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In their tangled mess of a relationship and companionship, Dean and Veronica have managed to become the only living souls who know the other so intimately. With their tattered hearts, slashed and broken from years of hardships and hell, the wounds have been patched together by merging their two souls and filling the gaps. Dean knows Veronica like Veronica knows Dean.
They are a matched pair.
Born from fire and forged from horror, they are two lone wolves who have become, against all odds, a pack.
If they knew how to love properly, love would be what they felt.
But their synchrony doesn’t mean they know everything.
(how could they, on their life of monster hunting and demon chasing. there simply hasn’t been time to expunge over twenty years of life in the form of words in the meager year they’ve been dancing their hunters dance)
Which means that when Bobby says the name of the planet -
(another world, home of a class divide that looks more like the Grand Canyon than a line in the sand, swathed in violence and lies and the sun baked hell-scape that built the foundation of her soul, shattered it and then forced her to rebuild in the wake of murder and ostracization)
- Dean is unaware of the weight behind it.
If either man had been looking in Veronica’s direction at Bobby’s proclamation, the following few minutes would’ve played out much differently.
“California hmm?” Dean murmurs with a small smile, focus entirely on the elder hunter. “It’d be a nice change to be in the sun for awhile. So what exactly does he need help with?”
As the conversation devolves into a tactical assessment, Veronica fights to remember how to breathe.
She knows it goes something along the lines of inhale, exhale, repeat, but her lungs refuse to co-operate. As her knees give away beneath her, back pressed heavily against the porch railing, Rumsfeld pads up to her and gives her the perfect pretense of crouching to pet the soft fur.
Clutching Rumsfled’s thick ruff tightly, Veronica clenches her teeth in concentration.
(in agony. in denial. in fear.)
As the wet nose pokes at her cheek and warm tongue slobbers happily on night cooled flesh, air whistles back into her lungs, chasing away the pinpoints of black invading her vision. Empty, rung out, exhausted even though she hasn’t moved since Bobby spoke, Veronica feels a haze rising within her.
Inhaling doesn’t dissipate it.
The cloud, of what can only be shock, settles heavily on her shoulders.
Veronica can’t even put up the token resistance to fight it off.
Her thought process has narrowed to a pinpoint.
(Neptune, Neptune, Neptune.)
(Why did it have to be Neptune?)
(Of course it was Neptune.)
In the back of her mind, a dam of memories is threatening to burst free and drown her, ready to sweep her into the currents and drag her to the bottom. It’s held at bay by the haze, teetering on the brink, the few bricks keeping the explosion from shattering her are in the physical form of the dog practically in her lap and the man to her right.
It’s two hands try to stop a tsunami, but there’s still time before the wave crashes.
Autopilot, crafted through the high school years of being ostracized by arguably the entirety of her hometown, engages. The mask slides into place -
(minutes stand between her and the flood, but self preservation is paramount; instincts for survival scream that she must retreat and lick her wounds in private, a tortured animal that will snap at any hand that approaches because she knows that she won’t leave Dean just like she knows Dean won’t abandon Sam so that means Neptune is on the horizon and with it will come nothing good)
- and Veronica finally tunes back into the conversation in time to hear “we’ll leave tomorrow morning Bobby; sound good to you Veronica?” Dean asks, finally turning to look down at where she’s crouched.
The sight of her, arms full of excited dog and hair sticking this way and that, alights a slow pulse of affection in Dean’s chest that thrums gently. For a brief second, in the yellow light cast onto Bobby’s porch from the kitchen, with the sounds of a calm night in his ears, Dean wonders if this is what a perfect life would be like.
It drains away in the next heartbeat.
That same pull, that same instinct from all those months ago in the bar surges back to life and tugs forcefully.
Look closer.
Veronica is shattering before his eyes, expertly hidden behind the impeccable mask of hers, but he can see the cracks. He has a mask just like hers, and it takes nothing to recognize it on her face.
“Sounds good,” she murmurs, voice level and calm.
Deceptive.
Her gaze doesn’t quite meet his and the first trickle of worry and fear begins to work its way through Dean’s veins.
Bobby misses all this, a little too buzzed to notice and too unaware of their intricate ways of communication to pick up on the nuances, and cracks a huge yawn.
As crickets chirp in the background, Bobby lurches to his feet and stretches with another wide yawn bursting free. “Well, I’m off to bed, g’night.”
A few seconds later, Bobby is gone, a chorus of creaks and groans signaling his path through his house and up the stairs. In Veronica’s arms, Rumsfeld attempts to wriggle free and follow his master and she instinctively clutches tighter at the warm, furry form. Wining anxiously, Rumsfeld turns his head and licks at Veronica’s cheek, slobbering all over her, before turning back around to pull towards the open door.
With a small sigh, Veronica releases her grip on Rumsfeld (Backup) and sits back against the porch railing, actively feeling the warmth leave her chest as the dog bolts into the house and thunders up the stairs after Bobby.
The tsunami swells.
She curls in on herself, drawing her knees to her chest and wrapping her arms tightly around them; she can feel Dean’s heavy gaze on her and knows that he can see that something is wrong.
“Veronica.” Dean breathes, moving from his chair to crouch next to her.
“Veronica Amber Mars, born August 16th, 1987, to Keith and Lianne Mars at the Neptune County General Hospital. Eight pounds, four ounces,” Veronica recites dully.
Emotionless. Blank.
Dean rocks back on his heels as the town name registers. Sorrow sweeps through him and he reaches out slowly, tentatively, to touch her arm.
And feels her shatter.
