It's too dark.
His room is so dim - so dingy and stagnant with nothing but cardboard boxes and posters that are ripped at the edges. It feels too stuffy around her as she lays against the beanbag he had pulled up next to him, her fingers nervously playing with the thick seam of the deflated chair while she watches her boyfriend fiddle with a bundle of tangled wires.
There's a loud, tearing guitar riff that blares from the record player tucked away into the dark corner of his room. The vinyl snags a few times as it runs over a scratch or two, and despite it sounding nightmarish it remains to be the liveliest thing in the room.
She hears him curse before feeling around his desk, eyes skimming along the wood until he mutters another curse and redirects his attention to her.
"Do you have the pliers?"
Veronica sighs and feels the ground around her. It's hard to see when she was mostly submerged in the dark. The only light they had came from the desk lamp J.D used to work, and even that was barely enough. It may have been good enough for him, but it left her brushing her hands along the carpet blindly, searching for an item she knew she shouldn't be giving him.
She tries not to think about the fact that it's for a bomb when her fingers brush along metal and she grasps the tool. She doesn't like knowing she holds something that will help the deaths of hundreds of teenagers - doesn't like knowing that she was helping.
She keeps the thought in mind when she passes the item to him. She forces herself to remember, even when the rough pads of his fingers brush along her skin and she's reminded of nothing but good memories.
Their relationship was built off of lies and manipulation, yet at that moment she couldn't wrap her head around that. She could only remember things like him pulling her throughout the 7/11, hand in hand. Or something as simple as her head against his chest in her bedroom, fingers closed around the fabric of his shirt as she stared off at the wall sleepily.
She couldn't wrap her mind around aiding in the mass murder of her peers. If she did, she'd feel remorse, and there was no space for remorse when you involved yourself with somebody like J.D.
"Thanks." He mutters and goes back to building.
Veronica sighs at his lack of emotion and slides down along the chair farther, extending her leg to press her heel against the leg of the desk. She knows she's already a dead girl walking, and she was probably tittering on the line between love and murder victim, but she needs to ask one question. There may not have been room for remorse with her lover, but for once she'll force it.
"J.D?"
"Ronnie." He returns her question with a statement. His face remains stoic for the most part, but Veronica sees the twitch of a smile. He's not excited over her talking. He's thinking about what was to come, and Veronica knows it by the way his eyes glint and the erratic tapping of his foot against the floor.
"Do you think we're making a mistake?"
She gets the first proper show of emotion when his shoulders fall, and he lets out a laugh. It's genuine, and Veronica finds herself curling back against the beanbag in embarrassment. She wasn't going to back down, and she knew she should have expected this, but it was still a sting, nonetheless.
He turns his head to look at her. The excitement has blossomed now, but its largely overshadowed by the humor painted across his features.
"Christ, Veronica. Listen to yourself." He lets out a breathless, almost bitter laugh and Veronica realizes she's struck a chord. This wasn't just humor – it was anger. "Went this far only to ask if you can back out."
Veronica's eyebrows knit, and she frowns. "I never said that."
"You don't have to say something for it to be said." He turns back to his work and angrily twists a wire, cursing when something breaks. Veronica watches bleakly. Her mistake wasn't asking about remorse anymore. Her mistake was asking in general. She should have minded her own business. He liked when she did that.
"I never said that." She repeats softly. As she speaks, she digs her heel against the desk. "I just asked if we were making a mistake."
He shakes his head.
"You don't feel bad at all?" She's pushing farther than she knows she should, and she doesn't have a reason. Everything inside her screams for her to stop, but she can't. She just can't.
"Why would I?" He dismisses her by beginning to search through his tools. This time, he finds what he needs.
"They're people." Veronica's a hypocrite. She knows that. Jason Dean was a bad person, but so was she. In the end, she was still a killer and she'd always go crawling back to him, no matter how many times he added to her body count.
"Christ." He spits out under his breath. There's a loud thump as the device is carelessly slammed against the wooden desk and he twists. His glare bites, and Veronica sinks into the beanbag completely.
"You're a person, too, Veronica. That doesn't mean shit." He snipes. She knows what he's getting at. She was still a person, yet they still treated her like shit. They had no empathy for her – why should she for them?
Veronica doesn't respond, and he shakes his head.
