Disclaimer: I only own the plot and my OCs. Anything you recognize as not mine belongs to 20th Century Fox, Disney, Marvel, and/or their otherwise respective owners.
Author's Notes: And here, as promised, is the next chapter! If there are more glaring errors (I caught quite a few after posting the last chapter – mb, I'm usually good at that!), I'm sorry. I wrote some of this while I felt like I was dying over the weekend from a cold. Feeling better now, but I apologize in advance for any typos. Yesterday and Sunday were...rough for me, lol.
Anyways, again, it's prolly gonna be a while until the next chapter. But until then, I hope you enjoy.
Best,
TGWSI/Selene Borealis
~turning tables~
~chapter 2: strangers by nature~
Sean and Alex took the news well.
"You're what?" Alex shouted. His anger was searing, turning from a simmering cauldron into an engulfing flame which rivaled his abilities. In fact, for a moment it seemed like those abilities would manifest right there in the main living room, as he projected images of Erik Erik Erik Charles and Erik a baby Charles and Erik kissing prison one man raping another in prison where everyone could see fear disgust shame shame shame. Finally, though, just as Hank moved to wrap a furry arm around him and lead him outside, he calmed down, breathing out through his mouth. "You're pregnant?"
Though his voice was laced with the same disgust as his thoughts, it quickly gave way the longer he pondered it. He knew Charles was not like the men in prison. Although his memories of the place were harsh and unforgiving, he knew that anything that had happened between him and Erik – and it did disturb Charles some, how instantaneously he was able to come to the conclusion that Erik was the other father – had to have been consensual. Erik had left them, but he wasn't a monster. Besides, since Charles had the ability to become pregnant, being a homophile for him had to be natural.
While the train of thought was slightly misguided, for this, Charles was thankful. He did his best to smile. "Yes."
Sean was much more reserved. He waited until the explanations of how it was possible, how Erik indeed was the other father (it did not seem fair to keep it from him when Hank and Alex had already reached the conclusion), to comment on what his thoughts were already swirling around like a whirlpool, looking at Charles through his fringe. It was in desperate need of being cut, but none of them were skilled in that department. "Are you going to keep it?"
Technically, the phrasing was ambiguous, but he knew what he meant. Sean was from a staunch Roman Catholic family. While he had a gay uncle or two and could accept this, believing much of the same as Hank despite what his faith taught, he drew the line at taking a life. And to him, abortion in each and every stage of pregnancy, from conception, was taking a life.
Truth be told, Charles had been debating this. He did not have the same beliefs, never having thought much about abortion or ever perceiving it as something wrong, but he had wondered if it would be the right thing for him to do. It would certainly be easier than bringing a fetus to term, then either raising it or giving it up for adoption. Moreover, it would be one less tie connecting him to Erik, and a fundamental one at that, as irrevocable as falling in love with him.
But it had been days since Hank had first told him he was pregnant, and he'd had some time to come to grips with his situation and reach his answer. "I am," he said. "If any of you want to leave because of it, I understand."
It was the better choice, he believed. Abortion would be pesky with his biology and adoption, dangerous. If the child were a mutant, he could not allow it to be put through that situation, or Erik finding it and deciding to recruit it to his cause.
That did not mean, however, he wanted the boys to stay if they were truly too uncomfortable with the idea, what he had gleaned from their minds notwithstanding.
"We'll stay with you, Professor," promised Sean, beaming.
Hank agreed with him. After some hesitation, Alex sighed and did the same. "I always used to joke I wanted a little sibling with my parents," he said, grinning crookedly.
For Charles, their vows were a beacon, all that remained in the jar after the other terrors had clawed their way out. Erik and Raven had left him, yes, but it seemed he had three loyal members of his patchwork family here. Hank, Sean, and Alex, they were all good young men. He could only imagine what kind of people they would continue to grow into.
The rest of the first trimester of Charles' pregnancy passed without much hassle. Going by date of conception instead of last menstruation since he didn't have the latter, he was about nine weeks pregnant. That left only three weeks for the first third of his journey to parenthood.
His nausea and fatigue did not go away. If anything, they got worse. But it was not too much for him to bear, and the boys did their best to draw his focus away from it. Hank did his research and made an ultrasound machine, which they used for a basic exam. At ten weeks, the fetus was small, barely a blurb on the screen. A cluster of cells which was entirely dependent on him. Strangely, seeing it did things to Charles' brain that he wouldn't admit to.
