Disclaimer: I don't own anything or anyone from X-Men or the Marvel Universe. Stan Lee does. I only own Annica Sawyer.


Lonesome Days

By Leah Pensotti

Chapter One: The Crossing of Paths


Logan stood in front of the three headstones that now graced the green lawn of the mansion. The early fall lingered while the strains of Indian summer fell away. With his bag over his shoulder and Scott's motorcycle awaiting him, he stood in front of Jean's marker a little while longer.

With Storm as headmistress of the school, Dr. Charles Xavier's legacy remained intact. Warren Worthington III decided to stay on; Hank McCoy visited often despite his new found political achievement; Bobby, Kitty and Piotr were nearing graduation while Marie was adjusting to her post-vaccine life within the walls of the school.

Logan lit another cigar and felt a tinge of guilt that he was running once again. He knew that he would return at some point; even his innate loner capabilities knew that to be true. He had become too tied to this place and the people. At the moment, what he needed was some time away from the constant reminder of her and the constant sight of her grave.

The school would be fine without him. They would be fine without him. Magneto had lost his power and Jean was no longer a threat to herself and anyone else.

Time away.


Detective Annica Sawyer sat behind her desk at the police station. She waited for her partner, Marcus Finnegan, to return with a year-old homicide file that closely resembled one that they had been working on for two days.

She nursed her fourth cup of coffee of the day, hoping for some sort of break in the case. Her black, fitted suit jacket was slung over her chair and the straps of her gun holster still hugged at her shoulders. Annica fought the urge to slump over her desk and lay her head on it's cool surface.

She hadn't been sleeping very well. Nightmares wracked her subconscious. She didn't remember them, but they frightened her to her marrow.

Marcus came lumbering towards her desk, manilla folder in hand. Annica looked up and raised an eyebrow to him.

"Please tell me there are similarities."

Marcus smiled and thrust the file towards her, "Better. We've got similarities and an informant."

Annica felt her heart jump with the news. She opened the file and skimmed over it. Same ammunition at the crime scenes. Ballistics believed it to be the work of the same weapon. Same entrance wounds. A silencer was used. It seemed to Annica that they were the marks of a professional. Scenarios ran through her head: gangs, the mafia, drug wars.

"What about the informant?"

Marcus sat down across from her, "Didn't leave a name and he called from a payphone on Fourth Street. However, he did leave an address where he wants to meet. A place called Maynard's."

"The dive on Lakeside?" Annica questioned. Of course he would want to meet there, it was cheap and had sticky floors and stayed perfectly busy at all hours. "Did he specify a time?"

"Eleven tonight. Better dress casually. Suits might scare him off."

She took another swig of her coffee. It was going to be another long night.


Logan didn't know how long he'd been on the motorcycle, but he decided to find a place to stop and have a beer. He turned off onto a street named Lakeside and happened upon a run-down bar called Maynard's. Looked like his kind of place.

As he sat down at the bar, the clock read 10:59 p.m. and the place housed a handful of various drunks and lowlifes. He ordered a beer and fired up a cigar and tried to block Westchester out of his mind. Two people entered through the door, a clean-shaven, blond-haired man and a young woman with honeyed chestnut hair in a ponytail. They did not seem to fit the clientele of Maynard's.

Logan watched out of the corner of his eye as they whispered and the blond man walked to a corner table and sat next to a small, scared-looking dark-haired man. The woman on the other hand, walked to the bar and took the stool next to him. She smelled clean, like lemons and her voice was feminine with a hint of huskiness.

"Can I get two club sodas with a twist and one beer? Whatever you have on tap." Logan felt himself involuntary smirking at her order. If he had to guess, the club sodas were for her and the blond guy and the beer was for their frightened friend in the corner.

She looked at him briefly as she waited for her order. Logan met her blue-green eyes for a second and she gave him a small half-smile like the Mona Lisa. When her drinks came she thanked the bartender, paid, tipped and when she put the change into the pocket of her jeans; Logan caught sight of the hilt of a handgun nestled into a holster under her left arm, peeking from beneath her denim jacket.

She was a cop.

The woman picked up the three drinks with relative ease and carried them back to the table in the corner. Logan went back to his beer and his cigar and continued to try and forget.


When Annica returned to the table, Marcus was already in questioning mode with the informant. She sat the beer down in front of him and listened intently to the wide-eyed, short and round man speaking in a jittery whisper.

"I-I shouldn't even be here. They'll find me."

Marcus shook his head, "We can protect you. Would you consider coming to the station with us and giving a statement? We will put you into protective custody right afterwards. We can help you."

"I am not sure you could protect me. Now the both of you are in too deep. They'll have your numbers, too."

Annica glared at him harshly. Sure sounded like some sort of organized crime to her. She questioned abruptly, "Then why even speak out at all, if you are so afraid for your life?"

The man's beady eyes narrowed at her, "Because they killed my family. My wife and son. Two months ago. Without them, my life doesn't matter anymore. I am more concerned about your lives. I shouldn't have involved you. No one is safe."

"Come with us. To the station. We'll work it out." Annica pleaded, suddenly feeling a little more compassionate than she would normally allow herself. Sleep deprivation was playing her for a fool.

