If

Inspired by Pablo Neruda's "If You Forget Me"

I want you to know one thing.

If Veronica hadn't left him, she knew what would've happened, and she didn't want to spend her life with Logan fighting and making up, only to fight again. What kind of life was that? What kind of relationship was that? Their patterns had become tedious and ultimately unrealistic. It was no way to spend a lifetime.

Plus, their relationship was always so… intense. Every moment was electrified, heightened. They were either fucking or fighting; at least that's how it seemed. The problem wasn't a lack of emotion; they had an abundance of love, passion, and even caring. The problem for Veronica was learning to experience her emotions without letting them overwhelm her.

You know how this is:

If she could admit her emotional shortcomings, it might have been different. Logan could easily give himself over to loving her, to being completely devoted, but it had never been easy for her. In the past, he'd hurt her. Their relationship had been forged from memories of a dead girl and the chaos, suspicions, and accusations that surrounded her untimely death. That alone should have been a clue. Giving Logan everything left nothing for herself, nothing to hold on to when something happened and she got hurt again.

Not that it was all bad. Deep down, Logan was a good guy, despite the life he'd lived. And he did love her. Veronica felt it every day; it hurt her heart to know it. She wanted so much to succumb to romantic ideals and love him with the same abandon, but she couldn't. She'd had romance once, with a boy who was sweet and relatively undamaged. Her best friend's brother. He seemed like a perfect boy even her father had liked. That was the naïve, happily-ever-after, movie life she'd let herself believe in, once upon a time. And then… life happened. Things got in the way, he'd run away with his baby, and she gave up romantic notions. She receded into the walls she'd built to protect herself from feeling anything too deeply, walls she began building slowly the moment Lilly died and life changed forever.

She'd loved Lilly, and Lilly died. She'd loved Duncan – not the way she loved Logan, but she had loved him – but he disappeared to places unknown. Even her father and Wallace left her once, however briefly. When she believed her father was dead… She still couldn't come to grips with what that would have been like. And Wallace running off to Chicago… She loved Logan and… everything imaginable happened between them. It was hard to feel, because most of the time, people let you down. And then where were you? Alone and sad. Again.

If I look at the crystal moon, at the read branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch near the fire the impalpable ash or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,

If Veronica was alone, she thought of the moments they had together. They were always memories of the perfect moments she'd spent with Logan: the Dog Beach sunsets, the quiet mornings together, the countless dinners he'd cooked for her, always experimenting with a new spice or taste combination that generally ended up being delectable. The many different memories were also the same memory. It made her heart ache.

Leaving Logan wasn't easy. It had never been.

As if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals, were little boats that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

If Veronica believed in the concept of "soul-mates" she'd had it with Logan. If a soul-mate was the one person in the world who somehow made you more yourself - yeah, that was Logan. She'd somehow always known it; could barely remember a time in her life when Logan wasn't in it. She knew him more intimately than any other person on the planet, loved him more than she could ever have imagined loving another person, and it was scary as hell. Who she was when she was with him—happy, loved, but constantly afraid that she'd somehow lose him—she just wasn't comfortable with that person.

Veronica didn't believe in romantic ideals of love and she didn't believe in happy endings either. After all they'd been through… she just couldn't trust that life would let them be together. That's what it was really about for her, that first summer. Since then, that's what it had always been about.

She had the power, if it was her choice to not be with him. She realized, a long time ago, that choosing not to be with Logan was much easier for her to handle than being with him and somehow losing him forever.

Well, now, if little by little you stop loving me I shall stop loving you little by little.

If she'd looked back, when she'd left him…she'd still be there, in that house, with him, living their life together, wondering when the world was going to take him, and her happiness away. She couldn't have that. Yet now, without Logan, everything she saw reminded her of him somehow. Everything she experienced seemed less than it could have been, because she hadn't shared it with him. So much of her life had been spent with him in it… there was a hole now that he was gone. But it was a hole she'd dug. She had to just step over it and hope not to fall in.

For a while, all paths led to Logan. She almost called him about a million times. She got in her car to drive past their house at least once a week. She wanted to stand with him in front of their French doors and look out at the ocean again, wrapped in his arms and feeling right. It really had been hard for her. But lucky for Veronica, she was always stubborn. She decided to leave Logan, and he'd stayed left.

