Sponge: Welcome back! Thank you to everyone who sent in private messages guessing the code, and a special congratulations to IrishLassWithSass23 and Mariclast for guessing correctly! Hope you all enjoy this chapter! Disclaimer: I don't own any of the Scooby Doo characters. They belong to Cartoon Network, Warner Brothers, and Hanna Barbera.

Chapter 15: It's Too Late Now

G-U-E-S-T

H-O-U-S-E

The gang should have known that it would come to this. Of course they would need to visit the creepy house at the edge of the property that was built over a sinkhole. And of course they would have to do it in the middle of a thunderstorm, braving the rain and mud and howling wind with only their dim flashlights or dying cellphones to light their way. But Mystery Incorporated was nothing if not determined, so it was together that they left the manor and sprinted down the western path towards the guest house.

It was only once they had raced up the two steps to the soggy wooden porch of the guest house that they realized they hadn't told the Farquards that they were leaving the mansion.

"Do you think we should have said something?" Daphne asked, slightly out of breath and glancing around at her friends anxiously. She wrung out her hair, which was damp from the rain, as Scooby shook himself out and the others gazed up at the awning above them. They noticed that it, like the porch ceiling at the manor, was also haint blue. Daphne went on. "Not to ask permission or anything, but just to let them know we were leaving the house? We could have called down the basement stairs to them at least."

Fred shrugged. Daphne was a responsible person, and he loved that about her. But there were bigger things on the line just now than explaining themselves to the Farquards – who, to be honest, he still wasn't sure he trusted all that much anyway. "It's too late now," he said practically. "We're already here. Hopefully this will be a quick search. The house doesn't look that big from the outside – we should be able to find the treasure and make it back to the main house before the Farquards even realize we're gone."

Velma nodded. "Come on gang," she said. "Let's go find the tray-sure." She said this last with a teasing glance at Fred.

He gently cuffed her shoulder, happy that she seemed like her old self again.

But once they heaved open the heavy door and stepped inside the house, any lightheartedness they felt was quickly extinguished.

"Jeepers," Daphne breathed, shining her flashlight.

The gang found themselves standing in a large, dank room. Whereas Beauregard Manor was opulent and extravagant, with intricate decorations and lavish furniture, the guest house was decrepit and run-down. The walls to their left and right each held two windows – all of which had broken glass. The wall straight ahead of them housed a large, open fireplace; the most ornate thing in the house. A lone, sad couch sat in the center of the room, facing the fireplace. Beside the couch was a derelict side table with an obviously broken lamp. The hardwood floors were dusty – or at least, they may have been if not for the spatters of rain that splashed down through multiple leaks in the ceiling, or blew in through the broken windows. There was a lightswitch beside the front door that clearly didn't work. Off to the right was a short hallway that led to other rooms – perhaps a bathroom or a kitchen.

But Fred wasn't interested in that. He'd moved his flashlight up towards the ceiling, where large broad beams held up the roof. There was something hanging from one of the rafters – an ostentatious, quite out of place, chandelier.

He frowned. "What do you suppose that's doing here?"

Velma shone her flashlight up to join his. "Rutherford did tell us that the General wanted to convert this place into a second house," she said. "Maybe the chandelier was meant to make it look nicer? More homey?"

"Yeah like, I feel real comfortable here," Shaggy quipped, stepping out from under a leak and shaking his hair out.

Fred nodded. "Right," he said. "Well, the treasure has to be in the house somewhere. I think we should split up and search for clues. Daphne and I will check out that hallway. Velma, Shaggy, and Scooby, you three stay in the living room. With all five of us searching, I bet we'll find something helpful in no time."

As Fred and Daphne headed down the hall, Velma and Shaggy glanced at each other.

Scooby shifted his weight uncomfortably. "Rye'll…um…go rook rover there." He paced over to the farthest side of the room, sniffing out the fireplace, clearly sensing that Velma and Shaggy wanted privacy.

Shaggy sighed. "Well," he said in a low voice. "I guess like…we should talk."

