Three Blonde Ghosts: The Past 1/3 [Ensemble] PG
Title: Three Blonde Ghosts: The Past [1/3]
Rating: PG
Word Count: 3,712 (12, 632 total)
Characters/Pairings: Mac, Veronica, Logan, Dick, Wallace, Piz, Parker, Keith, Max, Bronson some OCs (pretty much the whole cast as of end of season 3)
Spoilers: All episodes (from 1.01: Pilot to 3.20: The Bitch Is Back) This is post Season 3 so it's all spoiled.
Disclaimer: I own neither Veronica Mars or A Christmas Carol, they belong to Rob Thomas and whoever owns Dickens these days.
A/N: I wrote this for vmfic_gameon Round 4 for both challenges 3 and 4. I used 22 of the 25 words : cliquish, navel, confiscate, believe, mourning, bought, preconceive, gravitate, twister, butcher, guideline, infinite, debut, cynical, sunset, devotee, unconventional, venture, session, gone, sallow, and insecure. I'm a little shocked I couldn't get the other three in there. Also, this is the first time I've sat down and written anything in a while. I've been out of town for a while and my laptop is kind of out of order (the bottom row of letters and the space bar aren't working) so it's been hard. But I'm going to start trying to work on The Return soon.
Mac sat on one of the big, overstuffed armchairs in Veronica’s living room, her legs curled up underneath her. She let her gaze roam over the crowded room, taking in all the people that had gathered here for what seemed to be the traditional watching of It’s A Wonderful Life at Veronica’s apartment on Christmas Eve. It seemed to her that each year everyone got more and more comfortable with the arrangement while she felt more and more isolated from it. She could feel herself pulling away, holding herself apart from the group. These occasions always highlighted the fact that she was alone. Veronica and Logan were back together for the millionth time, cuddled in one corner of the couch, making cracks about George Bailey and Mr. Potter. Wallace sat at the other end of the couch, eating popcorn and adding the occasional observation to Veronica’s running commentary, he was alone now, his girlfriend out of town for the break. Mr. Mars was sitting on the love seat, Alicia Fennel cuddled up to his side while he glared at Logan for some reason. Piz and Parker were sharing a blanket on the floor, trying to hid the fact that they were dating even though everyone knew. Dick was splayed on his stomach in front of the television, often asking questions about the movie since he’d never seen it before. Darryl was sprawled out next to him, fast asleep.
Mac sat there, watching as their unconventional little group melded together into a make-shift family that she was somehow both apart of and separated from. It hadn’t been all that long ago when things had been such a mess. Logan and Veronica hadn’t been talking. Piz and Logan hated each other. Parker hated Veronica. Everyone hated Dick, except for Logan. Wallace and Logan were fighting. Even Mac and Parker had gone through a rough patch. But everything was fine now, everyone was all paired up. Except for Mac. Even Dick had found a buddy in Darryl this last week. According to Veronica and Wallace Dick had stayed late last night playing videogames with Wallace’s little brother. Now they were all friends, spending Christmas together.
Most of them had skipped out on the family Christmas thing this year. Parker was fighting with her parents about her decision to major in something they didn’t think worthy of the education they had bought her. Dick’s dad was AWOL again and his mother was spending Christmas with her new family. Logan’s sister, as far as Mac knew, was spending the holidays in London with her new boyfriend. Piz hadn’t given a reason to why he was staying, just that he was. Mac had opted out of the eight hour drive in a cramped back seat with her little brother on the way to visit her grandparents. She’d been invited to the Sinclair’s house for dinner tomorrow, but if she went there was the high possibility of running into Madison, who was still having some issues with finding out about the big switched at birth thing. But being here with the Mars-Fennel family was just the same. They still made a big deal out of Christmas.
“Okay, I say we either start dinner or order a pizza, because I’m hungry.” Mr. Mars’ voice broke into her thoughts and cut whatever Veronica was saying off.
“We’re doing a big dinner tomorrow, so why don’t we just order in?” Veronica suggested, hopping up from the couch to get the take out menus.
“I think we’re going to head home. Get Darryl to bed so we can all get up tomorrow for a big breakfast.” Alicia announced as both she and Wallace got up. Within minutes they were out the door, with a sleepy Darryl leaning heavily on Wallace.
Dick mumbled something about getting home to call his mom for a Christmas chat, before grabbing his coat and disappearing out the door. Parker hemmed and hawed about being tired before finally breaking down and admitting that she was going to go home and watch White Christmas and then go to bed. Piz decided to go as well, offering to give Parker a ride back to the dorms before he went to his own room and called his parents. Everyone had fled the Mars apartment within twenty minutes, leaving Mac to stand uncomfortably in the living room as Veronica and Logan argued whether to get Pizza or Chinese.
