Final Gift for salingergurl

[acinogan]

hello, there,
salingergurl , it's your secret santa!  merry late Christmas and happy new year!  i hope you will forgive the just-under-the-wire nature of this posting.  AND it's still a WIP...so I solemnly swear to finish it in a timely fashion.  I tried to get several items off of your wish list in there - i hope you like the result and maybe with a little feedback I can finish it up all custom-made-like.  there is no smut as of yet, but plans for smut are in place.

Title: Out Of Harm's Way
Author: acinogan
Pairing/Characters: Veronica/Piz but eventual LoVe (i promise), also Mac, Heather Button, maybe some others
Word Count: these bits - about 4,900
Rating: PG-13 for a bit o' cursing and nonspecific references to adult situations
Summary: near the beginning of sophomore year, Veronica is still with Piz and is trying to stay "normal" - and part of that is staying away from Logan.  Then when Heather goes missing, Logan asks for Veronica's help.
Spoilers/Warnings: general spoilers for the whole series, warning for future smut, maybe implied violence against a minor?  not sure yet, so i should just throw that out there for you
Disclaimer: i don't own any VM characters or situations or anything, and I'm sorry, T. S. Eliot's estate, for a blatant rip-off in part 6.
A/N: unbeta'd!  any mistakes are all me.  i would also like to thank love_is_epic  for talking through a bit of this with me and reading the first part (and for the coding pep talk).   ETA: there is a weird formatting bit in part 5 i couldn't fix after trying what limited tricks i have, so let me know if you get confused there - sorry!
so now on to the prezzie part...


part 1

He joined the end of the food court checkout line, and, just like that, he made her morning. She kept all the girly feelings on the inside; she was sure no one could even tell that she knew he'd shown up. That brief glimpse she'd gotten of him while she advanced to second place in the checkout line had brought at the same time a balm to her spirit and an upswelling of joy to her heart. She planted her feet on the floor so they wouldn't move of their own volition. The smile she couldn't keep from turning up the corners of her lips she hid by looking at her shoes. Then it was her turn to check out and she had another distraction to cover her emotions. Her life had turned into a series of distractions, one after the next in an endless line like a winding coastal highway, meandering next to the ocean while making casual stops along the way, anything to avoid the destination.

Nothing had changed over the summer: not her dad's employment status, not her career plans, not her romantic situation. For once, everything was steady, and she was doing everything she could to keep it that way, including staying with Piz even though Logan's appearance in the food court was what would end up getting her through the day.

* * *

He had seen her blond hair the second he stepped through the doorway of the food court. He always scanned the room for her, every room he walked into, on the off chance that they would be in the same place at the same time, so those few and far between times they were almost breathing the same air felt like tiny triumphs. That bright hair was like a silk banner in a breeze, and he had to stop himself, as he always did, from crossing the room in a few quick strides to be next to her and draw his hand through that silk. He deliberately made his way to the end of the line she was standing in, the closest he would get to her today. Even if she knew he was there, she wouldn't turn around, wouldn't look at him or acknowledge his presence, not in front of everyone in the middle of the food court. Not once since he'd fought for her honor at the end of last year had she initiated contact with him.

He supposed she was punishing him for overstepping his bounds, but he'd really thought that once she'd had all summer away from Neptune to cool down, she would come back to school and they would go back to their normal repartee. Classes had started two weeks ago and she had yet to speak a word to him. He had caught her eye on the first day back, walking across the quad in between classes, and for the brief time their eyes had met, he could have sworn she forgave him for everything. Then he saw a change of expression appear on her face, like shutters closing across a window, and since then there had been nothing. He hated that. Her fury and disdain were infinitely more appealing than this absence of everything he identified with who she was. He had made a deal with himself to try and wait her out, but he wasn't sure he could keep it. If he didn't get to look in her eyes soon and see for himself that she was either done with him forever, or not, he would be breaking that deal.

part 2

"Hey, how was class?" Veronica was startled back to reality as Piz joined her at the food court table where she'd been sitting.

"Class was good. How was your show?" Piz was still doing a talk show for the campus station, but they had at least scheduled the show for later in the day this year. It was a perk of being a sophomore, apparently.

"Well, this one guy called in to talk about the tuition hike, and..." Piz's voice trailed off in her head as her thoughts returned inward. She tried to make sure she nodded and responded to Piz appropriately while he told his story, but she was thinking about the T-shirt Logan had been wearing that morning, her favorite of his, the green one she wore to sleep in sometimes.

