Another random little oneshot that was designed to distract me from my real work. Oops… Reviews welcome.

Veronica Mars held her head high and swallowed, staring down the building opposite her. It was mocking her, but did she really want to do this? She gently dragged her long, blonde ponytail over her shoulder so that it was in front of her and toyed with the ends absently, brushing them against her palm. She guessed she was starting to look weird here, sitting on a bench and staring at the building across the street.

That would have bothered the old Veronica. The old Veronica never would have wanted to sit here apart from the crowd and be looked at oddly. And feel odd. But, in all truth, she really didn't like the old Veronica much anymore. The old Veronica was the one that had rushed onto a crime scene to find her best friend stone cold on the unforgiving patio stones by the pool, blood darkened by exposure and turning her hair black…

She put a hand to her mouth and pursed her lips. She had thrown up in the Kane shrubbery when she had seen Lilly. Twice. That nightmare had haunted her for so long and she needed to put it behind her. Because that way, she could move on. But she didn't know if she could. She didn't know if she had the strength to blank out Lilly's dead eyes staring up at her. Eyes that were both all-seeing and yet not all at the same time. Lilly knew who killed her. Lilly knew who had left her there, bleeding, by the poolside. She knew, and yet there was nothing she could do about it. Veronica swallowed again, this time to get rid of tears.

Lilly was pretty much everything to her. Lilly had had the strength and the sparkle. Veronica was just like the moon. Sure, she shone, but only because she reflected light from the Sun. From Lilly. Lilly Kane was like the centre of everything and now… Now she was gone. The Sun had gone out and created a black hole, drawing everything into the void where she used to be. Logan, the Kanes, her father's job, her parent's marriage, her… and crushing everything. Crushing them all into shadows of their former selves.

Veronica sighed and looked towards the building in front of her, thinking about becoming a new person. Getting a new identity that wasn't this Veronica. Because this Veronica had woken up in Shelly Pomeroy's guest bedroom and had had to search for her underwear. This Veronica had been feeling dirty and used and sick with herself. And sore. Sore from scrubbing her skin raw in the shower every night just to try and stop it feeling like it was crawling. People thought she'd got sunburn from somewhere.

This was a Veronica of the past. A Veronica she didn't like anymore. A Veronica no one liked anymore. Not since she had supported her dad in his quest to bring Lilly's real murderer to justice. She reached back to her hair and twisted it into an elegant knot at the nape of her neck, and then let it fall. It brushed at her coccyx. It was clothed, of course. Midriff-bearing fashion was more Lilly's thing. And, of course, because it was Lilly's thing, it had been Veronica's thing too. But not anymore. Veronica had gone even further back into herself, dressing down, trying to lose herself in the crowd. She hadn't gone out; her bedroom was her hermitage and she felt safe there.

But then she had tried. She had tried so hard at first to dress up and fake her way through high school. Basically, she had tried to be a normal teenager. She had tried so hard, and that was what led her to Shelly Pomroy's party. That was what had led to her being used and tossed to the side like her underwear.

All the 09ers had started shuffling around on the benches of their table, saving seats with their bags. They didn't want her, and Veronica was smart enough to know when she wasn't wanted. She knew full well that she was being ostracised from the 09er table. Well, fine. Let them sit there and smirk and jeer and count their money and Pirate Points and order in their food. Let Logan be a complete psychotic jackass. See if she cared. Logan had been her friend. But Lilly had been her friend too. Her best friend. So when she made the choice to tell her what happened between Logan and Yolanda, she had felt like she was doing the right thing. But now he was taking it out on her. She was just a little Veronica Mars puppet — nothing more than a punch bag — for letting out pain and aggression and sorrow. She was his outlet. And she hated him for it. She hated him for treating her like she was contagious. She hated the way he blamed her, her, for his break-up with Lilly. As if she had been kissing Yolanda. After Duncan had become distant, it had hurt. And he had become distant with Logan, too. They were both two hurting people, which was what forced the new Veronica to fight back. She was not going to bow at the feet of Logan Echolls and take his crap any longer. She was hurting too. She was going to grow a spine. An eye for an eye was going to be her new philosophy.

Veronica Mars didn't need a single, stupid 09er to make her complete. Not the new Veronica that she was aiming to be. The old Veronica had relied on them like a crutch. Because they were her social support. All of them. She had been callow and conformist, following them everywhere and being with them all the time just because she wanted to fit in. She just hadn't wised up to the ways of the world at the time. That had changed. She had come down to the earth in flames and tatters, screaming.

