Fic: "a butterfly trapped in a spider's web," Ironman/VM/Heroes x-over, R.
I appear to be on something of a roll.
This one came about because Gracie and I were pondering just how many people we've paired Veronica up with (we tend to whore her out, don't we?), and she asked if I'd ever gotten around to pairing V. with Nathan Petrelli. Well, no. But there *was* that Ironman fic cameo with Nathan and Tony, right? Did I ever explain how she got involved in it? Well, no.
Title: "a butterfly trapped in a spider's web"
Author: monimala
Fandom: Ironman/Heroes/Veronica Mars
Rating: R
Pairing: Veronica/Tony, Veronica/Other
Word count: 3375
Disclaimer: The characters belong to their respective creators, the title comes from The Police.
Summary: Sequel to something somewhere has to break. Veronica learned a long time ago that using her feminine wiles to get things done was often the simplest means to an end.
Notes: Set post-Ironman and in the Veronica Mars: FBI-verse. Fairly angsty, character death, etc.
She loosens her death grip on the steering wheel approximately 35 miles south of Malibu, pulling over to a shoulder on the road and parking so her shoulders can finally give in to their urge to shake. Her skin still feels sticky, like sex and the tart flesh of limes. She's used, and filthy, and worn down to the bone… but she has what she came for. Literally.
The locket sits, heavy, on a chain between her breasts. Gaudy, look-at-me, just the thing some bimbo would don before hitting the clubs. Nothing she'd ever wear if it didn't have a camera embedded within it.
She has officially fucked, and fucked over, Tony Stark.
Of course she knew who he was. From the beginning. How could anyone not, when he's been in every newspaper, on every online news blog, since he got back from his captivity in Afghanistan? That was the whole point. She's stalked him through bars and clubs all over southern California, watching from afar, taking notes, seeing who he chats up. And tonight she made her move.
She's going to sell his soul for thirty pieces of silver -- give or take several thousand years of inflation. His soul, and the close-up shots of the arc reactor set deep into his chest. The glowing blue device that she was careful not to look at… that she didn't even want to look at once he was buried inside her and Nathan Petrelli's cheek rasped against her palm.
It felt too good. Better than she has in a long time. Looking into two pairs of impossibly dark eyes, two mirrors for her own broken moral compass, listening to Tony try and save a man who didn't want saving, and knowing she was going to have to destroy them both once she climbed out of that King-sized bed. So she stayed as long as she could. She wallowed in rum and the cynical twist of Tony's lips bringing her off. She let herself believe, just for a little while, that she's still the girl from Neptune who just wants to trust someone again.
Now she has to collect her paycheck for services rendered. Ever so much more than whoring. She learned a long time ago that using her feminine wiles to get things done was often the simplest means to an end. This… this is so much more than that.
God, do you ever cut yourself a break, Mars? She can hear Carter laughing at her. Almost imagines his face in the rearview mirror, like he's checking his clip in the back seat. That's how she wants to remember him… teasing her, dogging her, challenging her, only she'll never have that luxury. She's always going to remember him screaming.
He was five days from resigning from the Bureau the day he died, so fricking honorable that he didn't want to keep being her partner and her lover at the same time. "Besides," he'd shrugged, all cocky and adorable, "you're a better agent." He'd kissed her that morning before getting into the unmarked sedan they were driving to a drop point just on the edge of the Mojave. Kissed her and told her, "Next Friday, Mars… save the date." Why? Because he was going to propose.
She stares down at her fingers, haunted. There is no white line where a ring should be. There won't ever be.
But she'll have two million dollars in an offshore account and the assurance that her dad will live to see his 50th birthday.
And she'll have the memory of tonight, of touching brilliance and tasting hope and drowning in the desperate desire for redemption. Of betraying someone who didn't deserve it.
Lilly's in the rearview now. She touches the blood at the side of her head with two pale fingers and looks at Veronica like she's a stranger. The hallucination is quickly blurred by tears.
**
She should take care with the pendant, with the digital record of her sins, but she leaves it and its chain in a heap on her nightstand as she pads naked to the shower. She stays under the spray until her skin is pink and raw from the heat and the pressure of her loofah. Until it scalds. She dries off in quick, efficient movements and slips into one of Carter's old Padres T-shirts. It hangs to her knees and still smells like his cologne.
