A.N
All rights to be mad and murderous towards me and my lateness with this chapter are granted. But just remember if you kill me then you'll never get chapter four, as apposed to getting it six months later…
Anyway, I've ironed out my 'writing style' so as of half way through this chapter things read a little easier. I think I'll make this a sole project as well until it's finished to help speed things up. I'll see what happens during the holidays.
-Chapter Three – Playing Dad-
"They're taking too long. Scott, why are they taking so long?"
For the sixteenth minute in a row Jean paced back and forth before her ashen faced husband, who right now looked very little like the audacious, unmovable rock leader of the X-Men that he had been in his peak days, and more like a sick and pale friend burdened with a weighty worry. His head a pounding mess and his arms riddled with tired muscles, he looked up strenuously at his beloved wife before lifting a heavy arm and taking her tense wrist in a gentle but demanding grasp. She looked down at him with pleading, pain-filled, watery green eyes. With his own stony expression though she sat.
His ruby-quartz gaze flickered momentarily through the stuffy, over crowded and under funded waiting room of the St. Michael's hospital just off Queen Street. They hadn't a choice with their hospitals; the nearest one besides here was on the other side of a heavily trafficked town, despite the late hour. The X-Men also liked to be discreet, still, despite the general acceptance of mutants in society today, and so any other mode of transport that wasn't a standard road vehicle, despite how fast the Blackbird could move, was out of the question. St. Michael's, because of this and being only twenty minutes from the mansion, was where they had ended up.
Scott's gaze, glancing over broken legs and flying vomit, eventually landed on Rogue who sat just across from him on a tattered, plastic-bound chair, her knees to her still chest as she hugged herself absent-mindedly. Her eyes told him she was somewhere else, despite the circumstance.
A gentle nudge prodded her side. Her husband leant over her ear and whispered tenderly in her ear.
"Chere? … Rogue, you wit' us here tonight?"
He seemed to frighten the little colour that there was left in her cheeks out of her ghostly complexion. Every tense muscle in her body seized as she spun her head round quickly, locking glazed green eyes onto Remy's overcast crimson glare.
"What?"
His smile trembled as he offered her it, although it was hardly even there at all. It was enough nonetheless to sooth her as her shoulders slouched and she faced forward towards the white tiled floor again.
"Sorry…"
She wanted to tell him so much. She fantasised about being back at the mansion, everything perfect and quiet, and jumping on top of him as she waved the test in front of his bedazzled eyes, only seconds later to be taken up by his powerful but tender grip until they had woken everyone else up and shared the utter joy of the moment of truth.
But she couldn't bear it, couldn't say it as she watched the swelling worry in his eyes for his dear old friend, and not when she still wasn't entirely sure herself.
"I'm just worried, a bit spaced out… is all."
Logan was at her side, standing as he leaned silently against a cheery yellow wall, just a pallid backdrop to him. With his arms crossed and his body unshaken, his gaze hidden under the brim of a hat, it was impossible as it almost always was to read his expression and generalise any thoughts.
"Aint we all," were all the roughly spoken but gently expressed words he said to them as he contemplated in private, knowing Jean would not dare pry.
Before him she looked very nearly ready to rise on her pacing feet again. Her fingers played furiously with each other, twisting and twitching in nervous noughts. She bit furiously down on her bottom lip, pealing away dried skin and her foot tapped in an uneven rhythm against the tiled floor. Logan eventually spoken up again in that same strangely soothing tone.
"Have just a little more faith in 'Ro, would ya Jeannie. You're makin' me edgy."
The words rolled over her, foreign in her distracted mind despite how he even tried to smile as he said them. She was making herself distraught, unable to stop conjuring the worst conclusions to mind. Eventually she turned to Scott again and he could see what was coming. He quickly slipped his hand into hers before she began to speak.
"Scott…" she faltered on the tongue then sighed and carried on as a sharp shiver ran down her cold spine, "what if she… she lost— Scott what if she's lost the baby and had a miscarriage?"
