#here to push my trans jaxon agenda by the way

[avocado-frog]

Dahlia. 5

Rating: T Warnings: child death, murder, human experimentation but only briefly referenced, implied child abuse, child abandonment Title: 6/7/2020 Word count: 5.5k Summary: The inside of the lab wasn't any better. Plain, white walls. Pristine, white, tiled floors. Thick, glass windows. A few books, a stack of paper and pencils, a toy or two, the only thing they got to pass the time before one of the people- white coats, blue masks, blue gloves- called one of them back.

Winter brought on hopelessness. Like it would never really end. They would never leave that place alive.

(12/3/2010)

Feet crunching in the frosted grass, book held protectively under his arm, with his camera wrapped around his wrist, Logan found a spot underneath the overhang, leaning against the glass wall.

He waited, knowing he wasn't going to get a lot of time to read before the kids came to bother him, but he didn't mind. The only thing he worried about was the cold. The uniforms didn't do much in way of heat preservation.

Logan thought it was ironic how much he hated the winter. He had ice magic, which was what Leo told him when he offhandedly mentioned his disliking of it. The other kids thought it was hilarious.

In truth, Logan missed normal winter. Before his eleventh birthday. When he shared a room with his older brother, when they stayed up late to watch holiday movies. Houses decorated with bright, colored lights, decorating his own house, staying home from school, the last day before break was always filled with paper snowflakes, loud music, baking cookies. Flying to China for a week to visit his grandparents on his father's side, and then to Japan for the rest of his family on his mother's side, then back to America. Three weeks in total. He remembered wishing that his family members would just visit them instead, but it was always fun to visit. He couldn't remember anything from when he lived there himself.

Logan was fourteen now, turning fifteen in January, and he didn't even know what month it was. He only knew his birthday and current age, because that's what the adults told him. Logan Kari, fourteen, January fifteenth, nineteen-ninety-six.

The other kids couldn't remember much from before. Before their kidnappings, before the lab, so Logan had to teach them. Every tradition he could remember, every detail. He told them lots of stories. He could only imagine the disappointment on Leo's face when she realized how truly underwhelming a microwave was. 

Winters were spent outside in the dreary weather. Logan couldn't feel the cold, but he knew that for the others- Leo especially- it got bad. For Logan, ice magic let him feel heat worse, yet be unaffected by the cold weather. Still, the sky was a light gray, snow drifting silently. The trees beyond the fence looked jagged and lifeless as their leaves were buried beneath white snow.

The inside of the lab wasn't any better. Plain, white walls. Pristine, white, tiled floors. Thick, glass windows. A few books, a stack of paper and pencils, a toy or two, the only thing they got to pass the time before one of the people- white coats, blue masks, blue gloves- called one of them back.

Winter brought on hopelessness. Like it would never really end. They would never leave that place alive.

-----

(5/12/2011)

"It's safer to go in groups," Logan tried to rationalize. The twins, ten years old, both nodded like they understood, but Logan could tell. They were scared. Scared Logan would leave them behind, scared that they would pay the price for what Logan was going to do, scared that Logan and Lily and Jasmine would all die.

"I'll come back for you in two months," Logan promised. Leo gave a firm nod, and Cass bit her lip, nodding along. "I promise."

"You'll be okay?" Leo looked up at him, and he smiled thinly, forced.

"Yeah, we'll be okay, Leo." Another nod. "You'll protect each other while we're gone, okay?"

Leo grinned, nodded again, and took her sister by the hand. "Promise."

Two months...

...He didn't see them again for six years.

-----

(5/13/2011)

A fifteen-year-old Logan, desperately clinging to the smaller hand of a nine-year-old Lily, with his younger sister, Jasmine, trailing close behind. Tunnel vision, as the exit came into sight. His peripheral vision faded to black, it was all he could see, all he could think about. He'd come back, in two months, for the twins.

