Things were getting better. Not that Kevin was sleeping through the night yet or anything, but very, very slowly he was starting to sleep for a little longer each time.

Mind you, this wasn't exactly making Lee exhausted as the mother. Not at all, because Tarin was still with her, still near her, touching her, just as much as he normally did, as he had even before she had gotten pregnant, so getting up multiple times a night to feed the baby wasn't killing her. Tarin, on the other hand, was far more tired. Though he rarely got up to go feed Kevin, he still woke up hearing the crying most nights. Add that to her power...

That is why Lee had started taking daily walks with Kevin. Well, one of the reasons. To give Tarin some time alone in the apartment to have a nap if he needed it.

So to Central Park she went, stroller being pushed in front of her, to grab a cup of coffee. The park was a much nicer place for a walk with a newborn than the streets of Manhattan, after all.

Ah Spring. Not nearly as warm as summer, but it was a step in the right direction. Still dressed as though it was twenty degrees colder then it actually was, Locke braved the location of some of his biggest misadventures on the east coast. Central Park.

It wasn't as though he couldn't get exercise at the mansion. There was plenty of land to walk around on, and the endless possibilities of the Danger Room meant that he could go for a jog on the moon or in Albuquerque. Heck, someone could probably even program his home back in San Francisco, right down to the most minute details, such as the angle the last book on the shelf in the living room tilted at. Thanks to his mysterious postal stalker there were certainly enough photos to use for reference.

Which was why Locke needed to be in Central Park. He needed to feel the crowd of the city, hear the noise, but be surrounded by something that he could work with. His dictionary wasn't noticeably thicker from the pictures, but that didn't mean getting pictures of himself any less frightening. Locke needed a distraction.

Soccer, as he had learned over the summer, was a pretty good one. By no means was it a replacement for baseball. There wasn't that same satisfaction of throwing a perfect pitch, and kicking a ball wasn't nearly as great as the smack of catching a ball in a glove, but it was an active sport, and something that he could practice easily enough on his own. Admittedly having to stop every few minutes to go round up baseballs was tedious. At least the soccer ball didn't stray too far away. He could also keep an 'eye' on it easier. Ground based games were good for earth manipulators.

No longer did Locke view the soccer ball as a potential decapitation device when in his hands, er, feet. His kicks were better controlled, and he stayed clear of things that could send the ball flying back at him. By no means was Locke ready to hand in his unused glove and join a soccer team. It wasn't his sport, just a way to pass the time. If there was any doubt on that fact, one simply had to notice that in a park full of people, Locke had not joined a game, nor did he have any interest in starting one.

The soccer ball rolled away, picking up a little speed from a dip in the ground and bouncing onto the main walkway. Locke trotted ahead, giving the sidewalk a small tug towards him to halt the ball from making a great escape. He had noticed the lady with the baby stroller and didn't want her to have to stop because of him. "Sorry," Locke said with a smile. He liked babies. His cheeks had some color to them from running about with a backpack loaded with water bottles, and the feeble attempts to keep the ball from going wild. Great chunks out of the earth he could notice, but subtle dips like the one that had made his kick go farther went unnoticed when not working with a golem. The Californian bent over and scooped up the ball, pushing the bit of the sidewalk that he had messed with back into it's proper placement. Really it was just a lump of dirt under the walkway he'd messed with, and he just had to flatten it back out. "Clearly not David Beckham."

Coffee in one hand, after she left the short line at the coffee stand, Lee continued down the path. It was a busy enough day in the park that Lee wasn't going to have to worry at all about running out of energy, but not too busy that she was feeling crowded at at.

At least Lee wasn't feeling in the least bit crowded until a boy ran onto the path in front of her, chasing a soccer ball.

And apologized to her as he scooped up the ball from the ground. "Don't worry about it," Lee said, pulling the stroller to a stop."You must not be from around here, though." At least that was Lee's thought. She hadn't heard a whole lot of people who were actually from New York that apologized like that.

"Really, don't worry about it," Lee repeated, glancing in the direction the boy had come from. "But you should probably get back to your game."

"Nope," Locke confirmed. He hadn't said much, so his accent couldn't have given him away. Not that it would matter in New York. Locke had probably heard every type of accent you could imagine, and quite a few you couldn't since his 'vacation' started over a year ago. You heard all sorts of things by riding the subway all day long. Saw some interesting sights too. Maybe it was because Locke still did the tourist things that he excluded an aura of not actually living in the city. Locke was proud of where he came from though, and didn't mind it if he looked like a tourist. How could he know though that the simple act of acting as his father had raised him would peg him as not being a New Yorker? "San Francisco. But I'm going to school here for now."

