Disclaimer: A Series of Unfortunate Events belongs to Daniel Handler/Lemony Snicket, so don't sue me. I'm only using the characters, and if he says to take it down, I will.
Author's Note: The first bit in italics is actually from a deleted scene in the movie, which I took the time to dorkily write down at one point or another. Lack of updates: Bitch at my minimum wage job. Nny11: It's been awhile. I am still going to continue it, you know. If only of respect to you. Maha. Anyway, of course I loved Mondays. God, the story was, in two words: fucking sexy. But that's because human nature appeals immensely to me and you sure as hell got it right on the unexplainable money. Goth F.: As I do you, my sexy reviewer-friend. Zycho: Don't worry about hamminess; I always fuck up on that area. Raining Seas: I really need to download that song then. And then read your new stories, which I'm sure I'm going to love. Waltz: As soon as I get my paycheck, I'm reading it. By the way, I amour you, if that's any consolation. Movie world, since they seem so young and innocent in the book.
Chapter Ten:
Ego
"Well, I got a good feeling about this."
He walked closer inside the cramped little room, his footsteps bleeding spurts of dust. There was no light; the windows were boarded up, and the floorboards were damp from some strange rain.
"Klaus."
"What? He seems like a great guy." Klaus sneered, spinning on his heel so that the flurries of dust surrounded them all. "I mean, the place could use some fixing up but that's nothing some lumber, paint and rat traps couldn't fix."
He turned his head and slammed his suitcase on the first lumpy mattress he could find. The only one.
"Oh, one bed. Fantastic."
"Klaus, you're scaring her." He darted his eyes back to his two sisters, still standing in the doorway of the room. He stepped forward, accusingly. "Oh, I'm scaring her?"
"Violet, what are we doing here?" Klaus asked her, his eyes pleading and jaded for such a boy his age.
She cast her eyes to the grimy floorboards. "Don't do this."
"Violet, our parents are gone. Our house was burned down, and now we're stuck with this guy." She could feel the heat exuding from his face, and she shifted on the balls of her feet. "These things don't just happen."
They were far too close.
"Well, obviously they do," she retorted, her own face heating. "Okay? But we're going to get through with this, and we're going to be fine."
He stepped back, gesturing to the cruel amenities of the room. "Violet, look at this place!"
"I can fix it."
"How?" An uncertain smile played at her lips as she stared, hard, into the eyes of her little brother.
"There's always something," she said as he sighed and sat down on the creaky bed, "Listen. We're it now. It's just us, and we have to make this work." She followed him, carrying Sunny, adding another weight to the broken bed. He turned to her.
"There must be a reason we're here."
"I wish I could believe that," she agreed. At the sight of her brother's downcast face, though, she struggled for words and reassurance.
"Maybe it's not as bad as it seems," she suggested, although her words seemed as unsure as her brother's expression. "Maybe he just doesn't make a very good first impression."
Klaus raised a skeptic brow. "Do you wanna try another take on that?" he mimicked, a Count Olaf-like lilt to his now completely exaggerated actor's face. "Quickly, while it's fresh in your mind."
Violet giggled, smiling for the first time in days
They were now shrouded completely in darkness, and Violet had just started to comprehend the words her brother so defensively uttered. The words elongated themselves, detached, danced, questionably intertwined themselves over and over in the gears spinning and colliding in her mind. They prevented the gears from turning so, and she raked her fingers through her mess of dark hair and ribbon, wondering what and why the world could do her so much wrong and right at the same time.
Too bad I loved you, rightThe hand positioned below her chin forced it up again as her whole body drooped, and she complied, staring up once again against her will at her brother's expressive eyes. His eyes were glazed over with a barely quieted lust, and she unfortunately, from her demobilized head, could not look away, which was something she dearly desired to do.