The man silently nodded and the three of them rose to leave. Marcus pulled out the keys to the car and they exited the bar. Annica was the last to step over the threshold when she saw the four dark figures step out of the shadows, guns pointed. Annica reached for her weapon and aimed right back. Marcus shouted for them to drop their weapons, but they fired instead, unleashing a torrent of bullets. Annica dove behind a car parked nearby and returned fire.

Marcus dropped to his knees, shot in the shoulder and the stomach. The informant had been shot in both legs and tried to crawl away to no avail, a bloody trail left behind him. Annica continued to shoot until her magazine ran out. As she reloaded, she noticed that she too had been shot in the left arm above the elbow.

Two men dressed in black, ski masks covering their faces approached the informant and dragged him away with his arms and into a car that approached. Annica stood and shouted for them to freeze, when the other two men descended upon her with guns drawn. One held a weapon at her temple and she was over powered by the other as he knocked her to the ground and searched her pockets until he found her badge.

"Detective Annica Sawyer."

He kicked the gun from her hand and she sat alone bleeding from the arm and the nose, wondering what would become of her and if she could somehow fight back.

Logan sighed when the gunfire pounded outside the bar. Trouble seemed to follow him around. Seeing as though this was not a mutant attack, he felt certain that he could help in some way. He cut out his cigar on an ashtray, left his stool and walked outside to find blood covering the small parking lot, a dark car skidded away from the scene, the blond man bled on the ground, and two of the attackers hovered over the woman; one held a weapon to her head and the other held her by the hair and looking at her badge.

Logan approached them, he didn't care if he was being stealthy.

"I'd let her go if I were you, bub." He snarled lowly.

The man that held her by the hair let her go and rose to meet him, "I don't believe this is any of your business. By trying to be a hero, you have made yourself a dead man."

All it took was a solid punch from Logan to break his jaw and send him spinning to the ground. The other man spun on his heel, took aim and shot Logan in the shoulder. Before he could unsheathe his claws, the female cop had retrieved her gun and shot the man in the neck. As the final attacker slumped to the ground, so did she.

Logan took her badge from the man with the broken jaw and strode to her side. He sat her up and saw the wound on her arm, "You've been shot."

"So have you." She nodded at his shoulder and then looked over to her fallen partner, "I need to get to the car. To the radio."

Logan nodded, "Can you stand?"

She sat up and held her left arm close to her stomach and allowed Logan to help her up. When they reached her partner, she fell to her knees and checked his pulse. He was breathing shallow, quick breaths. She stood again and flung open the car door with her good arm and leaned in to get the radio.

"This is Detective Sawyer. I have been shot and Detective Finnegan is down. I cannot move him. I need an ambulance quick."

The dispatcher on the other end told her that the closest one was five minutes out. She slumped against the car in pain and looked directly at Logan.

"I need to radio them about you. You need medical attention, too." Before she could raise the radio to her lips again, Logan shook his head.

"I'll manage. I will wait to make sure they come for you, but then I am on my way."

Her eyes burned, "You can't just leave. You just witnessed a crime. You saved my life. This needs to go on record."

"With all due respect Detective, this isn't any of my business. I just didn't want to see you die. I've got enough guilt as it is."

As the ambulance sirens wailed in the distance, Logan got on Scott's bike and drove away into the night, not realizing that he had taken the Detective's badge with him.


The next morning, Annica sat in her supervisor's office. Detective Chambers sighed heavily and said the words that she was dreading.

"I need your badge and your weapon."

Marcus was in the ICU at the city hospital and would undergo surgery before the afternoon. Internal Affairs had come sniffing around the incident. The informant was missing, her partner was clinging to life, she had shot and killed a man and the witness to the whole thing and the man who had saved her had gone running off in the night.

With her left hand in a sling and her nose the slightest bit bruised, Annica handed over her holster and weapon and looked a little angry.

"I'd give you my badge, but someone walked off with it last night."

Detective Chambers sighed again, "Annica, it will be cleared up in a week. We have a man with a broken jaw in custody. You did what you had to do. Take this time and heal up. You hate being behind a desk and I can't let you back out into the field with a shot-up arm."

Annica nodded and went to the door, "Thank you, sir. Call me when you receive any info after the questioning...or about Marcus."

She went to her desk and gathered a few things along with her jacket and purse. As she left the station, she through the box with her things into the back seat of her car, not caring if she had to drive with one hand all the way home.


Logan watched Detective Sawyer step into the her car, sling around her neck aiding her wounded arm. He still had her badge, but did not want to walk into the station and give it to her, that would illicit questions that he did not want to answer, trouble that he did not really want.

So he waited across the street until she appeared and followed her car back to her small apartment about fifteen minutes away. She got out of the car and walked up the stairs to her home.

Annica changed into a pair of black pajama pants and a snug gray t-shirt. She waited for the phone to ring as she drank a beer. She willed anyone to call. She wanted news about Marcus and the man in custody. She would like to know the name of the man she shot to death and the name of the man who was the informant.

Mostly, though, Annica wanted to know who the man that saved her was and why he ran off.

As she sat on the couch, thinking and drinking a beer, there was a hurried knock on the door. She got up and walked to the door and spied out the peephole to whoever was on the other side.

Her eyes widened in disbelief as she flung the door open.

"It's you."


More to come. Got inspired after seeing X3. Please read and review!