“You’re welcome to stay Mac, we can order you something.” Veronica offered, pulling out the Chinese menus and picking up her phone. “Lo Mein?”
“Or a veggie pizza.” Logan interjected, swiping the Chinese menu and replacing it with the pizzeria take out menu.
“In fact, you can be the deciding vote on whether we get Chinese or Pizza.” Veronica offered.
“Actually, I’m going to head home.” Mac turned and headed towards Veronica’s room, where her coat was flung over the foot of the bed, before she could see her friend’s face fall.
“You don’t have to leave Mac, I mean, just because everybody else left doesn’t mean you have to.” Veronica offered following her into the bedroom. “In fact, you could spend the night. We’ll stay up and watch all those old Christmas movies, I’m going to make Logan watch the Grinch and the Mickey Mouse Christmas Carol. You could stay, sleep on the couch.”
“Isn’t Logan sleeping on the couch?”
“Oh, yeah. Well, he can sleep on the floor or the love seat and you take the couch. Or we could make a bed up on my floor and you can stay in there. We can stay up all night, chat. We’ve got a bunch of cookies and stuff.”
“Sounds great, but I think I’m still going to go home.” Mac grabbed her coat. Veronica reached out to catch her arm before she walked away.
“I just, well, I don’t really feel like you should be all alone on Christmas. I mean, your family is gone and well…” Veronica trailed off, her eyes downcast as she searched for more words to try and convince one her best friends to stay.
“It’s okay Veronica, I chose to skip out on the family trip this Christmas. And maybe I’ll skip the Sinclair family dinner and come here instead, so I won’t be alone either way. I’ll be fine I promise I just…” Mac stopped just short of saying why she really didn’t want to stay. “I just want to sleep in my old room tonight. And my parents set up a tree before they left, and the left my presents so I’ll open them early and go to bed and then meet you here in the morning. Okay?”
“Okay, if you’re sure.” Veronica let her arm fall, releasing Mac.
“I’m sure.” She assured Veronica before she turned and left the apartment.
I don’t want to hang out with the lovey couple, not when Piz and Parker seem to have paired up and think nobody has noticed. And Dick is sending me puppy dog looks and Wallace’s girlfriend was coming for dinner tomorrow. This was not a reason that Mac could give to Veronica for not staying, she also couldn’t tell her that if there was anyway she could get out of tomorrow night’s dinner she would. Even Mr. Mars was dating Wallace’s mom again. Everyone was all paired up, just in time for Christmas. Except me.
~*~
“What the hell?” Mac shot up in bed.
Thump.
There it was again, a loud noise just to her right. A loud noise in a very quiet house in which she was the only occupant.
“Dammit.” A voice called in the dark. A girl’s voice.
“Who’s there?” Mac called, her left hand reaching out to find something to hit the intruder with. Her hand wrapped around something heavy and wooden, a carved box her brother had given her for Christmas three years ago. She flung it out in the general direction of the voice as she moved further away on the bed. The object didn’t seemed to come in contact with whoever it was and, instead, hit the wall.
“That wasn’t very nice.” The voice was annoyed, and suddenly very familiar. There was a crack, like someone snapping their fingers together very loudly. With the sound came a dim glow, a golden light that seemed to grow and grow until it engulfed the entire room.
A room in which Lilly Kane stood, wearing a yellow sundress and no shoes.
“Why aren’t you wearing shoes?” Mac asked dumbly.
“I’m dead and standing in your bedroom and the only thing you can ask is why am I not wearing any shoes?” Lilly cocked on hip and put her hand on it, tilting her head a little. So that’s where Veronica got it.
“No, Veronica Mars was doing the head tilt long before me. It’s actually one of the few things I’ve learned from her. Post-mortem.” Lilly answered the unspoken thought.
“Okay. Good to know. What are you doing here?” Mac asked, sitting up and swinging her legs out of the bed to rest on the floor.
“Finally, a reasonable question. I’m here to help you. I’m the Ghost of Christmas Past, well, kind of.” Lilly grinned and took a few steps forward.
“I don’t believe in ghosts.” Mac said, looking the hallucination right in the eye.
“I’m not a hallucination. And it doesn’t matter whether you believe in ghosts or not, because I’m here.” Her voice was annoyed, it was the same voice she used to have when she fought with Logan in the quad in high school.
“Okay. I’m obviously dreaming, I don’t remember dreaming about you before but, okay.” Mac nodded, swinging her legs back into bed and laying back down. “I’ll just wake up now and this will go away.”
“You’re not dreaming. Everybody always thinks their dreaming when this happens to them, but they never are. I’m here, you’re awake and we’re wasting precious viewing time.” Lilly reached for Mac and tugged.
