A.N

Oh dear. Man am I ever sorry to whatever loyal readers are left of this story (and I doubt there'll be many looks guiltily over at date of last update, December some time…)

Truly I am sorry, but if I could just tell you everything that has gone on over this past half a year, then I'd take up more room than this here chapter would itself. For the most part, like many of my Scottish brethren, I've been swamped with the shadow of exams, as well as the pressure to get into college and to obtain a job that will pay. Whereas I have achieved at least these three tasks, a mountain of problems still lies with them, but not enough to keep me from writing anymore.

So finally I bring you chapter four of this revamp, and hope that someone out there might read it with a little bit of forgiveness in there scowling soul. And faith in the promise that chapter five wont take another six months to upload.

-Chapter Four – Asher N'Dare Munroe-

There was a heated silence in the kitchen as the two strong willed women battled in eye contact together over a cold and half-eaten breakfast. Stubborn green met intense blue as red and white hair draped over their quivering, narrow eyelids respectfully.

"So you're telling me, Miss Munroe, that after eight months of being pregnant, you haven't had one ultra scan, not one. Not only that, but after the hospital rings strongly suggesting you do have one, no later than today, you kindly refuse their offer of skipping you to the front of the queue and proceed to have breakfast instead as if nothing's been said."

Slowly and quietly a chair scraped across the lino floor of the kitchen and Ororo rose to her intimidating full height, casting a dooming grey shadow over the red head sitting opposite her.

"Hank has made absolutely sure that everything is alright. I need nothing more than that."

"Hank," Jean replied, just as quietly coming to her feet with the painful scrap of the chair to accompany her rise, "hasn't seen you in three months. Two months ago, very nearly to the day, you had that… incident, and yet have refused any further assistance from the hospital since. So the very least you owe them, and yourself, and your baby of all else, is a scan. The very least you owe us for peace of mind is a scan. So you come with me today or I call Logan back home from wherever the hell he is and make him take you instead."

A glowing smugness began to cross the bold red lips of Jean's jaw as she triumphantly crossed her arms, happy with the knowledge that if all else failed, that threat wouldn't.

"Take your pick, Windrider."

For one long, painful minute they stood across the table and started hard to their full potential. Then Jean slowly moved to put her fingers to her temples.

"Alright," Ororo panicked with a burning frown at the same time, "I'll go. Just give me an hour."

"I booked the appointment for ten."

It was half past nine and a fifteen-minute trip to the hospital via car.

With Jean following victoriously at her heel, Ororo stormed out like the namesake she'd been given, on swollen ankles and cramped knees.

Finally left alone in the kitchen, Rogue and Remy sat in stone cold silence together, quivering and blessing their lives for another day.

The waiting room in the maternity wing was not a happy place, and not just because Ororo had arrived. The majority of the weary waiters were heavily pregnant mothers-to-be, accompanied already with one or two sugar-charged children, and several of those sat without partners. However, all went well unnoticed by Ororo, still buried in her sulking mood.

Spotting a convenient set of spare seats in a relatively undisturbed corner of the waiting room, Ororo sat down with a loud and exaggerated sigh as Jean confirmed their arrival at the department's reception desk. A few seconds later, the temperamental goddess was joined by her ever-faithful redhead friend.

"Care to tell me what's the matter then, 'Ro, or are you just going to sulk on that seat for the next half an hour?"

Tentatively Ororo raised her head to show Jean a sad and tired expression, and so Jean retracted some of her teasing humour for a more sympathetic look as she tucked back a loose scrap of hair caught in amongst Ororo's long white lashes. Silently she shrugged as way of finally answering.

"Now don't be like that," she sounded in the mannerisms of a pre-school teacher. Ororo cracked a shy smile, her mood shifting from stormy to nervous as quickly as she could make the clouds roll by, if she felt the need.

"Why don't you just ask my subconscious? She knows more about it than I do probably."

"You're asking me to trample on my long reigning ethics and dive psychically head first into your ever-so-private thoughts and feelings?"

"With my permission, yes."

There was a small pause, and then Jean said, "Well according to the back of your mind, you're scared."

It took a moment for Ororo to reply.

"… Yes."

"Scared like in the way I was last year, for example, when I had those chest pains."

