Author's note: Thanks to firstlightofeos for beta'ing this!

This is the last chapter of this fic. My thanks to everyone who has read, reviewed, favorited, and/or added this fic to their story alerts. :)

Week 41

On the night before the beginning, Charles lies awake in bed, wishing he could sleep. Emily's making it difficult, which has become a habit with her. Not only has she decided to spend much of her time kicking his bladder - an activity he enjoys far less than she does, given that he's had to bow to the necessity of a catheter as a result - but she seems to be under the impression that he doesn't need any of his other internal organs, either. He certainly doesn't need the lung capacity he'd grown so accustomed to over his first thirty years of life; what a silly notion.

It doesn't help that Erik keeps tossing and turning next to him, piling on blankets only to tear them off half an hour later. He stumbles out of bed to go to the bathroom seemingly every five minutes. And he does it all in as grumpy and loud a fashion as possible, just to make certain everyone in the vicinity appreciates the suffering he alone is enduring.

Propped up on three pillows, Charles does eventually manage to nod off, though he keeps starting awake and only falls asleep properly an hour or so before the sun comes up.

When he wakes a few hours later, the first thing he does is turn his attention inward.

"Well?" he inquires, as he has first thing every morning for the past several days. As far as anyone - meaning Hank - can tell, the girls are due any day now, but so far there's been nothing. There's no sign of anything now, either; all he gets from Emily is a sense of contentment, the same as any other morning.

That settled, he scans the house for Erik. He finds him in the kitchen and skirts around him to check in with Edie in the same manner in which he did Emily. She's clammed up a bit over the last few days, so he doesn't get much from her other than the general sense that she's not distressed. He suspects the quiet means it's about that time, but so far Erik's shown no more sign of giving birth in the immediate future than Charles.

"Oh, all right then. If you insist on staying in there, I suppose I won't try to convince you otherwise," Charles huffs, then proceeds with the laborious (ha) task of transferring himself from the bed to the wheelchair, followed by the equally tedious, awkward and time-consuming everything involved in getting ready for the day.

By the time he exits their bedroom, everyone else has been up and about for a while, and he's left to fend for himself in the newly remodelled kitchen. He debates for a while between cereal and toast - pretty much the outer limits of his culinary ability - before realizing he's not hungry. He doesn't ordinarily skip meals, but then again, he usually has more of an appetite around breakfast time.

He compromises by drinking two cups of tea instead of his usual one, then wheels himself toward the lab to find out if Hank has made any headway since yesterday. It's unlikely, but the further Darwin's pregnancy progresses, the more alarming the accompanying sounds from his abdomen become. While Darwin doesn't appear to be in any discomfort, it raises the question of exactly how they're meant to handle his child once there's no Darwin-like barrier between him and everything - everyone - else.

If Darwin goes into labor before Hank makes a breakthrough, they may have to shut him in the bunker by himself and hope for the best. Charles can't imagine Alex would take well to that.

At any rate, it seems that nothing new has turned up since yesterday.

"I'm getting closer, though," Hank says. He's currently trying to coax Darwin's arm to let him draw blood - he's been going through quite a bit from both Darwin and Alex lately, looking for some way to inhibit the baby's mutation at least long enough to get him born.

Charles doesn't envy Hank, having to work under Alex's glare. Neither does he envy Alex and Darwin, having to put their trust into someone who, the last time he tried something similar, managed to turn himself blue. He leaves after a few minutes chatting, thankful that they don't need anything from him at the moment.

He heads off to his study, where he has paperwork he needs to see to, as usual. There's always paperwork, enough to smother him; he knows that, soon enough, he won't have a chance to work on any of it, so he's catching up as much as he can beforehand.

Several hours later, Charles looks up from his desk and realizes he has yet to see Erik today. That's strange; Erik ordinarily spends most of the day alternating between hovering around Charles and hiding from him. The hovering usually comes first thing in the morning, followed by a stint up on the roof or in some similarly inconvenient room across the house.

