FIC: Violet World (L/L, L/W, mentions of L/A) PG-13 AU
Title: Violet World
Author: Marylane23
Pairing/Character: Lilly (L/L, L/W, mentions of L/A)
Word Count: 1900
Rating: PG-13
Summary: AU, Another variation on the events of October 3, 2003. Lilly lives, but she lost someone that day. Companion to my fic "Prism"
Spoilers/Warnings: Spoilers for all Season I.
Disclaimer: Rob Thomas owns them, and he won't share!
Notes: Hey Y'all, I've somehow magically finished the unrelenting nightmare of moving to another state for school, and so I thought I'd celebrate by actually writing something... Insane, right?
This is a companion piece to my fic Prism, b/c several people asked for more.
Title: Violet World
Pairing/Character: Lilly (L/L, L/W, mentions of L/A)
Word Count: 1900
Rating: PG-13
Summary: AU, Another variation on the events of October 3, 2003. Lilly lives, but she lost someone that day. Companion to my fic "Prism"
Spoilers/Warnings: Spoilers for all Season I.
Disclaimer: Rob Thomas owns them, and he won't share!
Notes: Hey Y'all, I've somehow magically finished the unrelenting nightmare of moving to another state for school, and so I thought I'd celebrate by actually writing something... Insane, right?
This is a companion piece to my fic "Prism", b/c several people asked for more.
I'm still working on the follow-up to "Revisions to the Status Quo"but it's still going to be a while. Aaannnyyway, here's this one in the meantime.
~~~
As a rule, you don’t make stupid mistakes. Not anymore.
So when you return to the room to find him sitting there, blissfully reading the meticulously compiled dossiers you so smoothly left open and in plain sight in the entryway, you curse yourself. Even if the odds of Logan Echolls ever setting foot in Mars Investigations again were beyond negligible, this wasn’t one of your finer moments.
The old you must have fought its way to the surface for a moment, there’s no way You 2.0 would allow that sort of thing to happen.
Panic sends you across the room to your laptop in half a heartbeat, slamming it shut as he looks at you with a disgust you should be used to by now. You can’t even muster subtlety when you grill him about what he saw.
Your file on Duncan. For once you feel deserving of the disgust radiating your way. It’s not as if you enjoy suspecting the people you love. But it’s been this way for more than a year now, ever since your best friend was found strangled in the family pool.
He asks you if this is what she’d want. For you to be tailing and scrutinizing people she loved.
“I loved Veronica,” you say. And he surprises you by accepting it.
~~~
You tear up his check without hesitation.
This isn’t the old days, you aren’t Lilly Kane anymore, and you could really use that money. Especially considering you’ve got Abel Koonz’ daughter stashed in a hotel room across town.
But even you aren’t low enough to take money from him for this. Not for this.
Someday Logan will find out about you and his dad. No amount of explaining will ever make that forgivable, and on that (hopefully far off) day, you don’t want him looking back and remembering the moment you “conned” him out of his sizeable allowance by “pretending” to search for his dead mother.
You would have given your eyeteeth to find her alive, to give him something, knowing what you’d someday take away. You know Lynn didn’t kill herself because of you and Aaron, you know you were the flavor of the most recent in a long string of months.
~~~
Someday you’ll find Veronica’s real killer. Prove that your own family covered it up. Prove that Keith Mars lost everything for nothing. And you know when that happens all your sins will come to light too. Such is the nature of the Crime of the Century.
You’re prepared for that. He’ll never be.
~~~
Going to school the next day is beyond nightmarish. Moreso than usual. You’ve got very little sympathy for poor Miss Pre-Valedictorian, you of the vastly improved but certainly not scholarship-level grades.
She has to worry about which top-ranked school will accept her now that her grades have slipped a fraction of a point, while you’re walking around with your stomach in knots wondering exactly when the ex love of your life will feel the need to tell your brother you suspect him of murder.
She doesn’t have to go through life wondering who drowned her best friend in a pool while she was off crying her eyes out over a breakup note she found stashed in her car, wondering if it was her fault because she called and asked that friend to come console her and then didn’t get home until after someone turned Veronica Mars into a murder statistic.