"Uh hu. And you wouldn't go to the doctor's because you were afraid he'd come out with the worst. (I think I know where this is going.)"

"(Yes, you do.) And it turned out to be nothing more than stress in the end, and so all that painful worrying was for nothing."

"… Yes."

Jean smiled as her point came rolling into play.

"There's hardly a mother alive who wouldn't instinctively known if something was wrong the moment that it was, and who wouldn't shoot to the doctor's the second they realised it. If there was anything to be worried about, you would really know. I know you would know. We all would."

Ororo tipped a cautious smile onto her lips. "So, you would have known then."

Jean nodded, smiling herself. "I would have known."

"Then why didn't you say?"

Jean made what dangerously resembled a strangling motion with her hands, edging them towards Ororo's throat, just when something caught the corner of the pregnant one's eye. She grabbed in from the little oak table at her side and waved it in front of the gritted-teeth Jean, all of a sudden excited with the notion that had just passed through her head.

"I haven't got a crib yet."

Jean pulled her hands back slowly and eyed the magazine carefully as Ororo flaunted it under her nose.

"I thought we agreed it would be bad luck to get a crib before the baby arrived."

Ororo dropped the magazine onto her lap and began to flick the pages with great intent. "We also agreed that buying anything would be bad luck before the baby arrived, but I don't remember you trying to convince Rogue of that for too long before she was let lose in the baby stores."

With a sigh Jean submitted.

Half an hour later, as was promised, a nurse with a great portion of wild grey curls poked her head into the crowd in the waiting room and called out with a tireless chime, "Miss Munroe?"

Miss Munroe spent a moment debating whether to step up or begin to silently slip away from the mournful waiting room, until she felt an insistent hand wrap round her wrist.

"No. You'll be fine. Now come and we'll follow the nice nurse through."

A scowl grazed across Ororo's brow, but both knew it wouldn't work as Jean helped her up onto her swelling ankles and dragged her up to the nurse, giving her a smile because she knew for now Ororo wouldn't.

"That's us."

"Great, this way."

With Ororo slouching behind at her heel the walk to the examination room played out like a doomed march towards a battle already lost. Ororo kept her scowl in favour of any other expression and Jean held on firmly to her wrist, gripping her in fear of losing her to an escapologist vanishing trick. She began to wonder if bringing Remy might have been a wise idea…

The examination room managed to start bringing things around though, as both women became captivated by its decorations. A message board held homage to an array of photos and cards as countless newborn babies with their tearful, madly grinning mothers started back at the couple, framed by messages of 'Thank You' and 'All The Best'. Posters lay draped all over the other walls of professionally photographed babies sat next to long, fancy poems, celebrating this and that to do with new life and children and gifts from above. The room even smelled of that sweet new baby smell, and the light above accented the small private space with a peaceful yellow glow.

Jean wondered away in thought as she began to read one of the poetic posters, and the nurse took Ororo from there.

When next the redhead turned round she was already laid out on the bed in the middle of the room with her bump layered in thick gel ready for scanning. She jumped up excitedly as she beheld the sight and dashed to Ororo's side, watching and waiting with over-brimming excitement as the nurse switched on the monitoring screen. She stood scanned for a few seconds before she stopped, a smile creeping onto her aging face.

"There." She pointed to the black screen. Ororo and Jean started on, blinking with confusion.

"Just here, you can see the white outline. The head, and the body, and even the heart, just there."

This time Ororo took Jean's hand, as she was the first to jump with a bubbling excitement that cracked over her face in the form of a slow spreading, tearful smile.

"Jean…"

The nodded, her own smile splitting across her face as she came to make out the baby with Ororo.

"That's your baby Ororo, your baby! Oh Ororo…" And then she was lost in tears and speechless joy.

An amazing relief swept across Ororo's face all of a sudden. Everything that had led up to this, all the heartache and depression, the horrors and trials and tribulations, where all suddenly forgotten as she lay staring at the screen before her, Jean firmly at her side, both finally seeing that it was all going to be worth it.

The nurse faced the two women again. "Well as far as I can see Miss Munroe, your baby is perfectly fine and healthy and growing well, despite the delayed check." A light-hearted chide made note in her voice, but no lecture followed it.

