From Darkness to Light VI: Nowhere to Run

What I said to Logan was true...it was never about him being up and around that made him special to me. It never mattered at all. What mattered was that he was the first person in a really long time who made me feel special, who I could be real with and tell all of my secrets to. He was the first person I ever truly showed my heart to.

You don't have to be able to walk to see someone's heart.

I can see him standing along the edge of the harbor, in amongst the debris and garbage. Logan Cale is the only person I know that's romantic enough to actually go down by that water and really enjoy it. I'm afraid some of my transgenic blood has gone to his brain, making his sense of romanticism even more pronounced. Either that or it temporarily killed the cells that create common sense.

He calls to me and before I really take the time to consider what I'm doing, he has me down by that dirty water in my bare feet. The winter is pretty mild around here, but it's really too cold to be walking barefoot, let alone getting in this water. Manticore gave us immunizations to protect us from this kind of pollution, but Logan really should be more careful.

But he's so happy. I've never really seen him like this...except for sometimes when Eyes Only makes a particularly good sting, but no, this is still different. He's giddy. Logan doesn't often do giddy...he's more of the brooding type.

I try to resist his charm, but he pulls me to him, reining me in with the handle of his cane. Not even my news of a fresh chicken waiting in his kitchen seems to affect his enjoyment of standing on this stinking beach.

"It's beautiful, isn't it? And it's funny, for the first time in a long time... I feel like anything...and everything is possible."

It's amazing to watch him like this. I guess I never really understood what he had lost because he never seemed any different to me. Logan on wheels was just Logan. Now I kind of wonder what Logan walking will be like. I feel like things are going to change. I just don't know how.

He pulls me into an embrace, his eyes piercing into mine.

"I see a poulet chez Cale in your future with a bottle of pre-pulse Nuits-St. George--say around... 8:00?"

Logan...a good meal...a great bottle of wine. I am there. And then afterward, well...hopefully we won't take another tour of the floor of his parking garage.

"This is a restricted area. Repeat: This is a restricted area."

I tuck my face into his body, hiding from the hover drone. I hate those things...they make me feel like I will always have to hide, that my life will never be my own.

We move quickly to get our shoes back on and then we have to separate. Normal is beginning to call me a dilettante and I don't want to lose my job. Being able to move around the city freely is worth working in that shit hole any day of the week. Besides, I'd miss my peeps.

"So I'll see you tonight?" Logan asks, reaching for my hand. He pulls me close again and leans down to press his lips against mine. It's going to take me a long time to get used to seeing him standing in front of me, of looking up to him, but then again we've got our whole lives to get used to it.

"Tonight."

When Logan answers the door, it seems so different. I have come to this apartment so many times, but this night feels very different. Things have changed between us and I don't know for sure what that means for our future. It's not that I think that we got together because of Logan's chair, but his whole outlook is different. What if a transgenic freak isn't in his game plan any more?

"Hey," he says, smiling at me from the front door.

"Hey," I respond, walking into the apartment at his invitation. He's got candles lit and soft music playing. We're a long way from the floor of his parking garage.

"Very nice, Mr. Cale," I say, walking ahead of him into the living room. I can smell the chicken baking in the kitchen. I sit down on the couch where a bottle of wine waits on the coffee table.

"I thought I'd try to woo you," Logan says, pouring me a glass of wine.

I take the glass from his hand and taste it. The wine is amazing.

"Well, this will work," I respond, setting the glass down on the table. He's turned the romance on full blast, that's for sure.

Logan sits down next to me and takes me in my arms. "I just want to thank you, Max, for giving me my life back, both before and now."

I think I know what he means, at least I hope I do. We have been living our lives together for the past few months and if I'm reading Logan, he's trying to tell me that nothing has to change at all.

He presses me back against the couch, sliding his hands up under my shirt and teases my nipples through my bra.

"You have entirely too many clothes on, Max Guevara," he whispers into my ear. "I think I need to do something about that."

He stands up, holding his hand out to me. As I stand up, he pulls me close, encircling me with his arms. "I love holding you like this. I never want to lose this, Max."

I follow him to his bedroom, where he playfully pushes me down on the bed. I'm seeing signs of the madman who fucked my brains out the other night, but at least this time there's the comfort of his mattress underneath me.

"I want to see every inch of you, Max," he snarls, pulling my boots off and tossing them across the floor. He moves on to pull my pants off and then my blouse. His hands rake over my skin, making it known that he owns every inch of me.

