Lines in the Sand: Chapter 2

An X-Men Evolution Fanfic

“This test is going to be horrible,” Kurt lamented.

Kitty giggled. “Well maybe you should have been taking better notes instead of staring at a certain girl in class.”

“Who, Amanda? I wasn’t staring. I just–I was looking out the window!”

“Right.”

As they walked outside, Kitty spotted Lance leaning against the wall. He usually had to leave school pretty quickly to get to work on time, but he didn’t seem to be in a hurry. No, it was like he was waiting for something, and for once, none of his friends were waiting with him.

He looked up, and their eyes locked, then he looked away as though he hadn’t noticed her. She grinned.

“Hey, Kurt, I’m not going to head back to the Institute yet. I’ve got a paper to work on, so I think I’ll stay at the library for a while.”

“Ok, see you later!” He waved, then ran to catch up with Evan, who had skateboarded ahead.

Kitty waited until they both turned a corner and were out of sight, then ran over to Lance. “Hi.”

He smiled. “Hi.”

She shifted the strap of her bag on her shoulder. “Don’t you have to go to work?”

“Shouldn’t you have asked that before you sent your friends home without you?”

She shrugged. “I really do have a paper to write, but I don’t have to write it today."

“Well, I happen to have the day off. So, since we’re both free, we should probably do something right?”

She hummed. “Like what?”

He shoved his hands in his pockets and leaned closer, smirking. “I’m sure we can come up with something.”

Something turned out to be sitting in Lance’s room talking and listening to music. Okay, the music was more to hopefully keep his housemates from eavesdropping.

Kitty had convinced him that they should both sit on the floor to talk better. Somehow they both ended up lying on the carpet, and her head lay on his chest. He couldn’t exactly remember how that had happened, but he was fairly sure this had been her plan from the beginning.

Not that he was complaining.

Her hair spilled over him and onto the floor. Slowly, he reached up to run his fingers through it. At the movement, she turned her head to look at him, and he wondered if she would tell him to stop.

Then she grabbed her hair tie and pulled it out, sliding it onto her wrist. Well, that seemed as much an invitation as anything. He ran his hand through her hair again, twisting it over his fingers.

“So what are you going to do when you graduate?” she asked. “Do–do you think you’ll go back to Illinois? Or–would you stay in Bayville?”

“I could probably be persuaded to stick around for a while,” he teased. “But no, I wouldn’t go back to Illinois. I’d rather move into the city.”

Her head brushed his chin as she nodded. “That would be nice.”

He was about to ask about her plans, when the door slammed open and Pietro sped into the room.

“Don’t mind me. I just need to borrow your calculator.” Lance’s backpack appeared on his bed, and Pietro shuffled through it. “Geez, how do you find anything in here?”

Kitty sat up and slid a couple feet away from Lance, as though she had been sitting there the whole time. That might’ve worked with anyone else.

Lance shot to his feet. “Pietro–”

Pietro held up the calculator. “I’m going, I’m going. Hey, Kitty, how did Evan do on that last English test?”

“Oh, um, I don’t know. He didn’t tell me.”

From the look on her face, that was a complete lie. Apparently Pietro agreed. He smirked. “That’s what I thought.” He left the room, and Lance followed him to shut the door again. This time, he was locking it.

Wait. He did lock it last time. And Pietro couldn’t pick locks.

“Todd!”

“I didn’t do nuthin'!” the younger boy shouted from downstairs. His pitiful tone might have been convincing if Lance hadn’t heard him use it on his teachers week after week to explain why he couldn’t turn in his homework.

“Can’t I get a little privacy here?”

“Privacy?” Tabby’s voice drifted up from the kitchen. “In this house?”

Lance groaned and shut the door. He locked it, then pushed the chair against it. He turned around and saw Kitty still sitting on the floor, hand over her mouth. He couldn’t actually hear her laughing, but her shoulders were shaking.

“Sorry about them,” he said as he sat back down.

“Don’t apologize,” she giggled. “I thought it was funny. Besides, the mansion’s the same way. You should have seen what happened when Rogue tried to bring her friend Risty over.”

He smiled. At least she didn’t seem upset. Still . . . “Remind me we should never go on a date here again.”

She grinned and slid closer. “Is that what this is?”

Oops. “I mean . . . if you want it to. It doesn’t have to though. I just–” He broke off as she covered his mouth.

“Yes. I want it to.”

“DECK the halls with boughs of HO-lly,” Tabby sang loudly (and off-key) along with the radio.

