A/N: Sorry about the delay, folks. I got a little distracted by life. On the plus side, I did pass the last of my blood tests. Yay! Here's the last (short) part to this chapter. Fanfiction dot net had a little blip with the announcement of the last section, so you might want to go back one and check to make sure you read it. I hope you all enjoy!
Saturday March 31, 2001
It was just another morning, like so many other mornings. Yet one sullen face was missing from them. It was odd; it took less than two months for their small group to become irrevocably altered forever. Actually, it took less time than that. It took a few days. One moment. A future lifetime.
Joyce couldn't understand how Logan managed to be so calm when Max was not heard from for several days. When she inquired – nervously – he just shrugged. "She'll be back," was always his reply. She wondered how he could have so much faith when so much had been torn apart between he and the only person he really had in this world.
Buffy and Dawn slugged into the kitchen simultaneously. Both dressed, but still rather bleary-eyed for a Saturday morning. "Morning, Mom," Buffy said, giving her mother a quick peck on the cheek as she meandered over towards the refrigerator. Dawn grunted something that Joyce and Logan both assumed was a greeting before drowsily elbowing Buffy out of her way. Buffy elbowed Dawn back, a little harder than intended. Dawn, not entirely steady to begin with, lost her footing, and stumbled into Logan, who was unable to quite catch his glasses before they plopped into his cereal. Dawn and Buffy, who were both prepared to start a heck of an argument, instead stopped, and looked rather guiltily at each other.
"Ummm," Dawn began, now wide-awake.
"It was an accident," Buffy quickly interjected.
Dawn rolled her eyes and opened her mouth to protest, but quickly shut it. She cocked her head, and asked, "Do you hear that?"
The other three occupants of the kitchen listened, carefully. They heard a soft steady rumble.. "Thunder?" Joyce questioned, moving to the kitchen window. It was sunny outside, and cloudless.
The rumble increased quickly, and was punctuated with louder beats.
A slow smile spread across Logan's face. "That's not thunder." He gripped his wheels hard to first steady himself, and pushed off quickly towards the front door, with the others close behind. He pulled open the front door…
…and there she was. Almost like she had never been gone.
She was sitting astride a motorcycle, a Ninja that looked quite similar to the one she'd had back in Seattle. His keen eye could have picked out slight differences, but he was intent on only noticing her as she revved the bike loudly.
"Miss me?" Max asked cheekily.
Joyce looked a little green as she watched Max on the motorcycle, looking as comfortable as if she'd been born on one. She nearly commented on it, but then snapped her mouth shut and did her best to look disapproving instead. "Miss you? We were worried sick about you. For all we knew you could have been—"
"Dead in a ditch somewhere," Buffy and Dawn finished simultaneously. They giggled, as their mother rolled her eyes self-deprecatingly.
Max laughed, looking at Logan.
The corners of his mouth tilted upward. "So you've got your bike back."
She shrugged, running her hand over the body. "It's not mine," she said softly. "Got it in LA. Squid knew a few people and..." She looked up, met Logan's eyes and smiled, at first almost shyly, but eventually the smile bloomed to the brilliance that nobody had seen for days. "It's not mine," Max repeated, "but it will be."
Logan looked back, wondering. He couldn't place the feeling, but at that moment, his world seemed to tilt, and upright itself. But instead of being the same world, something had changed. He glanced toward the sky, but it was the same blue it had always been. Yet something was different. He turned his gaze again towards Max, who was now pointing parts of the motorcycle out to an attentive Dawn, much to the chagrin of her mother. He couldn't pull his eyes from her, as though if he looked away again, she would disappear. He could never let her go.
Even if the world had, somehow, totally changed in a moment.
Next up: Chapter 10 – Inferno
A/N: This chapter was not-so-loosely based on the Buffy episode "Crush." I lovingly stole some lines from Joss Wedon, and since I'm not making any money off this, hopefully he won't mind too much. If you want clues as to which lines were his and which were mine, google the Buffy episode, or drop me a line and I'll be happy to help sort out the insanity. The next chapter will be a while, folks. Hopefully not as long as this one took. My job training is relatively intensive, and my brain is fried by the time I get home. Then after I finish writing, it becomes a task not to fry my poor overworked beta's brain (Thanks again, Alaidh!)
All my thanks for reading and reviewing!
