Sorry it took me a while to update, I sort of got stuck on how to continue this story. I've figured it out now, so there will be more frequent updates after this. Please review. Time is a very strange thing.

Sometimes it almost seemed like only a second passed, and the year was already over. Sometimes it seemed like some moment s went on forever – like running towards the pool, like seeing Lilly lying there. Like waking up that morning and finding out her innocence had been stolen – like she said time is a very strange thing, and she can't make it slow down. She is left to wonder what happened to all that time she had, it feels like one second she is going to that party, the next it's August and she's in Miami. August 18th to be more precise, the date she kept hoping wouldn't come, wouldn't show up, but it did and she can't change that.

It's her seventeenth birthday today.

It's an age Lilly Kane will never be, and that's what makes it so much worse to actually turn 17, because her best friend will be frozen forever at the same age. Nothing will ever change for her, she'll be sixteen forever, never changing never aging, frozen in time forever. It seems wrong that the girl who never managed to stay the same while she was alive, would forever be young in dead, wrong and twisted, but there are so many wrong and twisted things have happened since the 3rd of October, so it doesn't matter anymore. She'll be forever the same, and Veronica will change forever, forever and ever. She's seventeen, her best friend has been murdered, her mother abandoned her, she was raped, her best friends turned on her and now she's pregnant. She's turning seventeen and she hopes that it will become better this year somehow, but still she can't deny that things are changing, once and for all.

She's turning seventeen today, she's never felt so distant from Lilly then in that second.

She stared at the clock.

Almost willing it to stop from going on, just to stop before it became official, just stop working, but of course it doesn't. She knows, as she's lying in her bed, that even if the clock stops working, it doesn't mean time has stopped. It doesn't mean it hasn't become the eighteenth, it doesn't mean she's a year older, but still she wants it to stop so she can tell herself it has, for a couple of hours at least. But the clock doesn't stop working, and time doesn't stop running, and there's no denying it.

She can't stop the tears from escaping her eyes.

It's stupid she knows, after everything that has happened, a simple birthday seems so insignificant, so unimportant. But it isn't, it's important, because it separates her from Lilly, clearer than anything has done before. It's hard to explain, and that's why it sounds so crazy even to her, but feelings are irrational, she's discovered that a long time ago. After all how else do you explain she still loves Duncan, still thinks of Logan as one of her best friends, after all that has happened, after all that has been done. She can't change the way she feels about them, just like she can't change the way she feels about this, no matter how irrational it sounds to her and everyone else around her.

Some things can't be changed, like dead girls next to pools, and broken girls in white dresses.

Some things remain the same forever.

She knows she has to call her dad.

There's no way around it, no way to change that simple fact, he will want to talk to her on her birthday. He's her father and he loves her, and she loves him, but still there is this part of her that resents him, for accusing Jake, for beginning that war. After all if he hadn't he would have never been fired, Logan wouldn't have turned against her, she and Duncan would still be friends, she wouldn't have been alone at that party and she wouldn't be across the country now. She knows it's wrong to think that, and it's not her intention to think it, but like she said she can't stop the way she feels. But despite his mistake, because she knows he was wrong, she still loves him, and wants to go back home, but she's afraid and pregnant and can't.

Still she calls him, in the morning, after her shower.

'Dad?' 'Veronica, honey, Happy Birthday.' 'Thanks, daddy.' 'I wish I could see you, hug you. Honey don't you think it's time to come home?' 'Dad I… I'm not ready to come home. Whatever I'm looking for, I haven't found it yet. But I did make a friend, sort of.' 'Really?' 'Yeah, his name is Wallace Fenell.' 'Honey, school is starting again soon, come home.' 'Look, dad, I'm not sure what I'm going to do. But I'll call you as soon as I do okay?' 'Alright, honey, fine. Call me again tonight okay?' 'Okay. I love you daddy.' 'I love you sweetie.' Veronica hangs up with a mixed desire, one part of her is screaming for her to go back home and hug her dad, the other part is telling her to run even farther. Because how can she look him in the eye, he would know she was pregnant, and she didn't want to explain.

She doesn't want him to look at her or threat her differently, not that he actually ever will.

She can't stay inside of the hotel room.

She needs to get outside, walk the streets, breath the air, calm herself down. She leaves Wallace a note, indicating she's going for a walk and she'll be right back, she doesn't want him to worry. She's beginning to trust him, like him, he's the first kid her age in almost a year to speak a kind word to her, and that means something to her, even if it doesn't to him. It doesn't mean anything to him, because he knows nothing about her, and that's okay because she doesn't know much about him either. She thinks today might be a great day to find some things out, they can't stay on the surface forever.

In order for them to become friends, real friends, they need to know some things.

Veronica wants him to be a real friends, she need some real friends, people who trust her, who love her, who stand by her. People that actually care, not people that turn the other way, not people that break her, not people that scar her. Just one normal friend, who has nothing to do with Neptune, who has nothing to do with the Lilly Kane case, has nothing to do with anything at all. Veronica wants to know things about him – besides the things she already knows – and she wants him to know her.

She thinks maybe she should tell him about the rape and baby.

He's bound to notice anyway.

Duncan remembers a year ago.

A year ago his sister was still alive, Logan was still the same he was before and he still had Veronica, he still had a live. Now Lilly is dead, Logan has become another person and Veronica is gone, truly gone. He's not even entirely sure how they got to this point, how so many things could have co inspired against them, how so many things could have happened at the same time, to destroy them, to break them apart. But they did happen, and he can't change that, he can't even apologize to Veronica. He just wanted to go back, to that time last year when everything was still perfect, and never find out everything that came after that, pretend it never happened.

