{american horror story} unwoven
Title: Unwoven
Author: Aaronlisa
Fandom: American Horror Story: Murder House / American Horror Story: Coven
Pairing/Characters: Tate Langdon/Violet Harmon, Zoe Benson/Kyle Spencer, implied Zoë Benson/Kyle Spencer/Madison Montgomery, implied Tate Langdon/Hayden McClaine
Rating: FRM
Warning: There's mention of sexual abuse and incest.
Disclaimer: American Horror Story belongs to Ryan Murphy & company. Snippets of songs from Puscifer (Rev 22-20) and Marina & The Diamonds (Teen Idle) belong to their respective authors. There's also a quote by Robert Oppenheimer within.
Notes: For Coven, the story only takes canon into consideration up until Episode Seven. It's canon complaint for Murder House. This was written for Round Four at ahs_exchange.
Summary: Time is rather easy to destroy and reweave.
Word Count: 2522
Everything changes in the moment that they lay together. It's an unintended consequence.
Everything yet nothing changes all at the same time. Some changes are instant while others take years to manifest, to make themselves apparent.
In the moment that their sweaty limbs are entangled and there's no clear beginning or end, everything is different in the space of a heartbeat.
* * *
There's a part of him that can't help but wish that things were different. He wishes that he was exactly what he appeared to be, that he was free to ask her for her phone number so he could call her.
As she nervously sips at her beer, he's entranced by her shyness. And he wishes that everything were different. He'd love to be able to look at her the way she's looking at him.
Kyle Spencer wishes that he was just a normal boy. He likes Zoë a lot and even though he barely knows her, he wishes that he had the luxury of getting to know her.
However it's not meant to be. His mother would never allow for it. She'd destroy Zoë if Kyle even though to bring her home. He smiles at her as she blushes as she takes a sip of her beer. If things were different, he'd take this girl to a secluded corner and he'd kiss her, he'd map the texture of her skin underneath the hem of her skirt, he'd learn all about her.
But things aren't different. And in a moment, she looks away from him, the next she's concerned about her friend. And a part of him is crushed but another part of him is grateful.
It makes things easier when they get distracted, when they've decided he's not what he wants. He can imagine all about Zoë as long as he doesn't go home stinking of her perfume.
It's easier to help her find her bitchy friend, even if all he wants to do is pull her into one of the dark corners and just be normal for one moment.
* * *
"Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."
He can feel how the veil is stretching, how it's becoming thin. The veil between life and death, between worlds, becomes thinner every year that Michael lives.
With every delighted shriek of laughter that floats over the fence that keeps the living and the dead separate, he can feel the veil stretching impossibly thin. It's only a matter of time before it breaks and then he'll be able to redeem himself in Violet's eyes.
The veil thinning is his fault, it's his doing. He had fucked Vivienne before he'd allowed himself to even look at Violet. He'd fucked her mother to fulfill a promise to another mother who once claimed to want him. A mother who abandoned him just as his own mother had. Constance, Nora and Vivienne are all wrapped up in his mind until he can't really tell them apart.
All he wants now is for the veil to finally tear and then he can give Violet a chance. He can take her away to a place where she's not dead, where she's not reminded over and over again of his sins and his crimes.
At first he'd been angry that Constance would spirit the boy away the week of Halloween. But now he realizes that it's only a matter of time. It's only a matter of time before the bonds that tie him to the house are so weak that he'll be able to come and go as freely as he wants. And then when that happens, well the world will be his. And Violet will forgive him.
* * *
There are things that die with Anna-Lee when Fiona kills her. There are secrets and rituals that only a Supreme know. Not even the Council knows them. It's a tradition of secrets and rituals that are passed down from one Supreme to the next, an unbroken chain until Fiona Goode became impatient and thought nothing of taking the power that was destined to be hers in the end.
