Drink to Forget
By Misha

Disclaimer- I don't own anything to do with "Veronica Mars", I really wish I did, but I don't. It belongs to Rob Thomas and the UPN. I'm not making any money off of this, so please don't sue me.

Author's Notes- Another fic, this one's really angsty. It's a song fic, to the song "Whiskey Lullaby". The first time I heard the song was in the summer when I was camping, a friend played it for me on his guitar and my first thought was 'I have to write a fic to that'. Well, this was born and here it is. This is kind of strange for me, it's a LoVe fic, though not a particularly happy one. However, it is pro-LoVe, even if I'm not. It's also kinda anti-Duncan, even though I love him. I can't explain it, that's just how my muse demanded it. Well, that's all for now, enjoy!

Pairing- Logan/Veronica, Duncan/Veronica.

Summery- It was easier to try and to drink away the memories, than to deal with the pain.

Rating- PG-13

Spoilers- The whole first season.

The marriage of Logan Echolls and Veronica Mars didn't last very long.

There were only four years between the day when they said their vows and the night she walked out of the home they shared, never to return.

Well, she returned, but not as his wife.

Never again would she be that. After all, as soon as the ink was dry on their divorce papers, she was another man's wife.

Duncan Kane's.

Logan took losing her hard, something in him died that day. He'd thought it had hurt when she'd dumped him in high school, but this was a thousand times worse than that, a thousand times worse than Lilly.

There was nothing that could dim his pain, or make him forget her.

Everywhere he went, he saw some echo of Veronica. He thought of how happy they had been, for a while anyway, and he thought about how she had walked away without looking back.

He saw her every once in a while,after all they had two children together and that wasn't going to go away. Though they did try and work it so that they saw as little of one another as possible.

Logan thought it would be better if he never had to see Veronica ever again. If he never had to imagine her in Duncan's arms, living her life with him.

We watched him drink his pain away, a little at a time,
But he never could get drunk enough to get her off his mind.
Until the night,

He started drinking the night Veronica left and he continued to drink every day afterwards.

Some days were worse than others, like the night Veronica married Duncan, or when he heard that she was having Duncan's child.

He drank his sorrows away in a bottle of whiskey, trying to forget that he'd ever met Veronica Mars. But it never worked, there was never enough alcohol to wipe away her memory.

He could never forget her, just like he could never stop loving her. But, God, he wanted both so badly...

So, he turned to his beloved whiskey, hoping that it would dull the pain and the memory of her face.

He put that bottle to his head and pulled the trigger,
And finally drank away her memory.
Life is short, this time it was bigger,
Than the strength he had to get up off his knees.

Finally, there came a night when Logan couldn't take it anymore. When he couldn't take a life, haunted by her face.

He had spent fifteen years drinking to forget her and it hadn't worked.

She was still there, still so beautiful, and so treacherous. She had promised to love him and then had destroyed him.

He hated her, hated Duncan for having her, and mostly he hated himself for loving her, for never being able to forget her.

So, one night, he finished off a bottle of whiskey and realized there was only way to make himself truly forget her.

He took a gun and followed in his mother's shoes by ending his own life. He had thought of following her off a bridge, but it seemed better this way.

Messier and more painful, just like his relationship with Veronica.

His last thoughts before he pulled the trigger were of her. As the life seeped out of him, it was her face he saw in front of him.

We found him with his face down in the pillow,
With a note that said I'll love her 'til I die.

Their son, Andrew, was the one that found his body and the note that he had left.

"I'll love her 'til I die and I can't handle loving her anymore."

His children had been devastated, of course, but not surprised.

Their father had been a drunken mess for as long as they could remember. They knew the reasons and didn't blame him entirely, but it was true all the same.

Neither of the Echolls' children could remember a time when their father could make it through an entire day without a drink.

And when we buried him beneath the willow,
The angels sang a whiskey lullaby.

They buried him in the quiet graveyard, under a willow tree.

Andrew and Chloe, Veronica's other child by Logan, had insisted on a private burial. They would not share this moment with the world and they shouldn't have too.

The media had been hovering since the story had leaked, eating up the news that Aaron Echolls' son had killed himself, just like his mother so many years ago.

Still, the Echolls' children were insistent that the press had no business being at the burial. It was private, it was something that belonged to them and them alone.

The rumours flew, but nobody know how much she blamed herself,
For years and years she tried to hide the whiskey on her breath.

Logan's death made all the tabloids.

