Disclaimer: Characters owned by Marvel.

The last of the three short stories I wrote for my friend for Christmas. Now I'm very green with writing the Gen X characters, and I hope this didn't come across as more soppy than I had intended.

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It hung from a piece of string taped to the top of the ceiling.

It wasn't real, in the sense that it wasn't an actual plant. They used a plastic one.

The berries shone in the light, and the leaves had an unnatural green tint to them.

They called it mistletoe, if she could recall correctly. She heard them talking about it yesterday.

You're supposed to kiss people under it, they said.

Angelo tried to demonstrate for Paige and Monet. As if they didn't know what it was? They looked like they did.

They didn't think it was funny. Angelo did. And Jubilee did too.

She hadn't really seen anyone under it since.

She looked around, and it seemed as if no one was coming. She was alone. That was, well, she didn't quite know how to feel about.

She was used to feeling alone, but slowly she was starting to not feel that way anymore. It was kind of confusing.

She held in her hands a piece of paper that had been shredded somewhat in her hands.

She looked up at the plastic plant hanging from the ceiling. Then she looked at the paper. Slowly, she brought the paper to her lips, and mimicked what she had seen others doing.

She'd never kissed anyone before.

At least, she couldn't remember kissing anyone before.

It was all a blur.

Now that she had done what she was supposed to, she left the room, and made her way into the library.

She looked around, and saw that Jono wasn't there. But his coat was. She didn't know where he was, but that was okay.

She hurried over to the leather coat slung over the chair, and she carefully tried to put the piece of paper into one of the pockets.

Moments later, Jonothon Starsmore, the mutant known as Chamber, had seen the mutant known as Penance hurrying out of the library. Confused, he looked into the room. It didn't seem like she had touched anything, except, what was that? In his coat?

Carefully, Jono pulled out some small strips of what used to be a piece of paper from the pocket of his jacket.

Sadly, he didn't seem to know what they were supposed to mean, but, he figured that Penny must have put them in there for an important reason. Mainly, the day that was coming soon.

"Ah well. It's the thought that counts."

If he had a mouth right now, he would've smiled.