Chapter 7

Battle Wounds

9:30 pm Monday September 3

One thing Logan and Veronica have in common is their mutual loathing of hospitals. Logan's seen one to many doctor for his childhood "accidents." And Veronica's become more then bored with her experiences in exam rooms, whether they be job required checkups or emergency situations. Her last CT scan was recently and she admits as much when the ER doctor asks. It had been extensive blunt trauma and she'd received a concussion. The man looks at her chart and purses his lips. They're getting her medical records from New York. Her scan looks clean but they need to keep her overnight for observation.

She would say no. Plead to be released since she earned a good scan. But her father's in the room, gaping at her like he's seeing her for the very first time. She wants to tell him she's all right. Or that she will be soon. She wants to tell him the truth, but if he doesn't recognize her after this minor detail how much can she reveal until the betrayal starts to seep into his eyes? Until he starts to doubt her and, even worse, himself. She loves him. Would die and kill and do anything for him. But some things are just better left unsaid.

She's relieved that Logan is in a different examination room. That they're stitching him up and assessing the damage to his hands. She could kill that dumb ass. What was he thinking? She didn't need him to bash out her window when he'd already called for an ambulance. To pull her out of a car and carry her into the street when the police were on their way. It was impulsive and reckless and just so fucking Logan. Act now and think later. Now he would suffer the consequences. She's already contemplating headlines. Imaginary fights or acts of aggression. Drunk driving accusations. Or maybe the actual story. That despite all the fights and eventual radio silence, despite their broken engagement and her costal migration, he is still willing to sacrifice pieces of himself for her benefit. Waiting at a moment's notice to be the hero she never expected or asked for. And that she is ungrateful and bitchy as ever.

The doctor leaves, a nurse will be back to check on her soon. She and Keith are alone. The air turns awkward as the silence drags. Veronica feels the tension like a weight on her shoulders. He's just looking at her, eyes concentrating like he's trying to see beneath her skin. Map out the lies and the bruises so he can finally figure her out, predict the surprises that make him ache in the pit of his stomach. She is not a good daughter. Maybe he's not thinking it but she is.

He sits back in the chair, resting his chin in his palm. His face is passive, a swirling mix of pain and regret. "What happened in New York, Veronica," the question isn't angry or judgmental, it is simple and leaves no room for deflection.

A lie is on the tip of her tongue. But she doesn't need to hide this part. It'll just be another mistruth to keep track of, and she has too many of them already. Lies. Lies. Lies. She is so many different people, living in different stages of chaos with each identity. Her voice is low and she can't manage to keep eye contact for more then a millisecond, "You know what happened in New York Dad. It was in all the papers for weeks."

He thinks for a minute before his eyes before his eyes widen and he sits up, "Alex Corso? That was you?"

She swallows, and it's horrible but her face is hard when she draws her line, "I can't talk about it Dad."

He doesn't want to know. He really doesn't. Maybe that's the problem. Its always been so much easier to see her as this little girl, with pigtails and eyes that are innocent of secrecy. He's had several rude awakenings. She is nothing like that little girl anymore. But she is still his daughter, no matter what, and so he has to know, "He hurt you?"

She looks up at the ceiling, the muscles in her jaw locking into place one by one. "Yes," her voice is calm, the answer vague. Which is how he knows it's so much more complicated.

"How bad," his voice is tight, he can't look at her either. He taught her to ride a bike. Spent countless nights working her through math homework. Hid tears when she'd walked across the stage at college graduation. One night was all it would have taken to erase every moment.

She looks away and it tells him everything. He feels a lump grow in his throat at the thought of her all alone in a hospital room. His baby no matter what age, battered and too stubborn to call, "Why didn't you-"

"I wasn't going to die Dad. I didn't want to worry you. You have work and Alicia and-"

His hand slams down on the armrest of the chair, and in the quiet room the sound is deafening. She can feel the tears jump to her eyes immediately. He so rarely gets angry with her, almost never raises his voice. "Dad-" she tries, voice small.

But he is already rising from the chair, heading for the door, "I just, I need a minute Veronica. I'll see you soon."

