Disclaimer: Ok, let's imagine for one minute that Logan did belong to me...do you really think i'd share? So, i guess it's a good thing he DOESN'T belong to me, along with the rest of the people in the X-Men universe...:)

AN: This chapter is basically the last chapter from Logan's perspective. I had originally written them both with the intention of arbitrarily deciding which one stayed and which one would never see the light of day. However, after reading them both and liking them too much to pitch one, I kept them. If you don't care about Logan's persepective on the accident, you should be able to skip this chapter and the story will still make sense.

Chapter 7.

(Logan)

You're sitting in the driver's seat of a non-descript black sedan, waiting for your partner to return. Of course, the problem with non-descript black sedans is that they scream "government" and anyone with half a brain would have already dispatched snipers to the roofs of the nearby buildings. You tried to explain that something a little sportier, like a Camaro, would have actually blended in better, but does anyone listen?

This is your first time out with your partner, a tiny little broad named Hellcat. At least, that's what everyone expects you to call her, just like everyone is supposed to call you Wolverine. You take a minute to wonder if everyone has some kind of animal name and who's the unfortunate bastard stuck with something like "Platypus". You chuckle at your own joke.

You hear a sound behind you, too faint for a normal human to hear, but you're not a normal human. Your hypersensitive nose also catches the scent of Hellcat, combined with cordite and…blood? You're out of the car in a flash.

You look down towards the mouth of the alley where you're parked in time to see her running around the corner at top speed. You hear the sound of a muffled gunshot; someone is shooting at her with a silenced pistol. You spring your claws and run towards her to give her some cover. You've been told that she heals pretty fast, but not nearly as fast as you do. So if she needs backup, you're supposed to do what you can to minimize damage to her. You get within five feet of her when a bullet takes her high in the right shoulder and she drops to the pavement. You pause just long enough to make sure she's still breathing, but the smell of your partner's blood brings out that feral rage that you usually fear more than you'll ever admit to anyone. Tonight, however, you embrace it.

You stalk quickly to the end of the alley and take stock of your surroundings. You can hear at least three people in the general area and all of them stink of sweat, cordite and fear. You hear them speaking, making a rough plan to get into the alley and finish the job. They don't know it yet, but this is the last conversation any of them are ever going to have. At least one of the men has to circle all the way around the building to get to the fence that separates this part of the alley from another that runs perpendicular to it. Another is across the street, hugging the front of the facing buildings to come from the left. The last is coming from the right, but none of them are going to move until they're all in position. All the better for you to take them out.

You wait a few moments for the first man, the one on the right, to get into position. You can hear him breathing just around the corner from you, but you want to wait until the one going to the left is too busy crossing the street to notice you. A heartbeat later, you hear him begin his frantic scramble across and you reach around and grab the right hand guy by the throat, pulling him into the alley with no more noise than the shuffling of feet. He barely has time to register what's happening to him when you bury your claws into his gut and twist. His eyes widen in surprise, no one ever expects to die, and you lower him gently to the ground. A few seconds later, the guy coming from the left is in position and makes the mistake of whispering for his friend since he's no longer where he's supposed to be. The guy pokes his head around the corner, but you've already crossed the gap and your claws rake across his face, spraying blood from the vessels in his neck that you made sure to catch on the way down. He falls to the pavement, drowning in his own blood. Two down, one to go.

You've barely made it back to where the car is when you hear a muffled sound like a "whump" followed by the impact of the bullet in your left side. Don't these stupid fuckers know anything? You don't shoot the Wolverine, it'll only piss him off. This time is no exception. You increase your speed and the guy looks up at the sound and sucks in his breath in terror. All he sees is you, blood sprayed across your face, more blood dripping from the nine-inch ivory claws that extend from both of your hands. He takes another shot at you as you come face to face with him; a point blank shot to the chest that would kill a normal man but simply makes you even angrier. You grab him around the throat and squeeze, listening to him try to gasp for air, then thrust your claws into his chest and twist. You toss the corpse over the fence and it makes a very satisfying thump when it hits the ground.