The group's faces contorted with pain, their stomachs twisting and hearts leaping as Jean forced them to ponder over what could very easily be the inevitable. Logan was the only one who did not move, only tilted his head downward a little more. Rogue and Remy looked at the couple across from them and Scott's hand squeezed his wife's slim fingers together gently. Logan then shrugged.
"Guess we'll just have t' wait an' see."
And no one said anything after that.
………………
They were made to wait for half an hour. It felt like an eternity and a day. Finally though, after those nerve tearing thirty minutes were over, a doctor came into view from a set of swinging blue doors and headed towards them. Her face told them to ease off thinking about the worst as she placed a comforting smile on her full red lips and scanned the contents of her clipboard quickly before scanning her hazel eyes over each of them in turn.
"Can I ask who the father is?" Ms Munroe never said."
Jean opened her mouth to correct the uninformed doctor but Logan quickly stepped in front for her. The doctor smiled again.
"Right, Mr Munroe, follow me. And don't worry, you still have a very pregnant wife."
Four sets of shoulders slumped in relief as Logan went off. They quickly exchanged intrigued looks as he disappeared through the swinging doors, aware of their glances nonetheless.
"You think 'Ro's nourrisson could call him a pere?"
Rogue looked at him silently, Jean and Scott stumped, the idea truthfully never occurring to them over these past six months, despite how much they had teasingly nagged the two about their increasingly close relationship in the past. They had never been able to drag it out beyond an insanely deep friendship and so they had eventually given up.
Now the thought of Logan as acting father seemed so perfect that it drowned their hearts in swelling sweetness.
Shrugging, Remy came out with the definitive line that blared out all their parallel thoughts.
"They be close enough for him to play a good pere to de babe, an' ah don' see why not."
………………
Ororo was awake and sitting up on the hospital bed when Logan walked in with the doctor. However, she was in a world of her own. Her eyes dispatched from the present, she gazed on with glazed azure irises and silent pupils. Her hands sat limp on her knees, and she took no heed of the waves of goose pimples than ran up and down her bare arms. Her hair was still bedraggled and grey and her back sagged slightly, ridding her of her usual structured composure. She would have looked in shock, except for her expression was too lax to truly appear so. Instead she simply looked worn, and somewhere in her blank eyes was a lingering trace of guilt.
Logan went to her side and placed a gentle hand on her shoulder. It took a light squeeze for her to finally heed his presence though, and she looked slowly to her side where he stood with a lope-sided smile.
"Ah'm standin' in as dad right now, if it's alright with you."
She concealed a laugh and he smiled again with relief now.
"Mr Munroe?"
The two obediently focused on the petite-framed doctor to hear her long anticipated conclusion on tonight's unexpected horror.
"Your wife and baby are both fine now, I'm glad to tell you that. But I'll say in all honesty that it was a very close call tonight. The fever you ran Ms Munroe, if it had gone on for any much longer, could in all likelihood have led to a miscarriage and put your own life in serous danger as well. So with that in mind I urge you to stay as calm and relaxed as possible, for the remainder of your term at least, lest you want to end up back here, which no one ever really does." The doctor then gave her a gentle smile. "But apart from that, you are all free to go."
Relief of Ororo's own rushed in to sweep her still heart as she ran a clammy hand through her tangled hair. Turning back to Logan she managed a weak, genuine smile and a deep sigh. He gave the back of her free hand a sympathetic pat.
"Only another three months t' go darlin'."
Her smile became a slight grimace. "Three months and a delivery Logan."
He challenged her with more of a grin. "Three months, a delivery an' a baby at the end of it all."
She felt a warmth spread over her shivering bare skin as he said it. It was the same warmth she always felt when she was able to look past the slight hell that this pregnancy had been and realise what she would be getting out of it at the end. She would soon have family again, another Munroe at her side. Sometimes she sometimes scowled herself for. She had family, she always did with the X-Men. But then to have her own son or daughter, that was different, in it's way…
It was in again imagining this that she added subconsciously to the muse. What she imagined now for the first time was Logan at her side when she did give birth, someone there with her so that she was not alone, someone who was just as keen to act out the fatherly role as he was to act the rock she so often needed right now.