Erik's absence is odd enough that Charles uses it as an excuse to take a break, pushing himself away from his desk and heading in the direction of Erik's mind. It's closed off to a greater extent than usual - so much so that he's probably shielding - and Charles can't get a sense of anything more than his physical location.

He finds Erik in an unused bedroom on the other end of the house, pacing aggressively between the bed and the dresser. By the time he gets to the doorway, Erik's mind has shuttered even more, lending credence to the blocking theory.

Erik completely ignores his arrival, abruptly cutting off his pacing and walking over to the window, where he proceeds to stare out at...Charles isn't really certain what landmarks are visible from here. The lawn?

Charles tries not to feel hurt; he always tries to avoid taking it personally when Erik goes back and forth like this. The important thing, he reminds himself, is that Erik is here - even if he does spend most of his waking hours either sulking or preparing for an invasion. (He may think Charles is unaware of the arsenal he's hidden under their bed, but in actuality, he's choosing to ignore it.)

Ordinarily, this line of thought would be met by a statement such as, 'I don't sulk. Don't be stupid, Charles,' but this time Erik doesn't respond at all.

Charles gives him a minute, then says, "Well, you may as well tell me whatever it is you're upset about. Is it something I did? Out with it."

This would do the trick on most days; Erik normally jumps at any excuse to air his grievances, petty as they so often are. But today, he merely glances at Charles and then away, a muscle twitching in his jaw.

"If you won't tell me, I may assume it's something serious," Charles says. Then he adds, more light-hearted, "Maybe I'll get it into my head that you're in labor. We can't have that, now can we?"

Erik shoots him a disbelieving look, at which point Charles begins to think he might not have been far off the mark.

Then Erik says, "I told you to stay out of my head," which confirms it.

"...Oh. You are? Well, that's...that's...you are not doing that here," Charles manages, a little wrong-footed due to having assumed, for no particular reason, that he would be the one to go into labor first (probably because, from what he recalls, Emily was conceived at least half an hour prior to Edie). "And before you tell me to go away, you are not doing it alone, either. Come on."

And so saying, he turns the wheelchair around and heads back out into the hall, glancing over his shoulder a few seconds later to make certain Erik is following.

Erik submits to being led back to the inhabited part of the house with less resistance than Charles expected. In fact, he looks almost relieved at Charles taking charge - or at least he's alternating between that and severe annoyance, judging from the look on his face and the flashes of emotion Charles gets from him the next time he has a contraction, about five minutes after Charles found him.

Charles has to bite his tongue and grip the arms of his chair to keep from reaching out to Erik during the contraction; when it seems to be over and Erik relaxes minutely, he runs his fingers up and down Erik's arm, as much to soothe himself as Erik.

"Do you need anything? Can I get you anything?" Charles asks.

Erik looks momentarily irate - then calculating. The list of demands that follows is both lengthy and fickle, but considering the circumstances, Charles resigns himself to racing madly around the house for Erik's amusement. He'll get his own back when it's his turn.

The third time Erik changes his mind about the condiments he wants on his sandwich, Charles takes a detour to his study on the way back to make a phone call.

Since Erik has refused to discuss anything about his birthing plans beyond insisting that mutation and evolution make medical care completely unnecessary, Charles took it upon himself weeks ago to make arrangements for the both of them - or, rather, to include Erik in his own arrangements, which have been in place since well before Erik's return.

Erik may end up not needing help, but he's not going to give birth without having the option.

As Charles explains the situation to the receptionist on the other end of the line, he's very glad Erik isn't there to hear him explaining that his 'wife' has gone into labor.

"How far apart are her contractions?" the receptionist asks, not sounding terribly impressed.

Charles is struck by the sudden, insane urge to make up a number. He controls himself and thinks How far apart are your contractions? at Erik. Erik responds - suspiciously, though Charles suspects that's less because he senses Charles' intention than that he always seems a tad suspicious whenever anyone asks him questions about himself - and Charles relays the answer.