Altogether, the boys were adamant in wanting to set up the nursery as soon as possible, which made him chuckle or laugh on more than one occasion. Sean in particular went crazy with it once he got ahold of some funds after much cajoling, buying a plethora of baby paraphernalia Charles had not known he would want or need. He did not much about children, much less babies. It was an issue to soon be rectified with books, his study of choice.
They decided the nursery would be in what would now be allocated as the family wing of the manor, once the school was opened. It was located in a room diagonal to his, because the one right across was Raven's, and he didn't have a desire to open hers up and be faced with old memories. Among other things, the nursery contained a crib made of streamlined wood and as little metal as possible (in case the baby developed Erik's powers), a dresser, a changing table, a rocking chair, and plenty of toys to go around. The coloring of the walls and fabrics were of varying shades of green.
"Are you sure about the colors?" Sean asked him at one point, after they had already opened the buckets of paint for the walls. "You wouldn't prefer something more...yellowy?"
"I like the green," he defended. Charles wasn't precisely certain of why, but the color seemed fitting over the other gender neutral options.
Sean puffed out his cheeks. "Okay, then. It's your choice."
He wasn't the only to complain. "This is never going to come out," Hank grumbled later on, prodding at the patches of his fur matted by the paint.
"Oh, come on, Beast, it's not that bad," Alex said cheekily. "It really completes your look."
Growling, Hank launched himself at him, barely complying with Sean's demand of, "Hey, not in the nursery! Take it outside!"
Charles hid his guffawing by sipping at his ginger tea, only to wind up choking and coughing it back up.
After the nursery was finished, the boys went back to working on refurbishing the rest of the manor. The plans for opening the school had not been pushed back much; they were still aiming for a September opening, when most other schools would begin. Searching for the new students presented a bit of a problem, as Charles needed Cerebro to do it and Hank wanted him to be using the newly remade machine as little as possible, but he managed it. A few hours every week wouldn't hurt, he was insistent on it.
Besides, if not for Cerebro, he would not have found his first student to teach after the boys, ignoring the delay in the plans for the school.
He'd stumbled upon her completely by accident when he was in the sixteenth week of his pregnancy, not meaning to do anything except skim along the minds of potential students and other mutants. It was comforting, to know he and the others he'd met, Emma and Azazel included, were not the only ones in the world. There were so many out there of all ages, the adults assured in their identities, the children waiting for someone to find them.
Suddenly, as he coasted along Cerebro's mechanism, he felt a sharp, stabbing sensation from somewhere close by: Long Island, but the suburbs, not the city or the countryside. Frowning, he focused on it, noting the fear coursing through her veins, the anxiety, the disbelief at what was happening to her. She was a mutant who had just gotten her powers – a late bloomer, from what his small sample size suggested, because she was only sixteen.
He could see her as a brilliant flash of color in Cerebro. She was taller, with long blonde hair which went down to her waist. There were two blue, comet-like patterns around her eyes, a side effect of her mutation. She was hyperventilating as she was staring at them in her floor-length mirror, her hands glowing with bright light.
What's – what's happening to me? she thought. Her mind was a jumbled mess, her inner musings going at a mile per second.
Alison, he conveyed to her. It's alright. You don't need to be afraid.
He silently winced as his telepathy only frightened her more. "Who – who is that?" she cried out, tossing her head around wildly. There was no one else in her room except for her cat, a sleek white creature with blue eyes. It was named Beryl. "Why are you in my head?"
My name is Charles Xavier, he told her. And I am like you.
He spent the next hour or so conversing with her, calming her down. He learned as much about her as she did him and mutantkind in general. She lived in Gardendale with her father, who was a judge. Her mother had walked out on them when Alison had only been a toddler, and her grandmother had died two weeks ago – probably the cataclysm to her mutation. She loved music, and her father. He was a drunk, but she didn't want to leave him.
In the end, the choice was taken from her.
Hank fretted over him as soon as he entered the kitchen. "Charles, how long were you using Cerebro?" he questioned, as if he didn't already know the answer.
