F A N F I C T I O N > V . M A R S
Blowing Out Wishes by Amberina
Logan sat on the steps that led up to their porch. It was raining pretty hard but he didn't mind. He just kept lighting matches, one after another. He held them up and waited for the rain to put them out before discarding them in a small pile at his feet. Water dripped off his nose.
They moved up north to Washington after Veronica's father died. She wanted far away from Neptune and Logan had obliged. They started a new life, Veronica finding a job at a small newspaper. Logan managed to secure work at a TV station editing the local news for the first few months, before he was replaced. He was fired for mouthing off to a "personality," but it sounded better to say that he was replaced.
Of course, Veronica had taken off work now too.
The rain began to let up. He let a match burn down to his fingertips before he finally threw it down to the ground. As it hit the soaked grass it went out with a hiss. Logan tore another match off of his booklet and struck it against the back. It ignited easily. He stared into the flame and wondered how his life ended up like this.
"Logan," Veronica called from inside the house. She sounded slightly annoyed. She always did lately. It was a different sort of annoyance too; much different than what he'd become accustomed to previously. This was a sad annoyance, mellow but there. Understated, lurking under the surface of every phrase she spoke to him. Sometimes he wondered if his mind was playing tricks on him, but he knew that wasn't true. Things hadn't been the same since they left Neptune. Or, really, since Keith Mars had washed up on a beach, gutted.
Yeah, that definitely put a kink in their relationship.
"Logan," Veronica said again. She sounded so tired. They both were, really. "Logan, my water broke."
Logan lit another match and he watched it burn. This time, when it reached his fingertips, he didn't bother to drop it. He just let it burn him. He wanted to see how much he could stand. He didn't think he could take much more.
"Logan. Listen to me," Veronica said again. She was definitely getting agitated. "My fucking water broke. Are you even listening?"
"Hold on," Logan replied. He watched the match burn... burn... burn. Transfixed by the flame, by the fact that it represented something that he hadn't felt in a long, long time. Finally, it went out on its own, leaving a painful but comforting black-tinged burn on Logan's fingers.
They found out Veronica was pregnant a couple of weeks after they moved. Veronica had sat in the bathroom, on the closed toilet, and had sobbed into her hands for hours while Logan made her soup in the kitchen. She liked tomato soup, but Logan didn't. It went from hot enough to burn your tongue to cold enough to freeze your tongue in, like, twenty seconds. He crumbled up crackers on top just like she liked it.
They hadn't been stupid. Veronica was on birth control. They had figured that would be enough but it wasn't. When they went to the doctor, he placed the approximate conception date around the time of Keith's murder, of course. Logan often wondered if it had been that day - their last real day together, that day of toothpaste and gum and fucking against hard bathroom sinks - that they'd conceived. Maybe. They'd never know for sure.
Logan sighed and discarded the last match into the pile. He slid the booklet into a cargo pocket before rising and making his way into the house. They'd bought it straight-out with the little bit of cash Logan had left from his father's estate. Veronica had fallen in love with it, but Logan thought it was more than a little small for the price. Only three bedrooms, one and a half baths and no pool. It did have a pristine, white picket fence though. It was like a tasteless joke at a funeral; Logan appreciated it for that.
Veronica was in the living room. One hand was gripping the back of the couch, the other was pressed firmly to her rounded belly. She gave Logan a look that scared him, not because he thought she would hurt him but because he was afraid she didn't care enough to hurt him anymore. "I've been yelling your name for five minutes," she said with a frown.
"Sorry," Logan replied, not knowing what else he could say. It wasn't the time for snark or fighting. It wasn't the time for why have you been such a cold, distant bitch? Then again, there never really was a right time for that. He scooped up his car keys from the table - Veronica had chosen the lame but fitting keychain: I refuse to have a battle of wits with an unarmed person.
Everyday with Veronica did seem like a battle of wits, and Logan felt increasingly unarmed.
Logan led Veronica by the elbow to his car without a word. The X-Terra had been totalled a year ago, and he now drove a well-kept but annoyingly inexpensive Honda. It had been Veronica's, before Veronica swore off driving because she didn't know Washington and always got lost.
He opened her door for her and she paused. She just stared at him for a while, her eyes conveying some sort of emotion that Logan couldn't quite place. He felt like she was examining him under a magnifying glass and he wasn't sure why. Not sure of what to do or say, he just went around the car and let himself into the driver's side.