(The wave crashes, a barrage of memories and emotions that explode across the back of her eyelids like fireworks, an endless reel of the ups and downs, relationships and friendships and enemies, Wallace, Lilly, Keith, Mac, Weavil… Logan. A bulldog on the beach, wind in her hair on the back of a motorcycle, the weight of a camera in one hand and a tazer in the other.
And then she’s back in that basement, watching her friends die at the teeth of a monster that slowly tears everything in her world apart.)
“Oh Nica,” Dean whispers, rocking forward and gathering in his arms. Standing, he tucks her close to his chest, wincing at the harsh breathing emanating from the ball in his arms.
Once again, he finds himself shocked at how small she is.
Ever since he saw her on that beast of a motorcycle, he’s known that Veronica is an example of a tiny sized human, but holding her in his arms with only the smallest amount of strain, it hits home. She’s miniscule.
It causes the protective beast in his chest to flare to life.
Dropping his head, he presses a gentle kiss to her forehead and a single tear of empathy trickles down to splash on her nose. She burrows closer, eyes pressed tightly shut as if she keeps them closed for long enough, the barrage of memories will stop.
She can feel them moving, knows that Dean is holding her, but she can’t seem to drag herself free of the sinkhole her mind is swirling around. At this moment in time, Veronica isn’t Veronica anymore.
She is Neptune.
And Neptune nearly ate her alive –
(oh the irony is not lost on her; given that a vampire nearly did literally eat her alive, but at the moment she can’t appreciate any of this.)
- before and to imagine going back, after years away, shreds her.
She doesn’t even know if her father is still alive.
She doesn’t even know if her father believes she’s dead.
Eventually, movement stops and she feels them lower.
Dean settles in the soft dirt at the back of Bobby’s salvage lot that over looks a clearing in the back woods of South Dakota. The lack of city light is evident by the explosion of stars across the sky. The galaxies are brilliant above them, a strict contrast by the desire burning within Dean to punch something, to tear apart the thing that had put that look of profound agony on Veronica’s face.
But there’s nothing for him to fight, no action he can take to stop this spiral, because he knows its clutches all too well.
(Nightmares that drag him back to hell with all the ferocity of the hellhound claws that took him the first time. Nightmares that are impossible to escape and feel all too real, both the pain he felt over countless years and the pain he caused. Nightmares full of screams and cries and moans and pain and sometimes those nightmares drag him in so deep, it takes hours for him to return to himself, hours Veronica spends with his head in her lap and crappy television on in the background, talking to him about nothing and being the anchor required for him to find his way back to the surface.
Dean knows the spiral intimately.)
He feels her slowly come back to herself and rejoices silently.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers eventually, twisting slightly in his grasp to look up him, unfolding her legs to sprawl in her lap as she does so. Pink tinges her cheeks as embarrassment floods against her will.
“Don’t you dare,” Dean snarls back, the lingering fear bringing out the beast. He looks down at her in his lap, hair askew and eyes still distant as she draws herself out of the deep, and tightens his grip about her shoulders.
She says nothing, instead just studies the planes and angles of his face and tries not to get lost in the chips of green glass that stare back down at her.
“We don’t have to go,” he tells her, offering up his soul completely as he says this, because it would mean turning his back on Sammy, the only member of his family that remains in this twisted world, even though Sammy has already turned his back on him. But Veronica is –
(a phoenix, a wolf, a dragon)
- his and vice versa and they match. They would suffer for the other at the expense of their own lives and Dean is willing to do just that.
Reaching up, Veronica places a gentle hand on his cheek, which he leans into. “Yes we do,” she tells him softly.
“You don’t have to go back,” he tries, offering her one more out.
Veronica sighs and looks up at the array of stars above them. “I think I do. I think it’s time. I think,” here she pauses in order to fight off an aftershock wave, this one full of phone calls at her father’s firm and the thrill of the chase. “I think that I need to.”
This time it’s Dean who sighs, knowing it’s no use fighting her on this just as he knows that going back to Neptune will be the farthest thing from easy for Veronica. They are going back. And it might just ruin both of them.
“Okay.”
“Okay.”
(The next morning is a flurry of activity as they pack up the Impala, Bobby sending them off with a few texts on ancient vampires for Veronica to pour over and a cooler full of food for Dean. Veronica is quiet and subdued, having not slept for fear of dreams and still overwhelmed and shaking from the tsunami. Dean keeps a wary eye on her as the morning matures, but says nothing, knowing it won’t help.
They roll out of a dusty car salvage lot with the sounds of a happy dog barking in their rear-view mirror.
When they pass through Wyoming, Veronica makes them stop in a location that puts Dean’s heart in his throat. He knows where they are.
This is where they started.
As they drive down the dusty road, they pass by a hole in the dirt bar that looks like the last time it’s seen better days was a century ago.
It’s the bar.
Dean can’t help but look over at Veronica as they drive by the ramshackle place and finds her staring blankly out of the window.
He sighs.
They keep driving until they stop at a storage container unit.
Dean tries to put up a resistance.
The leather jacket the swirls onto Veronica’s shoulders becomes a coat of armour and Dean suddenly finds himself on the outside. He finds he doesn’t like it.
They leave Wyoming in the Impala and on the back of motorcycle. They drive through the night, Dean following Veronica’s tail lights and unwilling to let her out of his sight.
When dawn breaks, they check into a motel in the middle of backwoods nowhere, still a days drive away from California.
They climb into bed together and Veronica curls into Dean’s chest and Dean can’t help but feel there’s a thousand miles of distance between them.)