Well I don’t know
If I’m ready
To be the man, I have to be
I’ll take a breath, take her by my side
We stand in awe
We created life
~Creed
As the X-Men’s Gold Team left the jet, Wolverine unzipped his uniform, scratching his neck in irritation. Colossus moved in an exhausted pace behind him, half-holding Rogue up with Jubilee trailing behind them.
They’d just spent another long mission watching over a few pro-mutant activists in Washington, DC. Ridiculous mission, but as every day wore on, he began to understand why. They were responsible for the future and he’d do his part to ensure it was a future worth something.
Reaching into his pocket, Logan took the solid band of platinum and slid it back onto the ring finger of his left hand. It was only caution that made him remove it for every mission; if some of the renegade mutants or anti-mutant bastards learned he was married, it might put his wife in danger. He’d rather have her pissed off at him for taking it off than in danger.
Just as he reached the elevator door, he yawned, reaching to push the button. God, he was tired to the bone. They had been gone three days, most of it spent in bushes waiting for something to go down. After all of that, Wolverine hadn’t even gotten into a fight.
The elevator door slid open and Logan felt the first, real grin in days curve his lips.
“Darlin’,” he greeted his wife, stepping forward for a kiss.
”Do not “darlin’” me, Wolverine!” Ororo Munroe nearly shouted. Usage of his codename was never a good sign.
She had her hands on what was left of her hips, glaring at him in a way that was at once adorable and terrifying given her condition. She’d pulled on a black tank top and those weird maternity jeans cut with room for her enormous swollen belly. Logan blinked a little; it was like she’d gotten bigger since he left.
He thought it wise to not mention this.
Ororo’s pregnancy, apart from the ugly and violent way in which they’d learned of their child, was blissfully normal. In fact, Logan was rather disappointed by the stubborn lack of action it required on his part. She hadn’t had morning sickness for long, though she did have backaches almost continually. He’d never had to run out in the middle of the night for pickles and ice cream; ‘Ro seemed content with anything salty.
While he watched Ororo and his child grow, he’d been sort of shoved to the side. She was doing all of the work, which didn’t really seem fair. He made up for it by reading to her bulging stomach and massaging her back every night before bed.
The remnants of the Friends of Humanity were all but gone. Logan was certain they were like cockroaches, needing to rebuild before they infested again. For now, though, he was content to enjoy the impending birth…even if Mamma was a little hard to take every once in a while.
“You,” the woman in question jabbed a finger into Logan’s chest. “You were supposed to check in last night! Have you any idea how concerned I have been?”
“I’m sorry, baby,” he tried to soothe her, pulling her back into the elevator.
Colossus wisely said he and the girls would take the stairs. Logan couldn’t blame them, Ororo was terrifying when she was in a mood. She’d electrocuted him twice, which seemed to just make her burst into tears while he healed up.
Living with a pregnant mutant whose power was directly tied to her emotions was…interesting. Artie and a few of the kids referred to it as “Survivor: The Home Game”, though never in Storm’s presence.
“Logan,” his wife said sharply, drawing his attention back.
“Yeah?” he answered promptly.
“Am I boring you?”
Uh-oh, he thought mentally rubbing his head. She’s in a hell of a mood.
“Darlin’, yer not borin’ me at all,” he said gruffly, not willing to placate her like a child. “I’m just tired. It was a long mission and I ain’t slept in two days.”
“Two days?” her tone shifted from building ire to concern. “You have been working too hard, husband.”
Logan smiled wearily. “It’s my job, y’know.”
He paused, leaning toward her and placing a hand on the rounded bump beneath her shirt.
“You’ve been workin’ pretty hard yourself,” he said quietly, dropping a kiss onto her lips with some difficulty. “How ya feelin’?”
Ororo returned his smile as the elevator doors hissed open. The couple joined hands, moving into the hallway at a slow pace together. Her back injuries two years ago made movement hard at this late stage of her pregnancy. She lived, even without the added weight, in almost constant pain. Logan knew this and made sure he kept a pace that wouldn’t hurt her too badly.
“My feet are swollen, my head is pounding, my back aches, heartburn is killing me and your son has his feet lodged in my ribcage,” she replied tiredly. “But the worst of it is that I missed you.”
Touched, he wrapped a leather-clad arm about her shoulder, kissing her hair as they took the stairs toward their bedroom. “I missed ya, too. Both of you.”
When they reached their room, he helped his wife into bed, propping her feet onto a pillow and her back against the headboard. As he ducked into the bathroom to wash three days of sweat and leather from his skin, he heard Jean enter the room for one of ‘Ro’s now daily checkups.
