Veronica Mars, Season Two (AU)
Rated R for bad language
SPOILERS for Season One and Season Two through 2x10, "One Angry Veronica" (just to be on the safe side).
Logan is failing most of his classes, and Miss James assigns him a student tutor.

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Rebecca James folds her hands, and lays them on a manila folder. The folder tab is curled and fuzzy-edged, as if from much thumbing and consulting. A neatly-printed label reads: ECHOLLS, LOGAN.

"You're failing most of your classes, Logan."

"Only most of them?"

Miss James frowns. "You're hanging onto a D in Calculus II. Somehow." Then her expression softens, and she tilts her head. "This is a difficult time for you. I understand."

Logan says nothing.

"Do you really want to throw away all the work you did in summer school? Don't you want to graduate?"

He opts not to reply.

"I wasn't being rhetorical," Miss James adds.

"I don't care."

"I take it you're not planning on college."

"No."

"What exactly do you plan to do with the rest of your life?"

"Oh, I've got a plan." Logan leans forward in his chair; his sudden animation makes Miss James jump slightly. He holds his hands up, palms outward, framing the scene. "Here's the plan. In two months, I'm blowing this fucking town like I've got a JATO rocket strapped to my truck."

"And then?"

"I'm gonna check into a hotel room in Vegas and overdose on a massive cocktail of booze and drugs. Although, that's really the fall-back plan. In case I don't kill myself some other way."

Miss James sits back, her expression carefully neutral. Logan has this effect on everyone. He's a magnet with two negative poles. Repelling; repelling.

She says, "I've assigned you a student tutor."

Startled, Logan laughs. Of all the things for her to say, he hadn't expected that one. "What, you're tired of wasting just your time? Wanna waste somebody else's as well?"

The guidance counselor makes a face: an expression faintly pained and slightly embarrassed. "The school is legally obligated to provide you with assistance. At least until you turn eighteen."

"Ah," he says.

"But, Logan..."

"Save it. The speech about no child left behind. About trying to reach me. You put in the effort. I don't want to be reached. Your attempt is duly noted; thank you." He sits back, and folds his hands over his stomach.

Miss James stands up. For a second, Logan swears she looks like she's going to cry. Last year he might have felt bad. Maybe. This year, he can't bring himself to give a fuck. And her flicker of compassion passes as fast as her earlier embarrassment. She doesn't really care. She cares in a general way, but not for Logan specifically. Nobody cares specifically. He thinks about telling her this. Saying, it's okay, you know? It's cool. I get it now. Before he can, Miss James crosses her office, opens the door and pokes her head out. She says to someone, "Would you come in, please?"

A murmur of assent from beyond the door. A girl follows the guidance counselor back into the room. Logan knows her by sight, like he knows most of the Neptune High students. He doesn't know her name. She's under his oh-niner radar. She obviously knows him; she flashes him a brief look of pure horror and then her greenish-brownish gaze falls to the stack of books clutched against her chest, and stays down.

Logan sizes up his student tutor. Tall and fair-skinned. Not a bad body, as far as he can judge under her baggy black sweater and her boy-cut jeans. A ruffled brunette pixie cut. Not pretty. Except for those eyes. A slim scar jigs one corner of her upper lip, and her nose has a pushed-down, Cameron Diaz look. A small gold crucifix gleams in the hollow of her throat. She's sort of adorable, like an alley cat with one ear. And there is something familiar about her. More than passing-in-the-hall familiarity. Maybe it's only the tantalizing tough-girl whiff of Veronica 2.0. Or, maybe it's that Logan Echolls casts a long shadow. Did he make her cry last year? Trip her on the stairs, shove her books out of her hands, snap her bra? Stand back and laugh while Dick did one or more of the above? The girl casts him another look from under her lashes, and slips mutely into the vacant chair in front of the guidance counselor's desk.

"Logan," Miss James says, "this is Caitlin Ford."

Logan's mouth falls open.

"We've met," Caitlin says.

Logan's brain scrabbles like a dog on a polished wood floor. The first thing he latches onto is that her voice is Caitlin's voice. The one-eared alley cat is Caitlin.

Miss James closes the door to her office, either not noticing or deliberately ignoring that the temperature in the room has plummeted thirty degrees. "Now, the SOS program --" she begins.

"SOS?" Logan snarks. He's running on auto-pilot. Caitlin Ford? Caitlin Slut-Bitch-Chardo-Fucking Ford? When he has given Caitlin any thought at all -- which isn't often -- Logan has assumed she transferred to another school. Swanning through the halls of Pan High, maybe. Dragging some other stupid asshole around by the balls. He never loved Caitlin. He didn't even care about her much. She was a budget replacement for Lilly, but she gave his pride one hell of a bloody nose anyway. Bitches, both of them. Fucking cunts.

"Student Outreach Services," Miss James clarifies. "Students teaching other students."

Logan turns to Caitlin and says icily, "What exactly are you planning to teach me?"

She doesn't reply, nor does she look at him. Miss James answers instead. "AP English and History." She flips open Logan's folder, scanning the contents. "Caitlin, you have Mr. Polk for Chemistry, correct?"

