A Barely Breathing Story: Epilogue: Veronica

[jesterladyfic]

Epilogue: Veronica

Veronica’s sick to death of taking tests. She feels like the entire last year has been one big test and she doesn’t even know if she passed and now she’s stuck in a classroom taking one pointless exam after another.

Maybe they’re not pointless but she feels that way anyway.

These tests she knows she'll pass at least.

When she gets back to the dorm room Mac’s still there. Her dad and Wallace had left the night before, but Mac is sleeping in Tara’s old bed for a few more weeks, her exams already over by the time Veronica had called her.

“Everything okay?” Mac asks.

“Ask me again in another few weeks.” She pauses and flops down on her bed. “Do you really like it? The magic? Being a technopage?”

“Duh or I wouldn’t do it,” Mac says, tossing a pillow at her. “What does that even mean?”

“I just…all this magic. It’s everywhere here. How can so much of the world be ignorant of it? And how did I live a perfectly normal espionage life before it?”

Mac laughs at her.

“Espionage?”

“It’s a good, if not completely accurate, word,” Veronica protests. “I just mean that I’ve put everything in my old life on hold this year. Simply for this magic stuff and the people involved in it. And it could have cost-"

“Logan’s fine,” Mac says softly. “Bullets are practically standard issue in your line of work and he’s been on the receiving end before.”

“But he kept warning me and I was just too busy…too sure of myself…too worried about his motives.”

“Gonna happen no matter how vanilla your life is,” Mac tells her.

Veronica nods.

“I know. It was just a bit…startling.”

“There’s an understatement.”

Veronica laughs this time.

“Any chance you want to transfer to Sunnydale next year?”

“None,” Mac says calmly. “Who knows what life will do. But I’m always on the other end of a spell-enhanced Internet connection.”

“I’ll hold you to that,” Veronica says.

The next time she goes to the hospital it’s the day before Logan’s release. Tara’s gonna be there for a few more days and then she’s moving back into Buffy’s to get back on her feet again before catching up on her exams that she missed. Veronica’s not really sure of where to after that, but she’s not worried. Tara will do just fine.

Logan’s apparently planning on bribing most of his professors and she’s assured him that is not the way to go about it.

She runs into Spike outside Logan’s door.

“Going in?” she gestures.

“Naw, Scottie’s got a visitor,” Spike says.

Veronica looks inside and sees Buffy sitting there, chatting away.

“She seems…alive.”

“Think she might be.”

“What does that mean for you?”

“Same thing it always means.”

“You’re so ridiculous, you know that?” she tells him, exasperated.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Means you’re a male and a vampire and someone I know who won’t be snacking on humans anytime soon.”

“You get me that research? You can have more time…”

“No, I got it done. I have a folder in my room. Everything you could ever want to know about the Initiative and their scientists and that little chip in your head. Should give you a direction.”

“Private Eye, you are the best in the biz.”

“I know,” she says, smiling.

They don’t exactly hug, but it’s pretty much like a hug and it means the same thing.

When Buffy comes back out Veronica slips inside. She can hear Buffy asking Spike to come over to dinner that night and she smiles to herself.

“I’m about ready to attempt the Great Escape,” Logan tells her, looking very antsy indeed.

“One more night, little man,” she says, climbing up on the bed and sitting cross-legged at the end.

“That’s too far away,” he says, pouting.

“I’ll come closer. Soon.”

“Tease.”

“Jerk.”

“Has it really come down to this, Mars?”

“Probably always will with us. But that’s okay, Echolls, cause one day you won’t be able to call me Mars anymore and I’ll have the upper hand.”

His eyes squint at her as he processes her words.

“You mean…”

“Not now, not tomorrow, but it’s gonna happen. I want my share of that money you keep flinging at other girls.”

“Always knew you were a gold digger deep down,” he says, smiling, and there’s no trace of malice or insecurity in his face.

“That’s me,” she says with a straight face. “I wait outside all the 09er men’s houses, just hoping one of them will make me another Kendall.”

“Don’t knock it,” Logan says. “The woman does seriously all right for herself.”

“With stepsons five years younger than her?”

“The best kind of stepmom,” Logan says, eyes misting a little.

“Hey,” she says, snapping her fingers in front of his face. “That acceptance of the future is gonna go right out the window if you keep that up.”

“Oh, you don’t get out that easy,” he says, holding out his arms. “Take pity and crawl on down here? I can’t move.”

She shakes her head, but she scoots forward and lays her head on the uninjured side of his chest.

“You’re insatiable.”

“That’s my little bobcat. Ferocious to the last.”

"I am…my father's daughter, you remember," she says, wondering if he'll catch her drift.

She shouldn't have worried.

"Never doubted it for a second," he says. "No worries here, Mars, I wouldn't want my name either."

"But I do want you. You scared me to death,” she says, whispering into his chest.

“I scared me almost to death,” he says, kissing her hair. “I think maybe magic might be cooler than I thought though.”

“Cause it saved your life?”

“In some ways. Mostly because it’s a part of us now. I don’t think we can do without it. We’re hooked on Sunnydale.”

“Oh please.”

“Would you rather be hooked on phonics cause I can have it down here in fifteen minutes.”

She would hit him if he weren’t injured.

“I love you,” she tells him. “And no matter where I go or what I do or what ends up happening to us, normal or supernatural, I make you my number one priority and that doesn’t scare me anymore.”

She looks up at him and he’s not smiling, but he’s got that misty look in his eyes and she makes a mental note to tease him about it in twenty years, because, hell yeah they’ll still be together then.

He angles his head down and kisses her and she relaxes into the familiarity and the comfort. It’s not that heated and she doesn’t think it needs to be. It’s just like it should be, the duality of love and lives intertwined, choices made and roads taken and she listens to his heartbeat steadily thumping, beating out blood and life to his body, and, by extension, hers; his arm around her, their fingers threaded together and she’s totally okay with this.

His breath rises and falls beneath her and she latches on to that fact, onto life, and their life. Yes, this is just fine.