Chapter Text
“I’m gonna be real with you, Vi- I actually do think we should start a band.”
“No.”
“Seriously? You haven’t even heard my pitch yet!”
“I don’t need to hear your pitch to know it’s going to be terrible,” Violet retorted, pausing in her attempt to create what Louis called the most cliché prison shiv in the history of prison shivs, and what she called a practical mini weapon to stab the raiders that didn’t appear to be coming anytime soon with. “And anyway, we don’t exactly have time to start a band anytime soon. We have a thing to deal with.”
“A thing? Oh, is that what we’re calling it now?” Louis asks sardonically. Violet rolls her eyes and tests the tip of the wooden dagger against her thumb, wincing when she feels a splint of wood jabbing into her skin. “It wouldn’t even be that big of a deal. I can be on piano. You can be on drums. Clem can be on vocals. I could even manage to find something for AJ to do, probably. Maybe guitar, if we have one…”
“God, why does this matter to you so much?” Violet asks exasperatedly, trying to dig the splinter out of her thumb, without much success. Louis frowns at her from across the kitchen, where he’s currently sitting on the counter, mincing garlic for Omar’s stew surprise later on tonight.
“Because it’d cheer people up! You know, give them something else to think about instead of the fact that we might be dead come next week?” Louis tells her, turning around to scrutinize her face. “And, obviously, to spend a little more time with Clementine. Don’t pretend you don’t want that, too. I saw the way you were staring at her the other day- your jaw nearly dropped to the floor.”
“Shut up,” Violet says, flushing hard. “I was not.”
“You so were. When she started singing that cowboy song or whatever, there were literal hearts in your eyes. I wanted to tell you something, but I figured it wasn’t the right time.”
Violet digs the shiv- dagger, she chastises herself- into the table and glares up at Louis, who has a smug smile on his face that she wants to punch off. “Like you weren’t doing the exact same thing.”
“This isn’t a competition, Vi,” Louis says cautiously, watching the handle of the unfinished dagger vibrate from the force of Violet’s fist sticking it into the table . “All I’m saying is that if we’re going to be obvious about it, we might as well come up with excuses to be around her more. Aren’t you scared that something might happen, and you’d never get the chance to tell her how you feel again?”
Violet clenches her jaw stubbornly. “No, because she’s smart enough not to get herself killed. Nothing’s going to happen to her.”
“Oh, like nothing happened to Sophie and Minnie?” Louis quips- then instantly pauses, his face draining of all blood. Violet can’t tell what the expression on her face is, but she knows it’s not good by the way Louis’s eyes dart to the door, most likely wondering how far he could make it before Violet tackled him to the ground. “I… seriously didn’t mean it like that. That was totally uncalled for. Wow. God, I’m a jerk. I’m sorry.”
Violet eyes him warily, fists clenched on the table. “You better not say anything like that again. If Tenn catches you saying that, I’ll-“
“Point made,” Louis says meekly. “But I’m still right about the band.”
“…I’ll think about it.”
“Think about what?” Ruby asks as she comes in with a basket full of herbs from the greenhouse, a healthy flush in her cheeks as she maneuvers her way around Louis in order to set her load down on the counter.
“Louis wants to start a band,” Violet informs her, rolling her eyes. “We don’t even have a name yet.”
“I’m telling you, The D Stands For Doom is a perfectly acceptable name-“
“It so isn’t-“
“It’s alliteration!”
“Girls, girls, you’re both pretty,” Ruby scolds, wagging a green stem at them. “And I think starting a band’s a lovely idea. But, uh, maybe work on the name a little before you guys begin, okay?”
“See?” Violet says triumphantly, turning around in her seat to see Louis’s expression. He sticks his tongue out at her when Ruby’s back in turned. “The name sucks. If we’re going to go through with this, we’re going to come up with a name that doesn’t sound vaguely euphemistic.”
“Speaking of vaguely euphemistic…” Ruby edges closer, taking a seat in the empty chair beside Violet’s. “I need your advice, guys.”
Louis perks his head up like a hound dog sniffing prey, abandoning his mincing duties in order to take a seat on the surface of the table, directly next to Violet. She wrinkles her nose in response.
“People eat on this table, Louis.”
