The Coin's Other Side

Disclaimer: Do I own iCarly? No, no I do not. Will I attempt to own it? No, no I will not. Will I write a fan-fiction on it? Yes, yes I will.

A/N:

Chapter 10 (Cleaning up the Site)

"It was not pleasant," Freddie commented as he sat on his bed and spoke to Valerie over the phone. She wanted to know how the meeting with Olivia went, and he was being honest. It was dreadful, in every way. "I think we can rise from this though, we're going to try and run a segment of iCarly on bullying." He waited as Valerie bit into what sounded like a potato chip. "We're going to try and tell our fans to tone it down, and we'll lessen the personal information." Valerie hummed and swallowed her chip.

"That sounds good. There's a line that shouldn't be crossed. The world doesn't need to know that your mother's had an obsession with something, that Sam's mom doesn't 'shave', as I believe Vixen said Sam put once."

He remembered a statement like that was made at one point of time. Sam slammed her mom on iCarly, quite a bit.

"They don't need to know if Carly's getting her teeth cleaned or if you break up with some girl, much less who you're dating and how the dating life is going"

He smiled at the comment and laid back on the bed. Valerie was definitely right about that, maybe he should say something about it in the next iCarly. He could benefit from telling his fans that whichever girl he dated, it not any of their business.

"Yeah, I'd love to quiet the fans on that. Still need to develop that backbone, I suppose. I'd love to have a girlfriend, but not Sam or Carly, no offense meant to them." He heard the television click on in the background and Vixen started to laugh at something. Victoria commented that Valerie was on the phone and the younger girl quickly apologized. Valerie chuckled lightly and exhaled.

"Don't worry about it, I can hear him just fine. Anyway, Freddie, if you want a girlfriend, then you'll definitely need a backbone. Also, you'd have to show that girl that you mean it when you tell her you'll stick around. If she's a family person, then you'd want to show her that you care about her family just as much as you care for her. You know, basic stuff like that."

He nodded and moved from the bed. As he gazed to the far wall, he smiled towards the poster on the wall of iCarly.

"I think I could do that."

"Yeah, but now if you dated some girl and became close to her family, what would you do if you broke up with her?"

Should he panic now? He pulled the corner of his lip back and ran his hand through his head. Certainly if he were close enough, he'd stick around and just be friends.

"Well?"

"It depends. I think if I were close enough to remain friends of the family, I would remain friends of the family. If the girl told me she didn't want me around her family then I might not be able to."

"Hmm…" She took a bite of another chip and chewed it quietly. He always liked that she was a modest eater, not at all like him. Whenever he ate, it was fast and had a tendency to be noisy. "What about my family? You know you've never been unable to see them, and I'd be happy to see you hanging around them more often."

His heart rose up to embrace what sounded like an invitation, or maybe a suggestion. Yes, he would love to be around her family, maybe even give dating her another shot. If it did happen, she would need to know he wasn't fickle. However he would do that, he wasn't too sure, but he did think that strengthening friendships with her family members and remaining as such might help. It was worth a shot.

"Anyway, what are you going to do about iCarly? I mean, I'm on the site right now…not an easy task, mind you." She blurted out the last bit and his eyebrows rose and curiosity began to spark.

"Really?"

"Yeah I walked into that. Anyway, you do still have Jonah's video up…and a lot of users are still commenting. This is bad, it's a wonder his family didn't sue iCarly."

He swallowed and remembered Olivia and what she had become. Maybe suing wouldn't be a bad punishment for something like that.

"There are a lot of videos that are still in the site archives with negative statements and personal things said, including uh…" She took a deep breath and paused.

He scrunched his face and waited for her to continue.

"Including the one where Sam…the girls pretty much announce our breakup to the fans five years ago. Where Sam cussed me out."

He cringed and slowly fell back onto the bed. He ran his fingers through his hair and stared down at his feet. Did she resent him for that? He couldn't help but to wonder. She didn't talk like she did, and if she hated him, she wouldn't want him around

"Hey Val? Do you…" He paused at the sound of her fingers running along a keyboard. "Are you really angry at me? Do you resent me in any way?"

