Chapter Text
"Nobody loves you like your mum...mummm..." chanted the (fake?) Aussies on the radio. The Outback Steakhouse and their cheesy Australian chorus seemed to be playing on every channel. Logan grimaced and reached for his flask. His blood alcohol was probably already higher than the state sales tax and maneuvering the curves of the PCH one handed was difficult. He had replaced the Xterra with a little yellow Boxter after the last crash, and it handled so smoothly it was practically an extension of his body. Unfortunately, his body was currently soaked in alcohol and not at its most agile. No other way to get through the Mother's Day ads, though. "Everything you are is because of mum...mummm..." Oh, joy.
Logan grabbed the silver bottle and screwed off the lid, managing to get back into his own lane just in time. He took a long pull of whisky as the oncoming traffic honked and flipped him off. He shook his head in disgust when the flask emptied out after just two mouthfuls. Seemed like he had just filled it. Damn. He threw the useless flask over the seat and into the back. It clanked against several old beer bottles and an empty fifth of JD. Two more empty whisky bottles were wedged under the seat. If Logan were really honest with himself, he would admit he wouldn't be any more sober when June rolled around. Or July. And he certainly hadn't been sober back in February. Or March. But this particular binge was his own personal celebration of Mother's Day. It had a certain beautiful irony to it, celebrating in mom's special way.
Another tight curve made the bottles in back sing like windchimes. "Gotta take that recycling out, " he mumbled to himself ruefully. The Outback Aussies were still chanting about mum with the bottles doing back-up vocals, and Logan felt a burn that had nothing to do with the fresh whiskey in his belly. "Life really sucks without your mummmm, " he sang sarcastically to the Aussies. Four years and it still fucking hurt. Hurt like hell, like a gaping, bleeding wound. Time didn't heal it, it just made other people less patient with his pain. The Aussies mercifully ended their tune, but the torture started afresh as the droning voice of Tom Shane told him to "take his mother to Tahiti" by buying her pearls. Logan could have just changed the station. In fact, he could have brought his iPod along and saved himself a lot of misery. But he liked to face misery head on and wallow in it as much as possible. Anything else was cheating. "Life is pain, Princess. Anyone who tells you differently is selling something," he quoted to himself.
As Tom's helpful monotone drilled into Logan's head, he hit overload. Maybe that had been his intent all along, to push himself until he had to break. Tears started to flow only to be dried immediately by the wind, leaving his cheeks tight and chafed and stinging with each fresh layer of salt. The road took a hair pin up ahead and he could see deep blue water off to the side and far below, a steep drop down the sharp rocky incline.
It wasn't even a conscious decision. The black hole inside him just opened up, annihilating all matter it touched and filling him with a peaceful sort of blankness. Logan's hands gripped the steering wheel tightly and his foot stomped the gas pedal to the floor as he shifted into fifth gear and aimed for the ocean. "Here I come, mum."
The sharp, grinding squeal of ripping metal thankfully drowned out Tom's steady plea for business as the car tumbled and skidded down the slope. For a moment Logan was surprised at the emptiness he felt. It would all be over soon. Release at last! And then he flashed on Veronica's face and an aching regret slipped in. Funny, that. He had thought this was about his mom, but his mind couldn't let go of Veronica. The look on her face the very last time she broke up with him, reallyfinallynohope dropped him a year ago. The look that said she loved him but couldn't watch him destroy himself. That his drinking had flared out of control whether he would admit it or not, and that she had played that game out with her mother and wouldn't go near it again, not even for him.
As the smashed metal hunk wedged itself into a jagged outcropping and the world dimmed, Logan swore he heard Lilly's voice. "Logan, you jackass. Do you know what I would give to still be alive?"
"Wow." Gina said. "Wasn't that an amazing lecture, V? Zimbardo is a master. Sometimes I feel so lucky to be here at Stanford. *Things* happen here, important research, important people." Gina and Veronica cut through the Quad towards their favorite hang out in the old Union building. "I never did buy all that crap about good and evil that they tried to brainwash me with back in the Bible Belt. It always seemed more complicated than that. I think the idea that society can support or break down the morality of a person makes so much more sense."