He almost reached, he was so close. Gunshots fired in the distance, there was a thud, and Logan slowed to a stop, already tensing like a spring as he began to turn.

He was met with the sight of Lily, hands covering her mouth as she stared down at something with the most horrified face he'd ever seen on anybody that young, and his gaze snapped to where his eight-year-old sister should have been.

His sister laid on the white, tiled floor, in a white uniform, stained bright red, as blood created a shiny pool under her head and stomach. She was already dead. There was no use in moving to try to save her.

Logan pushed Lily behind him, as his heart rattled, pounded, threatened to explode, and suddenly, he was overcome, overwhelmed, every emotion began to flood his system.

Footsteps ran towards the group, and they were so close to being done. His breathing quickened, he couldn't control it. His head hurt, his vision spun. He wanted to vomit, only able to stare down at the sight of his sister. He couldn't breathe.

An almost-painful sense of cold ran through his veins, growing sharper, and sharper, until it felt like he was being stabbed, and he screamed.

Sharp pillars of ice shot around him, nearly hitting Lily, narrowly avoiding Jasmine, impaling the men with the guns. Three of them, Logan could count, fell through the ice spikes, leaving bloody trails behind. The ice blocked off any more from coming through. He did the only thing he could think to do, and grabbed Lily by the hand, trembling as the ice followed in much smaller spikes, out the exit.

Logan couldn't see. Alarms blared bright red, loud. Screams, gunfire. Logan didn't stop, on autopilot now.

Deep, deep into the woods was when he finally slowed down, hearing Lily struggling to breathe finally snapped him out of his panicked daze. She leaned against a tree, fighting to catch her breath. Logan fell down, palms digging into the sharp blades of grass, vision blurred.

Arms wrapped tightly around his chest, eyes pressed hard into his knees, shirt stained with blood, his veins turned ice-cold, lungs constricting, chest tightening, he couldn't breathe.

He screamed.

-----

(8/10/2013)

Getting out of the forest was a blur. He couldn't remember how he survived with Lily during those few months, but it was a lot harder than what he planned. He thought he could go back for the twins in two months, but he couldn't even leave the woods for five.

He felt sick. He promised he would go back for them... it just had to be put off momentarily. The weather grew hotter, and Logan was sure he was going to die for at least a week straight. Still, his timing was perfect. At least it wasn't winter. Lily wouldn't have made it.

The first thing that they had seen when they got out of the forest was a highway, and Logan barely reacted in time to save Lily from being hit by a car. He held her hand tightly as they found a way to safely get across, his heart racing as he finally stepped foot on something that wasn't grass. Solid asphalt.

Logan found himself immediately overwhelmed.

People ran past them, there were so many. Talking, yelling over the phone, racing each other down the sidewalks. Lily pressed herself into his side, and he was okay with that, terrified that she would get lost.

Maybe he was paranoid, but people shot them looks. Either disgust or pity, Logan couldn't tell. But he suspected that the two of them didn't look fantastic.

Mostly, they were stopped on the streets and asked where their parents were. Logan had no way of contacting his family, and was quite confused when it turned out that nobody knew his mother or father at all. The world outside of the lab was a lot bigger than he remembered.

A few states away, they managed to find a house. One that nobody lived in. The door creaked open with a careful push, and Logan didn't let go of Lily's hand, inching inside.

Dried blood stained the ground at the bottom of the staircase, trailing down from the steps. The fifth step down was cracked, the railing splintered. In front of one of the rooms, another puddle of dried blood. The furniture had a thin layer of dust, four of the eight bedrooms used to be occupied.

The first room was a kid's room. The one with the blood in front of the door. A small, wooden bed was pressed against the corner of one of the walls in the back, a blue comforter, yellow fish adorning the fabric, haphazardly twisted against the gray sheets, pillow tossed to the floor, stuffed animals- a yellow pufferfish, a pink starfish, a gray shark- strewn around the floor near the bed. As if the child had been in a rush to get out.

