Lemony has been a spectator to the lives of the Baudelaires for so long. He has seen their interactions, unadulterated and without filter time and time again; heard their whispered fears and their idle imaginings for a better future; felt their love and felt their pain with such an intensity that caused him to quake and sob, as though he and they were one. As though he was living through his trauma again, but from a different point of view. His was a vicarious presence. The power of words mediated their story and carried his soul to wherever they were. There was no dilution to the experience. It was raw and it was real.
What great irony it is that now that he resides so very close to them in his flesh and bone that the distance between them is felt.
He cannot connect to them. The physical proximity is meretricious and taunting. He can reach his hand and touch their frames, but their minds—their thoughts, their feelings, their beings—are so far away.
His mind falls at dissonance, and his soul is stirred. Reality and fiction have always had a vague impression of a line to separate them; but that line can only be witnessed when viewed from afar. He, however, lives and dwells within it.
Hushed words are uttered during the night. They spread and disperse with a purpose to confuse, never pointing to the direction of their enunciation. The only clue to their source is the light bestowed by a frail candle. Lemony treads softly on the wooden floor, peering from the doorway at the two siblings. They are huddled near each other, with the candle sitting on the table before them, its flame shivering when struck by their utterances. But they are so quiet. He cannot make out the meaning behind them, despite his experience in reading lips or his strengthened hearing. They must have developed skills of their own, however. Ones to which he hasn't been privy.
One thing is certain. They are at a disagreement. Emotion is the one thing he would never fail to read, and written on their faces is the language of frustration and the unease of the heart.
This is the closest he is to regaining that sense of familiarity— being the invisible bystander that sees all but bears no influence; like a shadow among shadows.
Except that it was better previously, when he was miles away and secluded. He had nothing to go on but a few photographs, words of witnesses, and an active imagination—he had forged them, in a way; centered them as characters in a story, and his was the cementing role. It gave him a sense of importance and freed him from guilt, if only temporarily.
How utterly useless and insignificant he feels himself to be now.
Even as Lemony stares at the middle Baudelaire and invokes feelings of relief that he is here; joy that he is safe; pride it was he who essentially found him, he finds none. He doesn't believe he will feel any of those emotions even should he locate the two remaining Baudelaires.
Because this is all temporary.
He didn't guarantee them safety. He's not protecting them. He hasn't changed a bit. He's still the selfish man who would flee without a second thought should threat come his way. And they know it. That's why he can't connect with them; they see through him and they know it.
His weight is heavy. He feels it too readily, causing him to lean tiredly against the doorframe, eyes glistening with a moist sheen but vapid of sentiment. The two Baudelaires look up simultaneously, and he watches Klaus's face turn from that of a canvas of pervading emotions to a parchment starved of colors. He is suspicious of him. Of course.
Lemony's eyes shift to lock with Violet's. They're not what he expected them to be. They don't mirror his thoughts in hostility and hatred towards himself. Instead they are melancholy and… almost remorseful.
Ah. That look. He recognizes that look.
It's the same one he saw on Beatrice's face the day she told him she was to leave him.
The thought makes him want to laugh. And cry. His lips twist upwards in a rueful mimicry of a smile and he expels a breath, turning to leave.
Violet is not Beatrice.
"Mr. Snicket!" echoes a voice from the forsaken room. The image of the face with which his mind associates it is blurring, contorting, morphing—
Violet is not Beatrice Violet is not Beatrice Violet is not Beatrice.
He hastens his steps on the stairs, darting through the darkness. Footsteps continue to approach.
Oh why can't she leave him be already! Is it not her intent?!
He is about to voice that thought aloud when he turns and finds the innocently confused face of Violet Baudelaire, and his chagrin is abated and replaced with shame. Violet is not Beatrice. She is her own person, and she carries with her the burden of three lives beside her own. Surely she doesn't need to be burdened with him and his selfish biases.
"Mr. Snicket," she voices quietly, her voice breathy from chasing after him.
He inclines his head downward for a moment of silent consideration, in which he reassembles his chaotic thoughts.
"Miss Baudelaire."
"I don't know how much you heard," she begins cautiously.
But he cuts her off. "Nothing at all," he says with haste, highlighting his subtextual desire to end the interchange for him to retire to his pensive solitude.
Violet straightens her shoulders, overlooking the dismissive insinuation. "Well… I take it that you drew something from our conversation all the same—"
"I was actually coming to inform you of a decision I've made," he cuts her off again, voice on edge.
She nods, tilting her head in a querying manner. It bewilders him how she has lived through so many atrocities yet remains to be as naive and ignorant of the world outside her inventive mind. It aggravates him greatly now.
"I have decided that the time for us to part has come." There is a taste of victorious, if not malicious, glee that laces his words and coats his tongue when he sees the semblance of shock on her still too-innocent face. "We have found your brother, and I believe you two have the resources to venture on your own. I am willing to supply whatever money you need, if this proves to be a detriment. But I have duty to fulfill elsewhere." The sweet taste is quickly made bitter. To lie like this is distasteful by all means, but the small nagging part of him that wants to be validated and preserve its pride overrides the guilt.
Except… her shock is quickly dissipated. Her visage is calm and curious. Wide brown eyes survey his countenance unabashedly.
"I don't think you mean that, Mr. Snicket," she mumbles the assessment she comes to at last.
There is no threat; no incredulousness; no disgust in her voice. Merely that aggravating, innocent curiosity.
He sucks in a discrete breath and remains rigid.
