Fic: Penance
Title: Penance
Author: NessaasseN
Character:Duncan/Veronica/Logan
Spoilers: Through 1.22.
Rating: R for language.
Word count: 2700
Summary: Another post-finale scenario.
Disclaimer: Veronica Mars and all its characters belong to Rob Thomas and UPN
He has never been in a police station before. He dropped Veronica off here plenty of times when they were dating, but he never once came inside. Just waved and grinned when she blew him kisses. Looking around, he doesn’t regret this. The chairs are hard, the floors scuffed and dirty, and it smells like stale coffee and the cheap pine air freshener they hand out at car washes. And whiskey.
That last one can’t be right. But he glances around, follows the smell to the body slumped against the far wall. He didn’t realize they let the drunks sleep it off in plain sight. Then he realizes that it’s Logan, and he doesn’t wonder anymore. He has clenched his fists without realizing it, and slowly he relaxes them. Breathing. In. Breathing. Out.
The lawyer comes while he is breathing. Go home. Get some sleep. They’re coming for your mother in the morning. When the Valium wears off. He doesn’t say that last part. Duncan nods.
The lawyer glances at Logan. "Poor kid," he says, and Duncan thinks he should be glad that Logan isn’t awake to hear him say that.
“Can I take him with me?” he asks. And the lawyer shrugs. They both know there’s no one else coming.
Between the two of them, they manage to drag Logan out to the car. Upright, his body suspended between them, the dried blood on his shirt starts to peel. They leave little flakes strewn behind them in their wake. For the first time, Duncan does not think of Lilly. He does not wonder if they scraped her blood out from under his nails, off his guilty hands. He is aware of himself not wondering, and this makes him smile a little. He feels more awake than he has felt in a long time.
Logan shifts behind him. Duncan looks back through the mirror, then reaches up, adjusts it so he can see his own eyes. They look calmer, steadier than he feels. This is what it’s like to be noble, he reminds himself. Try to remember, Donut. This is how you used to be. Nice. Normal. A good friend. He looks back at Logan again, his face shadowed. He can’t see the bruises. This is nothing new. He has been overlooking them for years.
The clock reads 3:05 when he pulls up to Veronica’s place. He tries not to think about all the times he followed her home when he shouldn’t have. Pining. That is such a stupid word.
He lets Logan wait in the car.
When she comes to the door, she looks tired. And peaceful. I was hoping it was you. That’s what he imagines her saying. But she doesn’t. Instead, he tells her Logan’s in the car. She blinks up at him. “I didn’t know where else to bring him. There must be press all over his house by now. And he can’t come home with me because . . . because . . .”
Because his father killed my sister. Because my dad threatened his life a couple of hours ago. Because I don’t know if we’re even friends anymore.
She just nods, and he is grateful.
They pull him out of the car and into the house and out of his clothes and onto her bed. He winces when he sees the marks, and he tries not to think about whether Logan has been here before. He watches her wipe the blood off Logan’s face, and he wonders how far they have gone. She hands him a pair of gray sweat pants and a t-shirt, and he blinks. “Be right back.” She disappears with arms full of cotton and quarters.
He dresses Logan slowly, carefully, one limb at a time. He realizes there is no way the guy is waking up, and he stops being so careful. He wonders if Logan knows about his father yet. He takes a breath and he realizes the room smells like Veronica. Like soap and strawberry shampoo. He keeps breathing.
When she comes back, her arms are full again, with blankets this time, and she spreads them over Logan with an efficiency that makes him hopeful. He follows her out of the room and finally asks her what he should have asked hours ago, when she was standing backlit by flames, scraped and teary and brave.
“Are you okay? What happened?”
She tells him. He can feel the horror on his face, and inside he is ashamed. He had always liked Logan’s dad. Everything about today is hard to believe.
They exchange father updates (of mothers they say nothing), and she kisses him on the cheek. “Thanks for bringing him here,” she says.
He wants to pull her into his arms and kiss her and say I’m so glad you’re not my sister and will you go out with me again. He wants to hug her, just hug her, because he feels so relieved that she is okay. And because she stood up for Lilly, which is more than the rest of them managed to do.
