"We should get a doctor or somethin'." Gris-Gris commented. Bella Donna nodded.

"Yeah, but who? We're criminals, remember? We can' exactly go to a hospital wit'hout someone callin' de cops on us. Ideas?"

Genard looked down at his son, who was sleeping peacefully in his arms, and then said to the others, "Dr. McCoy did a great deal for CJ an' Jean-Pierre...without him, dey'd both be dead. I t'ink maybe we should get in touch wit' him an' ask him to do de autopsy."

"He did a lot for Singer an' myself too," Fifolet remembered. "I agree wit' Genard's idea. Dr. McCoy is de only one we can fully trust."

"Agreed." Theoren said. "Who's gon' call him?"

"I will." Remy said.

Remy went upstairs to his bedroom and shut the door with a sigh, tears still running down his cheeks. He couldn't believe his beloved Tante Mattie was dead...and he knew he wasn't the only one who felt the same way. He picked up the phone and dialed a number, wishing he was anywhere else.

"Xavier School." a charming voice said once the other end of the line was picked up. The voice made Remy cry even harder, simply because Ororo Munroe was one of his closest friends and he wished she was there.

"Stormy...I..."

"Remy? What is wrong? I thought today was the day of Jackie and Emil's wedding. Is something amiss?" Storm questioned.

"Yeah...dey jus' got married...but...Tante Mattie..." Remy tried to compose himself. "Storm, I need to speak wit' Hank. He has to come here."

"What has happened to Mattie?" Storm asked.

"She's...she died...jus' a few minutes ago...Hank's de only doctor we can trust..."

Storm was silent for a few moments. "Tante Mattie's dead?" She whispered in disbelief. "Goddess...I cannot believe this news...Remy, I am so sorry...I will get Hank for you, just a moment."

"T'anks..." Remy replied.

Dr. Henry McCoy came to the phone with a heavy heart. Ororo had not told him why Remy was asking for him, and he was scared that there was something the matter with the baby. "Remy? Did something happen to Jean-Pierre?"

"What?" Remy asked, confused. "Oh no...no Hank, de baby's jus' fine. But we need you to come down here immediately, in complete confidence. Tante Mattie's...dead."

"Oh my stars and garters...that's terrible news. I'll get my things together and be down there in an hour.

"T'anks Hank. We'll be waitin'."

An hour later, Hank knocked on the door of the safehouse. Remy answered it and much to his surprise, he discovered that Hank had taken Ororo with him. Remy let them in with a tearful smile. "We didn' move her, 'cept when Mercy took her pulse."

"Okay, that's fine. How is everyone holding up?" Hank asked.

"Not great. We're all pretty upset..." Remy replied.

"Jean mentioned on more than one occasion how close you were to Tante Mattie." Hank said as they joined the rest of the guild members. "I can do a preliminary autopsy here, but to do a more extensive one, we'll need to move her to a table or a bed elsewhere."

"T'anks for comin', Dr. McCoy." Fifolet said as the other guild members looked at Storm somewhat curiously. The only ones who had ever met her aside from Jackie, Emil and Genard were Fifolet and Singer. Remy remembered this and introduced her to the others.

"Ev'ryone, dis is my friend Ororo Munroe, also known as Storm. Stormy, I'd like you to meet Theoren, Mercy, Claude, Zoe, Bella Donna, Gris-Gris and Questa."

"Gambit, I do wish you would not call me that." Ororo complained tolerantly. She smiled warmly at the thieves and assassins, and sat with them while they waited for Hank to tell them something.

After his preliminary autopsy, Hank stood up and addressed the assembled Guild members. While waiting for him to arrive, they had all changed into more comfortable clothes; most of them were dressed entirely in black. They were miserable and it showed. Hank sighed, knowing how difficult it must be for them to deal with this. "I'll have to do a more extensive autopsy, but I think I know what happened. Did Mattie ever complain about being dizzy or feeling disorientated within the past few months?"

"Non..." Theoren said. "But Tante never complained 'bout anythin', not even if she had a headache."

