Logan looked back on his life as he had done thousands of times before, but he had never before audited it to find its meaning, its purpose. Before it had always been after a particularly harsh beating in which the threshold of pain had already been escalated so far that the hydrogen peroxide that his mother dabbed onto his flesh had an almost numbing sensation. It was always then, holding back a sob, that Logan looked back on the times in his life that had maybe made him deserve this. This pain, this misery, both of which he could live with. However, when it came down to it, the thing that really made Logan ask, "Why", was this forever hovering sense of desolation. And he was tired of being repeatedly destroyed and alone.
Somewhere on this walk down memory lane, rather more like a dark alley that most try to avoid, Logan found his feet leading the way to Veronica's. Veronica being the one of very few, scratch that, the only consoling face in his bittersweet, lonely world of fists and flashbulbs, of belts and Emmys, of tears and scripts. She was the one constant in his life that had never turned her back on him, she had only fought face to face with a sharp tongue that had developed its defense only after months of his abusive words. She sure as hell wasn't Aaron, the father who had never been there to begin with and therefore couldn't have abandoned the son that he had never had. She wasn't like Duncan, the friend in which confiding secrets in would only be a waste for he didn't understand and never would. She wasn't Lynn, the mother who abandoned her unprotected, vulnerable son and had lept off a bridge into the more promising, painless world of which the waves below her had offered and she so graciously accepted. She wasn't like Lily, the girlfriend in which he had trusted, had placed his love in only to have it thrown back in his face. Or was she?
It was the question that had plagued him all night. It was the question that defined his very existence. It was the question on which the morning papers' headlines rested and the headlines for 7 and a half years from now when Aaron Echolls is put to death for murdering his son's girlfriend. The answer to this question could easily change the headline to read Aaron Echolls is put to death for murdering his late son's girlfriend This question had the power to change a paper that should have had a happier, more of a 'justice served' feel into a newspaper with a somber, 'too little, too late' feel. This question was what Logan was basing his life on, and he was scared, scared that he might already know the answer, scared that his life was teetering on the side of a bridge in the form of Puma sneakers, and scared to be alone...again.
With that he had walked through the big, white gate of Veronica's apartment complex. With that he decided that he wasn't ready to talk, both on the grounds that his mind needed to sort some things out and also for the fact the he had quite a bit of sobering up to do. With that he decided not to walk up the stairs to Veronica's apartment. With that he decided to sit on the edge of the apartments' pool, rolling up his pants, and plunging his feet into the cool water and with that he curiously watched Lianne Mars walk out of the Mars' apartment suitcase in tote. She didn't notice Logan as he remained staring at her trying to figure out where she was going, why her head hung so low and more importantly why she was crying. She looked tired and worn and as she passed under the florescent lights that lit the apartment complex, disturbing the insects and sending them buzzing. When she got to the gate she let go of her suitcase and she turned around, for a second causing Logan to fear that she had seen him and was going to go back and tell Veronica, but instead she raised her fingers to her trembling lips as a perfect tear streamed down her cheek and she blew the kiss that had been softly applied to her fingers toward the apartment, towards her sleeping daughter and with that she quickly turned and left.
It took Logan a few more minutes after Lianne left to completely compose himself, to grasp the situation. Logan sat there in the silence, in the dark, fumbling with his mother's lighter that was protectively placed in his pocket and he wondered, as tears now filled his own eyes, if his mother had done that. Had she not had the strength herself to stay and regretfully had, with tear blurred vision, kissed her fingers, curled them around the kiss, and then after she had mumbled into her hand how much she wished she had the strength to stay, that he didn't do anything wrong, and that she loved him, had opened her palm and blew her kiss and her thoughts and her love toward her son...Logan.