(A/N- I wrote this story a couple weeks ago to try to imspire myself. It failed. But I've decided to post. It is from Violet's son Matt's POV when he's around fifteen or sixteen. And, yes, I realize there is completely no word about Aunt Sunny. I didn't realize what I'd done until I posted it on 667 Dark Avenue. Deal with it. ;) )

Violet Baudelaire—the name conjures up many differing ideas. To me, she's my mother. To my aunts and uncles—or, at least, the people I call Aunt and Uncle—she is a sister and a loyal friend. But to my father—the man who ruined her life—she is an enemy. He maintains that he didn't rape her, that they had consensual sex and she inflicted the injuries on herself because she was ashamed of what she allowed herself do.

Yeah, like that made any sense.

I hate him. My mother often tells me I don't know him well enough to hate him, that I don't truly know what he's like and what he's capable of doing, but I know enough to form my own opinion about him. He'd been released from prison a year ago and had tried to kidnap me from school. I shook my head with the memory. That had definitely been one of his more idiotic actions. Why try to steal me away, be caught, and then be sent back to jail?

He'd been re-incarcerated a few months later. I'd had trouble dealing with the fact that my own father had tried to kidnap me and that the incident had sent my mother back to her shrink. I'd gone with her.

Most people think you have to be crazy to see a psychiatrist. My mother isn't insane; she just has a few mental/emotional problems. Dr. Harrison is really cool. During one visit, she'd told me to start writing poetry to get out all of my negative emotions, so I wouldn't have so many self-destructive thoughts.

"It works, sweetheart," she'd said. "Ask your mother."

I had turned to her just in time to see her lock eyes with the woman across the room. Both faces were blank, but the expression in their eyes was one I had had trouble identifying. Something passed between them—some message only they understood—and I hadn't known what it was. It had been awkward in the extreme to just sit there and not know what was happening.

Finally, my mother's eyes had fallen and slowly, she'd looked over at me. She'd said, "Remind me to show you some when we get home."

She had.

I would have never thought my mother capable of writing such things. In the first one she'd showed me, she'd talked about killing my dad, killing herself, and how I was the only thing that had stopped her. In another, she'd written about how my dad had taught her not to trust, and also to be afraid. She'd compared him to some guy I'd never heard of before. When I asked her, my mother refused to answer, saying I was never going to about him, he was dead, and didn't deserve to be remembered.

I know who Count Olaf is now.

My mother hates Lemony Snicket. She says he had no right to release those books the way he did, without asking her and her siblings if they would like the whole world to know about their life. She could have killed him when she heard they had decided to make the movie.

I was forbidden to read the books. Mom said that when she felt ready to tell me, I'd hear about it. I was forbidden to see the movie as well, but I snuck out and saw it one night with my friends. I don't think she ever found out about it. If she did, I never got into trouble for it.

I am the only one of my friends who never read the books. No one commented, though. I suppose they assumed since my mother was the Violet Baudelaire, I knew everything there was to know. I don't. My friend left one of the books at my house once, the one entitled The Slippery Slope, which, in the end, is how I found out about my father. I'd picked up the book and started to read, knowing I was going to get into trouble for it. I'd nearly made it to the end—I was finishing chapter twelve—when Mom walked into my room and caught me red-handed. I'd been nearly twelve at the time, and had received a major spanking. It had been more embarrassing than anything else; it hadn't hurt all that much, but to be spanked at twelve? Pure humiliation. It probably hadn't helped that my little sister had seen it.

Kasey Marie is a pain sometimes, but deep down, she's cool. The coolness is so deep down that a miner might have trouble finding it, but it is there. It shines through the bratty-ness from time to time

Technically speaking, Kasey's my half-sister. She is Jack's daughter. She looks like him due to the green eyes, sparse freckles, and the fact that she's "vertically challenged." She really doesn't resemble Mom physically, except for the black hair. She was born when I was five. I remember being absolutely fascinated with her when she was a baby. As soon as she learned to walk, talk, and tell on me, however, I wanted nothing to do with her.

She's what some might call a prep, a brat, or a goody-two-shoes. She thinks more of herself than she should at times, and I'm always there, for her own good, to bring her down a little. I'd inherited the Quagmire wit from my father.

