I did not create any of these characters. This takes place after season one, during the senior high school year. This is written under the pretenses that the crash did not happen, so some of the events are different. Read, review, and send love!

03

When Veronica awoke, there were two things that occurred to her near-simultaneously. One was that she was well-covered by blankets, and that Don was asleep next to her, arms around her almost possessively (protectively? No, definitely possessively) and two, that she had her panties on. She actually had a moment where she alternated between the strongest sensations of love and the most horrifying hatred, holding her hand firmly over her mouth as her eyes spilled over with tears. What was WRONG with him? Why did he DO THIS? She finally choked out a loud sob, curling her entire body into the fetal position and bending her arms at the elbows, using her forearms to cover her face as though she were being attacked.

Lamb awoke with a start. He didn't remember what he'd even been dreaming, but it wasn't anything important compared to the scene he woke up with. Veronica was crying her eyes out, arms defensively over her face like a fighter. For a second he thought he'd hit her in his sleep, but he realized that his arms were still on either side of her waist, and aside from some minor adjustments, he hadn't moved much in the last few hours.

"Veronica, what's wrong? What happened?" His voice wasn't loud, but it was terse; concerned. He had essentially opened his eyes to see her broken apart and it scared the shit out of him, because it had happened under his watch, so to speak, and he hadn't been able to prevent it.

She just shook her head 'no' and cried harder, curling even more into a ball.

'No, no, no," he said softly. He turned the light on, but Veronica made a loud noise of protest and he turned it back off again. "Okay, okay, it's off," he said, rubbing her back with one hand while he tried to sit up more. "I won't turn it back on, okay?"

This went on for a few minutes, Don literally pulling the entire inventory of shit in his head to try and determine why she was so upset. She, sadly, had plenty of reasons to be that way. Still, he realized he didn't care which of the hundred it was, he wanted to know. "Honey, please, please tell me what set you off?" he pleaded, trying to pull her arms away gently.

"Why do you remember?" she cried, voice warbling through her sobs. "Why do you remember the details of things I say? Why do you use them against me? Why do you hate me so much that you constantly fuck with me, even when I haven't done anything but try to stay on your good side?" Her voice had gone to a desperate begging tone, and he could feel that she sat up some so that she could level herself with him.

"Veronica, what are you -"

"Fuck, Christ – the RAPE, Donald," she blurted, using his full name. "I told you – I told you two years ago what happened, and you laughed me out of your office. We never, ever talked about it again, and now after you're done with me, you put my panties back on me? Is that some sort of sick joke? Do you like having a hand in making me go crazy?"

She spoke in a high-pitched whinny, and he had to reach out to stop her from taking a handful each of hair at the root and ripping it out, which seemed to be on pair with how she sounded. Sure enough, he grabbed her just before she managed to get hold of a thick enough patch of hair to yank out. What was it with this girl and hair? The things she said, though, made him feel like he was going to be physically ill.

"No," he said, voice as firm as he could make it. "God, no, I'm not trying to drive you crazy – why would you think that?" he demanded.

"Because," she blurted. "Because, you've hated me from day one. Everything I did, every step of the way, you were there to cut me down. I don't even know why, but that was just so, god, MEAN," she said, at a loss for a better modifier. "It was cruel, and now it's like you're trying to – I don't know, make sure that when I wake up I can't say, 'Oh, well, I guess it must have been consensual, my undies are still on!'"

"WHOA," he yelled. He didn't yell often, because his father liked to yell, and he was a lot more effective at just being a general bastard to get things done, but that – the shit she'd said – that warranted some good old-fashioned man-yelling. He didn't know what to say after it, but now that he had her attention, it gave him a chance to think. "I knew that you said when you woke up, you didn't have your underwear on," he said slowly. "I know that sometimes you wake up here and this is all really not orthodox, and you don't always know when you'll be here, or it's so late or early when you wake up that you don't even know where you are, but when you wake up you won't think that you're repeating that party. I did it because I didn't want you to wake up and - "

"And what?" she screamed.

"And ever feel that way again," he finished, teeth practically bared at her.