"...so this tool just can't stop going on and on about..." Piz was on a roll, she noticed when she checked back into the conversation. Something must have really gotten him wound up; he normally caught her daydreaming long before this. Sometimes she was glad he was a little blind to her flaws. He really did think she was wonderful, she mused incredulously, even though she had trouble paying attention to him occasionally and she had been less than demonstrative toward him physically since she got back from her internship. Why hadn't he tried to take things to the next level with her yet? She looked at his animated face while he talked, even while tuning out his words. He was cute, she admitted, in a clean-cut-meets-slightly-quirky way. He did have a nice body, what she remembered seeing of it, at least. It just wasn't...

"Veronica?"

"Hmmm? Sorry, there's this paper for Profiling that the professor just announced today, and I'm already stressing about it," she lied easily, then vowed to herself to concentrate wholly on Piz for the rest of their meal together. It was a task easier intended than accomplished, she found, and she continued to have trouble focusing on Piz. She kept thinking about Logan, and the glance of him she'd caught earlier. Even as she was not willing to let herself admit that she thrived on those seconds of proof that he was there and he was doing all right, she needed that confirmation like she needed to breathe. If she knew Logan was continuing on in a normal, non-destructive fashion, then she could, too. She really had no reason to upset the status quo.

* * *

He watched her sitting across from him, trying to pay attention, and he just kept talking, words upon words leaving his mouth. He didn't even know what he was saying any more; she certainly didn't. Things had been different since she'd gotten back from her internship. She went through the motions, but it was like her smiles didn't quite reach her eyes like they used to, or she didn't smile slyly down at her lap like she once did when he reached out for her hand while they studied side by side. She seemed to merely tolerate him. That was almost worse than her just breaking up with him and getting it over with. He wasn't anywhere near ready to give up on the chance that he was sure they had to make things really special between them again, though, so he could wait it out if she was having doubts. He would just be here for her if she needed him, and try to keep things normal for both of their sakes.

* * *

This was torture. Watching the two of them sit across from each other and talk like a normal happy little couple was almost more than he could stand. He got up to throw out his trash and return his tray so he could walk away from the spectacle. He had just put his tray on top of the stack when his phone beeped to remind him of his date that afternoon. At least Heather would only bust his balls about Super Mario Kart. Dick was, as expected, bitching at him to get over it, and thankfully, he wasn't really talking regularly with anyone else who knew all that much about his and Veronica's history. He saw Mac in passing occasionally, and she gave him these glances that he interpreted as "sorry, but Veronica got me in the divorce, and since you and Parker broke up, there's no reason for me to talk to you that won't make me feel like a traitor." A lot for one short moment of eye contact, but he was sure that's what she would say if she'd actually try to speak to him.

Speak of the devil, there was Mac now, on her way in to the food court as he left. Probably headed right to Veronica. He nodded at her, and she smiled and walked past. At the last possible second that he would still be able to see the three of them before he left the food court, he turned back to look. Veronica smiled as Mac approached, and he couldn't stop the thought: that should be me with them, not Piz. Then he continued on down the hallway and outside onto the quad, feeling at odds with the bright mid-morning sun.

part 3

Mac approached their table, and Veronica let out a sigh of relief that Piz would have a whole other person to concentrate on so it wouldn't be quite so obvious if her mind started to wander. Mac draped the strap of her bag over the back of a chair at the table.

"I'm starved; I'll be right back. Anybody need anything?" she offered. Veronica smiled and shook her head 'no' even as she thought, a memory transplant; can you get me one of those from food services? Maybe if she could just forget about Logan all together, she could be happy with Piz, blissfully ignorant to what she was missing. But she remembered; her mind wandered yet again as she remembered every touch, every kiss, from that first tentative chaste peck on the balcony of the Camelot that turned quickly into a fiery, consuming, in-spite-of-themselves embrace that was at once both escape and refuge, to what was to be their last kiss, even though she didn't know it at the time, that hasty goodbye before impulsively going lingerie shopping the day Madison Sinclair had rubbed it in her face that she'd been with Logan in Aspen while they were broken up. If she had known in advance that was to have been the last one, in spite of the whole Madison angle, she would have managed to make it mean more, would have somehow communicated to Logan how he had become the touchstone of her life up to that point. First it had been Lilly she'd relied on as a companion and sounding board, then Duncan had been her first real boyfriend, and through those years Logan had been there right alongside them, but after Lilly and Duncan had both left, only he had remained, her life raft on the ocean of so many of those stormy occurences during and after high school. And he had changed since it had been the four of them against the world, she had witnessed it for herself; hell, she hoped that, to some extent, she had encouraged some of the changes for the better. At least she had left him better off than she had found him. He was better off now, wasn't he? He didn't have to constantly work to prove himself to her or watch what he did for fear he would drive her away. He didn't have to deal with her moods or her secrecy or her jealousy. He could look at her with Piz and see that she was leading a nice, straightforward life, relatively danger-free, even, and hopefully just go on with his own life in the same manner.