Greed and impatience has not served the Salem Coven very well. It's robbed them of far too much, of too many things that they can never recover. It's something that Marie Laveau relishes in. The little witchlings that flock to Fiona's daughter are blind, stumbling about in the dark like three blind mice. And Marie's knife is finely honed. When she's done, the blood of the little bitch-witches will make the street in front of their academy turn red.
Fiona's just the witch that Marie's been waiting for: greedy and power mad. Blind to the gift that awaited her and impatient enough to take it before she was ready for it.
* * *
Wish I'd been a prom queen, fighting for the title
Instead of being sixteen and burning up a bible.
Madison gets absolutely nothing from sex with Kyle and Zoë. It only makes her feel emptier as the two connect on a level that she can't. She should have known that this would happen. She's seen how the monster looks Zoë, how his dark eyes track her every move, how he tries to express himself in words for her.
Fucking him had been the closest thing she'd felt to feeling since she'd woken up from death. She'd wish that Zoë had just left it all alone, that Zoë had burned her rotting corpse instead of shoving life back inside of her. She's an empty shell that can never be refilled.
She slips from the bed, quietly dragging clothes over her numb body. The couple on the bed move closer together as if she'd never left, as if she'd never been there guiding them together, binding them in ecstasy. Perhaps her role was just that simple: the supporting actress who gives the lead her chance at love and romance.
Madison pauses for a moment and thinks that she would have killed to have possessed Zoë's power. There's quite a few men that would have deserved death from fucking her. Men that told her that unless she did exactly what they wanted, she'd never get the part. Men who told her that she just had to touch them in a certain way or let them touch her so that she could become famous.
For a moment she thinks about staying, she might be numb, she might be unable to feel much but she could feel Zoë's power when she ran her fingers up and down Zoë's spine, when she showed Kyle just how to kiss Zoë down below, when Zoë's body clenched with desire as Kyle and Madison brought her to heights the other girl had never seen before.
She might not be able to feel like she could when she was live but she can feel Zoë's power and it's enough to make her want to stay. It's enough to make her want to see what happens when Fiona realizes that the meek and mild Zoë is the next Supreme.
In the end it's not enough to keep. Maybe when Zoë's taken control, when she wields power in her hands, Madison might come back. But right now, she has some debts to settle.
* * *
"Cause nobody ever survives
Prayin' to stay in her arms just until I can die a little longer"
The moment comes far sooner than he'd anticipated. Far sooner than he's ready for it.
Michael catches him in the house with his pants down. Literally, Tate's busy trying to find something between Hayden's thighs (since Violet's shut him out, Tate takes what he can get, he is after all still a teenage boy.)
Michael is an indeterminate age. He's a teenager but he could be thirteen or easily seventeen. Tate looks at the boy and sees himself and Violet in those features. It makes him sick as he pushes Hayden away from his body. He falls to his knees, gagging at the taste of decay and rot flood his mouth.
Michael laughs at him. Hayden stumbles in fear but Michael touches her and she vanishes. Tate knows that she's gone, that she's dead, dead, dead and never coming back.
"Yeah I can kill ghosts, daddy dearest."
He fears for Violet in that moment.
* * *
Every Supreme has a male counterpart. They represent the mother goddess and her horned god. While the Supreme holds the power, her male counterpart is her equal. In the past, the representation of the horned god was a man who actually had power of his own, he helped the Supreme in worldly affairs, while she attended to the mystical affairs of the coven.
In more recent years, the role of the male counterpart has withered away until Fiona had her Spalding while Marie had Bastien. Then again death has long since plagued the Salem coven, until Zoë came along with Kyle. Death begets death. He'd always been the one for her, the one who would stand by her side while she assumed her role.
The Council and the others are blind to it. And Marie only has an inkling. Her long life has blinded her, filled her with resentment and pettiness. Her thoughts turned towards the destruction of the Coven instead of working side by side. Tituba gifted the Coven with her powers, Marie only thinks to reclaim them by force if she needs to.
She's forgotten that death begets death. By slowly killing off the coven, descendant at a time through her various tools, the power of the coven shaped itself in the form of a young girl who could only gift deaths to any consort she could have.
