I am looking to purchase the rights to American Horror Story. I am currently in negotiations with Falchuk and Murphy, and we have yet to settle on an appropriate price. But until the sale is finalized, I am quite afraid that I do not own anything to do with the franchise. Thank you for your understanding.

CHAPTER 5: You're Invisible Now; You've Got No Secrets to Conceal

-O-0-o-0-O-

"You say you never compromise with a mystery tramp, but now you realize he's not selling any alibis as you stare into the vacuum of his eyes and say, 'do you want to make a deal?'"

-Bob Dylan, 'Like a Rolling Stone'

-O-0-o-0-O-

The Supreme Queen's nails made the slaps she threw sting like a bigger bitch than she was.

Violet wondered for the fifteen billionth time why she was sitting there (actually, she'd been knocked to the ground at this point) just taking it.

Maybe it was her five other fight-related school suspensions and the fact that despite what Vivien and Ben might ever so desperately want to believe, this was far from a fresh start. Besides, she'd managed to skip every single one of her classes at least once out of sheer boredom or to grab a bit of relief from the idiots that seemed to live in this part of town.

Or maybe Boston just had less IQ-eating fumes.

And another hit!

Harmon is down, folks, I don't know how she'll recover from this one! She might be out for the season with an injury like that, but here comes Mrs. Thompson to break it up!

The commentator in her head was going wild as her vision swam and her Geography teacher grabbed her by the arm and hauled her to her feet. It was all a blur of 'she hit me first' and 'she should be suspended' while she stood there, silent.

Next thing she knew, she was pulled to the principal's office and shoved into an overstuffed leather chair.

The statements launched from that wrinkled mouth, dried spittle leaving a whitish goo at the corner of sagging lips and drooping jowls, were like bullets.

Do you understand what you've done?

Do you know what the punishment for such acts is?

This will definitely appear on your permanent record.

I will personally contact your parents to tell them about your imminent suspension.

But Violet was made of rubber.

After all of those stolen moments spent with him, nothing felt real anymore. Going through the motions was like being a bystander in a stranger's dream. Hazy, surreal, impossible to care about.

In that moment, she hated him. He had done this to her; turned her into some disconnected zombie. He'd stolen every ounce of emotion she could muster and kept it all to himself, locked away in a heart-shaped box. Freaking Cobain wannabe.

So Violet just played dumb and nodded at the right moments and looked down in mock shame on cue. But her mind was running a mile a minute over a course of jumbled thoughts and confused memories.

She didn't even register her mother coming to collect her from the office a few hours later. She was rubber. No- she was nothing; she was void.

-O-0-o-0-O-

Tate found Violet in the bathroom. Not an unusual occurrence, but this time she wasn't inflicting wounds upon herself; she was cleaning the ones someone else had forced upon her.

Tate had always believed that scars could be beautiful. They were a lifetime of pain etched on a canvas so much more personal than the one any old person could go out and purchase at an art store. They were the tattoos of injuries. Each one had a story, one that could only be whispered in the ear of a lover when the light was dim and the person telling it was certain that no one could see their flaws.

Now, his Violet had a new story to tell. One that wasn't long forgotten in the blur that time could be to the living or an expression of her frustration.

It bothers you that someone else put it there, doesn't it, psycho?

He wanted a lot of things from these moments that belonged to someone else. He wanted to be cared about. He wanted to not be alone anymore. He wanted to be able to care about someone. He wanted himself to finally shut the fuck up.

"I could take care of it", he heard himself whisper. "I could make whoever did this stop."

Violet turned abruptly, her tiny hand clutching the place over her chest where she kept her every hope and dream as if to guard it from him. "Geezus Tate! You scared me."

"I could scare the person who did this to you."

He reached out with limp fingers to flutter against her reddening cheek. She pulled back.

"No, Tate."

He couldn't help but feel almost disappointed in her lack of action or willingness to use what he so readily offered.

"I-I can deal with this on my own. I need to be able to do this alone", she mumbled, returning the hand holding a piece of gauze to the deep cut over her eyebrow. She was shaking.

