The Brotherhood house was unusually cheerful this year with the holiday spirit, with everyone attempting to brighten up the crumbling establish with homemade adornments and a starved pine tree that Lance had used his powers to uproot from the rigid ground near the house.
"That thing was an eyesore anyways; at least now we're putting it to good use," Wanda had said, watching as the small sapphire bulb she had string onto it dragged down the dead branch and it came to rest against the carpet below.
The smell of burnt gingerbread cookies filled the house swiftly with Fred's constant attempts to conjure up something festive for them to munch on in their celebratory preparations, though Pietro had rushed into the kitchen more than once brandishing a fire extinguisher, thinking that perhaps the massive mutant had finally managed to set the battered stove on fire.
"How come we weren't informed that we had one of those whenever St. John decided visit?" Lance grumbled as Pietro dragged the contraption back to the cluttered closet and tossed it in alongside the untouched vacuum cleaner and cleaning fluids.
At least they were trying this year; last year they had spent all of Christmas Eve sitting around the living room guzzling down countless sodas and feeling sick from the carbonation all night, and on Christmas snuck onto the Institute grounds and arranged all the Christmas lights that had been laid across the roof to spell 'Merry X-Mas X-Geeks' across the span of the vast yard in front of the school. But this year their minds seemed to have put aside any needs for revenge against their rivals and they instead tried to enjoy the holiday season.
Todd continued to stalk Wanda across the Brotherhood house, totting a small wisp of rather sorrowful mistletoe that looked like it had suffered one too many beatings from Wanda's hexing abilities alongside the lovesick mutant. He seemed more determined than ever to gain her attentions in this season when romance was supposed to temporarily peak, but so far it had only managed to cause several more indents in the walls that roughly fitted the shape of an inverted person.
Pietro rushed from the upstairs and down continuously carrying various boxes of once forgotten Christmas items, ornaments and rotten candy-canes that everyone watched in disgust as Fred ate the majority of them though they had spent several years in the attic. Lance pulled from one box the perfect tree topper, a cloth angel that held a songbook in her hands and would look down upon them from the highest point of the dying plant. Her eyes even lit up with an artificial heavenly light when plugged in. He cast it aside with the other decorations and clawed through the other various things within it.
Lance winced as he remembered when he had put up the Christmas lights around the Brotherhood house the previous day during a small snowstorm. He had been stringing on the last portion of lights when suddenly the ladder gave way to the ice and he found himself suspended twelve feet above the ground, only the string of lights holding him in the air. He had shouted continuously and let out some rather embarassing screams as his fear of heights rang clear, but the Brotherhood hadn't come out to his rescue until he'd driven his leg through a window to get their attentions.
He yelped when a rusty mousetrap suddenly closed itself around his unsuspecting hand, and Pietro arrived back only to recoil a bit at Lance's surfacing rage.
"Oops, sorry about that. Must've fallen in from when we had that rather nasty rat problem a few months ago," Pietro said as Lance pried the device from his hand and entered the kitchen to wash the small, jagged pieces of decaying metal from his flesh. Fred was stirring a batter of an unidentifiable substance he claimed would become a vanilla cake, though from the horrendous odor it was emitting Lance highly doubted that.
"What do you think Lance? I'm tryin' to make us a cake for after dinner tonight," Fred said, holding his strange concoction forward as Lance cringed and recoiled from it with a half-repressed look of disgust.
"I'm thinking that if you keep cooking like this, saying grace tonight will be as follows: 'Oh God, we thank thee for the instant noodles and 88 cents cookies from Walmart you have provided for us,'" Lance said, and Fred moped a little and turned away as he continued to stir.
Lance rinsed his hands and was drying them with a stained dishtowel when suddenly the kitchen phone began to ring, the sound piercing the calm quiet that had come over the Brotherhood house. Before Lance could even hope to reach it, Pietro rushed to the receiver and picked it up, shoving him away with a victorious grin.
"Helllo, Brotherhood house, Pietro speaking," he said systematically and swiftly into the phone, then prying it from his ear and handing it towards Lance, saying "It's for you," in a disgruntled tone.
Lance took it, expecting to hear Kitty's chirpy voice chattering to him as was typical in the evening, but instead, another voice came through the telephone, Professor Xavier speaking to him in an unnaturally quiet voice.
The others watched as first Lance's face distorted into a look of utter confusion, and then one of terror as he slumped on the edge of a kitchen counter to keep his balance, looking as though he was going to be sick, and then they watched as his eyes welled with tears he seemed unafraid to reveal to them.
Wanda approached him slowly, watching as he limply dropped the receiver to the floor and a voice continued to speak, calling to him as he stood there trembling slightly.
"Lance, what is it? What happened?" she asked, taking another step forwards and then halting as he broke down, falling to his knees onto the linoleum floor and clenching his face in his hands. The floor was suddenly flooded with unhindered tears as the Brotherhood listened and heard only one coherent word spoken in his weak, pained voice.
"...Kitty..."