Mac suddenly found herself in the middle of what could only be the old Kane house. Lilly continued on through the house, still barefoot, towards what looked to be the back of the house.
“If this is my journey and all, why are we in your house?” Mac asked.
“Detour, but then again it kind of proves that it’s not a dream. After all, you were never in my house were you?” Lilly answered, barely throwing a glance back over her shoulder.
“No, I wasn’t.” Mac took a step, and then another, following Lilly out the back door to the pool area.
“There’s still something here you should see.” Lilly stood next to an embarrassed looking boy, standing in shorts too big for him next to a tree, looking like he wanted to disappear.
“Is that…” Mac asked, her voice trailing off.
“Cassidy? Yes. This was my pool party before we went back to school that year. It was only a couple months before everything fell apart. He was never really comfortable with these people, always worried they’d find out his secret.”
Mac turned her head away from the two of them standing there, surveyed the scene for the people she knew would be at this party.
Dick was in the pool with Duncan and the other boys of the Neptune elite. Lilly, alive Lilly, was rubbing tanning lotion in to her shoulders while talking to Veronica, who was standing next to her, laughing. Logan snuck behind her to slide an ice cube down her back, causing her to scream and shove him into the pool.
“They always did kind of gravitate towards each other, didn’t they?” Lilly said from beside her, Mac didn’t even realize that she’d moved. “I never realized it before.”
“The four of you were always so tight, a little unit. And then, after you died and it all fell away, we mere spectators couldn’t believe it.” Mac whispered to the girl that stood next to her that wasn’t any different from the girl that sat on a lounge chair twenty feet away.
“We were rather cliquish weren’t we? Didn’t let in the outsiders and kept closely guarded secrets. We were never as perfect as most people at that school seemed to think we were.” Lilly reached down to touch Mac’s hand, causing the scene to swirl and the colors to flow together until it all dissolved, spinning around them. Then, just as suddenly the colors separated and became shapes, the shapes became more and more distinct until it revealed another scene. They were standing in the middle of the main hall of Neptune High, staring out at the lockers where Veronica and Logan and Lilly and Duncan were all standing and laughing.
“You still seemed perfect. And since then you’ve all become a sort of legend.” Mac whispered, as the scene started to strike a memory.
“Well it was bound to happen. We all turned out rather tragic, didn’t we. Now here it comes.” Lilly turned them slightly, so they could watch the hall more clearly.
Mac watched as her younger self bumped into Dick and Cassidy. Dick made a comment before continuing on to talk to Logan, but Cassidy stopped and turned, watched her as she hurried off down the hall without looking back. She’d never known that, that he’d shown interest in her before.
“These aren’t really Christmas-time memories are they? I mean these aren’t really memories that have a lot to do with me, are they?” Mac rolled her eyes and tried to focus on Veronica and Logan, her friends now, and not the boy that was hurrying off down the hall after his brother.
“You’re not paying attention.” Lilly remarked before reaching down to grab her hand again, changing the scene again. “But if you want one a little closer to Christmas.”
It was a party. One she’d never been to and yet knew all about. There had been rumors about Veronica at this party, making out with everyone and sealing her reputation as a slut. Mac had also heard different versions of what had happened, the final version was from Veronica herself, telling her how Cassidy - Beaver - had gotten her alone in a room. This room.
There Veronica was laying on the bed, Cassidy running his hand up her leg and under her skirt.
“I wasn’t even at this party.” Mac turned and walked out of the room.
“But it affected you, what happened here, in the end, it affected you.” Lilly followed her, but didn’t change the scene. They stood now, in the center of all the party goers downing shots and yelling and dancing and having fun. She spotted Dick and Madison a few feet away from them, yelling at each other. Lilly reached out and shoved Madison into Dick.
“Hey, isn’t that against one of the rules? That there’s no interaction, that they’re not supposed to know we’re here?” Mac asked, biting her lip to keep from laughing at the appalled look on Madison’s face as she righted herself.
“They’re more guidelines than rules.” Lilly answered, reaching down to grab Mac’s hand and change the scene again. “And I’ve always hated Madison, even when we were friends.”
“Where are we now?” Mac asked, looking around the room.
“We’re at your graduation night, on the roof of the Neptune Grand.” Lilly let go of Mac’s hand and moved away a little so she could see Cassidy, yelling and pointing a gun at Veronica.
“I don’t want to see this.” Mac took as step back.
“We won’t stay for the whole thing, just the part where you see that he was broken long before you, that you couldn’t have stopped it.” Lilly explained, stepping closer to Mac.
“I know that. I know I wouldn’t have been able to stop him from killing all those people, doing what he did to Veronica. I know. He did it all before we were ever together anyway.” Mac bit her lip and took another step back.
