The song for this chapter is I'll Never Love Again by Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper.

P.S. I love all of you and your amazing reviews so much! I save them on my phone and savor them one at a time throughout the day whenever I need a smile, like a tiny box of the very best chocolates.

Chapter 17: Absolution - Part IV

Logan

I let myself out of my hotel room and take a breath of not-disgusting air. Movement flickers in my peripheral vision as I lock it and I double take when I see my wife.

"Going somewhere?" She stops, leather jacket hanging off her shoulders, hand gripping her messenger bag. Real Veronica. Actually here.

"Yeah, I was just going to blow up my friendship with Heather and, uh, probably ruin her faith in men forever."

My wife looks…plowed under. She might look worse than me, actually.

"What happened to your face?" she asks.

So maybe not.

"It met with the face rearranging committee. They had a few notes, as you can see." I gesture vaguely toward my split lip and the buffet platter of black eyes and bruises. "And if that didn't complete my day, Doc Lev called to advise me on my 'coping skills.'"

"She's a therapist. Should you sound this surprised?"

"Let's just say if you go out, you might want to take an umbrella for the rain of frogs." I pause. "She doesn't call as a rule, because she believes in strongly in personal responsibility for one's choices."

Veronica nods. She looks too exhausted to even really be doing that. She just stands there, looking at me, no rejoinder. No movement.

"How did you know I was here? Never mind, you're you." I interrupt myself even before I finish. "But no paperwork," I observe. "That's a surprise. Do they send divorce papers digitally these days?"

"Look, can we…not?" She rubs her forehead. "I just came from your therapist's office. You were right. She is mean."

I wince. That explains how beaten down she looks. "Need a drink? I swear to God she has some kind of sponsorship agreement with Jack Daniels."

"Look, I'm still mad at you, but it's been a day and can you just…" She takes one step forward and then she's in my arms and I'm holding her so, so tight even though I told myself to let her make the first move. "Don't let me go, okay?" she says into my shirt. "Not right now."

"I think I can handle that?"

It comes out like a question, because I'm not really sure I can handle anything right now except this, including letting her go long enough to unlock my disgusting hovel of a hotel room. Until some jerk off walks up the stairs and checks out her ass. The old anger flares up in me and my tattered knuckles burn and I want that fight. But her head is leaned against my chest and her weight is coming onto me, and Christ, she feels like she's lost ten pounds since yesterday. I need to get some food in her.

There's no way a place like this has room service.

I kiss the top of her head and lift her feet just a little off the ground so I can swivel us closer to the door. Hold her with one arm so I can unlock it with the other. Give murder eyes to the asshole next door who just took a second look at her ass. Wait while he drops his key and then nervous-fumbles his way into his own room, then lift Veronica into ours. She hasn't loosened her grip, so I think she might have been being kind of literal about that "Don't let her go" thing.

I wish Uber Eats would add a mind reading setting.

It's incredible, how much easier it is to breathe with her scent in the air. With her weight to hold up and her empty stomach to worry about. With something to fucking do other than hate myself.

I pick her and her messenger bag up and carry them to the bed. Lay her down gently, because I know how unforgiving that mattress is. She's limp and sleepy in my arms until I brush her hair back from her face and her bloodshot eyes come open and focus on me. She's been crying. A lot.

Her tiny fingers trace my swollen jaw. "Logan, oh my gosh, your face. I don't think I've ever seen it this bad." She sits up, the normal sharpness coming back into her expression. "Who did this to you?"

"Karma."

She makes a dissatisfied sound at that. "I'm getting you some ice."

I try to settle her back on the bed, but it's about as effective as holding back a freight train with a popsicle stick. She snatches up the white plastic bucket that's probably carrying Ebola, AIDS, and a side order of dengue fever, and disappears outside. Just before the door closes, her hand pops back inside to flip the chain into the opening so it can't lock her out.

I chuckle, for the second impossible time during the day least likely in history to provoke laughs. My wife looks like she hasn't slept in a week and she's been crying for at least half that long, and she's still a step ahead of everything, including gravity.

She's back in a flash, bustling to the restroom for a washcloth and then bundling the ice into it and pressing it into my hand.

