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He heard the click of a gun first, and it was hard not to laugh like that soft click was the funniest thing in the whole world. The funniest joke he’d ever heard in his entire life.
“In fifteen years, there’s been only one person who’s ever gotten the drop on me.” He angled his head back, not daring to look at the gunmen, letting the mystery unfold before him. He’s a wait-and-see man, she knows he always has been. Careful consideration, and exertion at the right moments; he’d taught her that and it’d been a hard lesson to learn. Not the hardest, but certainly hard. “And I know that person’s dead.”
“Absolutely certain, are you? Does a ghost have a gun on you?”
“I guess she must.” He turned to face her, slowly, and then he actually did laugh, shaking his head at her, from down the barrel of her gun. “You look pretty good for a dead woman.”
“Sweet talk will get you everywhere.” Dropping the gun to her side, she took in the sight of him. Still muscled, still hard, even with tiny lines around the corner of his eyes. In the nine years she’d spent in a coma, apparently Weevil Navarro had changed dramatically.
Losing the Codename: Biker for Codename: Husband, and Codename: Dad, chief among them. He’d aged well, from what she could see in the dim light of the street after dark. Apparently, even after nine years he hadn’t forgotten her, or the sound of her gun pointed at him, and that spoke volumes in his favor. The rest of the world had moved on without her, and he might’ve looked like he did, but in some ways he really hadn’t.
“Is it true what they say about you? You’re out of the business?” She sat at his dining room table, coffee just how she remembered she liked it. If only everything didn’t taste like ashes these days.
“If you thought it was true would you be here?” Naturally, he’d heard she ended up in a coma; the irony was, her death was supposed to ensure the survival of the California Spider, not dissolve it into ancient history. Generals who don’t understand their armies lose wars, he thought. Looking at her, if anyone could cheat death, it’d certainly have to be her.
“Why do you think I’m here?” Her gun sat on the table next to her, she’s certain she’s learned a hard lesson of caution in her past life.
“I always had what you needed, V. And I have what you need, now.”
What she remembers about her old life is it’s soft edges; it’s ice cream sundaes, it’s sex by candlelight, it’s warmth in the California sun. She remembers her steady hand pulling the trigger when told, when asked, when begged not to. She remembers her father dying in front of her at age 12, and she remembers hunting down every one of the subordinate bastards who did it.
They’d underestimated her, of course, and she let them live just long enough to regret that. Just long enough to understand that letting her live with that pain, with that memory of her pink bed-room walls dripping with her beloved father’s blood, hadn’t been a mercy it’d been an act of cruelty.
After that, there are a few years of schooling, training, that blur together in a rage-blind haze when she thinks about them now; eventually, training led to her recruitment by the California Spider. An elite team of….well, not all of them prefer the term killers, but somebody had put a bullet in her head so she was pretty much finished being hung up on terminology. The k-word never bothered her. Some people deserved to be dead, and she didn’t mind killing them. Becoming the deadliest woman in the world had been easy, once she’d gotten used to living with herself. The world hadn’t been as black and white back then as she’d liked, but now she really doesn’t care to see the gray.
Waking up from a nine year nap, she’d found her muscles atrophied and her head scarred, but rage no lessened by time. In fact, she’s sure she’s never been more alive with anger in whole life. There are at least four people she intends to kill before she dies for good, and there are things she needs for that to happen.
Her gun, first of all. Not the shitty pistol on the Weevil Navarro’s breakfast table,
her gun;
a silver-cast Taurus Judge, with a
V
on the handle just for her. Sure, it’s not for every assignment, but this is her last statement to the world, her last statement to every person she’d ever considered important; if she’s not the Judge now, who is she? Before she’d been shot in the side of the head, she’d given the Judge to Weevil, and they both know why she needs it back.
Dick Casablancas, Codename: 09, is first on her list to see the Judge. They’d never been close sure, but V always assumed a mutual respect. The dynamic of the California Spider, was everybody listens to Silver Star, and no one needs to get caught in the web. But when she’d thrown out the rule book, apparently they’d let it die with her.
When she tracks down Dick Casablancas, he’s some sort of mafia club boss, a scum-of-the-Earth type known for a womanizing streak and bad beer breath. That’s how she knows it’s the right Dick Casablancas. Plus, his club cover’s called the
09-er
, and how he’s survived nine years without the California Spider, V is sure she doesn’t know. Sitting at his bar, sipping a cocktail she knows she won’t be paying for; she’s missed life among the living. If she makes it out alive maybe this might just be fun. It’s a snazzy place, very Dick, she’ll give him that.