“I meant the part where he killed himself.” Lilly explained, reaching out for her hand again. This time Mac gripped her hend and squeezed her eyes shut as the scene dissolved and reformed again.
Now they were standing at the edge of the cemetery. Watching as a casket was lowered into the ground. Watching as a family stood and lowered their father into the ground. It was Woody Goodman’s funeral.
Mac looked down at her own bare feet and then looked up again. They were a little closer now and at a different funeral. She watched as another casket was lowered into a different grave. She watched as a tall blond boy in a gray suit with eyes hidden by sunglasses turned and walked away from his brother’s grave. Then she watched as a girl walked closer to it, crying.
“You’re crying.” Lilly pointed out.
“I was sad.” Mac whispered, watching herself as she stopped at the edge of the grave and stared down at the box that held the first boy she had ever loved. The boy that had killed so many people.
“You were mourning him, what you lost. Of course you were sad, but I meant that you’re crying now.”
“I’m still sad.” Mac reached up and wiped the tears away from her face.
“I know.” Lilly reached out and touched her shoulder this time. The scene spun and changed again, and still Lilly clutched her shoulder, trying to convey a little comfort and understanding in it.
“Now, this boy was pretty cute. All good and pure and sweet and all about saving the planet. You seemed to really open yourself up to him.” Lilly stood next to Mac as she blushed, watching herself kiss Bronson and they fell back onto the bed.
“Can we not watch this? I know what happens.” Mac tugged at Lilly, but she merely turned to stare at her.
“You really seemed to open yourself up to him. Let him in.” Mac glared at Lilly now. “Not just that way, I didn’t mean that way. I meant that you really seemed to connect with him. But it only seemed that way. He never really had a chance. You didn’t let him get close enough to really hurt you.”
Lilly pulled her away and out her own door into Logan’s old living room at the Grand, packed full of people for Parker’s birthday party. They walked swiftly through the party, past Logan talking to Veronica and Parker laughing. Past the couch where she was sitting with Max, the night they met, and through the next door where she was in a room, breaking up with Bronson.
Lilly stopped suddenly, only for a moment to take in the scene, to watch to the break up. To watch the other Mac walk away from the scene.
“He doesn’t realize it, but you were always going to break up with him. He doesn’t know that you were a little broken a long time before he ever met you. He doesn’t realize exactly how cynical you were, are. He doesn’t realize that you were never going to fall in love with him because you don’t believe in it anymore.”
“I do, I believe in love.” Mac protested as Lilly grabbed her hand and pulled her through another door and into Max’s dorm room, where they were lounging around in bed after that time they spent the entire weekend there.
“No you don’t, not for you. You believe other people love, you’ve hung around with Logan and Veronica enough to not be able to doubt it, but you don’t believe you’ll ever fall in love because it’s not so great when it happens to you.”
“I was in love with Max.” Mac said defiantly.
“No you weren’t.” Lilly pulled her through a big black door. On the other side she watched as she sat in the cafeteria with Max. He’d come to visit her at school. It was sophomore year at Hearst, near Christmas-time. She and Max had been together for quite a while at this point.
Max reached across the table to grab her hand. He was asking if she’d come with him during Christmas break to meet his parents. She remembered the way her heart felt like it was going to beat out of her chest. How she had recognized this moment as the moment where she either had to end it or risk something else.
“See, you know that you weren’t in love with him, not yet at least. If you’d stayed, if you’d gone with him you might have been, but you wouldn’t let yourself.”
“I was scared. What happened with Cassidy…” Mac had to stop to catch her breath before she began to cry again. “It was hard and bad and I got scared.”
“I’m not judging Mac, I get why you did it. But don’t try and fool yourself that you were in love with him. You were with him for a little over six months and you still kept him at arm’s length.”
“It was hard. I wanted to try and love him, but after… after…”
“I know.” Lilly whispered as the scene melted away into nothing. The were somewhere she’d never been before, but knew anyway. They were standing by a pool. The pool that, earlier, was filled and surrounded by her old classmates but was now empty but for the two of them. The pool where the girl that stood in front of her was murdered. “I’m leaving you now.”
“I wish I would have known you Lilly Kane, better I mean.” Mac watched as Lilly bent down to sit by the pool, dangling her legs over the edge and into the water. Mac did the same, dipping her toes into the cool water.
“We could’ve been friends, I suppose. I know that I would’ve adored the way things turned out. Badass Veronica, solving crimes and murders. In love with Logan. But things are the way they are, after tonight you’ll realize that the past just has to stay there, it belongs the way it is.”
Mac shut her eyes and nodded, but when she opened them Lilly was gone and the pool had faded away. She stood in her bedroom, staring into the darkness. Her feet wet.
