Thanks very much for all the reviews – they are always greatly appreciated.

Huge thanks to Alaidh for her work on this enormous chapter.

A/N: This is part one of a three part conclusion. The other 2 chapters are written, and will be posted when the poor slave driven Alaidh has a chance to do them.

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EPILOGUE, Part 1

The long, slow wait for Matt Sung to arrive at Seattle Town was a gruelling anti-climax to endure after the drama of the early evening.

Max had gone back out into the rain and, after a rather distasteful search, found Logan's cell phone and a set of car keys in Jaeger's pocket.

Bling was keeping a lookout at the cavern entrance for her return, his usually calm features creased with worry.

"Great," he breathed when she put the phone in his hand, reluctant to go any further.

Instead, she stood a little stiffly by the entrance, suddenly having second thoughts about her first inclination to talk to Logan as he was still by Emma's side.

Logan and Bling had been unable to persuade the distraught girl to leave her brother as he lay amongst the rubble of the mine. In fact, Emma showed no indication that she'd even heard them. She appeared to be lost in her own world of misery and grief.

Seeing Max return, Logan looked at her, his eyebrows raised with a 'what shall we do' expression, but the answer in her eyes was cold.

Stick it, Logan - ask me to lie, cheat, steal or kick-ass for you, but don't ask me to help Emma, her eyes seemed to warn.

Logan looked a little puzzled at her reaction, but instead turned his attention to other things. He wondered how long they'd have to wait for Matt Sung to arrive. He was concerned about the children and their parents. They were huddled in the cavern, like survivors from a disaster, cold, wet and shivering – their faces reflecting the trauma of the last few days as they tried to come to terms with the events they'd just endured.

He watched as Bling spoke to them, managing to raise a smile from Genevieve, who was stoically refusing to look in Emma's direction. Bling then checked on the injured Davies, who still lay unconscious.

"How's he doing?" Logan asked him quietly after he'd returned to Logan's side.

"Breathing seems okay. Just concussed, I hope." Bling looked across to the Hacketts, his face mirroring the concern that Logan felt. "We gotta get them outta here while we wait," he murmured in a low voice. "This is no place for little girls."

"One of the other buildings?" Logan suggested.

"I was thinking a car. They need warmth. We could all do with it."

"I got my keys here," said Logan at once, fishing them out of his soggy shirt pocket.

"And I've got Jaeger's from Max," smiled Bling.

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Max found the steady drumming of the rain on the roof of the car calming, almost soporific, particularly as Logan had the heating on high and the fan was blowing a steady stream of warm air onto her body.

Her thoughts drifted back to Emma. Seth's body would be cold by now. Only a matter of hours ago he'd sat in this car, worried for Emma. Would he have known this would be his last trip? She wondered if he could have had some presentiment of his own fate. In spite of herself, she shivered - a small almost imperceptible tremor that swept through her body.

"You still cold?" There was concern in Logan's voice as he looked across at her from the driver's seat. "I can put the fan on high."

Not wanting to see the concerned look she knew she'd find in his eyes, she simply shook her head and commented instead, "I wonder how the others're doing?"

Logan flipped the wipers on, and for brief intervals they could clearly make out Jaeger's black sedan parked in front of them where Bling had put the Hacketts to await Matt's arrival.

Logan had toyed with the idea of them all simply heading back into Seattle once they were in the cars, but he hadn't wanted to get Matt into any further trouble, so they had waited, like dutiful citizens, at the crime scene.

Emma had still refused to budge from Seth's side, so Bling had offered to wait with her and keep an eye on the still unconscious Davies.

"Hopefully the kids have fallen asleep," remarked Logan, staring through the windshield.

Max could sense his hesitation. She knew she must have been throwing off some weird vibes. "What?" she asked, not meaning to sound as abrupt as she had.

"What happened to Seth?"

Max's eyes narrowed slightly as she thought back to the events in the mine. Could she have done anything...changed anything? She felt bad about Seth's death, but her Manticore training taught her to analyse without emotion. No. There was nothing she could have done. The die had been cast well before she'd arrived on the scene.

