New fic: Keeping Christmas, PG-13, Miranda/Andy, Part IV
Title: Keeping Christmas
Author: chilly_flame
Rating: PG-13 for the occasional curse
Pairing: Miranda/Andy
Disclaimer: I don’t own anything related to the Devil or Prada, alas. I don’t own “A Christmas Carol” either, which is even sadder.
Notes: Many thanks to politic_x for the firm nudge in the direction of this prompt, although it took about ten days longer to finish than I’d hoped. Also, huge thanks to Xander, who guided me through a journey that was far more challenging than I anticipated.
The Christmas Cracker ficathon prompt: Miranda/Andy - A Christmas Carol take off, girlie_girl_23. Hope it’s something you like!
Part IV.
Miranda paces her office, watching the clock. Each minute ticks by slowly. She does not want to meet another spirit. She wants to go home and bury her sorrows in sleep. What else is there? She has ruined relationships in her past, and her present-even her children want to escape her. What else could there be? More of the same, always the same.
She leans against the desk, drifting in thoughts of her life’s many regrets, wanting so much to change what’s happened. She is powerless, and no one can help her. Not even Andrea.
Her precious Andrea.
“I’m done with this,” Miranda decides. If she leaves, the spirit won’t find her, and she’ll wake in her bed to find that none of this ever happened. But when she looks down at the clock, the minutes have sped by-a glaring “2:59” flashes from her phone. It’s time, and Miranda has only seconds to make a break for it.
She grabs her bag and heads down the long white hallway, but she hears the “ding” of an elevator in the distance. The sound sends her into a panic. “I don’t want this, I don’t want--”
She is stopped short, because the spirit appears, blocking her path. It is enormous: tall, broad, cloaked in material so dark it’s deeper than black. The image is so familiar that is strikes in her a primordial fear-one that hearkens back to her earliest memories of the boogeyman. Or the Angel of Death.
“I don’t want this,” Miranda repeats, standing her ground. But the spirit lifts an arm, pointing. She sees nothing beneath the cloak except darkness, and shivers. “No,” she says, but her conviction is fading. “No.” The last nearly comes out in a whisper. The spirit points again, and Miranda relents, losing her breath in a whoosh. She has no choice. She turns, and starts back down the hall toward her office, her heart thundering in her chest. She is nearly at Andrea’s desk in the entryway when the spirit’s hand lands on their shoulder, and the office disappears.
But then it reappears. The walls are no longer white, replaced by a soft cream. Miranda glances around, feeling a strange energy about the place. There are no racks of clothing, no clackers, no life at all. Desks and offices sit empty all around her. The place is abandoned.
“What’s happened?” she asks, to no one in particular. She doesn’t anticipate an answer from her silent ghost, who urges her back toward her own office.
Finally, she hears voices. It’s a relief, and she hopes to discover the truth from whoever it might be. She holds her breath, and laughs when she recognizes Nigel, dressed in a sharp black suit and tie. His shoes make a familiar sound as he moves across the floors and into her office. With him is-is that Andrea? She looks… different.
Gone is the beautifully dressed, youthful girl with long hair flowing over her shoulders. In her place is a middle-aged woman with gray roots and streaks of silver in her shoulder-length hair. Her face is still lovely, but her eyes have noticeably lost their luster, even at this distance. Her black slacks are ill-fitting, too long and too big. Her blouse is also black, as is the vest she wears over it.
She looks somehow… less.
Miranda follows them into the room, with the spirit just behind her.
“So that’s it, then,” Andrea says, apropos of nothing.
“Yep. Cassidy packed the last of her things a couple of weeks ago. The lease isn’t up for another eight months, but no one’s going to pay it, so I expect the building will take everything out by the end of January and auction it off.”
Andrea glances at the bare walls, one hand against her forehead. “I can’t believe it’s over.” She closes her eyes. “I’m glad she wasn’t aware enough to realize how bad things had gotten. She wasn’t, was she? At the funeral Jeremy told me once it happened she never woke up.”
“That’s right,” Nigel says. “It was a long year till Cass was ready to pull the plug. I don’t blame her though. It’s terrible that she had to make the decision alone. Especially with Runway finally shutting down. It was too much, I think.”
Miranda struggles to catch her breath.
Nigel continues. “Ten years ago I saw the writing on the wall-Runway was a dinosaur, trying to survive against competitors that ran lean and mean. Cass tried to keep it going but she had no experience running a team. I gave her advice to cut costs and staff and get the revenue going again, but it just… felled her when Miranda had the stroke. That was the final nail in the coffin.”