I don't put it to my face, because I don't want it to hurt less. But I cradle the ice pack in my hands, because she gave it to me. She still cares enough to take care of me.

She hauls a chair over from the table and drops it in front of me and if Veronica Mars recognized any civil rights or boundaries on earth, I'd be screaming for a lawyer already.

"Who did that to you?"

"Doesn't matter."

"You know I can find out."

"Don't, Veronica, really. I had it coming."

"Yeah, well, they're going to have it coming, too." Her knees are wide, Clint Eastwood style. Elbows propped on them, her hands hanging in between looking misleadingly harmless and small. "I hear there's been a little bear mace in the hot tub epidemic around Neptune lately. Gets in some mighty private places."

I sigh. She can keep this up all night. All decade, really. "It was Weevil, okay? And you aren't going to do shit to him."

"You and Weevil." She exhales, and something about her shrinks back to her actual, barely-over-five-foot size. She rubs her forehead again and I wonder how in the hell I can get an aspirin delivered to the Camelot. "It was my fault, you know that? This never-ending war between you and Weevil."

"Yeah, because he always knew I wasn't good enough for you."

"No." She gives me a glare so fierce I almost flinch. "He heard me during the five minutes or so when I suspected you of killing Lilly. He went after you." She sounds so tired. "The beating, Felix's murder getting pinned on you, your turf war that summer. It was all because of me, because I was freaked out and when in doubt, why not accuse people of murder? You know how I get."

"You saved me."

"Logan, don't. Don't excuse it."

"You did, you and Weevil." I shift the ice-pack, which is melting in my hands. "I was going to jump that night, no joke. Why the fuck do you think I was on the bridge? Drunk, not answering my phone, my car pulled off right where Mom's had been. Nothing else on earth could have stopped me right then. But I never could back down from a fight." I touch my swollen lip, which still hurts like a truly righteous bitch. "Gonna have to get that guy a fruit basket sometime. He always kicks my ass at all the right moments."

"Logan…" My name escapes her like an expression of pain.

"It was you, you know that?" I don't know why I have to tell her now. Maybe in case I never get another chance, because she should know all the beautiful things she's been to me. "Who got me out of the fucked up cycle I was in with Lilly. It was twisted, sick. I think part of me never thought I deserved better. I'd sure never had any better. And then that one night I drove back from Mexico, I was watching her at the car wash, and I saw you there, with her. Smiling, you guys laughing. She couldn't have been happier." I shake my head, staring down at the ice pack Veronica brought me. "I was a total mess, over knowing she was seeing somebody else. I didn't know it was my dad, but she did. She knew. And Weevil, he loved her and she was cheating on him, too. She was happy as fuck, knowing she was banging all three of us."

"Logan, Lilly wasn't bad, not rea—"

"I know that." I look up so she knows I mean it. "She wasn't evil. She was just young. She liked the attention, the power. She genuinely liked sex, too. Probably the happiest she ever was, having all three of us on the hook. Two bad boys who loved her and a movie star. She died happy, anyway."

I shove my fingers through my hair, but there's a goose egg there I forgot about from when Weevil bounced my head off the jukebox. I wince and drop my hand.

"She wasn't bad, deep down. I'll never believe that. But she treated me like shit. That feeling I said came over me that night that told me it was over: that feeling was you. That smile of yours… Hers was always a little sly, a little devious, but yours was pure light. You never would have done to Duncan the things she did to me. You two were good together. Boring, but sweet. And I thought, just once, just for a second, I thought, what if I could have a girl who treated me like that." I pause. "Changed everything, just that one thought. Your smile."

"And instead you have a wife who throws you out into a cheap hotel."

"Veronica, don't—" My voice shakes. I can't listen to her blame herself, not for any scrap of this. "I—"

"I said I didn't want to talk about it. I just…can you hold me?" She struggles with herself, and her voice comes out a little squeaky when she says, "Please?"

"Always." I let the ice cubes roll out of the washcloth and onto the floor, and I pull her onto the bed. When she curls up, I lay myself along her entire back, the way that makes her feel the safest. Her head under my chin, my arms wrapped around her. Her little boots squirming against my shins.