Her phone is buzzing; it's the fourth call and third message from her contact. They can wait, she thinks. They can wait till morning, till tomorrow, till kingdom come. Every inch of her aches. Her thighs are sore from Tony's enthusiasm, the delicate skin on the insides just beginning to purple. She's always bruised easily, but never more than now.
Nathan, with his grief and his misery and his coke-dusted kiss, would have broken her in half.
Even so, as she gingerly slides between the sheets and molds to her side of the bed, she remembers how his skin felt beneath her fingers. How it would have been easy to fuck him, too… to just cross those inches separating them and do it. Except that cheating on Carter's memory with one man was bad enough. Two… two is overkill, even for her stained soul.
It takes Veronica a long time to fall asleep, but she does sleep. Losing it isn't how she pays.
**
Nathan's out like a light, sleeping off the weight of the world, when Jarvis discreetly alerts him to a potential security breach picked up during a routine sweep. "It originated in your bedroom, Tony, not that I pay attention to what goes on there," the AI says, implying swinging from chandeliers and things snorted off a hooker's ass.
It's his own fault for programming Jarvis to be lippy. In any case, he pushes the computer's attitude to the back of his mind, checking out the readings on a minor electronic pulse… likely attached to some kind of recording device. His blood runs cold and the vodka and rum still sloshing around in it freezes.
Even as he asks Jarvis to play back the closed circuit feed (that he doesn't pay attention to), he already knows what the outcome will be. The girl. The blonde. She left of her own volition and brought her own transportation. And she didn't seem to give a damn that she was in bed with a billionaire and a congressional candidate. Red flags out the ass, flags that he'd ignored because he was defaulting back to the party boy lifestyle that came way, way too easily. Maybe it had never really left.
As Jarvis runs a facial recognition scan and narrows the search parameters to southern California residents named Veronica, he tugs a t-shirt over his head, frowning slightly at the bump created by the arc reactor. Damn. Another one he forgot to cut a hole in. Maybe he just needs to start a whole clothing line for people with unsightly metal circuitry and be done with it.
He finds a cup of lukewarm coffee on his desk, sniffs it to determine that it's not much older than a day, and gulps it down as a familiar face pops up on multiple monitors in the workroom. The driver's license of one Veronica Genevieve Mars, lately of La Jolla, California. Followed by her Bureau I.D.
Shit.
"Jarvis, feed her address and agency records into the Audi," he says, grimly, already swiveling towards the car. "And keep an eye on Nathan until Pepper gets here."
Pepper will do whatever is necessary to sober Nathan up, put a smile on his face, and get him back to Manhattan in one piece. And she'll do it discreetly. One can always count on the famous Miss Potts for that. The famous Miss Potts, who would never pick a man up in a bar, go back to his place, and take pictures of his arc reactor for industrial espionage or some other such purpose.
"Stupid," Tony mutters, as he straps on his seatbelt like a good boy and Veronica's address pops up on the nav screen as requested.
He floors it, bursting out of the garage into the sunlight, and hopes that 8 AM isn't too early for a wakeup call.
**
Veronica dreams of everyone she's lost. Lilly. Duncan. Her mom. Carter. But only Carter stays, tangling with her in the sheets, laughing in her ear, before he stares at her with his big, blue eyes and tells her that she never should have taken this deal. You know it's wrong, Baby. I don't care if they killed me. What did Tony Stark ever do to you?
She moans in her sleep, fitful, hating that he's right. This is… this is not what she imagined her life to be. But it's all she has. And these precious, fantasy moments with Carter… where he's holding her tight and kissing her tear-dampened cheeks and the weight of the metal ring in his chest scrapes against the front of her shirt…
Veronica's eyes flash open.
Her entire body tenses beneath the hard contour of someone else's. Someone whose eyes are not blue. Someone who is most definitely not a dream.
"Hi," says Tony Stark, softly, dangerously, as she automatically begins to struggle, reaching for the Beretta under Carter's pillow… only to have her hand pinned to the mattress. "Come here often?"
