Chapter Text
Days went by, weeks even. It was a while before Violet or the others had heard from Marion. He was radio silent.
Violet continued on with her chores, with her schoolwork, teaching the twins to write and read.
“How does this look?” One of them asked her one day, after she had gotten home from school.
He held up a piece of paper to her, gently taking it from him and observing the scribbled but readable text.
“This looks a lot better, but make sure you differentiate from the ‘u’ and the ‘v’, these both look kinda confusing,” she replied, handing him back the paper and pointing at the mistakes.
It felt like being a teacher in her own way.
“And mine?” The other twin asked.
She slid his paper from across the table, looking at it.
“This is nice. The capital and lowercase ‘h’ need a little more work though,” she replied.
“You are an excellent teacher,” he replied, taking the paper back.
“Just like Father Martin was.”
Her smile faltered somewhat, the past memory of his last moments forever ingrained.
“Yeah,” she muttered.
“Hey kid,” Trager’s voice interrupted, bringing in her laptop from downstairs.
“Rick, I thought I told you to stop with the exposé trip about Murkoff,” Violet said with a sigh.
“I know, but look, just look at this,” he said, setting the laptop down on the table.
She looked at him questioningly, before she looked at the laptop.
“Oh my god,” she whispered, looking at the footage.
It was video footage taken from within the asylum, except it was documented by someone else.
Waylon Park.
It documented almost everything, patients beating and killing doctors, a man eating a dead body out of a microwave, and so much more.
She furrowed her brow, turning away from the footage.
“Someone did it, someone documented it and put it out there for the whole world to see,” Trager replied, sounding excited. “I even knew the guy! Worked in I.T. for a while.”
“I can see that,” Violet replied, closing the laptop.
“You know what this means, right?”
“There’s a way out.”
“No more hiding.”
Both the twins were right. Trager was right.
She sighed.
“I’m sure Marion’s seen this thing already, and Glick too,” Violet said.
“And try to discredit somehow; make Park look like a nutcase.”
“And what if we tried to upload the footage from the camcorder?” She asked.
“Murkoff would be right at our doorstep before you can even press send. They’d be able to trace it back here,” Trager replied, shaking his head.
She sighed, taking one last look at the camera footage.
“If we could somehow upload onto a drive, and upload it from a public service, then it wouldn’t be so bad,” Trager added.
She nodded, listening as she looked over the footage.
“The mall would be perfect, but at the same time maybe the Walrider has some abilities,” she thought.
The buzzing had been at an all-time low recently, and it scared her whenever she heard it come back. But at the same time, she was glad it was almost gone, having grown accustomed to it so much.
“We need a plan,” Trager said, breaking her out of her thoughts.
“A course of action.”
“And a way to continue hiding until we can present ourselves.”
She nodded, closing the laptop once more. She sighed.
“I can talk to Mom about it; she knows a friend who’s a pretty good lawyer,” Violet replied, taking the laptop.
“Make sure he’s a pretty good damn lawyer,” Trager commented before she left to go upstairs to her room.
~
Chris was going through the laundry, separating clothes from the others along with Eddie, who was patching up holes left in the old t-shirts Violet had.
“So do you think we can build a life now? After what happened?” Eddie asked, looking up from his sewing.
Chris contemplated this.
“Maybe. With all the work from what Marion’s been doing, there might be a way out,” he replied, separating a shirt of his from Violet’s clothes.
“And what about Violet and Amber?”
“What about them?”
“Well, I don’t want them to be caught in the crossfire, that’s all. It would be a shame if they were labelled as criminals because of us.”
“We’re not–” he stopped himself. “Maybe we are, but that’s in the past. We’re victims , Gluskin. Our past history shouldn’t have much of an effect on who we are, as far as the public knows.”
“But Walker, we did horrible things in that place. It’s on camera, recorded for the whole world to see.”
“I know, I know. But that was because we were…used; our psyche wasn’t in the right place. Believe me, I know that,” he trailed off, thinking back to the events of the asylum once more.
He shook his head, brushing it off.
“I don’t want to think about it anymore,” he said, ending the conversation.
There was a sudden knock on the doorframe, Amber appearing in her usual nurse scrubs.
“Oh, hello, Ms. Amber! Did you sleep well?” Gluskin asked cheerfully.
“I did. I need to speak with Chris for a moment,” she said, her tone firm and serious.
