Chapter Text
Her daughter was just as magnificent as she had imagined.
That was the thought that settled in Jean Grey-Summers’ mind when, at last, the nurses placed the newborn against her chest. The contact was immediate, instinctive. As she wrapped her arms around her, a slow, profound warmth began to spread through her, as if something long restless had finally found a place to rest.
For a few seconds —or perhaps minutes; time had lost all shape— Jean stopped perceiving the world as she knew it. Everything seemed to narrow down to that small, warm body resting against her. The distant sound of monitors, the murmur of medical voices, even the sterile scent of the room faded until they became irrelevant. Nothing mattered more than that light, real weight, that life resting against her chest and breathing unevenly, still unaware of the chaos waiting beyond that room.
Only then, as if the thought arrived cautiously, Jean lowered her head a little more. She brought her face closer to the baby; she needed to confirm it, to make sure it was not an illusion born of exhaustion or longing. The warmth of her skin, the barely perceptible brush of her breathing, everything about her seemed fragile and, at the same time, irrevocably absolute. There were no words capable of naming it without diminishing it.
With almost reverent care, she adjusted the blanket around the tiny body, shielding her from a cold that perhaps existed only in her imagination. Even so, the gesture felt necessary. Jean had spent too long learning to feel everything —the voices of others, overlapping thoughts, the constant noise of the world— not to recognize that primal impulse: to protect, even when no one asked her to.
That was when a voice broke the silence.
“Well,” it said warmly behind her, gently pulling her from her thoughts, “it hasn’t even been fifteen minutes and someone is already very protective.”
Jean smiled before she even turned around. The comment, affectionate rather than teasing, drew an automatic laugh from her.
When she turned toward the door, she saw him. Scott was leaning against the doorframe, watching them. His posture was relaxed only in appearance; Jean knew him well enough to notice the contained stiffness in his shoulders, the way he did not quite know what to do with his hands. Even so, his presence filled the room with a different warmth. A familiar one.
“Give me some credit,” Jean replied, not entirely taking her eyes off the baby. “I haven’t had much practice with the things I want to keep.”
The remark came out more tired than sharp, accompanied by a barely-there smile. Still, it was enough to ease some of the tension lingering in the room. Jean looked up just as Scott pushed himself off the doorframe and began to approach, his steps measured, almost cautious, as if he feared the floor might creak beneath his weight.
With every step he took, Jean felt him.
Not as words or defined thoughts, but as a soft, disordered current brushing against her mind: astonishment first, pure and almost childlike; then a surge of love so intense it tightened her chest; and beneath it all, that familiar, ancient fear Scott could never fully silence. The fear of being a father again. Of not being enough. Of failing, even before he began.
Jean took a slow breath and shifted slightly on the bed, making space for him.
Scott stopped beside the bed and lowered his gaze to the baby. His hands hesitated for a second before resting on the edge of the mattress, as if he were still unsure he had the right to be that close. Jean felt the contained tremor, the way that small body in her arms seemed to reorder his entire world.
“She’s…” he began, and the rest of the sentence dissolved into silence.
Jean did not need him to finish it.
Magnificent, beautiful, pure, perfect: the words drifted through her mind without order or hierarchy, overlapping as if none of them were sufficient on their own. There was no need to say them aloud; they were already there, clear and absolute, shared in that intimate space where wonder required no translation.
She felt Scott’s fear intertwine with something firmer, deeper: a quiet, almost fierce determination. The same one she had sensed in him before, in other contexts, but now manifesting differently. Not as strategy or duty, but as a promise. To his daughter.
With a slow motion, Jean lifted the baby slightly, just enough for Scott to see her better.
“I know,” she said softly. “I think so too.”
Jean held Scott’s gaze for a moment longer, as if anchoring him to the present. Then, with deliberate gentleness, she adjusted the baby more securely in her arms and shifted her body.
“Come,” she said, almost in a whisper. “Your turn.”
Scott blinked, surprised, and Jean immediately sensed the spike of nervousness, that brief, almost comical flicker of panic that preceded all of his important decisions. Even so, he did not step back. Jean guided him patiently, showing him where to place his hands, how to support the tiny head. When the baby finally rested against Scott’s chest, something settled in the air.
