anjoufic | Into the Blue 2/?

Title: Into the Blue, Part 2/?
Author: Anjou

anjoufic
Pairing/Character: Logan/Veronica, Logan's POV
Word Count: 4,275
Rating: PG-13/mild R for language
Summary: It's almost summer, and Logan is sinking into the blue.

Spoilers/Warnings: S1. Beyond that is just my imagination, running away with me.

A/N: I had no idea that there was a new movie coming out with the same title as this story. My inspiration was this lyric from "Out of the Blue" by Neil Young:

Out of the blue
and into the black
They give you this,
but you pay for that
And once you're gone,
you can never come back
When you're out of the blue
and into the black.

Lyrical content should not be taken as foreshadowing. Thanks to suzanne_laura for the beta and support, and infinitemonkeys for the beautiful story icon.

Any and all characters that you recognize are the property of Rob Thomas and UPN. Neil Young's lyrics quoted without permission, but with love.

~*~

The longest day of Logan’s life was only getting worse. When they finally got through the pack of reporters that had staked out the gates of the house, they’d had to park at the end of the drive and walk, listening to the reporters yelling their rude questions as they wound through the maze of police vehicles. Worst of all, his father’s fans had arrived and were chanting “Free Aaron!” over and over.

“We love you, Logan!” they yelled, as if they knew him, as if they actually knew anything about what constituted reality.

The front door was flung open and their house looked like it'd been ransacked, but of course, it was all legal because the cops were doing it. Trina, who had been mercifully quiet for the past ten minutes, began yelling to beat the band as Logan wandered away from her. All he wanted was some food, a shower and to lay down in his own bed and sleep, preferably until he was forty years old and this was all a dim fucking memory.

Of course, he never got what he wanted. As he wandered into the kitchen, he could hear the sound of Mrs. Navarro yelling from upstairs and he moved through the room and toward the noise instead of stopping.

“No!” she was saying emphatically. “He was never in here!”

Mrs. Navarro was trying to block the sheriffs from breaking down the door to his mother’s room.

“Hey!” he yelled. “What the fuck are you doing?”

“We have a search warrant that covers the whole house, young man,” said a smarmy asshole in a suit. He definitely wasn't old enough to be calling Logan young man.

“Well, grandpa,” Logan said, “my father never went into these rooms, and they’ve been closed up since my mother died. Nothing in these rooms belongs to him.” He paused and then added, “She left it all to me.”

The group of officers went silent, some of them shifting nervously at the mention of Logan’s mother, but the asshole in the suit was adamant, and mad about the grandpa crack. “Either you open the door, or we’ll break it down.”

Logan jumped when a restraining hand was placed on his shoulder. “I’m sure that we can be respectful of Mrs. Echolls’ privacy, right, Josh?” Deputy Leo had magically appeared right behind him. “Josh Myers is the Assistant District Attorney,” he explained to Logan.

Josh stared at Leo for a second and then nodded.

Logan closed his eyes and unclenched his fists, then went over to the door and punched in a code, making sure that his body was blocking the view of the crowd that had gathered. He turned to the Assistant District Attorney. “Just you, and you,” he said looking at Leo. “I don’t want her stuff trashed. C’mon, Mrs. Navarro,” he added softly.

Her room still smelled like her perfume, and Logan closed his eyes and inhaled once before he stepped in, letting the others follow. After the will had been read, he’d called the locksmith and had a coded lock installed. He wouldn’t have put it past Trina to raid his mother’s closets and he didn’t want her to touch anything. If his mother had left something to Trina, that would have been different, but she hadn’t. She’d left it all to him, so he was going to keep it.

He closed the door behind them, effectively blocking the view of the curious onlookers. Lamb must have called in every cop in the county for this fiasco, he thought mirthlessly. “Mrs. Navarro can answer questions about anything in here,” he said huskily. He watched in a daze while Mrs. Navarro opened the doors to his mother’s massive closet and began opening drawers and moving aside clothes, carefully shifting things back in place once Leo said he was satisfied.

Josh Myers had rapidly lost interest in his mother’s closet and was standing by her bed, his expression a bit too curious from Logan’s perspective. When the ADA picked up the framed picture that was placed face down on her bedside table and stared at the photo of her and Aaron on their wedding day, Logan finally spoke.

“Please leave things the way they were,” he said, and went over and turned the picture back down.

“I’m sorry,” the ADA said and he seemed sincere, but Logan couldn’t bring himself to care.

“Whatever,” he said shortly.

