When Violet wakes, it is with a start. Brown eyes snap open before shutting yet again, hurt by the assault of the dimming light that penetrates the room from the window. She whimpers as sensation announces its resurgence with sweeps of pain; a chromatic plethora whose source of origin cannot be identified, but rather pervades her every muscle and every nerve with gradient degrees.
Her head aches, yet her mind does not respond to its pain; it strikes with a tenacity that is alarming, a thought entwined with three faces smiling at her, gesturing to her, calling her name, furthering away, shouting her name…
Klaus… Sunny… Beatrice…
Violet jerks into a sitting position, her pinpricked eyes wide open and her pain disregarded.
Klaus. Sunny. Beatrice.
Her head turns in a violent swish to the right and her gaze takes in a townscape she has never seen before; it is of dispersed buildings that range vastly in height and shape; white and black puffs of smoke arise from their chimneys to the heights of the skies, disappearing amongst the hovering clouds that are heavy with loitering rain.
Tears are quick to cloud her vision.
"No…" she rasps, her agitated throat protesting vigorously, but again, she pays it no heed.
Violet swallows and looks about her. She is in a small room with only two rustic beds including her own, a chair and a wooden, atrophying bench that is operating as a table.
The bleak cadence lent to the room warps and morphs into an azure blue; it rises and falls in waves, violent and uncompromising, as it forces hands clutching onto hands away from each other. Should the disrupted air, filled with screams of anguish, bear any influence on the supremacy of the sea, it does not show. Instead it continues its burden and tears her family away from her, until not a face is in sight, the remnants of a howled Violet still lingering in the air.
But Violet is no longer at sea. The air here is dead and does not speak.
She has lost her last remaining family.
"No… no," her hands rise to envelope her face as she shakes her head, banishing the tormenting notion and vehemently denying it.
This cannot be. She cannot have lost them.
She shakes her head to disorientation and the world swims about her.
This cannot be…
This is only a dream, and nothing more.
Exhaustion sweeps in and claims her already fatigued body, she readily accepts its embrace and falls back onto the uncomfortable bed, her half-lidded eyes trained on the roof before her. What an ironic thing that clarity should accompany exhaustion, but as a tear trails down Violet's cheek, she knows that this is not a dream.
Just like every other misfortune in her life wasn't a dream. Only now, it is her worst nightmare that she will dub as reality.
The thought replays in her head with resounding expediency, you have lost your family, you have lost your family…
The voice that utters these words is one that has haunted her for two years, and even after his death, it rings in her deepest moments of despair, dark and true, as if he were really there…
The gruff of his voice soon vanishes, and in its place comes a voice much more soothing; its familiarity unjarring, but rather consoling, a proverbial lantern that surfaces whenever she finds herself in the dark. But when has the light gleamed a beam so bleak and malevolent? In her own mother's voice, she hears the words that break her heart more than any other.
You broke your promise.
Violet quickly raises a wounded hand to stifle a sob, but it is deeper than that of the surfacing egress; it reverberates through her throat and through her chest, and soon, Violet is weeping, unhinged for the first time in decades, upon decades…
She broke her promise. She failed to protect her siblings. She failed her parents. She failed Kit.
A feeble voice of hope whispers, reminds her that she has separated from Klaus and Sunny before, only to find her way back to them again. But Violet is too tired and too weary to listen, and she finds despair much easier to cave into. Because what is the point of reunion if separation will inevitably follow?
A succeeding thought rejects the former, and thus begins a strife lead by feelings and logic.
Violet clutches her head and wishes her thoughts away, her eyes clenched shut, the stress inflicted adding to the presiding pain.
There comes a small sound, so alien and paradoxically reclaiming that Violet snaps her eyes open and becomes fully alert, her instinct driving her actions even in her state of dejection.
She looks in its direction and sees a raven sitting on the windowsill, gazing at her with unabashed coal-black eyes.
Violet stares back.
She fancies for an instant that she is peering into the eyes of death and the thought brings her a morbid sense of comfort.
It caws again.
"Have you come to warn me of my approaching end?" she mumbles to the bird with a voice afflicted by tears as she sits up, enveloping her legs with spindly arms. The raven is silent. "That's quite alright," she says, and the emptiness she hears in her voice alarms her slightly, "I don't think there is anything left for me to live for."
The raven averts its black eyes, as if repulsed by her, and she silently shares its sentiment.
A sigh escapes her lips and she turns her attention completely to her ominous companion. "What are you doing here?" Violet whispers, peering out to see a desolate sky and barren, far away trees, but no other ravens in sight. She wonders if they usually travel in groups like their crow counterparts, or if they are solitary like owls. She misses Klaus.