Toweling his hair, Logan reentered the bedroom in time to watch his wife burst into tears. The skies above opened, pelting the mansion with fat, heavy raindrops.
“At least another week?”
Frowning, Logan moved to the bed, sitting beside her. It was challenging, finding a place between two swollen bellies, but he managed. Jean was roughly five months along in her own pregnancy, which made things even more interesting. Unlike Wolverine, their resident Cyclops was run ragged by his wife’s cravings and symptoms. He would have made fun of the other X-Men leader…but if Storm found out, she’d electrocute him again.
“I know, sweetie,” Jean was saying.
“But he is already two weeks late and I want him out of me now!”
“I can induce you at any time, Ororo,” the red-haired woman replied. “If we wait much longer, it could be bad for the baby.”
“It is not natural,” Ororo said stubbornly. “We will wait a little longer.”
“Ok,” Jean kissed her cheek and patted Logan’s shoulder. “Eat your fruit and rest this afternoon, all right?”
“Thanks, Jeannie,” Logan smiled, reaching over to pat his unborn godchild.
The woman left a few moments later, leaving Logan alone with his crying wife.
~**~
“I lost the baby! Where’s the baby?”
Ororo awoke to the familiar sound of her husband’s nightmares. Turning as quickly as she could onto her side, she touched his sweat-soaked shoulder, holding her belly with her free hand.
“Logan?” she shushed him gently, shaking his shoulder. “The baby is right here.”
He woke with a start, turning and falling directly out of bed. His claws did not extend, which was a fear she knew he lived with every day. For the first few months after they’d learned of her pregnancy, he slept on the floor of their room. Haunting dreams of Jeffery’s attack left him with the all-consuming fear that he would somehow kill their unborn son while sleeping.
“Hi,” he said somewhat sheepishly. “Sorry.”
“Do not apologize,” she smiled, reaching over to flick the lamp on. “We are both right here and completely unharmed.”
Logan crept slowly back into their bed, one hand on the swell of her stomach. He kissed her gently, his closeness revealing the thundering beat of his heart.
“Jeffery?” she whispered, smoothing his hair from his forehead.
“Yeah,” Logan replied in a pained tone. “I keep seein’ him with that knife.”
“Shh,” Ororo soothed, touching the hand on her belly. Their child, as though in answer, pressed at the inside of her stomach. “He is saying hello.”
“Hey, kid,” Logan smiled, pressing his lips to her cotton-covered stomach. “Why doncha come out an’ say that to my face?”
Ororo laughed when another light push met their hands. “Yes, please. I am tired of carrying him around. I want him in my arms.”
They never allowed Jean to tell them the sex of their child, though they both assumed Jeffery’s reference to their “son” was a wild guess. Ororo believed, in her heart, that she carried Logan’s son and heir.
A slow, intense tightening in her belly took her breath away, as it had through most of the day. Logan had only returned from his mission the evening before, but it seemed something was happening now. Through the day, with everyone watching her as though she were a ticking time bomb, Ororo had felt that strange clenching in her womb, a signal that things were moving ahead.
“Hey, what’s the matter?”
Ororo took several deep breaths once the discomfort passed. “The time is nearing.”
Logan’s eyes went as wide as dinner plates. She immediately shook her head.
“Do not worry, birth is still hours away. We should try to get some sleep.”
“Are you sure? Shouldn’t we call Jeannie? I mean…”
“No,” she shook her head gently. “The contractions are far apart and not yet painful. Just stay here and try to sleep.”
Her husband clicked the lamp back off, lying back beside her in the quiet dark. His hand gently massaged her tender belly, luring her into sleep. She was smiling at him; at this dark, brooding man she’d come to love more than anything. They had been through so much, only to come out of it stronger.
She still looked at the pictures from their wedding when her hormones had her an emotional wreck. They’d kept the ceremony simple, married in the arbor just weeks after their misadventure in Germany. Logan had nearly cried when repeating their vows and “ though she blamed her tiny son at the time “ she’d shed more than a few tears.
Dreams often came to her in the quiet dark of night. She would remember the long road they’d traveled to one another. From that first shooting in Chicago to the terrible accident that nearly stole her life and finally the events of Logan’s undercover project and Jeffery’s vengeance. She was amazed that she and her beloved Wolverine managed not only to survive the last terrible months, but to create something so powerful as life itself.
Pain, sharp and acute, woke Storm suddenly. Gasping, she reached for her stomach, blinking at the change in light.