You take another brief moment to calm yourself, your bloodlust is high and you have a wounded partner to tend to. Once you've come back down, you rush back to Hellcat and pick her up. You're a bit surprised at how heavy she is. She looks like she weighs a hundred pounds if she's lucky, but she feels like almost twice that. You lay her gently in the back seat and cover her with your jacket before getting back in the car and gunning the engine. You're halfway to your extraction point when she comes to.

"Ah fuck I hate it when they shoot me." She says.

"Yeah, me too. Pisses me off." You reply, glancing in the rearview mirror as she sits up.

"And the bullets hurt almost as much coming out as they do going in."

You shrug. "I don't even notice anymore." She snorts and mumbles something that sounded like "arrogant bastard', but it amuses you more than anything. You glance back again only to see her with the claw of her left index finger out trying to dig the bullet out herself. "Hey, leave it. We'll get it when we get back to base."

"Fuck that. Stryker'll just leave it in til it comes out on it's own." She says bitterly. "He's a right prick, that one."

"Why would he do that?" You ask, confused.

"Cuz he knows it'll heal in a couple hours and I'll be good as new." She gasps in pain and you hear the slug hit the floor of the car. " Why waste perfectly good medical stuff on a nearly indestructible mutant whore?"

Her statement shocks you. "What are you sayin'? He don't patch up his own people?"

She climbs over the seat to sit next to you, now wearing your jacket to cover her bloody shirt. "Ah, my friend, you've just answered your own question. We are not 'his people'. We're mutants, remember?"

"No shit, 'Cat. But I thought that we were supposed to be workin' for them, doin' the really hard stuff that normal humans can't do."

"Oh yeah, I'm sure that's what they told you. They told me the same damn thing." She rolls her shoulder and winces. "But it's no more true now than it was fifteen months ago when I was first 'recruited' for the cause."

The way she said "recruited" makes you pause. How did you get joined up with them in the first place? You remember that you were already in the Canadian Special Forces doing covert ops and everyone called you…what did they call you? You shake your head in an attempt to clear it. "If he hates mutants so much, why the hell did he recruit us?"

"If I could answer that, I'd be the wisest person on the planet." She's staring straight ahead now, her eyes looking a little glassy. "At this point, I don't even give a shit anymore. I'm just hoping to find a way out someday."

You pass the rest of the trip in silence, but you continue to steal glances in her direction. At some point, she falls asleep and you can't help but notice how different she looks without that pissed off scowl she always wears. Hell, if she wasn't your partner, you might have even considered hitting on her. But you know damn well that work and pleasure should not mix. You wake her when you arrive at the extraction point, abandoned chemical factory on the outskirts of town and they debrief you on the chopper ride back to base. She hands a couple computer disks to the ranking officer, a Major Bodette, then collapses back into slumber. Bodette congratulates you on a job well done in taking out the shooters, but after what Hellcat told you, you start to wonder which side you're really on now.

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It all happened so fast, even my superior reflexes were unequal to the task. One minute we're riding along I-96 at a decent clip, the next the bike is starting to slide. We must have hit something in the pavement because the next thing I saw was Angela flying over my head just as the bike flipped over and slid a good hundred feet with me underneath it. I registered a sickening sound, much like a tenderizing hammer hitting a thick steak and I just knew that was Angela. I must have hit my head on the concrete wall that surrounded that part of the highway because I blacked out for a bit. When my vision cleared, I could hear voices. I stood up and looked around.

"Holy shit, she's still alive!"

"For now, but look at her, she's bleeding too much."

"Crap, I can't believe that guy is standing!"

There was a knot of people over near the edge of the highway where some construction was going on and I could smell blood, Angela's blood. I ran over to her, just repeating "no, no, no" like saying it would make it true. I pushed my way through the people to see horror.

She'd landed on some rebar, there were three lengths coming out of her torso and one through her left thigh. At least one of the steel rods was in the exact position of her heart. God damn it! I fuckin' killed her again!

She looked at me and she tried to say my name. She was ghostly white and fading fast, but I didn't know what to do. "Angela, no! No honey, you'll be all right, just hold on." I took her ice-cold hand in mine and she tried to grasp it but she was too weak. "Come on, hold on."

She managed to smile at me; I can only imagine that it took the last of her energy, before speaking her last words. "Just don't wait. Understand? Don't let them wait." Her eyes closed slowly, like she was going to sleep and her hand went limp in mine. I couldn't help it, I threw my head back and screamed. I heard her give one last gasp before the end and it seems that I felt it when she slipped away.

