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[veronica mars] the transition - pg13
Originally posted: 31 March 2007
Title: The Transition
Rating: PG13
Length: approx. 1700 words
Fandom: VMars (Lamb)
A/N: Nominally a response to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
picking_losers's Out Like a Lamb challenge, but I'm pretty sure I didn't hit all the guidelines? HUGE THANKS to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
twentyfivepast for the beta and hardcore linguistics assistance
He's never been a big fan of white. Black's a much more suitable color for, well, everything. Easy to hide in and behind. It doesn't reflect the light and soak up the sweat and the filth.
Tan, though. Tan and green and shiny gold, those are the colors he lives for. The colors he lived for. His palms itch to smooth a uniform shirt down flat against his abdomen.
It's too bad that blood's such a bitch to get out.
...
The chair's all wrong. He fidgets and the holster on his hip hooks and clatters against the wooden arm to his right because he forgot he was wearing it again. He's used to rickety, rolling chairs with green cloth seats and spare metal backs and nothing that reaches out to snatch. This one feels like he's sitting on a ghost.
Inga rolls her eyes when she knocks on the door and finds him twisting from side to side, trying to get comfortable. "Vhy don't you just buy another chair?" she mutters as she drops the files on his desk.
But this isn't just a chair -- this is a fucking throne and it's about time he got his ass into it.
After lunch, there's an office supply catalog open on the seat with a post-it stuck on page 179. He doesn't remember ordering model #78-152 but it's waiting for him one morning and he settles into the tall blue seat with something like regret.
The ghost is still there, wrapped around him seven inches below his chin and somewhere behind the ribs and hammering at the back of his brain. Or, it would have been, if this had actually happened.
He thinks it did but everything's starting to go fuzzy at the edges and he
settles back with a creak and a rush of breath that would never be called a sigh, not within his hearing anyway. His head is fucking killing him, pain radiating down his neck and into his chest. It throbs with the beat of his heart, with the tick of the clock.
When he finally turns to look, just a glance to the side, the light and the white and the tight skin around her eyes seem to glow like fireworks. They stoke the pain into a white-hot corona around his brain. His mouth moves in the familiar refrain and he watches the tears slip down her face with something so near to satisfaction that it burns up everything inside of him.
Or did it?
He settles back with a creak and a rush of breath that sounds like a curse. He watches her flinch and carefully stills his hands against the top of the desk.
Halting, dripping, the words spill from her mouth as if it's a faucet that needs tightening. He waits for the ragged breaths to shake her head down into her hands and uses the intercom to call one of the female deputies into the room. As the white of her dress disappears down the hallway, he peels back a strip of the desktop with his nails and bellows for Sachs.
The patrol car's halfway between the Pomroy's house and the Kane estate when he realizes he doesn't have his hat. He runs his hands over his hair, confused when the soft-sharp rasp gives way to a wet, pulpy mass.
In the bright morning sunshine, he stares at the blood on his hands. Next to him, Sachs practically sings, "Blood's always such a bitch to get out."
The sun flares and everything washes away in the star-bright glare and he thinks, "So, this definitely didn't happen," right before
the pills stick to his throat and drag their way down as he tries not to dry-heave all over the counter. The headache that's been building since the Sheriff first started muttering about Jake Kane has exploded into a supernova, pulsing just behind his eyes. The TV's still on in the next room and he hears Martina Vasquez say his name one final time. She purrs a little around the Ls and he pretends there's a shimmer of regret in her voice when she calls him as the loser.
Whatever. He didn't even want the fucking job anymore; it's too much paper and not enough power.
The pills finally drop down into his stomach and roil around in the acid and blood that's been churning there all month long. He breathes in long and deep through his nose and lifts his head to look in the mirror. There's a blur coming up fast behind him and he spins on one heel to face it. The supernova dissolves into thousands, millions, of tiny stars as he slams headfirst into the sink. One hand scrabbles awkwardly toward the cell phone that's just out of reach and the porcelain cants to one side and swirls out from under him, washing him down the drain.
Losing wouldn't have washed the blood from his hands, the same
hands that shake when he sits down next to the girl in the bed. Her bare scalp catches the light and throws it back in his face. She doesn't cry while she talks to him and he doesn't either, but he gets too damn close to it. He hears Veronica squawking from the other side of the room but he tunes her out and turns everything he is to the girl in the bed. She doesn't remember much, just music and a voice and when he walks from the room, he knows that he did this to her. He did this to her with every witness he laughed out of his office and every report he signed without reading.
Later that night, he settles into the too-large wooden chair and the holster catches one more time on that goddamn fucking armrest. He whips the gun into one hand and holds it flush to the aching point at the back of his head. There's dirty and then there's dirty and he doesn't think they'll ever clean away the slime that he leaves behind.
He doesn't envy whoever's job it will be to get the blood and gore out of the grooves he's worn into the top of the desk. He presses in, harder, ignoring the squelch of bone that's gone soft and pulpy, and squeezes back the trigger
and the paper target flutters back into place in the gloom of the air-conditioned range and Keith claps a hand to his shoulder.