As she left the hospital that early morning to go back to the mansion, and then on Logan's strict and direct orders straight to bed, she slept peacefully that night for the first time in nearly six months, a small smile gracing the corners of her lips as she blissfully dreamt the rest of the night away.
………………
It was a day later, almost. Five o'clock in the morning to be precise. Very unlikely that anyone would be awake whatever hour it was anyway on this dark February dawn, not even Logan and least of all Remy. No, he was a log beside Rogue, a very content, lightly snoring log.
She rolled her youthful green eyes as she rose from the warm bed, tenderly removing the bed sheets from over her. It was very unlikely again though that Remy would wake, not unless another nightmare storm hit the mansion, with its source derived from the attic. Even when she stubbed her bare big toe on the en suite door, the stubbing itself causing no pain to her steel-like skin but the door promptly slamming shut, did her dear husband arouse from his sweet, warm sleep. She just managed to refrain from swearing liberally and quickly opened the door again, scowling at its white innocence as she shut it over.
This had to be the last test. She was being obsessive over it now, she knew. She could forgive herself though. Just imagining being told the pregnancy was nothing more than a false alarm, especially after she celebrated with Remy and the others over it, broke her heart and soul.
She should have consulted Hank over it, she knew that too. But his recent phenomenal breakthroughs in medical science, revealing stunning research on such topics as cancer, AIDs and the legacy virus that he was only just now being allowed to share with the rest of the wary world, meant quite understandably he was hardly ever at the mansion anymore. He even had his own flat now, a sign of how much the X-Men had moved on from their glory fighting days.
So Rogue had been left on her own with this one and preyed that the tests and her woman's intuition would be enough to produce the correct conclusion in the end.
The third test came back identically to the other two.
Bursting from the bathroom into the bedroom and throwing herself head on into the bed beside her husband all in a matter of a fleeting few second, it was little wonder Remy didn't know what exactly had hit him at quarter past five in the morning.
His gut reaction, when he realised it was only Rogue, was to seize back the cosy duvet lost to him when she ripped it from his vulnerable, early-morning body and wrap himself tight again, shielding himself from the madwoman crawling over his torso. He groaned and buried his face deep into a pillow, ignoring the laughter that hailed from above, beaconing him to rise at this unreasonable hour.
"Remy! Remy, get up ya big fool! Ya big lazy swamp-rat fool! Get up, ya gonna be a pere!"
The words missed home at first. He simply saw Rogue's beautiful wide grin glowing beside him as he threw his gaze out from the pillow, her eyes laced with overwhelmed tears not yet shed and her entire body trembling.
"Y' hear me? You gonna be a dad, we gonna be parents. We're gonna have a kid!"
"You—we havin' a baby?"Chocked up almost to the brim in a mind-blowing truth, Rogue could barely speak, and only just summoned the wits to nod with her splitting grin held thoroughly in place.
It only took a moment later for the bedroom door to swing open with a flustered looking Logan standing tense at the doorway.
"What the hell is goin' on in here? You've just about woken everyone up in the mansion, as well as our neighbours two blocks down probably!"
His voice was gruff with sleep, his eyes worried as they glanced up to the ceiling, but nothing could deny him the smallest twitches at the corners of his pale lips as he looked the flustered couple up and down, their faces pale from shock.
"Well it's about time."
The two nodded simultaneously, hardly making a sound but finding one another to grasp onto as they trembled slightly from the dawning reality. Logan gave them one nod of congrats.
"I'll leave you two to it then, considering it's about half five in the morning and I'm not facing Ororo with ye's if you've managed to wake her up, which ah don't doubt you have."
The door was shut and Rogue collapsed onto her back on the bed, eye wide and round as she fixed blankly onto the ceiling. Remy soon filled her vision once again though as he hovered over her, fingertips tracing lightly over her flat stomach.
"So, a lil' fille or garson to call our own then, eh. Newest in the LeBeau line."
Rogue smiled quietly, imagining it.
"It'll be a little monster whatever it is, with all that LeBeau blood swimin' 'bout his system."