Logan started the car, its engine firing up with a kind of loud bang. That was always good. He gripped the wheel tightly as he backed out of their driveway. Even though unhappy with the size of the house, Logan had to admit that it was nice to have such a long driveway. Except when, of course, his girlfriend was in labor and currently not speaking to him.
Logan sighed and glanced over at Veronica. Her head was turned away from him, her eyes fixed on the scenery as it passed. Her stomach was huge, swollen with their baby, which continued to freak him out beyond belief. He never thought he'd actually pass his obviously faulty genes on to the next generation. He never even considered the possibility that he'd ever be a father. He wasn't too keen on the idea, but suggesting abortion seemed like the worst thing he could possibly do to Veronica.
Not that he didn't think about it every single day anyway.
Logan knuckles were turning white. He was surprised at how hard he was gripping the steering wheel, but he couldn't force himself to loosen up. It felt solid, sturdy. It made him feel grounded. It made him realize that this wasn't all some horrible nightmare. He needed to remind himself of that, otherwise he tended to forget.
Silence stretched between them. His life had become a cruel cliche, but then again when wasn't it? Being aware of the fact did not diminish the truth of it.
Needless to say (ha-fucking-ha), they arrived at the hospital without a word spoken. Along the way, Logan often wondered if he should say something - anything - but he always decided against it. What would the point be, anyway?
Logan pulled up to the emergency room and, leaving the car running, ran into the hospital to retrieve a wheelchair. Unfortunately, as he was talking to the nursing staff, Veronica made her way into the hospital on her own. Perhaps it was a "fuck you," or maybe she didn't realize. He was leaning towards "fuck you."
"Nevermind," he muttered to Susie Candy-Striper or whatever the hell the nurse's name was, and attempted to help Veronica into the wheelchair.
He nearly jumped when she said, softly, "Thank you."
"It's what I'm for," he said carefully. He couldn't help the old, familiar smirk that found its way onto his face, though. Luckily, Veronica wasn't looking at him.
He wheeled her up to the triage desk, though they were supposed to wait behind "this line" (the line was rubbed off completely, apparently, because he saw no such line). The woman behind it was reading a paperback novel (Beauty and the Bestiality, if the cover art was anything to judge it by - and Logan thought it was). They waited almost a minute before both said, at the exact same time, "Excuse me?"
The woman looked up, and snapped the gum in her mouth. She wore a vaguely bored, slightly annoyed expression. "Yes?" Her voice was incredibly nasally and Logan thought it would be fun to shove something up her nostril, maybe puncture her brain with a pen or something.
Veronica pointed to her stomach, but the woman just stared at her blankly. Finally, Veronica said, "I'm in labor."
"They're Braxton-Higgs contractions." She returned to her book.
"No, they are not," Veronica said forcefully. Logan liked this Veronica. He missed this Veronica. "I am soaked in amniotic fluid. You will let me in now before this baby is born here. Yes, right here."
"How far apart are your contractions?" the woman asked, though she didn't look away from her book. It must have been the good part, Logan thought sarcastically.
"Well, let's see... when I was at home twenty minutes ago, five minutes." Veronica sighed and continued, "I'm not sure now."
"You're not sure?" the woman asked, punctuating it with a gum-snap.
"I left my watch at home, as I'm sure you can understand," Veronica said irritably and Logan loved her.
"I haven't seen you have a contraction while you were here," the woman replied, flipping the page of her book. Her eyes widened at something on the page and Logan really didn't want to know what it said.
Veronica spoke through gritted teeth. Her breath seemed to catch in her throat. "I'm having one now, can you see that?"
"Fine," the woman said. She placed her book down on the table and rolled her eyes. She typed something into her computer, and then looked expectantly at Veronica. "Name?"
Another nurses apparently had overheard the exchange and came around the triage desk. "We'll get your name later," she told Veronica with an overly cheerful smile. She took the wheelchair handles from Logan and wheeled Veronica away without so much as a look at Logan. That was nice.
Logan figured he needed to park the car anyway, but regardless. He was the father; he shouldn't be ignored. He was the father. Fuck, that scared the hell out of him.
Logan turned and made his way back out to where he'd left the car. Only, when he got there, there wasn't a car there anymore. His first thought was, Who the hell would steal that piece of shit? He sighed and made his way back into the hospital. Maybe he should have reported it stolen, or at the very least told the fat man at the security desk, but he didn't like the car anyway.