Kyle's not alive, nor is he dead. Madison saw an inkling of it when she lay down on the bed with Zoë and Kyle.
* * *
"What do you want?"
The words fall of Tate's tongue, they sound jumbled up together and he wonders what he's done. How did it come to this?
Michael laughs at him. "What if I say I want Violet?"
"She's mine," Tate cries out.
"Is she now? You can't claim all the dead girls over here."
"You can have anyone you want just not her," Tate pleads.
"She doesn't want you."
The words are simple but they hurt more than anything else. More than when the bullets cut through his flesh and muscle and tore him apart.
"She does, I know that deep down inside she does."
"What will you give me for her?"
"Anything, anything," Tate says. "Please."
"I need you to go away, I need you erased," Michael says. "I need you to never have existed."
"But if I never existed, then you won't either."
Michael just laughs in response. "It's not that simple father, it never is."
"Then I'll give you whatever you want, I promise."
Michael looks at him with a smirk on his face and for a brief moment, Tate thinks of all of the promises that he's ever made. They've never worked out in the end for him. He's always paid more than a pound of flesh with each promise he's made.
"Will she be mine?" Tate asks.
"Oh yes, she will. All yours and no one else's."
It's the thought of possessing her, of owning her, of making her his own that make him agree.
"Anything, just let me have her."
Michael's smile turns feral and Tate screams as his body seems melt and he can't help but think ....
* * *
Kyle watches her as she pulls on a black dress. The dress is far too severe and for a moment he wishes that she would wear colours. He thinks about how lovely her pale skin and bright hair would look if he were to wrap her up in a mustard yellow cardigan, or against a faded plum blanket, anything but black.
He can't recall a time when she wasn't in mourning. Perhaps it was a time before he became aware, before he found his tongue and his mind. He remembers waking up wrapped up around her body, covered in white sheets and pale sunlight and he'd felt so alive. His body hurt in such a strange way, his chest as if it was riddled with holes. For a moment another name almost fell off of his lips.
He wasn't sure how he'd gotten there, the last thing he could remember was the party and finding his frat brothers on top of her friend (he remembers a house, old and rotting, and her with her fearlessness.) Zoë had looked at him and sighed.
From that moment, everything changed even if he wasn't quite sure what it was although he could feel her heart beating when he placed a hand on her chest. That simple sound made everything okay, it made everything better. He would follow her to Hell and back again as long as she allowed him the Heaven of her body.
Even now, he doesn't question her. She pulls the severe black dress over her body, covering up pale creamy skin and he merely imitates her and dresses himself in his own mourning clothes.
The academy barely survived the last attack upon it. Zoë saved them and because of her there's a handful of witches who are learning their powers underneath her careful tutelage.
Once they're dressed, they make their way down from their bedroom and into the dining room. A sullen looking older woman serves them just as Madison stalks into the room, a cigarette dangling from her lips. Her scarlet red dress makes Kyle sick. It makes him think of blood and fires and pain. It makes him think of the heavy weight of a gun in his hand as he pulls the trigger again and again trying to make the pain inside of him stop.
He shivers as Madison drops down into a chair. Zoë purses her lips and sends the younger witches off.
"You'll never get anywhere with them Zo, we're a dying breed," Madison says.
Zoë sighs. Kyle can feel her discomfort mingled with her desire. There's something about Madison that always calls to Zoë, even if he can't quite figure out what it is. (He wishes that he could possess Zoë and call her his own, he'd like to scratch Madison's eyes out for even daring to look at what is his but he can't and even if he could, he won't.)
"You say the same thing year after year," Zoë quietly says.
"I say it all the time because the world is moving on, what place does magic have in it anymore?" Madison says.
For once, Kyle realizes that the girl is lucid. That she realizes what year it is, how much time has passed by. It scares him to think that the three of them will never die. (It makes him long for the dusty sunlight in an attic in an old house where he could lay down on a dirty old mattress with her in his arms as the house stayed as quiet as a tomb.)
