Author's Note: Continued disclaimer for discussion of sexual assault re: Veronica's past and how she's recovering, for this whole episode of chapters.

I realized recently that part of what I am enjoying so much about this fic is that as a romance author, I rarely get to write about married people, because marriage is usually the end point of my books. And yet I've been happily married for 11 years now and I think all the most interesting parts of our relationship happened after the vows and rings.

This chapter includes a little passage that is my favorite thing I've ever written about marriage. I hope it speaks to you the way it spoke to me.

Veronica

"I'm glad that Heather's started coming to our Krav Maga classes, but I don't think it's fair that you'll spar with her and not with me." I pout as I let myself out of Logan's yellow Corvette.

"I'd need a bigger cup if I sparred with you." He's rocking the sweaty-after-a-fight look again, and it's basically killing me as he walks up the few steps from the garage into the house.

"What? I don't hit below the belt."

"Yeah, but inappropriate erections are kind of your specialty."

"Who says they're inappropriate?" I wink and breeze into our house, congratulating myself for only sneaking two glances at his ass as I pass.

Logan's been back from his brief stint in the Camelot for two weeks now, and there's something weird that happens every time I see him in our home. It's like a settling, like the whole house letting a breath out. But then it's immediately followed by my throat tensing and tears threatening and WOW if that's not embarrassing when you're an old married lady who has basically been living with the same guy since she was nineteen.

I have the immediate urge to excuse myself to run out and work on a case before he notices my reaction. Instead, I cross the room and tuck myself into his arms, squeezing him around his sweat-dampened waist and breathing in the clean, healthy scent of him. He holds me without asking a thing, not moving away even after it stretches into a full minute, then another.

Even a month ago, this would have been enough to get me a raised eyebrow and him knowing that something's wrong. But Logan's so good at pivoting with me, and he's already used to this new normal.

He's been so steady I would assume he bounced back faster than me, if it weren't for the nightmares. Well, and the other, most obvious thing.

After the Camelot, Logan started waking up with nightmares. Not that we don't both have them, but after three days, it became obvious it was now an every-day thing. I could comfort him back to sleep, but then he'd just be up again an hour later with a worse one. It took me two more days of data gathering to sort out what time it was happening. After that, it was a simple fix.

My phone on vibrate under my pillow. Wake up before him, fake a nightmare of my own, let him cuddle and soothe me back to sleep. Turns out if he's the one doing the comforting, he sleeps like a baby afterwards. Less than a week, nightmares solved. And yet I'm the one who flunked out of therapy. Go figure.

Unfortunately, the second issue is taking us a little…longer.

My phone reminder chimes and I pull away to silence it, glaring at the days-old reminder as I snooze it again. Logan goes to the kitchen to get water. "What's up with that thing? It's been remindering you to death all week." He gulps down half the glass in one go. "Since when does Veronica Mars forget things?"

I take a deep breath, consider putting it off again. Hate myself for being such a chicken, and don my most nonchalant smile as I sashay into the kitchen. "So, hey. Been meaning to ask you." I slide past him for a glass of my own, and he just passes his over because he's done with it. "Got any room in that fancy company of yours for a crack private investigator?"

"Safe Drinks?" He frowns, and I concentrate on filling the glass.

We haven't really talked about the company directly since my digging up his ownership of it led to the fight that led to us drowning in all the old stuff about my rape. I do know that after he walked out of his big investor meeting because I was sad, he rescheduled. At the second meeting, all the richie riches showed back up with friends in tow and threw money at him so fast that he's going to go national by the end of this year, not next.

"What do you um, want to do with it?" he asks carefully. "Didn't really ever notice you had an interest in business, besides kicking my tail in the Future Business Leaders of America."

"That was mostly just so I could beat you at something, not so much an innate interest in the stock market." I lean against the sink and sip my water so I'll look like I'm hydrating, not fidgeting. "I'd like to help, that's all. Is there anything you think I could do?"

"Uh, the production stuff is pretty boring. The lab guys mostly get that. The design stuff was fun, but we're pretty much through that. We've got our logos and social media and public awareness campaigns. The finance stuff is boring. There's really nothing that needs to be investigated or dug up…" He mutters through the possibilities, mostly talking to himself, but it's a good sign that he hasn't fallen back on his old defensiveness of thinking I'm just volunteering because I want to check up on him. I was sort of expecting that.

