James Cameron and Charles Eglee own Dark Angel. My use is in no way meant to challenge their copyrights. This piece is not intended for any profit on the part of the writer, nor is it meant to detract from the commercial viability of the aforementioned or any other copyright. Any similarity to any events or persons, either real or fictional, is unintended (and would really be sorta whacked, given some of the events and persons depicted herein).
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XV – Parting Is Such Sweet SorrowMax was hardly aware of the four guards that surrounded her – two in front and two behind – as she walked down a brightly lit, white-walled and white-tiled hallway. They finally rounded a corner and she caught sight of a familiar face standing in front of a door at the end of the hall. Son of a bitch, she thought angrily as she focused on Set. What the hell is he playing at?
"Max," Set said formally as she and her entourage reached him. "It's good to see you again."
"He's in there?" Max asked, ignoring any opportunity for pleasantries.
"That's an antechamber," Set answered. "Logan's cell is beyond a magnetically sealed door that's inside."
"Is he okay?" Max asked nervously. "Has anyone hurt him?"
"He's fine," Set assured her. "That's why I'm here – I'm personally guaranteeing his safety as long as he's in this facility."
"Already spend your thirty pieces of silver, did you?" Max spat. "Figure you might as well sit around here looking important?"
"You don't understand," Set replied evenly. "But you will." He fixed his cold gaze on her, his eyes piercing into hers, searching for something Max could only guess at. "I made a promise to Logan – I won't go back on my word, no matter the cost."
"Good for you," Max muttered. "You should really be proud about how honorable you are. So do I get to see him?" Set took a deep breath, then looked at her strangely, his head tilted comically to the side. "What, you trying to see if you can detect any bomb residue on me?" Max asked in an irritated tone. "You think I'm gonna blow out the wall and get Logan out of here?"
"You know that's not what I was smelling for," Set countered. "Are you sure you'll be able to do this?"
"I'm sure," Max said confidently, trying to draw strength from her own voice. She knew she sounded far more certain than she actually was. "Just let us have a little bit of time, okay?"
"Take as much as you want," Set responded, his voice holding a hint of warmth that Max had never heard there, that she'd doubted Set was even capable of expressing. "I volunteered for this shift, myself. No one else will be here until 6 A.M. The microphones and cameras are off. No one will intrude, and nothing you say or do will be recorded to be used against Logan later."
"Thanks," Max said wearily, her mind latching onto Set's final words. Used against Logan later, she repeated to herself. As in, during his trial, like anything he says can and will be used against him in a court of law. Once again she thought of escape, of getting Logan as far from the prison as she could in as short a time as possible. But he wouldn't go, she knew. He surrendered himself for a reason. I guess I could knock him out and smuggle him out of here against his will, but he'd just surrender again as soon as he had an opportunity. I'd have to become his surrogate warden, and I just don't have the time to do that. He'll have to stay.
"That's all," Set said to the guards. "No one's to come down here before the next shift."
"Yes, sir," one of the men responded as they all turned on their heels and walked away.
"Come with me," Set said to Max. He opened the door to the antechamber, and then punched in a code for the mag-lock inside. (Access code 9-3-4-5-2-7-4-8-1-1-6, Max noted, though she doubted she'd be able to open the door from the inside, anyway.) Once the door was open, she saw Logan inside, sitting on a cot, reading Martin's Storm of Swords. He looked up at her with obvious surprise.
"Max?"
"You expected someone else?" she asked.
"I didn't expect anyone at all," he responded. "Why are you here?"
"I'll come get you when it's time," Set muttered as he closed the door, locking the two of them in together. Max did a quick scan of her surroundings – the same white walls and white tile as outside made the room seem larger than it was, though the room was still comparable in size to any other jail cell. The only furnishings were a cot and a toilet.
"Not as nice as the old place," Max commented, wondering whether her joke was appropriate. But what else can I say? she wondered. It's not like I have much experience meeting close friends in maximum-security federal detention centers
"It's good to see you," Logan muttered, closing the book and placing it on the floor as he gazed up at Max. She saw the same fire in his eyes, the same defiance of everything he considered wrong. "I didn't think you'd come."
"How could you think that?"
"Because of Syl," Logan told her. "When you smelled her on me --"
"You knew?" Max asked.
"I didn't figure it out until later," Logan admitted. "It was when Syl commented that she could smell you on me."
"So are the two of you --"
"No," Logan assured her. "That's not what it was between the two of us. I'm not going to ask you to understand, and of course I know you can't ever forgive me."
"Shut up," Max said, her voice unemotional, non-confrontational. She wanted to talk everything over honestly, without excuses. We don't have time for excuses anymore. She just wanted to know the truth, however good or bad it was. "Don't sit there talking like you're admitting to cheating on me, because we weren't ever together," she told him. "Those were my own words, remember? I'm not going to blame you for acting on what I said."
"What we said and what we felt were two completely different things," Logan replied simply. "You and I both know that, and we both know what I did was wrong."
"Look Logan, I don't have that much time in here," she reminded him. "So I don't want to spend hours trying to figure out whether what you did was wrong. I just want to know why."
