Disclaimer: I do not own "Veronica Mars" or any of its characters. They are property of Rob Thomas and UPN. Except in dreams, when they'reall mine.
A/N: My very first fic, ever. I die for feedback, any and all comments are welcome, even criticism. As for the story, just remember what Logan told Veronica at the beach during LitB.
Pressure
She is lying down on her waterbed and she is suffocating. She is smothering and choking and being pushed. Her four bare walls are closing in, pushing in, hurting her. They will not let her move.
How could he?
The air attacks her. It feels nothing as it does it – just pushing, pushing, crushing her, crushing her lungs.
She had never really thought he was capable of it.
The air and the walls feel no anger, have no hate. Just cold, piercing cruelty. They push her to hurt her. They don't need to have a reason. They don't expect her to learn, they just want to make her small. Squashable. The punishing, she does herself.
Capable of it.
Her eyes are held open. She hasn't blinked in minutes, hours. The air burns her corneas, forcing itself into the corners, rushing.
Capable of it.
The air seeks out her lids, her pupils, clamps down her eyelashes. It would dry up her tear ducts if she had any moisture left.
The word sticks in her throat.
The walls move closer still.
Capable of…death.
Her breath is forced. She tries to push it back into the looming, menacing air, to make a dent. She tries to fight off the air, push it away from her. But it is futile and she can't beat it – the pressure is too strong.
It is before now, and she is searching, searching for the note…the note that would explain it all. The note that she could read over and over again, every morning, every night, until she found its clarity. Until she could have its peace. It had to be there. It had to exist. She needed it. But the car had been searched thoroughly. The room gone over with a microscope. There was no note. He had never left a note. He never wrote a note.
The air and the walls crush farther in. They hold her legs fast and circle her throat and she gasps and she can do nothing more. The air crawls into her, seeps into her brain. It laughs, and the walls laugh, the coldest laugh that chills her even when she is blanketed by dread. She doesn't hear it, but she gets every word. You know now, don't you?
Know what?
You know what is the consequence of distrust.
She says nothing back, waiting for the answer to be supplied. But the walls and the air don't say anything more. She has to say it, to feel the pain and the cut as she voices the answer. They wait patiently, snidely, for her to choke it out.
Truth.
She almost feels the walls smile, and then they push once more, suddenly, and before she can cry out the air slams into her chest and forces her back again.
I can't, though, she says. I'm not even here. But the walls and the air don't care and they make her watch anyway.
And she can't help it, she sees images. She sees it happen, watches scenes she hadn't even been present for, pauses and rewinds and replays a haunting chain of events that she had never witnessed.
This is it. This is the wind rustling. This is the sky. This is the cold, unforgiving ground. This is his face as he does it. This is his voice. Is he screaming, or is he sick enough to laugh? This is the sound. This is the thump, the blunt, deadly slap. This is the shock. This is his escape. (This is the bile rising in her throat as she flips through it, over and over again.)
She screams at the air and the walls, screams with no sound because they are still pushing, pushing. No, they tell her, you can't stop it.
She wasn't even there, but that won't keep her from seeing it again.
She bucks and shakes and she cries each time but it just happens and it has happened and she stays there, again and again. Finally it is gone and she is staring at the walls, motionless now, and a cool wisp of breeze from a nonexistent window flits across her face. But then the air is back and it is pinning her shoulders and the walls inch closer and now, oh, her bed is joining in and it presses up at her and starts to clench her legs and push at her neck and it is not sharp, never sharp, but dull and powerful and everywhere.
How could he?
There had never been a note.
She stares at the brown of the walls, which have stopped again, but aren't moving back. The air pauses too, in its onslaught, and settles like an infinitely heavy weight on her, pushing slower, deeper, this time. The bed squeezes more lightly but no more gently and creeps up to gradually encircle her neck and ribs and wrists. She shivers until she is trembling unceasingly, and she inhales strangled breaths and exhales choked sobs. Her face twists tight and her fingers tense and the air has eased up enough so she can quake.
The untraceable breeze sweeps in again and brushes past her, chapping her lips as her teeth bite down, down. It is silent, and no one is screaming at her and she has never felt so empty.
It is two days, three hours and forty-seven…forty-eight minutes earlier. She is standing loosely but stiffening, her contented expression dripping off her face.
She is looking up into the biker's eyes as they stare wearily at her, as the cut lips move and curl in a steady stream of words, finally ending hoarsely with three.
"He jumped, Veronica."
And then the walls swooped in.
He never left a note.