#national team is doing terrifyingly well… hope is a dangerous thing for a woman like me (slovenian) to have etc

[charlespecco]

If some club I despise signs Beni Šeško I might have to end it all ❤️

[takadasaiko]

The Longest One Hundred and Sixty-Eight Hours (a Veronica Mars one shot)

Part of my Spanning Years. Continents. series. 

FFN II AO3

Summary: While out on deployment Logan's squad is attacked and Veronica gets a call: he's missing. So starts the clock on the longest week of her life.

The Longest One Hundred and Sixty-Eight Hours

The call came in on the landline at the office and Veronica barely registered the concerned tone as Mac let her know that there was a Commander Eduardo Ruiz who had asked specifically for her. They were close enough to San Diego that it wasn't abnormal to have clients from the base. She just had to make sure that she toed the confidentiality line with her Naval Aviator boyfriend at home. Depending on the situation the lines could cut too close, but sometimes it worked in their favour. There'd been a time or two that Mars Investigation had gained a client because of Logan. Once by direct referral and a second one that had heard about them through the grapevine, as it were. Deployment left their Skype sessions short and sacred, so it was easy to believe that it had simply slipped his mind to tell her that he was sending someone her way.

Except he hadn't.

This wasn't wasn't a call for her services.

Veronica felt her world shift dangerously as Commander Eduardo Ruiz informed her that Lieutenant Logan Echolls' F/A-18 Hornet had been struck by enemy fire while over an undisclosed location. Both he and his Weapons System Officer Dave Riley had successfully ejected. The rescue team had found the remains of the Hornet, but there were signs of a possible struggle on the ground and neither Lieutenant Echolls nor Riley had been found as of yet. She was listed as his next-of-kin and they would let her know as soon as they had an update.

Commander Ruiz's voice was terrifyingly calm and stiff as he spoke, the words rehearsed, possibly even scripted. If he knew Logan or had any attachment to him at all, Veronica had no idea, and he couldn't answer any questions that she rattled off at him. There had certainly been a few. For each one he gave the same answer: the United States Navy was doing everything in their power to recover their two missing officers. He might as well have been saying that he was looking for a needle dropped into some Iraqi desert.

Veronica supposed that Commander Ruiz indicated that he was going to end the call before he actually did, but she found herself sitting at her desk with the phone still pressed to her ear and gaze fixed on nothing in particular in front of her, terror ripping through every vein.

Logan was missing.

He'd been shot down by enemy fire and he was missing in some foreign land that Veronica had no contacts in and no reach to. She could feel that realization - that helplessness - press down so firmly against her that someone might as well have punched her in the gut. She couldn't breathe, and while her mind was going a million miles a second, nothing of any use was making it through.

"Veronica?" Mac asked tentatively and the blonde woman blinked, finally registering that the line was dead in her ear and one of her two best friends was standing at the door to her office, her tone hesitant and her expression worried. "Everything okay?"

"Yeah, it's -" She stopped mid-sentence. She could lie to Mac, tell her everything was fine, but unless they found him in the next five seconds before she visibly cracked it'd be really hard to explain. The thing was she wasn't sure she had it in her to actually tell her the truth either. It was anything but okay, but even though she had heard it, even though the terrible understanding was spinning around in her mind like a record skipping, saying it out loud made it real. Forcing her mind to sort the words from the chaos, formulate sounds that would bubble up to her tongue and escape through her lips made it real. So Veronica found herself stammering with her mouth open, nothing escaping her but a couple of dry, half-attempts at words that she couldn't even decide on, and suddenly her vision blurred.

Somewhere in the distance, almost like down a tunnel, Veronica heard Mac call her name. "Is he….?"

"I don't know," she gasped, feeling strange and hot tears slide down her cheeks without having anything remotely close to permission to be there. "They don't know."

"They don't…. I'm sorry. I'm confused," Mac managed and Veronica heard her circle the desk more than saw it. She blinked hard and it helped a little. "How do they not know?"

"He's missing. He and Riley are missing," she managed, hating how raw and terrified she sounded. "There was a fight and a crash and…."

Veronica looked up and she must have looked like hell from the way that Mac's confusion crumbled into worry. "It's okay. It's going to be okay. Logan's crazy stubborn. They'll find him."