"Looks like there's plenty you do right!" The words filter in through the earmuffs and he fights back the curl of pride that shoots up his spine.
Instead, he just smirks and lines up another shot. The revolver's a little too tight in his grip and the recoil slithers up his arms, into his neck, and blows straight out the back of his head.
One of those things definitely happened. He wishes it were a little easier to pretend not to know which one as he
runs on the cold and quiet beach. The sand and the waves swallow his heavy footfalls and drown the sound of his labored breathing. He pushes harder, arms pumping, legs churning. When he turns the corner of the lifeguard's station and heads back up toward his car, he sees the kids out of the corner of his eye.
He doesn't see the rock that comes whizzing past the back of his head but he feels it. He already feels like he's halfway to dying, cells burning down to cinders, but he charges the kids as they scatter into the darkness. He tackles a scrawny boy and holds him face-down in the sand with one knee. He's halfway through Miranda and wrestling a lace out of his shoes when he feels the second rock crack against his skull.
His last real thought is that there aren't any boulders on the beach and as the sand rushes up to meet him he wonders what time the tide will come in and he pushes out one last
rush of breath and he settles back in the chair with a creak. All he's ever wanted is this little row of golden stars on his lapels and all the gifts that go with it. Instead, what he's got is a case that should have been (was) wrapped up a year ago leaking all over the news, the air whistling as it comes out, as the little bitch pokes holes in at every possible angle.
The door's half-open and everyone who walks past seems to be tiptoeing. Like if they step too hard on the linoleum at the threshold, they'll get sucked into his orbit and flounder right alongside him. He tries to remember what that's called, the thing even light can't escape -- it's the name of that stupid movie that's on HBO every summer, the one he can't watch more than twenty minutes of before the headache sneaks up the back of his neck.
Fuck it. He might do everything he can to keep from thinking but learned a thing or two from his days as the "loyal" deputy. He wants to see how cocky she is when he goes to the judge with a tape that shows her breaking into the departmental files.
He ignores the niggling little voice at the back of his head that tells him to wait.
...
Lights flash around him, red and white and blue and the sickly yellow of sodium lights arching high above the road. Faces float over and past and it smells like something's starting to burn.
He's not sure how he knows that, since his eyes have been closed for ten minutes and his breath is coming slower and slower as his blood swirls away.
It's not really a thought -- there's not enough left of him for that -- but the idea that he is what's starting to burn is what finally sucks him under.
Title: The Transition
Rating: PG13
Length: approx. 1700 words
Fandom: VMars (Lamb)
A/N: Nominally a response to
picking_losers's Out Like a Lamb challenge, but I'm pretty sure I didn't hit all the guidelines? HUGE THANKS to twentyfivepast for the beta and hardcore linguistics assistanceHe's never been a big fan of white. Black's a much more suitable color for, well, everything. Easy to hide in and behind. It doesn't reflect the light and soak up the sweat and the filth.
Tan, though. Tan and green and shiny gold, those are the colors he lives for. The colors he lived for. His palms itch to smooth a uniform shirt down flat against his abdomen.
It's too bad that blood's such a bitch to get out.
The chair's all wrong. He fidgets and the holster on his hip hooks and clatters against the wooden arm to his right because he forgot he was wearing it again. He's used to rickety, rolling chairs with green cloth seats and spare metal backs and nothing that reaches out to snatch. This one feels like he's sitting on a ghost.
Inga rolls her eyes when she knocks on the door and finds him twisting from side to side, trying to get comfortable. "Vhy don't you just buy another chair?" she mutters as she drops the files on his desk.
But this isn't just a chair -- this is a fucking throne and it's about time he got his ass into it.
After lunch, there's an office supply catalog open on the seat with a post-it stuck on page 179. He doesn't remember ordering model #78-152 but it's waiting for him one morning and he settles into the tall blue seat with something like regret.
The ghost is still there, wrapped around him seven inches below his chin and somewhere behind the ribs and hammering at the back of his brain. Or, it would have been, if this had actually happened.
He thinks it did but everything's starting to go fuzzy at the edges and he
settles back with a creak and a rush of breath that would never be called a sigh, not within his hearing anyway. His head is fucking killing him, pain radiating down his neck and into his chest. It throbs with the beat of his heart, with the tick of the clock.
When he finally turns to look, just a glance to the side, the light and the white and the tight skin around her eyes seem to glow like fireworks. They stoke the pain into a white-hot corona around his brain. His mouth moves in the familiar refrain and he watches the tears slip down her face with something so near to satisfaction that it burns up everything inside of him.
Or did it?
He settles back with a creak and a rush of breath that sounds like a curse. He watches her flinch and carefully stills his hands against the top of the desk.
Halting, dripping, the words spill from her mouth as if it's a faucet that needs tightening. He waits for the ragged breaths to shake her head down into her hands and uses the intercom to call one of the female deputies into the room. As the white of her dress disappears down the hallway, he peels back a strip of the desktop with his nails and bellows for Sachs.
