~September 8th 2016~
Violet Harmon tumbled onto the grass with a wave of laughter she hadn't allowed to leave her lips for what felt like years; her dirty blonde hair spread around her head upon the freshly cut grass; shortly after, Mortimer Langdon stumbled at her side from the opposite direction of which she'd come from, leaving both their heads to be at the same level, but their bodies pointing in opposite directions. "Holy shit," Violet voiced as she tried to catch the breaths she found herself surprised that she still needed. "I really am out of shape." When she looked to her side, at Tim, she realised he hadn't wasted even a moment before he'd reached for a cigarette and his lighter; it only allowed for the dirty blonde's brows to rise. "Have you even caught your breath?"
His eyes shifted to look at her as he inhaled the first long intake of smoke from the lit piece and put away the lighter, his brown curls shook along with his head before he let soft clouds of smoke between smiling words. "Nope." He admitted within the smirk of his lips and offered the cigarette to Violet, who shrugged once and took the small bud. "But I'm dead, Vi. I don't think I need air as much as I once did."
The echo of a short scoffed disbelief left from the other's parted lips. "Speak for yourself." A very out of breath Violet said as she exhaled a long cloud of gray smoke toward the cloudless blue sky; something to which Tim only let out a small wave of amused laugher, taking the cigarette from her offering hands. Her eyes refused to move away from his, surprised at just how at ease she felt with him. "I bet we look like we lost our shit running around the house like idiots."
Tim's shoulders were moving on the grass, trying to get even more comfortable than he already found himself, when her eyes locked with his. It slightly ruffled him because, to him, Violet's orbs studied him as if he were his mind-fucked twin. But, in reality, the girl simply admired how much he wasn't like him at all. "Isn't everyone around here crazy in some form or another?" He forced his eyes to look away from hers before he lead the cigarette to his lips once more.
"You've got a point." Violet allowed shortly with the echo of a breathed chuckle as she led her eyes to the sky; her cheeks hurt, given that for the past few weeks she'd been smiling and laughing more than she'd done at any point in her life. She found herself slightly troubled upon the reality of the ease with which the one guy who looked ninety nine percent like the man she'd wished hadn't ruined what they once had could make her feel so incredibly at home. Could it be because of the fact that he looked so much like Tate? Or perhaps it genuinely all rested within the reality that he seemed to be a good guy on his own and nothing like the other Langdon twin at all; that he wasn't as dark as his blond counterpart had once been, unlike the way she saw he was with the new owner. Was Violet jealous? Or was she simply wondering why he hadn't been able to be that way with her? Or had he been, and she simply couldn't remember because the only thing that came to her mind when his name came up was the way her mother had died giving birth to his child?
"Rapunzel?" Tim's words pulled Violet almost instantly out of her deep, dark reverie. Almost, since Tim had found himself forced to say her name truly three times for her to react to it.
"Hm?" She finally asked as she allowed her eyes to fall on his again, they don't even look as dark as Tate's do. She thought to herself as she looked into the familiar brown of Tim's hues.
"I asked if you think you're ready for Halloween." Tim's brows rose as he found himself wondering just what had taken over his friend's mind. Probably his twin, once again. Nonetheless, he inhaled a long drag from his cigarette as he waited for her answer.
An answer that came out slightly too swiftly. "Fuck no." She snorted a breath, before daring to look toward the sky again. "But it's not that close anyway, is it?"
"Nah." Tim announced as he mirrored her decision to lift his eyes to look up at the sky. "The owner's calendar said it's just the beginning of September, so we've got time to get you in shape to become a criminal." He allowed a smile to take over his lips at the sole thought of going back to the only fun he'd found when alive: stealing.
"Cool." Violet nodded; her mind wondrous once again. And, after a silence that surprisingly enough for both ghosts, felt absolutely comfortable, Violet spoke once more. "Can I ask you a personal question, Tim?" She wouldn't admit it, even to herself, but she liked saying his name; for it rested as a reminder that the boy beside him wasn't the guy that had so incredibly scarred her mind and soul. She turned to look at him upon his lack of a reply.
It was enough for his eyes to fall on her as a deep frown settled upon his forehead at her request; his first reaction, gone ignored, was to get the hell up from the grass and run out into the house. Only his legs didn't want to support that urge, thus, instead, he simply nodded. "Um... sure." He encouraged her, nearly praying to a God he didn't believe in that he wouldn't regret the choice. "Go for it."
