Chapter Text
In the desert
I saw a creature, naked, bestial
Who, squatting upon the ground,
Held his heart in his hands
And ate of it.
I said, “Is it good, friend?”
“It is bitter—bitter,” he answered;
“But I like it
Because it is bitter
And because it is my heart.”
-Stephen Crane
Neptune will call this the Year of Death. To Veronica Mars, only Lily Kane’s death is deserving of capital letters.
She doesn’t dream of Lily anymore.
“Maybe that means you’re moving on,” Wallace says, patting her arm. “That’s normal, V.”
But Veronica can’t celebrate her new-found freedom from those bloody visions. Lily Kane held Veronica’s heart—her old heart, whole and unscarred, beating steady and gentle—and was more careful with it than she’d ever been when she was alive. Veronica’s new heart belongs to Logan Echolls, but it’s a hard and bitter muscle, cracked and prone to spiking.
Veronica imagines photographs of her heart, the before-and-after, captioned with the names of those she loved and let love her. Who am I, Meg Manning? she thinks in disgust. She’s not one for flights of fancy, no matter how many ghosts follow her around. Even Veronica 1.0 was tough and no-nonsense, despite her long hair and pastel pink dresses. She could blush on command. Now, Veronica can admit that her younger self exaggerated her delicacy. Few people could keep up their guard when faced with her shy smile, and even though Lily said, “Embrace your dark side, every once in awhile,” she relied on Veronica’s innocent appearance to get them out of scrapes.
Keith Mars was amused when he learned his daughter hustled his deputies at poker, and conned their cantankerous neighbor into buying ten boxes of Girl Scout cookies. He didn’t scold her. He was proud of her steel spine—he said she came by it honestly—but he reminded her to be careful, because she wouldn’t always be able to smile her way out of trouble. As Lily would discover, a teenage girl is easily crushed. Still, they never truly believed it could happen to them.
Veronica is shaken out of her reverie when Mac plops down on the garish beach blanket; it’s a color Veronica calls “jackass yellow,” Logan’s favorite. Mac pulls up the hood of her sleeveless black zip-up, and Veronica feels a pang of grief, ruthlessly suppressed. Mac’s hair is a uniform drab brown. There are no purple streaks left.
Wallace looks at Mac askance, and she rolls her eyes, “What? I don’t want to be perceived.” Her sole public outing since graduation was Cassidy Casablancas’ funeral. Veronica stayed home, letting Wallace take her place at Mac’s side, trusting that he’d share the highlights with her. He told her that Dick gave the eulogy, despite Logan’s best efforts to dissuade him, because he was the only member of the family who bothered to come. Dick was predictably drunk, and his speech was predictably vulgar; he cursed his “ice bitch” mother, his “evil whore” of a step-mother, and his father, “a fucking pussy who couldn’t even get embezzlement right.” He went on to note that white-collar crime really shouldn’t be a big deal, since everybody does it, and the audience of rubberneckers laughed.
Logan elbowed Dick in the ribs when he pointed to Mac, whom he called “the Widow Beaver.” That halted any comments on the effect her unwillingness to put out may have had on the Beav’s suicidal tendencies.
When Dick railed against “kiddie-diddler Goodman,” Logan didn’t interrupt, despite Gia’s increasingly hysterical sobs. At the reception, the boys made it clear they don’t hold her father’s actions against her. Rolling her a joint, Logan explained, “I may be a jackass, but I’m no hypocrite,” even though he often is. He accepted her teary hug, turning his face away so she wouldn’t see him cringe, and Wallace smiled in reluctant amusement.
“I don’t blame you,” Veronica tells Mac, who is raking lines in the sand with her fingers like the beach is her own zen garden. She wants to comfort her friend, but the best she can offer is distraction, because she can’t talk about Cassidy. Mac is struggling to reconcile her memories of the boy she loved—and perhaps still does—with the memories of the boy he was, the rapist and the killer. She needs him to be more than his worst actions. To Logan and Veronica, Cassidy Casablancas was a villain. The sniveling, sneering face he showed on that roof was his truest face.
Then Wallace starts drawing lines, too. But the sand where he sits is dry, and the furrows fill up as soon as he makes them. I’ve got to put snickerdoodles on my to-do list, Veronica thinks. He’s been despondent since returning from New York, where he learned Jackie was—rightly—choosing her son over their relationship.
