Holiday challenge fic: Twelve Days
Title: The Twelve Days of Christmas
Author: Musamea
Fandom: Movieverse prequel
Rating: PG-13, for situational elements
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Summary: Christmas at the mansion, twelve different ways.
A/N: For the jeannie_x_slim holiday challenge. Many thanks to midnightcadenza for the beta.
I.
Jean spends her first Christmas at the mansion with only Professor Xavier and Dr. Lehnsherr. Jason had gone home to his parents during Thanksgiving Break and he hadn't come back. Professor Xavier went around the mansion with a sour look on his face for a week, and once, during one of their telepathic sessions, she'd caught a few stray images from his mind that gave her nightmares for days. It was Dr. Lehnsherr who came into her room when she woke up, crying and sending out a mental cry for help that woke both her teachers.
"He's not coming back, is he?" she asked, very quietly. When Dr. Lehnsherr said no, she felt slightly guilty for the relief that broke over her in a wave.
They try to make it up to her that she has to spend the holidays here with "two old men," as Professor Xavier puts it (though with a slight quirk of his lips as if he doesn't quite believe what he's saying). Her parents are going to be out of the country until New Year's and her mother calls to say, "Darling, we're just not sure if you'll be strong enough. You know how rigorous international travel can be, and while Charles says you've progressed with your shields, it would just be such a risk..."
(She hears her teachers discussing this one afternoon. She's a few minutes early to her German lesson and stops when she hears raised voices in Dr. Lehnsherr's office. "I think it's shameful," he says. "What kind of parents do they think they are?" "They are doing what they think best, Erik," comes Xavier's reply. Jean thinks he sounds tired. "They're afraid," Dr. Lehnsherr scoffs. "Aren't you?" "That's preposterous, Charles." "Then don't you think it's better for Jean to spend the holidays with two people who love her than two who are afraid of her?" Face flaming, she retreats on her tiptoes to the end of the hall and then makes as much noise as she can to signal her approach. Both men look perfectly natural when she knocks on the half-open door.)
Professor Xavier hires an interior designer to decorate the mansion. The woman strings tasteful white lights along the roof's edge and wraps the banister on the main staircase with ribbon and holly. She hangs a wreath on the door and places red and white ornaments in careful intervals on the artificial tree. She leaves the den looking like something out of a magazine, and when Jean looks at the room and then at Xavier's expectant face, she can't bring herself to tell him it's perfect and not at all what she wants.
II.
Her second Christmas at the mansion, she's begun to think of the place as home and feels barely a twinge of regret when her parents call to say that they're going to be gone again. This year, when Professor Xavier suggests calling the same decorator, she is able to look up from her dinner and wrinkle her nose at him.
Dr. Lehnsherr laughs. "Thank God. I hated what that woman did to this place." He looks at her from his place across the table, one eyebrow quirked upward, and she grins down at her soup.
Even Professor Xavier smiles, and Jean thinks she can see relief in his eyes.
She goes with Professor Xavier to pick out a real tree, and when it's delivered, she and Dr. Lehnsherr decorate it with their powers. She breaks half the ornaments in the box with her unsteady TK, and rather than reprimanding her or sending her to get a broom and a dustpan, Dr. Lehnsherr knits the shards back together with a wave of his hand.
III.
Her third Christmas, Hank's been staying at the school for three months while completing his current rotation is at a nearby hospital. They conspire together to string up lights (brightly colored bulbs rather than the posh monochrome ones that the decorator left two years ago) and hang stockings over the fireplace. They debate for half an hour whether they should write "Charles" and "Erik" or "Professor Xavier" and "Professor Lehnsherr" for the adults. (Hank thinks of them as "the adults," too, for all that he usually calls them by their first names. Jean was shocked to find out that he wasn't that much older than her, for all that he's already picked up a couple of degrees. She sometimes wishes that her mutation had left her with genius intellect rather than abilities that could be diagnosed as schizophrenia, but these are infrequent thoughts.)
Hank goes home to Illinois a week before Christmas Day, and Jean, on impulse, invites her teachers to Christmas dinner with her family.
Dr. Lehnsherr raises one eyebrow when she asks him. "Jean. I'm Jewish."
