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axolotiels · 8 years

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That’s Not How the Story Goes

Once upon a time when I was a wee little writer who had recently finished ASOUE, I was displeased that Lemony Snicket neither met the Baudelaires nor adopted them. I fixed that, and uncovered it recently, only to have to fix it again because little me wrote like a gremlin. You’ll see that not much has changed.

Enjoy!

It is my unfortunate duty to inform you that Lemony Snicket, a man thought to be dead many times over and with great penchant for writing utterly dismal stories about three ingenious orphans and their many escaped perils, has stepped out for a moment. I do not use the term 'step-out' to give another insinuation that he stepped out either in front of a moving car or off of a cliff to add another false death to his growing list; I merely mean that Mr. Snicket now has other obligations that are far more important than chronicling his dismay, delight, and other words that start with the letter 'd'.

'Delight' is not a word that many would associate with someone as melancholic as Mr. Snicket, and with good reason. Not only is his life an ongoing disaster, he also took the liberty of chronicling the equally disastrous lives of the Baudelaire orphans following their parent's demise.

Like it was my duty to inform you that Mr. Snicket has stepped out, it is also my duty to inform you that something most unimaginable has occurred following the end of his series following the Baudelaire orphans.

For those of you uninitiated in the final book written in his series of increasingly unfortunate coincidences, he stopped writing about his findings about the Baudelaires. Or rather, he stopped publishing his findings, because after that final book (Entitled 'The End') he had a very difficult time finding and following the Baudelaires.

He has entrusted the manuscripts that he has written to me, and I can safely assure you that there is little to no substance to them other than his signature writing style and Mr. Snicket bemoaning things as he is often prone to doing.

The Baudelaires, who had been through just about as much as a group of children could possibly go through, were staggering into a seaside town. It was a quiet place, and thusfar, nobody had noticed them. I wish, dear reader, that I could tell you how the Baudelaires managed to acquire new clothes, food, and medical treatment in such a short amount of time with nary a penny in their pockets (But with many pennies in the bank, which in retrospect, probably explains quite a lot.). I wish that I had been there to see it to pen it down with such accuracy as Mr. Snicket had before me, but alas... I would if I could, but I can't, so I shan't.

The Baudelaires were hardly lucky in anything that had thusfar happened to them, but in this tiny, dreary, seaside town that was riddled with caves and people who did not ask too many questions, they were relatively well off. Both Violet and Klaus were able to acquire jobs, though they didn't pay enough to allow them much extra beyond paying rent and eating food. It was almost a ritual that the Baudelaires had whenever either Klaus or Violet received a paycheck that they made some remark or other about 'it's better than being paid in gum and coupons'. Nobody laughed but it was in good enough humor.

They didn't see that many people, and were quite reclusive, as children who had been through so much were prone to being. In truth, they did not need the jobs they had. Violet, the eldest, had inherited the Baudelaire fortune on her eighteenth birthday; the fortune was one of the things that caused their many problems, but they would be quite foolish not to use it. Besides that, Violet and Klaus enjoyed having something to do, including forgetting that they had quite a lot of money as they tried to subsist off their wages, panicking, remembered their savings account, and starting the cycle again.

It just so happened that the 'something to do' on this fateful cloudy day was going out for a stroll while they went to the nearest supermarket in the midst of the town.

Klaus Baudelaire was the one who was walking along in the middle, Violet was tailing behind him and reading a list of whatever it was that they needed to procure, and Sunny was walking resolutely ahead of them. An old man was sweeping up the barber shop that stayed open despite seemingly only having three customers, and when they passed, they waved.

It is my gathering and the gathering of a fellow agent by the name of Kingsleigh that the Baudelaires largely enjoyed their home in the town by the sea because it was so close to water. It was not a beach, like the place from whence they had come, although there was certainly a gray and pebbly beach nearby, but it was a town that was so nearby water that it made them feel the littlest bit safer. After all, when everything you had kept going up in smoke, literally and figuratively, you'd take measures to counteract such things.