He makes quick work of his own outfit and again presses me back against the pillows. Foreplay is a thing of the past as he plunges himself into me. I'm tight and he fills me to the hilt.

"Easy, Logan!" I call as he presses me back again. I had no idea he was such an enthusiastic lover.

"Sorry," he pants as he collapses against me.

In his excitement to pleasure himself, I think that Logan has forgotten there are two of us here. I slide my hands down his side, trying to entice him into some play. He takes my hand and presses it down on his penis.

"Here," he states.

I understand that he has sensation there, but I want more...I want our old, softer, slower style of love. I lean in to kiss him, and then quickly roll on top of him.

"You want it fast, buddy?" I ask. "I can give you fast."

My tongue races over him, touching every part of his body as fast as I can. I press up into his arms, underneath, across his chest, down to his belly, along his scar...running my tongue over every inch. Finally I stop at his engorged shaft.

"You want a little cat wash there too?" I tease.

He nods, panting slightly with anticipation.

I slow down; trying to show him that fast isn't always better. I tease at the end, where a little drip of cum waits. I work my way up, slow and smooth, moving deliberately toward the top, tracing along the edge of his skin. My tongue moves over and teases his left ball, then his right. He gasps again, his back arching up a bit from the bed.

"You're killing me," he cries.

I slip down again, this time taking him deep in my mouth, pulling hard until he comes and fills me with his juices.

I'm lying limp against his chest, our legs entwined under the sheets when the phone rings. Logan picks it up, listens and then hands it to me.

It's Zack.

As the Ninja and I race toward Wyoming, toward Zack, I realize that tonight was the first time I had ever made love with Logan without coming myself. Maybe it was because we got interrupted. Maybe.

Zack and the others have been gone for a week, but so much has changed. I don't know if it's the loss of my siblings or Logan. He's been acting weird...nearly since the night I tried Zack's phone number.

He saved the chicken for me, but when it was time for us to sit down, he made and excuse and sent me on his way. He's been so distant. Maybe it was all talk...maybe there isn't room for me in his new, walking life. I do know that he hasn't left any room for intimacy. Maybe he's already gotten himself a honey who doesn't have to run from black ops guys and doesn't have a whacked out family who constantly calls on her to get them out of jams. Maybe he's sick of using his Eyes Only connections to get my people out of Seattle safely.

It's just so hard for me to believe that I so totally misjudged him. I thought we had something good going on. When he told me that he loved me, I believed him. I fell for it hook, line and sinker.

I was such a sucker.

Last night was really the end of it for me. Logan had been talking about this basketball game for weeks, so I went out and got tickets for him--a special deal. But when I went to pick him up, he wasn't there. And not only did he stand me up, but he didn't call. No explanation at all.

I really don't need this trouble in my life, but it's all so sudden and really unlike Logan. It's like he's hiding something from me...but what the hell would he be hiding?

I looked him up this morning, trying to press him for an explanation for his actions. It was like he was too busy to even talk to me. I don't mean to assume I'm something so special in his life that he can't find something better, but he wouldn't even look me in the eye and he didn't try to touch me.

Logan always used to touch me. If nothing else, that tipped me off that something was wrong...very wrong.

It wasn't very trusting, but I followed him. By the time I was headed back to Fogle Towers, I was so angry, I wasn't sure I'd still want him if he'd take me. I had opened myself up to him, shared my past, what they had done to me and in the end, he had turned to one of the very people who had worked so hard to make my life hell. It was the ultimate betrayal.

I can hear Logan on the phone as I walk into the apartment. Anger filled every bone in my body as I march over and cut off his phone call.

"We need to talk," I spit out at him.

"That was an informant with evidence on how the sector police are extorting money from--" He turns to look at me. "What happened to you?"

I confront him about Vertes, still unwilling to believe that he knew about her connections to Manticore, that he might have any understanding of what she had done to us. He comes back at me with righteous indignation that I would follow him. Doesn't he understand that I worry about him? That I know when he's acting weird?

He seems shocked to hear that Jace is after the good doctor and a bit too worried for Vertes' safety for my taste. The insults fly back and forth as he tells me he knows all about her dirty past. I can hardly stomach the thought.

"Not everything I do is automatically your business," Logan says, staring out the window over the Seattle night sky.

"Excuse me, but finding one of the bright young sadists who did experiments on us back in the day certainly is my business," I respond. I cannot believe he would do this.

Logan turns to face me, his body limp, depressed. "Let me see if I can break this down for you then, Max."

"Please do."