“Logan?” Leo called from the other room. He and Mrs. Navarro had walked through his mother’s closet and were now in the bathroom. “Did your mom have a computer?”

“She used the one downstairs in the family room,” Logan said. “Not very often. Mostly to shop.”

“Like I said,” Mrs. Navarro said emphatically. It was clear that she didn’t think much of the police.

They all left the bathroom, and came back into the main room. Leo crossed to the divan that was placed near the doors to the balcony overlooking the pool. Mrs. Navarro followed him closely.

“Logan?” Leo asked, pointing at the TV at the foot of the divan. "The TiVo seems to be running."

Logan was a little unnerved by the idea that his mother's programs were still taping, but he fought to keep his expression neutral. "I don't know about that," he said. "I don't come in here much." The TiVo seemed to be clicking off and then on again while they stood watching it. "I guess the disk is full or something," Logan said helplessly, his voice cracking with restrained emotion. He caught a flash of pity from Deputy Leo again and felt like punching him.

“This VCR has a camera cable attached to it,” Leo said, and tugged on the cable and a camera popped out from under the divan.

Logan's eyes filled with tears before he could stop them. He moved quickly to stand at the end of the chaise, hoping nothing else that had been disturbed would come rolling out. “Yeah,” he said, looking at Mrs. Navarro. “Um, in the weeks before she died, she um … spent a lot of time up here watching home movies.” He opened the doors that covered the shelf filled with tapes.

Mrs. Navarro looked at Leo pointedly, and Logan realized that he'd just confirmed something that she'd already been asked. He was surprised at the surge of gratitude he felt toward her because he knew, somehow, that she had omitted the part about Lynn’s drinking and drugging while she watched the tapes.

Leo picked up a cassette from the pile on the shelf. “Logan – Winter 1988” he read and then flipped around the next one to look at the title. “Logan – Spring 1988.

“I was just a baby,” Logan said, feeling stupid and even more like he wanted to cry. “She filmed me sleeping.” For hours, he thought. She filmed me sleeping for hours and she’d talk to me, telling me how beautiful I was, how much she loved me.

Mrs. Navarro took the tapes out of Leo’s hand and firmly put them back on the shelf, closing the doors.

“How long ago did your parents stop sharing a room?” The ADA was standing next to his mother’s bureau and Logan thought he might have been smelling her perfume.

Logan said. “I’m not really sure. It’d been a while.” He could feel that his face was hot with embarrassment; he was lying, as Mrs. Navarro and he both knew. His mother had always had these rooms, but only to house her clothes and things. It wasn’t until just about two years ago that she’d suddenly begun sleeping in here.

“Do you think your mother knew about Lilly Kane?” Josh asked.

Logan was pretty sure his mouth was hanging open. “I have no idea what she knew,” he said. “She certainly didn’t believe my father was faithful to her, but she didn't discuss that with me.” He straightened out the bed cover, pulling at an imaginary wrinkle.

“Are we done here, Josh?” Leo asked the ADA.

The ADA looked around as if committing things to memory. “Yeah,” he said, and started toward the door, then stopped and turned around to face Logan. “I am sorry about your mother,” he said. “She seemed like a great lady.”

“Yeah,” Logan said sourly. “Thanks.”

Everybody was a fucking fan.

~*~

When he came back downstairs, the cops were beginning to leave. Trina was out in the foyer yelling and insisting on taking pictures of everything that the cops had removed from the house which, he had to admit, was a pretty good idea. Still, he wondered how long it would be before items from the house began to show up on eBay. He’d give it an hour, not that he’d know. His computer was gone, his room completely trashed. He walked around the first floor.

“Logan,” Mrs. Navarro said, and he jumped. She handed him some food. “Eat.”

He’d been eyeing the opened liquor cabinets, but … he supposed he should put something in his stomach. It would give him something to throw up later.

“Dios mio,” Mrs. Navarro said, looking around the house. Everything was thrown on the floor -- couch cushions, books. DVDs and videotapes cases had been opened, their contents strewn on the floor with everything else. “What did they expect to find here?” she asked in an exasperated tone and began to straighten things up.

Logan took a bite out of his sandwich. “I have no idea,” he said. “Mrs. Navarro, you probably shouldn’t even bother.” She looked over her shoulder at him. “They’ll probably be back.”

“Animals,” she muttered, and went back to picking things up off the floor.

“My room is toast,” he announced to her.

She nodded. “Yes, they came here yesterday for your room and the pool house.”

