Erik Lensherr regarded Grace Engstrom's face for a long moment before he spoke—the rainwater eyes, and the passionate mouth. He felt a tremendous burst of affection for her. How well it all fits together—that the future of mutantkind and my own future should come together in one person. I shall not lie to her, but I fear the entire truth would prove too much, taken all at once. Best to deliver it in stages.

"This is not how I wanted to say this to you. It is—it must be rushed, without the time for things like dinners out, roses, and dancing. Instead it will come as too abrupt. I fear it smacks of the possessive and patriarchal, which is far from my intent. There is a place where I live, Grace, and if you were to live there with me, it would be a home."

She drew in a long, shuddering breath, and her eyes closed, overwhelmed, he thought, by emotion. "I could go down on one knee, if you like," he offered, mock-anxiously, hoping to make her smile. "My joints are behaving quite well today." It had the desired effect; although her smile was but a shadow of her former smiles, still, it was a smile.

His heart contracted in his chest at the sight. I could not say this if I did not mean it. I am not paying her in false coin. I am lost here…

But her "Oh, Erik," was an exhalation of pain. "If it weren't for the lion, I wouldn't even consider being in the same room with you ever again, let alone living with you. Jean told me about the Statue of Liberty, and how you nearly killed a girl who could be one of my own nieces."

I should have anticipated this. He bit back his retort—I must not alienate her—and instead said, "That is not a readily defensible episode, I know. It was not a decision I made lightly or easily, and God knows I am not proud of it. Yet you said the lion spoke on my behalf?" Perhaps the one responsible for this is my descendant as well as hers.

"It told me not to turn my back on you. For some reason, it's important." Her brow contracted, and she stared intently at the lamb. "The lamb just told me to ask you where the nearest hospital is to your home."

"I haven't been thinking that far ahead." he confessed. "In all truth I don't know where the nearest hospital is—the nearest which admits mutants, that is."

And Mystique acted as our medic. A feeling of dread formed in the pit of his stomach. Grace is forty-seven. That's a late age at which to become a mother for the first time. So much could go wrong—if she slipped on the winter ice and fell, if labor began too soon, if, if if if if…I want a safe delivery with a healthy baby and a living mother at the end of it even more than she does. "That is a legitimate—no, a vital question. I will dedicate all my resources to finding the answer."

He reached out, took her hand. "Your health and welfare, and that of our child, are of utmost importance to me." He was utterly sincere, and she could read that, on his face, in his eyes.

"Dr. Grey showed me the infirmary here." She told him. "They have everything a hospital could, except for a birthing chair—and I like her. I'd prefer to have a doctor in attendance who I could trust."

He heard what she was not saying, and replied to that. "I fear that unless Dr. Grey were to undergo a complete change of heart, that would not be possible. My ideology and that of Charles Xavier are fundamentally opposed to one another. This truce is only temporary." I doubt she will go against the advice of her voices. "It's a decision you must make, my dear. One side or the other. I can only say that I will do my best to make you happy—and keep you safe." Finished, he waited for her reply.


Meanwhile, Charles Xavier was reading his way through Grace's medical file. It was not terribly interesting reading. He read his way through the sad history of her previous efforts to have a family, considered the three years after her divorce, during which her father had died of lung cancer and her mother been diagnosed with Alzheimer's. As a result, she had gone on Prozac and other anti-depressants—not a great surprise. Every year, she had an annual check-up and physical, and a flu shot. Later years included mammograms.

Her health was uniformly excellent. She only had a few visits for accidents or illnesses—and those were marked by a phenomenal rate of healing. A fall from a deck that resulted in a broken ankle, which healed in less than a month, provided some interest, as did the ruptured eardrum, suffered while playing paintball at a nephew's birthday party. A paintball had been fired into her ear at pointblank range by accident. She was deaf in her left ear for six weeks—and should have remained so for the rest of her life. Her doctor had been baffled at the time, but attributed it to the injury being less severe than the original diagnosis.

Then he reached the consent form which Grace had signed when she gave her DNA sample for the breast cancer gene screening, and he stopped.

It was a brief form.

He read it all the way through, and then he read it again.

There was nothing remarkable about what was in it. It wasn't complicated.

The remarkable thing about it was—what wasn't in it.

His hands began to tremble as he frantically read through the remaining documents in the file.

Surely this can't be…

It can't mean what I think it means…

But it did.


A/N: Oh, yes, a double cliffhanger! I am evil, evil, evil!!!!