#me realizing that i will never be loved the way lemony loves beatrice | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

luluwquidprocrow · 3 years

Text

all phone, no sex

originally posted: june 23rd, 2019

word count: 2,485 words

rated: mature

beatrice/bertrand/lemony

fluff and humor, established relationship, domestic fluff, the vaguest phone sex! so much so that it’s barely even phone sex but by god is there a phone, they are handsy though and there is a reference to a previous sexual event with a tie

summary: Between three bored people, two working phones, and an unfinished crossword puzzle, this should really be easier.

Nights where Lemony works late are a whole new level of boring, Beatrice thinks. Sure, she and Bertrand are perfectly capable of entertaining themselves, but there is a certain silence in the house without Lemony. No rustling pages as he reads through multiple books at once, no typewriter in the corner with a half-written page hanging over the top, no fond smiles while he’s cooking, no eternal smell of snickerdoodles. Also, Bertrand is much less willing to read under the blankets with her—something about, we have lamps, Beatrice, why are you using an actual candle?

So they’re sprawled on top of their bed, Beatrice propping her book up on her chest, bedside lamp on and everything, while Bertrand, laid out at an angle next to her, has the morning crossword draped over her stomach. Beatrice reaches a hand toward the table by the bed, hunting on the plate of cookies she had there, and sighs when her fingers brush crumbs. No actual snickerdoodles, either. What a bummer.

Bertrand clicks his pen. “Poolside conveniences,” he says. “Seven letters.”

“Pool noodles,” Beatrice says idly, turning a page of her book. “Lounge chairs. Sunglasses. You, getting me a root beer float.”

Bertrand laughs. “That’s a little bit longer than seven letters, Bea.”

“Sunglas,” Beatrice offers.

“Not quite.”

“Well, rude,” Beatrice says. “We should really have words with the man who does these crosswords, Bertrand.”

“Probably,” Bertrand says. He fills in another answer, the pen a light tickle on her skin through the paper. “Do you want a root beer float?”

“Well, if you’re offering…”

Beatrice’s not even reading her book at this point, mostly, so she lifts her head and peers over the edge of the page like the most obvious spy in the word (as Lemony tells her, every time she does it) as Bertrand walks into the kitchen. He hits the light switch and warm golden light spills over his shoulders, across the curve of his spine, the faint freckles gathered on his skin that she can see if she really really looks when Bertrand isn’t so far away. It’s a great view (one of Beatrice’s top three favorites).

“You’re checking me out, aren’t you,” Bertrand calls.

“Guilty,” Beatrice says. “Move to the right so I can see your ass.”

Bertrand dutifully sidesteps to the left towards the fridge, all the good parts disappearing behind the counter.

“Some fun you are!” Beatrice shouts, dropping her book down. “Date Bertrand, they said! It’ll be fun, they said! Best lover in the world, they said!”

“Who’s saying all these things about me?” Bertrand asks. She can hear him clinking his way through the cabinets for the soda glasses, the soft hum of the fridge when he pulls out the root beer.

“Lemony,” Beatrice says. “Writing your virtues on the bathroom wall, in lengthy cursive.”

“He doesn’t strike me as one for vandalism.”

“All in the name of love, Bertrand,” Beatrice says. She lowers her voice for her top-notch Lemony impression. “Let it be known that Bertrand Baudelaire has, without question, such absolute charm that he could bring a nation to its knees, or someone with far less metaphorical knees.”

The whipped cream canister thunks against the countertop as Bertrand breaks into laughter, loud and bright (and very snorty) laughter that makes Beatrice start giggling and giggling. She goes for it again. “Tuesday evening, seven-thirty p.m.—Bertrand Baudelaire smiles. My heart belongs to him.”

The man in question comes back into the bedroom, still chuckling, a root beer float in each hand. Bertrand sits down next to her, offering her one. “That is, without a doubt, your worst impression, Bea.”

Beatrice sits up and smacks her book onto Bertrand’s chest (the crossword, meanwhile, flutters down on top of her thigh). “Hold that thought,” she says, grabbing the float and taking a sip.

He watches her with expectant eyes. Beatrice and Lemony had given him a seven-week course on making root beer floats, summers ago when they were all younger and a little shorter and Beatrice still wore her glasses and Lemony still watched exits and Bertrand still thought they didn’t like him at all, and it paid off, because, besides Beatrice deciding she was never going to wear glasses again, and Lemony realizing she and Bertrand were much better-looking than exit signs, and Bertrand understanding that they loved him like—what was it Lemony wrote down the other day, in that notebook he never lets her read and she does anyway?—the sperm whale loves the flavor of naval uniforms? it sounded Lemony enough, but still, besides all that, Bertrand could now make the best root beer floats this side of the Mississippi.

What about the other side? Lemony would ask, with that incessant need to be contrary, and Beatrice feels it like a pang in her chest and swallows too hard. Lemony really needs to stop working so late.

Bertrand leans in and kisses her, all root beer and a hint of that plain chapstick (spf 15) that he insists on using.

“You had some whipped cream on your lip,” Bertrand says, like he needs an excuse to kiss her. Then he kisses the other side of her mouth, just as soft and unchapped and sweeter than anything in the whole wide world.

“More whipped cream?” Beatrice inquires.

“Yep,” Bertrand says.

Beatrice holds up her root beer float, unsullied whipped cream and everything. Bertrand clinks his glass against hers and takes a sip.

“Smoothest man this side of the Mississippi to boot,” Beatrice mutters.

“What was that?” Bertrand asks, smiling.

He smiles like a million bucks, so Beatrice kisses him back, once on the cheek, and then keeps eye contact while slurping at her root beer float. What a guy.

Bertrand puts her book on the table next to his side of the bed and then picks up the crossword again in his free hand. “You really can’t think of anything for poolside conveniences?”

Beatrice squints at the paper. “Chaises.”

“Anglais.”

“No fun.”

“Where are your glasses?”

“Excuse you,” Beatrice says, looking affronted, “I have never worn glasses a day in my life.”

Bertrand doesn’t call her bluff (a smart move). “How do you think I’d look in glasses?” he says instead.

“That’s an unfair question, you’d look good in anything.”

“Anything?” Bertrand echos. He even raises an eyebrow.

“Anything,” Beatrice confirms. “I have a dire need to see you in all of Lemony’s hats, pronto.”

Bertrand frowns like he’s seriously considering it. “We’d need a very tall room,” he says, just as the phone on the bedside table starts ringing. Beatrice plucks the phone from the receiver and tucks it between her shoulder and her ear.

“You’ve reached Bertrand Baudelaire’s inability to complete a crossword,” she says into the phone. “One woman and a root beer float speaking.”

“I was just calling to—you made root beer floats without me?”

“I am a woman with needs, Lemony Snicket,” Beatrice says.

Bertrand covers his face with his hand, but his new round of laughter is still perfectly audible, probably even over the phone. Beatrice grins and toasts him with the glass.

Lemony ignores it, because he is a seasoned player at phone conversations with the two of them. “I was just wondering how you two were doing.”

“You mean compared to the last time you called, an hour ago?” Beatrice says. “Still fine. How’s the newspaper business?”

“About the same,” Lemony says. He sounds exhausted, and Beatrice feels maybe a little bad for giving him a hard time. “I’ll be at least another hour.”

Beatrice slouches back against the pillows. “An hour? Lemony, we’re here with root beer floats and all the lights on, you can’t come home any sooner?”

“Why are all the lights on?”

“You know Bertrand and candles.”

“I’m sorry I care about fire hazards!”

“Don’t make this a sad conversation,” Beatrice says, swatting at him with her hand. “A whole hour, Lemony?”

“It’ll be more than an hour if you keep asking me if it’ll be an hour,” he tells her.

“This is very uncalled for,” Beatrice comments. Bertrand nods, sipping at his drink again. “What are we supposed to do now?”

“Mm!” Bertrand swallows his mouthful of root beer. “You should ask him what he’s wearing.”

Beatrice covers the mouthpiece with her hand and opens her mouth in a mock gasp. “Why, Mr. Baudelaire,” she says, “I had no idea you could be so saucy.”

Bertrand waggles his eyebrows, and Beatrice stifles another round of giggles. She pulls the phone closer, resting it between them, she and Bertrand repositioning themselves a little lower on the bed (still holding the root beers, they’ve always been a necessary part of everything). Beatrice uncovers the mouthpiece, curling a finger through the phone cord. “Lemony,” she says, lowering her voice only a little this time (for the Sultry Version, not the Lemony Impersonation Version), “what are you wearing?”

Lemony sighs on the other end. “Clothes, Beatrice,” he says. “I am one hundred percent wearing clothes. I’m wearing shoes, too, would you look at that. I think I even have a hat somewhere.”

“Oh, come on, Lemony,” Beatrice says, rolling her eyes.

“Beatrice, we shouldn’t have illicit phone sex in a newspaper office—”

“Bertrand and I aren’t in a newspaper office.”

“Not technically,” Bertrand says, “but if you wanted, we could be there in—” He checks his watch, and why on earth is he still wearing a watch? Beatrice flips the catch on the back and throws it to the other side of the bedroom. Bertrand takes a bite out of the pile of whipped cream on Beatrice’s root beer float, and she gapes at the injustice, but that barely deters him from continuing. “—an indeterminable amount of time that I’d know if something dastardly hadn’t just happened to my watch.”

“I work here, I have to look all these people in the eye in the morning—”

“You’re there alone, aren’t you?” Beatrice says.

Lemony is awfully silent. She can almost hear him thinking. “What if someone walks in?”

“Lemony, it’s—” Beatrice twists around to look at the clock on the bedside table (“That’s what you get for throwing my watch,” Bertrand says. Beatrice shifts back and takes the entire root beer float from him and sets both their glasses on the table beside her empty plate before continuing). “It’s 11:30 at night, I don’t think anyone’s going to burst into the offices of the Daily Punctilio, desperate for crossword answers, and find you getting it on with your partners over the phone.”

“Is it really 11:30?” Lemony asks, a little too casually. “Also, tell Bertrand that 37-down is cabanas.”

Beatrice sighs. In the ongoing and frequent battle between Lemony’s professionalism (along with his tendency to be easily embarrassed) and the prospect of wonderful, illicit phone sex (which has happened before, on two occasions), the professionalism (and the embarrassment) tends to win. “Bertrand,” she says, “37-down is cabanas.”

“Oh, good,” Bertrand says, filling it in, this time holding the paper against the line of Beatrice’s hip. “Thank you.” Then he puts the pen and paper aside and gets an arm around Beatrice, which is always a thrill, his thumb brushing her waist, delightfully chill from the condensation on the root beer glass. “Tell him to take his jacket off.”

“Bertrand, in all his infinite wisdom, requests that you take your jacket off,” Beatrice says. “My personal request is for your shirt.”

“You’re going to list everything I could be wearing, aren’t you,” Lemony mutters.

“This is not the first time Bertrand and I have tried to get you out of a suit, I think we know what one consists of by now.”

“When you say ‘could,’ does that mean you aren’t wearing a suit?” Bertrand teases.

“Bertrand Baudelaire,” Lemony says, “I expected better of you.”

“Apparently he’s the saucy one,” Beatrice says.

“I don’t know if we can call sentence semantics saucy, though,” Bertrand says.

“I am still wearing a suit, for your information. Still wearing shoes, and still wearing a tie.”

“That reminds me, which tie were you wearing when you left this morning?” Beatrice asks, curling closer to Bertrand (and the phone). “The one Bertrand gave you? The one where I said, hmm, you sure have an awful lot of ties already, how about we not use this one for its intended purpose?” It’s a very nice memory. Bertrand seems to agree, because he smiles, dips down and presses his lips against the hollow of her throat. She’s sure Lemony can hear her breath catch. She can certainly hear his. “And we—didn’t?”

“I can’t believe that in a house with three reasonably responsible adults, none of us remembered to stop by the dry cleaner’s and pick up the rest of my ties,” Lemony says, and Beatrice has to give him this, his voice is remarkably level. “If I wore that particular tie, it was a collective miscalculation, and not because I was going to work late and miss the two of you terribly. The former I’m still doing, by the way.” The sound of one single typewriter key being almost forcibly pushed echoes on the line. “I am definitely working. I am definitely working hard. And if you make a comment about that distressingly obvious innuendo, I may die, Beatrice.”

“Oh, well, we can’t have that,” Beatrice whispers.

“We really can’t,” Bertrand says. “We like you too much.”

“I like you more, though.”

“Bea!”

“Look, I did that pitch-perfect impression earlier—”

“That doesn’t mean anything—”

“Impression?”

“Don’t listen to her, it was a joke about knees—”

“Well,” Lemony says, “she did say she was a woman with needs, didn’t she?”

It’s such a bad joke, it’s such a Bertrand sort of joke, but Beatrice can’t help it, it makes her cackle, burying her head in Bertrand’s shoulder as her whole body shakes with it. Bertrand starts laughing, again, snorts and all, and even Lemony’s laughing now, somewhere near her breast as the phone slips down, and she and Bertrand are going to get tangled in this phone cord if they’re not careful, but Beatrice just can’t possibly care.

Eventually, she manages to right the phone. “In the interests of fairness,” Lemony says, “and certainly not at all because I’d like to know, what are you wearing, Beatrice?”

Beatrice and Bertrand exchange a glance.

“Absolutely nothing,” Beatrice says.

There is a very pointed silence on the other end of the phone.

“And what,” Lemony continues, something sort of strangled about his voice, “is Bertrand wearing?”

Beatrice and Bertrand exchange a second glance. With a considerable amount of effort, Beatrice does not look at the rest of him.

“Not all that much now, to be honest,” Bertrand says. “I was wearing a watch.”

“You know,” Lemony says, “I think most, if not all, of this work can wait until tomorrow.”

Beatrice grins.

ending notes:

i am thoroughly embarrassed about knees/needs but look, i also cackled, and i keep laughing every time i reread it

additionally, the seven-week course in root beer float-making

#asoue #a series of unfortunate events

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vfdbaudelairefile13 · 4 years

Text

Chapter Fifty-Six:

The One Where Klaus Performs a Cranioectomy

Violet hesitantly walked into the Library of Records glancing around at the wreckage that Esme Squalor had created. Her heart sank in her chest as she glanced over at the emergency exit door that she had tried to escape out of only to find herself in the arms of Count Olaf. She shuddered remembering how trapped she felt in the man’s arms.

“Ed? Is that really you!?” a friendly voice called out. Violet stiffened when she realized that a man was walking towards her hurriedly. She glanced back at her father who was slightly behind her. He was smiling towards the man and only shifted his gaze to Violet when he realized that she was looking at him. He gave his daughter a small smile and a quick nod to the head. The man walked over one of the fallen filing cabinets and smiled at Violet. “There you are, Ed! You’re so grown up!” the man said as he rushed to Violet and wrapped his arms tightly around her. Violet stiffened more at the feel of the embrace. The last time anyone had grabbed her in this particular room had been Olaf so she was feeling a bit uneasy as this stranger grabbed hold of her and held her. But unlike Olaf, the man’s embrace was warm and it made Violet feel safe. Like her father’s embrace had made her feel. Slowly, she eased into the hug and eventually even hugged the man back although she tried to turn towards her father to give him a look of confusion. “Ed...oh how I’ve missed you,”

Violet slowly released her grip from the man. “I’m sorry, but you must have me mistaken for...someone...else?” she said as she took a good look at the man before her. It was odd, he seemed familiar and recognizable but Violet could have sworn she had never met this man in her entire life. She had seen his face in pictures, though. Although, that wasn’t what had Violet confused as to why he was so familiar. When he glanced up at his face, she could see a weird mix of partial Sunny and partial Klaus. The man had the same eye and nose shape as her baby sister while the color of his hair, the way he wore his hair, and the glasses on his face had her thinking of Klaus.

The man smiled. “Oh no, you’re Ed.”