Stroke, Miranda thinks. A stroke.
“She must have been devastated,” Andrea says. “How long was she Editor in Chief?”
“About three years. And what’s worse than anything is that she turned into a copy of her mother.”
Andrea inhales. “God, what do you mean?”
“You hadn’t heard?”
With a chuckle, Andrea replies, “Oh, it’s only been almost twenty years, old pal. It’s been all about the exciting city of Cincinnati.” Her voice is filled with bitterness. “Not like there’s much work there for me, though. If I didn’t have my parents and the house I grew up in, I’d have ended up on the street. That whole ‘blacklist’ thing really does kick in when Miranda fires you.”
Fired? Miranda is reeling at this information. Why on earth would she fire Andrea? And why would she not be able to find work? She’s brilliant and talented, not to mention well-connected in the industry, even at her young age.
“That was a bad time, if I recall correctly,” Nigel says, leaning back in his seat. “I never really knew why she fired you, kid. What happened?” He smiles. “Come on, the wicked witch is dead. Tell me.”
Dead, Miranda repeats to herself. The wicked witch. Me. She doesn’t want to believe it.
“I’ll tell you what happened if you tell me about Cassidy being like Miranda. That’s the trade.” Andrea crosses her arms and shuts her mouth in a firm line. Gazing at her, Miranda can’t get over how changed she is.
“Fine, fine,” Nigel relents, and only then does Miranda notice how much he’s aged. She’d been so focused on Andrea that the deep furrows across Nigel’s brow, the lines around his eyes and mouth, had made little impact. “As soon as she started, she turned into Miranda, version 2.0. Worked 18-hour days, fired people on a dime, had no life at all. At least Miranda managed to work a few relationships and kids into the mix after a while.” He sighs. “I heard a lot of gossip, and all of it the same. She had no mercy, no heart.” He winces, as if caught in a memory. “Losing Caroline so long ago--it changed her. And Miranda was so trapped in her own grief that she barely noticed.”
“Caroline?” Miranda asks aloud. “What?” She turns to the spirit and strides up to it. “What happened to my child?” The spirit makes no response. Miranda is so close to it she can almost taste its fetid scent, like a dead animal left in the street to decompose. “What happened to my Caroline?”
“I read about that,” Andrea says, and Miranda immediately turns back to listen. “She wasn’t even drunk, was she? But the driver was.”
Nigel bobs his head, and Miranda tries not to faint at the news. “She wasn’t drunk. It never made the papers, because of Miranda’s iron fist, but she was coked out of her mind. Our little Caroline had a monkey on her back. She had for at least a year, but Miranda insisted that she stay in school.” Nigel looks pensive for a moment. “Poor kid. I doubt Miranda ever recognized how bad it was till it was too late.”
“I can’t believe it!” Andrea breathes, clearly affected by the news. “Cocaine. And Caroline-if either of them were going to end up an addict, I wouldn’t have guessed her.”
Miranda is shocked by the callous nature of this discussion. Her child, her Caroline, on cocaine? Dead? And now they’re judging which twin would have been on drugs?
But Nigel seems to agree. “I know. Miranda never spoke to me about it over all those years. She shut down. I tried to be friendly, but all I ever got were those fake little smiles. And Cassidy tried so hard to please her, taking over when Miranda retired, even when it was clear there was no hope. Just because it was what Miranda wanted.” He gazes around the empty room with a sigh. “Miranda was 32 when she took on Runway, but it was always what she wanted. For Cass it was an albatross. She was only 25 when she took over.”
Andrea shakes her head. “Christ. That’s how old I was when I started as an assistant. I can’t imagine what it must have been like.”
Nigel nods. “I was lucky to be gone by then. I don’t know how I would have gotten through it.”
“Me neither.” Andrea shivers. “Are you going to go to the townhouse tonight? Emily said a few people were going to meet.”
Nigel smirks. “Yes. But you’re not getting out of telling me why Miranda fired you. So spill it, lady. And if I think you’re telling the truth, maybe I’ll consider finding you something worth wearing, along with scoring you a quick dye job. You look like hell.”
Andrea giggles, ruffling her own hair. “It’s not exactly a priority for me, Nige. It’s not like I have a partner at home pestering me about my roots.” She closes her eyes, squinting for a second until she finally says, “All right. I kissed her one night. And she freaked out.”
Nigel gapes, open mouthed, so does Miranda. She is sick to her stomach, uncertain she wants to know more.
“You didn’t!” Nigel declares in disbelief.