Velma sighed, too. She had figured it might come to this. But she didn't know where to begin.

Luckily, Shaggy seemed to. "I can't believe you didn't tell me," he said. He'd been thinking about it, and in the end, he realized that was what bothered him the most. Not the fact that Velma had cheated on a test. Not the fact that she'd gone to Marcie Fleach. Not even the fact that she hadn't told anyone else in the gang.

The fact that she specifically hadn't told him.

Velma shrugged, a defeatist gesture. How could she explain the frustration and disappointment and shame she'd felt with herself? Or the way she'd worried that Shaggy – and the others – would pity her? The whole situation had culminated in a bit of an identity crisis. Her brains, her academics, were huge aspects of her personality. If she wasn't the smart girl who always got straight-As, then who was she?

But she didn't want to get into all of that. So she tried to simplify it as best she could. "I was…embarrassed," she said at last.

"Embarrassed by what? A mistake you made out of desperation?" Shaggy asked. "Seriously Velm, like, do you know how much stupid shit I've done? I would never judge you. Not ever." He said this emphatically. "You don't ever have to be embarrassed around me."

Velma looked at him sadly. "But that's the thing. You weren't…around."

She didn't say it to try and shame him. She'd just said it as a fact. A true fact. He hadn't been around. He'd been several states away from her, halfway across the country. And that wasn't his fault, or hers. It was just the way things were.

"I could have been," Shaggy insisted. "If you'd told me, I would have, like…"

"You would have what?" Velma asked after Shaggy trailed off. "Called the president of the university? Argued with the dean on my behalf? That's not your battle to fight."

"Well no, but…"

Again, Shaggy didn't finish his sentence, so Velma just kept talking.

"Telling you wasn't going to change anything. I was already suspended. There was nothing you could have done."

"I could have helped you," Shaggy reiterated. "I could have been there for you."

"No you couldn't," Velma argued. "Not from two thousand miles away."

As tensions rose, so did their voices. Catching themselves, they glanced across the room at Scooby, who up until that point had been quite interested in some burnt detritus he'd found in the fireplace. But now he had frozen up and was staring straight ahead into nothing, almost as though if he remained still enough, he would become invisible. Or disappear from the room altogether.

Shaggy sighed. He knew they were making Scooby uncomfortable. "Come on," he murmured. Gently, he took Velma's hand and led her down the hallway by the light of his flashlight. At the end of the hall they could see the silhouettes of Fred and Daphne scouring the kitchen, and a doorway to their left housed the dingiest bathroom Shaggy had ever seen, so he stepped through a door on the right. It turned out to be a bedroom – or at least, what had once been a bedroom. There was a bed in it, anyway. It was little more than a box spring on a metal bed frame, but there was a thin rumpled blanket spread across the mattress. The window in this room was broken as well, and rain blew in from outside. Shaggy and Velma tried their best to stay out of the way.

Velma tried the lightswitch. It didn't work either. So it looked like they would have this conversation by flashlight.

Shaggy ran a hand through his hair, trying to figure out how to say what he wanted to say.

"Maybe I couldn't have been there for you physically," he conceded. "Like, fine. You're right about that. But I could have been there for you emotionally. I mean this shit is like…colossal. You shouldn't have had to deal with it on your own. It's too heavy. I could have helped like…carry that emotional burden for you."

This irritated Velma, for some reason. She wasn't sure why. It seemed a bit like a platitude, but she knew Shaggy wasn't being pithy…he genuinely meant what he said. So why did that bother her?

Because it will never happen.

The realization arrived quietly, without fanfare. But it still felt loud and large, taking up all the space in her brain. The two of them had had so little time to be an actual couple – most of their relationship during high school had happened in secret, and they'd only had a few months between telling their friends and going away to college. Their hearts were in the right places – they always had been – but Velma knew that no matter what Shaggy's intentions were, he couldn't be there for her the way she needed when he was so far away. And it broke her heart.

"I don't think you could have," she said at last.

