Current mood:	tired
Entry tags:	fic: searching for life, logan, logan/ofc, logan/veronica, veronica, vm_fic

Searching For Life- Chapter Three (Logan/Veronica, Logan/OFC, Keith) R
Title: Searching For Life- Chapter Three (4/?)
Author: love_is_epic
Rating: R
Warnings: Some rough language.
Word Count: 6551 this chapter; 22,016 total.
Characters/Pairings: Logan/Veronica, Logan/OFC, Keith, various others.
Spoilers: Goes AU during 3x13 (Post-Game Mortem).
Disclaimer: I do not own any of Veronica Mars or its characters. I do not make any money from this.
Summary: Sometimes finding what you’ve been searching for is harder than not finding it at all. Letting it go is even harder. This is a LoVe story that spans years, three-quarters of a continent and maybe a little bloodshed. They wouldn’t be epic without it.
A/N: This is an ongoing Christmas present for the most awesome vanessagalore for vm_santa. I really hope she likes gifts that keep on giving : )


Links to previous chapters as well as another author’s note under the cut.



Prologue, Chapter One, Chapter Two


A/N: First off I want to thank my cheerleading team (you all know who you are). You all have been invaluable these past couple of weeks and really, this chapter is due to you. THANK YOU! And also, a big fat thank you to clevermonikerr and scarlett2u who are always ready and willing to lend a helping hand, or an ear ; ) Lastly, but most importantly, to my beta, acinogan. I don’t think any of you will ever know the amount of time and effort she puts into beta’ing my fics. They’re pretty rough when she gets them and she makes them readable. I absolutely could not do it without her!!! THANK YOU! Of course, she’s not a miracle worker – all mistakes are mine ; )

*******



It had been several weeks since his chance meeting with Veronica. Things hadn’t been any easier for him despite his constant inner mantra that he had to move on, something he’d thought he’d done years ago. But for every thought, every memory, every feeling he tried to put out of his head, there were ten more waiting to take its place.

And of course there was the guilt, not only regarding his wife, but Veronica, too. Logan couldn’t help but feel that it was Veronica he was betraying instead of the woman he’d sworn to honor and obey. It was an impossible situation, and regrettably, no one involved would come out unscathed.

Logan drove down El Cajon Boulevard as he did every Thursday morning on his way to work. It was completely out of his way, but when Veronica had gone missing, he’d constantly searched old haunts, hoping that she’d miraculously turn up. When he’d moved back to Neptune, he’d picked up the habit again, almost like a reflex. Thursdays were Camelot days.

When he looked up at the familiar balcony, once the place of memories he tried far too hard to suppress, he couldn’t believe his eyes. A girl - no, a woman - with long blond hair and a fitted, yellow cotton sundress stood perched against its memory-laden rails.

He whipped his car around, tires screeching with the sound of his U-turn, not caring about traffic on either side of the street and pulled into the parking lot. He took the stairs two at a time until he reached her, still unsure if she wasn’t merely a mirage of his boyish heart.

She must have heard him coming, because she turned to face him, shock clearly written on her face and nervousness evident in her voice when she spoke.

“Hi.”

“Hi,” he responded. Logan looked at her long and hard, unable to wrap his mind around her being at this place, the one that had started it all. Had she remembered or was it just dumb luck? She answered him, almost as if she had read his mind.

“It’s silly, I know - me standing here. You’re probably wondering what I’m doing.” Veronica looked down at her dress, smoothing out the non-existent wrinkles with the flats of her hands. She continued on, not waiting for his reply. “I was just driving around, trying to re-familiarize myself, and this place – I don’t know. I just had to stop, you know?”

He shook his head only slightly, his eyes still rooted to the vision that embodied both the present and the past. Logan was trying hard not to jump for joy inside over the fact that maybe Veronica’s memories were coming back to her. But for every good there was an even worse - for every homecoming dance there was a missing best friend, murdered in her vibrant youth, tainting every sweet romantic occasion was a reminder of virtue stolen. He wasn’t sure if he wanted her to make that trade off. Despite everything, though, she was still Veronica and he knew that ultimately she would stop at nothing until she did know.

