Chapter Twenty-One

Trevor swallowed hard, his lips dry and his throat already aching. He drew in a deep breath and his broad shoulders rose and fell with it as he tried to find the resolve he'd had the night before.

Violet had walked with him to the Belle company that morning, but he didn't think his father knew that just yet. It had been a silent walk, neither of the partners really knowing what to say or what to expect. Trevor had spent much of the walk with Violet's hand in his, toying with the metal joints that made up her fingers as he fidgeted nervously.

When they came in the front door the receptionist had given Trevor a strange, but not unkind look, admiring that he clearly was not dressed for work. Sure, he had his boots on, but his black dress shirt was far from his average work day attire. His fellow employees too seemed quite surprised, even happy to see him so cleaned up, with Violet by his side as they headed through the shop toward his fathers office.

He'd stopped in front of the door, the clouded glass of the door obstructing his vision. He felt awful. Empty. Like he was about to be caught doing something wrong.

Trevor felt only marginally better when Violet took his hand in hers once more and moved up onto the tips of her boots and pressed her lips into his cheek. "I'll be right here. You can do this, Trevor," she affirmed, and as his eyes met hers he almost thought he believed it.

Violet stepped aside and her hands tightened around the hem of her dress. She knew she'd wanted to come, but now that she was here she had regrets. What would his father do if he saw her? If he knew that Violet had pushed him into this decision. What would he do if he knew she was waiting with baited breath right outside the door as Trevor said those magical few words that would, in theory, save himself from his father.

As Trevor's fingers clasped around the door handle though, every terrible thought that had plagued her mind for months crawled back up Violet's spine and filled her head with worry. There was silence as Trevor opened the door, well, as close to silence as they could get. The shop was live after all, each machine in the building whining and whirring away, drowning out almost any voices that Violet may have been able to hear.

Still, she was pretty sure neither of the men said a word as Trevor went inside the office and shut the door gently behind himself.

Violet felt eyes on her, and every time she looked up from her lap she saw Trevor's co-workers looking away, back to their work, anywhere other than at her, really. She wanted to stand, to peer in through the window, or even press her ear into the door to try and at least hear some semblance of the conversation going on. She hated to wait like this, even if she had been trained to do so.

Violet couldn't believe how far she'd fallen from her time in the military anymore. She couldn't even sit still. She had been trained to go days without moving. Sleeping and waiting patiently in the mud and dust and dirt without so much as a flinch. Even when bullets would zip over the top of her head the men around her would jump, but not Violet.

Never Violet.

Now she couldn't even sit in a chair for more than a minute without becoming unbearably nervous. Well, she could, obviously, but not this chair. Not the chair right outside Trevor's father's office. She needed to know. How long would they be in there? Would Trevor's father try to hurt him here? Right now?

Violet twisted her figure toward the wall behind her and pressed her ear into the wood paneling. She didn't care what she looked like, not when she needed to know if Trevor was okay. She'd made him risk everything by coming here and she wasn't going to sit idly by if something happened to him.

It was only then that Violet realized her mistake. This wasn't the only way, god, how could she be so blind. All this time she'd been so busy with work, so busy worrying, so busy trying to rescue Trevor from his life that she'd failed to put the simplest answer together.

A letter.

Violet felt a wave of dread wash through her veins as the truth of the mistake took hold of her. She could have helped Trevor write a letter to his father, whether it be one of resignation or not, that would have been much safer than this! Violet's fists clenched together as she racked her brain for how she could have possibly overlooked the possibility. She really was falling to pieces.

Between her stress attacks, being sent away for work, learning that Benedict was her brother, being flat out distracted by her love for Trevor…she'd somehow lost sight of the one thing that had gotten her this far in the first place.

Writing letters for people.

That was when things got loud in the office. As her face twisted from horror in her own failure to anger with Trevor's father her teeth clenched together and her fingers gripped the armrest of her chair violently. The wood creaked with pain beneath her silver digits as she pressed her ear harder into the wall and shut her eyes tight.