Violet recognised his doubt as something she'd do as she allowed herself to roll on the fresh grass until her stomach rested against it, allowing both her elbows to prop her as she motioned for Tim to hand her his cigarette, when he obliged, she took a long breath from the intoxicating smoke before she offered it back to him, who took it with a curious awaiting gaze. "As you know, I killed myself too." She started, before she let out a breath tainted with gray. "With pills, just like you." Her eyes finally lifted to look at his. "I was just..." Her eyes danced on the brown of his own as she gathered the very curious guts to ask that which had been nagging at her brain for almost as long as she'd known him. "I was wondering why you did it." She forced her eyes to stay on his.
Tim's insides suddenly felt as if they'd been squeezed, both by himself and by Violet, for he knew how it felt to experience such hopelessness and fear in a moment in which pills became the only answer; thus, he suddenly cupped his hands so tightly that his thumb ring began making a print upon the skin of his hand. "I just felt like there was nothing for me," he confided, a frown crossing his forehead upon the realisation of the ease with which he felt like sharing his most darkened thoughts with the girl he'd once considered using as revenge toward his brother. Opening up hadn't been something he'd been good at... ever. Yet, he felt comfortable enough not to stop. "Like the world was this... big ass place that I didn't belong in, let alone have a place in." He allowed his eyes to look up toward Violet's. "Especially my own life; every day it hurt to breathe, every damn minute I was angry about something. I couldn't sleep, couldn't think, tried not to feel so much all at once, and I thought..." He paused, surprised at himself at the extent of his words, and even more, at the eminent understanding that seemed to reflect in his friend's orbs, "maybe, for once, I'd feel something with the pills. Peace, calmness, sleep. A high before shit went dark." His nostrils flared with a sharp intake of breath but the visual contact within the two dared not part.
Thus, Violet hadn't been able to stop the way her eyes began to pool upon the recognition in his words, the one curse she'd not been able to break yet, crying at anything that made her feel. Yet, she never looked away; it scared her just how much it felt as if she'd been the one speaking, only instead of angry she'd simply just felt... numb. Tim, though, felt a sudden shock at the way her tears fell silently, with such a power than made him wonder if he could apologise for her pain; not because he'd caused it, no, but because he understood it, he only allowed himself to roll onto the same position on his stomach the way Violet laid in front of him. Violet knew, though, by the way Tim's voice had sounded, that it'd taken a lot in him to let her in like that, thus, after a couple of silent and thoughtful moments, without thinking too much about it, Violet decided to share her own thoughts too. "I found a way for those feelings to go away..." It was a means to allow her companionship upon a boy she realised understood to find a purpose within its own, a means she forced along the vulnerability she loathed showing so easily, but she did not mask along that moment at all. "I mean, I used to..." She paused, "before I died..." And even after, she continued in her head. "I used to find a way to make those feelings seem unimportant. I mean, feeling like you were alone in the world no matter how many people said they were there for you, especially because you were clearly hurting and they never saw it, it just made everything worse." Violet's head shook and their eye contact finally broke, her eyes falling to the colourful green of the grass. "They were so full of shit." Tim did nothing other than to study her, the girl before him, for he couldn't believe just how many of the words that she easily spoke seemed to relate to him. He'd been there, in that void of loneliness with people saying that they cared. It wasn't until Violet's eyes fell toward her left arm that he understood; his biggest secret, she shared it too.
Of course, it was only speculating, at least until Violet's right hand lifted from the grass, making her left elbow be the only one resting upon it; her fingers wrapped around the soft fabric near the end of the sleeves of her shirt, and finally, she tugged on it softly, feeling the tingling sensation of the fabric against the skin that held fresh and old wounds. Thin and thick red lines where, once, a sharp razor had marked the skin. Tim wasn't surprised when Violet seemed unable to look into his eyes again. "Whenever I was angry, sad, or when I felt like the world was closing in on me, this is the way I'd end up feeling alive." Violet spoke; Tim thought she wouldn't allow them, but suddenly, her eyes lifted to look into his once again. "I guess seeing the blood flow was my way of dealing with the bullshit."