She looked back up at him before she averted her eyes, flickering around to anything that wasn’t him.

“Do you know why? Is this- is this about us?” she asked, staring off to the right, her hand motioning around to the walls of the motel.

The trepidation in her voice told him that she was fearful of the answer, that maybe he’d misjudged this new Veronica even more than he used to misjudge the old. She seemed just as scared to remember the past as he was for her to. Not for the first time he wished he could crawl inside her mind and fill it with only the good memories, leaving no room for the tarnished ones.

Her inquisitive baby blues turned on him expectantly and he found himself barely able to come up with an answer. It was a loaded question - it wasn’t just about them, it started them.

Sure, maybe things had been headed that way; he’d been seeing her in a different light long before that anyway, but the second her lips had touched his, he knew there would never be any going back. Logan wished that he’d known then there wouldn’t be any moving forward. Of course even if that were the case, he would have been happy to be stuck in limbo in that moment – the one perfect moment when he realized that what he’d always wanted had been under his nose all along.

He struggled for a non-clichéd answer, going over every possible reply he could think of: first kiss- no, too simple; the day my life began – too much. Fortunately, or maybe not so fortunately, he was saved from answering as he watched the light turn on behind her eyes.

“You saved me. Right here- you saved me,” she told him, the first signs of confidence exuding from her.

Logan shifted all his weight on his back foot and ran a hand through his hair, looking down at the well-worn concrete. “Well, technically, no. He was a federal agent, so he wasn’t going to hurt you.”

“You didn’t know that,” she told him with conviction, a trust lacing her voice that he never expected to hear. If it weren’t for Sarah, a new start with Veronica would look more than just appealing- a bright future with no tainted encounters from the past.

“You remember.” It was as much a question at it was a statement.

“Some things.”

He found her staring at him with curiosity and maybe a little bit of something else. The urge to reach out and touch her was as irrepressible as it had been during that first meeting at the beach. But this time, he found his fingers stroking the ends of her hair before he could stop himself.

“Your hair is long,” he stated before pulling the traitorous hand back to his side. He itched to run it all the way through, letting the soft strands slide along his fingers, but he didn’t have that right anymore.

A small smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. “Yeah. It was short, but then I let it grow. I can’t make up my mind about which I like better. Do you- do you remember how I liked it?” she asked him innocently.

He caught her gaze, unwilling to let the moment pass them by without telling her at least something - without telling her how beautiful she was or how much he had missed her.

“I think you preferred it longer, but you’re beautiful no matter what,” he told her affectionately, their eyes locked on each other. “I never stopped missing you, Veronica.”

His confession seemed to unlock something in her. She momentarily stood frozen, a wide-eyed Bambi-esque stare replacing the innocent twinkle her eyes held only an instant ago. Her breath became heavier and she attempted to move past him, quickly darting for the stairs. But Logan was ready, had recognized the running-out pattern long before she ever had her decision made. She may have not been able to remember exactly who she was, but she was still Veronica Mars. There were some things that would never change and he found that to be the most comforting thing in the world.

Logan caught her by the wrist, the pads of his fingers pressed against her pulse point. He wasn’t holding her tightly but he could feel her heart beating erratically and realized that she was just as affected by him as he was by her.

He slid his hand up to her elbow and gently pulled her closer. “It was our first kiss. I stopped you from leaving and pulled you close – just. like. this.”

Their bodies were only a hairsbreadth away, both being pushed together by the memories of the past and the energy that one momentary thing had created between them. Veronica had always been in his heart and now she was in his arms; he realized that this was a turning point for them- or for at least him.

“It’s beginning to come back to me,” Veronica said breathily, her lips only inches from his, eyes glittering with recognition.

The whisper of her breath against his skin and the pounding in his chest, which had only gotten louder since he stepped on the balcony, were the only things Logan registered. It was a stimulation of the senses, a whitewash of noise, drowning out anything screaming at him to stop, to not take that next step.

