Charles looked over his shoulder at his first three students one last time as he left the room. They were organizing some sort of card game competition. His pride in the three of them waswell-warranted. They had matured a great deal since he had discovered them trashing a CIA facility.

Now Hank, Sean, and Alex were among the class leaders and had been elected to the student body. They took a strong hand in organizing trips. This year though Sean and Alex turned eighteen. He knew Hank had always intended to focus on his research and stay at the Institute, but the other two had yet to disclose their plans for their post-high school life.

It seemed a long time ago that he had first welcomed them into the doors of his school and even longer since he had first met them. So much had happened since then. As students they had been practically teachers. As people they had become the 'X-men' and, to his everlasting pain, fought Erik on several occasions since Moira's kidnapping. Mostly they were preventing assassination attempts or cutting lines of communication. Others were rescuing scientists that had been taken for some reason or another.

There were failures, but more often they succeeded. Nowadays they seemed to be outnumbered by the growing ranks of the Brotherhood. He often wondered if perhaps it wasn't time to boost their ranks, especially considering that they were almost adults. His own aversion to having his students fight a war stopped him on several occasions.

He sighed and shook his head. He couldn't worry about that quite yet. There were so many other things going on. Chaos and confusion were always an integral part of the first week at the institute. Charles had recognized this during the school's second year. He had hoped that it would soon end as the number of old students outweighed the new. Now that it was onto its third he started to wonder if the first week would ever run smoothly.

For one thing there was the urge for the children to 'show off'. Rarely had they been encouraged to use their powers at home. Parents were either abusive or secretive when it came to their children. Very few had encouraged their children to develop their abilities. Many of his students had felt ashamed to be able to do what they did.

Now there were scores of other children just like them. The feeling he'd had when he first met Raven had spread; they were not alone. What's more was that the others were asking them what they could do. Since most students had always felt, deep down, that their powers were 'cool', they had leaped at the chance to do so. More often than not this led to accidents.

There were also the children who were bitterly homesick. There was a certain feeling of responsibility towards them and teachers tried to calm them down. Others had been the victims of abuse and neglect. They shied away from contact with others and tended not to join in in class discussions or any games.

At times like those he was glad he had Moira with him. As a woman who had undergone both abuse and torture she was good at understanding how those children felt. Sometimes she introduced them to other children with similar experiences such as Doug. Slowly but surely they would come out of her shells.

No one could deny that she did a good job. She knew how to relate to them, but it pained him to know how she had come by that knowledge. The burns on her arms would never fully heal. Charles was always aware how much of the pain she had been subjected to had been because of her continued presence with them. However, he at least knew she was happy with her new life.

After the first week some of this quieted down. Children became more comfortable with their surroundings and less eager to show how much they could destroy or manipulate. However, he was looking forward to the weekend. The older students took the others on camping expeditions and excursions to the town. It gave them a sense of responsibility. Other teachers accompanied the younger students, and those that stayed behind were very often quiet and trying to get their schoolwork together or finished.

Because of his mobility problems Charles didn't participate in any of the outings. He went to town on occasion but could never go on any of the longer trips. Moira did a few of them, but mostly she stayed behind with him. She always said that she had to help grade papers and tutor, although he knew her real reasons were that he wouldn't feel left behind. He appreciated this more than he could say.

Thus far he hadn't seen her very much that day. Fridays were always busy and this one incredibly so. After dinner the mail had come in and she had sorted letters to the students she had gone upstairs. For nearly an hour afterwards he had been busy downstairs trying to get everything sorted for the rest of the week.

Now he punched the buttons into the elevator to take him up to the fourth floor. He felt exhausted and more than ready to just go upstairs and go to sleep. He wondered if Moira was still awake, waiting for up for him as she so often did. Charles considered that and smiled to himself. Well, maybe not go to sleep immediately.

The doors opened and he rolled out into the corridor. Their room was close to the elevator and he went there immediately. He put the key into the lock and paused. There were some noises coming from inside the room, very faint. Charles wondered if she had just come out of the shower or something. Either way she was definitely awake and he took this into consideration as he unlocked the door and went inside.