9:34 pm Monday September 3

Keith steps out of the door and a moment later Leo D'Amato steps in. He looks just as handsome as ever. Curly black hair and bashful smile. She feels a pang. But Leo's been married for years. Two kids with his dark eyes and olive skin. The perfect family she assumes would make her skin crawl. Veronica smiles at him glumly, "Hey Deputy."

"Veronica," he nods, pulling out a chair from the wall and taking a seat, "always good to see you."

"How's Gabby?" She asks, referring to Leo's beautiful wife. A woman so nice it should probably be illegal.

"She's great, just went back to work," Leo rubs the back of his head, with this quiet little smile proud father's sometimes get. Another pang. But it has nothing to do with Leo. Her thoughts momentarily flit to Logan's knuckles, there will be no stitches, the wounds will be wrapped and left raw.

Luckily her question was long planned, and falls out of her mouth even though her mind is miles away, "Still teaching fourth grade?" Gabby D'Amato loves little children. Loves them.

"Yep," he nods, and then both of them hesitate as Leo looks down at the pad of paper in his hand apprehensively.

She decides to make it easier on him, crosses her arms over her chest and smiles slyly, "Do you wanna ask me some questions Leo?"

He winces but clicks his pen and does his best to regard her stoically when he blurts, "Was Echolls' driving?"

Veronica's heart flatlines for a split second. And then her brain surges as she tries to figure out if Logan is playing an angle. If he thinks somehow he's protecting her. She catches her breath and slits her eyes, "Did he tell you he was?"

Leo looks at her hard for a beat and then relents, "I wanted to talk to you first."

Veronica looks at him straight in the eyes, voice firm, "I was driving Leo. Logan's drunk, I was giving him a ride home."

One of Leo's dark eyebrows rises, "In his car?"

She pauses at the implication. Until this very moment she hadn't even thought about what she would do when she dropped Logan off. Hadn't crossed her mind. She knows he wouldn't have been cruel enough to order her out into the rain. She shrugs and answers, "I wasn't thinking about myself at the time. I needed to take him out of the situation, I chose the easiest way. I guess I would have taken a cab back to Wallace's."

Leo pauses for a long beat then leans backwards in his chair, regarding her like a new discovery, "You know Veronica, I never understood how the two of you worked. How it lasted as long as it did. But now it's starting to make more sense."

She mimics his gestures, and juts her chin defiantly, "Care to elaborate?"

He laughs, more of a snort, and then gives into her request, "You'll take a one way ride in the middle of a monsoon to keep him from driving drunk. He'll punch a window in bare fisted to get you out of a smoking car. You can't live with each other, but you seem hellbent on not living without each other either."

Veronica runs a hand through her hair, her glum expression returning, "You make it sound tragic."

"It has to be," he replies, eyes studying her sad face, "otherwise it would sound like love."

9:35 pm Monday September 3

Keith Mars barrels into his hospital room gracelessly, face red as he asks immediately, "What do you know?"

Logan wonders fleetingly how he'd started off getting drunk to forget Veronica and ended up thinking about nothing but her. She'll have a scar. Another one to add to the already too many. He wonders how it looked before they stitched it up. And if there were other wounds she would never admit to. He tries to remember she's an officer. That sometimes it's a side effect of the job. But that means nothing to him. Just like nothing had mattered when he'd awoken to her limp body and head resting against the wheel. His mouth is a hard line when he answers Keith in a detached tone, "Well Sheriff, it looks like someone tried to bash her head in."

It's a mistake. And the boy regrets the words as soon as they have left his mouth. The man's fist clench and Logan knows he would deserve the blow. But instead Keith grits out threateningly, "Logan, I've put up with a lot from you over the years. But so help me God-"

Logan sits up from the wall he's been leaning against anxiously, Keith identifies the emotion brimming in his eyes as that of despair, "In case you didn't noticed your daughter kind of ran me over on her way out of town. We're not really in a sharing place right now." The boy's fingers drum against his leg, a nervous tick Veronica used to soothe by lacing their finger together.