He wants.
But he remembers that he is being noble. He is being nice. He is being normal. He should go home. Go to bed. Set his alarm so he will be awake when the police come to arrest his mother. Oh yeah. He is being normal.
He doesn’t do anything. When she says good night, she looks a little wistful, and he wonders if he should have done something, if she had wanted him to. “Are you sure you’re okay?” he manages to ask. She smiles and wraps her arms close to her body. “Go home,” she says. “Get some sleep.”
He turns around to wave when he is halfway to the car, and she is still there, watching him. She waves back and shuts the door. He rubs his tired eyes and yawns and thinks about going back inside, about lying down next Logan and falling into oblivion, about waking up where he will be able to see her again when the sunlight hits.
He gets in the car. He drives home. He sets his alarm. He closes his eyes to sleep, and he sees Lilly’s face. She’s not bleeding anymore. She is still smiling. Suddenly it matters less that tomorrow he’s going to wake up alone.
******************************************************************************************
There is a boy in her bed. This is a new thing for Veronica Mars.
There is a boy in her bed. And she can’t tell Lilly about it, because she’s gone, and she can’t enjoy it, because she broke him.
You loved your dead best friend better than your boyfriend. You still do. And now he’s not your boyfriend anymore.
She will never be sorry about putting Lilly first. Never. But she broke him just the same, and for that she is sorrier than she can say. She’s done a good job all day not thinking about it. The best job she’s ever done. Logan’s dad is going to pay for what he did.
And when she tells Logan about it, she’s going to break him even more.
She goes to put his clothes in the dryer. She puts in an extra dryer sheet, and she watches herself begin to try to make it up to him.
She wonders if this is love’s new formula. Part lust. Part guilt. Part penance. She wonders if this is the kind of love that lasts.
She pushes the quarters home, and tries not to run back to apartment. She worries that he is going to disappear.
He is right where she left him. She sits on the edge of the bed and watches the air move in and out of his chest. He has been so sweet lately. This still surprises her. It shouldn’t, but it does. This is part of the problem.
She does something very stupid. She climbs on the bed and stretches out next to him. She takes his hand. She wraps his fingers in hers and closes her eyes and tries to match his breathing with her own.
In an hour she will get up and go back to the dryer. She will make coffee and wait for her mother to leave and for Logan to wake up. She will explain. She will explain fast, like ripping the bandaid off a cut, because maybe it will hurt less that way. And then she will watch him bleed.
She will tell him she’s sorry, and he will throw her words back in her face. And she will respond in kind. And he will leave, cleaner than he arrived, headed for another bottle, another breakdown.
She reminds herself that she is very bad at predicting the future. But she moves a little closer to him on the bed, because maybe this will be the last peace between them for a long time. And while Lilly is dead, and her mom is a lost cause, and everything that has been driving her forward for a year and a half has vanished, he is warm and real and here.
Hours later, his clothes are still in the dryer, her mother's already gone, and they are sitting across from each other on the couch.
“I have to tell you what happened.”
He nods, barely.
She starts with the cameras and Beaver. Not knowing what to think. Going to look for the letter. Finding the tapes. When he hears what was on them, his eyes get wide and defiant and she remembers his face when Weevil was punching him so many months ago, how he looked like he would just take it and take it until he couldn’t get up anymore. He looks like that now, as if she is punching him and won’t stop. As if the beating won’t ever stop. She runs through the rest, her voice breaking a little when she talks about the refrigerator and her dad, and his hand drifts up, his fingers fluttering against the scrape on her cheek.
When the words stop falling out of her mouth, he stands up, unsteady, vibrating with rage, with disbelief, with grief. She holds very still. Then he bolts down the hall, leaving her on the couch feeling drained and helpless, and she can hear him retching and gagging and sobbing.
She carries a glass of water to the bathroom and sets it on the counter, trying not to look at him, hunched and breaking. But she can’t just leave him and so she drops to her knees and wraps her arms around him. He shakes and shakes. Tears are running down her cheeks now too and she thinks that while she is crying for him and for herself, she isn’t crying for Lilly anymore, and that makes everything feel cleaner somehow.
