Author's Note: So, to start, I should apologize for taking a God-awful long time to update; but if it makes it any better, this is my longest chapter posted to Valiums yet! I've been really busy, but updates won't take nearly as long now from here on out. Thanks for sticking with me, in any case! I gave you a flashback to Tate's past at Westfield in the last chapter and in chapters to come, there will be a lot of little snippets like that just to get further insight. They're small and scattered, but they're important to his character and there'll be more as we go- possibly even an entire chapter dedicated to his past. Violet's character is also shifting a bit in a way that's sort of tragic and also completely interesting because she's blossoming in a way. I've got a lot planned for her in future chapters; things are going to take quite a dark turn, so keep reading !
"Marco."
There's a silence in the kitchen that sticks to his skin like a summer rain. Tate is seated at the kitchen table; chair leaned back and ankles propped up, one over the other. His mother had always told him not to put his feet on the table.
His mother could go fuck herself for all he cared.
"Polo." Her voice breaks the silence like fingernails scraping off grime from buried flesh; dirt collects under her fingernails and she walks into the kitchen with bare feet that stick-pull on the cold floor. There's a grin on his lips when he sees her appear at his call; one of her cigarettes between his heart-shaped lips, he takes it away between nimble fingers to allow smoke to filter out between the snap of ivory teeth.
He's the Devil on his marble throne and she's stuck just at the threshold between wanting to climb onto his lap and wanting to cast holy water at him with a snarl on her lips.
"Red light..." his voice purrs. He's eyeing her like something he wants to eat and it makes her insides quiver unpleasantly. She's not entirely sure if it's the want to be absolutely devoured or the want to dig her fingers into his throat and pull out the gore behind his flesh, but something has her humming between her legs with the need for his dick. The need for his voice and his lips; hands, violence, and snapping teeth; for all things Tate Langdon to fuck her and then leave her crying.
But she's not a little girl anymore and he's retraced back to his roots of bloodthirsty psychotic.
She goes to take another step and he raises a brow. What's he going to do? Spank her?
"I said red light."
She remembers this game from when she was young and she's not supposed to move until he gives her the...
"Green light."
Her lips curl just a bit with a smirk and she starts padding her way across the stick of the floor; moving towards him slowly, knowing he'll stop her before she gets too far. She's right.
"Red light." He taps ashes of the cigarette to the floor.
She stops in her tracks. What happens at the last green light? The anticipation is digging its claws into her.
"What happens when I get over there?"
"Find out." There's a grin on his lips when he says it- looking up at her like he's daring her to throw herself off a bridge.
What's she got to lose, anyway?
And so, when he utters "green light," once again, she breaks the distance to stand before him; all long legs clad in tights and a skirt that pets her thighs. She hovers over where he sits and Tate raises his brows with his gaze to grin up at her, before handing over the cigarette as prize.
How anticlimactic.
She takes it and moves in even closer to brush her free hand into his hair, behind his head to hold his skull.
Violet puts the cigarette out in his eye with a sizzle and the pour of blood down the sharp angles of his face. He protests, but only at first, before the house is filled with the echo of his laughter. He's a man gone mad.
1994
"Do you believe in God?" Tate's voice is cold and his hands hold the gun steady— focusing on the spot between the female's eyes.
"Yes."
"Why?"
There's a pause and she looks at him, shaking and scared. She knows she's going to die.
He shoots her before she can give an answer.
Tate Langdon is the fatal flaw in God's plan— the one hiccup that wasn't planned for. How powerful it felt to be able to wipe out something that was placed on Earth by something bigger than he.
It's not Stephanie- no, she would fall in the library with books around her to catch her brains. This is another girl; one who he'd seen clutching a cross pendant to her chest and eyes raised to the heavens. The sky would rain blood and flood out her tears to red and pink, before her prayers were answered.
Because her God is a sick, cruel fuck for creating something like Tate Langdon.
She knows Tate has really snapped because she's been hearing strange noises up in the attic. Sometimes she thinks that she might have heard someone crying— someone screaming, but she discredits it and goes on with her day.
