Chapter Text
Part I
END OF JUNE 2007
Veronica slowly opened her eyes and found herself in an unfamiliar dark room. She squinted but couldn’t make out anything in the space. Trying to sit up proved to be impossible as she tugged on the ropes tethering her arms and legs to a solid sturdy surface.
If she had to guess, she was anchored down on some kind of table. Maple or walnut, a hard wood that could withstand rough wear and tear treatment.
She tried to twist her wrists, feeling along the rope for knots she could pick or stray nails to use as a makeshift knife. There was nothing of the sort. The rope was too tight and disappeared down into drilled holes in the table where she assumed led to the knots, out of reach.
There was no panicking yet. She just needed to find a way to get out and she would be fine.
Veronica called out into the dark room to see if anyone else was around, tied up or available to help her. No one answered, she was calling out into an empty void.
She closed her eyes to think. As soon as she did she heard a soft click above her and a soft yellow glow illuminated her eyelids. She opened her eyes and saw a single bulb lit above her. The light only made visible the table she was on; the rest of the room outside the circle of her light remained in the shadows.
Panic and fear began to creep into her bones. The atmosphere was different compared to five minutes earlier, she could feel it, there was a heaviness in the air. She was no longer alone.
“Veronica, where are the tapes, Veronica. Where are the tapes?! Where are the tapes?!”
A voice she never wanted to hear again in the flesh whispered then yelled out at her in the dark room. Her head thrashed side-to-side trying to locate the face that belonged to the sinister voice beyond the dark.
Aaron stepped forward out of the shadows and moved to stand right next to the table. His hands reached out and ran down her arms slowly in a seductive manner. He flashed her his award-winning smile as the anger from just moments before melted from his face replaced by a malicious smirk.
Veronica flinched at his touch and tried to squirm out of his reach but she couldn’t go anywhere, the ropes attached to each wrist held her in place. She was trapped by Aaron again only this time there was no freezer door between them to protect her.
He leaned over her to whisper in her ear. His breath was hot against the side of her face as his chest pressed against hers. “You’ve been a busy girl, Veronica. Lilly would have been proud to see the woman you’ve turned into, you have just as much spunk as she did.”
Veronica’s skin was crawling and she turned her head to the side away from Aaron, putting as much distance between them as she could in her current situation.
He ran a finger down the side of her face. “I should have sampled you when I had the chance. We could have had a lot of fun, you and I. I know I would have enjoyed it and taking one more thing away from my ungrateful son would have been the cherry on top.”
Veronica closed her eyes trying to escape Aaron, his words and touch made her stomach turn. She wanted to scream out and fight back but there was no one around, nowhere to escape. His hands were running down her body slowly until another voice entered the room. She didn’t pay any attention to the third person in the room because she was preoccupied with the relief of feeling Aaron’s hands leave her body.
“Hi, baby.”
Duncan walked out of the shadows and stood on the other side of the table across from Aaron. He bent over Veronica and pressed a kiss to her lips.
She turned her head away from Duncan trying to dislodge his lips. “Get off me!” Nausea built up in the pit of her stomach once more.
Duncan looked at her with a hurt expression from her verbal and physical rejection of his affection. “I love you, Veronica. I’ve always loved you. Even when I shouldn’t have, when I thought you were my sister, it didn’t matter you were special. That night at Shelly’s was one of the best nights of my life. I saw the love in your eyes when you walked into the party so confident in that beautiful white dress and again when you touched my cheek before we made love. I knew you and I were meant to be, we still are.”
Duncan smoothed down Veronica’s hair, fingers trailing down her neck, over her collarbone and breast, coming to a stop at her hand.
Veronica shuddered and tears ran down her cheeks. She was trying not to cry in front of them but she had had enough, she couldn’t hold it in any longer. “I don’t love you, Duncan. I’m not sure I ever did, I just loved the idea of having the fairytale dream, but I was wrong. I don’t want the fairytale, it’s not who I am anymore.”
Duncan grabbed her hand and held on softly. “Don’t say that, Veronica. I know you love me.”
She yanked her hand out of his. “I don’t love you and I never will. That night at Shelly’s was not loving, you ra −…”
She jumped when a third set of hands that were not her own settled on one of her legs down by her ankle.
“Dick still thinks I’m a virgin. You see, I know how to keep a secret.”
She looked through her blurry eyes and cried harder when she saw Beaver looking back at her.