The raven caws and draws a solemn smile from Violet. She brushes a finger along its feathers and sees a reflection of herself in its eyes, "I'm away from my family too." The bird nibbles at her extended finger, consoling her and heeding its departure. And indeed, in a swish of melded colors, the raven has flown away, leaving behind a long, ink-black feather.
Violet takes the silky token in her hand, her eyes following the graceful movement of the black bird.
It flies high and proud, unheeding of what falls behind it and unthreatened of what is to come. The omen of death bestows upon the forsaken land a semblance of life, in irony that Violet has become very accustomed to. Beneath it walks a man clad by an overcoat and a hefty cloud of fog; his sight too is momentarily claimed by the unusual presence of the raven. Lemony lifts his head and squints to take in the black form that overlapped the already bleak sun and he frowns. Ravens and crows alike have always been objects of unease for him, although he would not consider himself to be a man of superstitions.
He looks at the raven, and he sees his brother and his sister. He sees his friends. He sees his lover.
He turns his head again. Indeed, should the bird not carry ill-will in a form intrinsic to its being, it is enough that he is reminded of it upon its sight.
Lemony sighs. The tavern in which lies another object of his unease stands before him, falling apart and decaying, but standing all the same. Its chimney spouts white puffs of smoke; a sure sign of the functioning, rusting gears that protrude from the stoned walls. They turn with effort, objecting all the while with a low-pitched screech, impossible to hear unless you have stepped into its immediate premises.
He hopes she is asleep. He does not want to face her.
He hopes she is awake. He cannot bear a longer suspension of his worries.
What indeed is certain is that there is no evading confrontation. There is no running for Lemony Snicket this time.
He takes his steps gingerly, in a rhythm that coincides with his uneven breath. The lanterns that line the steps guide him along the stairs, his shadow walking alongside him, resembling him more than he has ever resembled himself.
He reaches the door of the small accommodation and opens it slowly, and the barrier between the lifelong acquaintances who have never met vanishes.
Blues and browns meet, and the shock that is inspired renders both Lemony and Violet stagnant.
Lemony is the first to break the silence, and Violet is the first to break the stillness.
He whispers her name so shakily, as if only by instinct, and it is the same instinct that spurs her into motion, abandoning her bed in haste and shuffling clumsily in search for an exit. It hurts him to see her like this, held together only by a compulsion for survival that predates humanity and makeshift bandaids that he designed from bedsheets.
And although he understands it completely, it still hurts him that her fear is directed towards him.
He tries calling her name again, hands raised in hopes of reassuring her that he means no harm, but experience must have snared its ugly claws into her young mind. She regards him with great distrust, back pressed firmly into the wall and limbs ready for defense against the possible assailant.
Violet's hand shifts towards her pocket and searches its content, but it emerges empty and abated.
Her ribbon has been lost to the see as well.
She does not allow her countenance to betray disappointment and remains steadfast, although her overall disposition changes.
Lemony notes with surprise an emotion that he has never associated with Violet Baudelaire before. Deep in her brown eyes, behind the keen intelligence and the sorrow, he sees surrender.
It is not the surrender of the weak nor that of self-pity. It is laced with the wisdom of a person who has tried all the possible alternatives before finally acknowledging the inevitable. He has fallen a victim to that surrender as well, many years back. Still he was not as young as she.
But she looks anything but young.
She must be a bit older than sixteen at this point. His mind falls at dissonance at this one fact.
"What do you want from me?" she says at last.
He stutters over his words, his voice never rising beyond the pitch of a whisper, "I— nothing, Violet," he shifts uncomfortably, searching for utterances that would surmise this most peculiar sequence of tragic years, but the mere exhortation of such proposal sounds ludicrous. He ends up murmuring, more to himself than to her, "it is a story of great length and complexity. I fall short at trying to condense it so concisely as to abate your fears and offer you the reassurance you need. Indeed it is complex…"
Her eyebrows furrow in confusion, her mind quickly deriving possible significance to his words. But should his words have any effect on her, it is only to make her more weary.
Lemony sighs for what he feels is the hundredth time since morning. He regards her with eyes that reflect her own, as if to offer her entry to a most guarded secret that can only be instinctively understood and whose worth would be diminished by the attempt of its materialization.
"I will tell you all about it," he says, voice so tired and sad, "I will tell you why you're here and why it is me who has brought you herein. I will tell you things that I believe have escaped your knowledge, that you have the right to know," while he is in dread of the last promise, her eyes gain a momentary glint of anticipation, "but not now," he informs and pleads. "I know you have no reason to, but I need you to trust me at face value until then."
