#loganmax

Logan’s PoV

The couple’s original plan—after Logan and Max had went and finally found Max’s mother—was to go to L.A. and meet Max’s old mentor, Moody, as they were both done with the dreariness of Seattle for a lifetime.

But of course… with Logan being Logan, he found himself getting into Eyes Only shenanigans once again. And sometimes he would look over his shoulder and back at Max, and hate how he was disappointing her by doing this.

But the love of Logan’s life seemed to take it all in stride; maybe because she’d realized long ago that helping people was what she did best, too.

"We’ll just go another time, Logan," Max agreed with her husband, as she slipped into her catsuit for the mission tonight. And if Logan hadn’t been checking to make sure he had all of the security cameras down for this venture, he probably would have been staring. "But before we hit L.A., we have to stop this pope from being assassinated. He seems like he actually has a plan for saving this shitty world post-Pulse, and the last thing we need is for this to go down the way it did last time: when Zack's clone murdered that religious leader, who promised the same thing."

"Thank you, Max," Logan answered back, as he paused for a moment to hold Max’s hand in his own and then kiss it reverently. Behind Max, the sun was just beginning to come out; and Logan thought the way that it lit her up as if she was the sun herself, was very telling. "We might finally get to see some good in this world again... And I'll be right there to help you. I mean, I just bought a sniper rifle that I want to use, if I-Tech gets too trigger happy themselves. And I know Alec, Joshua, Jondy, and even OC will also have your back. Once this is taken care of, we'll move to L.A. and never come return."

And have Max's back, they did: something Logan would forever be indebted to his friends for. And the whole mission went off without a hitch...

But Logan and Max still didn't get to go to L.A. to meet Moody, because their actions—despite Logan’s best efforts—still wound up on the news. And while most of the country was warming up to the transgenics, California found it within themselves to warn everyone that the mayor of Terminal City, Max, was banned from visiting California, unless they wanted them to send their police to Terminal City and execute everyone they saw there.

And thus, the pair had to stay in rainy Seattle just a bit longer… but it was partly for another reason, too.

…

It actually took the two geniuses some time to realize it when Max became pregnant. They'd been being careful—and though they eventually wanted children, they hadn’t thought they were ready for it quite yet—as there were still the questions of if there could be issues in having a half-X5/half-human child. But by the time Max had thrown up the fiftieth time, the two could no longer deny what must have been happening with her body.

So, they had all the appropriate conversations, started having doctors’ appointments, and decorating for the upcoming infant: the whole nine yards. And one night, when Logan and Max were lying in bed together after Max had had a particularly trying day, Max whispered a secret to Logan: “I don't think I want our kid to be born in this rainy, depressing city. I know a lot of the world has now joined Cali’s claim, and say they'll kill me on sight if they see me, but I can take them."

And that got a laugh out of Logan, as he brought Max and their little girl closer into their embrace, even if the reason for it was certainly a sobering thought.

Truthfully? Even though Logan had always suspected that Max would feel this way if and when she became pregnant, he'd still somehow prayed differently (even though he felt the same, really. Seattle had as many bad memories as it did good ones). It was just as much as Logan would tell himself he was ready to leave it, he did still have work here. And perhaps he at least wanted to get some more of it done before they really made the jump.

Logan started to say Max’s name, to try and explain this all to her, but she stopped him with a hand placed atop his chest. "Don't get me wrong, Logan. Seattle will always my home. And I'll if course miss OC, and come back and visit her and the crew twenty-four/seven. But don't you think it's time?"

And it was, wasn’t it? Logan had dedicated his heart to Seattle, but did he really want to give his soul, too? Shouldn’t he have been done using Eyes Only as a way to hide and not deal with the less ideal parts of his life? And if that was the case… shouldn’t he have given his dear bride exactly what he wanted? Especially since she had sacrificed so much at such a young age?