~~~
Duncan isn’t treating you any differently than usual. You wish “usual” didn’t mean the cold distance typical of the family that disowned you, but it’s better than it could be, you suppose.
~~~
You pull Logan aside once you can’t stand it anymore. You have to know when this will hit the fan.
But all he does is ask about Duncan’s epilepsy. Lets you see the hurt at the idea that Duncan would conceal that from his best friend.
Join the club, you tell him. You’re his sister, and you don’t remember the subject ever gracing conversation at the Kane dinner table.
~~~
You knew it was in the file, but you didn’t expect him to come right out and ask if Veronica was really your sister.
As much as you would have loved it to be true for your sake, you’re glad for Duncan’s that you can give Logan an unequivocal “no.” You tell him how you and Keith compared blood types from the student blood drive, and there’s no way Veronica’s O- could have come from your AB+ father.
You wish it could have been true, only in your version, you’re both Keith Mars’ daughters. Your parents love you, support you. All the parenting basics which until you started coming to the Mars’ for dinner, you’d only seen on TV.
~~~
The closest thing you’ve got to a father nowadays is waiting for you in the shithole studio you rent above the office. Tells you that Weidman paid him a visit, tells you to be careful because he can’t lose you too.
So you cave and you share information, finally. Like you’ve done before in this little mock family you’ve scrounged together for yourself.
When you came to him after his wife left and his job evaporated, sobbing to him that you know your parents are hiding something, and that Veronica wouldn’t want you to let him go through this alone. When you confessed that you’d been so miserable in your real father’s household that you seduced the local predator, hoping to gain enough potential tabloid ammo to negotiate a one way ticket out of Neptune on his tab.
And like always, it’s easier once he knows.
~~~
Your parents are lost to you. You already knew that. But Duncan…
Even if he was the one member of your family who made the few overtures to you, at the very least attempted to seal the breach, he’ll never forgive you for this.
You yourself didn’t think suspecting him was a greater crime than suspecting your own parents, but you suppose even he must hate Celeste a little bit. Maybe he gave you the tiniest benefit of the doubt.
He loved Veronica too. If it was him, it wasn’t him him, not the Duncan you love but the victim of his disease.
But you know the instant he flees the room, furious at your suspicions, that not even he will be your family anymore.
~~~
Logan is kissing you.
The impossibility of it is not lost on you, but somehow it’s happening just the same. Logan, who never forgave you for turning on your family, who clings to what sadly qualifies as the sunnier version of Veronica’s death, blissfully denying the possibility that someone you knew could have strangled her by your pool.
Logan came to save you and now he’s kissing you, and for an instant you settle into your old self again.
For that instant you want so very much for this to continue. But you pull away just after his lips touch yours, and make a dumbstruck beeline for the car.
A thousand possibilities you were certain had petered out into extinction could be in play again. That is, if you decide you want them to be.
You have to get out of here.
~~~
When you finish up at Norris’ house, you’re still not thinking about bombs. You wonder what’s wrong with you that the risk of a fiery death by misanthrope isn’t enough to distract you from thoughts of the four of you in “better” days.
You weren’t happy. But you think of four drunken teens and a limo party and you wonder why you couldn’t see what you had.
You start sobbing uncontrollably behind the wheel of your car for the Lilly Kane you had so happily abandoned.
So you pull over. And you make a call.
~~~
It doesn’t take him long to get there. You’re already on the dock at the beach, leaning over the railing, looking out over the ocean and a wild violet sunset and wondering if Veronica’s scattered ashes washed right back to you.
If that’s why she haunts you.
You wish to god you knew who took her from you. Who made it so instead of preparing for mom and dad to buy your way into college you work for a struggling private investigator tailing philandering spouses and bail jumpers and live in a hole that barely meets code, abandoned by your friends and family and trapped in a continual state of mourning.
~~~
You know he’d prefer small talk, but you skip right to the fact that Logan Echolls kissed you. You owe him that.
