Work Text:
If there’s one thing Velma Dinkley knows beyond anything else, it’s this: people leave.
The gang splits up. She’d expected it, because she’s a dyed-in-the-wool cynic. Only she’d been hoping for it to be because Fred and Daphne got married, and not because of what they learn about Fred’s dad-who’s not-actually-his-dad. Sometimes people leave. Sometimes family disappoints you. Sometimes everyone disappoints you. The gang leaves , leaves each to their own and also leaves her, specifically.
She didn’t tell them about Angel-Cassidy. She wouldn’t change that, even though she apologizes for it, because she’s seventeen and scared and wants her friends back more than she wants to be right. For once, there is something Velma wants more than to be right. She’s told hundreds of truths others wanted hidden. She’s pulled off so many masks. She’d thought Angel had a right to her secrecy, her privacy, her life-that-wasn’t-her-life-anymore. She still does, mostly. But the others had been in danger, and nothing else had mattered. She doesn’t talk to Angel after, even though she’s the only person left to talk to who’d understand any of it. The thing is that Velma’s not scared of Angel, not really. She’s scared that Angel might understand too much.
Velma’s not too proud to stand on Daphne’s stoop and ring the doorbell over and over, but she is practical, and practicality eventually forces her to leave when the clouds darken above; Crystal Cove is famous for its torrential storms. Getting drenched won’t make the best friend she’s ever had talk to her again. A few weeks later she sees Daphne with Baylor at The Bloody Stake, cheeks like roses in spring and she tries not to be bitter about it. Fred had been an ass and Velma’’d never even had a chance, never let herself think of it– and Daphne, kind and blooming, had always sort of deserved better than all of them, anyway.
Fred and Shaggy show back up, Scooby in tow, standing in the middle of the road because none of them know what subtle means. They’re not looking for her but they find her anyway, and then Fred hugs her and then Shaggy does, and she takes that to mean maybe they’re not mad anymore, so she tries not to be either. They go to the outskirts of town, park the van on one of the dunes and watch the lights flicker. She sits propped between Shaggy and Fred on the roof, names the constellations one after the next, offers another apology and feels it go sour in her mouth. They tell her they didn’t mean to leave her, that it wasn’t personal.
Velma’s always been a know-it-all. The Yes, it was dripping from her chapped lips is all but reflexive. Neither of them deny it, this time, and that’s how she knows she’s right. She thinks she might be maturing, because before this year she can’t remember ever being right so much and liking it so little.
She’s the only one of them without money– her parents still have a mortgage; Shaggy doesn’t even know what a mortgage is and Fred probably thinks it’s a brand of net. Daphne knows, is painfully aware, always offered to pay for Velma’s snacks and drinks and gas and Velma always, always turned her down. Her parents have a mortgage, and jobs, and she’s taking out student loans for college, which means that she doesn’t go to military school after shit goes down with Fred’s Dad-who’s-not-his-Dad no matter how concerned they are, and she doesn’t go on a quest to find herself either, and she doesn’t get a movie star boyfriend. Instead she’s grounded for a month initially, but her parents cut the time down to a week after she sits in the tea shop day after day, watching her mother brew blends and looking morose. She doesn’t do it on purpose. Crystal Cove is just too small to wander with the others gone. She could see Daphne, or not-see Fred or Shaggy. She doesn’t know which is worse.
She starts talking to Marcie out of boredom at first. Who else is there worth talking to? At least she knows the other girl is clever, something that can’t be said for the rest of her classmates. But then they’re running jobs for Mr. E, and then she notices how pretty Marcie’s laugh is when it’s unencumbered by stress, and then Marcie grabs her hand when they’re hiding from a security guard, clutches her fingers like Velma could save her, like Velma’s ever been able to save anybody from anything, like Velma’s not the reason the world fell apart and her friends left and everything has gone wrong. She asks Marcie about her dad, one day, realizing she hasn’t seen him around in months, and Marcie says, “I love him. I wouldn’t have done all that fucked up stuff at the amusement park if I didn’t love him.”
And that makes sense and it doesn’t at the same time. “This town’s not good for him,” Marcie continues. “For us. It gets under your skin. It’ll never come out.” She looks out the window. “I wanted him to leave and he left.” It’s just Marcie here now; her dad moved to Missouri after the park closed down. He sends her postcards. Velma knows because she sees them in the other girl’s backpack, worn and folded like they’d been read a dozen times over.
Marcie wears cherry chapstick that she buys at a local bargain store. Marcie likes sweaters better than hoodies because she’s never owned a hoodie that keeps her as warm as she wants it to. Marcie takes Velma’s hand when she’s afraid, shares her research and calls her V, and Velma squeezes her own eyes shut tight for just a moment before she does anything dangerous, and thinks I’d keep you warm if you wanted me to.
