Chapter Text
It was a Friday afternoon, school getting ready to let out for the day. The others were doing Violet’s chores–or rather their chores. It was a typical day of keeping up with the work.
Eddie found comfort in sewing and crafting, while the twins enjoyed writing and even drawing pictures, using some of the craft supplies Violet had given them. Trager, meanwhile, was putting together a wall of evidence. Using some of the documents collected from Miles, taken by Violet.
Chris looked at it, trying to piece together all the events that had happened, and led them to this point.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Trager commented, obviously proud.
Chris grunted in response.
“A little obsessed, if you ask me,” he replied.
“Just wait until Marion gets here, we’ll have everything we need then. And then we’re home free.”
“That’s also if we can get the camera footage uploaded without having them traced back to here,” he quickly reminded him.
The sound of a door slamming alerted them both, Eddie’s concerned voice ringing out before stomping could be heard.
“Jesus Christ, kid,” Trager said in response to seeing Violet stand in front of the door.
She looked beaten up, blood pouring out her nose and a nasty black eye on her face. And her hair was cut haphazardly. Chunks of it were cut off, the blonde coming out from the brown color. And she looked almost like she was ready to kill someone with how angry she looked.
Chris saw that look. He recognized it. That look of anger plastered on his own face many times before. And she looked so much like him, it was like looking in a mirror.
She continued to sob past the door, going to her own room and slamming the door behind her.
“Kid had it rough today,” Trager commented.
Walker directed a glare at him before he made his way to her door, knocking on it.
“Violet? Can I come in?” He said aloud.
He pushed open the door.
She was curled up on her side, facing away from the door.
He closed the door behind him, sitting on the edge of the bed.
“You wanna talk about it?” He asked calmly, his voice still gruff.
“No,” she replied half-heartedly.
“You wanna tell me what happened?” He asked again.
She choked on a sob, sniffling.
“They ganged up on me after school. Beat me up, cut my hair–”
She curled in on herself even tighter.
He contemplated, brow screwed.
What should he do in this situation? Comfort her, of course. But he couldn’t go out and just beat up high-schoolers. Intimidation tactics could easily work in his favor, or at least a threat.
“You need your mom to look at you, first of all,” he said finally.
He put a hand on her leg, trying to see if he could at least add some comfort. She glanced over at him, her eyes red and puffy and streaked with ruined eyeliner.
“And then we’ll get you a haircut,” he added.
She turned over, sitting up as she wiped her nose. She nodded, glancing down on the bed.
“You think you could pick me up from school? So they won’t try to ambush me again?” She asked.
He thought for a moment. Risk his identity and life? Or at least protect the one good thing he had?
“I could try. I don’t know if Murkoff will still be looking for me,” he replied with a hum.
“Marion said they thought you died in the asylum,” Violet replied.
He nodded at her words, flexing his jaw.
“What the hell should I do?”
“You know, when I worked…at Murkoff, they used to make fun of me all the time,” he started saying.
“Really? You?”
“Yeah, they would call me ‘Strongfat’. Hated that nickname as soon as they gave it to me,” he continued. “But they never messed with me.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because I was intimidating to them. They saw what I could do. And my time in the army taught me that,” he replied. “As long as you fend for yourself, they won’t ever mess with you. And you need to show them that.”
Violet nodded, wiping at her nose.
“The last time I got into it, I broke a girl’s nose.”
“Well that’s…bad, but at least they didn’t beat you up for a little while.”
“That’s why they came by with their whole posse; held me down and beat me up, and then they took a pair of scissors while they held my head down,” she replied, taking a shaky breath.
Chris breathed calmly, although he felt his blood boil.
“Just like me,” he thought to himself.
“Hey, hey, come here,” he said, opening his arms.
Violet reciprocated, burying her face in his chest.
There was a knock at the door, and Amber’s face peeked through.
He rested his chin on top of her head as he let her cry.
Amber had walked up.
“Baby, what’s wrong? What happened?”
She turned her face to look at her, taking in her beat up face and ruined hair.
“What happened? Who did this to you?” She asked urgently, taking her face in her hands.