A new song begins to blare from the record player, sending them both into an uncomfortable silence. At least, she thinks its uncomfortable. It's hard to tell what he's feeling with the poker face he's began to wear.
They sit like that for a while. She lays hopelessly in her chair while he fiddles with things that she could never understand.
"You want me to show you how to do this?" He says when the song ends, and he's granted a moment of silence. He doesn't pay attention to her when he speaks, but a part of her is glad. She's not sure if she can look him in the eyes right now.
"No." She whispers emotionlessly. Had he not learned anything from earlier? Had she not learned anything? Why she was even still here was a mystery to her.
Briefly, his fingers stop twisting a wire and he looks over at her. He doesn't look angry anymore. He doesn't look like anything.
He gives a half search of her face before returning his attention to his work, though he seems to move with more urgency this time.
Absentmindedly, she increases the pressure against the side of the desk, extending her leg with enough force to shift it a little. Once again, her fingers have begun gripping the side of the beanbag tightly, and before she knows it her fingers have gone numb. She's sure her continued dismay is obvious, but she can't stop herself.
She can't even stop him.
She can't stop him, because she knows he'd kill her too. She doesn't doubt that he loves her - it's just in some fucked up, demented way, and the only version of love he knew involved murder and his pistol.
She knew she meant something, as insignificant as she may still be. She knew she meant something, because she was still here to watch.
She wasn't the one that downed liquid drain cleaner and met the reaper in the middle of shattered glass. She wasn't the one shot and left dead in the woods. She was here, completely untouched. She was alive, and she had come to learn that meant a lot when it came to J.D.
Another song begins to play over their deafening silence. Usually she'd been grateful for the intervention, and she still would be if she hadn't recognized the song. She wouldn't have even given it a second thought if it wasn't titled 'Runnin' with the Devil,' and she wasn't sitting adjacent from who she was sure was the human version of the devil himself.
No, not the devil, she decides when she hears his father move noisily around the house, muttering profanities loud enough for the entire neighborhood to hear. A fallen angel at the most.
The room blurs around her as Veronica focuses on his moving fingers. The Devil was a fallen angel, wasn't he? He had fallen from grace, just as the boy in front of her had. He had fallen from grace not because of his own actions, but because of the ones around him.
It's no excuse, she knows. A fucked up childhood did not give one the right to kill. Maybe a motive, but not an excuse.
A part of her blames his father for his downfall. The other part of her blames J.D himself. She wouldn't lie to herself and admit that J.D wasn't partially to blame for the deaths. He pulled the trigger, but so did she.
Veronica didn't have an excuse, either. She didn't have an excuse for why she was still sitting there, didn't have an excuse for the times that she had felt the cold, hard metal of a gun in her hand. She didn't have a fucked up childhood, even if she eventually did deal with the bitch that people had known as Heather Chandler.
Violence was taught, and J.D had been one hell of a good teacher. He had spun her story into something much more violent, much more vicious, until she had accepted herself as the victim.
Briefly, J.D smiles, and it draws Veronica from her inner debate.
She knows now is the time to walk out. She needs to leave before fault can be made, but she can't bring herself to. The more she thinks about things, the more she understands J.D's reasoning. Not because she thought any of the people deserved what they were going to get, but because she understood his anger. Disgustingly enough, she even pitied it.
It's a whirlwind of emotions that makes her mind shift. She's angry at his father for what he did, angry at J.D for not fixing himself, and angry at herself for letting it continue. She's full of anger, sadness, and horribly enough love. There was love and pity for the man she knew never got to be a boy.
It's the earlier images of their hands linked together, and the sight of the disheveled, broken room around her that solidifies her decision.
"Can you teach me how to do that?
J.D pauses, turning his head slightly to look at her. A slither of light casts down on his face, cutting through the sharp edge of his eyebrow to illuminate his eyes. He doesn't verbally express it, but laughter dances clear in his eyes. He had been waiting for this.
"You said no earlier." He says. He doesn't bother biting back the smug tone.
Veronica casts her eyes to the floor.
"I changed my mind."
Immediately, he huffs out a muffled laugh. She sits and waits for the mocking comment that she expects to follow, but it never comes. When she looks back up, she's met with no arrogance, no cruelty. Just him smiling with his chair scooted to the side for her.
He tears his attention away to reach for some unused materials, setting them into a pile before motioning for her to come to him with a crooked finger.
With her eyes to the ground and confliction in her heart, she follows.