((END))
Author: Aaronlisa
Fandom: American Horror Story: Murder House / American Horror Story: Coven
Pairing/Characters: Tate Langdon/Violet Harmon, Zoe Benson/Kyle Spencer, implied Zoë Benson/Kyle Spencer/Madison Montgomery, implied Tate Langdon/Hayden McClaine
Rating: FRM
Warning: There's mention of sexual abuse and incest.
Disclaimer: American Horror Story belongs to Ryan Murphy & company. Snippets of songs from Puscifer (Rev 22-20) and Marina & The Diamonds (Teen Idle) belong to their respective authors. There's also a quote by Robert Oppenheimer within.
Notes: For Coven, the story only takes canon into consideration up until Episode Seven. It's canon complaint for Murder House. This was written for Round Four at ahs_exchange.
Summary: Time is rather easy to destroy and reweave.
Word Count: 2522
Everything changes in the moment that they lay together. It's an unintended consequence.
Everything yet nothing changes all at the same time. Some changes are instant while others take years to manifest, to make themselves apparent.
In the moment that their sweaty limbs are entangled and there's no clear beginning or end, everything is different in the space of a heartbeat.
* * *
There's a part of him that can't help but wish that things were different. He wishes that he was exactly what he appeared to be, that he was free to ask her for her phone number so he could call her.
As she nervously sips at her beer, he's entranced by her shyness. And he wishes that everything were different. He'd love to be able to look at her the way she's looking at him.
Kyle Spencer wishes that he was just a normal boy. He likes Zoë a lot and even though he barely knows her, he wishes that he had the luxury of getting to know her.
However it's not meant to be. His mother would never allow for it. She'd destroy Zoë if Kyle even though to bring her home. He smiles at her as she blushes as she takes a sip of her beer. If things were different, he'd take this girl to a secluded corner and he'd kiss her, he'd map the texture of her skin underneath the hem of her skirt, he'd learn all about her.
But things aren't different. And in a moment, she looks away from him, the next she's concerned about her friend. And a part of him is crushed but another part of him is grateful.
It makes things easier when they get distracted, when they've decided he's not what he wants. He can imagine all about Zoë as long as he doesn't go home stinking of her perfume.
It's easier to help her find her bitchy friend, even if all he wants to do is pull her into one of the dark corners and just be normal for one moment.
* * *
"Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."
He can feel how the veil is stretching, how it's becoming thin. The veil between life and death, between worlds, becomes thinner every year that Michael lives.
With every delighted shriek of laughter that floats over the fence that keeps the living and the dead separate, he can feel the veil stretching impossibly thin. It's only a matter of time before it breaks and then he'll be able to redeem himself in Violet's eyes.
The veil thinning is his fault, it's his doing. He had fucked Vivienne before he'd allowed himself to even look at Violet. He'd fucked her mother to fulfill a promise to another mother who once claimed to want him. A mother who abandoned him just as his own mother had. Constance, Nora and Vivienne are all wrapped up in his mind until he can't really tell them apart.
All he wants now is for the veil to finally tear and then he can give Violet a chance. He can take her away to a place where she's not dead, where she's not reminded over and over again of his sins and his crimes.
At first he'd been angry that Constance would spirit the boy away the week of Halloween. But now he realizes that it's only a matter of time. It's only a matter of time before the bonds that tie him to the house are so weak that he'll be able to come and go as freely as he wants. And then when that happens, well the world will be his. And Violet will forgive him.
* * *
There are things that die with Anna-Lee when Fiona kills her. There are secrets and rituals that only a Supreme know. Not even the Council knows them. It's a tradition of secrets and rituals that are passed down from one Supreme to the next, an unbroken chain until Fiona Goode became impatient and thought nothing of taking the power that was destined to be hers in the end.
Greed and impatience has not served the Salem Coven very well. It's robbed them of far too much, of too many things that they can never recover. It's something that Marie Laveau relishes in. The little witchlings that flock to Fiona's daughter are blind, stumbling about in the dark like three blind mice. And Marie's knife is finely honed. When she's done, the blood of the little bitch-witches will make the street in front of their academy turn red.