The boy who lived there must have really loved the ocean, Logan thought, as he continued to search through the room. Coloring books sat atop a desk, neatly arranged. Markers were tossed to the ground. A bookshelf filled with thin books, basic facts about different types of fish. A DVD sat on the floor, covered in dust. A cartoon mermaid sat on a rock with a crab and a yellow fish was on the cover. Coloring pages with that same cartoon mermaid laid underneath it, scribbled in red and purple and teal.

The boy signed his drawings in blue crayon. Ryan, with a backwards 'Y'.

The next room he found must have belonged to another boy of the same age. Logan liked to imagine that this one was supposed to have cleaned his room, but threw everything into his closet and under his bed like his parents wouldn't notice. In any case, his room was messier. Orange bedsheets, dinosaur stuffed animals. The room itself was painted bright orange.

Plastic dinosaurs, plastic bugs, plastic green army figures. Barely any effort was put into hiding the toys. By his TV was a handful of DVD cases, action movies for little kids, and a collection of episodes from a show about superheroes. ...Turtles wielding weapons and color-coded masks, something Logan didn't understand a single bit.

There was a wooden toy sword at the end of the hallway, coated in blood, and Logan thought it was safe to assume that it belonged to this one.

A deflated basketball sat underneath the desk, beside a bin of action figures. On the top of that desk, unfinished homework assignments for- Logan assumed preschool, maybe kindergarten. Signed with the name Sam, all capital letters, several exclamation marks at the end.

The third room, another boy's room. Glow stars stuck to the ceiling had all mostly died out, though they formed neat constellations on the walls. Foam planets hung from strings above the bed. This one was neatly made, unlike the other two, only slightly ruffled up.

Books about space laid scattered around the floor, coloring pages ripped out and taped to the wall, scribbled-in drawings of planets and astronauts and spaceships.

A big, plastic castle sat against the wall, plastic dragons sat on either side like guards. On the inside of the castle, a princess in a pink dress, and a prince in a red cape, with several knights gently laid in different rooms of the dollhouse.

This one took great care of the toys in his room, he noted, seeing how neatly arranged they all were, lined against the walls, organized perfectly. A small projector sat on the floor, displaying photos of the universe on the ceiling, while a narrator's voice told facts.

Elliot's name was written in overlapping, big handwriting on each drawing, some of the letters capitalized, some lowercase, varying in size. Always in purple marker. At least one of the letters was always backwards. They were all signed with what age they were done by, too. Two years old, three years old, four years old, and then five. It stopped at five years old.

The fourth room must've been the parent's room. A bed with red blankets, a desk against the wall, and a dresser on the other side. Above the desk was a photograph. Logan paused.

Leo and Cass told them that they had brothers. When Logan would ask what they wanted to do when they got out, it was always what they said. They wanted to go home, see their mom and dad, and their younger brothers.

They must've died earlier that year. If Elliot was five, at least, and Leo said that the last time they had seen them, they were two years old, doing the math, it made the three kids five years old.

So, Logan kept that photograph of the kids up on the wall, dusted them off, and cleaned the blood from the floor. He had to ask how to get a key made by the neighbors, got one for himself and for Lily, and cleaned each of the kid's rooms. He couldn't bring himself to get rid of anything, couldn't bring himself to throw the drawings away. Everything was kept in boxes in the attic.

Finally, he was finished. Finally, he could sleep. He took the room that was downstairs, the parent's room, so that if anybody broke in, he'd be the first to know. Lily took one of the last rooms down the hall, it didn't have anything in it. A guest room.

Logan locked the door to his room and didn't come out.

-----

(9/6/2013)

Logan could hardly make himself leave his bed. The door was locked, and he had no intention of letting Lily inside. Lily... Lily was self-reliant. She could take care of herself. She was almost ten years old. Logan was eleven when he had to start taking care of himself. Lily could do the same.