"About four or so hours, maybe more," Charles replied. He turned to look at the other two boys. "Sean, Alex, how fast do you think you could get to Gardendale?" Silently, he forwarded the location to them.
"That would take hours," Alex said. "What's so important about Gardendale?"
"There's a mutant there," he explained. "Her powers have only just manifested. But her father has kicked her out; she needs a place to stay."
Alex's back straightened, the severity of the situation registering within him. Sean's mental landscape crested and bottomed like the wavelength of his voice: he was tentatively excited at the prospect of having another person in the house besides them after so long, felt grief at how the girl had lost her family in a similar manner to them, and anxious to meet her. The only female mutants he had ever met before were Raven, Angel, and Emma, after all. "What's her name?"
"Alison Blaire," he informed them. "Please, find her as quickly as you can. I'm worried about her."
It took several hours for the two boys to return. Charles waited for them in the main living room, refusing to do anything less. It was uncomfortable on his back even sitting in his favorite armchair, the baby's weight pressing in on his spine from how his abdomen had not quite managed to protrude too far yet. But, it was a discomfort he was willing to bear.
Hank sat on the couch, providing him company after a light dinner. They watched the television until the broadcast went static at midnight. Charles wasn't sure if this was a good sign, the passage of time where the three should've come home getting greater and greater. A horrible sensation began to form in the pit of his stomach, and saliva pooled into his mouth.
So much for morning sickness only being in the mornings.
"They're going to be fine, Charles," Hank spoke quietly, wanting to help calm him. His face was half-illuminated by the nearby lamp. "Alex and Sean are perfectly capable of dealing with this."
"I know that," he said, and he did. It was, however, hard for him to believe it.
"Besides," Hank added, "they're not the biggest thing you should worry about."
His attempt at distracting Charles by piquing his curiosity was successful, as loathe as he was to admit it. He quirked an eyebrow. "Oh?"
"If Alison's going to stay here, how are you going to explain your pregnancy to her?"
Charles snorted. "She's sixteen. Do you expect me to give her the 'when two people love each other very much' talk?"
Hank sent him his revulsion. While he could understand that Charles and Erik had loved one another (that Charles still loved Erik), the idea of them that way was not something he wanted to think about. "You know what I mean. Not everyone is as accepting of homophiles as Sean, Alex, and I are."
"Yes, you're right," Charles conceded. "But, she's young. The young are almost always more open to change than older generations are. We'll cross that bridge when we get to it."
If you say so.
Unwittingly, after he did in fact wind up vomiting in the nearest water closet, Charles fell asleep in the armchair. He woke up an indiscernible amount of time later to the sound of footsteps coming down the hallway, three pairs. He startled, rubbing at his face, groggy and with a metallic taste in his mouth. "Hank, could you?"
Hank helped him back into his wheelchair. He stood behind him as Alex, Sean, and Alison walked through the archway, the girl holding her cat in her arms and having a bag slung over her shoulders. Her eyes widened as she caught sight of the other man's blue and shaggy form. She opened her mouth to scream.
Charles opened his mind up to her, washing over her a wave of calm. "Alison," he greeted her verbally, holding out his hand in a way it could be taken as either a welcoming gesture or an invitation to a handshake. "It's wonderful to see you're alright. I am Charles Xavier. I was the one who spoke with you earlier."
She gawked at him. "You're the man that was in my mind." She let go of her cat as she spoke, dropping her to the floor. Beryl mewled, then padded over to his chair, brushing up against it. Immediately, she began to purr as her owner pointed at Hank. "And you're – you're – !"
"A mutant," he said gruffly. "Like you."
Charles nodded. "Don't worry, Alison, you're safe here. And I will do all that I can to help you with your powers, my dear."
By the time he was twenty weeks, one other premature student had come to live with them at the manor. Her name was Megan Gwynn, and she was fourteen and from a small mining town in Wales. Her powers were a pair of rainbow-colored insectoid wings protruding from her back and a dust she was able to conjure up, which could cause visual and auditory hallucinations. She came to the manor in a similar way to Alison: he'd been using Cerebro when she'd manifested after almost getting run over by a car while on her bike, and had helped calm her down.