"If I did, I wouldn't bother talking to you, much less, want you around my family." This was true, she was not shy about her feelings. "Whatever anger towards you I felt passed ages ago. Vanessa and Veronica may act angry at you, but it's not you they're angry at. It may take a while for them to trust you again, but as for me, I don't resent you."

"I'm the cameraman of iCarly, though. I allowed these things to happen…"

"It would be one thing if you were an active participant. If you went in front of the camera like Carly and Sam, then went along with them, blatantly insulting anything, but you don't do that. You're just the cameraman, you don't control them and no one should ask you to."

He moved to his desk in the room and moved the wireless mouse, taking the laptop off the screensaver. When he went to the website, he had a couple more comment alerts. Usually he went through the comment alerts every day and just clicked 'accept all' because each day he had hundreds of new comments and didn't want to sort through all of them. Since he'd checked them an hour ago, he had about five new comments, so there was no trouble just reading them. The most recent was a comment made by a girl named V-Chick2. It was on a very old video that he wasn't sure even existed.

"Freddie, how come the video of that monitor…falling on my head…is on your site?"

"What?" His eyebrows rose and he clicked on the comment, which took him straight to the video of Valerie's last webcast. The girls wanted to put it on the site, he remembered, but both he and Carly said no. As he read the comment, it was clear that Valerie was the one who comnented.

Freddie, please remove this video from your site. It shouldn't be up here, take it off. Clean up your site…

"Carly and I did not want the video there!" Sam must have put it up, she would have done something like that back then. He groaned and started scrolling down to see the comments made over the years. They were not something he would want Valerie to see, and here she was, possibly reading every one of them. "That's it! I'm shutting the site down until I can get it cleaned up! What happened with Jonah had truly hit him hard, so he did not care to have all these people laughing over a big screen hitting Valerie and nearly causing her a concussion! He didn't want this, he didn't even want her to see this stuff. "Valerie? You still there?"

"Yeah, I'm here. You probably should also monitor and filter the comments you let through to the site. How often do you check?"

"Once or twice a day. I probably need to start checking them more often."

"Yeah. I'm getting off the site now."

Fair enough, he wouldn't want to be on a site where everyone was slamming him. He went into the admin controls of the site and turned off the access so he could work as the moderator and clean up the place. His first act was going to be deleting that video of Valerie.

"Hey, I'm sorry that video is on the site, I'm taking it down now." He clicked on the video editing and started scrolling down the numerous videos on the site. Next to each video was an X button, once clicked, it was gone, along with the comments. "The video, and all comments, will be erased from the site."

"Thanks." He'd probably be up for hours trying to get rid of videos that shouldn't be up, along with other sensitive viewer items. If there were any comments elsewhere, anything that was too overboard, he'd check and delete.

So, the girls are waging war on bullying, now?"

"Either that or on their own fans. Our fans need to understand that there's a line they shouldn't cross, and even we cross it sometimes. I think Sam's had an epiphany today."

"Really now? An epiphany?"

"Yeah, she's the one who came up with the idea of talking to the fans about the whole bullying thing." Even he was amazed by it, Sam was never one to take initiative on things, especially not on topics like this. He opened a new tab on his browser and opened up a list of movies in the nearest theater. "Now. Victoria says I owe her a movie, right? So what kind of movies does she like."

Valerie laughed lightly and paused for a brief second.

"You're really considering that?"

"Of course, I figure I should deliver with my promise of a movie."

"Okay, well, Victoria is a major fan of Daniel Radcliffe, she's been wanting to see that new movie he's starring in. The Woman in Black."

Freddie scrunched his nose and checked on the movie. He wasn't a fan of the actor, though the Harry Potter series had been okay. He was a bit of a fan of scary movies, but this movie seemed like it would be boring and reliant upon cheap jump scares. If so, he wasn't all that interested in seeing it. However, if Victoria was interested in it, then perhaps that would be the movie he owed her.

