#ran out of Gs for gaslight

[rytron]

Fridge update

[surferboypizzas]

The Reconciliation

summary: an ahs; coven fix-it-fic in which zoe tricks kyle and madison into reconciling.

warning: this fic includes discussion of s*xual assault and death. also swearing.

what you need to know about this au before reading:

Zoe was friends with Kyle before he died, and when Zoe and Madison brought zombified Kyle back to the coven, he was taken in by the small school.

There never was (and is not currently) anything romantic or sexual going on between Zoe, Madison, and Kyle.

Kyle did attempt to kill madison, he did not succeed. Ironically, he was stopped by Zoe, who (newly resurrected by Cordelia) ran upstairs after hearing screaming.

Fiona did not "fix" (I hate using that word in relation to him, but still) Kyle the way she does in the show.

The school has not been opened up to other witches outside of the coven, but this is a while after the events of Coven.

Misty and Nan are alive.

Madison and Zoe aren't gross people. Think of a gross bad thing they've done? It's gone. I've erased it. Never happened. We all know Queenie is the only canonically good person who is also a witch student in Coven.

~~~

"Ok. Now, Kyle, you go first." Zoe speaks from her space in between Kyle and Madison, who are standing across her room from each other. Snow falls outside, and the school’s old heater creaks in the background. For the last two weeks, Zoe had been waiting for the perfect moment to trap these two in a room together and convince them to make amends. Kyle turns to look at Zoe with a face of pure disbelief.

“Sh-” He points to Madison with his eyes wide, “She ki-killed me!”

Zoe looked at him with her arms crossed. “And you tried to kill her! C’mon, Kyle. Please just- apologize?” Kyle squinted at her and then sighed, nodding his head and pressing his palms together nervously while he turned back to Madison.

“I’m so-rry. Sorry.” He apologized half-heartedly. He could never say no to his friends, especially Zoe.

Madison smiled and sarcastically placed her hand over her heart. “Well, that was moving. I think we really made a breakthrough here! Thanks, Kyle! See ya!" Madison starts to make her way out of the room before Zoe grabs her arm to keep her from leaving. Madison slows to a stop right in front of the door.

“Madison.” When Madison still didn’t turn to look at her, Zoe uses her nickname. “Mads, you made up with Misty, who you actually tried to kill, is it so hard to make up with Kyle?" Madison rolled her eyes at Zoe’s trademark ‘mom tone’ that she only used with her. She hated how Zoe had started to shift the way she spoke to be tailored to each person around her. At first, Madison thought it was just some weird baby voice she used on Kyle, until one day she realized Zoe had given her a baby voice too. That she had started treating Madison like she was going to throw a fit if not handled in a specific way. She finally turns back to face Zoe.

“Give me one reason why I should, and- don’t give me that ‘because I said so’ bullshit," Madison says. Zoe pauses for a second before pulling both Madison and herself back to their original spots.

“Listen up, you are both very important to me and the rest of our family,” Zoe started (Madison already wanted to Vincent van Gogh her ears off), “and it would mean a lot if you two were to make up. I love you both, and I just want the people I love to get along. Is that really so hard to understand and achieve?” Zoe ends her sentence looking at Madison with a slightly pleading look.

Madison glances at Kyle and sees how easily his grumpy face melted into a grin at the word ‘family’ and rolls her eyes. “Fine.” She spoke, then sees Kyle’s smile grow. “Not for you, dumbass. For Zoe.” Kyle blinks at her dumbfounded, but not quite offended. Zoe looks between the two, she is clearly thrilled that her plan is working, but is attempting to contain her delight.

"So... I'm like... sorry. I guess." Madison says, clearly uncomfortable. Zoe moves her hand signaling her to keep going, (this is also an attempt to teach Kyle non-punchy conflict resolution skills, after all). So Madison restarts. this time actually looking Kyle in the eye.

"I'm... I'm sorry. I'm sorry for killing you, and I'm sorry for bringing you back." Kyle’s face twists in confusion at those last words, why would she be sorry for bringing him to the coven? Was she being sarcastic? It didn't feel like she was. He thinks Madison is finished for a moment, but she continues. "I'm going to be soft as hell for a second, so Kyle, listen up because I will never repeat this. Ever. And if you bring this up ever again I will gaslight the shit out of you and deny it ever happened. Now, you," she pointed at Zoe, "Need to leave so that I can be honest."

“Wait- me?” Zoe points at herself in confusion.

“No bitch, the ghost behind you. Yes, you. Trust me.” Madison says, gesturing at her to leave the room. Kyle and Zoe look at each other (Kyle seeming a little nervous), then Zoe nods and exits the room, closing the door behind her. For a moment Zoe considers eavesdropping through the door, but then decides to take the moral high ground... and considers listening with a spell instead.

Madison walks around Kyle to drape herself over Zoe’s soft chair by the window, and Kyle sits on Zoe’s bed, having to carefully move her books to do so. There is a moment of awkward silence, and Kyle starts picking at the fuzzballs on his red sweater. He wants to give her time to think of what she wants to say. His eyes snap up to hers when she starts speaking again.

"I'm sorry for being more bitchy to you than I am to the average person. It's just that- It's just that you... ok, let me explain. So you know how Zoe and I put your twunk ass back together with different limbs and shit? The frat boys' limbs?" Kyle nods, even though he doesn’t know what a twunk is. "So- to me, you're this lumbering giant whose arms and legs are this constant reminder of... the shit that happened.” Kyle tilts his head at this. Not only because the last word he would use to describe himself is giant, Kyle felt small most of the time. But also because he doesn't really remember much of what happened before he was dead, and assumes she is referring to the other Kyle. The Kyle without scars that Zoe has a few pictures of. "Shit, you don't know what happened." Kyle shakes his head and goes to say something, but Madison speaks before he can. "All you need to know is that some people were doing bad things. To me. And they were your... friends. Or whatever."

