my hands, trying to burn into my brain how her skin felt against my fingers; the way her hair fell through them; all the delicate tones tinting her porcelain skin because she was still perfect and it wasn't making this easier. I didn't say anything because I couldn't find the words; there were none. Instead I kissed her hard and forced myself from the room. Vivien and Chad were waiting in the hall when I walked out, shoulders heaving and head bowed, to take refuge in the attic.

Beau had slouched over to meet me when I sat down on the dusty floor, the little window overlooking the yard morbidly pulling my gaze towards it. I knew if I looked out of it I'd see the hole Ben and Patrick had dug; would see her buried in it. I wasn't going to be there; my strength only extended so far as leaving her bedroom and hiding up here.

He sat watching me sadly and rolled the ball only halfheartedly a few times before asking about Violet as best as he could. I was too lost trying to find a way to explain it to him to wonder how he knew anything was wrong with her. In the end I settled on 'she's sick', and he looked at me blankly for a moment before crawling over to a dark corner and rummaging around until he came back holding something in his hand. "For... for Vi... Violet." He stuttered, opening his hand to reveal an old tarnished ring set with a dark stone the size of a marble cut in half; a beautiful trinket left from some forgotten resident who got away with her life, but not her possessions.

"I'll go give this to her, okay? I'm sure she'll love it." I descended the rickety stairs with a sniff and cough, and was almost knocked over by Chad as he quickly walked down the hallway. I grabbed him. "Am I too late? Beau wanted Vi to have this, but is it too late?" He looked at the ring in my hand and shook his head, pushing me away to continue down the hall. Vivien opened the door and motioned to me. "What...?"

She grabbed me by the wrist and pulled me over to the bed. "Tell me I'm hallucinating."

"What?"

"Look at the wounds." She hissed.

I did. They were scabbed over.

I sat down hard in the chair and started shaking uncontrollably as Vivien paced a frantic circle at the foot of the bed. This couldn't be happening. If she was going to heal she would have. It had been three days, she was gone. I heard footsteps pounding up the stairs, down the hall, into the room. I left, pushing past Chad, Patrick, and Moira when Ben started examining Vi because I couldn't stand it; couldn't stand the hope rising up in my chest.

I paced, endlessly, down to one end of the hall, back to Vi's door, chewing my nail until I tasted blood, my heart thumping away like a jackhammer as the minutes ticked by in silence, trying desperately to tamp down the hope springing up inside of me because I knew how much it would hurt to have it ripped away.

I heard Vivien burst into tears and my heart broke, again, in new ways and shapes because of course she was dead and I was stupid for ever hoping, for ever thinking she'd get better, for ever loving her in the first place. I slinked back in the door, shouldering past the gays to give Violet the ring Beau had gifted her before she was hidden away from me forever.

"Here." I pulled the ring from my pocket where it had been making little dents against my thigh as I paced and presented it to Vivien. "Beau wanted her to have this."

She looked at me, confused. "She's healing." She looked at Ben and back at me. "Tell him." She urged.

"It looks like she's healing, but I don't know what that means. We have to wait and see what happens." I pushed past them, holding my breath as I traced a finger around her scabs.

"She can't be." I said dumbly, not daring to believe it.

"Well, she is." He said with a finality that cut through my disbelief.

I traced the planes of Violet's face with my fingers before leaning into her ear so only she could hear me. "Violet? Vi? I don't know if you can hear me, but if you can please come back." I picked her hand up and kissed it, squeezed it in mine. "Please."

Violet's sick room turned into a beehive of activity. She would have hated it.

After Ben checked her wounds every morning slowly people would trickle in; first Vivien and the baby, and then Moira, Chad and Patrick. In the afternoon Lorraine's little girls would bring her flowers they'd picked from the yard because Sleeping Beauty was supposed to be surrounded by flowers. There was constantly talking and living and laughing going on around her and I sat in the corner like a foul tempered gargoyle feeling as empty of life as she looked until they slowly filtered out, until it was just me and her again.

Every evening I unbuttoned the flannel of mine that she wore and counted her scars, traced them, kissed them. Every night I'd watch her, lay with her, read to her, put on her favourite music. Anything and everything I could think of that might help her and distract me because this, her being dead, had suddenly and inexplicably become the easy part.

On the good days I thought of Chad's constant strictures to me to 'man up' and fix things. To talk to her and find out what she wanted and needed and give it to her; to make her promises and keep them even if it hurt because that was the only way it wouldn't someday. I'd spend hours framing my apologies until they were just right, like an actor memorizing a script. On those days the future was a happy one because as he said, she still loved me, just didn't think the cycle of fucking and wounding would stop, and all I had to do was change that, not me.