"You've celebrated Christmas with me before. Please come?"
"Your parents--"
"They won't mind."
Her teachers drive to Annandale-on-Hudson on the twenty-fifth, and Jean is so pleased that it's halfway through dinner before she realizes how tense the room is. Her mother sits with her lips pursed tight, only speaking every now and again to say something that seems terribly pointed, even though Jean can't tell exactly what she's getting at. She can see that Dr. Lehnsherr is barely containing his anger (his butter knife is rattling a little, even though his hand is nowhere near it). Her father and Professor Xavier valiantly try to keep up the conversation about the practice of decorating Christmas trees -- something about the Romans portraying Dionysus with evergreen branches -- but even their talk is strained.
She listens on the stairs as her parents talk after her teachers leave, but they are speaking in undertone and she has to reach out mentally as well to catch the subject of their conversation.
"I'm just uncomfortable with… that lifestyle."
"Elaine, they don't flaunt it. Please. They've done so much for Jean."
"I know. It's just… I wish she'd given us some warning. I'm glad that they've helped her, I am. That doesn't mean I enjoy spending time with queers."
Their words make her feel cold and sick to her stomach, even though she's not exactly sure what they mean or why they upset her mother so much.
IV.
The next year, Warren leaves for home before she does, and she spends a few days with her teachers before her parents pick her up. She twists in the backseat of their car and ignores their protests when she rolls down her window to wave goodbye to her professors.
At home that night, she thinks of the two of them standing in the doorway, with fixed smiles on their faces, and she impulsively kicks off her blankets and sneaks into the downstairs hallway to call the mansion.
There's no answer on the other end, but after she's gotten back into bed, when her mind is beginning to haze over with the fog of sleep, she feels the barest brush against the outskirts of her thoughts. She dreams of Professor Xavier with Cerebro's red and white glow bathing him like thousands of Christmas lights.
V.
The winter of her senior year of high school, she refuses to go home when her parents call, making the excuse that she needs to work on her college applications. Hank drives down from Columbia and it's Warren's family's turn to be out of the country for the holidays. He cites college essays to them as well, though in his case the excuse falls rather closer to the truth. Scott, two years younger than Warren and Jean, doesn't have to worry about teacher recommendations and personal statements yet, but he also doesn't have a family to go home to.
Professor Xavier sets a price limit on gifts and stocking stuffers, and when Jean goes to him to complain (her family, though not as wealthy as Warren's, likes to give extravagant presents, and the Professor has never curtailed this practice before), he only says, "Not everyone shares your economic background, Jean. Those who are truly charitable understand that generosity depends not on a price tag but on the feelings of others." She feels suitably chastised and half-ashamed, until he cups her face with his hands and rises a little on his toes to kiss her forehead. (She went through a sudden growth spurt this past summer and now stands nearly as tall as Dr. Lehnsherr. She's not sure she likes looking down -- though ever so slightly -- at Professor Xavier.)
Dr. Lehnsherr gives a microscope to her and a tool kit to Scott. She's not sure if it's a joke until she sees Scott's grin. (It's only the second time she's seen that mega-watt smile; the first time being when Hank and the Professor fitted the ruby quartz glasses over his face and he could opened his eyes for the first time in five months.) Warren gives the Professor a pocket Shakespeare -- and that is certainly a joke. Hank receives all the things they think a young doctor needs -- mostly instant food items and earplugs and pens, since he is always misplacing his.
Scott's gifts are small, but thoughtful. He gives her a small jewelry box for her earrings, and she is amused at its somewhat misshapen corners until he tells her that he made it himself, with his force blasts. She glances up at him in surprise, but she can't tell if he's even still looking at her behind his visor, and she wishes for the very first time that she could see his eyes.
VI.
During her first winter break as a college student, the Professor calls her at her parents' house and asks her to visit. "Warren is going to Bangkok with his father, and Henry will be buried for much of the month," he says. "I think Scott would like to have another person his age around."
She drives to Salem Center by herself on Christmas Eve, with the radio turned high and carols blasting from her car's old speakers. The sky is overcast, with iron-grey clouds skidding along the horizon. When she pulls up in front of the mansion, she sees that someone -- probably Scott, who is more conscientious about keeping in touch with her at college than even the Professor -- has put up a large banner that says Welcome Home, Jean!
