Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The thirty days in the government mental institute were the longest days of Aaron Stampler's life.

He thought he’d be used to the agony of waiting in a cold dark room after his time in jail during the trial, but he’d been sorely mistaken. Day and night blended into one line of monotony. As he lay on his cot looking up at the asylum ceiling, he wondered if he’d been locked in here for thirty years, and had just lost track of time.

The only thing keeping him moving was the sheer excitement coursing through his veins. The anticipation of his eventual freedom felt electric.

And...there was one other thing that kept him going.

He kept thinking back to his parting words with his lawyer, Martin Vail. When he told him the truth, that the innocent “Aaron” persona he had crafted was just that, a persona. He was Aaron Stampler in name only.

Up until that point, he was the only one who knew his secret. That is until he spilled the beans to Marty. But after he finally did, it felt...good.
It felt liberating to finally have someone know the truth about him. That the innocent mask he used to garner sympathy was a trick. There was no “Roy”, because Aaron WAS Roy all along.

But Aaron knew that it couldn’t last. There was a reason he had invented the fake Aaron in the first place. He needed to be the perfect victim to get away with that murder. Nobody would have sympathy for the real Aaron. “A-A-Aaron St-st-stampler” won the case. “And ‘course he did,” Aaron thought bitterly, “What’s not to love about that stupid fuckin’ sissy-”

“Aaron Stampler?”

Aaron sat up on his cot as a nurse entered through his door, interrupting his inner villain monologue. “Aaron, you’re getting released today.” She said with a warm smile. “Pack up your things and the guards will escort you to the front office.”

Aaron opened his eyes wide, blinking them with faux surprise as he had done countless times before. “T-t-thank you, ma'am,” He said, with a practiced smile.

The nurse grinned back at him and left, shutting the door with a firm *click*.

Normally at this point, Aaron would’ve ended the facade and dropped his smile, but today he didn’t. He was thrilled to be getting out, so much so he couldn’t stop himself from grinning like an idiot as he threw his meager belongings into a bag.

Suddenly, something caught his eye. A slip of paper was wedged under his cot’s mattress. He hadn’t noticed it until now, as he was kneeling on the floor next to his backpack.

“Now what the hell is this?” He muttered to himself as he tugged the paper out from the cot. “Huh? This a fuckin train ticket? To- to Texas?? And. . .oh there’s no fuckin’ way, this’ gotta be fake or somethin’!”

But It wasn’t fake. Despite his disbelief, Aaron had found himself a one-way train ticket to Texas, for a train that left at 7:00 pm that same day. Aaron checked the clock on his bedside table. 5:02 pm. He let out a chuckle of shock. “Well goddamn, I s’pose I’ve gotta fuckin’ train to catch tonight!”

The asylum release process went smoothly, as Aaron expected. He said he was “r-real grateful, t-truly I-I am!” and tried not to laugh as he noticed glances of pity from nurses as he left. They all looked at him like he was a wounded puppy they were throwing out into the rain. Oh, if only they knew.

The first thing Aaron did after his release from the psych ward was get his butt over to the nearest bodega to get his hands on some cigarettes. That was another brutal thing about the institute, smoking was prohibited for patients, obviously. That doesn’t mean he didn’t smoke there though. When withdrawal symptoms made him desperate enough, he’d bum one or two cigarettes from one of the nurses' packs. Even if they noticed a couple were missing, “the stuttering choir boy” would be their last suspect.

“Fuckin’ idiots,” Aaron sneered, walking down the halls of the convenience store to find what he needed. Aaron knew that a train ride from Chicago to Texas was at least 20 hours, so he had to get the right supplies. He had a decent amount of money saved up, enough to live off for about a week if he spent it the right way. But Aaron figured he’d get himself a job once he got to Texas.

“Maybe that damn train ticket was divine fuckin in’ervention.” He thought wryly. “Who’s holy now Bishop Rushman? You’re sure IN a fuckin’ hole now, that’s f’er sure.”