Kyle could tell Madison was trying to stay casual, but he has a sinking feeling that what happened to her wasn't nothing. "B- bad thing- gs?" He asks.

Madison was stiffer and speaking softer than before. Kyle had only seen her act small once before, and it was when he was hurting her. His stomach filled with guilt, usually, he tries not to think about what he did too often. He didn't like that feeling. "Yeah, Kyle. Bad things." Madison says while looking out the window.

Something in Kyle recognizes her tone and posture. He can’t quite put a finger on what, though. "Hur- hurt you?" He asks. Kyle watches Madison shrink in her chair and decides to go back to picking at his sweater, and attempt not to pressure her to respond quickly. As he does, the familiarity of the situation continues to tug at him. She looks a bit like how he felt after what happened at the other Kyle’s house. Or how he felt when he thought about the lady there. Zoe says that lady is (or... was) his mother, but he doesn't believe her. He sees mothers on the TV every day, and that lady is not at all what a mother is. If anything, Ms. Cordelia was his mother. she was all grown up, and Kyle was only 19. Ms. Cordelia never yelled at him, always helped him when he got in big trouble, and gave him those gross leaves when his stomach hurt. Kyle thinks about who Madison's mother might be. He hopes that Madison can talk to her about the bad things that happened.

Looking back up at the unusually vulnerable girl across from him, who is hugging her knees and staring out the window, he feels about her the way he feels about who he used to be. He wants to hug her and protect her and tell her that it’s not her fault those people made her so sick, and that he is so sorry he hurt her, and that he knows she feels soft and stained- but that one day she will be allowed to be happy and messy and big at the same time.

"Yes." Her words snap him out of his own head and back into the situation at hand. Madison's neutral expression does not waver.

Kyle points at himself and decides to ask just one more question, the one ringing in the back of his mind. "My Frien- ds?"

Madison is quiet for a moment before responding. "They were your friends. But you- I really don’t think you knew they were bad, Kyle. The thing is that... when I see your tattoos... I start to think about what happened, and when you make sudden moves I jump a little. So it was, sometimes still is, hard for me to be around you. You're just- big. If that makes sense. Like they were. I'm sorry for giving you those parts of them... for making you carry their shit with you. At least some parts of their sorry asses were finally put to good use when they became a part of your whole labrador retriever thing you've got going on.” Kyle is clearly upset by the fact that he cared about such bad people, and that he couldn’t tell they were mean sooner. “Oh, stop giving me that guilty look like you had something to do with what happened to me. You tried to help me, shithead. Now calm down." Madison says.

"I help-p ed you?" A soft smile starts spreading across Kyle's face.

Madison raises her eyebrows at his reaction. "Calm down Kyle, stopping those guys was a bare minimum thing to do." Madison starts, (Kyle frowns), "But thank you. For 'protecting' me or whatever. Congratulations! I guess you were always meant to be our guard dog."

Despite her insults, Kyle once again feels a surge of affection rise inside of him towards her. This time, he stumbles over to Madison, leans down, and engulfs her in a hug. He was never good with boundaries. He couldn't use his words to express himself, so he leaned on using physical affection (or fighting people but that wasn't currently applicable) to show people how he felt. His eyes instantly widened and he quickly pulled away.

"Sor-ry!" He stepped away from her, hanging his head and mumbling like an embarrassed child. “S-udden Move-ment." Kyle brought his hands up to his face and rubbed his eyes before looking back at her to see if she looked upset.

Something inside of Madison grew sappy and soft. This idiot toddler-man had somehow comprehended the convoluted shit she was saying, and is trying to change his behavior according to it. She stands up and speaks, "It's fine Kyle. Really. Just, warn me next time. Or walk slower if talking is too hard."

Kyle decides to take the latter approach. "O-Ok." He said, then began to approach her very slowly. Like- very, very, very slowly.

Madison wishes there was someone else in the room she could look at to confirm that Kyle was, in fact, being insane. "Ok, I don't have all day. I'm going to need something faster than a snail's pace." She says.

Kyle stops and wrinkles his nose in disgust. “Snails. yuck!"

Madison’s expression turns into one of pure (amused) shock. "So the two words you do fully have down are 'snails. yuck.'? How- how does that even happen? Don't answer that, I don’t care. Hurry it up. Hug me now or never, Day of the Dead."

Kyle walked up to Madison and bear hugs her, she is significantly shorter than him, so she almost disappears into his sweater. Madison doesn’t hug him back at first, she instead lets her arms fall to her sides.

"F-riends now." He pats her on the head gently and intentionally. "Sa-safe now." He says in the softest voice he can muster (generally Kyle finds that he is stuck speaking at one volume, and that volume is loud).

Madison freezes at his last two words, then returns his hug for a moment. She thinks this might be the first time she’s ever hugged a boy who didn’t want to kiss her. It was nice. After a few moments, she clears her throat and steps back from him. "Thank you, Kyle." She says genuinely.

"Mhm!" He says, then just smiles at her, happy to have made a new friend. It was one more person on his list of people to protect and be protected by, and in his mind, there was nothing better than that. "L-et's te-ll Zoe w-e're frien-ds now." Kyle says, gesturing at Madison to follow him.

"What the fuck did I just get myself into," Madison mumbles, before following Kyle to the living room.