A/N: Takes place after 1x10: Smoldering Children. Violet's thoughts after her death.

try to forget about him / you're all alone

Kissing Cousins.

She never thought that being dead would make her so deliriously happy.

Maybe it's the idea that she won't have to deal with the emotions of being alive anymore? She's been so numb lately that it's made her life, well, her death, easier. It's made the idea of Tate easier too. After he showed her the body, her body, and let her cry every ounce of regret into the stitches of his shirt, they moved the corpse to an unmarked grave out back. The idea of rotting there in that crawlspace literally made her ill, the bile burning the back of her throat as she dry heaved and spit onto the floor.

He'd tried to comfort her afterwards. Let's play cards, he said, and when she asked him, what now, now that I'm dead, he said it'd be like this forever. This monotony of Murder House; just Tate and her and every other damned soul in this place.

She cries herself to sleep sometimes, when she thinks about it too much. Tate doesn't know; spoons her and snores in her ear while nuzzling at her hair. When they fuck, she stares at anything and everything except him. At least now she knows why her first time didn't hurt. She would have thought that maybe it was all of those lonely nights she fantasized of losing it, safe in her bed, her hand inside of her underwear moving raggedly against slick, sensitive skin… But no, apparently death allots you the right of not tearing and bleeding when you get your cherry popped by a kid who shot up your high school and died on your bedroom floor before you were even born.

And she thinks of when she was a child, when she dreamed of adventure and knights in shining armor. Not a house that eats you alive and a boy that wreaks of death.

One day Tate asks her, Violet, are you sure you're okay with this? And because he had been willing to "die" with her, like Romeo and Juliet, she plasters on the prettiest smile she can. Of course I'm okay. Why wouldn't I be? Let's go play chess.

They set up the board on her bedroom floor, right on the rug and lay out pillows to be comfortable. She doesn't understand the point of it. They're dead; how can they get comfortable? But she lies back against one anyways, says, Check, and the game starts. They converse about odd things, dancing their pawns around each other. About birds and music and imaginary friends they had when they were young.

And suddenly, the dead ghost of Maria joins them. Tate murmurs, Go away, and Maria does.

But now she can't concentrate. Falters with her moves and gets her queen killed. Violet? Tate asks, looks at the way she's shivering. Because in her head, she's wondering if that's the way she's going to become. Like Maria, wondering this house for all of eternity. Look at what he did to me.

Violet? Tate asks her again, clears the distance between them and bends down to kiss her. She lets him; lets his tongue slip into her mouth and swipe against hers softly as he makes a sound somewhere between relief and worry. She wonders if he really loves her, or the way she makes him feel.

And when he touches her breast through the fabric of her dress, she stops thinking. Instead she helps him get their clothes off, lets him push into her messily and kiss her like she's the moon and he's the wolf biding for her attention. His thrusts are uneven, shallow and strangling on his pleasure. He hikes her knee up toward her shoulder and slides against the exact spot he knows drives her crazy, touches her in all the right places to get her to make a sound. But she's too busy staring at the floor. Their movements have made the rug scatter a little, and she's just now noticing the dark splotches on the wood.

Are they from Tate?

Are they from the boy that's moving inside of her, biting her neck like maybe if he marks her as his, she'll never leave? And somehow, she knows they are. She knows that he's fucking her in the exact spot he took his last breath, the exact spot she took all those pills and wrote her death sentence. And he touches her, kisses her, and she comes so blindingly hard she cries.

They lay there for a couple of minutes, him still inside of her as he kisses her face, murmuring how much he loves her while she lets silent tears slip onto the floor beneath her head. Her mother's due home from the hospital tomorrow, and she wonders how she'll look at her. Like a traitor; like a murderer.

And that's exactly what she is, what she's become.

Look at what he did to me.