Somebody Stop Me.
Title: Shelter
Author: Devil Piglet
Pairing/Character: Logan/Veronica
Rating: R
Summary: It's time for Veronica to fashion a new truth out of a thousand old ones. Post-Season 1.
Disclaimer: All characters of Veronica Mars are used without permission.
Spoilers/Warnings: 1.22, "Leave It to Beaver"
1. ...Is A Promise
Before:
There is a purity to Logan's hatred; born anew every day from Lilly's ghost-face and Duncan's muted heartbreak and Logan's own furious helplessness. It is independent of time and place. Veronica knows that even if the rest of the school didn't despise her, Logan still would, and not every girl has an enemy as single-minded as he. That's gotta count for something, right?
At least that’s what she tells herself, when she gets the estimate from the body shop for new headlights. What she tells Keith, however, is that the LeBaron must have gotten vandalized, and makes a weak joke about how Neptune just isn’t safe anymore. As if they didn’t know that already. She hates lying to her father and adds that to the rapidly growing “Reasons To Maim Logan Echolls” list.
Whatever respect she has in theory for Logan's unadulterated loathing, she'd just as soon do without it in practice. The maniacal glint in his eyes (stark contrast to the dull matte of Duncan's half-lidded gaze) is starting to scare her, though she'd never let him see.
He doesn’t let the swelling around his face hid the sneer when he sees her car, the next few days at school.
She’s not on board with his reasoning - something got twisted, in his already-corkscrewed mind, about who’s to blame and who it should have been in the first place. But she understands the need to find fault, and she’s an easy target. She always was. Despite his utter involvement with Lilly, Logan had still found time to needle Veronica, tease her, poke holes in her blushing good-girl existence.
Veronica can't remember the last time she blushed. And Logan's absent, good-natured prodding has turned into something acrid and bitter.
He grins at her from Duncan's lap but it's sheer resentment that's propping him up. He wants to shame her out of coming to school each morning, wants to obliterate her from his sight and she wonders if maybe someday he'll take a crowbar to her to make that a reality.
That's an awful thing to think, but nothing could be more awful than Lilly lying dead in her own backyard, air smelling of chlorine and panic and tears. And that's already happened so Veronica guesses anything can.
Logan’s hatred shows her something else, too: that he hasn’t gotten over it.
Duncan’s retreated into numbness, and his parents are icy and remote, and Lilly’s other friends just want to forget about it, already! But Logan got hard, harder than he was before, and Veronica got hard too. Did he push her into it? Was every sadistic taunt, every mocking wink choreographed so that she joined him on this path?
If that had been his goal, he’d failed. Veronica pursues Lilly’s murder because she had to, because she’d loved Lilly, and Logan Echolls merely reminds her that friends are fickle and there are depths of fucked-up that can be hidden for years.
No, Logan’s hatred doesn’t spur her on, but it’s become indispensable just the same. It defines who she is, gives her a clarity of purpose when she wakes up each morning. It has a different flavor and texture to the garden-variety ostracism she experiences at the hands of the rest of her classmates.
She’s afraid she’s starting to like the taste.
During:
“Would I be a total stalker nutjob to ask you to run away with me?”
Her breath catches, and he can tell that she knows he’s not joking. Not completely, anyway. He can tell, too, that she’s thought about it as well. They’re building something bigger than Neptune, bigger than boats and cars and houses of horror. He’s loosening, inside, beginning to believe that he doesn't carry death in the touch of his hands.
I’ll take care of you. Wherever we go, no matter how tough you think you are, no matter how cruel I know I am. I’ll take care of you. This is his mantra, new and unfamiliar to him, because he’s such a failure he can’t even protect himself. But he’ll protect her.
And maybe someday he’ll even tell her that.
“Got any place in mind?”
Come to think of it - and boy, has he, his mind supplies - he’s plenty satisfied right here in his bed. Over the covers, if you can believe it. His father’s outside, meditating in the newly-constructed Zen garden and Trina’s in Corona Del Mar shooting a commercial for nutritional supplements.
“Someplace snowy,” he says, “where I can see you wear earmuffs.”
She laughs, and that would be enough reward, but then she kisses him and it’s what he always wanted (secretly, silently) and never had. Here in his room, the rest of the house silent and tomblike, they can indulge the hidden parts of themselves. He can goof off, quote Star Wars, swear he’ll buy her a unicorn someday. She can be gentle, caress him in a way that isn’t entirely sexual, play with her hair and makeup like she’s not supposed to anymore.
They boil each other down to the basics, and he loves it. He loves her.