“I got beat up,” Violet merely answered.
“Well, let me look at it, and then we’ll get you a haircut tomorrow, okay?” Amber said, swiping a loose bundle of hair from Violet’s face.
“I might be able to help with that!” Eddie called, halfway through the door.
~
As Amber left for work, Eddie had Violet sit down in a chair in the bathroom, a towel over her shoulders and looking in the mirror.
“So, what kind of haircut did you have in mind?” Eddie asked, smiling as he brushed out the loose strands onto the floor.
“Something short. Maybe a pixie cut,” Violet answered.
She seemed out of it, or at least slightly off-put. Eddie’s smile faltered as he set the brush down.
“Is something wrong?” He asked. “You seem distant.”
“I’m just tired,” she answered back.
“If you were really tired, you’d be in bed by now,” Eddie shot back.
He began to cut her hair, evening out the cuts as he talked.
“So they cut your beautiful hair off? Because of what you did?”
“...Yeah.”
He tsked, brushing out and cutting an uneven strand of hair.
“A pity. I really did like how you styled it so much. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with being blonde; blondes have all the fun.”
Violet scoffed.
“It’s true! I believe after this, you’ll find that being blonde doesn’t look so bad on you.”
“I only did it because I didn’t want to look like him.”
He held his scissors in mid-air for a moment, before he finally snipped a piece of hair off.
“And why is that? Aren’t you happy your father is here?”
“I am, I just–”
She cut herself off.
“I just…I never thought I’d actually see him. At all.”
“So why dye your hair?”
“Because I looked so different from my mom. Too tall, too fat, too…much like him, that it made me even wonder if I even wanted to look like him at all after he never answered any of my mom’s calls.”
Eddie screwed his brow, focusing on cutting her hair, evening out the layers so that they would blend together.
“There’s no shame in that,” he answered, his voice quiet.
“It felt like it.”
“You know he seems happier with you around, despite his past.”
“I know he is. But I can’t get over the fact he even tried to kill me, or he didn’t even recognize his own face staring back at him once he threw me out a window.”
“We all have our demons. Some of us just don’t know when to tell the angels from the devils.”
He continued to snip and brush, taking an electric razor and cutting the hair from the back of her head.
“It’s not what you might have pictured, but I’m sure it’ll do,” he finally said, brushing the back of her head from the strands of hair.
Violet looked at herself in the mirror, seeing blonde more predominantly now. It looked like she was a new person; an almost exact copy of her father’s intake picture. Eddie was right beside her, looking into the reflection with a smile.
“What do you think?”
Violet looked in the mirror, seeing her hair cut short, her ears now present. She looked at herself in the mirror, seeing her own father's face from his picture.
“It’s perfect.”
~
Later that night, as Violet recuperated on the couch with an icepack on her face, Marion came by.
He caught sight of the others, doing things like washing dishes or watching TV.
“Mr. Marion, so good to see you again,” Eddie replied, getting up from his seat.
He shook his hand, and Marion chuckled.
“Good to see you alive and well,” Marion commented. “I brought all that I needed for one good chance that’ll crash the whole company.”
“Good, cause we need it,” Trager replied.
“Just know that if this happens, Murkoff will have your heads, and if this goes public enough, then there might be a court case on our hands,” Marion explained urgently.
“And a court case they’ll get. We need to run this company into the ground , and leave nothing behind for them to grab at,” Chris added.
Marion glanced over at Violet sitting on the couch, and then pulled Walker aside.
“How’s your, uh, kid doing?” He murmured out of earshot of her.
“Not great; got jumped and beat up,” Chris replied, his gaze glued to the back of Violet’s head.
Marion also looked at the back of Violet’s head, seeing her with an icepack glued to her face. He hummed before he spoke again.
“Got a matching haircut I see,” he joked, lightly tapping on Walker’s shoulder.
“They cut her hair,” Chris quickly shot back.
“Oh…”
Marion cleared his throat, adjusting himself as he sat down at the kitchen table.
“Right, well, let's get started, shall we?”
The others were quiet, seeing him hook his computer up and boot it up, as well as going in and taking precautions.
