Loren knows not what he's done. (skelterhelter) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2012-03-07 00:28:00 |
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Entry tags: | door: american horror story, tate langdon, violet harmon |
Who: Tate & Violet
What: Meeting beyond the door.
Where: Violet's bedroom; the American Horror Story Door.
When: Very recently.
Warnings: Self mutilation.
She hadn’t wanted to come back here, and she’d said as much to the girl - Hannah - as she made the walk from Cassilda to Passages. It was a bad idea, Violet knew, but she couldn’t stop Hannah this time. The other girl was too determined to go through with it. The door to the house opened, and Violet found herself in her own bedroom, alone.
Everything was just like she remembered. The blinds pulled shut, her bed made, books scattered around. She looked at the chalkboard, the one Tate liked to leave her messages on, but it was empty and whatever, right? She didn’t want a message from him anyway. It meant he wasn’t here, and that’s what she’d told her mom she wanted - that she wanted him to go away. She’d told him too, so why did she care? Whatever. She didn’t care. He’d lied to her.
She opened the top drawer of her dresser, and she pulled out the cigarettes she stashed in her old underwear. She tossed the pack on the bed with a huff. Why bother hiding them anymore? What were her parents going to do? Ground her? It’s not like she could leave the house anyway. She shoved the window open, the skirt of her floral dress fluttering against jeans she wore beneath it, and she looked down at the yard below her window. It was all so the same, and she hated it.
A stop in the bathroom netted her a straight-razor, and she climbed on the open window sill and straddled the ledge. It was precarious, and she didn’t care. A second later, she had a lit cigarette in her mouth, and her sleeve shoved up to her elbow. The razor rested on the window ledge, and the sun glinted off it as she took a long drag from the cigarette and exhaled smoke above her head.
"You promised." The voice was solid before he actually was, but Tate rounded the corner into her bedroom a moment later. As young and misplaced as ever, this era lost him by a couple decades but some thrift store, hipster aspect of grunge kept his clothes relevant. Cheap and effortless; the forever artist, the mourning poet in plaid. Blue flannel sleeves hung down his arms and olive corduroy staked out his legs until they crested against black keds. His pale hair was overgrown and mismanaged, curling into the abysmal eyes that belonged to one of Death's own romantic dogs. Tate returned like the worst kind of nightmare, just the same as ever. Soft and wounded, with his hands wedged deep in his pockets.
"You promised you wouldn't do that again," and his sad eyes were all for the silver razor on her window's ledge.
She’d known he would come. He never left, even when he told her to, and some days she could convince herself that he hadn’t been lying about everything when he pretended he didn’t remember all of it. She’d totally believed it too. She’d thought she was helping him, that he didn’t know he was dead and she had to protect him by not telling him the horrible truth. It was total crap, and she hated that she still wasn’t sure how much of it was true and how much of it wasn’t. And that was without even thinking about her mom.
She didn’t look up when he spoke the first time, even though she wanted to, and even though she knew exactly what he was talking about. She tugged the cigarette away from her mouth, blew smoke out into the warm California air, and ignored him until he spoke again. She wanted to do it just to defy him, to prove he didn’t matter anymore, and she reached for the razor and tugged it between her fingers, the metal warmed from its time on the sill. “I told her I didn’t want to come back here,” she finally said, hurt in her voice and an angry determination to stay pissed at him. Still, she didn’t look at him, because she’d stare if she did, dammit; she totally wouldn’t do it. No matter what.
He hesitated at the foot of her bed, running a nervous set of fingers back and forth across the dull metal of her footboard. Lurking at a distance with sufficient awareness of how little she wanted him to be here. Tate had wanted Violet back, but not like this. He'd thought that if he could finally get the amnesia man to come to the door, things would be different. That Violet and him could start over or start again, but now he could see it was just like before. Right where they left off. "You like it better out there?" The question was gentle with a longing to understand what she needed to be happy.
She could tell he was running his fingers along the metal of the footboard; he did stuff like that when he was nervous. She wanted to climb off the windowsill and crawl into the bed, to drag him against her and curl up against him like she had when everything was still okay. Instead, she picked up the razor and dragged one line across her forearm, just to piss him off. Still, she didn’t look at him. “She’s not stuck in a house full of dead people,” she said angrily. “She can walk around, and she’s not trapped.” Which wasn’t totally true, but it would be eventually. She watched the red well up against her skin, wondering how that even still worked if she was dead. “I trusted you, Tate,” she added, and it was a betrayed thing, the sound of her voice, strangely ominous in relation to Hannah.