* * *

He watched Logan leave the food court and saw Veronica relax perceptibly. She wasn't even watching him; how'd she know when he was gone? It was like she was preternaturally attuned to Logan's presence. He had surprised her when he'd approached her a few minutes ago; there was no way she felt him coming and going unless her eyes were directly on him. He attributed it to the long and storied history the two of them shared. In a few years, she would be the same with him.

* * *

Logan paced back and forth in front of the TV in his suite. Heather still hadn't logged on for their weekly online "date," and she was over half an hour late. She was never late; she was usually already online when he logged in. He tried not to worry, but this was so unlike her, and he had pretty much become accustomed to having the unlikely worst-case-scenario end up being the reality.

He kept checking the screen, willing her username to pop up. He tortured himself like that for another half hour before he broke down and admitted he was ready to try a much worse kind of torture. It wasn't like he had never done it before. He got his phone from the coffee table and started to compose a text.

part 4

Upon hearing the beep from her phone that meant she had a new text message, she looked away from the Profiling class notes she'd been reviewing in the quad and checked her phone. Four little words: "I NEED YOUR HELP." From Logan.

While she stared at the simple text, she considered that one of the lesser-mourned ill effects of the electronic age was the reality that while one could delete a text message from one's phone, one could not quite delete it from one's brain. If one was unlucky, it stayed, leaving a negative-color impression on the inside of one's eyelids, the hangover of a plea reverberating long after it had been obliterated from cyberspace.

I NEED YOUR HELP.

So she had a choice: reply or ignore, respond and potentially (she was afraid) change her life forever or continue on in this current boring manner. What will you choose, Veronica Mars? The phone display taunted her.

I NEED YOUR HELP.

She readied her finger to press "delete," hovered above it for several seconds, then quickly pressed "reply" and sent a text to Logan: "where are you?" all the while feeling like she was making a terrible mistake but continuing on anyway. It didn't take long for his reply to come through: "MY SUITE-CAN YOU COME OVER?"

In her mind, she ran through all of the excuses she could use to avoid this. I have class, I'm meeting Piz, I'm meeting Dad for dinner, working in the library, study group, God, anything. Nothing sounded convincing enough, not even in her head. So she decided to take the bait and see what he needed her help for, and returned the text with her own, "10 minutes," then packed up her books and walked across the quad to where she'd parked her car that morning.

* * *

He released the breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding when he got Veronica's text and knew she was on her way. Now all he had to do was get her to help him for just a few minutes and hopefully track Heather down right away, nothing would be wrong, and they could go back to the completely separate lives they were currently leading. Right this moment, he actually wanted that, because that would mean that Heather was okay, that he was freaking out for nothing.

At least she was coming here. She was going to be here right in front of him and he would get the chance to see for himself if he was out of her life for good or just for now. It was too bad he'd had to ask for her help to get her here. He supposed that was the only way it would've happened.

part 5

She was stalled outside the door to his suite. She couldn't make herself knock just yet; she felt like the second her knuckles rapped on his door, everything she'd tried so carefully to cultivate would fall apart. Seeing him out of the corner of her eye every now and then by chance was very different from coming to see him in his suite. If she let Logan seep back into the edges of her life, history told her that it wouldn't be long before he was front and center, that his face was the image that would be burned onto her retinas, blinders up to all else. She closed her eyes at the thought, telling herself that she was stronger than that, that she had a good thing going now and she was going to do what it took to keep the normalcy in place, and knocked on the door so she could get this over with and get back to her happy routine as quickly as possible.

Almost immediately, he opened the door. His brow was furrowed, and his hair looked like he'd run that hand through it a million times; some things never changed.

"What's wrong?" she asked, cutting to the chase immediately, both for the sake of getting to the leaving all that much sooner and to help him fix whatever had him so obviously dismayed.

"Hello to you, too," he sniped, another classic sign of him being upset.

"You needed my help, not the other way around." Wow, how quickly it was disintegrating. Maybe she should turn right around and leave now.

The hand plowed through the hair.

