Twenty-Four Little Hours

Part One

   Warren and I are sat in the garden of the Xavier Institute, the evening twilight just beginning to turn into darkness as the sun sets, and the sky's brilliant red hue turning in progressive shades to blue-black darkness. Warren puts his arm around my shoulder, to defend me against the evening's chill. He clinks his glass of wine against my glass of fruit juice, and smiles. "Here's to us," he says, before he kisses me gently on the cheek and slips his free hand into mine. "Nice to get some time to ourselves, don't you think?"

   I nod distractedly, looking with slightly glazed eyes at the patch of petunias planted near the outer edge of the lawn. "I suppose so, Warren," I reply, quietly. In an instant, Warren notices something is wrong and raises his eyebrows in a concerned fashion, putting his glass down on the arm of the bench at the same time, so that he can touch my chin with his fingertips.

   "Hey," he murmurs softly. "Something the matter, babe?" Before I can reply, he smiles and brushes his temple. "This psychic rapport deal cuts both ways, Betsy – I know something's not right; I just can't tell what. Help me out here, huh?"

   I take a deep breath, and try to give him a reassuring smile. I can tell from his expression that it's not really working, so I look up at the starry sky for a moment or two, trying to find the right words. In the end, though, I find it easier to just go straight for the nub of the matter. "Warren, I… I think I may be pregnant," I say, as strongly as I can. Warren looks as if he has been shot for a few seconds, and then his face breaks into the biggest smile I've seen from him in months.

   "You're… pregnant?" he exclaims in an overjoyed tone. "Oh my God. Oh my God, Betsy – I don't know what to say. Wow. Oh, wow. You really think you're pregnant? How far along do you think you are?"

   I shake my head. "I don't know – maybe a month, possibly two at the most. I won't know until I talk to Hank about it in the morning."

   Warren's grin grows. "Oh, Hank'll just love that. He can't get enough of Rebecca, after all." He notices my less-than-pleased expression suddenly, and his blissful smile fades. "Wait… you aren't happy about this, are you?"

   "Of course I am, Warren," I say, knowing full well that I don't sound entirely convincing, "but I'm afraid, too – I don't want my baby to be a target for our enemies. I don't want my baby to be hurt because of what we do."

   Warren shakes his head. "They won't be, Betsy. I promise you that."

   "How can you promise that?" I snap, more curtly than I'd intended. "Neither of us could do anything to stop Sinister from hurting Rebecca, could we? I don't want this baby to go through that too!" My hands stray to my belly involuntarily, as if I am protecting my unborn child against the world.  "They don't deserve that. Rebecca didn't deserve that." I rub my brow despondently, feeling a headache throbbing at my temples, a dull ache that won't go away – no matter how hard I try to force it. "I don't want this baby to grow up to hate me for not being able to protect it. I don't want to be that bad a mother!" I pause for a second, feeling buried fears surging to the surface, like water through a burst dam, and then find the breath to continue "I'm scared, too, Warren. I'm so scared. I can't help thinking that what Sinister and his thugs did to me might hurt my child somehow – I don't think I could forgive myself if that happened." I run my hands through my hair, my hands ending their journey on the back of my neck. "And part of me feels that… that this is all a little too convenient, as if it's been planned by somebody."

   Warren frowns, his blue eyes clouding with confusion. "Planned? Who would do something like that?"

   "Oh, come on, Warren!" My voice almost rises to a shriek in my frustration and anger. "Think a little! Who gave me Rebecca in the first place?"

   Warren pauses for a second before he answers me. "You think Sinister might have done this?"

   I nod, unhappily. "Who else? It fits his way of thinking, doesn't it?" Rubbing desperately at my burning eyes, I can feel the buried rage and frustration I've harboured for months begin to swim to the surface. "He might even have made sure that this wasn't your child at all; I know he still has the cell samples he took from me. He could have combined them with the DNA of one of his Marauders; this could be Scalphunter's baby, for all I know. Sinister could have impregnated me with it at any time he chose – you've seen how easy it is for him to get through the mansion's security systems. All he'd have had to do is wait until you and I were asleep, and then I'd have been at his mercy." I cover my face with my hands for a moment or two, running my fingers down my cheeks and pulling the skin taut. Warren frowns, his eyes filling with the same kind of cold hatred that I've usually only seen when he talks about Apocalypse.

   "I really hope you're being paranoid, Betsy," he whispers, before he gets to his feet, and offers me his hand distractedly. "Come on. Let's go see Hank, and get this over with right now." He looks down at me, his wings obscuring the moonlight thanks to their majestic expanse, and then he smiles as best he can; the resulting effort is less than cheerful, but understandable under the circumstances. The look in his eyes is still icy-cold – but not from hatred now, I realise, as I feel his emotions bleed through to me along our link. What he feels right at this moment is a gnawing fear; a fear that nestles at the centre of his heart like the Jabberwocky. He touches my hand as we walk towards the house, and I grip his fingers tightly, instinctively, so as to try and share our mutual strength between us; something that we could both use to our advantage at this point. We walk slowly towards the back door of the mansion, feeling the evening's slight breeze blow across our faces and kiss our skin with an almost nonexistent chill. Then we make our way through one of the mansion's ornately-carved oaken doors, which opens onto a small hallway leading towards the mansion's central lobby.

