Title: The Kind of Quiet

Disclaimer: (In 'Sunny-lingo') 'Zilch' which here might mean, 'MLynnBloom does not own me or my siblings and it would be most unfortunate if she did for Count Olaf would most likely drown or poison her like our previous guardians'.

Summary: Violet Baudelaire experiences the vulnerability and misery of losing her mother after the fire.

The room was quiet. Not an uneasy, chilling silence, but a comforting kind. The kind of quiet suitable enough to sleep and dream in, or in Violet Baudelaire's case, invent.

She laid still in her bed as she looked up in the darkness. The white ceiling above her was perfect for imagining inventions on. In a way, it served as a blank canvas for her mind as she thought hard about how she could create a self-rocking base for the crib in her parents' room. It was a lovely crib, but it just needed something and to Violet, everything was a challenge.

A dim beam of light came from her open door and it shone faintly across her room. After a few moments of fidgeting with her stubborn thoughts, Violet shuffled out from under her thick sheets and bent upside down over her bedside. She felt blindly around and from under her bed she pulled out three books, an old doll, and a coat hanger. Nothing useful, she thought as she tossed the sickly cute doll in pink aside. She knew whatever she needed for her invention to work would come to her sooner or later, but the thought of something new to get her hands working on kept her mind buzzing.

She sat upright in her bed thinking hard until her head was sore. She pushed the dark hair that hung in her eyes back only for it to fall back in place again. It always seemed to get in the way of her musing, a word here which means "concentrating and thinking up wonderful contraptions only to be disturbed". That was why she found that the best time to think was to lie in bed so her hair could be out of her face.

The yellow light from the hallway still glowed slightly as it came through her door and Violet tiptoed barefoot over to the hall. It was coming from the room across from hers, her brother's room. She smiled as she stood in the doorway.

Klaus Baudelaire was curled up in his reading chair by his bookcase sound asleep, glasses askew. Violet crept over to him, turning off his lamp by his chair and closing his open book. She considered moving him but instead she gently laid a quilted blanket from his bed over his sleeping figure and kissed him on top of his dark head of hair. Violet tilted her head to read the book's title, Musical Composers of Our History, and smiled again. For being nearly eleven years old, she knew her brother could read anything.

Violet heard the creak of the stairs and whipped around. One of the many grandfather clocks in the Baudelaire mansion read a quarter past eleven in Klaus's room and she knew her mother would be upset if she saw her up this late.

Violet rushed back to her room, holding up her long nightgown so she wouldn't trip, and just as she threw the covers around her, she heard the footsteps stop at the doorway and then felt the owner of those steps sit on the edge of her bed.

"Violet," came her mother's voice, "I think your next inventing project should be a way to get back to your room quieter so your mother won't think you are awake."

Violet turned around and could see her mother's sweet smile within her silhouette. "That would be useful." Violet said simply, grinning.

"You should be sleeping. You know that, Violet." Her mother said.

Violet nodded as she sat up, "I do know... I was just thinking of things to make. Just things like that."

"And nothing more?"

Violet looked up. No matter what, her mother could read her like an open book. Not that there was an actual book completely about Violet Baudelaire that her mother had checked out at the library in her spare time and read, but that her mother could understand her feelings better than anyone. Violet bit her lip and couldn't help looking down at her mother's round stomach.

Her mother's eyes in the dark seemed to be saying, I thought you were. Her mother shifted closer to her. "Do you remember the day Klaus was born?" Violet shook her head.

"When your brother was born and we came home the from the hospital, you went straight to your room without a word and didn't come out for the afternoon. Your father and I thought you were upset, but just before dinner you came out pulling your wagon behind you. You had made it into your own portable stroller and you took Klaus, set him inside within the blankets, and showed him everything in the house. The silverware in the drawers, the books in the library--- everything, and how it worked as well.

"You shouldn't be nervous, Violet. You, your father, Klaus, and I will love this baby no matter what. Just like you loved Klaus as a baby, just like you love him now, and just like we love you." Her mother finished sweetly.

Violet smiled half-heartedly but her insides still fluttered at the thought of a new sibling. "Have you and father thought of any names?"

Her mother shook her head, "We'll know when we see him... or her."

Violet smiled. "I'd like to help too if you and father can't think of any names. Perhaps if it's a boy, you could name him Alexander, like Alexander Graham Bell. He invented the telephone by using electric currents. Or if he turns out to be a she, we could always name her Marie like Marie Curie. Marie Baudelaire... that sounds lovely."

Her mother chuckled slightly at her eagerness, "Yes, it does."

"But whatever name you and father do choose, please try not to make it too silly, like something like Beaumont Baudelaire. You might as well name him Baudelaire Baudelaire!" Violet giggled and continued, "Or nothing too strange like naming him or her after a type of cheese or fruit."

