#because tbh i hate that they made weevil fall off the wagon in the movie

[princesssarcastia]

in any other world (aka four ways veronica mars’ life could have ended up)

because i CANNOT get these ideas out of my head, goddammit.  whatever god gave me the plot bunny gene needs to take it back now.  anyway welcome to my veronica mars kick, 2020 edition. it’s another long one, boys, and readmores are for suckers.

1. just remember me when we used to be friends

them telling other people stories about each other (gia and whats-his-face wait another four weeks to kill carrie; logan is a thousand miles away with the best alibi in the world.  a movie!canon au

Cobb’s paranoia holds out an extra five weeks, and Logan is already on deployment when he and Gia sneak into Carrie Bishop’s home and electrocute her in her bathtub.  A troubled, drugged up starlet’s death is ruled a particularly gruesome suicide, and word doesn’t reach Logan until well after it happens.

Something about it doesn’t sit right with him, no matter that he predicted she’d end up here; something about it itches in the back of his mind, makes him want to reach for a phone he didn’t take with him when he shipped out and pull up a number he hasn’t dialed in nearly ten years.

But that’s ridiculous.  He writes it off as nostalgic product of a reunion he didn’t even go to, that he’s sure she didn’t, either, and gets back to work.  He’ll go brood and break down about Carrie when he’s off duty later, and let one of his squad-mates put a hand on his shoulder, and then move on.

He lets go of, Veronica, I need your help, and ignores the bone-deep certainty that she’d drop everything for that, after years and continents spanned and blood shed.

—

Meeting The Piznarskis is a surreal glimpse into a normal upbringing; the kind no one Veronica knew growing up ever got.   They’re kind, maternal and paternal people who unreservedly love their son and live simple lives.

And they seem to really like Veronica, which is good.  Piz keeps giving her beaming looks whenever his parents turn away, and her heart crawls deeper inside her in shame because all this clearly means so much more to him than it does to her.

She is keeping polite-society smiles on her face and using her tame, Normal Veronica anecdotes to entertain them instead of really opening up.  Is this how everyone is with their in-laws?  

These people will never know me, she thinks distantly as Mrs. Piznarski lays a hand on her arm and smiles as she inquires after her years at Stanford, and it is a comfort because she doesn’t want them to.  Doesn’t want to see their normal bubble pierced by the mud smeared all over her real history.

She starts keeping her polite-society smile on face in the apartment with Piz, too.

He doesn’t seem to notice.

—

She catches the tail end of Bonnie DeVille’s funeral on Hollywood Access at her favorite deli.  The volume is cranked up, probably so the guy at the counter can hear it over the crush of customers during lunch hour.  Which means that Veronica catches every unfortunate second of their coverage, vaguely familiar faces in the crowd drawing her attention back again and again.

Mentally giving up as a way to pass the time, Veronica compares faces to ten year old memories.  

Dick, Gia Goodman, Luke Holderman...some vaguely familiar schmuck...

She doesn’t even realize who she’s looking for until the correspondent mentions that DeVille’s last boyfriend, Logan Echolls, son of the late Aaron Echolls, is not in attendance because his current tour of duty with the Navy started just days before her death.

God, Logan.  Veronica bites back any kind of expression at the thought of Logan learning that his girlfriend committed suicide while high off her mind.  Even the media circus at the funeral is a bitterly familiar echo of what happened when Lynn died.

The thought of him lingers all the way to the front of the line and her brisk walk back to the office, until she finds her hands hovering over keys, debating whether she should look him up. Then one of the partners walks briskly past and she jerks back to reality, where she’s working through the rest of her lunch to keep the edge on the other new hires.

But the impulse lingers, long enough that she resigns herself to ignoring it until  a new obsession seizes that confined part of herself she shut away that first year at Stanford.

—

Veronica refuses to go back to Neptune for the reunion, but after Truman-Mann jumps at the chance to hire her, she splurges on two round-trip tickets to New York for Wallace and Mac, figuring meeting up was the whole reason they were so gung-ho about it in the first place.

