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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"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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