A/N: Please review. I'd like to know if people are reading my stuff, so I can decide whether the effort of a longer story would be worth it or not. :)
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Her ghost haunts him.
He sits alone in the quiet and listens to the sound of her voice echoing through the apartment. The rich tunes of her laughter dancing through the silences. Sometimes it is just the sound of the word "Logan," said in that forceful, bemused, frustrated fashion of hers that startles him into turning, searching for a woman he knows isn't even there.
Logan moves slowly to the window, taking care to make sure she hasn't followed him. But as he reaches the glass through which the broken city lies in wait, he sees that he was too slow. Or not slow enough. Because when he reaches it, her reflection is waiting for him. Sometimes with that playful grin, sometimes with those old eyes. Eyes that should never be able to exist on a person so young. Rain drips slowly down the pane, appearing as tears running down that golden face. But as the city lights shift, she disappears.
He turns away. It is no use waiting for a person who is no longer there. Except the images keep chasing him. In his peripheral vision, he often catches a glimpse of dark hair as she turns a corner. Or sees a thin leg swinging as she sits on his counter waiting for another culinary miracle to appear. He even forgets himself occasionally, and reaches out to her.
His fingers pass through air.
How is it possible to touch a ghost? Someone who is no longer there?
Often, it seems that the ghost of the dead is easier to reach than the ghost of the living.
Now he sees Max, and the smile is dim, the laughter gone, the eyes impossibly old. The spirit that used to live in her heart is gone, because it found that it couldn't exist in a place that is dead and broken.
So it has instead chosen to haunt him. Until she learns to live again.