She really doesn’t make it out to California very often, let alone Neptune.  After her disastrous freshman year at Hearst, Veronica jumped at every chance to step further away from the crash-and-burn-site.  The only reason she didn’t lose them is because Mac understood that impulse, and Wallace is a better man than everyone she’s ever met.

But god, skype and Facebook and phone calls don’t measure up to the real thing.  Veronica throws her arms around them right there in the airport and fights the inexplicable urge to tear up. 

Something between nostalgia and longing wells in her chest as they sit shoulder to shoulder with her in the back of a cab, chatting about their lives in Neptune.  She crushes it ruthlessly and fires back with tame, hollowed out stories from work and Piz, and smiles all the way through.

Her father was so proud when she told him.  My daughter, the big shot New York lawyer.  Veronica smiled all the way through that, too, and had an extra glass of wine that night where she derided her own inability to put two and two together.

Fortune 500 companies.  Frivolous lawsuits.  Disappear before they ever make it to a courtroom.

She knew exactly what she was doing, going into corporate law.  The smart thing, right thing, the thing that paid her student loans and kept her out of the oh-so-tempting mud surrounding criminal law.  She knew it would be contracts and smug rich people and ruthless competition.

But that didn’t stop her growing guilt—no, not guilt, shame—as she helped further grind the little guy into the dirt.  As she poked holes in probably-legitimate sexual harassment suits and helped companies with more money than they needed break contracts with smaller service industries and...

All that keeps her going in the disgustingly large paycheck she gets every two weeks and the fact that she does corporate law for filthy rich companies, not defense law for filthy rich people. 

(Though that doesn’t stop her from waking up gasping, one night, after dreaming she’s back in that courtroom, with Aaron Echolls’ goddamn face smiling smugly at her as she tears Logan’s and her father’s and her own testimony to pieces, as she gets him out of Lily’s murder and his attempt on her life.  Piz rolls over in his sleep, breathing quietly, and she slips out of bed. )

She and Piz treat them to dinner that night, and she enjoys it once she gets over the childish jealousy that she has to share these two people she adores with Piz, who she also adores, dammit.  

Their apartment has an office/guest bedroom and a separate living room, so when they get back near midnight (we’re way too old to be out this late, Wallace joke-groans, and Piz laughs back) Wallace heads to bed, and Piz does, too, after she waves him off from helping her set up the couch for Mac.

They share a look, and Veronica lets a smile pull her face wide as they have the same thought.  The sheets and pillow get piled up in a chair as Veronica quietly retrieves two beers from the fridge and plops down on the sofa next to Mac. 

“Cheers,” Mac says, clinking her bottle against Veronica’s, and they both take long pulls.

Veronica sighs more heavily than she means to and lets some unknown tension flow out with the air.  After a long, comfortable silence, Mac nudges her with her knee.

“How are you, really?”  Mac asks pointedly.  Veronica lets her head fall against the back of the couch and grumbles.  No, she didn’t miss the glances Mac and Wallace kept sharing all night when they thought she wasn’t looking, but when Wallace went to bed she thought they’d somehow agreed not to pry.

Now she realizes they just decided to be nice and not tag-team her, which is somehow worse.

“I met Piz’s parents a few weeks ago,” Veronica says, still looking at the ceiling, but even as she says it she knows it’s not the right place to start.  A symptom, not the disease.

Mac hums at her, listening but not interrupting, so Veronica takes the chance to start again.  Her head lolls to the side to examine Mac, really pin her with her stare.

“Did you ever imagine you’d end up working at Kane Software?” Veronica asks.

Mac catches her stare and raises her eyebrows, clearly recognizing it for what it is, and pauses to really thing about it.  “You mean, when I was scamming 09ers that deserved it for their money and helping you crack cases like a budding hacktivist?” She says with a wry look.  “No.  But I knew I was going to do something with computers, and terrible reputation of their founding family aside, Kane Software is a pretty good place to do that.”