He gets up off the floor before she does. She watches him rinse out his mouth with mouthwash and splash water on his face. He looks in the mirror and closes his eyes.
“God I need a drink.”
She passes on the opportunity to point out the full glass of water at his hip. “Sorry, we’re fresh out. Ice cream, now, that I can offer. Chocolate sauce, even.”
“Veronica Mars’s drug of choice?” His voice rasps, vowels hollow, and when he glances down at her his eyes are dark and wild. She swallows and stays on the floor because she still remembers him on his knees at the beach, wiping the tears from his face.
“Logan,” she says finally, and watches him flinch a little at the sound of his own name. “Will you let me help you?”
He laughs sharp and hard. “What? How? Make me a sundae? With whipped cream and a cherry on top?”
She can feel the tears starting to form behind her eyes again. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry for thinking it was you. You have every right to hate me. I just want . . . “
“To make it better?” He spits out the words, half-laughing still, and it’s no longer clear whether he’s mocking her or himself. “Don’t you think I know that you would do it all over again? For Lilly. For the truth with a capital T.” He shakes his head, mouth twisting in a bitter almost smile. “I really should write a book. The hazards of dating a PI. Lesson number one: you never stop being a suspect.”
“I’m sorry,” she says, no longer sure just what she’s apologizing for, no longer sure what else to say. I loved Lilly? I had to know? You looked guilty and I didn’t think twice? It’s what I do? He knows all these things already.
You loved your dead best friend more than your boyfriend. He’s not your boyfriend anymore. It is like a bad song on repeat.
He is staring at himself in the mirror. “You know, it doesn’t matter. It really doesn’t. Because here’s the thing. The real kicker.” He turns to look her straight in the face and there are tears in his eyes again. “I don’t care. I don’t care that you fucked me over for the truth and Lilly’s memory. I don’t care that you couldn’t trust me enough to stick around, that it was easier for you to play me than to ask me where I was that day. I don’t care. I want you too much to care. I need you too much. How fucked up is that?”
His raw laughter is his only answer.
She never lets herself need people the way that Logan does, never lets them get near enough to sucker punch her in the gut. She never lets anyone that close. She wonders if this is the shape her penance ought to take: letting him close enough to hurt her, to make her gasp for love and air all at once, until she can’t tell the difference. She isn’t sure she knows how. She isn’t sure she wants to.
His pain spills out all over the bathroom, as if he’d left the faucet running, and for what feels like a long time there is only the sound of his ragged breathing, the unsyncopated rhythm of him trying to choke back tears.
Finally he exhales loudly, and wipes his hand across his face, and when he speaks again, he sounds hiccupy and shaky. “So what do you say, Veronica? Can we try again?”
You loved your dead best friend more than your boyfriend. He’s not your boyfriend anymore. He’s still your boyfriend. Now who do you love again?
She stands up. His words seem to come out of nowhere she recognizes and she thinks she should be scared. She’s not designed to be the anchor in anybody’s storm. But he looks so lost standing there in those floppy sweats and her Dad’s old Padres’ t-shirt and she’s not sure she can stand to hurt him anymore. Still she hedges. “You know we’re a trainwreck waiting to happen, right?”
He shakes his head. “Train blew up a long time ago. And it’s not like I didn’t do my share. Shelly’s party. This shitty year. My stupidity about the alibi. Dad.” His voice empties on the last syllable, as if the one word used up all his oxygen, and he has to take a deep breath to finish. “Maybe we can just . . . call it even,” he ends. The naked pleading in his face makes her look away, just for a second.
Love. Part lust, part guilt, part penance. It never lasts no matter how you make it.
But she nods anyway and as if this is a signal he has been waiting for, he reaches out for her and pulls her close, resting his forehead against hers.
“Are you sure this is what you want? My life pretty much sucks right now.”
She reaches up and cups his face in her hands, pulls him down to kiss her. He tastes like mouthwash and salt and regret. “This is what I want,” she says. “You’re what I want.” She breathes the words into his mouth like a prayer, and she wonders how long it will take for him to believe her. She wonders if she believes herself.
