Author's Note: So, how far would you like to see me go with this?
Disclaimer: Rob Thomas created Veronica Mars. I'm not him and I'm not making any money off of this.
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Of course, I couldn't break up with Duncan in the immediate aftermath; I had to stick with my boyfriend in this "time of tragedy."
Logan insisted that we stop seeing each other -- he was feeling guilty, for some reason. I've never gotten the concept of guilt. Oh, I know what it looks like, and I can act guilty as well as anyone, and I know the definition, but really, you do something or you don't do something, and you keep going. It's this idea of "guilt" that holds most people back from doing the things that need to be done to get them ahead in the world.
I don't feel guilt. That's why I'm where I am today.
In any event, Logan somehow he thought that he could have prevented Lilly's death. Like if he hadn't made out with the woman at that party, hadn't been sleeping with me, this wouldn't have happened.
Well, of course not. So?
Anyway, this actually made it easier for me for a while, since I was one of the last people known to have seen Lilly alive. A couple of people mentioned that Lilly had seemed angry when she came up to me. I told Dad that I didn't know why she'd been angry; I knew she'd broken up with Logan recently, but that was about it.
Dad believed me. Dad wanted to believe me, which made it easier, but still, there's no one better at figuring out who's lying and who's telling the truth than he is. Of course, no one's a better liar than me, so that makes things a bit less nerve-wracking, but still.
Anyway, this was when he started in on the Kane family, and we know what happened then. Jake tried to have my father thrown out of office -- it was then that I "reluctantly" broke up with Duncan.
"Veronica," he protested. "I'm not the one doing this."
"Do you expect me to stand idly by while your father tries to ruin mine?"
"Your father's treating my father like a suspect."
"I know," I said. "But he's just doing his job. Your father's over-reacting. And I can't date you if you can't see that."
"Can we still be friends?" God, how pathetic he was.
Still, no point in completely burning the bridge. "Of course we can. But we'd probably better not see each other for a while -- you know, to ease the pain." And to make it easier for me to try to get Logan back into my bed. And this time, we could go public.
It took me a couple of weeks to overcome Logan's "guilt" and "grief." But, when I want something, I can be very determined. A little physicality combined with "Lilly would have wanted us to be happy" and "Duncan effectively broke it off with me" and I had him back in my bed again. A bit after that, we went public. There were a couple of muttered whispers about how quickly Logan and I were stepping on Lilly's grave, but no one ever had the guts to say anything to my face. Smart of them.
This was a bit of a rocky time for me, with my father investigating the most powerful man in Neptune and with Jakey reacting the way he was -- so I had to scramble to maintain my position. This is when I started investigating Don Lamb and found the evidence of his corruption. And there was plenty of evidence, too; I didn't need to make anything up. A little bit came from the records of the Neptune Sheriff's Department -- it's good to be the daughter of the sheriff, sometimes -- a little bit came from following Donny around, and a little bit came from his own house.
Breaking and entering? Yeah. But you hang around with cops and robbers long enough, you learn a few things.
He never even knew I was there. Of course, Lamb's an idiot; I probably could have left a forensics trail a mile wide and he'd've never noticed.
Having fought off the recall, Dad next had to deal with the fake Abel Koontz confession. Figuring that out was entirely his doing -- he really is good at his job, after all.
Logan stuck by side throughout all of it, and once Jake Kane was arrested for obstructing justice, all of those whispers about me kind of died down. I quietly figured out who'd been doing the whispering and marked them down so I could keep my eye on them. Tops on that list was Madison Sinclair, and honestly, she's a bigger waste of oxygen than my mother is.
Duncan became an outcast. I still didn't completely cut ties with him -- thus cementing my status as "the nice one" among Neptune High's ruling class. Besides, I didn't want him to think that I'd been the one pointing the Sheriff's office in his direction. To this day, almost nine months later, he has no clue who told the Sheriff's Office about his epilepsy. If he'd only give it serious thought, he'd realize it had to be me. But just like everyone else, Duncan doesn't want to think I could be capable of something like that.
It's this willful blindness that makes my life so much easier.
Anyway, sometime not long after this came Shelly Pomroy's end of the year party. Shelly wasn't a particularly worthwhile human being -- dull except for a certain ability to get men to lust after her -- but her father was the Ambassador to Belgium, so, I put up with her. If I wanted to go into politics eventually, I might need the connections someday.
Logan warned me before we got there not to accept any drinks I hadn't made myself -- some friends of his had gotten GHB and were planning to have a little fun with their girlfriends. One of these was Dick Casablancas. Dick was another person in my "potentially useful" classification; certainly, he's one of the many men around Neptune High who thinks he has a shot with me someday.
He doesn't. I'd take a social hit for that one. Dick may have rich and powerful relatives, but he's kind of stupid and only thinks about women as potential conquests. Not that I'm objecting on moral grounds, of course; I tend to think of most men the same way. The difference is, people know about Dick's attitude, and they don't know about mine. The last thing you want to be is one more notch on the bedpost of someone with that kind of reputation.
Thank goodness I followed Logan's advice. Someone passed me a soda as I walked by the bar; I handed it off to Duncan, who'd come to the party despite his diminishing reputation.
Apparently there was GHB in the drink, because Duncan acted like an idiot for the rest of the night and apparently woke up in bed the next morning with Shelly Pomroy, neither of whom remembered what had happened. Although they knew damn well what had. And so did everyone else, because Shelly made damn sure everyone understood that she had to have been the victim, because "everyone knows what Duncan Kane is like, anyway . . . "
Ah well. At least it wasn't me.