We're slowly coming to an end of this story. Just two more full chapters after this one, and a small epilogue.
She came to on a new bed, surrounded by a completely unknown array of instruments. There were only two IVs set above her and a single, slim cable running from somewhere under her clothes to the machine steadily and quietly beeping on her side. The room had no window and the door seemed more like an entrance to a vault than anything belonging in a hospital, but the whole place seemed much bigger than any standard hospital room she had ever seen. A far bench displayed several high-tech machines, a few computer monitors, a weird TV set, at least two keyboards and a rack of glass vials filled with multicoloured fluids.
As she surveyed the room, she moved her hands cautiously to check her fine motor skills. She almost jumped out of her skin when one of the hands got captured and she suddenly felt lips pressed to her knuckles.
"Sleep" she heard him murmur. "You need sleep, love."
With great effort she managed to turn her head enough to see his upper body lain on the bed beside her, her left hand captured in his right, his lips skimming her fingertips now.
"I think I've been sleeping quite long enough" she said, her voice rough in her own ears.
He straightened a bit, pushing himself up on his left elbow, his left hand cradling her hip possessively.
"I think a few more hours wouldn't be that bad" he said sadly. "From what Hank says, exhaustion is what will be affecting you most in the next few days. He guesses it will feel, in total, like a bout of flu - your whole body fighting with the infection - not to mention bronchitis on top of it. So the best way to get through that period would be, in fact, to sleep it off."
She freed her fingers from his grasp and tentatively traced his cheek, then moved up and slightly back - he obediently bowed his head as she explored the shape of his skull with her palm and fingertips.
"Oh, God, Charles" she could only whisper. "Charles."
"Shh" he caught the hand on his cheek and kissed the inside of her palm again. "It will be fine. Some day, not soon, but it will be. We'll make it better."
She shook her head mutely and he sighed, nodding slightly.
"You're right" he admitted, his hand slowly rubbing circles on her blanket-clad side. "We can't really make it much better. But it will be better, at some point. You're home, that's a definite improvement, isn't it? And we know why you're sick. And Hank knows how to treat it now."
She breathed slowly and shuddered, his warm hand holding her, stabilising her, grounding her.
"I'm home" she said finally in a small voice. "I'm home."
He had moved his chair closer up to her so that they could talk without waking Alex - Charles pointed him out to her, asleep on the next cot over.
"He's been miserable" he whispered. "We couldn't help him all that much, and with sun being identified as their energy source, both he and Scott are mostly stuck at home all day. Hank hadn't managed to work out anything that would help them, except for a full-body suit, So they are restless, plus Scott barely got over the trauma of Alex maybe dying after that explosion, and then the second attack... and Alex was the one who found you in the main hall..."
She squeezed her eyes shut. That was the part that everyone remembered but her. She felt guilty for not remembering what they all did for her.
"Do you think my memory will come back some day?"
He slowly shook his head.
"We don't even know why you lost it. I don't want to dig in your memories just yet, and Jean said she is not going to, unless we think it's something vital. She became very strict on ethical usage of her stronger powers recently."
She nodded and closed her eyes for a moment.
"I'm not sure I can ask her to do this. She might see way too much of the stuff we were actively trying to shield her from normally."
He hid his face in the blanket and groaned.
"Yes, I'd much rather avoid getting my student that well educated in the details of our private life, thank you, love."
"What was the plan with the hair? What were you trying to achieve?" she asked with reproach, her hand still exploring the back of his head tentatively.
"We thought the wig may lessen the shock - or make you laugh, at least" Charles explained a bit sheepishly.
"Oh, no. I'm engaged to an idiot" she moaned, her head dropping to the pillows again.
"More like married to one" Alex's slurred words made her sit up straight despite weariness. "Nice to have you back, Moira" he slowly slid off his cot, straightened his shirt and leaned over her to peck her her on the cheek. "You'll be fine now, won't you? Not going to die on us and leave us with this idiot all broken?"
She nodded jerkily.
"Then I'll leave you two to it" he said, yawned and left them in absolute silence broken only by tiny "peep" from the machine registering Moira's sudden spike in heart rate.
"Charles?" she rubbed her face with the free hand. "Did I actually forget our wedding?"
"Ah" he coughed. "Unfortunately, it's quite probable, yes."