"Mm-hm. And how long do they last?" After Charles relays this information, too, she says, "If you bring her in now, we're just going to send you home again. Why don't you make her comfortable and call back when she's further along?"

She then proceeds to go into more detail about when that would be, without letting Charles get a single word in - much less utter the code phrase that will set everything in motion.

And then, maddeningly, she hangs up.

Charles stares at the phone for a few seconds, then dials Raven, reckoning she'll want to know that one of her nieces is on her way.

When he gets back to Erik with the latest sandwich, he asks, "How are you feeling?"

Erik's answer doesn't amount to much more than a grunt.

Charles wonders how Edie is doing, and he reaches out to her with his mind to find out. At first he doesn't get much from her, but he presses on, more insistent than usual, until he gets through.

She's fine; not unduly stressed, so far as Charles can tell.

She reaches back to him, as she usually does. He basks in her presence. I can't wait to meet you, he thinks at her.

In response, she reaches to him, through him - then past him. Charles doesn't question what she's doing until she gives a little tug.

He still doesn't quite realize what she's done until a few seconds later, when he feels a band of pressure tightening around his midsection. It's not just a cramp - though it could be; he's had them on and off for the past week or so, and there's not anything so different about this.

Nothing so different, except for that tug, and the sense that Edie's just pulled on Emily's hand, telling her, 'Hurry up, hurry up, I'm tired of waiting on you.'

"If you put her up to this, don't tell me," he informs Erik. "I'd really rather not know."

Charles takes deep breaths, even after the first contraction is over, trying not to give in to the impending panic.

He's not ready for this.

"Aren't you going to offer to make me a sandwich?" Charles grumbles, midway through their third or fourth chess game.

Erik doesn't know (or care) what he's going on about. He'd usually have some idea, whether he wanted to or not, but she's been very quiet today, so the most he's been getting from Charles is the occasional pulse of annoyance. He stopped caring about Charles' annoyances weeks ago, right around the time he realized he couldn't escape knowing all of the details.

"No," Erik says. "Why would I?"

Charles looks like he's about to make a cutting response, but grimaces instead and pulls a wristwatch off his gut to check the time. He keeps doing that.

By the time they're on their tenth or eleventh game, Erik's decided he hates chess. He was already getting sick of it before today, but after this is all over, he's never playing another game again.

Every time he decides he's had enough, that he's going to go find something else to do to pass the time, he ends up having a contraction and changing his mind. They're coming faster now, more intense when they do come - and they're starting to really hurt.

When they're on their twelfth or thirteenth game, Erik tenses up as the fist clenches around his gut again. Charles looks at his wristwatch again, frowns, bites his lip for a moment, then says, "Well. Time for me to make a phone call. You sit tight; I'll be right back."

Erik's been half-wishing for Charles to go away, but as soon as he's out the door, Erik can't help wanting him to come back. A minute later, he shrugs and takes advantage of the situation to strategically reposition some of the pieces.

When Charles returns, he barely glances at the board before moving a knight seemingly at random.

He looks at Erik, sighs and says, "You know, we really ought to discuss how this is going to go. I have some people - doctors - coming to the house."

Erik stands abruptly, deciding to finish this whole business up on the roof, since Charles clearly can't be trusted.

For me," Charles clarifies, rolling his eyes. "They're coming to assist me."

"Why? Are you sick?"

Charles pinches the bridge of his nose and heaves a sigh. "In case you've failed to notice, you're not the only one in labor at the moment. I daresay I can't give birth all by myself. Nor am I going to make the attempt."

He doesn't say 'Unlike some people.' Erik doesn't hear it in his head, either - but it's still perfectly clear from the way Charles purses his lips and starts massaging his temples.

Erik's about to make a scathing rejoinder - 'we're the better men, Charles,' something along those lines; he's always come up with his best speeches on the fly - when Charles grimaces. Erik hadn't really been too concerned about that up until now, considering Charles has been looking more constipated than pained each time, but now he finds himself peering at Charles' face, eying the way he's tensed up and the way his hands are gripping the armrests of his chair.