"I understand, Max," Logan finally agreed, as he ran his hand through locks of her hair that were curling because of the rare humidity outside. And how he adored that they were. "So, we'll figure something else and raise our child elsewhere. I mean, we certainly want our daughter to get so much-need Vitamin D… ? Damn. This is crazy to think about... but I'm glad it’s finally happening."

This time, it was Max's turn to giggle as she sat up so she could see Logan’s face better. "…It's hard to believe we're finally going to be parents. I always wanted to be one, probably ‘cause of the genes, but for the longest time I thought it would be an impossibility for me, with my insane little life. This is a miracle, Logan. So, let's treat it as a miracle."

And though the two of them definitely intended to do just that… their dream wasn’t meant to be. And something would happen then, that would make them need to stay in Seattle like never before.

…

With how many times Logan had thought the terrorists’ plan to wipe out America’s technology with an electromagnetic pulse was evilly clever… he was honestly shocked that he’d never considered that releasing a pandemic could have had the same near effect, in reducing the place to a third world country. And wouldn’t you know, that just when the U.S.A. was finally starting to get on its feet again, that’s what would happen.

News of the pandemic—though at first wasn’t called that—was slow going. But eventually they realized that’s what it was, and that the WHO wouldn’t let them go anywhere because of it. And when that happened, the first ridiculous thought that entered Logan’s mind was that they weren’t going to be able to find a way to sneak into L.A. with Saia, after all. And he wondered if that was where Max’s mind had taken her, too.

"Do you think this whole thing is really an accident, as they’re saying? …Or was it engineered in a lab for warfare?” Max asked Logan, as she carefully made a baby-led-weaning dish for their newborn. And it was clear by the tone of her voice when she’d said the last words, just which option she thought was true. But as someone who’d been raised to be a genetically engineered killing machine, Logan certainly understood why Max would assume the worst of humanity.

"Honestly, Max? ...I don't know if I care if it was. Eyes Only is playing it safe this time and not getting involved with whoever might have done this... so he can keep his darling wife and daughter safe."

After Logan had said that, Max had apparently decided to not try strawberries with Saia again, after all. The general rule of thumb with infants seemed to be to actually try and introduce foods to them—because they’d have less a chance of being allergic to it when they got older—and if they were maybe allergic to something the first time, to try it again. Max had been debating back and forth on whether she wanted to give Saia strawberries again after her first allergic reaction. And somehow Logan having thrown her off must have made her decide not to.

“…Logan, that’s not like you at all. You can’t just leave this alone. There are bigger fish to fry here,” Max protested.

And suddenly, Logan was standing up—using his exo-skeleton for the one time he would allow himself to do so a day, since it was on its last legs—and embracing his wife. And Saia must have thought it was sweet or funny, because she cooed at it, which made both parents smile for a half-second. “I can and I will leave it alone, Max,” Logan said, moving a strand of curly hair out of the transgenic’s face and kissing her forehead. “You and Saia are too important for me to do anything different. And consider this me making up for times before, where I should have put you before Eyes Only and didn’t.”

And though Max was most definitely a saint these days—even more than he was now, Logan thought, if she wanted to investigate this and he didn’t—his saying this did seem to make her happy. She laughed ever so slightly, as she leaned closer to Logan so he could even kiss her lips. And she then said, “Yes, putting family first it how it should be, Mr. King of Seattle. Want to shield Saia and me first, if it comes down to it. But also don’t forget who you are.”

And while Logan was mostly pleased with how that conversation had gone—and it led to him and Max sitting on the couch, where Logan dipped Saia upside down a few times (being careful to hold her head as he did so) and making her laugh—but in the back of his mind, he couldn’t help worrying that Max might look into the pandemic behind his back, and get herself into trouble.

But that was ludicrous, because he could trust Max. Right? And would she really risk Saia like that? Logan couldn’t imagine it.

So, they put Saia to bed, and then Logan and Max fell asleep on the couch. And he dreamed of a world where their child could be human, X6, or a little of both—whatever she wanted to be—and free.

But of course, Logan’s worst fear came true in the end. Max couldn’t leave well enough alone, and she found out that I-Tech—Beka, rather—had been behind the whole pandemic, and swiftly became catatonic because of it.

