~~~

The inventor, Walter Felt, wandered and paced about the hospital hallways, anxiously folding his arms and staring down at the floor he passed.

His wife was currently undergoing a pregnancy test, and his whole future depended on whoever walked out of room 27, the room he paced around in front of. He flinched and held back a yell as the bronze-framed wooden door flung open. A young, blonde attractive male peeked out, before heading out into the hallway with the inventor, who's wife exited just behind him. She seemed to be swallowing a lump stuck in her throat

She was anxious.

The male's long white coat just barely scraped the floor as he shifted on the granite surface.

"Mr. Felt?" he asked with a rather highly pitched voice.

"That's me." Walter sighed

"So, the result came in. There won't be a pregnancy."

"Okay." Walter exhaled, not realizing he had been holding his breath for a while. He was relieved, but unsatisfied.

"How come?"

"Well... Mr. Felt..." The doctor began, leaving Walter to furrow his eyebrows for a brief moment before he spoke again.

"Your sperm seemed to lack enough potency to... fertilize.... Mrs..." The doctor trailed off.

"Walt, it's alright, okay? We can still adopt, I still love you." Felice spoke, choking up a bit. But she might as well have been speaking to a wall, for Walt Felt was lost in his mind and about a thousand thoughts. He didn't say a word. Not even when the doctor handed him the results on paper, or when his wife held him, her arms wrapped around his shoulder to lead him to the car, or even on the ride home.

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He was lost.

~~~

"I'm home." the inventor said, to no one. His house had been empty for four years now. Felice had left him. He hadn't noticed how dead the house would feel, lacking her presence. As soon as he got into the kitchen, he poured himself a large mug of beer and made his way through his dusty house to his even dustier attic, the girthy mug clutched in his grey, rough hands. He stumbled into the attic as the giant swig of beer he took prior to his trip up the stairs already begun to take effect.

"I gotta stop with the damn alcohol," he told himself with a soft, almost unnoticable slurring. "If Felice saw me, she'd... ugh."

He found himself in the attic before long and threw himself into the pile of dusty boxes. Felice wanted her tennis trophies back. She didn't want to come back to this place. She didn't want to see Walter. And he knew why.

He could still feel the instant regret as he swung his arm at her. By the time he realized what he was doing, Felice was on the floor with multiple bruises scattered all over her body. He apologized. She screamed at him. She told him she never wanted to see him in her life. She screamed at the top of her lungs.

She hated him.

The divorce is soon.

As soon as he gave up on controlling his sorrow, the tears naturally made their way down his cheek, almost flowing constantly, dripping on the dusty wooden floor, painting them in a darker brown. The floor groaned and creaked as he moved around the attic, looking for Felice's boxes, thinking back to when they first moved here. They were happy. The two of them. He sighed in relief as he found her boxes. Luckily they had seperated their belongings, so Walter wouldn't have to worry about sorting every single box by hand. He dragged the final box away from the pile of furniture against the moldy wall, his heart almost dropping as he heard a loud thud. An old computer had fallen onto the floor, due to the movement of the boxes, raising a cloud of dust into the air. Walter inspected it...

It was the computer he used to watch with Felice, when their television had broken and was being repaired. He remembered a good movie they watched. It was about a lonely man, who lost his family in a war. He watched as everyone in his life distanced themselves from his life. He went insane and committed crimes in his madness and shock. When he got released from prison, he repented on his life and found a way to cope.

Walter furrowed his eyebrows, trying to remember what the coping mechanism was. His old age was slowly creeping into his life, he noticed. He looked closer at the computer, then around the room, entangled wires and bolts all over the floor.

He gasped as soon as the realization struck him. There were more ways than one for him to make a son.

And two years later, Xavier was 'born'.