That night, after Xavier and Dr. Lehnsherr have gone to bed, Jean teaches Scott how to roast chestnuts over a dying fire. They debate the merits of holiday traditions. Scott thinks they're rather stupid -- "Come on, Jean, what's the point of parents lying to their children year after year about a fat man who can supposedly travel the world in one night and squeeze into chimneys? It's all just padding some corporate exec's pocket." She cups her chin on her knees and takes her time replying. "These stories give people a sense of continuity," she tells him. "As for Santa Claus… don't you think it makes Christmas just a bit more magical for kids?" He scoffs. "It'd have to be magic. I've calculated this… even if he traveled above the speed of light and averaged a minute per house--" She uses her TK and pelts him with couch cushions.
She wakes on Christmas morning and the entire world seems wrapped in snow. She slips into her coat and boots and runs outside, only to be ambushed by Scott, who has been building a small fort of snowballs. She shrieks and retaliates with her own volley, and ten minutes later, when they finally burst back into the kitchen -- laughing, cheeks and noses red with cold -- Professor Xavier has cups of hot chocolate waiting for them. They linger over the breakfast table, sharing sections of yesterday's paper -- Scott claims the front page while the Professor looks over the business section. Jean settles in with a crossword. Dr. Lehnsherr appears at the kitchen door a half hour later, in a bathrobe and slippers, and when Jean looks up and catches his smile upon seeing the tableau before him, she thinks her heart might burst with happiness.
VII.
The next year, Jean has a near breakdown from anxiety over finals, and her father orders her to Xavier's. She pulls into the drive with her radio off. There's no banner this year, since no one but the Professor is expecting her.
When she knocks, the door is opened by a gorgeous black girl with a fall of waist-length white hair.
"Who are you?" she asks.
Jean is too stunned to speak, but then Dr. Lehnsherr appears at the top of the stairs. "Ororo? Who is-- Jean!" He hurries down to her. "I didn't know you were coming, my dear."
"I--" She can't speak if she's not going to cry, so she just puts her bags down and throws her arms around him. He goes stiff for a moment, then very still, as if he's listening to words that she can't hear. Finally, his arms come up around her, and he rubs her back the way he used to on nights when her nightmares would wake him.
She spends much of her break sequestered with the Professor, reinforcing her shields and telling him about the last semester. Scott introduces her to the new girl, Ororo, joking about guaranteed white Christmases from now on. Ro, as everyone calls her, doesn't take any bull from anyone, and Jean both admires and covets this quality. She seems to have a natural affinity for gardening as well as weather, filling her attic room with plants and flowers that Jean has never seen outside of the New York Botanical Garden. She also seems to have a natural affinity for Scott, and when Jean watches the two of them at dinner, so clearly at ease with one another, tossing wisecracks back and forth almost faster than she can process the jokes, she decides that she's glad Scott has a peer at the mansion now. If she ever feels twinges of jealousy, she tells herself very firmly that it's just nostalgia for her own years at the mansion.
VIII.
The following Christmas, everyone -- even Hank -- comes home to the mansion because Erik's gone and no one wants the Professor to be alone during the holidays.
Scott helps her put up a small tree without ornaments; there's a tacit agreement to keep this holiday as quiet as possible. Dinners are strained as everyone tries to ignore the empty chair at the table and talk about cheerful things (though most of the conversations turn toward academia, now that all of them except Ro are in college).
On Christmas Eve, Jean finds herself stopped in the hall outside of Dr. Lehnsherr's old office. She can't think of any reason not to go in, so she pushes the door open. The room is stripped bare, and it hits her like a punch in the gut, before she's quite realized that she had expected everything to be the same.
Xavier finds her sitting inside half an hour later, eyes puffy but dry. He quietly shuts the door behind him and lowers himself to the floor beside her. He puts an arm around her shoulders and she leans into it gratefully, finding it strangely fitting that they should be the two picking up the remnants of what Erik (it will forever be Erik now) has left behind.
"He's not coming back, is he?" she asks.
Charles strokes her hair and says nothing.
IX.
The following year, her rage and hurt at Erik's departure have dulled into a bruise that only aches when she probes at it. Then word comes that Charles has been in a terrible accident.