He stiffens. Rage like you’ve never seen flashing across his features.
You explain about Logan’s mom, how you and he found yourselves on speaking terms again. You admit to feeling something.
He asks what he’s supposed to do. Supposed to feel. What do you want him to say? You shake your head that you don’t know.
What would his little band think of him standing there, slumping over the railing and breaking out of his stoic mask only to ask if you really loved “that rich-ass punk”?
You pull Eli close and tell him yes, you did love Logan, but not like you love him.
~~~
He’ll forgive you for this. He’s forgiven for worse.
After all, he was the first person you dared tell about Aaron. He was the one who took the tapes you stole from Aaron and burned them in a bonfire on this very beach. He couldn’t possibly hold one kiss, one you didn’t initiate or reciprocate against you. Could he?
~~~
It takes two days and your brother’s vanishing act, but he shows up at your door and wraps his arms around you without a word.
And suddenly the dingy mess you live in is a home. Because you pay for it with the money you know is more than Keith can afford to pay you but still does, and because Weevil pushes past the gaping holes in the drywall to make love with you on your secondhand mattress despite the fact that no one but the two of you and Keith has ever known there was a two of you to know.
~~~
Both Eli and Wallace must be sick to death of hearing it, but you tell them about all the worlds you imagine where she’d lived. Where she’d shaken off that bubblegum aura Lianne had tried so very hard to instill between gulps off the bottle, left pretty little pink Veronica to find the Mars in her and knock Neptune on it’s ass.
Would she be angry that you wheedled your way into her family? Or would she be happy that you made a real family out of the embers of her own?
In this world, the world without her, you know she’d have wanted you just where you are.
~~~
When Logan tries to kiss you again, you put a stop to it. Tell him it isn’t going to happen, don’t bother to tell him why.
Watch him cycle through from surprise to hurt to suspicion to anger like a psychology textbook entry on rejection.
He calls you every synonym for whore in the book and a few he’s invented before he takes off back into his house, leaving you to find your own ride home.
You don’t bother to deny these pet names. Even if you are the new Lilly, these endearments used to be true enough.
Not anymore.
Author: Marylane23
Pairing/Character: Lilly (L/L, L/W, mentions of L/A)
Word Count: 1900
Rating: PG-13
Summary: AU, Another variation on the events of October 3, 2003. Lilly lives, but she lost someone that day. Companion to my fic "Prism"
Spoilers/Warnings: Spoilers for all Season I.
Disclaimer: Rob Thomas owns them, and he won't share!
Notes: Hey Y'all, I've somehow magically finished the unrelenting nightmare of moving to another state for school, and so I thought I'd celebrate by actually writing something... Insane, right?
This is a companion piece to my fic Prism, b/c several people asked for more.
Title: Violet World
Pairing/Character: Lilly (L/L, L/W, mentions of L/A)
Word Count: 1900
Rating: PG-13
Summary: AU, Another variation on the events of October 3, 2003. Lilly lives, but she lost someone that day. Companion to my fic "Prism"
Spoilers/Warnings: Spoilers for all Season I.
Disclaimer: Rob Thomas owns them, and he won't share!
Notes: Hey Y'all, I've somehow magically finished the unrelenting nightmare of moving to another state for school, and so I thought I'd celebrate by actually writing something... Insane, right?
This is a companion piece to my fic "Prism", b/c several people asked for more.
I'm still working on the follow-up to "Revisions to the Status Quo"but it's still going to be a while. Aaannnyyway, here's this one in the meantime.
~~~
As a rule, you don’t make stupid mistakes. Not anymore.
So when you return to the room to find him sitting there, blissfully reading the meticulously compiled dossiers you so smoothly left open and in plain sight in the entryway, you curse yourself. Even if the odds of Logan Echolls ever setting foot in Mars Investigations again were beyond negligible, this wasn’t one of your finer moments.
The old you must have fought its way to the surface for a moment, there’s no way You 2.0 would allow that sort of thing to happen.
Panic sends you across the room to your laptop in half a heartbeat, slamming it shut as he looks at you with a disgust you should be used to by now. You can’t even muster subtlety when you grill him about what he saw.
