Time didn't really catch up with Logan until he realized that Shortie had turned five under their supervision. They neglected to mention her birth date to her, which explained the lack of celebration. The month was October and the weather was finally beautiful for little Shortie. Granted she hated the Winter months that were to come, but Autumn had a redeeming essence to it. The leaves had turned and were beginning to fall to the ground. There was never an order to any groundskeepers to maintain the yard after a certain point of the year, so the grass had grown wilder and the leaves made mountainous piles made by a handful of students. Shortie had taken this time to wander about outside with her father and a few of the adults she liked. She was even able to convince her "grandfather" Xavier to enjoy the nature of the estate. She was dressed in a heavy black hoodie, blue jeans and her own pair of Doc's Logan got her after he remembered her birthday about two months late. He never mentioned that, though.

Jean and Scott leaned against a large oak, sharing a scarf while Jean read a book and Scott just observed the scene that lay before them. Xavier was sitting next to Logan, who was keeping a watchful eye on the littlun. Ororo had been tinkering with the elements on the overcast yet dry skies. Kitty was playing with Shortie, running around like goons. Shortie abruptly stopped running and fixed her eyes upon the oak where Jean and Scott snuggled.

"What's wrong Shortie? Don't you wanna play?" Kitty inquired. She was using this time to catch her breath; she hadn't been exercising as much in the colder months. The little kid walked over to her father's plot of land and asked him if she could perhaps climb that tree.

"No, Shortie. It's too dangerous, you'll get hurt."

"No I won't! I can heal real fast anyways! If I fall you can catch me! Please!" She arched her eyebrows and brought on her demure face. He was really against the idea, but he figured that should there be a problem, he could catch her, or worse comes to worse, somebody else would. He sighed and reluctantly agreed. She wasted no time in racing over to the hardened plant.

"Uncle Scotty! Please help me get up on a branch?" She asked sweetly. He smirked and got from his comfortable spot. He grabbed his "niece" by the hips and placed her on the lowest stable branch provided. She eagerly started to make her way up.

"Hey, short stuff!" Her father called out. "Test a branch first. If you hear it crack, don't go on it!"

"Okay!" She really couldn't be concerned with everybody's ramblings, and ascended the tree. Logan had estimated it to be around two hundred feet in height. He was worried, but he deduced that she'd run out of energy before she would even begin to get close to the top. His thoughts were internally interrupted by a psychic with something to say.

"I must say, Logan, I'm quite impressed with little Shortie's testing. She had scored in advanced in history and English. I suppose next would be science and mathematics?"

"Sure, I guess. I ain't teaching her that shit, that's Eddies jurisdiction."

"I'm sure he'd be happy to educate her. She's quite the precocious child. Generally well behaved, reserved, intelligent, and very beautiful. You must be proud."

"You know, I guess I am." He outwardly smiled. He was a pretty proud papa indeed. He glanced at the tree and saw she was about ten feet higher than she was before. "Don't go to the top!" He yelled. She wasn't exactly listening though. She was back on her own little planet.

"So do tell me, Logan, what is a typical day for you?" Ororo asked. She had filtered out some water from the ground and let the stream enter her mouth. Logan smirked, to which she used the remains of her drink to splash in his face.

"Well if you're dying to know, darlin, we wake up, eat, I teach her something in history or with speech, lunch, more studying, then just a bunch of free time. It's like I'm working from home and I actually choose what I teach. But that's gonna change with the new semester next month." He frowned when he realized that there would be significantly less time for him and her to be together, but he knew that being around each other twenty-four seven wasn't going to be healthy either, at least in the long run. It wasn't fair though. He was mostly irritated and annoyed with small children. He had never met such an innocent adult in his life before his daughter. He hated realizing how obsessed he was, but with a miracle like that, who wouldn't be? She was the best inconvenience he could've ever asked for.

"Sounds like you've got it all figured out. Who's teaching her next semester?"

"Eddie. He's gonna bash the boring shit in her brain."