Part 2
Rating: PG
Word Count: 3,712 (12, 632 total)
Characters/Pairings: Mac, Veronica, Logan, Dick, Wallace, Piz, Parker, Keith, Max, Bronson some OCs (pretty much the whole cast as of end of season 3)
Spoilers: All episodes (from 1.01: Pilot to 3.20: The Bitch Is Back) This is post Season 3 so it's all spoiled.
Disclaimer: I own neither Veronica Mars or A Christmas Carol, they belong to Rob Thomas and whoever owns Dickens these days.
A/N: I wrote this for vmfic_gameon Round 4 for both challenges 3 and 4. I used 22 of the 25 words : cliquish, navel, confiscate, believe, mourning, bought, preconceive, gravitate, twister, butcher, guideline, infinite, debut, cynical, sunset, devotee, unconventional, venture, session, gone, sallow, and insecure. I'm a little shocked I couldn't get the other three in there. Also, this is the first time I've sat down and written anything in a while. I've been out of town for a while and my laptop is kind of out of order (the bottom row of letters and the space bar aren't working) so it's been hard. But I'm going to start trying to work on The Return soon.
Mac sat on one of the big, overstuffed armchairs in Veronica’s living room, her legs curled up underneath her. She let her gaze roam over the crowded room, taking in all the people that had gathered here for what seemed to be the traditional watching of It’s A Wonderful Life at Veronica’s apartment on Christmas Eve. It seemed to her that each year everyone got more and more comfortable with the arrangement while she felt more and more isolated from it. She could feel herself pulling away, holding herself apart from the group. These occasions always highlighted the fact that she was alone. Veronica and Logan were back together for the millionth time, cuddled in one corner of the couch, making cracks about George Bailey and Mr. Potter. Wallace sat at the other end of the couch, eating popcorn and adding the occasional observation to Veronica’s running commentary, he was alone now, his girlfriend out of town for the break. Mr. Mars was sitting on the love seat, Alicia Fennel cuddled up to his side while he glared at Logan for some reason. Piz and Parker were sharing a blanket on the floor, trying to hid the fact that they were dating even though everyone knew. Dick was splayed on his stomach in front of the television, often asking questions about the movie since he’d never seen it before. Darryl was sprawled out next to him, fast asleep.
Mac sat there, watching as their unconventional little group melded together into a make-shift family that she was somehow both apart of and separated from. It hadn’t been all that long ago when things had been such a mess. Logan and Veronica hadn’t been talking. Piz and Logan hated each other. Parker hated Veronica. Everyone hated Dick, except for Logan. Wallace and Logan were fighting. Even Mac and Parker had gone through a rough patch. But everything was fine now, everyone was all paired up. Except for Mac. Even Dick had found a buddy in Darryl this last week. According to Veronica and Wallace Dick had stayed late last night playing videogames with Wallace’s little brother. Now they were all friends, spending Christmas together.
Most of them had skipped out on the family Christmas thing this year. Parker was fighting with her parents about her decision to major in something they didn’t think worthy of the education they had bought her. Dick’s dad was AWOL again and his mother was spending Christmas with her new family. Logan’s sister, as far as Mac knew, was spending the holidays in London with her new boyfriend. Piz hadn’t given a reason to why he was staying, just that he was. Mac had opted out of the eight hour drive in a cramped back seat with her little brother on the way to visit her grandparents. She’d been invited to the Sinclair’s house for dinner tomorrow, but if she went there was the high possibility of running into Madison, who was still having some issues with finding out about the big switched at birth thing. But being here with the Mars-Fennel family was just the same. They still made a big deal out of Christmas.
“Okay, I say we either start dinner or order a pizza, because I’m hungry.” Mr. Mars’ voice broke into her thoughts and cut whatever Veronica was saying off.
“We’re doing a big dinner tomorrow, so why don’t we just order in?” Veronica suggested, hopping up from the couch to get the take out menus.
“I think we’re going to head home. Get Darryl to bed so we can all get up tomorrow for a big breakfast.” Alicia announced as both she and Wallace got up. Within minutes they were out the door, with a sleepy Darryl leaning heavily on Wallace.
Dick mumbled something about getting home to call his mom for a Christmas chat, before grabbing his coat and disappearing out the door. Parker hemmed and hawed about being tired before finally breaking down and admitting that she was going to go home and watch White Christmas and then go to bed. Piz decided to go as well, offering to give Parker a ride back to the dorms before he went to his own room and called his parents. Everyone had fled the Mars apartment within twenty minutes, leaving Mac to stand uncomfortably in the living room as Veronica and Logan argued whether to get Pizza or Chinese.