The haunted look he gets on his face when he sees her; well, that’s not bad either.
His guards come for her, they
try
to anyway, but even with a drink in her hand, she’s still the deadliest woman this side of Hell, and bouncers with guns sure as shit aren’t going to stop her now. He knows it, when she looks down her gun at him.
“So you
do
remember your old friend?” The club’s long cleared out, broken stools and crumpled bodies littering the place, and if she can make his life a graveyard before she takes it; well, all the better.
“You've always been a real bitch, V, but care to let a dead man finish his last beer?” Pinky out, he sipped and she shot the bottle, splintering shards of thick, green beer bottle glass into his hand and face.
“I’d say you're done now,” She clicked her tongue at him. The pathetic stammering and sputtering means he's still alive, and only for the moment that's okay with her. “What i don't understand is how you could turn on your best friend. Even a bastard like you needs a moral code, I just can't pin it down.”
“He wasn't my best friend anymore. You made him unrecognizable, you changed him, you know that. You'd say jump and he'd say how high. We did him a favor.” Dick spit his blood in her face, barely earning himself a flinch.
“Which of you put the bullet in my head?” The judge pressed against his cheek, she already has his blood on her and figures why go for the clean kill? Had they honored her would-be corpse?
“You already know.”
She pulled the trigger, spraying blood everywhere, and there's a still, calming in it she remembers. His warm blood cooling on her skin, she sighed.
“Well then, I really don't need you, do I?”
She finished her free cocktail, stepping over him and his attempted bodyguards, and she moved on.
“You know it won't bring him back,” Wallace, Code Name: Papa Bear, pointed out. Of course, he's the only person in the world that would dare say that to her now, but he's always been different. Deadly in a professional capacity only, he was efficient back in the day, and better with information extraction than anyone she'd known.
He's where she gets the information she needs to find and kill the rest of them. In the nine years since their friends tried to kill her, he's lived a quiet life. Naturally, he offered her a place in it, but the V who wanted a normal life really is dead now, and he believes her when she tells him that.
He tells her everything she needs to know. Addresses, aliases, fills in the nine year crater in her memory with as much as he can.
“You know, if after…” He started, but she shook her head.
“I'll die killing him or I won't, but either way you won't hear from me again, Papa Bear.” When he nods like he understands, she kisses his cheek and leaves him for good- information tucked under her arm and a mission to carry out. One assigned by God, she
feels
it, not a just a man who thinks himself one.
Tracking the Kanes’ has only gotten easier in the nine years she’s lost; V just follows the trail of blow all the way up the coast, until she reaches the horizon and Duncan Kane, Code Name: Prince, is waiting there for her.
“You know, you’re the first one I’ve met who’s still in the game. Why do you think that is?” Nine years, and time hasn’t been kind to him; he’s got a scar long across his face, either from his sister or their boss. V suppresses the urge to ask about it, mostly cause she just doesn’t care enough, and he’s only got so much time left.
“I always said you’d be back, V. You always had that kick for vengeance and everything.” He whistled when he saw her, long gun trained on her pretty little face. “You really think you can do it, don’t you?” He laughed.”Dick, sure. He was always too stupid to see you for the snake you were. And L-”
She fired, whizzing a bullet straight past his head and it buys his silence for a second. If he thought this was a game, she wanted to make it very clear who would win.
“You know why you’re still alive, right?” She shot his hand when his finger twitched the trigger, sending him yelping in pain and suddenly he found himself suffering from a severe case of weaponlessness. “I
know
you didn’t put a bullet in my head. You helped kill me, sure, the kicks when I was down and all, you’re a real classy guy. But despite your poor choices in friends and family, you’re right, you were always smart enough to stay scared of me- even when I was less to be afraid of. So I know it wasn’t you.” She kicked his gun away, and pointed
the judge
at his chest. “So which of them was it?”
He kicked her feet out from under her, knocking her to the ground, and began wrestling for her gun. Once she kicked out from under him, knocking him back, he pulled a knife with a smile.
“I’ll admit we’re not square, me and you, but it’s not like you’re some virginal fucking saint I need to feel remorse over. None of us even felt bad, you know. You were always the problem child- starting fights between the rest of us. Without you-”
“Without me, you wouldn’t have gotten off your fucking training wheels. You’d still be skeet shooting for the boy scouts wondering why nothing in your goddamn life feels like satisfaction.” She shook her head, nine years of scapegoating her must’ve been some labor of love for some of them. “Besides, eight makes a spider, not six or seven, and I see how well the outfit stayed together after it all”
He swung at her then, and she ducked, pushing him roughly, away from her. Slashing wildly with the knife, he sliced her once, twice, three times over her breast bone, but when he got brazen and went for her throat, she knew the conversation was over. Some people, she thought, there’s just no reasoning with.