Veronica grunted her assent, thinking the lecture had actually hit a wee bit too close to home. She had seen first hand how an ordinary person could be driven to commit evil acts and really didn't feel like sharing the memories. Or discussing something so personal in objective clinical terms. Gina could ramble with the best of them, though, especially when excited by a new theory.
"I love how he breaks it all down. Like, it is just unimaginable to me that I would be able to kill anyone. You know what I mean, the everyday me that is walking through campus with you. But then when he went through the steps that break down inhibitions... an enemy, someone I saw as less than human, someone who had hurt me or my family. Especially my family. If it was me or him, and I had to protect the people I love... I don't know. Maybe I could do it..."
*You are not a killer, Veronica.* The voice came back clearly, a voice she heard often in her dreams, and Veronica shuddered. She hadn't been willing to go there with Aaron. Had been so angry at Logan for pulling the gun on the Fitzpatricks. But after Cassidy, after feeling all her reasons for living had been stripped from her... Philip Zimbardo had nailed it. If Logan hadn't been there to stop her, she might well have discovered how far an ordinary person could go. Not a topic she wanted to revisit, but at least after listening to Zimbardo today she realized that it didn't make her less human.
The thought of Professor Zimbardo made her smile. She hadn't been blessed with too many encounters with the famous Prof, but his lectures were always memorable. Veronica chuckled. "He's a nut, isn't he? All that energy packed into that little frame. He bounces around so much sometimes I wouldn't be surprised to see him do a backflip to emphasize a point."
Gina laughed in agreement, then shoulder bumped Veronica. "You should talk, Ms. Pint Size Energy."
Veronica showed her best Look of Outrage and punched Gina's shoulder. "I am not *pint* sized! I am *at least* a quart!" They laughed together as they entered the Union.
Gina motioned to the coffee cart and waved a few bills. "Want a latte? I owe you one, I'll brave the line." Veronica nodded. "Grab us some seats. It looks deserted over by the TV." Veronica's eyes followed Gina's gesture to the empty couches in the corner and she gave a thumbs up as she turned to stake out some prime lounging territory.
The soft grey sofas sat empty and inviting, though their last occupants had left the TV blaring. Veronica reached out a hand to still its annoying chatter and froze at the image on the screen. A crumpled yellow sports car was being pulled from a craggy down slope somewhere along the PCH. "Jackass yellow," whispered a voice in her head and she didn't need the Breaking News logo that proclaimed "Near Fatal Echolls Crash!" to tell her whose car it was. Her breath came in short gasps, trying to supply enough oxygen to fuel the frantically accelerated beating of her heart. Her vision went black around the edges and all she could see was that crumpled piece of metal being dragged up by a crane.
She may have said his name as she dropped to her knees, her hand reaching out to touch the image on the screen as if it would some how connect her to him. Her mind repeated his name - Loganloganloganlogan as her fingers brushed the impossibly distorted wreck of his most recent pride and joy. How could he have possibly survived that? "Live Footage!" screamed the TV. Then, "Late Yesterday!" a similar lift, this time a helicopter lifting a stretcher from the impossibly steep cliffs as flashing lights and spectators lined the highway. Tears streaked down Veronica's face as her fingers traced the image of the tiny stretcher that held Logan's battered body.
"God dammit, Logan, " she hissed out, the words burning like fire in her throat. "God damn it, couldn't you have proven me wrong for once?"
Gina came bounding up at that moment, stopping mid bounce at the odd tableau in front of her. "V, guess who I - V? Veronica?" Veronica seemed transfixed by the TV, so Gina set the lattes down and approached her friend.
Veronica didn't feel Gina's hand on her shoulder. She wasn't aware of breaking down in Gina's arms, and really had no idea how she ended up sobbing into coffee cart napkins on the couch with Gina rubbing comforting circles on her shoulder.
"Critical condition..." said the announcer, his words filtering into Veronica's shocked and numb mind. "Broken bones... internal injuries...concussion...head wound, possible brain damage... blood alcohol well over the legal limit..." The screen changed again, and suddenly Aaron Echolls was staring at her from one of his most famous publicity stills. Veronica shot up, knocking Gina away without realizing it. "I have to go. I have to -" Gina's hand on her arm brought her back to the moment, the location. The announcer had gone into the standard "Echolls tragedies" blurb. A picture of Lily would be flashing across the screen at any moment. A crime scene photo if they were feeling gruesome, or the Homecoming photo including Logan, smiling and happy, maybe even the whole Fab Foursome, if the station wanted to be sentimental.
