WHO: Charles Xavier WHEN: June 1 WHERE: the X-Mansion WHAT: Adventures in babysitting WARNINGS: nah
“We can handle it, don’t worry. Go and have fun,” Charles assured Rogue as she made her way toward the door. Anka Irene sat on his lap, waving goodbye to her mother before looking at Charles as the door shut, lips quivering slightly. He smiled reassuringly down at the nearly one year old. Everything will be fine, he reached out telepathically to assure the little girl as well.
She promptly burst into tears.
It was alright. He could handle that and waved the metal rattle to entertain her.
Phasing through his body, the wheelchair, and the floor to the level below the ground floor was something else entirely. It took him about thirty minutes to locate her floating through the hallway of the first sub-basement, chewing on something that he was fairly certain wasn’t toxic. It took another thirty minutes to get her out of the electronics laboratory, bits and pieces of the metal material that had been used for various items having been strewn around haphazardly and reshaped into butterflies, cats and some other creatures he wasn’t quite able to discern.
Twenty minutes and one bottle later and she almost seemed ready for bed, eyes closing as patted her back. Even managed a tiny yawn from her. For all of the students he had helped mold through the years, the paths he had orchestrated for the various people who had lived under this very roof, babies were not something he had much experience with. He wondered for a moment about what it would have been like to hold David at this age, to have had a hand in raising him from the onset of his life instead of learning about him and meeting him decades later.
One sneeze was all that took to break him out of his silent reverie and for Anka Irene to phase from his grasp again. This time toddling off across the office floors and then through a wall. He wheeled after her, reached out telepathically as well to try and stop her continued escapade through the mansion, but another phase and she was out of sight again, her giggles alerting him to her direction.
It was a continued game of chase, finding her in different rooms around the mansion, nearly getting her to sleep before something would rouse her enough to go off on another jaunt. He really didn’t know how anyone kept up with her.
He managed to catch her before she made her way into the control center for the Danger Room, thankful that she wouldn’t have been able to access the area inside without the proper clearance anyway. He’d need to remember to tell Scott good work on the stringent guidelines later. Though they didn’t stop the nearly toddler from reaching over and pushing different buttons on the console as Charles worked to maneuver her back onto his chair.
One of the old files turned on the screen and it took Charles a moment to realize it was from back around when he’d first arrived and the X-Men had done one of their training sessions with a few of the other powered. He smiled as Dash flashed across the screen, Violet following suit a bit slower behind as her shield whirled around her. Various others that had come and gone showed on the screen, battling one of the programmed Sentinel simulations. Magneto shifted onto the screen, rendering the machine nearly obsolete.
“Dada?”
He looked down at the little girl who was staring at the screen before looking back at him. Charles reached over, rewinding the image and fixed it so that it would loop that bit of footage. If memory served him right not long after Rogue would be taken out by another and it was probably best to not show the little girl that.
“Yes, that is your father.” Charles smiled softly as her eyes widened before she twisted to look back at the screen, cuddling up against Charles as the footage continued to play. Not even five minutes later he heard the sound of her snores, but didn’t dare move, hesitant to wake her. Perhaps he could get a small compilation of various footage of Magneto together for her to take home, so that she could see glimpses of the man every so often. Though Charles wasn’t sure if there were anymore of the one that was her father in the archives.
Another sneeze broke him out of his thoughts. He groaned as the child phased again before heading off to somewhere else in the house.
It was definitive. He was much better with teenagers.