A/n: Thanks for your reviews, guys.
Yes, Rei, you could say this is a new, insidious kind of evil. I'm just drawing it out, dropping bits and pieces of Logan's story into each chapter. Just to clarify, you will get the whole thing, but it may take a while. I'm thinking about writing some of it as flashbacks too. I'm pretty much playing it by ear.
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Chapter 27: The L - Word
The first emotion Max felt was warm, fluffy; the same feeling she got when Logan's face lit up in one of his rare, brilliant smiles and she knew it was just for her.
The second one was panic. Oh, crap, she thought. I just said the L-word. And so did he.
I am so screwed. He's… I'm… there's no way it could ever work out… I should go right now. She rose, walking swiftly to the bedroom door, and then froze.
No. I can't run. I just can't. He's trying to take out Manticore in a couple of days, for god's sakes; I need him. And… I need him for himself, too.
Max returned to Logan's side, hesitantly, as if he were going to explode. "Oh, Logan," she breathed. "How do you do this to me? How do you do anything, after all you've been through?" Almost against her will she sat beside him again, gentle fingers caressing his prematurely furrowed brow as she answered her own question.
"Guess you just do the same as me, don't you. You lock it away in the dark place in your mind and never let it come into the light. Except now, I've brought it all up again. Made you tell me all about it. We have way too much in common, you know. Who'dve thunk, huh?"
Still trailing her fingertips across his clammy skin, Max allowed her perfect memory to replay the words in her head…
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Linda and Logan Junior moved often, for fear Logan Senior would find them. They changed jobs, schools, cities and names so often everywhere blurred into one. Neither formed any strong bonds anywhere they went, fearful of leaving a trail to be followed. Logan Junior was bright enough to keep up with his constantly disrupted classes, and pre pulse, work was available for those who needed it.
Linda took whatever she could get to support them. From handing out flyers to tending bar; anything that would keep food on the table and a roof over their heads. And so it went on, for years on end.
Not long after Logan Junior's ninth birthday, they were living in Philadelphia, in a run down two room apartment. Linda had taken a job waiting tables in a diner; Logan would go there at closing time and do his homework on one of the tables while she cleaned and cashed up.
One night, a kid, no more than twenty or so, ran in with a gun, demanding the money. He was a junkie; needed the cash to pay off his dealer. Linda, terrified, handed it over, but the noise disturbed her supervisor in the kitchen and he burst in, yelling about what was going on.
The kid panicked and pulled the trigger before he ran. He never so much as noticed the little boy hiding under the table behind him.
When the cops and the paramedics arrived, they found him kneeling in the pool of his mother's blood, trying desperately to shake her awake.
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So? Any thoughts?