“I brought my own router system, so they won't be able to ping it off of the wifi here,” Marion stated. “Now all I need is the camcorder.”
“Violet–”
“I got it,” Violet cut Chris off, getting up from the couch to grab said camcorder.
There was an uneasy silence.
“It may come as a shock that everyone at Murkoff will know you're alive–that you all are alive.”
“They got sloppy, didn't even count who all was inside,” Trager commented.
“Wait, they think we died?” Eddie asked.
“They do; after the riot that night, security went in and eliminated everyone…permanently,” Marion answered, furiously typing on the keyboard.
“You mean kill everyone inside,” Walker corrected.
“Yeah…that.”
“Here’s the camcorder,” Violet said, coming back with it in hand.
She placed it on the kitchen table before she went to replace the ice in the ice pack.
Marion went to work, bringing up and plugging in a USB drive into his computer.
“I’ll upload the footage onto a drive, and then after it’s done I’ll find some sort of public area or far off location, to throw off Murkoff. That way, they don’t have an online paper trail leading back to here,” Marion explained as he typed and clicked, uploading almost all the file footage from that night.
“We can’t thank you enough for doing this. It just feels so surreal being out of there,” Eddie said, watching Marion work.
“It’s not a problem,” Marion replied, completing the upload before he took the drive out. “I’ve been collecting evidence ever since the Billy incident.”
“Billy incident?”
“Billy Hope?”
That caught both of the twins' attention, as well as Violet’s.
Marion sighed, closing his computer.
“After we investigated Mount Massive, we got word of Waylon Park–tracking him down–and got a ping outside Nathrop, Colorado. We investigate, come back later, and realize Billy was alive and well.”
“How?” Trager questioned.
“The Walrider,” Violet spoke up, clenching her jaw.
Marion leaned back in his chair.
“For whatever reason, Billy was alive, and we had basically an army of trucks and equipment to take him out. But that wasn’t the case. Hope died, along with his mother, but it didn’t kill whatever gave him life.”
“It switched hosts,” Violet said firmly.
Marion looked at her for a moment, screwing his brow slightly.
“Yeah…yeah, it did,” he replied slowly.
He then picked up the camcorder, unplugging it from the cable of the computer. He flipped it open, turning it on, pointing it at Violet.
“What’re you doing?” Walker asked.
“Seeing something,” Marion merely answered, turning on the night vision.
He was quiet for a moment, his eye squinted in the eye piece before he brought it back down, looking at Violet.
“What’re you trying to find?” Violet asked, tilting her head.
“It’s nothing, just a hunch, I suppose.”
He got up from his seat, holding the camcorder for Violet to take back.
“Hold on to this for me, will ya kid? Keep it safe here while I go and upload this footage somewhere,” Marion replied.
“I guess you’re leaving now?” She asked, taking the camcorder back.
Marion continued packing his things.
“Yep. You might not see me for another few days, still have some investigating that needs to be done.”
“What kind of investigation?” Walker asked.
“Somewhere out in Arizona still. I’ve been too preoccupied with my daughter’s medical appointments to actually go out there and see what’s going on,” Marion replied, closing his bag. “But you know how it is, taking care of your kids.”
He nudged Walker’s shoulder, which earned him a glare in response.
Walker scoffed, crossing his arms.
“Yeah…” he muttered.
“Well, I’m gone. Take care, kid,” Marion said as he passed by her, walking out the door.
There was the click of the door, and the night continued on.
The others went to bed, all except for Violet.
Violet was still wide awake, laying in bed, staring up at the ceiling. Her eyes adjusted to the darkness, staring up at the space.
“What am I gonna do?” She thought to herself, turning over in her blankets.
She tried imagining herself in a situation where she would have to present her side of the story, to a jury, to a judge, to people all over the United States–and even the world that was willing to listen. All that attention, and all the wrong attention at the same time.
She remembered Glick. Her attitude, her serious face, even the way she presented herself. She was a threat, and needed to be taken out…somehow.
She tried going to sleep, closing her eyes as she evened her breathing. Hoping another nightmare wouldn’t wake her.