After:
There was a time, however brief, when Veronica thought Logan Echolls capable of murder.
Now, he intends to prove her right.
***
Sunset, beachside. It’s gorgeous. Veronica can see, at least on an aesthetic level, why people pay big bucks to live in this town. And she herself no longer smudges the scenery with choppy hair and fraying hoodies and death-ray glares. Veronica Mars, Teen Avenger And Accusing Blot On The Picture-Perfect Landscape has retired. Tonight she’s wearing pastel shorts and a tank top, almost back to being a regular girl again. Her dad’s pleased. Wallace is cautious (regular-Veronica is new to him). Duncan looks at her approvingly. Logan?
She thinks he’d be a little disappointed, to be honest. But it’s hard to know for sure. She hasn’t seen him for over two months.
“I was hoping it would be you,” she smiled. The tall young man stumbled forward - and then recoiled in horror. “You,” he mumbled, aghast.
“Logan?”
He scrambles back, but not before she sees the blooming bruises, the already-drying blood that cakes his clothes. “Damn, didn’t want - Weevil!” She didn’t understand why he was calling out Weevil’s name, of all people, but then the devil appeared, looking slightly worse for wear. He caught Logan before he fell, and nodded to Veronica.
“We were on the bridge, when we heard. ‘Bout Aaron Echolls being the one.”
“On the bridge? Doing what, half-gainers? What the hell happened to him?”
“I happened -” Weevil began, but Logan cut him off.
“Nothing. Get me out of here, I can’t be near her, I can’t -”
“Logan, come inside. We’ll talk.” She shouldn’t be this upset; not when the Mystery Is Solved and she hadn’t committed incest after all and her dad was going to be fine. Still dread crawled up from her belly, into her throat, made her words tremble and shake as they left her mouth.
Logan shoved off from Weevil, who made to retrieve him but then Logan’s voice turned pleading. “Please. Please, get me away from her.” Logan could barely stand but he clung to the corridor railing like a lifeline; like he’d sooner take a dive over its edge than be manhandled into Veronica’s apartment which she guessed was Weevil’s intention in bringing him here.
He’d rather die than come any closer. The knowledge hit her hard, in the gut. Only when Weevil stepped forward, concerned, did she realize she was crying.
“Take him,” she managed. “Back to your place, book him a room at the Neptune Grand, whatever. Whatever he wants, just keep him safe for the night.”
Weevil shook his head, but they both knew there was no way he’d leave Logan here, looking like he wanted to shred Veronica. She’d owe Weevil big for this, but he never really evened up after she got him sprung from jail so maybe it was a wash and why was she thinking this and why, why hadn’t Logan looked at her? Even once?
She never gets answers to those questions. The next afternoon Weevil calls - Logan’s gone; took his car, left the front gates to the Echolls’ mansion wide open, and placed a bottle of JD on Weevil’s doorstep in apparent gratitude. Weevil appreciated the gesture, he told Veronica. His grandmother, not so much.
Now she scuffs her toes in the sand, restless, waiting for what she doesn’t know, exactly. But classes are about to start up again, and Veronica’s sort of on her way to being healed, ready to try for a life of her own instead of cloaking herself in Lilly’s - so where’s Logan?
Eventually even Backup gets tired, slumps at her feet. “I’m pathetic, huh?” Her dog merely looks up at her balefully. This isn’t the movies, she reminds herself. Her long-lost almost-lover isn’t going to come sprinting across the sand, calling her name, sweeping her up in his arms, getting horizontal as the tide rolls in. Anyway, running across sand isn’t as easy or graceful as it ought to be.
Come to think of it, it’s actually a pretty damn perfect metaphor for her love life.
So she trudges back to the impressively reconstructed LeBaron (courtesy of Weevil’s Uncle Angel), carrying on a one-sided discussion of the night’s plans with Backup. Cozy family scene with the Fennels, followed by another strained phone conversation with Duncan? Yep, that seems about right.
What doesn’t seem right is her car. Veronica stops as she reaches it, cocks her head. Blinks.
Driven with careful precision into the center of her windshield is a shot glass. She stares blankly, takes in the shattered cracks that spread outward, distantly calculates the odds of placing the glass so perfectly, so dead-on. After putting a flagpole through a compact, though, this was probably no stretch for him.
In a daze she moves forward - could he be watching her? - and removes the shot glass. Turning it over in her hand, she expects I Got Baked in Ensenada! But Logan is creative; Logan will not repeat himself; Logan knows the difference between his two blonde ex-girlfriends.
This message is simpler, a bit more to the point:
Happily Never After.
