AN:

Hey guys first off I just wanna say thanks for still reading…Yea I had another one of those moments when I realized just how long this story is (Had to open a third word document since once they get past a hundred they get rather annoying). I swear the end of the story is in sight. I hope you're still enjoying it and the length didn't drive too many of you away.

Now to anyone who's reviewing at the end of this (which you know I love) can you throw in an E or an R, for Embedded or Remnants as the next story to be updated and please dear god don't tie again or just review more for this story, that's totally acceptable. Just don't make me think. If I'm not in the mood to write I just flip flop back and forth unless I have a clear direction. Thanks in advance!

Chapter Sixty-Nine

Due

Freak Nation Independence Day (Rooftop):

The noises below him had lessened from the previous year as had the crowd. Those who were still in the city had shown up, but more had scattered about the country searching out a freedom that came much easier elsewhere. He didn't blame them; there was still a strong anti-transgenic population in Seattle. They might think the same way elsewhere in the country, but they weren't constantly on the lookout for transgenics. Anything slightly off here put you at risk for being labeled a transgenic and they were all too well aware of the consequences that entailed.

It was hard to believe two full years had passed. Dos, due, dois, deux, twee, zwei, ni, he'd heard it all today in every different language, two. Drei, tres, tre, drie, tatu, tiga, three. Anni, años, années, years. Two full years, 2nd anniversary, entering the third year. They'd celebrated it in everyway they could and that had included boasting it in several different languages. Logan had definitely learned transgenics could be showoffs, especially when it came to one upping each other.

He didn't need anymore words to say it though.

Those three were more than enough.

Two full years…Well two full years minus 27 hours and however many minutes they'd gotten in at his apartment and house, a split second at Crash.

Odd how something could seem so long and short at the same time.

He took a deep breath and felt his son slightly stir against his chest at the movement, he stood up from the lawn chair he'd been reclining on, escaping the activities downstairs for a bit. He wouldn't let his mind dwell, he refused to.

He almost scoffed at the memory of Zen catching him in pity-mode right after the last time.

"Don't worry man; you and Max are due for a miracle." He'd said as Logan had started touting the facts: the timeline, the adaptive nature of the virus…There was a long list of things against them.

Logan had let out a biting laugh at that point and hadn't even bothered to respond. Exactly how many miracles did a guy get? Max entering his life at the exact right time? Max coming back from the dead? Being paralyzed and getting full use of your legs back? Finding a son in the most unlikely of times? Hell wasn't falling in love and having that person love you back one of the biggest miracles? Yea, he was pretty sure his run was over. He'd gotten more than his fair share in this life; he'd been given a lot more than was taken away.

He rubbed his son's back to release some of the excess energy that came with being entirely frustrated with the situation at hand.

Diving back into the 'real' world. Going back to work for the first time in six years. Alec had been the one to finally talk him into it as Logan had tried to point out, not for the first time that who would watch Cale since Max was so adamant about him not starting school yet.

"Okay Logan, I think you and Max are missing part of the big picture. You keep fighting about school, but exactly how do you think he's," he nodded his head down to Cale playing on the floor with Max, "gonna react to suddenly not being with you or Max all day? Can't just throw a kid into that situation." Alec said once more displaying an impressive amount of knowledge for someone whose only time with a child was the one he was talking about.

"What are you talking about he gets along great with other kids," Max said thinking of her son's interactions at the park.

"Oh you mean the park were you or Logan are at the furthest two feet away?"

"He can play on his own now Alec," Logan said defending their parenting. There were certain pieces of equipment they might stay close by when he was on, but they certainly didn't hover like they once had.

"The point is you and Max are always there," he shook his head.

Logan shook his head in return, "You, yourself have watched him, Original Cindy's watched him, Joshua's watched him, Zen, Vida, hell even Normal watched him."

"Oh I'm sorry, but when was the last time any of us watched him? Awake I mean. Josh watching him at night when you two have put him to bed doesn't count; he doesn't even know you're gone."

They both stayed silent for a moment. Max began to open her mouth, Alec cut her off.

