Chapter Text
Once alone in her room, Casey immediately goes to the shower. She spends a long time in there, even after the water goes cold, just trying to feel clean. She really didn’t like the movie but she can’t tell Barry why. It feels selfish anyway since what triggered her wasn’t any of the actual deaths. She’d be willing to watch a hundred death scenes before she’d watch the scenes of Violet being brainwashed again. It was too much like what John might have done to her if he were smarter. “You’ll be good for me now, won’t you?” It had made her stomach turn.
For the first time since their little relationship (?) began, Casey feels jealous of Barry. She’s never wanted to be close to Dennis more than she does right now if for no other reason than to be reminded that he isn’t like John... And where IS John? Suddenly his absence is less comforting and more ominous, like he could come back at any time and is just waiting until she has her guard down. Logically, she knows that that makes no sense but... well, where IS he? Why is he staying away? Maybe it is to torture her psychologically. He’s usually not that subtle but she wouldn’t put it past him.
She just can’t stop seeing that suffering girl in her mind and remembering the suffering girl that she used to be. At least, she tells herself, no one watched what happened to her while scarfing down popcorn. At least she’s not being offered up like a sacrificial lamb on the altar of entertainment. Fuck, does she suddenly hate humanity, the whole fucking species that produces shit like The Beast and reacts to his atrocities with fascination. The kicker is that Violet probably isn’t even dead, she’s probably alive to know how much people enjoy watching her squirm.
She feels a kinship with Violet suddenly and wishes that the two of them could stand together over a pit and watch the men who hurt them burn and know that only people like them are justified in watching others suffer. Did they think that showing the Beast’s death at the end of the movie made everything else ok? Did they think that fucking... fetishizing the suffering of human beings was all justified by one scene? Her heart is racing, her hands are shaking and her head hurts and she simultaneously wishes that she had someone to hit and that she could go down the hall and burrow into Dennis’ chest and just feel safe. She forces herself to take deep breaths, trying to calm down.
She builds a nest of blankets on her bed and crawls under it, curling into the fetal position. She stays that way a long time and EVENTUALLY falls asleep only to have fitful dreams. At first, it’s a montage of those particular scenes from the movie and the worst things John has ever done to her but eventually, she has a false awakening to find herself in a tightly confined space with her wrists and ankles bound. She realizes that it’s The Box, the one that The Beast would put Violet into when she misbehaved. At first, she tries to remain calm, telling herself that it’s just a dream, just a dream, just a dream... But then the lid begins to slowly creek open and she starts to hyperventilate.
She’s still hyperventilating when she wakes up. It takes a small eternity for her to be able to take a full breath again and then she looks around the room, paranoid. She gets up and turns on the overhead light to eliminate any shadows where someone could hide. Embarrassingly, she looks in the closet and under the bed and then she makes sure the door is locked before returning to her nest. She sits on her bed with her arms around herself until she eventually accepts that she won't be sleeping.
She gets out her sketchbook and tries to draw but her hands are too shaky. What would she even draw right now anyway? Her head is full of horrible memories and even worse imaginings. She’s suddenly seized with a desire to see Violet, not Kirsten Steward but the real Violet, to know what she actually looked like. She takes out her laptop and does a Google image search.
It takes a lot of scrolling to find a clear picture of Violet but when she finally does she finds herself looking at a girl slightly younger than herself, dangerously thin with a long neck and a heart-shaped face, thin lips, a long nose and large piercing eyes under low brows. It’s a mug shot, they’d booked her as if she were a common criminal when they’d caught the group and something about that makes Casey angry. Even when she’d finally been rescued, she’d been put into yet more restraints. It reminds her of when she’d tried to run away from John only to be brought back in handcuffs. At least the police had believed Violet, even if ridiculous conditions (her being injured and sick and half-starved) were required for them to listen to her. So that’s what it takes...
She decides to draw Violet just to give herself something to focus on. She wants to draw her unrestrained, in a normal situation but finds herself unable to imagine the girl when she was normal. There are no pictures (at least not on Google) of pre-Beast Violet. Still, Casey tries, she looks up reference images of nuns and tries to superimpose Violet's face onto them but removing that desperate, half-crazed look from the poor girl's eyes is a task beyond her imagination. She winds up with a drawing of Violet kneeling in a garden, looking at the viewer as if someone just out of frame is holding a gun on her.
She leaves her desk and begins to pace around the room, feeling suddenly restless. She contemplates going downstairs, maybe Dennis can’t sleep either, but then she remembers that Dennis always sleeps better on nights that Barry is here, and that unwelcome jealousy bubbles to the surface again. She’s also deterred from leaving her room by the number of closed doors between here and downstairs. John could be behind any one of those doors, she knows that he probably isn’t but... he could be. Ultimately, it’s her irrational fear of John that makes her leave her room, to prove to herself how irrational it is.
She finds herself frozen in the middle of the hallway, looking at Dennis’ door and wondering if it’s locked. How would Dennis and Barry react if she just went in there? What excuse would she give them for her presence? Sorry to wake you guys, but I had a nightmare? No, she supposes that’s not something a soon-to-be adult would do. Instead, she goes down to the sitting room and sits on the uncomfortable couch, watching the trees move and the light in the sky change.
After an indeterminate amount of time, she’s pulled out of her meditative state by a sound in the kitchen. By the sound of it, someone is washing something in the sink but... she hadn’t seen anyone go in there. They’d have had to come in from outside or up from the basement. A little bit of hope that it might be Dennis kindles in her chest but then... Patricia emerges. It’s nearly dawn and the landlady is either coming home from somewhere or coming out of the basement. Before Casey can raise any questions, Patrcia raises one.
“Dear Girl, whatever are you doing up at this hour?”
Casey is tempted to say ‘I could ask you the same thing’ but opts to be less confrontational.
“I just... couldn’t sleep and started to feel kind of claustrophobic in my room.”
A beat of awkward silence passes during which Casey has a mad thought. Aren’t Patricia’s eyes a lot like Violet's? The shape, the color, the... intensity... but, no, it’s either a trick of the light or a trick of her mind. That’s all.
“I’ve read that insomnia can be an unfortunate byproduct of an unusually active mind.”
Patricia offers. Casey has noticed that that’s Patrcia’s go-to for breaking up awkward silences, offering up random, loosely related facts.
“I guess I’m just too smart for my own good.”
Casey attempts a joke and it falls flat. She moves on to the only other topic she can think of.
“Are you ok?”
Patricia looks tense but that’s not exactly unusual these days.
“Why would I not be?”
“It’s just... it’s almost dawn and you’re... never mind.”
It occurs to Casey that, for all she knows, Patricia is up before dawn every day and it’s not worth it to press the issue.
“Dennis should be up shortly.”
Patricia offers as she proceeds toward the stairs. Casey doesn’t respond but Patricia doesn’t seem to expect her to. The landlady ascends the stairs and Casey is left alone in the sitting room feeling strange about the whole interaction.