Disclaimer: I don't own anything from the show, "Veronica Mars."
"Don's Denial" by JustWriter
Donald Lamb is an honest man, but there are some things in life that he didn't want to accept. Denial has been his friend ever since the morning after Shelly Pomroy's party. Lilly Kane's murder, just a few days ago, hadn't been that hard to swallow. The bitter pill of how he'd earned his promotion hadn't even fazed him. She'd come into the station with dried tear-smeared makeup down her face, cotton underwear in her hand; she'd been ushered right to his new office by the Saturday morning desk clerk who'd been working during Keith's regime.
When she'd told him what she'd believed to have happened he scoffed at her right away. There was NO WAY that she'd been hurt on his watch; no way that she'd had the 'R-word,' done to her. It simply wasn't possible. And like that it was easier to believe that she was lying rather than having had the unthinkable happen to her. His secret promise when he'd first met Veronica had been that he'd protect her no matter what. When she'd left his office with a blank face he pretended that the encounter hadn't happened. But then she started to change and he blamed it on the drastic change in lifestyle and her mother having left.
Then when she'd begun to get more involved with the deviants in her school and in her father's cases he began to arrest her to dissuade her from pulling these stunts. After a while he realized that she resented him and bit back more than a few insults but some always slipped out. Their friendship was long gone and he didn't know where it had gone. He always kept his promise though; if it meant taunting Keith about Veronica's name being scrawled on a dead man's hand just to keep her safe then it was worth it.
Then one night he'd gone into a depression and blindly searched for her at the Neptune Grand, and instead found the liquor. He'd gotten drunk and through his blurry vision saw a girl just like Veronica. She was witty and she liked him. When he'd woken up the next morning he'd briefly gone into horror over it and then proceeded to forget the incident with professional smoothness. Yes denial was definitely his friend; but he'd always protect Veronica, no matter what.