"I could hear everyone yelling at Jaeger that they didn't know where Grant had hidden the money. They were screaming ... crazy like. He must've had the gun on them even then. Just as I reached them, I saw him turn his gun on Seth and fire."

"Why?" asked Logan, shocked by the man's ruthlessness.

"Some sort of sicko retaliation. I think he knew for sure by then that none of them could cough up the juice on where the money was. I guess he was just plain pissed off."

Logan frowned in disbelief. "He killed Seth outta... spite?"

Max shrugged.

"What about the explosion?"

"Jaeger went right off after that, completely whack. I called his bluff ..." Max looked across at Logan. "Guess he wasn't bluffing after all."

"Sorry about that. I tried to warn you."

Max looked unperturbed. "No harm done. We got outta there in one piece."

"One point is interesting, though," she added thoughtfully. "Jaeger had a line rigged to the saloon roof. He'd already planned his getaway," she told Logan with raised brows.

"You think he already knew about Old Seattle?"

"He was awfully prepared for someone who supposedly only just got the intel."

Logan shook his head in incredulity as he considered the significance of Max's words. "Maybe it was Jaeger who saw Grant in prison. After all, he's the one who was relaying information to Greville and Petrovsky."

"Could be he was dropping the dime on them all along - keeping the juiciest bits to himself."

Logan grimaced wryly. "Double crossing the double crosser. That sounds about par for the course when 4 million's at stake."

"It's getting kinda hard to pick who wins the Eyes Only 'Scumbag of the Week Award' in all this," Max said with mock seriousness.

"You said it," Logan agreed wholeheartedly, but almost immediately his thoughts sobered. "One thing I do know: Emma must be sorry she ever hooked up with Grant in the first place."

Max wanted to make a sassy, smart-assed comment, keep herself untouched by Emma's situation – but she'd seen those eyes, and already they haunted her every thought. How could you mess with someone's pain?

Uncharacteristically, she remained silent.

Logan looked across at her in the gloom of the car. He felt instinctively that something troubled her.

"You saved Monique," he offered her, remembering those few agonizing moments as he'd blurrily watched Max and Monique hanging from the guttering, his glasses smeared with rain.

"We both did," Max said quickly. "You're the one who found the girls in the first place. Looks like you had some opposition," she added, looking at the shiner already appearing high on his cheekbone.

"Naaah. I let Genevieve handle it," he drawled back lazily, closing his eyes and letting his head lean against the headrest.

They waited the rest of the time in silence. Logan was content to let the affects of the evening wash over him, hopefully to recede with no long-term lasting affects.

Max, on the other hand, watched Logan for a long time, her thoughts troubled. She wondered how long it took to forget a face. How long would it be for Emma before all memory of Seth was little more than a vague, intangible outline?

The rain continued to steadily fall. Max wasn't sure if Logan was asleep or not – or somewhere in that halfway state where dreams and reality blur. A couple of times he shifted his position, but his eyes remained closed.

At last, the glaring headlights of approaching cars lit up the interior of the Aztek.

Logan opened his eyes and looked through the rain-smeared window. "Looks like they're here."

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It was a striking dawn.

The heavy rain of the previous night had been wrung from clouds that were now tinged with the palest hint of watermelon as the first tendrils of sunlight reached out.

Max watched the beauty of the dawn as it rose over Seattle's towers of vanity and pride in what had once been the city's area of financial success. One hand held the mug of coffee that rested untouched on her drawn up knee as she sat on the window ledge in Logan's living room.

Sunrise never failed to fascinate her – there could be no transformation as complete as this one, but even as she watched the gradual lightening of the sky, the thought came to her that there would be no rays of brightness in Emma Belding's heart this morning. Possibly not ever.

Logan's voice droned quietly in the background as he spoke on the phone, sounding husky and strained with fatigue. He found the shower he'd taken as soon as they'd arrived back at the apartment hadn't totally removed the gritty tiredness from his eyes.

Once they'd returned to Seattle, they'd taken the silently staring Emma Belding and the girls and their parents to a good hotel where the manager was a trusted EO informant. Both Genevieve and Monique had been in a sound sleep – neither waking when Bling and their father had carried them into the expensive hotel.

