Fic- Things Left On the Wayside (Veronica, Lincoln/Veronica) PG-13, 1/1
Titile: Things Left On the Wayside
Summary: Right foot, left foot, Veronica puts one foot in front of the other and keeps moving forward through the uncertainty.
Rating: PG-13 (language)
Author's Notes: 2,020 words. Set Pre-Series. It's a missing scene from a past that we don't know nearly enough about. Written during my break -up with Prison Break earlier this season when I did nothing for an entire week but work and watch season one DVDs over and over (my version of therapy) and became completey obsessed with this pairing and needed more of it. Big thanks to stealmy_kiss the lovely for the beta.
Veronica pulls her coat closer around her, shivering against the cold Chicago winter. Snuggles her face into her scarf - the one Christina had made her, ages ago, a mixture of pinks and blues and cherry reds that has been worn thin and has fraying edges, but is so long it gets the job done. She checks her watch, crosses her legs once, twice, three times, and sighs heavily when she sees Lincoln across the way - a cigarette in one hand, another running over his shaved head in a move that is so customary she half expected it. He’s fifteen minutes late, and it should anger her because she’s freezing and his being late means she’s going to be late, but this is Lincoln, and she knows he and time do not coexist peacefully.
There’s a brief smile that graces his lips when he catches sight of her, that gleam in his eyes that she can see from a mile away, the one she had been convinced once upon a time he held just for her, and it does more to warm her than the coat that is pulled so tightly around her she can barely breathe. He flicks the cigarette to the side because he knows she hates it and stops a few feet away from her, cautious, unsure. It is a move that is so unlike Lincoln, so unlike them, that it makes her heart constrict painfully.
“I didn’t think you’d come,” is all he says, crossing his arms.
She says, “Neither did I,” without even missing a beat, watching his slow exhale of breath, the fog clustering in the air between them for half a second, probably less, before disappearing within a blink of an eye.
Lincoln slides onto the bench next to her unceremoniously, his side flush up against her own, and the heat ripples through her blood like a godsend and for once in her life she is totally and utterly thankful for the power he has over her. There’s a long, drawn out moment of silence, and they both watch the lake in front of them, minds wandering, her fingers itching to touch his out of habit, nostalgia maybe, but her head not allowing it. It’s cold enough for the water to just have started to freeze and she remembers winters past: his hand in hers, holding on tightly as her graceful feet led his clumsy ones across the ice. A bittersweet taste enters her mouth; she swallows it hastily.
They breathe, inhale, exhale, at the same time. Tap their feet with the same rhythm. Look at each other out of the corner of their eyes at the exact moment. It’s cute for a second, makes her reminisce and miss him in the same breath and she feels stupid, because he is sitting right there, but the heaviness that is in her heart tells her that he couldn’t be farther away.
A long exhale that throws off their rhythm passes Veronica lips. “Why did you ask me to come here, Linc?”
Veronica counts down seconds until he runs his hand over his scalp. “I don’t… Fuck, I don’t know, Vee. I just - I don’t - I want us to be okay.”
Lisa’s pregnant, he’s back into things he promised her he’d never be back into, and things haven’t been okay between them for a really, really long time. Veronica takes a long second and thinks about wanting what you can’t have, looks at him hard, scrutinizing, tracing every line of his face in her head and tries to remember when things had spun so far out of their control.
“You don’t owe me anything, Lincoln,” she says, although she’s not sure who she is trying to convince, “we weren’t together -“
Lincoln shakes his head, cutting her off, “don’t do that. Don’t rationalize this. We’re more than that and you fuckin’ know it.”
The roll of her eye comes before she can stop it, and she’s angry at him for stopping her from saying the words she’s been repeating to herself for the past two weeks, every hour on the hour, every second her mind starts to wander. The same mantra she repeats every time she starts to feel herself getting angry, because saying them, repeating them over and over, embeds them into her brain, her being, and she has kind of come to like functioning under the falsely guided assumption (hope) that repetition makes it true.
Another sigh, long and deep, and Veronica can’t remember ever feeling this old before. This bone tired. “What is it that you want me to say, Linc? Huh? Do you want me to hold your hand and tell you that we’ll get through this, that we’ll make it? Is that what you want? Well, I can’t, okay? Because I don’t honestly know anymore what we’re capable of.”
“I’m sorry -“
“Don’t,” she says, cutting him off, her voice sure and demanding, forceful. “You’re going to have a kid, Lincoln. A Kid. And maybe you’re sorry about the way it happened, but Jesus, don’t act like he’s a mistake.” The statement is loaded with innuendos and all the things she has left unsaid. It’s there though, between them, hidden in the brief, fleeting look that makes them both remember the promise they made all those years ago, the one about vicious cycles and not becoming their parents.