"Oh and Freddie, they just heard me say that, now Vixen wants to know if you could take her to see that movie too."

He laughed with a full, hearty tone. After a minute, he stopped and stared blankly at the image of the movie picture. Could he make a commitment to Valerie and her family? Could he be trusted with that? Once in their lives, was he to be certain he wouldn't disappear out of their lives altogether once more? Yes, he was certain that wouldn't happen.

"Sure, I'd be happy to do that. Would you want to join us?"

"I would not mind at all, but I, uh…" She sighed and his eyebrows rose. Was she afraid of running into iCarly fans? He had to admit, he was a bit afraid of that same thing. "Didn't you say somebody emailed Sam and Carly when we were at the Panera Bread? If your fans are stalking you…"

"Well, a movie theater with your sisters seems like it wouldn't be so easy to spot you. I'm not too concerned who sees me with you."

"I know you're not."

"You don't want to be seen with me?"

"No, it isn't that at all. I can't explain it right now, Freddie…"

He could honor that, there really wasn't any choice other than honoring that.

"So you're not afraid to go to the movies, not afraid to be seen with me, and you don't care who sees you with me." He smirked teasingly and tilted his head to the right. Maybe he could goad her into tagging along, it couldn't possibly be that scary. "I'm pretty sure the scariest thing is going to be that movie, and I'm also pretty certain that the movie itself won't have any frightening scenes besides ghosts jumping in windows and whatnot."

Valerie chuckled and sighed as her two youngest sisters started clamoring around her. Freddie's smirk increased as he listened to their pleas for her to join them. "Sounds like they want you to go too."

"Is it really that important to you if I'm there?"

"Yes." He said it with such certainty that it astonished him, where the hell had he pulled that confidence from. Valerie's silence indicated she was just as shocked. He stammered for a minute and cleared his throat. "Hey, I'll even wear a disguise if I have to."

"Oh that should be fun to see."

"What? You don't think I have any cool disguises?" He put his hand to his chest and gasped, feigning shock. "Why I'll have you know, I have plenty of things in my closet. Besides, that, as fun as your sisters are, I'm pretty certain going to a movie with a couple preteens is going to be as frightening as sitting in a circle of obsessed Twilight fans."

Valerie laughed and Victoria yelled into the phone.

"I'm thirteen now, not a preteen, and Twilight is amazing!"

He snickered and shook his head.

"See what I mean, Val?"

Once more she laughed. He listened as she began walking and exhaled loudly after a while.

"Fine, if it means that much to you, I'll go. If you want to wear a disguise, go for it, I'm not sure I want to get harassed by your fans for being in your presence after all these years..."

He rolled his eyes and started looking for the movie showtimes. Saturday seemed like a good day.

"They can mind their own business for all I care."

"I'm glad to hear that. Maybe you're right, maybe there's nothing to worry about."

"I wouldn't let anyone say anything to you, Val."

"Thanks."

"Now, how does Saturday at three sound to you?" He leaned back in his computer chair and closed his eyes. The sisters started cheering and Valerie chuckled once.

"I think the girls are happy with that. I don't see an issue, should work. We'll see you then."

"Yep." He was very happy that she'd be coming along and believed they'd have a great time. At least, that's what he was hoping for. He leaned forward, he switched the tabs on his browser over to the iCarly webpage. He sighed heavily and lifted his eyes skyward. "Okay Val, I'm going to let you go so I can get to work on cleaning this site up."

"All right. It was good talking to you, Freddie."

"You too." When he hung up, he practically leapt from his seat to cheer. There wasn't a thing in the world that could tear him down, though he wasn't sure why he felt that way, other than he did feel triumphant in the fact that he just got Valerie to go to the movies with him and her sisters. Truly, this was a reason for celebration. When his eyes fell onto the site, he was more than happy to go through it.

Well, let's see how this turns out.