Disclaimer: I don't own Dark Angel.

A/N: Hugest thanks to Shywriter for betaing and finding plot-holes as well as a title (prevented my head from imploding). All remaining mistakes are mine.

This is a response to intstebri's challenge on DAR about what would happen if Max found out that Lydecker sent Logan the photos of the young X5 killing the prisoner and plays during and after 'Pollo Loco'.

(I promise that the next update will be 'Questions', no matter the outcome.)

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Max just disappeared from his life. No more joking and chatting over dinners, no more teasing and banter when they prepared for a mission, no more moments of shared silence when words just would have been too much. She didn't react to his calls, was always "on a run" when he called at Jam Pony or "had just left" when he did the same in the evenings at Crash. Even Cindy wouldn't tell him more than the repeated mantra that Max didn't want to see him – still didn't want to see him – in a voice full of reserved reproach that hurt him while at the same time it felt fully deserved.

It was all the fault of the photos, those pictures that Logan had seen so often that he had memorized every grim little detail. From the instant he had opened Lydecker's file, he just couldn't stop staring at them, driven by a morbid curiosity for that kid in the forest who had been Max.

Logan really had tried, he had tried so hard to stay calm and just and neutral … but this was Max ,and with her it always had been different, with the good things… and also, as he realized now, with the bad.

Maybe his overly strong reaction came from the strain of the days before, with Max brother showing up, seemingly having turned into a serial killer, causing Max to slip away from him and refusing to let him help or even just to talk. She had just left after that last, heated conversation, disregarding her usual pattern of checking in with him and leaving him to wait in nervous worry.

Upon hearing the click of the opening door that evening after he had last seen her, Logan quickly wheeled to the entrance, hoping it was Max, back at her usual self. And there she was, standing in his corridor, with her clothes dirty and wet and a strange look he couldn't quite decipher… There was grief and anger, confusion and fear, and, as he continued staring at her Logan noticed her red and swollen eyes , as if she had been crying. He had never seen Max cry.

She didn't answer to his quietly questioning "Max…?", and before he could ask her what had happened, she turned to disappear itno the shower, staying there that long that Logan was sure that the water had long turned cold. Finally she came out, firmly wrapped into the red bathrobe she'd come to see as hers, as if its fluffiness could protect her from all the world's evils.

His concern growing, Logan followed her into the living room area, watching how she settled onto the sofa with his back to him. Without saying a word, he stayed behind, feigning to be immerged into an art book while he pondered whether he should leave her alone.

Then, before he could come to any sensible decision, Bling came in, giving Logan a short moment of relief at seeing someone who could help him deal with Max. It dissolved quickly into sinking feeling of dreadful anticipation when, in a voice that seemed a bit more sober than his usual calm , the trainer handed him a large envelope. Logan knew that it could only be from Lydecker, he was the only one using that contact room for a good while… and still he opened it.

Soon after, Max left, looking for comfort and an absolution Logan couldn't give her in his shock about what he was seeing. As soon as the door had safely closed behind her, Logan wheeled himself to his desk for a thorough inspection of Lydecker's envelope. For a long moment his fingers hovered over the innocent, beige paper, as if a mere touch was enough to dissolve each and every one of the many happy memories he had of Max. Finally Logan let his fingers drop down onto the file in uneasy uncertainty of what he would find, feeling a throbbing headache built up, as he took out picture after picture. With every new photo he examined, he dreaded the next one more, his agony growing together with the nagging wish to stop this – to just go to bed and forget what he had seen. But he went on, his hand almost automatically reaching for another sheet of glossy paper while he tried to force his upset mind back to a state of cool, methodical analysis.

He didn't succeed, hadn't succeeded from the beginning.

From the very second he realized what the file contained, Logan's emotions had spiked up, dominating him in a way that scared him, shaking his self-image as someone who was always in control of himself. Doubt and something else, something that came close to horror, had hit him, banishing his worries about Max, who now was out there in the night, alone. In an intensity that had mocked his outward composure, a burning hatred flared up in Logan, an irritated anger at Lydecker's sick knowledge of how to evoke his doubts and mistrust… but even while he cursed the colonel for drawing him in with his perverse game of manipulation, Logan knew that the ultimate blame was with himself, that the photos could only trigger something that must have been there all along. He knew that all he needed to do was to stop looking, to shred the photos, or even better, to burn them, as if such a radical act would simultaneously erase the violently vivid imprints on his mind…

But Logan continued to stare at them. It was all he did from the moment Max quietly slipped out his door until he prematurely went to bed, unable to proceed with his work or to do what he felt he should do: go out to search for Max and find out what had shaken her so much that she wouldn't tell him…

There was her picture, together with the beaten, blood-covered body of a man. It left Logan with the terrible conclusion that the guy's death had been the making of a group of children who hadn't even reached puberty. It told him that one of those children, who now was working for Eyes Only, had killed an innocent.

