Chapter Text
Veronica Mars’ top ten list of life’s little pleasures is in constant flux. Except for the number one slot. That has, since she was a child, been claimed by getting in the last word. Nothing feels better than sparring with someone and leaving them sputtering, unable to respond. Getting the last word. Number one with a bullet. Followed quickly by ice cream. Of the chocolate variety.
And while she’s not what Veronica would consider a worthy adversary, the joy of getting the last word even applies to interactions with Madison Sinclair.
“Madison, I heard you lost your student aide gig and your student council spot. If I may be so bold as to make a recommendation? On Fridays, Sloppy Joes are your best bet.” With a condescending, tsk , Veronica leaves Madison standing there, no doubt wishing unspeakable harm upon her head.
She can’t help it though. The rush it gives her. The incandescent glow that starts in her toes and zigs up her body. It’s a little about writing a wrong, unmasking an injustice, etc. etc. etc., but has just as much to do with the mess she gets to leave as she steps back into the stream of people in the hallway.
All things considered, this day could have been a lot worse. Now she’s going home to discover whether she has an actual shot at expanding her friend roster to include more than just Wallace. She’ll pick up some poster board, maybe a little glitter, and help Wanda make a new batch of alternative-friendly-campaign propaganda. Veronica’s crafting (and small talk) skills may be a little rusty, but she can still do sociable and pleasant. She thinks. (Hopes.)
As she walks outside, the parking lot half empty of vehicles, she notices a group of skateboarders grinding down a staircase railing. A couple others are doing ollies off the curb. She misses entirely the rogue skateboarder determined to jump his board over one of the lunch tables until he’s directly in her line of sight. By then it’s too late for her to jump out of the way and, if his shout is any indication, he’s not in control either as he flies through the air.
Her head hits the pavement, a sharp and almost nausea inducing pain radiating out from her temple, and in that instant she reorders her list of least favorite things. Number one with a bullet?
Skateboarders.
Her head is throbbing and Veronica is unable to remember exactly what happened. Then she sees the flash of a skateboarder, hears the sound of her head hitting the sidewalk, and groans. God. The 09ers are going to be playing that video on a loop for the rest of my high school career. Through her eyelids she registers bright light filtering through the blinds and she screws her eyes shut, flopping an arm over her face.
With the other hand she bats around the nightstand for her phone, planning to text her dad and demand he both lower the blinds and come get Backup out of her bed. She loves the pup, but she’s recovering from a traumatic brain injury and he’s taking up more than half the bed, per usual. The duvet surrounding her is cozier and puffier than she remembers and she vaguely wonders if it’s like food tasting better when you’re hungry – do blankets become cozier when you feel as awful as she does? In her fog, she misestimates the height of her nightstand and knocks her phone off the table. It clatters loudly on the floor, which is only remarkable because her carpeted floors usually muffle all sound. If her phone hitting carpet is as loud as it is, she doesn’t want to think about what the sound of her dad making breakfast will do to her head.
“Fuck,” she whispers. Then cringes at the sound of her voice. “Ow.”
Backup shifts behind her, his body moving even closer. In an act of coordination she wasn’t expecting from him, one of his legs and paws drape over her torso. She huffs out a breath, amused despite her current state. For one second she considers getting up and out of bed, but she’s snuggled with her dog, her bed feels more luxurious than it ever has, and she just wants to sleep.
“How’s your head?”
Her eyes pop open and her brain does it best to match the voice to the person who is apparently in her bed. It’s not her dad, and it’s not Wallace, and that is the complete list of men she trusts. The voice is sleep graveled. She looks down to confirm that, nope , definitely not a talking dog snuggled up behind her. There is a bare, decidedly male arm, draped over her middle. It’s tanned with freckles barely visible under the smattering of dark hair. She also makes out a few odd, puckered, circular marks on the inside of the arm.
Move, Veronica. Knee him in the balls.
She moves to jerk her elbow back and into the man’s stomach but the movement shoots a pain through her head and she winces. Right. Head injury.
“Easy, Sonny. You’re not the only one regretting last night’s choices.”
