"Master, no!" Zira cried, and embraced him. She shot off another blast to get Mordo away, then opened a portal to the first place she thought of: Metro General. The portal opened up just outside the hospital, sealed the portal behind her, and ran in, barely supporting him. "Someone help me!" she cried as she entered the emergency room. A young doctor with dirty blonde hair and brown eyes saw them first, and her eyes went wide.

"Stephen?" she called, and ran over, joined quickly by two nurses. "Oh my God, Stephen!" She and a nurse helped take him off of Ziras shoulders while another got a gurney. "What happened?"

"We were attacked," Zira managed to get out. "This was the first place I thought of to get him help." The doctor nodded and helped get Stephen on the gurney, wheeling him into the emergency department. They started hooking him up to a few machines. Zira's eyes were drawn to the darkening stain on his back where he had been stabbed. She looked at her hands and found them covered in blood.

"He needs a transfusion," she heard the doctor say. "Stephen, hang on."

"Christine," Stephen managed to get out. The doctor stopped for a moment and looked at him with a degree of familiarity Zira had only seen between friends.

They must have worked together, Zira thought. Her thoughts were almost immediately interrupted by the doctor.

"Are you Zira?" she asked. The young sorcerer nodded.

"Yes."

"He says you can save him," Christine said. "What does he mean?"

"The stab wound isn't what's killing him," Zira said quietly. "I need to fix something within. Can you keep him alive while I do this?"

"Doctor, I don't think-" a nurse began.

"I've got this," Christine said. "Let her do her thing."

Zira took a deep breath, slowly exhaled, and pressed her hands to Stephens chest, and left her body, plunging into her teachers mind.

XXX

Zira was desperate. She had to enter the mind of her teacher just to save his life, but she wasn't sure what she would find in there. She already knew that Stephen was brilliant, but she also knew that he had great control over his mind. Zira hoped that he would at least be lucid enough to allow her to work the way she needed to work.

The first few veins of energy were easy to find. They were right at the front and from dimensions practically dripping with magic. She didn't even have to suture one of them. Most of them were images of different spells. She even found his mental library of everything he's done in his whole life. Zira remembered that he had a photographic memory and some of the pictures she found were really interesting. Others she wished she hadn't seen, but now could not unsee, much to her dismay. As she got further in, however, they were harder to find. Echoes of thoughts kept ringing throughout as she travelled.

Can't end like this…

...so much more to do…

...damned traitor…

A few of those thoughts were coming from specific places. Those she only peeked in to for veins and then left alone. Being in someone else's mind was dangerous even in the best of circumstances, but to be in astral form left her physical form vulnerable, and made her a lot more sensitive to the emotions of the person they are sharing a mind with. Zira also felt the probe of a few thoughts of the more unconscious parts of the mind that were trying to either shut her out or draw her in. She had to focus as much as she could because Stephens life was literally at stake. He was the sorcerer supreme and her teacher...he wasn't going anywhere if she had anything to say about it.

She tried to shut all of the voices out, but then she very clearly heard her name.

Zira...can't leave her…

She needs me…and I need her...

He needed her? Was he serious? Those sounds came from a door that didn't actually seem as guarded as some of the others. She knew she had work to do, but there was a possibility that another vein was in there, so she took a breath, put her hand on the knob...and went through.

Before her was the day he helped her fix Johnathan Pangborn, she could feel such pride coming from inside...no, from him. She had followed his instructions to the letter and she managed a procedure that normally took a few years of practice to get down, let alone perform it with energy rather than a scalpel and human flesh.

The first time she successfully made a portal, fear became happiness and relief when he watched her step through from Mount Everest. Charles would have killed me...glad she's safe she heard.

Stepping in front of Mordo, taking the attack meant for her. Worry and heartache. I can't lose her….care too much.

Finally, she stood face to face with an image of her without her silver hair and eyes. Her eyes look like mine. Her eyes look like mine, kept repeating as the image got closer. It reached out to Zira, who felt strangely calm as she took the images hand. That image was the strongest vein she had found, and she realized that the only way it could be fixed was with her own power, which she was more than happy to give.

He really does care about me, she thought. I'm important to him, and not because I'm useful. That was a feeling she hadn't felt in a while, even at Xaviers.

She realized that he was more of a father to her than anyone had ever been.

XXXXXXXX

Zira jolted back into her body to see Christine staring at her. The beeping on the heart monitor was slowing down a little to what she hoped was a normal heart rate.

"Are you okay?" Christine asked.

"I'm a little worn out, but I'm okay. Worry about him," she replied.

"He seems to be close to stabilizing, but he's going to need a blood transfusion," Christine continued.

"I'll do it," Zira said, rolling up her sleeves. "I'm a universal donor, and I've been tested within the last year." The doctor merely nodded and had a nurse draw blood from her. They took a sample for extra testing and hooked up the necessary bag.

"This could take a moment," the nurse said. Zira waved her hand over the needle and winced as she sped up the process. It weakened her physically, but it meant she was able to help her teacher. The moment the spell completed, she felt woozy. Another nurse kept her upright as the first one pulled out the needle and hooked up the bag. She knew that this was beyond against protocol, but she also knew that Stephen wasn't going to be too mad about breaking a few rules.

The nurse that kept her upright, a young man with black hair and kind brown eyes, bandaged the draw site and brought her a glass of apple juice and a few cookies, then lead her away from the bed to the waiting room.

"Someone will come and get you when he's stable," the nurse promised. "You should be proud of yourself, young lady. You saved his life."

"He did the same for me," Zira replied. The nurse smiled kindly and motioned to the food and drink in her hand.

"Make sure you finish all of that," he said. The young sorceress nodded and did as she was told. The nurse returned to the emergency room, leaving Zira to her thoughts. As she finished the last cookie, she realized that she had been in a daze and her mind was almost completely empty. She placed her trash in a trashcan and laid down on the couch she was seated on. With a tired body and mind, sleep came almost immediately for her, and it was mercifully dreamless.

"Zira?" a female voice called her back to consciousness. A quick glance at the clock showed Zira that she had been asleep for about an hour and a half. She turned toward the voice and saw Christine. She was holding a tablet in her hand and looked...unsure.

"Is he okay?" Zira asked, growing concerned.

"He's okay," Christine replied. "But...there's something you should see." She handed Zira the tablet in her hand. "We had to run some normal tests to make sure your blood was compatible. You were right: you were clean and a universal donor...but there was something else." Zira frowned at the tablet in her hand, unsure of what she was looking at.

"What is this?" she asked.

"The lab ran a paternity test because you shared similar markers," Christine explained. "Based on what they found...Stephen...is your father." Zira's silver eyes grew wide and she looked down at the bottom of the document page.

Probability of Paternity: 99.99999999%.