Keith tries to remember exactly where it was on her skull that Lilly had taken the ashtray. When Logan's father had "bashed the head in" of his treacherous first love. He's looked at the crime scene photos a million times, fixated every detailed, but even he couldn't bare to look at the picture of the girl's open head and vacant eyes. He'd known her since she was a baby for Christ's sake. For all he knows the blow could have been directly over her pretty right ear. He knows its crossed Logan's mind at least once.

"Look," Logan adds dejectedly after a deep breath, "she's not gonna tell you anything. Especially if you freak out on her. And if you guilt her she'll just lie."

Keith sags into a nearby chair, head in his hand as his mind races, "I feel like I just got sucker punched."

Across from him Logan grins bitterly and relaxes back into the wall, "Welcome to my world." There is a drawn silence between the two men and then without warning Logan lunges across the room, emptying the contents of his stomach miserably into a trash can.

10:00 pm Monday September 3

"Five seconds," Wallace exclaims as he and Mac fly down the highway, "She's literally been home for five seconds. How can I already be visiting her in the hospital?"

Mac slumps down in the passenger seat, high heels resting on the dash as she scarfs down one of the cupcakes they made Piz run in and buy at Whole Foods before this whole fiasco. "Dick calls her hurricane Veronica," she admits with a mouth full of crumbs.

"She was doing him a favor," Wallace replies quickly. He never should have let her leave. He should have handled Logan himself. It was his house. A good friend would have made them both stay, "She was always doing him favors."

Mac sighs, leaning her head against the window of Wallace's Escalade. The rain has slowed to a drizzle. She runs her finger across the stitching of her leather seat, "I'm worried about her. She seems sad."

Wallace flashes back to his previous conversation with Veronica. Barely a couple of hours ago. His knuckles turn white around the wheel,"She's got a lot on her mind right now."

10:00 pm Monday September 3

"Whose side of the car looked more fucked up?" Dick questions conspiringly from inside Wallace's downstairs bathroom. "Hers or yours?"

Logan is signing papers, desperate to get the hell out of dodge before all hell breaks loose. The fact that this brings him closer to her hospital room has absolutely nothing to do with it, "Dick it was accident. She wasn't trying to kill me."

"I'm just saying," Dick continues obliviously, "pissed off ex and all, a car crash is pretty convenient. She's government man, I bet she totally knows how to make it look like an accident."

"If Veronica was trying to kill me I would be dead," Logan sighs, high school coming back in a dismal wave. He adds for good measure, "Like a really long time ago."

"Okay," Dick grimaces, "that's enough of the tone."

"What tone?" Logan questions incredulously.

"Your wistful, I bet we could have made it work tone," Dick explains pithily, "It's patented and it makes me want to hurl."

"Goodbye Dick," Logan sighs, moving to disconnect the call.

"No dude," the blonde exclaims, "Mac and Wallace just left. I'm coming too."

Logan rolls his eyes. He'd rather rub his fists in salt at this point then deal with a crowd of friends and a crowd of paparazzi, "Dick, I'm drunk and my hand fucking hurts. The last thing I need are your lame attempts at mothering me."

"Don't make it weird man," Dick pleads, before adding with a smirk, "you know I just want to make sure you're still acceptable for the wedding photos."

"My bloody knuckles are sure to add a touch of class," Logan deadpans.

"As always," his friend agrees, "Listen, I'm coming. You're drunk, your hand hurts, and you need someone to drive you home."

"I'll call a car-" Logan tries again valiantly

"Logan, man, I'm walking out of the house. Just shut the fuck up," Dick finally snaps, before elaborating, "I'm in charge of making sure this wedding doesn't crash and burn and I need to be reassured that the maid of honor didn't just try to assassinate the best man."

Dick hangs up with a click and then begins to contemplate his escape plan. He'd rather light himself on fire then be stuck with his pair of backseat driver's for the rest of the night. But somehow he doesn't think Jackie is going to be down for twin blonde babysitting duties.

He contemplates taking his chances and going out the window, but the suit is expensive and imported and Parker and Piz are nothing compared to a pissed off Mac. He goes the asshole route instead and tries to sneak past the trio who are making small talk in the kitchen.