"Is something wrong?" Erik asks, when Charles focuses on him afterward.

Charles raises an eyebrow. "Nothing more than's wrong with you. I'm fine; she's fine. If that changes, you'll be the first to know."

"I'd better be," Erik says. He sits back down, looks at the chessboard, and neatly captures Charles' queen.

A few moves and one contraction - Erik's - later, Charles says, "I'm having a Cesarean section. just so you know." Before Erik can demand to know why he didn't bother telling him this before today, he adds, "It seemed the best option, all things considered. And the surgeons I went with, they're really quite good." A pause, then: "This isn't up for debate. I just thought you'd want to know."

Erik grunts in acknowledgement, mostly because he doesn't feel like hearing about everything involved in "all things considered."

He checkmates Charles two moves later. It's anticlimactic.

Halfway into their next game, the doorbell rings.

"Right, then," Charles says, sounding so cheerful that it has to be forced, and wheels out of the room. Erik considers staying where he is, but once he feels Charles' chair turn the the corner, he decides Charles might get anxious without him, and follows.

Things seem to go very quickly after Charles answers the door and lets an invading horde into the house.

There are people everywhere, going in and out constantly. First there are the human doctors and nurses, one or two of them almost always talking to Charles about something. (Erik doesn't know them, doesn't trust them, doesn't want them anywhere near him - but he can't avoid them, not if he's going to stay with Charles through this; and he can't leave Charles to their mercy.) Then there's Hank, who comes in to ask Charles some hurried questions, glancing nervously around; he flees in short order, even though no one so much as bats an eye at him. Sean gawks from the doorway for a few minutes; Angel shouts from down the hall that she's going out for the rest of the day, not that she owes any of them anything; Alex comes in and starts grilling the doctors about what they can do for Darwin until Darwin drags him out again, saying, "Now's not the time."

Somewhere in there, Raven shows up smelling like sulfur, takes a good long look at Erik and then says, "So why is it that you get morning sickness and act like you're dying, but now that you're in actual labor, you just look a little grumpy? That's weird."

"GET OUT," Erik says.

Everyone in the room stops what they're doing and looks at him.

"Why should I?"

Charles starts massaging his temples again. "Raven, please. I'll let you know when there's someone for you to meet. Would you mind just..."

"Oh, fine," Raven says. She rolls her eyes and leaves.

Erik doesn't realize he's gripping Charles' shirtsleeve so he can't go, until Charles pries his hand off and winds their fingers together instead.

Not too long after that, it starts hurting even more, and he can barely catch his breath after one contraction before the next begins - and for all that he knows he can take it, that this is pain with a purpose, he also doesn't have any say, any control over it. This is bigger than him, it's older than him, it's not even meant for him except that it is, and there's no way to slow it down now, even if he needed to.

And for the first time, Erik starts panicking. He's not sure what his body is doing, what it wants, what he should be doing - it's something he thought he'd be able to figure out when he got this far.

"Erik," he hears Charles say after a few seconds or minutes of panicking, his thumb stroking Erik's wrist soothingly despite how hard Erik's squeezing his hand. "Erik, do you want some help? The doctors could help you. I promise they mean no harm."

"...Maybe," Erik says through gritted teeth.

"Here, I'll show you."

Erik hasn't gotten anything specific from her since this started in the middle of last night; but now, Charles gives him everything she could have given him from the minds around them, and more besides. He sees that Charles is telling the truth, so far as it goes.

There's no way to prove they wouldn't mean him harm if they had the full understanding of what's going on, but he also sees how firmly Charles has them all in his power. In the end, that's what makes Erik say, "Fine."

Erik's not thrilled about letting anyone get an eyeful of everything going on between his legs right now, but there doesn't seem to be much choice if he's doing it Charles' way. Despite the humiliation of it, it is a relief to have someone else tell him not to push yet - apparently that's what his body wants to do - though that quickly becomes less of a relief when it's all he wants to do and they keep telling him no.

