Misc. Christmas Countdown Fill
Karunya's post (go read that first-it's CUTE!!) helped me make a little sense of the schedule. What I've gotten is that we missed a day somewhere around the 3rd or 4th (depending upon where you live), so I'm putting up another Christmas ficlet today. That way, even if they didn't all go up when they were supposed to, we still have the right number of Christmas fics.
Title: The Christmas Card
Rating: PGish
Summary: And Christmas fixes everything we fangirls currently find wrong with the canon ;)
Characters: Piper/Trickster, Wally/Linda, Irey, Jai
Piper woke up to rats running across his back. One of the smaller ones gave his ear a nip while a couple by his shoulder blades started their rendition of the ‘feed me’ dance. Sighing, he uncurled himself from the blankets and stumbled through the darkened mansion, holding his shoulder at an awkward angle lest he irritate the stab wound.
“You know you guys are capable of feeding yourselves when I need to sleep in, right?” He asked the group of them at large. The rats all sat up, eyeing him with that eager look that meant ‘Yes, of course, we agree with whatever chatter you’re making, now give us the food because we’re ever so good!’
After he fed the rats, Piper skipped breakfast for himself and went to change the bandages and clean his injury. It felt like a futile effort-wrapping one’s own shoulder was difficult enough anyway, but keeping it clean in a decrepit building was next to impossible. And he’d been impaled with Libra’s stupid spear. When he felt better, he wanted to clean up the rundown house so he’d have a more sterile environment to heal in, but he wasn’t going to heal properly in such a dirty environment.
So he did the best he could with the bandages, and by the time he’d finished with that, the rats had finished breakfast and wanted perches on him again. He lazily pet one of them and glanced out the window.
“Alright guys, what should I do to fill the time today? And don’t say feed you. I just did.”
He could honestly say that this was never how he expected to spend a single Christmas season in his life; alone in his dead parents’ house talking to rats. Not that he minded talking to rats, actually his affinity with them was a nice surprise, he’d just kind of expected to have human company too. Or, to have a lack of human company have been a conscious choice.
He got up, annoying several rats in the process, and ambled down to the basement and the piano, where he’d dumped his ‘work’ papers. He had clippings and stolen files on all the Rogues, but so far his ‘working the side of the Angels’ plan wasn't bearing any fruit. Maybe even after his shoulder healed he’d take things more slowly, spend some time with the flute getting better control over his newly discovered abilities, if he didn't scrap taking down the Rogues entirely.
The file of papers he’d swiped from the Keystone PD was sitting on top of the piano. Piper took it upstairs to look through it again. James’ will was on top, but below that was a stack of personal papers and photos from the Trickster that he’d barely glanced through.
Time had taken some of the sting out of James’ death, though it was still inarguably a painful subject for him to dwell on. Mostly he was still just confused though. At one point they’d been pretty good friends, which was why they’d sought each other out when they’d been in trouble over the years, but by the time they’d been cornered on that train they’d barely been speaking except to snipe vicious comments at each other.
And then James had flung himself in front of that hail of bullets. None of it made sense.
…no one should have been willing to die for him. He wasn’t worth it.
Piper rifled through the papers and couldn’t suppress a small smile when he found a snapshot of him and James when they’d been starting out as Rogues. He’d never dared mention this (especially not with all the fuss James had kicked up while they were cuffed together) but Piper had had such the thing for James when they’d first met. It actually showed a little in the picture-Piper was dazedly staring at James, who was smiling dazzlingly for camera with an arm slung around Piper’s shoulders.
Piper set the picture aside, deciding to hang it up later. Then he noticed an envelope with a poinsettia sticker sealing it shut. “Huh. Must be a Christmas card.”
He just held the card for a minute, looking at it, plagued by curiosity. But it seemed like an invasion of privacy to actually open the card…
But James was dead.
Curiosity won.
The Christmas card was an elegant little thing, printed on heavy cream cardstock with beautiful gold leaf detailing. Piper flipped it over to check how much it cost and confirmed his suspicion. It was at least five years old, if not ten, to be that nice and that cheap. Didn’t quite seem like James’ taste though. He would have expected a Christmas card from the Trickster to be loud, with some cartoon character or other on the front. Maybe it had been sent to him? But why hadn’t it been opened then...
