Fic: Breaking Points
Title: Breaking Points
Author: addictedtojoy
Pairing/Character: Veronica, Logan, Duncan (non-romantic)
Word Count: 797
Rating: PG
Summary: Breaking points. She has reached so many, and found her way back so many times.
Notes: This came out of nowhere at 2am, so I thought I'd post it. (More "Reunion" to come - this is not connected to it.) Criticism welcome, as always.
She’s always assumed that everyone had a breaking point, singular, that you could only destroy someone once, and then it was finished. But she’s had her heart broken so many times now-Duncan, Lilly, her mom-that she’s become so fragmented that she’s not sure she even remembers where all the pieces are, let alone if she'd be able to fit them back together again. So she’s had to adjust that phrase in her mind and make it plural: breaking points. And sometimes she wonders if just knowing that, its plurality, its potential to destroy her over and over again, is like reaching yet another one.
She knows that the world must be full of them-kindred, broken spirits touching the earth but not really existing in it. But here, wandering the halls at school or sitting in her dad’s office, she feels like the only one. The only one who is still so lost.
But then she catches a glimpse of Duncan, and remembers how different he used to be, too. How there used to be life in his eyes. How he used to make her laugh. His nearly-forgotten sweetness has faded into a green-tinged blur of memory and ill-defined yearning. He is not the same man anymore. Sometimes she wonders if his vague dreamstate is worse than hers. At least she is awake, and her eyes are open enough for the potential for healing to exist. A faint hope, most days, but one she clings to desperately. It has to get better than this. It just has to.
And when she looks at Logan, she sees another ghost. Like her, he is both the haunted and the haunter. He wanders the halls of Neptune High just as alone and lost as she is. They circle around each other like planets around the sun-but Lilly’s light has long since burned out, and they stay in futile orbit, warily watching each other. Sometimes she longs to close the distance between them, to readjust the solar system to give them both a semblance of stability. If only she could figure out how.
When his mother dies, she sees him recklessly careening even further out of their fragile orbit, and wishes she knew how to draw him back. But Lilly’s magnetism was always stronger than her own. She has doubts about her own gravitational pull, but still cannot help trying to reach out and haul him back. She cannot offer much but the comfort of her own small arms, but in that hotel lobby, they seem, for once, to suffice. She can see the cracks in his carefully constructed veneer widening, and vows to do everything she can to glue him back together. To prevent his reaching one more breaking point, to prevent life from adding to the many he has already passed.
In a way, they are the same-both vainly trying to fit back together the pieces of their lives, to put the sand back into the broken hourglass. But, even reassembled to the best of her ability, the end result doesn’t at all resemble the original. All she has left are the photographs showing her what she used to be. She is not so sure that if she were to get an x-ray, all her bones would be in the right places. She suspects it is the same for him. Broken again, he is not the same Logan who she knew before.
And even though that scares her, sometimes it is also the only thing that gives her hope. Because maybe the new Veronica and the new Logan won’t be so breakable. Maybe they will escape this ceaseless cycle of destruction and restoration. How many times can you rebuild yourself? All she can do is pray that they both have at least one more in them. That eventually, clawing her way back again and again will pay off, and that she will have the strength to pull him up after her.
He meets her eyes the next time they pass, and she sees he is getting close. Nearing the next breaking point. So she reaches out a hand, and she can feel the energy running between them, through her fingertips on his arm. Stay, her eyes say. Hold on. Maybe this time we can stop it from happening at all.
Breaking points. She has reached so many, and found her way back so many times. Maybe now it is time to stop trying to do it alone. Maybe now she will have the courage to hold on tightly to the fragile threads holding the three of them together. Duncan, Logan, Veronica. Circling around a dead sun for too long. Maybe together, they can pull it together enough to ignite a new light to orbit. She can only hope.
End
Author: addictedtojoy
Pairing/Character: Veronica, Logan, Duncan (non-romantic)
Word Count: 797
Rating: PG
Summary: Breaking points. She has reached so many, and found her way back so many times.
Notes: This came out of nowhere at 2am, so I thought I'd post it. (More "Reunion" to come - this is not connected to it.) Criticism welcome, as always.
She’s always assumed that everyone had a breaking point, singular, that you could only destroy someone once, and then it was finished. But she’s had her heart broken so many times now-Duncan, Lilly, her mom-that she’s become so fragmented that she’s not sure she even remembers where all the pieces are, let alone if she'd be able to fit them back together again. So she’s had to adjust that phrase in her mind and make it plural: breaking points. And sometimes she wonders if just knowing that, its plurality, its potential to destroy her over and over again, is like reaching yet another one.
She knows that the world must be full of them-kindred, broken spirits touching the earth but not really existing in it. But here, wandering the halls at school or sitting in her dad’s office, she feels like the only one. The only one who is still so lost.
But then she catches a glimpse of Duncan, and remembers how different he used to be, too. How there used to be life in his eyes. How he used to make her laugh. His nearly-forgotten sweetness has faded into a green-tinged blur of memory and ill-defined yearning. He is not the same man anymore. Sometimes she wonders if his vague dreamstate is worse than hers. At least she is awake, and her eyes are open enough for the potential for healing to exist. A faint hope, most days, but one she clings to desperately. It has to get better than this. It just has to.
And when she looks at Logan, she sees another ghost. Like her, he is both the haunted and the haunter. He wanders the halls of Neptune High just as alone and lost as she is. They circle around each other like planets around the sun-but Lilly’s light has long since burned out, and they stay in futile orbit, warily watching each other. Sometimes she longs to close the distance between them, to readjust the solar system to give them both a semblance of stability. If only she could figure out how.
When his mother dies, she sees him recklessly careening even further out of their fragile orbit, and wishes she knew how to draw him back. But Lilly’s magnetism was always stronger than her own. She has doubts about her own gravitational pull, but still cannot help trying to reach out and haul him back. She cannot offer much but the comfort of her own small arms, but in that hotel lobby, they seem, for once, to suffice. She can see the cracks in his carefully constructed veneer widening, and vows to do everything she can to glue him back together. To prevent his reaching one more breaking point, to prevent life from adding to the many he has already passed.
In a way, they are the same-both vainly trying to fit back together the pieces of their lives, to put the sand back into the broken hourglass. But, even reassembled to the best of her ability, the end result doesn’t at all resemble the original. All she has left are the photographs showing her what she used to be. She is not so sure that if she were to get an x-ray, all her bones would be in the right places. She suspects it is the same for him. Broken again, he is not the same Logan who she knew before.
And even though that scares her, sometimes it is also the only thing that gives her hope. Because maybe the new Veronica and the new Logan won’t be so breakable. Maybe they will escape this ceaseless cycle of destruction and restoration. How many times can you rebuild yourself? All she can do is pray that they both have at least one more in them. That eventually, clawing her way back again and again will pay off, and that she will have the strength to pull him up after her.
He meets her eyes the next time they pass, and she sees he is getting close. Nearing the next breaking point. So she reaches out a hand, and she can feel the energy running between them, through her fingertips on his arm. Stay, her eyes say. Hold on. Maybe this time we can stop it from happening at all.
Breaking points. She has reached so many, and found her way back so many times. Maybe now it is time to stop trying to do it alone. Maybe now she will have the courage to hold on tightly to the fragile threads holding the three of them together. Duncan, Logan, Veronica. Circling around a dead sun for too long. Maybe together, they can pull it together enough to ignite a new light to orbit. She can only hope.
End