sixthiterationlogs | same as it ever was; [OTA]

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same as it ever was; [OTA]

WHO: Veronica Sawyer
WHERE: Front porch of bungalow #22
WHEN: BACKDATED to September 19
OPEN TO: OTA
WARNINGS: n/a
STATUS: Closed to new threads

Dear Diary,

I am 18 years old and I am a horrible person.

The words just came out, and now everybody knows: I'm a murderer. I'd like to give you some line about it being a big relief, that my inner turmoil has finally been soothed, but I just wish I'd kept my fucking mouth shut. I'm stuck in this place with an apparent rogue's gallery of broken people, but it still bothers me that they look at me differently now. Like an asshole, I'd spun some prom queen fantasy that only Cougar knew wasn't true, and in true masochistic fashion, I've blown it up in my own face.

But that isn't even the worst of it.

Diary, you exist because today I got a box with my name on the top, and inside were three beautiful, fat packs of paper. So much paper. If I'm careful, if I force myself to write small, it'll last me a long time. There's enough to share, more than enough to donate some to the cause of record-keeping. But I don't want to share.

I told you, I'm a total fuck.

Is this simple greed or sabotage? It's like I don't even know myself anymore, Diary. But I do know this: If I woke up tomorrow back in Sherwood, Ohio, I'd really miss some of the people here.

Oh, and I missed my 18th birthday. I don't even know why I care.

Frustrated, Veronica clamps her fingers hard around her pencil with a low huff and resists the urge to throw everything across the yard. She may be a greedy shit, but the paper is too precious, and too much of her time was spent in sewing it into a little journal to treat it like garbage.

So many things are frustrating her anymore, it's difficult to pinpoint a single one as being the cause for how she feels. The water situation definitely doesn't help, Heather at Veronica's shoulder when she looks at her wilted and greasy reflection every morning, congratulations, I didn't know it was possible to fall this far. Vanity rearing its pointless, ugly head.

Settling the little book and pencil in her lap, Veronica leans back against the steps of the house she shares with Cougar and Jake. What would be really incredible right about now would be a drink. It's kind of, sort of her birthday, right? You'd think the benevolent gods of this place could provide some libations.

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A soft burst of laughter pushes from Veronica's throat, and she casts Frank an incredulous look. "Me? You have seen me, right?" she says, and then shakes her head with a smile. "No. Not that I don't appreciate that some part of your brain apparently thought I might be capable of considering it."

She looks away, back to the dusty road ahead of them, and her good humor slips a little. "I've used a gun before, but I don't think I could again."

Is that how it happened? Anyone else, he would have just slid the proverbial knife in there and asked. He doesn't mince words. That's not who he is. But even if his eyes are on her now, the words don't come.

(Who he is is the guy who kills people that kill people, and what happens next if she's one?)

"A handgun?" he asks instead, thinking it must be - and if she only fired it once, then it couldn't have been anything planned, right? Or is he still just fooling himself?

"Why not?"

There's this logical part of Veronica that is very clear on what is and isn't her fault. Yes, she'd been naive with J.D., perhaps willfully so. But she hadn't truly wanted to kill anyone, not even Heather -- Fuck, she'd been a stupid kid! Stupid kids say and think stupid things they don't mean! She knows objectively, when she lets herself step back from it all, that she'd made clear from the beginning that pranks are supposed to be harmless.

But did she? Did she really?

There's this guilt-shaped stone that sits way down in her stomach all of the time, telling her that she should have done more. She sees Ram's little sister's face in her mind and knows that saving the school that day wasn't nearly enough, not by a long shot. Why didn't she just do more?

"Shit," she says, and pushes out a tremulous sigh. "Look, I can't just be walking down the street and tell you this story, Frank," she says, and looks back to him as she draws to a stop. "You know I killed a person, and it sucked, it still sucks, everyday it sucks. I don't want it to be just one more thing I tell you. And if I'm going to do that, I probably should sit down."

