LOGAN
Logan put his hands against the cold metal bars and leaned his forearms against them. Goosebumps popped up on his skin, but he leaned in closer as if that would somehow help him melt through the bars and grab onto Elijah.
"Okay," he said. "This isn't so bad. I can make the bail and get you out of here and then we can figure out why the fuck they keep thinking you did this."
From the other side of the bars, Elijah stayed quiet.
"Elijah? Are you listening to me? What the fuck is wrong with you?" Logan snapped. "It's like you want to be in there or something. Can you please at least pretend that you're paying attention to me?"
"You can't make bail, Logan," Elijah said quietly.
Logan scowled. "Why the fuck not? I can do whatever the hell I want to-"
"Logan, there's not going to be any bail."
Logan's insides were squirming. He hated the sound of Elijah's dead, defeated voice. Elijah had never been like that. He always, always said it was going to be okay.
"Why are you saying things like this?" he asked. "They have no evidence. They can't not allow bail."
Elijah wouldn't look at him. "They'll find evidence."
Logan's eyes widened. "Where?" he demanded. "You've never even smoked a cigarette in your life, much less even laid eyes on a drug. You don't even drink! You've never gotten a parking or speeding ticket! You're so much the fucking poster boy of a fucking angel that it literally makes me sick! What're they going to hold against you?"
Elijah had the nerve to roll his eyes at him. "I'm in here for a murder, not selling drugs."
"I'm sorry, I guess you were just serial murdering your way through Louisiana while Olivia was asleep." Logan shoved his face against the bars. "Are you hearing a single fucking thing you're saying right now?"
"I just need you to take care of Olivia."
Logan's face went as cold as the bars he was holding on to. "No," he said. "No, no, no. You come back home and take care of her yourself. I am not doing your job if you're still perfectly fine and-"
"Logan, I'm not coming home!" Elijah snapped.
Logan fell silent. Air that he was breathing caught in his throat, thick and suffocating. He cringed at the horribly familiar feeling. He had already had two panic attacks that night, and he didn't want another one. Not now.
Just think to yourself, this too shall pass.
Dr. Chandler, you are the world's greatest idiot.
"Elijah," he said as steadily as he could. "You are coming home."
"You just need to take care of her."
"I can't take care of a kid! I don't know the first thing about this!"
"You know how to run an apartment."
"That's not the problem. Olivia's the problem."
Elijah glared at him. "If you stop calling her 'the problem,' it'll be fine."
"You know what I mean!" Logan dragged a hand down his face. "We've only just started getting along again recently. And we're still at each other's throats half the time. I don't know whether I expect me to survive or her!"
He was panting a little. He couldn't breathe comfortably. Memories of Olivia and him screaming at each other wouldn't stop. They had once gotten into an argument that started out as Logan demanding why Olivia always stacked the plates in the sink when he had already asked her to just leave them on the counter and ended up as a full yelling match about why Logan never took his clothes out of the dryer and why Olivia never answered her calls.
He breathed in unsteadily.
"She's not so bad, Logan," Elijah said gently.
Logan knew. "I'm worse, Elijah. I'm the problem. I'm not - I can't be what she wants me to be."
Elijah finally approached the bars and took Logan's wrists in his hands. "Listen to me, Logan. You are not a problem. And Olivia doesn't want or expect you to be anything except just be there. She doesn't need you to hug her or watch movies with her or even always be on time to pick her up. She just needs to know you're there."
Logan shook his head. He couldn't do this. The only reason he and Olivia were even on acquaintance terms was because when they were mad at each other Elijah forced them both to fix the problem.
"I don't think I can-"
"Alright, that's enough," barked the gruff voice from outside the jail block. "Time's up."
Panic gripped Logan. This was too soon. He hadn't had enough time, not to talk to his brother, not to prepare for whatever would happen next, not for going back to face his younger siblings with nothing. He held out a hand. "No, no, wait - just give me another minute-"
From inside the jail cell, Elijah gave him a little push. "Go, Logan," he said. "Please."
"No, I'm not leaving you here!" Logan protested as the security guard wrapped his hand around his arm and began hauling him away. "Let me go - stop - stop it, you asshole - get the fuck off me - Elijah!"
