I'll Survive (Weevil, Lilly, Veronica, Weevil/Lilly) R
Title: I’ll Survive
Author: odintsova_27
Pairing/Character: Veronica, Weevil, Lilly; Logan, Duncan, Aaron mention; Weevil/Lilly
Word Count: 1,682
Rating: R for language
Summary: Weevil and Veronica come to terms with the kind of person that Lilly was.
Spoilers: Takes place summer after Season 2, no spoilers for who killed Lilly or caused bus crash.
Author’s Note: This idea just kind of came to me, I am not a Weevil/Lilly fan at all, but I could kind of see this happening between the characters. Warning for major angst. This was written for the Queen Veronica challenge. My object was a pet turtle and my lyric was “flash and thunderfire” from Seven Seas of Rhye. The title for this fic also comes from that same song.
*^*^September 2003*^*^
“A turtle? A turtle? Lilly, please tell me this is some kind of sick, twisted joke.”
“You don’t like it?” Lilly put on the pouting, everyone-pity-me look that he had come to know and love. It took all his will power not to drop to the ground and kiss every part of her he could.
“I love it baby, but come on. Do you really think the guys are going to take me seriously with this thing?”
“Oh who gives a fuck what they think?” Lilly said pleasantly. “So what are you going to name her?”
“Her? Her?” he sighed. “You got me a girl turtle?”
“Of course. I was thinking Queen Lilly,” Lilly announced proudly.
“Of course you were,” he kissed the top of her head. “And Queen Lilly she shall be!”
Lilly laughed, falling back onto his bed and for a moment she looked beautiful and innocent, not like the same evil bitch that broke his heart for sport and from which he could never quite detangle himself. Then her phone rang and that childish glint was gone.
“Hello?...Oh, hi you!...No, not busy…Of course…Yeah…We need to talk, of course now would be good…’Kay…Love you too…Ciao!” She hung up, then kissed him hard on the mouth.
“Got to go, lover.”
“Lilly-”
“Spend some quality time with Queen Lilly.” She kissed him again and walked out.
He kicked the wall, “Figures. He gets Lilly at his beck and call and I get a fucking turtle.”
He looked at the turtle in question, who looked up at him with sad eyes, if turtles can even have sad eyes, “Well,” he sighed, “it’s certainly not your fault. Let’s see if I can go get you some food.”
Lydia, his four-year-old niece burst into his room, “Uncle Eli! Uncle Eli! Uncle Eli!” She stopped to catch her breath and spotted the turtle, still half-hidden in the cardboard box, “What’s that?”
He smiled, “It’s my new pet, she’s a turtle.”
“A turtle,” Lydia echoed, almost reverently. “What’s her name?”
He paused, thinking for a long moment than replied, “Queenie. Her name is Queenie.”
Take that, Ms. Kane.
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*^*^August 2006*^*^
Veronica sat on the beach, staring out at the ocean as night fell. It was still a hard idea to conceptualize, that she, Veronica Mars, had not only survived high school, but was staying in Neptune for college. She alternated between thinking “I must be fucking crazy” and “I’m glad I’m not leaving my dad and Wallace and Mac and…and Logan.”
“What about Logan?” drawled a voice behind her.
She turned quickly, realizing she must have said the last part out loud, “Nothing, what’s up?”
“Never understood what you and Lilly saw in that preppy, white boy.”
Veronica smiled, “Though admittedly you were biased in Lilly’s case.”
Weevil smiled, “True.” He was holding a shoe box, which he placed on the sand and came to sit next to her.
“So what do you need, Navarro? I already got your ass out of jail?”
“For which I shall be ever grateful. No favor actually, I have something for you.”
“Shoes?” Veronica asked, nodding at the box sitting behind him on the sand.
“No, that’s Queenie.”
“What’s Queenie?”
“A pet, a turtle.”
“Bad-ass Weevil has a pet turtle?”
“Lilly gave her to me, she wanted me to name her Queen Lilly. I settled on Queenie.”
Veronica smiled, “A man’s got to take a stand. So are you giving me the turtle?”
“No, Queenie died last night. I was coming out to bury her.”
“Oh.”
He reached into his pocket and took out a folded piece of paper out of his pocket, it was regular notebook paper, with some of the ink bleeding through, a lilac color, and the lines on which the paper was folded were worn. It was obvious this was a piece of paper which had been read and re-read many times.
“What is it?” Veronica asked.
“Remember Lilly’s spy pen?”
“Yeah,” Veronica replied.
“I stole it from the Kane’s house, this was the letter that was in it. She wrote it to me on the day she died.”
“Why are you just telling me this now?” Veronica asked, her voice becoming accusatory.
“Whoa girl,” he said. “I needed time to think it over. To think her over.”
“So why now?”