"Now would you like to know the sex of the baby?"

Jean looked up. "You can tell?"

The nurse smiled her wrinkled smile again. "Just about, although it's not a one hundred percent certainty. But I'm pretty sure from this picture I know."

Ororo shook her head, interrupting where Jean wanted to go. "No I don't want to know, thank you. I'll wait."

Dejection crossed into Jean's face. "Aw 'Ro…"

"No, Jean."

She smiled at her the redhead attempted a most pitiful, pleading look. "Jean, who's baby is it?"

The nurse laughed and smiled, having one last thorough look before shutting down the equipment. "Well I think we're done here. Would you like a picture of the scan?"

To this Ororo eagerly complied. Just as quickly she remembered the one answer she did want about the baby.

"What about a due date?"

The nurse crossed the room to the filing cabinet, sieving through the middle drawer until she pulled out a thin folder, which Ororo knew should actually have been bulging with paperwork, if she had shown up for any of her appointments…

"Date of pregnancy was the twenty ninth of August right?"

Ororo nodded solemnly.

"Well I would say any time between the thirty first of May and the second of June. Exactly a month from now."

Ororo lay on the bed for a minute, musing over the date that signified the complete changing of her life, again, before she was handed a small piece of paper from the nurse that she took and poured over keenly and slightly tearfully with Jean.

A few moments later she herself was deemed well enough to rise from the table, and she did so thanking and praising the nurse many times over before taking leave through the room's single door.

Then as they left through the hospital's labyrinth of corridors, she began to muse silently and privately once again. Musing over the changing of her life, again…

Remy, Logan and Scott found themselves all staring rather blankly down at what they could only describe to be a photograph of a dark, cloudy night. Rogue and Henry in contrast beamed over it with overwhelming joy and pride. Remy looked at his wife, more than a little confused.

"Dat's not 'Ro's petite one in der, is it?"

It was all she could do to sigh impatiently and roll her eyes in an exaggerated manner as Ororo laughed from her corner of the kitchen with Jean, where they all stood, watching the procession at total ease with her new found peace of mind.

"Look, oh thickest husband of mines, it's not that hard to see."

She drew one finely polished green fingernail along a dark set of smudges somewhere about the middle of the picture.

"Now that there's its blessed lil' heart. An' just above that's the head…"

She went on with a new, ever growing smile to trace out a pair of amazingly small arms and legs and then the general outline of the little grey, eight-month-gone baby. The three men nodded along with her as she revealed the mystery of the photo to them, too afraid to be the first to stand up and admit she'd lost them all at the heart. Henry looked on over her shoulder impressed.

"You know your stuff Rogue."

She smiled and shrugged at the compliment. "Guess ah've just got an eye for it."

Her eyes fell back onto Remy as he began to argue with the other two when they lost the outline completely.

As he violently pointed over and over again at one corner of the smudge, Logan countered back that it was no head he saw, but a foot. From Scott there was an angry protest and support for Remy of, "That not the head, that the foot Logan!" To which a low growl rumbled through the kitchen, and Scott and Remy both suddenly lost their argument.

Rogue sighed, smiling to herself once again. Yep, maybe one day.

Two Weeks Later

It was on May the eighteenth, two weeks before Ororo was due her baby, that the heavily pregnant mutant felt something greatly wrong begin to happen. She was awoken at three o'clock in the morning by an instinctive nagging at the back of her suddenly frantic mind, which soon grew into a very real pain.

Of course it was not the first time over these past eight and a half months that she had woken up in the early hours of the morning for no real reason at all, save for maybe that she was hungry or thirty, or that the baby was playing games with her bladder, but this time it was different…

This time she had gone into labour.

Outside the navy blue springtime skies tore alive with a blaze of thunderbolts, white-hot gashes of pain that seared the peaceful night one after another as they hailed down in their droves.

Ororo fell back onto her bed, her head crashing into a mountain of pillows as an awful lurching pain wracked her lower half. Her mind, which had been so calm and peaceful over the last fortnight, was suddenly racing as it began to pound heavily with the struggle to make sense of it all. How could this be? She was not due now, no, not for another two weeks was she due. The thirty-first, not tonight…

A low, distressed moan uttered out shakily from her throat as she felt another wrenching pull.