Lincoln sobers, a brief flash of guilt in his eyes, and he sits up a little straighter. He reaches into his pocket and she thinks for a second that he’s reaching for those damn cigarettes she hates, but instead he tosses a pair of gloves into her lap.
“You look cold.”
She’d left them in his car a week before, and Veronica runs her numb fingers over the smooth fabric and remembers the night she had left them there - they had been stealing a second away from Michael’s prying eyes. His lips against hers, her arms around his neck, his hands in her hair, and Veronica remembers the weightlessness she had felt inside the confines of his small, dirty car. Remembers those glorious moments of sheer happiness she always felt when she was with him as they kissed and breathed the same breath and laughed, low and throaty, like teenagers catching a forbidden moment.
That had been before, though, before the lies and the awful fight and the walking away. It was easier before - easier to ignore the faults of the other, the mistakes made on both their parts, but this - Lisa and the baby - this is just a constant reminder of how truly messed up their relationship is. How irreparable the damage has become. Veronica isn’t sure they can ever go back to the way things were before when forgetting was as easy as breathing.
“Look, Vee,” he begins as she slides the gloves on. They do little to ease the coldness of her hands. “I love you. And just tell me that you don’t love me anymore. Tell me that I fucked up and it’s over, and I’ll let you go back to your big fancy college and I won’t bother you anymore.”
Veronica looks at him, the panic in his eyes, the desperation in his voice, and looks out at the lake in front of them. She thinks of first kisses and holding hands, forgotten innocence. She rubs the scarf in between her gloved palms and thinks of him and Michael - her family, her sounding guard - and doesn’t know how to picture a life, a future, without the two of them in it. Tries to imagine a life without Lincoln - the good and the bad - and knows that it’s impossible.
Veronica can’t imagine a future without Lincoln in her past and that realization gets caught in her throat, thick and large, and for a second she feels like she’s drowning, sinking; the tears pool at her eyes, but she fights them just as hard as she fights for a breath of air, and when she finally finds dry land to cling to, she knows what she has to do.
“I love you, Lincoln,” she begins, quiet and reposed after a long moment. The wind whips through the air and she shivers. “God help me, I do, but I just… I don’t think I can do this anymore. Not right now. Not with everything.”
“Can’t or won’t?” Lincoln asks and the bitterness rips right through her. “What are you saying, Veronica?”
“I’m saying,” she exhales, slowly, cautiously, tries to find the right words. Any words. “I’m saying that things haven’t been right for a very, very long time between us, and we both know it and something needs to change, because this way we depend on each other, this messed up way we keep coming back to each other is tearing us apart… I’m saying that I’m going to go back to school, and you’re going to stay here with… Lisa,” the name tastes bitter and she can’t help the way she just sort of spits it out, “and you’re going to have this kid and try and give them the sort of life our parents never gave us because God, Linc, even though I think you’re the world’s biggest jackass right now… you aren’t your father.”
His hands are on her face before she can think twice, cold and shaking against her cheeks, his forehead rests against hers, and she closes her eyes and feels his breath fan her skin - warm and minty - and Veronica breathes in the essence of him. Makes a memory. Chokes at the thought of it being the very last time she could ever do so.
“I can’t do it without you, Vee,” Lincoln says and his voice is shaking and she can’t tell if it’s from the cold or the emotion.
“You can,” is all she says, her eyes on his, and she can see a war raging in his mind, back and forth, and she thinks, for a second, that he’s going to ask her to stay. He opens his mouth to speak and her heart stops because she knows, knows with every fiber of her being that she’s weak underneath it all. Knows that if he asked, she’d say yes because that’s just the way the two of them work.
Instead, he closes his eyes and kisses her lips, once, twice, and holds her closer. “I love you,” he whispers as she starts to pull away.
“I love you, too,” she says and it comes out sort of like a sob, a parting gift almost, and before she can think twice she pushes him away from her and stands.
And just like she walks away. Her legs are unsteady and her heart is heavy to the point where it feels like it’s pushing her into the ground. Veronica walks away because she does love him, loves him with all her heart, with everything in her, and she is deathly afraid that that will always be the case. Deathly afraid that one day she’ll wake up and they’ll still be together and married but only because he was the first guy who ever loved her and she was the first girl that ever made him feel like he could be something, and not for all the right reasons. Veronica isn’t even sure what the right reasons are anymore.
Right foot, left foot, Veronica puts one foot in front of the other and keeps moving forward through the uncertainty. She doesn’t give herself chance to second guess. She fights back tears and chokes down a sob. Thinks about the first time she had ever met Lincoln, all tall and handsome (even then) and how he had smiled at her with those eyes and how things had felt right, so, so right, even then at the tender age of eleven. Thinks about all the things left broken between them and wonders if it will ever be right again, but knows she did the right thing in the same breath. She does not cry.