The moment was too meaningful, their connection too strong; Logan found himself helpless to resist the temptation. He pulled her even tighter, wishing he could merge them, make them one so that he wouldn’t have to make the choice waiting in his future – the choice littered by his past and torn apart with the present.

She still smelled the same, the fragrance from her hair filling his nose. All he needed was to be able to taste her and he’d have the complete sensual experience. Oh, how he longed to devour those soft lips he’d dreamt about night after night.

Logan slid a hand up to her face and ran the pad of his thumb along her bottom lip, parting her mouth ever so slightly. To hell with everything else, this moment of insanity would be his, finally giving into temptation. He tipped his head down -

It was a sign. He wasn’t sure if he was incredibly relieved or terribly disappointed when his cell phone rang, effectively putting to rest any adulterous intentions on his part. Logan sighed in resignation looking at the caller ID. Sarah. He closed his eyes and let the guilt wash over him. When he opened them again, Veronica was gone.


*******


“Hey, Keith. The hospital just called. The Gallo kid died last night.”

Keith sighed heavily. “Thanks, Sacks. It’s a shame. We’ve got to do something about these bastards.” Sacks silently agreed before the Sheriff spoke again. “Get D.A. Carr on the phone and arrange to have Lenny Russo brought here to the station. Maybe if he’s facing murder charges he might be more willing to cooperate.”

“Sure thing, Sheriff.”

After Sacks left his office, Keith leaned over on his desk and put his head in his hands. He felt wholly responsible for David Gallo’s death. The kid, only nineteen, had been known for running with a big-time local drug dealer named Lenny Russo. He’d been calling the tip line for weeks, leaving messages about a man he swore murdered his brother. One of the deputies had followed up but David’s brother, Mannie, had died of an overdose. There was no foul play involved.

Things changed when David informed the Sheriff’s Department that he could identify one of the main drug kingpins they’d been tracking for years. Sacks had set up a time for him to come in and work with a sketch artist but he’d never made it. They’d found him later that day half-dead, shot in an alleyway notorious for drug activity from Lenny Russo’s crew. Keith wasn’t going to make another mistake; he’d immediately brought Russo in on drug charges, hoping he’d confess to the shooting, too.

A few hours later, Brady Carr, who was Balboa County’s most promising Assistant District Attorney, arrived at the station and the Sheriff left his office to welcome him. Ever since Brady had arrived in Neptune three years ago, Keith had taken a liking to him. The young D.A. was empathetic and idealistic, just as he had been when he’d first joined the justice system.

They’d become fast friends when Carr had taken an interest in Veronica’s case. And with her return, Brady seemed to be even more driven to find the truth. Of course, Keith was convinced that at least a small part of that was due to deeper feelings on the young man’s part. His concern went past professional involvement; he truly cared about her. Despite all the circumstances revolving around her disappearance and return, Keith couldn’t say it bothered him greatly; he could definitely do worse than Brady Carr as a son-in-law.

After going over the particulars of how they would handle the interrogation, the two men went into the room where the newest prison transfer was waiting.

“You say you didn’t do this, Lenny. Give me one good reason to believe you,” Keith started off, cutting right to the chase.

“I just didn’t, okay?”

Keith slammed his hand down on the metal table, instantly losing his patience. “You’re going down for this, Lenny. I will make sure of it. If you didn’t do it, then you know who did. Just picture them sitting around living the high life while you’re rotting away on death row.”

“Look,” Lenny started, somewhat taken aback at the normally calm sheriff’s demeanor. “I don’t know for sure who did it but I might have an idea. I’ll tell you if you let me walk.”

“Walk? We arrested you with enough heroin to supply an entire city block, not to mention you’re the main suspect in a murder. You’re not going anywhere for a really long time,” Carr interjected.

Lenny leaned over, carrying on a short conversation with his court-appointed attorney. When he finished, he looked resolutely at Keith. “What if I told you it was the same person that had something to do with your daughter’s disappearance?”

