THE STILL POINT (OF A SPINNING WORLD), chapter ten
by: AliLamba
rated: T for language and themes
notes: Another shorty :-/ This chapter is dedicated to all the toast shippers out there and in my heart. Also - thank you guys for reviewing this story xoxo I hope there are no illusions that I know anything about the Navy or military life in general. I am a girl who simply loves the internet. The internet doesn't seem to always tell me things I should know unless I ask nicely first, but if you would like to be my volunteer military fact source I would pay you in fic X_X Honestly. I would write fic in your honor and I would make it smutty as heeeeell. No guarantees on decency, but I would guarantee word(s). That's maybe plural. PM me!
When her eyes open the next morning, the room is deceptively dark. Heavy curtains had been pulled across the windows the night before, so even though her bedside clock says that it's just past eight in the morning, by the look of the room it could have been just past three.
Veronica's learned over the past few days that her best female friend in existence is a very light, very noticeable snorer, and it's one of the reasons Veronica went to bed with a pillow over her face. She is the first one up, and she comes to listening to the soft, slightly raspy sound of her friend taking measured, deep breaths in and out.
Veronica stands automatically and goes through the motions of waking up. She visits the bathroom, sets up the coffee maker, and then goes to the door of their room to retrieve the morning's paper. It's going to be a busy day, she knows,
It's one of the hidden perks of hotel management, to charge you seven dollars for a three dollar newspaper, delivering to your door for free. Veronica knows it will be there when she pulls off the security chain and throws the deadbolt, and swings the door back into the room.
She stares down at the paper for a long time.
Her toes are cold, she observes. The coffee machine pings from inside the room, announcing that it has finished brewing.
Veronica still looks at the paper, waiting for its words to make sense.
ECHOLLS GUILTY OF NEGLIGENCE.
The tidy subscript she can see from her vantage point is surreal. Lieutenant Logan Echolls' investigation reveals pilot was at fault in fatal crash. For more, turn to page A3.
The next door down the hall opens, and her dad reaches out to grab his own paper before he notices his daughter trying to do the same.
Hiding his surprise, Keith looks to where his daughter is looking, and then at his own paper. She knows he's read it when he says "Oh, honey," so sadly, like he's sorry. She looks up at him, and there are tears in her eyes.
"You were right dad," she says, and then her feet shuffle the rest of her body into his room.
Her dad had started his own coffee pot, but it's still working as Veronica relieves it of mug's worth. She sits on the edge of the bed her dad hadn't used the night before.
As a youth, whenever she'd traveled with her parents, jumping between the two beds had been a right of room initiation. She's grown out of that now.
"How can it be Logan's fault?" she asks, vacantly.
Her dad just shakes his head above his open paper. He's busy reading through the article. Veronica almost wants to believe that she's read enough of it and doesn't need to hear anymore.
"They say that the diagnostic tests finally came back," her dad summarizes. "Skip Johnston is quoted in here, saying that it all basically boiled down to operator error."
"Basically?" The word sounds hollow.
Her dad looks at her seriously and then looks back down at his paper. His frown deepens with every passing few seconds.
"I don't know about this honey," he finally says. Veronica blinks. She looks down at the mug of coffee curled within her fingers and realizes she hasn't drunk any yet. Her worldview is starting to catch up to her, but the process is slow, like she's trudging through sand. She lives in a world where the man she loves died by his own hands. No, that can't be. Logan wouldn't do that to her. He wouldn't do it to their baby. He didn't know about the baby. But didn't she think of Logan as smart, and competent? Wasn't he an experienced pilot? Wasn't he hand-selected for this mission because of his prowess with that particular style of jet? Wasn't everyone jealous of him for being chosen to fly the newly improved F/A 18F? Tears are starting to billow inside her ducts and she knows it's only a matter of time before she'll need to retreat or lie down.
"Honey I just don't know about this," Keith repeats, and he draws her attention because she's forgotten about him. He's staring at her even though all his attention appears to be elsewhere.
"Wouldn't it make sense that Skip Johnston could have altered the results? Wouldn't it make sense that in doing so he's just saved his own ass?"
Veronica's gaze is sharpening. What?
"Honey, that old man's flabby white butt is on the line right now, and he just found the perfect scapegoat."
Veronica still doesn't understand.