Veronica Mars, Logan thought, and he felt his guts wrench. He dropped the sandwich back on the plate as Trina walked into the room, talking a mile a minute on her cell phone. She hung up and addressed Mrs. Navarro as if she owned the place, rather than just stopped by between gigs.

“I need to talk to my brother,” Trina announced. “Go clean up someplace else.”

“Excuse me,” Logan said to her. “Mrs. Navarro and I were speaking.” He typically didn’t give Mrs. Navarro much thought, but he couldn’t help but be touched by her display of loyalty to his mother.

“It’s all right, Logan,” Mrs. Navarro said, and she left the room after giving Trina a scathing look.

“What the hell is your problem?” Logan asked.

“I don’t want our conversation to be reported in The National Enquirer,” Trina said. “The help usually has loose lips.”

Logan thought about all the stories that Mrs. Navarro could have sold to the Enquirer and turned his back on Trina, walking over to the liquor cabinet.

“Logan, I need you to be sober,” Trina said.

Logan huffed out a laugh as he rummaged through the cabinet, looking for the highest alcoholic content beverage he could find. “Whatever for?” he drawled out in an exaggerated manner.

“Barry is on his way over,” Trina said, “so you have just enough time to finish your lunch and take a shower before we have to go.”

“Go where, exactly?” Logan asked tightly.

“To see Daddy, of course,” she said to him as if he were stupid.

Logan laughed. “The only time I intend to see Aaron is when he’s in the courtroom, and hopefully, that one last time when they slide that big ol’ needle into his arm.”

“How can you say that!?” Trina yelled at him in outrage, grabbing the open bottle away from him. “He’s our father!”

All this time, Logan had never realized quite how stupid Trina was. “Trina,” he said to her very slowly, as if she were a rider on the short bus, “First Aaron fucked my girlfriend; then he murdered her.”

Trina’s head rocked back like Logan had slapped her. “You believe that?” she asked him, as if he were the stupid one.

“Yes,” he said, and yanked the bottle back from her, holding it up over his head.

She grappled with him. “No,” she said desperately. “It’s a lie.”

“They have videotape of them, Trina,” he said. “Screwing in the pool house.”

“No,” she said. “Barry said the tape was mostly destroyed. Barry said they don’t have a case.”

“Barry said, Barry said …” he mimicked unkindly. “You don’t get it, do you?” She was still trying to get the bottle away from him. “How long do you think it’s going to be before all of the other underage girls he banged start coming forward? Like, say, your classmates?”

Trina stopped and stared at him.

“What? Do you honestly think that my girlfriend was the first underage girl he ever screwed?”

“Daddy wouldn’t do that to …” she stopped herself just in time.

“You?” Logan asked. “I’m sure you’d like to think that. I know I would,” he added.

“He wouldn’t hit on my friends,” Trina said through gritted teeth.

“Why?” Logan laughed. “Because they were all so unattractive? Because they were your friends? Oh please, Trina.” He took a big swig from the bottle. “He probably fucked the dog – that’s why she really ran away.”

“You’re disgusting, Logan.”

“Yeah, well, if I were you, I’d be trying to figure out which one of those starfuckers you call friends is going to 20/20 first with her not-so-exclusive tale of underage debauchery, and tells America all about how lucky she is ‘to be left alive to tell the tale’.” Logan sketched quotes in the air as he imitated a TV announcer. “I’m putting my money on that Sandy girl,” he said, and took another drink. “Yeah, Sandy, the blonde one with the big tits? Remember how she just stopped showing up one day?”

Trina was staring at him. “She got a movie,” she whispered. “That’s why she left town.”

“It’s awful convenient that she never came back, though,” Logan said. “Maybe he hit her, too. How long do you think it’s going to be before your ex-boyfriend tells the press about the beatdown that Daddy Dearest put on him?”

Trina was crying now, but Logan just couldn’t bring himself to care. “You’re pathetic,” she snapped at him. “A useless, pathetic drunk, just like your mother was.”

She turned and fled the room, but not before he countered with “Better a drunk than a murderer.”

Logan surveyed the destroyed room with a sigh, ignoring the tears that threatened. If only he had jumped last night, then he could have really been exactly like his mother. He flipped a couch cushion back up onto the frame and sat down, putting his feet up on the crap covered coffee table. Something broke under his heel; he hoped it was one of his father’s many awards. The bastard stared at him from one of the framed movie posters that was propped against the wall it had been removed from. He threw a pillow at it, hitting Aaron squarely in the eye, and the pillow laid there obligingly, blocking Aaron from his view. He raised the bottle in a toast while he gave his unseen father the finger.