Unlike Alison, Megan came from a loving family. She lived with her grandparents, her mother having died when she was only a girl. When he talked to them by projecting an image of himself in their heads, they revealed to him that they knew the existence of mutants: Megan's mother had been one, with similar powers. They approved of his request to bring Megan over to the States, expressing a wish that there could've been something similar for Megan's mother when she'd been a girl. She was gone now, presumably deceased after leaving Megan with her parents for her protection. He consoled them, telling them he was sorry for their loss. Hank and Alex picked Megan up a few days later, using his private plane.
"This place is amazing!" Megan shouted as she bounded into the manor, practically skipping. She tucked a lock of pink hair behind one of her pointed ears, twirling around with her arms outstretched. When she saw him out of the corner of her eye, she stopped to wave. "Hi, Professor X!"
"Professor Xavier," he corrected her.
She grinned. "That's not what Beast and Havok told me."
He glared at the culprits reproachfully behind her, to which they smirked unrepentantly. You're lucky we didn't tell her we called you 'Mom,' Alex told him.
...Yes, he supposed there was that.
He gestured to the two standing next to him. "Megan, I want you to meet Sean – "
"Call me Banshee," he said wickedly.
" – and Alison." He resisted the urge to roll his eyes at the boys' antics. "Alison, this is Megan. We're still renovating the students' wing, so I thought the two of you could room together. Is that agreeable?"
They were only two years apart, Megan being the younger. Alison gazed at her speculatively. "We'll find out," she decided, grabbing Megan's wrist and leading her off, causing her to squawk. "Come on, I'll show you around."
To no one's surprise, Alison and Megan soon became as thick as thieves, being the only two girls in the house. Under the tutelage of the boys, they developed their "X-Men" names: Dazzler and Pixie. They spent two hours training with Sean and Alex every day, the rest of their time devoted to the scholarly kind of learning. Hank taught them science and math, Charles English and history. He was beginning to have to do it in his bedroom, as Hank was wanting to edge him into bedrest already ("it's for your own good, Charles, because of your spinal injury, you know this"), but still he did it.
It didn't take long for the girls to figure out the cause behind the bed rest, either. The transition from winter to spring made it hard for him to keep himself bundled up underneath layers of shirts, jumpers, and the blanket he put over his clothes, and his belly was beginning to expand outwards rapidly. His earlier assessments had come back to bite him in the arse.
"Professor?" Alison asked him. She was pushing him down the path surrounding the manor, while next to them Megan was working on her flying. The goal was for her to be able to control her speed, as she'd been having that problem, similar to how Angel had described her flying when she'd first manifested. "Can I ask you a question?"
"Hmm?" he hummed. His mind was half-occupied with enjoying the fresh air. Sometimes these days, it was hard for him to focus. He blinked. "Oh, yes, go ahead."
Alison didn't answer him right away, instead choosing to share a glance with Megan as the other girl folded in her wings and started walking with them. "Professor, erm," the older girl started. "Do you have a secondary mutation?"
The question was not to be unexpected. Brushing up against their minds, he saw they had already reached the correct conclusion, but wanted him to admit it himself. "I do," he admitted.
Before he could get another word in, Megan piped in. "Is it why you're on bed rest?"
"Yes, you girls are correct in your theories. I am pregnant," he said. "Is that going to be a problem?"
Until him, Alison had never knowingly met a homophile before. One of Megan's neighbors in Wales was one, and although she wasn't ready to admit to it and he would never comment on it until she was ready for him to, he could tell even from the most basic and briefest readings the younger girl was having thoughts about her own sexuality. She was not perturbed in the slightest by the idea of him being pregnant, since it was a result of his mutation.
Alison was a different story. Without diving deeper, her thoughts were whirling with a myriad of emotions, some too conflicting to make out. "No, it's not going to be a problem," she said, after a moment. "I'm happy for you, Professor."
"I am, too!" squealed Megan. "Have you started on the nursery yet?" She had ideas on how she could pitch in with it.
He chuckled. "I'm afraid, my dear, the boys have already beat you to it. The nursery's been finished for a while now."
Two weeks later, he was in the middle of a lesson with the two girls. They were reading Notes of a Native Son by James Baldwin, a book he'd decided was a good way of tackling English, history, and civil rights (for African-Americans and mutants alike) in one.