"Yesterday we figured out that the man wasn't fired and should have been. This is how. This is why he still has his job. Because he can blame Logan for his own failings."
Veronica shakes her blonde head, her mind spinning. Her dad is making sense, but she is still so confused and so heavily emotional about it all. What had he said? Johnston could have organized this? This could be how he's keeping his job? It suddenly clicks. Veronica gasps. She squeezes her eyes shut and drops her forehead into her hands. No. She can't decide what to believe, but she knows what she'd rather.
"I'm going to go wake up Mac," her dad decides, and she hears him stand and cross the room, open the adjoining door and shout Mac's name.
Mac groans, and then there's a lot of whining and distant voices. Veronica looks up at the door to listen and hears her friend clearly say "No toast no work."
Forty minutes later Mac is looking a bit better than awake, a piece of buttered toast wedged between her lips as she chews and types at the same time. Veronica is sitting cross-legged, sharing Keith's unused bed with her friend, the newspaper open in front of her amid plates of barely-touched room service. Her dad is using his own laptop at the small table by the back window.
"Keith's right," Mac suddenly says, shattering the relative quiet of the room. Both Veronica and her dad scramble to see Mac's computer.
"…I found the official report."
Veronica tries to remember that breathing is an inherent and vital function for survival. Her eyes are trying to absorb what is on Mac's screen, but the document looks like a jumble of letters to her. Her heart is beating too fast inside her chest, and her brain isn't being properly oxygenated. Mac continues to explain: "You were right about Johnston being friends with the Under-Secretary. They agreed to let Logan take the fall after emailing this to each other yesterday."
Veronica can't pretend to read anymore. Her head drops, and for exactly three seconds she allows herself to feel viciously gutted. Then she tilts her head back up.
"Can you send me this?" she asks, because reading over Mac's shoulder is awkward and uncomfortable. Mac sighs.
"Already did. But take this if you want. I'm going to take a shower."
Keith goes back to his laptop as Mac heads back to the girls' room. Veronica hears the shower start and observes her dad reading silently before she can bring herself to look back at Mac's screen. The official report stares back at her, almost defiant in its clarity. She knows that reading this will be painful. Everything so far has been painful. Veronica takes a deep breath and folds herself back into a sitting position.
It starts with the usual shit. Operation 318-009, sanctioned by Rear Adm Skip Johnston, COM. USS George HW Bush. Boeing test flight. Andaman Sea.
Lt Logan Echolls, pilot.
Veronica's heart throbs in her chest.
Preflight checks complete. COM Johnston gives the go ahead. Flight deck cleared for takeoff 1938 MMT. Pilot cleared for takeoff 1940. Pilot on the runway 1944. Take off 1944.
Veronica curls her fingers against her lips, and she holds in a breath.
Pilot turns east 1945. Radio contact maintained. 1946, explosion seen off portside bow. Radio contact maintained. Pilot turns south 1947. Pilot down 1948. Radio contact lost.
Tears brim around the corners of her eyes. She doesn't care that her dad is in the room.
Attempts to contact pilot failed 1949. Mayday called 1949, search and rescue initiated. HSC-9 contacted 1950. Pilots DeFolfe, Willis, Martinez and Harrington dispatched 1952.
2046 jet recovered.
A tear escapes, and snakes down Veronica's cheek.
Initial observation of jet: hull open, pilot not recovered in jet. Search continues 2054. Command convenes. 2100 pilot declared missing at sea. Search discontinued 0145.
Veronica smears her fingers under her eyes to wipe away the tears. She scrolls down. The next page is a diagnostic report of the jet Logan flew. It's full of boxes and small typed words that have no literal meaning in Veronica's mind. Each phrase sounds vaguely mechanical, but there is a checkmark next to each one. She scans once, and then twice. She's looking for a box without a checkmark, but there isn't one.
"Are you on the diagnostic page yet?" her dad asks, drawing her attention. Veronica looks over her screen and sees her dad frowning at his.
"Yeah," she answers, her voice raw.
"I don't understand any of this crap," he complains. Veronica sighs.
"Neither do I."
There's a strained silence. "Am I to understand though, by all these check marks, that Kathy Gilmore was right? Everything checked out?" It's an awful pun, but she's thankful for her dad for trying to cheer her up. Her dad smiles sadly at her, because he cares and he's confused. "Any chance Mac could understand any of this?"