Firing once into his shoulder, she watched him fall into a pool of his own blood, and when he reached up with his knife she turned it on him, using all of her body weight to plunge it into his neck.
Two down, two to go at the half, and by god, she just might make it.
Lilly Kane, Code Name: Cheerleader, still runs a little assassination circle. According to Wallace, it’s mostly small-time government contracts, which led V to believe maybe Lilly Kane finally learned an ounce of discretion. The lime green limo outside the office of Kane Services, well, that tells her otherwise. Killing the driver is so easy it could’ve been shameful, if shame even existed in their world anymore. She waited in the bed of the limo, the judge trained on the door, taking stock in the fact that the Cheerleader’s the last stumbling block on her way to Silver Star, and V didn’t intend to stumble. When the door swings open, and Lilly stepped in, there’s no shock or surprise- she’s been expecting V since she stopped hearing from Duncan.
“Was it just jealousy, or were you so eager to please you’d even kill your first love?” V doesn’t let her lips tremble, not after the shit she’s seen, done, and been through, but a different her might’ve shed a tear. For posterity, or something.
Her memory isn’t perfect from that day- after all, she’d been shot in the fucking head- but the image of Lilly Kane shooting her husband right after his vows comes through with crystal clarity every time V closed her eyes. It’s the only reason she doubts Silver Star pulled the trigger on her.
“We could’ve been legends, V.” Lilly rolled her eyes. “We still could be. Your little revenge rampage get up- boots are a bit butch for my tastes, but you’ve been in a coma since 2001- I get it.”
V slapped her across the face, hard, and sent Lilly reeling for the gun she kept strapped to her thigh.
“Is that the
judge
?” Lilly recovered, face red and stinging, but amused nonetheless. “How is Weevil, by the way? He stopped taking my calls after we’d killed you. You sure got your hooks into those boys, huh? You guys always had your loyalty hang ups,” Lilly rolled her eyes back again. “I mean, we’re
murderers,
what’d you expect, V?”
“In case you haven’t heard, I’m about to kill half the California Spider Assassin squad. I’m already a legend, Lil. Were you the one who shot me?” V stayed focused, hadn’t they all used to love that about her? Her determination? Her drive? Her attention to detail?
“You’re still taking this too personally,” Lilly whined, twirling her gun. “It was about saving the Spider, even if we lost you two. You two couldn’t just
walk away...
I mean
really,
faking your deaths and eloping?” She shook her head, dismissing the history. “Classic him, obviously, but you could’ve been incredible. You had to know not all of us were gonna let you give it up that easily. The only reason you’re alive now is because I got the ‘stand down’ order when I went to the hospital to desecrate your corpse. And now look, you’ve killed DK and made me regret being the good soldier.” Lilly kicked across the limo, and V got a stiletto heel three inches deep into her shoulder that made her scream- blood seeping through her shirt quickly when Lilly pulled her heel out.
V reached for one of the limo’s bar glasses, smashing it over Lilly’s head, and got her hands on the other girl’s gun. Truthfully, this was the only way it could’ve ended between them. V emptied Lilly’s own gun into her head, and extracted herself from the limo, shoulder still burning from the heel stab. They’d been close once, she remembered vividly, but they’d never understood each other. Plus, like Lilly said- they were all murderers, what could she expect?
Whether she’d sent him running for the hills, or in his old age he’d been reduced to hiding like the coward he was, either way, V took her time driving into the beautiful, Califronia hills. Idly, she wondered if she’d mourn after; not for
them
, but after it was over, if she’d feel more complete or less- she doesn’t care either way,
after
isn’t really the priority- but she’s curious all the same.
Getting to the house, she fought an eyeroll; it was his place all right.
“What kind of deal did you have to make with the devil for him to let you out of hell?” Sitting at the top of a flight of steps in the house, his gun’s cocked on her, and
god
, he looks like the crypt keeper himself.
“You really wanna know?” She lifted the judge, and locked her eyes on him. “Ask him.” She fired towards him, and he ran like the bastard she remembered. It’s not about to stop her from shooting, and it’s certainly not going to stop her from killing him.
“Don’t you want to know everything, V?” He called. “You always had that penchant for unravelling the mystery. Don’t you want to know all the dramatic details?”