That year, there is no tree. There are no snowball fights, no midnight caroling excursions, and no long evenings spent before the fire. The mansion goes uninhabited for several weeks, and Charles is still in a coma on Christmas Day.
Jean sits by his bed most days, holding his hand, wishing her gift was strong enough to find him and lead him back from whatever dark corners of his mind he has retreated to. Scott also spends much of his time in Xavier's room. Sometimes they talk, voices low, about his semester or the class that she's TAing, or she shares old memories with him in exchange with his more recent ones.
There's a couch in the room, and he insists that she take it when she grows weary from watching and waiting. Sometimes, when she wakes from these catnaps, she finds him asleep as well, his head pillowed beside Charles's right hand on the hospital bed. She learns that Scott sleeps with his mouth slightly open and small smile on his lips, as though his dreams are always pleasant, even though she knows they often aren't.
X.
The year after the accident, they all come home again, as if determined to steal a march on tragedy and gather before it can call them together.
They are all still somewhat subdued this year, though there's cause for celebrating -- Hank finishing his residency and Jean starting medical school. She gets used to the silences that sometimes fall at the dinner table and to the gentle whirr of the Professor's wheelchair.
Ororo decides to go all out with the decorations this year, as if they are talismans against ill fortune, and she spends an entire day hanging wreaths and stringing lights, recruiting Warren to fly garlands up where she can't reach. That night, when the others have gone to bed, Jean stays up stuffing stockings with her and finally works up the nerve to ask her, point blank, about her feelings for Scott.
Ororo's eyes widen for a moment, then she bursts out laughing. "Jean, that would practically be incest!"
"So you don't like him?"
"I like him well enough, just not like that. He's all yours."
"That's not what I meant!" Jean protests, though she can't stop grinning.
XI.
The following year, her workload is so heavy that she calls Charles and tells him she won't be able to make it for the holidays.
She comes home to her apartment on Christmas day to find every light on, the door wide open, and Scott, Ro, and the Professor crowded into her tiny living room.
"What the hell?" she says, once she's stopped laughing. Ro has a reindeer antler headband on and they've somehow managed to persuade Charles to wear a Santa hat.
"Ro picked your lock," Scott tells her.
"It was way too easy."
"We thought we would bring Christmas to you," the Professor says.
Later, after they've eaten dinner and opened presents, Ororo chases Scott and Jean around the apartment with a sprig of mistletoe until she corners them in the kitchen. Jean looks up at him, suddenly blushing furiously, and sees that the tips of his ears are pink (though she can't tell if it's from embarrassment or the wine they had with dinner).
"Um," Scott says.
"Oh come on, you coward, just kiss her," Ro laughs, obviously pleased with herself.
She moves forward to peck him on the cheek before things get even more out of hand, but he chooses that moment to lean toward her. They bump noses and spring apart from each other.
"Ow," Scott says.
The phone rings and Ro answers it, cradling the receiver to her ear with one hand and waving at them to get back to business with the other.
"Jean's phone… no, sorry, I'm afraid she's not available right now…"
Scott looks at her and smiles, and she wonders if he's always been so beautiful. He bends down again, and this time she holds very still.
"… yes, she has company… well, not exactly family… it's complicated."
"Merry Christmas," he says, right before kissing her.
XII.
This Christmas, Xavier has taken in three more students, with two more set to enroll in the spring. Scott's graduated and is teaching basic trig and history at the mansion -- and a little bit of shop, on the side. When Hank decides to take the CDC job down in Atlanta, Jean knows that it will only be a matter of time before she's living at the mansion once again.
She's not sure how this will affect her relationship with Scott -- they chose to take things very, very slowly in the past year -- or how her parents will take the news, but when Christmas morning dawns and she finds herself being called out of bed at an ungodly hour to unwrap presents and engage in a wrapping paper fight (it's drier and easier to clean up, Ororo says, even though Scott claims she's just not ready yet to unleash the children on the perfect snowfall that she conjured up last night), Jean knows that she's made the right decision.
Charles, who has the advantage of age and awe over the younger ones, barricades himself behind the couch and throws wads of paper with the best of them. He catches her eye from across the room and smiles.