It's also nice that he's thinking about the positions so much that I haven't had to deflect any deeper questions about why I'm interested. It's vaguely humiliating that my husband turned activist on this cause before I did, especially since the way he's attacked it is so large-scale and impressively effective. He's not a write-a-charity-check-and-forget-about-it kind of guy, my Logan.

I've had a lot of time to think about it, awake at night in between his nightmares. There's a pull, a surprisingly strong one, toward the idea of being able to do an actual something for all those girls. More than nailing the occasional perp to the wall after the damage has already been done. More than asking the sheriff to lock the date rapists in that one holding cell whose toilet always backs up, so they have to deal with the smell.

I've been stewing on all this stuff for years, letting it twist me and make me cynical and not helping much of anyone. While Logan has, quietly, been winning a war that most of America didn't even know we were fighting.

He looks up. "You could definitely be persuasive with the investors, but to be honest, I'm not sure I need the help. The initial endowment is so large that if I play our portfolio cards right, we should be self-supporting from here on out. Plus, I kind of prefer to spin the pitch on their sleazy douchebag level of tax breaks and getting 'those damn feminist alarmists' off their backs. I get more money that way than I do out of the guilt angle, and with my wife there I can't really…" He gives me an apologetic look, and I enjoy a second rush of pride that he's using their own own disgusting toxic masculinity to get more money out of them.

I sashay across the kitchen and hook him by the front of his shirt, pulling him closer to me.

"Oh honey britches, it's not polite to brag about the size of your endowment."

He snickers and kisses the end of my nose. "Not even if it's true?"

"What about the distribution angle?" I propose lightly, as if it has just occurred to me. "You need colleges and party venues to agree to pass out your roofie coasters and wine goblet testing jewelry, right?"

"We do." His frown clears. "I had sales reps lined up to do that, but you'd be way better at it." He smiles wickedly. "You can talk anyone into anything. If it's woman to woman, you'd have those ladies ready to march into war beside you, and you're even better with the old stodgy asshats who run most colleges."

I pat his chest, smoothing the sweaty tee shirt over the familiar swell of his muscles. "Mmm-hmm. And I've already got my angle worked out for the frats." I drop my voice to a growling baritone. "'Dude. You want to be the most female-friendly frat. Can you say pussy for miles?' Just loan me Dick Casablancas for the weekend, and we'll kappa your sigma from sea to shining sea."

His eyes are shining just as quietly as that ocean. "You want to say it, or should I?"

"I know, I'm awesome." I go for a sigh and a hair flip.

"Is it still impolite if it's true?" He kisses my forehead, chuckling softly. "I'm going to hop into the shower."

"Not so fast, Hot Buns." I catch him by the shirt and haul him back up against me, the sweaty-fight scent of him almost as arousing as that happy little sparkle, back in his eyes. Him, in our kitchen. Kicking business ass and Krav Maga ass and also, a little bit, kicking the ass of my libido because I want to seduce him but I can't think straight enough to do more than kiss him, open-mouthed and taut with longing.

After four kisses and biting his lower lip, I feel much more myself and I growl, "What's this about showering by yourself? What are you, selfish? California is in a drought, you know."

"Very civic minded of you, Bobcat." He tugs my ponytail. "But do you mind if I take a rain check? I'm kind of worn out from all the sparring. Not really feeling up to it, today."

I let go of him, my fingers going cold. "What good's a rain check during a drought?"

"C'mon, Veronica, you're not in the mood sometimes. What, because I'm a man, I don't get to tap out every now and again?" He won't look at me.

"I guess, sure, but you never have…"

I don't know what to do with my hands now that they're not touching him. They hang at my sides, feeling small and dumb. I don't know why I thought I should try this when I'm gross and all sweaty in schlubby work out clothes. I should have dressed up, put on heels, wined and dined him and danced him into a frenzy until he couldn't resist me.

But then, I guess that's the problem. Because for the first time since I've known him, he suddenly can. Resist me, that is.

"I'm gonna take a shower," I mutter. "Don't worry, I'll use the guest room. Let me just grab some clothes and I'll be out of your way."

"Veronica, hey." He catches my hand as I pass him, but I pull it away.

It's humiliating, him touching me when I know he doesn't want to.

He steps up behind me, close so he's with me but not making contact, because he won't force that part when I just rejected him. I hug my arms across my chest, trying not to shake.

"We haven't, you know," I whisper. "Not since…"

He exhales.

He knows as well as I do that the only time we've gone two weeks without sex was when he was on another continent.