Part Two
Author: Devil Piglet
Pairing/Character: Logan/Veronica
Rating: R
Summary: It's time for Veronica to fashion a new truth out of a thousand old ones. Post-Season 1.
Disclaimer: All characters of Veronica Mars are used without permission.
Spoilers/Warnings: 1.22, "Leave It to Beaver"
1. ...Is A Promise
Before:
There is a purity to Logan's hatred; born anew every day from Lilly's ghost-face and Duncan's muted heartbreak and Logan's own furious helplessness. It is independent of time and place. Veronica knows that even if the rest of the school didn't despise her, Logan still would, and not every girl has an enemy as single-minded as he. That's gotta count for something, right?
At least that’s what she tells herself, when she gets the estimate from the body shop for new headlights. What she tells Keith, however, is that the LeBaron must have gotten vandalized, and makes a weak joke about how Neptune just isn’t safe anymore. As if they didn’t know that already. She hates lying to her father and adds that to the rapidly growing “Reasons To Maim Logan Echolls” list.
Whatever respect she has in theory for Logan's unadulterated loathing, she'd just as soon do without it in practice. The maniacal glint in his eyes (stark contrast to the dull matte of Duncan's half-lidded gaze) is starting to scare her, though she'd never let him see.
He doesn’t let the swelling around his face hid the sneer when he sees her car, the next few days at school.
She’s not on board with his reasoning - something got twisted, in his already-corkscrewed mind, about who’s to blame and who it should have been in the first place. But she understands the need to find fault, and she’s an easy target. She always was. Despite his utter involvement with Lilly, Logan had still found time to needle Veronica, tease her, poke holes in her blushing good-girl existence.
Veronica can't remember the last time she blushed. And Logan's absent, good-natured prodding has turned into something acrid and bitter.
He grins at her from Duncan's lap but it's sheer resentment that's propping him up. He wants to shame her out of coming to school each morning, wants to obliterate her from his sight and she wonders if maybe someday he'll take a crowbar to her to make that a reality.
That's an awful thing to think, but nothing could be more awful than Lilly lying dead in her own backyard, air smelling of chlorine and panic and tears. And that's already happened so Veronica guesses anything can.
Logan’s hatred shows her something else, too: that he hasn’t gotten over it.
Duncan’s retreated into numbness, and his parents are icy and remote, and Lilly’s other friends just want to forget about it, already! But Logan got hard, harder than he was before, and Veronica got hard too. Did he push her into it? Was every sadistic taunt, every mocking wink choreographed so that she joined him on this path?
If that had been his goal, he’d failed. Veronica pursues Lilly’s murder because she had to, because she’d loved Lilly, and Logan Echolls merely reminds her that friends are fickle and there are depths of fucked-up that can be hidden for years.
No, Logan’s hatred doesn’t spur her on, but it’s become indispensable just the same. It defines who she is, gives her a clarity of purpose when she wakes up each morning. It has a different flavor and texture to the garden-variety ostracism she experiences at the hands of the rest of her classmates.
She’s afraid she’s starting to like the taste.
During:
“Would I be a total stalker nutjob to ask you to run away with me?”
Her breath catches, and he can tell that she knows he’s not joking. Not completely, anyway. He can tell, too, that she’s thought about it as well. They’re building something bigger than Neptune, bigger than boats and cars and houses of horror. He’s loosening, inside, beginning to believe that he doesn't carry death in the touch of his hands.
I’ll take care of you. Wherever we go, no matter how tough you think you are, no matter how cruel I know I am. I’ll take care of you. This is his mantra, new and unfamiliar to him, because he’s such a failure he can’t even protect himself. But he’ll protect her.
And maybe someday he’ll even tell her that.
“Got any place in mind?”
Come to think of it - and boy, has he, his mind supplies - he’s plenty satisfied right here in his bed. Over the covers, if you can believe it. His father’s outside, meditating in the newly-constructed Zen garden and Trina’s in Corona Del Mar shooting a commercial for nutritional supplements.
“Someplace snowy,” he says, “where I can see you wear earmuffs.”
She laughs, and that would be enough reward, but then she kisses him and it’s what he always wanted (secretly, silently) and never had. Here in his room, the rest of the house silent and tomblike, they can indulge the hidden parts of themselves. He can goof off, quote Star Wars, swear he’ll buy her a unicorn someday. She can be gentle, caress him in a way that isn’t entirely sexual, play with her hair and makeup like she’s not supposed to anymore.
They boil each other down to the basics, and he loves it. He loves her.