"We can ask her when she gets out of the shower," Veronica suggests, wrapping her arms around herself and leaning back against the bed. The pillows absorb her weight.
When Mac comes back out ten minutes later, her wet hair flopped around her temples haphazardly, she frowns at Keith's screen.
"Do I look like a mechanical engineer?" she asks. She sounds a bit testy, and she quickly corrects her tone. She sighs. "Wallace might be able to help here, but honestly, I'm not sure there's a lot to read into. I think the diagnostic test revealed that the plane was safe. Johnston says as much in his email to Ristler."
"Ristler?" Keith questions. Mac taps on his keyboard. She brings up the email she'd sent to Veronica and Veronica's dad.
"The Under-Secretary. They exchanged a few nefarious emails over the week. Turns out Ristler is who Johnston contacted first after the jet went down, and yesterday when the report was finalized, Johnston suggested they blame Logan. Ristler goes along with it."
"Could someone have falsified the diagnostic report?" Veronica feels she has to ask.
"I don't see why Ristler and Johnston would feel the need to contradict a report that proved Logan was at fault," Mac reasons. "What I got from the exchange was that Logan wasn't at fault, but Ristler decided Johnston was allowed to keep his job and they needed something or someone else to blame anyway." She looks at Veronica quietly, considering what she wants to say next while biting the inside of her cheek. "I…think they figured out how they could get away with it. I mean, the idea of Aaron Echolls' son being a serious Naval aviator was always a bit, well, unbelievable. Unless you knew him, of course."
Veronica nods, her mind blank. She sniffs in a great wet sniff and rubs her nose, sitting up.
"I want to take him down," she asserts.
Mac presses her lips together, as if she already knew Veronica was going to say as much. She looks like she really doesn't want to say what she feels she needs to say in return.
"Not to be a buzzkill or anything, but my anonymity is sort of important to what I do for a living. If we go public with what we have already…it's just, I mean, there's no way they're not going to trace it back to me."
Veronica nods again. She's already thought of that. She's been thinking for the last fourteen minutes and the fourteen minutes have been good to her.
"Which is why we don't need to. I want him to tie his own noose. I want to catch him admitting to fraud. I want a fucking sound bite." Her voice is more filled with venom than it has been in a long time.
Mac frowns, not following Veronica's thought process. "This is where you tell me that you…like, have your own private satellite or something, right? Or…you're best friends with Johnston's neighbor or something… I just don't see how you plan on infiltrating the US Navy, abducting a Rear Admiral, and forcing a confession out of a 40-year-plus war veteran."
Veronica swallows against the lump in her throat. She doesn't take her eyes off her friend.
"No, we don't need any of that," she says. "Because we have Dick."
He is going to have to write these people a letter. Seriously.
"Dear cock-sucking shitheads," he drafts, continuing in his mind as he picks at his shoe with a dirty fingernail.
Don't get me wrong, the food was great. You know service was a little slow but I understand. You guys were busy. And yes, let's be honest, the accommodations were a little weak, but you really made up for it in spirit. The daily beat downs were a great alternative to Western medicine for keeping your guests docile and well-behaved.
And to all those people who told him that prison was better in Burma? Oh, they were wrong. Two days had passed inside this cement cage, and it was two days of his life he would never get back. He might not speak the language, but he realized pretty quick that struggling against your captors while trying to shout your innocence didn't get you very far. He had the bruises and what he presumed to be a broken finger to prove it. Jail in Neptune was never this much fun.
He might actually donate to the annual Policeman's Ball back home if he ever gets out of here. If he ever gets out of here alive. Or he's dead anyway, right?
Logan sneers, anticipating the turn of his thoughts. The physical violence isn't what counts as torture here. Getting into fights with the guards is almost cathartic in comparison to the prison of his own mind, and the torture he meets out against himself when alone.
Logan leans his head back against his cell wall and searches the ceiling for answers. He wonders what his last will and testament looks like these days. He can't even remember the last time his lawyer had bugged him about it.
Veronica would get nothing. Her baby – their baby? – would get nothing. Logan closes his eyes tightly as his fingers curl into fists. The baby.
How is it that he's cosmically unable to save the women in his life? First Lilly…then his mom…then Carrie…and now Veronica. And Veronica's baby for crying out loud… Every time he's had to stand idly by as tragedy walked right through his life and took everything with it. Logan drops his head into his hands and grips the roots of his hair between clenched fingers.