“Ed?” Violet repeated, confused as she glanced back at Lemony, who had the biggest smile on his face as he wiped a few happy tears from his eyes. “My name’s Violet,”

The man smiled again, he gave Violet a gentle pat on the back. “Well, L here tells me you’re an inventor,”

Violet smiled and nodded her head. Her father never wasted an opportunity to brag about her mechanical skills to anyone. They could be his closest friend or a complete stranger and Lemony Snicket would be yabbering on and on about his daughter’s inventive skills. “I am…” she said slowly.

“Well ‘Ed’ is short for Thomas Alva Edison...one of the greatest inventors...like you.” the man said smiling.

Violet nodded. “I’m sorry, you and I have never met...my name is…”

“Violet Malina Snicket,” the man replied, still smiling.

“How do you…”

“Well I chose your middle name,” the man explained. “And you and I have met before...you just wouldn’t remember it seeing as you were so little.”

“Wait…”

“I’m Bertrand Baudelaire,” Bertrand Baudelaire stated.

“But...but...you’re dead…” Violet whimpered. “So...if I’m seeing you...I...I have to be…”

“Sweetheart, we’ve discussed this.” Lemony said from behind her. “You’re not dead...we are. Your subconscious is trying to help you cope with what’s happening on the outside world.”

“What is happening in the…”

“Nothing we need to worry about,” Bertrand explained. “You’ll be safe soon,”

“But how do you…” Violet asked, confused. “How am I…”

Bertrand and Lemony looked at one another and smiled. Bertrand pulled Violet into a tight embrace when he had seen that she was crying. “Shhhh,” he said holding his eldest daughter close. “No need for tears. Everything is going to get better eventually,”

“No, it won’t,” Violet replied. “Olaf won’t stop until…”

“I knew the only downside of Lemony raising you would be you inheriting his pessimistic views on life,” a female voice said. Violet stiffened once more as she heard the click and clank of the woman’s heels. Even if these heels were normal and produced a different sound than Esme’s stiletto knife heels, Violet couldn’t help but cringe each time she heard the sound of the woman approaching. The woman carefully walked around a few of the fallen cabinets, glancing from left to right studying the damage that Esme had created. Violet tried her best to get a glimpse of the woman’s face but she was unable to. “You know...all of this for some drugs…” the woman muttered pointing to the damage. Violet cocked her head confused as the woman tried to step over one of the cabinets as Bertrand had a few minutes prior. Something in Violet made her retreat behind Bertrand as Lemony quickly walked up towards the woman and helped her step over the cabinet. Violet didn’t know why but the voice seemed vaguely familiar. A familiarity that Violet was unsure of until she got a glimpse of the woman.

The woman looked up at her with tears in her eyes. “My...my Violet Malina,” the woman said before rushing towards Violet and hugging her. The woman hugged Violet tighter than Lemony or Bertrand had which surprised Violet she didn’t believe that was possible. Violet recognized the woman’s face from every time she glanced either at her locket or in the mirror. The woman’s face was a near carbon copy of Violet’s own face except for the eyes and when she glanced towards the woman’s eyes she could instantly see that her brother possessed her eyes. The woman cried as she held onto Violet. “My baby girl…I’m so sorry,” she cried as her grip on Violet strengthened. Violet felt as though she couldn’t breathe, but she didn’t find it a problem because she was one hundred percent convinced that she was dead.

“Bea…” Violet began but stopped. It didn’t feel right to call this woman by her first name when there was a more appropriate name for Violet to call her. It was a title that Beatrice first obtained when Violet was born and Violet didn’t see an issue with her using it even if this was a dream and she had never met this woman before. “Mom?”

Beatrice released some of her grip from Violet to look at her daughter. Beatrice was rendered speechless but slowly nodded her head as she wiped her eyes once more. “Yeah...I’m...I’m your mother,” she said as she put her hand on one of Violet’s bruised cheeks.

Violet tried to keep a smile on her face as she wrapped her arms around Beatrice tightly and began to sob into the woman’s shoulder. Beatrice ran her fingers through Violet’s tangled hair, doing her best to gently untangle it in the process. “Shhh,” Beatrice cooed. “Mother’s here now,”

“You...I...I…” Violet cried.

“Violet...I’m so proud of you,” Beatrice cried, she glanced up at Bertrand when he cleared his throat. “Sorry,” she called out to Bertrand as she looked back down at Violet. “ We are so proud of you, sweetheart.”

“Proud of me?” Violet repeated. “For what?”

“For what?” Bertrand repeated incredulously. “For protecting your siblings, of course.” Bertrand stepped closer to Beatrice and Violet, pulling them into a huge embrace. He then glanced over at Lemony, gesturing for the awkward bibliophile to join the embrace. Violet felt a sense of belonging and safety as she felt the strong embrace of all three of her parents. But even though she felt safe in their arms, she began to cry, all of her emotions hitting her at once.

She glanced up at them, looking more so towards Bertrand and Beatrice as she slowly shook her head. “But...I haven’t...Sunny was still…Olaf kidnapped her... and...and Klaus is…he’s severely...traumatized...and...” she cried through her tears.

“None of that is your fault, Ed,” Bertrand explained.

Beatrice gently broke the embrace and knelt down in front of Violet. She placed her hand once more on Violet’s bruised cheek. “Vi...sweetie...your father is right,” Beatrice said. “ None of that is your fault. You selflessly took them under your wing the moment you realized who they were.”

“Well...I had to…” Violet explained, shrugging her shoulders. “Snickets take care of their own...and they’re my siblings,”

Her three parents smiled. “You selflessly took them in,” Lemony said.

“You sacrificed yourself for their safety,” Bertrand added.

“And...when you had the chance to escape...you got recaptured because you thought your brother was in danger,” Beatrice added smiling. “ That shows how big your heart is, Violet. It shows how much you love your younger siblings and how much you truly belong with them,”

Violet shook her head when Beatrice mentioned her belonging with her siblings. “I don’t belong with them…” she admitted meekly. “They…”

“Now, Violet, why wouldn’t you belong with your siblings?” Bertrand asked.

“You’re just as much of a Baudelaire as they are,” Beatrice explained. “You are my first born. You are my eldest, not Klaus. Klaus is our middle child, Violet.”

Violet nodded her head but continued to cry. “But...there’s...there’s this...invisible wall…”

Beatrice shook her head as she wiped Violet’s tears away. “There is no wall. There is no barrier. Klaus and Sunny are your siblings. If…if life hadn’t turned out the way it had...all three of you would’ve been Snickets and Baudelaires.”

“But...Olaf and Esme…and Mr. Poe…” Violet cried out.

Lemony gave a low growl as Bertrand’s facial expression turned sour. “Mr. Poe is...an incompetent buffoon,” Beatrice explained.

“But he’s in charge of Klaus and Sunny’s affairs…”

“He was the lesser evil of our two options,” Bertrand explained.

“Who was the second option?” Violet asked curiously.

Beatrice gestured to the destroyed library. “The bitch who did all this,” Beatrice explained. Violet gasped.

“And speaking of her,” Bertrand began as he, too, knelt down to Violet’s level. “Her and Olaf don’t understand how the basics of family work. You are our daughter as much as Sunny is,”

Violet nodded her head as she glanced up towards her father. “Are you sure this is a dream?” she asked in a low voice as he nodded his head. “Cause if it isn’t...and...I’m...down for the count...I wouldn’t mind staying here with you.” she admitted.

Beatrice and Bertrand frowned as Lemony sighed. “Sweetie, this is a dream and...eventually you’ll wake up and have to deal with whatever is happening in the outside world.”

Violet nodded as she looked back towards Beatrice and Bertrand. “You are everything I hoped you’d grow up to be,” Beatrice told Violet.

“L didn’t do a bad job at all,” Bertrand agreed.

Lemony groaned. “I wish you’d stop calling me ‘L’,”

“Well, I know how much you hate your name,” Bertrand explained with a smirk.

“I hate ‘L’ more than I hate my name,” Lemony informed. “And you know this,”

Beatrice rolled her eyes at the two men as they bickered but she focused her attention solely on her daughter. “I wish I could’ve seen you grow up…” Beatrice cried, her eyes filling with tears once more. “God, you would’ve made us so proud every day.”

Bertrand nodded as Violet jolted violently. “What’s happening?” she asked worriedly.

“You might be waking up,” Lemony explained.

“But...I don’t wanna leave you guys just yet,” Violet pleaded.

Beatrice sighed. “We would love to stay with you, too. But you’re needed, Violet. The three of you need each other to survive Olaf,”

“But…”

Bertrand hugged Violet once more quickly. “Can you do us a favor sweetie, can you tell Klaus and Sunny that we love and miss them,” he said. “Can you also tell your brother that we don’t blame him for anything bad that has happened to Sunny. We should have never asked him to make that promise,”

“If everything went the way you had planned...I would’ve been asked to keep that promise...right?” Violet asked.

Bertrand sighed and nodded slowly. “You don’t have to keep that promise either, Ed. It’s a truly unfair and impossible promise.”

“I wouldn’t call it impossible,” Violet said, shrugging her shoulders.

Bertrand released Violet from the embrace but gently put his hands on her shoulders. “I don’t want you thinking you have to take on that promise for your brother. We should have never made him promise that. I would prefer that the three of you promise to take care of one another...as a team.” he explained sternly but kindly.

Violet nodded slowly, her eyes filling to the brim with tears. Bertrand released Violet’s shoulders as Lemony hugged her. “You are stronger than he is, Violet. You’re fighting isn’t for nothing,” he explained. “He may have tiny victories...but you will prevail overall.”

“But...if…” Violet cried.

Lemony released Violet from the embrace and Beatrice grabbed onto Violet and hugged her tightly. “The three of you will take care of each other. I know it. I have no doubt about it. You have grown into an amazing young woman. You couldn’t make me prouder even if you tried.” Beatrice explained. Violet jolted once more in her mother’s arms.

Violet nodded. “Please don’t leave me,” she cried. “I can’t do this alone.”

“You’re not alone,” Beatrice explained, her voice shifting slightly. “You have your siblings.”

“But they left…” Violet cried. “Olaf said…”

“Olaf is a lying piece of shit,” Bertrand explained, although his voice shifted like Beatrice’s. It was as if Bertrand sounded younger...prepubescent, even.

She moved her head slightly to look towards Bertrand, who was becoming blurry. “ No!” Violet cried as she reached out for Bertrand as she continued to hug Beatrice. “ Dad...don’t go!” she called out. Her heart fluttered in confusion as Bertrand slowly shrunk down a bit, his face shifted a bit, becoming rounder. Violet had to blink a couple of times as she watched Bertrand slowly form into her brother. “ Klaus…?” she cried out, wrapping her arms around her mother tighter than before. “ No...no...you can’t be here. You can’t be dead, too.”

But the Klaus in front of her didn’t say anything as if he couldn’t see who was holding her in a tight embrace. Lemony sighed. “Sweetie, we’ve been through this…” he began. Violet turned towards him and watched as he was becoming more and more blurry. “...you’re...not dead…”

Violet reached out for Lemony, but Lemony didn’t reach out for her. “ Mr. Lemons! Please don’t go!”

Violet’s eyes filled with tears as her father was going in and out of blurriness. As if he was only half disappearing. Was she waking up? What was happening? All of Violet’s questions were hushed when she felt the woman holding her in the embrace begin to laugh. It was an unsettling laugh. “ Now...I wouldn’t say that…” her mother said, although at this point, the voice that came out of her mother’s mouth was not how she imaged her mother’s voice just moments ago. It was a snarling voice, a recognizable voice. “ It’s time to lose our first patient,” the feminine voice snarled before laughing again.

Violet released her grip from around her mother and watched in horror as her mother’s hair bleached down to blonde before her eyes. Her mother’s shoes turned into stiletto knives and her mother’s face turned from the one that smiled back at her every time she glanced down at her locket to the face of a woman who will probably haunt plenty of violet’s nightmares.

“ Mom! No...please come back!” she shrieked as she pushed herself away from the vision of Esme Squalor that was once her mother. “ No...no...no…” she panicked. She looked back at where her brother stood. He seemed angry, but he was silent. “ Klaus! What are you doing, get out of here, run!” she turned back towards where she had last scene her father. “Mr. Lemons...thank God you’re still here…” she started to say as Lemony once again began to slowly disappear and reappear but always staying blurry. “ No…no...you...not you, too!” she pleaded as her father merely cocked his head to the side and began to bellow out a cruel laugh. A laugh that Violet and her siblings knew all too well. It was a wheezy laugh. She fell to her knees crying. “ No...no...no…” From where she sat, she watched in absolute horror as her father’s pant leg shrank, becoming unable to hide his tattooed ankle. She glanced up towards his face. “ Mr. lemons come back!” she pleaded, reaching a hand out for her father as he closed his eyes and jolted back a bit. When he opened his eyes though, they were no longer dull and blue. They were green and shiny. The same degree of shiny that had been plaguing Violet’s life since the tragic death of her father and the same shiny eyes that had been plaguing her siblings’ lives since even before then. She watched in horror as her father’s silhouette turned into the silhouette of the man who would surely haunt her every nightmare. “ No!” she screamed at the top of her lungs. “ No...no...no…” she glared towards Olaf. “ Bring him back!” she turned towards Esme who was still cackling. “ Bring her back! Bring them all back!”

“ Do it!” Esme screeched towards Klaus, who stood there confused.. “ Do it!”

Violet looked confused towards Klaus. “Do what?” she pondered.

“The best thing...for you to do...for our patient,” Olaf began as he, too, turned towards Klaus.

“Patient?” Violet asked worriedly. She looked from the two villains to her brother. “Where’s Sunny? Klaus...what’s happening?” she asked, her heart pounding. She glanced around and only now began to notice that the Library of Records looked vastly different. It was far too bright, every way she looked she couldn’t see anything but a very bright light. She watched as Esme took a step closer towards Klaus, she could hear the vicious sound of Esme’s knife heel stabbing the floor. Violet quickly stood. “ No! Stay away from him!” she pleaded.

“Is to remove her head altogether,” Olaf hissed.

Violet looked towards him with utter confusion. “Remove whose head?” she asked incredulously.

She looked towards Klaus, who looked up at Olaf and Esme, he seemed to be nodding. “ Klaus…” she called out, but he didn’t say anything. She glanced down at his hands and noticed that her brother was holding a long, rusty knife.

“There’s a chance…” Klaus began. Although Violet was confused. The voice that was coming out of Klaus’ mouth didn’t entirely sound like his. But his lips were moving perfectly to dictate what was being said. “...that the patient could die. ”

Olaf nodded his head. “Sometimes we make sacrifices for the sake of…protection...”

Violet shook her head slowly, none of this felt right. She was crying hard and trying her best to walk away from the scene that was unfolding before her. But it was like she was restrained. She might have been standing, but every time she moved her hands or legs, no movement followed. “ No...no…they said I wasn’t dead.”

Olaf turned towards Klaus. “Isn’t that so?”

“What do we do?” Klaus asked, his voice sounding more like himself. Violet’s head was spinning. Was she still dreaming? Was she finally dead? If that was the case why did her parents disappear?

“Before I make the first incision…” Klaus began. “This is a knife,”

“Well, let’s see you use it!” Esme screeched, although her voice was rough and wheezy like Olaf. “ do it! Do it!”

“ Do it!” Olaf barked. Klaus looked down towards the knife in his hand and then he looked at Violet for the first time since he had appeared in place of his father. He stood there, unmoving, just continuing to stare towards Violet. Olaf and Esme seemed to become impatient because they rushed over towards Klaus and began whispering to him. To violet’s horror and confusion, Klaus whispered back to them but as Violet watched on it didn’t seem as though Klaus was arguing with the two villains, but it seemed like he was agreeing with them.

“If...it means...leaving... Violet,” Klaus explained as Violet’s eyes widened.

“ No...no...no...no...you can’t leave me… ” Violet pleaded as the blinding light was beginning to consume the room around her. “ You son of a...you can’t leave me! Mom! Dad! Mr. Lemons! Come back! I can’t…” she whimpered as she felt herself slowly opening her eyes, feeling as if she had been consumed by the bright light that had once surrounded her in her dreams.

