THE CALL

Based on situations originated by R. Thomas

He doesn't call her right away.

He thinks about it, obviously. It's the first thing that comes to mind as he's being escorted into the police car. Well, second thing –the first one is that he really must be the only man in the entire universe who can say he's been the main suspect in the murder of not one but two of his girlfriends. But it's a close second. After all, it wouldn't be the first time that he had to call her to bail him out of jail. But he doesn't call her. There isn't much she can do about it from New York anyway.

So he calls Dick instead. He picks him up from the station and drives him home, attempting to lighten the mood by joking about how many times they've been in this situation. He doesn't mind; he's barely even listening anyway.

He doesn't call her when he gets home either. Again he thinks about it, but decides to get drunk instead. He deserves it -after all, he's being accused of murdering his girlfriend for the second time before he's even thirty.

So he spends the next few hours just laying on his bed, trying to drink himself unconscious. Sadly for him, he has developed quite a resistance to alcohol over the years, so oblivion doesn't come soon enough. And so he thinks. About everything.

He thinks about Carrie, obviously. He is truly sad that she is gone and he is going to miss her. Things might not have been great between the two of them lately, but he had loved her –still does, in a way. He wants to catch the son of a bitch that did this to her and make him pay, because Carrie shouldn't have died, especially not now that things seemed to be coming together for her.

But it's not just her. He also thinks about all the other women he's loved and lost. Lily and his mother are the first to come to mind, but they are not alone. He also thinks of Parker, who he's almost destroyed, Hannah, who was forced by her father into a different State just to get her away from him... Women whose life had been all but ruined in some way by his presence. Women who had had to pay the price for loving him.

And then he thinks about the other one, the one who barely escaped his curse. She had to leave everything and everyone behind, cut ties with anything that could trace even remotely back to him, but at the very least she is safe this way. She survived him.

She wasn't completely screwed up by him.

He hasn't seen her or talked to her in nine years. He has heard of her -Neptune isn't that big of a town, so news travel fairly quickly. Besides, he still has a couple of people he can count on to keep him posted about stuff. So, yes, he knows she's in New York and that she's a lawyer and that she is in some sort of committed relationship as of last year. He's genuinely happy for her.

She got out.

Which makes him even more of a jackass for thinking about calling her. There is no room in her bright life for his darkness. Not anymore.

But, damn it, he doesn't want to be a jackass! He's not looking to destroy her; he's not even after her for vengeance. If he called her now, it wouldn't be to haunt her, like it would have been at the beginning. Those days are way past him now. He is not the same man he was then -the same man she had to ran away from.

He spends the night laying on his bed, with his finger hovering over the call button. He has never deleted her number, even after all this time. He wonders idly whether she has kept his number too. He realizes that she has probably deleted him right away and finds that he really can't blame her if she has.

He comes really close to calling her when he realizes that she has probably changed her number any way. It is sort of a package deal: new life, new town, new phone –he gets that, but it still hurts more than he imagined it would, because for some stupid reason he has always imagined she would have kept that faint link between the both of them. It's stupid, really. So he thinks about calling her then, if only to put an end to his delusion. But he doesn't. As it turns out, he happens to like this delusion and he would rather keep it going for a while.

And so minutes turn into hours and still he doesn't call her. She would be proud of him. He is all grown up now; he doesn't need her to clean up his messes. He doesn't need her anymore...

Realization comes as his downing his third cup of coffee.

He does need her.

Not... Not like he did before. Not to bail him out of jail, not even to prove that he is innocent. He needs the girl who sat by him in that hotel lobby, holding his hand as he waited for his dead mother to show up, the girl who helped him getting over Lily, the girl on whose shoulder he literally cried on more times than he cares to admit.

He needs his friend. The friend he had in her before everything went to Hell.

And so he calls her, because suddenly he realizes that his friend would have kept her old number. His friend wouldn't have cut him from her life just like that, even if she was trying to get away from him. Because he had been her friend, and she would come through for her friend.

She always comes through for her friends.

The phone rings once, twice, three times. His heart beats frantically and he grips the phone tightly against his ear.

After six rings, she picks up.

"So... What's new with you?"

Only Veronica Mars would greet someone who's recently been accused of murder with such a casual phrase. He loves that she does. He loves that she is still herself.

Well, sort of herself.

The words are carefree enough -something straight from the Veronica Mars' Book of Casual Greeting to Deal with Every Potentially Awkward Situation-, but there is a certain contrived undertone he catches right away which is new. It's like she's trying to sound like her old self for his sake, even though she's not that girl anymore.

He appreciates what she's trying to do. Even after everything they've been through, the crap they've put each other through, the years they've been apart… Even after everything, he still needs her. And she's coming through. Again. It doesn't matter that she isn't the same girl who left Neptune nine years ago, because she is still Veronica Mars. And Veronica Mars would always believe in Logan Echolls.

His next words fly to his lips on their own accord.

"I need your help, Veronica."

And somehow he knows that that's enough. She'll come.

She always comes.

THE END

This is my first fanfiction in years and my first attempt at a Veronica Mars fic ever. For this reason, I'm a bit nervous about what you will think, so if you could write quick review now that you're done, I'll really appreciate it.