“They don’t. Also, you just stuck your shiv into it, like, a minute ago, so you’re really not one to talk. Anyways, go on, Ruby.”
“Well…” Ruby tucks a lock of stray red hair behind her ear, looking uncharacteristically nervous. “Aasim’s asked me if I want to go to the greenhouse with him tomorrow. Get some more herbs and the likes. But- I don’t know- the way he said it made it sound like it was more than a trip to the greenhouse, and I don’t know what to tell him.”
Violet and Louis exchange grins, previous tensions forgotten. “Well, what do you want it to be? A trip to the greenhouse, or a trip to the greenhouse?”
“I don’t know!” Ruby all but wails. “That’s why I came to you guys for advice! You’ve had relationships before!”
“I haven’t,” Louis tells her helpfully. “But I’ve read enough Cosmopolitan magazines in the dentist’s waiting room when I was a kid to know everything you need to know about relationships.”
“Seriously?” Violet asks. Louis looks at her, face serious.
“I never joke about Cosmopolitan magazines, Violet.”
“Okay, so, what am I supposed to do, then?” Ruby demands, bringing the attention back to the matter at hand. Louis strokes his chin thoughtfully for a few minutes, before snapping his fingers in apparent enlightenment.
“He isn’t trying to, like, hint at anything,” Louis decides, “because he’d be way too scared you’d punch him in the face if he was, but if you were to go with him to the greenhouse, and make the first move, he’ll be eating out of the palm of your hand.”
“That sounds gross. And unsanitary.”
“Violet, please. I’m quoting advice columns for middle-aged women here.”
Violet kind of wants to tell her not to bank much on Louis’s love advice, seeing as though his one and only plan to make Clementine to fall in love with them is to start a band with her and Violet, but Ruby just looks so earnest and trusting, she finds that she doesn’t have the heart.
“…Fine. I’ll go with him to the greenhouse. But you better not be wrong about this, Louis,” Ruby says warningly, getting up to hoist her now-empty wicker basket against her hip. “Otherwise, I’ll get so upset, I’ll- I’ll sic the raiders on you first!”
As they watch her go, Violet shakes her head in wonder. “You know that the kidnapping murderers have taken a long time to attack when people start making jokes about sacrificing you to them first.”
“Or maybe that’s just how she feels on a normal basis,” Louis suggests, sounding altogether far more cheerful at the prospect than he should be. “Don’t you wish that we had someone to go to for relationship advice?”
“Uh, no.” Violet scoffs. “We have ourselves.”
“’We?’ I’m the one making all the decisions around here!” Louis exclaims, raising his hands up in the air. Violet resists the urge to flip him off, glaring at him instead.
“That stupid band of yours isn’t a decision!”
Louis stares at her, aghast. “The band is not stupid. And anyway, if you think it’s so dumb, then why don’t you make a decision about what to do with the Clem situation?”
Violet stares at the grain in the kitchen table for a long time. Finally, she looks up at him, eyes hard as diamonds. “First of all, we’re going to discuss what we do if Clementine actually returns either of our feelings.”
“…What do you mean, either of our feelings?” Louis questions, looking bewildered. Violet rolls her eyes for the second time in the past five minutes.
“We’re different people. We’re not, like, a single entity here. We’re two people, and she’s one person-“
“-Oh, glad you got that sorted out for me; I only took three years of math classes before the world ended, you know-“
“And even if she does return our feelings, it may only be with one of us. So, what are we going to do, if that’s the case?”
“Cry.”
“Louis.”
He raises his hands up. “Alright, alright. Um, okay, so, if I was being totally real with you, Vi- I don’t think I could handle that kind of loss. I mean, if she picks you, I’m probably going to be jealous- of both of you, really. You’re my friend, and I wouldn’t see you as much anymore, since you’d probably drag her to the roof to make out underneath stars- I know you have a romantic bone in that body of yours somewhere-“
“Thanks, I think?”
“-and even if I did see you it would be tainted by jealousy and other gross teenage emotions, so it would be a double whammy. Bad on all sides. And I feel like you’d say the same thing.”
Violet opens her mouth to protest, but realizes he’s right. At least a little bit. She definitely wouldn’t be able to handle seeing Clementine and Louis together, if it wasn’t her on Clementine’s other side.