Now it’s Veronica’s turn to hum noncommittally.

“I never had your sense of justice, though,” Mac continues.  “I just enjoyed getting swept up playing Q to your Bond.”

Silence falls again as Veronica mulls over what to say next.  She’s avoided putting her finger on this feeling for months and months, because new, normal, successful Veronica Mars is not supposed to...to...

To miss sticking her hands in the mud.

“Sometimes I look in the mirror and I don’t recognize myself,” she says finally, forcing herself to keep meeting Mac’s eyes.  To get a second opinion.

“Yeah,” Mac agrees.  “I looked up the kinds of cases Truman-Mann takes when you told me you got the job.” ‘Looked up’ for Mac doesn’t mean ‘googling;’ Veronica grimaces lightly at the implication.  “It was, uh, surprising.”

Veronica turns away when her eyes start to burn with that now-familiar shame, taking another long drink.  “Well, it pays the bills.  Keeps me out of trouble.”  Another drink.  “They tell me if I keep up the good work, I can make junior partner in four years.  Three, even, if I snuff the competition.”

Mac nudges her again and Veronica starts to fiddle with the label on her beer.  “My dad hasn’t worried about me in four years,” she admits softly.  “He’s proud of me, Mac.  Proud that I got out, proud that I don’t ruin people’s lives anymore.”

“Hey,” she says gently, “You didn’t ruin peoples lives.”  Veronica lets her incredulous face speak for her.  “Well, no one who didn’t deserve it,” she amends.

“I ruined his life,” she says sharply.  “I got you and Wallace in trouble, I lost—” she bites that off.  “I wasn’t happy.  I saw dark corners everywhere.  That’s not a healthy way to live, Mac.”

“No,” she agrees.  “But was that because of your cases, or was it leftover from the long string of traumatizing bullshit in high school?”

Veronica takes another drink.  Getting a psychology degree at Stanford was a fun exploration of all the ways the previous four years of her life were fucked to hell, and fucked her to hell.  And she did seriously work on her trust issues, though she stopped short of going to therapy, because that was never gonna happen.

Mac goes in for the kill.  “Are you happy now?”

Veronica, hyper-aware of Piz in their shared bedroom scant feet away, doesn’t reply, and Mac lets her.  But they both know what the answer is.

—

She passes the bar exam with flying colors; a 320 that makes her father beam with pride once she takes the time to explain the scoring rubric to him.  Piz kisses her cheek and brings her flowers when he gets off work.

It takes more effort than she’s willing to admit to ignore the fact that she scored so much higher in criminal law than contract law and civil procedure.

—

It takes her three more months to gather the courage to break things off with Piz.  He’s smart enough to notice that she waited until their shared lease was up, and that leads to a fight more vicious than any they’ve ever had; a final nail the coffin of their relationship.

Apparently she’s cold-hearted, mercenary; unwilling to open up and share her inner life with him.  Unable to commit to anyone.

But if I did that, you never would have loved me, Veronica almost says, biting it back at the very last second because the last thing she needs to release that knowledge for circulation.

She methodically packs up her clothes, the scant few knick-nacks and numerous pictures spread around in a facsimile of personal touches.  Her new apartment was lined up before she even spoke to Piz, who later scathingly rejects her careful offer to pay for half of next month’s rent while he looks for a place.

In the end, it take three days to dismantle their year-and-a-half-long relationship completely.  He’ll certainly get all their mutual acquaintances in the aftermath, who were always more his friends than hers, leaving her with no one but the service people at her regular take out places and a handful of Columbia friends in the city to talk to. 

But as she unloads her things into her new space, all the emotion she can dredge up is a faint relief, and fainter satisfaction at having her own space for the first time in her life.  That’s it.

Cold-hearted.