He wants to forget, but he can't, because it happened, just like that.

He spends the entire day sitting in his room, staring at his phone, willing it to ring. He wants Veronica to call him, if only so he can convince himself for a second that they're still in the same time as they were last year. He sits there for hours, and somewhere in the late afternoon he does begin to think he should have probably left the house at some point, because staying here lost in his thoughts only made things worse. But he didn't leave and he lost himself in memories and 'what If's'. The phone rings, at eight that night, and it is Veronica, just like every other time. The conversation is different this time, it's almost a if she is trying to recapture that lost world as well.

A world that can never be retrieved, because Lilly died and she took that world with her.

And now the three of them – because Logan is a part of this as well – are just spiraling, lost out of control.

He hopes someday she will forgive him.

He stands on the beach, on the same place the four of them had once walked, and just stares at the ocean. Sometimes Logan just wishes he could throw himself into the ocean, and just keep swimming. Until he's left all his trouble and pain behind, until he's lost in that blue different world. Until there's nothing left of who he once was, until there are no memories left of what he has lost. But he knows he can't do that, because to get far enough to forget it, he'd actually have to be to far to be saved.

He'd have to drown to forget it all, because he'll never actually be able to swim far enough.

Never far enough to forget, to let it all go, he can't get away and it scares him. He never expects Ronnie to call, he wants her to, to try to get something of their old friendship back. Even though deep down inside he knows they never can, they're to far gone from who they once were. So he never expects her to call him, not after everything he has done, but she calls him every week. He can't quite understand why, but there isn't much left in his life that he understands, so he doesn't bother to try and find out. His phone rings, and he knows who it is at once.

'Happy Birthday Ronnie.'

It had been raining the day Veronica was born.

That's all he can remember about that day, there's nothing else he knows. He didn't find out Veronica was his, until many years later, when it was already to late to save any of them. He remembers every second of the day both Lilly and Duncan were born, but nothing about Veronica's. He wishes he did, if she is his daughter he would like to know, but he doesn't. The selfish part of him wants her to be his. The other part of him wants her to be Keith's, that's the part that wants Duncan to be happy.

It's conflicting and painful, and it's tearing him apart.

It makes him feel guilty, more so than before, but he thinks after all he has done he deserves all of that guilt. All of that pain. Still he wants her to be his, and he's truthful enough to accept that this has nothing to do with Leanne and everything with Lilly. He's lost his only daughter and if Veronica is his, he has something left. It's selfish and wrong, he accepts that as well, but it's how he feels and he can't stop it. He calls her to tell her happy birthday, he remembers last year Lilly had insisted on throwing her a party, and she almost sounds happy to hear him.

Almost, because in the end all he is to her is Lilly's father, never anything else.

Clarence follows her everywhere.

You would think as the daughter of the Sherriff – former Sherriff he never seems to be able to remember that – she would notice if somebody was following her. But she didn't notice, not once. Than again she was a teenage girl, and he was trained for situations like this, and this town is filled with people. Still she never seems to notice him not once, and nothing happens, nothing at all. He's bored out of his mind, but he's not about to go against his orders. He can understand Jake being protective of the girl who might be his daughter after his actual daughter was murdered.

He wasn't sorry about covering it up, Duncan was a good kid.

He was sorry for what happened to the Mars family, and he knows Jake is to. He's not sure where Mrs. Kane stands on all of that, something tells him he might not want to know. Keith Mars was a good man, he didn't deserve that to happen to him, and the girl was even a bigger victim. But he answered to Jake, and he understands him as well, so he did what he had to do. And now here he is, across the country, babysitting a teenage girl.

He doesn't want to do it, but he'll never go against him, so here he is.

When she tells him it's her birthday, he runs out.

He doesn't go far of course, he runs into the first bakery and buys a cake. Because really everybody deserves a cake on their birthday; he's not quite sure what her favorite is, but chocolate seems like a save bet. He just wants her to smile like yesterday and be happy, she just seems so broken right now. He sings to her – he's sure she'll wish forever he never had – and she laughs and seems like before again, but there is this look in her eyes. It's pain, it's that simple, and he thinks he recognizes it. It reminds him of how he feels when he thinks of his father.

He tells her about his family, he wants her to be his friend.

She looks at him with a knowing look; and he knows then that she somehow understands. And so she begins to tell him; of best friends and long blond hair mingled with blood. He hears about pain and being left behind, he hears of parties and girls in white dresses. He wants to kill whoever did that to her; even though he has no idea who he is and probably never will, and he isn't a violent person. He can't stand to see that pain on her face, and he just wants to hug her and take it all away, but he thinks that that would be bad somehow.

He hears her talk about pregnancy; and he swears to himself he will help her, anyway possible.

It's a couple of days later.

They're sitting somewhere on a beach; he likes it somehow but he misses home. They sit there in silence, trying not to think that the ending of the holidays are near. One of them must say something; one of them must bring it up, but as long as they don't it won't be there. Wallace finds it sad that a girl he ran into on the side of the road became the best friend he ever had, the best friend he'll ever have. In the end she's the one to bring it up, she's the one to say it out loud.

'I guess it's time to get back.' 'Yeah.' 'Do you think your mom would still want to help me?' 'Of course.'

The next day they get into the car and drive back. On the road again, she is heading back, going back to where she came from. But she feels free somehow, as opposed to when she left a couple of months ago. Time passed her by, but it has also learned her to accept some of the things that have happened. She's not going home; she's not ready for that, not ready for that at all. So she heads back with Wallace; thinking closeness to Neptune might be all she can handle right now.

She was completely alone when she left, now she has a friend.

She likes to think Lilly might have put him in her path, somehow.