And it’s the mocking, easy drawl that helps her identify the man behind her. She sits up, ignoring the lancing pain in her skull. She discovers, mercifully, that she’s not naked. What she is wearing, however, is little comfort: an oversized shirt she doesn’t recognize, men’s athletic socks that have bunched around her ankles, and her underwear. She swallows, trying to ignore both the roar in her ears and the pain in her head.
“Logan. What the fuck am I doing here.”
“Shhh. Early.”
She jumps out of the bed and reaches for the sweatpants she finds there, pulling them on and rolling the band over several times so she doesn’t trip on the legs. Logan is leaning back in the bed now, a sleepy smile on his face as he dozes, hands propped behind his head.
“I am not even close to kidding, Logan.” She picks up her phone from the floor – hardwood, not carpet like her room – clutches it to her chest and spares a thought to wonder where they are. It’s not a room she’s ever been in, and that’s even more concerning. Where did her take her? “How did I get here?”
He must hear the edge of panic in her voice because he opens his eyes, and looks at her with – what kind of fucking sick joke is this? – concern?
“Veronica, what’s wrong?”
“What did you do to me?”
He shoves the covers aside, jumping out of bed and cautiously approaches her. Logan takes one tentative step and then another. She flinches, balling her hands into fists.
“Nothing happened to you, okay? We were celebrating and you had a little too much to drink. We both did. We texted your dad, told him you were staying with me, then we took a cab home. Everything is okay. You’re safe.”
So that’s it. She suffered a concussion and then somehow ended up with Logan? And then he plied her with alcohol. It’s a miracle she’s not dead. Bile rises up in her throat and she swallows it down.
He takes another step towards her. “Stop!” she yells, and pushes hard at his chest.
He immediately takes a step back and nods. “Okay. You’re okay,” he repeats.
Nothing about this is okay. She doesn’t know whose clothes she’s wearing. This room is a mystery to her – did the Echolls family renovate the pool house? – and Logan is here but he’s not-Logan. She can’t figure out how she knows that. How can he be Logan and not-Logan at the same time?
“Stay away from me,” she yells, and he takes a step back, his worry so tangible she can almost feel it reaching out to her.
“Veronica, take a deep breath. Tell me what’s going on.”
Her eyes dart across the room and she sees her purse sitting on the dresser. She charges past him and when he reaches for her arm, she pulls back violently. “No!” Logan is startled, stunned into silence, his mouth hanging slightly open as he watches her. “When I find out exactly what you did, what you did to me, I will make you pay.”
His eyes darken at that, his brow knit together in confusion and hurt. She expects him to lash out or mock her, but all he does is stand there in silence as she grabs her purse and runs out of the room. She doesn’t spare a thought for the fact that a part of her knows the layout of this house or that she’s not wearing shoes.
As she runs outside she reaches into her purse for her keys. The weight of the bag is unfamiliar on her shoulder but that’s the least of her concerns. She pulls the keys out and frowns at the key ring. Besides the keys she recognizes – her apartment, her PO box, Mars Investigations office – there’s also a yellow X-Terra keychain and a number of others that are unfamiliar. The key to the Le Baron is missing.
This is sophisticated for even 09er torture. They, what, drugged me and stole my car, then decided to mock me with the X-Terra keychain?
That familiar feeling of bile rises up again and she somehow convinces her feet to keep moving. It’s only a matter of time until Logan’s friends show up for some ungodly purpose. One of the unfamiliar items on the keyring is a fob. She presses the unlock button, not quite knowing what will happen. A silver Saturn SUV lights up and she runs for it, locking the doors as soon as she’s inside. The seat doesn’t need adjustment and she drives away from the strange house, barely taking a breath until she’s confident no one followed her. It’s not until after she’s driven for a good fifteen minutes that she realizes she has no idea where she is.
She pulls into a gas station and plugs her apartment address into the GPS, frowning at the directions it spits out. The only good thing about this is that the terror and adrenaline from the morning have caused the pain from her concussion to fade.
