Bruce Followed After Rebecca To The Tree, Pressing His Ear Against It And Humming Thoughtfully. "Hmm.

Bruce followed after Rebecca to the tree, pressing his ear against it and humming thoughtfully. "Hmm. Sounds like... oak?" He grinned playfully down at Rebecca, then winked at Andie.

"Oh I’m sure she could have been walking by now, she just doesn’t want to. Before you ask how I know, I asked her." Andie said, running her fingers through her hair.

Rebecca squealed with excitement, clapping her hands. She got up on all fours and started crawling to one of the trees. “Expore!”

"Is this another battle for mutant rights? Did you two have an argument? We thought you might have more information that might be able to help us."

"There's certainly no prior studies in something like this," Bruce commented. "I'm the only one who survived like this. By extension, she's presently the only child who can even be considered to hold radiation in her body like I can, never mind the X-Gene factor."

Bruce adjusted his grip on Rebecca, laughing at her lecture. "Good. It's good to hear she's learning all the right things."

Rebecca made a stern face that looked much like Andie’s as she looked up at him. “Bad word Da. No say bad word.”

"That’s part of why we think she hasn’t been effected other than accelerated development. We still don’t know what her mutation is going to be, especially with the radiation. She could take after me, she could have something completely different." Andie said, chuckling as Rebecca shook her little index finger at her father, still lecturing him about bad words.

"She picked that up from my always lecturing Logan about watching his words around tiny ears."

Bruce shook his head, looking down at Rebecca. "I shouldn't've..." Bruce trailed off, unable to bring himself to regret any of the events that led to her. "You shouldn't've... God, Andie, I don't know. I don't know what to do."

"She never would have been able to even without the radiation, or are you forgetting the fact that I passed something on as well?" Andie said, kissing his forehead. "It’s a little too soon to decide that you’ve destroyed anything."

Bruce whistled, pulling Rebecca down so that he could look into her face. "Jesus, really?" he commented, while Rebecca grabbed at his beard, then moved on to his glasses when she saw she was getting nowhere. "That's... really advanced for eighteen months." Bruce looked down at Rebecca, who had gone rather blurry since she pulled his glasses off. He reached out and took them back, shoving them back onto his face.

"We actually think that might be why she’s advancing so quickly." Andie said, grinning as she pulled out her phone and snapped a picture of father and daughter. "She’s definitely a talker, that’s for sure. She knows her colors, her shapes, she even knows her numbers." She continued, pride clear in her voice.

Bruce cradled Rebecca's head in his palm, letting her lean back, supporting her weight so he could look her over. He couldn't help but smile at her before he looked back up at Andie, his face turning serious again.

"I have to finish up here," Bruce informed her. "I have patients, a few people who need me right now. I just need to finish with them, wrap things up. And then I can come with you." Come home, he didn't say, afraid of the implications of a word like home.

"Bruce, I don’t care where we are. I just want us to be a family." Andie sighed. "And don’t go all brooding on me saying that we can’t be. Like I said earlier, clearly we need to try something different. Leaving doesn’t do anything."

Andie wasn’t about to back down on this, especially not with how happy Rebecca clearly was in her father’s arms.