~Off to See the Wizard~
Warning: Strong Language, Adult Themes
Spoilers: Up to Mars, Bars.
There have been many times in his life when he has messed up. He knows it; it's never too far from his thoughts. It's there lurking right under the bottom of his skin, crawling, and moving and growing. He can't escape from it. Whenever he's alone he can never get comfortable. At those times he looks at his arm and he can see his skin rippling like waves.
The first time that he ever felt guilty about anything was when he was seven. Seven is a unlucky number, don't let anybody tell you any different. Seven is the year that that happened. He remembers his mother crying, and he thought that it was something that he had done. Something that he had said. He would have given anything to make the crying stop. From them on he was going to be a good boy. No one would ever cry because of something he did ever again.
Except that they do. Repeatedly.
The teacher at his school believed that he was being abused. This happened when he was eight and still perfectly behaved. That was stupid. His step-father would never hit him. He was a good boy, after all, and things like that never happened to good boys. Until they did.
And when that opened-handed slap hit his face he realized that good was negotiable. He didn't cry though. Crying got you nowhere.
He watched movies a lot. He said that he was going to play football or baseball. This was the language that the brute actually understood. Usually he did, but sometimes he would sneak out to the theaters downtown that showed old movies. It wasn't even that he liked old movies, just that they were a lot cheaper. He couldn't spend the money and see anything recent. This was when he was twelve.
By the time that he had turned fifteen he had seen The Wizard of Oz twenty-three times. Sometimes when he was church- the times that his step-father was sober and hustled everybody into going- he would pray to the Wizard instead of God. God had done nothing for him. The Wizard, on the other hand, had done a whole lot. He prayed that his step-father would get a heart.
It was a few months later that the cops came. Sure, there had been screaming, but honestly it wasn't louder than usual. The police came and asked questions, but not the right ones which was why he had to live with another six months of fucking torture. Eventually the Wizard granted his wish. In a ironic way. His step-father had a heart attack or something- he wasn't really up on the details because he didn't fucking care- the only thing that could possibly save his life was a heart transplant. And they went out and found a heart and everything, but it was too late. His step-father died just before he was put under anesthesia. Which was okay. Giving the bastard a heart was the worst waste of a organ.
The guy wouldn't have been able to find his heart, even with a fucking map.
The sports paid off though. He went to college with a scholarship and everything. The neighbor's had thought that he would grow up to be an alcoholic like his old man, or sell drugs or something. Because of apples and how they never fall far from the tree. And then his knee was shot and he considered selling drugs, but he was too scared.
He didn't want to mess up again. He asked the Wizard for some courage and eventually pursued his other goal of becoming a cop. Which was like being a drug dealer in that he had to work with criminals and got to carry a gun. When he landed a job as a Deputy in a hick town no one had ever heard of, he thought about how the two sides of the law weren't really all that different. In theory it was fair and ignored how poor you were, but it only helped those that could pay for it.
This was more comforting than it should have been. This was the world that he grew up in, this was the world that he understood.
When Keith made a mistake (he had been waiting for one- men like Keith always messed up- not because they do the wrong thing, but because they piss off the wrong people- that was when he moved.) As soon as he was elected Sheriff, he knew that he had messed up again. Not that at his victory party, he had actually done anything wrong. Yet, anyway. But there was this feeling that he couldn't do this. He couldn't bring people to justice.
Hell, he couldn't even bring his own step-father to justice. He couldn't save his mother from him, he couldn't even save his fucking self. How in the Hell was he suppose to watch over an entire town. Still, better him than Keith. Keith thought that justice was the thing where you put the criminal in jail like that would somehow erase the fact that your mother had been beaten nearly everyday for years without end. That when you closed your eyes you couldn't still hear her crying asking anybody for help. Anybody, please help me. He, unlike Keith, knows that there's no such thing as justice.
Keith's daughter knows this as well.
She had come in that day. If it had been the day before he probably would have helped her, so would have worked up the decency to lie. Or something. The day before his mother's first boyfriend since the death of his step-father, had used his mother like she was a goddamn punching bag. She didn't have any insurance and he considered not paying for the hospital room and the morphine just to teach her a lesson about being so fucking stupid to fall into the same fucking trap for the third fucking time.
And then came in Veronica, her blond hair tangled on her head, her face streaked with tears asking him to risk his job and his career to help find the person who did this to her. Like even if they had evidence (which they didn't) they would be able to convict anyone. Like the minute he showed up to the door, those 09ers wouldn't be swearing up and down that they didn't know who the Hell Veronica Mars was, and she was most certainly not at the party last night, Sheriff. Or that she brought the drugs herself, Sheriff. Or it was consensual, Sheriff. He had heard it all before.
Oh sure, usually he knew it was lies, but he didn't know whether she was lying or not. He gets forced to resign, her father's back as Sheriff, her mother comes back home and they all live happily ever after. A fairy tale ending. He didn't trust her. He trusted nobody after a happy ending. People got stupider and desperate when they thought they had discovered a way to make things right, the way they should be. God knows he did. Times like those he prayed to the Wizard for a brain.
And then she was crying like his mother had cried. And he had remembered all the times that he would try to calm his mother, to make the pain go away. He would tell her that it wasn't her fault. It wasn't her fault, after all. But he was so fucking sick of it all. Ask the wizard for some backbone. That's what he had told her. He thinks anyway- it had been years ago and he has tried to bury the memory under other memories. Deep into the crevices of the brain. And she left and he half expected Keith to show up and put him out of his fucking misery. Except that Keith never does. Not that he ever stops expecting it.
And the day after when he's still alive, he still has no idea whether Veronica was lying or not. He likes to imagine that she just made the whole thing up, for revenge or whatever her motives might have been. He forces himself to believe that she's some kind of witch out to get him because the times that she remembers that she's just a fucking teenage girl are the times that he feels his skin crawl. And he washes and washes, but the feeling never stops. He tries to ignore it, but he knows that was one of the times he messed up, and that if he had the chance to do it all over again he would still do the same fucking thing because he got to keep his job, his standing in the community, and his mother was so doped up that she couldn't feel the three broken ribs.
And that when his mother died, he made sure that the person who did that to her payed for it. That was the closest he ever came to behaving like Keith, and the thought that he was relying on the justice system nearly made him put his gun to his head.
The last time he messed up was five minutes ago. And now he's on the floor and he's pretty sure that that's his blood around his head. And he starts praying to the Wizard that he can go home. Not to the empty apartment that's too big for just him, but to the time when he was six and happy and no one had bashed his head in with a baseball bat. To the time when being good actually meant something, and when someone actually loved him, and the only time that people cried is when they skimmed their knees. And now he's on the yellow brick road, and he hopes to fuck that the Wizard's good and merciful and a whole lot more sympathetic than he's ever been.
At least, he thinks, he's not crying.
A/N: Years after Veronica Mars ends, I finally write a fanfic about it. Yay me?
Disclaimer: Anyway, I don't own Veronica Mars, nor do I get any money from writing this.