Fic: 'She Is Not His Sister' (Veronica Mars, Duncan/Veronica, Duncan/Lilly, PG-13, 1/1) Title: She Is Not His Sister Fandom: Veronica Mars Characters: Duncan Rating: PG-13 Spoilers: Entire first season. Warnings: References to Duncan/Veronica and Duncan/Lilly. Summary: Duncan loves blondes.
She Is Not His Sister
She is not his sister.
He loves Veronica simply because loving Veronica takes up enough room that he can't love Lilly. He loves Veronica because she is not Lilly, because loving Lilly is so fucked up that his forehead wrinkles and his eyes cross as he tries not to think about it. He loves Veronica because she is small and frail and delicate and oh-so-very-high-maintenance, and because all of that takes up a lot of time. He must constantly hold her hand, brush hair off of her face, kiss mouth, nose, eyelids, cheeks, forehead, neck, something, anything, and it takes up so much time remembering that she needs to be his that he almost can pretend that she is.
Veronica is what his sister could have been, once upon a time, sweet and innocent, except Jake and Celeste never meant to have a daughter. A son, just a son, carry on the Kane name, become a senator, become a president, become a king, become a god. Lilly was just a glitch, a speed bump, annoying the tires of their precious gas-guzzling SUV on its way to the top. Jake and Celeste never wanted a daughter, and it showed, and it was why Lilly was the way she was. By screwing and screwing over every eligible young bachelor (and non-eligible, and non-young, and probably non-bachelors as well), she is putting nail after perfect, manicured nail into their coffin. Her pleasure is her revenge, and that just makes it taste better. She hates them.
Duncan hates them, too. Hates being their golden boy when Lilly is smarter and stronger and better. He hates the pressure. He loves Lilly because loving Lilly is even more wrong than Lilly's method of revenge. But soon, revenge against his parents becomes something real, and suddenly he loves her because he loves her and because he can't stop. So he starts to love Veronica. She is not his sister. Soon enough, the illusion of love becomes love for real, and he loves her because he loves her and because he can't stop.
And then one day, his mother seals her own fate, tells him, "Your father is a son of a bitch, Lianne Mars is a whore, and Veronica is your sister. You will call it off with her, Duncan, do you understand me."
Twice. Two sisters. Two blond, perfect, nearly identical sisters. The virgin and the slut, the light side and the dark side, the yin and the yang, perfectly complementing each other, fitting together, swirling, spinning, until it's just a blur. A blur moving so fast that it's become a vortex, sucking him in, and he can't get out.
He loves them because he loves them and because he can't stop.
His mother has killed him, and killed his love for her, and that makes him love his sisters all the more. By loving them, he is loving all the secrets that the Kane name tries to hide. He is loving Lilly's slow ruination of all that Celeste is proud of. He is loving Jake's infidelity. He is loving the inevitable fall of the Reign of Kane.
But it is wrong. It's wrong, and he knows it, and so like with Lilly, he tries to stop. He tries to pretend like he doesn't love Veronica. He keeps his secrets from Lilly, and so he keeps them from Veronica. When Lilly presses about the fallout, he answers succinctly, "My life is fucked up enough."
A new Lilly blossoms in the ground that the other has fertilized. Veronica, too, hates the Kanes, and takes her revenge on them, but hers is unlike her siblings. Lilly's revenge is physical, Duncan's emotional, but Veronica is all about the psychological warfare. She is growing tall (in a manner of speaking) and proud and strong. With every breath of air that Veronica swallows, Duncan's lungs deflate a bit more, as he falls deeper and deeper into it. He's already killed one sister with his love. What's stopping him from killing the other?
When the world comes into focus again, after a year of being blurred by medication, tears, and hate, it is because he is presented with a gift for his suffering. Tiny, wrapped with a shiny bow, he learns that through all the lies, ones he was told, ones he told himself, they were obscuring the one bright spot in his muddled existence. The Kanes do not get their revenge exacted on them, not by Lilly nor Veronica nor himself. But he no longer cares. For once, something is going right.