Hank nodded. "Well, it would seem dat she died of a severe stroke." Seeing the horrified looks of shock cross the faces around him, he continued. "She didn't suffer, that much I can tell you. In fact, she was probably very happy, given the fact that she was here with all of you celebrating a joyous occasion."

Emil and Jackie were standing very close together and they both smiled half-heartedly at Hank's mention of their wedding, which didn't seem so important to them right then. "Would she have been feelin' unwell prior to dis, or do you t'ink it happened suddenly, wit'out any warnin'?" Jackie asked.

"I'm not sure of that at this point, Jackie. A more extensive autopsy will determine that." Hank replied. "I'm sorry, I wish I could tell you more right now, but I can't."

While Hank did his more intensive autopsy, the thieves and assassins moved into the backyard and sat around the large picnic table with Ororo, talking. It was decided that Jacie and Emil would postpone their honeymoon until after the funeral. They had suggested postponing it indefinitely, but the others wouldn't hear of it.

"Dere is no way you're gon' put dat honeymoon of yours off for months an' months, jus' b'cause of dis." Claude said firmly. "We can have de funeral in two days, an' after dat, you're goin'."

"But..." Emil said. "Tante Mattie's dead Claude. Don' dat mean anythin'?"

"Of course it means somethin', Red, but what Claude's sayin' is, Tante wouldn' want you guys to put your honeymoon off b'cause of her." Theoren said. "All she ever wanted was for all of us to be happy, an' she lived long enough to see two marriages and two births in de fam'ly over de past eight months."

Ororo decided to put her two cents in. "I did not know her well...I met her only when I had been turned into a child, when I met Remy. But I do not believe she would like it if you postponed de honeymoon because of her death. I think she would rather you go on with your plans. She wanted all of you to be happy, to live your lives as you were meant to live them."

"An' t'ink of what she'd say if we get stumped on somethin'." Questa finished with a small laugh.

"Okay. We'll go after de funeral." Jackie conceded.

Fifolet, holding his three-month-old baby daughter in his arms, couldn't help but voice a question. "Do you t'ink she knew she was gon' die?"

"It's hard to say, Feef." Bella Donna replied. "I t'ink she did. I mean she was an empath, remember? She might have picked up on signs from God dat only she could see, you never know."

They held Tante Mattie's funeral two days later. It was a small, solemn affair, with only the guild members and any close friends who had known Mattie well attending. Both Remy and Bella Donna spoke, praising Tante Mattie's loyalty, talking of her lifetime comittment to the Guilds.

Mattie had died of a severe stroke, as Hank had originally told them. In all likelihood, she had known her end was near, but she, being the stubborn lady she was, vowed to hold on for as long as she could. Hank explained to them that she was very lucky she lived as long as she had. There were a few small blood clots in her arteries, and evidence Hank found...bruises on her body among them...proved she had been taking dizzy spells and falling.

When the funeral was over, Jackie and Emil went on their honeymoon to Bermuda as originally planned, while Remy went back to New York with Hank and Ororo.

It was hard for all of them to put their loss behind them and move on with their lives, but with the desire to do right by the two children and keep working towards their destiny, they moved on more quickly then they would have originally thought possible. As if they had somehow heard Jean's thoughts to them all those miles away, they banded together as one family, instead of two separate ones, and helped each other through the pain. Mattie had been trying to get them completely unified ever since the unificiation in 2000, but they had never listened. But now that she was gone, they realized they'd be better off as a unit, even if they did still have differences of opinion quite frequently.

One Year Later

As they had done on what would have been Tante Mattie's one-hundred-and-twenty-fourth birthday in October, two months after her death, the Guild family held a day of remembrance on the one year anniversary of her death. They made a trip to her grave and held a memorial service in her honor at the safehouse. This time however, they found it difficult to be really solemn, thanks to the playful antics of fifteen-month-old Cheryl and thirteen-month old Jean-Pierre, who lightened everyone's mood.

When their memorial service was over, Remy went up to Emil and Jackie's rooms. Jackie was days away from giving birth to their first child. With both Tante Mattie and Jean out of their lives, they were uncertain of the sex of the baby, but neither one of them cared as long as he or she was healthy.