Jean watched him in silence.
There was an unexpected naturalness in the way Scott bent over the baby, in how his entire body seemed to instinctively adjust to that new weight. The habitual rigidity in his shoulders softened; his breathing slowed, became more deliberate. Jean felt the astonishment transform into something else: a fragile, alzmost reverent calm, as if for the first time in a long while Scott was not thinking about everything that could go wrong.
Fatherhood suited him, Jean thought.
Not as a burden, nor as an obligation, but as a place he could finally belong.
And this time —what moved her the most— he was not alone. There were no mad scientists, no decisions imposed by fear or loss. This time they could live it together, step by step, without haste, without sacrificing everything in the name of a future that never quite materialized.
Scott lowered his head, barely brushing the edge of the blanket with his nose.
“Hi,” he murmured, awkwardly. “I’m Dad.”
The word echoed in Jean’s mind with a mixture of tenderness and vertigo.
Before she could respond, the door opened with a soft knock.
“Excuse me,” said a kind voice. “I just wanted to check on the new parents.”
Jean looked up. The nurse, Claire —a woman with brown hair pulled back and an open smile— approached them with a clearly emotional expression.
“We’re fine,” Jean replied without hesitation.
“Yes,” Scott added, a little firmer, without taking his eyes off the baby. “Everything’s fine.”
The nurse nodded, satisfied.
“I’m glad to hear it,” she said with a smile, then looked at the baby with evident curiosity. “Have you decided on a name?”
Jean felt the question fill her chest with an unexpected, almost luminous joy. She smiled broadly, sincerely, and rested a hand on Scott’s arm.
“Yes,” she said. “Her name is Rachel.”
The name had been Scott’s idea.
Jean remembered it with serene clarity, as if that moment —weeks ago, during a quiet, late-night conversation— now overlaid itself onto the present. It had not been a grand choice wrapped in solemn speeches. Scott had said it almost shyly, testing it out loud just once, like someone afraid that merely naming it might break something fragile.
Rachel.
Jean had felt then what she felt now: that the name fit. Not as a label, but as a promise.
Rachel meant purity, yes but not an innocent or untouchable purity. It meant care, tenderness, something loved and safeguarded. Someone worthy of protection simply because her existence mattered. Jean looked at her daughter —her Rachel— and wished, with an almost painful intensity, that the world would be kind to her. That she could grow without fear, without inherited burdens, without the weight of mistakes that were not hers. That she could be happy. Simply happy.
If names held any power —and Jean, more than anyone, knew that words could— she wanted that to be her first shield.
“Rachel,” the nurse repeated, her smile widening as she said it. “It’s a beautiful name.”
Jean nodded, then added, almost like a shared secret:
“Her middle name is Anne.”
Anne had been Jean’s choice.
She had known it from the very moment Scott chose Rachel. She did not argue, did not question it. But later, when the room fell quiet and it was just the two of them, she thought about everything Scott was without realizing it. His quiet steadiness. The way he protected without suffocating, how he loved with consistency even when fear threatened to paralyze him.
She thought of her mother-in-law.
Of Katherine Anne Summers. Of the woman who had raised Scott —and Alex— without heroic promises or grand gestures, but with an unbreakable presence. Jean had never known her, but she had seen her imprint in Scott: in his sense of duty, in his stubborn loyalty, in his way of holding the world together without making a sound.
Anne was not an imposed tribute, nor an inherited burden.
It was a recognition.
A gentle root. A memory that did not weigh heavy.
Jean wanted her daughter to carry that name not to look backward, but to move forward accompanied. To grow knowing —though never spoken aloud— that there were ways of loving that did not need to impose themselves to be strong.
“Rachel Anne,” Scott murmured, testing how the name sounded.
Jean carefully placed a hand on his back and looked at her daughter again.
Rachel Anne Summers.
She felt the name settle into the air, complete and real. It was not just the beginning of a life, but the start of a shared story. Theirs. The three of them.
The world was still dangerous; Jean knew that better than anyone. But as she watched her small stellar light in the arms of the man she loved, she held onto a certainty as solid as the love filling her chest: they would do the impossible to protect her. Always.