“You been asleep a long time,” Logan said, a worried crease in his brow. “How bad is it?”
“I would rather be shot again,” she fought to smile, gripping her husband’s hand.
“Been gettin’ closer an’ closer, coupla times you’ve nearly broken the bones in my damn hand.”
“I believe,” she choked as the pain began to subside. “That perhaps we’d better call Jean.”
~**~
The process of seeing someone born was not completely alien to Logan. He’d bought books and read them until the “what ifs” nearly drove him mad. Jean and Hank had gone over the procedure a few times, but it was nothing to the experience.
It took hours, which he wasn’t prepared for. Ororo whimpered and gripped his hand when the pain got too bad. But she never screamed at him, never wished him bodily harm. At best, she would turn onto her side, burying her face in his chest. “It hurts” she said over and over again.
Watching his wife endure so much more pain was humbling. Even when the hours came down to the unavoidable climax, he could not believe how strong she was. That undeniable strength had first lured him to her and now he watched it culminate in the birth of his son.
Logan held the tiny, sleeping person in his arms, keeping the blankets around him to ensure he wouldn’t get cold. The little newborn’s skin was only a shade or two darker than his mother’s, but he was the spitting image of Dad.
Keeping his eyes on the sleeping creature, he looked back at his wife. Ororo rested against the headboard of their bed, cleaned and tired from the ordeal. Logan lifted on of the baby’s teeny hands with his forefinger, grinning when his son gripped his father tightly.
“How is he?”
His wife’s voice was tired, though filled with an ancient serenity. She’d done well and she knew it. Logan moved back to her, bouncing their little one gently in his arms.
He’d known love and fear and hate and hope in his life, but nothing could have prepared him for the moment his son was born. The often-stoic mutant had held his breath in the precious seconds before the baby first cried, that lusty wail telling him that everything was all right.
“Perfect,” Logan replied to the new mother. “He’s beautiful. Just like his mother.”
She answered his grin with one of her own as he bent at the waist, depositing the treasure in his arms onto her belly. The baby blinked his huge, black eyes at the pair of them before resolutely sticking a thumb back into his mouth.
“He looks like you, Daddy,” Ororo whispered as she gently stroked the little one’s cheek.
“Poor kid,” Logan quipped, coming around the bed to settle beside her.
Everyone else had long gone, leaving the new family to bond. Jean and Rogue had cleaned Ororo up and given Logan a list of instructions for care of both mother and child. Their room would now have another special place in Logan’s heart, for the baby had been born in the bed he shared with his wife.
“We have to name him,” his wife said quietly, gathering the seven pounds of beautiful child onto her chest.
She lay back with the little person stretched out on her torso, looking at him with that simple, content smile on her face. Logan lay back as well, leaning his head on Ororo’s shoulder to look into that tiny, squashed face.
“I’m still holdin’ on to George,” Logan said softly, reaching out to stroke a chubby cheek.
“George Munroe?” Ororo’s voice clearly said she didn’t agree. “I am still not sure about that.”
“Ok,” Logan nodded, thinking that she could pretty much do whatever she wanted after two hours of pushing to get this baby born. “What about yer dad, what was his name?”
She was quiet for a moment, looking between father and son. “David.”
“Huh,” Logan grunted. “Now that’s a good name. Strong, old fashioned, means somethin’. He has to have a name with meanin’.”
“I quite agree,” she replied. “And therefore I choose David Logan.”
Surprised, he raised a brow, looking up at the woman who changed his life single-handedly. She gave him that simple, heartfelt smile he’d grown to live for. Here now, content lying in bed with his family, Logan wondered how he had lived without her.
“David Logan Munroe?”
“It means something,” she replied, kissing the baby’s hair.
Logan leaned forward, inhaling the warm, sweet smell of his son, memorizing it for the remainder of his life.
“I can handle that,” he agreed. “Nice to meet ya, Dave.”
Ororo smiled, kissing his lips quickly. “When we met, did you ever imagine you would end up here?”
Thinking of that moment, when she’d calmly walked into the Professor’s office and raised that white eyebrow, he snorted with laughter.
“Actually, I thought you were so cold, I coulda frozen ice on yer ass.”
Ororo laughed, swatting at him over the sleeping form of their son. “And I thought you were the most brash, reckless, uncouth renegade I had ever met.”
“So much fer thinkin’, eh?” he grinned, touching first his son’s cheek and then his wife’s.
“I suppose first impressions are not always what they seem.”
“I’m glad.”
She smiled, that beautiful maternal serenity shining through it. “As am I.”
He grunted. She laughed. And all was right in his world.