It had been a long, difficult night – draining both physically and emotionally for all involved. Even Max had felt its effects, leaving her feeling somewhat lacklustre and lethargic. For the briefest of moments she closed her eyes and let her head rest on the window frame behind her. She was instantly drifting – not quite asleep but somehow separated from reality.

For a blissful moment she had the highly pleasant sensation of lightly floating, until eyes that were terrifyingly bleak stared back at her from the haziness of her mind.

Max's eyes snapped open and she immediately sat up straight, almost spilling her coffee in the process. She turned her head to find Logan coming towards her.

"How'd it go?" she asked him, barely noticing her coffee was almost cold as she took a hasty sip to cover her momentary unease.

Logan didn't seem to notice. His hands moved slowly as he manoeuvred his chair around the couch. Coming to a stop in front of her he eased his brakes on thoughtfully. "I got in touch with my guy. Should have some new IDs for the Hacketts and Emma by tomorrow."

"Poor Emma," murmured Max, almost in spite of herself.

"She wants to get everything for Seth done as quickly as possible," Logan said in a subdued voice.

"It's gonna be hard for her. I don't think she'll ever get over it," Max murmured again, staring distractedly at the polished wooden floor as she remembered Emma's grief-ravaged face.

"Well, she made her choice," Logan pointed out, not meaning to sound unsympathetic as he studied Max's troubled profile. "I guess she has to t'live with it."

Max's brown eyes suddenly flared with empathetic indignation.

"Yeah, well sometimes it isn't as easy as all that, Logan," she snapped unexpectedly. "Everything's not as black and white as you like to make it."

"I didn't say it was," he protested, surprised by her sudden vehemence. "But making choices is a part of life - it's what makes us the different species on this planet."

"Right," Max muttered cynically.

"Thing is you gotta count the cost –take responsibility for your actions."

Max's voice was bitter. "And what if you do your best and you think you've done the right thing, and it turns out you were wrong all along. What then?"

Logan narrowed his eyes a little at that, but he faced her squarely. "Then I guess you just hafta to learn to live with it," he informed her evenly, his voice tinged with the bleakness of experience.

Max looked away and Logan didn't know what else to tell her. He'd been taught life's lessons the hard way. Feeling a little jaded himself, he leant forward, letting his elbows rest on his knees.

He was right. Dammit, she knew he was right. But Emma Belding's face had told her with vivid clarity that the consequences could sometimes be too terrible to contemplate.

"I don't wanna..."

Max's words suddenly died as she looked wide-eyed at Logan with a frozen 'deer caught on the headlights' expression.

He had looked up quickly at her words and stared at her intently, his own thoughts suddenly confused. She looked like the kid found with her hand caught in the cookie jar.

Intuitively, he realized that she'd spoken her thought aloud. I don't want to... what? The question made him feel intrigued and nervous at the same time.

Max's dark, dark eyes locked with his green ones. His seemed to be daring her, compelling her to finish what she'd started.

I don't wanna lose you...I don't wanna hurt you...I don't wanna be the one who looks up and says, 'It's my fault.'

She opened her mouth...

"Logan...you just about ready?" Bling's voice carried clearly from the workout room.

Max closed her mouth, but Logan's gaze hadn't wavered from her face.

His eyes held hers – and she felt an almost hypnotic pull that was willing her to tell him the truth, share her fears, admit...

"I..."

"Logan!" Bling's voice shattered the silence.

Max stood up from the window with a startled manner.

For the briefest of moments, Logan closed his eyes with frustration, and by the time he'd opened them, she'd taken her cup across to the kitchen and he found himself alone. With the hint of a wry smile he ran a hand over the ever-present stubble on his cheek and breathed out slowly.

Max rinsed the cup under the faucet, a mechanical action as her emotions struggled with

whether she should feel relieved or disappointed. Somehow she felt both.

"He's all yours," she called to Bling as she turned the faucet off with a hard twist, hoping that Logan would take that to mean their discussion was finished and she could bolt out the door. That plan went slightly awry as she saw Logan now coming towards her.

She had no choice now but to wait for him.

"I oughtta go," she got out quickly. "OC must be running outta excuses for me by now."

"Right," he agreed, "And I gotta do some stuff with Bling," he added, nodding his head as he studied her with a thoughtful, almost quizzical manner.

