Fic: Five Things Are For Certain (PG)
Title: Five Things Are For Certain
Author: addictedtojoy
Pairing/Character: LoVe, D/V
Word Count: 738
Rating: PG
Summary: She is confused about so much, but a few things are for certain.
Spoilers: through One Angry Veronica (ep. 210)
Notes: A small return to VM fiction. Unbetaed, so all mistakes are mine. Feedback welcome, as always.
1. She will never look at fire the same way again
Growing up in California, you almost look forward to the winter days it gets cold enough to light a fire. There is something distinctly Christmassy and cozy about a fire in the grate. But she will never want to have one again.
That night when Logan’s house burns down, and she mistakes him for Duncan and lies on his chest before jumping off again, she feels the fear fluttering along with his heartbeat, just like hers.
She finds herself thinking about that moment later, alone, and is ashamed to admit that she might have known it wasn’t Duncan’s arms that came up and around her even before he spoke and she got up.
Thinking like that only complicates things, and she doesn’t need any more complications.
2. No one is as invincible as they pretend to be
She is more hurt, and more worried, than she’d like to admit about Duncan visiting Meg at the hospital every day and then lying about it. Lies are already a bigger part of her life than she’d like them to be, and she’d hoped he would be the breakwater protecting her from more of them.
She wonders if he regrets breaking up with Meg. She hopes to God she isn’t just projecting-doesn’t want to admit there is dumper’s remorse inside her to project.
And with Wallace, gone… well, now she has very few safeguards against the world. And with Duncan drifting little by little, she feels exposed. A girl with as few friends as she has should be careful to keep those she’s got. And she’s been doing a sucky job of it lately.
3. Two boyfriends are not better than one
Duncan and Logan living together is nothing but trouble. And then Logan getting arrested again, charged again for something she believes him when he says he didn’t do, brings her right back to the summer she’d like to leave behind. Not least because she’s afraid that remembering will help her remember those old feelings, too. It was hard enough to ignore him when he lived off in the palace of remorse. When the three of them are in the same room together, she is amazed that all their issues fit in there with them.
Logan doesn’t help matters, by looking at her that way, the way that says he knows she still wonders, that she worries she made the wrong choice. The look that says, I know when you look at him you wonder if he is too numb to love you back. When you look at me, you wonder if we burned too brightly for me to ever stop.
She damns his expressive eyes.
4. There is no vaccination for heartbreak
That day at lunchtime, sarcastically telling Duncan she is “just fine with it” that a comatose blonde is having his baby, she cracks a little. Like she can feel her insides fracturing apart a little more every time she has to pretend yet another thing doesn’t affect her, that Veronica Mars is untouchable, unbreakable. Funny, Duncan never sees that she isn’t shatterproof. Logan knew her patchwork soul better than anyone, but he isn’t allowed in to see it anymore.
Up on Duncan’s pedestal is a pretty lonely place.
By now, she thinks, she should have learned how to stop feeling things so deeply. Like nearly two years’ worth of heartbreak weren’t enough to show anyone how to be detached. Not even her new therapist (for the new-found fire phobia) can prescribe her anything to immunize her against life.
5. Nothing can go back to the way it was
When she looks down at the tiny girl in the incubator, she knows her dreams last year of everything going back to normal were futile. Solving Lilly’s murder only eased the heartache a little. Another tidal wave of pain rushed in to replace it, and Duncan’s daughter is living proof of it.
Looking into the face of innocence makes her remember how much of that faith in the world she has lost. She and Duncan and Logan will never be those naïve high-schoolers again. Since homecoming, they have seen and lost too much.
In her head, she names the baby Lilly and prays her life will be much, much more uneventful than Veronica’s own. But in Neptune, there’s not much hope of that.
Author: addictedtojoy
Pairing/Character: LoVe, D/V
Word Count: 738
Rating: PG
Summary: She is confused about so much, but a few things are for certain.
Spoilers: through One Angry Veronica (ep. 210)
Notes: A small return to VM fiction. Unbetaed, so all mistakes are mine. Feedback welcome, as always.
1. She will never look at fire the same way again
Growing up in California, you almost look forward to the winter days it gets cold enough to light a fire. There is something distinctly Christmassy and cozy about a fire in the grate. But she will never want to have one again.
That night when Logan’s house burns down, and she mistakes him for Duncan and lies on his chest before jumping off again, she feels the fear fluttering along with his heartbeat, just like hers.
She finds herself thinking about that moment later, alone, and is ashamed to admit that she might have known it wasn’t Duncan’s arms that came up and around her even before he spoke and she got up.
Thinking like that only complicates things, and she doesn’t need any more complications.
2. No one is as invincible as they pretend to be
She is more hurt, and more worried, than she’d like to admit about Duncan visiting Meg at the hospital every day and then lying about it. Lies are already a bigger part of her life than she’d like them to be, and she’d hoped he would be the breakwater protecting her from more of them.
She wonders if he regrets breaking up with Meg. She hopes to God she isn’t just projecting-doesn’t want to admit there is dumper’s remorse inside her to project.
And with Wallace, gone… well, now she has very few safeguards against the world. And with Duncan drifting little by little, she feels exposed. A girl with as few friends as she has should be careful to keep those she’s got. And she’s been doing a sucky job of it lately.
3. Two boyfriends are not better than one
Duncan and Logan living together is nothing but trouble. And then Logan getting arrested again, charged again for something she believes him when he says he didn’t do, brings her right back to the summer she’d like to leave behind. Not least because she’s afraid that remembering will help her remember those old feelings, too. It was hard enough to ignore him when he lived off in the palace of remorse. When the three of them are in the same room together, she is amazed that all their issues fit in there with them.
Logan doesn’t help matters, by looking at her that way, the way that says he knows she still wonders, that she worries she made the wrong choice. The look that says, I know when you look at him you wonder if he is too numb to love you back. When you look at me, you wonder if we burned too brightly for me to ever stop.
She damns his expressive eyes.
4. There is no vaccination for heartbreak
That day at lunchtime, sarcastically telling Duncan she is “just fine with it” that a comatose blonde is having his baby, she cracks a little. Like she can feel her insides fracturing apart a little more every time she has to pretend yet another thing doesn’t affect her, that Veronica Mars is untouchable, unbreakable. Funny, Duncan never sees that she isn’t shatterproof. Logan knew her patchwork soul better than anyone, but he isn’t allowed in to see it anymore.
Up on Duncan’s pedestal is a pretty lonely place.
By now, she thinks, she should have learned how to stop feeling things so deeply. Like nearly two years’ worth of heartbreak weren’t enough to show anyone how to be detached. Not even her new therapist (for the new-found fire phobia) can prescribe her anything to immunize her against life.
5. Nothing can go back to the way it was
When she looks down at the tiny girl in the incubator, she knows her dreams last year of everything going back to normal were futile. Solving Lilly’s murder only eased the heartache a little. Another tidal wave of pain rushed in to replace it, and Duncan’s daughter is living proof of it.
Looking into the face of innocence makes her remember how much of that faith in the world she has lost. She and Duncan and Logan will never be those naïve high-schoolers again. Since homecoming, they have seen and lost too much.
In her head, she names the baby Lilly and prays her life will be much, much more uneventful than Veronica’s own. But in Neptune, there’s not much hope of that.