Nothing about what is happening makes sense. In what world would her dad let her leave the apartment after she sustained a head injury? Looking around the inside of the car – the discarded Starbucks cups, the stack of textbooks on the floor of the backseat, and the novelty fuzzy dice hanging from her rear view mirror – these things all feel like hers. How did her stuff get inside someone else’s car? And what the fuck am I doing in Encinitas?
Her cell phone rings, another unfamiliar detail as she hears the ringtone, and sees it’s Logan calling. She wants to scream at the phone – at this protracted torture he apparently dreamed up. His caller ID picture is Logan as she knows him – ugly ass orange shirt, frosted hair, puka shells – but the photo bears little resemblance to the not-Logan she just ran away from. The question she asked earlier repeats again in her mind. How can he be Logan and not-Logan at the same time? She rejects the call, and tosses her phone back into her bag. Her dad must be out of his head with worry, but she needs to figure out what is going on before she calls him.
She buries her face in her hands, willing herself to take a series of calm, steadying breaths. Panicking might make her feel better in the short term but it won’t solve anything. She rubs her left hand down her face in frustration and stops when she feels something cool drag across her cheek. Before she opens her eyes and looks further, she knows it’s just going to be another piece of information that serves to confuse even more. She takes another deep breath and rotates her hand, resting her palm on her knee. Winking up at her in the sunlight is a large solitaire diamond.
“What the fuck is happening?” she whispers. She throws open the car door and throws up on the pavement below.
Veronica parks the Saturn next to her dad’s car at Sunset Cliffs and takes another deep breath. After her unfortunate episode in the gas station parking lot, Veronica searched the car, hoping to find some clue as to what was happening to her. In addition to the text books, coffee cups, and other predictable car items, she discovered a small duffle bag that a better, smarter Veronica would prepare to go on last minute stakeouts. Black clothing, shoes, granola bars, water, instant coffee, and a spare taser. If that didn’t confirm it, the registration for the vehicle in the glove compartment would have.
The contents of her purse only added to her confusion. For one, she found the box for the engagement ring, which meant the engagement was relatively new.
“We were celebrating .” That’s what Logan said to her.
The wallet was her style but made of real leather rather than her Fossil knock-off which meant she acquired money in this iteration of her life. Or, the thought niggled at her, someone with money purchased it for her. Logan. In addition to his one call, he texted her several times. Texts she couldn’t bring herself to read. With some space and time to breathe she concluded that whatever led to her being in that bed with Logan, she wasn’t physically assaulted. In the bathroom of the gas station she brushed her teeth, took off her sweat pants, and examined her arms, legs and thighs to confirm she wasn’t held down. Despite the momentary relief this brought her, her skin still itched – waking up with no memory was something she thought she would never experience again.
She feels a little better having gone through a McDonald’s drive through and mainlining a large coffee and two sausage egg muffins on her drive to her dad’s. The way the grease eases the roiling of her stomach and pounding of her head, coupled with her performance in the gas station parking lot, leads her to believe Logan was right. She was hungover. Maybe I didn’t actually have a concussion?
All she wants to do is sleep. Something that Veronica with a concussion could not do, but Veronica with a hangover will definitely take advantage of.
The instant she opens the apartment door, her dad is on his feet and pulling her into his chest. His arms wrap around her, and it takes everything she has to not collapse her weight fully into him. Tears prickle at the corners of her eyes and she hugs him tight.
“Hey, dad.”
He chuckles, a puff of air against the crown of her head, and loosens his hold slightly. “Hey, kid.”
They stand like that for close to a minute before he pulls away. “Logan called.” She looks up at him, her eyes blinking, and tries to keep her face blank. “Several times, actually.”
“Okay.”
“Are you going to talk to him?”
She shakes her head and hugs him again.
“What did he do?”
Flashes of the Logan she remembers run through her mind – making fun of her mom, teasing her about Troy – but she shakes her head. I don’t know what he did. She doesn’t answer and eventually her dad sighs, pulling her away from him. “Honey –“
“Dad. I can’t right now. I just want to sleep.”
He places his hands on her shoulders and stares down at her. She stares back. He’s so focused on reading her that it gives her time to do the same thing - both to him and to their apartment. Something catches her attention over his shoulder – an unfamiliar framed print on the bookshelf. She steps away from her dad to take a closer look and squeezes her eyes shut once she takes it in. It’s her high school graduation, apparently. She’s hugging Wallace – at least Wallace is real! – and a girl with red streaks in her hair.
