Author's Note: Sara is mine. Trader is mine. The Hunt is mine. Xmen and all their toys are property of others.

Sara lay on the bed, unmoving. She felt an hour drag by and didn't care. She should have cared. A Hunter was supposed to care, right? But right now she felt nothing. Nothing. Not even pain, which she would have welcomed.

She knew Logan was there. He came in without knocking. Without trying to be quiet. He knew it would only have set her off again, that her nerves were so hair-triggered they might as well have been on the outside of her skin. She could smell him smell her, assessing the damage.

"Blood. Yours and a lot of other. Smoke. Cheap cigars and metal."

"Give the man a prize." Sara turned away from him.

"I'm assumin' the shithead who declawed you is dead, because otherwise you would still be hunting him down."

"No." The whisper was full of more pain than he thought was possible, and he'd a pretty good grip of what pain was. "Leave it alone, Wolf."

"Ah, hell, darlin'." He crossed the room then. "Tell me."

"What part of 'leave it alone' are you not understanding?" Sara growled. She sat up and swung her legs down.

"The part where you came here with a pizza, Cat. If you wanted to crawl off and lick your wounds you would have left civilization behind."

"I came here instead. I don't why I came here. I should leave." Sara's hands came up, she hugged herself, rubbed her arms. She didn't wince as the ruined claws gouged her skin. Fresh blood. It healed, but too slowly. Logan didn't like it. He couldn't put his finger on it, but something had taken his Sara and hurt her. With a capital hurt. He knew the kind of damage it took to knock down a healing factor like hers to the point her own body couldn't repair these scratches. Knowledge did not make it better.

She was somewhere else, whispering things that he didn't think she knew she was saying. "Shouldn't have come here. Shouldn't have left the room. Duty. Honor. Blood." Her body was even tighter than it had been, if that were possible.

"Cat!" He snapped. Haunted eyes flew up to see him. They focused. She was back with him. "Sit down." Tried to be more gentle, hoped it would work. It didn't. "That's an order, soldier!" Old tone, the sort you use to a raw recruit thrown to the wolves of battle way before they're ready, the sort that would make even him respond automatically if he had been pressed beyond his limits of mental fatigue.

There came a point at which it could be a massive relief to follow orders. The point where your brain could flee to whatever foxhole would offer shelter. Dig in. Hide from the nightmares you've lived. Let your body tend itself until you can bear to return to it. Sara sat down. Her back was straight as an arrow, and her tension went down a bare notch. He could smell the fear on her. The aftermath of pain. He knew she wouldn't thank him for bringing anyone else in to see her like this, when she emerged from that mental blankness.

First things first. Assess the damage. He got a damp washcloth and some towels. Started at her feet. She didn't twitch when he found the strand of razorwire that was still poking out of her left calf, or when he saw the last yellow of a bruise the size of a cinderblock on her hip. He told her to stand and got her shirt off. She wasn't wearing a bra. There was dried blood under the shirt, there were other, worse smells, and he forced himself to focus on the task. It wasn't his friend. It wasn't his sometime lover. Just another comrade wounded in battle.

Sara whimpered, then. He had never seen her so... defeated. She wasn't just another wounded soldier. She was his. And she was still hurting.

"Come here." He pulled her into his arms. There was the hint of stiffness, then she went limp. No tears, just a shuddering that would not stop.

"I hoped you would be here," she whispered. "When I was there, before the blackness, I saw your face. You told me not to die. I didn't."