EPISODE EIGHT – "AULD LANG SYNE"
Disclaimer: All things Dark Angel belong to James Cameron and Charles Eglee and maybe FOX. No copyright infringement intended.
Spoilers: Season 2, Medium is the Message.
Rating: R for strong language.
A/N: I'm back. Thanks for being patient. I'm pretty much considering not posting here anymore...don't worry, that just means I'll be posting on my website, www.willowsdarkangelfic.freeservers.com. And, if you're over 18, at the Cape Haven writer's list. It's been so long, you may not remember where the plotline in this chapter is coming from. You have to go back to the Christmas episode. Max took a call for Eyes Only and didn't tell Logan about it. Then someone called again and she prevented him from answering the phone...
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Chapter One – "Oops"
Monday, December 28, 2020
Logan awoke much later than usual, savoring what was probably the end of an unusually quiet and relaxing few days on the Cale homefront. Max and he had spent the weekend puttering around the apartment, stretching out the Christmas holiday as long as they could, but both knew the beginning of the week would signal the inevitable return of normal life. Max had to go back to work, Logan had to go back to sniffing out corruption, and both had to await the next Manticore-related development. Now that they knew what Ames White was – or at least knew that his motive went deeper than a government ID badge – they were fearful of what it meant for Max and the transgenics, try though they had to put off worrying the past several days.
After lying awake for God knew how long, Logan finally dragged himself from his bed, smiling at the memory of the best Christmas he could remember. He was so glad Tricia had been able to make it, even for only two days, and he knew Joshua had enjoyed his first real Christmas experience, even if they had had to send him away a little prematurely. Max and Logan had spent time with him almost every day after that, bringing him even more Christmas dinner leftovers, and helping him clean up Sandeman's house and go through some of the dusty belongings piled up everywhere. Of course, Max and Logan had been looking for more clues as to the man's identity and current whereabouts, as well as any connection to the mysterious cult that White was a part of, but nothing had surfaced.
After a quick workout on the pull-up bar, Logan headed to the shower, then dressed in jeans and a dark blue sweater before he breakfasted on toast and coffee in front of the computer. He'd kept his promise to Max of staying away from Eyes Only business all weekend, and now he scanned the headlines and his email anxiously for any developments he'd missed. It didn't take him long before he found a story buried on the inside of Seattle main newspaper, and he sat there, staring in shock, for a full minute. "Drug Dealer Found Dead in Alley" read the headline, and in smaller print underneath, "Execution-Style Slaying Leaves Few Clues."
As soon as he'd scanned the whole article and recovered enough to form a plan of action, Logan picked up his cell phone and dialed. "Matt, it's Logan. This guy, the drug dealer killed over the weekend – what's the story on that? Anything you're not telling the press?"
"I wish," Matt replied. "We got nothing...whoever it was, they knew what they were doing. And it was personal...the guy was shot a couple of times and beaten on top of that."
"I'm going to look into it...and my reasons are personal, too. This guy was an informant – the informant I thought I had just talked into helping us take down the Steelheads," Logan said, exhaling sharply.
"You think they could've found him out?" Matt asked.
"Not exactly uncommon for a dealer to get gunned down in the street. Occupational hazard," Logan replied. "But it's a little too coincidental for my tastes. Thanks, Matt. I'll get back to you," he finished, and ended the call. Before he clicked the phone shut, though, he noticed the tiny green envelope sign in the upper-left corner of the phone, and, with a sense of foreboding, dialed in to check his messages.
"Man, where are you? I told that chick I needed some help – fast!" The voice on the recorded message was breathless, and scared. Logan recognized it instantly. "This Eddy guy thinks I'm the new guy on the block, instead of you – and he's gunning for me. You gotta protect me, man—"
The message terminated abruptly, and Logan swore under his breath. I can't believe I didn't check my messages, he thought. I just didn't think anything would happen till after the weekend...and I promised Max no Eyes Only...Wait, Logan thought. Chick? What chick was he talking about?
***
Max pushed her bike into the lobby of Logan's apartment, glad to get in out of the cold December drizzle. Had she been a normal girl, she'd have been exhausted, her first day back after a long holiday, but as it was, she was just depressed at having to return to the daily grind. However, she felt her spirits lifting along with the elevator as it sped towards the penthouse, and she swore she could already smell the delicious dinner he was sure to be concocting.
The moment she stepped into the apartment, though, she could feel a chill in the air, and the smell her hungry mind had imagined, evaporated. "Logan?" No answer. "Sorry I didn't hit you back right away. I figured if it was important, you'd dial me again, and I wanted to get my runs done ASAP."
She knew he was sitting at the window, his back to her, even before she entered the living room. A little twinge of anxiety pinched at her neck. "I know it sucks to have to wait a whole year before we get Christmas again," she joked, "but it can't be all that bad."
Slowly he put his hands to the chair's wheels, and pivoted to face her. "Did you forget to tell me something?" he asked coldly.