On the bad days the hours spent locked with her were a crucible because there was nothing I could do to fix this. Things were too broken, there was nothing salvageable, and love wasn't enough; our past would forever poison our future. She wanted to die, she wanted to leave me here, and I hated her for it. When she woke up she'd probably descend into hysterics at the prospect of still being here, with me, in this house, forever, and it didn't matter what I said or did because nothing would change that. Those nights there was no reading or talking or music because she was the bitch that ruined my life, and if she woke up she'd just keep ruining it and me.

And even that wasn't the worst. The worst was her not waking up at all, and as the days stretched into weeks, and then into a month and she didn't wake up I would go through the five stages of grief every night because she was never going to wake up. Her cuts had healed into pink, puffed up scarred tissue decorating her chest and abdomen, but her heart still didn't beat, and it never would again.

Ben had been talking about performing CPR the last few days, reasoning that maybe she needed a 'jump start' like a broken down car before she'd work again, but no one had gotten that desperate, mostly because no one wanted to be that wrong. As long as we had hope we had something; if we did it, and it didn't work we'd have nothing.

"I can't believe people read this." I muttered, looking up from the book in my hand to Violet's face. "You would have hated this wouldn't you? Some stupid, sappy bitch swooning over a sparkly vampire who basically just admitted to stalking her? If you knew I watched you sleep when you were alive you would have told me to go fuck myself." I tossed the book to the floor and made a mental note to throw it at Chad the next time I saw him for assuring me she'd love it.

I switched on her iPod and the sad twang of a slide guitar filled the room as I sat back down, playing with her fingers and singing along softly to the lyrics about a woman who leaves the man who loves her and the lengths he goes to keep her when her hand twitched in mine. It felt like an eternity before I could breath again, before my heart stuttered into a sprint. "Vi?" She didn't respond as a mixture of terror and elation seared through my veins while I hovered over her, waiting.

It came on slow; the flush seeping into her cheeks, the warmth spreading through her limbs, the barest hint of breath, and finally another little twitch of her hand in mine. My breathing was so ragged I thought I might hyperventilate and I tried to steady it as I leaned down. "Violet? Can you hear me? Squeeze my hand if you can hear me." When I felt her hand pulse weakly in mine I came undone; laughed, cried, smiled, kissed every inch of her face until she made an irritated noise in the back of her throat, and weakly, tried to pull away.

She seemed to come to life into a deep sleep. Her breathing was slow and steady, and eventually her head lolled to the side, nuzzling into a pillow as she mumbled something. "What? Say it again." I leaned down and put my ear next to her lips as she said 'cold'. "You're cold?" She made a little noise of assent and I laid down, pulling her against me and the thick down comforter over us. I wove my fingers into her hair and pressed her against me as I cried at the soft humid breathes floating across the skin of my neck.

"Why are you crying?" She mumbled, her voice heavy with sleep. "I came back."

"You were dead." I choked out.

"Yeah." She breathed, and drifted off again.

As dawn stretched across the ceiling I kept her wrapped in my arms because I was sure when she woke up she'd tell me to leave her alone, to 'go away'; to never see or speak to her again. It was a slow crawl to gallows and I was drawing out every last second of life because I knew the future beyond those steps held nothing.

When Ben and Vivien entered an hour later she was still resting against me, her arm having crept across my stomach. Their intrusion felt wrong, voyeuristic, and it was only after a harsh and hissed argument that they went back downstairs with ill grace.

She got restless around noon, tossing and turning, until she finally opened her eyes an hour later to see me staring at her. "Hey."

"Hey." The silence that descended was tense and heavy and awkward as we both lay there eyeing each other warily. "You look like hell." She said finally as she reached out apprehensively to stroke my cheek.

"I've been in hell." I said, as I pressed into her hand. So warm. So soft. So missed.

"I know." Her tone was sad and strangely evasive.

I stared at her as she worried her bottom lip before rolling over on my back. "I'm so pissed at you Vi." I said to the ceiling, exhaling a month indefinable, indescribable emotions like stale air as frustration at everything that had happened rose to the surface. "Why did you do it?"

"I told you why." She said shortly, but pressed on when I didn't reply. "You were right; family isn't enough. I wanted you, but I things were - are - so fucked up, and I don't know... I didn't want to turn into Maria; a sad shadow of a girl wandering around like a pathetic broken record mumbling 'look at what he did to me' over and over."