If she believed it in that moment or not was anybody's best guess, but Veronica's usual BS meter was cracked and broken on the floor beneath the weight of the unknown.

"I need answers," Veronica breathed, even as the dial tone sang out from the phone still clutched in her hand laid out on her desk. She couldn't seem to find the will to move to return it to the cradle.

"I don't think we can get those," Mac answered, her voice equally as quiet. "You're the first person they'll call, right?"

Veronica's tear-filled gaze snapped over to her friend and she couldn't bring herself to feel guilty as Mac flinched back at it. "I need answers."

"Okay," Mac whispered, nodding as she spoke. "Okay. Then tell me everything you know and I'll find you everything I can."

--------

Veronica swore that when - not if, when- Logan got home, she'd never let something pesky like national security get in the way of her drilling him for information again. As it stood now, he had told her as much as he said he could. They were in the Middle East - sure, small area. Only a few hot spots. Super easy to find a downed jet in all of that desert. What was the Navy thinking? - and halfway through deployment. Maybe she should start with his squadron. They had been together before Logan had tumbled back into her life - before she'd tumbled back into his? - but he usually talked about them by their call signs.

There was Coma from East Texas with his painfully slow drawl that Logan and the rest of the guys gave him so much shit over, Kasper that made snow look tan, Siesta that could fall asleep anywhere, and ALF - annoying little fuck - that just wouldn't shut up. There were more, but she only knew Riley by his given name, and even that was turning up with nothing except a couple that Mac thought were probably his parents out in the Midwest. Not that they'd have any more information than Veronica had been given. Hence being updated as Logan's next-of-kin.

Mac was a saint for the effort she was putting into the search, given what little Veronica could provide. They were well into the zone, treating it like any other case when Keith had come back into the office. He must have called out to one or both of them at least a couple of times because Veronica didn't look up - jumped might be a more accurate description, but she'd never admit to it - until he knocked on her desk as if he were knocking on a door. "Something come in while I was out?"

It was a blessing in disguise, that focus, and she rattled it off with only a twinge of pain on the outskirts of the words until she realized her father was dead silent. She didn't acknowledge it until he circled her desk and he stooped down to wrap his arms around her. His was a normal reaction, she knew. It was terrible news. Riley's family was probably in tears and utterly unable to do anything other than wait by the phone for any update that the Navy could possibly give them, and while she'd finally managed to put the phone back on the hook at some point so that a call could come through, there she was trying to track down the non-existent trails that would never actually lead to Logan. Still, it was better than sitting idly by. That would drive her insane.

What was it Logan had said back in college? I'm not built to stand on the sidelines. Well, neither was she. She had to do something. Thankfully Keith didn't try to talk her down from the frenzy.

It was late before Veronica finally relented to the truth that they weren't finding anything new on their end that night. Her father tried to convince her to come back to his place so that she wouldn't have to be alone while waiting for the news. She had Pony home, she reminded him, and while she and Logan had paid their pet deposit that they'd never get back, her dad hadn't. No need to bring an oversized puppy that still thought pieces of furniture were his chew toys to his place. Instead, Mac had managed to convince her to let her sleep on the couch. At least Veronica hoped she slept, because she sure didn't. No, that first night she'd gone into the dresser, pulled out one of his favourite t-shirts, and slipped it on to lay with her cheek pressed into his pillow. He'd already been gone for three months. It wasn't like there was any real trace of him there, but if she tried hard enough she could imagine it. And if she turned her back to his side of the bed she could almost pretend that he was laid curled up on his side, breathing softly and steadily. Alive and safe and home.

The next night, after a day of equally useless information that was really none at all, Wallace had pushed his way into the situation and had taken up Mac's exhausted place on her couch.

It was the earliest hours of the morning when Veronica's cell phone started singing next to her bed, dragging her out of the restless sleep filled with worst-case-scenarios playing out in her mind's eye. She didn't even look at the caller ID as she slammed her thumb against the accept button. "Hello?"

