The reporter is doing his best to look compassionate and interested at the same time. He is typical New York, dressed in black, carefully styled hair. Veronica almost smiles when she opens the door and sees him standing there. What did she expect, a trench coat and a fedora with a card tucked in the band that says 'press'. She hands him a steaming cup of coffee. He takes a sip then sets it down on the coffee table. She watches the way his eyebrow twitches, the way his fingers drum nervously on his leg. He shifts on the uncomfortable sofa was rescued from the ravages of a failed dot-come years ago when Veronica had just moved from Neptune and was trying to start her career.
"I've been busy lately." Veronica sighs with the perfect amount of regret. "With all the traveling. You know, life on the go." She smiles. It's entirely fake, a show she's putting on for his benefit. It helps her hide. Veronica watches the reporter scribble notes. She hopes he isn't writing about the way her mouth pulls at the corners when she lies.
"It's been ten years."
Veronica doesn't answer. There's nothing she can say. Sometimes she wonders why after ten years it still feels like yesterday. Why does she still wake up with the feel of fire burning across her skin? She doesn't have an answer.
No one was the same after that night.
Lilly became the dead Lolita of Neptune. Her face graced the cover of gossip rags for months. Sweet, smiling, slut. Every time Veronica saw her picture she would start to cry. Had she really been stupid enough to think it would ever be over?
Aaron sold the rights to his trial. It became the latest celebrity reality show. It was a hit. That fall there was practically a celebrity crime wave. Washed up movie stars robbed convenience stores and taco wagons in an effort to get a trial of their own and another chance at fame. Never anything as heinous as killing your son's girlfriend although some wouldn't have minded being caught in a hotel room with a seventeen year old. Statutory rape was the acceptable crime in society. After all, everyone can understand the lure of a beautiful young girl.
There were no television cameras when the IV was started in Aaron Echolls' forearm and the medication was pushed through that stopped his heart and his breathing.
Duncan became a walking example of better living through chemistry. His best friends were small, green and blue, octagon shaped bits of manufactured happiness that prevented his body from up taking feelings. He wore a perpetually blank look on his face, eyes void of any emotion. Celeste was a good mother and made sure he had access to all the pills he wanted. Whatever it took to keep her son from having to feel anything.
Logan.
Sometimes she swears she can feel his fingers trace their way up her arm, along her clavicle, lightly brushing her skin. Then she blinks and he's gone.
"I'd almost forgotten it was the anniversary." Veronica lies. She picks up a sweating glass of cola spiked with enough rum to keep her comfortably distanced from the memories. She thinks for a moment that her mother would be proud of her inadequate coping mechanisms. She'd discovered the family secret for numbness. "Funny how time erases things, blurs them."
The reporter shifts a little, scribbles more in his notebook.
"You never married."
Veronica blinks, eyelids rasp over her dry eyeballs in a quick motion. There's wetness on the edges of her eyes.
"No."
Suddenly Veronica feels like a performer in the circus, balanced on a narrow wire above the crowd that gasps as she struggles to find her balance. She's performing without a safety net. The feelings she keeps pushed in the deepest recesses of her mind start creep out; they are the small things she won't admit to herself except those times when she wakes up from her nightmares with his name on her lips. She knows she'll wake up the next day, reach out, and try to find him, to feel his skin under her fingertips. It's always like that when she lets the memories back in. She always dreams of him.
"No one did." The reporter's voice breaks through the clinging memories that lurk on the edge of her consciousness, pulling at her, beckoning her to lose herself in the past.
"No one did what?" she asks as she scrambles to get her bearings, to remember where she is, who she's talking to. She pushes the cobwebs of memories away. It's only temporary. They're still there, clinging to her, dragging her back.
"No one married." The reporter's voice is far away. Veronica blinks again. Suddenly she's back in her cramped little apartment, shelves of books lining the walls, one lamp casting a dim light that's not enough to hold back the shadows that live in the corners. She glances around, finds her bearings. The coffee cup, once steaming, is sitting cold on the coffee table. The reporter is looking even more uncomfortable on the couch. Veronica takes a deep breath.
"No one married. No one had kids." Her voice is quiet, regretful. Then another lie. "It's just the way it worked out."
She looks away from the reporter, past the exposed brick wall, through the window. Outside the trees are just starting to turn, their dull green tinged with orange and gold. There's a hint of a chill in the air. Veronica shivers a little.
Veronica knows the truth but she will never tell. They are children of war, living on the edge of posttraumatic stress disorder. Waiting for the next flashback, the final sliver of memory that will leave them forever in the past.
"Duncan Kane."
"What about him?" Veronica asks, turning back to the reporter. She wonders why she agreed to this interview.
"Do you talk to him?"
"No."
It's not a lie. Duncan wears suits these days and has important meetings with PowerPoint slides. He gives interviews to Business Magazine about how he's making the marketing department of Kane Enterprises a success. He has an assistant who keeps him from seeing unpleasant things. She hasn't been part of his world for a long time.