"Things would have changed."

"Yeah, okay."

"They would have." I said firmly, annoyed by her dismissiveness. "Neither of us wanted it to be like this."

"Tate, I'm tired and I'm sore, and I've been dead for three weeks, and right now I just don't want to do this with you." She said wearily, slicing through my anger.

I rolled back over, resting a hand on her hip. "Okay. All I want is for you to listen to me. You don't have to say anything, just listen, okay?" There was apprehension in her eyes, but she acquiesced, allowing me to tell her every detail of events of the last month, every nuance of emotion. Let me tell her all the apologies I had stored up and perfected over that time. She closed her eyes at some point to hide the pain, but the tears still wet her face, and when they did she let me pull her into my chest and keep talking into her ear. She let me repeat my last promise to her: to give her what she needed to be happy here.

But it was just that: she listened. She didn't say anything, and the silence afterward stretched on until her breathing deepened and she fell asleep again. It was dusk when she woke for a second time, sitting up and holding her head like it was throbbing before tottering over to the mirror above the dresser. "Why am I only wearing your shirt and panties? Should you be looking up the local chapter of Necrophiliacs Anonymous for Halloween?" She asked as she started popping the buttons.

I barked out a laugh. "No, it was easier to check your wounds this way. How do you feel?"

"Sore. Three weeks of not moving makes you sore." Her fingers were tracing the scars above her breasts.

"Twenty-seven." She turned to look at me. "There's twenty-seven of them. We thought you were dead, Vi. If your mom hadn't noticed the scars forming they would have buried you."

"Sorry." Her voice was small and contrite, and it might have been the only time I heard her utter that word and mean it as an actual apology.

"How do you know how long you've been dead for?"

"Hmm?"

"You've said it twice, that you've been dead for three weeks. How do you know?"

She made her way over to the window, lighting a cigarette and looking at Constance's house. "I just do."

"Do you want me to go?" She shook her head, finished the cigarette and came back to bed, curling against me. It took her nearly a week before she was normal, or at least functioning in the way she should. The entire time she was quiet; awfully, terribly, quiet. She didn't tell me what she wanted or needed, but she didn't send me away either, and I played along because it was so much better than it had been for years. It wasn't right, or perfect, just better.

When she finally went downstairs to see her parents and everyone else she never strayed far from my hand resting lightly against the small of her back. I could feel how tense her muscles were, how uncomfortable she was with being the center of attention. She served her time; drank a cup of tea, relaxed, briefly, with her brother in her arms, and when she deemed she'd put on her exhibition long enough, retreated back upstairs with me following along like a vestigial limb.

She was holed up with Chad and Moira and a bottle of wine in the living room with the doors closed, while I played Solitaire in the kitchen, clearly not invited. It was hours later that the door opened and she walked out, sitting down across the table from me, silent for a moment before she spoke. "You need to give Moira break. It wasn't her idea."

I dropped my gaze back to the cards, not wanting her to see how my features hardened. I knew it was irrational and stupid, but I couldn't help but seething silently at Moira every time I saw her for her hand in the anguish I'd felt over the last month. I heard her chair scuff the floor as she got up, and her footsteps fading away up the stairs. I packed up my cards and followed, catching her just as she pulled her shirt off, seeing her fresh scars pink and puckered and spread across her wasn't something I was getting used to.

I sat down on the bed, pulling her with me, and buried my face in her stomach. "I wish those would go away." I said glumly.

"Do you?" I pulled away to look up, and they were gone, perfect smooth flesh was all I could see for a second, and then they were back and she pulled away.

"Do you want to be alone?"

"Chad told me what he told you. He feels guilty for breaking my confidences now that I'm not dead."

"Are you... upset that he told me?"

"It's done, it doesn't matter. I just don't want to talk about it, not with you. It still hurts too much." I could see the muscles straining in her back as she gripped against the dresser fighting emotions I couldn't see with her face turned away from me.

"Why should I ease up on Moira?" The words came out harsher than I intended because, again, she had a hand in this anguish.

I saw Violet relax, like a sprung coil, her movements were easy and natural again. "Because I'm fine, and because she's not going to be here that much longer, so she might as well enjoy it while she can." She smirked at me over her shoulder, taking in my stunned expression before continuing as she pulled a shirt on to sleep in. "This is totally going to mind fuck you."