"A quick errand doesn't count or informants that only last an hour; he has to notice you're gone. It also doesn't count when you're in the building. Kid needs to know you're actually gone."

The realization that Alec might actually be right started to dawn on them.

"Yea so like I was saying maybe you should try a step below preschool before you scar the kid for life."

"I hate it when he's right," Max said looking slightly sick as Alec left the room.

"You're not alone," Logan replied with a shake of his head.

So it had been decided Cale would start spending part of his days with Josh, since Josh was the only person they had to watch him unless they went with daycare. It was a good compromise, a good start to fully socializing their son. He knew Josh and was comfortable with him and would get used to being surrounded by other people.

Things had been fine that first day, Logan had left him with Josh for three hours as he'd run errands. He'd left him with Josh before during the day as he'd go to meet informants and they'd left him alone with him as they'd been doing things around TC, the timeframe wasn't much longer than he was used to and things had gone well.

The second day had been six hours. Around the fourth as Cale woke up from his nap and realized neither parent was around he wanted to go searching for them. Logan had been greeted with a very frazzled and desperate looking Joshua and a suddenly incredibly clingy Cale. Alec had been a serious bitch to deal with for the rest of the week.

Without any further excuse to avoid going back to work, Logan had called and made an appointment to meet with Tom and pulled out one of the few suits that had managed to survive White's attack on his apartment.

" Logan?" a head turned and stopped walking past as he emerged from the elevator.

"Gabby," he smiled at the confused/shocked hazel eyes and took in Gabriella Greer for the first time since he'd not so politely gotten her out of his room at the rehab. She was pretty, that had always been the word he'd thought of when seeing her, not striking, not cute, just pretty, but that didn't mean average. Her overall look hadn't changed much since the last time he'd seen her, her light brown hair had a few new blonde highlights he didn't recall, but it was still up in the same clip it always went into when she was busy on the phone and computer. Slacks, blouse, the same uniform as always, unless she was interviewing someone she thought she could get some more information out of by showing a little more skin.

She was one of a crowd he used to socialize with after work, on the weekends. He'd preferred the people at work to those he'd grown up with, he'd realized somewhere in his marriage to Valerie that he really didn't like those people, he didn't understand them.

"You're really here?" Her surprised grin was his greeting and she quickly moved towards him for a hug.

He felt himself warm and grow more comfortable with the idea of working again. It felt nice to be missed.

She separated herself from him, "You're coming back to work?" It was only a half question; Tom's secretary had informed them all Logan had made an appointment. In the past, before his shooting he'd occasionally just stop by, talk to people, and find new connections for whatever work he was doing. He'd never made an appointment.

"If Tom'll have me," he nodded.

"Same old Logan Cale?" she asked with her eyes twinkling, Logan Cale of the past had disrupted many of the lives of their 'well to do' citizens, exposed a lot of injustice, had fought for change, of course those were all the reasons why he'd stopped being their Logan Cale, people like that didn't exist for very long in this business.

"I think I might take a slightly safer route this time," he said seriously, "not looking to have a price on my head again."

She nodded, "Smart move." That reminded her to take a moment to unobtrusively view his vertical frame. Tom had told her, but she hadn't believed it. You didn't just get over things like being paralyzed. And he had been paralyzed right?

He'd been trained to observe the little changes just like she had, "Bullet fragment," he said, it was the story he'd decided upon, since the truth was out of the question even to un-prejudiced people like Gabby. "They removed it and I started getting feeling back." The story worked, he'd been in the hospital, had a bullet fragment removed and just over six months later he was up and walking again thanks to the exo, not many had seem him in the chair after that and that could just be blamed on a bad day. His family knew about the exo, but would understand the lie since they assumed he'd bought his way out of paralysis.

"Jesus, Logan do you have any idea how lucky you are?" She said with a shake of her head before moving in for another hug.

"I've got some clue," he nodded as she separated again.

"So what's this I hear about you having a little boy? And rumor has it he's Junior Junior," she ended with a smirk. She'd seen him flinch when his uncle would come by and call him that.

