Chapter Twelve: Skeptics and True Believers
December 30, 2013
After a long day at the office, and with a long night of stakeouts ahead of him, Keith was already exhausted when he got home. The prospect of dealing with Veronica was enough to make him consider not going home. It wasn't that he didn't love his daughter, because he did – no matter what she did or why she left. But since her return, things had been… difficult. Her outright silence towards him for the first week or so had truly hurt, but he understood she was still trying to process everything. After that week she'd begun to talk to him. It wasn't much, and never seriously, but she would answer his questions and make small talk over dinner (on the days he could coax her into eating with him). As long as he didn't press her on why she left or bring up Eli, it was fine.
The problem was that getting her out of bed had become a battle that he just didn't have the energy to face. Veronica had fallen into a deep depression, something he'd never thought his strong and confident daughter capable of, and did little more than sleep the days away. And nothing he did seemed to help her. God only knows what must be going through her mind, but whatever it is, it must be pretty dark for her to give up so blatantly.
He'd asked Eli to come see her, but to his surprise once Veronica caught wind of it she'd refused to see either man.
Two weeks. It had been two weeks since she'd come back. Enough was enough. He didn't know what he was going to do, but something was going to change. It had too.
After a quick bite to eat, Keith noticed that he'd allowed himself to get lost in thought over Veronica for far too long. If he didn't get moving he'd be late and possibly miss getting the money shot.
He scribbled a quick note for Veronica and rushed back out the door.
Relief flooded Veronica when she heard her father leave again. After years of living by herself, she'd come to prefer her own company. Isolation was safe to her. If no one was around her, if no one cared about her, then she couldn't hurt them, they couldn't die.
Yeah, so her thinking was a little messed up, but it's not like she had a good track record with people she cared about sticking around. Ever since Lilly, everyone Veronica allowed herself to trust and rely on had left her. And there was no way she was going to let the two most important people in her life fall victim to the Veronica Curse.
The only problem with her plan to keep them away from her was the keeping them away. Her dad had surprisingly had decided to give her space. Eli was a little more confusing. He'd tried to come see her once. When she'd refused he'd left. She'd been expecting him to fight for her more. After all, he practically kidnapped her from Grand Rapids and snuck her across the country .
No. She wasn't supposed to be upset over this. She wasn't allowed to be. This was her choice. It was what she wanted… wasn't it? No. It sure as hell wasn't what she wanted. None of this was. But it's what she needed.
The sound of heavy footsteps drifted through the tiny apartment, waking Veronica.
Footsteps that were not accompanied by the sound of Backup's paws clicking across the linoleum. Two sets of footsteps. Two sets of footsteps and no Backup.
That added up to only one thing: trouble.
As she tried to force her panicked mind to calm she heard a metallic click as a safety was turned off followed by the noise of a new clip being chambered.
January 16, 2008
It was only the first week back to classes, but Veronica was already ready for Summer Break. While her class load wasn't exactly demanding, it was still more than she wanted to deal with. She'd spent too much time trying to pretend that the Fitzpatrick case didn't exist. And she'd been to desperate for normalcy when she allowed herself to be lulled into a false sense of security over the apparent lack of attempts on her of late.
If anything, she should know by now that it was never a good thing when your pursuer suddenly looses all interest in you. Actually, that was a battle she was loosing on two fronts. With the disappearance of the Fitzpatrick threat, so had disappeared Eli. Sure, she still saw him around the office, and at a rate much higher than could be considered 'accidental' around town, but it wasn't the same.
"Man, the crazy shit you white folks consider coffee… Latte, Espresso, Machiatto… Seriously V, since when is knowledge of a foreign language required to buy a cup of coffee?" As was his habit, Eli had snuck up on her, seemingly out of nowhere. At least today he came bearing some type of hot drink.
"Not sure. All I know is that sugar plus caffeine equals a happy Veronica," she replied, eagerly gesturing for the beverage he'd brought.
"What, this?" he asked, clearly indicating the large drink. "What makes you think I brought this for you?"
Rolling her eyes she held out her hand once more. They both knew he hated pretty much anything you could buy at a Starbucks, which meant he'd gone out of his way to bring her the delicious beverage that he was currently taunting her with.
Finally relenting, Eli gave her the cup and laughed as she inhaled the scent of the contents.
"So, how much trouble are you in?" she asked after a few invigorating sips.
"Aww, come on now V, what makes you think that I'd only bring you coffee when I need something. Ever think that maybe I'm just after the pleasure of your company?"
"A long and storied history between us my friend, so what'd you do and how long is it going to take me to fix it?"
"Well… if you insist… I may have broken my camera…" Rolling her eyes yet again she readily agreed to fix the damaged camera. After all, he had brought her caffeine.
December 30, 2013
Frantic pounding on the door to the small shack he called a house startled Eli from a light sleep. Rolling out of bed, still half asleep, he slipped a heavy knife behind the waistband of his sweatpants before opening the door. One hand wrapped tightly around the handle, ready to draw if necessary, he was startled to see that Veronica was his late night visitor.