Keith lunged across the table and grabbed the prisoner’s shirt, jerking him up out of the chair. “If you know something about Veronica you better tell me, or so help me God-“

“Keith! Keith!” Brady yelled, trying to get his attention. “Let him go. He’s just trying to push your buttons. There is no way he knows what happened to Veronica.”

“Oh but I do,” Lenny retorted. “I know who drove her car up to L.A. and set it on fire.”

Keith reached across the table again but this time Brady was faster and restrained the angry father.

“All right, Mr. Russo. You’ve got our attention. Please tell us what you know about Miss Mars,” the D.A. told him.

“I want a deal. I won’t talk without one.”

“Okay. Six months for the drug charge, credit for time served. Take it or leave it.”

Lenny thought for a moment and again leaned over to converse with his lawyer.

“My client will take the deal, and, in addition, his criminal actions during the incident in question will not be held against him.”

Keith looked at Brady and the two men came to a silent agreement. “Deal. Now just tell me what happened to my daughter.”

“I don’t know his real name but they call him the Clean-Up man. I’m not even sure of who he works for but whoever he is, he’s big time - must supply the whole west coast with drugs.”

“How do you know that?”

“Cause he’s got his hand in everybody’s pie. So anyway, I get this call one day, from Mannie – told me he was on his way to score some big time heroin, the good shit, too, he said.”

“Mannie Gallo, David’s brother,” D.A. Carr clarified.

“Yeah, right. So anyways, he tells me that he’s in this silver Saturn he’d hotwired at Seacoast Overlook and was following some dude to L.A. He said that all he had to do to get the drugs was to torch the car in some vacant lot. Mannie said the dude promised our competition would go away, too, if he kept his mouth shut about it.”

“Just like that,” the Sheriff stated, incredulous.

“I guess – whatever. Like I told you, he’s big.”

“Did he see Veronica?” Keith asked.

“Nope - just her car, which at the time, neither of us knew was hers. So later that day, when I supposed to meet Mannie to get the goods, I find him overdosed on the stuff.”

“Why didn’t you share any of this with the police?” asked Brady.

“Like I’m gonna make it easier for you to lock me up. No way.”

The wheels in Keith’s mind were already turning, desperately trying to make some kind of connection. “Darren Gallo was barely ten at the time his brother died. Why would he think that Mannie’s death wasn’t an accident?”

“Shit if I know. Mannie had always made me swear by his mother that I would watch out for the kid if anything ever happened to him. These past couple of months or so, I haven’t seen so much of David, though. He got himself a good job over at Stolz Industries. Mannie always knew he’d make something out of his life one day.”

“Have you ever had any contact with this Clean-Up guy as you call him?” Carr asked.

“No. But Mannie was right- our competition did go away.”

Keith studied him closely before asking, “How far does your turf go, Lenny?”

Lenny thought for a moment, clearly reluctant to answer, but due to the Sheriff’s warning glare, decided to comply. “From Vega down to the Hearst Campus.”

Keith nodded, lost in thought. “You got your deal, Lenny, but if I find out you had anything at all to do with David’s death, I promise, I’ll come after you.”

“Look. I cared about that kid. I really did- I hope you catch who did this, cause me and my crew didn’t have nothing to do with it.”

With that, Keith exchanged an understanding glance with Carr and walked out of the interrogation room.

“Sacks!” he called. “Get me the cold case file for Emmanuel Gallo.”

“Yes, sir.”

The Sheriff returned to his office with the file, opened it up and began searching through the various pages. When Mannie’s death had occurred, Keith wasn’t the Sheriff yet and by the time he replaced the deceased Don Lamb, there was no reason to suspect his death was anything other than an accident. But there, staring up at him from the toxicology report, was a very familiar sight. The drug cocktail that Mannie overdosed on was exactly the same as the prostitute who’d claimed to witness Veronica’s kidnapping up in L.A. He didn’t even have to look at the other file - he knew it by heart.