Yeah, he knows. Frank's mouth flattens in kind of a grimace. There are probably plenty of people who'd tell her she doesn't have to talk about anything she doesn't want to, but even as gentle as he's inclined to be with Veronica, that's not going to fly now.

"Then I guess we'd better find a place to sit." Because they're talking about it, apparently.

"Come on." He nods toward the storehouse, since they're just about there anyway. Inside should at least offer a little privacy. (For her, or for him?) "You wanna clear the air here, I'm listening."

It's funny, because once they're in there with the privacy of four walls, she doesn't want to sit at all, her body jangling with guilt and an anxiety she can't quite put a label on. She walks halfway to the other end of the big room and then paces back, picking at her fingernails.

"I had this boyfriend," she begins, because it really all comes back to that, doesn't it? She'd had a boyfriend and she'd become an idiot. "He was new at school, and cool and mysterious and— That doesn't matter. He was a sociopath. My best friend was kind of an asshole, she was just this terror, most popular girl in school, you know the kind I mean?" She flicks a glance up to him. "Anyway, she'd threatened me. I wanted to get her back, god it was so stupid. I just wanted her to barf on the carpet." She stops in the middle of the room and breathes out a heavy sigh. "I thought we were giving her milk and orange juice, but J.D.— He said it was an accident, that the cups got mixed up, but now I don't think it was. It was drain cleaner."

Her throat's gone dry. What if she had been the one to hand Heather the cup that day? Would she have noticed?

"There were these jocks, and J.D. wanted to teach them a lesson. Play a prank and scare them, and god I was such an idiot! He told me he had these bullets, that they were from Germany and only broke the skin. Like that's even a thing!" she says with a frustrated flip of her hands. "But I trusted him and he told me to shoot and I did. His name was Kurt and I shot him and it was a real bullet and he died."

She wipes hastily at the tears trying to well in her eyes. "He had this thing, J.D. This manifesto, almost. Where if someone was mean to other people, if someone was a bully, they deserved to die. And I didn't know. Not until it was too late."

Edited 2016-10-31 07:55 (UTC)

While she's pacing the room, he's lingering near the door, weight poised on the balls of his feet, still like he's held up by a string, just watching her. The way she can't keep still, the way guilt is rolling off her in waves. But feeling bad after the fact doesn't change what happened.

Drain cleaner. German bullets. She keeps saying how stupid she was, and he keeps thinking if there's anything Veronica isn't, it's stupid. A hand rakes back across his scalp, balling into a fist at the end of its arc and releasing again. She's not stupid, but she trusted some psycho piece of shit he'd really like to get his hands on right now, and she did this stupid thing, and people died.

"That's two," he says softly, because the number seems less important than everything else, but in his book responsibility doesn't end at who handed over which cup. Just standing there letting somebody get killed is almost the same as killing them.

But only almost.

(This guy's manifesto-- well, he'll think about that in a minute.)

"Would you have pulled the trigger if you'd known it was gonna hurt him?" He asks finally, not moving from in front of the exit. His chest feels like lead. "Would you've handed your friend that cup of Drano?"

"What?" Veronica blurts, her head snapping up, attention snagged abruptly from her memories. "No! I— No!" It's such an absurd concept that her mouth is having difficulty forming actual sentences, like it's so offended on her behalf that it decided to shut down.

Suddenly anguished, she shakes her head and then stares back at him. "I can't believe..." She huffs out a sharp sigh, features pulled tightly into an expression that toes the line between guilty and betrayed. "You think I could do that?"

Relief breaks across his features all at once, his head dropping back a moment before regret dips his chin again almost sheepishly. That's probably answer enough. Yeah, for a moment he was afraid she could. He didn't ask her that to hurt her, and his brows twist to see that he has - but he's not sorry enough to take it back, either. He takes a step out of the doorway, though, toward the wall.

"I think people are capable of shit I wouldn't believe." People he trusted, people he looked up to half his life did things he couldn't have imagined, and how can he trust his own instincts after that?

