Other side of paradise (Jason Dean x reader)

𝟏𝟎𝟎𝐤 𝐬𝐩𝐞𝐜𝐢𝐚𝐥

Veronica gripped the flowers a bit tighter as she traversed through the graveyard, with Heather McNamara trailing behind with a small music box.  The two girls came back here year after year to pay their respects, making their way past the graves of fallen friends who had been written off as part of a teen suicide statistic rather than getting proper justice for their untimely deaths.

Years back, when the time had come to lay you in the ground, Veronica and her parents had a tough call to make.

Lay you near the man who had drove everyone in town to the brink of insanity and practically caused your death due to his reckless actions, or keep you as far away from him as possible.

But in the end, they made one of the hardest choices they could.  Keep you near him.  Veronica was willing to admit that it's what you would've wanted, in your puppy love filled head.  You had offed yourself to stay with him.  You disregarded common sense to be with him.  And you two had even made it past the fight and murder thing in his final moments.

If someone was willing to be so stupid for something as silly and menial as love, then it would behoove her to just let you have your way.  Just this once.

Besides, she figured if there was an afterlife, you two would manage to find each other.  It was almost like you were tethered, bound to find each other and bound to fall together.

She and Heather stood at the foot of your grave, staring blankly at the stone.  On your left was the grave of Jason Dean, the one who didn't deserve a grave at all.  The one whose body deserved to get pissed on in a ditch.  On your right was your right hand woman, Martha.  Veronica hoped she was in the hypothetical afterlife as well, right by your side.  You deserved some time with her where no one could judge the two of you, especially all you two had gone through to stay just as close behind her back.

Veronica unceremoniously dropped the flowers in front of the headstone.  She didn't like expressing much emotion.  Maybe that's why she fell for JD too.  He didn't have that many, he was stoic, and different from the people she was trying to get an in with.

But that made her feel all the more lucky.  This is what you did, blinded by that sun.  She was supposed to be a genius, yet she managed to let him trick her into being an accomplice for murder.  If he had gone after her romantically, who else would've died?  Would it be her six feet under instead of you?

Heather bent down, and gently set the music box down.  It was one she had grown up with, and it played the song Memory by Andrew Lloyd Webber.  It was a melancholy showtune that she figured fit the situation, despite not knowing much of the context.  It was called Memory, so it couldn't've been that off... right?

While Heather wasn't a real friend to you for that long, she was grateful for the time she had spent with you, seeing you as more than just Veronica's lapdog.  Turns out, you were a pretty neat person.  When all of her other friends turned on her like sharks who smelled blood, you had literally saved her life.  But she wasn't able to save yours.

She and the Heathers had seen the red flags in Jason Dean, yet you and Veronica were left to fend for yourselves like you meant nothing.  And in the end, more than just hearts got broken.  Maybe if she had warned you, told you off, scared him off, anything that a good friend would do, you'd still be here.  You'd be with them visiting someone else, not be sandwiched between rotting corpses becoming food for some worms.

Before she could fully realize it, Heather began crying.  She felt guilty.  She wasted chances to save you for something as shitty as high school popularity.  And she had lost both in the end.

"If you can hear me up there... I'm sorry," she whispered.

Veronica looked at her emotional friend, then back at the fancily engraved rock you were buried under.  Then she looked to the one on your left.