…

"Max, it isn't your fault," Logan tried to tell Max for what felt like the millionth time, whilst she rattled off even more numbers that she thought had died because of her.

"Beka is your twin, yes, but she isn't you. So, her creating this agent doesn’t mean you caused the pandemic."

Logan feared that their loud voices would awaken Saia, who had finally fallen asleep even with her bad cold. But Logan knew he also needed to take care of Max here, because she hadn’t eaten in days—which wasn’t like her—and she was even looking inside the fridge now, with no reaction to it whatsoever. Logan was seriously afraid she was even thinking of trying to kill herself in it somehow.

"It's just... as stupid as this is to say, Logan—because I know how far-reaching I-Tech, that was Manticore’s sister, was—I thought this pandemic would moreso be tied to the Eyes Only side of things we do. And while the pandemic's thankfully almost over, with a vaccine coming out—and we can hopefully finally go to L.A. —…it's all too much. And it feels like I did kill all those people.

"Deep down, Logan... I know what you said is true, and that it isn’t my fault. But I just can't just do this right now. The Saia and the Beka stuff... it's too much."

"Max, wait!" Logan called after his wife, having guessed by her words and the tone of her voice that she was going to leave—as that used to always be what she did when things got hard, and old habits were hard to break—but it was too late. She'd already blurred away.

And it was at this point, that Logan started regretting his life choices. Something that was, perhaps, even selfish of him, because this last thing had been Max’s issue. Not his. But if he hadn't pushed her to be a better person so much, would he have possibly just lost his wife right now?

…

After Max was gone for six hours, Logan did something he promised himself he'd never do again, after he’d treated Max so horribly when she’d wanted to break up that time: he started drowning his sorrows again.

And maybe there even came a point where Logan thought he was trying to kill himself with alcohol poisoning. He really wasn't sure... though he still might have drunkenly called his friends and told him he was suicidal, anyway.

Just… what was the point of all of this? Of life, even? Especially if he was going to lose Max, and Saia might now grow up without a mother?

Sure, Logan supposed he had done things that would allow America to shape up into being a great country again. But it was a big “if”, that it even would.

And after his fifth glass of red wine, Logan began hallucinating. Or he was almost certain that he was. Because standing right beside him now, was none other than Max. But it wasn't his current Max. No. It was her as he had first met her: with her short and curly hair, super youthful appearance, and tough girl attitude... Logan could tell the latter, by Max slapping him upside the head the second she stepped closer to him. And Logan in reaction to that, winced and rubbed his head. He felt hurt in more ways than one here.

"What are you doing, Logan?!" the angel asked with fury evident in her tone, and it somehow made his heart swell. "Things suddenly get hard for you, and you just want to die?! Get it together, already!"

Logan sighed resigned, because really? Max was right. Of course she was. But Logan found that he was suddenly so tired... and maybe he was tired enough that he just wanted to rest.

And for the first time in a long time, Logan found himself missing his parents, and wishing they could be here to take care of him and supply him with all the answers he’d ever need.

"I'm just tired, Max," Logan explained to this girl that he would always love. He then tried to wheel towards her and take her hand, but Max wouldn’t have it. And of course she wouldn’t, because if he’d tried to touch her hand, his own would have gone right through and he would have realized this was a dream he needed to wake up from. And apparently Logan’s subconscious mind wasn’t quite ready for that yet. "We always fight the good fight, but what do we get out of it? Do we ever get a reward?"

If Logan had thought that Max would tell him that they fought because it was the right thing to do, or because others would someday take up the fight so that it wouldn’t be meaningless, he would've been sadly disappointed. Instead, she spun him around and somehow showed him a grueling scene. "Let me show you why we fight, Logan. Do you see Alina over there?"

"Alina? What does she have to do with anyth- Oh, God. What’s she doing? She's setting up bombs and blowing up a large portion of the city?! Max, why?!"

"You know what she would do for money, Logan. But in this scenario, where there was no Eyes Only to continue her father's struggle, she grew bolder."