"And I'm not exactly impartial, when it comes to you," he adds, with a certain quieter fragility. He cares. Enough it clouds his judgement. "So yeah, I gotta ask the question, alright, but I trust you at your word."

"Oh," Veronica softly says, blinking, her heart seeming to seize with the weight of what he's said. She'd never profess to truly know Frank, but she thinks there are fundamental parts of him she instinctively understands, and it's no small thing -- Not just that he feels that way, but that he's admitted it.

It's difficult, resisting the urge to cross to him and just put a hand on his arm or shoulder, to give him a hug.

"What are people capable of, Frank?" she quietly asks, watching him steadily. It's odd; she's thought of him so much since that day he pulled her from the fountain, but she's never really stopped to think about what skeletons might be lingering in his closet. Maybe she really does have a blind spot for these things. "Why do you have to ask the question?"

Frank goes still, caught under her quiet scrutiny. What are people capable of? There are things he could tell her, things he still sees every time he shuts his eyes, but he doubts any of that is going to matter to her when she understands what he is, why he can't just let her be.

"You asked me what I did before this," he starts instead, careful. She asked, and he didn't lie, but he didn't tell her the whole truth, either. It's time to fix that. Even if she doesn't understand, even if she never wants to speak to him again afterward -- even if that thought makes his chest clench in ways it hasn't for months -- after all she's just told him, she deserves the whole truth.

"I kill people." There. No sugar-coating. He doesn't even try to use past tense. "Not for the Marines anymore," and he's talking with his hands a little now, gesturing and justifying, "And not for being bullies or whatever bullshit your ex was on about. I mean murderers and rapists and people who fuck around with little kids. The kind of pieces of shit who aren't ever gonna stop. I make sure they don't hurt anybody ever again."

Time seems to slow in the wake of his admission, Veronica stilled with an uncertain hand resting against her chest, fingers curled into the neck of her shirt. It doesn't hit her the way it rightly should, and that's probably the most terrifying part -- That she isn't simply nauseated, although there's some of that, too.

Physically, she's stuck, like her feet have been fixed to the floor, her stomach sloshing sickly with confusion.

What the fuck is wrong with her? Why does this keep happening?

"How do you know?" she finally manages, barely above a whisper, and swallows hard. "How do you choose?"

"It ain't rocket science," comes out harsher than he means it, because people always ask him that and then don't like his answer, and it's a horrible sort of whiplash to swing from only just being sure of her again to being equally sure he'll lose her. Any second now.

(And isn't that better for her anyway, to keep away from someone like him?)

And yet. His breathing comes heavier, his weight shifting from foot to foot again, and he adds, "I just know, alright. I'm a Recon Marine, I do recon. People talk. Half the shit bricks in Hell's Kitchen have got rap sheets a mile long."

No, it isn't rocket science, but this isn't statistics and cold figures they're talking about here, either. This is human life. The difference between breath and blood and having a future and then just... not. There's no way to quantify that, no matter how much research you do.

Hot tears fill Veronica's eyes, and she quickly blinks them back. She wants to sob, wants to fall right down to her knees on the hard wooden floor, but she's been here before and she's not going to do that, she's not going to weep even if it feels like she's been punched in the gut.

All this time, she'd known he had his secrets just like she had hers, but she didn't imagine he was this broken.

"And me?" she asks, a rasp of a sound, but defiant beneath. "If I'd answered differently? Were you going to kill me, Frank?"

"I don't—" But that's not true; he knows. He rocks on his feet, brows pitched, looking at her now like a plea. Don't ask him that. Don't make him say it out loud and make it real, make it clear that he'd been blocking the door for a reason. That he could hurt someone who's not even twice his daughter's age, someone who's come to mean so much to him.

But she is asking, and she deserves an answer. His eyes drop.

"If I thought you'd do it again," he admits, quiet again. "Yeah."

Would it have been better not to ask? As Veronica sways in place, her chin trembling, she doesn't know if it even matters. She'd known what the answer was going to be before he'd even opened his mouth.

