Warnings – Character death and sex, but neither in explicit detail
Spoilers – Nothing in particular really. General spoilers for season two
Characters – Max, Alec, Logan
Timeline – After "Freak Nation"
Summary – Logan and Max think they've found a cure.
Disclaimer – Not mine.
Notes – For spasticvisions, in the jamponyfic Winter Ficathon, who wanted: Max and Logan think they have a cure... they don't. There's no one around to save Logan. That's right. I'm requesting death fic. I'm sick and twisted.

Cured

-x-x-x-x-x-x-
None of them were allowed to go to the funeral, none of them were even allowed out of Terminal City, not officially, anyway. She was aware that a small delegation went anyway, with Alec in charge. He'd assumed she would be going. All of them assumed she would be going, but she couldn't, wouldn't. Of course she couldn't: they'd recognise her – her face was on every poster every wall – The Leader of the Transgenics, you couldn't miss it. She'd be recognised, and that would be the end of it for all of them.

At least that's what she told them – only Alec dared to contradict her.

Her response to stop talking to him, didn't have its usual effect of him either trying to cajole her round, or to proclaim from the rooftops just how happy he was that he finally had some peace and quiet. If she noticed him hovering quietly out of sight from then on, she gave no sign.

-x-x-x-
"Are you sure this is going to work?" Max asked, hesitating to put her hand in Logan's outstretched one. Despite the delight showing in his face, his posture indicated wariness and she knew him well enough to know that he was nervous, but even she couldn't tell if he was worried about a failure in the cure, or what would happen if the cure actually worked.

"Of course," the anxiety in his expression spiked when she didn't move. "Come on, Max, it's not like you to be afraid."

But this was different, it was always different. And there were a million different things she could say to him, but she didn't voice any of them, instead she reached out and placed her hand into his. Warm flesh enclosed her own, tentative at first, and then with a firmer grip. She'd forgotten this, forgotten what it was like to touch him without the barrier of latex or cloth, and just for a moment she looked at the way their hands settled together, naturally, comfortably.

Her eyes followed up from their clasped hands, along his arm, past his neck, chin, jaw, lips, nose, and settled on his eyes. As their gazes met, Max felt a smile turning up the corners of her mouth to match his broad grin, and it was a bubble of happiness that brought a soft chuckle from her throat when he pulled her to him. For the first time in so long, they stood pressed together, his long length against her smaller, curvier frame.

"Not so bad, huh?" he asked, still smiling his ridiculously happy smile. And Max allowed herself to feel a thrill of joy. It was real. It was happening. There was no Zack, no Manticore, no virus, no cult, no prophecy, no White, nothing but her and Logan.

-x-x-x-
Max's behaviour had become so erratic and unpredictable that most of Terminal City avoided her. Suffering they understood – there'd been precious little else in their lives – grief was foreign to them, and all they understood was that their leader, their security was crumbling in front of them. In months to come, even after their confidence had been restored, Alec would reflect that Freak Nation would never really forgive Max for her weakness.

It was a small group that approached him, but it was the motley band that kept Terminal City running. Mole, Joshua, and a few others, and Alec had to appreciate the act that caused these varied minds to band together. But he was second in command (as much as you could be in this not quite army, not quite democracy, city), and they expected him to take over pick up where Max left off. They expected him to relieve her of her command.

Only Joshua seemed to really understand what might be going on. "Don't want. Have to," he said when Alec protested. "Little fella is hurting, so she hurts us. We need to make her well again."

"I'll speak to her."

-x-x-x-
Logan's lips were soft and warm, then hard and demanding. Max met him kiss for kiss, and she was the one who took it further, sliding her hands under his shirt, lifting it away from his warm skin. A part of her wanted to slow down, to take this as slowly and as luxuriously as they could; it'd been so long since she'd even been able to touch him, she wanted to enjoy every second of this – she wanted to remember it.

But they were drinking each other in, like they'd been dying of thirst. She wanted him, wanted to know he was alive, and touching her. It was every cliché ever written, and Max didn't care. There was plenty of evidence to say that Logan didn't care either.

Skin to skin, closer still. And again, like every cliché, it was hot and fast the first time, slow and tender the second. Exhausted, they fell asleep in each others arms.

-x-x-x-
Alec searched for Max in every nook and hole in Terminal City and once he was done he searched every possibly hiding space she could have returned to in the larger world. Her old apartment, Sandeman's House, Logan's old apartment (clean and new, filled with a shiny new family that screamed blue murder when they realised they had a transgenic in their home), Crash and even Jam Pony (and Normal didn't half tear strips off him for scaring away customers).

He knew where she was, he always knew where she was. The Space Needle was not so crowded that Max wouldn't go there to hide, to think, to be alone. You couldn't be alone with two people. Anyway, Alec wasn't really any better with loss than the rest of Freak Nation.

Briefly he kicked himself for not finding Original Cindy. But then when it came to Max he seemed to be a glutton for punishment.