Logan watched everyone around Alina burn. And he'd seen things like this before, of course. He thought—in some ways, perhaps—it wasn't too different from when he got shot. Or moreover, when Max did. Because death was all the same in the end, wasn't it? And yet nothing could prepare you to see people disintegrate before your very eyes. It made bile swim up in his throat.

"...Show me something else, Max. Anything else. Show me a future where we met another way, without all the heroism, and we’re happy! Why don’t you show me something like that?"

"It doesn't exist, Logan. And I’ll tell you why. If you’d never been Eyes Only, the two of us never would’ve met,” Max said in what could be perceived as a bored tone as she examined her nails. And naturally, this caught Logan by surprise as he hadn’t seen Max be like this in a long time. And he blinked at her, feeling angry. But then he saw it: the look of a lie in her eyes, and Logan felt his heart warming instead of growing cold—the only warmth he’d be sure to see through all this coming horror—and he remembered that this version of Max always said the opposite of what she meant.

“Do you really mean that, Max?” Logan asked curiously. And he made sure to slowly wheel even closer to her, since this was the version of the girl, he loved who spooked easily. “Wouldn’t you have still gone after the Statue of Bast?”

And there was that self-assured smirk on Max, that Logan loved so much. “I don’t know what to tell you, Logan. You’d think I would have gone after it when you weren’t Eyes Only, but I didn’t. I guess the red string of fate only connected us when it wanted to make me a better person,” Max guessed.

Or when it wanted to make me a more fulfilled one, Logan thought, but didn’t say—because he’d gotten sucked back into the version of himself that couldn’t express himself to Max. At least here and now. And while before that would have made him sad… now knowing that he had won Max’s heart in the end (even if she had now left?) made it sort of fun, to remember who they once had been.

"What will you show me next, Max? What other awful things happened because I chose not to be awful myself, when everyone else around us is?”

And now Max was looking at Logan furiously—with tears shining in her eyes—and Logan hated himself for having over-reached his bounds here. Because did he know anything of what this different angel had suffered here?

“Just the death of most of my siblings,” Max said nonchalantly, as if none of it really mattered at all. But in knowing just how much Max’s family meant to her, Logan wondered how much it was costing this girl from an alternate universe to act the perfect soldier, that Donald Lydecker had wanted “his kids” to be… which was exactly the thing that had destroyed them in the end.

“Max… if it’s too painful for you, you don’t have to show m-”

But Max was already cutting the former “king” of Seattle off, as she got into his face closer than she had ever dared to back when they’d danced around each other. “Of course I do, Logan. You have it in your head now that it isn’t better being bigger than the system—and no longer think that if you accept things as they are, that you’re part of the problem—so I have to steer you right. I gave you crap about it all when we first met… but don’t you know how much I believed in and admired all that you said? Through it, you helped me figure out who I am. I wouldn’t have stayed with you, if that wasn’t the case. But since you don’t believe it, witness my tragedy.”

And Logan did.

While Brin had actually survived the blast at Manticore before, and Max had later found and rehabilitated her… the Brin of this timeline exploded into a million tiny pieces, when Max and her siblings decided that the best thing they could do for Tinga was avenge her, even at the cost of countless lives.

And then there was Zack… in Logan’s universe—the one he would now start to admit that he loved—Zack, even as a new farmhand, had eventually gotten his memories back and had joined them in the fight for the transgenics’ freedom, but as a changed man: a changed man that Logan would gladly even call his friend now. But where this Max was from… Zack apparently hadn’t been able to handle Max having lied to him about who he was to save Logan, and had killed himself.

And Jondy… Jondy was someone that Logan had waited to meet with bated breath, with how Max had always talked about her. He had wanted to meet Max’s favorite sister nearly as desperately as she had. But when he had actually met her, the two of them had butted heads a lot. Jondy had thought that Logan was using Max for his “greater calling”, and he had thought she was a brat for “always poking her head in places where it didn’t belong” and talking badly about him to Max. But eventually, they’d found a way to be friends. So, seeing her like this now—torn apart as a science project, as Sanderman desperately tried to recreate the cure with her, that had been in Max—was almost too much for him to bear… if the fact that Max must have died in this universe wasn’t enough to already do that.