“Logan and I barely leave the house. The paparazzi won’t let up, because Perez Hilton keeps posting about Aaron.” Logan punched a wall and threatened to take a hit out on the bottom-feeder, but Veronica keeps that to herself. Her boyfriend’s temper makes Wallace and Mac uneasy.
The thing is, Logan’s temper is a perfect match for hers. If Perez Hilton showed up in Neptune, she wouldn’t hesitate to tear him apart, and the only reason she holds Logan back from smashing cameras—the only reason he lets her—is that she’s terrified he’ll end up back in jail.
Veronica worries that she’d lose herself if she lost him, although she knows loss is inevitable. Normal’s not my watchword. She tells herself that she is no longer hiding from brutal truths.
“Are you living in his beach house now?” Wallace asks, rubbing Backup’s belly.
Mac arches a brow. “The Sheriff’s okay with you two shacking up in that 2 million dollar den of iniquity?”
“Dad doesn’t get a vote,” she says through gritted teeth. “Not when he’s banned me from working at Mars Investigations. Not when he’s off chasing leads for that, that...“
“Gold-digging succubus?” Mac suggests.
Veronica nods, forcing thoughts of Kendall Casablancas from her mind. I’m not jealous. We were broken up. He was heartbroken that I was dating Duncan. I’m the one he really wants.
Wallace is holding his tongue with visible effort. The more they learn about Kendall’s shady past, the more unnerved he is by the fact that she was sleeping with their classmate; Mac, although untroubled by Kendall’s ventures into fraud, is disturbed by the fact that she seduced a teenager—and an emotionally unstable one, besides. But when it comes to sex, Veronica has never been able to see Logan as vulnerable, let alone as a victim. She can barely stand to think of herself that way.
“He hasn’t thrown a party since graduation,” Veronica continues, “and he hardly drinks.” Not when she’s around, anyway. She finds empty whiskey bottles in the trash; the housekeeper can’t dump them fast enough. Relationships are about compromise. And he’s grieving. He’ll stop when things settle down. She refuses to admit that she is starting to sound like her father.
Wallace is openly skeptical. “Logan Echolls, upstanding citizen?”
“Come over,” Veronica cajoles, hoping he can’t hear defensiveness in her voice. “He’s got those boring video games you like.”
Mac is already on her feet, brushing the sand from her baggy nylon shorts. Wallace is helpless against the combined force of her pleading eyes and Veronica’s head tilt; he mutters grumpily under his breath and trudges up the hill after them.
Logan’s new home is three times the size of the Mars’ apartment. It has a pool, a hot tub, a sauna, and the kitchen of her dreams, thanks to Logan’s affection for her baking. Between the formidable iron gates, the state-of-the-art, MacKenzie-approved security system, and her trusty pitbull, Veronica almost feels safe. The curtains on the cliff side are sheer, and when she asked why he chose them, Logan teased, “I thought you’d appreciate the sight of me bathed in the harsh light of truth.” She loves watching the moon gleam over the ocean through the window.
Veronica doesn’t sleep much anymore.
Her friends towel off at the door while Veronica unlocks the deadbolts; the text on Logan’s welcome mat—“Fuck Off and Die”—is obscured by the falling sand. Unzipping her outer layer, Mac reveals a shirt screenprinted with a picture of Carrie Fisher flipping the bird. Wallace and Veronica share a grin.
Mac has visited before, so she’s the one to set up the video games. She makes herself comfortable on the leather couch while Veronica heads to the kitchen, where Backup is already whining for treats.“No! You’re getting fat! Don’t try to trick me! I know Logan’s been sneaking you people food!”
Backup barks once before accepting defeat, sprawling on the couch besides Mac, while Wallace gawks at their luxurious surroundings. He raises his eyebrows when he spots the painting on the wall. It’s an incongruously delicate garden scene, one of the few surviving pieces from Lynn Echolls’ art collection. He smiles despite himself at the framed photos Veronica brought over. There’s Veronica, giggling madly as Logan tickles her side, while the ocean ripples behind them. And there’s Logan and his mother on the red carpet at the Daytime Emmys; he’s chubby-cheeked, and she’s free of fillers. Veronica found it on the Official Lynn Echolls Fan Club webpage. She’s done what she can to make the place a home for him, with middling success.