She pours herself a shot of tequila and knocks it back, in the interest of dislodging any hint of feeling she might be repressing unconsciously.   Fiddles with her phone and considers texting Mac, or Wallace, or her Dad, to let them know—because she’d done this, new address and all, without mentioning a word to them.  She’d even changed her paper subscriptions, but didn’t say a word to the three most important people in her life.

God, at this rate Piz will probably mention it to Wallace before she does.

All another shot gets her is her hands hovering over a keyboard again, still resisting the urge to look Logan up, to investigate he new life in some morbidly curious impulse. 

Kids these days call it Facebook stalking, but back in her day it was just plain old stalking.

And she doesn’t do that anymore.  Right?

—

Veronica channels her excess energy and time in a post-Piz existence into her work, and it earns her a “keep up the good work” from Gayle Buckley.  A nice word from one of the two female senior partners at their firm makes her all warm and fuzzy for the rest of the day.

But that dissipates as she remembers exactly what got her that compliment; playing asshole intimidating lawyer muscle for another “frivolous” sexual harassment suit at a fortune 500 company.

This time, she’s sure the company man did it, but that doesn’t matter in the face of all his money and scary lawyers.  The woman quietly folds for literal hundreds of thousands of dollars less than she should be entitled to.

That earns her another night in, drinking more wine than she really should be on a work night. 

Are you happy now? Mac asks in her head, and Veronica takes another drink.

—

She exchanges nods with the man at the corner store as she lines bottles on the counter; they’re familiar to each other at this point.  It’s late, even for a hard-working New York Lawyer in her late twenties, but she polished off everything two nights ago and somehow can’t face going to sleep sober. 

It’s not until she settles back into her couch with her second drink of the night that ice rushes down her spine in spiraling shivers.  Veronica freezes with the glass halfway to her mouth.

The blood rushes out of her face in a way that makes her feel cold.  An exhausted cold, a mix of expressions she remembers on her Dad and her Mom’s faces growing up.

Her hands shake as she sets it down with a decisive clink on the coffee table.

I will not turn into my mother, Veronica thinks, still reeling with realization.  Not even for Normal.

It’s close to 1:30 here, so everyone in Neptune will be sound asleep; she can’t stomach waking them up for this.  And there’s no one in the city Veronica is comfortable calling up at this hour.

Faintly, she recalls hands hovering over a keyboard, and her chest aches even more. 

If this were a movie, she’d probably go pour out her glass, and the bottles she bought tonight; make some kind of vow.  Sign up for meetings.

Instead, she gets up and collapses into bed as-is, barely remembering to set the alarm on her phone before she does.

—

After that she tentatively reaches out to people from Stanford and Colombia, desperate for connections to ground her and soothe the gaps she only now realizes she’s been filling with alcohol.

Just a few Facebook messages at first, but nearly all of them reach back.  Veronica has a weak moment of tearing up and rereading some of the replies in her inbox after a particularly hard day at Truman-Mann.

In another few weeks, she and a few people from Colombia have mutually coaxed one another into a standing lunch date, risking that relentless workplace competition for a chance at real human connection with people who won’t throw a fit if they have to run out of the restaurant unexpectedly.

She orders water with the meal and laughs for real at least twice.

—

Her last straw is a predictable one.  That final push, the leg stuck out to trip her so she faceplants back into the mud, like she wasn’t two seconds from deep diving into it on purpose.

I need your help, Veronica, one of her friends from Stanford says.  And that, as they say, was that.

—

Lilly laughs in Veronica’s ear as she picks her way through the crowd, for the first time in a long time.

Fleet week.  In New York, not San Francisco, but she laughs back all the same.

His posture is different.  Clearly, there’s something to be said for military training.  But it’s not that he’s standing taller, or with more confidence; despite the presence to him, he seems...lighter, like all that weight on his shoulder finally got shucked off.

It takes him a few minutes to sense her gaze, and she savors them, watching Logan Echolls in the wild.  Satisfying her inner stalker.