"Is this hurting you?" She's reaching back, her fingers very gentle where they seek me out. "Did he—are your ribs okay? Weevil always goes for the gut punch."

"I'm kind of disturbed that you know that. Do you know that from watching a lot of his fights, or just from seeing my injuries over the years?"

"Both. I'm an observant person."

I kiss her head, chuckling a little at the understatement. Stroke her hair back so it's not tickling my nose. "It doesn't hurt, sweetheart. Doesn't hurt at all, anymore."

Usually, when I hold her like this, one or the other of us drifts off. But today, neither of us sleeps, even though I think she's as exhausted as I am. I don't want to miss a second of how she feels against me. How well we fit together. I'm replaying every laugh and tear and fierce hug we've had in our years together, and I'm trying not to think about how they might be our last. I don't see any way out of this.

Hell, I don't see any logical way she can be here now. It's a time out, and I'm just holding my breath, knowing it's about to be over.

I kiss her hair and she stirs. "You can sleep if you need to," I murmur.

She rolls over instead, re-orienting with her head on my shoulder. I curl my arm around her back, tucking her as close as I can get her. Every part of my chest she's no longer touching feels cold.

"Do you ever think about Cassidy?" she asks, and now all of me is cold.

Cassidy, don't!

Why not?

I can still hear his voice in my head, like it never left.

"Not any time I can help it."

"I do," she says. "I thought a lot about how he could do what he did to me, but he couldn't even finish with Mac, who he loved. How he took her clothes and the sheets so she couldn't leave the room and get in the middle of what happened with us. He saved her."

"But he didn't save you." I hold her tighter.

At least I was there, that night on the roof with Cassidy. I didn't save her from what he did before, but I did everything I could that last night, and she walked out of it alive. It's not nothing. To me, holding her warm and beautiful in my arms, it's everything.

"He was messed up. After what Woody did to him. He knew he was. Dick knew it too, in whatever sick twisted way Dick knows anything. I think that's why he was pushing me and Cassidy together that night."

"He did? What the fuck?" Veronica's never told me anything about Dick being involved in all that, past what I saw with her kissing him and taking shots with him.

"It doesn't matter," she says dismissively. "Dick didn't know I was drugged any more than you did. He thought the liquid X he asked for went to Madison. I'd always been friendly to Cassidy, so I bet Dick thought I'd be the perfect fix for whatever his little brother's hangup was about women, considering I was making out with everything but the wallpaper. That's not the part I was thinking about, though."

I rub her back slowly, but she doesn't seem to notice, still caught up in her theory.

"Remember how Cassidy threw up on Carrie Bishop's shoes? I think he tried to have sex with me." She pauses for a second. "Better me than any girl who would remember if it didn't work, right? No pressure. I don't even know if I was unconscious then, or if I was awake but don't remember what happened, like with Duncan. But my guess is I was out of it enough that Cassidy thought I was his only chance at a trial run."

Listening to this may be the hardest thing I've ever done, but if she wants to to talk, I'll listen. She had to go through it, not me, and I've never been able to fathom her strength. I honestly don't know if I could come back from something like that, if it were me. A beating is one thing, but to make it sexual… I think it would get inside my head like nothing else on earth.

Which is, I guess, exactly what she's saying it did to Cassidy.

"They left him condoms," she says. "Two people told me they did, but I got chlamydia anyway. Which tells me the condom wouldn't stay on, probably because he couldn't get hard. I think he tried whatever he tried, and I think he hated it so much he threw up afterward, just like I did."

She says it matter-of-fact, almost sympathetic. I have no idea how she can be so logical about this, being her normal analytical self like it was someone else who woke up with no memory and no panties.

"I wonder…" she murmurs, "if Woody hadn't… What Cassidy would have been like. I think he would have been a lot like the guy Mac thought he was. Everything he did was to cover up what Woody did to him. And he was trying really hard that night on the roof, to front like he was tough, but I could see it in the way his face twisted. He hated that, too."

"How can you forgive him?" I can barely form the words, they're so harsh in my throat. "After what he did, how can you excuse it away like that?"