She looks back, just once, but he’s already gone.
(end.)
Summary: Right foot, left foot, Veronica puts one foot in front of the other and keeps moving forward through the uncertainty.
Rating: PG-13 (language)
Author's Notes: 2,020 words. Set Pre-Series. It's a missing scene from a past that we don't know nearly enough about. Written during my break -up with Prison Break earlier this season when I did nothing for an entire week but work and watch season one DVDs over and over (my version of therapy) and became completey obsessed with this pairing and needed more of it. Big thanks to stealmy_kiss the lovely for the beta.
Veronica pulls her coat closer around her, shivering against the cold Chicago winter. Snuggles her face into her scarf - the one Christina had made her, ages ago, a mixture of pinks and blues and cherry reds that has been worn thin and has fraying edges, but is so long it gets the job done. She checks her watch, crosses her legs once, twice, three times, and sighs heavily when she sees Lincoln across the way - a cigarette in one hand, another running over his shaved head in a move that is so customary she half expected it. He’s fifteen minutes late, and it should anger her because she’s freezing and his being late means she’s going to be late, but this is Lincoln, and she knows he and time do not coexist peacefully.
There’s a brief smile that graces his lips when he catches sight of her, that gleam in his eyes that she can see from a mile away, the one she had been convinced once upon a time he held just for her, and it does more to warm her than the coat that is pulled so tightly around her she can barely breathe. He flicks the cigarette to the side because he knows she hates it and stops a few feet away from her, cautious, unsure. It is a move that is so unlike Lincoln, so unlike them, that it makes her heart constrict painfully.
“I didn’t think you’d come,” is all he says, crossing his arms.
She says, “Neither did I,” without even missing a beat, watching his slow exhale of breath, the fog clustering in the air between them for half a second, probably less, before disappearing within a blink of an eye.
Lincoln slides onto the bench next to her unceremoniously, his side flush up against her own, and the heat ripples through her blood like a godsend and for once in her life she is totally and utterly thankful for the power he has over her. There’s a long, drawn out moment of silence, and they both watch the lake in front of them, minds wandering, her fingers itching to touch his out of habit, nostalgia maybe, but her head not allowing it. It’s cold enough for the water to just have started to freeze and she remembers winters past: his hand in hers, holding on tightly as her graceful feet led his clumsy ones across the ice. A bittersweet taste enters her mouth; she swallows it hastily.
They breathe, inhale, exhale, at the same time. Tap their feet with the same rhythm. Look at each other out of the corner of their eyes at the exact moment. It’s cute for a second, makes her reminisce and miss him in the same breath and she feels stupid, because he is sitting right there, but the heaviness that is in her heart tells her that he couldn’t be farther away.
A long exhale that throws off their rhythm passes Veronica lips. “Why did you ask me to come here, Linc?”
Veronica counts down seconds until he runs his hand over his scalp. “I don’t… Fuck, I don’t know, Vee. I just - I don’t - I want us to be okay.”
Lisa’s pregnant, he’s back into things he promised her he’d never be back into, and things haven’t been okay between them for a really, really long time. Veronica takes a long second and thinks about wanting what you can’t have, looks at him hard, scrutinizing, tracing every line of his face in her head and tries to remember when things had spun so far out of their control.
“You don’t owe me anything, Lincoln,” she says, although she’s not sure who she is trying to convince, “we weren’t together -“
Lincoln shakes his head, cutting her off, “don’t do that. Don’t rationalize this. We’re more than that and you fuckin’ know it.”
The roll of her eye comes before she can stop it, and she’s angry at him for stopping her from saying the words she’s been repeating to herself for the past two weeks, every hour on the hour, every second her mind starts to wander. The same mantra she repeats every time she starts to feel herself getting angry, because saying them, repeating them over and over, embeds them into her brain, her being, and she has kind of come to like functioning under the falsely guided assumption (hope) that repetition makes it true.
Another sigh, long and deep, and Veronica can’t remember ever feeling this old before. This bone tired. “What is it that you want me to say, Linc? Huh? Do you want me to hold your hand and tell you that we’ll get through this, that we’ll make it? Is that what you want? Well, I can’t, okay? Because I don’t honestly know anymore what we’re capable of.”
“I’m sorry -“
“Don’t,” she says, cutting him off, her voice sure and demanding, forceful. “You’re going to have a kid, Lincoln. A Kid. And maybe you’re sorry about the way it happened, but Jesus, don’t act like he’s a mistake.” The statement is loaded with innuendos and all the things she has left unsaid. It’s there though, between them, hidden in the brief, fleeting look that makes them both remember the promise they made all those years ago, the one about vicious cycles and not becoming their parents.