It was all happening too fast, far too fast. She hadn't felt any smaller contractions, not even had she felt her waters breaking, although now she realised there was a pool of liquid soaking the blanket around her thighs….

Where was the hospital, and the midwives, and all the doctors that should have been swarming around her, catering to her every needs—

Suddenly she could hear Logan fighting his way up the stairwell towards the attic and through its doorway, his own expression wild and pale with an onslaught of painful worry as he appeared at the other end of the room. He was begging for mercy from anyone who would listen. She couldn't lose it now, not when they were so close, her and the baby. If she lost it now…

But he soon found that barging forcefully through the wooden door was not necessary, as this time there was no fevered indoor storm to greet him. No winds, no lightning, no hassle; just a highly stressed and very confused mother-very-soon-to-be lying in the middle of the room in her bed amidst a flurry of blankets and sweat.

He was at her side in a flash and dropped to his knees at her head just as she spotted his much welcomed presence.

"Ororo darlin'? What is it, what's wrong?"

She strained to lift her head again and looked at him almost as if believing this all to be a dream. "Logan… the baby's coming."

It took him a few seconds to realise the fact of her quiet words before she uttered a more urgent painful moan and made an instinctive grab for the fellow mutant's nearest hand.

"Logan!"

His eyes widened, and not least in part due to the new swell of pain in his hand. Then he kicked himself into much needed action.

"Okay, okay, 'Ro, you just wait here, ah'll go get Hank."

Carefully he peeled off Ororo's stubborn and frighteningly strong grip from his poor unsuspecting hand before he started off again in a mad rush back down the stairs.

At the landing he was confronted by Scott. He didn't even have to ask as Logan shoved him the news in a blur of words, finishing off by asking where Hank was.

"At the Unive—"

"Well call him, get him down here now!"

Scott knew to hesitate would to be gambling with his life as he scattered off immediately down the long hallway in search of the nearest phone, which happened to be in his and Jean's room. However he didn't get that far before he was stopped by his neighbours and his wife, all standing gathered outside his bedroom.

"Ororo's gone into labour, I'm calling Hank."

Jean frowned, her common sense stunted by the hour of the morning. "But she's not due for another two weeks yet, she can't be."

Scott pushed gently past the three into his room. "You wanna tell Ororo that?"

Jean hardly even waited for the news to click in before she bolted off to the attic, Rogue starting behind immediately at her heels. Remy quickly stopped her however, much to her frowning anger.

"Don' wanna crowd the women now."

Slowly Rogue nodded and reasoned with his logic, but trotted over to the bottom of the attic stairwell nonetheless with husband in tow to wait there anxiously instead. Both guessed they might not be standing there for very long.

Another painful and uncomfortable moan filled the airy attic room as Ororo felt another sudden forceful lurch from below. Jean, who had reached her side faster than Logan had been able to, held onto her hand tightly, stroking her forehead with the other.

"It's okay Ororo, Scott's phoning up Henry right now, he'll be here soon."

On cue Scott walked through the door, phone in hand and eyes dismayed.

"No he wont, he's stuck in traffic. Some drunk crashed his car with an eighteen wheeler at a roundabout a couple miles along from the University; turned out there was also a baseball game going on and the whole road's been blocked up with the crowd traffic since. I've still got him on the phone though."

Jean and Ororo struggled to hear a faint 'hello from the other end of the line, almost sounding meek with apology.

From behind Scott Logan came storming in. "Give me the damn phone. Hank! Get yer blue furry ass down here now!"

"Ah Logan, so you're there too."

"Hank!"

Both Jean and Ororo winced as Logan found himself snapping conversation down the phone line. Hank took it al in his stride.

"Logan calm down, please. You'll upset Ororo."

Logan growled deeply, but lowered his voice and his temper for the sake of the poor woman in labour. "When'll you be able to get here?"

There was a short pause before an answer. "Impossible to say, the traffic reports are sketchy still, I think there's some sort of spillage coming from the lorry—"

"Hank!"

"Logan."

He looked worrying over at Ororo, who looked back in tearful strain.

"Okay, just tell us what to do then."

He could almost hear Henry smile.