He read the inside, and then read it again to be sure he was seeing what he thought he was seeing. There was a very moving love letter written inside, which was problematic because it was addressed to Piper.
“That can’t be right.”
He re-read the love letter another two times, then went through the file again until he found a memo from the Project. Yep, that was James’ handwriting. In a Christmas card that was at least five years old (if not older).
His hands were shaking. Piper carefully set the card down and stared uncomprehendingly into space. Impressive. Desaad was still finding new ways to hurt him from beyond the grave. If James had lived, if he had said something…Piper had always been on the cusp of falling madly in love with his friend, but had held back because of James’ perceived sexual orientation (James had always been such a good actor though).
The sharp distance James had put between them with those damn grating jokes the past few months started taking on a new perspective. The digs weren’t characteristic…were they defensive or were they Desaad’s influence? James hadn’t given Piper the card, but he hadn’t thrown it away either.
Piper went upstairs, curled back into his cocoon of blankets, and gave up on fighting the depression he’d been taking valiant strides in getting over. The rats fended for themselves for supper that night.
Christmas Eve found the Rathaway house and its sole occupant in much the same condition. The photo Piper had intended to hang up was still sitting in the living room, along with the Christmas card, both with edges that had been gnawed a little from the rats. Piper had barely moved, meaning he’d barely tended his injury and his fever had returned in full force.
Not that he’d taken his temperature anytime recently, but he could tell he was feverish. The violent shivering, for one. And the dreams…had to be fever dreams. Because he thought he’d heard someone running through the first floor of the house shouting for him, and no one had looked for him since, well…since the authorities had stopped wanting him as a murder suspect.
“Go ‘way. Not real anyway,” He ground out, trying to pull the blankets tighter around his shaking limbs.
Then he had to reassess the status of the fever dreams, because he was being cradled in someone’s arms and run from the house, and he was pretty sure he wasn’t loopy enough to hallucinate that.
Piper may not have dreamt being found and moved from his parents’ house, but he still wasn’t terribly coherent for the rest of the night. He woke up in a strange place on Christmas morning, feeling like crap and terribly confused.
And there were eyes in the doorway. Piper groggily looked up, just in time to see two sets of eyes go wide and then run away from the door. “H-hello?”
The door slowly opened wider, and then a girl with bright red pig tails sporting a flannel nightgown and fluffy slippers walked in. “Hi. Um…I’m not supposed to be bothering you, so when Mommy yells at me can you tell her real quick that you were already awake?”
“Okay…who’s your Mommy?” Piper asked.
The little girl frowned. “She said you know her. Jai, I think Mom and Dad are lying to us again!”
“Do you think they’re lying about having to wait to open Christmas presents?” A voice asked from behind the door.
“Jai?” Piper repeated, surprised. “Is your name Iris?”
“It’s s’posed to be. But everyone calls me Irey instead cuz, cuz Auntie Iris is older so she gets to have the real name and I’m stuck with the little girl version.”
“I must still have a fever. I thought you were a baby.”
“Speed force,” Jai said as he ventured fully into the room, and that was explanation enough for the moment. “Irey, Mom and Dad said he was sick. We should go wake them up, not bother him.”
“You’re right,” Irey said with a frown, disappointed.
“And then when they’re awake we can open presents.”
Irey rolled her eyes. “Um…do you want me to get Mommy and Daddy or can I ask you something first?”
“You can ask me something.”
“Are you really my Godfather? Because Jai’s got one, and we’ve both got Godmommies, but, um…I didn’t have one before, and then the loud man with the funny clothes came over and said you needed help and we went to look for you together and Mommy said you were my Godfather, so I just wondered.”
Piper nodded. “Yeah, I’m your Godfather.”
“Well where have you been?” She looked offended. “Jai’s Godfather visits him sometimes and gives him presents. Did you not like me or something?”
