Welcome

[Logan Cale]

Logan swallowed, hooking up his headset and slipping it down over his mouth and ears. He double checked the angle of his webcam, and made sure the effects monitors were up and running. He glanced over at his other screens, and then at his main monitor, making sure the mic was on and working. He hit the button, and took a breath as he went online.

"Do not attempt to adjust your set. This is a Streaming Freedom Video Bulletin. The cable hack will last exactly sixty seconds. It cannot be traced, it cannot be stopped, and it is the only free voice left in this city. In the past year, government owned and operated organization Manticore has been out of action. Disguised as a violent attack by radicals, it's arson and destruction were hidden from the public eye. But the truth is out now. There was no hospital. It was not the fault of the S1W. And their secrets were revealed. But this was not the end of Manticore. Reports have shown that power has shifted. Decisions have been made. And Manticore is rising from its ashes. Growing, more deadly and more prepared this time. This...is a warning. Peace.Out."

Logan disconnected the hack, exhaling heavily. This was a heavy subject for a lot of people right now. A new Manticore was deadly to the people he cared about. Max, Alec...Joshua. All of the transgenics, especially the ones who'd died trying to stay free. It was...bad. A potential disaster for Eyes Only, who had taken it upon himself to help the mutant community.

The gravity of the situation was just one more straw to his ever weakening camel's back. The whole situation between him and Max was getting more and more complicated. The virus hung between them like a palpable wall, and she'd pushed herself further and further away. After his second run in with the virus, it had taken everyone's pleading just to keep Max in Seattle. And now she would hardly even look at him. Let alone come near him. As if the virus were communicable by eye-contact. And Asha's every growing affections were making things difficult.

He sighed again, took off the headset, and turned as he heard footsteps just past the rippled glass that led to the elevator.

[Max Guevara]

She had been putting off coming here for days. . .longer even. Almost a week and a half. Max knew damn good and well that she could not avoid Logan like the bubonic plague as she had been doing. It just. . .it hurt too much to see him. To know that if she so much as grazed his arm then he could die. She hated Manticore with every fiber of her being for what they had done, for damaging the one thing in her life that had been real and unbiased. There was no way around it. She loved Logan, still did, probably always would. She could not let him go and yet she knew that she had to. It was the hardest damn thing she'd ever had to do. Walking away from him. . .and yet she had not. Because she kept getting pulled back and his face was in her mind a little too often, his words inside her head just a bit too much. She knew that she had to see him. Calling him on the phone to tell him that she and Alec had confirmed that Manticore was back. . .it wasn't enough.

So she found herself in his apartment, having slipped through the door silently. She'd heard his cable hack and the gravity of the words settled heavily on her heart. Manticore was back. They were all in terrible danger. She had transgenics right and left looking to her for answers and she had none. It was as simple as that. Max honestly did not know what they should do and yet they trusted her for guidance. She had never meant for it to go this far, for them to look to her like they did. She supposed that night she had made her little freedom speech had sealed the deal. . .Max almost wished she had shut her mouth and never gotten so damned involved with the transgenics freedom. She wished that she didn't feel so responsible for their well being.

Max took a deep breath, steeled herself, and stepped past the rippled glass and into the room. There he was. Her breath caught in her throat and for a moment all she could do was stare, wishing things were not so hard, wishing that she could run to him and . . .but she could not. She could not risk killing him. Seeing him in the hospital had nearly killed her. Max could not live knowing that his life was in her hands and that she might accidentally kill him. She just couldn't live like that. So instead she put on a falsified smile, faint, and she knew that he would see right through it. It was all she had to offer.

"Hey you," she said softly. "That was. . .very informative. Oughta make some headlines. . ."Secret Government Organization Back In Action". . .or something like that."

[Logan Cale]

He smiled a little. "Well, isn't that Eyes Only's job? Expose the truth..." He smirked at her. "Most of it, anyways?" Logan licked his lip, glanced at his keyboard and stood, walking up to her, leaving about a foot of air between them. "So you're talking to me again?" He raised an eyebrow, and crossed his arms. Max had been avoiding him, and not only did it hurt, it pissed him off. The attempt at playful banter fell through though, and Logan sighed, turning slowly and walking into the other room. "I talked to Joshua the other day. He's set up camp pretty well in Terminal City. Even got his own little place set up." He picked up his half drunk glass from earlier, dumping it in the sink. The room still smelled lightly of scotch, but it was tolerable. He swallowed, and looked at her. He....didn't know what to say to her.

"This isn't working..." he said, after a few seconds of awkward, uncomfortable silence. He walked back into the living room, tension knotting his throat. "I can't....I can't do this anymore..." He looked at the floor, realizing with a pang he'd just thrown her own words back at her. "This...edging around eachother...lying...hiding...I can't do it. One way or another, I need you in my life." He looked at her. "But I can't play hide-and-seek with you anymore." The green-blue eyes lowered behind his thin glasses, blonde eyelashes batting gently. "I just can't..."

Logan wanted to get over her. He did. She was over him, it seemed. And she obviously didn't want to see him, for whatever reason. He needed to get over her. But he just couldn't. She'd been all he could think about for so, so long....it was like cutting out a chunk of his brain and dumping it in the sewers. It just wasn't a reasonable possibility. "I love you, Max..." he said quietly. "But I can't love you like this."