________________________________________________________________

Esme smirked as she held Klaus back every time that he tried to move closer to his older sister. Both Klaus and Esme watch as Olaf looked directly at Esme slowly nodding his head. Klaus looked from Olaf to Esme angrily as Esme smirked once more as she released her grip on Klaus’ shoulder with a slight push to get him to walk closer to his unconscious sister who lay on the gurney. He shuddered and felt his blood run cold as he glanced around slowly at the surprisingly packed operating theater. Klaus Baudelaire was well aware that operating theaters are not nearly as popular as dramatic theaters, musical theaters, and movie theaters, and it is easy to know why. A dramatic theater is a large, dark room in which actors perform a play, and if you are in the audience, you can enjoy yourself by listening to the dialog and looking at the costumes. A musical theater is a large, dark room in which musicians perform a symphony, and if you are in the audience, you can enjoy yourself by listening to the melodies and watching the conductor wave his little stick around. And a movie theater is a large, dark room in which a projectionist shows a film, and if you are in the audience, you can enjoy yourself by eating popcorn and gossiping about movie stars. But an operating theater is a large, oddly lit room in which doctors perform medical procedures, and if you are in the audience, the best thing to do is to leave at once because there is never anything on display in an operating theater but pain, suffering and discomfort, and it was for this reason that Klaus was surprised to see how many people filled the theater. There were rows of doctors in white coats who were clearly eager to see a new operation being performed. There were clusters of nurses sitting together and whispering with excitement about the world’s first cranioectomy. There was a large group of the Volunteers Fighting Disease who seemed ready to burst into song if needed. And there were a great many people who looked like they had simply walked over to the operating theater to see what was playing. He also noticed in the front row was the rest of Olaf’s vicious troupe. All of them glaring and smirking at him.

As he stepped closer and closer to his sister, he kept his glare on Count Olaf. Klaus gasped at how dreadful his older sister looked. When Olaf had mentioned ‘Sleeping Beauty’, he was referring to a fairy tale that you have probably heard one thousand times. But when Klaus finally got a good look at Violet, it looked nothing like a fairy tale. He shuddered when he saw his elder sister laying on the gurney, he noticed that this particular gurney was as rusty as the knife that Esme held, and its sheets were ripped and soiled. The middle orphan felt his blood slowly begin to boil when he noticed that she was no longer wearing her overalls but had on just a hospital gown, a hospital gown that was as filthy as the sheets. He looked from her, his full face of guilt and remorse.

Why didn’t he protect her? He knew the kind of danger she was in. Olaf had made his intentions with Violet very clear. He thought. He slowly walked over closer to Violet’s numb body noticing Violet’s two bruised cheeks even under all of her hair that had been messily thrown over her eyes so that no one would recognize her face from The Daily Punctilio. Except for her cheeks, Klaus noticed that the rest of Violet’s face was pale, as pale and empty as the surface of the moon, and her mouth was open slightly in a vacant frown underneath the anesthesia mask. He shook his head, holding back tears as he noticed that his sister’s wrists and ankles were tied to the corners of the gurney. Her fingers hung loosely over the edge of the gurney, her fingertips all pointing down towards the floor. Even her bare feet slumped over the edge of gurney, completely limp and lifeless. She was entirely helpless. He had never seen anyone so helpless before. He glanced up at the man who stood before him, who wore the biggest chilling grin. Sunny could feel Klaus’ chest rise and fall as he took a deep angry breath, but still somehow casually walked up to the man. Klaus looked from the sinister man to his older sister, who looked as though she had been dropped onto the gurney from a great height. Honestly, if it weren’t for the slow and steady rise of her chest as she breathed, it would have looked like she had not survived the fall. Klaus looked at her in horrified silence, Sunny pushing Klaus’ medical coat apart just slightly between two buttons so she, too, can get a peak at her sister and when she had, she gasped loudly, moving her fingers so that the jacket would obstruct her view from her sister once more. Klaus could feel Sunny shudder in response to the horrifying view. Klaus put a hand over where Sunny was, in an effort to comfort her.

Klaus glared towards Olaf and slowly turned to the audience. “Excuse me, ladies and gentleman.” he called out to the audience. “I must have a quick word with Dr. Medical-School, here,” Klaus hissed in his disguised deep British accent. Olaf looked at him confused and even Sunny gave a look of confusion from under Klaus’ medical coat. Klaus grabbed Olaf’s arm, pulling him close to the young boy’s face. “ Listen to me very carefully,” Klaus hissed in a tone that sent chills down his younger sister’s back even causing her to shudder. “ If you touched Violet in any way…” Klaus stopped speaking when Olaf merely smirked at the boy, Klaus watched the sinister bastard shrug his shoulders as if he had no idea as to what Klaus was indicating.

He pulled Olaf close to him once more, harsher this time, causing Olaf to bump into Sunny directly, forgetting for a brief moment that his sister resided in the front of his disguise. To focused on protecting his older sister at the moment. “ If you touched Violet...I promise you, you will have Hell to pay!” He hissed. “ No one touches my sisters.”

Olaf smirked at the boy, a sinister smirk, laced with cruelty. Klaus didn’t know what the smirk meant. Olaf gripped his arm and leaned in real close to whisper a cruel response to the thirteen year old boy. “ Maybe I did...and maybe I didn’t. Wouldn’t you like to know?”

Esme’s face lit up with an idea as she quickly walked towards Klaus roughly handing him the sharp, rusty knife. “Don’t forget this,” she hissed, smiling towards the crowd. She glanced back towards Klaus. “ You’ll need it.” As she began to remove herself from center stage, she glanced at a confused Olaf whose face was a mix of pure confusion and utter annoyance. He looked from the knife, that was now being held by Klaus. Then at Esme, who merely shrugged her shoulders at him. Olaf gave a low growl as he glanced around at the crowd trying to rewire his plan seeing that Esme had handed Klaus a weapon. A devious smirk was planted on his face.

He gestured towards Violet. “Well, hurry along, Doctor Faustus. The anesthesia won’t last forever.”

Klaus looked from the rusty knife in his hands towards his older sister and then to Olaf, who merely turned his attention to the crowd.

“I do hope she doesn’t wake up in the middle of the operation,” Esme called out to Klaus, as she grinned happily at the prospect of what she had just said happening. Klaus turned to her in utter disbelief as she glared at him. He looked down nervously at his unconscious sister completely unsure of what to do.

“Doctors, nurses, Volunteers Fighting Disease, gore fans, regular people, welcome to the operating theater of Heimlich Hospital! I am Dr. Mattathias Medical School and these are my associates,” he said gesturing towards an angry and confused Klaus and a bloodthirsty Esme.

“And I am Nurse Cassandra Ursula Terrific Elliandra…” Esme said loudly.

“And of course, the man who will be performing the operation,” Olaf interrupted rolling his eyes at Esme. “the marvelous Doctor Faustus.” He gestured towards Klaus. Klaus responded by giving Olaf a pleading look. His way of begging Olaf to stop this insane plot. He knew it was effortless but he couldn’t help himself. Klaus looked around the operating theater as it erupted in applause. He gulped and glanced down at the sharp knife that was in his hands. He couldn’t control himself but he began to shake.

“As I’m sure you’ve heard, a cranioectomy is a procedure in which the patient’s head is removed.” Olaf explained as Esme pushed to center stage a large mobile diagram. She waved to the audience as she pulled down one of the few slides and showed a detailed diagram of a human head. “Scientists have discovered that many health problems are rooted in the brainial area.” Olaf continued to explain. “So the best thing to do for the patient is to remove the head altogether.”

Klaus looked horrified towards Olaf as he spoke. He simply shook his head in terror as he glanced back down at Violet. Esme took the time to pull the diagram’s draw-string releasing it. The slides of the diagram rolled back to its initial state quickly causing Klaus to jump at the sudden noise.

“Now, a cranioectomy is as dangerous as it is necessary. There is a chance that the patient,” he began as he turned menacingly towards Klaus. “May tragically die during the operation. Leaving their enormous fortune up for grabs. But sometimes we make sacrifices in the name of advancement.” As he said this, he stepped closer towards Violet and stroked her cheek and even ran a couple of fingers across her neck causing Klaus’ anger to boil once more. “Isn’t that so, Dr. Faustus?” he asked in a braggy tone as he turned towards Klaus.

Klaus began to breathe heavily as he looked from Olaf who was standing next to his sister’s gurney and Esme who was blocking the nearest exit. He glanced around the operating theater looking at all of the people who were eagerly awaiting him to cut off his sister’s head. He felt his legs becoming jello as he held the rusty knife limply in one hand. He walked a few steps away from Violet’s gurney, away from Olaf, and he put his free hand over his mouth to hide the fact that he was talking and at the same time to echo his words in hopes of Sunny being able to hear him.

“Sunny...what do we do?” he cried helplessly. “I’m surrounded by people who expect me to saw Violet’s head off.”

Sunny looked up at Klaus, cringed when she remembered how Violet looked on the gurney, and then she took a deep breath as she tried to think of something...anything that they could do. “Stall?” she suggested.

The word ‘stall’ has two meaning, but as with most words with two meanings, you can figure out which meaning is being used by looking at the situation. The word ‘stall’ , for example could refer to a place where horses are kept, but Klaus knew at once that Sunny meant something more along the lines of, “We’ll try to postpone the operation as long as we can,” and he nodded silently in agreement. The middle orphan took a deep breath and closed his eyes, trying to think of something that could help him postpone the cranioectomy, and all at once he thought of something he had read.

When you read as many books as Klaus Baudeliare, you are going to learn a great deal of information that might not be useful for a long time. But then suddenly like a strike of lightning, or a grand piano falling out of a window, the opportunity arises to use the infromation gleaned from even the most unlikely piece of reading. “Before I make the first incision,” Klaus called out to the audience nervously. “I...I...I think...I think I should talk a little bit about the equipment I’m using.”

Olaf looked at Klaus unamused as he folded his arms across his chest. Klaus walked around Violet’s gurney towards the anesthetic machine making sure not to look at it and making sure to not make it obvious what he was planning to do.

In the case of Klaus Baudelaire, it was an obscure book from the Baudelaire library, The Complete and Total History of Knives. Klaus raised the rusty, sharp knife higher showing it off to the crowd. Knowing fully that his hands were shaking the entire time. “Th-this is a knife.” he explained.

Olaf rolled his eyes tiresomely. “We know it’s a knife,” he explained coldly to Klaus. “ Now let’s see you use it,” he hissed as he glared at the young boy.

Klaus glared back at the man nervously. “Any real doctor would never perform a procedure without explaining everything first. And we are both real doctors, aren’t we?” He looked pointedly at Olaf as he asked the question. Olaf opened his mouth to say something but instead gave Klaus a low inhumane growl. He frowned towards the young boy but took a deep breath smiling towards the crowd. He looked back at Klaus, who smirked back at him. Olaf took another deep breath and gave Klaus a toothy grin. “Keep it short, Doctor.” he ordered as he allowed Klaus to continue on.

Klaus took a deep breath before addressing the crowd once more. “The knife is the oldest surgical tool in the world. Early knives have been found in Egyptian tombs and Mayan temples,” he explained as he noticed that Esme was playing with her fingernails and already yawning and Olaf had turned his back to the boy to mouth something to his henchpeople. Klaus took this time to slowly back up towards the anesthesia machine. He reached it with no problem, glanced back at both villains, who were still distracted, and flipped the switch from ON to OFF. “Where they were used for ceremonial purposes, and mostly fashioned out of stone. Gradually bronze and iron became the essential materials in knives, ,although some cultures fashioned them out of the incisors of slain animals.” Klaus was surprised that even when fighting back a panic attack for the most part he was still able to infodump about the random things he had read in books so many years ago.

Fearing that it wouldn’t be enough to help his sister gain consciousness quick enough, Klaus leaned back as far as he can, still glancing between the two villains and unhooked the tube that connected from the machine to Violet’s mask. Violet shifted only slightly and only barely. It was so bare that Klaus hadn’t even noticed it. “There are many different types of knives,” Klaus said as he leaned back against Violet’s gurney as if he was trying to relax. Olaf turned towards the boy and looked at him confused. “Which I’m going to list for you now…”

Olaf growled again as he dropped his head in disappointment. “ Do you ever shut up?!” he hissed for only Klaus and Sunny to hear. Klaus smirked as he continued to slowly walk around the front of Violet’s gurney, holding the knife in his shaky hands.

“There’s the pen knife, the pocket knife, the drawing knife, the...the...the butter knife,” Klaus listed as he felt Olaf’s grip on his shoulder.

“What a lengthy explanation, ladies and gentleman!” Olaf yelled in annoyance as Klaus’ eyes widened again. Klaus shook his head slowly, looking towards Olaf trying one last time to plead with his eyes. “But it’s time for the main event!”

Klaus’ pleading eyes vanished into a glare as the crowd around him began to applaud. He looked around the room wishing that the audience could see through Olaf’s ridiculous games.

“Yes!” Esme shouted, obviously losing her patience with Klaus’ stalling. “I think all these lovely people will understand the process better once,” she turned toward Klaus, a face full of no emotion at all. It was a chilling face. It made Klaus’ skin crawl. “The head has been removed.”

Klaus looked to Esme with frightened eyes as he looked from her to his older sister. Violet moved on her gurney, ever so slightly. Her mouth opened a little wider under the mask, and one of her limp fingers stirred briefly. The motions were so small that Klaus noticed them. He gave a small smile. Could he keep stalling until the anesthesia completely wore off?

“ Do it!” Esme demanded.

“Yeah! Cut off her head!” someone in the crowd shouted. Klaus could hear a few more people in the crowd agree.

Olaf gestured towards Violet’s gurney. “ Do it!” he hissed. Klaus walked over towards Violet’s gurney.

His sister looked so helpless. He wanted nothing more for her to wake up and help him out of this mess. But as he stared at her, she only moved her hand again, just barely.

“Be-before I...before I can…” Klaus stuttered. “I...I…”

The crowd around him murmured in agreement as Olaf and Esme continued to chant ‘Do it’ as if that alone would make Klaus cut off his sister’s head. He looked back down at Violet with pleading eyes. “Vi...please wake up,” he whispered worriedly. He cautiously poked at his sister’s arm hoping that the slight touch would be enough to annoy her awake.

Klaus listened in horror as Olaf’s troupe followed along with Esme and Olaf’s chanting and soon the entirety of the Operating Theater was chanting alongside the villains. Klaus slowly turned in a complete circle, looking around at the audience and the two villains who were on stage alongside him. He was pleading with everyone in the crowd silently, even trying to plead with Esme and Olaf. Even Sunny, who the whole time had been doing her best to keep her anxious brother calm, was starting to shake and tremble at the overstimulation that was happening in the theater. The poorly lit room was becoming darker and darker as Klaus turned in complete circles as the noise around him got louder and louder. Olaf glared at him as he hissed for Klaus to saw off his sister’s head and Esme clapped and chanted as loud as she could. She seemed more eager for this to happen than Olaf was. Olaf seemed to have been going with the flow since it seemed as though Esme had changed up his plans a bit.

Klaus nodded slowly towards Olaf as he stepped close to Violet. He clasped the knife in both hands as he began to hold it up over his helpless sister. He could feel tears starting to stream slowly down his face as he studied her gurney and tried to think of any escape routes. The only one he could clearly see was the one Esme was still blocking. He looked down at Violet’s sleeping figure and wondered if he could make a very small cut on Violet’s neck, one that could merely wake her up but wouldn’t injure her in the slightest. He looked at the rusty blade, which was shaking up and down as his hands and body began to tremble from his fear and anxiety. He didn’t like being so close to Olaf at all, let alone with sharp tools anywhere near. He hated not being able to control the situation, he had tried to stall but Olaf and Esme had ruined any and all attempts at that. He hated the fact that the operating theater had become too loud and too over stimulating. So he couldn’t help but start to slightly fall apart. There was no way in Hell that he was going to actually saw off Violet’s head. Surely, Olaf and Esme knew this. Neither of them could truly believe that he would.

Was this Olaf’s plan? To make him surrender? To expose Klaus and Sunny to the crowd? Or was his plan to actually have Klaus murder his big sister? Klaus was so confused and that might be the thing that was upsetting him the most. He didn’t like not understanding something. Sure, Olaf’s plan rarely ever made sense but this one took the cake. What was killing Violet going to help Olaf gain? He has to want me to give in. It’s just sick mind games with him. He wants to know that he’s won.