Jean had closed her book and made her way back to the mansion, and Scott followed. The rest were all sitting in a near circle in the yard. Kitty asked, "So you like being a dad after all, huh? I never expected to see that of you."

He just rolled his eyes and deployed other annoyed actions when they bombarded him with questions about the parenting lifestyle. "If you're all so goddam interested, have some mutants of your own. It's a grand time."

"Nah, I like watching after her when it's easy, without paying for her living and taking up all my time."

"You make it sound like a bad thing." Ororo stated.

"For my age, yeah. But he's at the perfect stage in his life to have kids, right around the the second century mark."

They all heard a branch snap and fall to the ground. They all darted their eyes to the tree and saw Shortie about half way up its length. "Sorry!" She yelled. Logan gave her a thumbs up, for she had heeded his lecture on the weaker branches. She continued to climb. She had made it her goal to be able to climb to the very top. The sky was finally breaking and the hues of an orange and indigo sunset could only be enjoyed at the top. She used to be petrified of heights, but after being struck by lightening, she had begun to lose of her fear of the world. If the forces of nature couldn't take her down, what could?

"Two hundred. It felt like two fucking thousand. There better not be two more hundred years left in me."

Kitty had bombarded Logan with basic sentence structure and annoying questions. His patience hadn't lasted him long before he had barked at her to leave. She gave a mischievous giggle as she motioned for Ororo to join her. The ladies had left the two gentlemen to themselves under the chilly wind. Logan was feeling pretty tired, which was noticed by Charles.

Shortie had made it to the edge of the apex of the tree. She had a death grip on the only branch above her head as she leaned out past the leaves to absorb the approaching dusk. Daylight's final fires dwindled with the descending sun. When it had hit the mountain, it only took a minute to submerge itself to the frequented unknown. She was satisfied and began her descent. She safely made her way all the way down to the first sets of branches at the bottom. Shortie called out for her father to catch her as she jumped. He walked over and caught the minute child in his strong arms.

"Daddy, I'm tired."

"Me too, kid. I guess we can turn in early or something."

"She can "turn in early". As for you, Logan; there is a whole new semester starting tomorrow, and you're back to teaching history to an array of disinterested students. You could use a few hours for preparation."

Logan growled menacingly, making Shortie giggle. A strike against him was she wasn't afraid of his explosive anger, although it's never specifically aimed at her. The trio had made their way into the mansion, each going to their designated stations of the time being. Logan had laid Shortie down on her bed, wrapping blankets around her and spending her last few conscious minutes with her.

"Daddy, how come you never show me your claws?"

"You could get hurt, sweetheart. It's happened enough before."

"I still wanna see them." He sighed and extended his left arm away from her, letting his triplet set of claws pierce his skin slowly. She mouthed a "wow" as they slid back into his arm. "Daddy, when are you going to die?"

He wasn't ready for a morbidly heavy and personal inquiry. He stared, a little dumbfounded, at his child. "No time soon, why?"

She played with her hands. "I heard some of the kids say their parents died when they were little."

"I'm not gonna die on you, Shortie."

"I don't wanna die before you, daddy." Logan kissed her cheek and reassured her that he was far from dying for a long time. He stroked her artificially colored hair until she peacefully was carried down into sleep. He silently left the room and advanced towards his old classroom. The teacher holding his place hadn't changed anything that Logan had set up, much to his delight. The reduction in time he was going to spend with his daughter opened, in his mind, a chance to revive his old debauched habits, so long as she wasn't close enough to bear witness.

Logan had made an outline of his lectures for the semester to come within two hours, and already he was longing for the end of the year. He really wanted to go to sleep right then and there, but Charles had told him to see him in Eddie's lab as soon as he could. He wasn't sure what was coming of this, but he wasn't too excited about it. Come to think of it, he was never really excited for anything.