Commander Ruiz was on the line again in that same rehearsed tone, but somehow, even with no real reflection in his voice to speak of, the words felt lighter. They'd been found. Both Logan and Riley. They had been transferred to a Naval hospital there in the Middle East. Next steps would depend on the extent of their injuries, but if all went well they would be transferred back stateside rather than moving to a medical ship or a hospital on a European base. While Veronica would have preferred the news to have been closer to Logan's in San Diego right this second, she would take alive and on foreign soil versus the unspeakable alternative without hesitation.

She had assumed it would be Ruiz with another update when the number lit her phone up the next day and Veronica had to stop and check herself at the familiar voice filtered over the bad connection. "Logan?" she breathed, pretty sure she wasn't dreaming.

"Hey." He sounded tired, his voice a little hoarse.

She gripped the phone tighter in her hand. "Are you okay?" They still hadn't given her any details other than that he'd been found and was alive. If he was hurt or how badly, she had no idea.

"More or less. Listen, I can't talk long, but I just…. needed to hear your voice."

Veronica swallowed hard, willing her voice to work. To tell him she needed to hear his too and that she needed him home right then. He didn't give her a chance as he cleared his throat.

"And to ask you not to be pissed."

Okay, that wasn't what she'd expected. "Why would I -?"

"I'm coming home," he said firmly, which only made his statement a moment earlier more confusing. "They were talking about sending me today."

"That's good news, right?"

She heard a sound from the other end of the line. "Yeah. One sec," he called back to someone on his end of the line before speaking directly onto the phone. "Veronica…."

"Still here."

"They wanna send me home, but Riles is gonna take a few more days. We had to eject. He… snapped his leg on the landing. He always hated those jumps."

"Bet he really does now," Veronica breathed, her mind calling up the image of the man that literally had Logan's back in the air. She liked Riley. He was sharp, with a wit that could match Logan's and a quirky and sometimes twisted sense of humour that was apparently born from a need to stand out among ten siblings. From what she could see, he'd also become one of the most loyal people to enter Logan's life after she had left for Stanford. They were close. "Is he going to be okay?"

"I hope so. He's in surgery now and they said it's going to be a long one. I don't wanna be gone when he wakes up, you know?"

"I know." She hated the words as they slipped out, but she knew how selfish it would have been to say anything else. Right then, she wanted to be selfish. She wanted to tell him to get his ass home so that she could hold onto him like she'd never let go.

"Veronica?"

"Yeah?"

"I gotta go."

"Call me when you can?"

"Yeah. Love you."

And then the line was dead, leaving Veronica sitting alone on the couch in their apartment. She squeezed her eyes shut, the last forty-eight hours' roller coaster of emotions washing over her as she tried to steady herself. "Love you too," she whispered into the empty living room.

--------

She spoke to him at least for a couple of minutes a day until he came home, but even hearing his voice on the other end of the line wasn't enough to keep the darker parts of her mind from playing tricks on her. She remembered how it had twisted her around during his first deployment after they had gotten back together, but at least then the dangers had all been theoretical. Sure, he was fighting a war and sure enemy aircraft or ships or what-have-you could take a shot at him and send him spiraling towards the unrelenting ground below. She knew that, and on some days it felt more real than others, but even after hearing his voice and that he'd made it out of this close call mostly intact Veronica needed to see him with her own eyes.

The first time he had come back from deployment it had been on the ship he'd left out on, but this time he and Riley were sent home on a transport plane that was due in late in the afternoon. Veronica had spent the entire day jittery and had driven down to San Diego with hours to spare. Wallace, Mac, and her dad had all offered to help with anything she needed from puppy duty to going with her so that she wouldn't have to wait alone. She'd declined the latter, instead opting to become well acquainted with the accelerator in Logan's BMW. Thankfully the PCH wasn't being heavily patrolled or she would have had to pay a mint for the ticket dealt out.

It felt like forever before Logan arrived safely and securely on the ground. He was on his feet when she saw him, left arm in a sling and bruises darkened under his eye and down along his jawline on the right side of his face. He looked exhausted, but still better than Riley who was stuck in a wheelchair with a cast nearly all the way up his leg. That was gonna suck. Probably already did, if he was due for pain meds anytime soon.

Logan spotted her and Veronica felt a rush of relief at that smile. She took off towards him, having to force herself to stop rather than latch her arms around his neck to hold on tight. He'd finally given her a list of his injuries - the worst being a torn muscle in his shoulder and a concussion - and she didn't want to risk hurting him.