She moves on my chest, her hair soft against my neck.

"Motive changes things, knowing why a person did what they did. At least it does for me."

I stare at the ceiling and wonder what that means for us. I licked salt off her because I was enthralled by her wild sexuality. I set up the other guy's salt lick because I was furious with her for betraying Jake Kane, and I didn't want to be as drawn to her as I was. I gave Duncan the drugs because I idiotically thought it would make them both happier. I fucked a freshman in the downstairs bedroom because I was half-wild with my lust for a girl I thought had betrayed our friendship. And because I had no idea she was in danger in the other bedroom.

I don't think any of my motives at that long ago party were particularly heroic. Fuck, I don't even know if I can live with them. I have no idea how Veronica ever could.

I close my eyes. If I were a better person, I'd take the ring off her finger and let her go. I'd push her away right now.

But all my hands do is stroke her back, trying to soothe the taste of those memories for both of us.

Her phone shrills from her purse. Instead of her muscles coiling to bounce up, like she usually does when someone needs her, she exhales and falls heavier into my side.

"Seriously?" she mutters.

"I can look, see if it's anybody where it could be an emergency," I offer. "Personally, I think they can fuck off. You need to sleep and the world can solve its own cases for the day."

It probably can't. Neptune would have fallen into pre-Batman-Gotham years ago if it weren't for Veronica Mars, but I'm not going to tell her that when I want her to never leave this bed.

If we take a breath, this time out is over, and I may never get her back.

"I'll look." She drags herself off my chest and I lie there, alone, trying to convince myself that wasn't the last time I'll ever get to hold my wife.

"Hey, Dad. It's kind of a bad time. Can I call you back later?" She listens, her shoulders slumping. "For—do you have to—are you sure that—" She sighs. "Jesus. Fine, I've got that box in the car. Let me run down and see if I can dig it up. Any chance you can run by and pick it up from me? I'm kinda tied up, can't take off right now. Sure. Yeah. I'm…um, at the Camelot, actually." The pause before her admission was tiny, but Keith would have caught it. "Yeah, for a case." She laughs brittlely. "Seems like they all lead back here one way or another, don't they?"

She drags herself off the bed and shoots me a tired, bloodshot look. "One minute," she mouths.

I nod, like her dad stopping by won't lead to them discussing the case and her going off to follow up on a hunch she got while they were talking that'll only take a minute, and then burying herself in work until God knows when. Where will that leave us? Limbo, if I'm lucky. A lawyer's office, if I'm not.

She lets herself outside. I haul myself up, because lying on that crappy bed without her is more punishment than even I want to sign up for right now. Her bag is flopped open on the floor, and I let myself stare at it because it's the only familiar piece of home in this god-awful room. Which is when I notice there's something zipped into the secret pocket of her purse. It's buried in the seam of the lining, and she never keeps anything in there except sensitive evidence she hasn't been able to turn over to the sheriff yet. This is round, like a DVD.

Which could mean it's a surveillance video for a case. She's had a thousand of them. But I know she's been to my therapist's office today, and I know Doc Lev sometimes tapes sessions, with client permission. A couple times, she's asked me to rewatch a key session so I can see my own reactions. Fascinating shit. Uncomfortable as hell.

I also know when she gives a client a copy of their session, she does it on a DVD. I unzip the pocket and look, and sure fucking enough, it's the brand of DVD's my therapist uses and it's labeled with today's date. If Veronica really did have a session with Doc Lev, it's deeply private, and something I have no right to see.

But if it was about this…about everything I just told her, then I may never get a more honest look at what she really thinks of me. It knifes through my gut, the thought of that. Veronica will never tell me all of the truth about her reaction to my confession. Not if she thought it would hurt me.

She might, however, tell Doc Lev. If there's any way through this, any hint or clue of a resolution, it might be on that video. And if it's hopeless, and I've hurt her in a way so deep she can't even tell me…this is how I find out if it's bad enough that I need to leave her, to save her from letting me hurt her worse.

I didn't bring anything with me when I left the house, but Veronica's laptop is shoved crookedly in her messenger bag, the way she carries it when she's in a hurry. I boot it up, put in her password, and shove in the DVD.

