Title: "how to save a life"
Author: monimala
Fandom: Veronica Mars
Rating/Classification: NAC, Veronica, Lamb, filler fic/AU.
Disclaimer: Not my characters, despite my efforts to steal them.
Summary: 1090 words. Takes off and goes AWOL from S3's "Of Vice and Men."
She hears snatches of conversation, fractions of words.
"Keith, I…"
"It's alright…"
"…I saw her lying there and…"
"…she's safe now…"
'Safe' jumps out at her. She reaches for it, batting away the hand that's stroking her head, pushing aside her hair and -- "Ow…"
"Shh," says the voice that's not Dad's.
"L-logan?" she wonders.
And then the fingers against her skin are gone, with restless sleep taking their place.
**
For days afterwards, he can't shake it. Can't shake her. Crumpled on concrete a few feet from her car, her keys in a heap just out of reach.
If he'd been a few seconds earlier, or a few seconds later, who knows what would've happened? He'd been whistling, that post-sex spring in his step, buttoning cuffs and checking zippers and feeling really goddamn lucky that Madison didn't hold a grudge for all those summer months where he didn't call.
Then he'd heard the car alarm.
His happy sex skip had turned into a sprint.
A few seconds earlier and he could've caught a rapist.
A few seconds later and he could've…would've…
"Guess who's on line 1?" Sacks, with his stellar timing, interrupts.
Of course, he doesn't say *her* name.
Lamb doesn't expect him to.
**
There were fifteen missed calls and three voicemails from Logan when she woke up the next morning.
"Did he…? Was it him?" she'd asked Dad, squinting at the daylight and blearily grabbing for the orange juice he was trying to hand her.
"No, but I called him and let him know you were safe."
"Why can't I remember?"
Dad had just shrugged, giving her about nine minutes to recuperate before he started lecturing.
Days after the fact, Veronica can remember bitching to the girl at the food court about the hair in her pasta. She can remember stumbling to the parking garage…the figure in the hoodie…activating her alarm …but she can't, for the life of her, remember anything else.
That's the worst part. After the lecture. After Logan staring at her like having a phantom rescuer is somehow her biggest sin.
"I'm sorry," she tells him, tartly. "Next time I get attacked, how about I speed dial you so you can play hero?"
"I don't want there to *be* a next time, Veronica. I want you to give this up. I want you to stop investigating these rapes and putting yourself in danger."
"Excuse me?!"
She thinks of the hand in her hair, soothing the raw shaved spot that she's covered up with a comb-over and some clips, and she wonders how she could have ever mistaken that touch for his.
**
He thinks about taking credit. About calling her and saying, "It was me. *I* found you that night. *I* saved you." Especially when she and Keith pull off that coup with Selma Hearst Rose and make him look like an idiot.
Not that he doesn't look like an idiot in general.
But he doesn't make the call. He doesn't spit it out at her when she sashays into his office like she knows everything. Because he remembers how she looked curled up in the passenger seat of his car, pale and heavy like a corpse. He remembers carrying her up the steps, banging on Keith's door with his elbow as her head lolled back against his shoulder.
And he can't forget how she said one word. "Logan."
As long as he's got this, he knows something that she doesn't.
He knows he saved her life.
And he knows that makes her his responsibility.
**
She remembers on a Thursday around 2 p.m.
It's his cologne. Cheap, sharp, like something off the discount shelf at CVS. A designer imposter. She catches a whiff of it as she leans over his desk, staring him dead in the eye and calling him a "useless sycophant," for not agreeing to send at least a few undercover guys to the big Pi Sig blow-out coming up this weekend.
"Do you need me to define 'sycophant'--" She actually stops right in the middle of the jibe and falls back in her seat.
"Veronica?"
He said her name exactly that way when he crouched over her.
And when he carried her home.
"Lamb?" She's dizzy all over again, nauseous too. "You?"
"Last time I checked I was still me." He helpfully taps his nameplate. "Although, apparently I also answer to 'useless sycophant,' 'incompetent moron,' and on a good day, 'Sheriff Sexy Pants.'"
"Polyester is not sexy," she murmurs, numbly, unable to quit staring at the long fingers still draped over the perfect white letters.
'She on Lam,' the nameplate says now.
All she can do is laugh…and get the Hell out of there before she starts crying.
**
He's not exactly sure when things change between them. It's like a weather pattern thing. A subtle shift in the air.
The day they catch the Hearst rapist, she actually looks at him like he's a human being, not something that crawled out of the sewer.
Her hair has almost grown back.
No one can see the razor scars.
But he knows they're there.
They're always going to be there.
**
She's stringing twinkle lights all over the living room the day she finally asks, "Dad, why didn't you tell me Lamb brought me home that night?"
"Would you have believed me, Honey?"
No one is more surprised than she is when she blurts out, "Yes."
**
It takes him almost ten years to ask her out on an actual date.
He sees her fairly often, since she's a federal marshal and Balboa County is her favorite stomping ground. They rub elbows, trade notes on cases and a regular volley of insults like "idiotic asshole," and "ballbreaking bitch."
He's been divorced once and he knows she fell out with Logan Echolls at least that many times after she left Hearst. And maybe it's ten years too late and a heck of a lot more dollars short, but he sucks it up and asks her out and hopes she doesn't notice that he has way less hair than he used to. He combs it over but doesn't bother with clips.
They have some fancy French wine that he can't even pronounce and she puts it on the government's tab. "Perks," she chuckles.
Later, he walks her to her hotel room door. She looks up at him and every single cell in his body is screaming, "kiss her!" so he does.
All she says is, "Lamb." And then she sighs against his mouth and whispers, "Thank you."
--end--
November 26, 2006.