He shrugged, and glanced at the box that held the dead turtle, “I don’t need it anymore. Maybe it’s sincere, maybe not, but it’s over, I’m over her. But I know you were her best friend. I thought maybe you’d want to see it.” He handed it to her.
He pushed some rocks into a circle to make a rudimentary fire pit and put the body of the turtle into the center. He took a rag from the car, soaked in gasoline and placed it over the body. Then he lit a match and stood back, he watched the small fire jump and spit, devouring the small form of the turtle.
Once the turtle had been burned completely he scooped the ashes and sand into the box, whistling a tune that sounded harsh and familiar, but she couldn’t place.
As he tossed the ashes into the ocean he sang a couple of bars of the same song under his breath, “By flash and thunder fire I'll survive, I'll survive, I'll survive.”
Veronica recognized the song now, it was Lilly’s favorite Queen song, “Seven Seas of Rhye,” she said. “That was Lilly’s favorite song.”
“I hated that fucking song,” he said, and, without another word, turned and walked back to the car. Veronica took out the letter, smoothed out the wrinkles and began to read
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Eli
I’m sorry. I can elaborate all you want, but it all kind of boils down to this. I’m sorry. I’ve strung you, hell, strung all guys along for as long as I can remember. But I really fucked it up this time, you see, because I fell in love with you.
All the guys I’ve been with from Logan to Dick to Casey and beyond just bored me, they were easy to figure out and easy to manipulate, but Eli you’re different.
You always knew me, the real me, not the wild-child that my parents knew, or the perfect older sister that Duncan knew, or the crazy-cool best friend that Veronica knew or the teenaged sexpot that Logan knew. Just me. Lilly Kane.
Yesterday you laid down an ultimatum, you said that unless we were monogamous, unless I gave up Logan and all those other guys, we were through. For the past twenty-four hours that is all that I can think about.
Early this afternoon I was at the car wash when I noticed Logan’s car parked across the street. I went over to see what he was doing here, since he and Dick and Beaver were supposed to be in Mexico. I got closer, but he didn’t notice me, he was scribbling something furiously on a piece of paper, and, I noticed, to my shock as I got closer, he was crying. Still not seeing me he got out of the car, walked over to my car and put what he had been writing in the front seat of my car. Then he got back in his car and drove away.
I went over to my car and picked up the letter. I didn’t read it and I don’t plan to, but I realized what it meant. It was over with Logan, over. I was an evil bitch, a shrew that had broken his heart and your heart and god-knows-who-else’s heart. As I stood there, holding Logan’s letter I was terrified that you would never forgive me.
I love you Eli, only you and I hope that you can forgive me. Please meet me tonight at the life guard stand near that tattoo shop on the pier, I love you Eli and I couldn’t stand to not have you in my life.
Love Forever and Always
Lilly
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*^*^August 2006*^*
It was a week after he had given her that letter that she called him, asked him to meet her on a beach. She looked bad, her eyes had dark bags under them as if she hadn’t slept in days.
“’Sup V?” he asked.
“I read the letter.”
“Un-huh.”
She handed it to him, he stepped back quickly as if it might burn him, “I don’t want it.”
She dropped it in the sand at her feet, “Neither do I.”
The both stared at the letter for a long moment, then she let out a deep sigh.
“I want it to be true, but I know…knew Lilly too well, this doesn’t sound like her, like the kind of thing that she’d do.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“Do you think she meant it?” Veronica looked up at him.
“Me? Hell, V I don’t know. Does it matter?”
“I don’t know. It matters to me, because if she meant it, that means deep down she wasn’t the kind of girl who would sleep with Aaron Echolls. That she had some…I don’t know…some…” she trailed off, unable to find the right word.
“Decency?” he asked.
“I guess.”
They both stared at the letter again, “I do what you just did a lot.”
“What?” she asked.
“Talk about Lilly in the present tense, like she is still there.”
“That’s ‘cause she still is,” Veronica replied. “And I don’t mean in a whoo-whoo way.”
“She’s still there to me. It’s like even after death I can’t get her out of my life, out of my head.”
Veronica nodded, “Me either.”
Their eyes drifted back to the letter.
“I have to go,” she said. “I’m meeting Logan.” She got up and walked away, leaving the letter still resting in the sand.
He looked at the piece of paper for a long moment, then he reached into his pocket and pulled out his lighter and his wallet. Out of his wallet he look a picture of Lilly in a low-cut shirt and short skirt, smiling at the camera. He turned the picture over, on the back was written, “Can’t wait to have you in my bed again lover, Lilly.”
He dropped the picture on top of the letter. He leaned down and, with his lighter, lit the picture and the letter. The fire consumed them quickly, leaving only charred remains. He picked them up and scattered them in the ocean.
“I’ll survive,” he whispered to himself, then turned his back on the empty beach and walked away.