"For us to be discussing that same thing you come to decide… that's too great of a coincidence," she mumbles still, more to herself now than to him. "No… it doesn't make sense." She looks up at him again. "I think… you've just made the decision. You must have heard us… or otherwise deduced the content of our speech."
Her mental acuity derails him for too long seconds before he regains his stern, but weekend, stance.
She continues, mature and young, and wise and ignorant as she is, "… Klaus wants us to look for Sunny and Beatrice alone. He doesn't trust you. He says that it's likely that you'll turn against us when the chance presents itself… like everyone else did." Her frail arms rise to envelope her thin frame. "I don't blame him," she confesses in a whisper. "It's the pattern that's yet to break. But… we must give someone the opportunity to break it for that to happen, right?" A feeble shrug and an attempt at a smile before the short-lived facade breaks again.
"Life endows you with experience to teach you a lesson, miss Baudelaire," he utters darkly. "There isn't always a pattern to be broken."
"Perhaps not," she says quietly. "And perhaps so."
His mouth opens and closes before he shakes his head in amusement. How stubborn. How utterly Beatrice-like she is. "Optimism is a treacherous ally."
"I never said I was an optimist."
"Well, you have the recklessness of one," he counters. "Your brother has a point. I could turn against you when it suits me. Are you willing to risk your life and his to prove a hypothesis?"
"I'm not trying to prove a hypothesis." She frowns, attempting to gauge his perspective. Sighing, she continues, "Mr. Snicket, tragedy doesn't evade us. That's the one thing that became certain for me. If you and we separate now, then who's to say that we've escaped danger? It has too many forms to escape! And I'm done trying that. What is left for us is to adapt… We either adapt, or we die."
"Why do you insist on testing waters when you could walk on land? What good would staying with me do you?" he mutters, then shuts his eyes in self-reproach. The bitterness is too evident to his ears; the mask he dons is cracking. He wants to run.
"Well… for one, Klaus and I wouldn't have been reunited if not for you—"
"You don't know that."
"—And even if not for that," she says, intoning her growing frustration at being interrupted so frequently. Violet pauses and looks him in his evasive eyes. "You're my friend. I don't leave my friends behind." Sorrowfully, she adds in a whisper, "not if I could help it, at least."
Lemony furrows his eyebrows and frowns. He hopes that his countenance speaks for dismay and not for the confused plethora of feelings that run through his veins. Her friend? He hasn't earned that courtesy. Does she not realize — No, of course she doesn't.
But despite himself, he feels warmth spreading through his chest and tingling his nerves. Happiness, he notes with disquietude. He doesn't like happiness. It's the deceitful foe that lures him with what he loves most only to drop him from a great altitude. His body is beyond recovery. It leaves scars and indentations; memoirs for his mind to visit every night, depriving him of sleep.
No, he hates happiness. It never lasts.
His voice cracks and struggles to be heard. "I'm not your friend."
Violet smiles rather despondently. "You are. I might not be yours, but you are mine."
He wants to shake her, wake her from this fantasy that she's living. Mostly he wants to run. "Miss Baudelaire," he says pointedly, pinching the bridge of his nose. "When you made that promise to your mother," he cannot believe he's stooping this low, "you must have realized that you would have to prime the safety of your siblings over personal affinities." What a hypocrite he is.
But she must realize the intent behind his words. The expression on her face—it is void of incredulousness, still. She's reading him and dissecting him. He can see the gears turning in her mind.
"You seem to be very adamant on making yourself out to be the enemy," she says, confused. "But you can't be. What kind of enemy would warn his intended victims from himself as much as you've been doing?"
Quietude looms before he speaks. "There is more than the kind of enemy you have in mind, Violet."
She stares at him in analytical silence. Eventually, she says, "I don't understand you at all, Mr. Snicket. But I suppose that's intentional on your part. You don't want to be understood."
She understands him better than most do, it turns out. Perhaps more than he does himself. This disconcerts him greatly.
Her voice cuts through his thoughts. "And… you have made my mother the same promise, correct? That you would watch over her children?" she intones the underlying meaning behind her words subtly, and he notes that imposing demands isn't something she enjoys doing. "You don't truly intend to break that promise, do you?"
It is his turn to assess her. He sees modesty and resolve reflected in her eyes, and just behind them, he sees the most gentle of fires refusing to die out. He decides he wants to make sure it doesn't die out.
"No," he says quietly. "No, I don't."
Violet's face breaks in a smile that serves as a surprising testament to her youth. She nods in approval. "Good, then."
At that moment, a rather disagreeable face emerges from behind a nearby door. "You two! Cut the chatter, it's time for the rest of us to sleep!" The door closes.
Lemony and Violet exchange a sheepish glance before deciding to descend the stairs again and into the parlor.
"Miss Baudelaire?"
"Hm?"
He hesitates. "I deeply apologize for my less than civil tone of speech. I… hate to think that I have offended you, or otherwise hurt you."
She looks at his profile with a small smile. "You called me Violet… at some point." He turns to her with a rather confused expression. "You may continue to do so, if you'd like."
He nods, but doesn't offer her the same liberty.
My vacation ends in a few days, so I thought it would be nice if I updated the story while I still had the free time. :)
It's interesting to write in Lemony's point of view for a change. His mind is full of darkness and self-hatred. I found that I had to keep referring the emotion-related events inwardly; inside the character's mind, where he primarily reflects on how they affect him. With Violet, on the other hand, such events are almost always referred externally, in which she wonders how she's affecting them.
I can only imagine how much the enigma that is Lemony "I'm a most confidential secret" Snicket perplexes Violet "I must understand how everything works" Baudelaire.
Thank you plentifully to those who review. :)