Then they change their minds, and Erik puts everything he has into this one, most important thing, and he hears Charles telling him how well he's doing but he ignores that, and he hears someone telling him to keep going and he ignores that too (the hell do they think he's doing? He's not going to suddenly change his mind), and he ignores everything he hears until they're telling him just one more, and that one hurts more than anything has yet, and then they're telling him just one more after that, and that one's not nearly as bad, and then he sees her, twisting around in the doctor's hands, and then he hears her, screaming at the top of her voice because she's only been in the world for a second but it's already pissed her off by being too bright, too cold, too loud.

"Give her here," Erik says. "Give her to me."

He repeats himself as they suction her nose and mouth, and keeps repeating himself until he gets results.

He's still having contractions, much smaller ones now, but he pays them no attention as she's handed to him. She's red and wet, naked and shouting, perfect.

She's so small. He didn't expect her to be this small. Not after everything she's put him through to get here. He didn't expect her to be this defenseless, despite her fierceness.

"Hi," Erik says, taking in every detail of her puffy face and tiny, waving fists.

She stops her crying, then; warm recognition - 'Oh, it's you' - fills Erik's mind.

When someone cuts the umbilical cord, the hum that's been on the inside of Erik's head for months goes silent. He hadn't realized how loud everyone else was inside his head until this moment. But it's good that all that's gone, because it's peaceful enough now that, if he listens carefully, he can still hear her in the back of his mind, smaller and quieter, but still there.

"She's beautiful," Charles says. Erik has the feeling he might have said a few things before that. If any of it was important, he'll just have to repeat it. "May I hold her?"

"Don't you have something you could be doing," Erik says. It's not that he wants to keep her from Charles - more that, for this moment, he wants to keep her to himself.

"There's no rush."

A little while later, when he thinks he can bear it, and when Charles has just finished having a contraction (so he's less likely to drop her within the next ten minutes), Erik hands her over.

"Hello, Edie," Charles says in a thick voice.

Watching them, knowing they're only half done, Erik knows something else, too: that he'll never have any brighter memory than the ones he's made, the ones he has yet to make, today.

Thankfully, Charles doesn't have enough concentration free to be alarmed about the position he's in, flat on his back on an operating table and unable to feel yet another part of his body. He's too busy focusing on everything else:

On making certain the minds around him are aware enough of what they're doing to do it correctly - without being so aware of what they're doing that they consciously realize they're about to perform a Cesarean section on a man;

On sending reassurance to Erik, who's seated beside him holding Edie, who's now clean, sleeping, and dressed in a set of pink pajamas Charles had insisted they purchase when he glimpsed them during a shopping expedition a few weeks ago. (There's a matching set waiting for Emily.) Charles isn't convinced that letting Erik bear witness to this is the best of ideas, but Erik did insist, and he can't imagine Erik twisting the door off its hinges in the middle of things would be a good plan, either. Unsurprisingly, Erik looks like he's about to drop, and despite his own reservations, Charles doubts he'll make any trouble as long as everything goes as expected;

And on making certain Emily doesn't do anything silly, such as deciding the surgical tools are new toys meant just for her. Charles thinks this is unlikely, given that she seems to have quieted down the way Edie did prior to her birth - the metal things on his stomach are less stubbornly attached than usual, and he's able to move them out of the way with no objection from her.

With all these considerations before him, Charles doesn't have the time or energy for the sort of visceral panic that would force the surgical team to put him under general anesthesia (and wouldn't that be a disaster in the making; the balance here is far too delicate for him to leave everything on its own while he sleeps).

Once they begin, it goes very quickly, far more than it did for Erik.

Charles feels nothing, and, thinking it's best not to court nausea or lightheadedness, resists the urge to see the incision through the doctors' eyes. Instead, he holds on tightly to Erik's free hand, as much for his own comfort as to keep Erik from doing anything foolish.