I quickly check out the window, but she's talking on the phone while ducked waist deep into her trunk, digging for something. The door's closed and she doesn't have a key, so I'll have enough warning to re-hide the video when she comes back.

Fuck, this is a betrayal. I know it even while I'm doing it, but the bigger part of me thinks I'm fucked and this is the only way to hurt myself bad enough so I'll do what's truly best for her. The thing neither of us want to do because we're too fucking addicted to each other to make the healthy choice.

Always have been. I thought we'd grown up enough we could be good for each other, finally, but this shit…this shit makes me doubt myself like I haven't in years.

As the DVD loads, I remember how scared I was the day of our wedding that I was dooming Veronica to something terrible by hitching her life to mine. I let her talk me out of it, all sly smiles and sweet blue eyes. Was I wrong? Or was she?

The video opens on Veronica giving the fastest possible summary of Shelly Pomroy's party, in stripped down detail like a police report. Yeah, Doc Lev's never gonna let her get away with that.

"A therapist with no information is like an architect without an idea of what sort of building she's supposed to construct," Dr. Lev says.

I smile sourly. "Called it."

On the screen, Veronica closes her eyes, and I watch her skin go two shades paler, like the memories are draining the life out of her.

"I was wearing a white dress," she says. "And everyone hated me."

I listen to her tell the story, and my hands clench tight in my lap until the scabs on my raw knuckles break and begin to bleed.

She focuses so much on me: on what she thinks I'm upset about and what I did, and the way she explains it doesn't sound half so bad as what it was. I hope Doc Lev saw that for the bullshit it was.

But that…even that's not as bad as the moment when her voice breaks and something behind her face breaks, too.

"So we're doomed?"

It rips me apart when I see her break down, my heart trying to kick its way out of my chest with every one of her sobs. I've never seen her in this much pain, not even the night on the roof when we almost died and she thought her dad was gone forever.

I don't…I don't understand. I can't understand how she could love me more than she hates what I did.

But she does.

I rewind to before she starts crying and listen to that moment again.

"He can't know how hard it is for me, or he will never recover," she says desperately. "Our marriage will never recover."

There is no fucking way she'd have said that if she knew there was any chance I'd hear her. There's no denying how much it hurt her to say that, or how much worse she's feeling when she finally speaks again, at the end of the tape.

"I don't care what they did to me. None of that hurt as bad as this. I'd let them do all of that to me again if it were the only way to get back here, to this life. To him."

I can't get myself together enough to open the door when she comes back. I just keep rewinding it to her crying so hard it's like it's ripping her soul out through her gritted teeth. I can't even fucking see through my swollen eyes by the time Veronica bullies the management into giving her a key and gets back inside. When I look up, her face changes and it's clear she knows I found the tape.

She comes over to my chair and drops to her knees. "Please," she says to me, and her voice shakes. "Don't make me go through that again. Don't leave me."

"I—" That doesn't even make sense. It's the last thing I want, the last thing I could ever want. How can she not see that?

I tip my forehead down to hers and it's like the whole ocean tipping upside down over my head, what it's like to know she'd willingly walk into rape all over again, rather than lose me.

"I didn't know," I rasp. "I wouldn't—" I don't know how to tell her I wouldn't have believed it, if she'd said it to me. Because I wanted to believe it more than anything. That she doesn't hate me.

"I know you wouldn't have," she says, as if I'd finished that sentence. "It's okay." She kisses me, and it hurts against my split lip and aches all the way down my raw throat and echoes beautifully through my bruised chest. "Come home, Logan. Please come home."

I can't speak, but I nod yes, and I hit my knees beside her so I can kiss her again.

#

Author's Note: There, that's better! What do you guys think so far, of how this arc has gone and their messy attempts to reconcile their past?

Also, I posted a new story! I'm finally getting to continue my watch of Veronica Mars and I'm closing in on the end of S3. I just got to a fantastic moment where Logan beat up [redacted for spoilers] because of a certain video, and I was SO disappointed with ShowVeronica's response that I had to write my own. I think most of you have found it already, but in case you haven't, it's called I'll Be There.