Veronica gulped for air, suddenly feeling as if she would choke. Please God, she couldn't see her own name or face on that screen. She had to get away. She grabbed her books and apologized to Gina. "I have to -" she still couldn't finish that sentence. She had to do something, but she had no idea what.
Latte forgotten, study time, homework, her whole daily life forgotten, Veronica rushed back to her room to try to find out what hospital Logan was in.
The TV flashed the homecoming picture just as Veronica turned her back, then a more recent tabloid picture of Logan stumbling drunk and draped on Lindsey Lohan at an exclusive VIP party. Gina studied the guy's face, realizing she recognized him from Veronica's wall though he looked almost completely different on the TV screen. The photo in Veronica's dorm room was a black and white she had taken of a magician pulling flowers out of this guy's ear down at Pier 39. Gina had always admired the photo because Veronica had captured, not just how good looking the guy was, but how he seemed to be so alive and full of joy and maybe a little mischief, too.
An hour later, Veronica was stuck in traffic on the 280 winding her way south to I-5 and eventually, LA and Logan. She took the time in traffic to leave choked messages for her professors telling them she had a family emergency and would be missing class for the next several days. Then she called her Dad and left him a message to expect her in the wee hours if she didn't end up just sleeping at the hospital. She thought about trying to reach Trina, but decided covert ops were her best bet in the end.
Veronica was sure Trina really did care for Logan in some twisted Echolls way and she would show up at the hospital for a photo op if nothing else. But Veronica felt enough guilt on her own for Logan's recent downward spiral and she did not want to have to defend herself in front of cameras if Trina got vicious. And knowing Trina, that was always a possibility, especially if it got her air time.
Veronica still agonized over her decision to play "tough love" with Logan. Had she been a coward, running away yet again? Sometimes she thought so, other times she felt he was the coward. For refusing to try AA, for refusing to see his obvious problem, for giving in to his genetic legacy. She carried the same burden, but had found help in the campus AA group. She tried to bring him to the meetings, but he would just complain bitterly. "There's no such thing as 'anonymous' for the son of an infamous celebrity, V. It'll just end up like that guy from Friends, front page on some crappy gossip rag. They don't need that and neither do I." It hurt Veronica to admit he might have a point, but she still pushed it. Finding a group of other ACAs - Adult Children of Alcoholics - had helped her really define her issues. Solve, resolve and heal them, or at least get a good start on it and she wanted that for Logan, too.
But Logan wasn't ready to go there, and Veronica couldn't deal with living with another alcoholic she couldn't completely trust. It wasn't that he wasn't trustworthy in general, but the alcohol often took precedence over daily life. Logan had been drinking casually already when Veronica met him at twelve, and almost a decade later it was a deeply ingrained part of his personality. Even the threat of losing Veronica was not enough to shake the habit.
On a good day, a good week, he drank only enough to maintain equilibrium. Veronica thought he might have actual physical withdrawal symptoms, a thought that turned her cold with fear. He hid them from her as best he could, but her tired and jaded eyes couldn't ignore the little bit of a shake that evened out after his lunch time beer. The good days alternated with bad days. Bad days meant a little slurring and stumbling, self pity and acting out. Bad days came about once a week. Once a month, or so, there would be a really, really bad day. Really bad days meant Logan hid out in his his apartment, avoiding Veronica and binge drinking while the memories wrapped thickly around him. At 3AM he would be suffocating on the solitude and alcohol and he would call her, begging her to come over. She always did, holding him as he cried, or puked, or tried to bury himself in her with rough, passionate sex. In the morning she would leave, circles under her eyes and her stomach sick. They wouldn't speak of it, and he would make a real effort to cut back his drinking for a while. But then another bad day would come. There were always more bad days, and there always would be unless Logan got some help. And Logan did not want help.
