Disclaimer: Veronica Mars and everything associated belong to Rob Thomas. I am merely borrowing characters for a short period of time for my own amusement.
A/N: Written for the What If Challenge at the vmwhatif LJ community.
she dreams in colour, she dreams in red
You run.
That's all you ever do.
---
You can remember running the night he died.
You ran from the hotel suite, you ran to your mansion where you chucked a heap of stuff in a bag and then you got the hell out of Neptune.
You didn't think about what the consequences might be. All you knew was that you saw him fall. You saw him fall. You ran from the bathroom and realized that Aaron Echolls was dead. You needed to get out. To escape. To get away from this hell-hole of a town.
So that night you ran.
---
Once upon a time there was a girl. She was a good girl. A good, sweet, kind girl. She lived a happy life. She had a good family, and she did well in school, and she had great friends. She had a boyfriend. She was loved.
And then she died.
You knew her once. Back when you were fourteen and a half and still believed in fairy tales. Back when you still thought that "happily ever after" actually meant something and weren't merely empty words. Back before everything went wrong.
Sometimes you wonder why, out of all the people in the world, you chose to assume her name. You could've picked anyone or made up a fictional name with a fictional past. But you became her.
And then all of a sudden you will remember why. It was because you were driving the car that night.
It was because you killed her.
---
You wake up shaking most nights.
The dreams that come, you hate them. They torture you. Sometimes they're of him, sometimes they're of her. And sometimes they feature you. But they are always red. So much pain, so much hurt. So much blood.
The dreams come and they wake you from your sleep. You sit there in the cheap motel beds, the thin sheets wrapped around your body, and you try to keep the shaking to a minimum.
Every night you promise yourself that you'll never sleep again.
Every night you lie.
---
You pull up outside the latest in a long line of cheap, seedy motels. You never stay for long in any of them, only ever a couple of nights at most. As you step out of your car, you look around to make sure no one has followed you. You know that the police will be looking for you; after all it wouldn't have taken much for anyone to work out that you were in the hotel room with Aaron Echolls when he was killed. And you know that the Fitzpatricks are after you. But you're never going back. Never.
You walk into reception, trying to block the memories of Neptune from your mind. You know that thinking about that place will only make it that much easier for the dreams to come. And you don't want to dream about him anymore.
The bloke behind the counter hardly glances at you as you ask for a room. He hands you a key with a grunt and turns back to the small, flickering television on the counter. You sneer and leave to look for your room, still constantly checking over your shoulder. You wonder when exactly you became so paranoid.
Sitting on the lavender sheets of the single bed inside the cramped room you wonder how long you'll manage to stay awake this time.
You think that maybe it's time you found a place that sells sleeping pills.
---
You look out of the bathroom window and there he is. He's falling in slow motion.
Shock courses through you as he stares straight into your eyes. He looks so sad. Blood is pounding through your veins, pounding so hard that you can't hear anything. But you can see his lips moving, he's calling out for help, he wants you to help him. But you still can't hear and your feet are stuck to the floor and you don't know what to do.
And then suddenly you're outside and you're falling with him. And now there's really nothing that you can do. The cold air stings as it rushes past you. The ground is coming closer and closer and you want to scream but your voice is pulled away from your body as you fall.
You look over at him and he's staring back at you, still looking so sad. He opens his mouth to speak and you know that by all rights you shouldn't be able to hear him over the wind rushing in your ears. But somehow you hear him and it's as if he's speaking straight into your mind.
Why? Why didn't you save me?
And then you both slam into the sidewalk.
---
You're walking down the street, in a town far away from Neptune, when you see his face again.
You turn your head and there he is, smiling in a school photo, being broadcast to the world on the news. You can't hear what the reporter is saying but you don't care anyway.
The pack of sleeping pills that you just bought slip from your fingers as you try not to panic. You're staring straight into his eyes and it's just like those damn dreams again.
You swallow hard and drag your eyes away. You need to get away from here.
You wonder if you are ever going to be able to escape from it all.
---
You left home when you were seventeen.
Well, no that's not exactly right. Leaving home would have meant packing your things and saying goodbye to your parents and moving somewhere nice, maybe college or close to a well-paying job. What you did wasn't leaving home.
You ran away from home. You ran away because you couldn't hack it anymore. Your dad was no longer rich, your grades had slipped, and people at school thought you were a bitch. What happened to Kendall had been the last straw. So you ran away.
You laugh bitterly when you think about it.
Funny how life always seems to repeat itself.
---
You run.
That's all you ever do.