DISCLAIMER: Dark Angel borrowed, no profits realized.

A/N: This is something that popped up when I was working on a sequel to CJ and a million other things. As often happens, this one took over and became more insistent than the rest. You'll see right away it's an AU, and spins away from S1 canon just around the kiss in "Meow..."

A special thanks to Mari83, who made me rethink some things.

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Asylum

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from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer: September 14, 2024

Staying Strong in the Struggle

By Thomas Butler

P-I News Staff

It's been seven years since Seattle saw the first broadcast of the man known simply as "Eyes Only," a journalist turned underground partisan in the fight to rid the local, regional and federal governments of the corruption that sprang up like weeds in the wake of ill-gotten legislation following the Pulse. For nearly six years he continued the fight, anonymously directing scores of those who volunteered for the cause and who, with their charismatic leader, stirred the imaginations and the hope of the millions who waited for his broadcasts. Ultimately, he was able to turn around much of the crime and graft that had been so long ignored by those in power who at the very least allowed it to happen.

But the cost was high: in the last months of 2022, Eyes Only was finally unmasked, and the world learned that journalist Logan Cale was Eyes Only. There is no one in the Northwest territories who hasn't heard it all by now: along the way, Cale himself was a victim of the criminals he brought to justice. Before Edgar Sonrisa was killed and his crimes fully revealed, Cale was shot by one of Sonrisa's men and left a paraplegic. Yet Eyes Only's work barely paused until he was forced above-ground in a sting operation he masterminded that netted the last corrupt players in city hall, finally bringing Seattle's city government back to one serving the people, not merely their masters. The personal cost for Logan Cale again, however, was high: this time, the hacker's true identity was revealed.

Cale continued Eyes Only for several months afterward, even bringing back the Pacific Free Press as a free, weekly newspaper in addition to his hacks. But in mid-2023, in a farewell broadcast, the first he'd ever done lasting over sixty seconds, he passed on the work he'd begun to his lieutenants and bid Seattle good-bye.

When he left, Logan Cale left more questions in his wake than answers. Why did he do it? What was the genesis of Eyes Only: one, jarring event, or the chronic, continual conditions around him? What drove Cale to put his personal wealth and his safety on the line, time after time, for countless people whom he didn't know and would never meet? What was the driving force behind the man who many believe saved Seattle from complete and utter lawlessness?

And once so committed, what allowed him to leave it all behind and leave the city he'd worked so hard to save? Some say it was because of threats ... some believe it was because he'd had it, was spent and exhausted and had nothing left to give just as more of the needy, destitute and desperate sought his help, even demanded his money, his skills ... some even say that, without the thrill of the secret life he led, he wanted to restart his life again in anonymity, with new adventures, excitement and intrigue...

They'd all be wrong...