Sunny took this time to take another sneak peek from inside her brother’s medical coat. It’s like the youngest orphan hadn’t learned her lesson from the last time she took a sneak peek because as she slowly pulled the fabric of the medical coat apart, she took her own look at a sleeping Violet and then gasped when she realized that her brother was now holding the knife over Violet. Sunny looked up at Klaus with wide, wide eyes. Thankfully, for the middle orphan he was unable to see the face Sunny was giving him.

The crowd around the two Baudelaires began to get louder and louder. Olaf even stepping closer and closer to Klaus demanding for him to cut off his sister’s head. Klaus was crying trying to get everyone around him to stop chanting. He turned towards Violet once more and noticed how her face flinched slightly. He could have swarn he heard a soft but desperate ‘no’ come from her mouth under the mask but he had no way of knowing for sure.

Klaus looked towards Olaf with a look of utter defeat and fear. Klaus bowed his head down as Olaf began to smirk. “I...I can’t do it,” he whispered, looking up at the ceiling. High above them was a swuare intercom speaker that he had not noticed before and teh sight of the speaker made him think of something. “ I can’t do it,” he announced depressingly towards the crowd.

“ Why not?” Olaf asked in a vicious but taunting manner.

Klaus swallowed, hoping he still sounded confident and not like a scared child. “I...I cannot perform this operation, there’s one thing thtat has to be done, the most important thing we do here at Heimlich Hospital.”

“And what might that be?” Olaf hissed annoyed.

“P-p-paperwork,” Klaus replied nervously.

Olaf looked towards the teen boy irritated and tired as the entire crowd around them gasped and agreed with Klaus. Klaus smiled and addressed the crowd. “We haven’t done the paperwork!”

“Paperwork! Yes, of course!” a nurse shouted happily.

“Somebody call Hal!” suggested a doctor. “He’s in charge of the Library of Records, so he can solve this paperwork problem.”

“I will! I’ll go get him right now!” One of the Volunteers Fighting Disease called out as she stood up from her seat. Klaus was unhappy to learn she was the one who had early been so eager to see him cut his sister’s head off.

“Just a brief pause, ladies and gentleman,” Olaf called out to the audience as they began to murmur amongst themselves. He angrily turned to Klaus, “ a minor interruption!” he hissed frustratedly. Olaf glared towards the disguised orphans and angrily sighed.

Klaus took this time to grab Olaf’s arm. “Let my sister go,” he hissed.

Olaf gave a low chuckle, Klaus gripped his arm tighter. “You only need one of us,” Klaus said as he looked down at where Sunny was and then once again at Violet. He took a deep breath. He looked from Olaf and then towards Esme, who seemed to be quietly debating what her next move will be. He closed his eyes, trying to blink his tears away. “...take me,” he whispered. “Just...leave my sisters alone.” The second the sentence left his mouth, Sunny punched him as hard as she could from underneath the medical coat which caused Klaus to grunt and heave over a bit.

Olaf smirked towards Klaus. “Why would I trade the... prettiest orphan for you?” he asked. “I mean...torturing you is... fun. But she’s…”

Klaus’ eyes went red with anger. “Don’t you dare finish that sentence,” he interrupted.

Esme’s eyes glowed with another idea. She smiled towards the crowd, waving and smiling to them as she walked towards Klaus. Once she reached him, she grabbed his shoulders, purposely digging her nails as much as she could pulling him slightly towards her.

“Ow!” he whispered angrily, glaring at the sinister woman, who looked back at him with crazy eyes.

“ Clever boy, you may have found a way to stall but sooner or later the show will go on and there will be blood! ” the vile woman hissed into Klaus’ ear. Klaus could feel Sunny slightly tremble at Esme’s words.

Be Violet. Do the scary thing first and get scared later. He told himself as he took a deep breath, trying his absolute best not to react to Esme’s threat. He slightly turned towards her. She gave him a smile laced with cruelty and bad intentions. Klaus’ breathing was becoming uneven as Esme continued to stare at him with her crazy eyes.

“... unless… ” she said smiling.

“Unless?” Both Klaus and Olaf repeated simultaneously. Klaus repeated it with a strange mix of worry and relief in his voice. He didn’t know what Esme wanted but as he glanced once more at his sleeping sister, he knew that whatever it was he would have to give it to her. While Olaf’s voice was a mix of confusion with a hint of anger.

“You give me what I want,” she explained, still holding a firm grip on the young boy. Klaus looked at her with confusion in his eyes. She sighed angrily. “I will stop this whole operation, right now, if you give me the item that you three thieves stole from the Library of Records.” she explained.

“Why would we stop anything...the whole point of this is to…” Olaf hissed under his breath, through gritted teeth as he glared at his girlfriend.

“ It’s mine!” Esme hissed, interrupting Olaf and leaning closer to Klaus’ ear. “ Mine...mine...mine...mine.”

“You stupid bitch what the fuck do you think you are doing?” Olaf hissed under his breath.

Klaus turned from the two villains, who were on either side of him and towards the gurney looking at his bound and unconscious sister once more. He weighed his options. He wanted desperately to know what else was on that film and he had no intentions of ever letting Olaf or Esme find out what Jacques Snicket had said about a survivor of a fire. But if Esme was willing to trade Violet’s life for a measly film then he knew what he had to do. “...if...if it’ll save Violet...then…” he could feel Sunny nodding as if she was telling him he was doing the right thing as he reached into his pocket and took out the Snicket file. He slowly reached his hand into his pocket, Esme watched in sweet anticipation as he lifted the object from his pocket and handed it to Esme.

Esme began to squeal happily as Olaf rolled his eyes and threw his head back in annoyance. “Oh, at last!” she gasped as she began to kiss the object in her hand. Klaus watched the villainess with a look of pure confusion as she continued to cheer about possessing the Snicket file.

Esme’s cheering was cut short when her eyes widened with both anger and confusion when she realized that the object she was holding was not what she wanted at all. She held the film in her palm as she released her fingers from gripping the film. She stared angrily at the film. “This...this...this...this isn’t the sugar bowl…” she said in a monotone voice. She looked up at Klaus about ready to rip the knife from his hands and run him and Sunny through.

“S-s-sugar bowl?” Klaus repeated confused. “That’s...that’s the Snicket file,”

Olaf’s face lit up as he cocked his head. Before Esme or Klaus could react, he reached out and grabbed hold of the file. “The Snicket file? What’s this?” he asked as he turned it every which way in his hands examining it.

Klaus looked ready to cry. If he had known that Esme didn’t want the film and wanted a sugar bowl he would have given her anything else but as he watched Olaf’s frown turn into a grin, he felt sick to his stomach. Olaf didn’t even know about the Snicket file and now he has it. What have I done? He asked.

“ You…” Esme hissed as her crazy eyes formed a glare Klaus’ way. Klaus looked from the murderous woman to Olaf.

“Now let Violet go!” He hissed.

Olaf smirked towards Esme as he turned to face the crowd. “Ladies and Gentleman!” he yelled. “It has come to my attention that this man is an impostor.”

Klaus’ eyes widened when he realized just what Olaf was doing. The crowd gasped. Klaus looked towards Olaf with pleading eyes, shaking his head rapidly. Esme turned on yet another one of the bright lights, this one pointing towards Klaus instead of Violet, whose eyes were slowly starting to open. She was mouthing something but no one on stage was paying attention to the bound girl on the gurney.

“He is not a doctor at all!” Olaf explained, smiling wickedly towards Klaus.

“Y-yes I am,” Klaus cried. “You said so yourself,”

“He’s two children, neither of which have graduated from medical school!” Olaf said reaching out towards Klaus trying to rip his medical coat open. Klaus quickly turned away from Olaf, now facing Esme.

“I-I-in my m-medical opinion,” Klaus said nervously as he watched Esme lean down and grab one of her stiletto heels. She smiled wickedly at Klaus. “I believe these two have lost their minds.”

“Oh, we haven’t lost our minds,” Esme called out with a snarl, “But you’re about to lose your heads, Baudelaires!” she hissed as she swung her heel at Klaus’ medical coat, cutting it apart with ease. The harness that held Sunny was cut, too and Sunny fell to the ground with a thud!

“Sunny!” Klaus cried as Sunny rolled on her back examining herself. Esme’s shoe may have been sharp and long enough to cut through both Klaus’ medical coat and Sunny’s harness but as Sunny examined the front of her outfit, she learned that thankfully she was unscatched by Esme’s shoe. She looked up at her brother and gave him a thumbs up.

Olaf grabbed Klaus’ shoulder and turned him around for the whole crowd to see. “Oh my God!” Olaf cried in an exaggerated tone. “It’s that Baudelaire boy!” he roughly ripped the fake beard from Klaus’ face.

“Baudelaire?” a doctor in the crowd called out. “The same Baudelaire that’s wanted for kidnapping and murder?”

Klaus looked around the crowd and watched as the crowd gasped as they recognized both him and Sunny from The Daily Punctilio. The doctors, nurses, and spectators in the crowd looked at them in horror, only the Volunteers Fighting Disease, who believed that no news was goods news, did not recognize the youngsters.

“That is the Baudelaire boy!” a nurse cried. “I read about them in The Daily Punctilio!”

“He’s a murderer!” Olaf cried as Klaus glared at him. “He helped kill Count Olaf!”

“Who?” Brandon asked.

Olaf rolled his eyes. “He...He’s a very handsome actor,”

“I might not be a doctor but I didn’t kill anybody!” Klaus cried to the crowd, who were all glaring at him now.

“Wait! Weren’t there two murderous kidnapping orphans? Not one?” a spectator asked. “Where’s the girl orphan?”

Esme hurriedly stepped in front of the gurney, shielding Violet from view. “She’s...already in jail,”

“ She is not!” Klaus cried as he rushed up towards Violet’s gurney and with his free hand, he brushed her hair out of her eyes so that everyone could see that she was not Kit Litencoves but actually Violet Snicket. “ These terrible people disguised my sister so they could chop off her head!”

“No...no...no…” Violet pleaded, she slowly but frantically was moving her head, she was trying to move her hands but she couldn’t. Klaus looked towards his sister, who was slowly waking up. He couldn’t help but smile even if she seemed to be having her own panic attack.

“Violet!” Klaus cried happily. Sunny looked up at the gurney happily as well.

Olaf and Esme looked at one another and smirked. “Don’t be ridiculous!” Esme called out. “ You’re the one trying to cut her head off. Look, you’re still holding the knife!”

“ No...no...no!” Violet pleaded drowsily. “ Please...I’m…”

“See, the poor girl is freaking out. She thought she could trust you,” Olaf hissed.

“ I wasn’t trying to kill Violet!” Klaus hissed angrily as Violet was trying her best to escape. She moved her head slowly but frantically from side to side, slowly pulling desperately at her restraints.

“If you’re not murderers,” a doctor asked, “then why have you sneaked into the hospital in disguise and why were you hiding your kidnap victim?” she asked as she pointed at Sunny.

“Brother!” Sunny screamed out, pointing at Klaus. She then pointed towards Violet. “Sister!”

But no one listened to the toddler as another person entered the operating theater. “I think I can explain that,” said the person, it was a familiar voice. But Klaus and Sunny weren’t sure if this was a good thing or a bad thing. In one hand, he was clutching the rings of keys that that three siblings had made from paper clips and Violet’s hair ribbon, and with the other hand he was pointing angrily at the children. “I’m glad to see that you are still here, although you all are a bit blurry. I thought for sure you would have snuck away after your prolonged and treacherous vandalism.”

“Vandalism!?” a doctor cried. “That’s terrible!”

“B-but…” Klaus cried out, backing up into Violet’s gurney.

“It was terrible,”

“Hal…” Sunny began but both she and Klaus were speechless. They both knew they had wronged Hal and that he had every right to be mad at them for tricking him, although Esme was the one who had actually destroyed his library, not them.

“Those two murderous kidnappers and their toddler victim,” Hal said, “pretended to be volunteers in order to work in the Library of Records.”

“They did?” Esme cried, feigning a fake gasp. Klaus and Sunny both glared at her. “You mean they’re murderous kidnappers and phony volunteers?”

“No wonder they didn’t know the words to the song!” Brandon cried.

“Taking advantage of my poor eyesight,” Hal continued, pointing at his glasses. “They made these fake keys and switched it with the real one, so they could sneak into my library and destroy any files about their crimes.”

“No...no…” Violet cried out, Klaus and Sunny doubted she was responding to Hal because she seemed to still be drowsy as if she had no idea what was going on still.

“Hal…” Klaus began as he looked back at Sunny and Violet. Sunny only hung her head in shame as Violet continued to drowsily whimper.

“I thought you three were my friends,” Hal cried.

“We didn’t want to destroy the file,” Klaus explained nervously. “We didn’t mean to destroy anything. I-I’m sorry...we...we tricked you. And I am so sorry about your library,” Klaus said in saddened tone. “B-but we’re not the real criminals here... we’re just kids...trying to survive.” He ran his hand through his hair nervously, glancing around the crowd to see if anyone was believing him. Unfortunately for Klaus, just like when Count Olaf had first accused him and Violet of murder, the crowd before him now looked like the crowd that he dealt with then, when he glanced around the crowd he couldn’t see one face that indicated someone was believing them or that they were on the kids’ side. Not even Hal. He took a deep breath. “The real criminals are…” he began as he glanced around the stage to notice that one person had snuck out when Hal had entered. “No...no…he...he was…” Klaus spun around in confusion. His eyes locked on the rest of the troupe and Esme but he couldn’t locate Olaf. “ Where’s Count Olaf?”