"Maybe I could," Shaggy argued. "If you'd let me try."

Velma sighed and sat on the bed. It was not very comfortable – she could feel every single spring through the mattress. "I don't know," she murmured. "This long distance thing…it's harder than I thought it would be. Like college."

Shaggy sat next to her. He felt like he'd been kicked in the stomach. If Velma was comparing their relationship to college – which she'd confessed wanting to quit – that did not bode well for their future. "Well…" he said, trying to steady himself. "Fred and Daph make it work. It like, can't be easy for them either."

"They don't have any time zones separating them," Velma reminded him. "And Daphne can afford plane tickets like they're penny candies. We can't compare ourselves to them – we've never been able to."

Shaggy's gut twisted in both fear and irritation. What was she doing? It was like she was trying to poke holes in this. "Well then what, Velma? Do you like…wanna break up?"

Velma's eyes grew sad behind her glasses. There it was. The question she'd known was coming, as much as she didn't want it to. "Do you?" she asked him.

Shaggy hesitated. "No," he said at last.

There was a pregnant silence. "Maybe we should, though," Velma said in a whisper. "Maybe that would make the most sense. If we just…stopped trying to make it work and just let things be."

Shaggy furrowed his eyebrows at her. "Is that why you wanna drop out of college too? Like since when are you the kind of person who gives up when things get too hard?"

"It's not just hard, Shaggy, it's impossible."

"Not for you," he insisted. "Nothing is impossible for you. You're the smartest, strongest person I know. So you made one mistake? Like big deal. It doesn't define you. You have a second chance, an opportunity to try again in the fall and do it better. Take it. And like, don't fuck it up."

Velma blinked. On the surface these words might sound cruel, but they came from a place of compassion – and oddly enough, it was working. Somehow, this was the thing she needed to hear. Marcie had been supportive of Velma's decision to quit Stanford. Granted, Velma assumed that Marcie was also disappointed, but if that were true, she'd kept it to herself. At the time, that had been what Velma wanted. But maybe true friendship – or true love – wasn't telling the other person what they wanted to hear. It was telling them what they needed to hear. Even if it was hard.

As for Shaggy, halfway through his speech, he realized he could have been talking to himself. He had spent so much of their senior year of high school pretending that he wasn't in love with the girl sitting next to him right now. He was not going to make that mistake again. This was his second chance. And he was not going to fuck it up.

"And as for us," he went on. "I don't know...maybe our relationship will get better if we like, talk more. I mean, you've seen my family these past few days…nobody fucking talks to each other, so nobody knows how to deal. I don't want that to happen to us. Not if we can help it. I still want to know what's going on with you. I still want to know how you're feeling. Even if there's like, nothing I can do to help."

Velma nodded. What he was saying made sense. And she wanted to try. She just wasn't sure she'd be able to hold herself to it once they were apart again. "Well," she said after a few moments. "I still don't know what I want to do in the fall. And how I'm feeling right now is…uncertain." She leaned her head against his shoulder.

"That's okay," he replied, putting an arm around her. "Your feelings are like…valid."

Velma smirked in spite of herself. Shaggy-in-therapy was really something else. She lifted her head to place a gentle kiss on his cheek.

She didn't realize he'd turned his face towards her and her lips ended up landing very close to his mouth.

He kissed her back.

Next thing they knew, they were making out hard and fast, mouths open against each other, tongues colliding, breathing heavily. It seemed to escalate automatically. Shaggy pushed Velma down onto the uncomfortable mattress, grasping fistfuls of her orange T-shirt as he did so. She responded by bringing her hands around the back of his head, pulling his face closer to hers. He let out an involuntary groan, and so did she.

They never did anything like this. Making out in the middle of looking for clues. This was what they affectionately called "pulling a Fred and Daphne." But it had been too long since they'd had an opportunity for this. Too long since they'd felt anything close to this.