“Then again,” he said aloud, “maybe I did jump, and this is hell.”

~*~

As it turned out, it took Barry closer to four hours to make it over to the house, just long enough for Logan to have had a long nap, woken up and moved to the TV room to finish his lunch with his beverage of choice. He’d been watching the non-stop coverage on CNN and every other news channel ever since. It was truly strange to see pictures of himself on the news and to hear the stories that were being told about him, Lilly, Duncan, and Veronica. Neither of them had spoken to the press, but he’d seen the replay of the scene outside the police station enough times and from enough different angles to decide that Duncan looked like he hated him now.

And Veronica looked like she pitied him.

As much as he detested being the subject of newsmentaries, he hated being the object of pity more.

“Fuck ‘em both,” he said aloud to the TV, then groaned as Madison Sinclair’s ugly face popped up on the screen.

“Again?” he asked the TV, then mimicked in a high, breathy voice along with Madison, “I’m so shocked! Oh!” TV Madison exclaimed and then put her hands up to her face in stage-y horror. “Ohmigod! I was just in that house, for a party! Oh!” she and Logan said, “to think what could have happened!”

Logan leaned forward and squinted, but they’d cut back to the newscaster too fast. He could’ve sworn that the first time he’d seen Madison interviewed, when it was live, that her nipples were hard when the cameras pulled back to show a wider angle.

“It’d be just like you to get off on this whole situation,” he told the TV, “but Madison, I can guarantee you that no Echolls man ever wanted to bang you.” He took a swig from the bottle. “Kill you?” He paused dramatically. “Now, that’s a real possibility.”

“I hope that you’re not going to be expressing those kinds of sentiments in front of the press,” Barry announced from behind him.

Logan didn’t even bother to turn around, since he’d already known that he had an audience for his little floorshow. “Barry, I can guarantee you that I will not be speaking to the press, period. So unless you and my sister are intending to inform the masses about my every utterance, they won’t actually be hearing anything from my lips.” His picture popped up on the news again. “Besides, why do they even need me? They can just continue to say anything they want about me and everybody will be happy.”

“Logan,” Barry said, in his oh-so-serious adult voice, “we need to talk about your father.” Trina had walked over to the TV and shut it off, then unplugged it when a protesting Logan had turned it back on with the remote.

“Fine,” he snarled, “how is the old murderer doing?”

“Logan,” Barry sighed.

“Fine, fine,” he said, “how is the old alleged murderer doing?” He arranged his features to resemble Aaron’s best ‘I care … deeply’ expression.

“Do you really want to know?” Barry asked.

“Sure,” Logan said. “Hit me. And make it hurt, just for old times' sake.”

Barry looked like he was actually considering Logan’s request for a minute, but stopped himself and walked across the room and sat down in an armchair opposite where Logan laid on the couch. “Your father is still unconscious,” he began, “and he’s in the recovery room after his second round of surgery.”

Logan had heard this much on the news and didn’t comment.

“His most serious injury is that his pelvis was shattered when he was hit by a truck. It turns out that some of the bone nicked his intestines,” Barry continued. Logan had to forcibly stop himself from making a ‘well, now he really is completely full of shit’ joke, so he took a swig off the bottle instead.

“They thought they’d repaired his injuries, but with the weakness he has in that area from having been stabbed and this new trauma, he showed post-operative signs of a rupture. They had to take him back in and give him a colostomy. It’s temporary,” he hastened to add, as if Logan might actually be concerned.

“Is that it?” Logan asked.

“As far as I know,” Barry said. “Do you have any questions?”

“Only the big one,” Logan said. “The shattered pelvis … will he be able to fuck any of my future girlfriends, or is it game over for Aaron?”

“I told you,” Trina said, “There’s no talking to him when he’s drunk. He’s just like his mother.”

“Thank you,” Logan said cheerfully. “She reminds me of that like 50 times a day.”

“Logan,” Barry said sympathetically, “I can understand how you feel - ”

Logan laughed. “Wow! Did your dad fuck your girlfriend, videotape it, and then allegedly bash her brains in? Because I never knew that about you!”

Barry was silent for a minute. “Listen, Logan, you’re right. None of us can understand how you feel right now, but I think that what your sister and I want to know is that you are not going to damage your father’s chances at a fair trial with any more stunts like last night. There have been reports that you were seen standing on the railing of the bridge your mother jumped from.”

Logan drank.

