Chapter Text
Veronica once had thought she had seen JD at his angriest once, not counting the time when he stubbed his toe and spilled hot coffee on himself. Out of the blue, JD had told her he was going to work on the roof, and not to worry about him.
But worry she did.
She spent two hours arguing with him that it’s too dangerous, particularly because if he falls, he’s dead, and it’s not like the roof is particularly sturdy, random shingles falling off at 6 in the morning and scaring the shit out of the birds. He called her paranoid, she called him insane, and it wasn’t long until his face became stony, something shuttering in his eyes, and she shouldn’t have been as surprised as she was when he gave her the silent treatment.
It took a solid day for them to reconcile, and an olive branch from her end of (more than slightly) chewy pasta and a (mostly) genuine apology before he even said a word to her.
But holy shit, she’d really take the silent treatment and all the anxiety and stress that came with it instead of this. Standing before her isn’t the man she fell in love with watching the sky at night and admitting her anxieties, it isn’t the man that good naturedly laughed at her attempt at making dinner and then swooping in to save the day, and it isn’t the man that traced his tongue against her collarbone before whispering that he’d do anything for her.
“JD, you need help. This isn’t normal it-“
“I saved you. I got you sober. I got you healthy again, you’re eating three meals a day because of me, you’re writing this book because of me, you got inspired again, because of me. And now, what? You just want to abandon me? After all I’ve done for you?”
“You’ve trapped me here! I’m stuck here with the ghosts just because of your mommy issues! Jesus, you could’ve just gone to an actual therapist for fucks sake! Instead, you’ve wrapped me up in this whole plot, used me, lied to me, and- and for what? What, you think if you can get your mom back everything will be rainbows and unicorns? You’re more fucked than I thought if you think I’m just going to go back to normal. We aren’t in a relationship anymore, babe, we’re over.”
She can practically see the smoke pouring from his ears and mouth, the spiked tail curled around him. All he needs is a pitchfork, she muses. He’s angrier than she’s ever seen him be.
Of course she’d end up being the cause of it.
“Over? Oh baby, I’m not giving up on us just because of a little hiccup. After all we’ve been through together, what, you think I would just throw everything away? I’ve worked too hard for that, Ronnie. ‘Sides, I think mom’ll like you. I’m good for you, she’ll like that.”
Her face scrunching up in confusion, Veronica takes a step back at the same time JD takes a step forward. Like some fucked up dance, they continue backing up and stepping forward until Veronica’s spine slams into the wall, a smile stretched wide across JD’s face like taffy.
“See, I’ve thought about this for a long time, darling. I mean, I really had nothing but time until you came along. And you’re right, maybe I can’t bring my mom back. But what I can do is join her.”
A choked off sound erupts from her throat, her heart freezing in her chest, her eyes burning with tears. “You can’t, I just found you, I-”
“Oh darling, that’s the best part. You won’t have to leave me. Your soul is tied to Chandler. Mine is tied to my mother, most of her anyway, it wasn’t my finest work, I’ll admit. I’m going to banish the rest of the ghosts so that when we die, it’ll just be the three of us. And Chandler, but that’s more of a necessary evil. But when we die, we’ll be tied to this house, the ghosts can’t leave here so neither will we when we pass away. And I know how this all sounds, but baby, I’m banishing all the other ghosts before we die so they won’t have to bother us. Everyone except my mom of course. And Chandler, but that’s more of a necessary evil.”
“JD-”
“All that’s left for us to do is to make the right decision here. You’ve said it yourself, you love this house, you hate your job, your therapy meetings, but I know you adore me, so why not do this, huh? We could be together forever, baby, no one to bother us but Chandler till we figure out a way to get rid of her, I mean, we can do this, we can leave all this behind and just sit on the porch forever and talk and fuck and live through eternity together, why would you not want that? And don’t try to give me some spiel about wanting to live, I know what your real plans were when you first came here, Veronica. I hid all the tools at night for weeks until I was sure you weren’t going to be the next body I had to report.”
“I wasn’t suicidal, I-”
“What do you call the drinking then? The depression, the smoking, the way you never seemed to care about the dangers of this place? Say what you want, but we both know the truth.”
There’s a lump in her throat that she can’t seem to get rid of, a feeling in her chest like her heart’s been shattered, the remaining pieces puncturing her lungs. For once, her brain is quiet, absorbing everything that was monologued to her while trying to make sense of the look in JD’s eyes, cursing herself when her breath hitches as he leans in closer to her, a low chuckle leaving his mouth and exhaling on her lips.
