An: I'm excited and it's for the dumbest reason ever. I finally got in touch with my professor and scheduled an appointment for registering for classes next week. Points for me, I guess, since my mom and I couldn't catch this guy if we tried. I'm not sure what kinds of classes I'm taking, other than the fact they're going to be science related because I'm going to a Master's Degree in biology. Well, if anything, I'll be getting more ideas for messing with mutants and their powers from school once it starts. That always has to be a good thing I guess. Anyway, here's my latest update from the guts of my computer. I thank you all kind reviewers for your opinions. Please continue sending them along because- like you- they rock like a box of socks.
My PenName is . . .: Well I hope this was fast enough for you when it comes to updating. I'm glad you liked the chapter and I hope you like this one as well.
E.L. Lockhart: Welcome back! I'm sorry you missed the updates and I also apologize for them being so blasted infrequent. Hopefully, that'll change. Anyway, I'm glad you still like my story and hope you'll continue to like it as it goes along.
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 graduate's school. All I own are my Pointe shoes.
There were many things Angie knew she had to be thankful for. Thankful for her family and her friends. For the fact her daughter was relatively healthy and happy and as normal as one could expect give her condition. For the face she was living in one of the safest places on the earth for people like her. Maybe even for the fact the Xavier School was still a safe haven for mutant children and adults alike.
Most of that was forgotten, though, at an inhuman hour of the night with an obviously upset child in her arms. She was home alone- well, in her quarters alone- since Matt was working a late shift in the trattoria e bar he worked in. Where her passion was teaching, his was cooking. Matt had finished his chef's training and was working towards either taking charge of the kitchen of his place of work or opening his own Italian deli.
Angie knew it was important for him to work as long as he could and show that he was willing to do the tasks that no one else wanted to- like take late shifts in order to prepare pastry shells for the next day- but she didn't like it at the moment.
"Come on, Hope," Angie cajoled, bouncing the child in her arms, "don't you want to go to sleep so mommy can get some sleep too. I have to work in the morning and no one wants a teacher falling asleep on them during class. Actually, I know some students who might but that sort of behavior is frowned upon."
She wasn't quite sure Hope understood her words or understood anything at all except the most basic of feelings but it made her feel better to talk to the child.
Hope, for her part, stared up at her mother with her unusual looking eyes. They had shifted in color to a dark hazel but that change hadn't been enough to hide the lacy starburst patterns that were in her eyes.
Actually, none of her unusual features had changed. They just seemed to be getting stronger as if they were determined to mark Hope as something out of the ordinary. Well, out of the ordinary in the outside world. Here in a school full of mutants there was nothing unusual about her. Appearance wise anyway. In every other way, Angelina wasn't sure yet.
Much to Angie's everlasting delight, Hope had stopped her loud crying. Her determined wailing as if the world was doing something horrible to her. In the few weeks she had been home with her parents, Hope had shown that she was not even going to bother developing a rhythm to her sleep. No pattern was ever going to be established no matter how hard Angelina and Matt tried to set one.
Oddly enough, where most William's babies had heart and kidney problems, Hope showed symptoms of neither. Rather, she had a startling propensity towards chest and other respiratory problems. At the moment, she was battling, yet another, chest infection.
Her breathing was rough, coarse like sandpaper and painful sounding. She was coughing something awful and had been for several days, thus causing what she figured was a sore throat. Like anyone with a bad cough, Angie figured her daughter was having some problems with pain in her chest, particularly below her diaphragm.
Yet another thing to keep her awake at night and prevent her mother from getting a good night's sleep.
A coughing fit rattled the little girl's body as she lay in her mother's arms. Angie waited with baited breath as she dared to hope that her daughter wasn't going to start crying again. The last coughing fit had left the little girl screeching for several long minutes.
No crying came though as the little girl simply looked up at her mother with a most pitiful expression on her small face. As pitiful as a small child could have of course, though it may have all been in the mind of her very tired mother.
In Angie's mind, though, there was a strange otherworldly feeling being shot through it. Feelings that were most obviously not her own were dancing through it, trying to make her aware of them. Trying to motivate her to do something though neither her mind nor the other was sure what that something was.
The other mind, being, whatever, was uncomfortable and hurting. Sore, scared and tired all at once. It wanted to sleep- it really did- but every time it went to something went horribly wrong and it had to wake up again. It wanted something to make that stop and to make it better.
Underlying all of that, though, was a feeling of security and comfort. As if it liked being where it was even though everything else was hurting it. It was a happy content something only if the sore part went away.
Looking from her daughter to the walls of her child's room, Angie tried to shake the thoughts free from her head. There was no way another mind could be invading her own, the professor had taught her how to protect herself from things like that back when she was just a student in the school.
Still that seemed to be the only reasonable explanation for what was happening to her. The thoughts weren't her own- That much was obvious to her- but then Angelina didn't know to whom they belonged.
Some little part of her mind- A part she was sure was her own- was telling her that the answer was not some poor mutant soul in trouble in some far flung place. Some poor individual she couldn't help because she couldn't get to them. No, this answer was close to home. Maybe even lying in her arms at that very moment.
"Well, that doesn't make any sense," Angie mused aloud, comforted by the sound of her own voice and figuring her daughter might be too, "you can't be psychic. Not yet anyway. Mutants get their powers at puberty and you, my very small munchkin, are not even close to being a teenager. I mean, I've heard of precocious puberty but that's crazy. You can't have powers."
Looking up, Angie realized that she had walked her way into her own bedroom. Of course, she didn't know if that was because she was tired or because of some internal prompting from the strange mind inside her own.
"Here's an idea," she broached, "maybe you just don't want to sleep in your own bed. Is that why you're waking up every night? You don't like that pretty bed Charles bought you? I think you should but that's just me. I'd rather sleep in that pretty room rather than in here when daddy's not home. Though, at this rate, he'll be coming home and you and I will still be wide awake. Aren't you tired yet?"
Hope made a few baby sounds akin to gurgles and burbles. Angie was quite anxious for her daughter's ability to talk to come around. That would make things a whole lot easier for her and Matthew. At least then Hope could tell them what was wrong instead of this whole guessing game they were playing now.
"I'll take that to mean you're tired," Angie responded, seeing as how that was what she wanted the answer to bed, "and that you'd rather sleep in here with me. Not that I mind because this bed is just too blasted big with just me in it. I miss your daddy when he has to work late but he's doing that so you can have the best of everything when you get bigger."
Angie sat herself on the bed, half leaning against the headboard. She settled her daughter in a one handed hold and, with the other, started to arrange the pillows on the bed. When she was done- after a few tired mistakes- Angie had managed to create a bumpered area for her daughter to sleep in.
She settled Hope on her back between two of the pillows and laid herself down on her side next to one of them. For a very long time Hope lay awake, eating her small fists and kicking her New York Mets pajama covered legs. Angie was starting to think the entire thing was hopeless and that Hope was never, ever going to fall asleep.
She sighed and prepared to pick the baby up when she noticed it. Noticed that Hope had, indeed, fallen asleep.
"Oh thank you," Angie breathed, noticing that the strange feeling in her mind, the otherworldly sense of another mind, had abated as well.
She lay on her side, one hand on her daughter's small arm, and slipped into sleep. A sleep were all thoughts of psychic babies were forgotten.
It was how Matt found the two of them when he walked in ten minutes later, smelling of vanilla and powdered sugar. He couldn't help but smile at the sight. Smile and curl on the end of the bed, lest he wake up his obviously tired wife and his sleeping daughter.