Last Wednesday...

Veronica's already in the hospital, her arms filled with the few remaining belongings of the late Abel Koontz, when she remembers about Meg. The parents are nowhere in sight - a good thing, as the last time Veronica met Meg's dad, he threatened her with a baseball bat.

So she makes her way in.

Yellow curtains are strung around the room, providing Meg with privacy, so Veronica is forced to take the long way around, her eyes working to decipher her former friend's shape before she can properly see it. The boxish, looming shapes that surround her unconscious form are no less frightening when the curtain's finally pushed aside - wires and tubes crisscross the room, latching on to Meg as though they rely on her for life, and not the other way around. They fill the space almost haphazardly: IV tubes, heart monitors... heart monitors...

Wait.

But, no, it's true - the two machines, side by side, look the same. Even the basic shape of their output is the same, that distinctive up-down-up-down spike that she's seen when flipping past ER. The first, registering a slow but healthy sixty beats per minute, links to Meg's chest - the second, showing a much more worrying one hundred eighty, trails wires to Meg's... stomach?

It clicks almost instantly, but Veronica doesn't want to believe it. In a state that seems like a dream, she reaches out to push aside the suspended tray that hangs over Meg's torso. Finally, when it's aside, Veronica can clearly see Meg's pregnant stomach.

For a minute she can do nothing but stare. Meg... How...

But she already knows how, doesn't she? Leaving the room in something of a daze, she knows: finding Duncan in the hallway - Duncan avoiding her at school - Meg being bitchy at her all term - and - and - and

The list goes on.

Veronica decides, she can't be here right now. She can't face him. She can't face anything.

The next door she opens, she wills it to be Milliways. And the Bar is kind.

(no subject)

She wakes.

There's a moment where Veronica can't put it all together, and that worries her, because putting things together is what she does. But then it clicks. The room around her, so white: curtains, walls, sheets. She remembers vaguely a stranger with too-blue eyes and too-smooth skin, and, oh...

Pain floods her head and she winces, pressing her palms to her eyes to fight back the hurting. She didn't drink that much last night, did she? She didn't drink at all, if she recalls correctly - but she doesn't recall correctly. Details are... vague.

She remembers lemon cake. And being asked not to insult Logan.

And then all she recalls is blue eyes, and desire, and sex.

She remembers kisses, a taste like wine, fingers fumbling with buttons. She remembers the feeling of her skin against someone else's, curves of muscle, locks of hair; she remembers a sensation like drowning slowly but having no desire for air. She remembers - all of it.

But it does stand out that she cannot recall his name. At first she thinks, maybe he just didn't say? but no, that's not it, because there's that sort of itching feeling in the back of her mind, and she's sure she's forgotten it. Which is fair. She was... distracted. But the hurried note by the bedside table

(Sorry. Had to go to work.)

doesn't help provide any more clues, either.

As she stumbles from bed, her head still buzzing as though a colony of hornets had taken up residence beneath her skull, she feels a sharp wave of guilt. It is so severe that bile rises in her throat, as though in sympathy, but she bites it back. It wouldn't do, to be standing in this stranger's apartment, naked, throwing up. As if things aren't bad enough.

It hits her then, like a physical force, a weight in her stomach. It was wrong. It was cheating. She reels, one hand grabbing the bed post for balance. It was betrayal.

But he - he deserved -

No.

She reaches for -

Get out of here.

Yes.





And somewhere, far in the distance, the first few chords of a song begin.