Disclaimer: I don't own the X-Men. Wish I did. The Ryans are mine, though.

Chapter 1: Doctor Ryan

People were screaming and running in all directions.

It was terribly distracting, Scott noticed as he aimed his optical beams at another Sentinel. Jean was using telekinesis to slow a Sentinel down so Wolverine could use his adamantium claws on its legs, but the emotional currents were making it hard for her to concentrate. Storm was laying down a cover of fog around the battle scene so that Rogue could sneak in and rip another one's head off its metal shoulders, but the fog was also obscuring the roadway for escaping pedestrians. Scott cursed as a running man blundered out of the fog and crashed into him and caused his optical beam to go wide, pulverizing another section of the crumbling brick building behind the giant robot. "Stay back!" he shouted at the man, who backed away from him with wide eyes. He turned his attention back toward the scene before him, just in time to see a large section of the brick building pull away from its place and begin to fall toward the ground…toward Jean.

"Jean!" he yelled, trying to warn her. He suddenly seemed to be running in slow motion, but the crumbling wall was falling faster than he could move as he threw himself toward his beloved. Jean looked up, her mouth making an O of surprise as the wall fell on her.

He fell to his knees beside the pile of rubble, scraping his knuckles on the rough brick as he tried to dig her out. "Jean," he kept calling, as Wolverine joined him. Both men heard a muttered curse from somewhere in the pile, then a large section of the rubbish simply lifted itself into the air, thanks to Jean's telekinesis, and she scrambled out and sat gasping on the pavement between the two men.

"Are ya okay?" Wolverine said, panting from exertion.

Jean shook her head. The slight motion made her dizzy, and nauseous, and she thought dazedly that she must have a slight concussion. However, of more importance was the fiery pain in her left arm: "I…I think it's broken," she moaned as Scott gently took her wrist and lifted her arm. He looked at the blood that stained her torn sleeve and agreed with her.

"Wrap it up, guys!" he yelled to the others. "We've gotta go home! Jean's hurt!"

"We are done," Storm said quietly from behind him, startling him. He whirled. She stood right behind him, joined by Gambit, Rogue, Iceman, Angel, and Psylocke. They all looked a bit the worse for wear, except Rogue, but since she was nearly invincible, that was to be expected. Jean was the only member of the team that had a serious injury, and Scott cursed himself for his ill-aimed blast as he slipped an arm under her good one and helped her stand.

Jean groaned as she stood and the ground wobbled under her. Storm looked at the bruise across her friend's temple, and said gravely, "We should return home as soon as possible. I believe you have a concussion."

A sudden commotion in the crowd attracted their attention as a woman wearing a white lab coat elbowed her way through. "Let me through! I'm a doctor! Let me through!"

One man who got her elbow in his ribs grabbed her arm roughly. "Where are you goin', lady?" he said. "You a mutie freak like them? Or a mutie lover?"

She drew herself up to her full height (about five feet four, Wolverine estimated) and huffed, "And if I am, I certainly don't see what business of it is yours! I don't see you offering to help! Have some respect for those who just saved your life!" She spared him a quick glance up and down, and muttered, "Then again, as you plainly have no respect for yourself, I suppose I overestimate your intelligence, asking you to respect someone else!" She yanked her arm out of his grip, ignoring his nonplussed look, and reached the X-Men with no further hindrance. "Put her down," she ordered Scott.

"Ma'am, really, this is not necessary," Scott tried to object. She pinned him with a glare that would have melted his bones if they had been lasers.

"I said, 'put her down'," the woman said. "She shouldn't be moved anywhere with that concussion." Bemused, Scott carefully laid his wife down on the pavement as the doctor knelt beside Jean. "Now, what's her name?"

"Jean," Storm supplied as Scott just stared at her. The doctor looked up from her examination and grinned at Scott. "Not used to being helped like this, huh?" The grin softened a bit as she registered Scott's concern. "She'll be fine," the doctor said kindly to him. To Wolverine, hovering behind her, she snapped, "Will you stop hovering, for gosh sakes? Go rip something up if you're so minded!" She waved a hand at him. Wolverine retreated a short distance but continued to eye her warily. Gambit hid a smile behind his hand at the looks Wolverine was giving the doctor. Few people could order Wolverine around like that; this woman was now on the short list of those who could.

The woman had produced a penlight from the pocket of her lab coat and was shining it into Jean's eye. "Pupils dilated…poor reflex…erratic breathing…" She pushed Jean's hair aside so she could see the bruise, and winced. "Yikes…no wonder…okay…surface laceration, hematoma…hmmm, a little blood…does this hurt?" she applied pressure with her fingers to a portion of Jean's skull just behind the bruise.

