Series of Unfortunate Events One-shots, What-ifs, and Drabbles

An Outside Perspective

It's basically the inevitable high school AU. Context before we start- Violet is a sophomore and Klaus is a freshman, and I know this doesn't really conform to the ages I've set for them, but there you are. Sunny will not feature much in this AU because she is a baby and not in high school. Sorry. The Baudelaires have been proven innocent and they're living with someone, it doesn't matter who it is, and that person put them in a regular high school. We'll pretend this was a good idea.

Oh, also this is told from the point of view of someone who is not a Baudelaire. I just wanted to try something new.

Let's get into it. Buckle up, it's a long one.

After my parents finish reading the Daily Punctilio, they give it to me and I scan the articles for something interesting. The stuff they print is often rote nonsense, but not always. That's how I began following the story of the Baudelaire orphans. The Daily Punctilio ran the story of the Baudelaire mansion fire, and I was interested in what happened to their children. 

The article said they were going to live with their distant relative, Count Olaf, who lived in the city as well. Soon, there was a small item in the paper saying they were going to live in the country with a friend of their parents, some recluse scientist. I guess because they're rich, stuff that happens to them is news. About a month later, the story of the scientist's death ran in the paper, and then the story of their next guardian's death, and then the story about the boarding school, and then the scandal about the city's sixth most important financial advisor. 

I was only marginally interested at this point, and the papers were only running tiny, not even full column articles about the orphans. But that all changed when the Daily Punctilio ran the headline 'Baudelaire Orphans are Baudelaire Murderers?' Now things were interesting. I didn't quite believe that the orphans would kill somebody, but I hadn't met them, so what did I know. I was just glad to read something interesting for once. From then on, there was always something interesting to read in the paper, from murder to arson to impersonating doctors and carnival freaks. 

Then the paper ran the story of their trial- apparently, they were framed for most of the crimes they were accused of and then did the rest of what they did under 'great duress,' whatever that means. 

And so then when Mr. Toma, my homeroom teacher, told us we were going to be getting a new student in our homeroom, I didn't think he meant notorious arsonist and murderer Violet Baudelaire. Excuse me- former notorious arsonist and murderer Violet Baudelaire. Toma told us that we were, and I quote, "not, under any circumstances, to ask her about her alleged crimes or talk about the trial." Which is actually a foolproof way to make absolutely certain that somebody will. Toma told us a week before Violet and Klaus actually transferred into our school so that we could "prepare ourselves."

Violet is strange. I thought she would be hardened and stoic- like the criminals that you see on crime shows- but she's not. She sits at the back of the class in homeroom and barely talks at all. I think she's actually shy. I have two other classes with her, English and Shop, and she's pretty much the same in those, too. In English, she sits quietly and almost never raises her hand. In Shop, it almost looks to me like she's sketching something out in a red leather-bound notebook- I mean, we're supposed to be drawing blueprints, but she's always going at it, even when we're supposed to be listening. The teacher, Ms. Loomis, just leaves her alone. She has a ribbon but I've never seen it in her hair. I've only seen her winding it between her fingers when she's nervous.

For instance, there was a time when somebody asked her why she killed Count Olaf. "Was it because of all the horrible things he did to you and your siblings or was it because you just wanted to see him dead? And what about all those fires?"