After disappearing into the supermarket that was hidden beneath a dull gray sky, they reappeared with a few bags of groceries and other assorted items. Klaus had picked up writing materials and common-place books, which he seemed to have an awful lot of, Sunny had purchased a few extra-strong teething rings for herself, and Violet had purchased a few random screws, nails, gears, and whatever it was that the market had in its tiny hardware section. Klaus was a reader, but he had taken quite a shine to writing as well. He remembered everything he had ever read, from the Baudelaire library, to the dismal secrets of VFD, even recipes to make foods which he was sure did not exist. Sunny was still working on special skills that could apply in a much calmer setting, but since she was a small baby (Which was not that very long ago, really) she had four very sharp teeth that could sever the toughest wires and even be used to climb large elevator shafts that happened to be empty. Violet was an inventor, and though her inventions now were mostly alarms, detection rackets, and ways to keep track of things that did not need keeping track of, she had proved quite adept at pulling inventions out of thin air when hurtling down a mountain backwards at high speed.

These skills were, for the most part, useless in their quiet life in the quiet town next to the quiet sea where scarcely anything happened. This was quite fine by them.

As they walked down the main street of the town, each of them thinking their own thoughts as most are prone to doing, Klaus suddenly looked at his elder sister and said, “Do you think we could stop for some tea?”

Violet looked up, surprised. “I don't see why not, but it does look close to raining.”

Sunny, who had overheard their conversation, responded with, “It always looks like it's going to rain.” But she said it in a merry way, like she was daydreaming, which the young Baudelaire was most certainly not.

Violet considered this and motioned for them to turn a corner a bit earlier than usual. Down the street was the town's only tea-shop, a store for tourists that sold the usual sand in bottles and colored seashells, a paint store that helped to paint said seashells, and a library that had been abandoned long ago and was now hollow of its books.

They stopped at the tea shop that only had outside seating beneath two weather worn umbrellas, and the Baudelaires sat down outside at a table and rung the service bell. Now that nothing was happening to them, they had a lot less to talk about, so they sat there in silence and watched whatever bird dared to flit across the sky above the town.

I impart something else upon you, for those initiated: the Baudelaires had previously acquired an infant. This child was someone they often thought about in their silent gray town, wondering where she was and how she was doing and whether or not she had been carried away by some large sea bird. The Snicket whose place I now take once had two siblings: a brother named Jacques, who was rather unfortunately murdered at the Village of Fowl Devotees, and a sister named Kit, who also perished but due to something that I am not allowed to talk about, despite Mr. Snicket having written at least 3 separate books containing information about what I am not allowed to talk about. (Which is a deadly fungus named Medusoid Mycelium). This sister, Kit, had accompanied the Baudelaires to their previous home (Here to mentioned in book 13; honestly, if you don't know all of this please go read this abysmal series for yourself.) and had the baby that the Baudelaires now thought an awful lot about. Beatrice, named after their mother, was quite ingenious and could read after only a few months, which is not something that babies are often inclined to do. The Baudelaires and Beatrice had been separated on their journey from their island home to the dreary mainland at which they found themselves now.

One can imagine that, though the Baudelaires tried their hardest to be happy and were happy for the most part, that such things like thinking about a lost infant that had become a part of a family that you no longer had would bring down your mood considerably. The saddened thoughts spread from sibling to sibling sometimes, as if they were all telepathically linked, which is a phenomenon that has not yet been taken as fact but may explain an awful lot.

The owner of the tea-shop stuck his head out of the door, took their order (Which, like the weather, was much too drab to remember properly, especially with only Mr. Snicket's rather hazy eyewitness account) and went back inside.

The Baudelaires, as you may have gathered, had become very suspicious people. They had not set out to become suspicious people, just as you never set out to become a strawberry-crazed maniac with a large stick or an associate and I to become ghost writers for one of our organization's last standing agents. It was merely the circumstances with which they found themselves that forced them from becoming three nice young kids to three nice young kids that would jump at the drop of a hat. Agent Kingsleigh has relayed to me that there was scarcely a day when they did not jump at shadows or unexplained noises in the night. So as you can imagine, the sight of a man in a gray suit staggering toward you with a suitcase in one hand and a look that was an amalgamate of several other emotions would most definitely arouse suspicion, even in a town as small and as nameless as the one that they lived in.

Violet looked up and eyed him down fiercely, sitting as straight up as she could. Before the man could speak, she held out one hand in a 'stop before I throw this screw-driver at you' gesture. “Can we help you?”

The man stopped, and the Baudelaires finally were able to get a good look at his face. His hair was black and neatly combed but still looked as all hair looks when its owner is under tremendous stress. His suitcase looked to barely be holding itself together, watermarks and scratches ripping their way through the dusty brown leather. Klaus held back a grimace; perhaps the most disconcerting thing about this shambling man was his face, and by extension, his eyes.