"No," Jean replied.

"Okay, then you don't have a skull fracture," she sat back, relieved. "Now brace yourself," and she touched the laceration on Jean's scalp. Jean gasped and squeezed her eyes shut at the burst of sudden pain as the probing fingers brushed the wound. The doctor drew in her breath, once, sharply, then breathed out. And just like that, the lancing pain in Jean's temple went away, leaving behind a throbbing but bearable headache. The woman, who had been crouching beside Jean, seemed to suddenly lose her balance and fell with a bump to her knees. She tried to cover up the movement by reaching for Jean's arm. "Now, how's this feel?" she went on. Jean moaned in reply. The doctor probed gently, feeling where Jean twitched as she felt her way down the redhead's arm. "You've got a fracture here, in the radius. You're okay, it's fixable. If you'll just hold still, then…" and she did the same thing again, that quick breath in and out, and the pain in Jean's arm suddenly went away. Well, most of it, anyway…again, there was a residual ache left.

The woman stood, brushing her knees off, and looked at them. "This seems cliché, I know," she said, "But take two aspirin and give me a call in the morning. Here's my number." She handed Scott a small business card with her name and number on it, turned, and disappeared back into the crowd. Scott looked at the card. Her name was Sara Ryan.

Dr. Sara Ryan climbed the last few steps to her apartment with her teeth gritted against the awful pain. Why is it, she thought as she fumbled for her keys and let herself inside, that healing my own injuries takes no time at all, but healing others makes me feel like I've run myself through the wringer? In the cool darkness of her apartment she slumped against her front door, sitting with her back against it and allowed herself the luxury of a few tears of pain. Then she struggled to her feet and switched on the light. And screamed in shock.

Wolverine leaned against the hall closet door, casually chewing on a toothpick. "Hello darlin'," he drawled.

"What the hell are you doing in my apartment?" Sara snapped at him, her hand on the doorknob, ready to run.

"Checkin' up on ya," he said, pushing off the wall and walking over to her.

"Why?" She snarled at him. "Don't come any closer. I do carry a gun."

"Yeah, I know," Wolverine said, coming to a stop in front of her. "But it's in yer purse, darlin', an' there's no way you're gonna be able to use it with yer arm like that." He poked the toothpick toward her arm.

Sara hid her arm behind her back. "How did you know?" she asked, eyes narrowed.

He approached her again. "The gun, or the arm?"

"Both."

He tapped his nose. "I've got a better sense o' smell than a dog," he informed her. "Smelled the gun in yer purse. As to the arm, I smelled yer blood when ya healed Jeannie. How'd ya do that?" He gently drew her arm from behind her back, looking at the sleeve of her white coat, which was now soaked with her own blood. He reached toward her face, and she flinched from his upraised hand. "Easy, there. I ain't gonna hurt ya." He pushed aside her thick blue-black hair and inspected the cut on her scalp. "Looks a little better now than it did on Jean."

"I heal," she snapped. "So why are you here?" He was silent as she dropped her purse on the end of the sofa and tried to ease her lab coat off her sore arm. When that proved difficult he came up behind her and helped her. She sucked in a breath as the fabric, stuck to her arm by dried blood, came free. Wolverine led her into her small bathroom and turned on the water in the sink, holding her arm under the tap.

"Returnin' a favor," he said, just as she'd given up hope of getting an answer from him. "You helped us. I'm helpin' you." He looked around for a towel. "Where do ya…oh," he said as he turned and was greeted by the sight of a couple of neatly folded towels on top of the toilet back. He picked one up and gently patted her arm dry, looking at the thin layer of skin that had grown over the ugly gash in only two hours. "How long's this gonna take ya to heal?" he asked.

She inspected her arm. "Probably be okay by tomorrow morning," she said. "The bone's already knitting; the skin just has to heal now." She sat quietly for a moment, then said, "Are you hungry? Thirsty?"

He looked at her, and she flushed. "Well, if you're going to help me at least I can show some thanks," she said. "I don't have a lot…I, umm, haven't had time to the grocery store this week yet, but maybe a sandwich or something?"

Wolverine looked at her for a moment. "After a healin' like this, I usually prefer meat," he said. "You should too. Ya need the protein."