He has her immobilized, hips keeping hers stationary, legs straddling hers. It's a parody of a lover's embrace and the kind of idiot mistake she would've made in the Academy… not recognizing that he's bulkier than Carter, built of steel and sinew, and that he smells like engine grease and stale coffee. And he's wearing her chain and locket around his neck, taunting her with the digital camera that he probably discovered while she was trapped in dreamland cataloguing how alone she is. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Of all the asinine, lazy things… the biggest thing she's lost is her edge.
His dark gaze flickers over her face, daring her to speak, so she carefully, cautiously, keeps her mouth clamped shut. "How much?" he wonders. "A couple hundred thou'? A cool mill? What's the going rate for betrayal these days?"
Veronica doesn't say anything. She just breathes. In. Out. Trying to figure out the best way to gain the upper hand. If that's even possible. So Tony keeps talking, his tone light and amiable, like they're at a cocktail party… except that she'd never be invited to the places he goes. "You know, Pepper and Rhodey are always telling me to quit picking up tramps in bars, reminding me that I've been free of terrorist captivity for long enough now that it can't count as compensating. I always tell them they worry too much… that there's no harm in being loved by the ladies. What's the worst that could happen? Tabloid press? 'I slept with Tony Stark and he's still hung like a horse'? Maybe if I'm lucky a YouTube clip or two…?" He chuckles, twisting her arm down to her side. "Does that make me naïve, Veronica?" he ponders. "Is there a target painted on my back? A sign that says, 'Please screw me and then sell the schematics for the device that keeps me *alive* to the highest bidder'?"
She should be immune. She should be beyond caring about anything except her self-preservation and her dad's. This man is nothing to her. A job. A transaction. Tears sharply sting her eyes anyway. "S-stop it," she grinds out, his false politeness cutting her to the bone. "Just… stop it."
He flinches. The sadistically sweet smile disappears from his handsome face. There are flecks of gray in his stubble and circles under his eyes, and she wonders if he's ever felt as soulless as she does on a daily basis. "Just tell me why," he says. "I have what I came for, so that's the only thing left."
She could tell him she had no choice, but there are always choices. So she tells him the closest thing she can to the truth. "I don't have anything left."
A muscle twitches in his cheek. "Your partner, Agent Joshua Carter, was killed in the line of duty six months ago." It's a statement, not a question. "The official report said 'gunshot wound to the head during a routine drug sting with the DEA'… but that's not true, is it? Did you watch him die, Veronica? Was he begging for his partner to have his back, only you didn't? Did you sell him out before you sold me out? Is that what this is about?"
His voice is hushed, urgent, and it flays her open.
Veronica doesn't even recognize the harsh, strangled, cry that tears from her throat. All she knows is that she's bleeding. It hurts. It hurts so badly. She can't breathe for sobbing.
**
When the girl trapped under him stops looking at him like she's about to slit his throat and starts keening like a wounded animal, Tony realizes something is very, very wrong. Her pretty face crumbles, looking like its been laid waste, and the sounds… oh, God, the sounds that come from her are the worst thing he's ever heard. Wracking sobs mingled with incoherent syllables that don't even sound human. He scrambles off her, to the empty side of the double bed, but she doesn't even seem to notice she's free to reach for her weapon and blow his head off. No… her tear-spiked lashes are folded over her gray eyes and she doesn't seem to see him at all.
All at once, he remembers the background info Jarvis dug up for him as he was pushing 115 miles per hour down the PCH. Jake Kane's daughter's murder. Aaron Echolls. He knew both men, between the board meetings and the red carpets, and the case dominated newspaper headlines for almost two years. In the years since her best friend's death and Echolls' attack on her, Veronica Mars has survived three more assaults and lost her mother to liver cancer. Her track record at the Bureau is spotless. She donates annually to RAINN even though her annual income is a pittance. She's never been in a relationship that lasted longer than a few months. All fitting the profile of someone easily turned to the Dark Side… or someone who is barely holding it together because she's broken into too many pieces.
Veronica has her arms wrapped around herself, almost like how he was holding her when he first slipped into bed with her… catching her in the middle of some private fantasy that had made her snuggle against him all warm and willing. At least until the tears had spilled down her cheeks. But that… that was nothing compared to this. She's curled up tight, as if she's trying to hold in something that's in mortal danger of falling out. And when he sits back on his haunches and whispers her name, she only shakes her head. "Go," she gasps, between hitching breaths. "Just go."
