The Littman house had just become completely empty for the first time in a school day. When David Littman crammed his children into the very stereotypical minivan, aside from the usual Taylor looking out the window in his daydreaming fashion, Austin rambling incessantly about some new manga he'd read, and Ginger dozing off beside her brother's folded wheelchair, there was a new addition to the car: a very nervous Holly, twirling her messy curls and chewing on the strings of the yellow hoodie she'd mentioned the night before.

Invisible to the living family, Violet stood against the door, watching as her protégée went off to school with her three siblings. It was crazy, but she found herself actually missing school – not the environment, the lessons, or even the people, just… Just the idea of being anywhere but the house. Really, when you're doomed to eternity in one single place, it's hard not to be sick of it.

Now that one of her favorite distractions – babysitting Holly – was going to become more and more of a rarity, she predicted an increasingly boring existence in that Godforsaken house.

"Morning." A female voice startled her, making her gasp a little.

"Hayden, it's rude to come up behind people like this."

"And watching little kids without them knowing it is a sign of pedophilia." The taller girl scoffed. "Face it, Harmon. You're getting lonely."

"Not to mention bored. You can only whip Chad's ass at checkers so many times before it starts to get old, you know."

"Go play with your boy toy, then." A soft smirk crept up on her face as she moved to face Violet, her brows raised. "Rumor has it you've got him beaten down pretty good already."

The words bothered her. The intention of this whole process, from the first session, wasn't to hurt him – hurting him was the means to get to the end, to his redemption, maybe to his forgiveness. He couldn't be forgiven if he wasn't sorry, and he couldn't be sorry if he didn't fully comprehend the dimension of what he had done. Although the events from the previous night made the latter seem practically impossible…

"He's not beaten down, believe me." Was Violet's bitter response, to which Hayden grabbed her by the wrist and practically dragged her into the kitchen. The action was met with a very feeble protest, completely ignored by the taller girl as she released the other and started to make the cabinets open.

"I'm pouring us some booze, and you're telling me all about this."

"Look, I'm not really…"

"I don't care. I wanna know. I deserve to know, okay?" A bottle of vodka and two shot glasses flew onto the kitchen counter, and Violet was about to protest, when she stopped herself mid-breath.

This bitch is a psycho. Guess what. So are all of us. I could use a friend here, and babysitting a four-year-old or having tea with the old lady maid isn't even close to the same. Yes. I'll take it.

With a satisfied smirk, the fairer girl took the shot that was poured for her, and the face she made seemed to go unnoticed.

"He's not beaten down. Says he wishes he'd never met me. He's mad, but he's not even halfway done with."

"Well, do you want him to be?"

Violet arched a brow.

"Want him to what?"

"Do you want him to be done with? I mean, Chad told me why you guys started this shit in the first place. Seems like a fair reason if I've ever seen one. Besides… Let's face it, sweetie. You've got a lot of pent-up anger in there, don't you?"

Long, pale fingers reached out to rest over Violet's heart, the first gentle touch she'd gotten from a grown person in over a year. Aside from a few cursory hugs from her parents and any interaction with Holly – who, let's face it, was four and blissfully clueless – she had made a point of shutting out everything else, to the point where even the soft contact of Hayden's hand on her chest sent a wave of warmth through her heart.

"Violet?"

"You have no idea how much fucking anger."

And it was true. God damn it, it was true – the amount of still undealt with rage she kept inside was growing so quickly, sometimes it seemed almost impossible that it all fit in just one tiny person. The sadness, the hurt, the frustration, all of it would metabolize into anger and build up; the girl was a walking bomb, and she hadn't even realized it until that one soft, undemanding touch. It was the contrast she needed to notice just how close it all was to overflowing.

"There's a way to let it all out, you know." Hayden's tone was sweet, her arm wrapping around the girl's shoulder as the other hand remained securely over her heart. "He deserves it. He literally asked for it. With all of the words. If you don't do it, if you keep everything inside, you'll go crazy… Don't let yourself go crazy, Violet. Please."

And when the blonde felt Hayden's chin resting on her shoulder, she noticed something else. She wasn't receiving advice from someone who had been in her shoes; it was a request – a request from a woman just as lost as her. From a woman who had watched her entire future crumble because of bad decisions, and wasn't that exactly her own story in a nutshell?

Sighing, she returned the embrace, knowing exactly what to do next.

