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Logan found the box by accident.
He'd been looking for the spare fishing line (as yours kept getting tangled in ways that defied physics, and he'd offered to restring the whole damn reel rather than watch you fight with it again) when his hand knocked against something in the back of the hall closet. Cardboard, taped shut, shoved behind the winter boots and that spaceheater he kept meaning to fix.
No label. Just clear packing tape gone yellow at the edges and dust thick enough to date it.
He should've left it alone, grabbed the fishing line, and walked away, but his fingers were already working at the tape, peeling it back.
Inside: photographs. Dozens of them, loose and in frames, faces he recognized from the shape of their absence in his life. Scott, young and smug. Ororo, laughing at something off-camera. Jean–
Logan's jaw clenched. Jean, looking at him.
There were others. Rogue, Kurt, Hank. The Professor in his chair. Mission reports in manila folders, maps of places that didn't exist anymore, a set of dog tags that weren't his but that he'd kept anyway because–
Because he was a sentimental bastard who couldn't let go of anything, including people who were decades dead and dust.
"Logan?"
You, from the kitchen, probably wondering why the fishing line mission had turned into a twenty-minute disappearing act.
"Yeah," he called back, rougher than he meant to. "Just…gimme a minute."
He should've shoved the box back in, retaped it, and pretended he'd never seen it. Instead, he sat down right there on the floor, box between his knees, and let himself look.
Scott's handwriting on a report: Logan's tactical assessment was correct, though I'll deny saying that if asked. He smiled.
A photo of everyone trying too hard to look professional and failing. Rogue had bunny ears behind his head.
He'd threatened to shave her head in her sleep for that.
Jean's perfume, faint but same as always, same as it'd forever be, clinging to a scarf he'd forgotten was in there. The green one she'd worn that fall when everything had felt possible, before.
"Logan?"
He looked up as you rounded the corner, just in time to see your expression go from curious to concerned when you registered his position, sitting on the floor, surrounded by ghosts in photograph form.
"Hey," you said carefully, kneeling beside him. "You okay?"
"Yeah. Found some old shit."
You looked to the photos spread across his lap, picked up the closest photo – the team one, the one with Rogue's bunny ears.
"X-Men?"
"Yeah."
"You look young."
"Wasn't. Just…different." He took the photo from your hands and studied it, like it might reveal something new if he stared hard enough. "Was a long time ago."
You didn't say anything. Instead you settled beside him, shoulder against his, warm and solid and present in a way that the people in the photos weren't, couldn't be, not anymore.
"Her?" You'd found the picture of Jean.
"Jean." The name felt strange in his mouth after he'd spent so long not saying it. "She was…" Everything. Nothing. Complicated. "Important."
"She's beautiful."
"Yeah, she was." Past tense. Because that's what Jean was now, and what they all were. Past tense, archived, filed away in cardboard boxes in the backs of closets. "They all were. Beautiful and stupid and so goddamn sure they could save the world."
"Did they?"
Logan huffed the tiniest little laugh. "For a while." He put the photo down carefully. "Kept the box because – hell, I don't know. Felt wrong to throw it out. Felt wrong to look at it. So it just stayed."
You placed your hand on his knee. "You miss them."
"Every day." Simple, but the truth. "Every single day I wake up and they ain't here, and I am, and I don't…" He stopped. Started again. "Don't know what I did to deserve bein' the one who gets to keep goin'."
"Logan–"
"Nah, it's… I'm okay. Just hits different sometimes, y'know? All these people who mattered, who were supposed to be the future, and instead it's just me still kickin' around, fixin' fishing reels and choppin' wood like none of it ever happened."
You were quiet for a long moment, rubbing small circles with your thumb through his jeans. Then: "Can I tell you something?"
"Yeah."
"I'm glad you're still here. Still kicking around, fixing fishing reels, chopping wood." You picked up another photo – him and Scott. Both of them looked annoyed. "I'm sorry about your friends. I'm sorry you lost them. But I'm not sorry that you survived. I'm not sorry that you're here, with me, right now."
Something in Logan's chest went tight into a ball and then released, like a fist unclenching after a fight. "That's selfish of ya."
"Yeah, probably." God, you sounded so unapologetic that it made his heart ache. "But I love you, and loving you means being grateful that you're alive, even if the circumstances that got you here were shitty." You leaned into him, and he wrapped an arm around your shoulders to bring you in close.
The photos stayed where they were, faces frozen in moments that would never come again.
"You wanna talk about them?" you asked. "Your team? I'd…I'd like to hear about them. If you want to share."
"Yeah," he heard himself say. "Yeah, I can do that."