"'I had returned home around the second week in June,'" Alison read, she and Megan sitting at his bedside with their books in their hands, "'in great haste because it seemed that my father's death and my mother's confinement were both but a matter of hours.'"
"Good," Charles encouraged. "Continue."
She read the rest of the paragraph, and then the one after it. "Now, notice this focus on his father in the first paragraph and the larger issues in the second, like before," he said. "What do you think this means?"
Megan bit her lip. Perhaps she was a little young to be expected to know the answer, but she grasped it anyways. "Is he trying to create...pathos?"
"That's one way of looking at it," he agreed. "Why do you think he's doing this?"
"To...make his cause seem more relatable."
"And himself," Allison added. "To give himself authority."
He inclined his head. "Yes, very good. I would ask you what else he could be doing here, but in the interest of time I think we'll move on. Now, Megan, would you like to read to – "
Abruptly, he cut off.
From inside him, he felt a fluttering. A flap of a butterfly's wings, the crackling of popcorn. At the same time, almost too coincidentally to be true, the hum in the back of his mind, a psionic sound he'd become used to, became something...more. It became a consciousness, unformed and barely perceptible, but something he could communicate with. When he nudged at it, it nudged back, giving him information he didn't think it was possible to know at this stage in his pregnancy, or at all until the baby would be born.
He was having a daughter, and she was perfect in every way.
Gasping, he wrapped an arm around his thickening abdomen. He almost couldn't believe the sensations, the psionic and the physical. They were unlike anything he'd ever experienced before.
"Professor!" exclaimed Alison then, reminding him that he was not alone in the room. She looked terrified, her face pale. "Professor, what's going on?"
"I'm alright," he rushed to say. "I just, ah...I've felt the baby kick, for the first time."
Megan jumped out of her seat. "Oh! Can I feel?" she begged, a rush of delight. "Please, Professor?"
Carefully, he guided her hand to the spot where the baby was kicking. He did the same with Alison, too, the older girl's eyes softening. Even with her hesitancy surrounding him, it was hard for her to ignore the miracle of a new life.
Naturally, he did not stop to ponder the possibility that the kicks would not be able to be felt externally yet. When they both frowned, he corrected his mistake. He opened up his mind to them, transmitting the strange sensation. Megan giggled, while Alison inhaled quietly. "It's a girl," she stated. "You're having a daughter."
His lips quirked. "Indeed so."
"We have to tell Alex, Sean, and Hank!" Megan crowed. She bounded out of the room, skipping so high he was almost surprised her wings didn't come out. "Alex, Sean, Hank, you've got to come see this!"
In the younger girl's absence, Alison turned to face him. For the first time since he'd told her the news, a smirk twisted at her features. "That's going to be you in fifteen years, Professor."
"Ah, don't remind me," he replied, but it was all in good fun.
When the boys returned with Megan, he showed them the sensations as well. Sean laughed and Alex grinned, while Hank hid his own elation with, "I was wondering when you were going to have your quickening. Technically, you should've had it two weeks ago."
Alex rolled his eyes. "Way to ruin the mood, Beastie."
Before the two of them could bicker, Sean said placatingly, "Well, every pregnancy is different, isn't it?"
"It seems so," Charles spoke. He rubbed at his stomach comfortingly.
He was going to have a daughter.
A part of Charles wanted to tell Erik.
He was thirty weeks pregnant now, and had been on bedrest for several of the latter ones. It was exhausting. One would think it wouldn't be, because laying in bed for the majority of the day except for bathroom breaks and meals did not seem at first glance that strenuous. Even with him continuing to teach Alison and Megan every day, the activity did not tax him much. They were good students, in every way which it counted.
But with laying in bed for so long, there was only so much he could do. He spent his days when he wasn't teaching the girls or being entertained by them or the boys, all five determined to keep him company, reading books old and new and working on a new paper to publish. He believed it would be good, would give the school further credibility once it was officially opened.
When he wasn't doing any of those things, however, his thoughts...wandered. It was hard for him not to let them. He'd more than accepted the changes of his body (for once, he was glad he could no longer feel his ankles, as they were swollen beyond belief), the impending life growing within. He remembered how horrified he'd been when he'd first found out he was pregnant, and he did not regret those emotions. Some days, while the love he'd developed for his daughter was unconditional and all-consuming, he could hardly believe he had a secondary mutation like this. Along with the shock came lingering doubts of whether or not he could be a good parent, given how his own had been, and if keeping the existence of their daughter from Erik would...truly be a good idea.