A pang hit him in the chest, and Tate reached out once again, this time with comforting arms. Violet allowed him to cage her in them. She was his delicate little songbird. He knew exactly how he wanted her to end up.

She had to depend on him for everything. They had to become so close that they acted as one, thought as one, believed as one. But he craved control. He needed it, in small doses. Like medicine. But he had to be careful not to get addicted. Or else he would take more than she could give, and that would break her. And he didn't want that. Not for his Violet.

"Let me handle it for you", he whispered, stroking her hair. She shivered. "Let me make it go away."

"No. No."

Her voice grew stronger. Thankfully, she didn't fight his hold on her, but simply continued to refuse his offer. The one that if he was in her shoes, he wouldn't turn down in a thousand years.

Maybe she doesn't realize just what you're offering, psycho.

Shutupshutupshutupshutupshutuppppppp…

"I feel like you're draining me away, Tate", Violet said, her quiet words speaking truth in volumes that her voice did not. "I need to do this for myself before I can't keep my head above whatever it is you're doing to me."

She understood more than he'd expected.

He felt pride at her intelligence and fear at her pulling away at once. It made him want to bend over the sink and vomit the nothing that sat in his stomach.

"I guess I'll stop then", Tate answered, his tone playful but his lack-of-a-heart heavy. Monsters don't have hearts.

"I never said that." Her reply shocked him speechless. He had nothing left to say.

Violet carefully twisted away from his embrace and opened the bathroom door.

"I'm going to ask my mom for help. She's good at stitching me up", she continued, smiling a weary grin. "God knows she's had to do it often enough."

Tate was left alone in front of the mirror that reflected the lie of his angelic face back at him.

Raising his fingers to his lips, he felt the rapidly cooling moisture there.

Copper. Blood from her forehead.

Smirking, he licked it away.

-O-0-o-0-O-

The rest of the week dragged on.

Violet hadn't seen Tate since she'd pushed herself to turn him down. The offer had been so tempting, it felt wrong. She didn't want to be the next Eve, biting that goddamned apple held out by the snake and getting humanity kicked out of paradise. No, she wanted this impossible life to last.

Ben had left not long after Vivien had gleefully announced to him that they were expecting a brand new bundle of joy. The news, overheard by their forgotten and now obsolete daughter, had left a bitter taste in Violet's mouth. She knew exactly what was going to happen. They'd lived it six months earlier, and look where it'd left them.

Vivien was a paranoid wreck. Ben was an unfaithful asshole. Violet was a masochistic mess.

God only knew what the next tiny little coffin would do to them all.

But Violet knew exactly where Ben had fled to, and it made her want to punch a wall. So she did. She emerged relatively unscathed, save for a newly made bloodstain on her wall and split knuckles.

And even worse, that Constance bitch had visited.

Violet liked Addie, she could admit that. The poor woman was a product of her evil mother's horrible mothering and bad judgment. But even so, she was the most optimistic person she had ever met, if not a little odd.

But Constance… Constance left her feeling like she was being eaten alive by those scornful eyes.

The cupcake that woman had left her had been promptly moved to outside her door. Sugared violets and chocolate frosting could only spell trouble. Besides, she was in no mood for desserts.

The fact that the woman who had prided herself on being her mother for sixteen years was convinced that Violet was so ignorant or oblivious to those around her that she could get away with not telling her about the baby made her retch. Literally. She had thrown up the little she had eaten for breakfast, having forsaken lunch in the hopes of escaping that Valley Girl.

The very lack of mention of a new sibling had instigated a heated argument. She knew exactly why Vivien had decided to lay off The Pill. And it was pathetic. There was no way that some unborn fetus could be the glue between Mr. and Mrs. Harmon, broken family extraordinaire.

Being left out yet again made her want to curl up and cry.

She wanted Tate.

She wanted to yell at him for causing this empty sensation in her thoughts and superficiality in her emotions. This was all him, and she knew it.

If it wasn't for him and his cryptic answers and half-baked fairy tales, she would be able to get angry properly- not this crappy annoyance tinged with a hint of resentment, and then recover. That was how she dealt. That was how she lived.