I’m missing two years of my life. Probably more than that.
“Veronica?” She turns around and it’s then that she finally notices the moving boxes in the center of the living room. There’s already a number of pictures removed from the wall, the outline of dust marking where they used to hang.
“You’re moving.”
“Up until this morning, you were too.”
“Where’s Backup?”
“He was going nuts. Rosie took him to the dog park.”
Rosie?
She shakes her head and steps away from him. “I need to sleep.” She shuts her bedroom door behind her and, sure enough, the space is also littered with boxes. There are answers in these boxes and throughout this room, but she’s barely holding it together. She lays down, pulling the covers up and over her head. All she can hope is that when she wakes up her life will make sense again.
She wakes to the sound of raised voices coming from the living room. Her head feels substantially better than it did that morning and she takes another second to savor the peace of her bed. It’s all wonderfully familiar – the duvet cover and scent of her dad’s laundry detergent. It’s the sound of her name that encourages her to sit up and, sure enough, the moving boxes are still there in the center of her bedroom.
Not a nightmare, after all.
Before she even opens the door, she knows she’s going to find Logan in her living room.
“Mr. Mars, please let me talk to her.”
“She’s sleeping, son. I know you’re hurting right now, but –“
At the creak of the door, both Logan and Keith turn to look at her.
“Hi, sweetie,” her dad says, a consoling smile on his face.
“How long was I out?”
“A couple hours.”
“Oh.”
Her dad looks between her and Logan. “Logan’s here,” he says needlessly.
She nods at that, her eyes downturned to the carpet in front of her. She folds her hands together and notices, again, the engagement ring on her left hand. It’s not something she’s able to even begin to understand, but she knows Logan gave her the ring. That apparently he proposed last night, and she said yes, and he gave her this ring. She has no idea what year it is, or where she was planning to move to, but she knows she can’t wear it. She starts to twist it off her finger and a muffled groan has her looking up to meet Logan’s stare. He’s bigger than she remembers him being. More cut than he was junior year. His cheeks have lost some of their roundness but aside from that, everything about him is softer. There’s no malicious glint in his eye and she wonders where it went. Did he lose it? Did she steal it from him? Was it even there in the first place?
She steps towards him and hands him the ring. He refuses to take it. He stands unmoving, but slowly shakes his head. “Veronica –“
She interrupts him. “I made a mistake.”
“I’m going to step out for a moment.”
“No, dad, it’s okay.” He ignores her, pressing a kiss to her forehead and grabbing his keys before leaving the apartment, shutting the door behind him.
“Veronica, nothing happened last night. We both got a little drunk, went out for dinner and dessert, then we came home and slept. That’s it.”
Home. “I was going to move in with you?” It’s such an absurd notion she laughs, forcing the ring into his hand. “Logan, who are we kidding?”
Her hand is suspended in mid-air for what feels like hours, but eventually he grabs the ring from her, shoving it deep in his pocket. He rocks back on his heels, his face contorting into something so unlike the softness she saw earlier. “Ah, yes. I should have known. The retreat is so familia. Don’t you ever get sick of yourself?”
“Don’t you?”
“Every single day,” he spits out. And it’s not the same, the look in his eye, as the one he wore when he made fun of her mom, but it has shades of familiarity. “Guess we played at being normal and well-adjusted for long enough.”
He turns around and opens the door to leave. Something deep within her feels lost and she steps towards him. “Logan, I’m sorry.” It feels true, but also ridiculous. The last time she really remembers seeing Logan, her Logan, she dropped a Lunchable on his desk in the journalism room.
“For when Wanda wins and takes all your little Pirate Points away. The Pepperoni Pizza isn’t bad.” He made a predictable food stamps joke and she slow clapped at his half-assed attempt. The look of disdain on her face only seemed to delight him more.
And now here she is, giving him back an engagement ring .