My mom tells me that's the only thing I got from him that she likes. I'd gotten his temper, among other things, but they're all bad traits. Mom says that although she can see him in me sometimes, I have a lovely balance between them. I was destined to have black hair—bother of them did—and I had my mother's bright blue eyes and her expressive smile, and my father nose and chin. I resembled my mother in my personality all except for that dry, satirical sense of humor, which bordered on rude every now and again, according to my stepfather.

Jack is an okay guy, but I can't say I get along with him totally. I am more than a little protective of my mother, and he is still the enemy sometimes. Especially when he lets his ego get the better of him. We have our occasional spats and arguments every so often, mostly provoked by either Kasey or myself, but altogether we have an endurable relationship. He isn't my favorite person in the world, but at least he hasn't abandoned us like my biological father.

My mother never mentions him around me, unless she's telling me about something he did to her, in which case it's not being spoken of in a good light. My Uncle Klaus, however, will call me out if he sees me doing something he thinks is "Quigley-ish." My Aunt Isadora tries to get him to stop, lest he do it in front of Mom, but he hasn't.

Everyone thinks that my aunt writes only in couplets. Wrong. She writes in any and every style she likes. She used to use only couplets, yes, but as she matured, so did her poetry. She's a very talented poet, and her poems reflect the various sides of her personality extremely well. She published a book of poetry a few years ago. In its own circles, it was very well received. One of my Uncle Dun's favorite bands contacted her about buying the rights to one of the poems from the book and turning it into a song on their upcoming album. He'd nearly throttled her when she refused.

Duncan was cool, but, like my stepfather, I didn't really get along with him. It wasn't that we didn't like each other, but rather that we couldn't find a common ground. He was just one of those people to whom I'd probably never be able to be close.

Klaus, on the other hand, was the relative to whom I was the closest. My mom often says it's because he'd stuck around with me when I was a baby, and because he had frequently taken me to his house when she'd needed a break. I think it's because he's the one who'd taught me (by example) how to be a rocker. He was one through and through. He and I like most of the same movies, books, and (most importantly) music. My mom liked a little bit of everything, but she mainly stuck to happy, uplifting stuff.

I also think I'm close to him because he showed me how to gauge my ears.

I'd first become enamored with gauging when I'd watched Uncle Klaus do it. At the time, he'd been gauging from a size four to a size two. Putting a two in your ear is like squeezing seven regular sized earrings through one's ear. It was like being hypnotized—I just couldn't keep my eyes away, and kept gawking like a fool. When he'd seen me, he'd wanted to know why I was staring, and I'd asked to see his other "earring." I hadn't been able to imagine forcing that through my lobe. He had taken me to the mall the next day so I could purchase a (much smaller) pair of my own.

We'd spent the whole day together, talking about the safe way to gauge, the things not to do unless you wanted your earlobes to split, and how to clean them. They hurt, and stink something awful, but they look cool and I like them. I'm constantly amazed at the designs people come up with, and how you gave to wind and twist some through your ears. Some are pretty simple—like putting a regular earring in—but others are complicated. (Swirls, for example, have to be put in seemingly backwards for them to look right in your ear.) Klaus is in an inch gauge now, and I have been forbidden to go past a two.

Mom says she does that kind of thing for my own good, and because she loves me. I don't doubt that she loves me, nor do I doubt that she has my best interests in mind. But I think sometimes she's a little too overprotective. I guess I can understand why she does it—especially now that I know what happened to her—but I don't believe she realizes how bad she is sometimes.

She's better than she used to be, though. I can remember that it was her having separation anxiety on my first day of school. I wanted to go to school, freak of nature that I am, but she was worried something bad would happen to me. I can't say her fears were unfounded, knowing her past. Simply going to the beach changed her life forever.

I love my mother. Although, she's never said so, I know I saved her life. I've heard stories about how she acted after her rape. I know that, while she acts happy, she's not alright inside. Going to a therapy session showed me that. Catching her crying her brains out in the middle of the night and having to comfort her while still half-asleep helped as well. Jack, for all of his good qualities, can't really handle tears, especially not violent ones. He wakes me up in the middle of the night every now and then so I can go to her and hold her until she cries herself back to sleep.

Thank God that doesn't happen very often now.

My mother will never not be sad, but my goal in life is to make the good moments last longer. Seeing as she's alive and not adding any more of those thin little scars to her collection, I think I can safely say I'm doing an excellent job.