   The passageway will take us down to the laboratory area and is lined with paintings of various past members of the Xavier family, while the carpet is composed of rich red fabric. Several expensive tapestries are also hung on the walls of the corridor, each of them depicting various medieval scenes – a huntsman chasing a boar, for instance, or a pair of women sewing beside a spinning wheel. They are extremely costly and have been ferried in from various parts of the world at the Professor's own expense – and they also function as a disguise for the doors to this particular basement lift. Warren brushes a raised nub of the wood beside the picture of the huntsman with his fingertips, and the tapestry raises itself in an almost silent motion. The bared wall is bisected by a wooden door, which swings inwards to reveal a strikingly different interior – the lift itself is composed of sophisticated polymers and metals, so it offers a stark contrast to the mansion's upper levels, decorated as they are in a sophisticated reproduction of an archaic style of architecture.

   A shame, then, that I have very little time to take in the contrast. Warren and I quickly make our way into the lift, and I touch the button that will take us down to the med-lab's level with my hand. As I do so, I hear the lift hum quietly into action and begin its journey below ground. It judders once or twice, and I feel my stomach lurch into my chest as it does so, the feeling of nausea packing more of a punch than I had anticipated. I stagger for a pace or so, my hand straying to my brow before Warren rushes to help me steady myself, his arm locking around my waist and giving me the support I need to stand again. "Thank you, Warren," I gasp, swallowing the bitter, acrid taste of bile as I do so. The smile he gives me in return is painfully thin, almost emaciated, and I can feel the strain and the apprehension chewing at his resolve just as much as it is doing to me.

   "Don't mention it," he murmurs in a strained, rasping tone, before the lift finally comes to a stop. He takes my hand and walks with me down the metallic, sparsely-furnished corridor that leads to Hank's laboratory. The lights are all still on, which generally means that Hank is still tinkering with one thing or another, feeding himself with Twinkies and chocolate bars as and when the feeling takes him. As we get closer to the lab's door, I can hear him singing Dr Seuss songs to himself over the clatter of test tubes and Bunsen burners – which brings an involuntary smile to my face, despite everything that is weighing on my mind. Warren knocks on the open door, calling "Hey, Hank – can we come in?" which causes Hank to fall silent for a moment ,before turning and grinning at us both, his long canines glittering in the bright, sterile electric lighting.

   "Greetings and salutations, my pleasantly unanticipated friends!" he says brightly, putting down the thermometer and Petri dish that he was holding beforehand. "To what beneficent turn of events do I owe the honour of this gloriously late visit?"

   I take a deep breath and, just as before, I decide that the direct approach is better, and less painful, than beating around the bush. Well, it worked once already tonight, so… "I think I may be pregnant, Hank," I say, in a slightly shaky tone. Hank's smile widens, and he leaps forwards off his stool, somersaulting a couple of times in the air before he arrives right in front of us, landing as gracefully as an Olympic gymnast, his muscular bulk making no more sound than a cat. When he has found his footing, he stands and grips us both by the hand warmly.

   "Oh my stars and garters," he says with depthless cheerfulness. "I do believe congratulations are in order. Well done, both of you. At least now we can say that it's not only Scott and Jean who are the principal proprietors of progeny in this mansion, yes?" Then he notices our demeanour, and his jovial air retreats slightly. He sighs. "Ah. I take it from your less-than-ecstatic expressions that neither of you feel quite the same way. What can I do for you, Betsy?"

   "I… I'd like you to do an analysis of the baby's genes, Hank," I say. "I know it's probably too early for you to tell us anything really significant, but I… we… were worried that this could be something that Sinister might have done to me – that this could be the baby of one of the Marauders." I pause, and my hands again stray to my belly, almost as if they are being attracted there by some unseen force. "I just want to know if this is Warren's child, that's all."

   Hank adjusts his glasses, pushing them up the bridge of his nose with a clawed fingertip, and an altogether more serious demeanour seems to settle over his shoulders like a cloak. "I see. Well, if you'd just like to sit on this bed here, I should be able to give you a thorough examination with the Shi'Ar equipment we have here in the med-lab." A small smile causes his canine teeth to peek out over his top lip. "A good thing, too, since I'm anything but a qualified gynaecologist. The female anatomy is a good long way out of my area of expertise, unfortunately." The absurdity of the statement makes me smile too, and that snowballs into Warren raising a faint smile, as well. "There you go," Hank says, winking. "I knew I could cheer both of you up somehow." He takes my hand and helps me to sit on the bed, making sure I'm as comfortable as possible before he moves over to a small control panel set into the wall. "Now just hold still, milady, and I'll have a full analysis of your baby's current condition prepared in a few minutes." He pauses, before tapping a few buttons on the console and activating the scanning beam, which glows with a soft red light as it moves up and down my abdomen, from just below my breasts to just below the base of my hips. "Hopefully I can put your mind at rest." He smiles again, and gestures at the scanning beam with a sweeping movement of his claws. "Aren't the wonders of modern technology marvellous?"