“So I'm Juliet to your Romeo?”
JD tilts his head, his lips downturned as he considers the situation.
“We don’t have a Friar Laurence, but sure. Romantic, isn’t it?”
Straightening her spine at the same time she snaps her head up to make better eye contact with her lover, she lets a whisper of smirk play out in the corner of her cheeks, “Bit cliche to end that way, don’t you think?”
It catches him off guard when she knees him in the balls, a groan gurgling from his throat as she sprints away from JD, her socks padding against the flooring. When she thinks back on this moment, she likes to think things could have been different had she not tripped.
Her foot catching on the fast food bags on the floor, ketchup spilling out of one like bloodstains, Veronica slams to the ground, barely catching herself in time to avoid hitting her head.
She howls when her hair is yanked upwards, JD standing above her and snarling.
“I was trying to make this fucking romantic, you know! But I should have known you’d like it rougher, huh, baby?”
Shifting into survival mode, she fights him off with everything she has, biting his fingers, scratching his face, punching him in the nose with a resounding CRACK. It doesn’t feel nearly as impressive once her head has been slammed into the ground and she’s being kissed without her consent, but still.
There was a time, at least a month ago, where Veronica had decided they needed a date night which essentially ended up with them spending the entire time in bed, but that’s just schematics.
“You could stay here,” he whispers into the crook of her neck, his voice barely audible. If anything, Veronica can better feel the words against her skin than hear them, his lips brushing up against her collarbone like a feather.
She hums, and he takes that as a response to continue.
“When you finish your book, and I finish this house, we could just stay here.”
Her breath catches in her throat and her eyes widen, JD no doubt being able to feel her heart rate speed up underneath him.
“You’d really want to stay here? After everything, after your mom? You were literally one of the first people to tell me to leave.”
“From what I remember, I was the first one to tell you that you didn’t make a bad decision.”
“Yeah, and look at how that ended up.”
“With a handsome and charming boyfriend, a steady job, and sobriety?”
“If we ignore all the ghosts meddling, then sure.”
“So you do think I’m handsome?” He asks, laughing when she flips him off. “Look, I don’t see what’s wrong with it, V. It’s like I always say: there’s always room for the living here.”
Narrowing her eyes, sarcasm dripping from her voice, she responds. “You’ve never said that before in your life.”
“How do you know? You weren’t around in my childhood.”
“Maybe I should have been.”
A hollow laugh rings out of JD’s throat, a look in his eyes that she can’t quite read, and fuck isn’t that annoying, to know that she will never truly understand the man she’s sort of maybe falling in love with? Maybe that’s a breakdown topic for another day, but still.
“I doubt anything would have changed. You would have just delayed the inevitable. Can’t stop someone’s fate when it’s set in stone, V.”
Tears springing to her eyes and desperately trying to get away, she can’t help but wonder if this was their fate the whole time.
She can feel Heather Chandler’s presence before she sees her, her body burning with the familiar feeling of bone deep chill, the hair on the back of her neck standing up. Before Veronica can even open her mouth, JD is being flung back from her, his body slamming into the wall by the front door that he had so lovingly rebuilt and repainted.
“The foundation,” Heather Chandler hisses into her ear, a grip on her arm to get her standing. “The basement, destroy it.”
And even though the instructions aren’t written down and she barely has time to process anything that’s going on, Veronica starts towards where the basement door would be if there wasn’t the door laying on the floor in front of her, the hinges still attached, a chunk of the wall missing as the door was ripped out and discarded.
“It was locked and I couldn’t find the key.” Chandler explains at Veronica’s expression, something like embarrassment in the ghost’s eyes.
Veronica steps over the warped wood, makes her way to the stairs and starts heading down them. Her stomach twists as she can’t help but remember the first time she entered the basement, remembering the way JD had claimed he was trying to protect her from the ghosts. The irony couldn’t be any more palpable now, and a laugh catches in Veronica’s throat.
When she’s on the last step of the stairs, just barely avoiding a rogue mouse trap, the realization that she has literally no weapons on her person makes itself known. Frantically looking around and scanning the area for anything she can use to destroy the foundation of this cursed place to free the ghosts and maybe her soul, she doesn’t have time to catch herself when she’s pushed to the ground. Her head banging against the hardwood, a groan leaving her mouth, her hands shaking as she tries to right herself, something has got a hold on her ankle.
“You really think you’d get away that easily?”