Within minutes, they're pulling Emily out of his body - Charles feels an odd, disconnected sort of tugging sensation, rather than pain or nothing at all - and giving her the same quick but thorough examination they gave Edie. And then she's crying, her first two tries hesitant before she gets the hang of it and begins to wail like the world is ending.

"Hello, there," Charles says when they lay her on top of him. "Hello, Emily."

He's felt so connected to her, all these months. He's felt her move inside him, even seen her a few times in the shape of a foot or an elbow faintly outlined on his stomach. He's waited so anxiously to meet her, never dreaming how much more connected to her he'd feel now that she's in the world, now that he's truly meeting her for the first time.

He stares at her, taking her in, memorizing her every feature. She's just as red as her sister, just as beautiful.

"Her head's not as squished as Edie's," Charles remarks aloud, for Erik's benefit.

Erik doesn't bother giving him a dirty look - his dirty looks are evidently in short supply, and he's saving them for the doctors - but merely says, "Some of us didn't take the easy way out."

"Yes, well," Charles says, too tired himself to make an argument of it. He glances away from Emily long enough to take in Edie again - and to take in Erik, holding her in one arm as he reaches out to lay his hand on Emily's back, so gently. Charles doubts Erik ever imagined he could be so gentle; but Charles has always seen it in him.

Charles knows they're not done yet. The doctors still have to finish suturing him back up. When that's finished, he has to send them away again, taking a few things from their minds while hiding the rest; Darwin may need them several months from now. Raven will want to hold and coo over her new nieces. The boys will want to see them, too, though Charles doesn't know whether holding or cooing is in the cards there.

But later, when the excitement's died down, they'll be left to themselves for a while: Charles and Erik, Emily and Edie, just the four of them, together.

Charles can't wait.

Epilogue

Erik's sitting in the kitchen, Emily beside him, her small hands cupped within his as they melt pennies together. (As he melts pennies and she tries to help, though she'll take all the credit later when she tells Charles about it, and Erik won't contradict her.) Edie and Scott are sitting on the other side of the table, squabbling over a box of crayons, though that seems to have been resolved now, Scott allotted two crayons and Edie the rest.

It took all morning to get them to settle down, so of course, as soon as they're being quiet and good, Alex and Darwin return from running errands.

"Daddy, Daddy!" Scott shrieks, and launches himself out of his chair and into the hallway. For the first time today, Erik isn't obligated to follow him, so he doesn't.

"Hey, sport," Alex says. He comes into the kitchen with a bag of groceries, sets it down on the counter, then turns his full attention on Scott. "What did you do while we were gone?" He glances over at Erik when he says this, all suspicion, as if his stupid kid would somehow get up to stupider things than usual just because Erik got stuck watching him this time.

"I played with Hank and I colored and I..." Scott begins, and Erik tunes him out right up until: "...and I went out the library window and I bounced. It was really cool!"

"You what?" Alex glances over at Erik again, looking murderous this time, then turns back to his son. "Why would you do that?"

"I didn't want to. Edie pushed me."

"Did not!" Edie says scornfully, not even bothering to look up from whatever she's drawing. "Tattletale."

"Yeah, tattletale," Emily says, turning around in her chair to glare at Scott.

Alex glares at Erik, like it's Erik's fault his kid is dumb enough to stand next to an open window while arguing with the girls. What did he expect would happen?

"Were you supervising them at all?"

Erik had been supervising his own children; he's never seen the need to waste much time or energy looking after Alex and Darwin's indestructible little shit. (The most fragile thing about him is that visor over his eyes, and that would be just about impossible to break, too. Erik should know; he helped Hank make it.) Erik's just opening his mouth to say so when Darwin shows up with another bag of groceries. He takes one look at Alex, then hurriedly sets the bag on the counter and ushers him out of the room.

"Come on, Scott," Darwin says.

Scott sticks his tongue out at Edie, then follows his dads out.

Erik turns back to helping Emily with the pennies.

A minute later, Edie says, cheerfully, "Little shit."