"I did this," the words leaked quietly from her lips in disbelief. "I did this. I did this," Violet repeated the words over and over as the booming voice of Trevor's father rose and the vibrations hit Violet's ear.

All at once she was on her feet, her hand on the door knob. "I did this!" Her voice was horse and her throat was on fire as she ripped the door open, stepped inside and slammed it shut behind her. Violet's heart was pounding, she could hardly see anymore, her eyes focused on only one thing. Mr Belle had paused his berating of his son when the door had opened and he stood frozen in surprise, his index finger jabbed into his son's shoulder just below the sling that held up his arm. Both men had met at the side of his father's desk and there they both stood, surprised to find Violet in the room with them suddenly.

"I did this!" Violet shouted at the two of them, unable to hold back her feelings. Her voice reached her own ears now as she shouted, no longer drowned out by the sounds of shrieking metal out on the shop floor. "Stop hurting Trevor just because you hate me!" She yelled at Mister Belle and watched as Trevor's father lowered his arm and stepped back around his desk. She watched him draw in a long breath and seemed to compose himself for a moment.

Violet's shoulders and chest were heaving with heavy breaths as adrenaline pumped through her veins. She wanted to jump. To scream. To let herself lose control and rip him to shreds but she knew she couldn't. She hadn't felt this way in…well, ever, she thought.

Even at war, Violet was just doing her job. She was a tool, a tool for killing the enemy before they killed her or her comrades. She didn't want to kill anybody, not really. She had just had to.

Now though, somewhere deep down, for the first time in her life really, Violet found that she, perhaps not wanted to kill, but that she at least wanted to hurt Trevor's father. That was new, and she wasn't all together sure if she liked the feeling or not. It made her stomach do somersaults and her muscles tighten all throughout her body as she held back her anger behind clenched teeth and silver fingers.

"You," Travor's father grumbled. "You're the one filling this imbecile's head with the idea that he doesn't need to be here. That he could change careers like it's nothing. He's trained for this job his entire life and you think he can just leave?" He shouted.

If it were even possible, Violet's hands tried to tighten even further. If her hands were flesh and bone she'd probably be gouging holes in them by now. "Stop insulting him!" She shouted up at Mister Belle, her anger spilling over. "All he ever does is what you tell him to do and then you hurt him for it anyway! You've been doing it long before you found out he cared about somebody other than you!"

"How dare you talk to me that way! In my own office!" Mister Belle boomed back. Violet stood her ground but she had to admit that she could sort of understand why Trevor never stood up to his father. "All you want is to take my last son away from me!" He yelled again and reached for his desk.

At first, Violet didn't even register that his hands had moved to the desk with any intent other than to slam loudly into the wooden structure. She was so blind with rage, her blue eyes locked right to Trevor's father. It was only after his hands were on their way back up and away from the desk that Violet's eye's caught a glint of light in his hands. Her eyes quickly flashed to his hands, and found the barrel of a small gun barrel staring back at her.

For the first time in Violet's life, she was slow.

How had this happened? Everything had devolved so fast. Violet had lost her temper and lost focus. In a combat situation, Violet would have snapped her target's arm before it had even reached a gun to pull on her. Now, so far removed from the military, she was failing to even react to a gun staring straight at her.

As the hum leveled off and Mr Belle began to speak again, her fingers finally twitched and Violet started to step forward.

"I'll not let the army take another one of my sons away from me! Not again!" Mister Belle's deep voice boomed.

Violet had intended to raise her hand and simply push the gun straight up toward the ceiling. She seriously doubted that Trevor's father could out muscle her silver arms, and even if he could keep the gun level, she could easily bend the barrel up and obstruct the shot, or even take the bullet straight into her palm while moving the rest of her body out of the line of fire.

Out of every problem Violet had faced in the past year, this one should have had the simplest solution. There really was zero danger. Even with a slow start, Violet had been trained to handle this situation all her life.

It should have been easy.

Something came into view at the right of Violet's vision though, and suddenly, the problem could no longer be solved.