He grinned, but the thought of the Bishop made Aaron feel disgusted. Even joking about his death didn’t bring him the comfort that he expected. He felt a prickly feeling down his whole body, a sensation that made him want to claw himself out of his own skin.

“He’s DEAD Aaron. We fuckin killed him, he’s DEAD.” Arron muttered to himself, clawing his hands into the shelf of the bodega as some desperate grip onto reality. He tried to ignore the hot beads of sweat growing on the back of his neck.“Now stop being such a goddamn pussy”.

Aaron left the store with a Dr. Pepper, a beef sandwich, and seventeen packs of cigarettes.

“Fuck, I hope I don’t run outta smokes,” He thought to himself.

By the time he had bought all his groceries it was 6:40, so he headed over to the train station. Aaron was reckless, but he wasn’t stupid. He knew that the little money he had should only be spent on what he needed to survive, so he really couldn’t afford to miss this train. He boarded just in time, and the moment he sat down in his seat, the train pulled out of the station.

As he sank into the chair he noticed how exhausted he was. He’d been spared the death penalty, but for the last month, he hadn’t been living. Not really.

Aaron looked out the window. The buildings of Chicago rushed past him, incredibly fast. He suddenly felt something he hadn’t felt in a long time. Hope. “Maybe I can finally live for myself once I get outta here,” He thought.

“Huh, well, that’s just silly. I’m livin’ fer myself now, aren’t I?”

But no matter how much he wanted that to be true, It wasn’t.

Chapter Text

Aaron hadn’t realized he’d fallen asleep until he was shaken awake by the train pulling in at the Texas station. He groaned and rubbed the sleep out of his eyes as he grabbed his things and got off the train.

It was generous to call where he was a “train station”. It was a small wooden shack on a decaying wood platform, and he would’ve mistaken it for a house if the train tracks didn’t run on for miles right next to where the platform dropped off. Besides the train tracks and the measly station, there was nothing but cornfields as far as he could see. He was in the middle of nowhere.

Aaron walked into the station house. There was nothing inside but a small ticket desk, and a door to exit out into the rural Texas countryside. Sitting behind the desk was a girl with long, pin-straight brown hair. She hummed to herself as she cleaned a double-barrel shotgun.

“S’cuse me,” He said to her, walking up to the desk, “I’m Aaron, Aaron Stampler. I’m new ‘round these parts, s’pose you could tell me a place I could find some decent work?”

The girl looked up from her gun to meet Aaron’s gaze. “Hi there Aaron, Welcome to Erekshun Texas. My name’s Ethel. My daddy’s the preacher of the town church. You can’t miss it, it’s the first thing you see when ya turn down the main road there.” She gestured to the door outside. “I think the church might be hirin’, if you like I'll ask my daddy for you.”

Aaron felt a glimmer of discomfort. The idea of working in a church again wasn’t a pleasant one. “Naw, that’s alright, don’t worry ‘bout it. I’m sure ya’ve got enough on yer plate.”

Ethel thought for a moment, then remarked, “Actually, now thatcha mention it, I think the Douglas’ were lookin’ for more hands down at their farm.”

“Ya don’t say?” The prospect of working on a farm was a lot more appealing to Aaron than being stuck in another church.

“Yup, an’ I think you’d be a good fit fer the job too.”

“So how do I get to this "Douglas’ farm"?”

“Oh right, it’s quite a ways away, but cha basically take a left when ya see the church, walk straight through the town, then keep on the dirt road beside them cornfields. After a while, you’ll see a big red barn and a farmhouse. Then you’re there.”

“Alright, thank you,” Aaron said, and he started out the door and down the long dirt road.

Aaron had been walking for about an hour when he finally reached the Douglas Farm. “Goddamn,” he muttered to himself, “it’s straight ‘outta a fuckin’ picture book.” And it was. The Douglas farm was exactly what you would think of when imagining a farm in a Hollywood movie. The barn was a bright vibrant red with white accents, and the two story farmhouse a couple of meters from the barn was a pale yellow.

