Author's Notes:

First I must tell you how this little plot started. Honestly? I'm so effing sick of Lilly this and Lilly that and somehow Weevil and Veronica can rarely be in the same fic without Lilly being mentioned. I can't stand Lilly and why does she get all the hot guys when all Veronica had was Duncan? What's up with that? Anyways, I don't like Lilly and if it were up to me, Lilly wouldn't exist. So there. :P This plot stems from me wanting to make Weevil and Veronica come together on their own without interference of she who shall not be named...and it morphed into a novella. :) This takes place around about Season 2 Episode 18-19-20ish and goes on from there.

Prologue:

Veronica woke up out of a dead sleep. Her dreams had consisted of nothing but darkness, an overwhelming sense of being in the middle of nowhere. She turned under the covers of her double bed to face the door and blinked hard again and again to focus her night vision. Her eyes were still droopy with sleep, her brain slowly trying to clear out of a fog. She dropped her arm off the bed, anticipating the silky fur of Back-Up's neck and frowned a little when she felt nothing but air. She wondered where he went, when normally his sleeping spot was right beside her bed. She wondered if maybe his absence was what had penetrated her dream of nothingness, if maybe that was why she'd felt a sudden shift in the air around her.

Veronica was by no means a heavy sleeper. She also wasn't a morning person, which didn't matter right now since the clock on her bedside table told her it was a little after 3 a.m. Feeling a little foggy yet she swung her legs over the side of her bed carefully and rubbed at her eyes with her fingertips. Maybe Back-Up needed out. He usually nudged her with his cold nose to get her attention at night and when that didn't work he'd whimper a little. Tonight, though, the small apartment she shared with her dad and dog was eerily silent.

Still trying to decide whether or not to leave the comfort of her warm bed, Veronica made a few small kissy noises, calling to Back-Up. She expected to hear nails scrape against the wood floor to alert her of his arrival. She heard nothing.

The fine hairs on the back of her neck started to tingle and she automatically reached for the switch of her lamp. She clicked it once, twice, three times. Nothing. Everything was dark. Everything was quiet. She monitored her escalated breathing, in through her nose slowly, out through her parted lips the same. She felt around behind her, unwilling to take her eyes off her bedroom door that stood wide open and felt a rush of relief as her fingers encountered the taser.

She'd been through a lot in the past two years and she didn't take the liberty of feeling safe in her own home anymore. Granted nothing had ever happened in her own home, but she still didn't like being asleep and vulnerable to the crazy sicko's that seemed to haunt Neptune and her own imagination. She grabbed the taser in her right hand and flipped the little button on the side to let it charge. She slowly lifted the phone off the cradle that lay beside her lamp near her bed and heard nothing. No dial tone. Still silence.

A quick sense of dread washed over her, flooding her senses. She wasn't some wisp of a girl who thought the phone had just been cut off over a late bill. No, not her. She knew, right then, that something bad was lurking outside her bedroom.

And it was that thought that didn't have her calm and composed enough to hear the sound of someone moving slowly toward her over the pounding in her ears.

She'd just stood up and replaced the phone in the cradle when a hard object hit her from behind. Her hands flailed out like a windmill, trying to shock some volts into her attacker when her wrist was grabbed and twisted hard. She cried out and tried to twist her arms back to relieve the pressure, her first mistake. The guy behind her pinned her arms down with one arm around her slim frame and shoved a chemical soaked rag over her mouth and nose just as she inhaled to scream again.

She fought the darkness that tried to swallow her up and brought her knee up to waist level then slammed her foot down, heel first, behind her and felt bone crunch upon contact. Even so she felt the chemical induced high shutting down her senses. Using the leverage of the man's arm around her she brought both legs up and tried to rock him backwards. Instead she lost consciousness.

TBC...