The security guard managed to dump him onto the floor outside the jail block and slammed the door shut behind him.
Logan lay against the cold tiles, exhausted. The tiles smelled like disinfectant and immediately started causing a pounding behind his eyes. It was nearly four am. They had been up all night at the police station while Elijah was booked for the murder of the U.S. Marshal who had been assigned their case.
That in and of itself made no sense to Logan. Who would believe that Elijah would kill the Marshal? John Hendricks had set up a whole new life for them, away from anything that could hurt them. They wouldn't just kill him. They needed him.
"Logan?"
At the sound of Blake's voice, Logan put his hands over his head as if that would block out the sound.
"Logan?"
"What?"
"Are you okay?"
Leave it to Blake to worry about everyone else when everything was going to shit. "I'm fine," Logan muttered.
"Did he...did he say anything?"
"No. He just acted more and more like an asshole until I wanted to strangle him."
Olivia and Blake had already talked to Elijah, but Logan had wanted to talk to him alone. He had thought that if it was just them, Elijah would tell him what was really going on.
Clearly, Elijah was only set on making this harder for himself.
"Come on," Logan said wearily. He pushed his elbows underneath him and shoved himself off the floor. "Let's just go home."
*****
The trial was a quick disaster.
Elijah pleaded not guilty, but there was too much evidence against him.
There was DNA. There were fingerprints. There was an eyewitness with eyesight so bad he couldn't see two feet in front of him much less a man sneaking around in the dark. The witness said he clearly saw Elijah scurrying across the road that night.
The motive?
Nobody was allowed to know that the Marshal had been assigned their case as per witness protection rules, so the best they could do was a random mugging.
The judge sentenced him to life in prison.
*****
"I want to drop out of college," Blake told him the day after Elijah was sentenced. At the moment, they were all living in Elijah's apartment, and they hadn't given a thought at all to what would happen after the trial. Now, they had to confront at least the near future without Elijah to tell them what to do.
"You are not dropping out," Logan said.
"Logan, this is dumb. I'm not going back! I can't go back!"
Logan took a deep breath and tried to channel his inner Elijah.
"Blake, listen to me. Elijah will get out in a couple of weeks when they do the appeal, right? He'll be upset if he finds out you dropped out for just a false alarm. You can't leave school now."
"An appeal? Were you not paying attention to the case? They found his DNA all over that guy!"
"I don't know!" Logan snapped, losing control of his inner Elijah.
Fuck Elijah.
"All I know is that he's not staying in there and he's not leaving us here alone, no matter what the fuck that idiot thinks he's doing, so I don't want to hear you say you're dropping out or argue about this with you any longer!"
*****
Olivia tried to convince him after that.
"I'm not going back," she said adamantly.
Her eyes were red and her face was blotchy but she didn't shed a single tear while she tried to convince him.
"Olivia," Logan groaned, dragging his hands through his hair. "I am not listening to this."
"How can I go back to school when he's in a prison full of actual murderers? Don't tell me you don't not want to quit school either!"
It was true. Logan decided every morning that he was going to withdraw from the semester and let his advisors know he would be back the following semester if the situation was okay. But by the end of every day, he would look himself in the mirror and tell himself to get a grip and be Elijah.
"I am going to school," he told her. "Blake's going to school. And so are you."
"You can't make me."
"Olivia, if I have to drag you out of bed every single day, then I will," he threatened.
Olivia muttered something nasty under her breath and slammed the door shut behind her as she left.
Logan put his head down on his bed and groaned.
By the time Logan convinced Blake to go back to his apartment and finish the semester, he was at his wits end. He had found Blake and Olivia crying twice that week, each, and those were only the times he had seen it. Blake left pages full of scribbles under the couch, on the bed, on Logan's desk. Olivia had shoved her birthday presents in the back of her closet shelf, completely out of reach.
Logan kept telling himself he needed to get a grip on his siblings and the situation and himself, but everyday, he felt worse and worse. He lay awake in bed at night, wondering where he went wrong. Did Elijah not trust him after what he did when he was sixteen? Did he still think he wouldn't be able to handle his problems? That had been years ago. Was it still keeping Elijah from confiding in him?