He was crazy before, after all- wasn't he?
Tate is the special sort of crazy that hides in the confines of your bones and latches onto your spine; the kind of crazy that makes you strange, but not sick. Now it's different. There's something else in the male's eyes that has her scared in a way that she doesn't understand. Something that keeps her crawling back out of curiosity— the need to see just what he's going to do next. Maybe that makes her crazy too.
She knows he's up to something in the attic when he comes down the steps with blood on his hands.
"What'cha got up there?" She asks with a brow raised and a little smirk on her lips. Yes, she's just as bad as he is lately and she ought to be slapped because she knows someone's been suffering and it certainly wasn't him.
"Nothing."
"Liar."
"Why do you care?" His voice is cold, but there's a smirk when he raises his eyes to hers— reaching out to grab a glass from the cupboards. He leaves red handprints on the glass like lipstick stains on a cigarette.
She simply eyes him pointedly for a moment; gaze lingering on his hands clad in bright maroon.
"I got you something." The words send a chill up her neck. This can't be good.
She has a feeling deep in the pit of her stomach that what he'd been up in the attic isn't a simple, romantic rose painted black.
She climbs the steps up into the attic first— Tate follows suit behind her and he's quiet. Maybe he's waiting for her to scream; to cry and yell at him. Maybe he thinks she'll tell him to 'go away' and then she'll forget he ever existed all over again. Maybe he just simply doesn't care anymore.
She's fairly certain it's the last option, because any sane human being wouldn't have done what he's done. Any sane human being would have been able to differentiate between right and wrong, but Tate seems to struggle with that line in the sand.
Maybe she's the sick one after everything— sick for not reacting with a scream like she might have done years back when she wasn't so used to death and decay. She's been desensitized.
There's really something wrong with her- because she hardly bats a lash when she finds someone held captive in the attic of the Murder House; bound by ankles and wrists with a heavy line of duct tape over her cherry-red lips. She's blonde; pretty— with dull colored eyes that sit in the cradle of high cheek bones and soft skin that frames every bone.
Pretty little thing— even bruised and bleeding. Why is she bleeding?
Tate had to get her in the house somehow and she wouldn't have agreed had she been conscious; and so, he'd knocked her out with just enough force. He won't say that much because grabbing a rock and hitting someone over the head with it isn't exactly normal.
But then again, neither is kidnapping a teenage girl and holding her hostage so that your ex-girlfriend can have someone to talk to.
"What'd you do to her?" Why doesn't Violet sound shocked? She eyes the girl like a new television set, rather than a girl with a life beyond the front gates. Maybe Tate was rubbing off on her.
Maybe she's been far too much like him all along.
A shrug, before he wrinkles his nose. Like a child caught in a lie about whether or not he's eaten the last cookie, not whether or not he'd smacked a rock over a random girl's head and taped her up in the attic. "I was standing out by the gate and she walked over."
"I don't mean that, shit-head. Why is she bleeding?"
"Who's to say?"
It dawns on Violet that this is just another one of Tate's games; a test of action and reaction and pushing to see just how far he can go with things until she snaps and frays like twine wound tight over the heavy handle of a kitchen knife. He's testing her and she can smell it in the way he answers her questions with more questions with a smirk on his ivory teeth. He's sick.
The blonde whines behind the tape tight over her lips and Tate moves over to ghost fingertips over the edge of the fray; fingers under the tacky side and then gives a sharp jerk— tugs the tape from her face and she gasps.
Ouch.
"What'd you say your name was?" His brow is furrowed; the question asked so off-hand, Violet wants to empty the contents of her stomach onto the floor- to count how many things she's actually eaten in the past week which wouldn't equate to much, anything to distract her from what's actually happening.
"Somebody... h—elp me!" Her voice is shrill and the skin of her wrists and ankles strains against the tape like a sheet tugged tight over a mattress. Her being there at all is still quite lost on Violet and she thinks about asking, but there's a sharp slap and Tate's palm is tight over the girl's mouth when she screams.