"Veronica? What are you doing here? What time is it?"
Tears were pouring down her face and all she could do was shake her head. She didn't have to say anything for him to know what had happened.
They'd found her.
"Come on V, let's get inside, okay?" She darted past him quickly and he closed the door behind her, being sure to engage a number of different locking mechanisms. Sometimes it paid to be paranoid.
Turning back to Veronica he was alarmed to see that she was shaking like a leaf.
"What happened?"
"Nothing. Dad's out on a stake out tonight, took BackUp. I was asleep, but I woke up when I heard someone come in, I thought it was dad. But then there was another set of footsteps, and another. Two men. If it'd been dad, he would have yelled or I would have heard BackUp…"
"Alright, then what?"
"I snuck out my window, like I used to. I don't think they saw me, but if they went in my room, they'll know."
He didn't bother asking how she knew where he lived now. Either Keith had mentioned it, or she'd seen it in the office. Shit. An overwhelming urge to punch something came over him. Veronica didn't need to deal with any of this.
"It's okay Veronica, alright? I'm not going to let anything happen to you, remember?" She nodded slowly.
Looking at the clock, he noticed it wasn't even one yet. At least they had that going for them. Veronica could get a full night's rest and he could make some plans.
"Why don't you go get in my bed, see if you can't get some sleep." Gesturing to an open door at the end of a hallway off the living room, he gave her a gentle nudge towards it. She opened her mouth, intending to protest, but he cut it off with a quick "Sleep."
Once he heard her close the door he slipped out into the garage where his makeshift gym was set up. There was a lot that needed to happen. But none of it would if he didn't get some of the rage out of his system first…
Twenty minutes later he'd finally begun to calm down and entered into rational thought again. Grabbing a bottle of water and a bottle of pills, he went to go check on Veronica.
Just as he had suspected, she wasn't sleeping.
"Querida, you need to get some sleep."
"You really expect me to sleep?"
"No. But I need you to. Tomorrow's going to be rough, what with you coming back from the dead and all."
"Coming back from the dead?"
"Yup. It's the only option."
"And my dad's okay with it?"
"Haven't told him yet. He'll be done with his stakeout in another hour; I'll talk to him then." Truthfully, he hadn't even thought about the older man. But it was true, Keith would be checking in with him around 2:30. Ever since Veronica's disappearance the men had grown accustomed to making sure the other was aware of work-related late night activities – lest he get attacked by the Fitzpatricks again. After the Fitzpatricks seemed to have forgotten about him the habit stuck.
"Planning on drugging me to get me to sleep?"
He snorted, "Yeah, actually."
"Toss me the bottle cholo." Catching it in one hand she quickly popped the lid out and doled out a double dose – then downed the pills without any water. Electing not to pick a fight with her over her apparent familiarity with heavy sleep aids, he kept his mouth shut. "At least there's an upside to this."
"What's that?"
"At least you finally got a better bed."
Half an hour later a frantic Keith was pacing the small confines of Eli's living room.
"I don't know Eli, it sounds way to risky to me."
"What choice do we have Keith? At least we have the benefit of knowing Sacks isn't dirty. Cliff can file whatever paperwork to make it legit."
"So this is your big plan? Waltz into the station tomorrow and say 'hey, Veronica Mars is alive after all'. Then what."
"It's the best plan we got. I'll call up Fox and a couple of the boys who've done security work for us before. We'll set up a 24-hour detail on her. Fox won't let anything happen to her," he reassured the older man.
Keith paused in his pacing in front of the open door to Eli's bedroom. From their vantage point, Veronica looked like a lost child, curled up in a semi-fetal position in the middle of the king size bed. The bulky cast on her arm underscored her fragility, as did the light bruises that were barely visible now that her spray-on tan disguise had worn off.
"I'm still not convinced Eli, I mean, what comes next for her? She's so turned around, I feel like I don't even know who she is anymore," Keith said weerily.
"Because you don't. The Veronica we both knew is gone. The only thing we can do is accept her for who she is now. And as for what comes next, I'm going to end this for once and for all. Veronica knows something about the Fitzpatricks and it made them nervous as hell, even if she doesn't know what it is that she knows… I figure that out and we'll be able to unravel this whole mess. Maybe then…"
"You're sure you can solve this?"
"Yes." He just wasn't sure how it would impact the lives of all involved – but it was far too late to be thinking about things like that.
AN: I know you all figured I'd abandoned you, but I swear, I haven't. Unfortunately, I've been promoted at work (hooray!!), which is awesome for me because I went from receptionist to the communications coordinator, but bad for you guys because that's where I did 75 percent of my writing before – now I have to actually work at work! Add to that that my laptop has been in the shop since before Xmas (grrrr….) and it's just been near impossible to get stuff done on this. Anyway, enough excuses, I'm sorry it's taken so long for this to get out, and thanks so much to all of you still paying attention to my story.