His hands moved up her leg as he spoke. “Did you ever tell Duncan what we did together at Shelly’s after he left you? I guess not since he left town before even you knew what we did. If he knew he probably wouldn’t have taken you back senior year. He wanted pink sweater Veronica and he could pretend you were still her because you had only been touched by him. Little did he know you’d been with me too.”
Before she could respond to Beaver another set of hands landed on her other leg. She didn’t need to look at him to know who it was. He was the most recent of her violations.
“What am I gonna do with you?” Mercer made his way up her body. When he got to her head he leaned down to her ear. “Let’s fix that hair of yours.”
A loud buzz, like a pair of hair clippers sounded in her ear. The table started to spin, four pairs of hands passing over her body as she moved from rapist to rapist. “Stop! Don’t touch me! Please, stop! Let go of me, please!” Tears flooded down her face and her nausea from the spinning table and present company intensified. Veronica closed her eyes hoping it would help with the motion, if nothing else.
Suddenly the table stopped turning and she opened her eyes to an empty room. The air was thinner and she could breath more easily. She cried in relief, happy to be alone once again.
Veronica bolted upright in her bed, clothes soaked through with sweat, her heart pounded in her chest as tears rolled down her cheeks. She quickly climbed out of bed and ran to the hall bathroom where she emptied the contents of her stomach.
The nightmares had started up roughly a month ago around the one-year anniversary of Aaron Echolls’ death. Tinseltown Diaries had released a special memorial episode highlighting Aaron’s most noteworthy performances and his involvement in the Lilly Kane murder trial, which had been an outright lie. He was guilty and very few people in the public believed that fact.
The TV special brought up all the traumatic events of being locked in a burning abandoned freezer. All the emotions she never really dealt with after the fact, because she was too busy caring for her dad, finding closure for Lilly’s death and trying to keep Logan out of jail.
Slowly, over the next few weeks more of her torturers had started making guest appearances. It was as if her subconscious was trying to tell her she needed help. She had buried the feelings deep down for so long that after one traumatic memory crept up to the surface, they all did.
Tonight’s nightmare had been the worst of them so far. Never before had the dream featured all four of her violators together at the same time. This was also the first time the nightmares had made her physically sick to her stomach.
Still trembling Veronica rinsed her mouth out with mouthwash and splashed some cold water on her face. She carefully made her way back to her room hoping she didn’t wake up Wallace who was asleep on the couch.
The summer had started out poorly for both of them. After the fight in the cafeteria between Gory and Logan, she had decided to break up with Piz. It was in that moment Logan looked up at her with that proud smirk on his face, she knew she couldn’t hide behind Piz any longer, she loved Logan and his actions proved that he loved her too.
It had been a messy end to their relationship, a lot of yelling from Piz about being led around for months and not fully giving them a chance to thrive. He had chewed her out and then left for his New York radio internship. The anger and hurt in his voice didn’t bother her as much as his harsh words had. He would never know, but his words had cut her in her deepest fears and insecurities.
Veronica had dismissed her own internship at the FBI; not wanting to be the talk of the town at Quantico after her pseudo-sex tape was released. Instead a few days after the semester was over she ended up on Logan’s doorstep at the Grand seeking comfort.
He let her in and one thing led to another and they ended up naked and in bed together. Their mistake, again, had been not talking before getting physical and yet expecting a different outcome each time.
She woke up the next morning in his bed alone. A note left behind on the nightstand said he was going out of town on a surfing trip with Dick and would be back in the middle of July. He didn’t even leave a way for her to contact him and there was no emotion in the note. It was simple and direct, I’m leaving, I’ll be back, but in what state she didn’t know. He didn’t even wake her up to say goodbye and she knew he regretted what they had done the night before.
Heartbroken and humiliated she spent the next few weeks moping around. Wallace had felt bad for her, or the reason he thought she was moping around was because of the sex tape. She hadn’t told him about her one-night stand with Logan. He chose to spend the rest of the summer with her instead of going on the Invisible Children retreat.
Which is how Wallace ended up on her couch last night. They had gone to a carnival just outside the city limits of Neptune to eat their way through mass amounts of food trucks and listen to the live bands. Once they had gotten back Wallace just decided to spend the night, too exhausted to drive the few miles across town to his house.
Veronica looked at her alarm clock, now almost four in the morning, and tried to fall back asleep. Her stomach was still upset, but within twenty minutes she was able to fall back into a restless slumber.