He lurched forward at the sight of blood, but somehow managed to restrain himself with a hand still locked in a whiteknuckle clench against the steel post of her bed. An attack dog at the end of it's chokechain, he wanted to go to her, but he also knew that was a bad idea. He didn't want her to tell him to go away, not yet, not when he only just found her again. "Don't, Violet.." Even if the words were a soft, pleading sound.. there was also a warning to it. He wouldn't just stand here and watch her hurt herself. Tate frowned when she said that she'd trusted him, all past tense. "I know, I never wanted to hurt you. I love you, Violet." Present tense.
She could tell him to go away, she could make him disappear; he’d taught her that. But that was the problem with loving someone you hated; you wanted them to stay, just as much as you wanted them to go. She dragged the razor in another straight line against the pale skin of her arm, and her lower lip trembled as she watched the blood well. She pressed the blade deeper when he said he loved her, and yeah, okay, maybe she was trying to make him hurt now. She knew it would hurt him - maybe more than it would hurt her, even. She still refused to look at him, because that would hurt too. Even if it kind of killed her to be in the same room with him while he was way over there. “Do you like her?” she asked.
Tate said nothing when the straight blade cut deeper into her skin, pale skin already mottled with many faint scars. He didn't curse, and he didn't bring forth any compelling arguments.. but he did come closer. Without invitation, he strode up to the solitary confinement of her windowsill and grabbed her wrists. Both of them, so that he could control the hand with the razor and he could heft her bleeding arm up against his mouth for a kiss. In the beginning, he remembered that grossed her out.. he wondered if it would even shock her anymore. All he wanted was for it to be enough to make her stop, and he released her wrists a second later to see what she'd do. "Who?" He asked the question like he didn't know any female but her existed.
She dropped the razor when he grabbed her wrist, and she watched him kiss her bloodied arm. It still made her turn her face away, but not like before, and she wasn’t as ashamed to admit that the darkness of it sent a thrill through her. It was easier this way, pretending she didn’t want him there, that she totally didn’t want his hands on her wrists, holding her where she couldn’t escape. It had been like forever since he’d been this close, and she wanted to shove him hard enough to hurt. “The religious girl,” she said, distracted, watching his mouth on her skin, his lips tinted red with her blood, then thinking of his mouth on her mother’s skin, then thinking of that baby Constance had hidden away. Tate’s baby. She yanked her hands back. and she shoved at him. She shoved hard, with the anger of months and months, of being dead, of what he’d done, of how much she loved him, and of how much she hated him.
"She's not you," was all he said before the shoving began. Tate fell back a step before making a solid stand against her pushes and shoves. He crowded in closer to her, and said nothing even when she shoved again. She could hit him if she wanted, kick him, cut him, set him on fire. It felt like he'd chased her around the entire world and back onto this side just so that she could break his face or carve out his heart. Whatever she liked, she could have it.
She was so close that the tips of her faded black Converse were overlapping his shoes, and the dress that loosely flowed over the denim jeans was tangling with his legs. She stopped pushing, and she began a barrage of fists against his chest. The blood from cut on her arm stained his plaid shirt, but she didn’t care. It was all crap, the door, the other side, being stuck here again. “Why?” she finally asked, not stopping as she pummeled his chest to the point of exhaustion. She hadn’t asked before, because she knew he would lie. Maybe he would lie now too, but she needed to ask. Now, she needed to ask.
He swayed under the storm of her anguish and fists until the seconds passed on to full minutes and she was still swinging on him. He'd be bruised, but Tate didn't care. She was hurting, so he'd hurt too. He expected her to realize that this was getting her nowhere, but Violet kept on hitting him and the only thing he thought to do was to crowd closer. He grabbed for her, but not in a reach for her curled fists. Rather he wrapped his arms around her, all warmth and long sleeves. Warmer than death had any right to be. Tate pulled her into his chest and pressed his cheek into her smoke laden hair, and if she wanted to keep hitting him just then, she could. He was unsure of what she wanted him to say, of what would make it all better, so he said nothing and waited to see if the exhaustion would make her forget she'd asked anything at all.