Locke smiled at the baby. Cute, but to him Chris and Mai still topped the charts. It was hard to see something so small and remember that his brother and sister had ever been that way. When the twins were first born Locke wasn't home right away, and even when he returned it took him time to be able to handle the late night feedings. "You have a really beautiful boy there," he said, hoping that it didn't sound like he was a child snatcher or something. There was a look to Lee, a proud parent look. He'd seen it on his dad's face, and on Kendra's. Now that he thought of it there were even times when Kendra looked proud of him.

The boy confirmed that he wasn't from New York, but rather from San Francisco. And was going to school here. "Must be some school to bring you across the whole country," Lee said. "Is it one of those arts schools?"

Then the boy commented about Kevin, and Lee couldn't stop the smile from spreading across her face as she also looked down into the stroller at her son. "Thank you," Lee replied.

This time the response to Lee was in the negative. "Nah. I like English, and would be happy if algebra and physics were abolished, but art schools are too... liberal for me. I didn't come here for school at first," he admitted. The teen knew he shouldn't be calling this a vacation anymore. Nobody takes a year long vacation. It just sounded better then running away from home and abandoning your family. "Things were kinda tense in San Francisco and I just needed to get away. Came here and things have been getting better. My stepmother thinks I should be continuing my education though so I'm now going to school out here."

"I'm not in any game. Too slow still. Soccer just isn't my game. Baseball is my favorite," he crouched down to look at the baby in the eyes and smiled. The lady had that new mommy pride to her. "How many months?" he asked. There was just a bit of that baby fluff hair, dark like his mom, but the eyes were darker. Probably the dad, Locke reasoned. "Any colic? Sleeps through the night?" He straightened up and brushed his hair sheepishly over the one eye. "Sorry, I know it's weird that I'm asking a total stranger questions about their kid, but babies are pretty cool. They learn like a million things everyday. Plus they're the strongest things on earth. I mean what else can get the biggest toughest biker dudes to make silly faces and talk in gobbledygook?"

So this kid was a runaway from the west coast, who had made his way to New York. Lee could certainly relate to that, though it had taken her much longer to get here than it had him.

Lee couldn't help but smile a bit. "So you're still in contact with your family after running away?" She asked. "I mean, it's good that you're back in school, but what does your family think about you being out here?" Sometimes, Lee knew, running away was the only option. It had been that way for her. But that didn't make it any easier, and if he was still talking with his family, there was always the option that the kid could go back someday.

He seemed to be quite interested in her kid, though, Lee noticed as the teen knelt down in front of the stroller. He did continue speaking, though, and Lee listened as she walked around to the side of the stroller. But not because she was worried. No, not at all.

"My husband likes baseball too. That, and March Madness Basketball, though I don't understand the draw myself..." Lee replied. Then he started asking about the baby. Then apologized for asking such personal questions.

The last comment that he made couldn't help but make Lee laugh. "Well, he hasn't been around any face making bikers, but he seems to do alright around tattoos nonetheless.

"But no, he's not even close to sleeping through the night yet. He's only a few months old."

"Yeah, I keep in touch. I've got a little brother and sister. Kendra, my stepmother takes care of them, but I got use to tucking them in at night and stuff you know? Or will know soon enough," Kevin was still very young baby, and most of the things that Locke had fallen into the habit of Lee would be facing in a few years. "They're proud of me, I mean they look up to me and I'm doing things out here that I couldn't back home. I think Kendra's just grateful she doesn't have to deal with the drama anymore. And it wasn't running away. Not exactly."

Tattoos made Locke think of Tarin. Not because he didn't know anyone else with them, but because Tarin was in New York, and the two had gone to a baseball game where Locke had been given some unwanted dating advice. The thought that maybe this was the wife Tarin was so fond of, and that this might be his child didn't even wave hello to Locke's mind. He was the unlucky type, the one who would run out of clean underwear on the day that the washing machine broke. With the odds of running into Lee already slim, his luck seemed to break the laws of probability. Kendra didn't like tattoos, which instantly made them more interesting to the teen, who wasn't sure how the new mommy felt about them. "Hey there's nothing wrong with a little ink. One of the best gifts I ever got came from a guy with tats."

