Disclaimer: Still not owning any Dark Angel.
A/N: Just a little something coming from recent exposure to the 5-things-formate. The chronology might not be too accurate... but it fits for this little phantasy.
For Shy, for being dragged to all kind of weird, impossible and non-existent places. (There's a tiny bit of Tony hidden in there)
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Four birthdays Logan Cale didn't celebrate... and one he did.
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Logan doesn't celebrate his first birthday. Not really. He doesn't even remember it, has no memories of the grey and misty day when people had gathered to see how that wide-eyed newborn had turned into a giggling little boy. All he has is a handful of photos and the tales of those older than him.
They show the familiar faces, younger than he remembers them, laughing at his attempts to reach for the single candle on a smurf blue birthday cake. His blond hair is curling down his neck, much longer than he'll ever have it again, and there, behind him, is his mother, smiling over his dad's feigned disapproval.
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Logan dreads his 14. birthday. It's one month after his father's death and every time he thinks of those birthdays before, the ones they had together, it feels as if somebody is strangling him.
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Logan misses his 22. birthday. Five months after the Pulse time is still an undefined mass, a rocky continuum that doesn't connect with the calendar.
It's getting better though. He's sitting in the makeshift headquarter of their newspaper, a free voice among all the hysteria. They've been working for weeks to get out the first issue and after a four hour fight with an old typewriter, Logan finally pulls out his first finished article.
Nobody seems to pay attention when he asks for the date, but somewhere in the far, unlit corner of the garage a red-headed guy shifts around some papers and mutters, "November... 11.".
Logan looks up, stunned, his surprise unnoticed by the busy concentration around. Then he laughs... and for the first time since that world-changing summer day he dares to imagine the future again.
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Logan doesn't feel like making a big fuss about his 24. birthday. The wedding is only two weeks away and he just got into a row with Val, over something as silly and irrelevant as the color of their wedding cake.
Instead he drives up to the cabin, away from the obsession with flowers bride maids and his impossible hair cut, away from aunt Margo's complaints on how hard the Pulse had made it to find a decent manicurist. Sitting at the lake, he thinks about how this marriage, in the words of Uncle Jonas, will make him a man, somebody who will finally live up to their expectations.
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His 32. birthday, isn't one Logan expected to celebrate. It's eight months after the shooting, four months after he almost bled to death, six weeks after he walked again... and three weeks after he took comfort in the cool weight of his gun, ready to end it all. He hasn't even been in the chair for a year and it's still too close to those months of being miserably unsure whether he wants to live through his next birthdays at all.
But here he is, despite Sonrisa, despite his fear of being shot, killed, murdered... despite depending on Bling and Max for those little errands he used to do on his own.
After a night of staring down at the city he calls Max, smiling when she picks up the phone. He invites her for dinner, promises her cake and ice cream and maybe even that special wine he has kept for so long.
He doesn't mention the occasion, doesn't tell her why his voice hides a determined grin. He just hopes that she remembers.
xxx The End xxx