Rahne is one of the first New Mutants to see Bird-Brain as somebody who needs help. His strange appearance does not make him disposable to her. That response follows naturally f…

Rahne is one of the first New Mutants to see Bird-Brain as somebody who needs help. His strange appearance does not make him disposable to her. That response follows naturally from her own experience of being feared and judged for what other people see when they look at her. Her friendship with Doug becomes especially important in that story. She pushes him to try communicating with Bird-Brain, and his language abilities give the group a way to understand the person they have rescued. Helping begins with listening rather than simply deciding where to keep him. Doug’s death while protecting her in New Mutants #60 leaves Rahne with guilt she cannot resolve through another rescue. In #64, she repeatedly uses the Danger Room to recreate the situation and change the outcome. The exercise can produce a different simulation. It cannot change what happened outside it. Her eventual understanding of Warlock’s desperate attempt to help Doug shows how grief can look completely different in two people while coming from a similar place. Rahne recognizes the wish to undo the loss because she has been trying to do the same thing in her own way. Wolfsbane’s forms remain useful to the team, but these issues give her no physical ability that makes mourning easier. Senses that can follow a trail cannot lead her back to a moment before a friend died. She keeps caring about other people afterward. That continuation is important. Compassion has exposed her to pain, but the book does not have to turn her into somebody indifferent in order for her to keep going. Her friends offer a family she can lean on while she learns that accepting help is part of belonging to that family too.