Charles wasn't able to get in contact with him, anyways. Cerebro was now securely off-limits between his bedrest and Hank roping Sean and Alex into his plans of not letting him use it, and even if it wasn't, Erik still had Shaw's helmet. And Emma. Their group had not made the papers or television news, but Charles had no doubts they were working behind the scenes, doing things the very ideas of which struct his soul and made his gut twist.
As long as Erik was on this path, he couldn't let him know the truth. He wanted him to, remembering how the other man had divulged to him the story of his daughter Anya, yet he couldn't. It would not be safe for their daughter. She had him, and she had the boys and his current and future students, and that would have to be enough. The alternative was much too perilous to think about.
"Have you decided on a name yet?" Sean asked. He was braiding Alison's hair, the girl sitting on the ground in front of him as he put the skills he'd developed from being part of a large family to work. Megan was dozing in her usual armchair, her copy of The Lord of the Rings splayed out on her stomach as she quietly snored.
Charles didn't look up from what he was writing. "I've had some ideas."
"Share them with the class," Alex said, from where he was sitting in the corner on an armchair which had pulled into the room, playing solitaire.
"I don't think you're going to like my choices."
Alex was not convinced. "Oh, come on, Charles. They can't be that bad."
Charles said nothing to this, humming softly as his eyebrows knit together in concentration.
"You can't hold out on us after saying that," Sean protested. "Is there one part of the name that isn't that bad?" He took the way Charles' nose minutely scrunched up as an answer. "Tell us that, Prof."
Charles sighed and set down his paper. He supposed there was no point in continuing to work on it. Alex and Sean would keep on pestering him until they got what they wanted. "Lorna," he murmured. "Her first name will be Lorna."
"Oh, I like that name," Alison said, smiling.
"Is it after the Lorna Doone book?" Sean inquired, finishing off the braid with a hair tie.
"No," Charles said. "I just like the name."
Alex set down his cards. "And the middle name?"
He waited four seconds precisely to answer. "Raven."
Neither Sean nor Alex were surprised by this. Although they were of the opinion Raven had betrayed them by leaving (which wasn't accurate at all, he had told her to go, because he knew without reading her mind that was what she had wanted, to be free to be herself, because he hadn't offered her an environment to do that and hadn't realized it until it was too late), they knew she was his sister in every way which mattered. It made sense for him to give his daughter her name, with how much she mattered to him. They didn't necessarily like it, but they understood it.
But, to Alex, that left only one reason why Charles didn't believe he and Sean would like her name.
Alex clenched his hands into fists. "You're giving her his last name, aren't you?"
Alison perked up, curious. She and Megan hadn't been told anything about his daughter's other father, nothing except for that he wouldn't be part of her life. She was eager to find out more about him.
Charles looked over at Sean. "Sean, would you take the girls downstairs, please?"
Sean made a face. "Professor – "
Charles said nothing, his expression conveying his insistence alone.
Sean scowled, but did as told. "Megan," he said once he'd stood up and gone over to her, shaking her shoulder gently. "Megan, come on. We're going to go downstairs."
Alison stared at him as they left. As best he could, he sent her his reassurance.
He waited until ten seconds after they were gone to speak again. "Alex, Erik is her other father."
"So that justifies giving her his name?" he spat. "Calling her Lehnsherr?"
"Xavier-Lehnsherr," Charles corrected.
Alex waved his hands around wildly. "Charles, he almost killed you!"
"He didn't mean to," he said, and it was the truth. Erik hadn't meant to put the bullet in his spine, or for him to feel the pain of the coin going through Shaw's head, killing him. Even in his darkest moments, Erik had never thought about hurting him. Charles knew his mind too well to believe otherwise.
"He put a bullet in your spine," Alex stated, oblivious to his train of thought and acting as if he could ever forget. "He left us on the beach, to deal with the US government and the fallout of his actions for hours! You could've died during that time! And if you had, none of this would be happening! You wouldn't be pregnant, and Lorna wouldn't exist!"
"You don't think I know that?" Charles snapped. The anger was most unlike him. He drew in a breath to calm himself. "Alex, I hear you. I remember everything that you do. But it doesn't change the facts."