"Yes," Caitlin replies quietly. "That's right."

"Well, Logan has Mr. Polk fourth period. Would you feel comfortable helping him with Chemistry?"

"I'm not that good at Chem."

"I think you're being too modest, Caitlin."

Caitlin sighs.

"If you're concerned about the time commitment..."

"No," she says. "It's fine."

"Logan?"

"What?" Logan snaps.

Miss James raises her eyebrows. "I understand that at the moment, you're not willing to make an investment in your future..."

Logan glares at her.

"... but I would appreciate your cooperation for the next two months."

He opens his mouth to beg Miss James to assign another tutor. Anybody else. Dear God, please. He stops. He's curious. Caitlin hasn't voiced a squeak of protest, except about Mr. Polk's Chemistry class. She knows Logan hates her. She's so slick at avoiding him, he hasn't even realized she still goes to Neptune until just now. She could just tell Miss James that she and Logan broke up last year. Less than amicably. Way less. But Caitlin doesn't say a word. Logan wants to know why. He also wants to know what happened to the blond hair, the tits, and the tan. And who gave her that boxer nose-job? Chardo Navarro? Probably. Hell, Logan could make book on that bet. Quite the gent, that Chardo.

"Logan?" Miss James asks. "What do you say?"

"All right," Logan replies. "Sure."
***
Caitlin Ford is a goddamned ninja. Logan is supposed to meet her Thursday after school, in the Student Resource Center. He can't wait that long. He tries to track her down before then. To have it out with her. Or something. He doesn't know what he wants. Maybe he wants her to say something. Apologize. Explain. Cry. Something. The suspense is killing him.

He can't find her. She's totally Irene Adlered him and disappeared. Veronica could find her, but Logan won't ask Veronica for help. Fuck no. Caitlin has to know Logan is looking, and that's why she's ducking him. All by itself, this is more interesting than Caitlin ever was the whole time he was dating her. Of course, they were really just cordial acquaintances who fucked. He doesn't know her middle name, or her top three desert island books, or what she dreams about at night, but he knows the taste of her skin. This is the trouble. He expects to see the Caitlin he knows. The long sheaf of platinum hair, the sassy sway of her ass, the little pink outfits. He's used to strolling the Lido Deck, not hunting through steerage. So, Caitlin has it her own way, and Logan doesn't see her again until Thursday afternoon.

***
Logan never sets foot in the library. He has to ask directions to the Student Resource Center. It's tucked away in the back. He gets the perp walk, escorted by a librarian, past the long line of carrels. The students eye him over their books; he's new meat on the cell block. Caitlin, of course, is already in the SRC when he walks through the door. She doesn't do anything except look up, but her shoulders lift and her chin goes down. Squaring herself for a fight. She's had almost the whole week to get in touch with her inner Xena.

Logan dumps his backpack on the table and drops into the molded plastic chair opposite her. "What the fuck, Caitlin?"

So much for ladies first.

Caitlin's brown eyes narrow, and that stirs up a vague memory. "His" Caitlin had bright blue eyes. Of course, he figures it out a second later: colored contacts. Not even an especially natural color. He was too drunk and self-involved and blindly intent on screwing her to notice or care. A small, sharp ice-pick of guilt stabs him; he tries very hard to ignore it.

"Do you mean, what the fuck, why Chardo," she says. "Or do you mean, what the fuck, why did I agree to tutor you? Or something else?"

"Let's start with Chardo."

Caitlin makes a movement halfway between a head-shake and a shudder; she takes her history textbook off her binder and sets it in front of her.

Logan ignores her implied request. "Did he break your nose?"

She looks up in surprise. This Chardo question isn't the question she'd expected, evidently.

"Did he hit you? Did he fucking punch you in the face, Caitlin?"

Why should he care, anyway? He can read that perfectly well from her puzzled expression. Of course, she doesn't know about his father. About the belt or the cigarette burns. And the bruises? She accepted all his laugh-it-off explanations about flag football. Whatever. Boys will be boys. The willful ignorance went both ways.

"Chardo came looking for me," Caitlin replies. "To give me what I deserved. One last goodbye, before prison."

"You think you deserved that?"

"I don't know." Caitlin glances past Logan, speculatively. "Do you think Chardo deserved it when you punched him in the face?"

That's not the answer Logan wants, because the answer to that question is yes. He scowls and unzips his backpack, hunting for his own history book.

"It's alphabetical," Caitlin offers.

"Huh?"

"Tutoring assignments. Same year, same section of the alphabet. You're an E; I'm an F. That's how the school assigns tutors."

"Why didn't you just tell Miss James you didn't want to tutor me?"

"Is this really what you want to talk about?" Caitlin asks him, sounding like she thinks he's funny.

"Fuck you!" Logan slams down his history book. "If I want to fucking talk about football, or the metric system, or fucking Zydeco music, Caitlin, that's what I'll fucking talk about."

"You know," she says, "There's nobody signed up after you. When you're finished yelling at me, I still have time to tutor you."

