Chapter Text
Veronica Mars walked through the door of her apartment, pulled the pins from the twist at the nape of her neck, shook out her long blonde hair, and exhaled with a sigh. It was a contented sigh, but an exhausted one. She had just finished her first week of work as an assistant professor at the University of San Diego and she was feeling every second of it.
It was her dream job, an academic position that allowed her to train students in forensic techniques while consulting on cases. She had a lot of contacts who wanted her help, thanks to her years of private investigation work with her father, Keith, and the connections she had made through the FBI internship she did after her first year at Hearst.
She had thrived at the FBI, naturally, but something happened during that summer that made her question her career track. After weeks of filing papers and observing senior agents sitting behind their desks in front of computers all day, she began to wonder how satisfying she would find that line of work. Access to information and surveillance techniques were an obvious plus, but she couldn't see herself bound to a desk. She missed the PI office in Neptune and the autonomy she and her father had as independent investigators.
And then something wonderful happened. She found herself assigned, one sweltering day in July, to deliver some files to a forensics lab across the city. When she asked why she was doing this instead of a professional courier, her supervisor simply said, "I want these files in safe hands. And besides, you've been bored out of your mind here in the office. This will give you a chance to see some of the other things we do."
When she entered the lab, she felt like she had come home. A lively team of people worked in glass-walled offices, excitedly talk to each other about the details of their current case. She delivered the documents to the head of the lab, Dr. Jessica Little. Dr. Little smiled and introduced herself, clearly enjoying making the acquaintance of a smart young woman. She offered Veronica a tour of the lab and explained how things worked there. After meeting all of the lab employees and getting a glimpse of the case they were working on, Veronica was hooked. This was a way she could be involved in solving cases while also exploring the science and culture behind the crime scene.
Over the rest of the summer, Dr. Little began to mentor Veronica. She suggested that when she returned to Hearst in the fall, Veronica should enroll in anthropology and biology classes, tailoring her schedule to fit the prerequisites for graduate school programs in biological anthropology that specialized in forensics. With the focus and determination she was known for Veronica dedicated herself to her studies, dreaming of someday running a lab like Dr. Little.
Her hard work had paid off. Ten years later, she had her PhD and had trained as a postdoctoral fellow at the Max Planck Institute in Germany. When the job advertisement for a tenure-track professor at the University of San Diego came up, she couldn't let it pass by. Here was the opportunity to do what she loved while living close to Neptune. She teased Keith about how he was getting older and she wanted to be closer to him, and while he laughed at this she knew he was thrilled to have her back.
Being in San Diego put her closer to a lot of things, not only her father. Here she was, living near the place she had gone through so much as a teenager. The murder of her best friend Lilly, her ill-fated relationship with Duncan, her horrible first year at Hearst, and—connecting it all together—her tumultuous love story with Logan.
She pictured Logan as she poured herself a glass of wine and settled onto the couch in her apartment to relax after being on her feet in the lecture hall and the lab all day. She pictured him coming out of the ocean after surfing, his wetsuit unzipped to his navel, exposing a torso well-muscled by years in the water, his wet hair disheveled.
This was how she had seen him last, two years ago on the beach in Hawaii. Was he still living there? She wasn't sure. While her younger self had kept tabs on everyone she knew as a matter of habit, she had stopped tracking Logan after she had last seen him. After her heart had shattered into a million pieces after she said her goodbyes to him on that beach.
Three times. They had seen each other three times over the years between their freshman year at Hearst and now. She had returned from her FBI internship to find that Logan had moved to New York, transferring to Columbia. While at first she suspected that he had made that move with the help of his generous trust fund, she later found out that he had earned it on his own with his writing talents. Logan, it turned out, was a writer. Not just any writer, but a brilliant one. He published his first novel before graduating from Columbia and since then had published two more in addition to writing essays and short stories for magazines and literary journals. He had a great career and he was barely thirty.
He was always in the back of her mind, but for the sake of her own career, and later for her sanity, she had kept him at a safe distance. Three times—a glorious and spontaneous road trip up the California coast after they had graduated from college, a surprise encounter in Geneva four years ago when she was doing research in Europe for her dissertation, and that blazing afternoon on the beach in Hawaii two years ago when she had to turn away for good.
Veronica sipped her wine and heard her stomach rumble, remembering that she had no food in her fridge. All of this self-reflection was making her hungry. Luckily, she had found an apartment in a neighborhood that had plenty of take-out options, so she reached for her laptop and looked up the number of a local Italian place called Zito's. Lasagna. After a grueling first week, she needed lasagna. She made the call.
She changed out of her work clothes into comfortable skinny jeans, sneakers, and an old hoodie. Grabbing her purse and plugging in her headphones, she turned her music on for her walk to the restaurant two blocks away. The Rolling Stones' "Under My Thumb" came on shuffle and she walked, enjoying the comfort of her sneakers and the movement stretching out her legs after her long day on her feet.
She was bopping her head along to the beat, smiling at the thought of her dinner, when she suddenly felt a hand on her left arm. Whirling around to face what she assumed was her attacker, she raised her hand with her keys clenched between her fingers—a self-defense technique she's learned years ago—and prepared to strike.
But she froze. Her keys clattered to the sidewalk. One of her headphones fell out and she just stared in amazement.
It wasn't an attacker. It was Logan.