"Whatever else Dr. Vertes has done, she is probably the only person on the planet who can keep me from landing back in a wheelchair."

I can't believe this. He would turn to HER when I could help him?

"What are you talking about? If you need another blood transfusion, all you gotta do is ask."

"That won't help. My body's rejecting your blood cells. The nerves in my spinal cord are unraveling as fast as they were repaired. We'll know in the next forty-eight hours whether the treatment even works…if I'll be able to keep walking."

I had no idea. God, why would he keep this a secret from me? I want to ask, but he's more concerned about where Vertes has gone. I tell him that she's at the safe house. I might hate her, but there was a reason Logan had contacted her and I wasn't going to give Jace the satisfaction of killing her before I knew what that reason was.

"Look. . . Max . . . I didn't want to tell you about this. For all kinds of reasons," Logan says, stepping toward me. He takes one step and then crumples, falling flat on his face at my feet.

I rush to help him, but he waves me away, trying to help himself up. It kills me to watch him struggling and I lift him into his chair. I would never have done that before, but now he seems so fragile, so broken.

"I gotta ask you--Is it easier for you if I'm in the chair?" he spits at me, his face filled with anger.

"Come on. Let's go see her," I reply, throwing his jacket at him. I turn and head for the door, hearing him follow me a minute later.

Logan is silent in the elevator. I follow him into the garage, thinking how only a week earlier we had made love right in this spot. It seems like a million years ago.

He pulls the door of the Aztek open and steps carefully from the chair into his seat. I can see now what I didn't want to see earlier--every step is costing him plenty. I was so blind! He had been falling apart right in front of my eyes and I had been so busy worrying about my life to actually notice his.

"I'm sorry," Logan finally says, nearly ten minutes after we've left the apartment.

"I understand," I respond -- and I do. I can see what it's meant to him to recover his legs. I can see that joy that he's gotten from it.

"I'm not sure you do. I felt what it was like to function like a regular person again. To be whole and complete."

Whole and complete? What does he mean by that?

"You've never not been that to me," I finally reply, and I mean it. I have never considered that Logan was less in bed or in my life because he used a chair.

"Staying out of that wheelchair matters more to me than anything else in my life. Anything. And if I wind up back in it… Let's just say that I'm not gonna live my life like that."

I can't answer. He's in no mood to hear me disagree and I can't find the words to tell him that it will be okay. I might know that it will, but he is going to have to believe it to make it so.

In the end, I'm not sure I've been able to say anything that will make him feel better. My fear as I raced from Vertes' office back to Logan's apartment almost overwhelmed me. I'm not sure I can live my life any longer without Logan. I couldn't bear to lose him.
I run up the steps, unwilling to wait for the elevator.

"Logan! Logan! Logan!" I call, running into the apartment. I'm so afraid of what I will find that I can barely take another step.

The gun is lying on the desk. My eyes lock on it until I hear the door open behind me. I turn and run, the fear making my heart race in my chest. I see him and drop before him, pulling him and the chair into my embrace.

"I thought…I was so scared…the ambulance…"

He hugs me back, his head dipping down to rest on mine. I squeeze my arms around him, wanting to protect him against all in the world that would seek to harm him.

"It's okay," he whispers into my hair.

I slip from his arms, my eyes racing over his body, making sure that he is whole and truly alive. He appears unharmed, but I can barely believe it. He moves past me and goes to the desk. He doesn't say anything, but picks up the gun and puts it away.

"Little accident upstairs. Mrs. Moreno fell down. Bathroom sink overflowed." His voice is clipped and emotionless, but he's here.

"She okay?" I ask.

"Yeah. She'll be fine," Logan responds.

I'm sure she will, but I'm not so sure about us.

"Logan..."

"No, Max, don't," he responds.

We can't leave this hanging out here. It's too much. I cross to him, dropping bonelessly down on his lap, collapsing against him, my arms around his neck, holding on and never letting go. It's as if the adrenaline rush is over and I can't move. I know that I can't be separated from him. I'm not sure I can live without him any longer. I've never relied on anyone like this...trusted anyone like this, come to treasure anyone like this.

I've never cared about his wheelchair, his legs, whether or not he could get it up...I love his mind and his heart, let alone his body...moving or not, the man is gorgeous. Atrophy is never going to change that and to be honest, I have always been more of a shoulders and arm woman.

He slowly rolls us toward his bedroom. We slip into the bed, pulling the blankets over us. Our clothing between us, I curve my body to match his and wrap my arms around him.

Wordlessly we lie there for hours until finally sleep comes.

FIN

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