She brings Marcie into the gang because it feels right. Daphne’s gone and thinking about the hole where she should be hurts. Mystery Incorporated means something to her, and Marcie means something to her, and so it only makes logical sense that she should combine them. But Fred is unaware, cruel, and he makes Marcie’s eyes well up when he talks about Daphne, her scent, her smile. And Velma thought like that too, once, looked at Daphne like she was the only girl worth looking at, but– Marcie goes home to a house by herself, cooks and cleans, picks up shifts at the Internet Cafe to pay the bills and still, somehow, gets straight As in all her classes. Marcie wears cherry chapstick and smells like it, too; really, she hasn’t actually smelled like hot dog water since the seventh grade. Marcie’s allergic to gluten but loves apples and beef jerky and black cherry tea, holds the mug between her palms and relishes each sip. Marcie–
Velma thinks she might be getting in too deep.
Daphne still doesn’t want to join them again. Fred doesn’t get it, because he thought Daphne would wait for him, alternately sit and jump with a snap of his fingers. If it wasn’t the rest of them Daphne was also shutting out– if it wasn’t Velma Daphne was shutting out, then she’d almost relish seeing Daphne give him what for. If one of them was getting out, going somewhere better, it was always going to be her.
“Doesn’t anyone care about mystery solving anymore?” Velma asks, after another conversation is derailed by Fred’s drama and Shaggy’s inability to stay on track.
“I care,” Marcie tells her, takes half the weight of the newspaper they’re reading, moves closer on the couch. “You’ve still got me.”
And if Velma wasn’t in too deep before, she certainly is now.
Daphne comes back to them. The others kick Marcie out, and Velma’s the one to deliver the verdict, and she knows even as she does it that she’s wrong, wrong, wrong. The weight settles on her like an unanswered question on a test. She’ll always be wrong for this.
Cassidy Williams dies alone in the deep. Velma feels her pass like a punch to the chest. I could have been her, she thinks, and then, It should have been me. Cassidy had not deserved what happened to her. It had been their fault– Velma's fault– that they hadn't been clever enough to outwit Pericles. They'd needed saving, a hero. Cassidy had been a hero. Then she was dead.
Velma wonders if it was worth it for Cassidy at the end, knowing that she wouldn't make it out. She'd die for any of them easy– Fred or Daphne or Shaggy or Scooby; she knows this about herself in the same way she knows that her heart continues to beat and that Cassidy's doesn't and never will again. Velma would die for her friends, and feel lucky to do it, but all of Cassidy's friends are worse than dead. When she wonders what Cassidy thought about, at the end, she never likes the answer.
The cases get tougher and stranger. More supernatural. She gets Marcie back– and lets her go– and they text when they can, and Marcie’s sense of humor keeps her alive until the other girl goes radio silent without warning, and Velma doesn't want to know, she doesn't, she doesn't.
(She does). And then they are at the end of the world and Brad and Judy pull Marcie, kicking and struggling, from a chest and hope blooms improbable in Velma's ribs. Marcie is still alive, and still alive means she can still be saved, and if she can be saved then Velma will do the saving. She'll do something right for once. But it's Marcie who saves her in the end, pushes her through a door with the others into whatever comes after the end of the world, and then there are gunshots and then there is no Marcie anymore, and Velma feels all the facts that made her up crack under the weight of this new, crushing one: there is no Marcie anymore. The town falls, the demon wins, and it almost feels fitting. Why should Crystal Cove continue on when Marcie can't? Why should anything get to keep living at all?
Marcie is dead. Marcie is dead. Marcie is dead and Velma says, “We have to keep going,” but she doesn't think that she means it at all.
They kill the demon. They end the evil. Fred and Daphne and Shaggy hold her tight and they tremble together as the world around them comes apart and reforms.
In the new world– the one they're given– Marcie calls Velma her girl. In the new world, Marcie sits curled on Velma's bed with black cherry tea propped on her knees. Some things stay the same across dimensions. In the new world, Marcie is a science fair champion, and no one calls her Hot Dog Water, and she is alive, alive, alive.
They leave. They leave, because there are mysteries to be solved and Velma knows the way she knows every element on the periodic table and pi to the thirtieth digit that Crystal Cove can't ever feel like home again, and that maybe nowhere will but the Mystery Machine. But before they do, she takes Marcie's chin in her hands and kisses her, and Marcie is not dead, has never been dead, and her hands are warm and soft against Velma's back, in her hair, under her sweater, and they are both so alive.
And Velma leaves, but she does it with a hickey on her neck and cash stowed away in her sock to buy postcards and stamps at every rest stop. And Marcie is waving in the rearview mirror, and people leave. But sometimes, they come back.