All at once her feet turn her loose and she surges forward, more anguished than angry, and pushes at his chest hard, once and then again, breath shuddering through grit teeth. She is not going to cry, she is not.

"Fuck you, Frank!" she yells, and pushes him again, her hands small and ineffectual. "Fuck you! You don't get to decide! You don't get to play god and act like you're doing the world a god damned favor!"

"Veronica--" he starts, his voice as lame and ineffectual as her fists. His own hands raise, not to stop her, but out of some futile instinct to hold her and make it better -- and he can't, and he knows that. His hands hover near her shoulders instead, not touching her. Just letting her blows land.

"I can't just let it happen again -- that's still a decision, Vee, that's still on me, and I won't." The words come out rough and hollow, but with depressing certainty. "Not again, not ever."

"I'm not doing anything!" Veronica yells back at him. "You know nothing about it! You don't know about how I wake up every, single night trying not to scream because of what he made me do! And you're just like him! You're EXACTLY like him!"

Her voice hitches hard, and it's too late, the tears have spilled down her cheeks, wiped away with angry little movements as she turns away.

"Why?" she cries without looking back to him, hands bunched into little fists against her chest. She's not sure exactly what she's asking or even who she's asking it to, Frank or god. They're both assholes, in her estimation.

Frank's brows pitch, and he reaches after her, but his hand doesn't connect, dropping instead to his side, limp. He wants to tell her that's why he asked, why he wouldn't hurt her now, because he believes her, but does that even matter? Isn't he just as bad as her piece of shit ex, letting her think he was somebody she could trust for this long? Who is he trying to fool?

"Guess this is just me now," he answers under his breath, defeated. A killer, and the asshole who's making her cry now, too. He used to wonder if that would change, but he should have known better than to try.

"You're not in any danger now, not from me." Even if she doesn't believe anything else he's saying, he hopes she believes that. "But you don't need this shit."

Him, he means. The things he does, all the violence he brings wherever he goes. He shakes his head and turns to leave.

She can hear him turn, hear his steps as he moves away, and suddenly Veronica is filled with so much incredulous anger that her body pushes her into action without thought or consent. There's a sack -- A repurposed pillowcase actually -- filled with some kind of tuber near to hand, and she grabs one of the roots and pelts it hard at his back.

"Don't you dare!" she yells, wants to grab another root and stops herself. "You do not get to just lay that at my feet and walk away, you coward. You do not get to be a martyr."

The tuber twacks against the back of his shirt, and that stops him in his tracks. His head drops back to stare up at the sky. Goddammit, Vee.

"What do you want from me, you want me to stay here and be your friend right now?" he answers as he turns back to her. His tone is caustic in a way that makes his chest feel like it's being carved up in real time to do, but here he is doing it anyway. If she doesn't hate him enough to cut him off already...

"So, what, maybe next week you can find out how I killed sixty, maybe seventy people before I got here? That every one of 'em was--" his voice falters, but only just-- "Was somebody's father or brother or son, and most days that fact doesn't make me feel a goddamn thing? That I'm supposed to be serving about thirty life sentences right now for the things I did to those shitbags, and the only reason I'm walking free around here is Wilson doesn't think guarding a jail cell is worth anybody's time?"

"I'm not a fucking martyr, Veronica, I'm--" What? Not a bad guy, he used to be able to say that and mean it. Now the truth sticks rough in his throat, but he pushes that out too. "I'm just a bigger monster than the rest of them. Don't tell me you need that shit in your life for another minute."

"Oh shut up," Veronica bites out. This anger feels good, liberating -- It's a less vulnerable emotion than her earlier confusion and heartache, and she takes a hard hold of it to fortify herself. "That's a bullshit excuse, Frank."

She jabs a faintly shaking finger his way. "Monsters don't help other people, monsters don't voluntarily do selfless things. You're right, I don't need it, I don't need your bullshit, Frank, but you made a choice. You made a choice, and then another choice and then another, and it got us here, and so you better step the fuck up because now I'm invested. So if you want to slink off and feel sorry for yourself, that's too damn bad. You think you're a monster? Fine. Be better. You don't get off the hook that easy."