He closed his eyes. His sister bled out in front of him. Spikes of ice shot at guards, warm blood splattered on his face. He took off running. His parents found him with a girl they didn't know instead of the sister he was supposed to keep safe. He couldn't find his parents at all. Leo and Cass were probably dead. Their family was dead. He wondered what happened to the three kids. What happened to the parents.

Lily pounded on the door and screamed for him to get up. Logan ignored her, curling in on himself, staring at the wall, tired, afraid to sleep.

Lily was crying and Logan was restless. Eventually, he had to get up. Eventually, he had to go outside again.

When he did, it was because there wasn't anymore food, there hadn't been in almost two weeks, and they would starve to death if he didn't figure something out.

She would die.

She would die.

She would die.

His sister was dead.

During the year the kids had spent wandering around, looking for a place to live, people acted strange. They would ask if they needed help, try to call the police, offer a place to stay (those were good days) or give them food or money. Logan had... maybe twenty dollars saved up.

Twenty dollars didn't make them as rich as Logan thought it had. It bought them a box of rice, a can of beans, cabbage, carrots, juice, some apples, oranges, and a bag of candy. It was enough for the time being, but they would need to find a way to get more money at some point. He had to get creative with the cooking, making something Lily would eat every day, something different, or else she would get bored, and it was a good distraction.

Logan got the both of them in school, had to lie and say he was Lily's brother (it put a weird taste in his mouth) and that they had both been homeschooled up until that point. They both struggled in the grade they were put in, but school was a good distraction for them both, too.

 ...For Lily, at least. Logan was terrified every second Lily was out of his sight. 

-----

(11/1/2013)

He didn't expect the twins to be there when he came back, but he was still devastated when they weren't. Logically, he knew they were dead.

He told Lily, and she cried, and she didn't talk to him for five days. Logan retreated back to the safety of his bedroom.

He failed them, too.

-----

(12/18/2013)

Logan, against his better judgement, let Lily go to the park across the street. By herself. He was afraid, scared that she'd be caught and killed, but she turned ten two days before, and was convinced that she could do it.

Logan was proud of himself, actually. He managed to get a job, and was able to keep himself and Lily alive. He didn't have to pay for anything regarding the house given that he technically didn't own it. He didn't know how to buy a house. Lily came back home from the park, knocking on the door. Logan hummed to himself, thinking that he must've locked it by accident.

Lily stood with two other kids on the other side of the door.

Two other kids, one (nine years old) had a gash on their forehead, unconscious as they leaned against the second. Black hair fell over their face. The other kid, looked a lot younger, maybe six, had their hands covering bleeding ears.

Logan rushed them all inside, took the one with the bleeding forehead to one of the kid's rooms, (Ryan's, he thinks). The other one never left their side. They couldn't hear- jumped whenever anybody spoke, always had their hands covering their ears- and didn't like to talk, and couldn't read or write.

It took the first kid, the older one, a week to wake up, and they couldn't talk very well either. Logan suspected brain damage. They had trouble articulating words, had trouble walking without using the wall as support, always had a headache, couldn't concentrate, and had seizures once or twice. That was absolutely terrifying the first time it happened.

The other one, the six-year-old, nobody could talk to them. Nobody knew their name until the other one told them.

"Dylan," the older one- Jaxon- mumbled. They refused to tell Logan their name. They pointed at the other kid. "That's... what they said that- that they wanted- wanted to be called."

Dylan. Logan nodded. And that's what they called them. Dylan and the other one. Dylan spent most of their time trying to learn how to read, glaring at Logan if he tried to help. They figured it out after a while, eventually learned to write, and it made things easier.

Dylan was a little hard to read. They weren't fluent in sign language until they were around ten, but they learned to read at seven. Dylan and Logan could talk to each other, the thing was whether Dylan wanted to. They hardly ever initiated a conversation with anyone who wasn't Jaxon.

Dylan didn't trust them. They were six years old and had a backpack packed because at any second, Logan was going to kick them out. That's what they thought.