After:
There was a time, however brief, when Veronica thought Logan Echolls capable of murder.
Now, he intends to prove her right.
***
Sunset, beachside. It’s gorgeous. Veronica can see, at least on an aesthetic level, why people pay big bucks to live in this town. And she herself no longer smudges the scenery with choppy hair and fraying hoodies and death-ray glares. Veronica Mars, Teen Avenger And Accusing Blot On The Picture-Perfect Landscape has retired. Tonight she’s wearing pastel shorts and a tank top, almost back to being a regular girl again. Her dad’s pleased. Wallace is cautious (regular-Veronica is new to him). Duncan looks at her approvingly. Logan?
She thinks he’d be a little disappointed, to be honest. But it’s hard to know for sure. She hasn’t seen him for over two months.
“I was hoping it would be you,” she smiled. The tall young man stumbled forward - and then recoiled in horror. “You,” he mumbled, aghast.
“Logan?”
He scrambles back, but not before she sees the blooming bruises, the already-drying blood that cakes his clothes. “Damn, didn’t want - Weevil!” She didn’t understand why he was calling out Weevil’s name, of all people, but then the devil appeared, looking slightly worse for wear. He caught Logan before he fell, and nodded to Veronica.
“We were on the bridge, when we heard. ‘Bout Aaron Echolls being the one.”
“On the bridge? Doing what, half-gainers? What the hell happened to him?”
“I happened -” Weevil began, but Logan cut him off.
“Nothing. Get me out of here, I can’t be near her, I can’t -”
“Logan, come inside. We’ll talk.” She shouldn’t be this upset; not when the Mystery Is Solved and she hadn’t committed incest after all and her dad was going to be fine. Still dread crawled up from her belly, into her throat, made her words tremble and shake as they left her mouth.
Logan shoved off from Weevil, who made to retrieve him but then Logan’s voice turned pleading. “Please. Please, get me away from her.” Logan could barely stand but he clung to the corridor railing like a lifeline; like he’d sooner take a dive over its edge than be manhandled into Veronica’s apartment which she guessed was Weevil’s intention in bringing him here.
He’d rather die than come any closer. The knowledge hit her hard, in the gut. Only when Weevil stepped forward, concerned, did she realize she was crying.
“Take him,” she managed. “Back to your place, book him a room at the Neptune Grand, whatever. Whatever he wants, just keep him safe for the night.”
Weevil shook his head, but they both knew there was no way he’d leave Logan here, looking like he wanted to shred Veronica. She’d owe Weevil big for this, but he never really evened up after she got him sprung from jail so maybe it was a wash and why was she thinking this and why, why hadn’t Logan looked at her? Even once?
She never gets answers to those questions. The next afternoon Weevil calls - Logan’s gone; took his car, left the front gates to the Echolls’ mansion wide open, and placed a bottle of JD on Weevil’s doorstep in apparent gratitude. Weevil appreciated the gesture, he told Veronica. His grandmother, not so much.
Now she scuffs her toes in the sand, restless, waiting for what she doesn’t know, exactly. But classes are about to start up again, and Veronica’s sort of on her way to being healed, ready to try for a life of her own instead of cloaking herself in Lilly’s - so where’s Logan?
Eventually even Backup gets tired, slumps at her feet. “I’m pathetic, huh?” Her dog merely looks up at her balefully. This isn’t the movies, she reminds herself. Her long-lost almost-lover isn’t going to come sprinting across the sand, calling her name, sweeping her up in his arms, getting horizontal as the tide rolls in. Anyway, running across sand isn’t as easy or graceful as it ought to be.
Come to think of it, it’s actually a pretty damn perfect metaphor for her love life.
So she trudges back to the impressively reconstructed LeBaron (courtesy of Weevil’s Uncle Angel), carrying on a one-sided discussion of the night’s plans with Backup. Cozy family scene with the Fennels, followed by another strained phone conversation with Duncan? Yep, that seems about right.
What doesn’t seem right is her car. Veronica stops as she reaches it, cocks her head. Blinks.
Driven with careful precision into the center of her windshield is a shot glass. She stares blankly, takes in the shattered cracks that spread outward, distantly calculates the odds of placing the glass so perfectly, so dead-on. After putting a flagpole through a compact, though, this was probably no stretch for him.
In a daze she moves forward - could he be watching her? - and removes the shot glass. Turning it over in her hand, she expects I Got Baked in Ensenada! But Logan is creative; Logan will not repeat himself; Logan knows the difference between his two blonde ex-girlfriends.
This message is simpler, a bit more to the point:
Happily Never After.
Part Two