It wasn’t a smoking gun by any means but it was definitely a start. He had a murderer to catch and hopefully with it would come the answers he’d been searching over ten years for.



*******



“Hello?”

Logan paused, still groggy from sleep, waiting for the person on the other end of the phone line to say something. He got up from his warm bed and moved out of the room, not wanting to wake his sleeping wife.

“Hello? Who is this and why are you calling me so late?” he asked, irritation tingeing his voice. “You better say something or-“

“It’s me,” the female voice finally responded. Her voice was soft yet thick, like she’d been woken from sleep as he had. “Hey. I’m sorry.”

“Veronica? Is there something wrong?” he asked, concerned.

It had been almost two months since the incident at the Camelot – since he almost cheated on his wife. Logan hadn’t seen or heard from her in that time, and he was just a little bit grateful. He thought he would have had better resolve, after all it’d been more than ten years. But he’d obviously misjudged their connection, simply chosen to ignore the fact that epic never went away.

“No. Not really,” she paused slightly. “I’m sorry woke you up. I’ll go.”

“Veronica. Don’t hang up, please,” he searched for something to say to keep her on the phone. “It’s good to hear your voice.”

She sighed with what sounded a lot like relief but didn’t respond back.

“Are you okay?”

Now, that was a loaded question if Veronica had ever heard one. She was not okay, not by a long shot. She had awoken in the middle of the night with a horrible dream, one she didn’t have as often, but the one that always shook her more than any others. As with everything else in her life these days, it was hard to tell the difference between dreams and reality. Usually she was able to gloss over the fear and store the images for later but this time, it was different. New sights and sounds had emerged and it shook her to her very core.

She had been scared and somewhat confused. She reached for the phone and dialed his number before she even realized what she was doing. It was like a reflex, and she wondered how many times she’d done the same thing. Veronica was grateful that she had programmed it into her phone when she’d run across the number a couple of days ago, long forgotten, on the cork board by the landline.

“I’m not sure,” Veronica told him honestly. “I had some… visions. I don’t know whether they’re real memories or not. They seem like it, but really, it all seems to be lost in translation.”

“Have you talked to your Dad?”

She laughed half-heartedly. “Somehow I doubt they’d be things he would want to hear. And to be honest – I kind of get the feeling that he wouldn’t know anyway.”

“And I would?” he asked gently.

“Maybe.” He could hear the hesitation in her voice before she continued. “I’m not entirely sure, but I get the feeling that if anyone would know, it would be you.”

Logan’s throat developed a large lump. This Veronica was his Veronica, and yet she was still so different. Her current openness was something he would have given anything for so long ago. Now that she’d shown it, though, he realized its price had been far too high.

“Logan?”

“Meet me somewhere.”

“Now?” she asked

“Yes, now.”

“I don’t think that’s…”

“Please, Veronica,” he begged.

“Okay. Sure. Where?”

“Blacks Beach,” he replied. Do you know where that is?

“Yes, I think so. Give me few minutes and I’ll be on my way.”

“Be careful,” he told her as he hung up the phone.

Logan found his tennis shoes quickly and put them on.

“Where are you going?”

Sarah’s voice startled him. He wanted to lie, to tell her a client needed him, that he needed a late night run – something other than he was going to meet Veronica, alone. He thought better of it, though. Sarah had been nothing but wonderful since they’d found out Veronica was alive. She deserved the truth.

“I’m going to meet Veronica,” he told her, looking her in the eyes. “She called a couple of minutes ago and she’s remembered some things.” At Sarah’s incredulous slant he continued. “Look. I know this is a lot to drop on you and you’ve been more than understanding. I really don’t have the right to ask anything else of you, let alone ask you to be okay with me leaving in the middle of the night to meet my ex-girlfriend.”

Logan exhaled, resigned to the fact that Sarah deserved to know everything, no matter how painful. “But I am asking you. I need to be there for her. I’m the only one who can give her the answers she needs, the only one who can fill in a lot of the gaps. And more than that- she needs me. She was there when I needed answers, when I needed the whole truth and I want to do the same for her.”