She smiles back and thinks at him, I'm home.
Author: Musamea
Fandom: Movieverse prequel
Rating: PG-13, for situational elements
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Summary: Christmas at the mansion, twelve different ways.
A/N: For the jeannie_x_slim holiday challenge. Many thanks to midnightcadenza for the beta.
I.
Jean spends her first Christmas at the mansion with only Professor Xavier and Dr. Lehnsherr. Jason had gone home to his parents during Thanksgiving Break and he hadn't come back. Professor Xavier went around the mansion with a sour look on his face for a week, and once, during one of their telepathic sessions, she'd caught a few stray images from his mind that gave her nightmares for days. It was Dr. Lehnsherr who came into her room when she woke up, crying and sending out a mental cry for help that woke both her teachers.
"He's not coming back, is he?" she asked, very quietly. When Dr. Lehnsherr said no, she felt slightly guilty for the relief that broke over her in a wave.
They try to make it up to her that she has to spend the holidays here with "two old men," as Professor Xavier puts it (though with a slight quirk of his lips as if he doesn't quite believe what he's saying). Her parents are going to be out of the country until New Year's and her mother calls to say, "Darling, we're just not sure if you'll be strong enough. You know how rigorous international travel can be, and while Charles says you've progressed with your shields, it would just be such a risk..."
(She hears her teachers discussing this one afternoon. She's a few minutes early to her German lesson and stops when she hears raised voices in Dr. Lehnsherr's office. "I think it's shameful," he says. "What kind of parents do they think they are?" "They are doing what they think best, Erik," comes Xavier's reply. Jean thinks he sounds tired. "They're afraid," Dr. Lehnsherr scoffs. "Aren't you?" "That's preposterous, Charles." "Then don't you think it's better for Jean to spend the holidays with two people who love her than two who are afraid of her?" Face flaming, she retreats on her tiptoes to the end of the hall and then makes as much noise as she can to signal her approach. Both men look perfectly natural when she knocks on the half-open door.)
Professor Xavier hires an interior designer to decorate the mansion. The woman strings tasteful white lights along the roof's edge and wraps the banister on the main staircase with ribbon and holly. She hangs a wreath on the door and places red and white ornaments in careful intervals on the artificial tree. She leaves the den looking like something out of a magazine, and when Jean looks at the room and then at Xavier's expectant face, she can't bring herself to tell him it's perfect and not at all what she wants.
II.
Her second Christmas at the mansion, she's begun to think of the place as home and feels barely a twinge of regret when her parents call to say that they're going to be gone again. This year, when Professor Xavier suggests calling the same decorator, she is able to look up from her dinner and wrinkle her nose at him.
Dr. Lehnsherr laughs. "Thank God. I hated what that woman did to this place." He looks at her from his place across the table, one eyebrow quirked upward, and she grins down at her soup.
Even Professor Xavier smiles, and Jean thinks she can see relief in his eyes.
She goes with Professor Xavier to pick out a real tree, and when it's delivered, she and Dr. Lehnsherr decorate it with their powers. She breaks half the ornaments in the box with her unsteady TK, and rather than reprimanding her or sending her to get a broom and a dustpan, Dr. Lehnsherr knits the shards back together with a wave of his hand.
III.
Her third Christmas, Hank's been staying at the school for three months while completing his current rotation is at a nearby hospital. They conspire together to string up lights (brightly colored bulbs rather than the posh monochrome ones that the decorator left two years ago) and hang stockings over the fireplace. They debate for half an hour whether they should write "Charles" and "Erik" or "Professor Xavier" and "Professor Lehnsherr" for the adults. (Hank thinks of them as "the adults," too, for all that he usually calls them by their first names. Jean was shocked to find out that he wasn't that much older than her, for all that he's already picked up a couple of degrees. She sometimes wishes that her mutation had left her with genius intellect rather than abilities that could be diagnosed as schizophrenia, but these are infrequent thoughts.)
Hank goes home to Illinois a week before Christmas Day, and Jean, on impulse, invites her teachers to Christmas dinner with her family.
Dr. Lehnsherr raises one eyebrow when she asks him. "Jean. I'm Jewish."
"You've celebrated Christmas with me before. Please come?"