So much of him craves the ability to reach her. If she was here, he would be showing these guards his bare ass right now. No, he wouldn't be here to begin with.
God, he misses her. He thought he missed her before, when he would sleep in the safety of his bunk at night on the ship, fantasizing about her face and reliving every memory of Veronica he had. The good ones and the shitty ones – anything was better than being so far away.
Sometimes he'd imagine what she was doing. He would imagine how her dad was healing, how business at Mars Investigations was going. He would imagine her hanging out with Mac or Wallace, on stake outs, chasing down bad guys, getting the money shot like the plucky little Nancy Drew she is. He imagined her sleeping in, or making some disastrous form of dinner. He would imagine her in the shower. Sometimes, when he was really desperate, he'd wonder how she was doing with his car.
Those memories can't sustain him now. He's just so, fucking, tired, and his soul is so miserable, and his heart is so hopeless. Despite all previous run-ins with the law, he's never conceived of a life spent in jail before now. Now he can imagine it with frightening ease.
Veronica thinks of him as dead. The world thinks of him as dead. The US consulate imagines that he's an imposter…
Logan's expression twists together. He considers that if he writes enough letters, maybe he can change the consulate's mind. Maybe if he writes enough letters to Veronica, or to the Navy, eventually they'll stop thinking that his correspondence is some cruel hoax and actually consider the possibility that he's alive.
He wonders what the rationing is like for prisoners in Myanmar. One stamp a day? Two?
He laughs at himself hatefully, and hits the back of his head against the wall with enough force to hurt. It's his small punishment, the only one he'll be able to control himself.
Oh, Veronica, if you could see me now…
A small, hateful part of his soul wonders if she even misses him at all. It's the same part that wonders whether she's setting up a happy family with Piz right about now. He knows he's being an idiot, that this line of thinking is irrational, but when you're faced with nothing but time… Jeez, why not. Logan closes his eyes. He imagines Veronica with a big swollen belly, kissing Stosh Piznarski sweetly and not even pretending that it's him instead. That's what her life would have been like, if he hadn't been so selfish and called her back when he needed someone's help and no one else was on his side.
He knew Veronica would forever see him as some lame, kicked puppy. It's what made it so easy for her to leave him in the first place, nine long years ago. But he had called her back – for what – for legal advice? No, he called her back because he felt alone. He'd felt alone for nine long years without her, and when the loneliness finally got to be too much, well. It didn't matter that he was up against a murder charge, or that he was being publicly disgraced anymore. It didn't matter when he called her that she pitied him, and she knew enough about him to pity him in a legitimate way.
Logan balls his fists and throws a punch into the air because he knows he's being ridiculous and that his thoughts don't reflect reality. He stands suddenly, ghost boxing with his abrupt burst of nervous energy. A shrink would have told him he was literally trying to fight the demons away, but Logan knows that's a fucking ridiculous notion.
Veronica loved him. She loves him. She told him as much. And this was his Veronica, right? The same one who couldn't let sleeping dogs lie. If there is anyone in the world he wants to have the knowledge of his death it would be her, because she is the only person in the world who wouldn't buy it. Right? …Right?
Logan hurls all his weight into a sucker punch to the air. He's been trying to avoid the math, because he doesn't want to know, but it's going on eleven days since his death now, and he can't decide what a good number of days would be enough to give up on. Twelve? Could he fairly give up on day twelve? Day twenty-nine?
What would happen if he got to day thirty and he was still in this shithole. What then. How could he not decide that by day thirty she had given up on him.
Logan hurls a fist at the cement wall with an anguished shout. He's going to die in here.
His knuckles burn where they've made contact, but he hurls them at the same place again, and then he hits the spot with his other fist. He throws punch after punch at the wall, trying desperately not to think. It's too much. Physical pain yearns to take the place of emotional. When the hurt of impact is shooting into his shoulders and his arms feel like rubber he finally stops. His breathing is wet and ragged, and frustrated tears are smeared under his eyes. Logan collapses onto the floor and puts his face into his bleeding hands, and lets himself cry. His shoulders pitch with each new sob as he misses her. He can't help but think, morosely, that he's nothing without her, and if he never sees her again he'll die from that alone.
He's scared. That's the honest truth. He's just so fucking scared.
TBC. And now you must wait…