Disclaimer: I do not own Scooby-Doo. If I did, you would be watching this on Boomerang... for about eight seconds before changing the channel to CNN.
A/N: I am not giving up on History Inc. I am, however, taking a break. Frankly, historical fiction takes more time and effort to write and lately I've been really busy. I need a story I can write more easily. But I will come back to HI... later.
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Chapter 1:
"Thanks for the ride, guys..." Velma told her friends as she climbed into the Mystery Machine, which waited for her in the parking lot of the clinic.
"No problem, Velma," Fred told her. He was used to giving her rides now; all of Mystery Inc. was at this point. Velma didn't have her own car; between the typical costs of attending college and her insurance having gone up as of late she simply couldn't afford one. Not that the gang minded.
Velma took her place next to Daphne and buckled her seatbelt. She stared out the window. It was getting dark; a faint trace of her reflection appeared upon the glass. She practiced smiling until her face was convincing. The gang had plans for the rest of the evening; everything else could wait.
"So, like, Velma... you still feel like bowling with the rest of us?" Shaggy inquired from the back seat. He didn't want to elaborate any further as to what he was really asking. It made him feel kind of uncomfortable in the most un-macho way. Yet the entire gang knew that it was a legitimate question; sometimes these "appointments" drained every last drop of energy from their friend, to the point where she fell asleep the moment she reached the van. Although that hadn't been nearly so common recently as it had been four years ago...
"Yeah, I'm still up to it..." Velma answered back.
Four years. Shaggy and Velma (and likely Fred, Daphne, and Scooby) had been thinking the same thing. The difference was that Velma understood the time frame's irony, while her friends probably still felt the reason to celebrate. Four years... One more and she would have been home free. One more.
And then this had to come up.
I'll tell them tomorrow, Velma told herself. Tonight let's just have fun, like we planned. Maybe we'll even solve another mystery... one last mystery...
"We're here." Fred's voice jerked his friend back to the present. She climbed out of the van, followed by Daphne, and walked across the parking lot to the bowling alley's entrance.
"You want anything from the snack bar?" Fred asked his friends. Velma was the only one to shake her head. This was another of the gang's unspokens. The mere smell of popcorn and hotdogs wafting towards her nose was enough to make Velma want to vomit. That too was pretty much the norm by now.
The night from there on out went pretty much normally and uneventfully. Normal. The thing Velma had been striving for for so long. Or something near normal-- atypical as it might have been, she wouldn't give up being a genius detective with a talking dog any day. But normal for Velma.
Now normal was once again slipping from her grasp.
Velma was still struggling to push the glumness from her head when she felt Daphne's hand on her shoulder.
"Come on," her friend told her cheerfully, oblivious to what was going on behind Velma's coke-bottle glasses.
"Like, where are you girls going?" Shaggy asked curiously.
"Ladies' room," Daphne responded.
Fred groaned. The ladies' room, or "conference room" as Scooby, Shaggy, and Fred referred to it, was a land of deepest mystery. Seriously, the boys always kind of wondered if their friends only retreated into the restroom to talk about them. Why else did women always leave in pairs?
Daphne jumped ahead and pulled the door open. Last time they had been here the door had stuck shut and when Velma finally got it open it slammed into her knee. The bruise still hadn't gone away. Actually, that had been one of the initial concerns to begin with...
"So Velma, I was wondering if you by any chance had a--" Daphne began, rooting through Velma's purse in that way only sisters and best friends can get away with. She found the item she was looking for-- a hairbrush-- and began brushing as she stared into the mirror. Daphne found her voice drifting off, however, when she noted Velma's face. It is easy to fake it with a large group of people, but it is very hard to lie and say everything is fine when one is alone with one's best friend.
"Velma?" Daphne asked.
A tear trickled down Velma's cheek.
"Velma? What's wrong?"
Velma's answer came in a whisper.
"It's back."
The moment after she said it, only two sounds could be heard resonating throughout the bathroom: the clatter as Daphne's shock had triggered her hand to release the hairbrush so it fell into the sink, and the anguish of the girls' tears as both of them wept.