She set him up.
She stole from him.
She deserves to rot.
He should leave her to the wrath of whoever hired her, leave and not look back.
Tony unhooks the gaudy gold chain from around his neck and drops the locket on the night table. Then he crawls across the tangled sheets and pulls her, resisting every inch of the way, into his arms.
If that makes him naïve, so be it.
**
It takes her what feels like hours to get herself under control. Her face feels tight and her throat is raw, and she barely has the energy to move. Tony never lets her go. Not even for a second. He cradles her against his chest, the plain white t-shirt soft against her cheek, and whispers things that don't make sense… mathematical equations, stories about a cave, and anecdotes about his first year at MIT being just like Real Genius. He's kind to her. Unbelievably kind.
Finally, when she's not even sniffling anymore, just lying silently in his arms and realizing that this has all gone to Hell, his lips buss her forehead like a mother checking a child's temperature. "You loved Josh Carter," he murmurs against her temple. Again, the statement instead of the question.
Replying takes effort. Her voice sounds like somebody took a cheese grater to her larynx. "He said he was going to quit the Bureau to be my househusband… they gave me his ring finger instead."
"Jesus." Tony's face drains of all color, looking ghastly in the dimness of the room, lit only by the faint blue glow of the arc reactor. "I am so sorry."
So is she. Infinitely, infinitely sorry. "It's my fault," she shrugs, listlessly. "I didn't say yes right away when they offered. It wasn't until they said they'd get Dad and Backup, too…" She shudders, remembering the blood on the warehouse floor. So much of it. 10 pints. Every drop in Carter's veins.
You're a better agent.
Oh, God, how she wishes that wasn't true.
Then it would have been her body cooling on the cement instead of his.
The thought is enough to make the ragged hole in her chest widen. She didn't even know she still had tears left.
Tony grasps her chin, tilts her head up so he can look her square in the eye. "I can help you, Veronica. I have resources you couldn't even imagine, government contacts, military contacts… whoever these people are, they will not hurt anyone else you love," he swears, so passionately that she can practically believe it's possible.
Except…
"So you stop them… so you take them down… how do you fix me?" she counters. "How do you fix what I've become?"
He looks at her for a long time, palms cradling her cheeks, thumbs stroking the fine bones. Face to face like this, it's strange… intimate… she just met this man yesterday, and she realizes he's occupying Carter's side of the bed and it doesn't feel earthshakingly wrong.
"How do I fix you? Like this," he offers, before softly kissing her lips.
And it doesn't feel earthshakingly wrong either.
**
He had sex with a flirtatious, sexy stranger about seven hours ago. Now, he's kissing a woman named Veronica Mars, who tastes like saltwater and sorrow. She kisses him back with a quiet hunger, curving into his arms as if she can leach some strength from him… strength he'd gladly give her. She is so small, so fragile, that he wonders how he didn't notice before. Too worried about Nathan to see that someone was bruised and broken right between them. He won't make that mistake again.
They strip out of their clothes by mutual, silent agreement. And then Tony kisses every inch of her that he cut with his thoughtless accusations. Every wound. Every barely healed scar. She touches her tongue to the puckered skin surrounding the reactor and he strokes her hip with the backs of his knuckles. They touch each other with apologies, and when he slides into her, it's with forgiveness.
This time, she doesn't have to take. It's freely given.
This time, nothing gets stolen.
Except maybe the rusty gears and hollow valves that pass for his heart.
**
She loosens her death grip on the dashboard approximately 35 miles south of Malibu, finally accepting that Tony's speed demon propensity is not going to get them splattered across the PCH. He chuckles, turning up the AC/DC blaring from the satellite radio, and looking at her from the corner of his eye… as if he's double checking to make sure she's actually okay.
The locket with the embedded camera hangs from the rearview, standing in for fuzzy dice and providing an ample reminder of just how not okay she almost was. As she reaches up to fix the chain so it swings more evenly, she can almost see Carter in the mirror.
Laughing as he checks his clip. Teasing her, dogging her, challenging her.
You made a good call, Mars. Knew you would.
That's how she wants to remember him.
That's how she will.