It also dredged up all those old stories. Lynn's suicide. Lilly's murder at Aaron's hands. The fact that Veronica had walked out on Logan after four years of marriage and married Duncan Kane barely a month after her divorce was final.

She hated the rumours, the fact that her private life was public once more.

But, what other people thought about her didn't bother her as much as the fact that she knew they were right.

Veronica blamed herself for Logan's death.

She should have been a better wife to him. But they had fought so much and Logan was never an easy man to live with and there was Duncan offering her love and support and demanding of her. She had given in and made that decision and had damned Logan in the process.

She hated herself for what she had done and the guilt ate away at her.

She began to drink, just to wash away the blame she heaped upon herself. She was her mother's daughter, all right, drinking to forget her sins.

Veronica tried to hide it, tried not to let Duncan or the children see how much she was drinking. After all, she had a reputation to maintain, a place in society to uphold, and it would never do to let anyone smell the whiskey on her breath or see the red-tinges to her eyes.

She finally drank her pain away a little at a time,
But she never could get drunk enough to get him off her mind.
Until the night,

Veronica drank more and more as time passed.

She just couldn't get Logan's death off her mind.

Every night when she lay in bed next to Duncan, she thought of Logan.

She thought of how she had destroyed him with her selfishness. She should have honoured her wedding vows, but then, she was her mother's daughter after all.

Why should she do what Lianne Mars never had?

In her more sober moments, she hates the fact that she has become her mother, but those are few and far between.

She drank more and more with each passing day, just hoping to forget Logan for a little while. But it never worked, there wasn't enough whiskey in the world to make her forget about him.

She put that bottle to her head and pulled the trigger,
And finally drank away his memory.
Life is short, this time it was bigger,
Than the strength she had to get up off her knees.

There finally came a night when Veronica's guilt and self-loathing became too much for her to bear.

She sat on her bed, holding her bottle of whiskey and surrounded by old photo albums.

She looked at pictures of herself, Logan, Duncan and Lilly long ago and wondered when it had come to this. Lilly was long dead. She was a drunken mess. Logan was dead, because of her.

And Duncan... He was a good man, for all that he had slept with his best friend's wife, but he was very involved in his career and his image and he was oblivious to his wife's pain.

But then, that was Duncan. He wasn't much of a husband, but she wasn't much of a wife. She lived her life at the bottom of a whiskey bottle, trying to forget another man's face.

She put the albums away, all except one photograph, and took her gun out of her drawer.

She held it and thought of all the mistakes she had made. Of all the lives she had ruined. Of the fact that she had left the man she loved for one that she hadn't loved in a long time and that Logan was dead because of that. Because of her.

She finished off her bottle of whiskey and raised the gun to her head and prepared to pull the trigger. As she did, she thought of Logan and how much she wished she could have done things differently.

We found her with her face down in the pillow,
Clinging to his picture for dear life.

Chloe found her mother's body.

It didn't surprise her that Veronica had taken the same out as her ex-husband. Her parents had never been able to separate themselves from each other, not really.

Chloe took in her mother's dead body and the empty whiskey bottle and wondered why things had progressed as they had.

Chloe saw the picture her mother was clutching, a picture of a young, happy Logan Echolls.

She bit back a sob and gently pried the picture from her mother's dead hands, she covered her mother's body with a blanket and then went to tell her brother, step-father, and half-siblings the news.

She wondered how the two little ones, who hadn't seen their father meet the same destructive fate like Chloe and Andrew had, would react to the news.

She was sure it would devastate them, after all, she was devastated, even if she had been half-expecting it.

We laid her next to him beneath the willow,
While the angels sand a whiskey lullaby.

They buried Veronica Kane next to her ex-husband.

Her older two children had insisted on it, since they believed that she would have wanted it.

Duncan had given in, perhaps admitting to himself a truth he had known for years, that Veronica had never loved him like she loved Logan. But then had he ever loved her as much as Logan did?

Duncan didn't know the answer to that, but he wept as he watched her casket being lowered to the ground. He wept for her and for Logan and for himself and the way things had turned out.

He stood there long after everyone else left the cemetery, crying silent tears over the way they had destroyed each other. Two people who had loved each other desperately and one man, who had come between them and regretted it desperately.

Veronica Mars had never really been meant for him, Duncan knew that now, but because he was selfish and he had wanted her even after she was Logan's wife, he stood here now, at the graves of two people he had cared about.

He wept for lost years and broken lives and longed for a glass of whiskey to help wipe away the painful memories.

The End