"Was there anything else in these three months that I might have a need to know? Did we fight aliens?"
"No."
"Had a very quick World War Three?"
"No."
"Any of the students transforms into an interesting animal I should know of?"
"No, not according to my knowledge."
"The house is still there?"
"Jean and Erik put it together exactly as it used to be. Well, almost."
"Mhm. Any unexpected family news? Because Erik had already told me about Raven and Kurt, so maybe, if there is anything else waiting for me, you could tell me right now?"
He frowned, trying to find the right words.
"Erik has a son" he said finally, as simply as he could. "And a daughter. Actually, they are twins."
She opened her eyes and looked at him in surprise.
"What?"
"Turns out that Peter - ah, you probably don't remember Peter, but, well, he helped us a lot since Apocalypse - is Erik's son. And as he has a twin sister, well, turns out Erik actually does have a bit of family, despite what had happened."
"What... What had happened?"
He rubbed circles into her palm.
"Erik was in Europe, that much we knew, right?"
She nodded slowly.
"Turns out the moment Apocalypse woke up, there was a small earthquake in the factory Erik was working in. He saved people from being crushed by the machinery, but of course that meant everyone noticed his powers. Local authorities came for him, and in their idiocy, managed to kill his wife... and daughter" he breathed slowly to stave off the sympathetic fury he felt every time he recalled Erik's emotions. "He went... mad. Worse, much worse than it was the first time when we met him. He lost any reason to stay connected to anyone else - not even other mutants, in fact. He tried to kill the workers in his workplace, but Apocalypse found him there, killed the people and recruited Erik. He was much to easy to hook with a promise of unlimited power and total destruction - well, you can guess his volatility makes it so much easier for such chances to entice him."
"Oh, God" she bit into her knuckles.
"And then El Sabah Nuhr used Erik's link to me to jump directly here, into Cerebro actually. They..." he sighed. "They took me. I didn't know at the time - but Jean and Hank put this together later - Alex tried shooting them, but instead hit some engine whatever that Hank was testing. The whole thing went up in flames and... suddenly everyone was standing on the front lawn, the house blowing up, kids scattered around the garden and then a military jet landed and took the four of you - Hank, Raven, Peter and you - into custody. Kurt, Scott and Jean managed to get on board and then freed you from the location you were kept in. By the way, Stryker is still running free and I think we should deal with him at some point. Anyway, long story short, we came back home, some more bruised than others, Scott had a panic attack because Alex wasn't waking up due to his burns, Jean and Erik reconstructed the house..."
She raised a finger.
"I see a little plot hole in that story" she said weakly. "How come we found ourselves on the lawn if we were inside during the explosion?"
He kissed the finger.
"That is where Peter comes in. He took all of you out of the house before the explosion actually happened."
She squeezed her eyes shut and shook a little.
"What?"
"He is fast. We didn't manage to measure it yet, but he's so fast he emptied the whole school before the house was blown up. Anyway, it turns out that sometime before Erik had met us all these years ago, he had passed through a small town nearby - in search of these people he was bent on eliminating then - and he had a... a fling. With a local girl. Local girl found out she was pregnant after he left, but she never contacted him - mostly because once she managed to identify him on TV, he was already an international terrorist. She told Peter, though. Now, sharing the details would be up to Peter and Erik, but when you were in the h-hospital, Erik learnt by accident what Peter's full name was and managed to work out the rest. And later it turned out Peter has a twin sister, so now Erik's all torn about this" he shook his head lightly. "And the whole situation with the school being attacked, and, and you, and us all... It isn't helping. I just hope Peter tethers him firmly enough for him to stay."
Moira blinked away the tears threatening to fall.
"So he was sitting with me, at the hospital, while still mourning his wife and daughter?" she said softly, growing more and more worried. "He was there, all that time, hurting, and... and he never even told me?"
"It was his choice, love" Charles sounded rather dejected. "He said he was the most probable one to convince the hospital he was your husband and so he had to go - but I suppose Hank would have been OK, too, although Erik doesn't agree. He was in the best state to drive you there, anyway, and then to stay with you, too. After all, Hank was more needed here, in the lab, to find out what was wrong with you. In the end, Erik's choice was the best - if not good for everyone involved then at least the best of rather poor options we had."