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badlydrawndrawnings · 4 years

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atwq book four thoughts

guess who somehow got a lot of free time yesterday and made the bold decision to finish reading the last atwq book? me!

guees who feels like they jinxed qwerty’s fate from the previous book of being arrested, but alive, even though i bet daniel handler planned it from the start? still me!

guess who is rather upset netflix accidentally gave a clue/spoiler on the identity of hangfire?

also me.

okay, so first off, to get something out of the way. i love this book. i really do. it had me on suspense every chapter.

theodora figured out qwerty was in vfd (...when did she figure out? not long after sharon reveal herself as a fake vfd member? or during the period she and lemony weren’t speaking to each other?), and god she really was willing to take the blame on being qwerty’s killer. did she think maybe she once again screw up, but this time there was no going back because the screw up got someone killed? after all she seem to selfishly went to break qwerty out for a good evaluation. maybe she thought if things went different, he would still be alive. and given the schism happened, vfd while not divided yet, this is like a sign on how another librarian’s death in the long, long future, will be blame on an innocent party and things go to hell again in the pursuit of justice and truth.

also, ghede and gifford also knew of the coup as well? or at least knew the sbg was doing something and they’re like let them do this shit and we can watch it’s gonna benefit us in the long run’. also, holy shit olaf name drop take two with beatrice herself! i didn’t think while knowing each other young mean they actually hanged out with one another to think they’re possibility friends. this puts the opera night even worse. beatrice must have knew olaf’s parents. with my headcanon of olaf parents being caring parents to olaf and used their connections to get their son back earlier than others, this is just awful.

getting back on track from the mess that is vfd there’s a murder on a train (agatha christie ahoy!). i admit several weeks ago i made the decision to watch snowpiercer and train to busan so i couldn’t really take the murder on the orient express shout out clearly and kept on thinking of the wild willy wonka and the chocolate factory/snow piercer theory. and zombies in south korea.

all the damn sbts kids just thought it great to share the one brain cell to be on the same train (pip and squeak just follow in their taxi; cleo and jake had to travel through time in the dilemma to catch up with them). ornette got her time to shine with her artistic/sculpting skills and there’s some light on the subject of the lost family (of course it’s a fire that took ornette’s mom life. fires seems to be a way to kill a lot of parents). i was right to call her gung-ho working with lemony, she just agreed to make fake bb statues for moxie and kellar and was like ‘oh shit the two are sharing a brain cell. hangfire could figure something is up what have i done’ and had to make something else to give to lemony. i uh..wonder if seth has a reason to draw her baseball cap all...fuzzy. just a weird question.

kellar’s sister lizzie shows up. i’m going to be honest. she has the bad luck of appearing last and under two disguises that went over my head (she sure fooled me!). i do have some thoughts that surround her and the haines family, but that needs me to re-read the last two books to make sure i’m not imagining something . will say lizzie is much younger and shorter than i thought given her first illustration. i hope maybe a re-read will make me get some new insight on her. also, hi sally murphy. i’m glad lizzie got out with maybe your help (i mean, why else would she want to high tail it out of there).

the identity of qwerty’s killer was something i should have seen coming due to how the mitchum parents are more subdue. i want to slap stew’s parents. they spend all their time bickering they only got their shit together to see how their ‘precious’ son is really a bully and killer and working with the villian under their damn noses. i almost feel sorry for them because shit stew more or less blackmail his parents into covering the crime but at the same time...this call could have been avoid if you pay attention to how your son isn’t the angel you think he is..and you two are still fighting with one another please get your priorities straight i beg you. i admit i almost want to slap stew but i don’t slap kids, and i think if i exist in the snicket world i would get murder first by him.

qwerty’s death and the fact he’s a vfd member just hurt me so bad and i’m still kind of grieving over him. for one, i felt like i should have seen qwerty being part of vfd coming. he’s a sub-librarian. while not a sub-sub-librarian, the fact is qwerty is such so damn helpful to lemony i should have seen he was just doing his best to help lemony because theodora wasn’t honestly...wasn’t doing a good job at a chaperone. but he couldn’t blow away his cover because he wasn’t supposed to interfere in the apprenticeship and honestly he was just happy to be a sub-librarian helping children find what they would love reading.

but qwerty isn’t the only death in this book. i got to copy-paste something from an old atwq post in feburary 8, something i made as a joke, because oh boy, this part is the one negative i have honestly.

he tried to pretend to be her father! i know his voice mimicry is basically akin to juni cortez’s mimicry, but this is just cruel had ellington been there.

about a week later, i made the decision to rewatch netflix asoue. now, the first time i watch season two [edit lmao i actually don’t remember if it was season two i think i hated season two so much i could have blur two and three together i got to rewatch the show again definitely. edit two: okay, i’m certain it was season two i’m 98% certain it was was a pause and read easter egg that’s why i couldn’t remember what season exactly damn easter eggs] i honestly was like ‘so they gave nero a last name. coolio. feint isn’t a surname i was expecting but this is the netflix show this probably isn’t canon to the books’.

on the rewatch, after the austere academy part two ended, i realized something is...off, with nero now. he’s mocking people. and his voice, while not mimicking them, is like...it’s like nero could have inherit mimicry from someone but it never went through. or maybe he did got it but it’s not at its full potential without the proper teaching of someone with the skill...like a father, perhaps?

so the kronk meme is playing in my mind, but it’s the edit of him saying ‘oh no, it’s all coming together’. and given patrick warburton also voice kronk, it felt more like lemony snicket decided to materialize right behind me, be an asshole, and thought it funny to do a commentary on my possible realization hangfire, in the netflix show at least, couldn’t keep his dick in his pants and bore a bastard son in an adulterous affair and ellington has a half brother in the world she doesn’t know about and i hope she never learns about.

(given barrymore feint is just a cameo of barry sonnenfeld, i guess the bullshit gene i talked about in another post regarding a theory who netflix!h is should be renamed the feint gene.)

so reading the third book, and especially this book, i kept a close eye on any mentions to ellington’s dad and hangfire’s behavior. i kept on saying in my mind ‘please don’t be who i think you are’. and bam. armstrong feint is hangfire. i feel like if netflix didn’t have the need to make an atwq reference in nero’s surname, and if i was smart enough to have the book clues smack me in the face (i feel there are clues somewhere, and hangfire dropped all pretenses and just being ‘himself’ in book two was one), i wouldn’t be so angry and upset by this reveal. i more or less got spoil and put the pieces together due to an adaptation, and i should have known better than to do a re-watch while reading atwq. i should have consider the possibility of easter eggs to atwq.

anyway, lemony snicket thought it great to kill hangfire by feeding him to a copy bombinating beast (the tadpoles!!). with ellington right freaking there. with most of his sbts friends there to witness. moxie can’t even look lemony in the eye anymore (no more best friends anymore). everything happened just like that and after finishing the book and taking a walk around the living room, i have to say hangfire is a good villain. he achieved his goal of getting the bombinating beast, even if it’s a copy. he’s a very competent villain who succeed in almost every book in some way or form. he played everyone like a puppet and was a threat that is more akin to tmwabbnh and twwhbnb’s level of villainy. kudos to you hangfire i’m impressed.

hangfire totally got it coming too. however, i do feel...hurt in his death, if only for ellington’s sake. during the walk because i realize ellington reminded me of a character from a different fandom i’m in. there’s some differences that i won’t get into (it’s...complicated for the other fandom), but they’re cut from almost the same cloth: teenage girls with shitty fathers who are using them for their own selfish goals. thoughts for ellington and her future formed faster for me than for the other atwq kids as a result:

post-canon!ellington (a few days later when she finally gets her stuff figure out), has a simple list. 1: avoiding anyone with a vfd tattoo or give shady lemon vibes -ellington split asap after she and kit broke out and have 100% certainly no one is after them, but not before stealing some things from kit, one being notes of vfd volunteers (she thinks). 2: find a new place to live. 3: figure out a new name that isn’t an anagram, because the inhumane society once they heard the news, is probably going to try to get her if they get wind she is hangfire’s daughter and possible ‘successor’. ellington wants nothing to do with the bombinating beast. she never wants to see the statue or anything similar, or hear the words again.

adult!ellington (under a fake name of course), while accepting all that happened, hasn’t forgive lemony snicket. yes, her dad was a villain. yes, she finally understand her dad isn’t the kind naturalist and man, and used her for the biggest ‘what’ event of her life that is also a very selfish goal. many times in the past though, ellington wonders if she missed any signs of her dad’s descend to who he eventually became, or if he hid it very well to where he was wearing two masks all this time, one hiding his true nature. ellington even wonders at one point, dad was going convince her to willingly work with him without the fake kidnapping and had to change his plans to something crueler.

ellington will never know for sure. this is why ellington can’t forgive lemony and will say it to face if they ever meet again. what ellington hates the most out of her father’s death is that she can never tell dad all of her feelings about his wrong doings. she can ask all the questions burning at the back of her mind, or yell her frustrations how terrible a father he is for faking his kidnapping and getting her to do his dirty work, getting her to use her loyalty of family to do things she would never do under normal circumstances. she ask questions and yells at the only photo left of armstrong feint...

and in the end, she knows he’ll never answer, and it hurts to deal with the unknown. adult!ellington doesn’t do the yelling and questioning to the photo as much. partly because she did ‘settle’ on what might be an possible answer, but mostly because the photo is pretty faded to where it’s less ‘armstrong feint’ and more ‘hangfire’. once in awhile though, she slips up like old times.

adult!ellington with her new life (she travels a lot, pays in cash most of the time, and has no set resident; she still love coffee) tends to think of the past, especially when it came to what she had with lemony snicket. did lemony like her? was she just a question in need of solving? ellington admits to possibly liking him, but it was so long ago maybe she just thinks she liked him to have a ‘positive’ memory of the boy she haven’t seen in years that she kind of wants to see again, if only to yell at him for robbing her of something important. his name lands on her radar a lot, twice from the daily punctilio. the first one was learning of lemony snicket’s crimes, and it was an accident.

the second time, she learn of his death, though she read the daily punctilio on purpose in hopes of a name drop. adult!ellington ended up finding some children’s book, and made the mistake of going to the back of it and find a photo of lemony snicket. not really though. lemony is hiding his face (ellington hates it) and she buys it to know what it’s about. it spiral to where she bought the next two books because she wants to know if the baudelaires orphans are real (and because lemony doesn’t seem the same anymore from his writings). ellington settles on real when she pulls out kit snicket’s notes she stolen and cross references names, and even travels to the locations to them to make sure. after the third book publication, the series goes on ‘hiatus’ due to the daily punctilio and their announcement. ellington doubts he’s dead, but couldn’t help attend the funeral. ellington is certain lemony snicket is alive, because she convinced she saw him at his own funeral.

#atwq #all the wrong questions #why is this night different from all other nights #ellington feint #hangfire #asoue #a series of unfortunate events #netflix asoue #asoue netflix #lemony snicket #spoilers #this is a text post

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unfortunate-stranger-losers · 4 years

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All Those Things They Couldn’t Say - A Runaway Baudelaires AU

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Chapter Two - Beatrice and Bertrand make a Grave Error

The Baudelaire children usually didn’t go out on their own. It wasn’t that their parents didn’t trust them, but there had been several instances where they had to drop everything and immediately leave town, and Beatrice and Bertrand were absolutely terrified that one day their children would be too far away for them to pick up, and they’d end up separated, and then somehow the world would explode. But sometimes, if the kids were reasonably cautious, they could take a day to themselves.

Violet was sitting at the edge of the beach, tying back her hair. “Klaus, at what angle are the prevailing currents?”

Klaus pulled a book from the basket, reading aloud from the chart inside. Beside them, Sunny gnawed on a rock, gave it a glare, and then tossed it aside, reaching for one that wasn’t sandstone.

“Of course, we’ll need the right projectile.” Klaus said.

“That’s where Sunny comes in.” Violet said. “How you doing, sweetie?”

Sunny smiled and held up the stone, now perfectly flat. “Asill!” she called, meaning something akin to, “Ready!”

Violet pushed back the picnic basket, and stood, waving the rock in her hand.

“Excuse me, Violet,” Klaus said, “Why are you using your left hand?”

“I’m curious to see if I can throw as far with my left as I can with my right.”

“I thought this was to gather data, though.”

“My invention may need to differentiate between dominant and non-dominant hands.”

“I guess that’s true. Mark the rock.”

“Shit, I almost forgot.” Violet said. She knelt down, opening up the basket, and pulling out some chalk from underneath the canned food. “Here it is.” She drew a large X, and then stood up again and skipped. The three siblings watched as the rock tossed itself across the water and then, after Klaus called out nine skips, Violet handed him her ribbon and dove in.

Sunny cheered as the siblings were splashed. She loved getting wet and messy, though she knew it was a bad thing, as they only had a few clothes at a time. “Luto!” she cheered, meaning, “Get mud on us next!”

“Sunny, no.” Klaus sighed, pulling a dry shirt from the basket to wipe his glasses.

“Ye!” Sunny said, which meant something like, “Sunny, yes!”

Klaus replaced his glasses and looked back to the water, to see Violet emerging several feet away, her hair pressed against her face. She held up the rock, and called, “How far?”

“What?”

“How far?”

“What?”

Violet sighed and swam closer, eventually making her way back onto the sand, now dripping wet. “I said, ‘how far?’” She repeated, handing Klaus the rock.

“Oh.” Klaus considered, absent-mindedly pocketing the stone, and then told her his best guess.

“We’ll need exacts, of course,” Violet said, squeezing her hair, and then shaking like a dog. “We’ll need some kind of measuring device.” She took her ribbon from Klaus, tying her hair back again. “I need a measuring device. Portable and waterproof. Sunny-”

“Gack!” Sunny shouted, pointing ahead. “Look at that mysterious figure emerging from the fog!”

The children looked up; the beach was, indeed, quite foggy, and up ahead, was some sort of figure moving towards them.

Violet immediately tensed up, and grabbed the basket, slamming it shut and flipping the lock. Klaus lifted Sunny, who leaned into his shoulder and squinted her small eyes.

“It only seems scary because of all the mist.” Klaus said.

Violet looked very carefully, and then instantly relaxed. She dropped the basket to the ground, and ran forwards.

“Mother! Father!”

Klaus’s face brightened, and he also ran with his big sister, lifting Sunny higher as she cheered. Out of the mist, Beatrice ran forwards, enveloping her daughter in a tight hug.

“Do we- Father!” Klaus squealed as Bertrand also hugged him, then decided to go the extra mile and spin him and Sunny around. Sunny laughed and threw up her arms as if they were on a ride, while Klaus just said, “Dad! Come on!”

“I assume this isn’t urgent, then?” Violet laughed, as Beatrice let her go and looked her over.

“No. Why are you all wet?”

“I jumped in the water to get a rock.”

“Well, okay. So long as your clothes dry-”

“These will be fine, they’re the right material.”

“Is it time to go already?” Klaus asked. “We only just stopped looking at fish and tide pools and just started skipping rocks.”

“Sorry, Klaus.” Bertrand said, putting him and Sunny down and straightening Sunny’s bonnet. “But the post office is closed for the weekend, which means we can get into the attic if we hurry before the custodians lock the doors.”

“Will Lemon Man send us a telegram?” Violet asked, in a sing-song voice; she’d come up with the half-rhyme when she was eight, to entertain Klaus.

“We hope so. His last message said he should be speaking soon.” Beatrice said, her face lighting up a little.

“And,” Bertrand smiled slightly, “When we get there, we have a surprise for you children.”

“Cake?” Sunny asked, excited.

“No, afraid not.” Bertrand laughed, and he took Klaus’s hand. “Come on, let’s hurry it up before we have to climb through the window.”

Beatrice creaked open the backdoor to the post office, peered inside, and then waved and went in. Violet followed cautiously, holding onto Sunny with one arm and Klaus’s hand with the other. Bertrand took up the rear, glancing behind them every now and again just to make sure they hadn’t been followed.

Violet remembered a few years ago- she’d had to have been ten or eleven- when they had been followed. Beatrice had quietly asked her if she recognized the man in the black hat behind them at the bookstore, and Violet realized he’d been a few tables away at the café, and Klaus muttered that he’d been at the same grocery store. Beatrice and Bertrand had taken them down several aisles of the shop they were in, zig-zagging best they could, before going out into the road, running wildly down several streets until they found a crowd, pushing through it, and then picking a well-populated spot to sleep- a homeless shelter, where thankfully nobody asked questions, and a nice lady taught Violet and Klaus how to play clapping games. But even then, Violet remembered a dread in the pit of her stomach, one that didn’t go away until they were three towns away, and the black-hat man made no further appearance, and Klaus had already forgotten the incident and almost ran away to chase a cat.

She hated that dread, and now she had two siblings to help her parents look after, one of whom had no sense of fear. But at least they weren’t completely helpless; Sunny was quite the biter, and though Klaus was a slower learner than her, he could hold his own in a fight at least long enough for backup to arrive. They could run, they could hide. And they were all on the lookout for followers, anyone they recognized too many times- or sometimes even specific people. Every now and again, Mother or Father would see something in the newspaper, and turn it around and point to someone and warn them that person was an enemy- either from VFD or against, it didn’t matter. They were an enemy to their parents, and therefore the children.

Beatrice directed them away from a room with some noise inside- probably a janitor, making sure everything was clean and locked up- and herded them towards a staircase. There, she signalled them several numbers with her hands- two, fifteen, twenty-seven. The stairs that creaked. Violet went up first, swiftly skipping the steps, while Klaus took a bit longer, watching to make sure Violet skipped the step before doing so himself. Even Sunny fell silent, which was very nice; it had taken them quite some time to convince her that, yes, she had to stop humming or crying or giggling when they needed to be quiet.

Beatrice finally pushed open the door to the attic, and peered in, lighting a candle that lay beside the door. The small room flickered with the dim light, and Violet’s eyes flickered, too, as she saw the old telegrams stored around them.

“These still work.” Beatrice nodded as Violet put Sunny down, reaching again for her ribbon. “Take one apart if you want, but leave at least one working, in case Lemony contacts us.”

“Loco?” Sunny asked, which meant something like, “He knows where we are?”

“He has a… general idea.” Bertrand explained, as Klaus put the basket by the wall and he closed the door. “We never tell anyone exactly where we are, Sunny.”

“But more importantly,” Beatrice knelt by the ground, and her children quickly sat around her, forming a circle with a space left for their father, “Our surprise. Are you ready?”