Tim found himself nodding. "People rarely see someone else's pain when they really need them to. And that makes a heart, even the coldest one, swell with stone heavy pain." His eyes trailed away from Violet's to study the look of the familiar scars upon her arm, the physical outlet, he thought. "They say pain is the way to take care of what you can control when no one else wants to help." Violet simply nodded. "And it feels like it's the only damn thing you can control when everything is spinning into oblivion." Violet felt a sudden wave of fresh tears fall down warm against her cheeks; there rested that feeling again, she noticed, the feeling of whatever dead thing her heart had been, being suddenly freed of some strange weight. Yet, she couldn't move, for she knew that if she did, she'd lose it right in front of the friend that had suddenly come to become someone that understood her even more than Tate had in simply a matter of minutes. So she laid there, looking at her broken arm, exposed and unprotected as she cussed the curse that made her want to shed tears and sob more than she ever wanted to in life.
The tears were almost too much for Tim; he wasn't used to seeing someone so emotional, let alone someone that understood him too. He wanted to, he had the strange urge to try and give some form of that thing called being a friend. He had no clue how to, but he needed to try. "Rapunzel?" He asked, wondering where the hell the gentle tone that had taken over his voice had come from; he could hardly believe it was him. "It's okay," he reassured, "It takes a lot to tell someone how much you were hurting. You're braver than my ass ever could be. I keep shit bottled up." Without much more ado, he shifted onto a sitting position beside Violet, enough so he could swirl a finger to the bottom of his pants, where he rolled up the ankle of his left pant leg, bearing red and faded rows of scars there, looking as much as the ones on Violet's arm.
She didn't know how to speak the words; the truth was that, usually, she'd keep all her emotional stuff bottled up too, only to come free until something sharp made contact with her skin. Dead or alive, she hadn't been able to keep her promise to Tate; at least not after they'd stopped talking. Regardless, the surprise of Tim's own secret being uncovered so selflessly for her made the need to sob and cry nearly impossible to ignore; nearly. Her eyes lifted to look into his again, after seeing the scarred skin of his ankle, and without even realising what she wanted to do until it was too late, she moved the hand that remained covered by the sleeve, the one which skin had never been broken, and allowed her fingertips to gently and barely even grace the red and white marks on his skin; broken, tainted, just like her own. Her eyes lowered to look at what her hands had done. "You're brave too, you know?" She voiced in a tone merely higher than a whisper, "It seems... more than you give yourself credit for."
Tim had been watching the jagged lines of what used to be the soft skin on his ankle, too afraid in that moment to allow himself to keep eye contact with her regardless of if she'd looked away; for he became nearly unable to believe what he had done. He had revealed one of the most personal facts about himself, one of the things not even his parents or anyone in the world ever had known, and with someone who he'd never even expected to create a bond with, especially not such a big bond as the one that seemed to form between the two. Damn, he thought, as he realised that his chest and heart, as dead as they were, felt finally free of a weight he didn't even realise they'd been carrying. His eyes finally lifted to Violets when her fingertips touched his broken skin. "Not as brave as you, Rapunzel." He admitted with a smile and a soft tone. "But thank you." Her eyes lifted to look into his and a small smile took over her lips. "I've never... really talked to anyone about this." He gave a short tap to his ankle with his fingertips.
A statement that made the blonde's eyes lower to where her fingertips rested on his ankle, and even though she'd managed to keep the sobbing and yelling in, some slow tears had escaped her eyes within their silence. The way they'd connected... It felt strangely familiar, while at the same time absolutely different. Maybe even normal, or as normal as a pair of ghosts could really be. And she liked it. This guy... Violet thought, it was as if in a matter of minutes her whole views on him had completely changed. He wasn't just Tate's twin anymore. He was just... "Tim."
Violet didn't notice she'd said the word out loud until his eyes lifted to hers from the frozen position they'd been in on her own hand still touching his damaged skin. "Yes?"
Violet's eyes blinked away the daze, before she lifted her own eyes to look into his and allowed a small smile to lift the corners of her lips. "I'm sorry you're stuck here, but..." After one last brush of her fingertips against his shattered skin, she lowered her eyes and moved her hand to where his gripped his pant leg, and softly and slowly, she pushed his hand away, allowing her own hands to lower down the fabric to cover his ankle. Then her eyes lifted to meet his once again and an almost invisible smile crossed her lips before speaking. "I'm glad I met you." Violet admitted, finally pulling her hand away to lower down the fabric of her shirt to cover her own broken secret.
To Be Continued.