That was another reason to hate the old Veronica. The old Veronica was a sheep. A helpless, lost sheep just following a flock that wasn't hers. She often thought Lilly was the shepherdess. Because she was naturally the centre of the attention, and you could see why. She was just 'fabulous', and wanted, no, needed, everyone to put her on a pedestal and extol her and bestow blandishments on her in order to be accepted — deify her. And people did. Everyone wanted Lillian Kane to be their friend. Everyone wanted to be endorsed by her. Everyone. Except her parents. Lilly often said that Duncan was their favourite, that they only tolerated her.

But Veronica hadn't thought like that. She, too, had needed to be given the official Lillian Kane stamp of approval on everything she did, wore, said… Which was how she had come near enough to the Sun to dazzle and be dazzled, and how she had been one of the first to be pitched headfirst into the void left in Lilly's wake. It had aged her. She was sure that her face was more lined — it was as if the lineaments had been waiting for an excuse to pop out ever since her features had been formed, and the death of Lilly was their key.

The new Veronica was not going to be part of a herd. She was now a black sheep anyway, tainted, and didn't blend like she was meant to. But when the 09ers had cut her loose, they had set her free too. Manumitted her from the pressures of conforming and following and bleating.

The old Veronica hated being alone. The new Veronica had no one. And that scared her. It scared her to be making her own path through high school, not having anyone else to make the rules but her. She was wounded. Not by Lilly's death; she had been wounded before that. She had been wounded before Duncan stopped offering his services as a crutch, and it was ineluctable that she would lean on Lilly entirely after Duncan and bolted. Because the Kane kids had been Veronica's support. Physically, socially, mentally… and as soon as she had been forced to depend solely on Lilly, she was whipped out from under her as well. And Veronica had landed flat on her face, and was forced to crawl. Because without her crutches, she was lame. In both senses of the word. She was a nothing and had nobody.

The old Veronica had seen too much to deal with. In fact, the old Veronica was too sheltered to deal with anything that she had seen. She wanted that to change. She had been forced to deal with her parents' separation like a bucket of icy water thrown across her face. It had been one many slaps and harsh blows that had practically laid to rest to old, sheltered Veronica Mars that was a sheep and leaned on people. She was still there, though.

Sometimes she flared up in moments of surprising clarity. Moments for her to actually feel hate for her father for ruining everything. Moments to feel angry at Lilly for leaving her, moments of hatred for Duncan and anyone else around her. But the new Veronica was winning out increasingly. She felt dirty enough after waking up the morning after the night before. She didn't need to make herself feel worse by harbouring those feelings towards those she loved. So the old Veronica was beaten back down. Some more. Into a pit of simpering, whimpering, baaing weakness until she had all but drowned.

Because Veronica wasn't that person anymore.

She had hardened now. She was no longer labile, no longer malleable to be moulded by others, simply because she was practically impenetrable now. She couldn't be easily influenced into doing something just because everyone else was doing it. She wouldn't let herself.

She'd learnt that lesson the hard way by going to that party just because everyone else was. And look where that had got her. Drugged, unconscious and raped by an unknown assailant. It was making her skin crawl again, and she wanted another shower. She didn't know what she expected to see swirl down the plughole one of these times. Perhaps a part of her that she had finally succeeded in scrubbing out slopping to the tiles and then oozing its way malignantly down the drain into the sewers where it belonged. Because it was filthy. Just like her…

But no. She had an appointment here. And she was going to go through with it. She had decided all on her own this time. Another sign of a new Veronica. She wasn't relying on anyone to make her decisions any longer. Because she didn't need them. Because from out of the ashes of the old Veronica had risen a new one. A better one. A phoenix without the show off-y plumage was fluttering around in the old Veronica's body, forming a new life and a new attitude and a new outlook and there was one thing left to kill the old Veronica — just one. And then all she needed to do was bury the old Veronica. Perhaps in a plot next to Lilly. If they could afford it, which she doubted. The old Veronica would like that. She would like Lilly deciding what happened to her even in death, just so she wouldn't have to think for herself.