"Yea," he shook his head at the name, "I want you to know I was firmly opposed to that. We call him Cale; he's two and a half."

"Two and a half?" she repeated.

Lies were trickier with people you'd known for awhile. He looked slightly guilty as he continued on, "Things were a little crazy the last time I saw you."

She almost rolled her eyes, "Maybe if you'd actually stopped to talk to me instead of pretending like everything was fine as you tried to figure out ways to kick me out of the room…"

Another required guilty look.

"Do I know his mom?" she asked. The last time she'd gone out with Logan had to have been a good six or seven months before his accident and he'd been with a blonde school teacher, Terry, her reporter's mind recalled.

"Uh probably not," god he hated lying and having to pretend to actually think about that. He felt like he was diminishing Max by doing that.

A quick look down at his hands, "You didn't marry her?" Huh, that was an interesting fact; she could have sworn he'd have done the right thing, even if it meant punishing himself for the rest of his life. He'd certainly stuck it out longer with Valerie than anyone else would have.

"There were a lot of things going on at the time. You'll meet her, you'll like her."

"So you're still together?" Another interesting turn.

"We're still friends, responsible parenting."

"Uh huh," she slowly drawled, viewing his face thinking about his actions and words.

"I should probably go meet Tom," he remembered his appointment, thankful to have the escape.

She nodded, "Yea and I should probably get this down to the copy-editor," she raised the folder she'd been holding this whole time.

So starting two days from now he was going back to work part-time. Hmm that had been embarrassing, but he was willing to suffer through the embarrassment of fearing he was turning into his mother to spend more time with his son.

"Hey," Max called out softly opening the door knowing their son was with his father and it was past his bedtime.

He turned and smiled.

Her face softened as it always did seeing the blonde tyke who had fallen asleep clutching at his father's neck and hadn't let go. "It get too loud down there?"

"Just a bit, we left when Alec started doing keg stands."

Max laughed, "And here I thought he was actually maturing."

"Alec?" he raised an eyebrow.

Another laugh that caused Cale to squirm slightly against his father. "Definitely past his bedtime," she walked over and placed a hand on her son's back.

"Yea, I just wanted to stay so you could say goodnight," he said referring to the fact that she had run out to find more ketchup for the 'burgers' Mole had been flipping all night sick of the whining she had been listening to as others lamented the fact that they couldn't go out.

She smiled up her thanks to him and shifted her position to take the child Logan was disengaging from himself.

He smiled as she cradled Cale close to her, their son awaking and giving her the briefest of looks before falling back asleep. "And mothering doesn't come easy to an X-5," he said reminding her of her words when he'd returned with Cale.

She looked up from Cale's cherubic face and smiled, "Gotta admit, pretty surprised we only lost one. Guess these things are really part nature and not all nurture."

The one she was referring to wasn't a child, but a mother. In total, they had had sixteen 'breeding partner' births that didn't include that first wave of people who had gotten pregnant on their first 'heat' experience. The lost mother had been Leila, the same as the 13 other out of the 15 mothers (one and thankfully only one had twins); she was too young, too inexperienced and in short just not ready to be a mom. She'd lasted for almost three weeks before finally just disappearing one day, a note placed underneath the baby saying, 'I'm sorry' so no one worried and went looking for her. Ren and Hudson, the only two to go against what was the norm had taken her son, Jordan to be raised with their own son, Caden. The only couple out of the breeding partners to be in it together as far as anyone knew. There hadn't really been any other option, another transgenic could have taken in the baby, but formula was a pricey commodity and incredibly difficult to find and making another one of the mother's into a wet nurse seemed unlikely.

"Guess so," Logan said with a hand up to stroke him son's soft hair, though he couldn't feel the texture through the gloves he'd never bother to take off, mostly because Max was still flipping out any sight of bare skin.

She looked up at him as she held Cale close savoring his weight and warmth knowing she'd miss it until it was back in her arms. She didn't mind being wrong, she'd found that happened quite a bit as she finished growing up. Things seemed to turn out better than she expected and she certainly wasn't one to complain.