I felt hands grasping at me, telling me to sit down, that help was on the way, to let her go. I didn't want to, I wanted to pick her up and bring her with me. I knew, intellectually, that she'd be coming back tomorrow. But the mind and the heart don't always communicate very well and humans tend to let themselves be fooled by their eyes. And my eyes were filled with the horrifying scene of the woman I was beginning to care about a hell of a lot dead because I'm a fucking idiot.

The sound of sirens filled the air and my head snapped up. I knew I had to get the hell out of there before they arrived, I had no way to explain the remnants of blood on my clothing where the pavement had scraped away cloth and skin. I looked around, frantic, then shoved my way back through the people and took off. We'd just come across an overpass, so I made my way there and jumped to the highway below. I felt the impact from my ankles through my spine, but it's times like these that I'm glad I have a metal skeleton. I dashed quickly to the off-ramp and ran as fast as I could until I found a pay phone.

The only person I could contact right now was Ricky, who had been at the bar when we set out. I told him there'd been an accident and what happened to Angela. My voice broke when I told him, but I didn't know how to tell him not to worry about it. He asked where I was and said he'd send someone to pick me up. Fifteen minutes later, a very ugly brown Ford pulled up next to me and I climbed in.

It was Carl, the other bartender at The Dive. He looked me over but didn't say anything about the state of my clothing on the trip back. I barely let him stop the car when we reached the bar; I just wanted the hell out of there. And I wanted to wash Angela's blood off of me. I vaguely heard Ricky say "Jesus fucking Christ" as I passed through the bar to the office and I blocked everything else out as I made my way up the stairs. I opened the door with the keys (even though I would have preferred to kick it in) and I started removing my clothes in a trail that ended in the bathroom. I got into the shower and turned the water on full blast hot, then sank to the floor, shaking.

Sixteen days. We'd had sixteen amazing days before this. She'd finally started talking about our time at Alkali Lake, telling me about some of the training we'd received but also about the extreme disciplinary measures that were taken for mission failure. Just last night, she'd told me about the first mission we ever went on together. I still didn't remember it clearly, but it seemed like the more she told me, the more things were coming through in my dreams. I even found myself sitting downstairs at the bar on occasion and little things would flash through my mind that she hadn't told me yet. I don't know what it was about her, but she was doing a damn fine job of breaking down whatever it was that kept my memory at bay.

Now this. I sat there in the shower letting the water scald me, an unbelievable pain shooting through my being. I thought it had hurt to watch Jean die. Compared to this, that was a fucking picnic. It made me realize more than ever that I hadn't been in love with Jean, even though the attraction had been there. What I was feeling now was second only to having molten metal bonded to my bones.

After about twenty minutes, I finally started to calm down and think rationally. Yes, Angela was dead. But she wasn't going to stay that way. In just under twenty-four hours, she'd be back again. The problem was, she'd probably already been taken to the morgue and there was no way I was going to be able to get in there and get her out before that happened. I strained my brain trying to remember if anything like this had ever happened to us before, but my mind stayed infuriatingly blank. I decided I'd boiled myself enough and shut the water off.

My clothes were completely thrashed, I wouldn't even be able to salvage the jeans. Grumbling, I went in search of other clothes and pulled them on as quickly as I could. I threw myself on the couch and held my head in my hands, part of me still grieving for the dead woman I would see again tomorrow. I don't know how long I sat like that, but after a while I heard a soft knock at the door. I raised my head and took a deep breath; it was Ricky. I crossed over and opened it.

"Hey Logan. Can I come in?" He asked, looking around.

"Sure." I held the door and he walked right over the sofa. After securing the door again, I sat in the armchair. "I'm sorry. It was an accident."

Oddly, Ricky just gave a short bark of laughter. "Man, don't worry about it." He said. "I was just coming up here because…how much do you know about her?"

I narrowed my eyes. "Enough, why?"

"Did you know that she's…special?"

"I know why I think she is. What are you gettin' at?"

He took a deep breath and looked at me hard. "This doesn't leave this room, you understand me?" I nodded. "She doesn't know that I know this, ok?" I nodded again and he took another deep breath. "Angela…she doesn't die, ya know?"