"Right, well how long as she been in labour for?"

Logan turned back to Ororo. "'Ro, darlin', when'd you go into labour?"

Scott was now supporting her to sit up as Jean busily arranged the pillows behind her in some sort of reasonably comfortable manner to sit up against.

"I don't know, I just woke up and—Argh!"

She fell back into Scott's strong hold, howling now. When next Henry spoke to Logan he sounded a little more urgent.

"Okay, let me think."

There was a short pause. Logan began to frown in more worry.

"Hank?"

"You know this is a lot harder to do over the phone."

"Hank for God's sake she's in labour!" Stop with the jokes!"

"Alright, okay I'm sorry. It sounds like she's near to delivering, so she's ready to start pushing. Get someone to bring up warm towels to wrap the baby in when she comes."

"She?" Logan rushed a look over at Ororo who had clearly not heard him as she whimpered some frightened words to Jean.

"Don't tell Ororo."

Logan nodded, and he found he couldn't stop the fleeting smile that graced his thin lips for all of a few seconds. Then Hank heard some bawling on Logan's behalf followed by a faint Southern accented reply.

"The towels are on their way, now what?"

"Now you get her to start pushing."

"Cyke, here," Logan handed him back the phone and took Scott's place beside Ororo, ready to take orders. Jean stayed kneeling beside her at the other side of the bed, trying to talk and reassure Ororo through the pain. They nodded silently to each other just as another white lightning bolt cracked the sky, illuminating every tense corner of the room and every uneasy face that watched on.

"Okay darlin', Henry says you're gonna to have t' start pushin' now."

Ororo looked up at Logan suddenly as if he were crazy.

"Logan I can't have been in labour more than an hour! I can't—Argh!"

Jean gritted her teeth as Ororo squeezed her hand, nearly crushing the entire bone structure of it in her terrifying grip.

"Ororo, you really have to start pushing now," she winced, joining in with Logan's persuasion, "It doesn't matter how long you've been in labour. If the baby's ready to come then it's ready to come."

Ororo moaned, her face betraying that she was already beginning to tire with the pain and the shock. With a little whine though she nods and accepts their request.

Then, just as the three geared themselves up for Ororo's first big push, the attic door burst open once again and the other husband and wife duo of the mansion tumbled in, their arms drowned in a mountain of steaming warm towels. They received a scowl from Logan and a small friendly smile from Jean, but nothing from Ororo as she collapsed onto the bed and began to roar out more pain. She began to push without them.

Scott frantically stood filling in Henry with the process as it happened, watching with great discomfort on his face as all of Ororo's rich tanned colour seemed to drained away into a kind of ashen grey.

"Hank says one of you have to stand ready with the towels, lifting the bed sheets over Ororo's knees."

Both Remy and Logan found themselves looking towards each other in pale reluctance. Logan was more than ready to talk Ororo though the entire process, and take as many bruises on the hand as was necessary, but going down below…

Rogue rolled her eyes and grabbed some of her towels.

"Go stand there with Scott you wimp."

He quickly did so with little protest and Rogue dropped to her own knees at the bottom of the bed, tossing the bed sheets over Ororo's stomach.

Again, this time on Jean's command, Ororo pushed and again the night sky outside was bombarded with thunder and lightning the likes of which Westchester had probably never seen, even after all the years that Ororo had lived there. A heavy downpour battered at the glass ceiling of the attic, looking like it could cave the roof in at any moment along with the monstrous winds that threatened even the roots of the oldest oaks on the mansion's grounds.

All that the five observers could do was have faith in Ororo that she had enough control not to send them and the mansion to the other side of New York.

Suddenly though, amidst the chaos of the elements, and the frantic thoughts of the onlookers, Rogue cried out, "I see a head!"

Ororo's own head fell back into Logan's arms, exhausted, as the revelation was announced.

"No darlin', c'mon now, you gotta keep goin'. Just a few more pushes an' it'll be it all over, okay?"

Slowly Logan felt the weight on his arms lifted away as Ororo dragged herself back up, reassured by the promised that in just a few minute this hell could all be over, and by the large hand that sat on her back to help her stay up.