Their eyes meet across the crowd, and his face melts into that boyish grin she remembers, softened with age and warm, just for her.  She smiles back, delighted, and waves.

Yeah, she looked up him.  Eventually.

2. bloody knuckles, longing for home

logan, veronica, and weevil gather like fate after aaron echolls gets off for lilly’s murder; and decide to do something about it.  and then flee neptune, because the perfect murder doesn’t exist.

Veronica lets herself into Logan’s room at the Grand with the key she swiped from Duncan before he fled the country.  Steam pools out from the cracked bathroom door, so she drops her back on the couch and heads for it, making no effort to conceal her presence.

His head is bowed between his shoulders, arms tense as he leans against the vanity.  He breathes out sharply, almost a laugh, and doesn’t move.

“Chlamydia, huh,” he says roughly.

“Immunity, huh,” she fires back, but her heart isn’t in it.

“You know he’s staying here?” He asks, still not looking at her, but tension pools in his bare back.  Condensation starts to run in rivulets down the mirror. “He cornered me outside the elevators, earlier.  Threatened to cut me off.  No more mister nice father.”

Her fingers delicately trace one of the myriad scars that cuts across his spine, and then another, and another, and Logan lets her.  She maps out sins of the father visited on the son, and makes a decision.

Aaron Echolls will get his justice in his own way.

“Room 619,” she says, and his head rises.

Their eyes meet in the mirror.

—

Mac does extensive research on the Cayman Islands, just for fun, since Cassidy mentioned his father holds some of his assets there.

Veronica and Weevil go out for a drink.

Logan flirts with the woman on the night shift at the Neptune Grand’s front desk.

Veronica and Weevil and Logan go out for a drink.

Keith and his daughter spend the days between the end of finals and graduation decidedly not talking about it, but he thinks she’s taking it as well as she can.  Almost surprisingly well.  Veronica finds the tickets to New York he has stashed away.

Veronica and Weevil and Logan and Wallace go out for a drink.  It becomes a regular thing, grabbing beers or tequila or whatever they can get their hands on and sitting on a darkening beach every other night or so.  Sometimes the hush of their voices run underneath the waves.  Sometimes silence rings out.

Deputy Leo intercepts a mother and two boys who come into the station to make a witness report, but they can’t seem to find what they’re looking for in a book of the usual suspects.

Wallace forgets a pen in the coffee cup on the desk outside Clarence Wiedman’s office, when he goes to visit his mother at work.

Dick and Logan plan a blowout bash to celebrate graduation at the Grand.

Cliff McCormick brushes up on inheritance law in addition to juggling six other cases.

Logan books a plane to the east coast for after graduation.

—

After the graduation ceremony is over, half their graduating class descends on the Grand, filling the lobby and conference space rented out.  Some of them even make their way to the penthouse, Logan throwing open his door with a flourish.

But something about it just doesn’t feel right.  So Logan, Veronica, Wallace, and Weevil grab drinks and head out the front door, letting everyone see them leave for the beach.  Dick loudly complains to anyone who will listen about how Logan has been doing this every night for two weeks, like he’s got a standing appointment to hang out with narks and gangbangers.

Veronica calls her father and leaves a voicemail, letting him know she’s staying out on the beach with her friends for a while longer, in case he makes it back before she does.

Mac stays in the lobby with Cassidy the whole time.  Kendall Casablancas exits the hotel a little after midnight.

Weevil and Wallace stay out on the beach all night; the Xterra, which they all took together, sharing space for the last time, does not once move.

When housekeeping make their way through the hotel the next morning, there is a do not disturb sign on room 619.  It stays there all day, and night, and day, and night, and day again, and night again, until they start to pass it by automatically.

Veronica and her father leave for New York.  Logan boards a plane.

—

When the news breaks about Aaron Echolls’ death, neither of them are in Neptune.  Logan arranges for a private service in absentia, and sends Cliff McCormick as his representative to the will reading, which the executor of Aaron’s estate takes with more grace than Trina.

