the beginning is the end is the beginning
I'm sorry if the beginning of the chapter is a bit boring for some of you, I know it's a Violate story, but I wanted to show what happened to Nora when Tate left to go after Charles, and then it kinda became about her past life too... But I'm not really sorry, I liked writing her. I never realized how much of an interesting character I find her to be, until I actually wrote about her.
So maybe it will seem like a very Nora centric chapter, and I guess there's truth in that, but don't worry, there will be Tate in it too ;)
Disclaimer: I don't own anything.
Chapter 07 - Connection
Nora and Charles Montgomery's marriage has stopped being a love story a long time ago.
She remembers how it started, with one glance at him on the college campus, and she was a goner. He was charming, attractive and always a complete gentlemen. But the best of it all was how dedicated he was to her. She was the center of his universe, his very own sun in his life, and she loved every minute of it.
It helped that he came from a wealthy family, and he was willing to give her anything and everything she wanted, no matter the prize. She had always dreamed of marrying a rich man, ever since she was a little girl and her grandmother disowned her mother, thus depriving them of all the material goods that Nora's family had enjoyed before.
With Charles, her dreams seemed to be coming true and it didn't take them long to get married.
The first few years were blissful. Charles continued to ravish her with attention and clothes and expensive jewelery, and Nora was just as happy as ever. But then came the fallout.
To this day, she has no idea how it really happened. Charles started to spend less time home and more time in the hospital, or at least that's what he said, and Nora began to think he had an affair. When their money waned, she thought he might be gambling. Or doing drugs.
It turned out to be the latter.
Nora had turned a blind eye to that, refused to think about why he would be so desperate to turn to morphine, and told him to go to rehab. When he returned, to gain their money back, she encouraged him to participate in illegal organ trades, and he agreed without a word, willing to do just about anything to keep her as his wife.
And as a mean to repair their broken marriage, Nora, once again calling the shots in their relationship, decided she wanted children. Charles had no problem with that either.
But things didn't get better. Partaking in illegal organ trades had indeed helped them win some of their money back, but it came with a major consequence Nora didn't foresee. You see, Charles had began to form another unhealthy but very different addiction: his addiction of doing insane experiments in the basement of their house.
She had no idea what he was actually doing or what he was trying to achieve, and she didn't bother to ask him. All she knew that when he wasn't the hospital, or doing his 'other job', he was in the basement, and sometimes he brought people with him, people she never actually saw leaving. She turned a blind eye to that too and pretended she didn't suspect anything. She had to, for her sake and for her unborn baby's sake. Charles was the only one who could support them.
She hoped that once their child was born, he would see the error of his ways and be the man she fell in love with so long ago, but she had no such luck. Charles barely cared for her or for their son, Thaddeus. Nothing interested him, nothing but his experiments, and eventually he lost his job at the hospital.
That was the final straw for Nora. She knew the man she once loved was truly dead and she despised this new Charles who took his place. Sometimes she wished for his death, but those were only fleeting thoughts. If Charles died, she would inherit his money of course, but it wouldn't be enough to support her forever and eventually she would have to start working again. She wanted to avoid that, if possible.
But then this tragedy happened and money became unimportant, and here she is now, finally allowed to hope with all her heart that her husband is dead.
She paces around in what probably used to be the living room as she tries to calm this wailing, crying thing in her arms - her son, it's her son, she reminds herself, but sometimes she wishes he wasn't so she could just abandon him at the side of the road or something. She has this feeling that he will be her downfall sooner or later, and it makes her contemn him just a little bit.
She sees the way Tate looks at the boy when he's screaming, with hatred and disgust and worry in his eyes, and she knows he wishes they could get rid of him too. Nora is not stupid, she knows that one day his nonstop wailing will attract one of those creatures to them.
And maybe that day is today, she thinks as something moving outside catches her eye. As the thing gets closer and she moves to the window to get a better view, she feels dread and a hint of panic rise inside her chest, the sounds coming from Thaddeus completely fading to the background, when she realizes that it hauntingly looks like her husband.
Maybe he isn't dead after all. That will be a problem.
Just as she decides that she cannot have him coming back alive so she'll have to kill him herself, she gets a better look at Charles and notes with a hint of smile on her face that he is dead.
Or maybe undead would be a better word for it.
Very well. All the better reason to put him out of his misery once and for all. She will kill him, shoot him in the head and she will take pleasure in seeing his brains plastered on the sidewalk.
Placing Thaddeus down on the couch, she reaches for the gun and heads for the door. Tate had ordered her to stay in the house at all costs but that command is long forgotten as she steps outside to kill her husband.