"Logan Echolls."
Veronica takes a slow, deep breath.
"What about him?"
"Do you talk to him?"
She never talks to him. She just dials his number and listens when he answers in a voice husky from sleep. She pretends she's forgotten about the time zones, but in truth she likes the way his voice sounds when he's just been woken. They don't say anything, just sit on the line, thousands of miles between them, and breathe. In and out. In unison. For a moment it's like he's next to her again. She always hangs up when he says her name.
"I see his movies."
This isn't a lie either. She's seen them all. No matter how bad. No matter how much he's sold out. She watches him, watches his face, and remembers him.
"How do you feel about the nomination?"
She gives the same answer she's given all the other reporters.
"I'm honored."
In truth, she's horrified. It's a picture of children cowering in a grass hut. It's a picture of evil.
She can still see their ebony skin shining in the harsh sunlight, their bright smiles as they crowded around her, their hands picking at her pants, begging for things she couldn't give. Safety. Salvation. They are orphans, robbed of their mothers and fathers. Their childhood washed in blood and horror. She can still smell the dry dirt of Africa, it's stuck in her nostrils, embedded in her brain. It smells like hunger. It stinks like despair.
The edges of the hut are on fire, red flame licking into the center. Their faces are washed in fear. She remembers how her chest clenched tightly as she ran away, left the children there to burn to death.
Except she had enough time to turn around and snap a god damned picture. It was reflex, a quick flick of her finger, the whiz of the camera shutters. She'd wanted to run, to at least save one of those frightened children, but her companion had pulled on her arm, dragged her away from the advancing militia.
It's a picture of genocide. It's a picture of what the world promised would never happen again, a picture of a lie. The children died for nothing more than being born into the wrong family. She wishes she'd never been there.
She never knew her picture would be nominated for a Pulitzer. Veronica Mars. Photographer of War.
When they were finally miles away from that village, Veronica had stopped the Jeep and jumped onto the dirt road, collapsing onto her hands and knees as she retched over and over until there was nothing left. She took shower after shower that night but she couldn't wash away the smell of the burning grass hut. It smelled familiar, like her nightmares where she was trapped by fire. That night she dreamed about the faces of the children as they burned. There were trapped in a refrigerator.
Veronica takes another drink. She wonders what it would feel like to face the world without the help of the bottle. She wonders if the reporter would write about that.
He has a few more questions. What would she say to the young people of Neptune? What's her next project? Veronica answers them all smoothly, professionally. She shakes his hand and shows him to the door. She manages to hold back the tears for five minutes then slowly slides down the wall to the hard wood floor. She pulls out her cell phone and dials a number.
One ring.
Two rings.
Three…
"Hello?"
She says nothing. He says nothing. They just breathe. One, two, in, out. Until….
"You're calling earlier than usual."
And she hangs up.
The flash of cameras blind Logan as he steps out of the limousine and onto the long red carpet. All around him are the deafening shouts, paparazzi yelling for him to look their way. He hears the rat-tat-tat of camera shutters, fingers pressing the trigger buttons over and over.
Looking for that money shot, not caring who they destroy in the process.
He tucks his cell phone into his pocket and wonders what would happen if he pulled it back out and dialed her number, said her name. Would she hang up?
Would she listen to him?
A reporter shoves a microphone in his face. He can barely hear her over the noise of the crowd. She asks him another question about who he's dating. Logan doesn't answer. His fingers caress the smooth cover of his cell phone. He swallows hard.
He turns around. The reporter gasps as Logan Echolls walks away. Back to his limousine. She won't get her story today.
He climbs into the back. Falls back onto the leather seat. Pulls out his phone. Dials. He has her number memorized.
"Logan." Her voice crackles over the line. He closes his eyes, takes a deep breath.
"It's been ten years." Logan says quietly, his voice filled with the pain he's been carrying for too long. "It's time to stop this."
Veronica says nothing. She just breathes. For a moment it feels like all their other phone calls over the years. Silence. Then she says, softly, plaintively.
"No."
Logan swallows again.
"Please."
"Logan…" His name is a whisper. He knows she's crying.
"Veronica. It's time to come home."
They are children of war.
Their world is full of the fog of memories, ghosts of the past. They pull at their edges and keep them trapped in the past. Lilly, Aaron, they keep them tight in their grip. No one is allowed to escape.
They are trapped, fire licking at the edges of their lives, always threatening to consume them. But it never quite makes it all the way because like the picture, their fire is frozen, threatening but never the final word.
It's raining the day she shows up on his doorstep. Logan remembers the way the air smelled, crisp and fresh. He remembers the way the rain made everything bright and green.
She's soaked, her wet hair dark with rain and plastered on her forehead. She's smiling as she throws herself against him, wetting the thin cotton of his t-shirt. His arms go around her, hesitantly and he doesn't realize that he's shaking. She saying something, over and over, garbled through her tears and muffled in his chest:
"I'm home."