Story: Reality's Nightmare

Author: Amy (aka Sea Angel)

Disclaimer: I don't own 'em




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Logan sat on the edge of his bed, thinking. He had just finished his rehabilitation session with Bling. It had been one week since Max's death, and he was only now begining to feel its effects. He had wished this day would never come, but he had known that it would anyway. He had learnt rather abruptly in the last year, that his wishes meant nothing. He had thought, for a brief moment, that perhaps they did. When his lips touched hers on that night, when she told him that she didn't care whether or not he could walk, when she asked him, almost pleadingly, if "it" would wait; when those things had happened, he had thought...he had almost dared to dream that one day...

But that was over now. Those dreams would never be. They had been murdered the same way she had, and they were now no more. What he was left with was an ache in the pit of his stomach, and a pain in his chest, and a realization that he was not the only one in her life who should be allowed to mourn her. He was being selfish. Wallowing in sickness and grief felt right enough for him at the moment, but he had remembered, with a wave of naseaua, that Max's friends did not know.

The thought made him cringe, for the only people who really knew were himself, Lydecker, Bling, Krit and Syl. Krit and Syl were having difficulties of their own coping with what had happened, Lydecker had dissapeared shortly after, though he swore that he would return, and it wasn't fair to ask Bling to be the bearer of such awful news. It was up to him. He knew it had to be done, it was part of the puzzle that he needed to put together if he was to get a grip on his life. His life, which had been blown to pieces by the bomb of truth that had wrecked his world.

Slowly, he lowered his head to look at the phone in his lap. Never before had he felt quite this much fear and hatred of an inadimate object. With trembling fingers, he pressed the on button, and listned for a dial tone. When he heard the familiar dull note, his fingers began to shakily recall the digits of her number. His heart cramped, his vision blurred, and he let out a small gasp of pain as the phone dropped from his palm with a loud bang to the floor. Shoulders heaving, he followed the phone's path until he, too was on the floor, letting his grievances show yet again. He stayed that way for an hour.

When his world came into focus once again, he realized that the phone wouldn't cut it. Had she phoned him to tell about Max's death, he would have been infuriated at her inconsideration. Going to Max's house, however, was not something he was sure that he could handle. He had seen more devastation and tears and pain in his lifetime, then anyone should have to deal with in centuries, but nothing could compare to this.
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At her door, he almost lost it again, but he held fast to the knowledge that this is what Max would have wanted him to do. His hand balled itself into a fist at his side, and it wasn't until he raised that fist to knock, that he noticed how much he was shaking. Almost convulsing, really, and he began to understand why the seizures scared a genetically engineered soldier so much. He too, had thought he had control over his emotions. He had known to much to believe that he could control his life, but he had figured that he was the master of his feelings. But like the convulsions reminded Max of her inadequacies, his lack of self-control reminded him of his love for her.

He knocked at the door.

As footsteps apprached the door, Logan's mind found itself in a state of recollection. He had heard them, as hard as he had tried not to, he had listned to their conversation that night. He had seen and felt the pain and fear from Max as she declared to him that she owed Cindy the truth. Smart or not, Max had declared, she had earned it.

Logan was not used to the sight of Max crying, but that night, as he heard the tears in her eyes, he had realized just how vulnerable she really was.

"I was scared that if I told you what was up, it would all change. And that you'd look at me like I was some kind of freak, that you didn't even recognize."

The footsteps were coming closer, but to Logan, they seemed to be moving remarkably slow.

"You could've died putting that bitch in your head, but you did it anyway, to get my back."

The door swung open with an intensity that Logan had rarely seen before. Original Cindy stood before him with a look of frantic anger in her eyes.

"You are my boo, for life. No matter what."

They stood there like that, for what seemed an eternity. Cindy with furious, storming eyes, and Logan with pained blue ones. It was as there eyes met, that the anger began to be replaced with something even more sickening. As realization parted the clouds in her eyes, the color drained from Cindy's face. Finally she spoke.

"Don't you come telling me no bad news now, boy. I have worried so much this past week that I deserve for her to come home right now and tell me that she don't have to be running no more. I deserve for her to be here instead of you, telling me that I was right about you two, and that the reason she hasn't shown up here is because you guys went off on some romantic adventure."

Her voice had risen considerably since she had started, and Logan was afraid that she was on the brinks of hysterics.

"I deserve for my boo..."

Her voice faltered, and he could hear the tears forming in her throat.

"I deserve for my boo to be...for my boo to be alive."

As she uttered those last words, her resolve broke, her voice cracked, and the tears that he had heard forming, spilled onto her cheeks in sheets of rain.

He caught her in his arms before she hit the ground from her legs that refused to work. Understanding and hurt held both of them tight in their grasp, and he was afraid that if he were to let go, she would fall. She would fall just like he would without his wheelchair or exoskeleton. She would fall because she had lost those things, her support, her fun. And the only coherent thought that kept running through her head made her cry any harder. The only thing that she could manage to mutter summed up the pain that she was feeling inside.

"She was my boo."

Cindy knew that those words meant more to her than anything else at the moment, and she knew that she would give anything in the world if she could just tell Max that again. But she couldn't, and so that was why she stayed in Logan's firm grip, repeating the sentence over and over and over again.