Then the guilt would lead to old memories and the old memories would lead to more guilt and Logan began doing his homework late at night to keep himself busy during the midnight hours and prevent his thoughts from wandering into that black hole that just wouldn't stay shut.
Two weeks after Elijah's hearing, Logan awoke at eleven in the morning and decided that fourteen days was enough.
He was going to pretend. He was going to pretend that everything was fine and that his thoughts were functioning just fine and he was sleeping just fine so that Elijah wouldn't be disappointed when he got back and discovered that they had stopped eating dinner and lunch and breakfast and vacuuming the house and answering the phone.
He went into Olivia's room, where she was still burrowed under her blankets, and woke her up. "I'm just going out right now to my apartment to get my stuff."
"Are you staying here?"
"I'm going to move in here with you."
"What?"
"A lawyer called me yesterday and said Elijah appointed me your legal guardian if he should be unable to do so, whatever the fuck that means," he muttered under his breath. "And my apartment's too far from your school, so I'm moving here. I'm just going to go get my stuff."
He started leaving, but Olivia said, "Wait, wait, wait. I want to come."
"I'll just be back in a few hours and I can do it-"
"I'm not staying here by myself."
Logan turned back to look at her. Her eyes were swollen. She had probably been crying again yesterday.
"Can you be ready in fifteen minutes?"
****
After getting a few boxes from the grocery store, they got to Logan's apartment around noon. Logan told his roommate what he was doing and then handed Olivia half the cardboard boxes and a roll of tape. "Can you do whatever dishes and things you remember are ours and that cabinet there? That's my stuff."
"Does that mean you're never coming back here?"
Logan was so pissed off at Elijah that he couldn't even think about that. "I don't know, Olivia."
"Are you doing your room?"
"Yeah."
"What about your roommate?"
"I'll find him another roommate or something."
"Is Blake going to come live with us?"
Logan had sent him off, but there was no knowing if he would change his mind, and Logan wouldn't be able to tell him what to do if he did. "I don't know," he admitted.
"What about-"
"Just quit it with the questions, Olivia!" he yelled, suddenly irritated that everyone expected him to have the answers. He was sick and tired of not knowing a fucking thing. "I don't know anything about anything so just shut up and don't ask me anymore!"
He felt awful the moment the words left his mouth, but she had already turned around and started taking things out of the cabinet, slamming mugs against the counter.
It wasn't fair to her. It wasn't fair to any of them. Logan sat on his bed and put his head in his hands, trying to breathe past the ache in his chest. It wasn't a congestion like from a panic attack. It was like the stifling ache that came with grief.
I'm not grieving. He's not dead. And he's not gone forever.
Why was Elijah taking this lying down? Didn't he care? Didn't he at least have the heart to believe that Logan would help him out of it? Didn't he have any faith in him?
"Fuck you, Elijah, and when I get you out of there, I will kill you ten thousand trillion times," he muttered to himself as he tossed his clothes in a cardboard box.
When he was done packing his clothes, the things on his desk, and his bedsheet, he popped into the kitchen to see if Olivia was almost done. She almost ran him down as she staggered out, balancing two boxes atop each other.
The top box swayed and slid, and Logan caught it as it slipped right off the bottom one. "Don't worry, I got it," he said.
Olivia dropped her remaining box on the floor and it was only then that Logan could see her face, red and fuming. "Give me that," she snapped, snatching the box back from her hands and putting it back on her pile. "I don't need you!"
I don't need you!
Logan knew small things that were said in anger didn't affect people, shouldn't affect him, but it felt like a stab in the chest. He knew she would've never said that to Elijah or Blake. She would never have told them that she didn't need them, angry or not.
"I know, okay?" Olivia said, picking up her boxes. They slid dangerously to the left, but Logan didn't make the mistake of helping her again.
"I feel like screaming at people, too," she continued. "But you know what? I don't! Because you're supposed to talk about your problems, not scream them!"
And she stomped off down the hallway.
I'm supposed to submit a 8-10 page story for my fiction class tomorrow, so naturally I'm procrastinating and writing this instead. Might put up that story if anyone's interested though.
Thank you all for the comments. I'm sorry that I wasn't able to respond to all of them but thank you thank you a ton.
For next time: Olivia is forced to try to go back to normal, and other things...