Fiona's just the witch that Marie's been waiting for: greedy and power mad. Blind to the gift that awaited her and impatient enough to take it before she was ready for it.
* * *
Wish I'd been a prom queen, fighting for the title
Instead of being sixteen and burning up a bible.
Madison gets absolutely nothing from sex with Kyle and Zoë. It only makes her feel emptier as the two connect on a level that she can't. She should have known that this would happen. She's seen how the monster looks Zoë, how his dark eyes track her every move, how he tries to express himself in words for her.
Fucking him had been the closest thing she'd felt to feeling since she'd woken up from death. She'd wish that Zoë had just left it all alone, that Zoë had burned her rotting corpse instead of shoving life back inside of her. She's an empty shell that can never be refilled.
She slips from the bed, quietly dragging clothes over her numb body. The couple on the bed move closer together as if she'd never left, as if she'd never been there guiding them together, binding them in ecstasy. Perhaps her role was just that simple: the supporting actress who gives the lead her chance at love and romance.
Madison pauses for a moment and thinks that she would have killed to have possessed Zoë's power. There's quite a few men that would have deserved death from fucking her. Men that told her that unless she did exactly what they wanted, she'd never get the part. Men who told her that she just had to touch them in a certain way or let them touch her so that she could become famous.
For a moment she thinks about staying, she might be numb, she might be unable to feel much but she could feel Zoë's power when she ran her fingers up and down Zoë's spine, when she showed Kyle just how to kiss Zoë down below, when Zoë's body clenched with desire as Kyle and Madison brought her to heights the other girl had never seen before.
She might not be able to feel like she could when she was live but she can feel Zoë's power and it's enough to make her want to stay. It's enough to make her want to see what happens when Fiona realizes that the meek and mild Zoë is the next Supreme.
In the end it's not enough to keep. Maybe when Zoë's taken control, when she wields power in her hands, Madison might come back. But right now, she has some debts to settle.
* * *
"Cause nobody ever survives
Prayin' to stay in her arms just until I can die a little longer"
The moment comes far sooner than he'd anticipated. Far sooner than he's ready for it.
Michael catches him in the house with his pants down. Literally, Tate's busy trying to find something between Hayden's thighs (since Violet's shut him out, Tate takes what he can get, he is after all still a teenage boy.)
Michael is an indeterminate age. He's a teenager but he could be thirteen or easily seventeen. Tate looks at the boy and sees himself and Violet in those features. It makes him sick as he pushes Hayden away from his body. He falls to his knees, gagging at the taste of decay and rot flood his mouth.
Michael laughs at him. Hayden stumbles in fear but Michael touches her and she vanishes. Tate knows that she's gone, that she's dead, dead, dead and never coming back.
"Yeah I can kill ghosts, daddy dearest."
He fears for Violet in that moment.
* * *
Every Supreme has a male counterpart. They represent the mother goddess and her horned god. While the Supreme holds the power, her male counterpart is her equal. In the past, the representation of the horned god was a man who actually had power of his own, he helped the Supreme in worldly affairs, while she attended to the mystical affairs of the coven.
In more recent years, the role of the male counterpart has withered away until Fiona had her Spalding while Marie had Bastien. Then again death has long since plagued the Salem coven, until Zoë came along with Kyle. Death begets death. He'd always been the one for her, the one who would stand by her side while she assumed her role.
The Council and the others are blind to it. And Marie only has an inkling. Her long life has blinded her, filled her with resentment and pettiness. Her thoughts turned towards the destruction of the Coven instead of working side by side. Tituba gifted the Coven with her powers, Marie only thinks to reclaim them by force if she needs to.
She's forgotten that death begets death. By slowly killing off the coven, descendant at a time through her various tools, the power of the coven shaped itself in the form of a young girl who could only gift deaths to any consort she could have.