-x-x-x-
Max woke to find Logan dying and in pain. In fact it'd been the thump of him trying to get out of bed, and falling to the floor that alerted her. She'd rarely slept so long, and never so deeply, so she woke feeling disorientated, and not knowing why. The soft groan and the disarrayed bedclothes were a good indication, and she woke quickly, adrenaline pumping, thoughts clearing: only someone in pain would make a sound like that.

She knew better than to touch Logan in the state he was in: she could only make it worse. Her hands fluttered loosely above him for several seconds, and then she cursed herself, hated herself, because precious moments of Logan's life slithered away while she dithered. For years to come she would ask herself if that fraction of time would have made a difference, even though logic said otherwise.

Desperate, she reached for the phone, but there was no power, the line dead in her ear as she tried in desperation to punch buttons, willing something to happen. Logan's cell phone was flat, when he was usually so careful at keeping it charged: his life and livelihood came from knowing what was happening, where and when.

The crack of plastic in her hands alerted her to the phone, the pressure from her grip having snapped the casing. She dropped it, if dropping it could be classed as throwing at the wall hard enough to make a dent, hard enough for it to shatter.

Another groan drew her back to the floor, to Logan, to the one thing she'd rather not think about right now. All she wanted to think about was him safe and well, body enriched with a dose of transgenic blood.

But she knelt by him, looking down at his eyes, now open and pained. "I'll get help," she promised. "I'll get help." But the words sound small and pathetic, barely audible over his moans of pain. What help was there to get? Everyone was so far away in their own world, not in the one the had max and Logan, alone. She eyed the sheet on the bed, if she could wrap him up, that would work. Yes—

He grabbed her arm, and it was so like the last he'd done that, to hold her, to stop her from running away. She tried to shake him off, but for a dying man he had a grip of steel and he held on tight. They pulled against each other in a macabre tug of war. "Max," he hissed.

"Let go!" she demanded in return.

"It's not your fault." And with that Logan Cale slipped into a coma he'd never wake from. There was no goodbye, no declarations, just forgiveness.

The words broke her, and tears rolled down her cheeks, because it was her fault, it was always her fault: her, and her freaky genes, courtesy of Sandeman and Manticore. And didn't she hate them now?

As the grip around her arm slackened, Max jumped up, and pulled off the bedspread, it'd be awkward, but what could you do? As long as she could get Logan to a doctor then who really cared?

She wouldn't believe in the impossible until she was halfway to the hospital in the back of a pick-up, and Logan breathed his last.

-x-x-x-
Alec didn't say anything as he sat beside Max, watching her stare out to the city and further. Fantasy said she could see right into the heavens, but Alec had never been given for fantasy (unless they were the right sort), and he was about to start now. If she noticed him, she didn't acknowledge him, and they say silent with their own thoughts.

"I want him back," Max said eventually, breaking the silence. There was so much pain in her tone that he wasn't sure how she stood it.

Alec didn't know how to respond, or even where to begin. He'd never known what it was like to miss someone so much you wanted them back. Rachel was still a mix of emotions for him, and yes longing was one of them, but it was mixed with guilt and confusion. He'd never wish her dead, to be sure, and he'd regret to the day he died her death, but to have her back? That he didn't know – he'd lost her in a time when he wasn't allowed to want such things.

"Max…" but he had noting to say, and silence gaped in front of them.

It was a long while later that she spoke again. "They don't want me anymore, do they?" she asked, and he didn't have the heart to answer, or to plead ignorance. "I'm broken and useless, and I killed him and they don't want me anymore."

He was angry at the transgenics for hurting her, for not understanding, even when he knew why.

"It's not that," he tried to say.

"Save it Alec!" she snapped, and he could almost her old self in the words and tone.

Braver men would have stopped, but braver men probably wouldn't have recognised that as tempers went: this was a mild display from Max.

"They don't understand," he tied again, attempting to explain something impossible to her.

"They don't understand?" she repeated and he heard the anger loud and clear. "They don't understand?! He's gone, he'll never be back, and they don't understand?" She laughed bitterly, humourlessly.

"It'd just be temporarily," Alec tried to explain, feeling more and more helpless.

"You don't understand," she said scornfully.

He managed to hold back the 'I'm trying'.

"He's gone Alec, he'll never come back – and I want him to." She choked and then the sobs began, and he could do nothing except hold her and rub her back, tell her that she was wanted and he'd always be her friend.

The sky was pink, when he escorted her to a worried Original Cindy, and he couldn't hep but think of ill-omens and coming storms. They'd lost something great, the whole world had, and most of them would never know it, though he wondered how they couldn't. This was one little downfall along the way to the end of the war, and he wasn't sure they could win it – not without Logan Cale and what he could give them, and certainly not without Max Guevara.

-x-x-x-
A week later, face pale and cheeks sunken, but eyes bright, Max arrived back at Terminal City, ready to fight. If anyone ever saw her slip again, it was only Alec, and he knew better.
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