He didn't seem to have the same hold up. Logan covered the last few steps and wrapped his uninjured arm around her, pulling her in more than up and leaned in for a kiss. Veronica's arms slid around his middle, fingers digging into the fabric of his uniform as she pulled him deeper into it. They stayed there in that moment, neither willing to let go of the other even as she heard Riley shout a joke about waiting till they had a room from off to the side. Logan loosed his grip on her and Veronica was pretty sure he shot Riley the bird, only confirmed by the other man's chuckle.

Veronica finally - reluctantly - broke the kiss. "You okay?" she asked breathlessly.

"Yeah. Let's talk when we get home."

She nodded and turned towards Riley. "How ya doin', Riley?"

"I gave as good as I got," the Weapons System Officer promised with a shit-eating grin.

"Oh yes. The ground never saw him coming," Logan answered, a smirk tugging at his lips and one eyebrow quirked up at his friend. "You sure we can't give you a ride?"

"Nah. My folks flew in. Apparently going MIA warrants a flight in from the homeland."

Veronica snorted. "Aren't you from Nebraska?"

He gave a casual shrug and a noncommittal mehbefore he started wheeling himself towards a small group of people that Veronica could only assume were his family if the collection of redheads were anything to go by. He offered a quick wave as he rolled forward. "See you in a couple days."

"Yeah," Logan huffed the response, his voice low enough that Riley probably hadn't even heard it.

Veronica turned back to him, watching the smile leave his eyes first, exhaustion taking its place, and then his thin lips evened out into a straight line. She touched his arm. "Let's go home."

Thankfully it didn't take much to get back to the car and off the base. Logan asked her to keep the top down on the BMW, even if he wasn't the one driving. She glanced over every handful of minutes as they started up the PCH, watching as he slowly relaxed into the seat. His eyes drifted closed, the lines in his face softened a little, and it was everything she could do not to reach out to him. Finally, she lost her battle and her hand slid over of its own volition to his knee. He startled in his place, but only for a moment, and settled back in as he moved his right arm across his body so that it could rest on her hand. Apparently she wasn't the only one craving touch at that moment.

The sun was setting by the time they got home and Veronica and Logan took the stairs up to their apartment slowly. She frowned as she fit the keys into the lock and turned only to find it already unlocked. She pushed the door open and loosed a relieved breath at the sight of her father refilling Pony's food bowl, the leash laid out on the counter. Keith looked as startled as she felt, straightening with a grimace, and turned fully towards them. "Hey. I didn't know what time you two would be here." His gaze drifted past Veronica. "Logan. Good to see you home."

"Good to be home," he answered, his voice quiet and more than a little tired.

"I won't keep you. I brought some Thai over. It's in the fridge if you get hungry."

"You didn't need to do that, Dad," Veronica tried and her father gave a small smile.

"I wanted to. Mac and I'll hold down the fort for the next few days. Take your time. And if you need anything -"

"Pretty sure I know your number," she promised, the corners of her lips tugging up and she wrapped a hug around her dad's neck before letting him slip out their front door, the cane he still leaned on after the car wreck sounding softly as he eased his way down the stairs. Three flights weren't easy for him to climb to drop off food and feed a puppy. He'd wanted to check on them. Not just her, but both of them, and there was something comforting in that knowledge.

Logan loosed a long breath, drawing her attention around as he moved slowly into the apartment. He dropped to a knee to greet Pony with a scratch behind the ears and a few soft words before straightening again. "Thai sounds amazing right about now."

"Don't have that on your ship, do ya?"

"Definitely not."

Or in the desert when you're missing for nearly thirty-six hours.Yeah, that probably wasn't the best way to lead into reminding him that he'd told her they'd talk when they got home. She wanted to. More than anything she wanted to hear every inch of what had happened, but while Logan was a fan of talking about nearly anything, when it came to his own personal traumas he tended to toss out a flippant remark and keep his feelings to himself. He knew her. He knew she was dying to ask, but she knew him too, and he probably hadn't given himself time to even start processing until they were back on US soil. Hence the reason he looked so damn tired.