Remy flopped down beside his wife, sighing contently, just as happy to imagine with her.
"Truer words never spoken chere. At least he'll be our lil' monster."
"He?"
Remy shrugged. "A man can hope, non?"
She didn't argue.
This was why Remy LeBeau had battled all those years ever at the side of Rogue, why he had came through all the obstacles and hurdles with her. Why he had always come back after the hardship and knock backs, why he had put his heart and soul into getting their relationship to work. Why he had never backed down and stayed stubborn at her side forevermore. It had all come to a head now, at this moment; finally his life had meaning again.
………………
Quite naturally, because it would be wrong if they didn't, celebrations were in order and fulfilled that very night. After phone calls and psychic links galore, and after receiving everything from holograms to beams from space, and once Rogue and Remy were happy that they had informed all whom they wanted to, the six resident X-Men settled into the warmest and most favourite of the mansion's lounges for a chat and a relax.
Rogue and Ororo seized a corner for themselves, curled up in two healthily stuffed armchairs of rich velvet pelt that were near enough to the marble fireplace so as that they soaked up the radiating warmth, but didn't swelter until they dehydrated. The topic of chat was the fortunes and pitfalls of what would be their forthcoming motherhoods. The others, needless to say, were happy to leave them be.
Lounging on a long, plush red sofa Scott, Jean and Remy, along with Logan sitting on an armchair across from them, grouped together themselves. Wrapped loosely in Scott's arms, Jean lay sleeping. The devoted husband stroked through her blazing red hair affectionately, sparing her a soft smile before his attention, with Logan's, latched onto the brand new father-to-be.
"Two pregnant women living together in de one mansion…" Remy mused, only half-jokingly, "You think de place is big enough?"
Scott's frank answer came back a quiet, "No."
"T'ink der be enough chicken stocked in de basement?"
Logan chucked an eyebrow. "With all due respect to your spouse Cajun, as long as Ororo struts through these walls, the chicken's going nowhere but on her plate."
There was a glint in Remy's dark eyes, and a flicker at the corners of his mouth. "Y' know Rogue c'n be pretty damn fast, when she wants to be."
Despite the wicked opportunity for jokes aplenty, Scott let that one lie, tactfully changing the subject instead.
"You must be thrilled then, to have your own baby on the way, finally." He smiled, but Remy wasn't blind to the small trace of regret hidden under his warm expression.
"Oh ah don' know Cyk," he started, tentatively attempting some light humour on the matter, preying Rogue was wholly engrossed in whatever Ororo was saying to accompany her dramatic arm gestures, "Yeah ah'm thrilled an' all, but how much does de pere really do durin' de nine months? Play punch bag? Scapegoat?"
"Hold back their hair over the toilet, let them choose what time you both get up at in the morning, cross boarders for the food they need; yeah, stuff like that."
Remy swallowed quietly, but in obvious fear. "Choose what time in de mornin'?"
Logan unleashed a wolfish grin before getting up in his usual unexplained manner and patting the paling father lightly on his slumped shoulder.
"Good luck, that's all ah can offer to ya Cajun. Got business, I'll be back later, don't have any kids while ah'm gone."
He aimed his last comment at the huddled women in the corner, making sure both heard and both nodded in acknowledgment.
"Typical man, runnin' off when it all gets too much."
Ororo smiled gently, brushing off the distraction Logan had caused, blinking away the glaze in her eyes. "I don't know Rogue. He's been pretty good to me over these past six months."
Her hand lingered subconsciously over the crown of her ever-expanding bump, smoothing over the white, stretched maternity wear she had so… eagerly went shopping for with Rogue and Jean.
"Yeah, he'd make a good dad ah suppose. He seemed keen enough t' pose for you and your kid at the hospital anyway."
There was a sneaky glint in Rogue's shadowed green gaze as she tentatively said it, one accompanied by a small, accruing twitch in the corners of her mouth, which she fought with every facial muscle to keep at bay. In turn Ororo only approved herself a wistful smile, as if forgetting she was in the presence of company, allowing herself to be carried away a little by private thoughts and muses. Rogue never asked though and so she never told.