"Your parents--"
"They won't mind."
Her teachers drive to Annandale-on-Hudson on the twenty-fifth, and Jean is so pleased that it's halfway through dinner before she realizes how tense the room is. Her mother sits with her lips pursed tight, only speaking every now and again to say something that seems terribly pointed, even though Jean can't tell exactly what she's getting at. She can see that Dr. Lehnsherr is barely containing his anger (his butter knife is rattling a little, even though his hand is nowhere near it). Her father and Professor Xavier valiantly try to keep up the conversation about the practice of decorating Christmas trees -- something about the Romans portraying Dionysus with evergreen branches -- but even their talk is strained.
She listens on the stairs as her parents talk after her teachers leave, but they are speaking in undertone and she has to reach out mentally as well to catch the subject of their conversation.
"I'm just uncomfortable with… that lifestyle."
"Elaine, they don't flaunt it. Please. They've done so much for Jean."
"I know. It's just… I wish she'd given us some warning. I'm glad that they've helped her, I am. That doesn't mean I enjoy spending time with queers."
Their words make her feel cold and sick to her stomach, even though she's not exactly sure what they mean or why they upset her mother so much.
IV.
The next year, Warren leaves for home before she does, and she spends a few days with her teachers before her parents pick her up. She twists in the backseat of their car and ignores their protests when she rolls down her window to wave goodbye to her professors.
At home that night, she thinks of the two of them standing in the doorway, with fixed smiles on their faces, and she impulsively kicks off her blankets and sneaks into the downstairs hallway to call the mansion.
There's no answer on the other end, but after she's gotten back into bed, when her mind is beginning to haze over with the fog of sleep, she feels the barest brush against the outskirts of her thoughts. She dreams of Professor Xavier with Cerebro's red and white glow bathing him like thousands of Christmas lights.
V.
The winter of her senior year of high school, she refuses to go home when her parents call, making the excuse that she needs to work on her college applications. Hank drives down from Columbia and it's Warren's family's turn to be out of the country for the holidays. He cites college essays to them as well, though in his case the excuse falls rather closer to the truth. Scott, two years younger than Warren and Jean, doesn't have to worry about teacher recommendations and personal statements yet, but he also doesn't have a family to go home to.
Professor Xavier sets a price limit on gifts and stocking stuffers, and when Jean goes to him to complain (her family, though not as wealthy as Warren's, likes to give extravagant presents, and the Professor has never curtailed this practice before), he only says, "Not everyone shares your economic background, Jean. Those who are truly charitable understand that generosity depends not on a price tag but on the feelings of others." She feels suitably chastised and half-ashamed, until he cups her face with his hands and rises a little on his toes to kiss her forehead. (She went through a sudden growth spurt this past summer and now stands nearly as tall as Dr. Lehnsherr. She's not sure she likes looking down -- though ever so slightly -- at Professor Xavier.)
Dr. Lehnsherr gives a microscope to her and a tool kit to Scott. She's not sure if it's a joke until she sees Scott's grin. (It's only the second time she's seen that mega-watt smile; the first time being when Hank and the Professor fitted the ruby quartz glasses over his face and he could opened his eyes for the first time in five months.) Warren gives the Professor a pocket Shakespeare -- and that is certainly a joke. Hank receives all the things they think a young doctor needs -- mostly instant food items and earplugs and pens, since he is always misplacing his.
Scott's gifts are small, but thoughtful. He gives her a small jewelry box for her earrings, and she is amused at its somewhat misshapen corners until he tells her that he made it himself, with his force blasts. She glances up at him in surprise, but she can't tell if he's even still looking at her behind his visor, and she wishes for the very first time that she could see his eyes.
VI.
During her first winter break as a college student, the Professor calls her at her parents' house and asks her to visit. "Warren is going to Bangkok with his father, and Henry will be buried for much of the month," he says. "I think Scott would like to have another person his age around."
She drives to Salem Center by herself on Christmas Eve, with the radio turned high and carols blasting from her car's old speakers. The sky is overcast, with iron-grey clouds skidding along the horizon. When she pulls up in front of the mansion, she sees that someone -- probably Scott, who is more conscientious about keeping in touch with her at college than even the Professor -- has put up a large banner that says Welcome Home, Jean!