Kyle's not alive, nor is he dead. Madison saw an inkling of it when she lay down on the bed with Zoë and Kyle.
* * *
"What do you want?"
The words fall of Tate's tongue, they sound jumbled up together and he wonders what he's done. How did it come to this?
Michael laughs at him. "What if I say I want Violet?"
"She's mine," Tate cries out.
"Is she now? You can't claim all the dead girls over here."
"You can have anyone you want just not her," Tate pleads.
"She doesn't want you."
The words are simple but they hurt more than anything else. More than when the bullets cut through his flesh and muscle and tore him apart.
"She does, I know that deep down inside she does."
"What will you give me for her?"
"Anything, anything," Tate says. "Please."
"I need you to go away, I need you erased," Michael says. "I need you to never have existed."
"But if I never existed, then you won't either."
Michael just laughs in response. "It's not that simple father, it never is."
"Then I'll give you whatever you want, I promise."
Michael looks at him with a smirk on his face and for a brief moment, Tate thinks of all of the promises that he's ever made. They've never worked out in the end for him. He's always paid more than a pound of flesh with each promise he's made.
"Will she be mine?" Tate asks.
"Oh yes, she will. All yours and no one else's."
It's the thought of possessing her, of owning her, of making her his own that make him agree.
"Anything, just let me have her."
Michael's smile turns feral and Tate screams as his body seems melt and he can't help but think ....
* * *
Kyle watches her as she pulls on a black dress. The dress is far too severe and for a moment he wishes that she would wear colours. He thinks about how lovely her pale skin and bright hair would look if he were to wrap her up in a mustard yellow cardigan, or against a faded plum blanket, anything but black.
He can't recall a time when she wasn't in mourning. Perhaps it was a time before he became aware, before he found his tongue and his mind. He remembers waking up wrapped up around her body, covered in white sheets and pale sunlight and he'd felt so alive. His body hurt in such a strange way, his chest as if it was riddled with holes. For a moment another name almost fell off of his lips.
He wasn't sure how he'd gotten there, the last thing he could remember was the party and finding his frat brothers on top of her friend (he remembers a house, old and rotting, and her with her fearlessness.) Zoë had looked at him and sighed.
From that moment, everything changed even if he wasn't quite sure what it was although he could feel her heart beating when he placed a hand on her chest. That simple sound made everything okay, it made everything better. He would follow her to Hell and back again as long as she allowed him the Heaven of her body.
Even now, he doesn't question her. She pulls the severe black dress over her body, covering up pale creamy skin and he merely imitates her and dresses himself in his own mourning clothes.
The academy barely survived the last attack upon it. Zoë saved them and because of her there's a handful of witches who are learning their powers underneath her careful tutelage.
Once they're dressed, they make their way down from their bedroom and into the dining room. A sullen looking older woman serves them just as Madison stalks into the room, a cigarette dangling from her lips. Her scarlet red dress makes Kyle sick. It makes him think of blood and fires and pain. It makes him think of the heavy weight of a gun in his hand as he pulls the trigger again and again trying to make the pain inside of him stop.
He shivers as Madison drops down into a chair. Zoë purses her lips and sends the younger witches off.
"You'll never get anywhere with them Zo, we're a dying breed," Madison says.
Zoë sighs. Kyle can feel her discomfort mingled with her desire. There's something about Madison that always calls to Zoë, even if he can't quite figure out what it is. (He wishes that he could possess Zoë and call her his own, he'd like to scratch Madison's eyes out for even daring to look at what is his but he can't and even if he could, he won't.)
"You say the same thing year after year," Zoë quietly says.
"I say it all the time because the world is moving on, what place does magic have in it anymore?" Madison says.
For once, Kyle realizes that the girl is lucid. That she realizes what year it is, how much time has passed by. It scares him to think that the three of them will never die. (It makes him long for the dusty sunlight in an attic in an old house where he could lay down on a dirty old mattress with her in his arms as the house stayed as quiet as a tomb.)
((END))