His assets are divided evenly between his two children, in addition to the existing trusts tied to age.

Cliff makes a brief stop at a coffee shop on his way back to his office, and says a few words to that computer geek friend of Veronica’s he catches sight of.  He forgets some of his notes on her table when he leaves.

—

Keith Mars comes back to Neptune alone.  The investigation into Aaron Echolls’ death stutters, stalls, stops.  Eventually, a harassed medical examiner admits it’s possible he could have maybe committed suicide.

—

Halfway across the world, a sweet and mischievous little girl named Lilly grows up with a kind, doting father, and an Aunt and Uncle whom she adores, whenever they’re in the country to see her.

Twice every year, her father and Aunt Veronica and Uncle Logan share a toast, even if only by skype.  Once on her Aunt Lilly’s birthday, and once on some day in late may.

3. all things grow

veronica mars, special agent with the fbi and logan lester, english professor, love each other well with the strength of decades, and still impress the hell out of everyone who meets them.  the one where veronica went straight to stanford after the whole cassidy debacle, and never quite lost the knack of investigating but with some distance from the neptune cesspool, learned to do it without ruining lives, her life.

Everyone knows Professor Lester is a jackass—with tenure, so he can’t be reprimanded for it.  But everyone also knows Professor Lester has the best analytical mind in the English department, and all the brightest stars in the Lit program come out of his courses.  He’s not bad to look at, either; the planes of his face are so sharp you just might cut yourself on them, and his eyes are always glittering like he knows something you don’t.  And he really doesn’t dress like a forty-year-old college professor, which doesn’t hurt.

Only the simultaneously lucky and unfortunate bastards who load their schedules up with him, or worse yet, get him as their advisor, ever see those planes soften.

His office is tastefully decorated, for those few English majors who know enough about interior decoration to say so. It’s also surprisingly devoid of books to belong to a man who seemingly memorized every text he’s ever taught. Pulling quotes and passages out of thin air is a particular talent of his.

There’s only one personal touch in the whole room, beyond the probably-expensive furniture: a picture of himself and a blonde woman holding a pit bull, on a beach so clean it can’t be in New York.  In it, her eyes glitter the exact way Professor Lester’s usually do, but his have melted into something infinitely more tender.

Very rarely, at the end of the afternoon or occasional evening class, the particularly observant students notice a blonde woman in a black pantsuit slip into the back, legs extended, ankles and arms crossed. She never says anything.  Just follows Professor Lester’s sharp movements at the front of the room.

None of them are trained to notice the outline of her holster, or the way her gaze actually darts around the room, tracking movement and exits, though it always comes back to rest on Logan.

—

Special Agent Mars is always fun at the Agency’s mixers and dinner parties and fundraisers.  Seeing her out of the sleek suit some of her coworkers suspect she was born in is all the more jarring for her ease in formalwear.  A real chameleon, they murmur, as she flips a switch and becomes more of a tittering socialite than a federal agent.

But the real fun is when she drags her partner with her.  Neither of them wears rings, but then, many agents don’t, so whether they’re married or not is up for debate.  He’s her standing date for every function, though, so in the end it doesn’t matter.

Veronica Mars has a rapier wit. Paired with her degrees in psychology and law and penchant for cataloguing every detail about a person at a glance, it’s safe to say she’s been verbally skinning people up one side and down the other since Quantico.

When her husband opens his mouth, it’s clear he shares her talent for sparring with words.

And watching them talk to each other is like following a tennis match—or perhaps boxing; trading barbs like endearments.

The best times is when some stuffy higher up with more ego than sense tries to glad-hand one of the most promising agents of the decade, and leaves the conversation head three sizes smaller and feeling vaguely emasculated.

—

Veronica learned the hard way in high school not to put too much of herself into her cases; learned to save some for her father, and for Logan, and for her.  But every so often one just stick in her craw and she can’t help sinking her teeth into it.