“Oh, uh, I’ll just excuse myself to the living room then,” Gluskin said, hurriedly putting down his sewing and walking out of the room.
She shut the door behind her with a soft click. Chris continued folding clothes, separating them accordingly.
“What’s this about?” He asked, not looking up.
“I need to talk about Violet with you,” she replied.
He nodded. He looked at her, his brow set.
“I know she’s my kid,” he said plainly.
“So she told you?”
“Yes. Gave this whole pep talk before she even said it,” he said with a slight smirk.
Amber hummed in response, nodding her head.
“I thought I would never see you again,” she said, crossing her arms.
“So you didn’t even bother to try and call me after you found out you were pregnant?” He pointed out.
“I did call you! Multiple times! But that night–”
“And what happened that night?”
She opened and closed her mouth, breathing a sigh through her nose.
“Enlighten me, because I clearly don’t remember what happened.”
“That night, we were both drunk. But I remember what happened.”
“Then tell me,” Chris asked, his voice low but not angry.
“I went clubbing that night with my boyfriend, and then he dumped me, left me at the club we were at. And then you showed up on the curb while I was crying my eyes out. And I knew you were army, or at least military because of the camouflage you were wearing. You asked me if I was okay, and at that point I was already tipsy. You asked me where I lived, pointed down at the apartments I was staying at, and took me home.”
“And then what happened?”
She shuddered.
“We both drank from a bottle of tequila I had in the pantry, a gift from my then ex. You took care of me while I was sick, and then…one thing led to another…and we…” she trailed off, embarrassed.
“We had sex,” Chris finished for her, raising a brow.
“Yes, we did. And then I woke up the next morning, you were getting ready to leave. You told me if I ever needed a shoulder to cry on or someone to talk to, I could call you. You gave me your phone number, and your home phone, and then I never saw you again.”
“And when you found out you were pregnant?”
She sucked in a breath.
“I was over the moon. I tried calling you, but I never got an answer.”
“What year?”
“1990 to ‘91.”
“Iraq,” he merely answered. "I was on multiple trips before they sent me to therapy."
“That’s what I thought.”
“Did she ever ask about me?”
“She did, and she was just a little girl back then. She would ask me, ‘Mommy, when is Daddy coming home?’ and things like that.”
“And what did you say?”
Amber took a moment to collect herself, wiping at her eyes.
“I told her…I told her that you were off fighting in the war,” she replied, sniffling. “I thought you died, but I didn’t have the heart to tell her that.”
Chris nodded, taking it all in. She cried, covering her face with her hands.
“I thought you died in the war. Which is why I never told her. I told her you left to go fight in the wars,” she said, her voice breaking.
“Hey, hey,” he said, growing closer to her.
He put his hands on her shoulders, trying to console her.
“I’m here now. I’m here, I’m not going anywhere,” he said firmly. “I can’t change the past, but if I had known–about you, about her–I would’ve left the moment they told me I could be hired at Murkoff.”
“And what about them?”
Murkoff would be on their tail in an instant if they found out he was alive, as well as the others.
“It’ll get taken care of. Marion’s working on it,” he replied.
She nodded, wiping at her eyes.
“I-I need to grab my purse, get ready for work.”
“Yeah, go do that. I’ll take care of anything you need here.”
“Hey, I think you might want to–” Violet’s voice interrupted entering the room, her laptop in hand. Her face faltered.
“Am I interrupting something?” She asked.
Her mother recuperated.
“No, no. It’s nothing, baby,” Amber replied. “I gotta go to work now. You be good, do your chores.”
She placed a kiss on Violet’s cheek, swiping her bangs out of her face. Violet felt at the place where she left the kiss, looking back at her leaving before she looked back at Chris.
He just chuckled, putting a hand on her shoulder.
“She told me,” he said, his answer vague but telling.
“Oh…OH!”
He chuckled again at her reaction.
“What is it you wanna show me?”
“Waylon Park posted his video footage from the asylum; it’s being shared like wildfire–all over the internet.”
She held her laptop, a video of the footage from the asylum playing.
He sighed.
“Have you heard from Marion?”
“No. He’s been radio silent for weeks now.”
“Okay. Do what your mom said, we’ll just wait and watch until something happens, or if he contacts us.”
“But Dad–” she whispered.
“Ah, ah! No buts. Come on, I know you have homework to do,” he said, ushering her out of the room.
“I already finished it.”