"Make sure you get some sleep, huh," she told him gently. Then she was gone.

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Normal turned with exaggerated surprise when he saw Max wheel her bike down the ramp at Jam Pony.

"Well, well, well. So, you've decided to grace us with your presence, let us bask in the reflected glory of your dazzling personality...plunge us into..."

"You got a package for me, Normal, or are you just gonna stand there spouting crap?" Max asked, cutting short his ravings with a look of contempt.

"Yes, I have a package for you. In fact I have a whole mess of packages for you and if I see you back in here any later than...

"Great," snapped Max, to Normal's utter stupefaction.

He looked at her suspiciously. "Is this the part when you turn around and tell me you're not the real Max and I'm supposed to believe she was abducted by aliens who cloned her body and released mutated freaks throughout the city?"

Max looked at him with frank disgust. "Get off the grass, Normal. You high or somethin'? Just give me the packages."

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Logan scarcely noticed what Bling was doing with his legs as he sat on the workout table in his boxers, a deep frown furrowing his brow.

"These are looking good," his therapist murmured as he finished dressing both knees.

"Mmm," Logan murmured, head slightly turned, eyes intent on the ground.

"Of course falling beams don't do much for anyone," Bling continued dryly.

"Mm hmm," Logan murmured again distractedly.

Bling threw him a quick look. "Of course, they shouldn't need to keep you too long in the hospital."

Logan shot a sharp look at him. "What?"

"Just thought I'd get your attention - I was kinda bored talking to myself," Bling told him, pleased to get a response as he continued his examination. "And that cranky look you're giving me is more interesting than the vacant stare I was getting before."

"Funny," grunted Logan, wincing a little as Bling's probing hands found a tender spot high up on his back.

"Well, you seem to have got out of last night's scrape in more or less one piece," Bling told him as he moved his chair across to the edge of the table.

"Told you," Logan retorted as he lowered himself into it.

"Max okay about everything?" Bling asked casually, tossing Logan his T-shirt.

Logan paused the briefest moment before shrugging on his shirt. "What d'you mean?"

"I thought she seemed a little preoccupied since last night. Maybe she's taking Seth's death a little hard."

"I talked with her about that. She doesn't feel guilty about Seth's death," Logan told him, wondering why he felt so relieved that this was all Bling had meant.

"It wasn't guilt about Seth's death that I was thinking of," Bling countered, causing all Logan's unease to come flooding back.

"Bling, my mind's too tired for riddles," he snapped back testily.

"You don't think sometimes she doesn't wonder if she might end up like Emma?"

Logan grimaced for a moment, suddenly feeling very dense – Zack! he thought with frustration. Trying not to let it show, he managed to get out evenly, "Her brother's done a pretty good job so far of dodging a Manticore bullet."

Bling just looked at him. "It wasn't her brother I was thinking of," he retorted meaningfully.

This time he really had Logan's attention.

The sound of his phone ringing had Logan spinning around quickly to answer it, thankful he could escape Bling's scrutiny. Matt Sung was on the other end.

"Logan. I got everything tied up back at the site."

"That's good, Matt."

"Listen...something else has come up. We need to meet."

Logan made a face. "Now? Can't we do this on the phone?"

"Not really. How soon can you make it?" Matt's voice came back.

Logan hesitated, but in the end, common sense won out for once. "Listen, I gotta get some sleep. We'll need to make it later, unless it's something urgent," he offered, thinking vaguely that Matt sounded a little distracted and ignoring the disapproving look Bling was giving him from across the way.

"No," Matt replied quickly. "This afternoon'll be fine."

"Okay – we'll make it 2 o'clock then," he agreed.

"And Logan," Matt added as he was about to hang up, "it might be a good idea if Bling comes with you."

Logan paused a beat. The last time Matt had suggested that, they'd found themselves facing a sniper.

"You in some kinda trouble, Matt?"

"No, nothing like that," the detective refuted quickly.

Feeling too tired to try and work out Matt's cryptic words, Logan simply acquiesced with a, "Fine," and left it at that.

Leaving Bling instructions to call him in four hours if he was still asleep, which he strongly doubted, he made his way to bed.

TBC

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