There is just one problem she hasn't thought of.
Nora has never in her life used a gun before, and although Tate had taught her how to shoot, he hadn't taught her how to aim. And it's harder than she expected.
The first bullet misses him. The second lodges in his arm. The third hits his chest.
Neither of the wounds deter him and by the time the third gunshot rings out, he's already too close. She has no more time to shoot, she doesn't even have time to close the door. She screams as Charles flies at her but she's lucky enough to be able to run back inside, up the stairs, throwing open the first door she finds, and getting inside, slamming the door shut before he can get to her.
The door clatters as the zombie claws on it, trying to find its way inside, and it's only then that she remembers Tate's warning about staying inside. Guess she should have listened, she thinks as she moves as far away from the door as possible, practically melting into the wall. Her head is spinning in fear, her legs are threating to give out on her and all she can think about is how she doesn't want to be mauled by her husband. She doesn't want to find out what it feels like to be eaten alive.
Reloading the gun so she can have one more chance of shooting him - although with the way her vision is blurring, the odds are against her - she prepares herself the best she can, when the door suddenly stops rattling.
She doesn't understand what happened. Did the monster leave? Zombies weren't exactly best known for their intelligence, they had no brain they could use, so the idea that it might have stopped just to trick her and get her to come out is out of the question. But where did it go?
She only finds out when she hears her baby cry. Oh God, Thaddeus. She left him downstairs on the couch.
There's one chilling moment of clarity when time stops and she swears she can feel the world spin around on its axis, then she's falling to her knees, emptying the content of her stomach to the floor. She was so angry at Thaddeus before, so furious he wouldn't stop screaming, but now there's just guilt. To think she had even wished he wasn't hers...
She's up and out the door before she can even register what she's doing. Moving down the stairs, the baby wails get louder and louder, and when she hears chewing, she knows she's too late. As she arrives downstairs, her suspicions are confirmed by the gruesome sight before her. There's Charles, kneeling in front of the couch, and there's Thaddeus, who's finally did what everyone wanted him to do and stopped crying. For good.
Nora closes her eyes tightly, trying to banish the image from her mind but she has a feeling it's burned on her brain permanently. She slaps a hand across her mouth, perhaps to keep her sobs in, perhaps so she wouldn't puke again, and it takes her a good few moments to compose herself. When she feels like she has regained even just the tiniest bit of her strength, she steps closer to her once husband, the gun shaking in her unstable hands as she raises it. She's able to creep up on him because the thing is too busy eating the remains of their son, and she presses her weapon to his head, pulling the trigger before it could attack her too.
And the it's done, but she feels like it'll never really be over.
Sinking to the floor, she wraps her arms around herself, and weeps for her lost baby boy, only the corpses of her husband and son around to hear her desperate cries.
That's the scene Tate arrives back to.
Nora sobbing on the floor, Charles and Thaddeus dead.
"I shot him. He killed my baby, so I shot him." That's all she says when he questions her, breaking into another fit of hysteria moments later.
He never actually finds out in detail what happened because Nora doesn't stop crying long enough to get out a coherent sentence after that. There's just one thing she says, repeating it over and over again until he begins to grow sick of it, like he was sick of the stupid baby's crying too.
"Where's my baby?"
Again and again she asks it. He tells her he's dead, he tells her her husband killed him, he tells her he became a zombie too so he had to shoot him, he even tells her he's just sleeping in the other room. She registers none of it, like she doesn't even want a reply, she just likes to repeat her question. He stops answering around the seventh time.
Tate has no idea how to handle her so he just lets her cry. He gives her time till next morning to get better so they can move forward but he has very little hope she'll get better and he's right. She's lost her mind, and like her family, it wasn't coming back anymore.
And maybe part of him is glad for that.
He likes Nora, he genuinely likes her, really, but he has nor the time nor the patience to care for her, especially not now, in this state of her mind. She wouldn't last for long now, he tells himself just to appease the side of him that's sad and even guilty, and she could bring him down with her if he wasn't careful. And then what would happen to Violet?
He undoubtedly feels a connection for the woman who has been his mother more than Constance ever was, who had helped him in his time of need, who had always supported him in his quest of finding Violet, but the connection he feels for Violet is, at the end of the day, stronger.
So he does what he has to do.
He puts the gun to her head and watches as she doesn't even flinch, doesn't beg or try to pull away. She looks resigned, almost peaceful.
Then he pulls the trigger.
At first I was going to make Nora kill herself like she did in the show but then I thought it would be more dramatic if Tate had to kill her.
Anyway, we're nearing the end of the story. I'm excited :)
