Logan had known pain in every shape it came — the sting of a bullet, the burn of adamantium, the silent gnawing ache of outliving everyone who ever mattered. But nothing ever compared to watching Katie suffer.

She wasn’t supposed to. She’d been made to.

They called her a miracle, a success story — the one subject who survived the same butchery that had carved him into what he was. But Logan knew better. He saw the way her hands trembled when the memories hit her too fast, the way her eyes lost focus when metal met bone, and that faint, fractured look that said she remembered every scalpel, every scream.

She hadn’t been born a mutant. She’d been born normal. And that, somehow, made it worse.

They’d taken everything from her. Her humanity, her peace, her choice. And still, she chose him.

Logan never understood that. Not fully. He could see the damage in her — not just the physical scars laced like silver lightning across her skin, but the way she walked through life like it still owed her something she’d never ask for. She carried her pain like armor, her smile like a weapon. There was something fierce and fragile in her that reminded him of the parts of himself he never looked too long at.

When they were offered a way out — that chance to start again, clean slate, no past — it was him who hesitated. But she… God, she’d looked at him. Eyes bright, alive for the first time in years. And he’d known what she was thinking.

A world where none of this had happened. Where she’d never been taken. Where she could’ve been free.

He almost told her to go. To take it. To forget him and run before the world took something else from her. But she didn’t. She stayed.

He’d never forgive himself for the relief that flooded through him when she said she wasn’t going anywhere.

Katie had always been too selfless — always putting everyone else before herself, even when it tore her apart. She’d stayed through the nights when the nightmares took him, when his claws drew blood and his mind was somewhere between the past and hell. She’d held him through it. Never flinched. Never pulled away.

But he knew what it cost her. He’d see it in the quiet moments — her reflection in the glass, the way she’d touch the scars on her arms like they were chains. She never said the words, but he heard them anyway.

She didn’t want to be this.

Now, he sat on the edge of their bed watching her sleep peacefully. The rain pattered on the old windows of the cabin. The noise was soothing. It was far from the pain they were used to. He moved his large hand, rough fingers brushing her hair out of her face with all the care in the world.

“I don’t know what i’d do without ya, doll.” He murmured softly, his eyes locked onto her pretty face. She was his everything and nothing could ever change that. She was his heart. “Reckon i’d die without ya around.”