"So how long have you known?"
Rogue grinned at the sharp shift in topic in the conversation. Underestimating Ororo and her will to ever keep minds off herself and Logan was a silly thing to do, she should have known by now.
"What figures you t' think ah've known for longer than ah've said."
Ororo simply offered her a raised eyebrow. "Well?"
"Alright – a week. Ah took a couple o' tests last week then one on Wednesday then one last night an' then the last one this mornin'."
Ororo submitted an impressed nod. "You are thorough."
Rogue shrugged. "Wouldn't wanna be celebratin' a false victory, would ah?"
"But you are sure now?"
"Oh yeah, hell yeah. Five outta five's gotta be a pretty good sign, right?"
Ororo split a smile and nodded. "As good as the signs get I suppose."
She watched the clock slip to quarter past two then took a casual glance over at the remaining three others, listening to Jean snore lightly and Remy and Scott teeter around the beginnings of some mundane macho argument.
"One week pregnant then; how do you feel?"
Rogue chewed on her bottom lip thoughtfully then let out a small shrug. "Ah don't know really. Doesn't feel like a week t' be honest; feels like it's only been a day, only since ah informed Remy of the good fortune we spent many a sleepless nights tryin' t' create."
Ororo let that one go with a small grin.
"How did you feel one week in?"
Ororo was quiet for a minute as Rogue asked, and instant regret flooded in to the Southern woman's conscience.
"Well, one week in I was still waiting for the brunt of the swelling in my face and thighs to go down, and Hank was still struggling to get me out of the attic for his check ups. Generally I wasn't feeling very good."
Fighting down a churning a wave of guilt in her newly burdened stomach, Rogue locked eyes meekly with the majestic mutant across from her as she pushed back a heard of her own memories from that past shaky time.
"Aw 'Ro, ah'm sorry, ah really am— ah never meant– ah mean it was just a passing question—"
Ororo put up a slender hand to dismiss Rogue's squirming apology, smiling and shaking her head as she did so.
"Please Rogue, you're just making me feel bad for making you feel bad. This is your night, your joy – you have every right to say and ask whatever you want."
A sheepish grin crept back onto her rosy face, but at the same time, without ever expressing it in her eyes, she wondered. She wondered that if Ororo could put up a hand and dismiss six months ago with nothing more than a smile and the shake of her head, then why would her mouth still not utter, not even to Logan or Jean, what exactly happened on that night? Why was she still not prepared to share and unload the burden that was keeping such horrific memories locked up?
As ever Rogue could only let it go, never to posses the boldness in front of Ororo that could allow her to pry further than where the pregnant mutant was freely prepared to go to.
The clock suddenly chimed its half-past jingle.
"Half two – geeze, we pregnant women can talk."
Ororo etched on another smile to her slightly dry lips, taking it for granted that Rogue was as ready for bed as she was. They promptly stretched and rose in near perfect unison, watched by Remy and Scott as they pulled themselves free from their muffled argument, which appeared to have no clear winner.
Remy obediently clung to Rogue's side, his hand quickly slipping into hers, his eyes affectionately locked onto her flat stomach. She gave him wide smile and a playful pat on the cheek and on that they disappeared to their bedroom.
Ororo turned to Scott before she made her leave.
"That would be you two down here for the night then."
Scott nodded, stroking his fingers tentatively through her lush hair again. "Well you know as well as I do how … sensitive … she can be if you wake her before her due hour."
Ororo nodded back knowingly. "Goodnight Scott."
"You too Ororo."
For a moment she lingered in the doorway, half in but hands still clung to the inside doorframe.
"Scott."
He looked up. "Hmm?"
"It will happen, eventually."
Without a word he looked down again and Ororo took leave for her bed.
………………
Three Weeks Later
Remy was looking a little desperately at Ororo as she stood outside the main upstairs bathroom with him. It was only natural, she supposed, for his face to be awash with an eerie, green-tinted paleness and his eyes to be set in a glazed wonder, but then it was only natural the procedures Rogue was carrying out down the pan.