He nearly rolled backwards into the hallway out of shock. Moira was on their bed, dressed in a bathrobe. He noted that her hair had been blow-dried, he knew for a fact that she hated to go to bed with wet hair. An envelope had been opened and lay at the foot of the bed. If he craned his neck he could see that the paper it had contained had dropped to the floor. Her legs were drawn up to her chin and her face was buried in her hands.

She was also sobbing. This shocked him because he had, in their long acquaintance, never seen her cry. Well, not like this. Tears had come to her eyes when she had sat by his bed at the hospital. They had been there when she had hobbled along on crutches and jostled her broken rib by accident. He had even seen tears on their wedding day and when he'd held her the night they had rescued her.

This was different. These sobs were shaking her entire body and made his head pound to hear them. He quickly shut the door behind him and pushed his chair to where he could get to the bed. With great difficulty he hoisted himself next to her, dragging his useless legs behind him. His arms encircled her and he kissed her forehead.

"Sweetheart, what is it?" he asked.

Moira didn't answer, but her sobs were subsiding a little under his gentle touches. He held her a little closer and then glared balefully at the envelope at the foot of the bed. Charles had no idea what it was or where it had come from. It looked official, although scrutinization showed that it wasn't from the CIA. It still looked suspicious though and he was willing to bet that it was what had caused his wife's condition.

He kissed her forehead again gently and waited to see if she would say anything. One of her hands clutched the side of his face and pulled it so that his nose touched hers. Her body shifted so that she was pressed flush against him. Moira kissed him wordlessly, almost desperate and hungry. She was still crying when they finished and she buried her face in the crook of his neck.

That was it for him. He didn't believe in reading minds if he didn't have to, but he knew that this was an emergency. Charles touched his forehead to hers and was almost immediately thrown back. There was a startling amount of emotion there, but not sadness. To him emotions were a little like colors, as were sensations. White was pain and blue was sadness. He was relieved to find that this wasn't either.

It was hard to get past without pushing too hard at it though. He concentrated and saw that her thoughts were actually rather disjointed. He saw images of the inside of a doctor's office. He saw her crying and then talking with her mother, which confused him since they hadn't seen Moira's mother in a year. The doctor's office came back along with one of the doctor's looking at a clipboard.

"We'll mail you the results," he said.

Cold twisted inside of his gut as he continued. He saw her finding the letter in the mail. She slipped it into her pocket and hurried upstairs. He could tell now that she was guiding his thoughts a little. Charles watched her agonize over the envelope, biting her lip and looking around. Moira put it down on the bed before going to take a shower, to calm herself down. Her mind flicked to when he had come into the room to find her crying on their bed.

He opened his eyes and saw that her head had tilted back and she was looking up at him. Moira's eyes were red and puffy but the tears had stopped. She was no longer crying and took his face in her hands. It was all he could do not to worry about what had been in that envelope, why she had been in tears.

Charles had been very young when his father died, even now he had no idea what it had been of. He suspected that it had been some sort of cancer. That loss had been painful and because of it he had never really known his father. To lose someone he loved to a long, wasting disease was almost more than he could bear to think about.

"Sweetheart," he whispered, "what's wrong?"

Her face cracked into a small smile.

"Nothing's wrong…I was just…blown away," she said, "I just never thought it could happen, everyone said so. The results say-"

She shook her head. Her hands moved from his face and onto his shoulders. From there they slid down his arms. Her body shifted so that his back was against him and she positioned his hands so that they rested on her stomach. Charles could feel the warmth emanating from her body even through the bathrobe.

Moira turned her head back so that she was looking him in the eye.

"-they say that I'm pregnant," she said.

Disbelief coursed through him, but there was no arguing with the expression on her face. His lips crashed onto hers, and then he began to cry too.

A/N: Generally I hate the Ultimate Marvel Universe for thier bizarre portrayls of my favorite characters. Nearly everyone became a jerk. However, I will say that this moment is brought by them because Moira and Charles did have a child in that universe.