   "Well, technically speaking, this isn't modern technology, fuzzy," Warren says as he holds my hand, his tone brightening just a little bit. "Not for this planet, anyway."

   Hank rolls his eyes. "There's always one, isn't there? I swear, Warren Worthington, you are the worst killjoy in this entire mansion. Why don't you go and find the others? I'm sure there's something of theirs you could ruin, after all – their late-night showing of Aliens in the rec. room seems a likely candidate." He shoos Warren away with one hand while taking my blood pressure with the other, the small rubber bulb in his hand pumping gently until the armband he has placed around my upper right arm has inflated sufficiently. "Go on, Warren – I'm sure Logan will be happy to fill you in on just how much he appreciates having his viewing experiences interrupted." Hank is about to continue when the machine makes a small pinging sound. "Ah," he says, evidently realising what it's trying to tell him before Warren and I do. "The analysis is complete – if you'd just like to follow me..." Hopping over to another bank of computer screens, Hank taps a few buttons and the machine spits out a long spool of paper. He looks over the results with a conscientious eye, his attention totally focused on the long lines of drying ink scrawled across the page in his hand, and for a moment even I am unsure of what he's thinking. Before long, though, he grins widely, and passes the paper over to me. "Congratulations, mommy and daddy," he says warmly, as I take the print-out with shaking fingers. "Preliminary results show that the little one is healthy, happy – and one hundred percent yours."

   "Are you sure?" I say, if only to give myself time to grasp the enormity of what Hank has just told me.

   Hank grins. "Milady Braddock, I'm as sure as I can be at this early stage of conception; after all, the baby is barely formed yet. If you look here –" and he indicates a small ultrasound picture of the embryo on the print-out (which confirms to me, finally, that I have a life growing inside of me) "– you can see that the child is still in the process of forming his or her own nervous system. The embryo is not 'baby-shaped' yet, as it were, so there is a limited amount I can do for it at this point. However, I would like to do an amniocentesis on the child when it reaches sixteen weeks old – which will be in around three months' time – just to make sure that the preliminary analysis we've just done is absolutely correct. Until that time, you may consider yourselves parents." He takes my hand and shakes it gently, before he kisses me on the cheek. "Congratulations, Betsy. You'll be a wonderful mommy – just ask Rebecca."

   Warren takes offence at that, and stands with his hands on his hips. "Hey, furball, what about me – don't I get a mention here? I mean, I am Rebecca's daddy, after all."

   Hank raises an eyebrow. "Yes, and look where that got her – she's become a Yankees fan and can't get enough of Friends reruns. If it's all the same to you, good sir, I'd much rather you were kept as far away from this little bundle of joy as is humanly possible." Then, he grins expansively again. "I kid, Warren, I kid. Congratulations to you too – I'm sure you'll do as good a job with this child as you have with its elder sister."

   "You better believe it, fuzzy," Warren laughs. "And don't mock the Yankees, okay? Or your secret stash of Twinkies will become even less secret than it is already." He makes a mock-threatening gesture and then gives Hank a grateful hug. "Thanks, man. I really appreciate this."

   "No problem," Hank says, returning his old friend's embrace gently. "Anything I can do for a happy couple such as yourselves." He winks at me, and reaches out to take my hand. "As I'm sure I've said before, I would happily give my last drop of blood for you two. This is purely incidental by comparison."

   "Thank you, Hank," I say, relief flooding into my voice. "Thank you so much."

*

   Warren helps me into bed, and then slips his arms around me, his lips peppering my neck with kisses before he whispers "How does it feel?" in my ear.

   "How does what feel?" I say, knowing the answer to my question almost before I've even spoken the words.

   "To be a mommy," Warren says simply, his fingers gently rubbing the skin of my stomach over and around my navel. "You know, like a normal mommy, not a superhero mommy."

   I sigh. "I don't know yet, Warren. I really don't know. Ask me again when this baby is eighteen and going out with somebody we disapprove of."

   Warren laughs, and cuddles me a little tighter. "Good answer, honey. Did I mention that I love you today?"

   "Oh, only when we woke up, when we had lunch, and about ten times during dinner," I reply, a wicked grin crossing my lips. "I love you too, Warren. And thank you."

   "Thank me? For what?" Warren says, a little ripple of confusion passing across the surface of his thoughts.

   For helping me make this wonderful gift, I tell him telepathically. You and I made a life together, and for that I will always be grateful. I touch his cheek with my fingertips, before inclining my head back so that I can kiss him. "Always."

   Warren smiles briefly after he breaks the kiss, and then tickles my belly button with spidery movements of his fingertips. "Thanks, Betsy. That means a lot." He laughs suddenly, as a thought strikes him. "Now all you have to do to pay me back is give birth to that baby. Think you can do that?"

   "I can certainly try, Warren," I say, resolutely. "I can certainly try."