"Sorry...I did, I do. Come in," he moved out of the doorway to let her enter the suite. Nothing had changed there, either, she noted as she scanned the room. "Do you remember Heather, Dick's little sister-in-law for like a nanosecond?"

"The tween who was wearing my shirt and tried to reconcile us with a radio dedication? Vaguely."

"She's...missing. I think. I play Super Mario Kart online with her every single week, and she's never late, and today she still hasn't shown up, even though I keep checking, and I don't want to call her sister or either of her parents cause what if I'm blowing this whole thing way out of proportion?" He was really freaked out, she thought. It was sort of strange that he had this weekly game with a young girl, but also sort of sweet at the same time. Not to mention this was starting to bring back a few of her less pleasant memories of his tendency to overreact about people not being where he thought they should be.

"So what do you want me to do?" She was a little confused as to why he thought she could be the one to help him in this situation. She wasn't even convinced yet that there was a situation with which to help him.

"Can you call her house and pretend to be some kid from her class or something, just see if she's there so I can know for sure?"

"Yeah. I can do that." He handed her a slip of paper with a phone number on it, written in his handwriting.

"I already got the number from information." He looked at her anxiously and she lost no time in dialing the number on her phone. An adult female picked up after one ring. "Heather?!" That was not a good sign, she thought. It looked like Logan might be right to be worried.

"Um, no, this is Kaylynn? From Heather's class?" She hoped the 'question at the end of every sentence' inflection still said 'twelve-year-old' as much as it always had. Logan nodded slightly, approving of her tactics when she used them to get what he wanted. "I have a question about some homework? Can I talk to Heather?"

The woman sighed. "Heather's not home right now," she said, and Veronica picked up on the small catch that crept into her voice at the end of her sentence.

"Okay, I'll call back later? What time will she be home?"

"Oh...I don't know sweetie," the woman said, obviously trying not to alarm the person she thought was a twelve-year-old girl. "Will you, um, will you tell her to call home if you talk to her?"

"Okay, I can do that," Veronica said truthfully, softening her act. She ended the call and looked up into Logan's agonized face. "Well, she is definitely not at home, and I am pretty sure her mom thinks she should be." His face fell, crumpled, almost. Was she missing something about how close he was to Heather? "Look, she's probably fine, just went home with some friend and forgot to tell her parents; remember, I used to do that all the time with Lilly, and Dad would call looking for me? Which one of her friends do you think she's with? How well do you know her routine?" Even as she spoke, her spidey sense was tingling. Both Logan and the girl's mother were worried. Is this how he was when he used to worry about me? she wondered, this near-breakdown state and apparent inablility to concentrate on anything else?She doesn't have any friends at her new school. Her parents split up and her mom moved her a couple towns further away and she switched schools and the girls there are mean and wear bras." He looked so earnest talking about preteen underwear that she had to press her lips together to keep from smiling. "What?" he asked defensively. "You're the one who always wants to know everything."

"

"Nothing, it's just...nothing."

"Her parents got divorced and her sister and Dick dumped her here for a weekend to go live out their little elopement fantasy and taking care of her a little gave me something to do besides feel sorry for myself, and yeah, she was an annoying preteen girl at first, but then she wasn't, she was just a kid nobody wanted. So we hung out, and they're pumping her full of antidepressants, and she logs on every week..." He ran out of steam. "She probably just ran out away. Who would blame her?"

"Well, say she did," Veronica suggested gently. It would be better than several of the alternatives. "Where do you think she would go?"

"I don't know. I thought you be able to help figure that out."

"Logan, she's twelve years old. I can't exactly put an alert on her credit cards."

"Or a Lojack on her Range Rover."

She rolled her eyes at him, then shook her head and gathered up her bag to leave.

"You're right, okay? I don't know why I asked you for help."

"Really? You didn't think this help you needed would maybe make me feel a little nostalgic? Maybe you wanted to remind me of all the good times I had helping you out." The sarcasm oozed from her voice.

"You know, the past year or so, at least, I seem to remember you being the one who needed the help. Just not from me." He watched her face for a few seconds as his words sank in. "Yeah, think back. I actually haven't been the one needing the lawyer or the last minute rescue or that special investigative voodoo that you do so well. How many times did you get roofied last year?"

"Wow. None by you, for once, so I'm not surprised you don't remember."

"Veronica--" he started, sounding like he knew he had gone too far.

"No, don't. Let's talk about what you've been doing lately. You've moved on to beating the shit out of anyone you think has wronged me. Mercer, Gory Sorokin, Piz?"

