A/N: This chapter is Violet's perspective. Credit entirely goes to easilyabused because she wrote this. We are collaborating on this story and it is based on a Tumblr roleplay that we're doing together. Thank you for the follows and favorites! They are very appreciated.
Where Did You Sleep Last Night?
Chapter 2: Violet
Violet tries to recount to herself, her ears ringing, what just happened. The sudden explosive heat, the fires, the fragmented remains of the floorboards of the deck splintering into her as she was thrown by the force of the bomb. She'd slowly risen in a daze, locking eyes with Clem, remembering how she'd pleadingly glanced at her before gathering AJ to her chest and jumping away from the fires burning all around them. Violet, wanting to join them and see them all to safety, knowing… clenching her eyes shut, shaking her head to herself. It was never a question in her mind. She can't leave… her friends to this. Omar… Aasim… Louis… a burning death, trapped alone in a cell… mutilated… without a friend. She'd made herself resolutely turn towards the door, tearing inside as she'd turned away from her girl and AJ, determined to save her friends… like she couldn't before.
Somehow she quickly makes her way down through the flames and the smoky air, lingering pain emanating from every point where she'd been hurtled against the ship's deck, waving the stinging smoke from her eyes. Trying not to think of if Clem and AJ had made it to shore… not able to think of if they didn't. Her head aching… her heart. Aching.
"Louis?" she calls as she descends, then more insistently, "Lou!" The fires blaze all around her and she watches her steps, never knowing what will fall from beneath her, pieces of the walls already burning down to ashes at her feet. Violet stops a moment below decks as the floor lists beneath her, looking around herself desperately. Knowing it's stupid, adrenaline pulsing thick in her blood, yet she asks to the emptiness around her… "Omar… Aasim…?" she coughs, pressing her wrist to her eyes… hating herself. "…Minnie?"
She finally reaches the prison and checks in on Louis, still curled in the corner against himself, making sounds she can't even describe. Horrible…? Choking…? Coughing… but alive. Thank God. She turns across the hall, pressing her hand to the door, checking on Omar and Aasim.
"Guys?" She releases the prison lock, the heat suddenly blaring against her face as she pulls the door open, settles down between them.
Aasim… is dead. She rolls his unmoving, ruined form towards her, staring into his unseeing eyes, still-warm blood slowly soaking her clothing. Closes his eyes as she shuts her own, sorry. So fucking sorry. The bomb… had been their idea. She sets him down, pressing her hand to his sticky, sickly still warm chest a second to say goodbye.
"Omar?" she thinks to ask, scuffles herself against the splintering wood, instinctively trying to lift him. Hoping against hope he's all right, immediately knowing… he isn't.
"Vi?" he asks, choking. "Hey, Violet…" She holds him against her chest, raising his head. "You… you've gotta go."
"What the fuck do you mean," she asks, fully the fuck in shock, unwilling to accept this as she draws him up towards her, "you're coming with us, just get up, please just…" again and again she tries to raise him but he collapses heavily, curling against the floor. It's then she notices the blood seeping ever more quickly, starting to pour from his chest, spurting, soaking against her into her hoodie.
"I'm sorry, Vi…" he chokes, curling onto his side away from her to… almost get comfortable. "I… wish I could… I can't."
He gently sets his head against the deck and Violet leans down, hugs Omar weakly against the floor, whispering the things racing through her head she can't quite process in that moment.
"I'm so sorry, I'm so fucking…"
"I'll kill them, Omar… I swear to you I'll fucking kill them,"
"Good… goodbye."
She aches inside, making herself stumble to get back up, the smoke gathering in her lungs reminding her that her time is running out. Violet resolutely turns herself back across the hall and throws the lock of the other cell up, wrenching the door open. Relieved, sort of, to see Louis still huddled in the corner of the room, curled up and softly sobbing to himself in the shadows thrown from the fires starting to spread. She's relieved he hasn't asphyxiated, burned before she could reach him, but also so… so fucking goddamned horrified, so sick inside… if these people aren't dead from the blast, she'll kill them, like she'd promised Omar. She'll fucking kill them for this. Every. Last. One.
Violet hurriedly lowers herself to kneel beside her friend. "Come on," she softly encourages, huddled beside Louis on the floor, trying to lift him up by the shoulders, "we gotta go, okay?" He resists, cradling his head against the flames and continuing to cry, but she somehow eventually manages to drag him to his feet. That done, he… vacantly locks eyes with her… nothing behind them, nothing of the goofy, happy dude she'd considered a brother all these years. Then he raises his hand to point… to the door. Violet's heart fucking sinks. She knows. He's telling her to save herself the only way he's able to, and… leave him. To burn to death, suffocate, still huddled in the corner…
Like fuck she will let that happen.