The sessions returned, but there was nothing about them – nothing but the physical act of making Tate relive his murders through the perspective of his victims – that could be compared to how it was before. Violet hadn't thought much about it, but now it was clear just how wrong her intentions had been at first. Selfish, for the most part.

She had wanted so badly to believe there was still some good in the man she loved – that the evil, the monster, didn't have enough power to overcome the human – that her entire reasoning became his salvation. In all honesty, as much as she tried to disguise it behind some more noble motive, she really had been cleaning him up just for herself. To be able to love him without guilt. A fair request, but it missed the point. The much bigger, crucial point of how he deserved his punishment without any sort of reasoning besides the fact that he had committed thirty-two murders and a rape. No more, no less – he needed to be punished. If God had forgotten to give them a proper hell to suffer in, and the opportunity had come knocking on Violet's door, she had to deliver it.

The strange thing was that now that the hope for loving him freely was gone, so was any hesitation she might have had. Any concern about treating him humanely – and oh, it was ironic to even think about compassionately torturing someone, wasn't it? – gone. The liberation that came with it felt fantastic.

"This is no training bullshit, and I'm not a fucking dominatrix. If you want that BDSM shit, you go to Patrick." She had said it to him that same day, just minutes after the interaction in the kitchen. "From now on, I have no pity on your stupid puppy eyes. You don't talk unless I let you. Are we clear?"

His nod – hesitant, and also strangely… Fearful? – was the last of any sort of communication they exchanged until the very last session. And this time, Violet made sure there wasn't even a chance.

In all of their previous sessions, she would give him some time to breathe and regain his full consciousness after each death. A few minutes for the limbs to stop shaking and the blood loss to diminish. Now she didn't mind more deaths in a much shorter spam – as soon as he got his pulse back, eyes barely open, it would begin. The word again was uttered more out of habit than for any practical purpose, because now it was her very own hands doing the damage, rarely assisted and never, ever stopped for any reason other than simple physical exhaustion. The more violent the murder had been, the more pleasure she took in repeating it over and over, until his face was unrecognizable, and his body, completely motionless for solid hours on the cold ground.

Violet did not feel even the smallest bit of guilt. She didn't, because he deserved it, and because at the end of each session, her assessment of his eyes would show better and better results; sometimes, the horror of what he had done to mostly innocent people would send him into a state of pure shock. Only now it was even better – Tate's comprehension of his own monstrosity was a side effect, and it seemed as if the beast was being destroyed in every possible way, even if it meant taking down the remaining human that still came with it.

And yes, she was aware it existed. However small, Tate's human side was still there, more raw and beaten and exposed as every session went by. And Violet saw it so clearly – how he'd flinch when she came near, how his legs had begun to shake even as he walked up or down the stairs to the attic or basement, and often an involuntary movement or sound would bring a look of pure panic onto his face, like he had broken an unspeakable oath. Sometimes a word would threaten to escape his lips, then be swallowed back in a choked sob, not really an uncommon occurrence in a room where the most successful meetings were the ones that drew a long current of screams from his lungs.

Violet knew all of it, and she was sorry she couldn't separate the boy from the monster. Then again, if she could, she doubted she would have fallen for him in the first place.

In the meantime, Hayden had made advances at her, purely of a sexual nature. After one or two very awkward tries, Violet realized it really wasn't her deal. She was into men – and what man could she release her sexual frustration with in that house? Who knew her body better than anybody else, and certainly wouldn't refuse it, even after…

After his last death of the day, Tate would have the time his body needed to recover, and then she was on him like a leopard pouncing on its prey.

Even as they became a tangled mess of sweaty bodies on the floor, still rough and violent and without even a whisper of tenderness, she was in command, and it was clear without it ever needing to be spoken. She knew he enjoyed it – he was hard within seconds, grabbing at her hips and legs and breasts and every part of her skin he could get a hold of with harsh, bruising fingers. Still, he did it because she wanted him to. He slipped inside because she needed him there. She put effort into making him come because it turned her on to hear him moan – and as soon as he slid out, panting, still with her bite marks on his shoulder, she'd make him go away with a feeble whisper.

Somehow, even after all of this, the anger wouldn't go away.

The frustration wouldn't diminish.

All of the hurt inside her just kept growing, and growing, to a point where she began to seriously worry about how much more she could take before it made her explode.

Surely enough, it soon would.