Trevor's hands pressed into Violet's frame, one on her right shoulder and the other into her right hip. Without expecting Trevor to do this, Violet lost her footing and began to fall to her left, with nothing to grab for other than Trevor. Her eyes ran wide as she fell toward the floor, and the fabric of his shirt slipped through her metal fingers.

That was when the shot rang out.

With a small puff of smoke and noise that seemed to deafen the entire workshop, Violet hit the wooden floor of the office, the brass casing of a bullet pinging to the floor right beside her. Violet shut her eyes and prepared herself for the pain, prepared herself to take a deep breath and spring to her feet in response to it in fact.

However, when she pulled in her legs to prepare to stand up, she saw Trevor sway for a moment, before he hit the floor, hard, beside her, face down.

For several moments, the room seemed to freeze. Violet couldn't even take a breath as the dust settled around them. Her vision was fixed squarely on Trevor's limp figure as her mind raced, attempting to figure out what had just happened.

Then there was red.

And then, as far as Violet would later remember;

There was nothing.

That's the way that Violet would remember it when all said and done anyway, but as her blue eyes glazed over and her fingers clenched, the scene before her twisted and melted. The brown and bright atmosphere of the office blended and washed until all around herself were walls of stone and darkness, damp and charred by rain and fire.

The air seemed to crowd in around her as she remained still, her shoulders up against one of the stone walls as blood pooled beneath the body that lay beside her, it's deep green army coat sporting a fresh bullet hole in its lower right side.

The body shifted beneath the coat, it's frame and colors changing. His hair lost some of its grayer patches and turned black and it's skin tanned slightly, and before she knew it, Violet was staring at Major Gilbert, cold and bleeding on the stone stairs where she had last seen him all that time ago.

Dread washed through her as her mind slowly churned out a single coherent thought for the first time in what felt like hours.

"Major," her voice was just a hoarse whisper, barely able to get the word out at all.

Violet's eyes hardened and her head felt light, her arms and legs like jelly. Suddenly, Violet was aware that the two of them were not alone in the stone stairwell. This was different. Every time she found herself back here it was always just the two of them. She studied the third man for a moment, his hefty frame cloaked in a grey grey army uniform, a gun pointed right at her head.

All of this only lasted a moment though, before every muscle in her body tightened as she shot up from the floor. She was on her feet in only a heartbeat, and before another breath was drawn or released in the office, Violet's cold metal hands closed around the gun in the soldier's hands, and ripped it from his grasp so hard that several of his fingers broke and twisted on its way out.

Violet would have heard him yelp in pain as he hunched forward, looking at his hands, if she could hear anything other than her own ears ringing and her heartbeat slamming against her skull.

Even as she turned the gun around in her grasp and pulled the trigger, she heard nothing.

The barrel flashed and the gun discharged, and the soldier's shirt quickly began to turn red.

Violet didn't even stay to watch the man fall, she was back on her hands and knees in only a moment, hoisting her silent and still Major's body as best she could. He was much taller and heavier than herself, but as she grabbed him up she found she had much more strength than she remembered. She was still so young, and naught but flesh and bone, yet her scrawny arms somehow had no issue hoisting Major Gilbert up onto her shoulder.

After a moment to take in their surroundings, Violet found a door in the stairwell wall and kicked it open, Major Gilbert on her shoulder with her one arm around the backs of his legs, and the gun levied in the other.

There were soldiers everywhere, clad in Green coats to her surprise, rather than grey. They were all unarmed and seemed more than surprised to see her. Violet stood in stunned silence for a moment as she felt the should of her coat growing more and more wet with blood.

"Medic," she finally said, far more softly than she had intended too. As none of the soldiers responded, she screamed it again, this time hysteria starting to crowd into her voice. "Medic!"

Again, none of them responded. None of them even moved. Violet, losing patience began to run toward a large opening in the walls of the old stone castle, and was out in broad daylight as she passed through it. The sun was out now, which struck Violet as odd, since she had only been outside moments ago and it had been raining during the battle if she recalled correctly.

