AN~ I wanted to play around with a bad Veronica.
Veronica always knew she was pretty.
She became aware of it when she was ten or so. She's not sure how it came to her, but she remembers looking around and realizing that none of the other girls in her classroom were as nice to look at as she was. And then she started looking at other people, and she realized she was nicer to look at than most of them, too. Eventually it came to her that she was prettier than almost everyone she knew, and she probably would be for a very long time.
And she used it.
Oh, she never let any adults- or most of her classmates- see it, but she manipulated them all. She batted her eyelashes at a boy, or turned a certain way towards a guy, and he would do exactly what she asked. Bambi eyes with adults, even into her teens, accomplished wonders. Girls would follow her because she was popular and they wanted to understand her secrets. She had them all wrapped around her finger. It was easy as getting dressed in the morning, and it meant she almost always got her way.
Her best friend, ironically, was nothing special to look at, and didn't care about popularity. What had happened was that Veronica had been walking to class, and she saw a girl who wasn't looking at her in total admiration, and she stopped to ask why. The girls had told her that she knew. Knew Veronica's secret, knew that she had no real friends, knew how and why she used people. Veronica kept her close by, because she couldn't have that girl spreading the truth around school.
Strangely enough, she actually grew to like this frank, plain girl with mouse brown hair and muddy brown eyes. And she became more like her. They spent more and more time together, and one day Veronica asked the question. If she wanted to change, did she have to give it up?
The answer was another question, actually. Give what up?
Veroinca answered: Being pretty, using it.
She learned that day that she didn't need to change completely. She could just change the way she used her face. Use it to help people, instead. Get them to make good decisions. Convince people to listen to reason. Maybe even, like, get into politics or something, and start organizing a cease-fire.
Neither of them realized just how far Veronica would take this advice to heart. She married into one of the biggest secret organizations in the world, falling in love with another person who could see through her beauty to the person inside, and who liked what he saw. And there she helped people. She used her charisma to convince people that they were doing things wrong, and that they should fix it.
So she's still pretty, and she still uses it. She only hopes her daughters will find something else to build their skills around. Being pretty is overrated.