He watched as Sarah absorbed everything, expecting her to lose her temper at any second. She surprised him, though, just like she always did. Logan wondered how she could continually amaze him without him expecting it. He dropped his head, abashed. Disappointment in relationships had always been his default setting, but the beautiful, patient woman before him had slowly showed him that it didn’t have to be that way.

Sarah reached over and placed her hands on either side of his face, pulling it up, forcing him to look her in the eyes. “Logan,” she admonished gently, “You’re a good man. You do what you feel you need to do and I’ll be waiting when you get back. I love you and I trust you.”

Logan felt his heart swell, so very thankful for his wonderful wife. He was immediately deeply ashamed for the events of the Camelot, for even thinking about Veronica as more than a friend, for wishing that things could have been different. Sarah was the best thing that ever happened to him and he didn’t want to forget that – he wouldn’t forget that again.

All the emotional turmoil from Veronica’s return had left him dangling in some kind of uneven balance, but he knew Sarah would be the one, had always been the one, to ground him. She was his center, his north star, the person that helped him make sense of the constant upheaval that was his life.

Twenty minutes later, Logan found himself at the beach anxiously waiting for Veronica to arrive. A million thoughts were running through his head – what things had she remembered, why had she remembered them, were they about him, about them? Did she remember how cruel he had been to her once upon a time? Did she remember how much he had loved her?

It was as if a great shift had occurred, his mind suddenly on all things Veronica, his heart aching to see her again. Just the thought of being near her erased all the promises he’d made himself, he’d made about his future. It was as if he were two different men, his heart belonging to two different women. He was sure the tug of war would eventually tear him apart; it was already beginning to.

He was lost in thought when she approached.

“Hi,” she said, startling him slightly.

Logan tried to contain his happiness at the sight of her, still in pajamas, one pigtail sticking out farther to the left than the other. Her white tank top fit snugly against her body, riding up slightly, the waistband of her Smurfette sleep pants visible. It was obvious that she, too, had been in bed before her late-night dialing.

“Hi,” he replied, the grin covering his whole face despite his best efforts.

Veronica returned his smile with equal fervor, before looking down at the sand, kicking it with her feet. Despite their initial giddiness, he could tell she was nervous. Logan couldn’t say that he blamed her; he was feeling it, too.

Her head tilted towards him, and, for the first time since her valiant return, he saw something different in her eyes -a new realization of him, like for the first time, she saw him exactly for who he was. It was if what she remembered of her past was finally catching up with what she knew to be in her heart, their history merging with the lasting feelings between them. Of everyone in his life, Veronica knew him best, despite the fact that she’d been missing from it for the last ten years.

The silence stretched out between them, but it was not uncomfortable. Their surroundings provided suitable noise; the waves splashing against one another, the water ultimately slapping the rocks. It was if they both unconsciously ached for the solace this night could provide, the comfort only found in each other.

“So you wanted to ask me some things?” He broke the tranquility of the moment, thinking it was best get it all out in the open. It was one of the things that years of therapy and helping others had taught him.

“Yeah. I did.” Her head again dropped to study the sand. “I had this dream. It was… it was bad. I just really needed to know if it was true. I’ve had it before, but I couldn’t ask anyone about it then.” Veronica paused to clear her throat. “Anyway, I need to know if it’s real or if I’m going crazy.” She laughed a little hesitantly. “I’m not sure which I would prefer right about now.”

Logan nodded his head, urging her to continue.

“So, I’m locked in this little space – it’s white, I think,” she hesitated before swallowing thickly, trying hard to be brave. “I’m scratching at the roof of wherever it is I am but can’t get out. Then there is smoke everywhere, and… I’m scared - terrified actually, but in my mind, I keep thinking about you, wondering if I’ll see you again. Does any of that sound familiar?” Veronica asked timidly.