Aaron started up the wide dirt road that led to the front door of the farmhouse. He walked up the porch steps and rapped on the screen door.

“Uhhh, just a minute!” He heard a female voice call from inside. Whoever she was had such a strong, twangy Southern accent that he couldn’t believe it was real. He was from Kentucky, so he and his family all spoke with that Southern drawl, but this girl’s voice bordered on comedic.

Then the screen door slammed open, and the girl standing in the doorway was slightly out of breath. “Well hey there Mister,” She said with a smile that was a bit too wide. “What’re ya doin’ around these parts?”

“Uh, hey there ma’am,” He said, a bit unnerved by the girl’s odd demeanor “...I’m Aaron Stampler, I just came here from Chicago a couple o’ hours ago. Ethel over at the train station sent me here, ‘since I was lookin’ for a job, she said this farm was in need of some extra hands.”

“Oh! Yeah, we’ve been real short-staffed on the farm, on account of the war and everythin’. It’s just me and my mama- I mean, uh, It’s just me! Just me here. On the farm. Alone.”

“What did’ya say yer name was miss?”

“I’m Pearl. Pearl Douglas.” She stuck out her hand and Aaron reached to shake it. As his hand gripped around hers, he felt something warm and wet. He pulled his hand back in disgust, find his hand now covered in a bright red liquid...

“What in the hell?”

“Oh! Oh I’m sorry mister!” Pearl exclaimed, wiping her hands on her overalls quickly. “I-I was just finishin’ up making...uh...a pie! A berry pie, right. It’s awful messy, really, so it’s best if you come back tomorrow so I can in’erview ya then.”

Aaron knew this was definitely NOT berry juice. After you kill two people you get pretty familiar with the feeling of blood on your hands. And this, this was blood.

He looked up at the farm girl in shock. She looked back at him with wide eyes of someone who had been caught. Her upturned nose twitched, and she began to look Aaron up and down, to see if he had believed her lie. To see if she needed to tie up one more loose end.

Then, a pained, guttural moan came from inside the farmhouse. Pearl looked to her left, at something Aaron couldn’t see from where he was standing on the poarch. He ran up the steps and burst past Pearl into the house to see what she was looking at.

There, lying on the kitchen floor of the farmhouse, was a blonde girl covered in her own blood. A giant axe was planted through her skull. She was still alive, but not for much longer. Her eyes were pleading as she looked up at Aaron. “B-be” she stuttered, blood gargling out of her mouth as she tried to communicate with him. “Be-behind y-ou.”

Aaron felt a sharp blow to the back of his head, and then everything faded to black.

Chapter Text

Aaron woke up to the worst migraine he’d ever had in his life. It felt like his head was being crushed from the inside out.

As he opened his eyes, he was hit with a surge of panic when he saw nothing but pitch darkness. “DAMMIT, did I go fuckin’ blind?” He thought, his mind racing. But as his eyes adjusted to his surroundings, he realized he hadn’t lost his vision. Whatever room he was in was as dark as night. “Prob’ly her basement or somethin’,” He deduced.

He agonizingly pushed himself up to a seated position. The floor he had been lying on was hard and cold. “Augh, fuck!” He groaned painfully. “That little fuckin’ redneck bitch,” He swore, “When I get a hold o’ her, I swear I’ll rip out her fuckin’ spine.” He pulled his sore body off of the ground and leaned against the nearest wall he could feel. But as he leaned back, the wall started to...creak? And roll? This wasn’t a wall. Aaron turned around. His eyes had adjusted to the dim lighting by now, so he could see that what he had mistaken for the basement wall was a wheelchair. With...something inside of it.

Reluctantly, Aaron reached his hand out to touch the dark mass sitting in the wheelchair. His hand was met with the cold flesh of someone long dead. He drew his hand back with a shudder. “Who in the hell is this broad?” He muttered.

Then, as if on cue, Aaron heard the basement door creak open. He felt his blood run cold. A stream of light flooded in from the top of the basement steps. He looked up to see a girl’s darkened silhouette standing in the doorway. Pearl.