Their kissing was sloppy and feral, but neither of them cared. It felt too good to be this close to each other. Velma thought she could actually feel the dopamine releasing from her brain into her bloodstream, lighting her up like a neon IV drip. This was what she really needed, almost as much as Shaggy's words of encouragement.

She shifted on the bed, and felt a particularly painful bump beneath her shoulder.

"Ow," she muttered, pulling away from Shaggy briefly.

"You okay?" he asked, his breathing still heavy. "I didn't like, hurt you, did I?"

"No, no, you're fine," she assured him, reaching under the threadbare blanket on the bed for the source of whatever had caused her discomfort. "I just rolled over something." Eventually her fingers made contact with something metallic, and she fished it out from beneath the blanket.

Her eyes had adjusted to the dark by now, but she still floundered for her flashlight to study the object further. Because it could not be what she thought it was.

Shaggy was quicker, and found his flashlight first. He shone it on the object, his breathing heavy now for a different reason.

"Zoinks, no way," he murmured.

It was a delicate silver bell.

Just like the one Aunt Louisa had used to hypnotize Daphne on their first night here.

No…it was exactly the one Aunt Louisa had used on their first night here.

"Jinkies," Velma whispered, finally wrenching her gaze from the bell to make eye contact with Shaggy. "What is this doing here?"

"I have no idea," Shaggy replied. "Shouldn't it be in Aunt Louisa's purse? Which should be…with her and Frank? On that boat?"

Velma closed her eyes, remembering the poem. "Four little Beauregards going out to sea," she recited. "A red herring swallowed one, and then there were three." Her eyes shot open. "Shaggy, that's it! That's the answer!"

Shaggy felt like his head was spinning. "What do you mean that's the answer?"

"We were meant to see Louisa as a red herring," Velma explained, heart pounding. "And maybe Frank, too. But what if Fred was right, and the two of them have been the ones behind this the whole time – making themselves seem innocent when really they're the masterminds?"

Shaggy furrowed his brow. "But like, they disappeared in that storm, didn't they?"

Velma leaned forward. "That's what they'd want us to think. But what if they didn't disappear? What if there is a secret cove somewhere, but instead of a mainlander using it to sneak onto the island, Frank and Louisa steered their boat there and hid it before the storm rolled in?"

Shaggy nodded slowly. "O…kay," he said. "But if that's true then like…where are they now? They wouldn't be out in that weather. It's like, not safe."

He had a point. The storm appeared to have taken on a life of its own outside – the wind was downright roaring now, and lightning flashed or thunder boomed every other minute. The house seemed to shake with the violence of it.

"I don't know," Velma admitted, standing up. "But we should show this to the others. If nothing else, it's proof that Louisa has been here…if she's not here right now."

A shiver went through Shaggy. There didn't seem to be many places to hide in the guest house, but he suddenly felt quite wary.

Velma put the bell in the pocket of her shorts. Together, she and Shaggy left the bedroom and turned right down the hall towards the kitchen, where Fred and Daphne were investigating.

Only, they weren't there.

Confused, Shaggy and Velma shone their flashlights around, illuminating a derelict oven and refrigerator, but no sign of their friends.

"Daphne?" Velma called. "Freddie?"

"In here!" came Daphne's voice from behind them, in the hallway.

Shaggy and Velma did an about face and headed out of the kitchen. They met Fred and Daphne in front of the doorway to the dilapidated bathroom.

"Where were you guys?" Daphne asked.

"In there," Velma replied, jerking her head towards the bedroom. "And we found a –"

"Is Scooby with you?" Fred interrupted, looking worried.

Shaggy knit his brow. "No," he said. "We left him in the living room."

Fred turned back, shining his flashlight behind him. "Well," he said. "He's not there."

Shaggy's stomach dropped. "Like what do you mean he's not there?"

"We were just in the living room," Daphne replied. "And we didn't see him."

Velma's eyes grew wide. "Well he wasn't with us."

The four of them stood staring at each other, panic etched on their faces.

Scooby was gone.

Sponge: Thank you for reading! Please review, and I'll see you back here next week!