My eyes narrowed. "What are you sayin'?"

"I'm saying I know what she is, I know she's a mutant."

"How the fuck do you know that?" I growled, my claws itching just under the skin.

"It was an accident, really. Hell, it was so long ago I don't even know if she realizes I was there when it happened." He went on to tell me about something that had happened just over seven years ago, about a month after Angela had moved here. She was working as a bartender at a seedy little joint across town and Ricky had a cousin who lived just down the street. One night as she was walking home after her shift, she'd been jumped by some gangbangers and one of them had knifed her pretty good. She had somehow managed to stumble to an abandoned house before passing out, but she left a blood trail that a blind man could have followed, including a decent smear on the side of Ricky's car. As one of the few concerned citizens in the neighborhood that night, he followed the trail to the house and called out, but didn't get an answer. Thinking maybe she might need help, he entered cautiously and found her sprawled out on the bathroom floor, dead as a doornail. Now, this being Detroit, it was a risk to call the police and tell them you found a body, so he simply left her there. However, he also had a conscience and that kept him up the whole night, wracked with guilt. Finally, he decided to report it and called the police the next night and gave them an anonymous tip from a pay phone down the street.

Unfortunately, the police had ways of tracking anonymous calls even in those days and they found the pay phone he used. They started knocking on doors and asking everyone if they'd phoned in a tip about a body. It took them a little while to get to Ricky, but as soon as they asked him he freaked a little and they knew it was him and arrested him on the spot for making a phony report to the police. They took him downtown and questioned him for hours but his story never changed. Yes, they'd found a lot of blood and yes, they'd found the trail and followed it to the source. It still didn't change the fact that there was no body in that house when they got to it. But, since he had a spotless record, they simply fined him and let him go.

It wasn't until years later when she opened RnR and was looking for bartenders that he crossed her path again. When he arrived for his interview, he almost passed out right at her feet. She'd even joked with him, asked if he'd seen a ghost and he made some lame excuse to her. He obviously got the job, ultimately becoming the manager of The Dive and he never once said anything to her about knowing she was a mutant.

"Look Logan, I don't want her to get in trouble. I don't know how her mutation works, but I do know that if she's gonna rise from the dead, she'll be doing it in a very bad place. We have to get her out of there if we can."

I leaned forward and clenched my hands together. "Believe me, bub, if there was a way for us to do it and not get arrested for body snatchin', I'd do it in a heartbeat. But I get the feelin' she's done this before and I'm sure she'll be all right. If they try anythin' that might threaten her in any way, she'll fight tooth and nail to get out of it."

Ricky just nodded and we sat there for a while, lost in our own thoughts. He finally stood, said he had to get back to the bar and I let him out then sat back on the sofa. My eyes fell on the red cabinet in the corner and I thought of the treasure box it contained and my guts twisted again. Sixteen amazing days and here I was, alone with only my thoughts to keep me company. I honestly didn't know how I'd ever make it through the night.

Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

I finally fell into an uneasy sleep about four in the morning, but my dreams were filled with the sight of her impaled on those steel bars. I finally gave up trying to get any real sleep around ten o'clock, which only left about an hour before she'd be sitting up in the middle of the morgue. I spent the whole hour pacing in the kitchen by the phone, knowing she'd call me if she managed to escape. Time slowed to a crawl and it was well over an hour before the phone rang. When it did, I nearly jumped out of my skin.

"Angela! Where the hell are you?" She quickly outlined the situation for me and I was in turn pissed as hell and worried sick, but they were both overshadowed by the sheer relief I felt at hearing her voice. She'd just told me to come get her and be ready to drive really fast when she uttered a curse and the phone went dead in my hand. I didn't even take the time to hang up her phone, I just grabbed her car keys off the peg in the kitchen and I was out the door.

Even if I'd never known Angela in a previous life, I would've fallen in love with her on the basis of her car alone. It's not every day that a (supposed) thirty-something woman chose to drive a 1968 GTO with a 350 horsepower V-8 engine, a Hemi 4 speed transmission and I suspected that the extra button on the dash was for a nitro boost. It was painted a garish shade of orange and the only thing missing was a naked lady painted on the hood. I couldn't help but smile at the look we would get from Cyclops if we came rolling up to the mansion in this baby. I smiled even wider at the look that would be on his face when Angela told him to keep his grubby mitts off of it.