They sat in silence, with him rubbing her palm soothingly and trying to send as much calm/comfort into her as he could and her holding back the tears.
A bell rang in the distance and they both twitched at the sound. Moira pushed herself a bit higher on her pillows.
"Does this mean we have two teachers with the same surname?" she asked mock-lightly, her voice still shaky. "That may cause some problems."
"Actually, we do, but we found a solution" Erik said from the door, where he had apparently been standing for some time, watching them. "There is a Professor Xavier and a Doctor Xavier."
She squeezed her eyes shut.
"Ah" she said breathlessly. "I..."
"We know, love" Charles squeezed her hand. "You considered going back to your actual maiden name, but then you thought it would be safer not to - not that I agree, but it was your choice to make."
She nodded slowly.
"That makes sense" she paused and thought about it. "Moira MacTaggert wasn't the happiest person - at least, not until the very end. Moira Kinross... was so long ago I barely remember her anymore."
Erik sat opposite Charles, on her right side.
"Being Moira Xavier doesn't seem like a walk in a park either" he half-smiled. "But now you have a school full of people very intent on making sure Professor Xavier takes good care of you. To the extent of his limited capabilities."
Charles managed to hit him on the forehead with a bottle cap.
"Are you sure someone with this level of aggression should be allowed around children, Moira?" Erik picked up the blue piece of plastic from the floor and sent it back towards Charles. "That may be considered a bad example."
"Because really, you are the picture of restraint and peace" Charles shot the cap back towards his friend. "And using obscenities in Polish in front of the students is an actual bad example. Did you notice how the youngest ones started swearing recently?"
Erik actually blushed, to Moira's surprise.
"That was only one time, and it was only because Peter managed to find something even more idiotic to do than running up a tree."
Charles straightened, frowning.
"And why didn't I hear about it?"
"Because, in this case, parents of both participants were present at the scene of crime and we managed to resolve the issue, well, inside the symbolical family units."
"Which means that Raven looked at Kurt semi-sternly for fifteen seconds tops and you barraged Peter with a dressing-down, Eastern Europe style, for half an hour?"
"Well, it may have happened like this, if you must know. Anyway, one of the kids managed to catch pieces of what I said and they are now repeating it. Actually, what they are repeating most often is not a curse, I'll have you know."
"Really."
"They are saying 'choroba', which is more or less 'sickness'. Not much of an obscenity, I'm afraid. But it does contain a rather satisfactory use of 'r'."
"As if you cared. You were using a lot of German ones I actually recognised when Alex managed to block the garage door by accident."
"He shouldn't have been playing with the lock then!"
"You still should not be using 'arschloch' in the vicinity of little ears. They were delighted to learn it!"
"But...!"
Suddenly both of them found their lips sealed shut by Moira's outstretched hands.
"Both of you, quiet" she said in her best vice-principal voice. "Erik, you will contain yourself on the school grounds and use age-appropriate language around the children. Charles, you will instruct the kids that not everything they hear is to be repeated on and on. Also, you will both stop throwing bottlecaps at each other. Is this understood?"
They nodded slowly.
"Now, can one of you please fetch me something to drink? And Hank? I'm afraid my temperature is raising."
The massive amount of antibiotics and painkillers Hank was pumping into her system was definitely making her sleepy. She wavered between the states of full consciousness and deep sleep, sometimes with no gradient of stages between. There was always someone with her - Charles, Jean or Alex, usually. Sometimes a napping Hank. Sometimes Scott, who made use of his afternoon hours - when he didn't even want to sit upstairs, because of the low evening sun - and did his homework while guarding her.
It took her additional four days to get cleared of the bronchitis and the general treatment was seemingly taking care of... of the additional DNA, so Hank deemed her strong enough to be unhooked from all interesting machines and move upstairs. As long as she promised and not to overexert herself and to submit to a jab with a needle every three hours, she was "cleared for light duty".
That consisted mostly of working through mountains of paperwork, checking reading assignments for the youngest children, shouting encouragement at girls doing their kata, remaking the schedule for Home Ed lessons with a wicked smile - requiring at least two grownup males at each of them with the proviso that none of these could be Hank, reading to the youngest group (freeing Jean but including Ororo, who needed more practice in reading English), being showered with affection by the youngest group, being showered with affection by Charles, being quietly guarded by one of the Summers brothers, being quietly checked on by Erik, setting up the "girl room" with Jean and Ororo and, finally, spending as much time as physically possible with Charles.