"Why are you doing this?" she whispered, her eyes searching his in vain. Her fingers were clutching his shirt, something she just realized she was doing. The cotton wrapped around her slim fingers, and she tugged it uncertainly, a just movement to keep her movements somewhere other than her thoughts.
"I don't mean to," he whispered before placing his lips onto her
…jaw line, incidentally, and he pulled back just as soon as her mind registered what he had just said. Violet's body shuddered as her brother's chapped lips grazed her jaw, but even that only lasted a moment before her angled face met with the air's chill embrace yet again.
The hand behind her head seemed to have disappeared, what had actually been her balance for the last few moments, and she struggled with equilibrium, albeit momentarily, before questioning her brother with quizzical eyes.
Her body had betrayed her again, but she forced herself the words, "Thank you", for what she really wasn't thankful for, but merely a sentence loosely based on ethics and courtesy. What she could feel, truly, was the feeling of her muscles twitching in annoyance, especially and most shamefully (she thought, the familiar pool of blood rushing to her cheeks) the lips, of which she had no real control over at this point.
'Loved', she thought, 'isn't that the past tense of love?' She reassured herself by promising to look it up, as silly it sounds. Then again, denial is always a silly thing.
All in all, however, was the fact that she was still the big sister and will always remain as such.
"Thank you," she repeated, ignoring the slight twinge of hurt as Klaus leaned away from her, as if to give her space. His eyes were unreadable, yet familiar, but Violet was too caught up in her mixed emotions that she couldn't and didn't dwell on it.
But what she did know was that he meant yes, I'll stop. Even if it means hurting me
And hurting you.
She shook her head. Where the bloody hell did that come from?
So the silence lasted, she guessed, for a couple of minutes. Violet tried harder to make out things in the enveloping darkness, but her eyes kept darting back to her brother's form.
No, she wasn't afraid of the dark, she knew. But she used to be.
"I'm sorry. I don't carry candles." His voice cut through the oncoming night like a beacon in a Lacrymose fog. "Or matches," he added. She nodded because she understood.
Her voice softly sliced through the same fog, unconsciously and precisely and a bit startled that her strange brother initiated conversation.
"Neither do I."
There would have been another silence, if Klaus hadn't been so sick of them already.
"Did you know human beings are an evolutionary species?"
Violet started at the seemingly out of place question. "Pardon me?"
"Humans. Like butterflies."
Violet's brow furrowed at the mention of two such nouns. "What on earth do butterflies and humans have anything to do with matches and candles?"
The ground puckered upwards (or her feet moved downwards); either way, the moist undergrowth lapped the underside of her bare feet. She tilted her head at him, observing her brother truly for the first time in days at his absurd implications. Since when had he turned from scholar to half-wit? As if answering her, he stood up, tugging at his trousers-the erection had long since faded but the gleam in his eyes had not-and smiling enigmatically,
A bit sexily, if Violet could be so daring.
No. She absolutely can't and absolutely won't. So, No.
He thrust out a sun-darkened hand, the pattern of freckles and faint sun-spots acting as obvious constellations to Violet.
She couldn't help but feel a twinge of utter desolation at his smile. She gained a part of her brother back, yes, but for what price?
This is what she wanted, right?
He smiled at her like nothing had happened in the past month and if time had not come between them. He smiled at her like a stranger and a simple brother, both someone else at the same time.
Violet, his sister, reached out for his hand tentatively, her eyes betraying nothing but her wariness. The internal crisis gnawed at her bowels.
Did we both give up?
She clutched his hand and felt herself being hoisted into the nighttime breeze and into unsuspecting darkness. She fell into him, but he stiffened and pulled himself back so only his lips barely touched her ear.
Alas, propriety!
"Nothing whatsoever," he whispered, albeit brotherly. "Nothing whatsoever."
The stars blanketed themselves out like beauty on a darkened bay. Comets scattered throughout the skies, blooming cosmic flowers in an evergreen forest of night.
Loved, the past tense of love.
She felt like vomiting.