She had been horrified to discover that the Brotherhood had done nothing to celebrate the holidays last year, and had insisted that she would change that. Lance hadn’t expected much, but she had really outdone herself.

Somehow she managed to find an old fake tree someone had thrown out and convinced Fred to carry it home for her. It had smelled pretty bad when they got it home, but Lance sprayed it off with the hose and let it sit outside for a few days, and now it wasn’t too bad.

Since then, Tabby and Todd had spent every free moment making chains and ornaments out of paper and string. Fred spent all that morning in the kitchen making sugar cookies, and they were nearly halfway through the batch already. They went surprisingly well with instant hot chocolate, though Fred looked horrified when Lance suggested it. He insisted that “abomination” wasn’t real hot chocolate. Lance wasn’t sure what was real hot chocolate, but he doubted it came out of a paper packet.

Now Fred was hanging paper chains along the walls, Tabby was dancing around in her paper Santa hat with cotton balls taped to her face in a fake beard, Todd had disappeared, and Lance was hanging ornaments on the tree.

He looked at the dwindling stack of ornaments and decided to leave the rest for Tabby and Todd. He sat on the couch beside Pietro, who was watching Tabby’s dance in amusement. He hadn’t participated in their decorating, but he seemed to enjoy watching them. Lance knew he probably didn’t celebrate Christmas, but he didn’t think he planned to celebrate Hanukkah either. He wasn’t super familiar with the holiday, but Kitty was teaching him more about it, and Pietro hadn’t said anything about any of the traditions she mentioned. Actually, Lance couldn’t remember him celebrating last year either.

“You’re Jewish, right?” Lance asked. “Do you not celebrate Hanukkah?”

Pietro shrugged. “I used to with Father and–with Father, but I haven’t in a really long time.”

Lance noticed his slip. He hadn’t heard Pietro mention anything about his mom, and he wondered if that was who he was avoiding mentioning. “Why not?”

Pietro raised an eyebrow. “Would you want to celebrate by yourself? My dad’s not exactly the type to go all out for the holidays. Or show up at all, really.”

“Oh, yeah, I guess that makes sense.”

Lance’s phone buzzed, and he pulled it out. He smiled when he saw it was a text from Kitty, letting him know she had gotten to her parents' house.

“I figured it out!” Todd called from the stairs. He hopped into the room, waving a paper cone and a small lamp.

“Figured what out?” Tabby asked.

“Watch!” He plugged the lamp into the wall and tossed the lampshade aside. Then he pulled something metal out of his pocket, and Lance realized he had made a wire frame to go around the lightbulb. The paper cone went around the frame, and then he said, “Turn out the lights!”

Pietro flipped the switch, and Todd clicked the lamp on. Little spots of light scattered across the rooms and Lance realized he had poked tiny holes in the paper.

“Ta da! Christmas lights!”

Lance squinted at the Christmas tree. The lights dotted the branches and the paper ornaments, and it did kind of look like Christmas lights.

“It’s perfect!” Tabby said, and Lance smiled as he looked around the room at their efforts. It really was.

Kitty took a deep breath and closed her eyes. Maybe if she focused on something else, the headache wouldn’t bother her so much.

Professor Xavier had assured them all that the headaches were just a lingering effect of the hypnotism, and should fade soon. She wished she could have taken a sick day to recover, but unfortunately she had a math test that day, and for some reason being hypnotized by a traveling carnival performer to steal some weird old key wasn’t really a good excuse to miss class.

Now if she could just make it through those three classes before math.

“Here.” She heard Lance’s voice, and her eyes flew open as he took her hand. He put something in it. “Headache, right? Take these, and even if you can’t eat, drink lots of water. It’ll help.”

She gaped at him. She hadn’t gotten the chance to tell him about what had happened yet, so how did he know?”

He laughed at her expression. “I kinda have experience with these things, you know.”

Oh, right. Somehow she completely forgot about his migraines. “Thank you.”

“No problem. I’ll see you later.”

He walked away, and she opened her hand to find a couple ibuprofen tablets. She smiled and went to find some water.

A dark car pulled up to the house, and the youngest occupant rolled the window down to look at it. “I’ll be living here?” she asked.

The woman beside her gave a chilling smile. “Yes, this is where you will stay until we find your father.”

How fitting, Mystique thought, that while Magneto had betrayed her, he had also provided her with he weapons she needed to destroy him.

It was time for the Brotherhood to make its return.

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