Eyes, like being suspicious, were also something that the Baudelaires were exceedingly familiar with. The man did not have eyes that resembled the insignia of VFD, but they knew those eyes. They were scarily similar to their own, weathered and gray beneath their actual color. The eyes of a person who had seen everything, lost it, worked hard to regain it and had it ripped out from under them like a poorly-woven rug. The man was not old but looked to be aged by stress, much like his hair.

Having met Mr. Snicket on a few occasions, though most of these were as he was on the run from quite a few rather rude men and women who wanted to tie him to the front of a boat and sail into the sunset or things of a similar ilk, I can say that Mr. Snicket exudes a very depressing aura. He is melancholy by nature, and with good reason to be. A melancholic aura was not the aura that the Baudelaires gathered about him that day. Agent Kingsleigh has reported that the aura that Lemony Snicket projected was that of horrifically happy disbelief, which is an amalgamate of 3 separate emotions.

He stood there with his mouth agape and the hand that held his suitcase shaking.

“I...” The man tried to speak and found himself unable, taking another step forward before being stopped again.

“Can we help you?” Violet said again, not in the mood for any more nonsense for the rest of her life.

The man in the gray suit cleared his throat and straightened himself up, but still looked windblown and disheveled. “I... you do not know me, Baudelaires,” He said, his voice a deep and saddened baritone that sounded like it was trying its best to be both nonthreatening and to keep its owner from coming to tears. “But I know... I know you.”

This is a very alarming thing to hear when one has led a completely normal life and has not been chased across the country and over the seas by a man with a unibrow and a bad habit of setting important things on fire while blaming other people. The Baudelaires had in fact spent quite a few years of their lives fighting away this man with a unibrow and every bad habit imaginable, so hearing a man who looked as though he'd been dragged through a hurricane over a particularly angry lake say that 'he knew them' was a rather frightening thing to hear.

“No. No, no, no, we have had more than enough of people following us and giving us trouble.” It was Klaus who spoke up this time, a defiantly cautious glint in his eye.

The man looked mildly disappointed for a second, but his expression remained mostly unchanged. “I-I know, Baudelaires. Forgive me for surprising you but-”

Violet stood at the table as the pleasant smell of blueberry pastries and sugary tea contrasted sharply with the less-sweet attitude with which the Baudelaires had surrounded themselves. “Unless you have come bearing news about anyone named Beatrice Snicket, we would appreciate it if you let us alone. Good day sir.” She said this like a man who was attempting to throw a small child from a chocolate factory. I do not know why she mentioned Beatrice, but bless her for doing so.

At the sound of the two names, both 'Beatrice' and 'Snicket' respectively, the man froze again. Even his shaking stopped, and for a few moments, he looked as though he were on the brink of collapse. His eyes flashed and he faltered again, but this time he asked a question. “Beatrice... Beatrice Snicket? There is no Beatrice Snicket.”

A cold wind blew through the street and shifted him a bit in place, hiding the shiver that racked him. With every passing second, his eyes seemed to grow bigger and the Baudelaires said no more, waiting.

“Beatrice married Bertrand.” The man in the gray suit said slowly.

“Beatrice didn't marry our father.” Klaus said, and saw Sunny give the man the most suspicious once-over he'd ever seen. “She never even knew out father.”

The man in the suit looked bewildered, running his hand through his dull black hair. “Who is... Baudelaires, I...” For someone who made his existence entirely on words, he found himself at a remarkable lack of any.

“We would greatly appreciate it,” Violet said in a calm but utterly venomous voice. “If you would leave my siblings and I alone.”

Once again, the man only stared, and the Baudelaires were left to wonder what was taking their tea so long. He straightened himself but still did not move in the quiet street of the quiet town. After he appeared to be lost in thought even among all of the other emotions that his face betrayed him of feeling, he said in a hushed voice, “My niece. Beatrice Snicket is... is my niece.”

It had taken quite a bit of time for Mr. Snicket to gather this information despite all of the evidence pointing at it in the most obvious way. When one has been through as much grief and gross disbelief as much as Mr. Snicket and the Baudelaires both had, it can be quite hard to articulate speech. This was precisely what was happening to Mr. Snicket at that moment in time. He actually managed to take a deep breath and exhale it slowly enough to speak in a more understandable and less chopped up manner.