Veronica forgot that Wallace has yet to enjoy the perks of the 09er life. She practically grew up at the Kane mansion, and she lounged in the Neptune Grand penthouse all last year. Veronica has perused oil paintings by old masters with a red Solo cup in her hand, teenage debauchery raging behind her. She’s had a five star chef’s filet mignon delivered to her bed. There’s a Turkish robe in the bathroom, size extra small, and she cuddles with her boyfriend on high thread count cotton percale. She’s watched the sunset from the deck of the Enbom yacht; Lily held a bottle of Le Mesnil-sur-Oger to her lips, laughing that gleeful rebel’s laugh, while Logan cheered them on. She’s lolled in the backseat of a dozen limousines like a happy pitbull. Wallace didn’t date Jackie long enough to lounge around Terrance Cook’s palatial bachelor pad.
She’s setting out a platter of chocolate chip cookies when she hears the beep of the alarm disengaging. Mac and Wallace are focused on the TV screen, and she’s grateful they’re too busy trash-talking to notice her giddy hop toward the door. They turn in time to see Logan pull her close to kiss her.
“Aww, Bobcat, are you throwing a party?”
“Wow, Veronica,” Mac says dryly, “he really has become an upstanding citizen, if he’s calling this a party”
“Well, somethings upstanding, anyway,” he says with an exaggerated leer, laughing at Veronica’s glare.
He kisses her again, deeper, and Veronica determinedly ignores the taste of whiskey on his tongue. It’s not like he’s slurring his words. Still, she pinches him when he offers Wallace a beer and is relieved when her friend declines.
Logan grins through the pain, like always, and captures the offending fingers in his hand. He nips at them, warning her under his breath that he’ll be exacting revenge later, and she bites her lip, because it’s bound to be delicious. Then he is dragging Veronica over to the armchair so she can curl up in his lap. She doesn’t mind his extravagant displays of affection anymore. She is so tired, and his arms are the only place she can truly relax.
Logan knows it. He knows all her tells by now. Veronica started honing her poker face in middle school: the popular table was cutthroat, and Logan and the Kanes weren’t always there to protect her from the vicious machinations of preteen social climbers. Logan noticed her discomfort as much as any concerned friend—so, at first, he missed plenty.
Veronica refined her poker face after Lily’s death. She trained herself to concentrate on the teachers’ voice instead of the other classroom sounds: the malevolent whispers, the snide laughter, the dull thud of shoes kicking the metal legs of her desk. She kept her expression blank or slightly contemptuous, brutally silencing the questions she could not yet answer: “Who raped me? Is he (are they) in this room?” Logan watched obsessively for a flinch that never came, but he eventually learned to identify the tightness in her jaw as a sign she was grinding her molars. He has the keen eyes and ears of a predator.
Later, he learned her as a lover, desperate to please. So Logan knows that running a finger along her inner wrist brings up goosebumps, and, when he scratches her scalp, she stretches with feline grace. He holds her loosely during sex, gentle in a way he’s never let himself be with anyone else. But some days, her chest goes hollow after the pleasure fades, and he knows that she needs to be held tightly. He tightens his grip until the pressure is painful, whispering in her ear that he loves her more than anything in the world.
He never asks her what’s wrong. She’d never answer—and if she did, she’d demand a quid pro quo he can’t afford. It’s mutually assured destruction, when they’re both working so hard to repress their grief and their rage. They’ve decided to ignore the grief and rage they caused each other.
But we’re fine, she assures herself. After all, her friends aren’t watching her with pity and concern. They call her the unsinkable Veronica Mars. Her smile is as bright and shark-like as it ever was. She refuses to be pulled under by the rip tide of numbness, fatigue, and despair.
Logan is rubbing the knot in her shoulder, and she indulges in a whiff of his unique scent: ocean salt and boyish musk. She doesn’t join in the banter, deciding instead to rest her eyes. It takes too much effort to be persnickety. It takes too much effort to talk, most days, so they find themselves sitting in silence when they’re alone.
That’s alright. I’ve done this all before.