For a moment, he wondered how he could be so goddamn stupid. He, of all people, should KNOW not to trust a book by its cover. Now, because he carelessly ran into the home of an innocent-looking, eyebrowless farm girl, he’d be the victim of some small-town serial killer.

“C’mon Aaron, buck up you goddamn pussy!” He thought bitterly to himself. “You DID NOT go through all that time in jail, in court, and in that...church...to end up gettin’ killed by a fuckin’ GIRL. YOU ARE NOT GETTIN’ MURDERED BY SOME COUNTRY HICK BITCH. BE A FUCKIN’ MAN!!” But he knew he had to act fast if he didn’t want to end up like the corpse in that wheelchair.

Pearl descended the stairs slowly, the creaks echoing down into the basement indicating what step she was on. “I read about you in the papers,” She called out flatly. ”You’re the Chicago Butcher Boy aren’t cha? The one who killed that Archbishop.”

“Jesus Christ,” thought Aaron, “Has everyone on Earth gotten an earful of my fuckin’ business?”

“Yer trial was a big deal everywhere because of how easy you got off. The paper said it was because you had ‘two faces’ or somethin’. So ya automatically weren’t guilty on the cause of insanity.” She said. She stopped her gradual descent in the middle of the staircase. “I don’t see what’s so special about that, lotsa people have two faces. Anyone can act like someone they know people wanna see.”

Aaron rolled his eyes. He wouldn’t expect some common farm girl to understand dissociative identity disorder.

“I put on faces all the time, but even when I do I never get what I want.” Pearl sneered. “People like you are the ones whose prayers get answered. You get picked, you get pardoned. Well, I’m tired of it. If I’m gonna rot on this farm for the rest of my life, WELL SO ARE YOU. I’m sure your corpse will make GREAT fertilizer.”

Pearl sprinted down the remainder of the steps and swung her axe straight into the corner where Aaron was. But all she hit was the damp basement wall, her weapon denting it with a loud *clank*. “Huh? What the-”

Aaron seized the opportunity and rushed the girl from behind. He grabbed her by her shoulders and yanked her backward in an attempt to wrestle the axe from her hands. Pearl whirled around and swung the axe again, now with her target in sight. Aaron cursed loudly as he dived out of the way, the axe’s blade grazing the right side of his stomach. He hit the floor with a loud *thud*.

Pearl stood over him and looked down at him coldly. “Nice try mister. But I didn’t go through all this effort just to be killed by someone like you.” She raised the axe over her head, prepared to make the killing blow.

Aaron coughed, spitting the blood from his mouth. “Yeah, It ain’t gonna be that easy you cunt.”

He lunged at her ankles from the ground, knocking her off her balance. Pearl screeched as she fell forward, hitting the dirty floor face first. Scrambling back to her knees, she grabbed the handle of her axe and spun back around to face Aaron.

She was met with the sight of his dirty sneakers, as he swung his leg to kick her right under the chin. The force of the blow knocked her head skyward and sent her flying backward into the nearest wall. Pearl screamed in pain like a dying animal. She looked up from her low position on the ground to see a deranged-looking Aaron standing over her. He held her father’s empty wheelchair above his head and swung it down on her with brutal force. The old wooden wheelchair splintered into dozens of pieces, turning into a useless pile of scraps on the floor.

Pearl just barely rolled out of the way as the wheelchair crashed against the wall. Still clutching the wood axe against her chest, she pulled herself back up. She glared furiously at Aaron. “THAT WHEELCHAIR WAS MY DADDY’S!” She screeched.

“Why the hell d’you care? Weren’t you the one that fuckin’ killed him?”

Pearl’s angry expression then wrinkled with regret. “Oh god... I know I shouldn’t have done it... oh, Daddy didn’t deserve that. I-I-I didn’t know what to do, I couldn’t just leave him here alone!”

“Leave em’? Yeah, sure. As if you have anywhere else to be outside of this farm.” Aaron sneered patronizingly.

