AN: Hi Everybody! As of last Friday, I am officially a college graduate! I had my degree (Bachelor of Sciences) conferred in Lincoln Center-Avery Fischer Hall. Now it's on to Graduate's School. Two more years of school for me! (Yes, I'm crazy. Yes, I do like school!) The best gift I got for graduation was four tickets to see Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith at 12:01 AM the Thursday it opened. The movie was beyond excellent, though it was a lot darker than any other Star Wars movie. Anyway, I'm sorry for the delay because, other than graduation, I got stuck planning a talent show for my Girl Scout Troop as well as a trip to the circus. I'm better now though, having stuck the end of the year ceremonies on one of the other leaders. Hopefully she won't pass it back on to me since I planned it last year. Thanks for the reviews and I'm hoping now that I'm on vacation, I can update more often.

LJP: I Bet you've got a very good read on where this is going but I'm not going to say either way for now.

Lindiel Eryn: Hope's got some very…strange…powers, least of all the fact she may or may not be subconsciously communicating with her mother. Still, it may be useful later for her, or maybe in the short term. You shall soon see.

Disclaimer: I own nothing except a handful or two of made up characters. All of this wonderful stuff belongs to the geniuses at Marvel Comics. I'm just playing in their world. I'm broke and in college. All I own are my Pointe shoes.

"Can anyone tell me the differences between DNA and RNA?" Angelina- at the moment being called Mrs. D'Amichi by a roomful of rather board looking students- requested.

It was midmorning and she was addressing one of the many Introduction to Biology classes she'd been assigned to teach. It was only a few days into her return to teaching and she'd jumped into the work feet first. Though it was a distraction from the near constant worry she had for her daughter, it was both a bad and a good thing. She knew she had to get back to teaching, get back to her life as it was before her daughter's birth. If that meant facing a class of board looking students at an hour they had deemed too early for their liking, so be it.

Of course, the distraction upset her as well. It made her feel as f she was being a negligent parent somehow. That because she wasn't constantly at her daughter's side, there was something wrong with her, that she was unable in some way. It was only the constant reassurances from her husband and from the other she worked with that Hope was never actually alone that gave her the strength to get back to work.

"One had a 'D' and the other has a 'R'" called a tall boy from the back of the room that seemed to be more interested in doodling on his paper than actually paying attention.

Angie glared at him, since he'd broken one of the cardinal rules in her class and not raised his hand and waited to be called on. Ordinarily she would have given him a mild punishment for his actions but decided against it. She hadn't been a regular teacher for these students because of her stint in the medical bay and her rules, apparently, hadn't been enforced by her substitute.

"We raise our hands in this class, Fredrick, and we don't call out," she reprimanded, "but you're on the right track. Can anyone tell me what the difference in the 'D' and the 'R' represent? He's given us a big hint here, kids."

There was a dead silence in the room as most of the students averted their eyes from the woman standing in front of the room. It was a common tactic students used when trying to avoid answering a question. They figured- as she had when she was a student- that if they avoided eye contact with the instructor they were less likely to be called on. Little did they know- She'd learned this only after taking a teaching position. - that the less eye contact they made, the more likely they were to be called on.

"Come on, guys, think about it. We've got a big hint sitting in front of us," she nearly begged, wondering how many of her students actually did the assigned work.

The next phase of student avoidance started with her near begging. She watched as the room became a hive of activity. Students rifled through their textbooks and their notebooks as they searched for an answer. Angie knew this was mostly for show as maybe less than half the class was doing the assigned searching. The rest were just trying to look like they were doing the work in order to avoid being reprimanded.

While they searched, Angie's eyes roved from her class to her desk. It was on her desk that something caught her attention. A small light, red in color, flashed from the top of her watch.

Well, what had once been her regular wrist watch.

The device had been modified in order blink when it received a signal from the medical bay. A signal for good or for ill, though Angie hoped it was for good. Since being attached, the small light had only blinked once and that had been during a test run of the transponder. Other than that, though, the small light had been dead. There had been no change in Hope's status until now.

"Class, books away. Something's come up and I have to go. I want these differences on my desk by next class," she ordered, starting to sound frantic as she was fighting the urge to run from the room and head straight down to the medical bay.

She couldn't just leave her class sitting there, though, without work to do. There was something highly unethical about that to her since she was a teacher. It was enough that she'd been absent from the class for so long in the first place. There was catching up that needed doing.

"What's wrong, Mrs. D?" someone asked, "you alright?"

"Me? Yeah," she answered in a distracted way as she ran from the room ,"Something's come up and I need to see to it now. Be good kids and do your work."