Made sense that the baby wasn't sleeping through the night. At least Lee only had to deal with one kid waking her up. Chris and Mai had double teamed, either one crying just after you managed to quiet the other and laid down, or would wail when the other twin woke them up. Remembering something odd that he had read once Locke decided to share some baby knowledge. "Making the sound you do during the mouthfeel stage from wine tasting helps calm a baby down. It has something to do with the range of noise they can hear in the womb...Dunno. Kendra wasn't much for wine tasting and I'm not old enough for that."

Lee stood there and simply watched the teen as he spoke. He hadn't run away. Not exactly. But he couldn't deal with the drama back home, yet even though he still had to be in high school, he was apparently doing things here that made his younger siblings proud of him. That, Lee was more than a little confused about. It all sounded like running away, but when Lee ran away from her home, she did everything she could to avoid any contact with her family.

But apparently the boy seemed to get the wrong idea about her comment about Kevin being alright around tattoos, and Lee laughed. "I never said there was anything wrong or bad about tattoos. In fact, I've gotten some rather good presents from a man with quite a few of them."

The next thing the boy said was a bit of advice apparently, but it left Lee just as lost as she would have been with out it. "I'm not much of a wine drinker, either," she admitted. "I much prefer beer, but even that's not on the menu any time soon."

There was just something the boy had said about how he had ended up in New York that just didn't quite add up for Lee. How it had sounded like he had run away from home and come here, only to stay in contact with his family and be pressured into going back to school thousands of miles away from home. "If you don't mind me asking, what school do you go to? It must be pretty good for what you're doing to make your siblings proud of you."

Ok, so the advice on how to stop a crying baby wasn't the best. It required that before having a child you did things like wine tasting. Come to think of it Locke didn't know anyone who did stuff like that. It was too pretentious and snooty. His friends parents were more likely to go to garage sales then take a tour of wine country. Still it had been an interesting fact and Locke wondered if it was really true. Kevin would not be providing the answer seeing as his mommy didn't drink wine, and for the moment he was a happy panda.

"I go to Xavier's Institute," he said with pride. Ever since coming to New York Locke had been determined to not hide his mutation. The way that he saw things, you could only do one of two things once you find out your a mutant. Option the first was to morn over your genes, questioning why you were born with the ability to blow bubbles out your ears, or being extra hairy. On the whole a rather depressing choice. It meant that you either had to question your beliefs in a higher power, (assuming you had any), because why would you be forced into this position of which you could not escape? You would loose faith quickly (again, assuming that you had any to begin with), leaving you with a void that you hadn't stopped to notice before. Locke wasn't going to go around and bash others for their religious views, but he had to wonder how mutants who moaned about being mutants could even believe in anything. The second option, which Locke followed and was infinitely more practical was to suck it up and accept that you needed to be a mutant. Yes in nature there were genetic oddities, and yes, some mutations hurt the first few species, but nature and evolution will only allow the best to continue onwards. Being a mutant meant that you either lacked a crucial survival point, as was the case for Locke and his earth sense, or that you held an advantage. The important thing to figure out was under what circumstances your mutation let you shine. "They think I'm going to be some big hero, but that's mostly because I already am to them. Just part of being a big brother. Kendra... she's not happy with the situation, but c'mon. How would you feel if you suddenly found yourself having to deal with a kid who's a mutant, and you aren't even the kid's mom? She's more happy with the personal growth rather then the whole 'My stepson is learning how to deal with walking trees'"

Amazing how willing Locke was to talk about such personal matters. A year ago he'd been broken into pieces just because a guy showed some concern over a teen trying to get out of a storm. Now though was time to get away from himself. Locke thought back to when Chris and Mai were driving Kendra crazy. She had been outnumbered until he stumbled in. "I heard that swaddling helps them to sleep, because arms are a distraction, and they don't even really realize that they have them. Also putting them on their side or stomach. Something about being on their back makes them think that they're falling. But then there's the whole SIDS thing that you have to worry about, so the side sleeping is probably as useless as the wine tasting thing. Uhh... Oh! When they were really young we kept a hairdryer plugged in their room. If one started getting fussy when the second was starting to calm down, we'd just flip the thing on at the low speed and it calmed them."