They ate in silence, Veronica not trusting herself to hold back the questions. She wasn't sure how long had passed as she shoveled mouthful after mouthful of food, glancing over to see that Logan had stopped altogether. His brows were drawn tightly, his lips pulled down at the corners, and his grip on the chopsticks was firm. "I'm sorry," he breathed after a long moment.

"What for?"

"Scaring you. I'm guessing I probably scared you." He finally turned to look at her, those soft brown eyes making it hard to breathe.

"Understatement," she answered softly, "but it wasn't your fault."

"We, uh… We were so focused on the aerial fight that we missed what was happening on the ground. He was on Doc and ALF's tail, Riles and I took the guy out, but there was fire from below. They didn't have to eject, we did." Logan swallowed hard, clearly having trouble trying to get through the story he knew she wanted and Veronica did her best to keep her expression even. She reached out, her hand against his, and he set his chopsticks down to thread his fingers through her own and continue. "We got lucky. I mean, Riles might call bullshit. He's the one with a broken leg, but there weren't too many on the ground where we landed. We got out alive, laid low, and they found us."

There weren't too many on the ground. Right. Okay. Maybe she didn't want to know how he'd busted his shoulder and gotten a concussion. The little he'd told her was a lot to digest, and he'd been doing it by himself for the last week. Well, him and Riley.

"I didn't know about Doc and ALF. I'm sorry."

"Yeah. Those were fun calls."

Right. He was their squad leader. While someone above his head probably made the calls while he was MIA, Logan would have followed up with the families. For all of the responsibilities he skirted as a teenager, he took on even more while serving in the Navy. She'd never gotten the full story on exactly where the change had happened, and maybe it was because real change never happens at a single point in a person's life. She knew that somewhere in his sophomore year at Hearst he had bottomed out and he'd landed in ROTC. He'd met Riley there and Riley had been the one to steer him towards aviation. Logan had said once or twice that Riley had saved his life, and Veronica had always wondered if that wasn't just up in the clouds.

"Part of the job," Logan murmured and squeezed her hand. "Funerals'll be the hardest. That's in a couple of days."

Ah. So that's what Riley has meant. Veronica hadn't thought that they'd demand him back at work quite that quickly. Not while he was on medical leave. At least she'd hoped that they wouldn't. The idea of only having a day or two with him after all of this tied her stomach up in knots.

She pursed her lips together. "I'm selfish," she admitted softly, catching his confused gaze at the seemingly abrupt statement. "I hate that they're gone. I know they meant a lot to you, but…." She closed her eyes, struggling to find the words. She felt like such an asshole voicing them. These were people that he cared about, people that other people cared about. They weren't just names or call signs. They were good guys. Logan respected them, and even prefacing that she felt selfish for saying this didn't make it any better.

"Hey." She opened her eyes to find him looking directly at her. "You're good. You just listened to me. It's your turn."

She reached her free hand up to the side of his face, her fingers curling around bruised skin carefully. "These have been the longest hundred and sixty-eight hours of my life. I thought I'd lost you. Before, every time something split us apart, we could come back from it. Nine years and we came back from it, but…"

The words she'd meant to say got stuck in her throat, a sob choking them down, and Logan leaned his forehead against hers. "I'm here," he promised. "When our plane got hit, when we ejected…. all I could think about was you. About how I couldn't die not having seen you again. Veronica." He waited until she looked at him. "I love you. No matter what happens, it's you. You're the one I'm coming home to, and I'm always going to come home."

She felt the dam break and the tears started to blur her vision. There were so few people she could show anything akin to weakness to, but she saw the same glassy look in Logan's eyes and she leaned forward, her lips pressed against his. She could taste the salt from the tears - hers or his, she couldn't be sure - as he scooted himself off the bar stool. His movements were slow and a little awkward with one arm still firmly secured in the sling, but she followed him back to the bedroom.

One hundred and sixty-eight hours. Seven days. One week.

But tonight she laid curled up against him, her cheek pressed against his chest as his fingers worked their way through her hair. They would face the next challenges when the sun came up. Right then, in that moment, she felt herself finally drifting towards sleep with the steady beat of his heart a reminder that their epic story wasn't over. He was home, he was safe, and he would always come back to her.