She shakes her head. “I can’t.” She doesn’t even understand it herself. All she knows is she woke up in a life she doesn’t understand with a Logan she doesn’t know. He’s not the Logan from before Lilly’s death – all brotherly affection, and sharp elbows, and even sharper wit. He’s also not the Logan from just earlier this week – mocking and baring his teeth, satisfied only when she bares hers. This is someone she doesn’t know.
He nods, like he expected her answer. “We made it two years this time. I guess I should be grateful.”
This time?
All she wants to do is ask him about the other times. Explain she can’t be engaged to him because she doesn’t remember how they started dating. Or when her hair got as long as it did. Or why her dad calls him ‘son’ with quiet affection in his voice. She needs to know what’s happening to her.
He clears his throat, avoiding eye contact. “I’ve got that thing in San Diego all day tomorrow and Sunday, which, I’m guessing you’re not planning to go to anymore?” He looks down at her, eyes a little hopeful despite the ring in his pocket and the words they exchanged.
She shakes her head. “No.”
“Well, stop by and grab your stuff any time.” He looks back for one fleeting moment. “Take care of yourself, Veronica.” Then he’s gone.
She wants to yell – “I don’t know who you are!” – at his retreating form but the words remain lodged in her throat. After she’s certain he’s gone she does yell in frustration, the sound bouncing off the walls of the living room. She charges into her room, flicking the lights on and opening all the blinds. She needs some fucking answers.
Veronica spends the next several hours sorting through the contents of her room. When her dad pops in with a sandwich and potato chips, leaving them on her desk, she says something about purging her junk before she actually starts to pack. He stands in the doorway, watching as she starts to throw items she doesn’t recognize and can’t imagine purchasing herself, in a box for Logan.
“Sweetie, you okay?”
She might not know how she got here, or how this is happening, but if her past few years of experience translate to this reality, her dad will accept a half-answer. Their relationship these days operates under a carefully constructed cycle of reveal and obstruct.
“I’m fine, dad,” she answers, tossing a few mix CDs in her garbage box. When she doesn’t hear him leave, she looks over her shoulder and back up at him. He’s staring at her with that shrewd furrow to his brow. After a few seconds she realizes he’s not satisfied with her answer and takes a second to ask herself how she’s actually doing. “I’m confused. Not sure what I feel. I’ll figure it out.”
He nods. While she didn’t reveal much more, he seems to take it as an honest reply. “Of course you will. Are you sure you don’t want to come with me to Rosie’s? She’d love to see you.”
She shakes her head. “No thanks. Tell her I said hi. And not to feed Backup human food. He’s going to get fat.”
He laughs at that and it comforts her at the same time it makes her miss the father with all the years of history she knows. She’s decided as she sorts through THIS-Veronica’s belongings that it’ll be easier if she thinks of this life as another character – an Amber, or Kim – that she pretends to be. Except, the character is herself.
Once she hears the front door close, she fishes a piece of paper out of her bra and unfolds it, writing down yet another question to find the answer to:
Rosie and dad? Moving in together?
She’s already sussed out that Rosie is what her dad calls his girlfriend, Roseanna, but she doesn’t know how long they’ve been together or where they met. She pauses and writes down another question.
Do I like her?
Some of the answers to questions on her list have come easier than others. The freakishly organized computer folders filled with photos come in extremely handy. The girl with red streaks is apparently another former Neptune High student named Mac, and she’s in dozens of photos alongside Veronica and Wallace. One Veronica determines is from junior year, due to the length of her hair, but they also attended some sort of formal event together at the Neptune Grand, which Veronica can’t quite place. Through all the folders and all the years, Logan vanishes for months at a time and then reappears. There’s a folder filled with photos of just the two of them during the summer after her senior year of high school – Logan surfing, the two of them dozing in a hammock, Logan pressing a kiss to her cheek.
Much to her embarrassment, there doesn’t really seem to be a stretch where THIS-Veronica goes without a significant other. There’s Logan, then strangely enough Duncan (which makes her laugh and cringe and feel a little wistful), then Logan again, a guy with floppy hair she tracks down in a Hearst directory, a short-lived romance with a med student named Eric, and then coming back around to Logan again.