Logan picked up on sign the quickest, followed by Dylan, and then Lily, and finally, Jaxon. That one wasn't great at picking up on languages. They had to sign slowly for them and for Dylan. Logan didn't mind.

Dylan was scared of him. They hid behind a locked door with Jaxon, huddled in the corner of the room until it was time to eat. They would take the plate, and watch the other kids, would wait until they were all done, wait thirty minutes, and then they would start. Once they were sure Logan wasn't poisoning them.

They were six years old.

One day, Logan tried to figure out a way to make Dylan trust him a little more, so he told them about the toys up in the attic. The children they belonged to were only a year younger than Dylan was.

So, that was how the kids discovered that the attic door had an automatic lock function when it closed.

Nobody could find Dylan for hours, because Logan was out trying to get something from the store and didn't know about the attic, and left Lily in charge while he was gone. He returned to find Jaxon in tears, Lily absolutely frantic, and Dylan sobbing in a locked attic.

It took several more hours for Logan to convince them that nobody locked them in there on purpose.

Two years passed, and the two kids had both decided that they wanted to go to school, because it was where Lily and Logan both left during the day, and Logan worried about leaving them home alone much more than he did about having them in school.

Dylan was eight for their first day of school, putting them in second-grade. Like with the other two, Logan had to say that they were siblings. He didn't really mind it as much as he did before.

Dylan insisted that they would be fine on their own, since the other kids were obviously in different grades. But as much as Dylan didn't trust any of them, they hated being alone.

Something happened that day. Dylan might have been overwhelmed, or something was said to them, or being alone was a lot harder than they thought.

Logan got off of work early to pick the kids up that day, and as he waited outside with the parents of other kids, Dylan was the first one out.

Dylan, fearfully looking around, chewing on their hand, crying, eyes snapping to meet Logan's gaze, making a beeline towards him, head burrowed in his stomach, sobbing. People turned to look, made little sympathetic noises, and Logan had to protect the poor kid from a few of the adults who brought it upon themselves to try to get them to stop crying.

Logan spent a lot of time trying to find the kid's families. But they never found Dylan's parents. Nobody knew where they were, and Dylan had only been three years old, they wouldn't have remembered anyways. Logan managed to find a file for Dylan somewhere, and found their parents through that. They learned from there that Dylan had been left on a dumpster in an alleyway nearby, and nobody could figure out a way to tell them. Logan was the one who ended up having to do it, when he was eighteen, and Dylan was nine. Dylan took the information about the abandonment, and simply left for the park across the street. 

Logan could tell that Dylan cried about it, face hidden with a hood pulled over their head when they came back. Neither of them talked about it, but Logan wanted to find Dylan's parents more by that point. He had a lot of words for them that he would never say in front of the kids.

They found the other kid's parents when they were eleven, a little while after they learned about Dylan. Logan expected them to leave, possibly for Dylan to go with them, because Dylan liked them the best.

The kid had looked uncomfortable- almost afraid- throughout the entire visit, and it only got worse when they started to argue. Logan had been out in the kitchen, he didn't know what it was about, and nobody spoke about it when it was done.

...When it was done, the kid had a broken wrist, Lily knocked out a grown man with a toy baseball bat, and their father was being arrested.

As Logan attempted a home-made cast around the kid's wrist, he decided that maybe those two were better off with him, anyway. They had said that they'd rather stay than let Logan try to find alternative family members for them.

Logan had six biological siblings that he never spoke to, and his parents, who he hadn't seen since he was eleven.

-----

(9/12/2016)

He always kept his door open. That was the rule, the first thing he told the kids. His door was open. Lily had nightmares, sometimes, and wanted to stay with him. Logan never minded. Jaxon joined every so often, and Dylan only once or twice.

One night, he recalled waking up to finding all three of the kids- Lily was thirteen, Jaxon was twelve, and Dylan was nine, he'd known the younger two for three years by that point- all asleep in the bathroom. Lily's hands were stained blue, Jaxon's hair was wet, also dyed blue, and Dylan was surprisingly unscathed. Jaxon's hair was sloppily cut to his ears, chopped poorly, done by the hands of three kids.

