Title: What Did You Mean, Veronica?
Author: Clara Fox
Rating: M for language and mentions of adult situations.
Summary: One shot. It took a snide, lying drama queen like Jackie Cook to make Veronica realize that maybe she's not so worthy of the men in her life after all.
Setting: A canon-friendly interlude of Veronica's thoughts after Green-Eyed Monster (S2E4).

Wallace, are you sure there's not a more YOU kind of girl at Neptune?
So, what, you think she's out of my league? You think I'm too small-time for a girl like that?
Wallace, no, that's not what I mean.
Then what DID you mean?
What DID you mean, Veronica?
... I mean... I think YOU'RE out of HER league.

-S2E3, "Cheatty Cheatty Bang Bang"

Yeah, it's true. Veronica Mars, detective, discoverer of solutions and outer of secrets, failed to notice what has been in front of her face for a year. Or maybe I noticed it and then repressed it. Don't blame me - no one likes to accept the fact that she's a lousy best friend and a generally selfish person.

It was Wallace who forced me to think about it. I'd been so caught up with Jackie's self-important bitchery to realize that her attitude wasn't really what rubbed me the wrong way. It was more the fact that she'd started taking up Wallace's attention. And Duncan's attention, for that matter. And as ashamed as I am to admit it, Wallace was right: I did think she was out of his league. His league was one that was there for me when I needed him, maybe taking some time to crush on a sweet, easily-suckered, no-backbone girl. The kind who would never realize, let alone point out to Wallace, that he DID spend an awful lot of time at heel. But where did I get off blithely expecting that?

I used to honestly believe that Wallace's and my relationship was built, as I have frequently reminded him, on a solid foundation of mutual back scratching. I cut him down from a flagpole, he steals me some confidential files; I help him out when his purity test score needs a nudge down the charts, he drops everything when I need a second man on a stakeout; I make sure he starts in the Pan game, he plants a bug in his mom's boss's office. Okay, frequently his side of the friendship has involved a few more, and slightly riskier sacrifices than mine. But my cases are all important or lucrative or both, and Wallace's are... well, they pretty much consist of making out over a trig book.

And there it is: my huge, endlessly rationalizable flaw. My problems, lately, have been either of the life and death variety, or of the type that slowly fills in the $80,000 hole my mom left in my college fund. Therefore, in my selfish little world, my problems are much more important than Wallace's. I've been conveniently failing to realize that to Wallace, the situation probably looks a little different.

So hello, it's nice to meet you - I'm Veronica, and I'm a narcicist.

I'm going to stop rationalizing it, but I can still try to explain it to myself, if only to convince myself that I'm not on the road to becoming Leanne "waste your daughter's savings, steal your husband's bonus, and sleep with whomever you want" Reynolds. Maybe part of the problem is that I've had my dad to myself for so long. As an adorable only daughter with a silver tongue and winning smile, I pretty much got things to go the way I wanted since Mom left... at least until I got myself into some dangerous situations without bringing either Backup or backup. But even after that, in all the little things, Dad has been wrapped around the littlest of my little fingers. Ice cream flavors? The freezer's stocked with my favorites. Living room layout and decoration? All my picks. Focus of the love and attention of my father? Entirely on me. So is it so strange that I would be inclined to expect unconditional and unwavering love and loyalty from all the men in my life? Well, when you put it that way, I guess it does sound a little extreme. But I've had some bigger issues to deal with recently than the validity of my expectations for men. So as much as I hate to admit it, I had never really gotten around to admitting to myself that maybe my life did revolve a little too closely around Veronica.

Take Logan, for example. No, it's not surprising that he's doing impetuous, libido-driven things now. He's always had that passion, but in the Lilly days it was focused solely on Lilly, no matter how many times they broke up, how many times she told him, "shove off, nimrod, I'm moving on to older and bigger things," he never stopped adoring her, never stopped waiting for her. So I guess that's why it bothers me that he moved on so quickly, and so enthusiastically, after me. I spent my entire childhood trying to be like Lilly, and at some point I accepted that I never would be as outrageous or as natuarally sexy as she was, but I thought that I was equally worthy of love.

But I'm okay with thinking that my discomfort witnessing the sexcapades of Logan and Kendall is based on my selfishness. Because if it's not that, it means I still have feelings for Logan. And frankly, I think it's safer for everyone if I just accept the selfish label.

I haven't had the luxury of taking very much for granted recently, but when I found out why Duncan broke up with me I finally let myself stop thinking there was just something fundamentally horrible, inherently un-girlfriendable, about me. And since my birthday fortune cookie confirmed what I'd suspected for a while, that he had never stopped loving me, I've been a little less about the Hard-as-Nails, Needs Nobody Else Veronica, and a little more of the old, long-haired, Trusting In The World Veronica. Not that I'm back to being the blissfully naive best friend and shadow of Lilly Kane, but I do have some faith in some things now. One of those things was Duncan Kane.

But Duncan's faithful, back-burner love for an ex-girlfriend who's off-limits - an admirable quality when you happen to be the girlfriend in question - is a little less warm-and-fuzzy-making in larger doses. Yes, he kept loving me even when he thought I was his sister, and even when I was dating his best friend. But his new routine of daily hospital visits to Meg is at best a troubling reminder that I'm not the only girl in his life, and at worst? The world "placeholder" tends to spring to mind. So I tend to try to think about other things.

But nowadays, those "things" consist of Veroncia's Parade of Bad Feelings, starting with my old friends Sadness and Guilt over the bus crash, moving on to the strapping but ever-growing Shame over the simultaneous decreases in cookies baked for Wallace and serious conversations had with Wallace in the last two weeks, and stopping for a moment to showcase Female Cattiness over Wallace's bitchy new gal pal before raining ticker tape down on the gnawing, burning Jealousy that won't let me forget who - okay, screw politeness - what Logan is now banging. Sure, it's a sucky metaphor, but it's a pretty sucky succession of feelings too.

So the new plan for the new Veronica is to take less for granted and actually earn the adoration I'm getting. I will be civil to Logan, even if it kills me. I will spend more time with Dad. I will stop snapping at Duncan. I will be more supportive of Wallace. I will be nice to Jac... okay, no, I'm going for "better," not "perfect."