As Ororo pushed, and Logan kept his arm firmly across her back, and Jean curled her toes from the pain that seared through her hand but loyally stayed at the bedside, one final triumphant blaze of lightning stuck the sky in a glorious divine white, and then was followed by the first tender cries of the mansion's newest resident.

"It's a girl 'Ro, you gotta girl!" came the cried of an ecstatic Rogue from the end of the bed, who as gently as she good followed Scott's instructions from Hank in catching the baby and wrapping it up in her warm towels not seconds after it had come into the world.

Logan carefully lay Ororo back down on the bed amidst an askewer array of pillows and blankets, and Rogue tentatively came over beside them, cradling a squirming, tiny crying bundle in her folded arms.

"Here she is little one, you're very own new mummy."

With tears of her own Rogue handed the precious newborn to an overwhelmed, tearful Ororo and then stood back into Remy's arms, who had come around behind her. It wasn't difficult to guess they were musing about their own child on the way. Rogue was already sporting her three-month-bump, and with pride.

For now though, the attention with babies was firmly focused on Ororo as she sat and cradled her new daughter for the first time, choking back the occasional tear and sniff.

Small, thin wisps of soft white hair sat atop a tiny dark head still a little red from the strain of birth. Her face was scrunched up as she cried the last of her first cries before settling down into her mother's warm and protecting hold, arms waving about before Ororo began to stroke the back of one of her little hands.

Scott hung up the phone from the back of the crowd, Jean still kneeling at Ororo's head, gushing with tears at the sight as well. He came and stood above her, his hand resting on her head of blazing red hair.

Logan kissed Ororo's hot forehead, stroking her damp white hair softly as he looked down at the baby with a strange kind of affection rarely ever to be seen in his grizzled blue eyes.

"Worth every damn minute, wasn't she?"

She simply nodded, unable to speak, beside herself and dumbfounded with a volley of powerful emotions as the mother/daughter bond began to seep through her veins.

Remy lent forward. "That would be lil' Asher you're holdin' there then."

Slowly, she then smiled, swallowing back some of her tears to speak. "Yes it would be. My Asher."

And suddenly nothing else before this mattered. He who attacked her was forgotten, and the nightmares and torture all gone because she had just received the most amazing reward for a lifetime of struggle, a reward even for struggles that had been fought and won before these past eight and a half months. Suddenly it just didn't matter any more.

"My little Asher N'Dare Munroe."

Henry arrived two hours later. By this time only Logan remained with Ororo, the others gone to give her some room and some peace. They were all up in the kitchen though, too rallied with adrenalin and emotion to even try and get back to sleep. Rogue was promptly fighting her way through the fridge.

Ororo was asleep when he quietly crept into the attic. Logan had the baby securely sat in his arms, fresh towels now wrapped around her tiny, vulnerable body.

He nodded to Henry as he walked in then immediately looked back down at the newborn, as if afraid she would run away if he didn't watch her constantly. Henry joined him at the bedside on a wicker chair, where a row of three had been set up for the others to sit on and pour over the baby for an hour or so before they left Ororo, Logan and Asher alone together.

Henry's catlike face split into a beaming smile from ear to ear as he laid sight for the first time on the tiny bundle of new life sleeping in Logan's arms.

"I'll take it everything went okay then?"

Logan smiled slightly. "Yeah, seems to have. Ororo's got herself a girl all fit and healthy with a set of lungs perfect for all that baby screamin' business."

Henry extended his own hands out and with slight reluctance Logan handed her over. It took the geniuses doctor only a few minutes to confirm Logan was right about her health, and then he sat and cooed over her.

"She's absolutely beautiful. White hair I see. No doubt blue eyes when she opens them. What's her name?"

She made a sort of content hiccupping noise amidst their conversation and Logan laughed quietly.

"Asher N'Dare, but Ororo just calls her Asher."

Carefully Henry handed the baby back to Logan and then moved over to the sleeping Ororo and as gently as he could gave her a quick check over too. She barely stirred.

"Well both mother and daughter seem perfectly fine, despite the rushed delivery. I only wish I'd been here."

"Well Asher here wasn't waitin' for anyone, not even her mother."