"Yeah, I really need that shower." I start for the bedroom with long steps, glad we bought a two-bathroom because I don't think I could bear for him to see me naked right now. I'm not even sure I can bear to see me naked right now.

"Veronica, please." He comes after me. "You know it's not that I don't want you. You know that."

"Do I?" I whirl. "Do you know what it's like for me when you do that? It's like what they did to me at that party is all over me and it's so disgusting you can't even touch me." I stalk toward him and he falls back a step. "You, when you're supposed to love me."

"Veronica, Christ, I do love you." He reaches for me. "You know how much I love you."

I throw his hand off, violently, and point to my chest, shaking with the force of my abrupt rage.

"This is my body." I pin him with my eyes and it feels like the words are heaving out of my chest, erupting from some place I didn't even know I was keeping them penned in. "Not theirs. Not even yours. And nothing they did to me changes that, all these years later."

All those showers, and this is what I was trying to wash away.

I don't need the water anymore, because the blood is running hot through my veins and maybe it's because I just spent an hour practicing throat strikes but I feel it for once. This body is mine. It's me, and it's strong, and they didn't stain me. I won't let him make me feel like they did. I won't take that from anyone, not even the husband I adore.

"I know," he says, his eyes agonized. "You're right, and I know. Veronica, believe me, if I could fix the way I feel right now, I would. It's nothing to do with you, or how beautiful you are, or how attracted I am to you." He swallows. "I'm just…so disgusted with myself that I can't bear for you to reach for me. Right now. I'll figure it out. It'll pass, okay?"

The rage is ebbing. Hearing him agree so quickly eased the ferocious need to fight. Now I'm just focused on him, and I recognize the look in his eyes. I bet he wants that shower so fucking bad right now.

"I can feel it, you know," I murmur. "You don't even get hard. Like, when have you ever not gotten hard?"

He runs a hand through his hair, his eyes falling from mine. He sits down on the arm of the couch, those hard shoulders sagging like he's too tired to carry them today.

"I think this is maybe one of the only things you'll never get. Because it's as a man that I failed to protect you. They did those things to you because—"

"No, you didn't." I can't even listen to him say that. "I wasn't yours to protect back then, not that you want to admit it. We were enemies." He opens his mouth to argue with me and all of a sudden I'm saying the one thing I have never wanted to tell anyone. "You know what? You want to talk about who failed to protect who, Logan? I didn't protect you."

He frowns. "What?"

"I found out your father beat you when he was still alive, living in your house. I let him drive me home, I let him throw you parties. You know what my excuse was? I told myself that Trina used the past tense. The stories you 'used' to tell. Not 'still tell.'" My nostrils flare and I feel ill at how flimsy it is. "I told myself I'd seen you take bigger guys than Aaron in a fight, and he'd never try that shit with you now that you were grown up. Do you think I'm stupid enough that I really believed my own justifications? Because I don't."

I was never going to tell him this. I was never going to tell anyone this, just like I never told anyone after that one night with Grace Manning, when Duncan and I walked away and pretended I thought Sheriff Lamb was going to do something about her being locked in her closet, writing on her little notebooks. I am goddamn ashamed of the things I've let go on around me. And the deep, ugly shame I see in Logan won't let me be a coward and keep pretending he's the only one with gross secrets.

I hold his eyes, not letting either of us hide or pretend we were better than we were. Too many times, I've let him say I was too good for him because a little bit of my ego wanted to believe that I was as smart and brave and cool as he thought. But now that I see how it's tearing him down, thinking he has regrets while I have a clean slate? I can't let it keep going like this.

"I was uncomfortable," I tell him. "That's all. Not even scared of what Aaron would do to me. I took on the Kanes, for fuck's sake, and they're even richer than your family. I was too uncomfortable to save you. All I had to do was open my mouth to my dad and you would have been taken out of that house—"

"With my dad's legal team?" he cuts in. "Against the overworked social workers of Child Protective Services? Don't kid yourself, Veronica. Even as a teenager, you were good. But you couldn't have gotten me out of that house with a cutting torch while Aaron was still alive. No matter what you did. We couldn't even get him convicted of murder and that was after he lit you on fire in front of witnesses."

"I DID NOTHING," I scream at him. "I would take on anything and everyone in that town back then, and yet I smiled and made polite conversation with your father and I left you there when you were something to me, Logan. I was your mortal enemy at Shelly's party, but when I was already falling in love with you, I fucking left you there."

I shove my hand over my eyes, impatient with my own tears.

