In Search of An Ending
By Misha
Disclaimer- I don't own anything to do with "Veronica Mars", I really wish I did, but I don't. It belongs to Rob Thomas and the UPN. I'm not making any money off of this, so please don't sue me.
Author's Notes- I started this a long time ago. It's a bittersweet D/V fic that wouldn't leave me alone one night when I was thinking about the less pretty nature of their relationship and how they wer both hanging onto the past more than anything. Thus this was born. I hope you enjoy.
Pairing- Duncan/Veronica.
Summery- She came back to him, not out of love, but to get the ending they never had.
Rating- PG-13
Spoilers- Entire first season.
Sometimes, Veronica just sat and thought about the past. About life before Lilly's murder. Sometimes, she remembered what she and Duncan had had then.
Looking back, she realizes how sweet and sugary it had been, how fragile. They were that couple you loved to hate. Everyone envied them, wanted to be them. They were never apart, they adored each other and the whole world knew it. They were the perfect couple.
Except, looking back she realizes that they rarely talked. Not about anything of substance. Their whole relationship had been sweet, clen, pure. Nothing rough or dirty or real about any of it.
She only realizes this now, looking back. The only thing that wasn't pretty and perfect was the ending and there had never been much of an ending to speak of.
He just stopped talking to her, just pretended she didn't exist, and just like that the fairy tale was over, like it had never really happened. But it had, maybe it was more illusion than substance, but it had happened.
She often reflects back to the beginning of it all. Third grade. They moved to Neptune, her mom's hometown, in the third grade.
She still remembers her first day at school there, she wore a jean skirt and a cute pink shirt, with pink barrettes shaped like bows in her hair. She remembers walking into the room and feeling all the eyes on her, she remembers at recess the pretty blonde girl (though her hair was a darker blonde than Veronica's own fair locks) who came up to where she was standing awkwardly, watching everyone else, and took her hand, pulling her into the fray.
From that moment on Lilly Kane was her best friend and that meant that every other girl in school liked her too. Lilly might not have been in her class (after all she was a year older), but everyone knew she was and if Lilly liked someone, the rest of them did too.
Veronica spent lots of time after school at Lilly's house, though almost from the beginning she got the feeling that Lilly's mother hated her. Still, that's how she got to know Duncan, because she was at their house all the time.
Back in the early days Veronica never thought much about Duncan. He was just there, Lilly's annoying little brother. Back then she didn't like boys very much, just thought of them as annoyances.
Though, as they got a little older that changed. They played soccer together and as she got older and boys stopped being yicky, Duncan was really the only one she ever noticed. It just happened naturally, as if it was meant to be.
He was her first kiss. It was Lilly's fourteenth birthday, Lilly insisted that they had to play spin the bottle. Her bottle pointed to Duncan and they kissed. It was just a simple, sweet, brief kiss, they were barely more than children, after all, but it was also the start of something more.
After that kiss, things were different between her and Duncan. For about a year, it was about blushes and not meeting each other's gaze, but watching the other when they weren't looking. It was about not knowing what to say, but wanting to constantly be around one another.
By the time high school started, they had gotten out of that awkward stage and were firmly a couple. That had happened in the summer between eighth and ninth grade.
They had been hanging out with Lilly and Logan, he had entered their lives two years earlier, and they slipped off leaving Veronica and Duncan alone. They had been at the beach and for the rest of her life Veronica would remember the feel of the sand beneath her bare toes and what it was like to be alone with Duncan that first time.
He kissed her. Deeper, sweeter, more meaningful than that first kiss. There had been awkward conversation and lots of blushing and mumbling as they both admitted that they really 'liked' one another.
And just like that, Veronica was Duncan Kane's girlfriend. They were one of the power couples at Neptune High right from the beginning. Duncan, as Jake Kane's son, was automatically one of the golden ones and as his girlfriend, so was Veronica.
Being Duncan's girlfriend had come easily, hadn't required any thought or effort. It had come so easy to her, to cling to Duncan and look at him with adoring eyes.
They were always together back then. From first thing in the morning, before class, until late at night when one or both of them had to get home.
Duncan walked her to every class and they met at one of their locker's at every break and lunch, of course, was spent together with Logan and Lilly.
After school, they were together, sometimes with Lilly and Logan, sometimes without. They studied together, spent their free time together, and couldn't bear moments apart. She cheered him on during his soccer games, he watched her pep squad performances.
It was very sweet and innocent, everything a first love should be. Except there was no passion, no depth, but she hadn't seen that at the time. All she had seen was the sweetness and the tenderness.
It was exactly what she thought love should be and it went like that for over a year, until the day Duncan stopped talking to her and it ended without ever really ending.
Maybe that was why she clung to the ashes of that relationship for so long. Because there was no ending, one day it was perfect and the next day, nothing. She didn't know how to stop loving him, because she hadn't known she was supposed to.
Even now, she took him back, because she thought she was supposed to and she didn't know how to walk away. She wanted to give them the perfect ending, but she didn't know how to do it without it being torrid and bitter and angry, everything they weren't supposed to be.
She had spent so long pining for Duncan, because they'd never gotten an ending and now... Now she was trying to figure out how to give them that ending.
Veronica thinks that they would have graduated high school and gone off to college and drifted apart. It would have ended naturally, because it was never meant to last.
But it hadn't, they'd been forced apart and that had made it seem like some epic romance, when really it never was.
And someday soon, it would end. Quietly, maybe not as naturally as it would have, but with very little fuss and fanfare. She just had to wait it out, wait out that day and their ending.
The End