Pearl fumed. “I was S’POSED TO BE DANCING IN THE TRAVELING GROUP RIGHT NOW!! But I guess I was too plain, too mediocre, too German to make the cut!” She screamed bitterly. Then, she stopped, as if remembering the reality of her failure. She dropped her arms from her chest, her axe swinging down to her side defeatedly.

“They chose Mitsy instead.”

“Mitsy..” Aaron spoke, “Was she the blonde you had bleedin’ up in yer kitchen?”

“Yup, that's her.” Pearl said wryly. “Why does she always get everything she wants. She just wanted that spot in the dancin’ group, but I needed it. I- that was my one shot, and-and I blew it. It was all for NOTHIN’!” She wailed painfully, dropping to her knees. She threw her axe on the floor in front of her, and began to sob loudly into her hands.

Aaron was quite caught off guard by all of this. Although he wanted to strangle this girl until her eyeballs fell out, he did feel...a little bad for her. “That’s stupid.” He thought to himself. “Feeling bad for people gets ya DEAD. C’mon, be a man, she’ll be the easiest kill you’ve had yet!”

Aaron reached down and picked up the axe slowly. He stood back up to his full height and looked down at Pearl, who was a sniveling heap of tears on the ground. He wrung his hands around the handle of the axe. Something about this felt...wrong.

This wasn’t like what he had felt before he killed Linda or the Archbishop. Killing Linda was a “spur-of-the-moment” kinda deal. The rush of anger he felt after learning about her frequent cheating escapades really helped tune out his conscience. The blinding rage of betrayal he felt was the only thing that made that murder happen.

But killing the Archbishop...well, it felt glorious. It was freeing. Now, Aaron knew there was nothing that the Archbishop could ever do to him again. No more tapes, no more “purging the demon” no more nothing. He had to do it.

The only downside is that he figured that he probably couldn’t have sex ever again, because no orgasm could compare to the high he felt after that piece of shit was dead.

Killing Pearl didn’t feel right though. As he held the axe over his head, preparing to swing, he didn’t feel the familiar rush of adrenaline he had felt before.

Pearl stopped crying. She looked up at Aaron, mascara streaking down her cheeks, making her look like a demented raccoon.

“Do it.” She said, glowering up at him from beneath her barely visible eyebrows.

Aaron chuckled reflexively, confused at this. “Huh?”

“Do it. Kill me.” Pearl said, eyes drifting to the side. “I’ve done some awful things, and- I thought I was gonna get outta here. But things didn’t go according to plan. I don’t see how I can possibly undo the things I’ve done.” She swallowed, and locked eyes with Aaron again. “I can’t fix this mess. So just, just do it already.”

Aaron tried to imagine that she was the Archbishop to try to make killing her easier, but...It didn’t work. When Aaron had killed the Archbishop, he had felt just as trapped as Pearl did now. Her hopeless words echoed the thoughts in past-Aaron’s mind. She just wanted to get out of her shitty life too.

“Fuck,” he thought “With how fuckin’ soft I’m actin’ I might as well start stuttering. If I drop the axe, who’s to say she won’t swoop down and drive it through my skull? She’ll fuckin’ kill me if I don’t do it first!”

But as Aaron looked down at Pearl, he knew that he was lying to himself. She wouldn’t kill him. This wasn’t a trick to get him to drop his guard, she wanted him to kill her. Or, she couldn’t see any better option.

Aaron dropped the axe to his side. And for the first time in a while, finally said something that felt right to say. “No.”

Chapter Text

"Huh?" Pearl asked, looking up at Aaron.

"I said no. I'm not going to kill you."

Meanwhile, in Russia, Nicholas the Second launched an atomic bomb at one of Russias enemies, the USA. If you weren't aware, Erekshun Texas is located in the USA! So the entire country of the USA was blown up, including Aaron and Pearl.

RIP to the goofiest southern accents the world has ever seen. Thanks Edward Norton and Mia Goth!!! :) <3

THE END.