When morning rolled around Veronica woke up feeling worse than the night before. She felt weak, fatigued and a little dizzy. She sat up, which ended up being a terrible mistake, threw back her covers and hastily made a dash to the bathroom.
After vomiting several times she was shaking and drained. Not wanting to move far she crawled over to the corner of the bathroom, away from the toilet and rested her cheek on the cool tile of the tub.
She didn’t remember having any more nightmares or dreams after the one that woke her up at three in the morning, so she was confused as to why she was still feeling nauseated from it.
Veronica felt like the room was spinning so she closed her eyes and clutched her stomach hoping to keep the nausea at bay. After a few minutes she had fallen asleep against the tub.
Sometime later the door to the bathroom flew open and banged against the wall startling Veronica awake.
She watched as Wallace ran in with a hand over his mouth and puked up everything in his stomach. She cringed at the sound and hoped she wouldn’t vomit on reflex.
When he was finished he scooted away until his back was resting against the wall. He finally noticed Veronica sitting next to him, eyes closed and pale. He nudged her leg to get her attention. “What are you doing in here?”
Without opening her eyes she responded, talking slow and quiet. “Same as you, Papa Bear.”
“Good, because this is all your fault.”
Her eyes snapped open with her eyebrows knotted together in confusion trying to figure out how his vomiting spells equated to being her fault. “What?”
Wallace held a hand over his stomach. “I told you not to order that seafood basket last night. Never trust fish cooked at a carnival and plus it was sitting out in the heat for who knows how long.”
“Excuse me? Okay, one, you may have told me not to order it but you still ate it, I didn’t force you to eat it so that’s on you, buddy. Two, you don’t know it was the fish. We could have gotten food poisoning from any one of the twenty things we ate yesterday. This is not my fault.”
He blew out a shaky breath. “I’m sorry. I know this isn’t your fault. I feel terrible and I’m taking it out on you.”
Veronica gave him a slight smile. “It’s okay. I’m sorry, too. I dragged us to that carnival, if I hadn’t then…”
“V, really, none of this is your fault. I shouldn’t have said it was.” He placed a hand on her foot, the only part of her he could reach without getting up. “Hey, we had fun though, didn’t we, before all this?”
“Yeah, we did.”
“How long have you been sitting in here?”
“Maybe an hour before you burst in, I don’t know for sure, I fell asleep. This is round two for me though, I ran in here in the middle of the night too.”
Wallace slowly stood up using the wall for support and held out a hand to Veronica. “Come on, Supafly, let’s go lay down, my butt is starting to go numb on this floor.”
She grabbed his hand and stood up, swaying a little before finding her balance. They made their way out to the living room and sat down on the couch, each of them on an end with their feet mixing in the middle sharing a blanket.
Veronica and Wallace were watching a movie when Keith and Backup walked through the apartment door from an all night stakeout.
Keith released Backup from his leash and held up a white paper grocery store bag with greasy food stains, shaking it around to intensify the aroma. “Hey, kids, I bought donuts for breakfast.”
When the sugary fried smell of the donuts wafted over to the couch both teens scrambled to their feet, hands over mouths and darted in opposite directions. Wallace took off toward the hall bathroom and Veronica ran to her dad’s bathroom, where they both emptied their stomachs once more.
Veronica was bent over the toilet when she felt her dad gather up her long hair and hold it to the side out of the way, rubbing-soothing circles on her back as everything left her body.
She flushed the toilet and continued to sit on the bathroom floor contemplating if this was a good place to just hang out for the rest of the day.
Keith handed her a small glass of water and sat on the edge of the tub watching as her shaky hands brought the glass up to her lips and then moved it away without taking a sip. “You need to drink something or you’re going to be dehydrated. A few small sips every few minutes.”
She set the glass down on the tile floor and brought her knees up to her chest, laying her head down on top. Her voice was hoarse from all the vomiting. “I can’t. Everything just comes back up and I’m tired of getting sick, it hurts.”
“I know, which is why you need to drink a little something in intervals or you are just going to keep throwing up.” He brushed a few sweaty strands of hair away from her face. “I know this isn’t the best time for an interrogation, but I need to ask you something and I would like an honest answer from you. Can you do that?”
Veronica nodded her head and looked up at Keith with a worn out expression.