Your file on Duncan. For once you feel deserving of the disgust radiating your way. It’s not as if you enjoy suspecting the people you love. But it’s been this way for more than a year now, ever since your best friend was found strangled in the family pool.
He asks you if this is what she’d want. For you to be tailing and scrutinizing people she loved.
“I loved Veronica,” you say. And he surprises you by accepting it.
~~~
You tear up his check without hesitation.
This isn’t the old days, you aren’t Lilly Kane anymore, and you could really use that money. Especially considering you’ve got Abel Koonz’ daughter stashed in a hotel room across town.
But even you aren’t low enough to take money from him for this. Not for this.
Someday Logan will find out about you and his dad. No amount of explaining will ever make that forgivable, and on that (hopefully far off) day, you don’t want him looking back and remembering the moment you “conned” him out of his sizeable allowance by “pretending” to search for his dead mother.
You would have given your eyeteeth to find her alive, to give him something, knowing what you’d someday take away. You know Lynn didn’t kill herself because of you and Aaron, you know you were the flavor of the most recent in a long string of months.
~~~
Someday you’ll find Veronica’s real killer. Prove that your own family covered it up. Prove that Keith Mars lost everything for nothing. And you know when that happens all your sins will come to light too. Such is the nature of the Crime of the Century.
You’re prepared for that. He’ll never be.
~~~
Going to school the next day is beyond nightmarish. Moreso than usual. You’ve got very little sympathy for poor Miss Pre-Valedictorian, you of the vastly improved but certainly not scholarship-level grades.
She has to worry about which top-ranked school will accept her now that her grades have slipped a fraction of a point, while you’re walking around with your stomach in knots wondering exactly when the ex love of your life will feel the need to tell your brother you suspect him of murder.
She doesn’t have to go through life wondering who drowned her best friend in a pool while she was off crying her eyes out over a breakup note she found stashed in her car, wondering if it was her fault because she called and asked that friend to come console her and then didn’t get home until after someone turned Veronica Mars into a murder statistic.
~~~
Duncan isn’t treating you any differently than usual. You wish “usual” didn’t mean the cold distance typical of the family that disowned you, but it’s better than it could be, you suppose.
~~~
You pull Logan aside once you can’t stand it anymore. You have to know when this will hit the fan.
But all he does is ask about Duncan’s epilepsy. Lets you see the hurt at the idea that Duncan would conceal that from his best friend.
Join the club, you tell him. You’re his sister, and you don’t remember the subject ever gracing conversation at the Kane dinner table.
~~~
You knew it was in the file, but you didn’t expect him to come right out and ask if Veronica was really your sister.
As much as you would have loved it to be true for your sake, you’re glad for Duncan’s that you can give Logan an unequivocal “no.” You tell him how you and Keith compared blood types from the student blood drive, and there’s no way Veronica’s O- could have come from your AB+ father.
You wish it could have been true, only in your version, you’re both Keith Mars’ daughters. Your parents love you, support you. All the parenting basics which until you started coming to the Mars’ for dinner, you’d only seen on TV.
~~~
The closest thing you’ve got to a father nowadays is waiting for you in the shithole studio you rent above the office. Tells you that Weidman paid him a visit, tells you to be careful because he can’t lose you too.
So you cave and you share information, finally. Like you’ve done before in this little mock family you’ve scrounged together for yourself.
When you came to him after his wife left and his job evaporated, sobbing to him that you know your parents are hiding something, and that Veronica wouldn’t want you to let him go through this alone. When you confessed that you’d been so miserable in your real father’s household that you seduced the local predator, hoping to gain enough potential tabloid ammo to negotiate a one way ticket out of Neptune on his tab.
And like always, it’s easier once he knows.
~~~
Your parents are lost to you. You already knew that. But Duncan…
Even if he was the one member of your family who made the few overtures to you, at the very least attempted to seal the breach, he’ll never forgive you for this.