I rolled up to the city morgue less than twenty minutes later and looked up to the roof. Angela peeked her head over the edge and waved me around to the alley in the back. I got the car positioned so the passenger side was nearest to her and opened the door. My eyes nearly fell out when I saw her climb down the wall using only her claws. Near the end, her eyes widened at something she saw and I turned my head in time to see a security guard witness the last six feet or so of her climb. She literally leaped off the side of the building, twisted in the air and landed a couple feet from the open door, diving in and pulling it after her as I gunned the engine.

She directed me on a fairly scenice route back to The Dive and I was a little annoyed that we didn't have more time. But there was no denying that she'd been seen and it was apparent from her generally pissy attitude that she was going to have to leave Detroit.

When we got back to the bar, she started issuing orders as she sat down at the computer in the office. I made a couple calls for her, then ran up the stairs to her apartment to pack. Since I travel light, that didn't take me very long and I went over the cabinet in the corner to retrieve her treasure box. It dawned on me that I didn't have the key and I didn't have time to go get it from her, so I just popped my claws and tore through the doors. Now that I could get a good look in there, I saw that she had other incredible things in that cabinet besides the box and I knew we'd be abandoning it all.

She had a matched set of fighting daggers, almost ten inches long and wickedly sharp. On another shelf was a chess set that looked like it was made out of real ivory and ebony with gilt trimming on the board. Yet another shelf held a collection of jade Buddhas. I shook my head in regret as I retrieved the black lacquer box from the shelf it occupied alone.

A few moments later, Angela came streaking up the stairs and ran to the bedroom. I heard her muttering curses and slamming drawers, but she emerged less than a minute later fully dressed with a backpack slung over her shoulder. She finally noticed me next to the cabinet with the box in my hands. She raised an eyebrow when she saw the state of the cabinet. "It was locked." I said lamely.

"Ah, so you killed it. Fair enough. Let's go."

We dashed back down the stairs and back into the bar. Ricky was just coming through the door and she demanded his car keys. He tossed them to her and we were gone. I tried to get the keys from her, but she was bound and determined to drive. Just as we approached the corner, a couple cop cars came screaming up to the bar behind us. She cursed again and rounded the corner, then gunned the engine as hard as she could. She called her hacker friend as we tried to find a way out of the city, but it soon became clear that we wouldn't be leaving with as much ease as we had hoped. I swear, you could blow up a building full of nuns and babies in this town and get away with it. Come out as a mutant escaping your own autopsy and they'll seal the place up tighter than Cyclops' ass on a bad day.

"Damn it, we're gonna have to crash one of these." She said, punching the steering wheel.

"Looks like it, yeah." I agreed.

"It's too risky, they'll probably shoot at us and if I die again, it'll be another day before I can even try to get out."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"What's what supposed to mean? It takes me 24 hours to come back, always. I'll be stuck here, they'll shove me in jail and the next thing I know, a group from the government will be out here picking my ass up and testing me to destruction. It's pretty simple."

"No, what I meant was, what do you mean by 'I'? Don't you mean 'we'?"

"What? No! You have to get out if you can. There's no sense in both of us getting caught."

I fixed her with a scowl. "Let 'em try, but I'm not leavin' here without you. I can't and I won't."

"Logan, you have to. If either one of us is going to have chance, you have to."

"No way, darlin'. Ain't gonna happen." I was not giving her an inch on this subject, no way. She'd come to mean too much to me to just let her throw herself away.

"Fine. But we'll have to get everyone disabled so we can have something of a head start. And we'll have to get off in like Taylor or Romulus and steal a car. I'm sure they've seen this one."

"Finally, a little fun." I popped my claws and grinned. "I can't wait."

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AN: Real life has happened to me in a big big way...my mother had to have a triple bypass and is in the hospital...i have lots of chapters ready for upload, but i don't know if i'll be as speedy with the updates for the next few weeks...i'll get to them as time permits...in the meantime, love to my beta readers, Zac and Turiel Tincdaniel, for making sure this keeps making sense...super special thanks to those who review...you keep me writing...:)