It’s him. He’s shaking with anger, his forehead bleeding. He looks more like her nightmare JD than the man she feel in love with at the cabin and the realization makes her feel sick, her stomach churning.
“Fuck you.” She spits out, blood flying out as she struggles to get out of his ever tightening grip.
Out of the corner of her eye she can see Heather Chandler doubled over in pain, no doubt struggling more so with the sensation after not having to feel it for years. The words the girl had said earlier ring through Veronica’s mind like bells, “Whatever damage I do to you, it will be inflicted on me as well.”
Well shit.
Panting, JD straddles her, his hands gripping her wrists and forcing them to the floor. “You know, when I told you I’d talk to you if you told me you were suicidal, that wasn’t a lie. I make deals with people here, I figure I should get something out of the whole situation when it’s me that has to find and report the body. When they die and turn into a ghost, they have to keep tabs for me. Let me know the status of my mom, how pissed the other ghosts are, that sort of thing. You were the only one I couldn’t do that too. I said before, Veronica, but it’s still true. You’re my equal. All this can be yours if you just take it.”
Not only did Veronica get the luck that her boyfriend is literally trying to kill her, she also gets a boyfriend that monologues throughout it like some shitty ‘80s movie villain.
Jesus Christ, her life is depressing.
So of course, that’s when JD pulls out the gun.
“You know, I thought about strangling you, but I thought that was too cruel. That’s happened more often to you than the average person, after all.”
What a compassionate lover. All she wanted tonight was fries and a burger with everything on it except onions, but instead, she’s going to get a gunshot wound instead.
What bullshit.
“Now that you’re dead, what are you going to do with the rest of your life?” JD muses as he cocks the gun, a cocky grin on his face.
Her survival skills fired up after being dormant for so long, even she’s caught off guard when she manages to grab a mouse trap right by her left hand and throws it at his head, hitting her boyfriend right in between the eyes.
He grunts and recoils a little, giving just enough time for Veronica to twist away from him, her knees scraping against the floor, her face bruised. Managing to reach into her pocket, against all odds, her lighter is still there. As hard as she focused on sobriety, she never had quite followed through with quitting smoking.
A flame flickers against the lighter at the same time JD recovers, terror flashing in his eyes as realization hits.
“Veronica, don’t you dare!” Her monster yells, fear lacing his tone.
She dares.
Years later, she’s still not quite sure how she survived, can only remember the vague feeling of a hug before losing consciousness, the smell of lilacs overwhelming her senses, and something breaking in her chest as she loses her connection to Heather Chandler.
When she’s forced to recount the story, her voice hoarse and nails bitten so much it’s painful, she doesn’t tell the truth. Not all of it at least. It’s too painful to explain how she finally thought she had found a man she could truly trust who then suddenly betrayed her. It’s too hard to reconcile the fact that he never saw anything wrong with it either.
It’s easier that Kurt acts like he has no idea who she is, his partner sitting next to him completely unaware of their history. And from what Veronica can piece together in her brain, broken and burnt out as it is, that’s probably a good thing considering the looks Kurt and his partner occasionally give each other.
Heather Duke picks her up from the police station with a change of clothes and an extra large Gatorade with a blank face but searching eyes. She says nothing about Veronica’s appearance or even asks why she picked her up here, much less why Veronica specifically asked for her, and Veronica has never been more thankful for her friend. Veronica gulps the drink when she gets in the car, some spilling onto her chin, and when she catches a glance of herself in the side mirror she has the startlingly realization that, combined with her lifeless eyes, her pale skin, the blue resting on the corner of her mouth, that she looks more like Heather Chandler than she ever thought was possible.
Despite everything, Heather Duke never says anything about her appearance or what happened tonight, just tells her that she’s pretty sure she got a hoodie that’s her size and she can stay the night if she doesn't mind that she has a two month old kitten named Firefly.
She doesn’t mind, and ends up spending two weeks at Heather Duke's house before leaving. The day she goes from Heather’s house to stay in a motel as she tries to get her shit together, she relapses and ends up drinking from the mini bar until she blacks out. When she wakes up the only thing she can see at first is the blue paint on the wall, the exact color of Heather Chandler’s eyes, and Veronica’s first thought is that she doesn’t really think she’d mind if she was dead.
That very same weekend, she gets a job at a local animal shelter and adopts a stray cat named Ghost that only has three legs. She’s not sure if that’s progress or not, but her cat’s favorite thing to do is to be petted and chase a laser pointer Veronica bought for $2, but it;s enough for now.
