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Charles' lap was covered in a soft, silken blanket, baby Lorna resting over his thighs. Charles looked down at her with a soft smile under the light of the moon, somewhat surprised she still fit so evenly over his lap. Goodness, but she was still so tiny. They'd only had her for a few months and she was still the smallest thing that Charles had ever seen with his own eyes. When she had first come to them she hadn't even been six months and now that she was nearly a year, she was still so, so small.
He sometimes wondered if she would ever get any bigger and the thought, often, made his heart ache with terror and speed with up excitement in equal measure.
She was sleeping, for now, wrapped up in a bundle of blankets on Charles' lap which seemed to be one of her favourite places to be. It was late, certainly later than she should ever be out of her crib, but Charles hadn't been able to sleep and Lorna had started fussing, so he'd gotten her from her bed and wheeled the two of them out back under the high, shining moon. Lately, he’d found that he had been having trouble sleeping, kept up at night with thoughts that all felt too big for him to ever fall asleep while pondering.
Charles never could have imagined the way that having a child would change him. It hadn't been something he'd often thought about, not as a young queer and certainly not as an over-worked headmaster who often felt like the parent of a school full of children anyway, but having a daughter...well, having Lorna in his life was as much a revelation as it was a blessing.
He’d always worked towards obtaining a better future for mutant-kind, but that felt spectacularly more important now that he had a young one to whom he wanted to give everything-including-the-moon. There was nothing that would deter him from his goals now, nothing that would let him rest, not until he was certain that he had carved out space in their wretched world where his daughter would be safe being who she was.
He knew that Erik felt it too, and that Erik's more...aggressive ideals had been slightly curbed by the idea of leaving his daughter without a father. He'd calmed greatly over the last handful of months and had all but refrained from joining either the remains of the Brotherhood or the X-Men on missions he would have never missed before. Charles understood—he too was being a bit more careful in the minds he influenced throughout his more political sphere, just in case.
Lorna made a soft gurgling sound, drawing Charles' attention from where he'd been watching the stars back down to his beautiful little daughter. Charles adored her green hair even more than Erik did who was rather ecstatic that his daughter had a physical mutation that was so unique. Smoothing a finger over her sparse eyebrow, Charles loosened her blankets when she started wiggling around his lap, letting her get her arms free so she could flap them about.
A moment later Charles realized what had captured her attention as he heard a faint buzzing next to his ear. He didn't flinch away from the insect despite it being so close to his face, not when Lorna was rested carefully over his thighs, and instead held still as a bumblebee buzzed around his head and swooped down towards his daughter. Insects didn't have much of a consciousness, though Charles wasn't too worried about the bee stinging.
Lorna giggled, her chubby little hand reaching up and up and swatting ineffectively in the air for how short her arm was. Charles couldn't keep down his fond smile as he watched her bat adorably after the buzzing bee flying about her head but not getting close enough for her chubby fingers to reach, and Charles relaxed back in his chair to the amazing, heart-warming sound of his daughter's laughter.