“Baudelaires, I am sorry to intrude on your personal space but please allow me to introduce myself. I am Lemony Snicket. I'm the last...” He faltered, and spoke up again. “the last living Snicket. Unless my... my niece Beatrice is still alive.”

The Baudelaires said nothing, stunned but still not quite as stunned as they once would have been. They collectively wondered where their tea was.

“I.... Baudelaires, I've been trying to find you since the fire. The-the fire I was framed for.” He was allowed to take a few flat steps forward as another gust of wind funneled down from the sky.

Violet, Klaus, and Sunny exchanged judgmental glances. “The Snicket file?” It was Sunny who spoke up this time. Despite not even being a fully-fledged child, she was remarkably articulate, especially when things such as this came into the equation.

For a second, Snicket looked relieved. “Yes, that's... that's the one.” He became serious again quickly. “I'm very sure that you're well aware that Count Olaf started a great many of those fires, including yours.”

“What do you know about Count Olaf?” Klaus asked, trying to funnel away the almost mocking tone he had acquired. They were less threatened and more annoyed by now, but they were also curious.

A clatter came from inside the tea-shop's kitchen, and everyone jumped. 'Clatter' is a word which means a loud crashing of plates, or in this case, 'agent Kingsleigh finally realizes that Lemony Snicket is standing outside and rushes to contact our supervisor'. I am sorry to inform you that this clatter overshadowed the conversation. What you are about to experience is what is known as a chronological jump, in which I am forced to skip a few details which, fortunately enough for me, are not absolutely instrumental in the retelling of this account.

By the time the tea-shop completed the Baudelaire's order, Lemony Snicket was seated across from them at a table. The siblings had crowded close to each other like birds in a storm, listening and talking whilst trying to make some amount of sense. They could tell that this man who now sat across from them and who was trying to keep from bursting into tears at any given moment, had been through a lot.

They had told him about their endeavors on the island, which he had not been able to follow, and were about halfway through when the shop owner passed them their tea and blueberry turnovers before going back inside and tending to the telegram he'd received from me.

“So, Baudelaires please allow me to attempt to digest this,” They did and waited for his response. “Kit is in fact deceased, she had a baby whom you named Beatrice, and on your way back you somehow lost her and you have ended up... here.” He sounded as though he were about to cry, which was not a new development but a distressing one nonetheless.

Violet nodded. “We're sorry about your siblings, Mr. Snicket.”

“I can't imagine what it would be like to lose Violet or Sunny, especially after all we've been through.” Added Klaus, suddenly feeling very ill at ease, though he couldn't figure out exactly what made him feel that way besides everything.

Snicket gave them a weak smile. “I don't expect you to, Baudelaires. With all that's happened, I'd hoped that you wouldn't have to.”

There was something both oddly comforting and oddly unnerving about the things the man called Lemony Snicket said. I am to believe that at that point, he had told them that he'd been chronicling their misfortunes, and they had understood that it had something to do with VFD. There was also something else that Mr. Snicket was hiding, and this they knew well, despite having seen him for all of about twenty minutes.

“What are you going to do now, Mr. Snicket?” Violet asked while taking a tentative sip from her tea. She didn't think the tea would harm her in any way, but she was very put off by whatever was occurring, even if it was harmless and terribly sad rather than harmful and terribly sad.

He thought for a moment, penning down details that he had observed from the Baudelaires and their tellings of their time on the island whilst attempting to keep the wind from blowing them away. “I don't know. I never do. But,” he looked up with his eyes flashing, if only a little, “I'm not running from anyone anymore, not at the moment anyway. I suppose I have you three extraordinary children to thank for that.”

They looked at him a bit stunned. He was correct, of course, but it was still an odd thing to hear. What he said was 'thank you'; what he meant was 'thank you for killing Count Olaf or otherwise letting him die, as it now puts me further away from danger as well as you further away from danger'.

Lemony Snicket went back to his papers for a moment, his pen scratching furiously.

The Baudelaires were faced with a dilemma, a word which here means 'should we turn away this incredibly sad man with a tip of the hat once we leave' or 'should we further our interactions with this sad man though we are not obligated to do as such'.

Violet, Klaus, and Sunny all excused themselves for a moment and walked far enough away that the gusting wind disguised their hushed voices.