“I know, it was stupid. Honestly, I didn’t expect her to go along with it, but I also didn’t expect her to kick me out and call HR like, that second. But she did. It was at the townhouse, late one night, and I’d decided to go out in a blaze of glory, because I couldn’t take it. So I gave her the book, and I kissed her.” Andrea touches her mouth, and Miranda is breathless. “And you know, I think she kissed me back for a second, then she shoved me away and said something like, ‘What do you think I am, a dyke?’”
Miranda wants to fold herself up into a tiny box and disappear forever.
“And that was it. I was gone. And I never told, because I was so humiliated, but worse, I really thought Miranda cared about me. At least enough to let me down easy. Sometimes we’d look at each other, and I just felt… something.” She snorts miserably. “Not so much, right? I never saw her in person again. She had my stuff sent to the apartment so I wouldn’t have to come in.”
“Yeah, yeah I remember that.” He leans forward and rests his head on a hand. “I’m so sorry, Andy. Really.” He reaches over and takes her fingers in his, and Miranda watches Andrea’s face crumple into tears.
“Sorry,” she mumbles, “don’t know what’s got into me.”
“It’s hard to look back,” Nigel says. His voice is filled with regret. “There was so much loss.” They sit together in silence.
When Miranda touches her own cheek, her face is wet with tears.
The bony, terrifying hand rests on Miranda’s shoulder again, and in a whirl of color, things blink into darkness, until she realizes they are at the townhouse. In the parlour, there is a Christmas tree in the corner. There are no ornaments on it; it looks naked and dismal. Not much in the house has changed, except on the fireplace mantel, there is a rectangular mahogany box. The spirit points, and pushes her toward it.
Slowly, Miranda approaches. She doesn’t want to look, but she is compelled to, until she finally sees the word she has dreaded.
Caroline is etched into the lid, and she knows what’s inside. Ashes. The ashes of her child--her first born. A sound of utter despair escapes Miranda then, because this makes it all real. Her beloved child is dead. She reaches out to touch the box, but a sound distracts her. Cassidy appears, and Miranda’s eyes widen. She is beautiful, but the look on her face pierces Miranda’s heart.
Miranda recognizes the expression from the mirror. She sees it every morning, and every night.
The doorbell rings, and Cassidy disappears for a moment, until Nigel, Andrea, Emily and Serena make their way into the room. No one speaks, not even when Cassidy picks up a box from the side table. She drops it on the mantel, next to Caroline’s. The words engraved on top of the box are Miranda Priestly. Not Miriam Princhek. Not Beloved Mother. Miranda Priestly.
“You guys are welcome to stay as long as you want, but I’m going to bed,” Cassidy says. Her voice is flat; the timbre of it startles Miranda, who expects her to sound as she had as a child.
“Oh, come on, Cass, just spend a few minutes with us. I’d love to know more about you,” Andrea begins. Nigel has followed through with half his promise-at least she’s wearing trousers that fit.
But Cassidy ignores her. “There’s nothing to tell. Mom’s dead. Runway’s gone. You can all revel in that, like all those other two-faced assholes who showed up at the funeral today and whispered about how much they hated mom, what a cunt she was, and how I turned out just like her.” She laughs. “I don’t know why you bothered coming by. Nobody really gave a shit about my mom except me, and you know what’s pathetic? She never even cared about me. So do what you want. I’m done. I’m over it.”
Miranda stares, her heart breaking for what feels like the tenth time tonight. “Oh my girl,” she moans. “My sweet girl.” She sobs, shocked at the sound that leaves her throat, and falls to her knees.
Cassidy starts to leave, and when Andrea tries to stop her, Cassidy pushes her away. Hard. Andrea’s eyes are hurt, but Cass storms past her and down the steps, leaving the foursome alone.
None of them says a word. Miranda watches the tears slide down Andrea’s cheeks as Emily puts her face into her hands. Serena touches her back, and Nigel just looks at the mantel, at the box that holds what’s left of Miranda Priestly.
After a few minutes, they stand one by one and leave the townhouse. Slowly, Miranda creeps downstairs to find Cassidy alone in Miranda’s bedroom, lying on top of the covers. She is weeping, and she whimpers one word, so softly that Miranda can hardly hear it: “Mom.”
Miranda’s eyes slide shut. She can’t bear another moment. “Spirit, I promise--” she words catch in her throat. She won’t make an empty vow this time, as she has so many times before. “I swear on my girls’ lives that I will change. Please help me live for every moment, and help me learn to love the people in my life the way they deserve to be loved.” Words come to her from out of nowhere, and they stream from her mouth with utter conviction: “I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.”
The spirit’s hand is firm upon her shoulder when the room goes black.
----
Part V.