Fic: King of Pain (Keith, Veronica) PG-13

[em2mb]

Title: “King of Pain”
Author: em2mb
Pairing/Character: Keith, Veronica.
Word Count: 4,165
Rating: PG-13
Summary: He fixes the bathroom door and paints Veronica’s bedroom, but deep down he knows a splash of color can’t mask the grey in their lives. The hero is the one who stays, but sometimes it’s natural to want to run.
Spoilers: Through 1x01, “Pilot

Comments

[em2mb]

I always make lazaefair lick my envelopes, since the adhesive actually contains wheat gluten.

[em2mb]

Hah. I just started rewatching season one. When Veronica was on the beach with Backup, Kingsley started barking at the TV.

[hiddeneloise]

This has killed me.

I always wondered about Keith, too. The guy was pretty oblivious when it came to his daughter. Or much of anything. For a PI, Keith Mars saw or perceived remarkably little. He loved his daughter, there's no question about that. But he couldn't see her clearly.

I like your version. It kills me, but that's precisely why I like it (well, that and the fact that it's so well written). Much like Keith in the show (and to an extend, in this story), I shudder at the thought of examining what happened, at looking too closely. And yet, I'm forced to, and it's some kind of a dark victory that we get in the end of it.

Thank you.

[em2mb]

Keith Mars was a good father, a good sheriff and a good PI. I just don't believe he could have missed something so major in Veronica's life. At the same time, I think it would have to remain unspoken between them whatever he knew, since Veronica placed such a high value on emotional unavailability.

[hiddeneloise]

I just don't believe he could have missed something so major in Veronica's life. See, I do. He was a loving, devoted, and caring father, but he wasn't exactly an astute one all of the time where his daughter was concerned. He has allowed her to pull fast ones on him a lot. Not that he was stupid about it, he just had blind spots that many parents do have with their kids. And the further the show went, the less attention Keith paid to what Veronica was actually doing. Once upon a time, this was the man who put surveillance on her when she dated. But in season 3, she could call him at 3 a.m. from some crappy gas station and he wouldn't blink. Or she could be attacked by a serial rapist at a parking lot, and in the next ep Keith would be asking if her boyfriend had a reason to worry. Even earlier, she would lie to him, he would find out, show disappointment, and then things return to the way they've been, with no repercussions

[mitzy_spain]

I always thought that Keith is blind winth Veronica but she was dealing with lots of things at the same time. And maybe he thinks is his fault.
You did a really good job, good fic
Not only Keith tries to protect Veronica, she tries to protect him.

It was his way of saying that he knew, and for a second, he thought she might have gotten it. “I promise you you’ll never have to, Daddy.”

[em2mb]

I think it was critical to this careful existence they carved from their former lives to acknowledge what happened without actually talking about it. But Keith had to know.

Thanks for reading!

[celtic_flicka]

They way Keith figured out what happened without asking her, and the way they both slowly acknowledged it without actually talking about it specifically was so perfectly in character for both of them. I always thought it was sad that Keith didn't know what happened to her (I figured that there was so much trauma in her life at that time that he just couldn't untangle it all), but you've created a completely plausible scenario here.

I'm so glad you wrote a short piece--I want to start reading "All the PIs Men," but I have to finish something for work first (because I know I won't be able to just read one chapter). So thanks for a shorter fic to hold me over until I can start that one!

[em2mb]

I was in a massive car accident in high school. I spent four days in a coma, and no one expected me to pull through (clearly, I enjoy proving a doctor or two wrong). But to this day (five years later), I still can't talk about it with my parents. Just mentioning any ongoing therapy/rehabilitation puts them on edge. We're all very aware of what happened, but it's just too difficult to talk about.

I think parents often see what they want in their children. I don't think it's uncommon for them to look the other way when something bad happens, for as much as they want to be strong, they're hurting inside, too.

[annie_oakley]

I really enjoyed this because it's nice to get in Keith's head and remember a time when he didn't seem quite so oblivious to everything going on in his little girl's life. All of the relationships and characters suffered as the show went on, but I think the Keith/Veronica dynamic took just as many hits as Logan/Veronica. It's so good to read about Keith using actual common sense and PI skills to figure out what is going on with his daughter and, in a way, avenge her. It really reminded me of how much he loves her. On the show, sometimes it seemed like Keith just didn't look because he was afraid of what he'd find, and he had too much guilt over his role in what became of Veronica's life and how it changed her, so he tried to let it slide. Ugh.

[em2mb]

Is it weird that I try to look at season three more as a challenge than a train wreck? Of course, it was all that and more, but there's no use dwelling on it now. I'd rather look forward and see how I can amend as many of RT's wrongs as possible.

Though, at least with Keith and Veronica, I can understand how a parent might only see what he or she wants in their precious progeny. Still, their dynamic - one a source of real affection (not to mention comedic gold) - was so far off kilter by the end of the series. I actually started this sometimes toward the last few episodes, so I may have been "correcting" the wrongs of season 3 even then.