Every hallway was too crowded for her linking and every elevator was too slow for her use. Angie was growing more and more impatient as the light on her watch winked and blinked with a sort of urgent insistence. It wanted to be acknowledged, to share its message with her. That sharing had to wait, though, as Angie was subjected to all sorts of inconveniences of the modern world.

Still, she made it down to the medical bay in record time. Though she was breathless and tired looking as she darted down the length of the room, she made her way towards the one person who would know most about her daughter's case. That being Beast.

"What's going on, Hank?" she asked, nearly frantic, "Has there been a change?"

"Listen," was all the blue furred mutant replied with a mischievous smile on his face.

Quieting down both her mind and her body, Angie noticed the usual "snap-hiss" of her daughter's respirator. That was what was missing from the usual noise in the room.

Seeing realization dance across the woman's face, and making sure to allay her fears, Beast explained, "I came in early today and I found Hope struggling against the respirator. I extubated her some time ago in order to test her breathing abilities and see if this was not a futile struggle. The little tough girl has been breathing on her own since then."

All the horrible thoughts that had been dancing through Angie's head were dispelled with that one phrase. She almost couldn't believe her ears, almost being the operative word for her.

"She's breathing on her own?" Angie repeated, more to herself than to anyone else in the room.

She wanted to turn that phrase over in her mind a few times and marvel at it. Most took breathing on their own for granted, as some simple action done by the involuntary muscles in the body. Angie knew she never would again after all of the struggle and the worry and the fear that this day would never come. It was the first sign of her daughter being properly alive and maybe even able to leave this medically based room and come live in the room Matthew claimed he had prepared for her.

Beast smiled, watching the change in his friend's expression. This was something to see. Something that one did not always get to see when working with cells in a dish or with grumpy students.

"And the infection?" Angie broached, wanting to know of the other danger her daughter had been faced with at birth.

"Our aggressive treatments are finally showing good results. It's subsided enough that I think you can take her home later. I'd just like to keep her under observation for a few more hours, just to be sure. I don't want anything to happen when she gets home, even if we all live on the same floor," Beast answered with a smile.

"Can I see her?" Angie requested, almost giddy in tone and action, "Please?"

With a nod, Beast lead the way over to what once her daughter's prison. No longer hooked up to a multitude of tubes and covered with wire leads was how Angie found her daughter. She was asleep, though she looked like any little girl Angie had ever seen. Not really any since, in Angie's most biased opinion, she was the most perfect child she'd ever seen.

"I'll give you one better," Beast joked with a smile, "if you sit there, I'll let you hold her. I think you're the only one who hasn't yet and you deserve that honor now."

He placed the baby in her arms, the familiar tickle increasing to something more knowing and firmer, making Angie smile even brighter. She was light and almost frail looking. The latter wasn't helped by her pasty pale complexion as it made her look even sicker. Her pale skin tone was sharply contrasted by her fine mop of mousy brown hair that was sweat plastered to her forehead.

There was something about her facial features, placid in sleep that woke the most unwelcome scientific portion of Angie's brain. Hope's nose was small and upturned, her lips full and her upper lip long. Her chin was smaller than what would have been considered normal. There was something almost elven to their quality really.

As Angie was trying to silence the scientific portions of her mind, Hope's eyes slipped opened. They were gray-blue but Angie knew that they would shift to dark hazel soon to match both her and Matt's eye color. The small eyes seemed to sparkle with a strange sort of intelligence, a knowing of the person whose arms held her at the moment.

Looking down into her daughter's eyes, Angie's breath caught in her throat. It looked as if someone had taking the smallest tweezers ever and placed tiny bits of white lace on the eyes of her daughter. The pattern looked as if tiny white starbursts had taken up residence in the eyes of her child.

"You know, Angie, that's only the second time she's opened her eyes in her entire life," Beast pointed out, trying to draw Angie away from the conclusion that had been swirling through his more qualified mind.

Angie, shaking off her sudden shock and fear, recalled that the first time was just after they'd removed the white pads on her eyes, allowing her to view the world around her. It was a short view, though, as she shut them tightly again.

"They say a baby opens its eyes only once after birth- or in Hope's case after she was able to safely- and takes in everything it can. She saw you, Hank, so I think she knew she was in good hands," Angie retorted.

"Who says that?" Beast asked, curiously.

"The world's greatest thinker alive…my Grandmother Galante," Angie answered with a laugh.

The laughing lasted all of a very long moment before Angie brought up, "Her eyes…the way she looks…she's not what I think she is, Hank, is she?"

The blue furred mutant looked Angie in the eyes, trying his best to sympathize with her, and answered, "Angie…Hope's a Williams' baby."