Universe: Musical-verse. Though, I suppose that if you just changed every time I say 'Martha' to 'Betty Finn' I guess it could be movie-verse too.

Rating: K for mentions of murder.

A/N: This story takes place about a month after the end of the musical (or movie).

Only One Way to Find Out

"Veronica! Time for dinner! I made patê!"

Veronica rolled her eyes as her mother's voice rang up the stairs. "Bring it up."

It would take more than liverwurst for Veronica to leave the sanctity of her bedroom.

Actually, Veronica found that not much besides school could convince her to leave her room. She hadn't even hung out with Heather the past couple of weekends. It seemed Heather still usually came as a packaged deal with Heather which vexed Veronica too much to bother with either of them.

And then there was Martha. A part of her hoped that her friend didn't think that she was abandoning her again, but a bigger part of her couldn't bring herself to care. Couldn't bring herself to care about much of anything.

It wasn't that Veronica didn't value her friendship with Martha, she really did, but it made her ache to spend too much time around her. It pained her that through everything, Martha was still such a good person and a good friend, whereas Veronica felt like the worst person ever. And she felt like it was really true, since the actual worst person ever was now dead. That left only her for that position.

Okay, maybe she was a little depressed.

But people like her deserved to be alone.

"Hello!"

Well, almost alone.

"Aah!" Veronica screamed and turned around only to find herself face to face with Heather's ghost.

Weeks of Heather materializing out of nowhere and still Veronica wasn't used to it. At this point, she was convinced that Heather was doing it just because she enjoyed seeing Veronica freaked out. Although, it did do Veronica the favor of adding a nice change of pace from her general lack of emotion. So maybe she should have been grateful.

Still, upon hearing the typical scream, Heather raised her perfectly plucked eyebrows in an expression of fake hurt. "What's wrong? Are you not happy to see me?"

"No," Veronica said slowly, her hands clutching her chest to make sure her heart hadn't up and exited her body this time. "Of course I'm happy to see you. You just still always surprise me when you do that."

"Is it that you're surprised to see me appear out of thin air or is it that you're surprised to see another person at all?" Heather asked with an air of superiority as she sat down on Veronica's bed, examining her nails. Even in death, Heather Chandler continued to look absolutely perfect, down to her perfectly pointed toes.

"Well, technically you're not actually a person," Veronica retorted.

Heather rolled her eyes. "Fair enough. But it seems to me that I see more of you than even your own parents."

It was true. Somehow Heather had gone from demon queen comma best friend to exclusively best friend. Even more her best friend then Martha. Veronica hated to admit that to herself, but at this point, it was irrefutable.

"You're the only person I don't have to lie to," Veronica reasoned. Sure, it was sad that the person that she felt most comfortable around was a ghost, but by that point, Veronica was fairly resigned to how sad her life was.

"Well, I'm flattered that that's what puts me above Martha Dumptruck."

"Dunstock," Veronica corrected automatically.

"Whatever. You wanna watch a movie?"

"Sure." It was movie night, after all.

"Veronica, were you just talking to someone?" Just then, Veronica's mom brought up her dinner, a big plastic smile gracing her face, though it didn't hide the concern in her eyes.

That had been Veronica's mom's constant facial expression for the past two months or so. At first it was worry about the new crowd that Veronica had been hanging out with. But ever since that stopped being a problem, it was replaced with a constant fear that she would come upstairs only to find Veronica dangling from her ceiling fan. Again.

"Nope, it was just the TV, Mom."

Veronica didn't know when she became a compulsive liar, but one glance at a smiling and nodding Heather Chandler gave her a good idea.

"What? Better to lie than for your own mother than have her think that you're crazy."

At least her only friend approved of her deceitful tendencies. It seemed poignant that only after Veronica killed her did Heather lessen her judgments toward her.