"Like Lemony?" Her mother asked with a secret laughing sparkle in her eye.

"Exactly," Violet smiled at the unusual name.

They sat there in the same peaceful silence the room had been in when Violet had laid in bed thinking when Violet reached over her bed and picked up the doll on the floor with the long, batting eyelashes and the pink, painted smirk.

"Here," Violet said as she brushed her hair aside from her eyes and gave her mother the doll, "If she turns out to be a girl, she can have my old doll."

Her mother placed the doll in her lap and tucked Violet's hair behind her ear, "That's very sweet of you, Violet, but if this baby turns out to be anything like you, she won't want it either." They grinned.

"However," her mother paused. She picked up the doll and untied the ribbon of a violet color from its faux flaxen hair. "Faux" is simply a French word used to fancy up the meaning, "fake or phony", and as for flaxen, it's just a way to say, "blonde the way a doll's faux hair would looks like". With the ribbon she had pulled out, her mother strung it under Violet's neck and tied it in a simple bow on top of her hair.

"There," Her mother said, "I can see your face better now. That hair seemed bothersome."

Indeed it was, but Violet didn't say a word. She never thought she would find anything useful out of her old doll but now that she could pull back her hair whenever need be, she could and already the gears, wheels, and levers in her head started to turn. Her hair had always been a mere obstacle to her inventing but just now her mother figured out her biggest problem of all.

Violet hugged her mother tightly as she was laid down to sleep. Her mother stroked her hair for a moment and as eager as Violet was to think, she could scarcely keep her eyes open. As she drifted off, her mother lingered beside her before she stated to hum something sweet that sounded somewhat familiar and far away. Words were being sung but Violet couldn't make sense of them as the room seemed to grow darker.

At long last, her mother bent down to kiss her cheek goodnight and whispered the last words of the song into her ear before leaving. Violet stirred and turned sleepily around to watch her mother leave.

The room became a blur and the walls became fuzzy as if someone had run an eraser over every solid line in the room. And just after her mother gave her a sad smile in her eyes, she turned to the hallway filled with an engulfing fire.

"Violet..."

The room was falling with her.

"Violet!"

"Klaus?"

Violet blinked a few times before she could see what was around her. She was in a small bed with Sunny beside her looking up at her worried. Klaus was leaning over their bed squinting in the dark without his glasses. The room smelled sickly sweet and it wasn't until she saw Albert and Edgar sleeping noisily on the floor that she realized she was in Mr. Poe's household, and not her own.

"You were talking in your sleep," Klaus explained in a whisper, "I didn't want you to wake up Albert and Edgar. "

Violet looked down at them as she sat up. The sons of Mr. Poe were extremely unpleasant and annoying, despite the fact that they gave up their beds for them, but Violet figured Mr. Poe made them. She longed for her own bed but knew it was just a pile of burnt rubble now in the scorched field of what used to be their home.

"I was?" Violet asked as she rubbed her eyes. She tried to grasp exactly what she had been dreaming but it was slipping away.

Klaus and Sunny nodded but exchanged sad looks. They didn't have the heart to tell her she was calling out for their mother.

"I was dreaming about them," Violet finally figured in a soft voice.

"Meefo...," Sunny said in a sad hush, which here most likely meant, "I was as well before I woke up and realized..." And she stopped.

Violet picked Sunny up into her arms and held her tight. The dream was coming back to her in short snippets, and a moment later she understood that it had been a memory.

"I was dreaming," Violet repeated, "about a time before you were born Sunny. Mother was telling me about when you were born, Klaus, and we were thinking of names for you, Sunny. She was singing and..." Violet's voice trailed off as she felt the ribbon still in her hair. Her heart jolted painfully as her lip trembled.

Klaus brought his knees to his chest and blinked the tears away from his eyes. "I miss mother, too." He said after a long time.

"Daddy," Sunny whispered as tears rolled down her cheeks.

"We miss them both... so very, very much," Violet cried in a whisper as she laid down with Sunny, making room for Klaus. They wept together as silently as they could in the quiet room. The kind of quiet that makes one feel horribly alone.

And as they cried themselves to sleep, Violet began to hum almost inaudibly. Klaus held Violet tighter as he felt like he heard it before and Sunny bit her thumb trying to recall where she had heard it as well, and as for Violet she was oblivious she was humming at all as she was falling asleep.

The moonlight from the window shone brightly on the Baudelaires in bed, all struggling to find a peaceful thought or memory they could sleep with. And as one by one, Sunny and Klaus fell asleep, Violet uttered those last words of the song her mother whispered in her ear for no one to hear.

"The world is quiet here."

And indeed for the Baudelaires, it was.