Logan Echolls had never considered himself a waste of space before that moment. But as he leaned on that girl's (Minako, her name was Minako and we would call her Mina for short because the last syllable was just too much damn trouble) shoulders, he almost couldn't help himself. He couldn't hold himself up much less think very highly of himself. He kept almost falling, but she was strong, holding him up even though he was bigger and had bigger problems than he thought she could handle. But there she was, even after she'd chased him out, and she wasn't leaving him behind.
And her kindness made him feel like a waste because he didn't deserve it.
He felt so fucking cliché again, dancing on bridges and drinking himself into a stupor and crying into a blonde's arms and wishing that she would just fucking kiss him already so that he wouldn't have to focus on himself. He wouldn't see Lily's dead eyes on the computer monitor or Veronica's back as she walked out of their apartment for the last time or his mother's red convertible abandoned on the highway or his father's smile that he had scene on the corpse when he'd had to identify it, as if he knew that even though he had died, he'd still gotten away with murder. He would just feel, and he wouldn't feel what was ripping through him right then and there, and that would have been a vast improvement.
"Why did you come back?" he mumbled, his face parallel with the ground.
She stumbled a bit and said, "Guilt more than anything I suppose."
Logan sniffed. "I make you guilty?"
She shook her head. "No. I make me guilty. You make me..." she trailed off, glancing over in his direction and trying to smile. "I'm not entirely sure what you make me."
Normally, Logan would have made a joke about how he wished she'd said horny. But as it was, he couldn't come up with the joke.
"Did you really not love anyone again?" Minako asked suddenly, prying into his personal affairs as if she had any right to. "After... Lilly?"
Logan opened his mouth, initially to snap at her, but then he remembered that she was carrying him home after everything that had happened, and he reconsidered. "There was another girl. Her name was Veronica. She was Lilly's best friend."
"Was it the same?" she queried, her blue eyes curious and anxious under the moonlight.
Logan shook his head. "No. Lilly and I were... tragic. Even when she was alive. But Veronica and I were..." He laughed, remembering her story about his drunken (alterna) prom confession. He still didn't remember it, but after Cassidy died and they'd started going out again, it didn't hurt as much so she told him what he'd said. It had been the first night they'd had sex, when she told him.
"I once told Veronica that I thought we were epic," Logan surmised, remembering how true he had thought that had been, even when she'd walked out the door. He still sometimes expected her to show up, and if she did, he knew things would be just as painful.
Minako laughed, still nervous and a little shaky. "Ruined lives and bloodshed?"
Logan blinked. "Yeah... Exactly like that."
Minako nodded sadly, her eyes suddenly growing distant. Logan got the feeling that she was suddenly in another time. She was far away from him for a few seconds, and it made him feel frightened and abandoned, even though he still felt the warmth of her hands and her hair brushing up against his legs.
"I know about epic," she whispered softly in a voice he didn't recognized. "All too well."
That was the moment that Logan was suddenly coordinated enough to bury his hands in her endless hair and push her against the wall. He kissed her hard until she was next to him again. He knew it happened when her arms curled around his neck and she kissed him back.
That was the moment they both forgot.
