The last thing Julian felt like doing was rehashing more shit. He was a miserable sort of depressed person and he knew it. He didn't like helping Josh kill Kimura, but he'd been struggling to just accept it and forget it as one of those necessary evils Frost was on about all the time. He didn't like Ali almost dying, didn't like the angry and grief-ridden streak this mission had made in him. And he didn't like remembering Brian. Even after James, even after the Academy bombings, the only way Julian coped was forgetting.

And maybe that was a problem if being an X-man was turning out to be a constant reminder.

So when he happened across Brian old basketball in some back corner of his closet, he gave it more than a once-over, more than a passing thought he pushed away. His fingers ran over the bumps and grooves for a moment and he exhaled, a little bit exhausted, and then set his jaw.

It was stupid, acting like that. It didn't accomplish anything. How many times had he been surly and angry for weeks on end, and for what? How long had he stayed in California after James' death? Grief was useless. So was anger. It was how he dealt with crap when he was a kid. But now he was at a loss how to deal with it at all.

He was thinking this when Josh ran in, and Julian's head snapped up in surprise, and he stared at the other boy for a moment, as if deciding how to react to his soft question.

"Yeah," he said guardedly, casually. He spun the ball on the tip of his finger, then tossed it back into its corner.