Her face betrayed her confusion as she propped a hand on one hip. "Uh, well, Original Cindy says she'll be your love slave if you'll cook her a Christmas turkey every week for a year...that what you mean?"
Logan's face remained impassive. "Did you talk to one of my informants last week?"
Immediately, light dawned, and all the color drained from Max's face, but she tried to cover it with a look of disinterest. "Oh, yeah...sorry, with all the fa-la-las going on, I forgot. You said you weren't going to work, so I took the call. You catch up with him?"
"That would take a trip to the great beyond," he replied. "He's dead."
Max's mouth formed a little 'O' of surprise, but she recovered quickly. "Well, one less drug dealer is good all around, right?"
Logan's fingers tightened on his wheels, and Max could see every muscle in his body stand at attention. He started to respond angrily, then took a breath. "Max, this guy was an informant. It was my responsibility to keep him safe – and I thought, yours, too. He's dead because of us."
Max huffed indignantly. "No, he's probably dead because he stiffed some guy on a deal. Don't put that on me. I'm sorry I didn't tell you about the call. I forgot. But the world's better off, Logan."
"Well, let's see about that," he said in a controlled voice. "I had just spent three weeks convincing this guy to work with Matt and me to trap the Steelheads. They busted him, and killed him. Now do you think anyone is going to believe when I tell them that I'll protect them?"
Max stood her ground, defiantly crossing her arms. "Oh, that right, I forgot.
You know all about walking away from someone who needs your help,"
Logan finished bitterly, then turned the chair and wheeled quickly past her in
the computer room.
Max stood frozen for only a moment, then she whirled around and stalked after him, slamming a hand down on the computer desk. He refused to look up at her, his eyes boring into the computer screen instead. "One dead dealer and you get to rewind the last two years? You couldn't have even kept up your little crusade without me! And I seem to recall putting this girl's transgenic behind in some serious danger trying to cover your ass more than once."
Finally his eyes slid upward to hers, but the look was still cold. "So you've helped some people, who gives a damn about letting one guy bite a bullet? Sorry, Max, it doesn't work that way. And if you think it does, you don't understand what Eyes Only is about at all."
"I said I was sorry, Logan. I should've remembered the call. But you can't be everywhere all the time. Your informants wouldn't inform if they didn't think there was something in it for them...and most of them would end up dead sooner or later, whether or not they were helping you. Kinda goes with the territory."
"That's not the point!" he yelled. "Don't be so self-righteous, Max. The world is all about shades of gray – you know that better than most, earning a living from robbing people blind."
"Okay, let's compare shades of gray, then," Max snapped. "I steal from bad guys and rich guys who probably got rich by screwing everyone else. Drug dealers hook people who can't afford to get hooked, and then they squeeze for every last dime they have. Yeah – we're really birds of a feather, Logan," she retorted, and then her sneer flattened into an accusatory glare. "Well, I guess I know what you think of me now."
"Oh, no. You're not twisting my words. I'm just saying, just because this guy was a blight on society 99% of the time doesn't mean I didn't owe it to him to keep him safe. And now he's dead. I didn't get into this business to break promises and get people killed."
"Oh, great, the famous Eyes Only guilt complex. You're not responsible for the welfare of the whole world, Logan. You didn't get him killed, I did, remember?" Max corrected.
"It's bigger than just this one guy, anyway, Max. I agreed not to do Eyes Only work over Christmas. And you returned the favor by throwing my integrity in the toilet so you could hang lights on a tree."
"Overdramatize much?" Max asked in disbelief. "Bottom line – I'm sorry your sting was busted, but I'm not sorry the guy's dead. End of story."
"Yeah, it is – at least for tonight. I'm tired, and I'm going to be up all night," Logan said, pushing back from the computer. "Considering how important you think my work is, maybe it's best you don't stick around." His accusing eyes held hers, until she finally shrugged and pushed off the table.
"Fine. Should've known if you had to pick between the Halloween mask and me, I'd be sleeping alone."
Before he could respond, she breezed around the wall divider, and a second later, he heard the door slam. Wheeling back to the desk, he propped up his elbows and buried his face in his hands. A second later, he was shocked to find his hands wet, and he took them away, staring at them. He hadn't realized how much his informant's death had affected him. But damn it all, he felt responsible. Eyes Only should never take a break for the holidays – what had he been thinking? While they were opening presents, someone was being gunned down in the street because of something Logan had gotten him into. He knew in his gut that the Steelheads had pulled the trigger, but Logan himself may as well have. If he'd never recruited him, the guy would still be standing on the street corner, swapping cash for drugs.
That didn't matter, he thought fiercely. Eyes Only isn't in the business of deciding whose life is worth saving, and whose isn't. And I can't have Max thinking that he is, not as long as she is working on his behalf. Then Eyes Only becomes just as bad as the people I'm trying to shut down, he realized disconsolately. He wiped his face sadly and switched off the computer, knowing he'd never be able to focus enough to accomplish anything that night. Emotionally and physically exhausted, he found it difficult to summon the strength to push the wheels back once more and head towards his bedroom.