“So, what are we? A package deal? This isn’t really enforcing my individual entity thing, Louis. It wouldn’t be Clementine’s fault if she only preferred one of us.”
“Yes,” Louis says patiently, “but it’s also not our fault if we can’t handle gross teenage emotions without each other, Vi. And, honestly, I don’t think I’d be able to handle this without you. Not even the Clementine thing, but the relationships thing in general. It’s good to have you there. To guide me, y’know? To guide us both.”
And goddammit if Louis’s little speech doesn’t leave a warm, tender feeling in Violet’s previously cold, dead heart. She gives him a genuine, if tentative, smile, and bumps her foot against his under the table.
“Same here, Louis. So… I guess we really are a package deal, then. Huh. Never would’ve expected that to occur.”
“What?” Louis cries, mock-offended. “We’re practically identical! Two peas in a pod!”
“Two peas in a pod, one of which is severely deformed and suffering from malnutrition because the other pea kept on sucking up all the nutrients.”
“I… don’t think that’s how peas work, Vi.”
Violet picks her shiv- dagger- back up again. “I literally don’t know what the difference is between edamame and peas, so. You shouldn’t expect much.”
“This conversation is officially off track. Again, I reiterate: your plan for Operation: Seduce Clementine?”
“Oh, God,” Violet groans, laughing despite herself. “We’re not calling it that.”
“We so are.”
“I think we should just spend time with her. Naturally. No sneaking around, no having ulterior motives or whatever… let’s just get to know her before we do anything else. Like, we don’t know a lot of things about her, and she doesn’t know a lot of things about us.”
“I know a lot of things about Clementine!” Louis protests. Violet arches an eyebrow at him, something she know always upsets him, because he can never do it himself and desperately wants to.
“Oh, yeah? What’s her favorite color?” She questions, whittling away at the shiv- dagger! It’s a dagger!- in earnest now. Louis’s face breaks into a huge, devious smile. It’s the kind of smile Violet expects to be on the expression of the cat who just got the cream.
“Violet, of course.”
“I will throw this deadly weapon at you.”
“Shivs aren’t even real weapons!”
“It’s not a shiv!”
Thinking about it later, though, counting the cracks on her bedroom ceiling as she tosses and turns sleeplessly for the fifth time in the past week, Violet has to admit to herself that she doesn’t know entirely what’s going to happen.
Minnie might not be dead. There’s a possibility that she’s alive- sold into labor, yes, abused by raiders and murderers and all-around bastards, yes, but alive-, and yet Violet still thinks it’s a good idea to start a new relationship with another girl- even if that girl makes Violet’s heart flutter, and her palms sweat, and her skin tingle anywhere she touches her. Minnie used to do the same thing. Whenever Violet would catch a glimpse of a lock of red hair, she’d flush down to her roots- even before she realized she liked Minnie, like her body was constantly one step ahead of her. And now the same thing was happening again, and she didn’t know what to do about it.
What would Minnie say, if she could see her now?
Probably that Violet was being stupid, and depriving herself of future relationships because she was still half in love with a girl who may or may not be dead, and all of that. But Violet just can’t help it. Every time she looks at Clementine, and she feels her heart skip a beat, it feels like betrayal. She didn’t even realize clavicles could be considered beautiful, but she’d stared at Clementine’s for nearly ten minutes the day before. No, Minnie wouldn’t say she’s stupid. Minnie would say that she’s head-over-heels in love stupid. And that kind of stupid’s dangerous. That kind of stupid can kill.
“That kind of stupid is not letting me sleep,” Violet groans out loud, getting up from her bed. She grabs one of the blankets off the mattress and pulls it over her shoulders before padding in her socked feet over to the window (wearing socks to bed, coincidentally, was one of the only things she and Louis agreed upon- if for completely different reasons; he wanted to be comfy, and she wanted to be prepared in case they had to make a quick getaway.) The moon hangs bright and luminous in the inky night sky, illuminating the courtyard. At night, Ericson looks almost peaceful, as though it isn’t overrun by unruly children ages six through eighteen, but almost as though it’s been reclaimed by nature, by the trees and the soot and the soil, slowly collecting in the cracks of the cemented pathways.
And then there’s Tenn, standing in the middle of it all.