Author: NessaasseN
Character:Duncan/Veronica/Logan
Spoilers: Through 1.22.
Rating: R for language.
Word count: 2700
Summary: Another post-finale scenario.
Disclaimer: Veronica Mars and all its characters belong to Rob Thomas and UPN
He has never been in a police station before. He dropped Veronica off here plenty of times when they were dating, but he never once came inside. Just waved and grinned when she blew him kisses. Looking around, he doesn’t regret this. The chairs are hard, the floors scuffed and dirty, and it smells like stale coffee and the cheap pine air freshener they hand out at car washes. And whiskey.
That last one can’t be right. But he glances around, follows the smell to the body slumped against the far wall. He didn’t realize they let the drunks sleep it off in plain sight. Then he realizes that it’s Logan, and he doesn’t wonder anymore. He has clenched his fists without realizing it, and slowly he relaxes them. Breathing. In. Breathing. Out.
The lawyer comes while he is breathing. Go home. Get some sleep. They’re coming for your mother in the morning. When the Valium wears off. He doesn’t say that last part. Duncan nods.
The lawyer glances at Logan. "Poor kid," he says, and Duncan thinks he should be glad that Logan isn’t awake to hear him say that.
“Can I take him with me?” he asks. And the lawyer shrugs. They both know there’s no one else coming.
Between the two of them, they manage to drag Logan out to the car. Upright, his body suspended between them, the dried blood on his shirt starts to peel. They leave little flakes strewn behind them in their wake. For the first time, Duncan does not think of Lilly. He does not wonder if they scraped her blood out from under his nails, off his guilty hands. He is aware of himself not wondering, and this makes him smile a little. He feels more awake than he has felt in a long time.
Logan shifts behind him. Duncan looks back through the mirror, then reaches up, adjusts it so he can see his own eyes. They look calmer, steadier than he feels. This is what it’s like to be noble, he reminds himself. Try to remember, Donut. This is how you used to be. Nice. Normal. A good friend. He looks back at Logan again, his face shadowed. He can’t see the bruises. This is nothing new. He has been overlooking them for years.
The clock reads 3:05 when he pulls up to Veronica’s place. He tries not to think about all the times he followed her home when he shouldn’t have. Pining. That is such a stupid word.
He lets Logan wait in the car.
When she comes to the door, she looks tired. And peaceful. I was hoping it was you. That’s what he imagines her saying. But she doesn’t. Instead, he tells her Logan’s in the car. She blinks up at him. “I didn’t know where else to bring him. There must be press all over his house by now. And he can’t come home with me because . . . because . . .”
Because his father killed my sister. Because my dad threatened his life a couple of hours ago. Because I don’t know if we’re even friends anymore.
She just nods, and he is grateful.
They pull him out of the car and into the house and out of his clothes and onto her bed. He winces when he sees the marks, and he tries not to think about whether Logan has been here before. He watches her wipe the blood off Logan’s face, and he wonders how far they have gone. She hands him a pair of gray sweat pants and a t-shirt, and he blinks. “Be right back.” She disappears with arms full of cotton and quarters.
He dresses Logan slowly, carefully, one limb at a time. He realizes there is no way the guy is waking up, and he stops being so careful. He wonders if Logan knows about his father yet. He takes a breath and he realizes the room smells like Veronica. Like soap and strawberry shampoo. He keeps breathing.
When she comes back, her arms are full again, with blankets this time, and she spreads them over Logan with an efficiency that makes him hopeful. He follows her out of the room and finally asks her what he should have asked hours ago, when she was standing backlit by flames, scraped and teary and brave.
“Are you okay? What happened?”
She tells him. He can feel the horror on his face, and inside he is ashamed. He had always liked Logan’s dad. Everything about today is hard to believe.
They exchange father updates (of mothers they say nothing), and she kisses him on the cheek. “Thanks for bringing him here,” she says.
He wants to pull her into his arms and kiss her and say I’m so glad you’re not my sister and will you go out with me again. He wants to hug her, just hug her, because he feels so relieved that she is okay. And because she stood up for Lilly, which is more than the rest of them managed to do.