That night, after Xavier and Dr. Lehnsherr have gone to bed, Jean teaches Scott how to roast chestnuts over a dying fire. They debate the merits of holiday traditions. Scott thinks they're rather stupid -- "Come on, Jean, what's the point of parents lying to their children year after year about a fat man who can supposedly travel the world in one night and squeeze into chimneys? It's all just padding some corporate exec's pocket." She cups her chin on her knees and takes her time replying. "These stories give people a sense of continuity," she tells him. "As for Santa Claus… don't you think it makes Christmas just a bit more magical for kids?" He scoffs. "It'd have to be magic. I've calculated this… even if he traveled above the speed of light and averaged a minute per house--" She uses her TK and pelts him with couch cushions.
She wakes on Christmas morning and the entire world seems wrapped in snow. She slips into her coat and boots and runs outside, only to be ambushed by Scott, who has been building a small fort of snowballs. She shrieks and retaliates with her own volley, and ten minutes later, when they finally burst back into the kitchen -- laughing, cheeks and noses red with cold -- Professor Xavier has cups of hot chocolate waiting for them. They linger over the breakfast table, sharing sections of yesterday's paper -- Scott claims the front page while the Professor looks over the business section. Jean settles in with a crossword. Dr. Lehnsherr appears at the kitchen door a half hour later, in a bathrobe and slippers, and when Jean looks up and catches his smile upon seeing the tableau before him, she thinks her heart might burst with happiness.
VII.
The next year, Jean has a near breakdown from anxiety over finals, and her father orders her to Xavier's. She pulls into the drive with her radio off. There's no banner this year, since no one but the Professor is expecting her.
When she knocks, the door is opened by a gorgeous black girl with a fall of waist-length white hair.
"Who are you?" she asks.
Jean is too stunned to speak, but then Dr. Lehnsherr appears at the top of the stairs. "Ororo? Who is-- Jean!" He hurries down to her. "I didn't know you were coming, my dear."
"I--" She can't speak if she's not going to cry, so she just puts her bags down and throws her arms around him. He goes stiff for a moment, then very still, as if he's listening to words that she can't hear. Finally, his arms come up around her, and he rubs her back the way he used to on nights when her nightmares would wake him.
She spends much of her break sequestered with the Professor, reinforcing her shields and telling him about the last semester. Scott introduces her to the new girl, Ororo, joking about guaranteed white Christmases from now on. Ro, as everyone calls her, doesn't take any bull from anyone, and Jean both admires and covets this quality. She seems to have a natural affinity for gardening as well as weather, filling her attic room with plants and flowers that Jean has never seen outside of the New York Botanical Garden. She also seems to have a natural affinity for Scott, and when Jean watches the two of them at dinner, so clearly at ease with one another, tossing wisecracks back and forth almost faster than she can process the jokes, she decides that she's glad Scott has a peer at the mansion now. If she ever feels twinges of jealousy, she tells herself very firmly that it's just nostalgia for her own years at the mansion.
VIII.
The following Christmas, everyone -- even Hank -- comes home to the mansion because Erik's gone and no one wants the Professor to be alone during the holidays.
Scott helps her put up a small tree without ornaments; there's a tacit agreement to keep this holiday as quiet as possible. Dinners are strained as everyone tries to ignore the empty chair at the table and talk about cheerful things (though most of the conversations turn toward academia, now that all of them except Ro are in college).
On Christmas Eve, Jean finds herself stopped in the hall outside of Dr. Lehnsherr's old office. She can't think of any reason not to go in, so she pushes the door open. The room is stripped bare, and it hits her like a punch in the gut, before she's quite realized that she had expected everything to be the same.
Xavier finds her sitting inside half an hour later, eyes puffy but dry. He quietly shuts the door behind him and lowers himself to the floor beside her. He puts an arm around her shoulders and she leans into it gratefully, finding it strangely fitting that they should be the two picking up the remnants of what Erik (it will forever be Erik now) has left behind.
"He's not coming back, is he?" she asks.
Charles strokes her hair and says nothing.
IX.
The following year, her rage and hurt at Erik's departure have dulled into a bruise that only aches when she probes at it. Then word comes that Charles has been in a terrible accident.