"That's actually a tough question to answer," Logan admitted. "I've spent lots of time trying to figure that out, myself. The short answer is that I was hurting, and Syl made me feel better."
"Did you love her?"
"No," Logan said immediately. "Once in awhile I thought I did. In fact, a couple of times I almost told her I did. But in reality, what I really loved was the way she made me feel about myself. You'd rejected me, Max, at a time when I really needed you. Then, when we might have worked it out, I sent you away. We'd both exerted so much effort staying apart that I wondered if it might be because you, and maybe me, too, felt that I wasn't good enough for you. Being with Syl made me feel good about myself, like I was someone worthy of a woman's affections… a transgenic woman's affections."
"And you doubted how I felt?" Max asked. She wanted to scream at him, she wanted to ask him how he could have done such a thing, no matter how down on himself he'd been, but part of her understood his feelings. She couldn't bring herself to consider Logan the only one at fault in the situation.
"I never doubted how you felt, but I also knew we couldn't be together," Logan responded. "I'm not asking you forgive me. Just try to understand – I was living as Logan, Eyes Only, and Kilroy. I had no one to help me, no one I could confide in. You'd been everything to me for two years, but you had too much going on to ever be able to be there for me. Syl was there."
"So it could have been anyone?" Max asked.
"No," Logan muttered. "Syl also had her own issues, in so many ways like mine. We were both alone. We were both in pain… I don't know how I can make this make sense."
"Don't try," Max muttered. "I can't even explain what I feel right now, Logan. I'll admit that part of me wants to tear your head off; no one's ever hurt me, ever betrayed me, the way you did. But I also know that you're in a world of trouble right now."
"Don't remind me," he responded.
"I don't know how many chances I'll get to speak with you again," she said. "I don't know that we'll ever get another chance to be alone again. I'm not going to spend the rest of my life regretting that I didn't just bite the bullet and tell you how I feel." Okay, here it goes, she told herself. I can't believe I'm about to do… "I love you, Logan," she blurted out before she'd even finished steeling her resolve. "It feels like I always have, maybe even from that first moment you caught me breaking into your place."
"I love you too," he whispered.
"It figures," she said through a sob, tears welling up in her eyes, some from joy and some from misery. "We finally come right out, and the moment's perfect, all except for the fact that you're in prison for being a domestic terrorist and you'll likely get execu…" Before she even finished the sentence, Max had broken down into full-fledged sobs. For several minutes she struggled to get her feelings under control, to act as if she was just as much under control as she ever was. "Why?" she finally managed to ask.
"Why what?"
"Why the whole Kilroy thing?"
"Because someone had to do it," Logan explained as he leaned back against the wall. "Someone had to keep the Familiars off-balance, someone had to launch attacks that would help discover their secrets, and someone had to defend the safety of those transgenics that were too afraid to voluntarily go to Terminal City. Someone had to continue Lydecker's work."
"Zack could have done it," Max objected. "Or I could have done it. It was our job – it shouldn't have been you."
"It had to be an ordinary," Logan countered. "A private transgenic army led by an ordinary is nowhere near as frightening as a group of transgenics that gather to pursue some mysterious cause that no ordinary knows about or could ever understand. It's all about perceptions, and that's why it had to be an ordinary. There's no one else but me who could've done it."
"You self-important bastard," Max griped. "You had no right."
"I had every right," Logan responded.
"You were supposed to serve as Eyes Only. You were supposed to be my partner, not my rival. And you were supposed to be there waiting for me when the wars are over, so that I have someone to go home to. It's what I always thought about late at night – that wonderful future when you and I would finally get to settle down together."
"That'll never happen," Logan pointed out needlessly. "I'm sorry."
"There's got to be a way," Max muttered. "Maybe we can get you out of here somehow…"
"I have to stay," Logan said calmly, sadly. "That was the plan from the beginning, Max. After all, like I said – it's about perceptions. The image of an ordinary leading a transgenic army won't be too effective if no one hears about it. The world has to find out Kilroy is an ordinary; they all have to find out who Kilroy is."
"And they have to get to put you in the electric chair?" Max asked incredulously. "What'll that prove?"
"It won't come to that," Logan assured her, his voice still tinged with a sorrow that confused Max. "Don't worry, Max. They won't execute me. Of course, that doesn't mean we can be together, either."
"But I love you," Max whispered lamely, wondering even as she said it why she'd felt those words would make everything better.
"I love you, too," Logan said again. He looked up at her, and in his eyes Max found the same, familiar warmth and security she had always treasured. She was not altogether unexpectedly swept away by her emotions, and for the first time in her life, she allowed it to happen.
"Show me how much you love me," she said as she half-charged across the cell, grabbing Logan's face in her hands, almost smothering him in a kiss that she tried to make last forever.
When she thought back on everything the next morning, Max couldn't remember when their clothes had come off, or how much of the night they had actually spent making love to each other. All she could remember for certain was that in Logan's arms she had found the comfort and solace she'd always been missing. And that made her wonder, as she was escorted out the next morning, how there could ever be anything sweet about the sorrow of parting.
To be continued………………………………