He wants.
But he remembers that he is being noble. He is being nice. He is being normal. He should go home. Go to bed. Set his alarm so he will be awake when the police come to arrest his mother. Oh yeah. He is being normal.
He doesn’t do anything. When she says good night, she looks a little wistful, and he wonders if he should have done something, if she had wanted him to. “Are you sure you’re okay?” he manages to ask. She smiles and wraps her arms close to her body. “Go home,” she says. “Get some sleep.”
He turns around to wave when he is halfway to the car, and she is still there, watching him. She waves back and shuts the door. He rubs his tired eyes and yawns and thinks about going back inside, about lying down next Logan and falling into oblivion, about waking up where he will be able to see her again when the sunlight hits.
He gets in the car. He drives home. He sets his alarm. He closes his eyes to sleep, and he sees Lilly’s face. She’s not bleeding anymore. She is still smiling. Suddenly it matters less that tomorrow he’s going to wake up alone.
******************************************************************************************
There is a boy in her bed. This is a new thing for Veronica Mars.
There is a boy in her bed. And she can’t tell Lilly about it, because she’s gone, and she can’t enjoy it, because she broke him.
You loved your dead best friend better than your boyfriend. You still do. And now he’s not your boyfriend anymore.
She will never be sorry about putting Lilly first. Never. But she broke him just the same, and for that she is sorrier than she can say. She’s done a good job all day not thinking about it. The best job she’s ever done. Logan’s dad is going to pay for what he did.
And when she tells Logan about it, she’s going to break him even more.
She goes to put his clothes in the dryer. She puts in an extra dryer sheet, and she watches herself begin to try to make it up to him.
She wonders if this is love’s new formula. Part lust. Part guilt. Part penance. She wonders if this is the kind of love that lasts.
She pushes the quarters home, and tries not to run back to apartment. She worries that he is going to disappear.
He is right where she left him. She sits on the edge of the bed and watches the air move in and out of his chest. He has been so sweet lately. This still surprises her. It shouldn’t, but it does. This is part of the problem.
She does something very stupid. She climbs on the bed and stretches out next to him. She takes his hand. She wraps his fingers in hers and closes her eyes and tries to match his breathing with her own.
In an hour she will get up and go back to the dryer. She will make coffee and wait for her mother to leave and for Logan to wake up. She will explain. She will explain fast, like ripping the bandaid off a cut, because maybe it will hurt less that way. And then she will watch him bleed.
She will tell him she’s sorry, and he will throw her words back in her face. And she will respond in kind. And he will leave, cleaner than he arrived, headed for another bottle, another breakdown.
She reminds herself that she is very bad at predicting the future. But she moves a little closer to him on the bed, because maybe this will be the last peace between them for a long time. And while Lilly is dead, and her mom is a lost cause, and everything that has been driving her forward for a year and a half has vanished, he is warm and real and here.
Hours later, his clothes are still in the dryer, her mother's already gone, and they are sitting across from each other on the couch.
“I have to tell you what happened.”
He nods, barely.
She starts with the cameras and Beaver. Not knowing what to think. Going to look for the letter. Finding the tapes. When he hears what was on them, his eyes get wide and defiant and she remembers his face when Weevil was punching him so many months ago, how he looked like he would just take it and take it until he couldn’t get up anymore. He looks like that now, as if she is punching him and won’t stop. As if the beating won’t ever stop. She runs through the rest, her voice breaking a little when she talks about the refrigerator and her dad, and his hand drifts up, his fingers fluttering against the scrape on her cheek.
When the words stop falling out of her mouth, he stands up, unsteady, vibrating with rage, with disbelief, with grief. She holds very still. Then he bolts down the hall, leaving her on the couch feeling drained and helpless, and she can hear him retching and gagging and sobbing.
She carries a glass of water to the bathroom and sets it on the counter, trying not to look at him, hunched and breaking. But she can’t just leave him and so she drops to her knees and wraps her arms around him. He shakes and shakes. Tears are running down her cheeks now too and she thinks that while she is crying for him and for herself, she isn’t crying for Lilly anymore, and that makes everything feel cleaner somehow.