Lincoln sobers, a brief flash of guilt in his eyes, and he sits up a little straighter. He reaches into his pocket and she thinks for a second that he’s reaching for those damn cigarettes she hates, but instead he tosses a pair of gloves into her lap.
“You look cold.”
She’d left them in his car a week before, and Veronica runs her numb fingers over the smooth fabric and remembers the night she had left them there - they had been stealing a second away from Michael’s prying eyes. His lips against hers, her arms around his neck, his hands in her hair, and Veronica remembers the weightlessness she had felt inside the confines of his small, dirty car. Remembers those glorious moments of sheer happiness she always felt when she was with him as they kissed and breathed the same breath and laughed, low and throaty, like teenagers catching a forbidden moment.
That had been before, though, before the lies and the awful fight and the walking away. It was easier before - easier to ignore the faults of the other, the mistakes made on both their parts, but this - Lisa and the baby - this is just a constant reminder of how truly messed up their relationship is. How irreparable the damage has become. Veronica isn’t sure they can ever go back to the way things were before when forgetting was as easy as breathing.
“Look, Vee,” he begins as she slides the gloves on. They do little to ease the coldness of her hands. “I love you. And just tell me that you don’t love me anymore. Tell me that I fucked up and it’s over, and I’ll let you go back to your big fancy college and I won’t bother you anymore.”
Veronica looks at him, the panic in his eyes, the desperation in his voice, and looks out at the lake in front of them. She thinks of first kisses and holding hands, forgotten innocence. She rubs the scarf in between her gloved palms and thinks of him and Michael - her family, her sounding guard - and doesn’t know how to picture a life, a future, without the two of them in it. Tries to imagine a life without Lincoln - the good and the bad - and knows that it’s impossible.
Veronica can’t imagine a future without Lincoln in her past and that realization gets caught in her throat, thick and large, and for a second she feels like she’s drowning, sinking; the tears pool at her eyes, but she fights them just as hard as she fights for a breath of air, and when she finally finds dry land to cling to, she knows what she has to do.
“I love you, Lincoln,” she begins, quiet and reposed after a long moment. The wind whips through the air and she shivers. “God help me, I do, but I just… I don’t think I can do this anymore. Not right now. Not with everything.”
“Can’t or won’t?” Lincoln asks and the bitterness rips right through her. “What are you saying, Veronica?”
“I’m saying,” she exhales, slowly, cautiously, tries to find the right words. Any words. “I’m saying that things haven’t been right for a very, very long time between us, and we both know it and something needs to change, because this way we depend on each other, this messed up way we keep coming back to each other is tearing us apart… I’m saying that I’m going to go back to school, and you’re going to stay here with… Lisa,” the name tastes bitter and she can’t help the way she just sort of spits it out, “and you’re going to have this kid and try and give them the sort of life our parents never gave us because God, Linc, even though I think you’re the world’s biggest jackass right now… you aren’t your father.”
His hands are on her face before she can think twice, cold and shaking against her cheeks, his forehead rests against hers, and she closes her eyes and feels his breath fan her skin - warm and minty - and Veronica breathes in the essence of him. Makes a memory. Chokes at the thought of it being the very last time she could ever do so.
“I can’t do it without you, Vee,” Lincoln says and his voice is shaking and she can’t tell if it’s from the cold or the emotion.
“You can,” is all she says, her eyes on his, and she can see a war raging in his mind, back and forth, and she thinks, for a second, that he’s going to ask her to stay. He opens his mouth to speak and her heart stops because she knows, knows with every fiber of her being that she’s weak underneath it all. Knows that if he asked, she’d say yes because that’s just the way the two of them work.
Instead, he closes his eyes and kisses her lips, once, twice, and holds her closer. “I love you,” he whispers as she starts to pull away.
“I love you, too,” she says and it comes out sort of like a sob, a parting gift almost, and before she can think twice she pushes him away from her and stands.
And just like she walks away. Her legs are unsteady and her heart is heavy to the point where it feels like it’s pushing her into the ground. Veronica walks away because she does love him, loves him with all her heart, with everything in her, and she is deathly afraid that that will always be the case. Deathly afraid that one day she’ll wake up and they’ll still be together and married but only because he was the first guy who ever loved her and she was the first girl that ever made him feel like he could be something, and not for all the right reasons. Veronica isn’t even sure what the right reasons are anymore.
Right foot, left foot, Veronica puts one foot in front of the other and keeps moving forward through the uncertainty. She doesn’t give herself chance to second guess. She fights back tears and chokes down a sob. Thinks about the first time she had ever met Lincoln, all tall and handsome (even then) and how he had smiled at her with those eyes and how things had felt right, so, so right, even then at the tender age of eleven. Thinks about all the things left broken between them and wonders if it will ever be right again, but knows she did the right thing in the same breath. She does not cry.
She looks back, just once, but he’s already gone.
(end.)