Title: Barrier
Fandom: Veronica Mars
Pairing: Logan/Veronica
Rating: PG
Length: 382
Content notes: Season 3 and Film spoilers
Author notes: I had trouble being inspired by the prompt this time, but I managed to write something.
Summary: Veronica tries to protect her heart.

Veronica tried to keep her heart protected by a metal barrier. If no one got in, no one could hurt her.

She hadn't used to be so hard on the inside, but being hurt did that to person. Made a person weary of trusting anyone, especially a man not her father that told her he loved her. How did she know Logan wouldn't be like everyone else and leave her?

So, she fortified her heart with the strongest metal she could think of at the time: titanium.

Still, he was able to sneak through the barricade and invade her heart. She tried walking away from him when he broke up with her. She told herself it was for the best, but still, she couldn't stay away from him and only a few weeks later, she was kissing him again.

He was like a drug, and she couldn't quit him.

And then she found out about Madison Sinclair, and all Veronica could think about was the fact she had been right to block him from her heart. He proved he wasn't trustworthy by sleeping with Madison and then not telling her. Instead, she had to find out from Madison in the worst place possible. Veronica had never felt so humiliated in her life.

She told herself that was it. She was done with Logan Echolls. They were finished, in the past, kaput!

That didn't mean it didn't hurt her when he began dating Parker, but she grinned and bore it. She had no right to be angry or hurt by any of Logan's actions anymore. And if she began dating Piz as a way to hurt Logan the way he hurt her, it was for her guilty conscious to contend with.

And then he attacked Piz for only a suspicion instead of proof, and she used that as an excuse to walk away for good, to leave Neptune and all of the pain behind.

And now nine years later, she was back at Neptune and falling under the spell of Logan Echolls once again.
In their many years of radio silence, though, she learned some things. She learned to trust a bit more, to not protect her heart with impenetrable barriers.

And maybe this time, just maybe, she and Logan would make it.