BIRTHDAY LETTERS

8. She leaped from our window

Time passes, and the world's eyes begin to glaze over him. He is an ugly intrusion with his history and his past, and his 'trauma'. This is Neptune and nothing's real unless you admit it is, so it's perfectly easy for them to just look away. He becomes a ghost; a shadow.

He's sick of it, to tell you the truth.

His father won't look at him anymore – big fucking shock – and always such a stupid, needy, pathetic boy, he comes up with a plan. That whore Kendall is still mooching off them, and Cassidy knows without a doubt she's cheating. So he has to prove it; get the slut out of there lives and point out that he is not just some pile of wreckage that's been left behind.

But he fucks that up to; hires some stupid PI who finds the whole truth and nothing but the truth, and isn't smart enough to keep his fucking mouth shut. So Dad runs and Kendall's still there, and he just wants to scream in frustration. He's left with his plan in tatters and these stupid photos of Kendall screwing Logan fucking Echolls, of all people. He somehow manages to convince himself to storm up to the Echolls house.

He knows it's a stupid idea, and if he tries anything, Logan will kick his ass. But Logan just cocks his head to the side, confused, when he shows up and Cassidy's will does not waver.

"Beav? What are you doing here?"

Cassidy snorts. "My name is Cassidy," he says, eyes sliding over the house. Upstairs is the room where Duncan took a blunt object to Aaron skull; round the back is the poolhouse where Lilly, Caitlin and both fucked their boyfriend's (or to-be boyfriend's) dad. Somewhere is the bathroom where Lynn cleaned off Veronica's blood. Jesus, and people think he's fucked up.

He throws the photos to the floor, and watches as Logan's eyes go dark and pissed off. "My stepmom," says Cassidy. "I'll give you this Echolls; if there's one thing you know how to do, it's self-destruct with style."

"What do you want?" mutters Logan, and Cassidy just shrugs.

"Nothing in particular. My life has been shot to all hell and this is just another moment in the sequence, and now I'm taking it out on you. It stupid, but what can you do?"

Logan snorts, and Cassidy sees something settle in his eyes, like he's trying to figure out how to hurt him. Cassidy braces himself. "Well. Hiring someone to find out who your stepmom is fucking – God, you're a perv. What's the deal Beav? Just trying to figure out how normal people do it?"

Cassidy grits his teeth, and refuses to let Logan see him flinch. "Yeah. Unless you missed this bit, I figured that out a few years back."

Logan rolls his eyes and laughs. "Please? Lilly? She wouldn't know normal when fucking if it ripped her fucking ear off."

Cassidy shrugs. "Whatever; it's enough. Like you can talk – Jesus, Kendall, of all people? Another rich matriarch with loose morals? Hello, Oedipus!"

Logan can't hide the snarl and that, and Cassidy feels a form of satisfaction. He's winning. If he can just keep a straight face, Logan will lose and he will have the power back.

"Well, at least I'm not fucking her to try and convince myself she's not someone else. It must suck for you, really; I was there, I saw the sorts of things you liked doing. Pity to have someone try and get that crap from you, right?" Logan pauses. "Or, I don't know, maybe you're enough of a fuck-up that was all the reason you liked it anyway. You didn't want to talk, right?"

Cassidy can't force himself not to react to that – not with words, but with a hard punch to Logan's face. Logan laughs. "Alright Beav! What, you finally grow a pair?"

Logan pulls himself off the ground, and Cassidy punches him again. This time, Logan hits back and they're lost.

Cassidy's not exactly sure what happens next; one moment, they're two steps from killing each other; the next, he's on the floor with Logan's teeth in his neck and hands pulling off his shirt.

It's over quick, because neither of them really want to admit they're doing this. After, Cassidy just lies on the hard wood floor, feeling uncomfortable. Logan avoids his eyes.

The anger from before dissipates, and Cassidy gently touches Logan on the arm. "Hey? Are you okay?"

Logan's face scrunches up, like the question Cassidy just asked was impossible. In a moment, Logan's face breaks into wracking, desperate sobs. Cassidy doesn't know what to do.

8. And fell there. Those are not dogs-

He doesn't mind Kendall so much anymore. Yeah, she's a bitch and a whore, but the thing is – he can be more honest with her than any other person in his life, and she won't care. He doesn't scare her, and he likes that, because it feels like he's deceiving her.

Still, he pretends he hates her – he needs to for the plan to work. He wants to make people pay – Daddy Dearest, in particular. The things he's noticed since Shelley Pomroy's, since the bus crash: there's nothing he can't do.

He drags Veronica Mars into it, and that strikes him as funny – there she is again, convinced he's what he's what he's shown himself as. Convinced he's weak, innocent little Beaver. She seems to have let go of her 'investigation' into what happened at Shelley Pomroy's for good.

She comes through, of course – she even manages to figure out the truth about his cover story. Logan and Kendall, can't say he saw that one coming. But the jackpot, of course, is the proof Daddy Dearest is screwing the system, bribing the assessor, and it strikes Cassidy as funny. Dad probably thinks he's the smart one; that he can't fuck people over and never have to pay for it.

He's wrong, of course – Cassidy sees that in the sympathetic way Veronica looks at him while showing him the laptop full of photos. Cassidy's the smart one, and he's ruling over them all – as he sees Dad's chopper ascend into the skies, he only wishes that his Dad would know who was so much better than him.