Veronica took her food from her mother and not-so-subtly shooed her out of the room. She then put on a movie and sat back on her bed with Heather and started eating her dinner without really tasting it. It wasn't Jiffy Pop, but she didn't think that she would have enjoyed it either way.

"Why couldn't it have been like this when you were alive?" Veronica asked all of a sudden.

"What are you talking about?"

"Why wouldn't we have been actual friends like this when you were alive instead of friends who hated each other?" she clarified.

Heather considered the question, then shrugged. "You're all I have now. And I guess I'm all you have too. Besides, I have nothing to prove here."

"You mean no one to manipulate."

"You always have to be right, don't you?"

"It just comes naturally, I guess."

They fell into silence again. Heather seemed just to be watching the movie, but Veronica was lost in thought. So many problems could have been avoided if Heather had been like this when she was alive. Veronica wouldn't have longed for a relationship with JD because she would have actually liked her friends, Martha might have even been able to hang out with them, and JD wouldn't have killed Heather, because she actually had a soul. No one would have died at all.

"Veronica, I'm worried about you," Heather said, snapping Veronica out of her wistfulness. "You're getting to be lamer and more of a recluse than you were before I took you in."

Veronica couldn't even bring herself to look touched by her friend's concern. Or offended by the not-so-subtle insult. "It's not like I'm not hanging out with anyone. I'm talking to you."

Heather frowned. "Oh yeah, talking to a ghost is the definition of very. God, you're just so clueless about cool versus not."

Despite Heather condescending her, it wasn't the same as before. Her voice had lost its edge and it seemed more friendly. All it meant was that through everything, Heather was still Heather.

She continued through Veronica's silence. "I'm not going to be around forever. And if you spend the rest of your life only talking to a ghost you're going to find yourself in a loony bin faster than your Jesse James should have."

"Let's just watch the movie."

Heather sighed, but they went back to watching their movie anyway.

Soon Veronica found herself feeling drowsy. Though she hadn't done any of her homework yet, she wanted nothing more than just to go to sleep. Sleep was the one place where she wasn't troubled by dead boyfriends, murder, or her best friend being a ghost. Well, on a good night.

The next thing Veronica knew, her eyes were opening to a blue TV screen and she was flat on her back on her bed. She actually had fallen asleep.

"Heather?" Her voice was thick with a careless yawn.

But she heard no sarcastic reply or angelically evil giggle. Veronica's brows furrowed and she looked around. No Heather. Was this what she meant about not being around forever? Had Heather's ghost finally stopped haunting her?

A month ago, Heather's ghost vanishing would have thrilled Veronica, but now it just made Veronica feel lonely. Even lonelier than she had been feeling before. Now she was truly friendless.

At just that moment, Veronica heard her door squeaking open. Was that Heather? No, that was stupid. Ghosts couldn't open doors. When had she gotten so dumb? Instead, of Heather, Veronica found herself face to face with Martha.

"Martha, what are you doing here?" Veronica asked, perplexed. "It's after midnight."

"It's Friday, Veronica. I know you've been up later on a Friday than midnight," Martha answered without really answering as she walked herself in on crutches. "Besides, it's movie night."

Veronica gestured to the still-on TV. "You already missed it."

Martha laughed good-naturedly. "Not that movie."

Martha hit the eject button on the VCR and slipped in a new VHS from out of her pink overnight bag. Veronica didn't even have to ask what the movie was.

Veronica remained settled on her bed and Martha joined her. Veronica actually enjoyed the feeling of the mattress dipping under Martha's weight. It was a nice change of pace from Heather's eternal weightlessness. Martha then whipped out some Jiffy Pop from out of her bag.

"I bet your movie night didn't have this."

A smile crept on Veronica's face. "No, it didn't."

The two of them sat through the familiar previews and tried to hold back from eating all the popcorn before the movie even started. In an effort to be successful in that, Veronica opened her mouth with a question that was growing to bother her. "Martha, you never answered before; why are you here?"

"I did answer. It's movie night. It's tradition."