He woke up Jaxon, took Lily and Dylan back to their respective rooms, and gave him a proper hair cut. He already knew, if he was being honest. It hadn't been much of a shock when Jaxon whispered his name to him, when he cried after Logan smiled and said it was okay, when Jaxon did end up in his room for the rest of that night. Dylan came out maybe two weeks later, but Logan had never known them as anything but Dylan.

Lily was Lily, so she was accepting of them both (almost aggressively so) and Logan did as much research as he possibly could on the matter. Logan didn't care. As long as they were all happy. He was proud that either of them trusted him with that information at all.

-----

(10/13/2016)

The kids always faltered when introducing each other to people.

Logan referred to the kids as their names, like the rest of them did, and he would be asked one of three questions. If they were related, whether or not he was their adoptive father, (god forbid) or whether they were adoptive siblings. Logan always went with the siblings route, because he was not old enough to be their father at all and did not want to be referred to as such. But he never introduced them as siblings unless asked. 

He was hardly listening when Lily invited a friend over, and when she gestured to Logan, introducing him as her brother, and that'd been it. He didn't think anything of it, until a few hours later. He never mentioned it.

Later, she asked if it was okay if she did that, because she knew about his biological sister, and Logan decided that it was fine.

Jaxon was the second one, when he had to go home early from school, after falling from the monkey bars and hurting his arm, when the nurse opened the door for Logan.

"Your brother's here."

Jaxon stood up, followed Logan to the car, and fidgeted with his hands like he had a question that he didn't want to ask. Logan had to prompt him.

"Are we brothers?" Was Jaxon's question, and it caught Logan off guard. Jaxon's face immediately filled with regret. "Sorry. It's just that the- the teachers at school all say that we are, 'nd Lily calls you her brother, too. So I was just wondering..."

Logan shrugged. "You can call me whatever you like. I don't mind either way."

"...Okay." Jaxon played with the end of his hoodie string. "I think I'd like it."

And when Dylan used the sign for brother to get Logan's attention, that was the one that nearly made him cry. Dylan had just stood there, wondering why Logan was crying when they had simply wanted to inform him that they were out of apple juice.

-----

(11/12/2018)

Logan had found it mildly worrying that Dylan and Jaxon had both met a new person that day, named Cass and Leo respectively. Even more so when Jaxon told her that the Leo he met had been looking for a Logan. And when Dylan told him that the Cass had been looking for a Lily.

Dylan had invited the two over for dinner the next day. Logan said that was fine.

He accepted the twin's deaths ages ago. He made a mistake, a poor judgment in not taking them. He worried, though, that they would have ended up like Jasmine.

The two that Dylan invited over, had in fact ended up being the twins, looking so different from when they were ten. Logan guessed them to be sixteen now. They didn't look hurt, Cass had stayed relatively the same, now wearing black glasses, a brown cardigan sweater. She was polite, kind, she was the same as six years ago.

Leo was different, and painfully so. Sharp, angry, paranoid. Logan almost didn't recognize her. If she didn't share the same name as his supposedly-dead childhood friend, he wouldn't know it was the same one.

He let the twins stay. How couldn't he? He should've taken them with him from the beginning.

Two people turned to four with the addition of Jaxon and Dylan, and they stayed like that for five years, until the twins. Six people became nine, with the triplets that joined soon after.

Logan wouldn't change it for anything.

-----

(3/20/2019)

Logan's door was never locked. It was always open at night.

So the night that Logan woke up to frantic pounding on the door, to Sam screaming for him, when he shot up and scrambled for the doorknob, fumbling with the lock until it turned, it was worrying. Because he never locked or closed that door.

"...Sam?" Logan rubbed at his eye, and stared at him. His face had lost color, tears in his eyes, hands clenched into fists at his sides. "What's wrong? Is everything okay?"