"So if you want to push me away because you can't live with how you failed to protect me, then you have to tell me, Logan. What should you do to me for how I failed you? Not just one night when I was drunk, but over and over and over again. I don't even know how many times he beat you after I found out." My voice falters and he comes off the couch towards me. But I've pushed him away too many times tonight and he doesn't try again. Just stands within arm's reach, his hands twitching at his sides.

I sag, all the fight leaving me. "It was enough to almost break our marriage that you think you failed me. So what's this? Huh? What's this?"

#

Logan

After she leaves me in the living room, I sit for a long time with a headache pounding the fuck out of my brain. I take a shower and nearly call Doc Lev. Put my phone away, because it's beyond me right now to put this shit into words. I need her to pull it directly out of the wreckage of my guts if I want her to fix it tonight. So instead I text to ask for an appointment first thing tomorrow.

How many more of these blow ups can we survive?

When I go looking, Veronica's car is still in the garage. I find her out on the balcony, curled in a chair with a pile of wadded Kleenex in her lap. I hate how much she's cried these last weeks. Since that night when she told me to find some way past this. Is this it? Is this getting past it, or just digging the wound deeper?

I put a hand on the back of her chair.

"You're not packing."

She shakes her head. "I'm not leaving."

She reaches up and takes my hand, tucks it against her shoulder. I leave it there, her hand covering mine.

"I don't hate myself enough to think you'd be happier if I left." She looks up. "You'd be a wreck if I left."

"Worse than a wreck," I correct hoarsely. "Veronica…" I kneel down next to her chair. "Nothing Aaron did was your fault, and you couldn't have stopped him. Not with his lawyers, his publicists. He would have made what the Kanes did to you look like a child's pouting fit. Look what he did to Lilly, and that was just to cover up sex. An affair, when he'd had a million. Thank God you didn't try." My voice quivers. "Thank God you're safe."

She doesn't react, just keeps gazing out at the dark sea, and I remember her hiding in a bed that wasn't hers, waiting for a rapist alone with no backup, just to save a future bunch of girls she'd never met.

"If I wanted you to help me out of there, I would have asked." I hope she can hear the honesty in my voice. "I asked for your help when I really needed it, even when we weren't even friends."

She looks at me, and she's not crying anymore. "I failed you and I hate myself for failing you. But I'm not going to screw up our now because of what I did in the past." She takes a breath and one of the tissues rolls out of her lap. She looks so tired. "I've been sitting out here thinking, and I hate this. Everything we've been going through. But a marriage is more than a moment, Logan. We're more than one fucking moment, no matter how bad."

"I don't…what do you mean?"

"Shelly's party was a moment. You, moving into the Camelot, that was a moment. Us, saving each other on the roof of the Neptune Grand. Not taking off on our wedding. We keep getting more moments, as long as we don't run away."

My wife takes both my hands, and hers are small and cold from the sea air, but strong.

"We have to keep choosing each other, every time we could just let this break or blow up in our faces. I don't believe in happily ever afters. Even before Lilly, I'm not sure I did. But I believe in hanging in there, and trying to buy ourselves a few more moments." A tear leaks out at the corner of her eye. "And maybe not every one of our moments will be happy, but I'm happy we'll get more."

"You really think it's that simple?"

"I don't think anything about that is simple. But I know you're worth it."

I lay my head down on our clasped hands with those words seething through me, playing hell with all the guilt in my gut, and the memories lurking in the back of my head, and every part of me that is dying to believe her words, as much as I can hear that she believes them. Can I just choose to? Is it that simple?

I kiss her fingers, and I feel exactly how un-simple that choice is.

Her hands tighten in mine, and then she gets up and pulls me to my feet.

"Come inside," she says. "You haven't eaten."

She's moving like it hurts, she's so tired. I just don't know what to think right now, she has me so off-balance.

"How do you—" I shake my head. "You never used to be like this. I don't get it. You were the first to push me away, the first to condemn me for the past. You never…stopped in the middle of a huge fight to think about if I'd eaten, for fuck's sake." I try to think of when she started to change, but it's been little by little for so long and I think it's sinking in tonight because I keep expecting her to leave me and she just…doesn't.

"You taught me," she says simply. "C'mon." And she leads the way back into our house, leaving the door open behind her.

Author's Note: Don't worry too much, my dears. I think Veronica Mars is more than a match for a little sexual dysfunction, and it's good for her to have to fight for her marriage for once, rather than the other way around. I am personally squirming with glee, thinking of what she might pull to get Logan back in her bed and happy again.