“You’re welcome to stay Mac, we can order you something.” Veronica offered, pulling out the Chinese menus and picking up her phone. “Lo Mein?”
“Or a veggie pizza.” Logan interjected, swiping the Chinese menu and replacing it with the pizzeria take out menu.
“In fact, you can be the deciding vote on whether we get Chinese or Pizza.” Veronica offered.
“Actually, I’m going to head home.” Mac turned and headed towards Veronica’s room, where her coat was flung over the foot of the bed, before she could see her friend’s face fall.
“You don’t have to leave Mac, I mean, just because everybody else left doesn’t mean you have to.” Veronica offered following her into the bedroom. “In fact, you could spend the night. We’ll stay up and watch all those old Christmas movies, I’m going to make Logan watch the Grinch and the Mickey Mouse Christmas Carol. You could stay, sleep on the couch.”
“Isn’t Logan sleeping on the couch?”
“Oh, yeah. Well, he can sleep on the floor or the love seat and you take the couch. Or we could make a bed up on my floor and you can stay in there. We can stay up all night, chat. We’ve got a bunch of cookies and stuff.”
“Sounds great, but I think I’m still going to go home.” Mac grabbed her coat. Veronica reached out to catch her arm before she walked away.
“I just, well, I don’t really feel like you should be all alone on Christmas. I mean, your family is gone and well…” Veronica trailed off, her eyes downcast as she searched for more words to try and convince one her best friends to stay.
“It’s okay Veronica, I chose to skip out on the family trip this Christmas. And maybe I’ll skip the Sinclair family dinner and come here instead, so I won’t be alone either way. I’ll be fine I promise I just…” Mac stopped just short of saying why she really didn’t want to stay. “I just want to sleep in my old room tonight. And my parents set up a tree before they left, and the left my presents so I’ll open them early and go to bed and then meet you here in the morning. Okay?”
“Okay, if you’re sure.” Veronica let her arm fall, releasing Mac.
“I’m sure.” She assured Veronica before she turned and left the apartment.
I don’t want to hang out with the lovey couple, not when Piz and Parker seem to have paired up and think nobody has noticed. And Dick is sending me puppy dog looks and Wallace’s girlfriend was coming for dinner tomorrow. This was not a reason that Mac could give to Veronica for not staying, she also couldn’t tell her that if there was anyway she could get out of tomorrow night’s dinner she would. Even Mr. Mars was dating Wallace’s mom again. Everyone was all paired up, just in time for Christmas. Except me.
~*~
“What the hell?” Mac shot up in bed.
Thump.
There it was again, a loud noise just to her right. A loud noise in a very quiet house in which she was the only occupant.
“Dammit.” A voice called in the dark. A girl’s voice.
“Who’s there?” Mac called, her left hand reaching out to find something to hit the intruder with. Her hand wrapped around something heavy and wooden, a carved box her brother had given her for Christmas three years ago. She flung it out in the general direction of the voice as she moved further away on the bed. The object didn’t seemed to come in contact with whoever it was and, instead, hit the wall.
“That wasn’t very nice.” The voice was annoyed, and suddenly very familiar. There was a crack, like someone snapping their fingers together very loudly. With the sound came a dim glow, a golden light that seemed to grow and grow until it engulfed the entire room.
A room in which Lilly Kane stood, wearing a yellow sundress and no shoes.
“Why aren’t you wearing shoes?” Mac asked dumbly.
“I’m dead and standing in your bedroom and the only thing you can ask is why am I not wearing any shoes?” Lilly cocked on hip and put her hand on it, tilting her head a little. So that’s where Veronica got it.
“No, Veronica Mars was doing the head tilt long before me. It’s actually one of the few things I’ve learned from her. Post-mortem.” Lilly answered the unspoken thought.
“Okay. Good to know. What are you doing here?” Mac asked, sitting up and swinging her legs out of the bed to rest on the floor.
“Finally, a reasonable question. I’m here to help you. I’m the Ghost of Christmas Past, well, kind of.” Lilly grinned and took a few steps forward.
“I don’t believe in ghosts.” Mac said, looking the hallucination right in the eye.
“I’m not a hallucination. And it doesn’t matter whether you believe in ghosts or not, because I’m here.” Her voice was annoyed, it was the same voice she used to have when she fought with Logan in the quad in high school.
“Okay. I’m obviously dreaming, I don’t remember dreaming about you before but, okay.” Mac nodded, swinging her legs back into bed and laying back down. “I’ll just wake up now and this will go away.”
“You’re not dreaming. Everybody always thinks their dreaming when this happens to them, but they never are. I’m here, you’re awake and we’re wasting precious viewing time.” Lilly reached for Mac and tugged.