“Mother, of course we are.” Klaus tried to hide his smile.

“Enough with the theater kid reveal, just tell us.” Violet said.

Beatrice made a pouting face. “What? Too dramatic for you?”

“We’re not babies, Mom.”

“Dis,” Sunny said, which meant, “That’s offensive.”

“Shut up, Sunny, you wanna see, too.”

Bertrand sat inbetween his two youngest children, looking more excited than they were, and said, “Bea, dear, show them what we got.”

Beatrice smiled so, so brightly, and then she reached into her jacket pocket, and whipped out a deck of cards.

The Baudelaires immediately lost their minds.

“Holy shit!” Klaus shouted, forgetting that they should still be quiet and also that he probably shouldn’t swear in front of his parents.

“Oh my God!” Violet started bouncing up and down, a dazzling glee spread across her face. “Oh my God! You got some? We can have some? For a while?”

“Pok!” Sunny screamed, which meant something like, “You’ll teach me to play, right? You said you would!”

Beatrice also bounced slightly, dropping the pack onto the floor in front of Sunny, who immediately grabbed it and bit into the plastic wrap to open it. “Yes! There was some in the convenience store, and since it’s finally warm enough we could ditch one pack of matches, so we have room for these now!”

“I’ll deal!” Klaus took the cards from Sunny, while she continued to bite into the plastic. “What are we playing first?”

“Pesca!” Sunny said. “Go fish!”

“Or,” Beatrice took a card from Klaus, “I could show you some tricks!”

“Yes! Yes!” Violet cheered. She quickly turned to Sunny and said, “Mother’s card tricks are the best. She can make them disappear!”

Sunny gave her a look of disbelief. “Jan,” she said, which meant, “Yeah, right.”

“Well, Sunny,” Beatrice said, showing her the ace of hearts, “If you think so…” Then, with a swish of her hand, the card was gone.

Violet and Klaus clapped, while Bertrand laughed. Sunny, however, widened her eyes in shock, and then she let out a wail.

Beatrice’s face fell. “Oh, no, Sunny, look, I can bring it back!” She waved her hand, and the ace of hearts was in her hand again.

Sunny stopped crying, a look of amazement on her face. “Wow!” she clapped.

“Now,” Bertrand said, “I was thinking about Patience. Klaus, do you want to show Sunny how to play?”

Klaus nodded, spreading out the cards. “See, Sunny, here the symbols don’t matter, but the numbers and colors. You know what numbers to look for, right?”

“Dec!” Sunny said, which meant, “One through Ten!”

“Good. Then after Ten comes the Jack, the Queen, and the King. Now, can you remember them in descending order?”

“Toidi.” “Yes, Klaus, I’m not an idiot.”

Klaus spread out the cards, and they all spread out, calling out cards they thought they could play. This continued for quite some time, to the point where Beatrice had to light a second candle so they could keep playing, and Sunny had to make sure nobody saw her yawn and would make her go to bed.

“Who taught you how to play cards?” Violet asked, after a while.

“My foster mother.” Bertrand said. “Beatrice learned from…”

He trailed off, but Beatrice finished. “From my chaperone.”

They fell silent. Then, Klaus said, “Well, I bet they didn’t think that part of the game would be trying to keep an infant from eating the- Sunny, stop it!”

Sunny put down the queen of spades, huffing. That was enough to brighten the mood again, and Beatrice let out a loud laugh, almost doubling over. “S-Sunny, please- please, they’re not food.”

“Doo,” Sunny said, which meant, “Everything’s food if you eat it.”

“Sunny.” Bertrand laughed.

“God, you’re going to be a disaster when you get older.” Violet giggled, placing a card down.

“Xis,” Sunny huffed, which meant something like, “No, I’m going to be the Queen, so bow to me, peasants.”

“Now, Sunny,” Bertrand chided, “That’s no way to talk to your loyal subjects.”

“Loyal my ass,” Violet snorted. “We’re throwing her down the garbage chute first chance we get. Too much dead weight.”

“Bapa!” “I’ll show you who’s dead weight!”

Sunny launched herself at Violet, barely shaking her balance. Violet, though, flopped on the ground, crying, “Oh no! The Queen has gone mad with power!”

“The Queen is attacking the Royal Scientist!” Klaus shouted, before picking Sunny up and waving her in the air. “Off with her head!”

“Viva la Revolución!” Violet cheered from the floor.

“Now, now,” Beatrice laughed, “Does the Empress have to step in?”

“No, the Empress can go make out with the Emperor.” Klaus said, as he tossed Sunny into the air and caught her again.

“Well, if you insist-” Bertrand said.

“Dad, no! Not in front of the baby!”

“I’m baby!” Sunny cheered, as Klaus tossed her again.

But before they could say any more, they heard a telegram machine start up.

Beatrice immediately leapt to her feet, rushing to the machine that was printing out a small paper for them. Bertrand froze, eyes wide.

“Lemon Man has sent us a telegram!” Klaus said.

Violet didn’t join in his laughter, though, instead inspecting her parents’ faces. Whenever she was present for the receiving of a telegram, her parents always had the same look, a mixture that took her several experiences to decipher. First, in their jumble of instant emotions, was an excitement- whether positive or negative depended on how much of a jam they were in, though her parents made sure that they were never in too much danger to begin with. Second was relief, because it meant Snicket knew where they were and could send them news, though it was always in code. Third was a fear, fear that this would be horrible news, or someone else’s message, telling them that Snicket had been captured and someone was coming for them. Last, and hardest to figure out- in fact, Violet only placed it now, as Beatrice returned with the paper, showing it to Bertrand, who took out a pen to help decode- was a longing. She wondered what the longing was for- for the life they’d left behind, or just for their friend. They’d always seemed very fond of Lemony, whenever they discussed him; they must have been incredibly close.

“He hasn’t used this code in a while.” Beatrice snorted. “Finally remembered it existed.”

“Yeah, he’s gotta stop using Sebald. Too wordy.” Bertrand said.

“First of all, that’s just how Lemony is.” Beatrice said. “Second, bold words coming from ‘attempting a botanical hybrid through the tuberous canopy, which should bring safety to fruition despite its dangers to our associates in utero.’”

“Hell, Bea, you still have that memorized?”

“I’m an actress, dear, memorization is my job.”

“Get a room!” Klaus said, rolling his eyes and bouncing Sunny on his lap, where she had started to eat her bonnet.

“You need any help with that, Mother?” Violet asked, peering over at her parents circling letters and scribbling them at the paper’s edge.

“Thank you, Vi, but I think we’ve got it.” Beatrice said. She got to the last sentence, and said, “Alright, let’s see what our silence knot has for us today.”

Her and Bertrand’s eyes widened, however, as they read the message, and Violet could see a flash of fear. Shit. That wasn’t good news.

“Mother? What does it say?” Klaus asked, his face falling. Slowly, Violet started to pick up the playing cards.

Beatrice scanned the note, as if hoping that it would say something different. Then, quietly, she read.

HURRY. YOU ARE IN DANGER. I CAN KEEP YOU SAFE BUT YOU MUST RETURN TO THE CITY. MAY BE ABLE TO CLEAR YOUR NAMES. BRING ALL ASSOCIATES. O IS NEARBY. -YSK

Violet knew “YSK” was Lemony’s way of signing off- Your Silence Knot, some kind of inside joke they shared- and she knew that O was one of the people they were running from- what was his name again? Omar? But it didn’t matter what she knew; the message chilled her.

“The city?” Klaus’s voice grew quiet. “You said that’s where we were running from.”

“We shouldn’t be there.” Violet said.

Beatrice shut her eyes, taking a few deep breaths. Bertrand was the first one to respond. “Children, we trust Lemony more than anyone else on this planet- except you, of course. If he says…” he trailed off. “God, this is risky.”

“He wouldn’t ask us to do it if it wasn’t important.” Beatrice whimpered- the children had never known their mother to whimper.

“Are we sure it’s him?”

“Nobody else would sign off with YSK, or know our location.”

“How can Olaf be nearby?” Olaf, that was it!

“Which one is Olaf again?” Klaus asked.

Bertrand drew in a sharp breath. Beatrice shook slightly, and said, “He’s… he’s the one we wronged.”

Violet and Klaus went pale, while Sunny just looked up in confusion. “Whazzit?” she asked, but nobody responded.

“Are you… gonna tell us what happened?” Klaus prodded, and Violet elbowed him.

“We… we can discuss that when we’re safe.” Beatrice said. “We’ll have to move quickly. If we catch a train tonight, we should be there by morning.”

“Do you have money?”

“I have enough. We can put Sunny in the basket if someone wears an extra jacket, so we don’t have to pay for her ticket.”

“Sure.” Sunny nodded, excited to do some sneaking.

“Should we really bring the children?” Beatrice asked, glancing towards them.

“Lemony said to bring all associates. Who else could he mean? He must have some kind of plan, right?”

“Maybe he wants us to invite the designated safe people.”

“It would take a while for all your safehouse peeps to show up.” Violet mentioned. Their parents had them all memorize the addresses of places to go if they got separated, but she doubted Lemony would know which houses they were- or, indeed, if the people living there knew they were a safehouse.

Beatrice glanced back down at the telegram, running her hand over the message. Then, quietly, she said, “Do you think he could really clear our names?”

Bertrand met her gaze, and they were clearly asking the same question- do we want him to?

“So,” Violet interrupted, knowing her parents were thinking terrible things and not wanting that to continue for much longer, “Does this mean we get to meet our mysterious Lemony man?”

Beatrice and Bertrand each took a deep breath, and then Bertrand said, “Yes.”

Klaus smiled brightly, and he picked up Sunny. “What are we waiting for, then?”

Beatrice grabbed her husband’s hand, and as the children ran to get all their bags and make sure they had everything, she whispered, “We’re seeing him again.”

“We’re seeing him again.” Bertrand repeated, his voice just as full of hope as hers.

#asoue #asoue netflix #a series of unfortunate events #asoue au #runaway baudelaires au #asoue fanfiction #mine #my fanfic #the bad beginning #all those things they couldn't say

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beatricebidelaire · 4 years

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Hey! So, reading some of your posts, I was just wondering something. What do you think happened with such relationships as Kit and Olaf or Beatrice and Lemony? It is my personal belief that Olaf had a staggering amount of control over Kit even before he turned crazy, and when it started veering into levels Kit wasn’t comfortable with Kit kinda snapped and just left. And with Beatrice and Lemony, I feel like Lemony just idolized her, rather than saw her as a romantic partner. And that’s not ok

hi - first of all I’m on mobile so i apologize in advance if formatting gets bad

so tbh we don’t know and i think there are a lot of possibilities, we only ever see glimpses of it. i think while we could see lemony seems to be putting beatrice on a pedestal and had a hard time moving on and seem to see her as a perfect figure and that wasn’t exactly good for him, it doesn’t necessarily mean he did that while she was alive and/or when they were together. because grief can change someone, and it’s possible that he wasn’t always like this, that their dynamics wasn’t always like this, and he’s using that as his own way of coping, his way of dealing with his grief. because it’s easier to make it a show, a performance to himself, to pretend she’s this perfect person. deep down he probably knew she wasn’t but he’s not ready to think of her that way, think of the real her , because that would be opening too many wounds. to think about the real beatrice with all her goods and bads and flaws and memories and realness, that’s maybe too much to handle and when he was writing asoue, he wasn’t ready for that. which was obvs not healthy for himself, but sometimes that’s grief and everyone deals with it in their own way. i’d like to think he finally started to move on and to heal when bea jr write to him and he realizes goes from “because I love her so much I cannot imagine there’s a second Beatrice Baudelaire” (I’m paraphrasing a bit) to getting to know his niece, I’d like to think he finally started to move on and heal.

now the thing about sugar bowl gen is that we know so few things so we don’t really know either way, and maybe he always idolized her and put her on a pedestal, maybe he always saw her as some kind of perfect figure, maybe growing up in vfd wasn’t the best way to learn to love and young lemony had the tendencies to picture his crushes / romantic interests as either “femme fatale” character (ellington feint) or “perfect figure” (beatrice baudelaire), and maybe they weren’t fit for each other even before tragedies tear them apart. which is also possible.

i don’t have a fixed opinion on things went down between beatrice and lemony, mostly because i enjoy the ambiguity and unknown and finding out fragments of history and playing around with them. i’m very much an equal opportunity canon compliant fic writer tbh. also i love lemonberry ice and in many versions of my imaginations L also loved bertrand, not every version though because i do ship bertrand with quite a few people ranging from georgina to the denouement triplets, but i digress

similarly we don’t know what happened with kit and olaf aside from the scene in the end (netflix!opera is pretty aesthetic wise but not my canon, kit being innocent and unaware of what’s going on at opera night will never be my canon no matter what b sonnenfeld said.) so like, anything goes i suppose. maybe they just had a brief fling maybe they were deeply in love before things went wrong, i particularly enjoy the headcanon that they kissed one (1) time as teens and that’s it and he said the line “... one last time” dramatically and that’s it. once a theater kid always a theater kid. i don’t really think they were in love or anything and by the end it’s mostly just rose color tinted glass of nostalgia at play. he missed her not as much as missing she as her but “younger days” as whole, “before everything went wrong” era as a whole instead of her, except even then he’s still probably the one who cared more than her, who’s always cared about vfd more, and not to sound like a baticeer who had complicated feelings towards kit snicket, the fact that he doesn’t even care that much or miss her as her that much but was still the one who cared/more at the end is something i found incredibly, vindictively, satisfyingly amusing lol.

i know various people have different headcanons and thoughts about young!k/o but since i’m a beatrice fan i will admit that i find kit’s and olaf’s respective dynamics with beatrice much more intriguing to me than k/o itself, so i like to throw her into the mix when i discuss k/o dynamics. my personal favorite theory, based on my biased opinion lol, is that kit liked beatrice but didn’t admit it to even herself , and young beatrice and olaf certainly shared some similarities, dramatic theater kids who’d canonically known each other at least as early as seven (one of they very few canon facts we DO know about sbg), and that’s the real reason she dated O. olaf on the other hand were bffs who knew about Beatrice’s feelings instead and dated Kit to kiss beatrice off. b&o to me just had that kind of dynamics.

in conclusion, beatrice baudelaire forever . happy new year!

#answered #lalalalivy

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snicketstrange · 3 years

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Rereading The Chapter 14 (The End)

I believed that in ASOUE's universe, chapter 14 was apparently written some time after the rest of the book. But I abandoned that idea. Lemony wrote to the editor that chapter 14 could be found at the end of the same manuscript.

We then have the epigraph of Le Voyage. It's an excerpt that portrays the moment of death, and perhaps the acceptance of death. But I don't think this means that Lemony is completely certain of the Baudelaires' death. I think it means he's pretty sure he won't write about the Baudelaires anymore. I think the right question is "why did Lemony decide to stop writing at this point in the story?" "Why did he plan to write more and then stop writing?" I think Lemony didn't promise to write the entire story of the Baudelaires. He promised to write the story of the conflict between the Baudelaires and Olaf. So when he was sure of Olaf's death, and that was only with the additional information he had probably had access to through Beatrice Jr, Lemony realized that the research might be over. The certainty of Olaf's death was the event he determined when the narrative came to an end. So, it makes us wonder what kind of promise Lemony made. Apparently he promised that he would clarify the facts surrounding the charges the Baudelaires went through, as well as the contexts in which these events took place. That's why it was so important to get this information out to the general public. Because it involved the honor of the Baudelaire family. Furthermore, this explains why he could not rely solely on the account given by the Baudelaires themselves: after all, they were being accused of being lying criminals. Lemony needed to clear their name, proving, so to speak, that the facts reported by the Baudelaires were real, and it was not enough just to record what he read in the island book.

