#lomax

https://archiveofourown.org/works/80531206

Freedom

It was the day that Logan Cale/Eyes Only had been waiting for since he had started representing the downtrodden, Max knew: the day he could finally unplug for good.

America, by some miracle Max could still hardly believe, was finally back on the right track, and they didn't need Eyes Only's guidance anymore.

Stepping into Joshua's old house now, that had become Logan's own after White had destroyed his old crib, Max sat in the arm chair across from Logan as he did his final broadcast-imploring the people to do good and power on-and she couldn't help but to smile.

"Do you want a glass of wine to go with a job well done?" Max asked her boyfriend, once he ended the broadcast and turned his attention to her, with a conflicted look upon his face. Alec had suggested she bring a bottle of Chardonnay over for Logan when the mayor of Terminal City eventually saw him on this day of all days (she, however, would be drinking grape juice).

And while at first, Max had laughed that idea off like she did most of Alec's thoughts... in the end, she had realized he was actually pretty sound in his reasoning. And so the transgenic had went shopping and made sure to have the different bottles with her in her messenger bag when she rode her baby here.

Laughing-for he surely remembered their old nightly routines of drinking when they'd first met like, just like she did-Logan went to his kitchen to grab wine glasses for the both of them and then held his glass out for Max to fill. "I can't think of any better way than to celebrate this day, actually. Thank you, Max."

"Yeah, well, you kept your nose to the grindstone for years there-when anyone with any sense would have just given up, and called it a lost cause-so I'm thinkin' a celebration is definitely warranted here," Max said, filling her own glass and then taking a sip of the juice.

She missed alcohol, she did, but this was definitely a nice alternative to it.

But back to the whole Eyes Only and America thing, Max still couldn't quite figure out how things had changed for the better.

She supposed it had all started when the transgenics, plus Logan, had decided to walk out of Terminal City, because they'd needed supplies and since Logan wouldn't have been able to stay in the toxic environment much longer.

Naturally, the police had threatened to shoot them all-something Max had really thought was going to happen for a moment there-until Max had wisely asked if they actually planned to kill them all on national TV, for just taking a walk, the way that Cece had been murdered.

That right there had been enough to get Detective Clemente to listen and let them pass... and amazingly for public opinion to begin to change about the transgenics, though Max and her crew hadn't realized it at the time.

Max had been named the mayor of Terminal City after that, but she'd barely had any time to learn how to politic at all before that doomsday meteor that White had been salivating over for his lifetime had shown up on the horizon.

Max's blood was the key to give humanity an immunity to the illness the comet would spread within them-something that Max had learned from Sansderman: who, God help them all, had secretly been Normal the whole time. ...Max still didn't really like thinking about that, and all of the mixed feelings that brought up in her.

Thankfully, Normal had revealed that they could make synthetic copies of Max's blood to give to everyone, so they wouldn't have to bleed her dry, by using generated proteins.

All-in-all, it wasn't too dissimilar to what Max and Logan had gone through in finding a cure for the Virus... So Max's people had placed the cure into the water supply, and humanity had lived to see another day-and Max, Logan, Alec, Joshua, Zack, Syl, and Krit had stomped White and his doomsday cult into the ground when he'd thrown a fit about things not having gone his way.

Fortunately, Eyes Only had let the world know that Max's blood had saved their lives. And not only had that action of Max's succeeded in giving the transgenics their freedom once and for all... Max having chosen to be a god damn superhero, she supposed, inspired the good that was left in humanity to finally rise up.

While a number of corrupt leaders had awkwardly been twiddling their thumbs, in seeing the world change for transgenics... and in learning that they weren't as immortal as they'd thought and that a transgenic, of all people, had rescued them all, a number of Logan's journalist buddies had risen up overnight and seized power from them, in the kind of coup that Manticore would have been proud of.

Things had really started to come around then... though Max and Logan weren't fools, and knew that some of these newly appointed leaders would turn against their own people for power (and some had). Eyes Only had told the public that he was hopeful about things, but that he, for the time being, would keep an eye on this new America to make sure she ran as she was meant to. (And if it was ever found that these politicians were dirty, it wasn't too hard for Logan to send in his favorite cat burglar, Max now laughed at the thought, and find evidence against them and expose it all, so the Americans would revolt against them).

That had been three years ago now, and Max reckoned things were as squeaky clean as they were ever going to be. And so Eyes Only was finally hanging up the mic.

"Be honest," Max teased, upon swirling her grape juice in her wineglass so thoroughly, that she would have spilled some of it if she wasn't who she was, "you're going to miss hearing yourself talk, just a smidge."

To that, Logan chuckled before winking at Max and saying, "Believe me when I say that the only time I want to hear 'my voice' echo back to me now, is when our daughter repeats what I'm saying to learn how to speak."

"Pfft. You think Alia's going to need to do that? With how smart our girl's gonna be, I wouldn't be surprised if she comes out of the womb talking," Max said half-jokingly and half-seriously. Because while she hoped that that wasn't the case, and before Tin-Tinga had been the only X5 capable of passing on her super-powered traits to her offspring, Max knew that she was different (Sanderman's chosen one or whatever). And that, added in with the fact that both of her parents were geniuses, Max wondered if they were going to have their hands full with Alia from the start. She already seemed to be trying to run marathons within the womb, the times she would kick Max, the X5 thought wryly.

Honestly, Max-who had always loved kids-couldn't wait to find out what her daughter would be like, and she knew that Logan was much the same.

"So we fight on?" Logan questioned, meaning about standing up to the cute menace their daughter would surely be, not too differently from when he'd once sat across from her and asked her to help him protect the downtrodden.

"Damn straight."

Not taking their eyes off of each other, the former Eyes Onlys raised their glasses and drank on this day of all days.

Author's Note: An idea that I've had for a while now... that I think, originally, was going to be longer, but it actually ended up being pretty short here. And now I feel like pointlessly expanding this fic would be unnecessary, so I think I'm mostly okay with how it turned out. -shrugs- But maybe if I ever get another idea for this fic's universe, I could add another chapter to this or something.

...I'm not a politician or really politically minded at all. If I'm being honest, I doubt getting things to turn around in the Dark Angel world would be this easy. But I did my best. And actually added in something the writers would have planned to do if the show hadn't been canceled (Max and the transgenics' Rosa Parks moment, as they called it), and a fan theory that existed at the time (that Normal was Sanderman, which makes a weird sort of sense to me).