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Date Posted: 09:52:23 12/24/03 Wed
Author: Kuzibah
Author Host/IP: 208.59.89.53
Subject: Holiday Fanfic (Part 8)

Christmas Cards 2003
by Kuzibah

If these are new to you, and you’d like to read previous years’ stories, they can be found at my website: The Muse’s Oubliette.

Disclaimer: Characters and situations particular to the TV shows “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “Angel” are the property of Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, Evil Fox, and various other entities. No copyright infringement is intended or implied. Happy Holidays, you bloodsucking lawyers.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

If Only in My Dreams

Xander popped the top on a long-neck, his third of the night, and downed most of it in one gulp. His apartment was dark, only the light from the street coming through his windows.

Buffy and Dawn had invited him for the holiday, and he would join them tomorrow, but he needed tonight to himself. He pulled off his eye-patch and rubbed his fingers across the smooth knot of scar tissue that had formed where his eye used to be. It itched, and he knew if he cried, it would sting and burn, but he didn’t think he could help that now, and just resigned himself.

He drained the bottle, then lifted the TV remote. The familiar Vince Guaraldi music filled his small apartment.

“Is that supposed to be a dog ice skating?”

“Oh, Anya,” Xander said aloud. “You should be here, baby.”

He reached over and squeezed one of the sofa’s throw pillows up under his chin. On the TV the drama of Charlie Brown and the poor little tree played, and Xander found himself smiling at the antics of Snoopy and his heart breaking a little when the other kids laughed.

The tears began when Linus asked for lights, and kept on until the children started singing “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing.”

- - - - -

Giles unwrapped another delicate glass bauble and passed it to Dawn, who hung it from one of the branches on the Christmas Tree. “Where did this one come from?” she said.

Giles adjusted his glasses on his nose and squinted at the ornament. “I believe that was from Germany. Mid-1800s, if I’m not mistaken. My great-grandmother Lillian’s, I think.”

He handed her the next one, a carved wooden spaniel.

“What about this?”

Giles smiled fondly. “That was mine. A gift from my great-aunt Lucy when I was eight.”

“Finally!” Dawn said. “I was wondering when we’d get one of yours.”

Buffy entered from the kitchen, a mixing bowl under one arm. “Looking good,” she said, surveying the tree.

“Thanks,” Dawn said, hanging the spaniel prominently.

“Do you remember the little snowmen?” Buffy said. “The ones you made in Brownies, out of the pom-poms?”

Dawn nodded sadly. “Yeah,” she said, and both girls recalled a lifetime of treasured ornaments, now gone into the collapsed Hellmouth with the rest of Sunnydale.

“We’ll make new memories,” Buffy said confidently, and Dawn nodded again, moving away from the tree to sit by the fireplace. Buffy returned to the kitchen, and Giles continued to hang ornaments without comment.

- - - - -

Charles Gunn stood on the corner outside the shelter, trying to catch a glimpse of the festivities inside. He could hear laughter and music, and say the shifting patterns of Christmas tree lights against the glass.

He had never had to take refuge here, though many of his “peeps” had over the years. He’d always been too proud; the man of the house, even when “the house” was an abandoned building without plumbing or electricity. He’d insisted he could take care of himself and his little sister, but now, with the perspective of a few more years, a lifetime’s more experience, and, yeah, maybe some mystically acquired knowledge, he had to admit that the best that could be said for them was that they’d survived.

And in the end, one of them hadn’t even done that.

He climbed the stairs to the porch and knocked.

Anne, the director of the shelter and someone who’d fought alongside him one endless night, answered the door. He could tell from the lack of recognition in her eyes she hadn’t seen any further than his $3000 Italian suit. “Can I help you?” she said.

He reached into his inside jacket pocket and pulled out an envelope. “I’m here to deliver a contribution,” he said, and handed it to her.

Anne turned back the envelope flap and looked inside. Gunn saw her eyes widen as she saw the cashier’s check with its row of zeros. “Who sent you?” she said.

“It’s a gift in the name of Alonna,” Gunn said. “She was a very special woman.” He took a step backwards toward the sidewalk. “And Happy Holidays to you all.”

- - - - -

Giles slowly rinsed out the cocoa mugs in the cottage’s ancient sink, his hands moving without thought under the tepid water. He could hear Buffy and Dawn in the next room, chatting about the next day’s dinner and other festivities, but he wasn’t making any sense of the words.

He was looking out the kitchen window at the snow that fell lightly outside. It was little more than a flurry, and would most likely be gone by morning, but he was thinking of another Christmas, and snow where there should not have been snow, for a purpose yet to bear fruit.

Angel had told him soon after that the First had appeared as his former victims to torment him, and that it had chosen the Shade of Jenny Calendar to be its voice.

Good, Giles had thought at the time. You should suffer for her death.

Now, having faced the First himself, having seen the pain it caused, he regretted his past petty vengeance. Things were not so simple. Good people suffered and died, evil thrived and prospered.

There was a force with a greater plan for them all, and sometimes it chose the unlikeliest of vessels.

He had been in communication with Angel and Wesley since the delivery of the amulet that turned the tide for them in Sunnydale, had kept them apprised of the search for the Slayers and the organization of some sort of body to see they were trained and sent where they were needed.

In return, Wesley had informed Giles of Spike’s return, first as some sort of spirit, then late in corporeal form. How the prophesied Shanshu was now apparently up for grabs, with Spike as likely a candidate as Angel, in coldly cosmic terms.