[Max Guevara]

Max could barely tolerate the look that washed across his features as the attempt at light-hearted banter fell through. She could almost hear his heart beating in his chest if she listened hard enough and it seemed to match the pace to which her own was breaking. She could lie to the world. . .but not herself. Her heart ached with the need to tell him how much she loved him, that she had been avoiding him because of that, because she could not bear the thought that he would die if she so much as made a single mistake. The last time had been too close. . .seeing him in that hospital bed with a tube down his throat, barely holding onto life. . .Max swallowed thickly and let her gaze hit the floor, the back of her throat burning. If only. . .if only. She'd heard those two words in her head too many times.

His words sliced through her and she leaned against the rippled glass window with her arms crossed tightly over her chest. . .just to keep from falling over. He was always the one that kept fighting to save what was left of them, to keep going. He was so much stronger than she was. She did not know how to keep fighting when her fear clouded everything that had been, everything that could be. The virus was not going away. How could she sanction risking his life just for her own selfish gains? She loved him. . .and yet she loved him enough to save him, spare him, even if it meant hurting him. And killing herself. Certainly this was emotional suicide.

"I. . .Logan. . .I can't risk it. One touch and you drop dead and dammit, I can't live with that kind of fear. That last time. . ." her voice dropped to a whisper and she reached a hand up, wiped back the tears that threatened to fall. "I love you too much to lose you. I can't. . .I can't risk you like that. Don't you understand?"

[Logan Cale]

"Of course I do. Just because I understand it doesn't mean I have to like it..." He sighed again, and sat down on the couch, elbows braced on his knees and hands massaging his temples. "Damnit, Max..." He swallowed, his head pounding. This was too much for him to think about. He was in over his head. Logan didn't do relationships well. He hadn't had a girlfriend until his sophomore year of college. He was too analytical for emotions to be a driving force in his life. He had better things to think about. Well...he had, until he met Max Guevara, who had wiped his mind clear and rewritten life for him in a language he didn't completely understand but loved every minute of. And now his translations were starting to go out.

He sat back. "I don't....I don't know what to say...We've tried so hard...given up so much, spent so much...trying to stop this just so we could be together...and now it feels like we're quitting." Logan looked up at her. "But it also feels like we don't have any other choice..." He sighed heavily, swallowing and licking his lips. Logan shook his head. His throat felt thick, and gummy, the pressure headache was building to a throbbing roar, his eyes felt dry and stinging, and he really wanted to throw himself out the floor-to-ceiling window of his apartment. He just didn't know what to say to her. He loved her more than breathing, but they couldn't keep this up. Not forever.

[Max Guevara]

There had been a time in her life when she had lived without attachments. In fact most of her life had been looking out for number one, ensuring that she didn't tangled up in other people's lives and thusly bring about the ruin of her own. When she had first met Logan, when he had first bothered to track her down after she had broke into his loft home. . .she had been a completely different person. And she knew that the woman she had become, the woman that had a heart and cared for the greater good, for her own kind, for the outcome of things that hadn't happened yet. . .it was all because of him. He had given her a heart to care with, a reason to care and to feel again. His own bravery had given her her own, had shown her that it was alright to fight for something other than yourself. In fact. . .it was better.

"Logan I don't want to give up, I really don't. . .I just don't know what else to do. We've tried everything that I know to try and it just. . .It hurts to be away from you and it hurts to be near you. . .Sometimes I can't breathe, dammit, it hurts so much. I don't want Manticore to win."

But they did. . . Her inner voice whispered and she stamped down on that, not wanting to believe it, knowing that it was true. They had won. They had not killed Eyes Only but they had dismantled Max's fighting spirit piece by piece and bit by bit because everyday that had no solution was another day that the hope in her heart drained away into nothing. She could not love him and she could not bear not to. Max didn't know what to do or which way to turn. Every fiber of her being wanted to run to him right then and there, to throw herself into his arms and make the world go away, to be just Max and Logan again. . .but she had never been a normal girl and she would never be. Happiness. . .she didn't deserve it and it would never be hers.

"You should. . .you should. . ." she swallowed hard, took a step forward and this time didn't wipe the tears away that shimmered in her eyes. "You should be with someone that can love you Logan, like you deserve. Every part of it. That can touch you and hold you, that can be strong for you and guide you. . .someone. . .that can do everything I can't."

[Logan Cale]

He closed his eyes, and swallowed, not moving at all. He'd been dreading those words for a long time. They just....they couldn't do it anymore. After they had tried so hard for so long...they just couldn't do it. Well, Manticore, I hope you're happy... He clenched his jaw bitterly, and sighed. He was leaned over, elbows braced on his knees, chin on his clenched hands. Max was so far away...afraid to hurt him anymore. If he were being completely honest, Logan would have preferred dying of the virus than living life without her. But he knew Max wouldn't accept that for anything, so he didn't even open his mouth. God, why did this have to be so hard? Couples broke up all the time. But this was so, so very different.

He smiled at her sadly. "Max, I don't want to be with anyone else. Anyone else is not you, and you are who I want to be with." The smile slipped off his face. "I've never hated any one thing more than I hate Manticore right now." He stood slowly. "The only real good that's ever....ever....come into my life, and they've taken it." He swallowed, crossing his arms as a shudder passed down his spine. The loathing and sickening hatred he felt for those genetic breeders made him nauseous, and he swallowed back bile, grimacing. "If I could, I'd take every one of those sick bastards out myself...but I can't." He swallowed. "Hell, I can't even protect myself...Let alone try something like that..."