Wolverine has seen enough violence to recognize what has happened to the X-Men. That doesn't make watching his friends suffer routine. In the aftermath of the tunnels, his exper…

Wolverine has seen enough violence to recognize what has happened to the X-Men. That doesn't make watching his friends suffer routine. In the aftermath of the tunnels, his experience becomes something the remaining team badly needs, even when the answers it produces are uncomfortable. Sabretooth's attack in #213 makes Logan's place in the reconstruction especially tangible. The danger is inside the mansion, where injured people are supposed to be recovering. Betsy Braddock cannot simply match the intruder blow for blow, but she holds out long enough for Wolverine to enter the fight. Their very different abilities belong to the same effort to keep him from reaching more victims. This is also an important beginning for Logan and Betsy as teammates. Her courage is visible before there is any comfortable assumption that she belongs in the field. She has had to act under pressure, and the veterans have something real to judge besides a name, a power description or somebody else's recommendation. With Dazzler, Longshot and eventually Havok entering the picture, Wolverine is one of the people carrying the team's memory. He knows the missing friends as more than vacant positions. He also knows that surviving a bad fight doesn't mean the next one will kindly wait until everyone has recovered. It would be easy to make him nothing but the hard answer to every problem. These stories give that role a more complicated setting. A team needs his readiness to fight, but it also needs people who will question what survival is costing them. Logan's presence helps the new group remain recognizably the X-Men, even as the familiar household breaks into a much less secure arrangement.