Her partner is too good to blink when her edges are sharper than usual, but Veronica can tell he notices.

And the man they’re tracking sure as hell does, too.  There’s something magnetic about Special Agent Veronica Mars on your trail, and this asshole is responding to it.  Leaving her...gifts.  Messages at crime scenes.

Verr-onicaaaaaaa, an old demon slithers in one ear and out the other.

When she starts to respond in kind, her supervisor removes her from the case and puts her on unpaid leave.  It’s in New York, though, and Veronica knows herself.  Knows who she is when she looks in the mirror.

Logan kisses the tip of her nose and thanks her for scheduling her crazy after his semester is finished.  They pack together, trading soft looks and touches as they maneuver seamlessly around each other.  Veronica calls Keith.

She silences the voice that sounds like teenage Veronica hissing that she’s running away from the fight.  That’s not her anymore.  And she’s not alone in this; if she didn’t trust her partner she wouldn’t have made it six months in the agency.  If she didn’t trust Logan, she would have died at seventeen.

Their visits to Neptune are rarer than her father would like, but just enough to soothe that part of them both that comes from here, that lives in every McMansion and dark alley and seedy bar and raging club and deserted beach.

Neptune is in their blood.  Veronica wouldn’t wish this place on her worst enemy; but they are akin, she and it. 

While Logan pulls his board and wetsuit out of storage and practically moves onto the beach, she does the usual tour.  Eli’s shop is doing well, and Valentina is adorable in her little oil stained overalls as she helps her father.  Wallace still eats lunch at their table, after all these years, and she smiles reflexively back at him like she did the first day they met.  Mac is still selling her soul to the devil for more money than god, running their software development with an iron fist.

Cliff quirks an eyebrow at her, and drops hints about cases he needs help with like other men his age drop little candies into children’s hands.  She rolls her eyes, but glances over the files anyway, and spends a couple nights taking pictures and video and surprising him with it in court.

It feels...nice.  Nostalgic, but not addictive.  Just some legal favors for an old friend who never failed to scratch her back when she scratched his.

Her forced leave isn’t up yet, and her partner says they’ve hit a frustrating but not definitive dead end back home, so she considers driving to San Diego to drop in on Leo with a pizza, for old time’s sake.

Then the man she was tracking in New York finally shows his face in Neptune.  He followed Veronica back here, to her home.

Oh, if that isn’t the worst, and last, mistake he ever makes.

Her friends, her family, closes ranks.  The town closes like a lobster trap for people stupid enough to come after Veronica Mars on her home turf.  By the time her partner and replacement make it out to the west coast, he’s beaten and bloody and wrapped up in evidence like a Christmas tree in Sheriff Lamb’s lockup.

The Sheriff takes the credit for the arrest; there is no mention of old biker buddies of Eli’s, or information passed along from Cliff and Wallace, or systems infiltrated by Mac. Of tasers and favors.

Veronica is cool as a cucumber when they call to tell her about it, while she’s out to lunch with an old friend.  Her partner is suspicious, but there’s no evidence.  And frankly, he’s not sure even Veronica Mars could have collared this guy without the resources of the Bureau behind her.

Deputy Sacks shakes his head in disbelief that people are still falling for that after all this time.

They go back to New York.  Life goes on.

—

Neither of them went to the ten year reunion, still too fresh off the horrors of high school. 

But they do go to the twenty year reunion, and win the shit out of it.  Not that they care, beyond vague petty satisfaction at the faces of those few people who do.  They leave early, have dinner with Keith, drinks with Wallace and Mac, and fly back to New York the next morning.

Some infinitesimal weight neither of them realized still existed was off their shoulders by the time they touch down in their home of fifteen years.