She gave into the embrace because she was stupid, and because he was Tate, and because he’d been her first - the first in her bed, the first person to really get her, the first person to protect her from all the bad shit that was all over. She swung one lazy-latent fist against his collarbone, and then her fisted hands slid over his shoulders, behind his neck. She clung. She clung as if she was drowning, and he was salvation, even though she knew he was the undertow and she’d never make it back to the surface if she gave in. It was hard enough the first time, shoving him away, and she didn’t know if she could do it again, not with all this crap with the door and the house empty of even her stupid parents and that gross baby that cried all the time. “Why?” she repeated, because she hadn’t forgotten. How could she forget the one thing she’d been asking herself over and over. Why?
"I'm sorry," and he was. Although it was regularly difficult for Tate to recognize what he wanted out of this afterlife, he knew it wasn't this. He didn't want to see Violet hurt herself, and he didn't want to see her cry. He rubbed his cheek against her hair, surprised at how solid she felt even when he knew that she was dead now, too. "I'm sorry," he whispered again. Sorry for hurting her, but not exactly sorry for what he'd done. You couldn't change the past and it didn't help to atone for shit, and besides.. he'd had his reasons at the time. It was difficult to pinpoint, the thing with Violet's mom more so than anything else. He liked Dr. Harmon, and he loved Violet.. it didn't give him a lot of room to justify anything, but excuses had never been Tate's thing. He held onto her, waiting for the shoving and punches to start up again. "I'd never meant to hurt you, and I'd never let anyone else hurt you either. I don't know how to fix it, tell me. Tell me what to do and I'll do it," he begged.
She stiffened when he he didn’t answer. He never had answers, and it just reminded her of why she was angry. He never answered. He’d ruined everything, turned everything upside down, and he never said why. She shoved away from him again, free of his arms and the warmth of his body. She wished she could hate him more, hate him enough that she didn’t want to feel him close to her. But she didn’t; she didn’t hate him, and it made her angrier, made her want him to hurt. “I hate you,” she said as she pushed him away. “I hate you, and I’m going to make sure that girl outside does all kinds of thing you’ll hate, and you’ll know it’s me doing it!” she yelled, her voice loud and entirely teenager, unthinking words and threats meant to stab and hurt. She let it sink in, and she shuddered as she found the strength to say the next words: “Go away, Tate.”
He stumbled back from her, although stronger people than her had failed to hold him off. It was only for Violet that he wilted away at the slightest request, too afraid of hurting her to demand anything else. When she began to yell and shout those things, Tate's mouth crumbled into a frown that said he didn't entirely understand what she meant. That girl on the outside was nice, why would Violet make her do things he'd hate? Violet's next words were stronger, and they made him raise his eyes from the floor in desperation. "No," but even then it wasn't defiant.. just more of a plead. "Don't do this," his voice broke on a hiccup sob because not again, not again. Tears were spilling down his face now. He was still losing her, and he'd thought coming to the door would fix everything but it hadn't. It might have made things worse. "Violet, please. I love you." He did! His features were tear-streaked and hysterical, too young to be a killer. "I NEED YOU!" The scream was a warcry.
She believed he loved her. That was the hard part, she believed, but it didn’t change anything, and it didn’t make anything better. And he couldn’t tell her why, and she wanted him to hurt the way she’d hurt when she found out about him and her mother. The murders, those she could forgive him for. She could find a reason to justify it in her own mind. But not her mom. Anything but her mom. She wasn’t immune to the sobbing, and her cheeks became wet-over with tears, but she stood her ground. “GO AWAY!” she repeated, just before she started sobbing herself. She didn’t want him to go, she didn’t, and she reached for him (dragging him close), and then pushed him away again. “And I’ll bring someone back here with me next time,” she threatened, turning the knife. “I will, Tate.” And she was close again, somehow, pounding on his shoulders with closed fists. “I will.”
"Violet, no.." The words were fractured in a dozen syllables, broken by his sobs when she repeated herself. He'd go away, he couldn't deny her that, he didn't know how. But he didn't want to, there was too much to tell her, to warn her about with the amnesia man. Tate stepped and then stumbled into her hug, which became a shove all too quick, and he was already backing up when she added that last part. The part about bringing someone here with her. Who? Why? He'd kill them, whoever they were. Tate shook his head and sniffed away the tears while golden, angel curls drooped into his dark eyes. The look was heartbreak with a spark of murderous flint, and then.. in the next blink, he was gone.