He had arrived in Eddie's lab in a matter of minutes. The scientist was busy tinkering away with some beakers before making his way to a biology computer thing he had. Logan wasn't too caught up with contemporary technology, so he had no idea what most of the machines in the room were or were capable of.

"Glad you could make it." Xavier had said. There were two chairs, presumably for Eddie and Logan, stationed opposite where Charles sat. Logan took a seat and Eddie soon followed, holding a slender stack of papers in his hands.

"We have executed further examination of Shortie's genealogy and DNA synthesis. We found some interesting data."

"Such as?"

"Well, her amphibious alleles on her X-chromosomes have a period of dormancy embedded in their codes, which I project to take effect when she is around eight or so. It won't be until a few short years she experiences tangible mutations again. What they'll be is still a mystery. But we were able to analyze her primary mutation set. It's much weaker than her next set will become, which explains her waned version of your powers. The active chromosome alleles at the present time were inherited from you, Logan. Her secondary set will be strictly maternal."

"So she's gonna be normal for a few years, then get stronger and new powers?"

"Basically."

"Do you know all of her current mutations?"

"On a literal scale, no. I would expire before I could count every single mutation occurring in transcription. However, for her mutation mutations, she has a healing factor just under the standard of yours, as well as approximately triple the average strength of a female her age and size."

"So is she healthy, all and all."

Eddie had sighed. "Yes, she is. I expect her to live a healthy and average lifespan."

"Good." Logan nodded. The silence for a few seconds helped Logan further register the ramifications of Eddie's hypothesis. Average lifespan was around seventy or so years old. "Hey Beastie Boy, what did she get from me again?"

He coughed uncomfortably. "Your healing and strength. For now."

"And you're sure nothing else of mine's gonna be with her later at all?!" He was almost yelling.

"I'm terribly sorry Logan."

Logan had stormed out of the lab in a blind ferocity. He wasn't set to maim or kill; it was disgustingly vague. He ran to the front yard of the estate into the rain. The two hadn't bothered to chase him in his given state. He fell to his knees and wept in his hands. Emasculation was gripping his neck.

What kind of future could he provide for her on this basis? Eventually he'd have to tell her. If that wasn't catastrophic enough, he'd still look to be in his thirties by the time he became a grandfather (although he'd never let that even happen). She would be an old lady and he would still be a young man. If they were seen together, she'd be mistaken for his mother. Of the many times he wished for the curse of immortality to be erased, he never felt it as intensely.

His cries in the rain had been silent, much like the style of his daughter's. He had never taken this into account, but another reason why he had never wanted children was because he would have to watch them grow old, feeble, then die, like everybody else he knew and knows. He had pushed an awful to the back of his mind successfully for a while, but it had reemerged to him like a retrovirus: losing his son, Daken.

The twisted convolutions and deceit that served as the boy's life foundation was what killed him in the end. The memory was foggy, but he knew it was a battle. Too many mangled dead surrounded the images in his mind not to be. He had not only lost his son in the fire, but his clone, appropriately named X-23. He couldn't remember who he was fighting or why they were there, but he wished he couldn't remember anything. His life was a chase to find the truth only to get burned by it.

He picked himself up from the melodramatic outburst and went back inside. He had showered and dried himself before slipping into his bedroom. He had been mindful not to wake up Shortie, but her sensitive ears heard his movements and triggered her awake. He smiled at her weakly and crawled into his bed. She crawled over to him and wiped his face gingerly. "What are you doing, short stuff?"

"I know you were crying."

"I was not." He quietly barked. She didn't need to persist him on the matter, but kissed his cheek and gave him a hug.

"Daddy, please don't die before me. I'll miss you too much."

He turned off the lamp that provided a light glow and held her close to his heart. "I won't."

"Promise?"

"I promise. I love you, Shortie." He kissed her head and began to cry again. She couldn't notice as she was asleep. How he has wished he wore lips of deceit, but he was beginning to fully realize that nature had failed him; the parent will bury the child this time. He hadn't cried himself to sleep since he was a child.