Before he could even begin to piece together an explanation, Irey hopped onto his sick bed and gave him a hug. “Doesn’t matter, you’re here now so we can start over. Hi, I’m Irey and I have a Nintendo DS. I have a pink one and Jai has a red one. You should get me games when it’s time for us to get presents again.”
“Speaking of presents…” Jai said impatiently.
“Right, right, let’s go get Mom and Dad. Bye Goddaddy! Feel better!” And then Irey ran from the room at superspeed. Jai lagged after her mumbling under his breath.
Deciding he was too tired and achy to make sense of that encounter just then, Piper fell back asleep.
He woke up again to excited shrieks and squeals as the twins shredded their Christmas presents. Ignoring the stabbing pain in his shoulder and the protests from his weakened limbs, Piper got up and ventured out of the bedroom into the rest of the house.
He found the living room, where Irey and Jai were enthusiastically tearing into a sizable haul of presents while their father sleepily filmed them, their mother snapping at them to stop and hold up their presents for the camera, and say who they were from when they weren’t ‘Santa’s’.
Linda saw him leaning on the doorway first. “Hartley! What are you doing? Get back to bed! Do you know how infected your shoulder is?!”
“Got an idea…sorry, I won’t intrude.”
“Hey, that’s not it. Piper, at least sit down.” Wally put the camera down, then helped Piper over to the couch. “We have some catching up to do, I was just waiting for you to feel be-”
“DAD!! I’m going to open it without the stupid camera if you don’t get back here!” Jai yelled.
“It’s not too late to replace your presents with coal if you don’t watch that attitude mister!” Linda warned him.
“But Mo-om! That one’s taller than I am!”
“Just let him open it,” Wally said, taking a seat next to Piper. “I think we filmed enough for posterity.”
“Oh fine.”
Jai fiendishly unwrapped the paper, and squealed when he revealed a keyboard. “Yes! Santa did get my list!”
“How’d I do?” Wally asked out of the corner of his mouth.
“Huh?”
“Jai’s growing up into a real music nut and I was stumbling in the dark. I just picked a big one with all the features I could find. Is that keyboard actually any good?”
Piper squinted to see the box around Jai’s excited flailing. “It’s not bad, but there are better. Wally…what’s going on? The last time we talked, you…”
“Left you in a hotel room with a mummy, I know.” He looked a little sheepish. “I…wasn’t in a very good space at the time. Come on, me behaving like an idiot isn’t anything new to either of us, is it?”
“I suppose not,” Piper agreed.
“When I stopped and thought about it, of course I realized you’d never hurt Bart. He’s alive again, in case you didn’t get the memo. I’ve been trying to find you for awhile now to apologize, but well…parenting is time consuming.”
“And so are zombie invasions. It’s okay, I get it.”
“No, Piper, I mean it. I’ve missed having you around, and you damn well shouldn’t have been trying to heal up alone in a rat infested house-”
“I like the rats.”
“So not my point,” Wally grumbled.
Piper smiled. “I’d like to be friends again.”
“Cool. Maybe Trickster won’t kill me then.”
“T-Trickster?”
“Irey said she told you. Hey Irey! Didn’t you tell Piper-”
“Nope! Thought I did but nope! Hey Goddaddy, I changed my mind! Santa got me lots of DS games so can you get me a kitten instead?” Irey was attempting to swim through wrapping paper while her mother was trying to stuff it into a trash bag.
“Tell me what? Wait, was James…”
“Resurrected.” And there he was standing in the doorway. “Saving all of reality’s ass from Neron earned me a Christmas miracle, I guess. I also got a cryptic remark about a Christmas card I never delivered.”
Against his better judgment, Piper shot off of the couch and stumbled through the sea of presents and wrapping paper. James met him halfway and caught him as he fell. “Did you find it?” James whispered.
“Yes.”
James smiled. “Good. Should’a delivered that thing years ago. Merry Christmas Hart.”
James cupped Hartley’s face in his hand for a tender kiss, and the lovely moment wasn’t quite ruined by Wally’s surprised squawk. Linda elbowed him in the ribs.
“Hey! I can’t be the only one who feels like I missed something.”
END