Mac suddenly found herself in the middle of what could only be the old Kane house. Lilly continued on through the house, still barefoot, towards what looked to be the back of the house.
“If this is my journey and all, why are we in your house?” Mac asked.
“Detour, but then again it kind of proves that it’s not a dream. After all, you were never in my house were you?” Lilly answered, barely throwing a glance back over her shoulder.
“No, I wasn’t.” Mac took a step, and then another, following Lilly out the back door to the pool area.
“There’s still something here you should see.” Lilly stood next to an embarrassed looking boy, standing in shorts too big for him next to a tree, looking like he wanted to disappear.
“Is that…” Mac asked, her voice trailing off.
“Cassidy? Yes. This was my pool party before we went back to school that year. It was only a couple months before everything fell apart. He was never really comfortable with these people, always worried they’d find out his secret.”
Mac turned her head away from the two of them standing there, surveyed the scene for the people she knew would be at this party.
Dick was in the pool with Duncan and the other boys of the Neptune elite. Lilly, alive Lilly, was rubbing tanning lotion in to her shoulders while talking to Veronica, who was standing next to her, laughing. Logan snuck behind her to slide an ice cube down her back, causing her to scream and shove him into the pool.
“They always did kind of gravitate towards each other, didn’t they?” Lilly said from beside her, Mac didn’t even realize that she’d moved. “I never realized it before.”
“The four of you were always so tight, a little unit. And then, after you died and it all fell away, we mere spectators couldn’t believe it.” Mac whispered to the girl that stood next to her that wasn’t any different from the girl that sat on a lounge chair twenty feet away.
“We were rather cliquish weren’t we? Didn’t let in the outsiders and kept closely guarded secrets. We were never as perfect as most people at that school seemed to think we were.” Lilly reached down to touch Mac’s hand, causing the scene to swirl and the colors to flow together until it all dissolved, spinning around them. Then, just as suddenly the colors separated and became shapes, the shapes became more and more distinct until it revealed another scene. They were standing in the middle of the main hall of Neptune High, staring out at the lockers where Veronica and Logan and Lilly and Duncan were all standing and laughing.
“You still seemed perfect. And since then you’ve all become a sort of legend.” Mac whispered, as the scene started to strike a memory.
“Well it was bound to happen. We all turned out rather tragic, didn’t we. Now here it comes.” Lilly turned them slightly, so they could watch the hall more clearly.
Mac watched as her younger self bumped into Dick and Cassidy. Dick made a comment before continuing on to talk to Logan, but Cassidy stopped and turned, watched her as she hurried off down the hall without looking back. She’d never known that, that he’d shown interest in her before.
“These aren’t really Christmas-time memories are they? I mean these aren’t really memories that have a lot to do with me, are they?” Mac rolled her eyes and tried to focus on Veronica and Logan, her friends now, and not the boy that was hurrying off down the hall after his brother.
“You’re not paying attention.” Lilly remarked before reaching down to grab her hand again, changing the scene again. “But if you want one a little closer to Christmas.”
It was a party. One she’d never been to and yet knew all about. There had been rumors about Veronica at this party, making out with everyone and sealing her reputation as a slut. Mac had also heard different versions of what had happened, the final version was from Veronica herself, telling her how Cassidy - Beaver - had gotten her alone in a room. This room.
There Veronica was laying on the bed, Cassidy running his hand up her leg and under her skirt.
“I wasn’t even at this party.” Mac turned and walked out of the room.
“But it affected you, what happened here, in the end, it affected you.” Lilly followed her, but didn’t change the scene. They stood now, in the center of all the party goers downing shots and yelling and dancing and having fun. She spotted Dick and Madison a few feet away from them, yelling at each other. Lilly reached out and shoved Madison into Dick.
“Hey, isn’t that against one of the rules? That there’s no interaction, that they’re not supposed to know we’re here?” Mac asked, biting her lip to keep from laughing at the appalled look on Madison’s face as she righted herself.
“They’re more guidelines than rules.” Lilly answered, reaching down to grab Mac’s hand and change the scene again. “And I’ve always hated Madison, even when we were friends.”
“Where are we now?” Mac asked, looking around the room.
“We’re at your graduation night, on the roof of the Neptune Grand.” Lilly let go of Mac’s hand and moved away a little so she could see Cassidy, yelling and pointing a gun at Veronica.
“I don’t want to see this.” Mac took as step back.
“We won’t stay for the whole thing, just the part where you see that he was broken long before you, that you couldn’t have stopped it.” Lilly explained, stepping closer to Mac.
“I know that. I know I wouldn’t have been able to stop him from killing all those people, doing what he did to Veronica. I know. He did it all before we were ever together anyway.” Mac bit her lip and took another step back.