“I know you and Wallace drink when you go out, I’m not naïve, and being a former officer of the law I choose to look past your underage drinking, but I saw your car out in the parking lot when I got home. Please tell me you did not drive home while intoxicated last night, because I know I drilled that lecture into your head at a very young age, even before the sex and condoms talk.”
“Dad, I promise we did not drink last night. This is not a post alcohol binge. We went to a carnival and ate our weight ten times over sampling all the food stands. I’m pretty sure we have food poisoning.”
Keith chuckled. “That’s my girl.” He stopped laughing when he saw her un-amused expression. “Do you want to sit in here or do you feel up to moving somewhere more comfortable?”
“It would be easier to just stay here all day. I wouldn’t have to move and the cold tile would feel great on my face, but my body is aching from sitting here.” She gave him a small smile. “Maybe I’ll come out of this with a nice six pack from the intense work out my abs are getting expelling everything in my system.”
“Here.” He lifted the glass of water in her hands back up to her mouth. “We can go back in the living room after you drink about a fourth of the water in that glass.”
She gave her dad a grimace and it reminded him of when she was five years old and didn’t want to eat the vegetables on her plate. She huffed out a breath and slowly took sips of the water until Keith was satisfied with her fluid intake.
Veronica gingerly made her way back into the living room with Keith trailing behind her. She sat down on the couch and slowly turned to lie down on her side bringing a blanket up to her chin.
Keith set down the glass of water she didn’t finish from earlier with a straw on the coffee table and headed toward the kitchen.
Wallace was sitting at the counter nibbling on a piece of plain toast. “How you doing, Supafly?”
“Not good. You?”
“I’m doing a little better.”
“Way to rub it in.”
Wallace took another bite of his toast and took a sip of water from the glass Keith set down in front of him. “You should have some toast. It’s bland and doing a good job at staying down so far.”
Veronica scrunched up her nose and covered it with the blanket. “I’ll pass. Just thinking about food right now is making my stomach turn.”
“You do seem to have it worse, but you also ate twice as much as I did.”
“Believe me, I learned my lesson. Next time we will just stick to ice cream at Amy’s. Skip the carnival all together.”
After Wallace finished his toast he moved into the small living room and sat in the chair next to the couch. He turned on the TV and watched Sports Center while Veronica drifted off to sleep.
A little over an hour later Wallace was beginning to feel a lot better so he gathered his things and had Keith drive him home, promising to come by tomorrow to pick up his car. They left a note on the coffee table for Veronica, telling her where they had disappeared to, in case she woke up while they were gone.
Roughly ten minutes after Keith and Wallace left Veronica woke up and dashed off to the bathroom again. Once she was finished emptying her stomach for hopefully the last time she stripped off her clothing and turned on the water to the shower and sat in the tub letting the lukewarm water run over her.
The steam from the water seemed to help. Plus, the feeling of being clean again after a full day and night of vomiting helped a great deal. She was starting to feel somewhat normal once more.
After her shower she took Wallace’s advice and made some toast. She was weak and dehydrated and knew she needed the nutrients.
Keith came back home from dropping Wallace off to find Veronica eating and drinking again. “Feeling better, Kiddo?” He bent over and kissed the side of her head.
“Much better. I think I just need a good nights sleep and I’ll be good to go again.” She stood up and rinsed off her plate before giving Keith a hug. “I’m going to bed. Goodnight, Dad.”
“Goodnight, Honey.”
Veronica closed her bedroom door and pulled her phone from the top of her dresser and hit two on her speed dial before lifting it up to her ear.
She listened and counted five unanswered rings before the call switched over to voicemail.
“You’ve reached Logan with today’s inspirational message. “It is important that we forgive ourselves for making mistakes. We need to learn from our errors and move on. –Steve Maraboli.” Leave a message.”
Veronica moved her lips to the words saying them along with Logan before she hung up the phone and placed it back on her dresser. She knew he wasn’t going to answer. She had been calling his phone for the past four weeks, ever since she woke up alone in his bed, listening to the same message. He hadn’t taken his phone with him when he left on his surf trip; she saw it sitting on the bedside table when she left the suite that morning.
She ended up calling him once or twice a week just to hear his voice before she went to bed. She ached to talk to him, but she would just have to wait another two weeks before he came home.
Veronica climbed into bed, turned off her bedside lamp and drifted off into a restless sleep, which had become her norm since the beginning of summer, ever since Logan left.