#lemony snicket hands out handkerchiefs -- a thought lulu has now put in three (3) fic related adventures

[whoslaurapalmer]

just, spitballing something

violet doesn’t learn how to drive for a really long time (when would she have had the time?? when was it necessary??) but eventually she learns how to drive in her late twenties, and she needs An Adult Who Is More Adult Than Her to be in the car while she’s driving and it’s lemony. lemony is very touched to be asked to supervise her driving, even though no one can concretely confirm whether or not lemony himself can drive. but he knows what he’s talking about and is very patient with her even when she accidentally runs a red light one (1) time

and the thing about violet hanging out with lemony is that like, he doesn’t make her uncomfortable, but, he makes her uncomfortable. violet has been the oldest adult in the room for so long that when there is an actual adult around who’s the age her parents would’ve been if they were still alive, she does not know what to do with him. he never acts like a parent or An Older Adult, but violet has been protecting everybody for so long that she doesn’t know what to do when presented with somebody who could potentially protect her, and maybe actually do it, like they’re supposed to. and she doesn’t need somebody to protect her, she’s in her late twenties and she knows how the world works and what to do, how to live and how to hope and how to be. and she doesn’t need lemony, not like that, not at all. sure she likes him just fine, he helps around the house and he has good taste in books and beatrice likes him, and he took care of her, but you’re supposed to take care of a child. violet isn’t a child anymore. and she doesn’t want to be.

anyway. she runs the red light one (1) time and has to pull over because she can’t breathe. and when she starts crying and lemony lets her cry she’s almost angry that he doesn’t do anything else. but she doesn’t know what she wants him to do. and then he hands her a handkerchief. and lemony has never asked anything of her, she thinks, except that she just be violet baudelaire. and, being violet baudelaire means a lot of things. inventor, orphan, sister, parent, adult. she was a child. then she was an adult. she’s an adult now. and there was no period in between, and klaus knows how that feels, but klaus is her brother, her younger brother, and violet wants nothing more, all at once, but to look up and see somebody else who’s supposed to know what to do. somebody else to make a decision, somebody else to do something terrible and hurt someone else, somebody else to make a mistake, somebody else to raise her siblings and beatrice, not that she doesn’t want to but she’s been going for so long without stopping until here, now, on the side of the road in a car she built herself, learning how to drive much too late, which just tops the list of things that in a decent world violet baudelaire should never have really had to do, and violet feels like she’s unraveling. being violet baudelaire means, she’s never allowed herself to be this tired, and she can’t do it.

and lemony snicket is handing her a handkerchief. and he smiles at her, and tells her she can try again. driving scares him, too. that’s why he doesn’t typically drive, even though, yes, he does have a license. he shows it to her. he tells her about how her parents were very proud of him, when he got it. he tells her they made fun of his picture, this very picture because he has since renewed it a number of times (sometimes many years late but always renewed) but always under circumstances where he could not change the picture, but he assures her no one gets a good picture at the department of motor vehicle anyway, and it’s nothing to worry about. he tells her she’s okay.

violet takes his handkerchief. she holds it tight in her hands and can’t find it in her to wipe her eyes or stop crying, and she can’t say anything at all. lemony looks concerned now, and he almost always looks some degree of concerned, about one thing or another, but he looks concerned at her and he puts his hand on her shoulder and says it again, very earnestly. she’s okay. and she really isn’t. she doesn’t feel okay at all. she leans over and sobs into his suit jacket, because she’s not okay. and he doesn’t say anything else. he holds her very gently and doesn’t say anything. not even when she crumples up the lapels of his jacket in her hands as she grips them alongside the handkerchief. like a child, she thinks. it’s terrible.

it’s not all that terrible. the world is stopping, but it still moves on. another car drives by. neither violet or lemony let go for as long as it takes.

eventually, violet stops crying, and she leans back in the seat and dries her eyes, and folds lemony’s handkerchief into a neat square, and hesitates. then she tucks it into the pocket of her shirt.

“for safekeeping,” she explains. anything can happen in a car. in case i need it, she does not say, because she’s still not entirely okay.

lemony nods, very seriously. not patronizingly, but seriously. like he’d do the same thing, like he understands completely, and she doesn’t have to say anything more.

violet drives back home with lemony snicket.