"How are you feelin', Jack?" Remy asked when he joined them.

"I feel like a house. Even worse is, I look like a house too." Jackie laughed. "But Singer says dat's normal an' we all know de end result is worth feelin' an' lookin' like a house for nine months. I'm at de point now where I jus' want dis over wit', y'know?"

"Yeah, I know. How long now?"

Emil grinned. "Any day now."

Jackie suddenly gasped and held her stomach. "I t'ink it's more like any hour now...um..."

"What?" Emil and Remy both demanded. Emil had been a nervous, overprotective wreck since Jackie told him they were going to have a baby, and he was still scared half to death that something would go wrong.

"Remy...go get Mercy an' Bella Donna. I t'ink my water jus' broke..."

Five minutes later, Remy was racing back into the room with Mercy and Bella Donna right behind him.

"See, dis is why havin' Tante Mattie around was such a good t'ing..." Bella Donna commented. "How on earth're we s'posed to do dis by ourselves?"

Mercy, who had more of a clear idea what to do than Bel did, being older, just shook her head. "De same way we're s'posed to do everythin' dese days. On our own. We're not helpless."

"I am!" Emil squeaked. "What do I do?"

"Hold her hand an' help her focus, dat's what." Mercy commanded. "Remy, go tell de others what's goin' on. We'll keep you informed, we promise."

"Okay."

It was well after dark before Bella Donna had the pleasure of going down the hall to the library and telling the others that it was over. Remy and Theoren were practically beside themselves they were so anxious. "Well?" They demanded.

"It's a girl." Bel smiled.

Down the hall, Mercy was watching with a content smile on her face as Jackie and Emil bonded with their newborn daughter.

"She has red hair!" Emil complained, but he was only joking and Jackie knew it.

"She's absolutely perfect. Ten fingers, ten toes, blue eyes an' red hair. Not to mention jus' as opinionated as her father. She's perfect...an' normal. T'ank God..." Both Jackie and Remy had secretly been hoping this child wasn't born with their mutant genes...and unless the sclera of her eyes went from white to black with time, she hadn't.

"What're you gon' name her?" Mercy asked, walking back over to look at the little girl more closely again.

The proud parents glanced at each other and then back at Mercy with secretive smiles on their faces. "Dat's a secret until you go get all de others in here so we can introduce her to everyone officially." Emil said.

It didn't take long for the excited thieves and assassins to crowd into the room, with Cheryl and Jean-Pierre in tow. "Okay, so?" Mercy demanded.

"We've been thinking 'bout dis for a long time." Jackie began. "It was a big decision and we have a feelin' you guys will all approve. So, we are very happy to be able to introduce you to Mattie Roberta Lapin."

"Oh guys..." Theoren breathed. "You named her directly after Tante Mattie...she would have loved dat. But how did you know what Tante's full name was?"

"She told me." Emil said simply. "I asked her a few years ago what her actual name was, on her birth certificate, an' dat what she said. Everyone approve? We wanted to name her Mattie anyway, but when we realized she was due around the anniversary of Tante's death, that clinched it for us."

"It's perfect." Bella Donna said, voicing the opinions of everyone present. "Jus' like she is."

None of them realized it, but as they stood around talking and cooing over little Mattie, and laughing at the reaction of the two toddlers when they were allowed to get close to her and look to, they had two invisible guests watching over them. Tante Mattie and Jean-Luc LeBeau stood watching the loving family scene before them and smiling. Neither of them ever left the sides of the guild members, just as Jean had predicted. They, along with Bella Donna's father Marius Boudreaux, and other long-dead members of the Guilds, were the guardian angels of the clans, and watched over them constantly. They were proud of them, and thrilled at everything being achieved by the guild members, especially the continuation of the family lines.

"You were right, mon ami." Jean-Luc said. "You tol' me b'fore I left dat dey'd be fine...all of 'em. At first I didn' b'lieve you, but you right right."

"I always am." Tante Mattie replied. "I always am."