Again, I wish I could tell you what transpired, but neither I nor the agent working there that day was able to write down what it was that they were saying. Snicket was busy writing down thoughts of his own and glancing balefully up at the Baudelaires, appearing to almost believe that they would disappear like spirits or those who had been framed of murder if he did not keep looking to see if they were there.

Suddenly, Lemony Snicket had most of his work go up in smoke, a phrase which here means 'his papers did not spontaneously combust but a great few of them were scattered into the empty street by a rather rude gust of wind.' He clamped his suitcase shut and sprinted into the street, which is remarkable when one knows how many bone fractures he's had in the past.

The Baudelaires all rushed back to try and swat down the flutter of parchment, and with four people all hunting paper like cats, it was easily accomplished enough. Violet was given a perfunctory nod by each of her siblings while delivering a stack back to Snicket, and as she handed him the papers, she looked him in the eye.

“Mr. Snicket... do you have a place do stay?”

He furrowed his eyebrows, as if unable to comprehend the question, and then responded, “No, no, but I'll manage.”

“We know it isn't much, but we do have a couch.” Klaus spoke up from behind Violet; he'd taken his seat again alongside Sunny.

For a second, Snicket looked horrified. “No, no, Baudelaires, I couldn't accept that offer.”

Violet, who still held her cautious demeanor, was also struck with something akin to pity. “Please, Mr. Snicket you won't be any trouble.”

“Not to mention, it's getting a bit more blustery than this later tonight. Your papers won't survive a storm like this outside.” Klaus looked calmly at the man in the gray suit.

Snicket pursed his lips, deep in thought, as he often was. “I believe I've put you in enough danger already, Baudelaires. You never know who's following you when you're someone like me.”

Violet straightened up and looked him in the eye, an act that can be quite frightening, especially when one is a young woman who was ready to fight tooth and nail at any given time, should something go awry. “Even if you are being followed, Mr. Snicket, even you should know that we are more than capable of defending ourselves.”

Sunny glanced slyly at her sister and the now startled-looking man she was talking to. “She's right, you know. I still have my teeth.”

“I still have my inventing skills.” added Violet, crossing her arms.

“And I still have my memory and my books. More of the former than the latter.” Klaus crossed his arms as well, as did Sunny, and soon three fourths of the table was sitting resolutely with their arms crossed and their hair being mussed by the cantankerous winds.

“You've been through quite enough.” Snicket muttered, averting his eyes in favor of his scrambled parchments. It was not that he lacked empathy, but the fact that he thought he didn't deserve to be among their good graces. “If I were faster, perhaps I could have stopped some of those... those atrocious acts, but I was not. I don't want to be too slow for you again... it's best if I leave you be.”

The Baudelaires shared a thoughtful glance in the gusty afternoon in front of the tea shop. Violet, Klaus, and Sunny made a silent agreement without so much as a flick of the head. They ignored their forced cautious nature for the first time in a very long while.

Snicket had begun packing up his things when Sunny got up and placed one tiny hand on his forearm, and said in a strangely adult voice for someone so young, “We forgive you, L.” She said it with the implication that there was nothing to be forgiven, but all three of the easily startled siblings knew that he needed to hear it.

He looked up, and his expression of alarm seemed to melt into melancholic relief that only people like Mr. Snicket can manage. Once again, he looked as though he were about to cry, but once again again, this was not very new.

It took a moment for Snicket to respond while he made sure all of his papers and pens were in the right order and had not been rigged to explode. Once he was done, he was met by the three faces of the children it had taken him so, so long to find. He sighed and put one hand to his forehead. “I'm not going to change your minds, am I?”

“No.” They all responded in unison.

He quickly looked away with a soft grin playing on his lips as he wiped nonchalantly at one of his eyes, as if hiding tears was something he had to do often.

As it was my unfortunate duty to inform you that Mister Snicket stepped out, it is my much more pleasant duty to tell you that he did accept the offer to sleep on their couch. An even more pleasant bit of news is that this is the first time in at least ten years that he has not left the same post after three days of staying their. He has asked me to stop the recount here, and I shall respect his wishes. One more parting bit of information, but you did not hear it from me, and I did not hear it from Kingsleigh: The Baudelaires are quite enjoying having an uncle again.

#asoue #a series of unfortunate events #lemony snicket #his is prolly ooc af #lemony sniclets #jinx writes

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