"Tis only been three weeks Stormy, how c'n she be doin' all dis pregnancy business in de mornings already?"
A loud retching noise followed up the question, the third to arouse within a matter of minutes. Ororo managed to ignore it this time.
"Pregnant and you still insist on dubbing me with that name."
She encouraged not even a sly side smile from the Cajun, and so taking sympathy on his fraught emotions she took on a patient yet repetitive sounding tone and proceeded to explain to him, again.
"As I have already said Remy, things are different for each individual woman throughout each individual pregnancy. Some of us start habits like these only weeks into the term, yet others it's not for months, if at all. In my case the morning sickness has no meaning because it is occurs in the afternoon; with Rogue it seems morning will do just fine for her.
"Cravings, mood swings, fatigue; they all vary from one body to another. It's just part and parcel of being a woman and bearing a child."
Explanation finished, Remy succeeded to look none the wiser father, and slightly horrified at the thought-come-reality of having to go through nine months of an unpredictable pregnancy with an unpredictable woman. Ororo surprisingly sympathised with him.
Rogue quickly interrupted their parallel trails of thought as she emerged pale and yet fresh faced from the bathroom, eyes laden down with bags but her mouth arched up in an eager smile as she rubbed her hands hungrily together.
Breakfast then?"
Ororo laughed, shaking her head at Remy's further set bafflement and Rogue's utter success in winding him up.
"I'll join you both later if that's alright."
With a nimble side step she slipped behind Rogue and into the bathroom, leaving the explaining and the confusion to the very couple themselves.
As Ororo padded across the immaculate black and white tiles she dropped the limited amount of clothes she had on and left them to lie behind her. Slowly opening the glazed shower door she spun the silver painted taps and set the temperature to where she always had it. Then she left the water to run and took a couple of steps back.
There in front of her the full-length, gold trimmed wall mirror gleamed in the reflective light of the spotlights above, bouncing Ororo's image back at her, showing off to her her almost fully grown bump.
She took a slim hand to it, running it over the crown of the swell and across her belly button, then underneath it and along the stretched sides and then finally over to where the baby's feet lay, where often she would be kept in silent wonderment as she watched it kick to its heart's content.
It went without saying that it was quite a change from her once toned and slim waistline, where tight skirts, lacy thongs and figure hugging jeans had never been a problem before, but were now the devil's very own spawn reincarnated (a claim made in one of her more infamous mood swings).
She smiled happily. It was only two months now until she was due to deliver. Today was the second of March and her exact due date was the thirty-first of May. The thought was forever sending quiet chills down her arched back.
However, any doubts, any hesitations she might have had before, when memories still lingered constantly and her emotions were still strung tight, were now gone, and no more were her nightmares or regrets.
If nothing more, she was determined above all else to never let what happened three weeks ago happen again, not when she only had two months left to go and she was so near. She could not risk coming so close again to destroying the life inside of her, not for selfish fear, needless fear she felt she should add. Not for anything.
Despite these worries Ororo showered quite contently on that cool, calm spring morning, moving on half an hour later from the steamy bathroom to join Rogue and Remy in the smoky kitchen to fulfil her tasteless breakfast cravings once again.
Rogue had gotten off easy with her pallet, although she was still only in the early stages yet. However, all was balanced out by a frightening swell in her appetite, which was always made most apparent at breakfast, or any time before noon.
A plate of toast, a plate of bacon, a plate of sausages and two or three glasses of orange juice were usually what sufficed till lunch, and still Remy's toes curled at the ever frustrating mystery of how Rogue never tipped the scales any more than what was fashionable for pregnant woman.
For now the Cajun's guard seemed to be down, probably due to the giddying heights of his in-coming fatherhood. He managed only just to spot and acknowledge Ororo as she drifted in quietly, eyes already locked fiercely onto the coffee maker and cupboards in quick unison.
"Bonjour Stormy—"
Without missing a beat she raised a warning finger.
"Ca va?"