A streak of blood was smeared on her face – if it was her own or that of the man, Logan couldn't tell – covering her lips, those wonderfully soft and warm lips which he'd always hoped to kiss again one day. Now he wondered if she'd tasted the blood.

She was surrounded by others like her, a row of little soldiers looking grim and determined with their uniforms and shaved heads that denied them the basic privilege of individuality. Those must be Max's siblings, the persons who always gave her a rare, brilliant softness, the ones she missed and for whom she searched and whom she wished to find above anything else in the world…

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It was in this state of disturbed confusion, of doubting Max while equally hating himself and Lydecker, that she found him the next morning, his thumb flipping through the stack of shiny photos again and again, fingers touching the smooth, brilliant surface that separated him from Max's past.

As he had so often, Logan somehow felt her presence without having to turn around, as if her completely silent apparition tickled the hair in his neck or triggered some kind of kind of inner alarm.

Usually Max's appearance was a welcome distraction and the cause of a sudden, fluttering spike of his heartbeat stemming from his startled reaction… or so he told himself. Today, however, he was afraid to see her. In a lack of planning that was confusingly atypical, Logan so far had successfully avoided considering what would happen if Max was confronted with those pictures. He simply had banned it from his thoughts, too occupied throughout the last evening of gloomy, doubtful brooding, too restless during tonight's fitful sleep, filled with dreams of children, like a pack of wolves, hunting down a panicking, breathless man.

So he turned slowly, with the depressing knowledge that in just a second something would be destroyed between them, irreversibly, something that was much worse than any damage Lydecker's threats and warnings ever could have done.

Up until now it had been only him and his secret doubts. He could just have chosen the easier way of figuring out things alone, neither facing Max with the pictures nor with his betrayal of contacting Lydecker. Now this option was lost, forcing them to deal with this the hard way.

Logan moved his head just in time to see Max turn around and slowly walk toward the door, head bowed down, refusing to acknowledge him. She seemed calm, showed none of the emotions that might have hinted how to approach her and which he would have understood so well… anger for contacting Lydecker behind her back, insult for not asking her about what had happened the day the photos had been made, hurt disappointment that he trusted her enemy more than he did her…

But there was none of it, only an empty stare that in its lifeless beauty reminded Logan of a department story mannequin. It was as if someone had switched off all signs of humanity in her, turning her into the person her creators wanted her to be.

Without thinking Logan called her name, a strangely strangled "Max" that was carried only by his wish to stop her from leaving. He had no idea what to tell her, how to explain his behaviour. As he observed her motionless back for some seconds, looking harsh and rejecting in its averted pose, Logan wished that things could just be like before.

With a slow, stiff movement, Max turned to look at him, evenly, her calm face still showing no reproach, no anger. Just sadness and regret, as if she had expected something like this to happen all along, something that had opened his eyes about what she really was: A killer, an animal driven by raw instinct and cruel hunger for blood, not the naïve, beautiful, girl next door living the life of a simple, average bike messenger. Not somebody's friend. Not someone he could love.

Then, as he failed to explain, to say something to keep her back, Logan suddenly found himself confronted with Max's back again as she walked out of the door, never showing a crack in her eerie façade of stoic fatalism. It was a response that was so much worse than anything else could have been, leaving Logan helpless and without words.

It was the last time he had seen her.

Only after she was gone did Logan realize how much he'd gotten used to her presence. Without Max there was only work, file after file, case after case, broadcast after broadcast. The only interruptions were random, tasteless meals, their only justification to provide him with energy for his mission, short hours of sleep that had no other purpose than to keep the exhaustion at bay. There was no other sense, no other legitimating his existence than being the anonymous benefactor behind Eyes Only's blue and red mask.

Without Max it was again like in those weeks and months after he'd gotten out of the hospital, when he'd thought that this would be his life now, this and nothing else.

Then Max had come along, turning his missions into something that wasn't only grim work but an opportunity to talk, to smile and laugh, to have passionate discussions about morals that more than once, when her wits left him astounded, ended in her favour.

After some weeks she had started to come over just like that, even when there wasn't any legwork, the trace of insecurity on her face dissolving into a cocky grin when Logan offered her a snack, never knowing how welcome she was. He had never told her. He'd only fed her, with a lovingly prepared sandwich, a glass of milk together with a pre-emptive dose tryptophan or with a 'second breakfast', which he often suspected was actually her first. She had smiled shyly at his offer to raid his fridge whenever she wanted, but still mostly waited until he interrupted his work to prepare a sandwich for the both of them. Each shared meal, every exchange of stories and memories contributed to Logan's gently growing hope that maybe she wasn't only coming for the food.

But all this was over, suffocated by her past and his failure to come to terms with it.

…………….. to be continued (and yes, it really is M/L) ………….