"Please don't do that; I'd really prefer not to hear it." Gee, how polite of him to ask her nicely to be quiet with an angry palm clasped over her mouth. No, no one here can hear her; no one that can help her, anyway.
"What is this?" Violet's voice is confused and maybe a bit annoyed.
After all; how can she possibly be bothered with a kidnapped girl in the attic?
"Well, I grabbed her for you— I mean, you're always talking about how bored you are."
"So you give me a person to play with?"
"Guess so."
She snorts, shakes her head and turns away from him. "You're a psychopath."
Violet slips down from the attic and drips into the rest of the house like the break of an egg into a pan. She disappears and avoids Tate for a while because he's starting to weasel his way into her mind in ways she's not quite sure she's ready for yet. She still hates him, after all— despises him.
But there's been one dramatic shift in their relationship.
She isn't afraid of him anymore and isn't afraid of the house. He hasn't changed— no, he's the same as he's ever been. However, she's been swallowed up by the Murder House and wound into the dirt— salted down at the foundation so that she may not bloom. Her roots are sharp and they cling to worms and rot as she lets them crawl within her and replace her insides with their hiss and bite. Roaches and maggots use her brains as furniture— her skull their walls and their prison.
She is as sick as Tate is and this house is molding her into a monster. Violet Harmon is not a frail littler flower- was she ever, really?
Monster or not, at least she still has a shred of remorse.
She's on her back on the couch— one leg propped over a bent knee and her foot taps the air as if to conduct the music of mice in the walls. She's got a book in her paper-cut fingers and her honey eyes are glued to words she's read a million times.
Why can't you order books over the phone like a pizza? Not that she had any money.
Eyes blink hard and she's reminded of the flaxen-haired girl held quiet up in the attic. Tate's been avoiding the problem— waiting for Violet to swoop in and take action. Ignoring her until she does.
Funny how that works— she ignores him because he rapes her mother and hides his psychotic tendencies from her to make it seem like maybe he's sane. He ignores her for refusing to play some sick form of house with a random chick who has a family, school, and friends beyond these walls.
She has to suppose that makes her selfish— for not appreciating his gift.
He's an idiot if he thinks he can just grab anyone off the street and hand them over as her new friend. That's not how you make friends and that's certainly not how to cure boredom.
He's finally flicked the switch, hasn't he?
He really doesn't care whether she asks him to stay, or tells him to go away— and he's certainly relishing in his ability to truly be himself now. This is how he's been all along, after all. Tate is a good actor; and maybe there had always been a love there for Violet, but there was also a love there for violence that is something very deep-rooted. Something she simply cannot fill because he stuffs it with darkness and horrible things like broken bones and curdled blood.
A hole left behind by an absent father and a mother who didn't pay attention.
A hole left behind by dead siblings and razor blades— too many pills and the sound a bullet-casing makes when it falls to a clink on hallways floors.
She doesn't pity him and he doesn't ask for her pity.
He just wants to burn.
...
Speaking of— she'll make quick work of lighting her last cigarette and swinging legs over the edge of the couch. Bare feet wade over the wood flooring and she makes her way through the house like a wave of sound to caress the walls and drink in the silence to make it her very own.
Her feet carry her to the attic and she doesn't quite understand it, but maybe it's the magnetic pull of a life to another life not quite beating. A moth to a flame and a fly to a light bulb, because dark and dusty insects never really could possess the light they so wished to have. She'll flutter about and bang her head on the glass until she's concussed and bleeding from the brain.
He's done this to her— twisted her into something curious and wrong.
This is wrong, but he's not around to see, so Violet will pad over to the girl and pull the tape from her mouth— shush her and tell her to be quiet, study her frightened expression. What is she doing? Just where is this going?
"You wanna go home?"
The female nods near violently from the part of the dusty floor she occupies. Of course she does— was it ever really a question? Tate's not the best host.
"Then you'll have to do what he says. You know that, right?"