“I meant the part where he killed himself.” Lilly explained, reaching out for her hand again. This time Mac gripped her hend and squeezed her eyes shut as the scene dissolved and reformed again.
Now they were standing at the edge of the cemetery. Watching as a casket was lowered into the ground. Watching as a family stood and lowered their father into the ground. It was Woody Goodman’s funeral.
Mac looked down at her own bare feet and then looked up again. They were a little closer now and at a different funeral. She watched as another casket was lowered into a different grave. She watched as a tall blond boy in a gray suit with eyes hidden by sunglasses turned and walked away from his brother’s grave. Then she watched as a girl walked closer to it, crying.
“You’re crying.” Lilly pointed out.
“I was sad.” Mac whispered, watching herself as she stopped at the edge of the grave and stared down at the box that held the first boy she had ever loved. The boy that had killed so many people.
“You were mourning him, what you lost. Of course you were sad, but I meant that you’re crying now.”
“I’m still sad.” Mac reached up and wiped the tears away from her face.
“I know.” Lilly reached out and touched her shoulder this time. The scene spun and changed again, and still Lilly clutched her shoulder, trying to convey a little comfort and understanding in it.
“Now, this boy was pretty cute. All good and pure and sweet and all about saving the planet. You seemed to really open yourself up to him.” Lilly stood next to Mac as she blushed, watching herself kiss Bronson and they fell back onto the bed.
“Can we not watch this? I know what happens.” Mac tugged at Lilly, but she merely turned to stare at her.
“You really seemed to open yourself up to him. Let him in.” Mac glared at Lilly now. “Not just that way, I didn’t mean that way. I meant that you really seemed to connect with him. But it only seemed that way. He never really had a chance. You didn’t let him get close enough to really hurt you.”
Lilly pulled her away and out her own door into Logan’s old living room at the Grand, packed full of people for Parker’s birthday party. They walked swiftly through the party, past Logan talking to Veronica and Parker laughing. Past the couch where she was sitting with Max, the night they met, and through the next door where she was in a room, breaking up with Bronson.
Lilly stopped suddenly, only for a moment to take in the scene, to watch to the break up. To watch the other Mac walk away from the scene.
“He doesn’t realize it, but you were always going to break up with him. He doesn’t know that you were a little broken a long time before he ever met you. He doesn’t realize exactly how cynical you were, are. He doesn’t realize that you were never going to fall in love with him because you don’t believe in it anymore.”
“I do, I believe in love.” Mac protested as Lilly grabbed her hand and pulled her through another door and into Max’s dorm room, where they were lounging around in bed after that time they spent the entire weekend there.
“No you don’t, not for you. You believe other people love, you’ve hung around with Logan and Veronica enough to not be able to doubt it, but you don’t believe you’ll ever fall in love because it’s not so great when it happens to you.”
“I was in love with Max.” Mac said defiantly.
“No you weren’t.” Lilly pulled her through a big black door. On the other side she watched as she sat in the cafeteria with Max. He’d come to visit her at school. It was sophomore year at Hearst, near Christmas-time. She and Max had been together for quite a while at this point.
Max reached across the table to grab her hand. He was asking if she’d come with him during Christmas break to meet his parents. She remembered the way her heart felt like it was going to beat out of her chest. How she had recognized this moment as the moment where she either had to end it or risk something else.
“See, you know that you weren’t in love with him, not yet at least. If you’d stayed, if you’d gone with him you might have been, but you wouldn’t let yourself.”
“I was scared. What happened with Cassidy…” Mac had to stop to catch her breath before she began to cry again. “It was hard and bad and I got scared.”
“I’m not judging Mac, I get why you did it. But don’t try and fool yourself that you were in love with him. You were with him for a little over six months and you still kept him at arm’s length.”
“It was hard. I wanted to try and love him, but after… after…”
“I know.” Lilly whispered as the scene melted away into nothing. The were somewhere she’d never been before, but knew anyway. They were standing by a pool. The pool that, earlier, was filled and surrounded by her old classmates but was now empty but for the two of them. The pool where the girl that stood in front of her was murdered. “I’m leaving you now.”
“I wish I would have known you Lilly Kane, better I mean.” Mac watched as Lilly bent down to sit by the pool, dangling her legs over the edge and into the water. Mac did the same, dipping her toes into the cool water.
“We could’ve been friends, I suppose. I know that I would’ve adored the way things turned out. Badass Veronica, solving crimes and murders. In love with Logan. But things are the way they are, after tonight you’ll realize that the past just has to stay there, it belongs the way it is.”
Mac shut her eyes and nodded, but when she opened them Lilly was gone and the pool had faded away. She stood in her bedroom, staring into the darkness. Her feet wet.
Part 2