Summary: They think she's gone, forever ash; she sees them from Heaven, and her tears become their rain. Post-season one.
A/N: This was previously a fic titled When Angels Speak; the chapters are re-written, the title changed. Please let me know what you think! Your reviews are the reason why I haven't given up WAS completely. This story is very loosely based on The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold, a great novel I'd recommend to anyone. Only the premise is the same; everything else is mine.
A/N: I've taken some liberties when writing this, and had some things that happened in the season one finale not happen. Namely, Lianne never came back and Logan never dangled his life on a bridge.
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one.
She almost wishes her life would flash through her eyes. She wants to see Lilly unlike the one that's been haunting her for the past year, she wants to see her mother without any scent of alcohol bruising the sides of her mouth, she wants to see herself, everything in tact, every emotion in tact, virginity in tact, smiling and glad and alive. She wants to see life.
She wants anything. Anything to dull the pain. Anything to take her mind off of – anything – to make her feel something that doesn't make her wish she would just finally, finally die.
She doesn't scream. She doesn't give the bastard the pleasure of tasting her fear.
But she cries.
He can't see her tears, can't hear the dull thud of the poisoned liquid falling against the ashen wall, can't taste the terrible taste of acrid water suffocating the lips, like she can. So she lets the tears fall down her face freely, allows them to pool into her ears.
And she coughs.
As the flames begin to advance and the heat blisters the air enclosing her, an unreal amount of smoke smothers her. She descends into a coughing fit, so backbreaking that her body twists and aches long before the flames come in contact with her skin, her skin once so impenetrable, now so soft. Her hair is drenched from her own sweat, moisture ceaselessly falling from her pores.
With each additional breath, her mind loses substance.
"Does it hurt, Veronica?"
His voice sends ice through her heart, and, despite the intense heat, she shudders.
She tries to tell herself that the voice isn't real, that on-sale walky-talkies can't endure the mounting, scorching heat which she feels. The voice is still there, for some reason, perhaps because she can't convince herself to breathe, let alone convince herself she's deviated from reality.
She opens her mouth, and she tries to breathe.
She slowly begins to die.
"Still there, Veronica?"
She tries to tell him that of course she's still there, someone like him can't take away more than she's already lost, she's invincible, everyone's told her so - but when she parts her lips to speak, smoke fills into her mouth and all she can do is cough.
No more speaking. No more trying. She thinks that maybe the smoke is wrapping her mind with its fists.
Quiet for a few minutes, or seconds, or hours, or none of the above. Doesn't matter. Quiet.
And then she listens closely, and she thinks she may be able to hear her heart beat through the muddled air. She listens, quiet, only the throb of her heart, and she listens as each beat is slower than the last.
She listens closer, but the harder she tries to hear her heart, the more her head throbs.
Daddy isn't coming, Veronica. You're going to die, Veronica. Do you like the way you've lived, Veronica?
He won't be able to forgive himself. Daddy won't be able to let himself live. She wishes she could tell him it's okay, she wants him to live, but she can't, won't ever. She knows this now.
No more fists against the walls confining her. No more trying to escape. No more hope, Veronica, because, Veronica, you're a practical girl. You know how this will end.
She's still able to cry, because she knows how this will end, but she doesn't want it to end. All this talk about life, all this talk about wanting to die, and she's only just now realized she doesn't want to. She wants to live. She has people. People now to live with. She wants to stay.
She sees the people in her mind, sees them like she wants to see her life, but she can't think of how they are. She can only think of how they'll be, without her.
Daddy. Daddy won't ever stop crying, even when his face is dry, eyes stoic. Daddy has so much tears built up in him.
These thoughts aren't easy, her mind isn't so strong, she can't simply think. It hurts to think, and it hurts to breathe, but she thinks and she breathes because she never wanted to die so young; she wants to add as many additional seconds, possibly minutes, to her life. She wants to control something.
Wallace will finally know what she's felt the year Lilly died, and she wants, more than she wants to avenge this man who's killing her, for him to never feel like that. She knows what it does, how it breaks a person down, to lose a best friend, and she wishes, more than she wishes to see her life, that he'll be better. He'll be stronger. She wishes she never meant so much to Wallace, because if she means as much as he means to her, he'll never be the same. And he will cry. She wishes he wouldn't.
And she's still coughing, as she's thinking of all these people she's leaving behind, still crying, still barely breathing and still hurting like hell.
Lianne will be upset, maybe, might come to the funeral. But she won't be sober, never again. She'll be in the back pew and she'll be sipping vodka disguised as water, and she'll prove then how much she's stopped loving her. She'll cry. She won't mean it.
Now it's getting chilly and she's not afraid, but that's only because emotion is being stripped from her, from red to black, pink to grey. She thinks she might be, should be, afraid, because flames are licking the sides of her container and she's not really breathing anymore, and yet it's cold when it should feel like hundreds of degrees. She shivers but still sweats.
Duncan will cry, and he'll mean it. He'll cry and he'll mourn, and maybe he might sit near the front, maybe by Daddy, maybe he'll be almost as upset as when Lilly died; because she and Duncan, though not soul mates, were close to possibly being friends. They had been friends, almost best friends, the kind of friends that lovers could be (but she can't really remember now – had they made love?). He'll cry, maybe more for the old her than the her that she'd become.
Her entire body is throbbing now, like one single, beating, tearing heart, and she can't remember. She can't remember, so she tells herself, Veronica Mars. You are seventeen. You are dying. She remembers herself again, then feels the pain more unbearably, forgets, and reminds herself, Veronica Mars. You are seventeen. You are dying.
Logan. She thinks that maybe Logan hated her - what had she done, again? – but knows that he loves her. Maybe not like he'd loved Lilly, maybe not like he loves his alpaca, but there's some love, somewhere, somehow, in that split heart of his that he feels for her. He'll forget why he hated her. And he'll cry. Oh, God, Logan will cry.
It's losing its substance, maybe there's none of it left, and she can't think anymore, can only feel, and for once wishes she can't – can't feel.
And because she can't think, can only feel the flames now licking her skin, she may be in Hell. If there's a Hell, it's this, smothered in flames, remembering but without memory, skin burnt to a crisp, screams like echoes in her eardrums but silent to the night.
But it stops suddenly, the pain, everything, and she's not in Hell anymore. She might be saved.
She isn't saved. It only takes a second for darkness greater than the one already wrapped around her to flood onto her, into her, around her.
The pain is gone, but she can't feel anything. Nothing. Not even fear.
Veronica Mars, you are dead.
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fin part one