A/N: so if you've been a slacker and haven't read the prequel to this, now would be a good time. cause you won't understand most of this without reading it.
PICKING UP HER PIECES: STAY CLOSE TO ME WHILE THE SKY IS FALLING
90909
You have a yacht. You have a sick girlfriend who desperately needs a vacation. What do you do?
Isn't the answer obvious?
90909
After you've had Veronica safely home for several days, you finally agree that Lamb had a point about giving her a vacation.
She is wan and pale, and more than a little withdrawn, and you hope a change in scenery will help her heal.
So the next morning, after everything is packed, you bundle her up and carry her onto the boat, while Wallace and Alicia and Lamb follow behind you.
The thing you didn't think about (and you still don't know whether you would have let this change your plans) is that Veronica can't use the wheelchair while on the boat. She still can't walk, because her feet still have to be debrieded (something you and Lamb take turns with, careful to do exactly as the doctor showed you), and she is in constant agony. You marvel at how well she takes it though. You haven't seen her cry once, and you're still waiting for the pain to get the better of her.
Then you hate yourself for watching for it, when, five hours into your vacation, you carry her up to the deck and she falls asleep so twisted in on herself that you can't even begin to correct it, and she's so drugged that you can't even begin to wake her up.
Then she wakes up so tense and sore that she cries for hours, and you realize just how little it takes to break her these days, and you find you still marvel at how well she's taking things.
90909
Ever since her little stunt on the beach, you're terrified to trust her with her medication. While you're on the boat, it stays under lock and key in a room on the opposite side of the boat from her. You're pretty sure she won't try anything stupid again, but there are other things that could happen – addiction, for one, and now that you know how easy it would be for her to take too much, all the other horrific possibilities crowd your mind as well.
You spend hours each day trying to get her to take the anti-depressants prescribed to her, with no success, and you think it should reassure you that she doesn't seem to like taking pills. But she's in so much pain, both emotional and physical, that you can't help but wish she'd just follow the doctor's orders.
But part of you realizes it's really no use arguing with her about this point, because you've seen what anti-depressants did to Duncan, and you saw Ronnie's reaction to what they did to Duncan, and you know that she'll never risk having that happen to her.
You decide to make her talk to each of you instead.
90909
Wallace goes in to Veronica's room, and stays for hours, and for a while you can hear him on the verge of yelling at her, and you have to stop yourself from barging in and forcibly removing him from the room. You can hear Veronica crying as well, and your heart clenches in your chest. You move towards the door, and Lamb puts a hand on your shoulder.
"Let them be, Logan. They both need this."
And since when did Lamb know what Veronica needed? And since when did you start listening to him?
When Wallace comes out to get his mother, the look on his face makes you glad you listened.
90909
You personally are terrified that Veronica will continue to go down her destructive road – that she won't accept your help or let you in, and you will lose her.
Part of you desperately needs to talk to her about it, to tell her you need her too, to beg her not to shut you out. But the bigger part of you is terrified, and doesn't know how to handle her.
You've lost a parent too. Your mother's death hurt. But your relationship with your mother wasn't anywhere near as close as Veronica's relationship with her father.
You'd like to be able to tell her you know how she feels. Every other big tragedy in her life, you went through with her. Well, maybe you didn't understand much about Duncan breaking up with her, but Lilly's death? You knew exactly how she felt. Her rape? You didn't have to go through it, but you keenly felt the guilt for being responsible, even if it was long after the fact. Finding out that your father had killed Lilly, and having your father try to kill her? You were with her in her pain.
But this? You can't even begin to imagine, and that scares you.
90909
It is late when you go into the master bedroom, and lay down beside, but not quite touching, Veronica.
For hours you lay there in silence, mulling over what you need to say.
Then, finally…
"Will you let us help you, Veronica?" you whisper, not daring to look at her as you speak. "Let us in? Let me in?"
And this last part is something like a plea. Unable to feel this lonely any longer, you inch your hand closer to her and turn it palm-up, waiting for her to take it.
It is that moment that you realize you will wait forever for this little blond pixie.
You give her time to think about her answer, already knowing you're planning on making her agree by the time you're back to Neptune, but also aware that she needs to think about this.
Nearly half an hour later, you hazard a look at her face. Her eyes are too bright and her breath is ragged, and you realize that she wants to say yes, but she just isn't sure she'll be able to keep her promise once she does.
"I'll teach you how. And I'll wait forever."
The transformation is breathtaking. The tiniest of smiles lights on her face, and she slides her hand sideways, until her little fingers intertwine with yours.
You both fall asleep in this position.
90909
By the end of the next day, she is feeling much better, at least physically. So the following morning, you carry her up to watch the sun rise with you. If you believed in such things, the sight would be like finding religion. Her hair frames her face in soft waves, the gold highlighted by the sun against the canvas of the sky.
You want it to be like this forever.