The patrol car's halfway between the Pomroy's house and the Kane estate when he realizes he doesn't have his hat. He runs his hands over his hair, confused when the soft-sharp rasp gives way to a wet, pulpy mass.
In the bright morning sunshine, he stares at the blood on his hands. Next to him, Sachs practically sings, "Blood's always such a bitch to get out."
The sun flares and everything washes away in the star-bright glare and he thinks, "So, this definitely didn't happen," right before
the pills stick to his throat and drag their way down as he tries not to dry-heave all over the counter. The headache that's been building since the Sheriff first started muttering about Jake Kane has exploded into a supernova, pulsing just behind his eyes. The TV's still on in the next room and he hears Martina Vasquez say his name one final time. She purrs a little around the Ls and he pretends there's a shimmer of regret in her voice when she calls him as the loser.
Whatever. He didn't even want the fucking job anymore; it's too much paper and not enough power.
The pills finally drop down into his stomach and roil around in the acid and blood that's been churning there all month long. He breathes in long and deep through his nose and lifts his head to look in the mirror. There's a blur coming up fast behind him and he spins on one heel to face it. The supernova dissolves into thousands, millions, of tiny stars as he slams headfirst into the sink. One hand scrabbles awkwardly toward the cell phone that's just out of reach and the porcelain cants to one side and swirls out from under him, washing him down the drain.
Losing wouldn't have washed the blood from his hands, the same
hands that shake when he sits down next to the girl in the bed. Her bare scalp catches the light and throws it back in his face. She doesn't cry while she talks to him and he doesn't either, but he gets too damn close to it. He hears Veronica squawking from the other side of the room but he tunes her out and turns everything he is to the girl in the bed. She doesn't remember much, just music and a voice and when he walks from the room, he knows that he did this to her. He did this to her with every witness he laughed out of his office and every report he signed without reading.
Later that night, he settles into the too-large wooden chair and the holster catches one more time on that goddamn fucking armrest. He whips the gun into one hand and holds it flush to the aching point at the back of his head. There's dirty and then there's dirty and he doesn't think they'll ever clean away the slime that he leaves behind.
He doesn't envy whoever's job it will be to get the blood and gore out of the grooves he's worn into the top of the desk. He presses in, harder, ignoring the squelch of bone that's gone soft and pulpy, and squeezes back the trigger
and the paper target flutters back into place in the gloom of the air-conditioned range and Keith claps a hand to his shoulder.
"Looks like there's plenty you do right!" The words filter in through the earmuffs and he fights back the curl of pride that shoots up his spine.
Instead, he just smirks and lines up another shot. The revolver's a little too tight in his grip and the recoil slithers up his arms, into his neck, and blows straight out the back of his head.
One of those things definitely happened. He wishes it were a little easier to pretend not to know which one as he
runs on the cold and quiet beach. The sand and the waves swallow his heavy footfalls and drown the sound of his labored breathing. He pushes harder, arms pumping, legs churning. When he turns the corner of the lifeguard's station and heads back up toward his car, he sees the kids out of the corner of his eye.
He doesn't see the rock that comes whizzing past the back of his head but he feels it. He already feels like he's halfway to dying, cells burning down to cinders, but he charges the kids as they scatter into the darkness. He tackles a scrawny boy and holds him face-down in the sand with one knee. He's halfway through Miranda and wrestling a lace out of his shoes when he feels the second rock crack against his skull.
His last real thought is that there aren't any boulders on the beach and as the sand rushes up to meet him he wonders what time the tide will come in and he pushes out one last
rush of breath and he settles back in the chair with a creak. All he's ever wanted is this little row of golden stars on his lapels and all the gifts that go with it. Instead, what he's got is a case that should have been (was) wrapped up a year ago leaking all over the news, the air whistling as it comes out, as the little bitch pokes holes in at every possible angle.
The door's half-open and everyone who walks past seems to be tiptoeing. Like if they step too hard on the linoleum at the threshold, they'll get sucked into his orbit and flounder right alongside him. He tries to remember what that's called, the thing even light can't escape -- it's the name of that stupid movie that's on HBO every summer, the one he can't watch more than twenty minutes of before the headache sneaks up the back of his neck.
Fuck it. He might do everything he can to keep from thinking but learned a thing or two from his days as the "loyal" deputy. He wants to see how cocky she is when he goes to the judge with a tape that shows her breaking into the departmental files.
He ignores the niggling little voice at the back of his head that tells him to wait.
Lights flash around him, red and white and blue and the sickly yellow of sodium lights arching high above the road. Faces float over and past and it smells like something's starting to burn.
He's not sure how he knows that, since his eyes have been closed for ten minutes and his breath is coming slower and slower as his blood swirls away.
It's not really a thought -- there's not enough left of him for that -- but the idea that he is what's starting to burn is what finally sucks him under.