Title: The Return 13-Potential

Rating: PG-13 (mentions of sexual situations and just in case there's anything else.)

Characters/Pairings: Lilly the first, Veronica, Parker, Duncan, Mac, Logan, Dick (mentions of: Lilly the second) LoVe and MaDi

Spoilers: All episodes (from 1.01: Pilot to 3.20: The Bitch Is Back) Although this is obviously AU and there are alterations to some of the events in the last couple of episodes.

Disclaimer: I own nothing. Literally, nothing. So don't sue me over this, because you won't get anything.

A/N: This story was also not originally mine, and I'd like to really stress that in the first two chapters. Anything after that is of my own creation (storyline wise, not the characters or situations mentioned). And sections in italics are thoughts.

The Return
13
Potential

--Lilly--

Lilly sat on the porch in the early morning light, a chill seeping in where she'd let the blanket droop. As she pulled it tighter against her the screen door opened and shut softly behind her. Lilly didn't turn to look who it was.

The person took three soft steps straight forward and stood for a moment next to her, before sitting so close there were only a couple inches between them. Veronica's warmth radiated off of her, like she was a small space heater in her sweats and one of Logan's hoodies.

Veronica kept her head straight, looking off into the distance of the front yard, to the mountains. Pulling her knees up to her chest, she cuddled into herself next to Lilly on the top step of the porch.

"You lied Lilly." Veronica's voice was calm and a little breathy in the early morning. Her soft voice somehow didn't seem to hold the anger Lilly had expected and feared all night long.

"I know." Lilly whispered. She'd been dreading this since last night, after her fight with Logan. She hadn't meant to go that far, hadn't meant to lie. It was an old habit, lie to get what you want, lie to win the fight. She had done it all throughout high school, used it like a weapon. But that was the thing. She had done it in high school, which was a different time, but she was still stuck in it. They'd all moved on and grew up without her, and now she was playing catch up. All the younger ones were so much older and wiser than she was now. It was such a difficult position to be in.

"Why?" Veronica asked, finally looking over at her. Lilly was suddenly struck by how different her friend had really become, but somehow she was still the same.

"Because I fought with you for a reason. I started thinking, that maybe… well maybe, if I let things slip too far into what they used to be, they would actually start to go back to what they were. I don't want to be with Logan, not anymore. And honestly even if I did, I'd be a little disappointed in him if he actually wanted to be with me." Veronica raised an eyebrow, looking at her in disbelief. Lilly knew what that look meant. It clearly said "yeah right, you're happier when everyone is in love with you".

"First of all, after what I did, I really don't deserve Logan. He loves so completely, and so… so… passionately. If he loves you, if he cares about you, then you're all he thinks about and he pretty much devotes himself to you." Lilly took a deep breath, preparing herself for what she was about to say next. "And that's the other thing, he's in love with you. He has you, and from what I understand… from what people have told me. You're pretty amazing. Like a super-hero or something. So why would anyone give you up for the silly girl that made all the wrong mistakes? The girl that's still stuck in high school, a place that wasn't very kind to Logan."

"Lilly." Veronica whispered, her tone sounded as if she both agreed and disagreed with her assessment of her own character.

Lilly shook her head, she knew where this was going. Veronica was going to try and do the nice thing. She was going to tell her that she made one mistake and yeah, it sucked, but it didn't define her. It was the same thing she said to her the night they went to Logan's hotel room, when Lilly had freaked out in the car and begged to not go up there.

"That's the way it is Ronica. I know that. I plan to change it, to get out of high school and grow up and fix my stupid life. But right now, I'm stuck there. I might be twenty-one, but in my head and my heart and everything, I'm still sixteen. Almost seventeen." Lilly finished with a smile, one that was both genuine and sad.

"I'm always going to love you Lilly." Veronica said, her voice low. She leaned in and hugged her, whispering the rest into her ear. "But you really do have to grow up now, and you really do have to fix this with Logan."

Lilly pulled back out of the embrace to look into Veronica's face.

"There's a lot of things that I have to fix with a lot of people." Lilly whispered back. "I just started with you."

--Parker--

Parker sat at the kitchen counter, eating a bowl of cold cereal. Lucky Charms. She was pretty sure that they belonged to Logan. Or maybe Duncan, for his daughter. But she didn't care, she's was pretty sure she was the first one up and if she was done in time could completely deny the fact that she'd stolen a bowl.