And she'll have the memory of last night, of touching brilliance and tasting hope.
--end--
August 10, 2008
This one came about because Gracie and I were pondering just how many people we've paired Veronica up with (we tend to whore her out, don't we?), and she asked if I'd ever gotten around to pairing V. with Nathan Petrelli. Well, no. But there *was* that Ironman fic cameo with Nathan and Tony, right? Did I ever explain how she got involved in it? Well, no.
Title: "a butterfly trapped in a spider's web"
Author: monimala
Fandom: Ironman/Heroes/Veronica Mars
Rating: R
Pairing: Veronica/Tony, Veronica/Other
Word count: 3375
Disclaimer: The characters belong to their respective creators, the title comes from The Police.
Summary: Sequel to something somewhere has to break. Veronica learned a long time ago that using her feminine wiles to get things done was often the simplest means to an end.
Notes: Set post-Ironman and in the Veronica Mars: FBI-verse. Fairly angsty, character death, etc.
She loosens her death grip on the steering wheel approximately 35 miles south of Malibu, pulling over to a shoulder on the road and parking so her shoulders can finally give in to their urge to shake. Her skin still feels sticky, like sex and the tart flesh of limes. She's used, and filthy, and worn down to the bone… but she has what she came for. Literally.
The locket sits, heavy, on a chain between her breasts. Gaudy, look-at-me, just the thing some bimbo would don before hitting the clubs. Nothing she'd ever wear if it didn't have a camera embedded within it.
She has officially fucked, and fucked over, Tony Stark.
Of course she knew who he was. From the beginning. How could anyone not, when he's been in every newspaper, on every online news blog, since he got back from his captivity in Afghanistan? That was the whole point. She's stalked him through bars and clubs all over southern California, watching from afar, taking notes, seeing who he chats up. And tonight she made her move.
She's going to sell his soul for thirty pieces of silver -- give or take several thousand years of inflation. His soul, and the close-up shots of the arc reactor set deep into his chest. The glowing blue device that she was careful not to look at… that she didn't even want to look at once he was buried inside her and Nathan Petrelli's cheek rasped against her palm.
It felt too good. Better than she has in a long time. Looking into two pairs of impossibly dark eyes, two mirrors for her own broken moral compass, listening to Tony try and save a man who didn't want saving, and knowing she was going to have to destroy them both once she climbed out of that King-sized bed. So she stayed as long as she could. She wallowed in rum and the cynical twist of Tony's lips bringing her off. She let herself believe, just for a little while, that she's still the girl from Neptune who just wants to trust someone again.
Now she has to collect her paycheck for services rendered. Ever so much more than whoring. She learned a long time ago that using her feminine wiles to get things done was often the simplest means to an end. This… this is so much more than that.
God, do you ever cut yourself a break, Mars? She can hear Carter laughing at her. Almost imagines his face in the rearview mirror, like he's checking his clip in the back seat. That's how she wants to remember him… teasing her, dogging her, challenging her, only she'll never have that luxury. She's always going to remember him screaming.
He was five days from resigning from the Bureau the day he died, so fricking honorable that he didn't want to keep being her partner and her lover at the same time. "Besides," he'd shrugged, all cocky and adorable, "you're a better agent." He'd kissed her that morning before getting into the unmarked sedan they were driving to a drop point just on the edge of the Mojave. Kissed her and told her, "Next Friday, Mars… save the date." Why? Because he was going to propose.
She stares down at her fingers, haunted. There is no white line where a ring should be. There won't ever be.
But she'll have two million dollars in an offshore account and the assurance that her dad will live to see his 50th birthday.
And she'll have the memory of tonight, of touching brilliance and tasting hope and drowning in the desperate desire for redemption. Of betraying someone who didn't deserve it.
Lilly's in the rearview now. She touches the blood at the side of her head with two pale fingers and looks at Veronica like she's a stranger. The hallucination is quickly blurred by tears.
**
She should take care with the pendant, with the digital record of her sins, but she leaves it and its chain in a heap on her nightstand as she pads naked to the shower. She stays under the spray until her skin is pink and raw from the heat and the pressure of her loofah. Until it scalds. She dries off in quick, efficient movements and slips into one of Carter's old Padres T-shirts. It hangs to her knees and still smells like his cologne.