His feelings were conflicted as they’d been so often lately. The pain from her remembering the past went both ways as he was forced to relive those same horrible events along with her. He’d longed to forget the night his father attempted to eliminate Veronica like he’d done with Lilly, but he kept reminding himself she needed the truth. If he didn’t tell her, he knew she wouldn’t rest until she found it. And really, they both could probably use a little peace.

“When you found Lilly’s killer - my Dad - he was Lilly’s killer. When you found out, he locked you in a freezer and set it on fire. Your Dad saved you. He kept my father – Aaron - from hurting you,” he told her, anguished.

As if she could sense Logan’s self-deprecation starting before her very eyes, she leaned over and placed a comforting hand on his cheek.

“Hey. It’s not your fault and whoever Aaron was, you’re not him. You said he was your father, but I know that you couldn’t do anything like that… you couldn’t be anything like him,” she told him with conviction.

Logan managed a small smile, touched by her faith in him even when she wasn’t sure of her own proof. Veronica dropped her hand and looked him in the eyes.

“There is something else,” she told him softly.

“What is it?”

“I have this other dream sometimes - I actually had it tonight. I’m at this party, drinking, I think, and then just… I can’t remember. But I wake up missing my underwear.”

Logan’s worst fears had been confirmed. He had to tell Veronica the truth about that night at Shelley’s party. Of all the things she could remember, he had hoped that would have been the last. Really, it would have been better if she hadn’t remembered it at all.

“I can’t- I don’t think I can tell you what you want to know,” he told her gently.

“Why? In my dream you are there. Why can’t you tell me?” she asked, the desperation for the truth starting to come out.

“Because, Veronica. You don’t want to know, not really. Believe me when I tell you that you’re better off not knowing,” Logan told her, raising his voice slightly.

“Please, Logan,” she pleaded, “You have to tell me. I have to know if these things bouncing around inside my head are real, if they’re my memories, or if I caught them off some bad teenage movie. Why won’t you just tell me?”

“I’m afraid you’ll hate me,” he whispered, his face scrunched in pain.

“Why would I hate you?”

“I did some things. I wasn’t – I wasn’t a very nice person to you after Lilly died, and I was responsible for some very bad things that happened. If I tell you now then you’ll never talk to me again – hell, you’ll never be able to look at me again,” he told her, anguished.

“That’s impossible,” she assured the noticeably hurting man before her. She reached forward and took his hand, placing it directly over her heart. “I obviously forgave you a long time ago, or you still wouldn’t be here.”

Right then, the only thing that mattered was the pounding of Veronica’s chest against his palm. He realized the enormity of what she was trying to tell him. Her heart was in his hands.

“I trust you.”

It took him a moment to register her words, for the syllables to make it through to his brain, to overcome the multitude of emotions still coursing through him. Even then, he was unsure of what he heard.

“What did you say?” he asked confusedly.

“I said - I trust you.”

Logan almost wept. On top of everything else, it was too much to realize those words from Veronica’s lips meant ten times more than the same ones from his wife’s only hours earlier. If he didn’t know it before, he found the sudden clarity right then. He would never be able to love anyone the way he loved Veronica Mars. She was buried deep in his soul, burrowed under his skin and spread out across his very being. He concluded that even though she was different, she would never cease to be his Veronica.

He swallowed hard, and tried to concentrate on the feel of her small hand holding his much larger one in place, the feel of soft cotton against his fingertips. His nervousness bubbled up from inside as the tension built, spreading across his skin like wildfire. He swallowed thickly and prepared for the worst.

“There was a boy named Cassidy. He was Dick’s brother, a friend of mine. He was… messed up.” Logan looked away, steeling himself to get through the rest of the horrible story. “You had gone to a party and your drink got dosed with GHB by accident. You ended up passed out in one of the rooms.” He stopped and took a breath, deciding exactly how much to tell her. He would skip some details now, but later when the worse was over, he’d tell her the rest. “Cassidy- we called him Beaver - he… he raped you,” he told her in a pained whisper.