Violet is silent for a while, thinking. His statements are hasty and lacking in logic. But her regard to her safety is greatly diminished with the knowledge of not being depended on; she is a lot more quicker to accede— but not trust. She cannot trust.
By the man before her, she is reminded of a broken automaton, rusted and missing gears, but with a purpose designed intrinsically in its format. He could help her, she knows. And with the scarcity of alternative options, she cannot find a better course of action.
She nods slowly and he has the look of great gratitude.
Violet is rather surprised when he moves in a flurry, depositing a typewriter and a paper bag on the table then a briefcase against its leg. He removes his overcoat and deposits it on the chair before crossing the room quickly and peering outside the window. He murmurs to himself again words that Violet does not make out, and suddenly, the light is shunned out by a dark curtain.
She follows his movements closely but keeps a good distance between them.
Lemony turns to see her regarding him with even greater suspicion, holding herself tightly and tensely.
"Oh, I do not believe I have introduced myself," he says rather shyly, clearing his throat. "My name is Lemony… Lemony Snicket."
Both names register in her mind with varying significance. She is unsure which to address first.
"You're… are you related to Kit and Jacques Snicket?" she asks. His face darkens almost immediately and he looks away, carrying on with his hasty actions.
"Yes," he says, taking out bread rolls and yoghurt from the paper bag, "they are— were my siblings."
Violet flinches at the intonation and looks at the ground, guilt clouding her face. The contrition behind the death of the two Snickets is a burden that she will carry with her to her grave, but Lemony needs not to know.
Her fears towards the strange man are quelled a little, but her discomfort around him does not ease. She does not like the notion of her being more of a malefactor than he.
Lemony offers her a sandwich of his making and she takes it hesitantly, but gratefully. Until that moment it has skipped her attention that she is starving.
"Thank you," she says quietly and takes a sizable bite, raising a self-conscious hand to her mouth.
Lemony nods and pulls the chair for her, he gestures, "please."
Violet relaxes herself in her chair slowly, her legs wobbling under her weight as she bends them to accommodate the new position.
The light streaming through the curtains colors the room with a purple hue; it shifts as if undecided whether to stay or depart. Lemony sits against the windowsill and finally raises a hand to remove his hat and Violet is allowed a better opportunity to appraise the man. Instantly she is reminded of Jacques; the kind man whom Violet has known only fleetingly, yet touched upon his life with a deadly print. They share the same melancholic azure eyes, but Jacques' are open and generous in their display of his emotions. Lemony's are guarded and layered, as if his sorrows cannot be contained in one film. But there is no mistaking it, the two are definitely brothers.
She makes a conjecture that Lemony is the younger one; more by his skittish, unavailable nature than by his appearance. Jacques must have been the caretaker, always offering support where it was due, even if it was not wanted.
Kit, she could not place. The female Snicket was fiercely independent yet nurturing all the same. Perhaps the middle child? But she did look strikingly like Jacques— could they have been twins?
"Should I make you another sandwich?" comes a sudden break in silence and Violent startles. Lemony mutters a small apology and she shakes her head, "no, thank you," she says.
It would be a lie to say she is not still hungry, but being dotted on is not something she could get used to.
In the end, she suffices with, "I'll make one myself."
She holds the knife in her hand and it trembles. She silently curses her feebleness and does not retreat from the task at hand, if only to prove to herself that she is still capable.
This proves to be a fanciful delusion. After spending many hours being tossed by the sea and assaulted by the different forces of nature, Violet is definitely not capable. It is a wonder her body has withstood its nervous use thus far.
The knife draws crimson blood from her hand and she hisses, dropping the dreaded object instantaneously. Lemony rushes to her side immediately and holds the freshly wounded hand ever so carefully. He takes a white sash of linen from among the many that lie upon the table, a testament of bedsheets being torn to pieces.
"Forgive me. You are spent, of course you are… I should have taken that into consideration," he mutters, moving to bandage her hand, but Violet shakes her head and takes the cloth from him, her blood falling in streaks to color the wooden floor. "It is my fault," she says quietly, despondently, before going into the bathroom.
Lemony hears the sound of water rushing as he stands helplessly outside and feels the barrier between them extending beyond that of the antiquated door.
Writing such an emotionally charged story proves to be quite taxing. But the promise of character development is rather exciting. For now the two are nervous, awkward wrecks (especially a certain writer; can he go on with a sentence without uttering an apology?).
Speaking of apologies, forgive my tardiness in updating. I am taking intensive German courses and they do demand a lot of my time.