When the boy said what school he went to, everything clicked together. Why he was here, and why, even though he ran away, he did still talk with his family. Just because his family couldn't deal with his powers in their every day life wouldn't necessarily mean that they didn't want the kid in their life. Not everyone went through the same problems she had had with their families.

"Just make sure you stop to think before you run in and play hero," Lee said with a slight smile just as Kevin started to fuss a bit. Moving to the back of the stroller, Lee started moving it back and forth. He normally liked their walks, so probably wasn't happy about this prolonged stop. "And don't avoid your homework because you're spending all your time in the danger room. School's important too."

And then the teen went on with another suggestion to help with Kevin. For someone who was so young, who should have many other things on his mind, than knowing this much about babies. "I'll keep that in mind. It might actually be something I can use."

"Oh I always think first," he reassured Lee, "Usually that I have to be crazy to get involved. Common sense is one thing, but I can't just let a crazy person run into danger." Then again jumping into danger for a total stranger was madness in itself. The baby was getting fussy, so Locke backed off a bit. Although the little boy was still very young he clearly wanted to go. Not that surprising. Babies in general liked some sort of movement, such as rocking. Mai loved the baby swing and was more fussy being taken out of it then she was before being put into it. "How do you know about the Danger Room?" he had to ask.

Locke looked a little embarrassed, yet proud that he was able to give Lee some advice that was actually useful. "Uh yeah. I kinda took over some of the late night feedings. When my little brother and sister were born I wasn't sleeping much anyways, and their mom was getting overwhelmed. Guess I know too much about babies."

Lee couldn't help but think that this kid had been spending too much time listening to Sam. Not that Sam was a bad guy, not in the least, but he did seem to have a tendency to jump in to help people without completely thinking it through first.

Lee just shook her head, especially when he asked how she knew about the Danger Room. "What?" Lee asked, a small smile coming across her face as she spoke. "You thought the Danger Room was a secret?"

Shaking her head again, Lee just looked at the teen. "Just because I'm not a student, doesn't mean I haven't been in there before, you know."

But Kevin seemed to be getting fussier and fussier as each moment ticked by. He didn't seem to like the idea of standing still like this. "At least I'm a quick learner," Lee commented, glancing down at her baby. "But I think I need to get him moving."

Lee took her position behind the stroller once more and pushed it a few steps before looking back at the teen. "So how are you enjoying the school?"

”Hardley,” If the Danger Room was suppose to be this great secret he wouldn’t have been introduced to it as soon as he had, nor would it have been used for that school dance. ”I wasn’t even there a whole day and I was brought down. But I don’t think I’ve seen you around the school, and I’ve got a pretty good memory for faces.” It wasn’t quite the truth, since Locke couldn’t bring himself to look girls his age in the face. What he did learn was the different ways in which people distributed their weights. He could identify his family’s footsteps with ease. Locke was fairly confident that he didn’t know Lee’s. Then again seeing how she had a baby recently her entire posture would have changed. Lee might have very well have been in the institute, but he wouldn’t recognize her weight distribution the way it was now.

Locke stepped aside to let Lee continue walking her baby, fully expecting her to be finished talking to the strange teen. And yet she continued to ask him about his school, which she had to be familiar with. It made him curious as to what her connection to the Xavier Institute was. As best Locke knew, there weren’t many people at the school who weren’t mutants, and she seemed to be fine with the prospect that her newborn was near one. Locke trotted along behind. ”If I didn’t like it I wouldn’t still be here in New York. It ain’t easy being across the country from your family and friends. The scholastic stuff is the same wherever you go. What’s different is who I am here.” He smiled. ”And that’s happy.”

The boy didn’t recognize her from the mansion, but Lee knew from experience that that didn’t mean a thing. She had spent a month there once, though most of it was in the infirmary, and though she was there, there were many people she never saw. Even people she knew, she almost never saw them.

“Well, I’m not there a whole lot,” she explained. “The last year or so, it’s pretty much just been to see DocProf and then leave again. In fact, this little guy was born there, but again, I’d be surprised if you had seen me then since I was a little preoccupied at the time.”

It wasn’t instant, but at least once she started moving again, the stroller moving along the path seemed to quiet him down. At least he wasn’t as fussy.

At least the boy was now walking with her, so she wasn’t talking to herself. But what he said in return made Lee simle. “New York is just something special, I think,” Lee replied. “There’s just something about this city…Even before I met Tarin, I couldn’t see myself being happy living anywhere else.”