Violet took in her surroundings, attempting to get her bearings, but only a few moments later she heard sirens in the distance.

Down the stone road came an ambulance truck, seemingly headed right for her. Violet's hand tightened around the pistol as she stiffened, the truck practically pulling right up to her. She was suspicious that the truck may belong to the enemy, but found that as it parked, neither of the men in the front seat got out.

They were staring her down with nervousness crowding their features. Violet thought she could hear some muffled talking from somewhere inside the truck but she wasn't sure.

"Help me!" She shouted, and the men inside snapped to attention at the sound of her voice.

Slowly but surely, the two men left the truck and made their way toward Violet.

"Just take it easy ma'am, we only want to help," they said with their hands up. Violet glanced down to her hand and found the gun still halfway raised, realizing why they were so afraid of her.

Violet lowered the gun and walked toward the truck, before helping the two men load him onto a stretcher and into the back. The truck was extremely small, Violet could see this, and resigned herself to the fact that she wouldn't be able to ride back with them to camp.

She resolved to do the next best thing, and as the doors shut, she checked her ammo and raised the gun again, slowly headed back toward the old castle.

"Ma'am," one of the medics spoke softly.

"Save him," she ordered, "get out of here, I'll clear the area."

It was then another voice spoke up, wearily and out of breath. "Violet stop!" She heard from behind her. As she turned around she found a familiar face attached to a hunched over man who clearly hadn't run anywhere for years.

"Lieutenant Hodgins," Violet saluted coldly.

Hodgins turned to the Medics, "get him to the hospital, now! I'll take care of this."

The men simply nodded their heads and drove away into the distance.

"Violet, what happened here," he said as he took in a deep breath.

"The enemy was hiding within the structure and they shot Major Gilbert. They were trying to shoot me but he got in the way."

Hodgins fell silent as he looked Violet up and down over and over again.

"I'm going back in," she turned away from him and took a step before Hodge finally spoke.

"No Violet."

Violet halted and turned back, "but sir," she began but the Lieutenant cut her off.

"Violet," he began and paused. "Violet, I order you to stand down and surrender your weapon to me," he spoke clearly through a pained expression, holding out his hand toward her. "The battles over Violet. You…won," he struggled to say.

Violet looked around herself, realizing that the unarmed soldiers from before were leaving the building and crowding around them. There were more sirens in the distance now, multiple she figured.

Violet stepped forward and did as she was ordered, handing the gun over to Hodgins without contest.

Around the corner came multiple vehicles. Another ambulance truck and even what Violet thought were police cars? An odd thing to see on the battlefield but it didn't concern her she figured.

"What are your orders then, Lieutenant?" She asked and Hodgins shuddered again.

One of the police cars stopped beside the pair and as the officer met them Hodgins handed him the gun he'd taken from Violet.

"Listen," Hodgins said to the officer. "I know what this looks like," he emphasized, "but she wouldn't do this without a reason. Let me keep her in my custody or this mess could get worse for all of us. I'm the only person alive that she'll listen to right now."

"Sir she needs to come in for questioning," the officer said somberly, refusing to look at Violet.

"She will, but if you question her right now all you're going to get out of her is that she was doing her duty to win the war. Isn't that right Violet?" He looked down at her.

Violet involuntarily saluted her superior officer, "yes sir. That soldier shot Major Gilbert while he tried to defend me. I was only doing my duty."

Hodgins simply gave the office a hard look before he leaned in and whispered something that Violet couldn't make out into the police man's ear. When he pulled back he spoke again. "Can you give us a ride to the hospital?"

"Yes, get her in the car, I'll go give this to another office," he gestured to the gun and walked away.

Hodgins moved to the police car and pulled the backseat door open and gestured for Violet to get inside. Violet cocked her head to one side in confusion for a moment.

"Did I do something wrong?" She asked, and for a moment Hodgins thought he may hav seen a small glimpse of the new Violet in that expression.

"I don't know yet, Violet," he answered honestly and Violet sat down.

"I really don't know."