“I’ve managed to keep them out of the press so far, but …”

“So, you’re saying that if I kill myself too, that it’ll make my Dad look like even a bigger bastard than he actually is?” Logan asked. “Weren’t you supposed to be trying to talk me out of this?”

“Logan,” Barry said in exasperation, “I want you to promise me that you won't torpedo your father's …”

“Wait, wait, wait,” Logan said in a tone of disbelief. “Do you think that you’re Aaron’s lawyer, Barry?”

Barry looked at him as if he were stupid, “I've been your father's attorney for 25 years, Logan. And as his attorney, and his friend, I’ll be putting together a criminal team.”

“Oh, oh, oh, man, Barry,” Logan said. “You don’t know, do you?”

“Know what?” Barry asked impatiently.

“Barry, when was the last time Aaron called you?”

Barry shrugged. “It was around the time we were arranging the reading of your mother’s will, why?”

Logan was nodding. “Has Aaron ever not called you for that long, Barry?”

Barry had gone very still in his chair. “Your mother had just died,” he said. “Of course, he became somewhat withdrawn. Business was no longer a primary concern.”

“Yeah,” Logan said, and sat up. “Listen, Barry. You stopped being Aaron’s lawyer the day you kept the fact that my mother changed her will from him.”

Barry’s expression was incredulous. “That’s not true.”

“Yeah, it is,” Logan said. “And I’m sorry he didn’t tell you, but that’s the way it is. From his perspective, you went behind his back and you sided with my mom against him. And when he wakes up? He’s going to pick up the phone and he’s gonna call Mark Geragos or Robert Shapiro. Hell, he'll probably have them dig up Johnny Cochrane for him!”

Trina had turned around from the window and was staring at him as Logan continued, gesturing with the bottle to emphasize his points. “He’s gonna assemble the biggest, baddest Dream Team you’ve ever seen. And he’s gonna ditch his publicist and get someone really hardcore to do image rehab, somebody meaner than Pat Kingsley. And then, he’s going to instruct them to hire some PI that makes Pellicano look like a wannabe and have them dig up every piece of dirt they can find on Lilly, and the Kanes, and the Mars family.” He ticked the list of his father’s enemies off on his fingers. “And then, they're going to splash it all over the airwaves.”

Barry had begun to look really uncomfortable.

“I mean, he has never had this kind of an opportunity before,” Logan said. “It’s even better than what he was planning for about a year from now. You know, the quiet comeback of the older, wiser Aaron Echolls," he framed an imaginary TV screen and adopted a pained expression. "No longer the action hero, but the serious actor and devoted family man, still mourning the tragic death of his beautiful wife.”

When Barry flinched even Trina noticed it.

“See?” Logan said and took a drink. “He doesn’t need that strategy anymore, Barry. He’s already more famous than OJ. He's just as guilty, but he’s a helluva lot smarter.” Logan nodded. “The one thing he’s not gonna do is pick up that phone and call you, because you betrayed him.” He paused. “Trust me, Barry, that’s the way it’s gonna go.”

Barry was staring at him with an expression that was equal parts distaste and fear.

“Are you finished?” Trina said. “He’s too drunk to come to the hospital anyway, Barry. Let’s go.”

“Au contraire, ma soeur. I’m not drunk at all,” Logan said cheerfully to her departing back. “Not enough, anyway. And don’t worry, Barry. I’d sooner face a firing squad than leave this house. I certainly have no desire to see Daddy Dearest.”

“You really think he did it, don’t you?” Barry asked. He’d stood up and was preparing to leave.

“Oh, yeah,” Logan said. “And that leads me to think about all sorts of things, so I’m drinking.” He looked up at Barry. “Actually, I, um, called you a couple of weeks ago, to ask for the inventory of my mother’s artwork and her other possessions. Do you have it?”

“That seems rather mercenary of you, Logan,” Barry answered sharply, “considering the current circumstances.”

“Yeah, well, the current circumstances dictate that my father is going to spend a helluva lot of money on his defense,” Logan said. “And I’ll be goddamned if he spends one penny of my mother’s money.”

Barry dropped his briefcase on the coffee table with a bang and opened it, withdrawing a thick manila envelope. He tossed it at Logan. “Consider our business concluded, Logan,” he said, and walked to the door. “Any questions you have about your mother’s trust, have your lawyer contact me.”

Logan waited until he heard the distant slam of the front door and raised his bottle in the air. “Alone at last,” he said, and picked up the remote before he realized that the TV was still unplugged. “Aw, fuck me.”

~*~

Part 3

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Wow, incredible chapter!

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Into the Blue 2/?

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