She was silent for a few moments, and then she spoke again. This time, it was very softly, as though she was praying that he had some good answer for her. She was prepared to believe anything he could tell her, as long as it sounded convincing. Any reason that he could give, at all. "What about when I came to you that morning to report the rape?" she asked.

He closed his eyes for a moment. He'd thought many times about how it could have gone differently once he'd started seeing Veronica like this. Before, he had never cared, and even in the beginning he hadn't cared. In fact, until very recently he was still sorting things out with himself, but it was pretty clear that he felt something now, and hiding it at this point was not an option.

"I have no good answer for you," he admitted. "I wish I did, but I don't. It was your word against theirs, and I'd have been hit by so many yelling parents over it that it wouldn't have even had a point to it." He hung his head. For once, he felt dirty.

She started to cry again, and pulled away from him. "You were supposed to protect me," she reminded him, her voice laced with pain. She was off of the bed, stumbling to find her clothes.

That remark cut him pretty deeply, and he jumped up after her, turning the lamp back on. Fuck what she wanted; he had open forum now and he was upset. "I'm sorry I couldn't be there, but I don't understand why you're bringing this party stuff up now, when us arguing about it can't change anything," he said, pointing at the ground. He wasn't yelling now, but he was... easy to hear. "I can spend the rest of my life making it up to you, but it won't change what happened."

"Not the party," she said, shaking her head violently. "The night that Seann Fitzpatrick attacked me." She stopped with one pant-leg of her jeans on to look Don in the eyes. "I told you something was going to happen. I told you, and you told me to go home and not to worry. You said everything would be fine and it wasn't fine. It wasn't fine, Donnie. I wasn't fine."

"You weren't supposed to be ALONE!" he countered. He paced around the room like an angry large cat. "Logan was outside of the station to pick you up! I said everything was going to be fine because that idiot was supposed to take you home! You were never supposed - " He caught up for a second, and closed his eyes. "You were never supposed to have left alone," was what he eventually stated, firmly.

Veronica's mouth opened and then closed. "Logan was supposed to... No, when I went outside he told me that you said you were taking me home. He left, and I waited outside for a while, and then I started to walk." She trailed off. She couldn't believe that he would do something like that to her. Hell, she couldn't believe that Lamb had told him not to leave her alone.

He sat down on the bed, a very strange expression on his face. She'd never actually seen that look before; or, no. She had, but it was only once and she'd been younger. His eyes looked like they were on fire, almost. He seemed to drift into space, lips pursed as he tapped his fingertips on his chin, like he was assessing details she could not see.

She stopped trying to get dressed and sat next to him. "It was a lie?" she asked hesitantly.

He looked back at her, and his expression was sad, but it looked like he was trying to keep it blank and failed. "It seems so." He took her hand. "You were never supposed to be there that nigh. Logan was supposed to have taken you home, though it's my fault I didn't see him through on it. I failed you, and I'm sorry. I don't intend for it to happen again," he warned her.

Veronica pressed her lips together tightly. Was he playing at some game? He seemed utterly serious – but like that, he could flip the switch, and then it would go away and he'd be his old, evil self again. How did she know which version of him she was getting? The truth was, she didn't. She'd have to trust him, and she'd have to keep trusting him. It was one thing to have a fling with the guy, but to actually believe the things he told her – different ball game.

She pushed her pants back off of her legs and kicked them to the edge of the bed, shifting to her knees so that she was more eye level with him. "If you let me down," she began. She didn't finish, because she didn't have to. He already had his finger to her lip, shaking his head.

"I won't," he said. Then he replaced that finger with his lips, giving her a chaste kiss. He ran his hands through her blonde hair, focusing his blue-green eyes on her. No, he wouldn't let her down. He didn't know how he wasn't going to fuck this up, but he was going to try and make it last for as long as he could before he did.

She eventually laid back down, allowing him to pull the blankets up over them, and rolled over so that she could press her back against his chest and cuddle. He wrapped his hands around her waist, and she placed her hands on top of his, closing her eyes and catching a brief moment of peace.