4. ten stoplights bleeding out

the one where keith mars dies in that plane crash, and veronica mars takes over mars investigations; veronica mars never escapes the insidious pull of neptune; and after ten plus years of money shots and favors, has perfected handing down her own particular brand of justice—and revenge. logan still joins the navy, but always finds his way back to her. 

it’s a story Eli’s heard a thousand times before, living in this town.  a story he’s lived himself, once or twice, though ever since he met Jade he’s done his upmost to keep his nose clean—to be that better version of himself she somehow managed to see in him.

the cops have it all wrong, lazy, corrupt, blaming it on the first brown kid they lay eyes on, planted evidence, ruined lives, etc.

there’s nothing he can do for them.

there’s nothing he can do for them.  But V always did love referrals.

“You need to go see the Sheriff,” Eli tells the kid, still hoping that one day the nickname will catch on just so he can see her expression.  His face crumples in heated confusion, because he just spent twenty minutes laying out how “Sheriff” Lamb was an asshole, but Eli smirks and jerks his head toward his car.  (Car, not bike)

They climb in, and drive to one of the last places in town holding out hope against gentrification—the 09ers he went to high school with would’ve called it seedy.

He still has a key to her offices after that stint working as her secretary for a few months when she was in college—though it’s not the same key.  Veronica Mars is too paranoid to keep the same locks for too long.  Never does catch her changing them out, just reaches in his pocket some days to fiddle with his key ring and fights a smile when his fingers find unfamiliar teeth.

But today, her doors are open.  They chime as Eli guides the kid inside, and gestures toward the old couch still sitting against the wall.

The receptionist’s desk is empty again.  He wonders vaguely what the last one did to earn the brush off.  She never manages to find what she’s looking for in an employee (either herself or her father, Eli’s never figured out which, but either option makes him want to clasp her shoulder).

He raps his knuckles on her office gently and pushes it open without waiting for an answer. 

She looks up sharply, her resting face before she registers his presence that special kind of pinched that means Logan had damn well better be at the end of his current tour of duty.

“Weevil,” she lets out a little breath and some of her tension.  “Long time no see, huh?”

“Yeah, we missed you at dinner last week.”

She shrugs.  “Life of a PI; there’s always another stake-out to ruin your night life.”

“Uh-huh, sure,” he drawls, raising his eyebrows at her.  After a decade and a half of knowing Veronica Mars, he’s more than familiar with her self-destructive tendencies. 

He’s vaguely grateful she’s pulling back from him before she unsheaths her paranoid claws and scratches everyone in reach, even friends like him; but mostly, it puts an ache in his chest that makes him want to hug Jade close and kiss Valentina on the forehead.

“Whatever, vato.  Just because you’re a successful businessman now doesn’t mean the rest of us don’t fight to keep the lights on.”  Her lips twist wryly.

And now he feels sort of bad, because she never charges his referrals full price for her services.   But favors are part of her gig, the way she tells it—keeps her in information and the occasional backup.

“Speaking of,” he starts, and she leans back in her chair and throws her feet up on the desk in a self-satisfied manner, one after the other, “I’ve got a Sheriff Lamb special in the waiting room for you.”

“Let me guess,” she drawls, “rich ‘victim’,” she pairs it with air-quotes, “planted evidence, and a timeline that makes no goddamn sense?”

“Got it in one,” he says tiredly, suddenly exhausted with the never-ending Neptune narrative.

“Send him in,” she says immediately, pulling her legs back and flipping through the one of the endless files that populate her life.

He hesitates at the door; once he hands off the kid, it becomes a case, and Veronica will tune out everything else that matters.  And Eli owes it to her to ask, to give a shit.

“When’s he back?” He asks softly.

Veronica’s hands slow, tension pouring back into her frame.  “Four more weeks,” she answers, clearly unwilling to further the conversation anymore.

“Yeah, well, make sure you remember to drag his ass to dinner with us then.  Valentina misses his stupid impressions.”

She rolls her eyes, and he shakes his head and leans out of the doorway to gesture to the kid, and that’s that.  Veronica Mars is on the case, and somewhere across Neptune, a familiar shiver just went down Don Lamb’s spine.