Violet blinks, but he’s still standing there, looking up at the sky with a thoughtful, solemn expression on his face. He’s not wearing any shoes, or a jacket either, even though the temperature has been plummeting as the days go by. Frowning, Violet hurries out of her room, down the stairs that lead into the courtyard. He’s still in the same position, face tilted towards the moon, hands clasped tightly together across his stomach.
“Tenn?” Violet calls cautiously, edging slowly to where he’s standing. “What are you doing?”
He jumps a little, eyes wide when they fall on Violet’s face. “What are you doing?”
“I saw you out in the courtyard by yourself in the middle of the night and decided to come investigating.”
“Great outfit, detective.”
Confused, Violet looks down at herself- only to realize that her blanket is still draped around her shoulders. Blushing a little, she takes it off her shoulders and puts it around Tenn’s, who she can now see is trembling slightly in the cold night air.
“Why are you out here, Tenn?” Violet asks, after a period of silence passes.
“I miss them,” Tenn says softly, tucking the blanket more securely around himself. He looks calm, but Violet sees the way his hands clench into fists at his sides. She knows he’s been doing the exact same thing she has- tossing and turning all night long, thoughts focused solely on his sister. Sisters. It’s around this time of year that they… disappeared.
Violet’s face softens. “I know you do. They might still be out there, you know.”
Tenn looks up at her, expression haunted. “I hope they aren’t.”
“What?”
“Vi, if they’re out there- really out there-, then they’ve probably been really, really hurt by the raiders. I don’t even want to think about it. Sophie was always scared of getting kidnapped before the- when we were younger. To think about her and Minnie all trapped and scared like that…” Tears rush to his eyes. Wordlessly, Violet puts an arm around him and pulls him close to her, wishing not for the first time, that she’d been able to protect him more. The day Marlon told them Sophie and Minnie got bit was the worst day of both their lives. Even now, she can still remember the look on his face, when he realized his whole world was imploding… she remembered, because when she looked into the mirror that night, she saw the same look on her own face.
“Wherever they are,” she tells him softly, “I know they’re thinking about you.”
Tenn lets out a quiet sob. Violet puts her other arm around him, bending down on her knees so that she can embrace him properly. He clings to her like a child- like the child that he is-, wrapping his arms around her shoulders and pressing his face into the crook of her neck. They stay like that for a long time, until Tenn finally lets go, putting a hand up to his face to wipe away the tear tracks.
“They’re thinking about you, too,” Tenn whispers. “Minnie especially.”
Violet’s heart clenches, but before she can respond, Tenn continues.
“I know that she’d want you to be happy, because she’d want me to be happy, too,” he says, looking almost painfully earnest. “We were like family-“
“We are family,” Violet interrupts- a little too peremptorily, maybe, but Tenn’s face lights up a bit at her words.
“Then, as family,” he says, taking her hand into his, “I want you to be happy. And I know that being around Clementine makes you happy.”
Her face drains of all color. She wants to rip her hand away from his and run back off to her room- where it’s safe, and quiet, and there are no little brother figures to make her question her decision-making skills or the fact that she’s been apparently transparent enough that her feelings for Clementine are written all over her face, but she doesn’t. She knows she needs to hear whatever comes out of Tenn’s mouth next.
As if reading her thoughts, Tenn smiles a little. “Don’t worry, you’re not super indiscreet about your feelings or anything. I overheard you and Louis in the kitchen the other day. I’d apologize for eavesdropping, but I know that’s been happening to you guys a lot lately, so I figured you wouldn’t mind all that much anymore.”
“I do,” Violet grumbles, but she smiles back at Tenn so he knows she’d kidding. Half-kidding, anyway. The eavesdropping thing is getting a little annoying, if she’s being perfectly honest- she’ll need to put bells around his and AJ’s necks from now on, like little cats.
“Anyways, if you and Louis and Clem are all going to be together… then if Minnie’s still alive,” and here his voice cracks a bit, “you can just make room for her, too. And that way it’s fair on all sides.”
Violet laughs, a tiny, heartbroken thing. “You were always such a little diplomat, you know that?”
Tenn looks at her, eyes big and serious. “I try to be.”
She squeezes his hand. “I know you do. And, for what it’s worth, I think that’s a great plan.”
A watery grin threatens to split Tenn’s face.