"You know, Logan's gonna freak if all his cereal is gone when he gets up." Duncan's voice startled her. He was standing in the doorway to the kitchen, looking at her with a smile on his face and his daughter on his hip. Lilly had her blanket clutched to her chest and her head on her daddy's shoulder.

"It's not all gone, there's still at least two bowls left." Parker pointed out, lifting the box and giving it a little shake.

"Yeah, but there's only going to be one bowl left after Lilly has some." Duncan walked closer, repositioning Lilly to slide her into the high chair. "She won't eat anything but Lucky Charms now, something she's picked up from Logan."

Duncan got a small child's bowl out, along with a little spoon and the milk. Parker smiled at the sight of all the tiny flatware. It was all pink with little flowers, and she let out a breathy giggle at the thought of Logan picking it out. The small sound caught Duncan's attention and he looked at her with the puzzled look she often saw on his face.

"Should I be worried that she's only twenty-two months old and already madly in love with Logan?" Duncan asked, shaking his head as he poured a small amount of cereal and an even smaller amount of milk into the bowl.

"No. Logan's a charmer, he's always going to have the legions of ladies, it just means she's normal." Parker answered, leaning over the counter to give the bowl to Lilly, since she was closer.

"I keep forgetting that you two dated. He usually doesn't have such a good relationship with the girl after, well after the relationship ends." Duncan walked around the counter to sit next to her, grabbing a giant blueberry muffin from the basket on the other side of the counter.

"Yeah, well, we never should have gotten together." Parker said, slurping up a spoonful of milk. "Not that it wasn't fun. He just wasn't over Veronica and I was, well I was still pretty fragile."

Parker wasn't sure how much he knew about her, how much of her story Logan and Veronica had shared with him. She didn't mind if they had told him about her rape, she just hated telling people. It wasn't like back home in Neptune, at Hearst, where everybody knew.

"I'm not sure he was ever going to get over her. And by the sounds of things last night, I don't think he'll even have to attempt to anymore." Parker said, lifting her bowl and tipping it to slurp the remaining milk out of the bowl.

"You know what? I think that's the way things are supposed to be." Duncan announced through a mouthful of muffin. "For a long time I thought she and I were meant to be, this couple that was going to be together forever. But now, I don't."

Parker gave Duncan a puzzled look. From what she'd heard from Mac the last couple of days, and Wallace last night, they'd been this perfect golden couple.

"I mean, after everything we're definitely not right for each other. And I used to think all these obstacles were getting in our way and once we got past them we'd be together forever and totally happy. But now, now I think that maybe they were there to prevent us from being together because we weren't mean to be together. They were there as a warning. And everything that Veronica went through after the Lilly thing, everything that Logan went through… it was all so they'd be better for each other, so they'd be right for each other. They changed, but this way they're better suited towards each other. Sweet and perfect Veronica and hormonally charged, slightly broken Logan wouldn't have made it. Broken and bitter Veronica and that Logan wouldn't have been good either. But broken Veronica and broken Logan fit, like they fix each other and what they don't fix they make up for." Duncan looked at Parker. "Does that make any sense?"

"Perfect sense." She whispered. She was amazed at how well Duncan knew Logan and Veronica. They kept their secrets so well that she didn't think anyone actually knew them, nobody but each other. But Duncan and Lilly, they knew them. Duncan knew them enough to know that they were meant to be together. Lilly had proved she knew them yesterday, known exactly what to say to make a cut. "You really know them."

Parker was glad for that. She didn't have to worry about them so much. Often it seemed that they were all they had, the two of them. Parker had always known that Veronica was basically Logan's family, that she was always going to be more important to him than anyone else. Veronica had her father and Wallace and Mac, but it seemed that Logan was the only one that really understood her, really knew her. That was a lonely place, though. Only one person in the world that you were able to fully be yourself with, and that person knew your past.

"You know, you seem to really know them too. Just not in the way that I do. Or Lilly does." Duncan pointed out, looking directly into her eyes. "We don't know them now, or what they're like in college. How Veronica manages her courses, or how often Logan goes to class. I can imagine, make a guess. I'm sure Veronica has everything color-coded and goes through a highlighter a week. And Logan only attends the class if he absolutely must, but when he does he isn't really there anyway. Still, somehow he inexplicably passes all his classes, and usually does pretty well in them."