"But we haven't done movie night for weeks," Veronica said, guilt creeping into her voice. "And you've never been one just to stop by. We would always make sure to invite each other and double check multiple times every week, even after years of movie nights."

Martha pressed her lips together, something she always did when she was nervous. It was the reason her lipstick was always so wide during school. "Promise that you won't think I'm crazy," Martha said slowly.

Veronica had to try not to laugh. That was an ironic request. But easy.

"I promise."

Still, Martha was hesitant to answer. Veronica tried to give her an encouraging look and finally Martha took a breath. "Heather Chandler told me to."

Veronica inhaled sharply, suddenly choking on a popcorn kernel. She hacked and wheezed, trying to get it out. When she finally got her breath back, she choked out, "What?"

"Hey, you promised!" Martha said, her voice a little wounded at Veronica's reaction, clearly misreading it.

"I'm not judging you!" Veronica saved, waving her hands wildly in front of her, her voice still hoarse. "Just…how?"

"Well…" Martha said, starting slowly again, "I was asleep but then I just woke up randomly and found Heather Chandler in my room. She wouldn't explain anything to me when I asked her what was going on, she just said that I should go see you. I think that I might have dreamed the whole thing, but it felt pretty real. Anyways, I didn't see the harm in going to see you, so I thought, why not?"

Veronica felt her chest swell. Martha always had such a big heart. And it turned out that Heather did too, she just did a good job of hiding it.

"Do you think I'm crazy?" Martha asked worriedly.

Shaking her head, Veronica smiled. "No, you're definitely not crazy."

"Well, if she is crazy, it's not about that."

Suddenly, Heather Chandler appeared in front of Veronica, next to the TV, arms crossed and foot attractively beveled. Her nose was also slightly wrinkled in Martha's direction, but Veronica thought that was more for affect than actually being demonstrative of feeling.

"Ooh, the movie's starting!" Martha squealed, and suddenly her attention was glued to the screen.

Veronica took the opportunity to mouth to Heather, "I thought you left."

Heather shrugged her shoulders. "Turns out you're not ready to live without me. I just thought that I would give you a shove in that direction, though."

Veronica was touched. "Thank you," she mouthed.

"We'll just say you owe me one. If you didn't already owe me about a hundred for letting your boyfriend kill me."

Maybe that comment should have stung, but Veronica read that comment to mean that Heather didn't blame her for her death. In all their time together the past few weeks, Veronica had felt awkward asking that certain question. Knowing for sure now made her feel better. Better than she had felt in weeks.

"Are you okay?" Martha asked all of a sudden.

At first, Veronica was confused, but then she realized that her eyes were glossy with a few unshed tears.

Veronica blinked them away and shook her head. "No, I'm fine. I'm just realizing what good friends I have."

"You can be such a baby sometimes, Veronica."

Veronica subtly threw Heather a look as the ghostly girl sniggered to herself.

"Better then Heather Chandler at least," Martha said with a laugh.

Veronica glanced at Heather to see that a sneer had immediately dropped onto her face, replacing her good humor, and laughed a little to herself as well.

"She's not as bad as you might think."

Heather smiled, feeling amended and sat down next to Veronica on the bed.

"I always liked this movie."

A moment later, after quoting a particularly cute line, Martha smiled. "I love this movie."

Veronica looked between the two of them. "Me too."

Then a thought occurred to her. Maybe JD was kind of right about one thing. The Heathers and Marthas in the world could definitely get along in heaven. But maybe it was possible for them to get along on Earth too. Veronica thought about Heather McNamara. She then eyed her phone.

There was only one way to find out.

A/N: Yay, my first musical fanfic! I've been wanting to write one for years, but it's hard for me to mess with musicals. But lately I've been obsessed with Heathers and ideas just started popping into my head. I do hoped you enjoy this one, whether you're a fan of the musical, the movie, or both. Please review, even if you just want to talk about how much you love Heathers!