He managed to find his way to Veronica, after stopping to ask a few people that seemed pretty uninterested - the people they hire these days, really. She was wearing a hospital gown (white with something cornflower blue all over it, he couldn't quite tell what it was supposed to be) and there was an older man between her legs. When her eyes met Logan's, she looked lost. Logan wanted to hold her but he couldn't exactly do that now, could he?
He shoved his hand in his pocket and played with the matchbook he had placed there. He turned it over and over inside his pocket, flipping it and twisting it. It gave him something to focus on that wasn't Veronica's eyes begging him to take his sperm back.
The doctor told Veronica something but it didn't make much sense to Logan. He figured there'd be a lot of that, so he just leaned against the wall and tried not to have a panic attack. Left, right, over, under. He turned the matchbook in his pocket as if his life depended on it. It might have.
The next hour was a blur of things he didn't understand and Veronica shouting things at him that sounded vaguely demonic. Sometime before they finally gave her some pain medication - morphine, he thinks he heard them say, but he's not really sure - she wailed, at the top of her lungs, "I should have had an abortion!"
Logan's mouth went dry. He didn't quite know what he was feeling. It was some mixture of offended - though he couldn't figure out why - and relieved. And terrified. So fucking terrified.
Left, right, over, under. Turn, turn, turn.
And then, to a chorus of pants, screams and jeers that Logan could have sworn came from more than one person, but really only came from Veronica, the baby slid out of Veronica. It was ugly and so little and Logan could not believe he made that.
"It's a girl," the doctor said cheerfully.
"It's ugly," Veronica noted with a frown.
"Now, honey, you know that's not right," Logan said disapprovingly as he sat on the edge of the bed. "She's ugly."
Somehow their half-joking distaste for the baby's shriveled looks bonded them. They found words again, though neither managed to say anything that Logan thought they should say. He wasn't going to be the first, though. Veronica had to know that.
"What should we name it?" Veronica asked, staring at the baby's face, puzzled.
Logan thought for a moment, lots of names running through his mind (Lilly? No. Lynn? No. Hope, Faith, Charity, Love? Definitely fucking not. Were those parents insane? Yes. Yes, they were.), before he finally said, "What about, what about Logan?"
Veronica looked at Logan for a long while before she repeated after him, slowly, "Logan."
"It's unisex," he added. His hand was in his pocket, fingers working furiously with the matchbook.
"I know." Veronica sounded a little annoyed, but also amused. He hadn't heard her amused at him in a long, long time. It felt good. "Logan Echolls. I don't know... it doesn't seem to go with the last name."
"Funny," Logan said with a smirk. He almost felt like he had Veronica back. Maybe all it took was getting the demon spawn out of her belly... "Look, Veronica, these past nine months..." So much for him not being the first to mention something.
Veronica looked at him as if she couldn't believe he was actually doing this.
"... I don't know what's been going on between us, but... "
"I wanted to get rid of the baby. I wanted to leave you. I wanted to tell you that every time I looked at you I saw my dead father." Veronica lowered her eyes. She was just looking at the baby now. "How did this happen?"
Logan swallowed hard, trying to get rid of the lump in his throat. Left, right, over, under... "Well, when birds and bees really love each other..."
"Logan, this isn't the time," Veronica said, her voice harsh. "I wanted to get rid of the baby," she said again. And then she waited, waited for something, some kind of reaction. Logan didn't know what she expected.
"I wanted you to get an abortion. I thought about it everyday. I thought about it on the way here," Logan said, staring at a spot on the ceiling, at the florescent lights. He was looking at anyone but Veronica. "But you didn't. And now we have a baby."
"So what do we do now?" Veronica asked, as if finishing Logan's trail of thought for him.
Logan looked down at the baby. It looked back at him as if it saw him, really saw him. Saw through him. "I don't know."
Veronica looked sad as Logan finally looked at her. "I guess we try not to screw up too much."
"That'll happen," Logan said bitterly, but he found himself wishing with all his might that maybe, just maybe, they wouldn't. Maybe it wouldn't end up fucked up. Maybe it wouldn't end up like him. Of course, it had genes for alcoholism, murder, suicide, and heroism so he couldn't see how it could end up okay, but they could try.
"We have to try, Logan." Veronica echoed his thoughts.
Logan pulled his hand out of his pocket. He clasped his hands together, and lowered his chin into them. "Our car was stolen." He looked up, and to his surprise, Veronica just laughed.