90909
She falls asleep in your arms, not long after the colorful display has given way to light blue, and you decide to let her stay on the deck for a while. You grab some sunscreen, and take her to the little dining area that is shaded by a tarp. You deposit her gently onto one of the cushions, and cover her in enough sunscreen to drown an elephant in. you can't be too careful with her already burned skin. You wouldn't let her in the sun at all, except the therapist you'd talked to told you to make sure she spent time outdoors, because things like that would help the depression.
It all sounded like holistic mumbo-jumbo to you, but even the doctor who treated her burn told you to make sure she spent at least an hour a day out in the sun – with sunscreen, of course.
So you apply liberal amounts of the stuff, and then lay a thin blanket gently over her. It is summer in California, but out on the ocean, the early mornings are cold. Once she is situated on the cushions, you sit and watch her.
She is beautiful, swathed in blue and her hair framing her head like a halo. She really does look like a little angel. She sighs and rolls over, towards you. It seems almost instinctive for her to seek you out.
You sit there and stroke her hair for hours, until you realize that it's lunch time. Before getting up to grab something for you both, you cover her in more sunscreen and make sure the awning is providing her with plenty of shade.
"Lasagna," you say to the wind, as you smile. You make it from a box, so really, how long could it take?
90909
It was a mistake, a simple, stupid mistake, and it almost breaks her again, and you hate yourself. And no matter how safe she is, you're never going to leave her alone and helpless again. You've done that often enough already.
90909
She heals remarkably fast. Not just while you're on the boat, but afterwards too. She doesn't ever really agree to see the therapist, but one day you stopped giving her a choice, and Dr. Green is intuitive enough, funny enough, sympathetic enough, something else you don't know enough, that Veronica stops arguing after the third appointment.
You're pretty sure Veronica would never have gotten through that first year without her.
And two months after everything in her world came crashing down (literally), your theory is proved true in one of the worst ways possible.
Dick meets Veronica in the Pac-n-Sac. You don't know what happened between them; the only reason you know it was Dick was because the cashier described him and you put it all together.
All you really know is that after you'd let Veronica go out on her own, for the first time since her father died, she has a nervous breakdown in the Pac-n-Sac, and she's been gone for three hours by the time the manager calls you on her phone to tell you that whoever this girl is that has you as her emergency contact is rocking herself and shivering in the middle of the cereal aisle, and she won't respond to anyone but to scream and fight when anyone tries to touch her.
You make it there in record time.
90909
When you see her, your heart breaks. She's sitting, curled in on herself, rocking slightly, and shaking so hard you're surprised she hasn't literally shaken herself to bits. Her eyes are squeezed tight and her breaths are coming out in rapid gasps that worry you.
You kneel down beside her, cringing inwardly when your shadow falling over her makes her flinch back from you, and shake even harder (and you didn't even think that was possible), and you mentally berate yourself for coming at her from the side when you should have kneeled in front of her, where she can see that its you.
But it doesn't help her for you to get angry, even if it's only at yourself, so you get up and move around to face her.
"Veronica?" you say, but it doesn't catch her attention. "Veronica, open your eyes for me, let me see those baby blues, love."
When she finally pulls one eyelid up, just enough to see that it's really you, her reaction is instant. One moment she's sobbing on the ground, curled in a little ball, and the next, she's finishing her panic attack in your arms.
You force her to turn her head and pop two little pills she'd been prescribed for anxiety onto her tongue. You hold the water bottle while she swallows, then bundle her up into the car.
By the time you stick the key in the ignition, she is asleep.
90909
You know you won't find out what happened to her unless you're there with her in the therapists office, but you won't ask her to give that up. You don't think she'd be able to handle it if you demanded to see her that weak, and you know she'd never agree.
Which is why you're a little surprised when she refuses to let go of your hand in the office. You tug on it, experimentally, and she whips around and gives you a look that brings your mind careening back to "Don't let me die, don't leave me, Logan!"
You rush to steal your hand away and put your arm around her, kissing the top of her head and feeling her small sigh of relief as you walk back to the meeting room.
90909
When you hear what Dick did to her, you almost snap. You and Dick are over. Your friendship is no more. And it's something you should have done when you found out he laid her out for his brother to rape, but you didn't so now will have to do. Then, even before you manage to reach for your phone, you look over and see Veronica, staring dully ahead. Her eyes are heavy with fatigue and the anxiety medication she had to take before seeing the doctor, and, somehow, this reminds you that she's not the only one who lost someone that night.
You don't call Dick. Sometimes it's better for everyone involved if you just forgive and forget.
But while she's sleeping that afternoon, you begin to look for houses.
It's time for a change.
It's time to let go.
90909
The house is beautiful, with a porch swing and walls old enough to whisper stories into your bones. The porch faces the rising sun, and Veronica loves it.
There is some work that needs to be done. The price is higher than what it's worth.
But Veronica loves it, so you don't let her see the price tag and you don't haggle with the old owners. This would take too much time.
You start moving in the next week, and by the end of the month, you and Veronica are waking up early to watch the sun rise over the island on your new oak swing.
Every day is a little closer to healing.