"It doesn't change how you feel, you mean," Alex accused.
Charles counted down from five in his head. "I know that's what you think. But while I don't want to say I know better, perhaps I do. I know Erik's mind, and I am the one he paralyzed, after all." At the reminder of the effects of Cuba, Alex flinched back as if struck. Charles hated it. "Even if you don't accept my wishes, can you at least respect them?"
"What happens when he finds out?"
"He won't." When Alex snorted, he gave him a look. "Do you think he's going to be searching government records, looking for the existence of a daughter who would never even occur to him to be possible? Or coming here long enough to find out what she means to him?"
"He has Emma," Alex pointed out.
"Do you think she'll be around any of you long enough to find out? Or that I would let her be in range of here for long?" No response. He exhaled softly. "Can we agree to disagree on this?"
"...Sure. But don't say I didn't tell you so," Alex warned. "You love Erik, I get it. But it also makes you weak around him, and it's not gonna be him here to pick up the pieces when he finds out the truth, it'll be us: me, Sean, and Hank."
With that, the younger man left the room.
In his wake, Charles cradled his stomach, looking down at it. Tears blurred his vision; hurriedly, he wiped them away with one hand. "He means well," he said quietly, but if it was for his daughter's benefit or his own was anyone's guess. "He just doesn't understand your other father's...complexities."
There was no such thing as grey to Erik, after all he had been through, he operated entirely in black and white. But Charles, having seen his mind and fallen in love with him the first time he entered it, could see the grey in his character. He wasn't purely good, but then again, he certainly wasn't pure evil. Most weren't.
Hopefully, that meant one day he would come to his senses.
Hopefully, that meant one day Charles would be able to tell him the truth about their daughter, Lorna Raven Xavier-Lehnsherr.
Lorna was born in mid-July.
The entire event was...well, an event. He woke up that morning as the sun rose to discover that his waters had broken: his mattress and covers were damp, and the cramps in his lower back and sides let him know it was not from accidentally pissing himself in his sleep. Without alerting the girls, he sent a message out to the boys, letting them know it was time before extending his powers further, out to White Plains. He found a doctor there, an obstetrician. It wasn't hard to make him do his bidding, as loathe as he was to admit it.
In the early hours of the afternoon, after convincing the doctor with his telepathy that performing a c-section on a man at his home was indeed normal, he awoke from the gauze of anesthesia. The first thing he saw as he instinctively smacked his lips was Sean standing near his bedside, holding a bundle of blankets which he was rocking ever so slightly. He smiled. "How is she?"
Sean looked up, absolutely grinning from ear to ear. "Perfect," he declared. "But, um, I don't think you need to worry about her being a mutant or not, Prof."
Without elaborating any further, he held out the newborn to her father. Vaguely aware of Hank protesting this due to him just waking up from the anesthesia but electing to ignore it and the way his stitches twinged, Charles sat up to hold her. She was in his arms instantly, and then he saw it: her green hair.
"Oh," he whispered, brushing back one of her delicate curls. "I don't know where you got that from."
To this, his daughter opened her eyes, they having been previously closed. Despite her only having entered the world at most an hour before, her irises were already green. "And you have his eyes," he breathed.
The realization made him sniffle.
Sean and Hank, the only two in the converted operating room, gave him this moment of tranquility. "The doc says she's perfect. I mean, obviously, you know this, but," the former rambled, his younger age showing. He collected himself. "She's healthy. Ten fingers, ten toes, perfect heartbeat. The works."
"Yes, thank you," Charles said.
But he wasn't aware he had formulated a reply.
I love you, he conveyed to Lorna silently, both in feelings and words. As a newborn, he didn't expect for her to understand the latter, but he thought it was important. You're the most important thing in my world, my life, my everything. I love you so.
Blinking, she stared up at him and gurgled. His heart melted into a million pieces, because along with it he could feel her adoration, her love for him. She was only a babe, but she already knew who and what he was to her, having felt his mental presence from that first time in the womb.
Crying openly, he pressed a kiss to her forehead. As he did, he was sure of one thing:
Even without Erik in their lives, with a bond like theirs, the two of them were going to be alright.
Word Count: 6,273
Next Chapter Title: cry your heart out