He gets up off the floor before she does. She watches him rinse out his mouth with mouthwash and splash water on his face. He looks in the mirror and closes his eyes.
“God I need a drink.”
She passes on the opportunity to point out the full glass of water at his hip. “Sorry, we’re fresh out. Ice cream, now, that I can offer. Chocolate sauce, even.”
“Veronica Mars’s drug of choice?” His voice rasps, vowels hollow, and when he glances down at her his eyes are dark and wild. She swallows and stays on the floor because she still remembers him on his knees at the beach, wiping the tears from his face.
“Logan,” she says finally, and watches him flinch a little at the sound of his own name. “Will you let me help you?”
He laughs sharp and hard. “What? How? Make me a sundae? With whipped cream and a cherry on top?”
She can feel the tears starting to form behind her eyes again. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry for thinking it was you. You have every right to hate me. I just want . . . “
“To make it better?” He spits out the words, half-laughing still, and it’s no longer clear whether he’s mocking her or himself. “Don’t you think I know that you would do it all over again? For Lilly. For the truth with a capital T.” He shakes his head, mouth twisting in a bitter almost smile. “I really should write a book. The hazards of dating a PI. Lesson number one: you never stop being a suspect.”
“I’m sorry,” she says, no longer sure just what she’s apologizing for, no longer sure what else to say. I loved Lilly? I had to know? You looked guilty and I didn’t think twice? It’s what I do? He knows all these things already.
You loved your dead best friend more than your boyfriend. He’s not your boyfriend anymore. It is like a bad song on repeat.
He is staring at himself in the mirror. “You know, it doesn’t matter. It really doesn’t. Because here’s the thing. The real kicker.” He turns to look her straight in the face and there are tears in his eyes again. “I don’t care. I don’t care that you fucked me over for the truth and Lilly’s memory. I don’t care that you couldn’t trust me enough to stick around, that it was easier for you to play me than to ask me where I was that day. I don’t care. I want you too much to care. I need you too much. How fucked up is that?”
His raw laughter is his only answer.
She never lets herself need people the way that Logan does, never lets them get near enough to sucker punch her in the gut. She never lets anyone that close. She wonders if this is the shape her penance ought to take: letting him close enough to hurt her, to make her gasp for love and air all at once, until she can’t tell the difference. She isn’t sure she knows how. She isn’t sure she wants to.
His pain spills out all over the bathroom, as if he’d left the faucet running, and for what feels like a long time there is only the sound of his ragged breathing, the unsyncopated rhythm of him trying to choke back tears.
Finally he exhales loudly, and wipes his hand across his face, and when he speaks again, he sounds hiccupy and shaky. “So what do you say, Veronica? Can we try again?”
You loved your dead best friend more than your boyfriend. He’s not your boyfriend anymore. He’s still your boyfriend. Now who do you love again?
She stands up. His words seem to come out of nowhere she recognizes and she thinks she should be scared. She’s not designed to be the anchor in anybody’s storm. But he looks so lost standing there in those floppy sweats and her Dad’s old Padres’ t-shirt and she’s not sure she can stand to hurt him anymore. Still she hedges. “You know we’re a trainwreck waiting to happen, right?”
He shakes his head. “Train blew up a long time ago. And it’s not like I didn’t do my share. Shelly’s party. This shitty year. My stupidity about the alibi. Dad.” His voice empties on the last syllable, as if the one word used up all his oxygen, and he has to take a deep breath to finish. “Maybe we can just . . . call it even,” he ends. The naked pleading in his face makes her look away, just for a second.
Love. Part lust, part guilt, part penance. It never lasts no matter how you make it.
But she nods anyway and as if this is a signal he has been waiting for, he reaches out for her and pulls her close, resting his forehead against hers.
“Are you sure this is what you want? My life pretty much sucks right now.”
She reaches up and cups his face in her hands, pulls him down to kiss her. He tastes like mouthwash and salt and regret. “This is what I want,” she says. “You’re what I want.” She breathes the words into his mouth like a prayer, and she wonders how long it will take for him to believe her. She wonders if she believes herself.