Her phone is buzzing; it's the fourth call and third message from her contact. They can wait, she thinks. They can wait till morning, till tomorrow, till kingdom come. Every inch of her aches. Her thighs are sore from Tony's enthusiasm, the delicate skin on the insides just beginning to purple. She's always bruised easily, but never more than now.
Nathan, with his grief and his misery and his coke-dusted kiss, would have broken her in half.
Even so, as she gingerly slides between the sheets and molds to her side of the bed, she remembers how his skin felt beneath her fingers. How it would have been easy to fuck him, too… to just cross those inches separating them and do it. Except that cheating on Carter's memory with one man was bad enough. Two… two is overkill, even for her stained soul.
It takes Veronica a long time to fall asleep, but she does sleep. Losing it isn't how she pays.
**
Nathan's out like a light, sleeping off the weight of the world, when Jarvis discreetly alerts him to a potential security breach picked up during a routine sweep. "It originated in your bedroom, Tony, not that I pay attention to what goes on there," the AI says, implying swinging from chandeliers and things snorted off a hooker's ass.
It's his own fault for programming Jarvis to be lippy. In any case, he pushes the computer's attitude to the back of his mind, checking out the readings on a minor electronic pulse… likely attached to some kind of recording device. His blood runs cold and the vodka and rum still sloshing around in it freezes.
Even as he asks Jarvis to play back the closed circuit feed (that he doesn't pay attention to), he already knows what the outcome will be. The girl. The blonde. She left of her own volition and brought her own transportation. And she didn't seem to give a damn that she was in bed with a billionaire and a congressional candidate. Red flags out the ass, flags that he'd ignored because he was defaulting back to the party boy lifestyle that came way, way too easily. Maybe it had never really left.
As Jarvis runs a facial recognition scan and narrows the search parameters to southern California residents named Veronica, he tugs a t-shirt over his head, frowning slightly at the bump created by the arc reactor. Damn. Another one he forgot to cut a hole in. Maybe he just needs to start a whole clothing line for people with unsightly metal circuitry and be done with it.
He finds a cup of lukewarm coffee on his desk, sniffs it to determine that it's not much older than a day, and gulps it down as a familiar face pops up on multiple monitors in the workroom. The driver's license of one Veronica Genevieve Mars, lately of La Jolla, California. Followed by her Bureau I.D.
Shit.
"Jarvis, feed her address and agency records into the Audi," he says, grimly, already swiveling towards the car. "And keep an eye on Nathan until Pepper gets here."
Pepper will do whatever is necessary to sober Nathan up, put a smile on his face, and get him back to Manhattan in one piece. And she'll do it discreetly. One can always count on the famous Miss Potts for that. The famous Miss Potts, who would never pick a man up in a bar, go back to his place, and take pictures of his arc reactor for industrial espionage or some other such purpose.
"Stupid," Tony mutters, as he straps on his seatbelt like a good boy and Veronica's address pops up on the nav screen as requested.
He floors it, bursting out of the garage into the sunlight, and hopes that 8 AM isn't too early for a wakeup call.
**
Veronica dreams of everyone she's lost. Lilly. Duncan. Her mom. Carter. But only Carter stays, tangling with her in the sheets, laughing in her ear, before he stares at her with his big, blue eyes and tells her that she never should have taken this deal. You know it's wrong, Baby. I don't care if they killed me. What did Tony Stark ever do to you?
She moans in her sleep, fitful, hating that he's right. This is… this is not what she imagined her life to be. But it's all she has. And these precious, fantasy moments with Carter… where he's holding her tight and kissing her tear-dampened cheeks and the weight of the metal ring in his chest scrapes against the front of her shirt…
Veronica's eyes flash open.
Her entire body tenses beneath the hard contour of someone else's. Someone whose eyes are not blue. Someone who is most definitely not a dream.
"Hi," says Tony Stark, softly, dangerously, as she automatically begins to struggle, reaching for the Beretta under Carter's pillow… only to have her hand pinned to the mattress. "Come here often?"