Pulling out a box of musely and pouring herself exactly half a bowl, Ororo then moved onto the coffee machine. "Fine Remy, thank you. And I see you're still soaring from three weeks ago, mon ami."
She gestured to his own plate of toast, sitting a couple of slices down now. Carefully his dark eyes ran the length of the table that it took to reach Rogue's own plate of toast, now sitting two slices up.
"Three weeks in an' he still can't seem t' get over the news yet. Ah just hope the 'pleasant shock' doesn't turn into full blown denial, y' know." Gently Rogue poked her husband in the side. "Y' hear that Remy LeBeau?"
He nodded obediently, hugging his plate to himself as he answered in timid silence. To ask who the boss was in their relationship was just to prove anyone's lack of observation skills.
Ororo's coffee steamed into readiness and she began to add lashing of sugar and herbs to the pot, claiming it as her own now. Then taking it out of the machine Ororo gave Remy a quick backward glance and began to pour the contents hungrily over her cereal.
It seemed Remy would never quite get used to his old friend's odd cravings, as he turned away in plain distaste from her coffee-cereal combo. Smiling nonetheless, Ororo sat purposely down across from Remy and began to eat, one big mouthful at a time. He took to distracting himself by looking wistfully out the kitchen door.
"So where be Scott and Jeannie?"
Rogue shrugged. "Still in their bed is my guess."
Ororo sighed and wolfed down another spoonful of breakfast.
………………
"Scott how long have we been trying?"
Laying her head on his bare chest, Jean closed her eyes as Scott laboured a heavy sigh into his lungs. He looked down upon her as a burst of young sunrays spilt through the bedroom window and fell upon her head of lushes red hair.
"About three years, I think."
It was her turn to sigh. "And still nothing."
He pursed his lips in silent frustration. "No."
In a way, the former leader was almost envious of Remy, even of Ororo; he had been able to give his wife just about the one thing they couldn't just go out and fight for; she had inadvertently found herself burdened with the one thing worth more than anything they ever battled for. But Scott, after three long years, three hard, frustrating years, hadn't. That pained him far more than anything else had or could.
"How much longer do you think we should keep trying for?"
He was quiet for a long minute, until he felt her grip tighten on the sheets.
"I don't know."
This was far from the answer she was looking for, but she said nothing. Her understanding and patience far outstretched her tempter.
"We'll keep trying Jean, until we get our baby, don't worry."
A short silence lingered between them as they considered the looming impossibility of that.
"No matter how long it takes, no matter whether it's ours or whether we have adopt, we will have a baby Jean."
He spoke with such a new and fresh confidence then that Jean could not help but embrace a flicker of hope and a weak smile.
"Thank you."
………………The day was glorious, blessed with a sun rarely seen on the best of summer days, never mind in the middle of a temperamental spring. The streaky, burnt orange rays from above made their way into almost every alleyway and back-street, every crevice and brick hole, across every high-rise building and pathway, warming the acres of New York below and setting moods within the general public light.
On such days, Logan of the retired X-Men would usually be found silently admiring the natural beauty in its purity as gratefully as Ororo herself would. Usually he could be found in amongst the small forest of trees buried into the mansion's stretching grounds, dwelling in the solitude of cool shade, or even out in the back with the others, watching casually as they duelled competitively at the poolside.
He would not usually be found in a cold, leaky bar alongside Main Street sitting at an old oak wood counter, moodily talking to the barman behind in a hushed and indifferent tone. He tended to do that more on bitter winter nights, to follow the clique.
But whatever aura it was that this place set off on first impressions, which made most turn away without so much as a flicker of interest at its murky windows, it made for an apt example of that other old clique: to never judge a book by its cover.
To the non-observer this place was dark, lonely and depressing, the very last spot in New York that any respectable soul would waste their precious hours of leisure time in. It was simply for the grungy and the cheep, its flickering lime-green neon sign and fraying chequered curtains best left ignored than investigated. Besides, most would argue to any curious partner, there was a perfectly well reputed bar not two blocks down the road from it.
But of course, Logan knew better about the bar.
