Disclaimer: I own nothing.

Author's Note: My first shot at a Veronica Mars fic. Tell me what you think.

Meg is gone. The forever kind of gone. Gone like her best-friend is gone. Another friend buried six feet under. Another friend whose secrets will come back to haunt her. She was pregnant. Virginal Meg. With Duncan's kid. Her head spins. She surmises that she's had too much to drink to drive back now. She's been fooling herself for too long anyways. There's no going back anymore.

The hotel seems oddly empty even though it's not late. It's only around 7 and the cynical part of her brain thinks this should be the crossover period between the legitimately late and the people who need beds, but not to sleep on. But where are pervs when you need them? Certainly not leering, comfortingly, telling her that some things haven't, in fact, changed, that some things never will. Instead she faces a scene out of a scary movie. The lobby is all but deserted. She wouldn't be surprised to see tumbleweed.

She climbs the stares resolutely, Jack Daniels clutched in her hand to give her strength. Her stomps resound up the stairs. She's expecting someone to meet her at the door. Just not who does. Guess Duncan isn't here after all. Guess this whole trip was for nothing.

"Logan?" she asks anyways.

He's shirtless and she's horny in the 'the world is falling down around me and I'll do anything just to escape for a little while' kind of way. She admits silently this is kinda desperate and if he says yes they'll both regret it in the morning, but she's always given into to impulse, and that sure as hell won't change now. He isn't looking at her though. He's looking behind her into space. She wryly wonders if he's seeing a Lilly twenty seconds behind her instead of the one in front of him and slightly to his left. If so, she hopes that Lilly smiles at him; she's just noticed through alcohol-induced haze that he looks particularly crappy himself today and his eyes are burning.

He gasps "Veronica" then a split second later a high-pitched "Lilly" and then finally a hard won, spit-out "Dad" like his teeth are made of glass and every time a word's uttered from his mouth his lips bleed. She'd forgotten that if events had worked out differently this would have been their anniversary; she's too drunk to comprehend the train wreck that is Aaron Echolls. She kisses him suddenly like otherwise she'll drown. They clutch at each other like lifelines and hope one morning they'll wake up on top again and everything in the past year will just be a dream.

He pats her long blonde hair and mutters "Ronnie" in his sleep.

In the morning she'll confront her little brother on how he could have been as careless and stupid as to have knocked up Meg (and gotten over Veronica- who deserves better even if she is dead and was dating Logan at the time,she tells herself). In the morning she'll have to face Logan's look of disappointment when he wakes up to discover yet again that his girlfriend's dead, that his own father trapped her in a tiny refrigerator and burned her to death.

In the morning she'll have to remember yet again that it was because of tapes she, herself had asked Veronica to get, and that she hadn't even bothered to warn her what was on them.

And maybe in the morning, she thinks she'll even cut off her hair finally. A whispered 'Ronnie' from the boy beside her petting it is her only answer, but she'd swear there's a Veronica on the ceiling smiling down at her.

Maybe she'd better go shopping for a new wardrobe as well. Anything to distance herself from the naïve, happy girl she once was, and she currently can't stand.

And she's right of course. It is definitely Veronica smiling down at her.

If only she had the ability left to tell her everything's going to be all right, she could almost smile back at her.