The words had been harder to get out than he’d ever imagined and he wondered how Veronica had lived with the reality of the innocence that had been ripped from her. He risked a glance in her direction only to find her looking out at the water. Her fingers tightly curled around his hand, still resting over her heart. What began as her means to comfort him, her desire to give him strength as he shared the truth, was now providing her own.

“Later, we found out that he had been molested by his little league coach, Woody Goodman, who was, at the time, the town supervisor. Cassidy blew up a bus with some of our classmates on it to keep that secret, but you put it all together and found out what he’d done. You always figured it out,” he told her, a slight wistfulness in his tone. He blew up the plane that Woody was on too, before committing suicide.”

It all sounded so cold, so calculated, in his head. He had to wonder about all those people that lived by those words – ‘the truth shall set you free.’ Logan certainly didn’t feel very free and he’d just arranged for one of the two people he cared most about in the world to be bound in an eternal prison of her very own.

It startled him a bit when Veronica dropped his hand, and the overwhelming loss he felt was immediate. She stepped back a couple of steps and Logan could sense the change in her despite the distance she’d put between them.

“The car alarm.” Veronica whispered, horrified. At Logan’s confused look she continued. “At night I wake up - my sheets soaked with sweat and my eyes filled with tears and I never know why. The only thing I can ever remember is a car alarm. It keeps going off, the constant blare haunting me until I can finally fall back asleep. But now I remember. We were on the roof of the Neptune Grand.” She paused for a moment before continuing, clearly distressed. “That feeling when I realized he raped me – I was so…” she trailed off, lost in thought.

“And then he blew up that plane that Woody was on and I thought my dad was on it too.” Large tears began to spill over onto her cheeks but she made no effort to wipe them off. She continued on. The breakthrough obviously important and he wasn’t going to stop her. “And you- Cassidy was going to shoot me but you put yourself in the way instead.” Veronica’s eyes swirled with emotion, searching his, before lowering her chin to her chest and saying softly “You were always there, whenever I needed you, you were always there.”

Drawing on inner strength she kept going, her voice more sure. “I remember wanting to shoot him – I wanted him dead so bad. He’d raped me and I’d thought he killed my father but you kept me from pulling the trigger. You kept me from becoming like he was.” Veronica raised her head to look at him, her face twisted in agony. “But then Cassidy walked backwards off the roof and I remember being so glad. I was glad he was dead. I was so, so glad he was dead,” she repeated, her breath ragged, the tears flowing rapidly.

Logan found his heart shredding with each memory she relayed in her own words. He wanted to say something- anything, but he could only shake his head in agreement. He watched, pained, as the faint moonlight reflected off the wetness on her cheeks, the anguish on his face surely matching hers. He couldn’t wait any longer to touch her, though. Stepping forward, he reached out only to have her turn and run off into the darkness, obviously not caring if it was water or sand her feet fell upon.

He ran after her, determined to make her see that she wasn’t alone, that she’d be with him this time, just like she was the last. His long strides allowed him to catch up with her, but they were still not quite quick enough. He was still a few feet away when she tripped and fell into ankle deep water, head falling into her hands.

Logan rushed over, dropping ungracefully into the frothy water beside her, and slid a shaky arm around Veronica’s small hunched frame. He wanted nothing more than to comfort her, but the truth was he was shaken, too. His world felt so unsure, as if the earth’s axis had tilted and everything was sliding around, looking for solid ground.

Loud consuming sobs began to come from the tiny blond kneeling alongside him, causing her whole body to shake, and he found himself watching helplessly as she started to dry heave, the overwhelming grief manifesting itself physically. Logan did the only thing he knew to do - the very same thing he’d done that night on the roof, a mirror of her own actions from a night at the Sunset Regent. He rubbed soothing circles along her back and whispered to her soothingly, assuring her that he was there, that he would always be there.

It was so painful to witness the girl that had always been so strong fall apart before his very eyes. He patiently waited for it to subside and then he pulled her into a powerful embrace, determined that no one, not even him, would ever hurt her again.


To be continued…

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