The barman who owned the place was one of the most upbeat, optimistic characters around, at least that Logan knew of, and next to Jubilee. He was an oxymoron to the appearance of his very own business, a glowing pink figure that stood out amongst broken ceiling lights and beer stains with a smile that could shatter glass. He was quite simply known as Frank, and his bar as Frank's Bar, and to his regulars he was a legend, if not a modest one.
Logan admired him almost purely for his unspoilt spirit and ability to make light of any situation and mood a person might happen to drag into his bar at whatever time of the 24-hour day. All claws would be flying, and not seconds after Logan would be chugging beers before he could even scratch out a splinter of the bar. A man who could do that, in Logan's humble opinion, deserved a medal.
But Logan was not here for a laugh and a couple of beers tonight, not even to calm any tempers or to offer a passing hello. Today he had arrived for information, for the other, perhaps most vital, thing Logan knew about Frank and his bar, was that behind the beaming, ever-smiling face of Frank was a man who knew a lot about a lot, and who owned a business of gossip, as well as of beers and peanuts. And that information was free on the market for anyone he saw fit to have it.
"Ah, Mr Logan, what can I serve you, the usual?"
The rouged and slightly hunched figure of a mutant shook his shaggy-haired head as he entered the bar amidst a sea of cigarette smoke and took his usual barstool directly before the barman. "No Frank, not today thanks. Ah just need an update."
Frank took an idle dirty glass from beside the sink behind him and began to clean it slowly with an old, beaten cloth.
"An update on your friend's attacker?"
Logan nodded silently.
Frank put the glass down carefully and picked up another, looking casually around his bar as he did so. The place was near deserted save from a couple of hunched, mumbling men in one grey corner and a lone woman and her purse in another. He turned back to Logan and leaned heavily on the bar.
"'Fraid I don't have much more for you Logan. If y' want my opinion instead, then I think he's cleared town. Smartest move he'd have made since he started this fiasco too. There aint been any more killings of his style in about a month."
Frank looked around again before dropping his tone slightly to continue.
"Y' know, if you could just get your friend to talk about what happened, well… She's the only other know survivor, 'part from Michelle, that we know of." A smattering of wistfulness entered the balding man's dull-brown gaze. "You know she must have some fight in her to have gotten away from him alive. Michelle only managed to scram 'cause her mate Paul was passin' the block and he managed to scare him off. Came damn near close to catchin' him and all."
Logan growled. Frank took the guttural sound with a slow shift in weight in his feet. The growls were never directed at him, he knew. The growls were biting back at six-month-old memories, the ones Frank kept well away from the imagination. Logan looked down at the bar as he quietened himself to a sniff.
"She wont talk, ah told you that already. And ah got no intentions of making her, no one does. We got a description from her friend, that's all I need, that an' a tip-off on his whereabouts."
Frank shrugged, throwing the battered cloth over his stout shoulder. "Well, like I said, there's been nothing for a month, so…"
And that was all that Logan would get, as he knew it was the God-honest truth.
"Sure you wont have a beer?"
Logan rose from the stool, shaking his head as he left Frank a tip regardless of the fruitless venture. "No thanks Frank, I gotta get goin'. Been away from the mansion for close to three weeks now, should be getting back."
Frank smiled his lopsided smile. "You really care about her, don't you?"
Logan stopped for a moment, foot in mid-stride. It was the first time Frank had dared to make a comment beyond the line of business. It was hard to get mad though.
"Yeah, yeah I do," Logan answered, hoping he meant it in the die-hard-friend sense of the word 'care'.
"It's hard, I'd guess, when you love someone that much, but can't get any closer. Must be frustratin', must pain the heart."
Logan lowered his glazed blue eyes and dropped his gruff voice to a mumbled. "It aint like that. 'Ro's just always been there for me, so it's my turn to be there for her, just like ah'd be for any of 'em."
"By standing in as dad?"
Logan reached the door and put a warm palm to the pane of glass there. "See you round Frank."
"You too Logan."
And still the friendly, chubby, optimistic barman smiled as his favourite customer left, knowing a lot more about Logan's feelings than he himself knew, or at least would ever admit.