"You're not even sorry, are you?"

"No," she replies. "I'm not sorry. We had a business arrangement. You got laid, and I got the social cred of being seen on your arm."

"Except I wasn't... what? I wasn't bad enough for you? Not exotic enough? Not dangerous enough? Where was I lacking, exactly?" he asks sarcastically.

"I wasn't bad or exotic or dangerous enough for you, Logan," Caitlin replies. "I wasn't..." She hesitates, then she drops the cherry on the sundae. "I wasn't dead enough."

Logan takes a deep breath. He closes his eyes for a second. Right now, he doesn't blame Chardo one bit for punching Caitlin in the face. "So, this is all my fault."

"I didn't say that," she replies quickly. "And I didn't say things when we were dating, either. We didn't have that kind of relationship." She opens her textbook and flips through the chapters. "Okay. Let's go through the study questions at the end of Chapter Fourteen."

She's right. Whatever things Caitlin wanted to say -- he would have laughed at her. If he'd even bothered to listen. The tight, hot ball in the center of his chest isn't entirely anger anymore. He asks her, "Did you want to say something? I mean... besides telling me to fuck off?"

"List three causes of the Industrial Revolution in Europe."

"Eli Whitney got everybody drunk when he invented gin," Logan spitballs, and then he tries again. "Why didn't you just transfer to another school?"

"My dad told me I'd made my own bed, and now I had to lie in it," Caitlin replies. She doesn't sound angry; she sounds amused by her father's choice of aphorisms. "He grounded me for the rest of eternity, but it didn't matter. I didn't have any friends left. I was miserable. And then I figured out... this will sound stupid to you, I'm sure."

"Fire away."

"I had a reason to stay. And I could be like Veronica Mars. I could fight back when Dick or Cole dumped my books. More important, I could start over. Be a completely different person. Not a shallow, ball-breaking bitch."

"In other words, not like Veronica Mars."

Caitlin smiles. The little scar bisecting her lip pulls the left corner of her mouth up a bit more than the right, making it a sassy, gangster's-moll smile. "Three causes of the Industrial Revolution," she reminds him. "One. The Enclosure Movement...?"

Logan puts his head down on his textbook. This close to the page, he can't read a single word. Thank God.

"Two," Caitlin continues serenely, "colonial expansion. Three, the scientific revolution. Oh, and the cotton gin wasn't a mixed drink, sorry."

"Dammit," says Logan, muffled against page two-seventy-nine. Then he lifts his head. "Caitlin, why did you want to tutor me?"

"You're failing everything."

"I am not. I've got a solid D in Calculus II, thank you very much."

"Good. You can tutor me. I suck at Calculus. Logan, you know you can't just bomb out of school, ditch Neptune, and ride off into the sunset in your butt-ugly truck."

"Hey!"

"What are you going to do after that? Drink and party until you're sixty; and you're fat and bald, and the girls think you're a total joke? Drop dead from a heart attack in some five-star hotel bathroom in Europe? What kind of life is that? It's retarded."

"I thought you said you didn't want to be a ball-breaking bitch anymore."

Caitlin touches his sleeve lightly. "You're smart, Logan. Graduate. Go to college. Do something. Be somebody."

Logan shakes his head. It doesn't matter. It's pointless. Nobody cares what I do. I won't make one fucking iota of difference. He's tired of having this conversation. And why the hell does she give a crap, anyhow?

She says, "The Industrial Revolution began in Britain with the introduction of what energy source?"

"Dilithium crystals."

"Come on, Logan."

He gives it some serious thought. "Coal?"

"Close. Add water."

"Wet coal. Steam?"

"Yes!" Caitlin exclaims, looking surprised and delighted, which Logan finds annoying and hilarious.

"Woo!" Logan throws devil-horns. "Next stop, Harvard!"

Caitlin presses one hand to her chest. "Oh my God," she gasps dramatically. "I feel just like Anne Sullivan!"

"Oh, ha-fucking-hah."

"Discuss probable factors why the Industrial Revolution did not occur in China."

"Caitlin."

She lifts her head, looking startled by Logan's lack of a stupid, jackoff answer to the study question. Thing is, Caitlin hasn't answered a few of his questions, like: Why did you agree to tutor me? What did you figure out last year, that made you want to stay at Neptune High? Did you want to tell me something when we were dating? And do you maybe want to tell me something right now?

Logan says, "I... do I show up here every Thursday?"

"We don't have to study here. As long as I'm back by the end of the hour."

"So, theoretically we could go somewhere. In my butt-ugly truck."

Caitlin lowers her eyes briefly, then she meets Logan's gaze again. "Theoretically."

"All right," he replies. "Cool."

Her mouth curves in that little, lopsided smile. "Transportation developed rapidly during the Industrial Revolution. List three traditional modes that underwent marked improvement."

"Astral projection."

She laughs. "Okay, how about we try Calculus, instead?"

Logan leans back in his chair. "No, no. Wait. Uh... steam locomotives?"


THE END
***

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Part Two: Thursday Next
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