CONFLICTED
Tears streamed silently down her face as she sat, cross legged on her bed, staring out her window and into the lit window next door.
Despite the mansion they had bought with more than enough room for the triplets to spread out and have their own bedrooms, the last remaining Quagmires insisted upon sleeping in the same room, tossing away the objections anyone cared to make. Was it so unusual for twenty year old triplets to share a bedroom? they wanted to know. They hadn’t listened when Sunny had casually pointed out that, yes, it was.
The Quagmire triplets were night owls but still managed to be morning people - a feat Violet couldn’t understand and had often attempted to mimic but could never quite recreate. The red numbers flickered 2:13 on her bed stand, yet only now had Duncan ventured into the adjoining bathroom to brush his teeth, Isadora and Quigley were splayed out on their appropriate beds, chatting as Isadora composed what - from Violet’s view of their bedroom - appeared to be her latest couplet. Somewhere in the back of her mind, Violet wondered what it’s subject was.
Was it about the way Isadora could clearly see Violet’s shadow moving around just across the alley, late into the night? About the sobs that came drifting through the open window next door, wafting through the tempered glass and solid walls of their house and invading their bedroom? Was it dedicated to the fact that it was clear Violet fought every night to stay up as late as they did, just so she could watch Duncan and Quigley move about, see the smiles they shot towards each other and their sister, hear the ghosts of their laugher? Or was it simply about a young conflicted girl, who was in love with two thirds of a set of three?
Just as vaguely, Violet realized she was being silly. The world didn’t revolve around her. Isadora wasn’t writing about her. She probably hadn’t even thought about Violet Baudelaire all night.
Duncan had since returned from brushing his teeth, and as he came through the bathroom door and back into the bedroom, he paused, grinned and said something, at which his siblings laughed and clapped as Duncan extravagantly bowed. Violet’s eyes flickered to Quigley just in time to see him roll his eyes. He rolled over onto his back, drew his knees up to his chest, wrapped his arms around his legs, and began speaking, eyes settling on Duncan as he spoke. Duncan smiled softly at Quigley, slipping under the covers of his bed as he listened to his brother, nodding and interjecting his own two cents into the conversation as he did so.
Violet turned away. She was done with this, for tonight, at least. She slid off the opposite side of her bed and padded around back over to the window. Pausing for only an instant, she closed it with a bang. She just saw the look of surprise on the Quagmire triplet’s faces before she had jerked the Venetian blinds down, turned away, and slipped into bed herself, unconsciously mimicking Duncan’s movements only moments before.
Violet Baudelaire was beginning to break down. She knew she had to choose and soon, before both of the Quagmire boys walked away from her without a second glance back. She couldn’t hold out much longer - her siblings and Isadora efforts couldn’t keep the boys from pursuing their own, individual love-lives much longer.
But Violet had long since been convinced it was impossible to choose between them. They were both so perfect in their own, lovely ways, and Violet supposed it was a matter of choosing which attributes she liked best. And oh, she had tried. She’d set a system of points for each good attribute and then rated each of the boys on how much this attribute shown through in each, added up the points, and found the numbers equal. She’d asked Isadora, Klaus and Sunny for advice, but none came from them. She had even prayed, but received no sign, no answer, no smile from God that told her which man was the better man.
Duncan she had met first, of course, and spent the longest time with. He had carried her through her hardships at Prufrock Prep, and it was he who had worked late into the night with her, helping her learn and memorize all those dreadful stories for the test that could very probably have decided her fate all together the next day.
But it was Quigley who she had shared such a special moment with, high atop the ruins of V.F.D., sitting half-frozen on a completely frozen waterfall. It was Quigley who she had first acknowledged any feelings that were not merely friendship for, and it was Quigley who had been jerked so violently away from her.
On top of all this, there was also always the threat of neither one liking her. Or perhaps one did, but she would pick the one who didn’t, tell her she loved him, have him say he didn’t love her back, and then have the other one be completely heartbroken. She wouldn’t even be able to comfort him without being accused of him being second choice when, in fact, he wasn’t. His name just hadn’t been the one she’d picked out of the hat.
Somewhere in the back of her mind - right alongside where the musings about the subject of Isadora’s couplet - Violet Baudelaire realized that Duncan and Quigley were driving her to insanity without them even realizing it.
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