But Jackie has the eagle eyes of a mother of two and he doesn't get to far. "Richard," she questions sweetly, stopping him dead in his tracks, "Aren't you forgetting your leftovers?"

He winces and turns, pissed as all hell when he orders, "Lee, Piznarski it's time to roll the hell out. Thanks for the hospitality as always Jacks."

"No problem," she returns, her voice sarcastic as she rolls her eyes at him. He winks in return and heads for the door.

10:35 pm Monday September 3

Leo leaves eventually. It becomes painfully obvious to both of them that she is unwilling to implicate Logan in any wrong doing, probably wouldn't even if he was genuinely to blame. Keith doesn't return as quickly as he promised, which Veronica guiltily admits to herself is a relief. Like every man in her life he wants answers she hasn't come up with yet.

She is channel surfing when he shrugs into the room, his face still drawn and flushed from alcohol. He doesn't approach the bed or even try to speak, he glowers at her. His jaw is clenched and his eyes hold a look of manic intensity that she recognizes immediately. He's teetering even closer to the edge then she is.

She turns the TV and relaxes into the bed, the left side of her head falling against the pillow in order to hold his gaze. He's not gonna talk so she might as well. "How are your hands?" she asks softly. She's too tired to yell.

"They'll heal," he shrugs. He knocks the back of his head against the wall with a thump, holding it there when he questions similarly, "How's your head?"

She's not gonna die, at least hopefully, and no matter how much her head hurts she knows Logan hurts just as bad. Doesn't know when she started caring but she finds that she does. At least right now. "I'll be fine," she replies calmly.

He pushes his head off the wall and looks at her again, she finds herself relieved, "Veronica," he starts, voice already cracking around the edges, "I-"

"Logan I know," she interrupts before he can make them both cry, "Just…come sit down."

He sighs, closing the small distance in a few strides. He falls into the chair next to her bed. All anger has dissolved for the moment. They are survivors of a trauma and lucky to both come out nearly unscathed. "Your Dad's worried," he confides leaning his elbows on his knees, so that when he starts to tap his feet it looks like his whole body is vibrating.

"I know," she winces. She feels the urge to touch him, feels like if she doesn't soon they will both explode. It's a study in will power but somehow she manages to keep her hands at her sides.

He looks up at her, eyes incredulous, "Are you gonna tell him what happened?"

She sighs, bites her lip, and eventually admits calmly, "Probably not."

He pauses, it's what he expected. Veronica's relationship with her father is based largely on his ignorance of some of the more tragic aspects of her life. At some point during her sophomore she had decided it was her job to protect him, and she hadn't stopped trying since. He breaks the unspoken rule, reaches out and finds the line of stitches under all of her dark hair. His fingers are warm and tickle the shell of her ear unintentionally. His voice is soft but dubious, "I'm assuming that means I'll never find out either."

She lets out all her breath in a whoosh, has no idea why a lump is once again taking residence in the back of her throat. She can't believe she's starting to fall to pieces after only a day, "I don't want to talk about it tonight."

But he doesn't let up, hand still tracing the contours of her profile absentmindedly as he presses, "Why are you moving home Veronica?"

She needs to distract him, so she encircles his wrist and brings his eyes back to her own, then asks pointedly, "Why are you working with Weevil, Logan?"

A stalemate. And they stare with guarded faces daring the other to crack first. Back to the same game already. The moment ignites like a live wire, and it doesn't help that she is a twist of a wrist away from holding his hand.

The spell is broken by an opening door and Veronica releases Logan's wrist at the same moment he tries to tug it away. The dinner party minus Jackie is being led into Veronica's room by her father. Keith is trying to explain visiting hours are over but can't seem to get a word in edgewise amongst the fray.

There are varying degrees of shock and resignation from all friends as they take in the scene. Dick is the first to comment as usual, groaning as he flops onto the couch by the door, "You guys should really seek counseling. Violence is not supposed to be foreplay."

Hope you enjoyed this little installment. More to come soon. Review please.