I think this is the most sensible explanation, and as a theorist I will defend it. But as a fan willing to come up with slightly bizarre ideas, I feel like imagining Lemony realizing that his own death was close to happening. It would be interesting to imagine that Lemony's research took so long that he was an elderly man when he was publishing The End. And the reason Lemony finished his work at this point would be his physical limitations. That would explain shocking secret #13: "he's finished." And more than that: it would even explain the title of the book: "The End of Lemony Snicket". And furthermore, this would explain Lemony's dedication to Beatrice in chapter 14. After quoting the words of Charles B., in which the poet compares the hour of death with the setting off of a ship, Lemony claims that both he and Beatrice are like boats sailing at night, but especially her. Both were on a dark and lonely journey, but she was already dead. "

Beatrice's last words recorded in the book were really emotional to me when I first read them, and they still are today. Especially after I watched the Netflix series, it's now possible to imagine a very specific face when I picture Beatrice. And it's possible to think of a specific soundtrack when I read this.

About the baby's name, on my Headcanon Violet is the name of Mrs. W, who was presumed dead around the same time as Lemony. And in my Headcanon, just as Lemony didn't really die, she didn't either. I still like to think that she was the mystery woman on TGG, and that's the real reason Quigley used the name Violet in the message he sent to submarine Q.

I think this is the first time I stop to think that the Baudelaires ate crab. This is unclean food for those who practice Judaism as a religion, isn't it? I even thought the roast lamb was a reference to the Passover celebration, but they wouldn't do that by eating crab. Or is it that in a book in which Daniel Handler implicitly criticizes religion, he did so on purpose? I think it's unlikely, but still possible. But, albeit unintentionally, the Baudelaires rejected the religious customs of their ancestors in a book in which religious customs are questioned and this is significant.

"The baby had heard about danger, too, mostly from the register of crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind from which the Baudelaires read out loud each evening, although they had not told the infant the whole story. She did not know all of the Baudelaires' secrets, and indeed there were some she would never know."

The above excerpt is important as it reveals that Lemony has information about Beatrice Jr's future as he was writing this chapter. This explains how Lemony knows what happened in this chapter: Beatrice Jr told him. Lemony did meet her, and he realized that the Baudelaires hadn't told her the whole story.

A detail that has always pleased me in this book is to notice that after 1 year, Sunny stopped babbling words and has a more conventional and extensive vocabulary. I find this compatible with the fact that 1 year has passed and it's also compatible with her character development arc. One of asoue's themes is "how some children are forced to mature too quickly because of tragedy". Sunny, for example, needed to learn how to cook and convince herself that she loved doing it and that she was good at it in a few days. And all this before she learned to speak English properly. She needed to help with a birth long before she fully understood issues related to human procreation. But in chapter 14, she finally had the opportunity to develop without tragedies forcing her to skip important steps in life.

"Do we take this?" Violet asked, holding up the book from which she had read out loud.

"I don't think so," Klaus said. "Perhaps another castaway will arrive, and continue the history."

"In any case," Sunny said, "they'll have something to read."

Please realize how important this dialogue is. Daniel Handler placed this dialogue here to make sure the reader understood the source of information Lemony had access to: the island book. The children wrote about their own story in that book, including their thoughts, feelings, and private conversations. The children shared some details about ancient events, about when Sunny wasn't even born. In the book, Lemony found details about some events that took place on the island before the arrival of the three Baudelaires.

"I want to make sure these life jackets I've designed will fit properly."

Well... It's good to know that, even though the boat sank, the Baudelaires had lifeboats. Their chances of survival really increased a lot. And knowing that Beatrice Jr managed to survive a shipwreck, it's quite possible that they did too.

The Baudelaires watched her approach, wondering what the next chapter in this infant's life would be, and indeed that is difficult to say. There are some who say that the Baudelaires rejoined V.F.D. and are engaged in brave errands to this day, perhaps under different names to avoid being captured. There are others who say that they perished at sea, although rumors of one's death crop up are often revealed to be untrue. But in any case, as my investigation is over, we have indeed reached the last chapter of the Baudelaires' story, even if the Baudelaires had not.

Lemony just reports here what he heard. Although Daniel Handler intentionally wishes the ending to be left open, and I will respect his decision, I will speak my opinion. They didn't die at sea, though. Note that Lemony directly relates the baby's future to the future of the three Baudelaires. The way Lemony wrote here suggests that the baby's future is as uncertain as the future of her adoptive parents. But we TBL readers know the truth about Beatrice Jr.'s future. Beatrice is alive! So the most likely situation is that her parents are also alive. ( And who knows other characters that we thought had died there on TBB... could it be that at least one of them could also have survived?)

But the question is: if Lemony knows the baby survived, why did he hide this information from the reader? Certainly to protect his niece. Lemony didn't lie, just omitted some details.

The baby paused, and looked at the back of the boat, where the nameplate had been affixed. She had no way of knowing this, of course, but the nameplate had been nailed to the back of the boat by a person standing on the very spot she was standing—at least as far as my research has shown.

Lemony once again dismantled specific knowledge through research, which could only have been done through information provided by others. Beatrice Jr needed to tell Lemony exactly where she was at that moment and Lemony needed to compare that with the information Beatrice Sr and Bertrand wrote in the island book. And then, on visiting the site, Lemony was able to ascertain the most likely position for those descriptions. While Lemony is a bit mistaken, the research process must have been like that.

Finally, she uttered a word. The Baudelaire orphans gasped when they heard it, but they could not say for sure whether she was reading the word out loud or merely stating her own name, and indeed they never learned this. Perhaps this last word was the baby's first secret, joining the secrets the Baudelaires were keeping from the baby, and all the other secrets immersed in the world. Perhaps it is better not to know what was meant by this word, as some things are better left in the great unknown. There are some words, of course, that are better left unsaid—but not, I believe, the word uttered by my niece, a word which here means that the story is over. Beatrice.

Oh... How I love this ending. That's when I felt my head explode for the first time in my life, and I'm still picking up the pieces.

#asoue #asoue theory #lemony snicket #a series of unfortunate events #asoue theories #beatrice baudelaire #snicketverse #beatrice snicket #beatrice jr #violet baudelaire #sunny baudelaire

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whoslaurapalmer · 2 years

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fic summary:

“what do you mean you lost my ring?” R asks Lemony.

oh no vera you have accidentally unlocked a secret old wip from 2017 that i could never quite get to work in terms of style and characterization -- lemonberry ice's wedding day, Full Of Shenanigans, including r's ring being lost (only instead by jacques and dewey, the best men). i am revealing the secrets because 2021!me stands by the idea that r's ring being lost works best as a subplot in a longer fic, for maximum fun.

i love wedding shenanigans fics!! i think in real life it would probably be terrible to have a million things go wrong on your wedding day but in fiction it just becomes the best time of all time. i love ensemble casts and i love shenanigans and things going wrong, in a humorous way. and so i had planned considerable, terrible shenanigans.

do all of them make sense, in retrospect??? nope!! do i know anything about how a wedding is planned??? very little!! the characterization problems i had were that this was after i'd written beatrice but when i was still working out how to write everyone, so occasionally character was sacrificed for humor (which i cannot abide by) in a way that was like, shooting my writing style back four years, which was not okay and a big reason i didn't finish it, but, some of this was a fun time.

the title was "fierceness and tenderness", from the poem a blessing for a wedding by jane hirschfield. major themes included the needs of vfd vs. personal happiness/romantic relationships/family loyalty (also featured were jacques/jerome, r/olivia, past olaf/kit), bea learning to ask for help and curtail her reckless tendencies, something about lemony learning to rely on other people as well. if i was to write it seriously now it would probably entirely be vfd vs. personal happiness and the difficult balance between the two, but it would still lean happy because, sometimes they deserve to be happy. also it'd have much smoother and tighter shenanigans, rereading and typing them all up made me realize how, incompletely i'd (vaguely) outlined it

plot points --

-it is her brother's wedding day, and kit is picking up the flowers. however the reservations have all been made under initials, and when she gets to the flower shop the receptionist isn't sure which J.S. order is hers. kit takes all of them, just to be safe. -that is still my favorite thing in the whole world. -upon reaching the wedding venue with this unholy amount of flowers, kit is approached by ramona, who says, "i don't mean to alarm you, but, have you seen beatrice?" "what do you mean, have i seen beatrice?" -MEANWHILE, jacques and dewey are searching jacques' apartment for the engagement ring, which has gone missing. dewey finds the ring but decides to keep it to himself because, as a romantic, he's been suddenly struck with a plot to get jacques and jerome back together, after finding out jacques recently ended their relationship -MEANWHILE, beatrice is having brunch with esme, and after hardcore passive-aggressive banter, esme threatens beatrice's life and the two engage in, some sort of chase, that part i hadn't really figured out, but it ended with beatrice in the sewers, for some reason -most of the wedding party arrives at the venue, including lemony and bertrand, who find out beatrice is missing and take it rather well, considering -dewey and jacques have to tell ramona they have Lost Her Family Heirloom Ring Of Great Importance, Even If She Doesn't Even Own It Anymore, But It Is The Principle Of The Situation, It's An Important Ring One Way Or Another

“Did you find the ring yet?” Kit asks.

Ramona turns sharply. “Did you what?”

“Well – ” Jacques begins.

“Jacques,” Ramona says. “Jacques, you didn’t. You did not lose my mother’s ring.”

“I didn’t,” Jacques says, “it’s just – ”

“Temporarily misplaced,” Dewey puts in. “But we’re sure it’ll turn up.”

“You’re sure it’ll turn up,” Ramona repeats, her voice rising. There’s a look in her eyes that Jacques does not like. “You’re sure it’ll turn up.”

-ramona (and kit) spends half the fanfic trying to wrangle her friends and it's taking a great deal of her energy. -MEANWHILE, monty has recently acquried a new snake (the virginian wolfsnake) and brings it to the wedding as his wedding gift. he shows it off to josephine. he also brings the plot point that he saw beatrice with esme. -i'm going to stop capitalizing meanwhile, olaf has not been invited to this wedding but is suspiciously hanging out across the street, just vibing, which everyone takes as a threat of varying levels -kit decides to take care of esme and olaf, ramona decides that she cannot have kit going rogue on this wedding day, and has her enterain jerome, who is so touched to have been invited to this wedding, because of course he was. -then, ramona has monty and josephine take care of olaf. somehow. it involved the virginian wolfsnake and a typewriter, and this --

“Oh, he thinks he’s so clever, doesn’t he,” Josephine mutters. “The man doesn’t even know the difference between i-t-s and i-t-apostrophe-s. One of these days I’m really going to stick it to him.”

-kit finally gets herself away from jerome and finds jacques, and they have a hard sibling conversation about what they deserve in life and what they want and what they're capable of having, but also how both of them think lemony deserves to be happy, and whether or not that means kit and jacques are allowed to be happy too. -dewey has jerome find the ring, who runs into jacques and gives it to him, and they work things out. -ramona forgives dewey for matchmaking with her ring. -oh!! lemony and bertrand were out there looking for beatrice. who else was gonna look for her. they have a sweet reunion moment in the sewers about bea coming to terms with her recklessness and then get back to their wedding. -it ended with this --

“Come on,” Beatrice says, smiling. “Let’s go get married.”

“Wait,” Lemony says, squinting down the aisle, “why are there so many flowers?”

“I don’t think we even picked some of those colors,” Bertrand adds.

Kit sighs. “I’ll tell you later. Just go get married.”

-anyway, gustav took the pictures (which got carried over into bea's letter). geraldine is covering everyone's shifts at the daily punctilio since they're all at the wedding, minor chaos ensues. -oh, theodora was totally invited. -there was also another end note spot where violet and klaus ask about the wedding --

“could you tell us about your wedding day?” violet asks.

beatrice, bertrand, and lemony look at each other.

“oh, the details have blurred a little over time,” bertrand says. “we got married, that was the best part.”

“there were a lot of flowers,” lemony says. “a great deal of flowers.”

“we were given a snake as a wedding present,” beatrice says.

“but we don’t have a snake,” klaus points out.

“well, we had to give it back,” beatrice says. “it got ahold of one too many typewriters.”

#lulu talks about the sad lemon man #every time i answer a fic ask i'm like 'lulu did you understand the assignment or did you just want to ramble'

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virtualfindingsdocumented · 4 years

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u asked for it. top 5 wack fandom takes on vfd politics and what u think is actually right

I was almost falling asleep in a class I can't afford to miss when I saw this and it woke me up faster than any energetic drink would.

All respect to people who think differently, of course.

1- VFD always kills the parents of the recruited children, and always has

I think everyone and their mothers (well, my mother at least) finished TUA and TPP thinking this is the case, but when you think about it it doesn't make a lot of sense on the long term for an organization to work like this, when we consider most parents seem to be volunteers too. While there is an argument that getting three children for the "price" of two parents could be a good deal, those children are untrained, and have to go through a whole process before they can even start the training (as described in the meeting in TUA).

Plus, the executions would have to be carried by volunteers too, and I can't imagine this working long term either. Eventually, someone would have to have been tasked to kill a volunteer that they couldn't. Eventually someone would have to have spilled the secret. Eventually someone in charge of this would want to do something differently.

So, even if killing the parents is something that is done, I believe this would have started around Schism time because at that specific point there must have been volunteers wanting to leave and take their children with them, together with the disagreements between volunteers. Because it was not something that was done, the parents who died were ones that would never expect their fellow volunteers to turn on them like this.

But my main theory about this is that the high number of orphans with weirdly similar backstories is actually a freaky coincidence, in a way. It was totally VFD's fault, but it wasn't executions. More like:

- A number of volunteers had enemies who would love to kill them with fire at any point, so them dying this way isn't particularly weird. Their job put them in this risk.

- Some of the deaths are so close to the children being recruited because sending their children to VFD's care was a way to protect them from these enemies. You are an adult volunteer and you realize you pissed more people off this month, so you send the children away so they will not get caught in the fight. (Check next theory)

- Specific families were targeted by not so well intentioned volunteers for money/revenge/whatever. Those not so well intentioned volunteers arranged to kill the parents and maybe even get their hands on their children ala Olaf and the Baudelaires but it was an individual thing, not a VFD thing or even a Firestarter thing.

- Problematic volunteers who had children may have been targeted by VFD as an organization rather than by individuals as it was seen they were a "lost cause" but the children could still "be saved". It was still an exception and not a rule.

Like I said, all is still VFD's fault, but not a planned mass execution plot.*

(*Maybe in the case of non-volunteer parents it is planned execution though, but how common these even are.)

2- They don't ask permission first

The whole recruitment thing described in that FAQ in TUA is so detailed and specific that it is a waste to think it is just a lie. Also, it isn't like real life parents don't send their children to bad places all the time, if only you say the right words to them.

I believe the parents, specially volunteer parents, are in to the whole thing, more or less.

They are asked permission, but to reasonable things like taking their children to receive top level education, visit incredible places around the world, learn skills they wouldn't learn anywhere, so on... As they metaphorically sign the contract they are probably not aware of the paragraphs in small print there.

Hiding the specifics is enough for non volunteer parents, and volunteer parents are for most times already so used to that life style that they don't need a lot of convincing.

Likewise, the children are aware to some point of what is going on. What would be the point of a FAQ like that if potential new volunteers are not going to read it? Again, they don't know the whole story, just the fun and exciting parts!

As a last note on the recruitment subject, my reading of the story in The Little Snicket Lad and Lemony's notes on it is that Jacob was on board on the thing (since he seemed to be there the whole time and did nothing to stop it) while E seems like she didn't know the recruitment would be on that specific night (or else she would be home to say goodbye) but she knew it was a thing that would happen at some time. Considering this likely happened very near the Schism, I think something made it not go as it should, and that's why E didn't know.

3- Kit is a "brainwashed volunteer"/extremely pro-VFD

Every time I see a post like this I am amazed at how differently we can interpret the same things. For me, Kit seems to be aligned to Lemony when it comes to VFD, and Lemony is consistently shown to be the most anti-VFD volunteer on the firefighting side.

Lemony and Kit work together in whatever rebel plot they had in ATWQ, and while we don't know the aftermath of that, they are working together again by TPP time as is canonically confirmed from the mentions of her in TSS and TGG, and that not counting the theories of L being JS and/or the taxi driver and being directly involved with the sugar bowl plot (which, if he was, may not even be VFD approved).

Also, when Dewey speaks of his hopes for the Thursday meeting, he says that it will change VFD's smoke and mirrors thing.