If she'd been honest about why she'd left him, it wasn't because of their patterns of fighting and making up. That was the kind of couple they were; they had too much passion to not fight. She left because she'd found a ring in the back of his sock drawer and knew she couldn't say no if he asked. She knew what her leaving did to him. Veronica knew him well enough to realize that she was the only one who could really destroy him, even after everything he'd been through. She hoped that was the case, and that he finally gave up on her so she could be free of him and move on. Even if she didn't really want to be free.

In truth, she hoped he hated her for leaving him, because she hated herself, and that his hate would allow him to forget her so she could forget him, too. But she neglected one thing: they knew each other too well, and forgetting wasn't part of the epic.

If suddenly you forget me do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.

If she was ever going to get over Logan, Teddy was how she was going to do it. He was everything she thought she should want. Their relationship was like those happily-ending stories she'd stopped believing in. Walking down the street one day, she tripped and fell into him. They struck up conversation, started flirting, and …six months later, they were living together; engaged in nine. She should have been over the moon. The date was set before Veronica realized she was bored out of her mind.

A year to the day after she met Teddy, she woke up and rolled over. She put her hand on the bed where he should have been but wasn't because he'd woken up even earlier to run. She closed her eyes. She didn't picture Teddy's body making that warm place, that dip in the pillow. In her mind, it was Logan. She closed her eyes and pretended she was still in their bed, in their house. She remembered all the mornings they'd lain in bed, touching, talking, tasting each other. Logan had this way about him, this power, this… pain. Teddy didn't. Teddy was right in all ways except one—he wasn't Logan. He couldn't make Veronica feel. She wasn't scared of losing Teddy. Yet somehow, after all this time, she was still scared that one day she'd wake up and find out life had caught up with Logan and he was gone.

She cried for an hour. It hurt to think about how horribly she'd messed it all up.

If you think it long and mad, the wind of banners that passes through my life,
and you decide to leave me at the shore of the heart where I have roots,

If Veronica had walked out of his life in order to leg Logan go, what right did she have to want him back? What business did she have still loving him? Why did she put that add in the Neptune paper? To test him. To see if he still loved her. To see what he would do about it.

Veronica spent her time pretending now. Her experience as a P.I., which she found hard to escape, had made her good at it. She pretended everything between her and Teddy was normal, that it was okay to marry someone you didn't really have feelings for. There was only one person who could make Veronica feel, but she'd called out quietly to him and he hadn't answered. His absence was the only thing she could feel.

Remember that on that day, at that hour, I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off to seek another land.

If she just got through the day, she thought, she would be okay. So Veronica walked down the isle. She said "I do." She danced with Teddy to "At Last," a song he chose. She fed him cake and pretended it was the happiest day of her life. But, inside her dress, hidden close to her heart, was a letter from Logan. A poem. It had come the morning of her wedding.

When had Logan discovered Neruda? She supposed it didn't really matter. He still loved her. That's what got her through her wedding day, and the two years that followed. It took her that long to realize what she should have known all along.

But if each day, each hour, you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
iif each day a flower climbs up to your lips to seek me,

If Logan could still love her after all she'd done, leaving him with a house and a ring, leaving him to marry someone else, he'd never stop loving her. It was just as he'd always promised. He'd love her forever. She knew that now. She tried her hardest to make him hate her, make him forget her, make him realize that she was far too afraid to love him the way he loved her. But he did anyway. He knew Veronica, and he loved her and everyone else be damned. To him, it was that simple.

Ah my love, ah my own, in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms without leaving mine.

If she was honest with herself, she'd always loved him that way too; it terrified her that someone could make her feel that way. But she was Veronica Mars. She was fearless. And who was Logan to make her afraid? Why was he allowed to have this power over her? He was the love of her life, that's who. And she'd be damned if her stupid fears were going to stand in her way. Veronica Mars had looked down the barrel of a gun. She'd been drugged and raped. She'd nearly been burned alive. She'd been bloodied and bruised in countless ways yet this much more frightening. But if she ever had to do it all over again, she wanted Logan there. For better, or worse, in sickness and health, all those things she'd promised someone else two years ago.

Veronica moved out and filed for divorce. It was time to kick fear's ass.