She climbs the steps slowly, one at a time, gun still pointed at him, hand still steady. His smile makes her want to shoot his fucking teeth out, one perfect white chip at a time.
“And you always had that penchant for being a heartless bastard. We knew if we weren’t careful you’d come after us. I knew you could want us dead. Your thing was always control; as long as the puppets danced in tune, you were happy. I should’ve known, that I made a mistake thinking you wouldn’t kill your own son. You never liked me, you respected me, sure, because I’ve got a gun on you right now, and how many women in the world can say they bested Silver Star? But your own son? That’s a level of if-I-can’t-play-with-my-toys-no-one-can you should really get diagnosed.” She watched him eyeing her, even now trying to predict her movements so he could manipulate them.
“You
took
him from me, and you were going to take everything from me. I couldn’t just let that happen. You two were the best, in the whole world, killers with grace, finesse, zero qualms about morality- don’t be shy, how many people did you kill to get to me? How many qualms did you have about that?” He laughed at her, like he’d always laughed at her. “You wanted to waste your life, and you wanted to waste his.”
“So you ordered a bullet into his fucking chest?” A droplet of sweat slid it’s way down her back, cool and slow.
“It’s possible I overreacted.We thought you’d been killed, bested, by another team. To find you, in some desert love-nest whispering sweet nothings like either of you could just
walk away
from everything I gave you, from everything we could’ve been to the world.” He tilted his head. “I wasn’t about to stand back and watch you ruin everything, little Veronica Mars. You remember what you were before the Spider? A femme fatale playing hardened spy. I made you, we made you, and you turned your fucking back. What else could I do but put a bullet in it?”
“I’m insulted that you don’t even remember you put that bullet in my brain.”
Of course it’d been him. It’d have to have been him. They came into the chapel, Lilly, Duncan, Dick, and Silver Star, full assault mode, wrecking everything in their path. They’d fought back, naturally, the
best in the world
, but even half the Spider organized into a well-armed single strike… Veronica remembered losing a tooth on Duncan’s fist, and watching it fall to the floor, bouncing around with a
plink, plink, plink,
while they continued their assault.
Lilly pulling the trigger on Logan, the red-soaked lining of his tux, and the sound his body made hitting the floor- that’s what made Veronica shut her eyes. Looking back, maybe it’d been a bargain with God, a silent promise to pay these people back what they owed that spared her life. But with her eyes closed during that last moment of Hell, she heard the gun go off and then there was just blackness for a very long time.
“Oh, I remember, V. Don’t think I don’t. I didn’t think I’d ever get to experience it
twice.
You know, Logan always hated it when we fought. He was always telling me his plans for you two; kids, marriage, like you could just skip off and join the homeowner’s association and pretend you’d never fucked each other drenched in other people’s blood.”
“Maybe we could’ve. But that’s not what I want now.” Tears in her eyes, at the conscious memory; he’d always talked like that- like they’d had a future together in the real world, or even in both. That they could exist without the Spider. She should’ve known they could only try. “Now I want you to die, and Aaron- it’s time.”
Pulling Logan’s knife from her back pocket with her left hand, gun still steady in her right, she reflected light off the metal and watched his eyes widen.
“I
looked
for that-
where did you get that?
” He snarled, lunging towards her, angled for the knife. “You’re telling me that little street kid Weevil kept your weapons after all these years? That’s my
son’s
knife, Veronica. Say what you want about my skills as a parent, but that knife belongs to me.” He punched her face, landing hard blows with the heel of his hand, and she cut his cheek with the knife he wanted so desperately.
“Here, take it,” Her smile was bloody, red dripping from the corners of her mouth as she slashed at his chest, digging deep cuts across his body. “I’m sure this is exactly how Logan would’ve wanted you to have it.”
She slammed him against a wall, bracing her body against his, and he blinked a few seconds before the realization struck him. She had stabbed him, and he was dying.
“Do you think you’ve won?” He sputtered, body slumping into her shoulder as she pulled the knife out, cleaning it against her pant leg.
“I sure as shit didn’t lose.” She left him, slid down against the wall, and the feeling of freedom that overtook her shocked her into sobs of joy. Feeling of real breath back in her lungs, like she’d carried out the mission of God her life had always pointed her towards.
It’s an unmarked grave she visits every so often, every time she tastes coffee he would’ve liked or she sees a kid that could’ve been their’s with a little more time. If rage was energy, hot and passionate raw energy, grief was the dull edge of the blade.
When she visits, she carves a little message every once in awhile, using his knife in the grass.
To Code Name: Playboy,
With Love,
V.