(Of course, since it is all so vague, it opens room for more complicated and messy possibilities, but still.)

And the way Widdershins spoke of the Snicket siblings... I don't think they would get to that status if they always played by VFD's rules.

4- Beatrice II was kidnapped by VFD

Don't underestimate her.

Beatrice was getting out of options, failing to get in touch with Lemony, so she went to VFD fully knowing who they were, as a last attempt to find out more. It's no coincidence she got in the same class as he did so many years previously.

She used VFD to get the information she wanted. Whether that was a good or a bad idea, that's another matter.

5- VFD's leadership and leaving VFD ("VFD is a cult")

I have posted about this before, but I must insist I don't think such a thing exists. And whatever once existed was already weakened by ATWQ time (a 13 years old and his sister did mess up a big fragmented plot on their own).

VFD is most likely a bunch of people who think they are the smartest ones around doing whatever they feel like and messing up what others are doing.

There are factions and alignments but no hierarchy.

This brings dark conclusions, such as no one would have given the order for B and B to kill Olaf's parents.

So we lack the characteristic leader figure a cult would have, like Ishmael is for the islanders.

Also, there is the whole "you can't leave" idea and I like the drama it brings, but it isn't a "you can't leave, if you do we will kill you" and more a "you can't truly leave because you can't erase what you've done and the memories you have and the consequences that will one day catch up to you".

No one went after Josephine or Hector to try bringing them back, for example, and Olaf only got to them because of the Baudelaire children. Beatrice and Bertrand lived in luxury and peace and their children grew up unharmed until their deaths. And you don't see active volunteers insulting "retired" volunteers and vice versa. Which also breaks another main cult trait.

#from the volunteer #save #i hope this makes sense #i typed this all at once just now #vfd politics

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lemonysnidget · 5 years

Text

Dead Wrong

Or “Who is Beatrice Snicket’s father?”

Reading The End when it first came out, I remember finishing the book and being somewhat bewildered, somewhat dissatisfied, thinking “okay how is that related to anything that came before????”, but also overall thinking “Wow, I’ve got more questions than when I started reading this book.” That’s not to say that I didn’t like the book, or that I didn’t feel like it wrapped up the overarching theme of the series is a really great way. I enjoyed The End, but it’s very different in tone from the rest of the series, and it doesn’t answer a lot of questions you go in with. And even before Chapter 14, you have so many more questions that also won’t be answered. That’s a bold move on Handler’s part, and it’s a rare thing in Children’s Lit (and a lot of fiction overall).

One of the big questions that has stuck with me as a fan throughout the years - and sparked a few conversations during lunch block with my friends - is Just who is Beatrice’s father? It’s a question you don’t even realize that you could ask until 13.13, and then you’re just kind of stuck with it for the rest of your life. Are the Baudelaire orphans raising the daughter of their former enemy? It’s a great question for Handler to leave the audience with.

Let’s dive into the significance of why wondering about Beatrice’s father is big, and what implications it has for the meaning of the book.

Reading the series the first time around, you might not even think to ask who is the father of Kit Snicket’s baby. Kit’s presence in TPP is so quick that you might not even have the chance to wonder - I certainly don’t remember even thinking about it, since there were so many other questions to be asked at the time. But, once you have Dewey whisper Kit dramatically before he drowns, the answer seems obvious. You do wonder why Kit didn’t mention Dewey’s existence to the Baudelaires, but you don’t linger on it. You realize that “my brother sends his regards” in Frank’s note is actually talking about Dewey and is kinda cute (or creepy depending on how you’re looking at it) and not a code. And if you didn’t get all of that because the book moves at such a breakneck speed, by the last couple pages of the book, you get this line:

For another terrible moment, it felt like the boat was going to sink into the water, just as Dewey Denouement had sunk into the pond, guarding his underwater catalog and all its secrets, and leaving the woman he loved pregnant and distraught. (12.13)

Pregnant? Distraught? Sounds like Kit Snicket. So, we have confirmation that Dewey loved Kit (or that Lemony thinks that Dewey loved Kit). And it’s phrased in a way that really makes you inclined to think that there’s little ambiguity on the matter of who impregnated the Snicket lass.

You get to The End, and everything seems to continue down that same train of thought. Kit asks the Baudelaires specifically about Dewey, and hopes that he will join them too. And then when she finds out Dewey is dead, she just gives up. She tells the Baudelaires: “I've lost too many people—my parents, my true love, and my brothers” and you immediately think she’s talking about Dewey (13.13). You don’t even question it. You just accept that she’s talking about Dewey and move on. But then... suddenly it changes.

"I've lost too much to go on— my parents, my true love, my henchfolk, an enormous amount of money I didn't earn, even the boat with my name on it." (13.13)

There are very few times I’ve actually mentally heard a record scratch in reaction to something, but this was one of them. I remember just stopping and staring at the page for a few seconds, thinking I had misread something. I then flipped back a couple pages to confirm that yep, the parallel structure between Kit’s and Olaf’s statements wasn’t in my head. And I knew that there was absolutely no way that it was an accident. (The in-universe record scratch for the Baudelaires happened with the kiss.)

Handler’s a skilled writer, and he knows enough to be extremely deliberate with his words and phrasing. He knows the importance of punctuation. Even if he might make fun of Aunt Josephine, he uses grammar so well that it’s clear he does care how sentences are structured and how punctuation or the splicing of sentences can provide nuance. No writer worth their salt would have these two sentences in the same chapter (let alone a flip of a page away) if they weren’t trying to say something. Not only do you have similar words and sentiments, there’s similar sentence structure and punctation! These two lines are supposed to go together. And this isn’t even the first time that Olaf and Kit have had very similar lines, in fact in TPP, both Kit and Olaf say "A taxi will pick up anyone who signals for one” matching each other word to word (12.1, 12.9). Perhaps while reading TPP, you didn’t notice it or you assumed it was some kind of code or aphorism of VFD, so you didn’t pay it much mind. But, in hindsight, it seems that Handler was already hinting at Kit and Olaf having a very deep connection.

More than just parallel structure, Handler has a major, major departure from tone of the whole series and the characterization of both Kit and Count Olaf. ASOUE is not a series that focuses on romance, and it certainly does not advocate the notion of true love - maybe you’d find that in The Pony Party or The Littlest Elf. Love in ASOUE is not a permanent thing, and it is not a good thing. Beatrice 1 moved on from Lemony and was very happy in the life she chose. Charles’ love for Sir was not at all healthy. Esme and Jacques marriage is hardly a fairy tale (more a Russian novel). And even though Lemony seems to carry an ever enduring torch for Beatrice, he never refers to her as his true love. No one mentions true love. But, at the end of The End, pragmatic, Machiavellian Kit brings it up for the first time. It’s a little bit jarring. And then when Count Olaf says it, the reader is asked once again to step back and re-evaluate their understanding of the story’s villain, and the story itself.

Continuing on that theme of forcing you to re-evaluate a man readers have spent 13 books seeing as a deplorable/disgusting/unloveable individual, Handler gives Olaf and Kit the most intimate moment in the whole series when Kit reaches out to touch Olaf’s tattoo and recite a love poem to him. Two dying individuals on the opposite side of a war, just connecting one last time, to recite poetry to each other. Taken out of context, it seems pretty damn romantic.

And what does Olaf do in response to Kit’s love poem? He ruins the moment by abridging a poem about the cyclical nature of misery and pain, how children inherit their parents trauma’s, and the best way to avoid passing that burden on is to not have kids and die. Let Olaf say fuck, cowards. Charming thing to say to a pregnant woman in the process of giving birth, eh? Definitely a very Olaf thing to do. Is he just being an asshole? Or is there something else going on?

At that point, there is no choice but to consider the possibility that Olaf is the father of Kit’s baby. Handler wants us to wonder if Beatrice’s birth is book ended by her parents deaths.

No doubt, in the year that follows on the coast shelf, the Baudelaires asked themselves just that. Are they raising the child of the man who relentlessly pursued them and who they believe murdered their parents in revenge? They would have definitely done the math and realized that their series of unfortunate events took less than 40 weeks, safely allowing Olaf to have fathered Beatrice before becoming their guardian.

You can almost see Violet, Klaus, and Sunny searching Beatrice’s face as she grows up, looking for any similarities or clues as to who her father is. Unfortunately, Beatrice “look[s] very much like her mother” so they might never have come to a conclusion (13.14). But, the fact that even with the ambiguity and doubts the Baudelaires still lovingly raised the possible child of the person who they believe made them an orphan is huge. It shows that VFD’s cycle just might be broken. Unlike Olaf, who wasn’t able to let go of the fact that his parents were murdered by at least one of the Baudelaire’s parents and who let it turn him into a twisted villain, the Baudelaires give Beatrice a family, and they don’t let any doubts get in the way of raising her and loving her. And that flies right in the face of everything that has come before.

Instead of the intergenerational passing down of trauma, abuse, and pain that is a part of VFD and the story as a whole, the Baudelaires stand up and stop the cycle. The Baudelaires did not become like Count Olaf, despite their unfortunate events. The Baudelaires rose above their trauma.

They directly contradict Olaf’s dying words. Man doesn’t have to hand misery to man, and your parents don’t have to fuck you up. Trauma does not have to be something that’s passed on as an epigenetic trait. You can have a terrible childhood, and you can grow up and make sure that whatever you suffered doesn’t happen to the next generation. This is a major takeaway point from the series.

The ambiguity over Beatrice’s paternity is essential to the overall arc of ASOUE. It completes the circle, and it is a powerful message. So powerful, in fact, that Handler actually decided he had to include it, even if originally, he hadn’t planned on it.

Handler has talked about how he had to rework some of TPP because of one throw-away line in TBB. But, he hasn’t talked about how suddenly, between TGG and TPP, Kit became 9 months pregnant.

In the driver's seat was a woman the Baudelaires had never seen before, dressed in a long, black coat buttoned up all the way to her chin. On her hands were a pair of white cotton gloves, and in her lap were two slim books, probably to keep her company while she waited.(11.13)

The Baudelaires can see her lap in TGG - Kit was not in her third trimester when Handler originally penned TGG. But, “her belly had a slight but definite curve” as of TPP (12.1). This is a ret-con, folks. Handler can’t change the fact that he had the Baudelaires be able to look into the car and see that she had two books in her lap instead of resting on top of a very pregnant belly, so he tries to act like nothing happened and hopes the readers won’t notice the contradiction. A woman who is about to give birth would have more than a slight curve, I might add, but that’s not exactly important.

Obviously, Kit being pregnant was vitally important to Handler’s story. So important that he contradicted himself, something that he went to great lengths to avoid doing in the same book. If Beatrice’s father was supposed to be Dewey - a character who was only in one book, who supported the Baudelaires rather than challenged them - then Handler would not have done this. Beatrice wouldn’t have been written in if Dewey was meant to be the obvious father. The Baudelaires raising Dewey’s daughter doesn’t really add anything to the story, and it would present far too small of an arc (just the last two books) to be worth it.

So why even have Dewey be romantically connected to Kit at all? Why not just not give a candidate for who the father of Kit’s baby is until we see her with Olaf? Well... to quote the show:

ASOUE is filled with mysteries. Handler loves weaving them. He loves giving you a few clues here and there, and sometimes giving you enough clues to solve the puzzle on your own, and other times, he deliberately withholds stuff just because it suits his narrative aesthetic. And a lot of the time, he deliberately misleads or misdirects you.

When it comes to Dewey and Kit’s relationship, Handler gives us enough to connect the dots, but connecting them isn’t necessarily the right thing to do. While it is entirely possible that Dewey and Kit were sexually involved, it is very important to note that Handler does not actually give us any confirmation that Dewey’s feelings were returned or if he and Kit actually were intimate. Dewey loved Kit, yes, that is a fact, but loving someone is not enough to create a baby with them. That’s not actually how it works, even if a lot of sex talks might want you to think so.

Kit and Dewey were not living together. If Kit and Dewey were planning to co-parent together as a couple, Kit would not be solely responsible for “[choosing] wallpaper for the baby's room” - they would be choosing it together, but instead, Dewey is still living with his brothers at at the Hotel at all hours (12.2) Further support for this is that were Dewey and Kit together, Frank wouldn’t have to act as a go-between for Kit and Dewey by telling her “my brother sends his regards” (12.2). Dewey would have been able to give Kit his regards himself... and he probably wouldn’t be giving regards. For a couple that’s romantically involved, that sounds incredibly formal! In fact, Kit actually describes Dewey as “a wonderful gentleman” (12.2). A similarly stiff way to refer to someone... not to mention the fact that referring to someone as a gentleman is frequently used in the context of a guy not being to forward or taking advantage of a situation sexually where he could have ignored the woman’s boundaries. It really does sound like Dewey, despite loving Kit after years of working with her, wasn’t actually physically intimate with Kit. Dewey’s love, therefore, seems to have a lot more in common with the courtly love of Dante and Beatrice rather than an erotic love.

That doesn’t mean they weren’t mutually emotionally intimate, creating a very strong bond. Kit was obviously extremely distressed by his death and they did work together for years. But, it’s hard to know if Kit was upset to find out about the death of her child’s father or if she was upset because her friend and everything that they had worked for was gone. Or both. Either one is pretty devastating.

Olaf in book canon is more likely than not Beatrice’s father, for meta reasons and “in universe” reasons. Olaf being Beatrice’s father is consistent with the textual evidence, whereas the textual evidence does not support Dewey and Kit having a serious or even sexual relationship. The Baudelaires considering the possibility that Olaf is Beatrice’s father is absolutely essential for the meaning of the series. The Baudelaires, who unlike us cannot go back and pick apart the text, have to have their doubts, but they treat Beatrice in a way that the prior generations of VFD could not comprehend.

So you might wonder, Does Olaf know? Does he consider the possibility for Beatrice being his daughter? For him, the matter might be pretty unambiguous, since he has knowledge that the Baudelaires, Lemony, and us the readers don’t have. Perhaps he knows that she isn’t, perhaps he knows she is, perhaps he doesn’t know one way or the other. Regardless, Olaf doesn’t care. Olaf was more than willing to claim he’d kill Kit and her unborn child at the start of The End, but when it comes down to it, Olaf chooses to suffer a lot of pain, prolonging his death, to help the both of them. Darwin might argue that Olaf being Beatrice’s father takes away the selflessness of the act. But, Darwin would be ignoring Count Olaf’s dying words: “Don’t have kids yourself.” Count Olaf did not want to become a father, but he suffers greatly to ensure that Kit’s child is born.

That is a noble act.

You could say it would be more noble if it were Dewey’s daughter, but I disagree. Why would Olaf care whether Dewey’s daughter lived or died? He wouldn’t. Olaf’s act is selfless because Beatrice isn’t Dewey’s daughter.

On the topic of Netflix, and speculation for the third season:

Do I think the show is going to go this route... possibly. Though the casting of a younger woman to play Kit and a younger man to play the Denouements makes it seem a little bit less likely that they would go for it. But, I do find it interesting that Netflix deliberately added the cake tasting scene in TBB.

Perhaps it might have just been to foreshadow to complicated relationship between Lemony and Olaf, but, it’s interesting that it’s cake when we know that cake is what Beatrice Snicket wants to bring along with her on the boat to escape the island - "Cake!" shrieked the baby, and her guardians laughed (13.14).

“Cake” is the only non-babytalk line that Beatrice says, and the fact that Handler chose to have Beatrice love cake of all things not to long after he has Lemony inform of us of the fact that Dewey was able to document twenty-seven cakes “that Olaf has stolen” (12.13). Handler wanted to remind us of just how much Olaf loves cakes just before The End. Sure, he’s not the only character who likes cakes, but it is an interesting choice on Handler’s part, and an interesting choice for Netflix to include that scene.

In about a week, we’ll know what route they decided to take with the Netflix adaptation, but I do believe that they have set up the potential for Beatrice being Olaf’s daughter should they choose to keep Beatrice’s line about cake.

And there you have it, the meta I have had in my ‘drafts’ for six months because I kept on writing it and scrapping it.

#asoue #a series of unfortunate events #kit snicket #dewey denouement #count olaf

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