Title: Whispers in the Dark

Fandom: American Horror Story, American Horror Story: Murder House

Characters: Violet Harmon, with mentions of Ben and Vivian Harmon, Tate Langdon, Hayden McClaine.

Rating: FR13

Disclaimer: American Horror Story belongs to Ryan Murphy, Brad Falchuk and company.

Notes: Set post-Season One.

Summary: The house is starting to speak to her.

Word Count: 575

Sometimes when she's laying on her bed late at night, she can hear the house. It's not the sound of the house settling, the creaks and the groans of an old house. Instead Violet can hear the house trying to speak to her. If she was still alive, she'd write it off as something that her mind dreamt up, but ghosts don't dream since they don't actually sleep. She knows that the house is speaking to her except it's words are indistinct as it's voice is too faint for Violet to clearly decipher.

It makes her think of Tate. Did the house speak to him? Was he able to understand it? Every now and then, Violet can feel emotions that aren't her own. She thinks that if she were to try and tell her father, he'd label it as some psychological disorder, a reaction to finding herself dead and frozen as a teenager. But Violet knows that those foreign emotions belong to the house. How she knows this, she's not too certain. Except those emotions are stronger when her parents have chased off another family who want to live in the Murder House. The emotions are so strong then that they're tangible, they almost smother her. Violet's certain that her parents can't feel the house like she can.

Does Tate feel the house's darker emotions? Do they drown him in waves of hostility, malevolence, and anger? She wonders about the other ghosts. Hayden seems likely to feel and hear the house but Violet can't bring herself to talk to Hayden. In ways, Hayden's just another victim (even if she's a psycho) but Hayden destroyed Violet's family. Violet knows that even though her parents have found a peace that they never had when they were alive, they're still dead. Prisoners of this house, prisoners of death and prisoners of a picture perfect life. Hayden is still the enemy even though it was her father who set everything in motion. So Violet won't ask Hayden about the house.

Violet wonders if Tate sees the things that she sees, if he realizes what the house has done, is still doing to them? Or if he's nothing more than an unknowing tool of the house? Has the house been speaking to him for so long that he can't tell his own voice from the house's? His own emotions from those of the house's? She can't forgive him but she finds herself understanding how he became who and what he is.

What worries Violet the most is what will happen to her when the house's voice becomes clearer for her. When she can't recognize the difference between her own emotions and the house's. Will she become just like Tate and Hayden? Will her own crimes and sins be worse than Tate's? He had been under the influence of this house for so long and he had been powerless to resist it. How can she think that she's strong enough to resist it? Even with her parents.

Violet doesn't tell her parents anything of what she feels because in the Murder House one can never know who else is listening (aside from the house itself.) And no matter what, she's still not willing to give Tate an opening, a way in which he can worm his way back into her heart again. So she keeps her worries to herself and hopes that because she's dead the house can't drive her insane.

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