Logan who, she confirms, was the person she intended to move in with. She pauses, her pen poised over the paper. One more question.
Where am I going to live?
She folds the paper back up and hides it in her bra, then reaches for a folder on the desk. It’s filled with acceptance letters to college. Hearst. Stanford. UCLA. Nothing too surprising. The surprises come as she continues reading: grad program acceptance letters. Stanford. UC Berkley. Apparently this Veronica was keen to study Developmental Psychology and had applied for deferred enrollment.
So living with Logan was temporary. Why did I defer enrollment? What was I going to do until grad school started? And was Logan planning to come with me?
There’s a lot she’s figured out simply by staying inside her room. She knows the names of all the key people in her life – it’s a circle not much larger than the one from the reality she left – and the general flow of her life. The invitation to a grad party she’s throwing with Wallace confirms she’ll be graduating from Hearst in less than three weeks. The finer points she’ll need to discover by asking questions and feigning innocence. She lays back on the carpet and closes her eyes.
“I’m 22-years old. I’m about to graduate from college. My best-friends are Mac and Wallace. I’m going to grad school at Stanford.” She opens her eyes and looks around the room then fishes out the list again.
Photography?
Work for dad?
Those questions are going to take some time. An entire wall in her bedroom is covered in an intricate mosaic of photos Veronica assumes that THIS-Veronica took. The composition of some is so finely detailed she has a hard time believing it’s actually her work.
She puts the list away and reaches for her phone, scrolling through her contacts.
“I’m Veronica,” she whispers to herself. “This is my life.” The phone rings three times.
“Hey Veronica.”
She takes a second, trying to link the voice she’s hearing for the first time with the pictures she’s seen.
“Veronica?”
“Sorry, Mac. I’m here.”
“No. Don’t be sorry. I’m sorry.”
She frowns. “Why are you sorry?”
There’s silence for a beat and then, “Well, you know? Um…”
Veronica sighs. “Logan called you.”
“Yeah. He didn’t say much.”
“How’d he sound?”
“Sad. Angry.”
Veronica closes her eyes, trying to remember the Logan who was her friend for those few years. “So, the usual.”
Mac chuckles at that and it causes Veronica to smile just a little. “Pretty much. Sounds like he’s planning to get his brood on.”
“Yeah.” We couldn’t have just stayed engaged? Right? She hits her palm against her forehead. Of course not. “He’s leaving for that thing in San Diego tomorrow,” Veronica says.
“What thi – oh, shit. That’s this weekend?”
“Yeah.”
“He said he only wanted you to be there, so I kind of forgot about it. Shit. I’ll get ahold of Dick and tell him to go. It’s his kind of thing so he won’t make it weird. Actually, give me a second and I’ll text him right now.”
“Sure.”
Veronica’s brain pings around every detail of what Mac just revealed. She opens her laptop, types in ‘San Diego,’ the dates of the upcoming weekend, but she stalls on the third search term. What would be Dicks’s ‘kind of thing?’ She thinks of breasts, beer, partying, but none of those are things a person would invite their fiancé, and only their fiancé, to.
Maybe --, she thinks. Veronica types in ‘surfing,’ and hits enter. The first search result is a link to an amateur surfing competition.
Logan is competing this weekend. And he only wanted me to be there.
“Okay, I’m back.”
“Do you want to go too?” Veronica asks.
“Ordinarily yes, but I expect you have a reason for calling me.”
“Yeah,” she says, suddenly unsure. Were they these types of friends? “I need to get my stuff from Logan’s house tomorrow.”
Mac sighs loudly and for some reason it causes Veronica’s eyes to prickle with tears. “Are you sure about this, Veronica?”
“I gave him back the ring. I better be sure.”
“He proposed?!”
Shit. Last night’s celebration did not include the friend group. Got it.
“Um. Last night, actually.”
“Goddamn, Veronica.”
“That about sums it up.”
She types ‘Logan Echolls Surfing’ into her search bar while she waits for Mac to speak again.
“Want me to come over?”
“Not tonight. I have something I need to take care of. But pick me up tomorrow?” She figures it’ll be easier than trying to figure out wherever it is Mac lives.