She furrows her eyebrows; she's afraid. She'd flee— throw herself out the window, even, if her ankles weren't taped together, wound over and over again.
Violet snorts and shakes her head. "You're stupid."
Ghost-girl doesn't feel bad. Does she feel anything at all anymore? No, there's no sympathy for someone not ready to grovel for their life and it's a fact that tears away at the lining of her stomach. She truly is sick.
Doesn't the girl see? Tate would not stop until Violet succumbs and admits to her metamorphosis.
"If you could just undo the tape, I could..."
"Didn't I tell you to be quiet?"
"Yeah, b—ut…"
Violet shakes her head because she is filled with impatience and it scratches and whines at the hinges. She's going to come undone and rip right out of her skin if this isn't taken care of and if it isn't taken care of the way she wants it to be. She's in charge now.
And then she has an idea— and it's wicked and sick; cruel.
"You're gonna shut your mouth and you're not gonna say another word unless I address you," Violet snaps. She pulls out her pocket knife and her lighter and she hatches out a plan. She wants this so bad, she can already feel it dancing just past her fingertips in a place spun in spider's silk and lit by glow-worms. She knows Tate is watching now— listening and honing in on her to make sure she does it right; makes the right decision.
Violet perches in the girl's lap— swings a leg on either side of her and then grabs hard onto her jaw to yank it open.
"The quieter you are, the easier this will be."
...
When Violet's done holding the knife over the flame and pressing it to the open wound, the girl finally stops screaming. There's left-over blood caked on flesh and she'd cauterized the stump of what was left of the girl's tongue with the metal of her pocket-knife.
A slave doesn't talk back; a slave doesn't argue.
Would Tate be proud of her? Does she really give a shit about Tate?
No- this is about her. About darkness hatched within her that's newfound. Something that had always been there, but had been hidden and tucked away; denied surface to breathe and fill its lungs with fresh air. Tate's trying hard to push it out like a kicked dog; order her to step up and realize that maybe she's been wrong. Maybe there's something there.
Maybe there's a monster in all of us and all it takes is a little isolation to bring it crying to the forefront.
"What are you gonna do with her now that she doesn't have a tongue? She's not going to be much of a conversationalist." Tate's voice is the sharp crack of a whip in the silence of the room. There's still blood on Violet's hands and since it's not his, she feel guilty and tries to wipe it off on her skirt.
"I don't want her."
"Yes you do. You wouldn't have come up here if you didn't."
Maybe Tate is right, she's not so sure. She doesn't know what possessed her to wander up to where the girl is taped and hidden to begin with.
"This is really—fucked up. I don't even know why I'm entertaining it…" Violet's fumbling and she's gathering up her knife— goes to close it and stow it away in her pocket, but Tate is suddenly right in front of her and fingers claps hard over her wrist to stop her. No, the knife is staying out and she's known somewhere deep in her gut all along that it wasn't going anywhere.
"It could get worse." His words are a cold chill on every little bone that lines her spine.
She gets it— understands what this house can do to someone because she's been stuck within its walls for years and she's done her fair share of festering. When something good is surrounded with influences that are wrong, then that thing shall also become wrong. Violet isn't weak— she never was— but now she's something completely different because she's been thrown into a locked box with a mad man. She's shifted and grown and her metamorphosis is complete.
She's not a little girl anymore.
Hell, she's not even the same person she used to be when Tate first met her.
Would the old Violet have carved the tongue out of an innocent girl's mouth? Does the old Violet matter anymore? Still, hurting someone else feels a lot different than hurting Tate, or even hurting herself.
Tate reaches out to ghost gentle fingertips over hers— scoops the knife out of her grip and all the while, keeps dark eyes on her face just to study and try to dig deep. He wants to know what she's thinking and because of that, she makes sure to wear her very best poker-face.
He'll show her how to spread her crumpled, wet wings just as they emerge from their cocoon.
He will be the serpent hissing in her ear; the want and need to ruin.
He will make her wrong.