He made it out of the computer room, but then sat at the juncture of the therapy room and the kitchen, pondering. Slowly he made his way to the cabinet on the wall, and selected a fine bottle of Scotch, one he'd had for years, a very expensive, aged name brand. His eyes flickered to the other side of the counter where he kept a few glasses on the counter, and then, disregarding the idea, he unscrewed the top and took a tentative sip straight from the bottle neck. The sharp sting of the bitter liquor going down immediately dulled the guilt and disappointment and sadness and anger that rose up in his throat and pounded at his ribcage.
He took another sip. He hadn't drunk alone in months – no, maybe years, he realized. Surely it was before Max had come into his life. Logan had always guarded himself very carefully against alcohol – even as a wild college man, he'd held off at frat parties when other guys drunk themselves into oblivion. Alcoholism hung over his family like a noose, threatening to seize in its tightening grip anyone who slipped up, and Logan would be damned if he'd be as weak as Jonas...and as his father.
As the third sip became a swallow, Logan began to rationalize. I killed a man...I fucked up, big time. I should feel like wallowing a little. How could I ever get someone into that position, and then not have his back? Maybe I shouldn't even be in this business.
He stuck the bottle between his knees and wheeled to the sofa, then set it on the coffee table so he could transfer, already a bit unsteady. Immediately he leaned over to recapture the bottle and swallow another mouthful. Screw Sam Carr and his preaching against alcohol and SCI, Logan said, snorting in a moment of teenage rebellion. I'm 32 years old, I can damn well handle a few shots of Scotch without losing control of my bodily functions...and if not, I can always clean up later, he thought, and laughed stupidly, even though it wasn't really funny, he knew.
Several more shots and an hour later, he gazed at the bottle, silently congratulating himself on leaving it nearly three-fourths full. Maybe that's enough for tonight, Logan. Not like I can't handle more...just better leave some for later. It is good Scotch, after all.
After several attempts, he managed to screw on the top and leaned over to put it back on the coffee table. Seeing it in slow motion, he misjudged the edge of the table, and the bottle hit it and kept going over the side, landing with a thunk on the rug.
Thank God for rugs, Logan thought, grateful not to have little shards of glass in amber liquid all over the floor. Aren't rugs wonderful? They don't ever get anyone killed. They'd answer all of their voice mails, he was sure, if they had fingers to punch the buttons of the cell phone. He leaned over, elbows on his knees, to peer at the bottle doing the backstroke across the rug's bold black stripes. Paralyzed legs really a bitch when you're drunk, he mused. Well, really, all the time, but especially when...Logan shifted and scooted and leaned forward, trying to reach for the bottle, which seemed to be moving farther away, like a rainbow when you looked for the pot of gold.
Finally, Logan scooted too far forward and, predictably, his butt slipped right off the corner of the couch. As he landed hard, his clumsy fingers made contact with the bottle. "Got it!" he cried in triumph to the empty room.
Then he looked up at his chair, and could have sworn somebody had come in when he wasn't looking and jacked it up higher than he was used to. As he sat pondering the possibility that if he drank some more Scotch, he'd be able to get up and dance a jig across the room, the phone rang shrilly, hurting his ears. Unfortunately, the ring was coming from across the room, from on top of the dining room table. Logan kissed his bottle of Scotch goodbye and had just begun to scoot across the floor towards the phone when his stomach started feeling funny and he had to stop.
"Ohhh..." he groaned. Suddenly the room felt too warm, so he stripped off his sweater, leaving only his tee shirt, but still he could feel the heat in his cheeks. At the same time, the butterflies in his stomach turned to nausea, and it became worse as he tried to ignore it and keep moving.
Eventually the phone stopped ringing, but it took a minute for Logan to realize that he was still traveling in the wrong direction. "Damn it," he muttered, stopping and reversing course. He doubted he had ever felt more miserable in his entire life than he did at that minute. The floor kept moving and tilting beneath him, which wasn't helping curb the urge to barf all over his pretty mahogany floor.
This was all Max's fault, he thought. Yeah, that was it. She drove me to this. If she had just given me the message, I would have gone and put that guy in a safe house, and he wouldn't have gotten killed, and I wouldn't have had to drown my guilt in a bottle of Scotch. Nope, not my fault. Finally he was back at the chair, even though he just knew someone had come and gotten it and dragged it farther away than where he'd left it.
Though he felt like just lying down on the rug and falling asleep, Sam's face swam in front of his eyes, lecturing. "Logan, it's not so easy for you. Nothing will ever be easy for you."
"Shut up already," he yelled, and the face disappeared in a little poof of smoke. Sitting there, he realized he'd completely forgotten how to get back in the wheelchair. Surely I can think of it if I just sit here long enough, he thought, swallowing the bile that rose in his throat. Hmmm...tiredly he pushed his glasses up on his nose and sighed. Where were the Steelheads when you needed them?