Sam didn't speak, making some choked noise, gesturing to the kitchen, so Logan followed him, and slowed, and stopped.

His ears rang, he couldn't focus, he had to stay awake long enough to fix this. Blankly, he remembered Dylan telling him to hide the knives.

He told Sam to get Cass and to get Dylan, and the boy darted up the staircase, leaving Logan with Ryan and Elliot.

Ryan, eyes glazed over, pale, staring at his brother, blood flowing from a deep cut on his palm, dripping onto the tiled kitchen floor. Breathing shallow, he looked up at Logan, desperate.

He didn't say anything, and Logan didn't want him to. Moving carefully, he directed Ryan away from the scene, whispering for him to stop looking, as he led him to the countertops, sitting him down on the top, raising the bleeding hand into the air, searching for their first-aid kit.

Several footsteps ran down the stairs, and Logan couldn't even begin to imagine what the other's reactions would be.

Elliot, on his side in a pool of blood. Still alive, but barely. Dylan's magic was able to keep him alive, Cass's was able to fix the wound, and stop the bleeding, but it took both of them a long time, and Logan didn't want to think about Elliot at all so he didn't watch.

"It's really deep," Jaxon muttered, sitting near Ryan because he didn't want to see Elliot either. "If Cass doesn't... finish soon.. he might need stitches."

Logan knew that, but he appreciated Jaxon for filling the silence. Jaxon turned to Sam, asking a question.

"He won't like it," Sam cringed.

Logan hated giving stitches, and it turned out that Ryan shared their collective fear of needles. Every single one of them, besides the twins, were afraid of needles.

Logan never had stitches before, so when he told Ryan that they wouldn't hurt, he didn't actually know.

Whether Ryan was just afraid of needles, or in genuine pain, Logan didn't know, and it didn't matter, because either way, the minute his eyes locked on the needle in Logan's hand, he was screaming. Thrashing to get away, begging to be left alone, and it was a struggle, and Ryan didn't leave his room after that.

The aftermath of that, Logan didn't think anyone took it well.

Leo and Jaxon's fight was proof of that. 

Two months ago, they were inseparable. They contrasted each other so much, and yet complemented each other perfectly. Logan knew that on Saturdays, they would stay up either watching movies in Leo's room, or in Jaxon and Dylan's to play games until Dylan kicked them out. There was never one without the other, but Elliot was their third in that group. Elliot almost dying created a rift, and Leo took her anger out on Jaxon, and nobody found him until morning.

Leo and Ryan disappeared, and Cass left to stay with her cousins. Sam stayed with the others on the chance that his siblings would come back, and Logan left to finish college in-person. He hated to leave them, but this was something he couldn't fix.

Logan regretted leaving them so much. Sam called every day, updated him on everything that happened, and it was his favorite part of the day. Sam made new friends, Logan was happy for him, but sometimes, it was different. Sometimes, Sam was crying because of a bad nightmare, worrying that he would never see his siblings again, that Elliot would die, and Logan reassured him that it was going to be okay. He didn't know if that was the truth.

Mostly, he regretted leaving because of his siblings. Sam and Elliot were a whole separate thing entirely. Of course, he cared about them, he was worried about Elliot just as much as the others were, but the others, those were his main priority.

Dylan, especially, was upset that he left. Logan visited whenever he could, and Dylan always avoided him. Logan knew exactly why, and he hated that he was reminding Dylan of their parents.

Jaxon was just angry in general, called Logan an idiot for leaving, and yelled and screamed when he had to leave again. Lily had to hold him back from literally attacking him.

Lily said that she understood, that she wasn't mad, but Logan could see the undercurrents of anger hidden in her eyes. She denied it every time.

-----

(6/7/2020)

Logan finished packing the last of his things into his car a while ago, and had resorted to sitting on an empty mattress. Sighing, he stood up, knowing that it was better to get it over with.

He'd be home in two days.