Drained
Disclaimer: Nothing is mine.
A/N: I can't write depressing things. This is my first attempt, and I don't think it is very well written. I'd love some constructive criticism, though, so please read!
Relationship: Subtle Max/Logan. No more or less than what they are on the show.
Continuity: During episode 1.14 – Female Trouble.
Summary: Logan's thoughts as he contemplates and prepares for his suicide.
XXX
"See you later," she says. And although I return the salutation, I'm not so sure that I would. Perhaps in another life. Not that I believe in that sort of thing. That's not really relevant anyway. I watch her smile at me the way she does, almost like a singular moment of weakness, and I can tell that in that moment, she could be caught off guard. She turns with an elegant grace and leaves my apartment to go and take care of the vulnerability I created for her. As if I hadn't been making her life hard enough.
Now that Adriana Vertes is dead, my one and only hope, thanks to the ever-popular Donald Lydecker, I am only destined to lose my legs again. I've already lost them. I had been struggling with it emotionally and tried to conceal the immense physical pain I started to have from Max. Of course, I failed. A phrase I was only too familiar with by now. I'm back in the chair for it.
Moving from the couch to the chair was only an extremely painful reminder of the entirety I'll never have. A taste of what it was like to walk again was cruel. It was being taken away from me just as fast as I had gotten it back. Rolling over to my computers I think of what I want. What I don't have. What I'll never have. What's keeping me alive? That's a question I can't answer and it scares me. I absent-mindedly moved the chair side to side, harshly hitting my knee against the desk. I finally realize what I'm doing and that I can't feel it. I suddenly sense all the thoughts and emotions that had been holding me back drain out of my broken body. Like the last pillar of desire to live had demolished. I can actually feel it crumbling.
I wouldn't leave a note. Who would care? Sure, Bling might come in and find me. A shock, perhaps, to know that he'd have to wait a little bit longer to be able to pay for that new car without my generous paycheck. The neighbors might come first, or the authorities on account of the neighbors. They'd all move, not wanting to live in a building where someone had died. The inconvenience I'd cause them all. There isn't a single family member who didn't want my head on a stick. And Max…well all I do for her is…. Max can take care of herself; she'd been doing it for ten or eleven years. She doesn't need me for anything. She's a big girl, and I'm not the only computer savvy person in Seattle that she can get Manticore and rogue X-5 information from. All I've done for her has been negative. Even the positives have taken a brutal turn. She's only been in and out of a jail cell or somewhere like it because of me. It would be a relief for her to have me out of her life. I can't even think of why she still comes around. I start to think she's using me. Maybe she tried to keep me happy…so I'd let her in when she needed it. When she needed it.
In fact, it all gives me more reason and incentive to do it.
Running a hand over a mahogany case next to my desk, I can almost feel the pulse of the item threatening me from within. I apply pressure and slowly slide the covering away. Peering inside, a white box of bullets stands out intensely against the dark walls. The black handgun, in contrast, seems to melt away into the dark wood, yet it somehow jumps out like some sort of twisted pop up book. Surprised to find myself without any hint of hesitation, I reach for gun and rest it on the desk. I reach in a second time and pull a single golden inch long bullet from the box. I take the gun back in my hand and compare the two objects side to side. A beat of indecision throbs and then dissolves just as quickly in my mind. I shakily load the ammunition into the semi-automatic weapon. I lay the readied gun in my deadened lap and blankly stare at the wall in front of me. I couldn't live like this. I take in a deep breath through my nose. And then another. I wouldn't live like this. I grab the gun in a swift motion and hold it up. I gaze into the barrel and unexpectedly hear my heart thumping in my ears, and feel it throughout my arms and chest. My face begins to burn. I won't live like this. I raise it to point at my right temple. An image of Max flashes in my mind as I put my finger on the trigger.
A droplet of water drops onto my lens and jolts me out of the trance I seemed to be in. I put the weapon back on the desk and frown as I take off my glasses and inspect them. Another miniature splash erupts on the lens. Looking upwards, I see a patch of damp ceiling has formed and has leaked through from upstairs. Mrs. Moreno.
I go upstairs to see if she's all right. I'm able to get inside her apartment. I call her and receive no reply. I immediately go to the bathroom and find the tap running on full pressure and over-flowing onto the floor. I find the elderly Mrs. Moreno waking up on the soaked floor with a small red gash on the upper right side of her forehead. I tell her to stay still as I reach for the phone on the nightstand right outside the doorway. She tells me it would have been better if she had just died. That she was old, and had nothing to live for. She says that I have no idea what she's going through. I'm young and have everything the world has to offer right in front of me.
"I'm gonna ask you to stop talking like that, Mrs. Moreno," I tell her. I dial the paramedics for her and help her up and out of the flooded bathroom. I stay with her until a tall dark man walks through the door with a stretcher.
I slowly make my way back downstairs, seriously thinking about what had just happened. I picture the gun on my desk and wonder if I'm still going to carry through with it. I find my door slightly ajar and nudge it open. I roll in and discover Max running towards me in hysterics. She kneels down and wraps her arms around me. Somehow it only makes me feel worse to know she has to kneel to hug me. But the reminder of her scent ignites something small in my mind. I can't describe it, but it's there. She says something about how worried she was and when she saw the ambulance. She must have seen the gun on my desk in an empty apartment. She obviously had assumed the worst, and I can only guess she read the file she had had to take from Vertes' clinic. I know it had to have said I was depressed and possibly suicidal.
"Little accident upstairs. Mrs. Moreno fell down. Bathroom sink overflowed." I wheel over to my desk and put the gun back in the case. I swallow hard and look up at her. She gives me a comforting smile. She asks if she'll be okay.
"Yeah," I say. "She'll be fine."
XXX
A/N: Ugh. Did you hate it? Should I have ended it differently? Done anything differently for that matter? Please, please give me some critical feedback! Thanks!