"We've gotta get out of here, you and me," she insists, setting her hands squarely on his shoulders, shaking Louis a little harder than she intends but needing to get through to him. "I want you alive, all right?" She can only imagine how severely he's traumatized, how he must be so fucking terrified, but their eyes meet and after what feels like a century or five, the walls slowly beginning to catch fire and crumble around them… he lowers his head and nods, moving to crush her shoulders for a hug. "We're gonna be okay," she murmurs with a cough or two into his shoulder, "but we have to go. Now. Work with me." Violet lets herself take comfort in her friend's arms wrapped around her shoulders after so long, after seemingly endless days and restless, eerily quiet nights being so scared she'd never see him again, allowing themselves a moment despite the severity of the situation, rocking him back. Despite the bits of smoldering wood flecking all around them, the thickening smoke, the embers lowly threatening to engulf them.
As they get out of the cell, Violet knows… he sees them. Aasim and Omar, respectively dead and dying against the blistering floorboards. Louis chokes, murmurs… muffled… shudderingly screams? The fresh blood sputters from the corners of his lips and not knowing what else to do, Violet shields him against it, pressing the flaking dried and drying blood from his mouth against her shoulder, drawing him towards the door to the deck. "There's nothing we can do," she makes herself admit, trying to be numb, not entirely succeeding as she… can't help but glance back to the open door of the blazing, blood-drenched cell. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I couldn't… I'm sorry." Sorry for him, sorry for them… sorry for herself, not knowing how she's going to explain it to the group… at home.
They quickly make their way through the halls, Violet leading her friend by the hand, stopping at times to raise him from the floor after he falls, nestling his forehead against the floor, appearing to give up. "I swear to God," she exhales, hauling Louis up with all her strength, then moving them both along, "I'm not losing you. I am not losing you again."
The fires intensify all around them as the ship lowers ablaze into the water, jarringly sinking, every crackling floorboard a portent of the end. Violet drags Louis along with her upwards towards the upper deck, determined to get them out alive. She… has to see Clem and AJ again, hold her… her girlfriend, to her, teach the kid a few new swears when she's not looking. She has to keep Lou safe, help him eat, learn how to communicate, listen to every goddamned song he wants to play, even if it's Yankee Doodle or Heart and Soul. Even… Oh My Darlin' Clementine, like he had done before. Violet isn't sure what to feel, in that moment hoping to Christ he gets to play it for them, darkly aware of how in the song… Clementine drowns.
When they finally reach the deck, the boat is burning. Entirely on fire all around them, scraps of lumber falling around their feet, turning to ash as they step over what remains. Violet swallows, resolves herself. "We're gonna have to jump," she realizes aloud, "and swim. Can you swim a bit?" She turns to Louis and he solemnly… sighs? They're getting somewhere, even if he's sniffling. "Let's go. Grab my hand."
And so on three they jump, hand in hand, into whatever the river has to offer them. Dark water crashing all around them, Violet choking against the current, chilled to the bone, and despite her best efforts, her head going under.
It's terrifying, Violet never having been a particularly good swimmer, and having to make sure she brings Louis along with her, clenching his knuckles white between her own. It's like a bad dream - her head bobbing up above the water for a gasping breath before being plunged down again, the terror of being unable to breathe running static through her blood. She wrenches her hand against Louis' to keep hold, struggling to bring them both above water as best she can, move them towards land. Determined to save him, to save herself, pumping her legs against the water despite the burning terror in her lungs and somehow gradually drawing them closer to the shore. Being plunged down again and again, Violet almost accepting it… if she has to die, at least she's with Louis. At least he isn't alone. At least he has someone to die with him, after their failure to protect him before. She closes her eyes, her vision just as dark as before. At least her eyes don't sting anymore.
Somehow cast onto the banks of the river, she leans her head against the soil and sand, coughing violently, Louis' hand still clenched in hers as she pukes up brackish water. As she catches her breath, she raises her eyes… masses of walkers descending. Violet breathlessly forces herself to get up, grasps for her cleaver, staggering as she steps between one and Louis, quickly dispatches it, remembering on the spot James' trick to move through herds. Not even thinking as she rips the walker's chest open with her meat cleaver and quickly rubs the remains over herself, before turning to Louis and doing the same for him. Automatic.
She checks their surroundings before looking back to Louis, him chokingly crying, and she holds him instinctively, presses him against her to offer what comfort she can, the walker guts sickly squishing between their bodies. Covering them both. "We…" She half chokes, "we gotta go… but Lou, I promise," she holds him tighter, lets him weep quietly into her shoulder a moment as the river laps quietly against their feet, sand slowly sinking beneath them. "We're going home. I'm going to bring you home."
Violet swallows as she embraces him, daring to close her eyes a moment, remembering after the fear and the burning heat, hoping to God… hoping to fucking God that Clem and AJ made it out. That they'll be there.
"Walk slowly," she instructs, "…weird, like they do. I'll be with you… we're almost home."