Henry continued to smile at the new sleeping mother and baby duo. Then he looked at the time, half past five. Considering he didn't live in the mansion anymore he thought maybe it would be best if he got back to his own home, see if perhaps the University was missing him, or more to the truth wanted him to cover yet again for the medic professor who had been bedridden with the mumps for the past two weeks now.

"Well I'll be off Logan; any sign of trouble and call me on my cell immediately. Let Ororo know I dropped by and tell her she has a most beautiful and wonderful new daughter, although I'm sure she already knows that."

"Sure you don't wanna stick around Doc. 'Ro'll be livid when she finds out she missed you because she slept through your visit."

Henry laughed quietly. No, I don't want to crowd Ororo. I'll be coming back to check up on things as soon as I can this evening I would think anyway." A small glimmer of pride seeped into the caring yellow gaze of the kindly mutant. "So goodbye for now, and God bless the little one."

Logan thanked him several times over and nodded as he left back through the wooden attic door. Almost immediately his full attention swung back to Asher.

The little baby still hadn't opened her eyes yet, her tiny new face remaining scrunched up as she squirmed about in her peaceful sleep and resettled in Logan's arms.

He silently hoped she would have Ororo's eyes, and not his... He imagined a pair of blue eyes the likes of which had never been seen before, where there wasn't another set in the world that could stand up to the intense beauty they radiated amidst her lovely face. He imagined her at high school, her blazing white hair leaving not one head unturned, and not one boy's tongue lolling. And her amazing blue eyes, leaving hearts pounding, only later to be broken in their droves. He smiled and felt the pride leak out from his heart as if he himself was her new father.

She made a soft gurgling noise then a little hiccup.

"As noisy as your mum eh? Wonder how much ye'll turn out t' be like her? You're already quite forward anyway."

Logan smiled again as he watched her yawn the tiniest of yawns and then wave her arms about, as if looking for something to grip onto. He gave her a grizzled finger and she blindly latched on.

It wasn't long before his chatting to the baby and his soft laughter stirred Ororo from her brief sleep. She rolled quietly onto her side and felt a small smile curl onto her dry lips.

"I see you're getting quite well acquainted with each other."

Logan jumped a little, not noticing Ororo was awake. He felt the back of him mind scowled him for losing his guard, although in fairness none of the former X-Men were expecting to be jumped by any of there former foes for the meantime.

"Mornin' 'Ro."

She continued to smile quietly. "What time is it?"

Logan thought. "Must be nearly quarter to six."

Carefully she raised her weary body, stiff now from the earlier strain and then the short sleep. The mountain of pillows still behind her was gratefully received as she rested against them. With all the tender care of a real father Logan handed back Ororo's baby to her, which she took with a growing smile.

She stroked her daughter's face with one long finger, rocking her gently as she carried on her blissful sleep.

"She certainly was worth 'every damn minute' Logan: The new silver lining in my cloud, in my life. I can't imagine the idea of ever giving her up anymore, not nine months ago and not now."

Logan moved closer to Ororo. "Well there aint anyone who's gonna take her away from you, not while ah'm around."

Ororo felt herself subconsciously bring her baby daughter closer to her chest at the thought of someone ever trying to lay claim to her crept into her mind.

Logan quickly steered the topic of conversation away from the notion.

"Just think, six months from now Rogue's own little one'll be joining us too. Kina scary to imagine it actually; another LeBeau out to terrorise the neighbourhood. Ororo?"

Ororo didn't answer however; she was far lost in thought. Lost in the idea of if the father did come back, tried to steel away her daughter, or worse…

"Ororo, darlin'?" As quickly as Logan had lost her to the daydream, his worried voice cut through her utterly silent angst. Her blue gaze, which had gone misty in her lost thoughts, focused slowly back on the man beside her, and suddenly she came to realise that she had started shaking, quite badly, without realising before.

"You alright, you want me to call Hank?"

Quickly and almost furiously she shook her head. "No, I'm fine, just tired, I think."

Logan quipped an eyebrow. "You think?"

Again she did not respond. But he did see a draining fatigue slip into her pale gaze, and he believed now would be the best time to follow the lead of the others.

"Well I'll leave you two alone then. Any problems and you holler straight away, okay?"

She nodded distantly.

Slightly confused and more than worried he bid her a goodbye and left.

What if?