Erik sighs. "Stay out of Daddy's mind, dear; it's rude." He pauses for a moment, and then adds, "And don't say 'shit.'"

Charles plans to stay holed up in his study for most of the afternoon to get various things done, but when he gets a spark of not-quite alarm from Erik in the kitchen - followed by a sense of 'You need to come see this' - he sets his work aside and ventures out.

When he gets there, he sees Erik holding a piece of construction paper at arm's length in front of his face.

Erik turns to look at him, his eyebrows raised nearly to his hairline.

"What's the matter?" Charles asks.

Erik flips the paper around. "Isn't it pretty," he says, not a little ironically.

Charles peers at the crayon drawing. He makes out the sun easily enough in the top right-hand corner; the blue squiggles in the middle of the page are clearly meant to be water. There are stick figures, of course: Erik's the tall one, the girls are the short ones, and Charles is the medium-sized one with a square intersected by two circles in place of legs. They're all holding hands, which is par for the course. For some reason, one of the shorter stick figures has green hair.

It takes Charles a little longer to make out what the big gray oval above the stick figures is meant to be. He's stumped at first, until he notices the other, much smaller stick figure off to the side, drawn upside-down with a red squiggle coming from its head.

...Oh.

"It's lovely," Charles croaks, when the urge to have a coughing fit has passed. He glances at Edie, who looks awfully pleased with herself.

"Can't keep anything from this one," Erik says, just as ironically as before. He turns to Edie, gestures at the blobs in the lower left corner of the page, and asks, "What's this thing here?"

"That's a giant," Edie says. "It's squishing your helmet."

"...Oh, I see. And why is that?"

"Because when you put it on, you stop having thoughts."

The look on Erik's face suggests he's not having any particularly coherent thoughts at the moment; and the glance he sends Charles' way suggests he wishes he hadn't been so quick to call him in here. "You mean you can't hear my thoughts."

Edie gives Erik an impatient look, one he's worn many a time. "No-o," she says, crossing her arms. "You stop having them."

Charles can't resist: "She's got you there, Erik," he says sweetly.

Erik looks back and forth between them, and he's just opening his mouth to say something when Emily pipes up:

"I think it's pretty, Daddy," she says, with a defiant glance at her sister.

This escalates in short enough order:

"It is not, it's ugly," Edie says.

"You're ugly."

"Am not! Your hair is ugly!"

(Well, that may explain that part of the picture.)

And then Edie lunges at Emily's hair, and Emily smacks her, and then Charles wheels forward to break them up and hold them away from each other.

"That's enough," he says. "No more fighting. Apologize."

Mumbled, insincere apologies follow.

"Thank you. Now, I want you both to go to your rooms until I say you can come down."

He glances at Erik, who's still frowning at the picture in his hand. Erik takes the hint and says, without so much as looking up, "Now."

Charles lets them go. They glare at each other a moment longer, then scatter out opposite exits.

"I'd appreciate a little more help than that, every so often," Charles says, more out of habit than any expectation of changing anything.

Erik stares at the picture a minute or two more, then shrugs and takes it over to the refrigerator.

"You can't be serious," Charles says. "Isn't that a tad morbid to have up on the fridge?"

"More morbid than this?" Erik asks, gesturing at last week's masterpiece, which involves Scott being eaten by a bird. (The explanation for this one: "Because he's a little worm." Edie's always been a bit bloody-minded, especially in her revenge. She hasn't had a civil word for Scott in a week and a half, ever since he made the mistake of pulling Emily's hair.)

"...I suppose not."

It's been a good long while since Charles has looked at Erik and had one of those surreal moments when he can hardly believe Erik's here, that they're raising two beautiful (if often trying) girls together. He has one such moment now, and suspects Erik is having one as well, judging from the bemused way he's still looking at Edie's picture, as if he can't imagine how they got from that place to this one.

"You should come here and kiss me," Charles says.

Erik obliges - with a bit more tongue than is strictly necessary, judging by the chorus of "ew"s from the doorway some fifteen minutes later.

THE END