You yourself didn’t think suspecting him was a greater crime than suspecting your own parents, but you suppose even he must hate Celeste a little bit. Maybe he gave you the tiniest benefit of the doubt.
He loved Veronica too. If it was him, it wasn’t him him, not the Duncan you love but the victim of his disease.
But you know the instant he flees the room, furious at your suspicions, that not even he will be your family anymore.
~~~
Logan is kissing you.
The impossibility of it is not lost on you, but somehow it’s happening just the same. Logan, who never forgave you for turning on your family, who clings to what sadly qualifies as the sunnier version of Veronica’s death, blissfully denying the possibility that someone you knew could have strangled her by your pool.
Logan came to save you and now he’s kissing you, and for an instant you settle into your old self again.
For that instant you want so very much for this to continue. But you pull away just after his lips touch yours, and make a dumbstruck beeline for the car.
A thousand possibilities you were certain had petered out into extinction could be in play again. That is, if you decide you want them to be.
You have to get out of here.
~~~
When you finish up at Norris’ house, you’re still not thinking about bombs. You wonder what’s wrong with you that the risk of a fiery death by misanthrope isn’t enough to distract you from thoughts of the four of you in “better” days.
You weren’t happy. But you think of four drunken teens and a limo party and you wonder why you couldn’t see what you had.
You start sobbing uncontrollably behind the wheel of your car for the Lilly Kane you had so happily abandoned.
So you pull over. And you make a call.
~~~
It doesn’t take him long to get there. You’re already on the dock at the beach, leaning over the railing, looking out over the ocean and a wild violet sunset and wondering if Veronica’s scattered ashes washed right back to you.
If that’s why she haunts you.
You wish to god you knew who took her from you. Who made it so instead of preparing for mom and dad to buy your way into college you work for a struggling private investigator tailing philandering spouses and bail jumpers and live in a hole that barely meets code, abandoned by your friends and family and trapped in a continual state of mourning.
~~~
You know he’d prefer small talk, but you skip right to the fact that Logan Echolls kissed you. You owe him that.
He stiffens. Rage like you’ve never seen flashing across his features.
You explain about Logan’s mom, how you and he found yourselves on speaking terms again. You admit to feeling something.
He asks what he’s supposed to do. Supposed to feel. What do you want him to say? You shake your head that you don’t know.
What would his little band think of him standing there, slumping over the railing and breaking out of his stoic mask only to ask if you really loved “that rich-ass punk”?
You pull Eli close and tell him yes, you did love Logan, but not like you love him.
~~~
He’ll forgive you for this. He’s forgiven for worse.
After all, he was the first person you dared tell about Aaron. He was the one who took the tapes you stole from Aaron and burned them in a bonfire on this very beach. He couldn’t possibly hold one kiss, one you didn’t initiate or reciprocate against you. Could he?
~~~
It takes two days and your brother’s vanishing act, but he shows up at your door and wraps his arms around you without a word.
And suddenly the dingy mess you live in is a home. Because you pay for it with the money you know is more than Keith can afford to pay you but still does, and because Weevil pushes past the gaping holes in the drywall to make love with you on your secondhand mattress despite the fact that no one but the two of you and Keith has ever known there was a two of you to know.
~~~
Both Eli and Wallace must be sick to death of hearing it, but you tell them about all the worlds you imagine where she’d lived. Where she’d shaken off that bubblegum aura Lianne had tried so very hard to instill between gulps off the bottle, left pretty little pink Veronica to find the Mars in her and knock Neptune on it’s ass.
Would she be angry that you wheedled your way into her family? Or would she be happy that you made a real family out of the embers of her own?
In this world, the world without her, you know she’d have wanted you just where you are.
~~~
When Logan tries to kiss you again, you put a stop to it. Tell him it isn’t going to happen, don’t bother to tell him why.
Watch him cycle through from surprise to hurt to suspicion to anger like a psychology textbook entry on rejection.
He calls you every synonym for whore in the book and a few he’s invented before he takes off back into his house, leaving you to find your own ride home.
You don’t bother to deny these pet names. Even if you are the new Lilly, these endearments used to be true enough.
Not anymore.