She rearranged some pillows against the footboard and laid down against them. "You didn't ask me where I went when I died." She said around a cigarette, waiting for me to dig out the lighter I always kept in my pocket for her. "You asked me how I knew I was dead for three weeks." She said around the first puff as if showing a flaw in my logic.

"You didn't die, so you didn't go anywhere."

"Yes, I did. I wasn't here, not until around the time I started to wake up."

"Okay, so where were you? Heaven or Hell?" I was entertaining her, joking with her, because the idea that she was gone and came back was absurd; it didn't work like that.

She scowled. "If it makes it easier just accept that everything I think happened was actually going on inside my head and it's total bullshit; a consensual hallucination of my mind to ease me into death or something. Maybe the dream of someone in a coma, whatever. It felt real to me."

"This is bullshit, Vi. You can't die, the house won't let you, and anyway we don't die because we don't have bodies, not real ones at least."

She smiled at me maddeningly as if I'd fallen into a trap. "That's sort of true. All we are is souls, and you can't usually kill a soul, but He can." She nodded towards Constance's house. "And that's what matters. The body, that's just meat, a vessel, unimportant. When you die it's your soul that moves on; your body just decays. I didn't decay because this isn't flesh, it's soul no matter what it feels like."

"Okay. So where did you go, Heaven or Hell, and how did you come back?"

"Heaven. We all go to Heaven." She was staring at the ceiling puffing perfect little smoke rings, like perverse halos.

"So I'd go to heaven if I died?" I scoffed.

"Eventually." She looked at me. "Maybe." A smile playing on her lips.

"Maybe?"

"Maybe. Not everyone goes directly to Heaven; it's not Monopoly, you don't always pass Go. Some people have to go to purgatory. It's sort of like reincarnation except we're out of the flow of humanity, but still, the soul only ascends." She let out an irritated little huff at my confused expression. "Even though we have a soul we're still human and flawed and we have free-will so we fuck things up. If we die before we can overcome our baser human nature we go to purgatory where we're re-presented with the lessons we didn't learn in life."

"You're stuck there until your soul can ascend again, but the change must be permanent." She trailed off lost in thought for a moment, musing. "I didn't ask, but if we can only ascend it's because our nature has fundamentally changed." Her eyes focused on me again. "Anyway, it really comes down to three things: compassion, humility, and simplicity. But those three things break down in a thousand different ways. So, maybe. You have to overcome your flawed nature to ascend, otherwise you're stuck there indefinitely."

"If the soul can only ascend what about Hell?"

"Dogma."

"What?"

"Dogma. You're too married to the ideas of the afterlife written by flawed humans; justice is a human need. There is no Hell in the afterlife, the soul only ascends. The phrase 'Hell on earth', did you ever think of it literally?"

"Yes." She arched an eyebrow questioningly. "I did. You try growing up with Constance." I said irritably.

"My point exactly. This is Hell."

"I'm lost."

"No shit." She scoffed. "This is Hell. Where we live, earth, this is Hell." All I could do was gape at her in disbelief. "What? It's that had to believe? Look at all the awful shit we do to each other, and not even outside these walls. You said it yourself, the world is a filthy place. Well, duh. Welcome to Hell."

"Bullshit."

"You think so? Look around you, Tate. Sometimes we create our own Hell; what would be worse for us than living here and not having each other? Sometimes we're powerless to the Hell others create; war, genocide... fuck, natural disasters. Just because there's moments of happiness doesn't mean anything."

"Exactly, so Hilter's going to Heaven? I find that hard to believe."

"No, you have to have a soul to ascend." She smirked at the look of shock on my face. "Not everyone has a soul. That little abomination next door doesn't. No soul, no ascension. When they die they just die; they're only flesh."

"But you couldn't kill him. How does that work?"

"I just didn't kill him in the right way. He can die. People like that though, they're kind of pure projections of Hell. Demons don't really exist like they do in the Bible, but they're sort of close to it, I guess."

"You guess?"

"Just because I got some answers doesn't mean I got all of them. But people like that, and places like this house, it's an energy that keeps them going. You have to break that. When you do they just die. If we could break the energy of this house it would just be a house like any other."

"So how do we break the energy of this house?"

"No idea." She said, avoiding meeting my eyes by picking at the comforter.

"You're a shitty liar, Vi."

"What does it matter if this is all something my brain cooked up?" She said, annoyance coloring her voice.

We sat glaring at each other, each calling the others bluff because at some point I had started to believe her. I felt that creeping sense of fear, the same as I had when I watched her with the gun in her hand. "You're going to destroy the energy of the house aren't you? That's why Moira's not going to be here much longer, because none of us are."