"All right, so Piz didn't deserve it, but those other two assholes absolutely did. I'm not going to apologize for it."

"So it's okay to beat people up if they deserve it?"

"Is it okay to blackmail people if they deserve it, Veronica?" Ooh, he was so infuriatingly smug when he thought he was right. She adjusted her bag on shoulder and turned towards the door. She took a couple of steps and then stopped.

"Call me if there's anything I can actually do to help find Heather. Her parents and the police will probably be fine without me," she fired off over her shoulder and then left the suite. She had to get out of there, away from Logan and all the memories and accusations. He felt helpless, she got that, but there wasn't anything she could do. Why had she even come over? It was like they'd both regressed by a couple years, back to that time when they'd been more comfortable hating each other than dealing with the implications of any other type of relationship. And while some of that time had been enjoyable, now was really so much better. Wasn't it?

part 6

Logan couldn't stay contained in his suite any longer. After hours of nearly constant checking to see if Heather had logged in, and hours of constantly being disappointed when she still hadn't, he was ready to explode. It was so late that she should be asleep anyway; she would be if she were somewhere safe. A million scenarios were playing on a loop in his head, a million bad things that could have happened to a twelve-year-old girl, some of them he had seen happen to a sixteen-year-old girl and she had come through it all right...

The not knowing, the waiting, those were what was driving him crazy. He grabbed his keys and wallet, stalked out of the suite and down the hallway, taking the elevator down to the parking garage.

Once he was driving, his mind continued to wander, his body automatically going through the mechanics of driving, stopping at lights when he was supposed to, his thoughts racing instead.

At one stoplight, he looked down at the console to turn the stereo volume up, and when he looked up at the intersection again, his headlights illuminated Veronica's Saturn as it crossed his path from left to right. Not thinking it through, following the flash of her blond hair like a ship follows a lighthouse beacon, he turned right after her when the way was clear. When he realized intellectually that he was going to be following Veronica Mars, Licensed P. I., he considered just how much she would yell at him if she caught him, then he continued on behind her car anyway, keeping as much distance between them as he could while still keeping her in sight. He also thanked his lucky stars he'd switched to driving this nice nondescript black vehicle instead of the very obvious X-Terra.

So what if she yelled at him? It was better than ignoring him, better than more of that nothing since late spring. The interchange they'd had earlier was the most alive he'd felt in months, not to mention it had probably kept him from calling Heather's house himself and setting himself up for yet another round of unsubstantiated felony charges, this time involving kidnapping or indecent liberties with a minor or some other nonsense Van Lowe would come up with just because he could. Oh, or better yet, charges in multiple counties because Heather lived a few towns over. They would probably get around to looking at her internet history sooner rather than later, if she didn't show up soon...

He made himself pay closer attention to Veronica's car as they got closer to the PCH. He wondered exactly what she was doing driving around this late. She hadn't stopped anywhere; it looked like she was doing the same thing he was, just drving around aimlessly. He knew what his excuse was, what was hers?

Ahead of him by many yards still, she came to a particularly treacherous stretch of the PCH known as "Death By Water." He was surprised when Veronica sped up aand careened around the first tight, winding curves, advancing faster than he did, but navigating the road expertly, like she'd driven this stretch of road before, perhaps often. He would have expected the James Dean tour of the PCH from himself, but watching Veronica propel her car recklessly through the night was disconcerting. Maybe she'd seen him following her and she was trying to lose him.

He continued on for a couple of miles after he'd stopped seeing the red of her taillights, thinking about Heather, and Veronica, and feeling powerless to keep the both of them out of harm's way.

Suddenly, as he came out of a broad curve, Veronica's car appeared, parked on the shoulder, parking lights on. He wondered if he should stop; what if she was having car trouble? It wasn't like he had a paring knife he could loan her, but he did have Triple A. He decided to drive past and see what was going on, pretty sure his presence was about to be discovered, if it hadn't been already. He slowed down and looked out his passenger window as he passed her car, expecting to see a face full of righteous anger, but instead he saw a blond head bent over so her forehead rested on the steering wheel, slim shoulders shaking from her cries. She very obviously did not know she'd followed him.

He kept driving, and every tick of his odometer took him further away from her. As much as he wanted to turn around and open up her car door and gather her up in his arms as he had done on a couple of agonizingly memorable occasions, he didn't. He kept going, knowing that he wasn't who she would want to come to her rescue. If she would let anyone save her, it wouldn't be him.