Parker raised an eyebrow. "Those are pretty good guesses. Veronica sometimes makes it two weeks with a highlighter. And I could never figure out how Logan passed all his classes, how he's not on academic probation this year."

Parker and Duncan giggled, their discussion straying away from their mutual topics of Logan and Veronica and to things that ranged from the mundane to the silly.

It wasn't an important conversation, in fact it wasn't really about anything at all. They didn't get too serious or even tiptoe around the serious subjects. They barely mentioned their pasts or their futures, like everyone else she met did. It wouldn't go down in history as the most intellectual conversation, it probably wouldn't even be too important to either of them.

But it had potential.

--Mac--

"So, you and Dick huh?" Mac was startled as she crept out of Dick's room to head for breakfast.

"Why are you always so quiet?" Mac asked, glaring at her witness, the only one to have caught on to her and Dick's little game. Of course it was him.

"Because I'm a ninja." Logan did a little kick, followed by a chopping motion with his hands as he said this. "Now, you and Dick?"

"Okay, you caught us, now what?" Mac asked, curious to Logan's reaction. He wasn't freaking out, but she expected that more of Veronica. She wasn't sure what she'd been expecting from Logan, but this instant acceptance wasn't it.

"Now what?" He repeated, a smirk slowly spreading into a smile across his face. Then, at the top of his lungs he began to sing: "Mac and Dick, sittin in a tree. K-I-S-S-I-N-G!"

Logan had barely called out the letter 'I' before Mack lunged at him. She missed and he went running down the stairs, still singing.

"First comes love. Then comes marriage. Then comes baby in the—oof!" Logan's song was cut short when Mac tackled him to the ground in the hallway, only a couple feet from Veronica's bedroom door. He'd obviously thought he'd find safety in there, probably had planned to make his getaway by running in there and locking the door.

"I can't believe… actually, I can. Of course you take it upon yourself to inform the entire household and all of our friends… IN SONG!" Mac yelled out the last two words, getting up from her position on the floor next to Logan's prone body, which lay sprawled across the hallway floor.

As Mac stood and began to dust off her pajama bottoms she looked up to find Dick standing on the stairs they had just run down, looking utterly amused.

"That was the weirdest wake up call I've ever had." Dick said, stretching his arms up as Logan groaned on the floor.

"What is all the yelling about?" Veronica asked, coming up the stairs from the lower level. After spotting Logan on the floor, face down, and Mac standing over his body, looking victorious she smiled nervously. "What's going on?"

Mac looked to Dick, hoping he'd take the lead. He just looked afraid, very, very afraid. Mac took a deep fortifying breath, she'd have to remember Dick's fear of tiny blondes in the future. It might come in handy.

"Mac and Dick are dating." Logan beat her to the punch. She was just about to reveal her new relationship to her best friend when he blurted it out.

"Logan. That's not funny." Veronica said admonishingly, stepping forward to help him up. When he was standing he wrapped his arms around her waist.

"It's not a joke babe, they're really together." Logan paused a moment. "Actually I'm not sure if they're dating, but she spent the night in his room."

Mac closed her eyes, waiting for the fallout. Veronica hated Dick, for reasons Mac wasn't entirely sure of.

Mac opened her eyes and saw Logan whispering in Veronica's ear, something that made Veronica's face soften. She nodded.

"It's too early, can we talk about this later?" Veronica asked Mac.

"Yeah, we'll talk this afternoon." Mac agreed, bouncing her head up and down the entire time in gleeful agreement, happy to delay this conversation just a little bit longer.

"Good." Veronica said, turning and disappearing into her bedroom.

"What exactly did you say to her?" Mac asked Logan before he could follow her into the room.

Logan just shrugged, winking at her as he walked backwards through the door. As soon as he was in far enough in he gripped the edge of the door and swung it closed.

Mac got one last glimpse of his cocky grin before it shut, then she heard Dick release a breath from the steps behind her.

"That went a lot better than what I thought it was going to be." Dick said, she turned around to see him sag onto the railing.

"Yeah, but we still have to talk later. And that has the potential to be a bad conversation." Mac said, somehow not believing her own words. There was something in the way Logan smiled at her and the way Veronica had nodded that made her think that this wasn't going to be such a fight. That Veronica wouldn't immediately disapprove.

A/N: Feedback is love