When It Was Dark

The world was ending there on the island, along with the sun settling in the sky and the water rising steadily at the coastal shelf, almost setting the package of bloated books afloat again. Kit was stuck on the raft, unconscious and close to drowning, and Olaf was nursing a deep wound.

As Violet knelt next to her brother in the sand, in front of the villain, it all came back. She was about to hand him the apple that would dilute the poison - giving him a chance to keep tracking them down. He would never leave them alone for as long as he lived.

She remembered. It crawled in her skin with equal parts repulsion and something else – his hand in her hair, almost gentle, leaning over her when she was strapped down at the hospital, hearing his rough breathing. Telling her all about how he had enjoyed the rush of the hunt, twirling a sharp instrument in his hand and smiling at the way her breathing picked up.

She remembered it through a haze, his gloved fingertips against her neck, stroking her pulse. Defenseless.

It was a double-egged sword, he had poisoned her mind, gotten to her core, with her desire to be noble instead of self-preserving.

The harpoon gun was lying there, abandoned, and the single harpoon had been taken out of Olaf's flesh, discarded in the sand. She could pick it up, find a way to reload the gun, and finally end it. She could refuse to give him the apple, or wait for his bleeding to drain him, but he could recover. He had before.

It should have been a wicked thing to do, and only minutes earlier she would not have hesitated. For Klaus and Sunny. For the Quagmires. For every orphan, every child in the world. For Aunt Josephine and uncle Monty and their parents. To rid the world of his existence. She had been hesitating far too long; she should have been the one to push him overboard when she had the chance.

Being noble had only led to the cause of so many unfortunate events. It was her turn to be the hunter and he was the prey. She would finally feel what it was like.

If we fight fire with fire, the whole world will burn. But he deserves it.

"Violet," Count Olaf cooed, wheezing from the poisonous spores, his eyes boring into hers. "Don't you understand that so much of life is just waiting for people who have wounded you, to finally, finally die? I don't want your bitter fruit."

The way he said her name, like a harsh stroking of her hair, made something twist in her stomach. She looked at her brother, then back at the man who grimaced in pain. His gaze followed her when she reached out to pick up the bloodied harpoon.

The villain understood. He would not fight whatever they did to him, even though he would keep gloating and taunting them until the end.

She wanted to do it for every time he had been in complete control, tormenting them. For strapping her down to a hospital bed, for knocking her out, drugging her, kidnapping her and trying to kill her. She had felt a sense of vertigo - a word which here means a sensation of falling headfirst into a metaphorical elevator shaft - when he had proclaimed he would bring her home for the wedding night after their faked marriage, and no one, no one in the crowd would stop him.

He had no power over her anymore. His mere presence used to evoke fear, but now barely a trace lingered.

Violet saw their faces, Klaus honest and open, and Sunny, with her baby fat receding and sharp teeth, and she knew she would do it for them - she would kill him with her bare hands.

But Kit was moving anxiously on top of the raft, her screams of anguish cutting through the stillness, as her baby prepared to enter the world.

"Do one good thing in your life, Olaf," Violet said, standing up above him, throwing the harpoon away. "Prove that there's something in you that's not entirely rotten. Help Kit."

"I'm a bad apple," he laughed, choking and wheezing as the poisonous fungus settled in his throat. "But I've done plenty of good things, too."

When Kit screamed again, something changed in his eyes, and he grabbed the apple from Klaus' hand.

.
.

"You're a wicked man," Kit mumbled when she opened her eyes, lying on the soft white sand of the beach. Count Olaf hovered above her, gently stroking sand from her cheek. She struggled to form the words, one hand resting against her her stomach. "One kind act from you does not make all your failings right."

"I haven't apologized."

"You hurt so many people."

"People hurt me too."

She reached out and touched his ankle, almost tenderly, brushing the sand away in return, seeing the old ink. "Remember when we used to put out fires together? To make the world a safer place."

"Hmm," he affirmed. His hand rested lightly on top of her belly.

Kit felt the baby move and the surge of pain from deep within, the dull ache at the bottom of her hips. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes.

"The baby is yours."

She couldn't see his reaction, because she felt her life slipping away, it wouldn't be long now.

It could have been different. So many things depended on events that spiraled out of control and the consequences were still washing over them like tidal waves, but so many things could have been different. They fell back side by side in the sand, shoulder to shoulder, so close, as if there wasn't a schism between them – a word which here meant something so far apart there was no way for them to ever mend that distance.

Kit felt her face moisten.

"If you had chosen another path, we'd be somewhere completely different now."

He glanced at her. "You could have joined me."

Kit wished she could offer any comfort to the orphaned children standing there, grieving her, grieving the man that had put them through hell. She tried to smile for Violet, Klaus and Sunny.

"I'm thinking of naming her Beatrice. She is going to be a orphan too," Kit whispered.

Olaf was not trying to give her sympathy or deny it, he never would. He would always be honest with her, or in lack of that simply evade the truth.

He was exactly what she had needed, all these years.

Dark flickered behind her eyelids, and the heat from the sun was burning her dehydrated body from the inside, the fungus nestled in her throat and spread through her airways. She only needed to keep breathing long enough for her daughter to survive without her help.

Soon the pain washed over her in strong waves and she was wincing, throwing her head back as the children gathered around her and she felt Olaf's cold, bony hand against her forehead, his soothing mumbles somehow carrying her through the ache.

In the dark, he was there, and she pushed away the thoughts of all the bloodshed and arson, in this peaceful, tranquil place. A perfectly safe place to raise a child.

She was half-dead by the time it was over, and Olaf fell back next to her. He had seen the child, but it was too late now. Not even the father Kit had picked for her, the noble, loving man that now rested at the bottom of a pond, would be there for her. Dewey was ten times the man Olaf had been, and they both knew it.

Kit kissed her daughter's forehead and cheeks and held her close for a bit, before handing her to Klaus. Tears streamed down her face as she looked at the man she once loved.

"The night has a thousand eyes. And the day but one -"

Olaf smiled faintly back at her as he recited the poem for her, and the sun shone down upon them, and memories of pain and poisonous darts and opera nights and betrayal faded away, to the sound of the newborn.

"Yet the light of a whole life dies when love is done," Olaf finished, choked.

"But love isn't done," Kit mumbled, looking at the Baudelaires. "Love is never done."

The world was overflowing with light,

and Kit held Olaf's hand when the darkness gave in for them both.

Violet stood beside her brother and sister, mourning one of the few noble women they had known, and all the fear had left her. No longer was there any lingering traces of nervousness, for the person causing it had perished.

Beatrice II was sleeping, unknowing of the past and ready for the future.

It was so bright.

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