But it snowed for Angel, Giles had nearly blurted out, realizing even as he thought it what a simplistic justification this was for such ineffable events.

Still, it snowed.

- - - - -

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Replies:

[> Re: Holiday Fanfic (Conclusion) -- Kuzibah, 09:53:29 12/24/03 Wed (208.59.89.53)

Willow stood in the back of the church as the worshippers from the Midnight Mass filed out. She knew, intellectually, this place had nothing in common with her beliefs as either a Wiccan or a Jew, but the curved stone walls, black from centuries of candle smoke, and the stained-glass, letting in only dots of blue and red light from outside, and the near quiet, broken only by whispering and lapping water, seemed hallowed all on their own, without any trappings of faith.

Two tiny old women, all in black, their heads covered in scarves, knelt side by side in the front row, rosary beads clacking lightly in their hands.

Willow dropped a Euro into the alms box on the wall, and picked up a thin white taper. She touched its wick to one of the other burning candles and pushed it down into a box of sand to stand and burn alone.

She had left Kennedy, her lover, at their hotel and ventured back out alone. Having had Tara called again to her mind, she’d realized how much she still had to reconcile that loss, and Kennedy couldn’t understand. She hadn’t known Tara, and Willow wondered if the two would even have liked each other in the parallel dimension where Tara still lived.

“I miss you,” Willow said, tears filling her eyes again.

The candle, made of soft beeswax and very thin, burned quickly, and Willow stood and watched until it extinguished itself in a pool of melted wax.

- - - - -

The elevator doors hissed open and Angel stepped into the room that even in Wolfram and Hart was particularly private and hidden. It was well-appointed, with tasteful furniture no one ever sat in, beautiful paintings no one took the time to admire, flowers brought in fresh each week to scent the air and removed before they could wither.

An antique canopy bed hung with rich satin and velvet stood in the middle of the room, and two nurses, kind and discreet, stood nearby in their starched caps. Angel approached the bed in silence, and gazed down lovingly at the occupant.

Cordelia’s dark brown hair, now grown out long again, lay carefully arranged on the white linen, framing her pale face like a halo. Her eyes were closed, her lashes brushing her cheeks, and her eyelids having the slightly bruised look of the comatose.

Angel sat beside her on the bed, and took one still small hand in his. He brushed his other hand over her hair, moving it back from her face. “Happy Christmas, Cordy,” he said quietly. “We all miss you terribly. It’s not the same without you here.” He touched her fingers to his lips. “Come back to us,” he whispered, and held still for several minutes. The room seemed to hold its breath.

There was no response, and he lowered her hand back to the damask coverlet.

“We had a party last night,” he said. “Remember the Secret Santa? We all revealed who we had. Spike had me, can you believe? But he tried his best, and it turned out okay. I was astonished, and I think he was, too. But don’t tell him I said so. I’d never live it down. And Gunn gave Wesley a trip to Utah, a skiing weekend…”

- - - - -

A ringing phone slowly and painfully brought Spike to consciousness. He groaned at the sensation of the enormous vice tightening on his brainpan and the taste of the vole that had crawled into his mouth and died, and struggled through the tangled bedclothes and empty liquor bottles to reach the offensive instrument. He snatched it from his cradle and growled “what is it?” Regardless of the answer, he was already composing a profane and devastating putdown for the idiot on the other end of the line.

“Spike?” came the small voice, tinny and distant.

All Spike’s words failed him, and he sat up and clutched the phone in both hands. “Buffy..?” he replied.

“Oh, my god, it is you,” she said. “We heard that you were alive, well, un-alive… back, I mean.” She took a breath. “Are you okay?”

“I’m…” Spike took a breath of his own. “I’m better now,” he said. “How are you?”

“I’m good. I’m in England, with Giles.”

She fell silent, and Spike listened to the sound of her breathing.

“Are you having a nice Christmas?” she asked finally.

“Shouldn’t you be calling Angel?” Spike said, and instantly regretted it.

“I will,” Buffy said. “But I wanted to talk to you first. I was worried about you.”

“I’m okay,” Spike said, grateful she’d ignored his reflex jab at her. “I think about you all the time,” he said. “I wanted to go to Europe, but, there were things…”

“There are things here, too,” she said.

They both fell quiet again, and this silence was tense and drawn.

“I have to go,” Buffy said. “I just wanted to…”

“Buffy. I…”

“I’ll call soon,” she said. “Merry Christmas.”

Spike held the phone to his ear for a long time, listening to dead air.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Happy Holidays, Everybody. Enjoy yourselves, take care of each other, and may you have many blessings in the coming year. ~Kuzibah


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[> Re: Holiday Fanfic (Part 8) -- wwolfe, 11:06:24 12/24/03 Wed (161.149.63.107)

I liked the ending a lot, and I wouldn't have expected to, if you'd asked me ahead of time. Overall, I enjoy the allusive way you tell these vignettes, through suggestion and implication. And, as always, the defining details, like Giles's Christmas ornaments, the votive candle, and Anne's non-recognition of Gunn-in-a-suit. The combined effect is very cinematic: I can see the cross-cutting between the individual scenes, and it's enjoyable.

Oh - and Snoopy. Sigh.


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[> [> I'm glad you enjoyed them -- Kuzibah, 13:03:28 12/25/03 Thu (12.175.117.195)

And if it stays this slow at work today, there may be a short postlude.

Merry Christmas to You and Yours.


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