.

(When I'm dead and gone, will they sing about me?)

(Scream My Name-Tove Lo)

.

She'll never leave, she understands.

Violet remembers those moments when she had been lurched into the kitchen, Tate carefully drawing himself closer to keep her from running. She remembers the fear clawing at her as they walked down the stairwell and into the crawlspace, her body a wreckage of death. It looked so twisted, the corpse, with fattened flies crawling over her lips and swarming her blue tinged flesh.

She also remembers, if she tries hard enough, the feel of icy water and his fingers in her mouth trying to get her to live, live, live.

His voice howls inside her mind some nights, tight with emotion and struggling to get her to not die. He promised, hadn't he? That he would never let her die.

He hid her razors, but she had found another way.

Violet shouldn't feel satisfied, but she does.

It's hard to process that she'll never be able to leave the murder house, and she'll always be a remaining image of the past. Sometimes she can almost see through the house, Moira bleeding into youth with dry words and planned movements and sometimes into an aged figure that stares down any threat.

She knows. Violet knows that Moira can tell that she's no longer part of the living. Sometimes she finds a mug of a soothing blend of tea sitting outside her door, and there's something that just knows in her sad little smile.

Tate never leaves her anymore. There's no point in keeping up a façade, because why bother? They're both dead and they're both sad dead people.

It's still raining, but it doesn't make her skin crawl anymore. The dead animals that constantly appear in the basement no longer make her scream, so they just sit there. Rotting, the way her body is behind the wall and beneath the house.

They're together, which is all that should matter. She'll never escape the home, so why even try? Wouldn't it be better to pass decades along playing the way children play, curled up on her bed playing card games and scrabble?

"I never wanted you to find out like that." Tate tells her as he obediently passes her the cards. His face looks shadowed and hazed with guilt now, silences growing between them more and more. "I thought maybe I could make you believe in something better. That this wouldn't hurt you as much."

She accepts the two of hearts, shuffling around her hands of cards. "Do you have any threes?"

"Go fish."

Violet sighs as she takes a card from the diminishing pile, the collection of matches neatly organized around them. "They'll find the body eventually, won't they?"

Tate repositions himself on his stomach, his ankles crossed in the air. "Maybe. You never know." He cocks his brow at her. "Do you have any fives?"

She passes him her five. "If they try to leave the house?"

He doesn't look at her. "You won't be able to."

"Do you ever miss leaving?"

His lips twist into a bitter smile. "I used to. Halloween is the one day of the year when the dead can walk, you know. I used to leave the house and break as many things as I could."

"Why?"

"I wanted to leave my mark." Tate squints at his hand of cards. "It can be hard watching an entire world move on, and leave you buried in the sands of time."

Violet throws her cards down, allowing him to claim victory. "I'll always be here, you know. Even if I wasn't dead I would always want to be here with you."

Tate blinks at her before sitting up. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out an aged playing card, the corners bent slightly. "This is for you."

It's the ace of hearts and it's so worn she doesn't understand. "Are you cheating?"

He gives out a bark of a laugh. "No. This was from before everything. I used to play cards with my sister, and this was my favorite. I liked keeping it on me. Now, it's for you though. I'm always going to be your ace of hearts, as long as you'll have me."

She slips it into the pocket of her flannel shirt, feeling the worn care of the card pressed against her skin. "Well, seeing as how death won't stand in the way I guess I'm keeping you for a long time then."

Tate crawls over the cards and gives her a toothy grin. "For eternity."

The kiss is soft, but it's filled with fear and love. It takes her only a few minutes to realize that the rainstorm that had lasted for days and almost for weeks had faded into bright blue skies and the pain that she had been filled wasn't hurting her as much.

"Eternity is a long time when we're only playing go fish." She informs him with a trace of a smile.

Tate smirks at her. "I'll let you win sometimes if that'll make you feel better."