He has her immobilized, hips keeping hers stationary, legs straddling hers. It's a parody of a lover's embrace and the kind of idiot mistake she would've made in the Academy… not recognizing that he's bulkier than Carter, built of steel and sinew, and that he smells like engine grease and stale coffee. And he's wearing her chain and locket around his neck, taunting her with the digital camera that he probably discovered while she was trapped in dreamland cataloguing how alone she is. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Of all the asinine, lazy things… the biggest thing she's lost is her edge.
His dark gaze flickers over her face, daring her to speak, so she carefully, cautiously, keeps her mouth clamped shut. "How much?" he wonders. "A couple hundred thou'? A cool mill? What's the going rate for betrayal these days?"
Veronica doesn't say anything. She just breathes. In. Out. Trying to figure out the best way to gain the upper hand. If that's even possible. So Tony keeps talking, his tone light and amiable, like they're at a cocktail party… except that she'd never be invited to the places he goes. "You know, Pepper and Rhodey are always telling me to quit picking up tramps in bars, reminding me that I've been free of terrorist captivity for long enough now that it can't count as compensating. I always tell them they worry too much… that there's no harm in being loved by the ladies. What's the worst that could happen? Tabloid press? 'I slept with Tony Stark and he's still hung like a horse'? Maybe if I'm lucky a YouTube clip or two…?" He chuckles, twisting her arm down to her side. "Does that make me naïve, Veronica?" he ponders. "Is there a target painted on my back? A sign that says, 'Please screw me and then sell the schematics for the device that keeps me *alive* to the highest bidder'?"
She should be immune. She should be beyond caring about anything except her self-preservation and her dad's. This man is nothing to her. A job. A transaction. Tears sharply sting her eyes anyway. "S-stop it," she grinds out, his false politeness cutting her to the bone. "Just… stop it."
He flinches. The sadistically sweet smile disappears from his handsome face. There are flecks of gray in his stubble and circles under his eyes, and she wonders if he's ever felt as soulless as she does on a daily basis. "Just tell me why," he says. "I have what I came for, so that's the only thing left."
She could tell him she had no choice, but there are always choices. So she tells him the closest thing she can to the truth. "I don't have anything left."
A muscle twitches in his cheek. "Your partner, Agent Joshua Carter, was killed in the line of duty six months ago." It's a statement, not a question. "The official report said 'gunshot wound to the head during a routine drug sting with the DEA'… but that's not true, is it? Did you watch him die, Veronica? Was he begging for his partner to have his back, only you didn't? Did you sell him out before you sold me out? Is that what this is about?"
His voice is hushed, urgent, and it flays her open.
Veronica doesn't even recognize the harsh, strangled, cry that tears from her throat. All she knows is that she's bleeding. It hurts. It hurts so badly. She can't breathe for sobbing.
**
When the girl trapped under him stops looking at him like she's about to slit his throat and starts keening like a wounded animal, Tony realizes something is very, very wrong. Her pretty face crumbles, looking like its been laid waste, and the sounds… oh, God, the sounds that come from her are the worst thing he's ever heard. Wracking sobs mingled with incoherent syllables that don't even sound human. He scrambles off her, to the empty side of the double bed, but she doesn't even seem to notice she's free to reach for her weapon and blow his head off. No… her tear-spiked lashes are folded over her gray eyes and she doesn't seem to see him at all.
All at once, he remembers the background info Jarvis dug up for him as he was pushing 115 miles per hour down the PCH. Jake Kane's daughter's murder. Aaron Echolls. He knew both men, between the board meetings and the red carpets, and the case dominated newspaper headlines for almost two years. In the years since her best friend's death and Echolls' attack on her, Veronica Mars has survived three more assaults and lost her mother to liver cancer. Her track record at the Bureau is spotless. She donates annually to RAINN even though her annual income is a pittance. She's never been in a relationship that lasted longer than a few months. All fitting the profile of someone easily turned to the Dark Side… or someone who is barely holding it together because she's broken into too many pieces.
Veronica has her arms wrapped around herself, almost like how he was holding her when he first slipped into bed with her… catching her in the middle of some private fantasy that had made her snuggle against him all warm and willing. At least until the tears had spilled down her cheeks. But that… that was nothing compared to this. She's curled up tight, as if she's trying to hold in something that's in mortal danger of falling out. And when he sits back on his haunches and whispers her name, she only shakes her head. "Go," she gasps, between hitching breaths. "Just go."