She was twirling hair around her fingers absently, and when she realised she forced her hands into her lap where their grappled with each other, twisting and turning and grasping and pulling and wrestling. She finally let them up from their pin to smooth down her hair and take out the hair tie. Immediately, a silky cascade of blonde hair tumbled down across her shoulders and her face.

She looked at the tie in her palm and closed her fingers around it, suddenly and viciously dumping it in the trashcan next to the bench she was sitting on. She got up equally as angry and set her face and began walking purposefully across the street, her eyes fixed on the exterior of the building she had made her goal. She waited at the edge of the street and a Camero whooshed past, the top down.

Her hair streamed towards the sports car as it disappeared and she waited before patting and straightening it again. She had to get inside the building, because that way, she could start her new life. The new Veronica would emerge from the building triumphant. The old one would be gone for good. Left on the floor to be swept away.

She paused with her hand on the door and then her face and resolved hardened once more and she pushed it open. There was a desk in front of her to her left with a computer on it. She walked over to it, standing in front of it and blowing air out through her lips, tapping a nervous staccato beat on the polished wood on the desk.

Someone came over to greet her and she smiled at the woman. Or rather, she turned up the corners of her mouth. She didn't show her teeth anymore. She didn't even remember how to make those muscles work, and even this workout was irking her. The smile didn't reach her eyes, either. Her eyes had been the biggest giveaway to the moon that was her personality and her soul. They had reflected Lilly's light, Lilly's love, Lilly's everything. But now they were dead. The light had gone out, and any remnants that had managed to cling to her irises after Duncan and Lilly had been tossed into the void the day her mother walked out of the house, slamming the door and taking with her two suitcases. And that had been that.

The woman didn't seem to notice this and she bodged the mouse in front of her, lightly chastising the screen for taking so long to display what she needed it to. "Sorry. I think we need to invest in a new one. What is it that you want?"

"Oh, I already have an appointment. Veronica Mars?"

The woman frowned a little, but then clicked and smiled. "Gotcha, honey. Take a seat over there, for me, would you?"

Veronica did so. She picked up a magazine and thumbed through it. She didn't care. She didn't care about the lives of other people. She could barely bring herself to care about her own life enough to pick up the scattered shards. She was staring at the pages, the words meaning nothing. They were jumbled and meaningless and she just didn't care. She flipped hair over her shoulder and settled back into her chair, her lips pursed her head cocked a little. She let out another shaky breath. This was it. She knew that Lilly would be applauding her for this. But not very enthusiastically. Lilly would want her to do this with class, style, panache. But that wasn't her. That was too flashy. And besides — they knew her here. She'd been coming here for years.

"Veronica!" Another woman was waving at her. She smiled her plastic smile again and stood up, waving by simply swiping her hand half-heatedly through the air once.

"Hey, Mandy," she said, her facial muscles screaming at her and she walked across the room, her back straight, her eyes unclouded, to sit in a chair.

"Is it going to be the usual?" Mandy asked, combing through Veronica's tresses with her fingers and watching the halo that the light bouncing off it caused.

"No," Veronica said quietly, turning towards Mandy's enquiring gaze and starting again, taking a deep breath and putting venom behind her words. "No. Cut it off. Chop it all off."

She turned around, because she didn't want to see the woman's reaction, but she could see Mandy's face in the mirror.

The woman had her mouth wide and was shaking her head a little side to side, disbelieving. She lightly ran her fingers through the blonde hair again. "Veronica…"

"Please," the blonde said in clipped tones.

"Are you sure?"

"Before I change my mind, just… please," she said, almost begging her to get this over with, so she wouldn't jump out of the chair and not go through with it. Just do it! She was screaming in her head, her knuckles were white as the clutched the arms of the chair. She closed her eyes so as not to watch as it happened. As the old Veronica was finally hacked to pieces. She wanted to new her to emerge a surprise.

As Mandy picked up her scissors hesitantly and gently and lovingly combed through the hair Veronica had been growing since she was about nine, Veronica kept her eyes closed, a smile crossing her pursed lips.

'Goodbye, Veronica Mars,' she thought, as, piece by piece, her old self dropped, cleaved, cropped, severed and slashed for good, to the salon floor.

These pop up from time to time in my brain and refuse to go away until they've materialised. Reviews let me know I'm not wearing out my keys in vain.

No, seriously. They've gone shiny and slippery. Too much typing, me thinks...
Twisted Flame