Her accusations hit him like a slap of cold wind to the face. Sure, he'd been trying to piss her off, but he wasn't expecting her to see right through his bullshit and drag his sorry carcass out into the light, and shit, part of him is goddamn impressed with her for doing it. She's not wrong, either — he made his choices, and they're here now.

Be better, she says, and it's every fight he and Maria ever had all over again, him building up his armor and her tearing it down with ruthless precision. It's the small, stubborn look Lisa used to give him when he told her, Not tonight. It's Karen Page standing out in the cold screaming, You do this and I am done, and he feels it, and he wavers. Maybe the way his heart is crumpling now is no more than an echo of the kind of hurt Maria used to inflict on him, but he feels it, and even that much makes his bones ache for the memory of the rest. Of all things he's lost, this is the one that keeps coming back to taunt him, like he could ever feel that much again for anybody anyway (couldn't he? doesn't he right now?) — like he deserves anything more from life than following his family and their killers into an early grave.

"I don't want to be better, Veronica," he manages, shaking his head. All the fight's draining from his tone; he just sounds tired, hollow and heavy with it. "That's not where this road ends."

But.

He made his choices, and she can make hers.

"You want me to stay, knowing that, I'll stay."

"If I didn't want you to stay, I wouldn't have thrown a fucking root vegetable at your head," Veronica bites out, finding it difficult to keep shouting when he looks so defeated, like a dog she's kicked into submission.

He says he doesn't want to be better, but she's looking at him, and she can't believe that's true. All this time, he could have just walked away, he could have left her here with her confusion and anger and wrapped himself in whatever self-righteous bullshit he uses to keep himself warm at night. But he didn't.

She's seen the face of someone who doesn't want to be better, and this isn't it.

"You have to do better, Frank," she finally says. Her throat feels sore from yelling. "Right now, here. In this insane place. For me. Because I—" Her voice hitches, her face crumpling before she can catch herself and pull it back into something less anguished. "I need you. Get it?"

Jesus, Vee. Her composure breaks, and Frank's own brows pitch in answer, fists twisting at his sides, open and closed, fighting not to just reach for her now. That's not his place, not when he's the one hurting her, not when he doesn't know if he can make it better.

(She needs him to.)

His head drops in a nod instead, shamed. Yeah, he gets it.

What she's asking, though -- it's not forever. It's not giving up. Really, she's not asking him to stop at all; she's just asking him to put whatever he is on hold, for however many more weeks or months they're stuck in this rat trap together, and try being what she needs. If he could keep her from needing him at all, he would, but they're past that now and he knows it, can see it in her face as much as he feels it in his own bones. His eyes stay low and distant, considering. Can he be better?

"There's certain people--" he starts, and falters again, struggling to put this into words at all, let alone make it not sound like a cop-out. It isn't, for him. It's a compromise, a new set of rules he's offering, because even if he wants to make a change, rules are the only way the world makes sense anymore. "Folks come through that fountain that ought to be dead and buried already. And there's a couple of 'em, if they show up here, I-- I need 'em gone. I owe that, to people who needed me as much as you."

But that's it. No one else. His eyes lift to her, for permission.

Her eyebrows pinch together, wondering, worrying about what's pushed him to this place, to having to draw that hard line in the sand even now, but she doesn't ask. Not today, not when she already feels like she's been wrung out; she isn't sure she could bear to hear it. Maybe that makes her a kind of coward, too.

Her chin dips just a fraction, grudging assent given, and she immediately hates herself for thinking something as blindly naive as maybe it'll never happen; maybe those people will stay far, far away. But then again, that's what she is, isn't it? Blindly naive, for thinking he will be different, for thinking she can help.

"Please don't let me down," is all she can really say; anything else feels paltry, superfluous. This is really the heart of it, the reason why she's pushing back and he's letting her. She wonders, idly, if the next time he feels compelled to kill someone, if he'll think of her and pause at all, or if he'll just carry the guilt like a well-worn stone.

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