That year, there is no tree. There are no snowball fights, no midnight caroling excursions, and no long evenings spent before the fire. The mansion goes uninhabited for several weeks, and Charles is still in a coma on Christmas Day.
Jean sits by his bed most days, holding his hand, wishing her gift was strong enough to find him and lead him back from whatever dark corners of his mind he has retreated to. Scott also spends much of his time in Xavier's room. Sometimes they talk, voices low, about his semester or the class that she's TAing, or she shares old memories with him in exchange with his more recent ones.
There's a couch in the room, and he insists that she take it when she grows weary from watching and waiting. Sometimes, when she wakes from these catnaps, she finds him asleep as well, his head pillowed beside Charles's right hand on the hospital bed. She learns that Scott sleeps with his mouth slightly open and small smile on his lips, as though his dreams are always pleasant, even though she knows they often aren't.
X.
The year after the accident, they all come home again, as if determined to steal a march on tragedy and gather before it can call them together.
They are all still somewhat subdued this year, though there's cause for celebrating -- Hank finishing his residency and Jean starting medical school. She gets used to the silences that sometimes fall at the dinner table and to the gentle whirr of the Professor's wheelchair.
Ororo decides to go all out with the decorations this year, as if they are talismans against ill fortune, and she spends an entire day hanging wreaths and stringing lights, recruiting Warren to fly garlands up where she can't reach. That night, when the others have gone to bed, Jean stays up stuffing stockings with her and finally works up the nerve to ask her, point blank, about her feelings for Scott.
Ororo's eyes widen for a moment, then she bursts out laughing. "Jean, that would practically be incest!"
"So you don't like him?"
"I like him well enough, just not like that. He's all yours."
"That's not what I meant!" Jean protests, though she can't stop grinning.
XI.
The following year, her workload is so heavy that she calls Charles and tells him she won't be able to make it for the holidays.
She comes home to her apartment on Christmas day to find every light on, the door wide open, and Scott, Ro, and the Professor crowded into her tiny living room.
"What the hell?" she says, once she's stopped laughing. Ro has a reindeer antler headband on and they've somehow managed to persuade Charles to wear a Santa hat.
"Ro picked your lock," Scott tells her.
"It was way too easy."
"We thought we would bring Christmas to you," the Professor says.
Later, after they've eaten dinner and opened presents, Ororo chases Scott and Jean around the apartment with a sprig of mistletoe until she corners them in the kitchen. Jean looks up at him, suddenly blushing furiously, and sees that the tips of his ears are pink (though she can't tell if it's from embarrassment or the wine they had with dinner).
"Um," Scott says.
"Oh come on, you coward, just kiss her," Ro laughs, obviously pleased with herself.
She moves forward to peck him on the cheek before things get even more out of hand, but he chooses that moment to lean toward her. They bump noses and spring apart from each other.
"Ow," Scott says.
The phone rings and Ro answers it, cradling the receiver to her ear with one hand and waving at them to get back to business with the other.
"Jean's phone… no, sorry, I'm afraid she's not available right now…"
Scott looks at her and smiles, and she wonders if he's always been so beautiful. He bends down again, and this time she holds very still.
"… yes, she has company… well, not exactly family… it's complicated."
"Merry Christmas," he says, right before kissing her.
XII.
This Christmas, Xavier has taken in three more students, with two more set to enroll in the spring. Scott's graduated and is teaching basic trig and history at the mansion -- and a little bit of shop, on the side. When Hank decides to take the CDC job down in Atlanta, Jean knows that it will only be a matter of time before she's living at the mansion once again.
She's not sure how this will affect her relationship with Scott -- they chose to take things very, very slowly in the past year -- or how her parents will take the news, but when Christmas morning dawns and she finds herself being called out of bed at an ungodly hour to unwrap presents and engage in a wrapping paper fight (it's drier and easier to clean up, Ororo says, even though Scott claims she's just not ready yet to unleash the children on the perfect snowfall that she conjured up last night), Jean knows that she's made the right decision.
Charles, who has the advantage of age and awe over the younger ones, barricades himself behind the couch and throws wads of paper with the best of them. He catches her eye from across the room and smiles.
She smiles back and thinks at him, I'm home.