Violet needed to regain some form of that control that she no longer had over anything she did. Everything was dictated to her by the heavy shadow of depression that hung over her head and rained restriction down on her life.

Her fingers twitched for the cold steel that would paint her skin in her frustrations. She craved the reminder that only she had the power to decide whether she lived or died. All it would take was a slip, or one too many, and she was gone; no one could touch her, not even the growth taking over her mind at every waking moment of her day.

Tate.

"Tate."

Without even noticing, she had allowed his name to pass her lips as she reached out, hurt and wanting. She felt like a burden to the world. Like an unwanted toddler whose skill set included only crying and screwing everything up.

"I'm here, Violet."

His voice stroked her ear, making its way past her head and right down to her heart.

She let out a short cry, jumping as his arms wormed around her waist and pulling her close. There was no way he was a ghost. No ghost could do this with their presence- not to the living.

"How did you-"

Her question was cut off by his mouth, ambushing her own from the side.

His lips, once hesitant and soft, were almost bruising in intensity as they collided with her own. Instead of the careful dance they had performed before, he was taking a definite lead. He was taking away the control she had grasped at so desperately just moments before. So Violet fought back with equal dominance, pressing for his acknowledgement of her superiority. That acknowledgement never came.

They simply continued until they both agreed to pull apart without the use of words. They didn't need verbal communication when it came to this, not anymore.

Tate's lazy smirk reminded her of what she had been about to say.

"How in the hell did you get up here?" Violet hissed, poking one finger into his left shoulder. She couldn't forget that she was mad at him for abandoning her for a week. She couldn't dismiss everything he had said, the crap he had tried to pull…

Maybe I can forget to remember all of that shit if he kisses me like that again…

Digging her nails into the thin flesh of her palm, she forced herself to let go of those thoughts. Though that sure as fuck would be more pleasant than trying to get real answers out of him…

"I'm a ghost, remember?" His smirk grew wider and he let loose a chuckle. "You don't see me until I want you to."

"I thought we were done with this crap, Tate. Besides, what's that supposed to mean?"

He let his chin rest on her shoulder. "It means that I can watch you in the shower."

No. this was too much.

Somehow twisting away from his vice-grip, Violet turned to face him, willing her small frame to overshadow his, just for this once.

You see what he's done to you? You can only feel when he'd around. And now he keeps feeding you this bullshit line that he knows is just to screw with you.

With her fight with Vivien, Constance's unannounced house call and now this, Violet was ready to break.

"If this is how you're going to act right now, Tate, just leave me the fuck alone!"

Boom.

The effect was not unlike emptying several clips into his chest.

Tate staggered back, an expression of shock and hurt flashing across his beautiful yet tragic face before disappearing into one of anger.

"You lied, Violet. You told me you'd never tell me to leave."

Each word was more loaded than the rifle Ben kept under his bed, just in case.

But what scared her most was what his features had twisted into.

Oh god. He looks like that guy form that old movie. The one who wore a crazy jumpsuit and had those blue, blue eyes… you know, the one that got sent to jail and brainwashed by the government…

Alex from 'A Clockwork Orange'.

Wasn't he a psychopathic murdering rapist?

…

Oh god.

And then he was just gone, as if he'd never been there to begin with.

Just before Violet could catch her breath again, her breathing halted the moment she heard something from downstairs.

Vivien was screaming.

-O-0-o-0-O-

Hello, hello lovelies!

'Tis I, returned from a long week of procrastinating with this chapter and cursing Microsoft Word for being a complete and utter-

Okay, on to better and brighter things. Or maybe not.

Again, I have so much more in store when it comes to this story. The unhappy awkward moments are far, far from over (sorry).

A thank you of large proportions to my marvelous readers, as usual, you have made this worth doing.

A larger thank you to those among you impossibly amazing enough to favorite and add me to your alerts.

The biggest thank you to vixenXfreepop (I want to be your friend too :D), jandjsalmon, Jadeoblue and Tatertot ( I lovelovelove your username xD), who are the best people on the face of the planet.

All right. It's getting late-ish, I have school and I want to go watch more episodes of American Horror Story.

Merida, out.