Logan's Voiceover (watching the flag)-
I don't know how to describe these past few weeks, I don't know how to explain everything's that happened.
When I was a teenager, before the pulse hit, when my parents were still alive, I had these vague plans for my life. Plans that basically entailed doing everything the opposite way my father wanted, my life was balancing act of tying to be myself and the son he wanted.
He wanted Harvard, but I went to Yale. He wanted business, I went for journalism. He wanted me to settle down in the family business and raise one. I had plans for traveling the world, never really settling down, even though I somehow found myself engaged to Daphne. Of course I was a kid then and I had no idea what lay ahead in the coming years.
When the pulse hit and everything changed, including me. Responsibility, patriotism, self-sacrifice that was what led my world. Then came Valerie and the thought of what it would feel like to be in a family again. I clung to her, I clung to the belief of her, she was my link back to what the world had once been.
Then she was gone and then one day there was Max.
I couldn't understand my feelings for her at first. Infatuation? Obsession? I tried to convince myself it was because I needed her for the cause. Then I went out on a suicide mission, I'm pretty sure I knew that the whole time because looking back I saw it was failed to begin with. It was my responsibility though, if there was even just the slightest chance I could save all those who were dying because of that man then I had to try…
Then I was just broken, broken in a way I had never even imagined, never thought possible. There was nothing for me besides Eyes Only, even though she came back.
Before I had been self-sacrificing, rejecting intimacy and love because like my life, it wasn't worth the suffering of others. The more I went without, the more good I could do. With Max all I could feel was unworthiness. I'd felt it before I lost my legs, I'd felt the butterflies in my stomach waiting for her to show up at my apartment, I had never felt that way before. After my legs though, I wasn't just unworthy, I was worthless. I couldn't see the love she had for me and the times I did I convinced myself that staying away was for the best, Max deserved the best and I couldn't give that to her.
Then came realizing exactly how right we were for each other, we both felt unworthy, we were both confused and we both cared more than we had ever imagined possible. I was so in love with her by the time our anniversary rolled around that I didn't care about being unworthy anymore, I didn't try to deny it from myself anymore. I loved her.
Then I lost her.
The surreal-ness of it all when I woke up in the van and then going to the Needle. Then going home and having it hit me. The thought of never turning around and seeing her watching me when I thought I was alone, never feeling her touch again, not seeing the way her face would light up at a joke, or when she was laughing at me, or every first bite of food. Time kept passing though, the world kept turning, the sun rose and set, everyone went about their lives when hers had stopped.
I went to page her a dozen times in that first week.
I'd look in the fridge and I'd wonder what she'd want for dinner.
I would hear a noise in the apartment and I would turn expecting to see her.
I woke up every morning and I had to remember that she was gone.
The emptiness and the loneliness that had been my life before Max had been nothing compared to that.
Then she was home.
She was alive.
Standing before me in urban camo, she was there. She was still there as I cupped her face, felt her hair and her skin beneath my touch…The virus could have taken me then, taken me that night and I wouldn't have cared. Her in that moment was more than the world pre pulse, more than having my parents back.
Then there was that whole convoluted mess, all the ups and downs, ending with her withdrawing more than I have ever fathomed. She was further away from me than she had been when we were strangers.
When Beverly came out into the hall after she reexamined Max and sent Original Cindy back into the room…Being told she was pregnant and having my already shattered heart splinter once more. The thought of her and Alec having children, her being totally gone from my life, it was second only to her dying as shallow as that sounds. I wanted her to be happy, I wanted her to have the world, just the thought she was never going to be in mine again…
Then came how far along she was and the slow awareness that crept into my mind…Counting back…I had told Beverly that wasn't possible, she looked at Max's chart again and said that both the blood work and her physical examination said otherwise.
"I'm assuming it's yours" she had said. I'd wondered how she'd known and then I remembered telling her after I'd had the virus.
I had just nodded, my mind going in so many different directions at that point.
"I'm going to see what I can find out about the likelihood of the virus being passed along to the baby."
My heart that had just started to soar, fell. It fell so fast , that she's lucky I didn't drop at her feet. Everything hit me again, the virus, Alec, it was all there, stronger than it had ever been before. A child, I couldn't have even imagined wanting this way years earlier was suddenly going to be kept from me. I hadn't wanted love, I hadn't wanted a family, but once I met her it was all I wanted. The thought of never getting to hug my daughter, the thought of not being there every night to tuck her in…Not being able to take her to the beach or to the lake like my father had done with me, watching her from afar instead of being the one to teach her how to swim…
In my mind I saw a little girl, exactly like Max being swung over the water by Alec. I saw myself sitting on the beach, unable to do anything but watch.
Walking back into the room and telling Original Cindy, seeing the shock in her eyes mirror the shock in mine. Her telling me to take her seat and then just sitting there watching where our unborn child lay safe in Max. I once more couldn't move, I stopped speaking, I just sat there and tried to figure out how we were going to make this work.
I didn't think things could get worse, but of course they did.
I left the hospital and started to walk, I walked for miles and then I realized I was standing in front of the Needle. That's where she found me and told me once more I was worthy.
So many things have happened in the weeks since, White killed Joshua's girlfriend, found out I was Eyes Only and trashed my place sending me to hide at Sandeman's house, Sam tried to capture Max, then we topped it all off by the standoff at Jam Pony with me jumping up on a car and taking out a sniper. We got back here, somehow safe, only one life lost in the process.
This is definitely not how I envisioned my life all those years ago. I'm pretty sure it's actually better though. It makes no sense. The logical part of my mind knows this is insane. I'm involved in a war, trapped in a toxic city, but I'm holding Max's hand and our child rests within her, still safe even after everything that happened. Even if I can never know what our child's skin feels like, I will be there for her. I will comfort her after every nightmare, I will dry every tear, I will watch happily from the sidelines as she plays in the water with her mother.
I grasp Max's hand tighter, silently reassuring her that everything will be fine as we continue to watch the flag.