She set him up.
She stole from him.
She deserves to rot.
He should leave her to the wrath of whoever hired her, leave and not look back.
Tony unhooks the gaudy gold chain from around his neck and drops the locket on the night table. Then he crawls across the tangled sheets and pulls her, resisting every inch of the way, into his arms.
If that makes him naïve, so be it.
**
It takes her what feels like hours to get herself under control. Her face feels tight and her throat is raw, and she barely has the energy to move. Tony never lets her go. Not even for a second. He cradles her against his chest, the plain white t-shirt soft against her cheek, and whispers things that don't make sense… mathematical equations, stories about a cave, and anecdotes about his first year at MIT being just like Real Genius. He's kind to her. Unbelievably kind.
Finally, when she's not even sniffling anymore, just lying silently in his arms and realizing that this has all gone to Hell, his lips buss her forehead like a mother checking a child's temperature. "You loved Josh Carter," he murmurs against her temple. Again, the statement instead of the question.
Replying takes effort. Her voice sounds like somebody took a cheese grater to her larynx. "He said he was going to quit the Bureau to be my househusband… they gave me his ring finger instead."
"Jesus." Tony's face drains of all color, looking ghastly in the dimness of the room, lit only by the faint blue glow of the arc reactor. "I am so sorry."
So is she. Infinitely, infinitely sorry. "It's my fault," she shrugs, listlessly. "I didn't say yes right away when they offered. It wasn't until they said they'd get Dad and Backup, too…" She shudders, remembering the blood on the warehouse floor. So much of it. 10 pints. Every drop in Carter's veins.
You're a better agent.
Oh, God, how she wishes that wasn't true.
Then it would have been her body cooling on the cement instead of his.
The thought is enough to make the ragged hole in her chest widen. She didn't even know she still had tears left.
Tony grasps her chin, tilts her head up so he can look her square in the eye. "I can help you, Veronica. I have resources you couldn't even imagine, government contacts, military contacts… whoever these people are, they will not hurt anyone else you love," he swears, so passionately that she can practically believe it's possible.
Except…
"So you stop them… so you take them down… how do you fix me?" she counters. "How do you fix what I've become?"
He looks at her for a long time, palms cradling her cheeks, thumbs stroking the fine bones. Face to face like this, it's strange… intimate… she just met this man yesterday, and she realizes he's occupying Carter's side of the bed and it doesn't feel earthshakingly wrong.
"How do I fix you? Like this," he offers, before softly kissing her lips.
And it doesn't feel earthshakingly wrong either.
**
He had sex with a flirtatious, sexy stranger about seven hours ago. Now, he's kissing a woman named Veronica Mars, who tastes like saltwater and sorrow. She kisses him back with a quiet hunger, curving into his arms as if she can leach some strength from him… strength he'd gladly give her. She is so small, so fragile, that he wonders how he didn't notice before. Too worried about Nathan to see that someone was bruised and broken right between them. He won't make that mistake again.
They strip out of their clothes by mutual, silent agreement. And then Tony kisses every inch of her that he cut with his thoughtless accusations. Every wound. Every barely healed scar. She touches her tongue to the puckered skin surrounding the reactor and he strokes her hip with the backs of his knuckles. They touch each other with apologies, and when he slides into her, it's with forgiveness.
This time, she doesn't have to take. It's freely given.
This time, nothing gets stolen.
Except maybe the rusty gears and hollow valves that pass for his heart.
**
She loosens her death grip on the dashboard approximately 35 miles south of Malibu, finally accepting that Tony's speed demon propensity is not going to get them splattered across the PCH. He chuckles, turning up the AC/DC blaring from the satellite radio, and looking at her from the corner of his eye… as if he's double checking to make sure she's actually okay.
The locket with the embedded camera hangs from the rearview, standing in for fuzzy dice and providing an ample reminder of just how not okay she almost was. As she reaches up to fix the chain so it swings more evenly, she can almost see Carter in the mirror.
Laughing as he checks his clip. Teasing her, dogging her, challenging her.
You made a good call, Mars. Knew you would.
That's how she wants to remember him.
That's how she will.
And she'll have the memory of last night, of touching brilliance and tasting hope.
--end--
August 10, 2008