Veronica // Heathers Fanfiction

XIX

10 months earlier...

Three weeks after she killed her daughter, Veronica made a decision.

She was going to leave.

Like a small seed sprouting in the dark sides of her mind, growing bigger and bigger as the years went on, the idea of getting up in the middle of the night and leaving everything behind was something Veronica fantasized about often.

She loved JD, and she always would, but she fooled herself into thinking they would have a normal, healthy life. Or that they even deserved one, after everything they'd done.

Heather Chandler would never have the chance to fall in love and get married. Or to hold her newborn baby in her arms. So why did Veronica?

Veronica grew up, — enclosed in her bubble of ignorance— believing that the world was just and fair. That good people accomplished good things in life, while bad people faced the consequences of their choices. Cosmic Justice, Karma... however you want to call it.

She never understood how, after everything, after Heather, Kurt, and Ram, and all of the collateral damage she caused, she managed to live a good life. Veronica deserved the electric chair, not a beautiful house, a thriving career, and a loving family.

She never understood it... until she did. It didn't make sense to her until he went back to talking about killing people as casually as one talks about the weather —the client that pissed him off, the old lady who looked at Veronica judgingly for breastfeeding in public, the guy who left a bad review on her book. She didn't know if he went through with any of his plans, and she'd rather not know. Plausible deniability and all of that.

And then the cracks in their relationship —the ones they had poorly sealed after high school but hoped would stay shut forever anyway— started to reopen. The rage fits, the screams, the threats, the walls he punched until his knuckles bled, and the vases she threw, sometimes missing him by a few inches on purpose, sometimes getting the perfect aim; the times he slapped her, and she slapped him right back; her bleeding nose, and the scratches on his face; the times he would desperately hold her blood and tear-stained face with both hands telling her she couldn't leave him, he would never let her, because she was meant to be his.

Things got ugly, and brutal, and familiar. 

Then their kid died.

And like puzzle pieces clicking together, everything made sense.

The universe didn't give her a happy ending. It just gave her a taste of it, enough for her to know what happiness felt like, and then it took it away. Because you can't grieve something you never had, but experiencing that bliss, even if just a little, and then having it taken away from you —so abruptly that it's painful, and you can't breathe as the ground crumbles beneath you— hurts a lot more.

Her life wasn't great. It hadn't been for a long time. But she sucked it up, and she tried to pull through because Hazel loved her father so much, and JD loved her too; Veronica didn't want to separate them.

Even though, eventually, she did. Because Veronica was the reason Hazel was dead. She killed her. She hadn't meant to, but she hadn't meant to kill Heather either, and regret never stopped her body from rotting on the ground.

She shouldn't have gone so far into the lake. She shouldn't have let Hazel go without a life jacket. She shouldn't have left the water to call 911. There were a lot of things Veronica shouldn't have done in her life.

She could feel that JD didn't believe her. He thought she did it on purpose, no matter how many times she tried to explain herself to him, until they were either screaming at each other, with angry tears running down their faces.

In other scenarios, he would have been proud of her. Because he didn't care about people, they were disposable to him, something he could make go away with the pull of a trigger or a cup of poison. But against all odds, he loved his daughter; because he loved Veronica and their relationship, no matter how fucked up it was —maybe that was why he loved it so much— and Hazel was the result of that. She was the best part of both of them combined and turned into a beautiful, snarky, smart little girl.

For years, JD loved Veronica for giving him Hazel, and now she was sure he hated her for taking her away.

JD had threatened to kill her many times —like the time he hung a brunette Barbie doll on the ceiling fan by the neck, as if she was hanging herself, or when he put a copy of The Bell Jar on her nightstand after an ugly fight— but Veronica never cared; she knew he was bluffing.

This time, though he didn't say anything, —and maybe that silence was what made it even scarier— she could feel he was planning something. When he held her in bed, she could almost hear the cogs turning in his head, as if he was thinking of the most effective way to kill her and make it look like a suicide.

Veronica always ignored the little voice inside her head, yelling at her to bolt, because when she was younger, she thought he would change; as she got older, she realized he wouldn't change, but as a mom, she couldn't make choices thinking solely about herself, she had to think about what was best for her daughter, and she knew her kid needed her dad and her family —because in her eyes, they were a perfect family. Despite everything, JD and Veronica made sure to give her that.

But Hazel wasn't there anymore. It was just Veronica. JD wouldn't stop himself from killing her because he didn't have to worry about his kid growing up without a mom anymore. He had nothing to lose.

With that thought in mind, Veronica gathered her things and left, entering her car on a rainy day, a little before 5 a.m., praying to the God she had disappointed so many times that JD wouldn't wake up. 

As she left the illusion of the picture-perfect family behind, stepping on the accelerator to get out of there as fast as she could,  Veronica thought about all of the things she could do. Maybe she would stop by Heather McNamara's house and tell her to stop trying to fix her helpless marriage and just get in the car; maybe she'd change her name and go to Seattle. She didn't know. All she knew was that she was finally free.

That restless feeling of invincibility didn't last long, because less than 10 miles later, she tried to step on the brake, and it didn't work.

Everything after that was a blur. Panic began to overtake her, clouding her brain and stopping it from thinking straight. The road was empty, but the rain got heavier, making it impossible to see what was in front of her. She didn't know which direction to go, so she turned left. And everything went black.

***

When Veronica was a kid, she had a dream where she was stuck in quicksand; she tried to move, tried to swim out of it, but she remained stuck in place until she drowned.

What she felt after waking up from the accident wasn't much different. She tried to move, but every attempt was met with failure, and not a single part of her body obeyed her. As if someone had put weight on top of every one of her limbs and no matter how hard she tried, she could take them off.

She was still there. She could hear and see everything but that was it. Her mind lost control of her body, but the real Veronica was still trapped inside, screaming and begging to be let out, but no one could hear her.

JD was the perfect husband during her hospital stay, so supportive, so gentle, and so fucking fake.

He brought her home, after three months in the hospital, with JD and two nurses who helped settle her in.

Veronica had to give it to JD, who kept the caring husband act until the very last second. But as soon as the front door was shut, indicating they were finally alone, his award-winning performance came to an end.

He walked towards her, and though he kept the sweet smile on his face, his eyes were burning with anger, one he had been forced to bottle up inside for the last months.

Carefully, he touched her cheek, his fingers cold on her skin. Then, he leaned in until his face was mere inches away from hers; Veronica could smell the cigarette still lingering in his breath. His voice came forth sweet and gentle but drenched in poison.

"I told you I would never let you leave me, Ronnie."