Erik knocked on her half-open door and entered when he saw her raise her head.
"I'm afraid we need to talk" he said without a preamble, sitting in the chair next to hers. "Because Charles is… he is too afraid to raise the point."
She took off her glasses and folded them slowly, buying herself some time. His own were in the pocket of his shirt and he looked oddly vulnerable like this, without the additional layer of armour on his face.
"What is it?" she leaned back on the supportive brace at the to of her chair that Hank had set up for her to avoid straining her back.
"We have to…" he started and sighed. "We have to make funeral preparations. The hospital staff was kind enough to wait for us to make a decision, but since we transferred her to the funeral house, we need to proceed soon. I understand - and Charles certainly does - if you don't feel up to the task, so we will organise everything, but… He said you had discussed names, but because you still don't remember that time, he doesn't want to suggest any of them. And he is too afraid to just come and ask you plainly. So, we need you to make one decision."
She rubbed her nose to stop the tears.
Jean cried for the whole afternoon in her room when she had learnt what Moira had decided.
The director of the funeral home looked from the lawyer's face to the small stack of documents in front of him, frowning.
"I only see here a… a Mrs Stein listed as the mother. And you are telling me she can't even come here to do this properly?
"I'm the father" Charles explained tersely. "My wife is unable to leave the house as yet. She was just released from the hospital recently. Can we please proceed?"
He hated pity. Pity cut him like a knife. The woman at the next desk felt pity for him and he could barely stand it. He knew he shouldn't be that tense, but the ugly, heavy whiff of "poor man, what chances does he have…" made him cringe. He focused on the director.
"Here are the documents, so please, do arrange everything as needed."
"And the tombstone?" the man asked, for some reason irritated. "Have you decided on the inscription?"
"Erik?" he reached blindly for the small piece of paper Erik had been carrying for him and unfolded it.
JEANNIE
KINROSS
He looked at it for a moment and swallowed the tears coming.
"Do you have a pen?" he turned to the lawyer, who produced one from her purse and Charles made a correction.
"Charles" Erik's voice caught in his throat. "You don't have to…"
"No, my friend. But I want to. You have been our choice for her godfather, you know. At least this way…"
"You know very well I'm not exactly the right person for that job, Charles. But - thank you."
The director watched their interaction with puzzlement and picked up the paper.
"Jeannie Nina Kinross" he read slowly. "Should I add the date?"
Charles slowly shook his head.
"Just one more thing" he took back the note with inscription. "'Beloved'. This will be… sufficient."
The funeral was simple, with just the four of them - Moira leaning on Erik's arm, Jean pushing Charles' wheelchair. The parents and the not-godparents stood quietly over the tiny coffin as the cemetery worker waited a few meters from them.
Moira crossed herself with a shaky hand and leaned on the wheelchair handles for a moment with her eyes shut and forehead on Charles' shoulder. Erik reached inside his jacket and tore at the lining on the right side, making them all shudder at the sudden ripping sound.
"Erik" Charles whispered, looking up at his friend.
"I never had a chance to do this for them" he answered, staring ahead. "It seems like an appropriate moment."
He offered his arm to Moira again and she handed the wheelchair back to Jean. The big man with a shovel approached and placed the small coffin in the equally small grave. He covered it quickly with a mound of dirt and affixed a temporary marker at one end.
"May His great Name grow exalted and sanctified" Charles said slowly, before they turned back towards the car.
Erik's eyes widened and he nodded slowly in appreciation.
"They were at the top of your thoughts, my friend. I know I'm not exactly the person you'd have accompany you in this prayer, but..."
"Nobody better, Charles. Now, let's go home. We all deserve some rest."
In case someone can't guess what it's all about - Erik performs the symbolical 'rending of garments', which in case of a non-parent's funeral would be tearing of something on the right side, like a vest lining. Despite the fact that baby X was not his actual family, he is still most certainly grieving for his own dead, and due to the way they died, he was unable to do even that simple thing at the right moment. What Charles said is the first line of Kaddish - he wouldn't be qualified to take part in the prayer, as he isn't Jewish, but he hoped it would help Erik.