"Is that what you want?"

"I don't know." I said slowly, turning over the idea. "What would happen? Would we all just disappear?"

"Lost Souls now departing gate 9A." She giggled, betraying for the first time how much wine she'd consumed over the last few hours, and expelling the tension that had descended moments before.

"You came back." I said suddenly.

"What?" She snapped like I'd hit a nerve, which one I had no idea.

"You came back. How does that work?" She relaxed.

"We get a choice. Well unless you die in a place like this house you get a choice, but when you die, before you go to purgatory or heaven, you get a choice. You can stay or come back. If you come back you can ascend when you want to, but once you do you have to stay. All that bullshit about ghosts sticking around because they have 'unfinished business' or whatever... it's sort of true. I imagine those kids you killed just won't move on until they get some answers, but different people, different reasons. You can't move back and forth though; once you die you only have the one chance to come back. So if we died I would have to stay there, but you'd have a choice."

"Why did you come back?"

"Unfinished business." She said vaguely, but there was a hardness to her voice that told me plainly to drop the subject.

"Okay. So these things that break down in a thousand ways, how does that work?"

"Did you ever read the Bible?"

"I thought you said that was the work of flawed humans."

"It is, sort of; divinely inspired, but not guided."

"Huh?"

"Forget it, it's not important. What was Jesus like? I mean what were like, the big defining things?"

"He existed?"

"Fuck, stop getting bogged in unimportant details, just answer the question. God, you're worse than a stupid kid sometimes. I'd have better luck with conversation with Travis."

"Fuck you." I spat and got off the bed, heading for the door, but she grabbed my wrist.

"Sorry, really." I pulled against her, but she wouldn't let go. "Tate?" I forced a breath out my nose. Every time. Every fucking time all it took was her asking and I'd cave. She tugged against me, pulling me down, and I let her, caging her in with my arms. "I'm sorry. I know that still hurts."

I bit back the angry retort on my tongue and tried to smooth things over by getting back to the point. "So... what was it you said? 'Humility, compassion...?"

"Simplicity. That was the toughest one for me." She said offhand.

"Why?"

"Jesus said 'Be like children'. Children have an infinite capacity for faith, for the belief in things not seen or proven. It's tough for me." She shrugged. "Whatever. Think about all the things you've done in your life and afterlife and measure them against those three things."

"So he really existed?"

"Yeah, like Michael in reverse."

"What do you mean?"

"Well he's a pure projection of heaven or whatever; human and God, like Michael in reverse."

"If that was the case the Devil would have raped your mother." I said in a small voice, bracing for the blow that was surely coming for mentioning it.

"Maybe there isn't a The Devil, you know? I mean humans have an infinite capacity for cruelty, maybe that's all it is, and it's easier to point to a boogey man than to say we're all evil. Just because Jesus died to atone for our sins, everyone's, all of them, doesn't mean that we were perfected; we're still flawed and human."

I frowned. "Is that all we are? Evil little things that pollute the earth?"

"No because we have free will; we have a choice to be good or bad, and none of us are wholly one or the other."

"Even the soulless?"

She shrugged. "No idea. Like I said, I didn't get all the answers." She was quiet for a long time as her words twisted and spun in my head. Finally she got up, tossing the pillows back where they belong and crawling forward, prodding my arm. "If you're going to stay at least be useful." I lifted it, letting her nuzzle against me, and wrapped it around her protectively.

"What are the good things?"

"Sleep Tate, I need to sleep or I might actually die."

"Not funny Violet." I scowled, but she kissed right over the pulsing vein in my neck and settled herself. "Fine, but this conversation isn't over." Her fingers slipped over my mouth sushing me. I kissed and nipped at them briefly before whispering an 'I love you' into her hair.

"Vi?"

"Hmm?"

"You came back to break the house didn't you?"

"Go to sleep Tate, or at least be quiet so I can."

A/N: Ugh... this was a tough chapter to write. Not that it didn't come easily or anything (it did), but the first half was just damn depressing even though I knew where it was ending up. The second half was fun actually because I got to use a lot of stuff that's been floating around my brain for almost a decade. So surprise, Violet's back. For now. Maybe.

There's one more chapter of this and then I'm going to go back and expand Beat The Devil's Tattoo a little. As always I love you all for reading and reviewing :)

And I do have to recommend Halloween by CharleyLovegood. It's Tate & Stephanie (goth girl from the Dead Breakfast Club) and it's amazing. Maybe no the easiest read for us Violators, but so so well done.