And Logan somehow pulled this Max into his arms, as the greatest pain he’d ever known (and had felt this twice before, as Max had been shot twice) came back to him. “…Max, without me being there to help… you died taking down Manticore, didn’t you?”

And if Logan had expected Max to express depression at her own death, he would have been mistaken. But he felt she should have been feeling something here, because Max had always valued her freedom so much… But even then, she’d always been selfless, hadn’t she? So maybe she wouldn’t care in the end…

“Max… I don’t want to see or hear anymore. Please, just let me go back to my good life. To you.”

Max’s resolve to give him a clip show lessened then; Logan could see it on her expressive face. But she still allowed him to see a few more things, so his own resolve wouldn’t slip away. Logan saw his dear friends Alec, Joshua, and Original Cindy getting shot at, when they tried to walk out of Terminal City in a Rosa Parks moment.

And then the pandemic that Beka had started took out most of the world, because Max didn’t go to get answers out of her sister.

“Max…” Logan said, as he took her face between his hands now and leaned his forehead against hers (and was it him, or was the sun finally coming up again?). “You were right. And you always are. You should have gone. So, I’m telling you to go now and deal with Beka, and your own conflicted feelings about what happened… be my dark angel, and I’ll be right behind you, always. And I know you’ll always have my back, like you promised.”

And Logan thought he, perhaps, felt this Max’s lips on his own before he woke up. But it was only a “perhaps”, because that Max and him had always been kept at arms-length, hadn’t they?

When Logan came to, the first person he saw before him was Max—even though he’d just let her go—but it was his current Max (the one he loved with all his heart). He could tell by her hair, that was somewhere between the short and curly it had once been, and the long and straight she’d worn it as when she first came back from Manticore.

“Logan!” Max exclaimed—running over to him as fast as she had another time, years ago—as she threw her arms around him and kissed his cheek. “I-I’m sorry! What I said and did… it was wrong. Even if I got Beka to tell me the real antidote… If I knew I was leaving you in such a state, I never would’ve! Promise me you’ll never try to kill yourself again! Promise!”

“Yeah, seriously. Don’t,” Alec echoed, coming out from behind the partition that blocked the computer room from the living area. And there was kindness in his voice. A kindness that Logan had always recognized, which was why he’d told Max that she’d done the right thing in saving Alec’s life. “Max had us all come over here when she saw you—and has had Mia trying to bring you out of your coma—because she thought being surrounded by friends might convince you to live. Logan, don’t throw your life away, man. You did so much for us… so if it ever gets too much for you, you let us know and we’ll be there for you. And I swear I’ll find a way for you, Max, and Saia to get to L.A.”

“Saia! Oh my God, Max! We’re horrible parents! Where is she? Is she okay?!” Thankfully, their little flower was fine. It seemed she had slept through Max’s leaving and Logan’s despair. And now Original Cindy had her in hand, none the wiser to what had gone on with her parents, as she Original Cindy entertained her by showing her how to shake her head “no”.

“We kind of were awful parents here, Logan… despite us always having wanted to be parents—and, yeah: we could probably work on that—but we’re good people. And we’ll get through this. Promise me we’ll get through this.”

“We will, Max. We will.” And the cyber-journalist locked eyes with Max and had a silent conversation with her, like they’d used to all the time. “Starting with seeing if your blood can be a cure for this virus, too. And I know our friends will be there to help us… Thank you, Alec, OC, Sketchy, Asha, Alec, Joshua, Brin, Jondy, and Mia… and thank you, Max.”

And while Logan’s current Max looked at Logan somewhat baffled by his statement, and replied “of course”, the other Max—who really hadbeen there—got that Logan had thanked her, and smiled.

And then she disappeared, going back to heaven like the angel she was.