Veronica questioned whether she had done the right thing for Logan, but she knew she didn't have any other choice for herself. As she learned what it meant to be an ACA, she also learned she would never be able to save her mother, and trying to save Logan was just one more attempt to change her childhood by proxy. She had to set the rules for her life if she wanted to be healthy and one of the prime rules was to surround herself with other people who also wanted to be healthy. It destroyed her that Logan couldn't be sober with her, but it wasn't her job to heal him. He had to start that himself and so she told him she loved him, would always love him... and let him go.
She tried not to watch the headlines after he quit school at SFSU. He moved to LA and started hanging with the Hollywood party crowd, having pretty, rich, famous girls fight over him in clubs they really weren't legal to be in. She tried not to let the guilt eat at her as he slid further into his own private hell, losing the real Logan, the Logan she loved. Once again he became the cynical hateful rich boy with too much money and too much to prove, the obligatory psychotic jackass with a devoted entourage of ass kissers just waiting for his next outrageous stunt.
The five and a half hour drive to LA (that she managed in four and a half hours) gave her plenty of time to think about the past. She steadfastly refused to think about the future, about what she would say to a conscious Logan. If she ever got to see a conscious Logan again. Or what she would do if he ended up brain damaged or... her brain refused to even consider the final possibility. She had seen too much death already. Logan could not die.
Getting into the hospital was easy. Getting into the ICU, not so much. But Veronica was determined and managed to steal some scrubs and fake an ID. She did some sweet talking with orderlies and listened to the gossip going around and found her way to Logan's room. Security was posted at the elevator, but the media must be mostly behaving because they didn't even blink at her in the nurse scrubs.
Logan was covered in tubes and bandages, vital signs monitored by several different machines. One leg was in a cast, held up in a sling. His right arm was also in a cast, his left wrapped in gauze from wrist up to forearm. His head had clearly been shaved and many stitches probably hid under the bandage wrapping his skull. His face was a puffy mottled patchwork of bruises crossed by the oxygen tube in his nose. Both eyes were circled in dark blue-black and shades of green and purple tracked across his cheekbones under a sprinkling of red gashes, some large enough to be held together with butterfly bandages and stitches.
Veronica gasped at the sight. It was worse even than she had imagined. He had stabilized, according to the information she had gotten, but had not yet regained consciousness. Not too much cranial swelling which was a good sign - hopefully no permanent damage. He was on a morphine drip, and probably wouldn't wake up for a while. The doctors wanted him to heal a little before having to deal with the pain. They were detoxing him slowly from his self medicating, and replacing his drugs of choice with the minimal meds to treat him. If he made it out of here, no, *when* he made it out, he would be required to undergo mandatory rehab.
The tears slid silently down her cheeks as she looked for a place to safely touch him, a patch of skin not covered in bandages, cuts or bruises. Finally she gently traced the fingers on his left hand. The bitten nails she remembered so well, the calloused palms that had tattooed their ownership across her body. She put her cheek to the back of his palm, face slick with tears that ran in rivulets onto his sheet.
"Oh, Logan," she sighed. " You had to go all epic on me, didn't you? Haven't we had enough bloodshed? Enough lives ruined?" She pressed her lips to his hand. "You are such a drama queen. For someone who hates publicity, you sure seem to pick flaming public ways to screw up." Veronica leaned down, touching her forehead to his hand, focusing on that small square of unblemished flesh. She was suddenly overwhelmed by the reality of it. She had always held out the fantasy that he would get sober, come back for her. As unrealistic as it was, as she of all people should know, she couldn't help it. But here he was, barely hanging on to life.
"You were supposed to get your shit together and come back to me," she whispered, her throat raw. "I still love you, you know." Funny how easy it was to say that to his unconscious form. It hadn't been nearly that easy to say to an awake, living, breathing Logan. The living, breathing and almost always intoxicated and frustrating Logan. He had professed his love for her a number of times, and she had always choked on the words in return. She had justified it as self protection - as if not saying it made it less real. Because she always knew this - this hospital room, his broken body - lay in their future. But here, now, she wanted to say it over and over again, create some kind of irresistible pied piper's song to bring him back safe and sound, make him follow her to a new, better life. She leaned over and gently kissed his forehead, tracing the leafy shadows of the bruises under his skin with her fingertips. "I love you, you idiot. I hate how little you value your life, how careless you are with your body, but I will always, always love you."