Sara bit her lip, thinking frantically. It wasn't that she hadn't had time to go grocery shopping; she simply didn't have the money. Her lawyer had told her he needed more to file more paperwork for her in divorce court, so she had given him what he asked. It hadn't left her much afterward; in fact, without the free lunch at the hospital she worked at, she would be starving right now. She was hungry; right now, very hungry, and she knew what he said was true, but she had no money. "I, uhh, I ate at the hospital I work at," she temporized.

Wolverine knew she was hiding something. He was trying to figure out what when there came a knock at her door. She went to answer it. As soon as the door opened, though, he smelled fear from her. Puzzled, he looked around the bathroom doorframe.

"Get out of here right now or I call the cops!" Sara was trying to close the door on a tall, rather handsome man, dressed in an expensive suit, who had one foot jammed in the door.

"Sara, come on," the man was saying. "I just want to talk."

"Yeah? Well I don't!" she tried to slam the door again, but he pushed his way in again, this time to stand in her front entranceway. Wolverine had to suppress a growl. There was something he didn't like about this guy and the fact that Sara was scared as hell of him added to his dislike.

He looked around the little efficiency apartment. Wolverine had already seen it contained little furniture: a small bed, a battered dresser with a cracked mirror atop it, several cardboard boxes stacked on their side with books in them, and a small bedside table with a tiny lamp on it beside the couch. There was a small round table with a chair beside it and a refrigerator in the corner. This man in his expensive suit looked completely out of place in here.

"Sara," the man said, his smooth, oily voice grating on the nerves of the unseen listener, "come on. Give up. You'll never get the divorce. Give this up and come home. God, your bathroom at home is the size of this apartment!"

Sara lost her temper. "You want me to come home? Why? So you can bring your 'secretaries' and 'assistants', your 'business associates', home right in front of me? So you can humiliate me, degrade me, and hurt me again? So you can play the perfect married man during the day and beat me up at night? I'm not coming home, Richard. Get out." She brushed past him to go open the door.

He grabbed her arm, the healing one, causing her to cry out in pain. "Listen to me, you--" he dropped her arm and paced in a circle, once, fast, stopping in front of her. "I am not letting you go. You are mine. Understand?"

She pushed away the finger wagging in front of her face. "I. Am. Not. Coming. Home. Is there any part of that you don't understand?" she snapped.

He backhanded her hard and fast across her right cheek with such force she staggered back a step. He followed her, grabbing a handful of her thick black hair and slamming her bodily up against the wall, ignoring her sudden cry of pain as her mending arm was caught between her body and the wall. "Listen to me, Sara. I'm not letting you go--"

"Yeah ya are," came a low, gravelly voice at his elbow. The voice was accompanied by a sharp poke in his ribs. "Let 'er go or I'll shred this expensive suit you're wearin' and give it ta 'er fer a pot scrubber."

Richard Ryan turned, to see a growling, animalistic man standing behind him with three sharp claws puncturing the jacket of his suit. "Are you crazy?" he let Sara go, letting her slide numbly to the floor, and turned to face Wolverine. "Do you know who I am?"

"Criminal attorney, now Senator Richard Ryan. Yeah, I know who ya are. Ya wanna know what else I know?" Wolverine poked him a little harder in the ribs for emphasis. "You're a pathetic little control freak gettin' his kicks outta harassin' and beatin' up on yer wife. But I got news fer ya, dude. Not in front o' me, ya ain't." The man backed out of the apartment at the tip of Wolverine's claws. But as Wolverine slammed the door on him, he called to Sara, "This isn't over yet, bi--" and the slamming of the door cut off the rest of his words.

Wolverine hurried to her, slipping an arm under her good one and helping her to stand. She got to her feet, sniffed once, and wiped her face with the hem of her T-shirt. She went over to the mirror, examining her face, at the purple bruise that was already starting to fade, and sighed. "I'm sorry you saw that," she said quietly.

Wolverine sat on the couch, thinking of many things he wanted to say but decided against. Finally he said, "So that was yer ex-husband, I guess?"

"Yeah," she sighed. The sigh spoke volumes. "At least, he will be my ex whenever my lawyer gets around to completing the paperwork for my divorce. I had to file civilly; with the way I heal, there were never any bruises or signs of abuse for anyone to see, nothing I could report. And with his influence and connections, no one would believe me." She felt her arm. "Look, I don't want to rush you out, but I'm really tired--"

"I'm goin'." Wolverine stood. She escorted him to the door and he was about to step out when she spoke.

"You know, I don't even know your name. I think the news people call you Wolverine, but I can't see your friends calling you that."

He turned back to her. "Logan. My name's Logan."