It feels stupid to admit, but she's changed since her time at the mansion, some little ways and some bigger. There’s a solid month where she refuses to go to a gas station and simply walks to wherever she needs to go instead, and from time to time she’ll buy something red to wear to honor Chandler.
Regardless, it takes a long time before Veronica feels whole again, before she can go throughout the day without feeling nauseous just by remembering JD’s hands on her, the way that looking back his touch always seemed to reek of possessiveness and control and she can still remember the way his breath felt against her neck when he held her at night, his hands crawling around her body like she was nothing more than something that he could use however he liked and-
Some days happen to be harder than others.
On those days, she goes against every instinct in her body that wants her to curl up in bed and never leave or simply buy any kind of alcohol she can get, and instead drives on over to Mac’s or Heather’s house. Mac always gives her a massive hug and an iced tea, and they dance to Ariana Grande and scream along the lyrics and watch movies until they fall asleep on the couch, Regina carrying Mac off to bed and covering Veronica with a blanket. The bad things about days with Mac are that she doesn’t have them often, Mac (rightfully) wanting some time alone with her wife and needing time to get work done and be the wonderful woman she is.
On those days, Veronica walks to Heather’s house, music blasting through her headphones to drown out her thoughts, and hands full with two black coffees. When she rings the doorbell with her elbow, Heather always answers- even when it was two am and raining and Veronica was shaking with sobs and had spilled nearly half of the coffee on the lawn. When Heather lets her in, she doesn’t greet her with a hug, but she gives her a nod so that she knows it’s okay that she’s there, and she gives her a look that tells her that it’s okay, and that’s all that really matters. Most times, they sit in arm chairs, Heather petting her cat, Veronica clutching onto her drink until all the warmth has been seeped out of it. Sometimes they talk, and the small house is filled with Heather’s complaints about her job, or about her neighbor’s kids that once (accidently) hit her with a water balloon one weekend, but it lacks the same type of bite her criticism had when she was younger, and if you listen closely, you can hear a tenderness in her voice. Veronica talks when she can, tells Heather stories about what it was like at the mansion, and how she still can’t seem to breathe whenever she gets an email from a publisher.
Their relationship isn’t the same as it used to be, and that’s most certainly a good thing, but it still seems to stop and stutter and stumble every now and again, especially on nights that Veronica wakes up screaming or when Heather locks herself in her bathroom weighing herself and crying at the numbers.
Despite that, there’s a calmness between the couple that Veronica still can’t quite wrap her head around, an understanding where they spend the nights leaning against each other, quietly listening to a podcasts about self improvement and loving themselves (it takes a while before the couple finds one that doesn’t make them cry uncontrollably or laugh themselves sick, but they get there). Spending time with Heather makes her remember she’s her own person, and that even though she knows one of them could just up and leave at any time, when she’s with Heather her soul feels whole in a way it never has, and she knows for a fact that they’re sticking together this time. No matter what their relationship is.
When Veronica’s book gets published a little over a year after she moves in with Heather, she dedicates the book to her, gives her and Mac credit for always piecing her back together after she shatters. Heather gets the first copy of the book, a hard copy at that, and when she turns to the dedication page, the spine cracking open, she finds a tentative marriage proposal written in ink and a little stick figure drawing of her, Veronica, and their now three cats (Firefly, Ghost and Moonlight).
The couple gets married two years later, barely able to get through their vows with how much they’re crying, later having to redo their makeup before the reception, and when they went up to cut the cake and realized they were delivered the wrong one, Mrs. Sherry and Brendon Johnson swirled in icing on the top made the newly wedded Heather and Veronica Duke laugh so hard they end up just washing off their makeup in a sink instead of trying to fix it again.
Deep down inside she knows that she’ll never recover. Despite how her soul glows when she’s with her wife, JD and that fucking mansion took a piece of her and haven’t let it go. Some days it physically hurts, though those days come by fewer and fewer. She knows that she’ll never fully heal, but she’s still alive, still going despite everything she’s been through. And maybe that’s enough. Maybe it’s enough that she can kiss her wife and pet her cats and maybe it’s enough that even though there are days she doesn’t get out of bed there are days when she laughs so hard she can’t breathe. Maybe it’s enough that she’s still here, still breathing, despite the odds.
It takes years before she’s able to answer JD’s final question to her, the final words he ever said that wasn’t a demand, but answer it she does.
What is she going to do for the rest of her life?
Veronica is going to live, and accept the happiness she’s denied herself for years.
She’s going to live, and prove herself wrong.
JD may have been right, there is always room for the living, especially for her.