Christmas in the Wasteland

by Wasuremono

Christmas comes again: it always does, at the end of the years that Maxwell Labs counts out silently to keep himself sane. It's the fifth one since Giygas broke the world; the first four had been nothing but more mile markers in the long, slow death march, and Maxwell had wondered why he was even still alive to see them. He has no expectations of the fifth Christmas being any different.

But sometimes there are surprises.

The hint of something changing begins on his walk home from the lab, Christmas Eve night, in the darkness and silence of what's left of Winters. The wind at his shoulders chills him to the bone, and Maxwell is grateful he doesn't have far to walk. Under his feet, the snow is stained gray with ash, and the sky above is full of the sullen clouds he used to hope would bring rain. He can't see far, but what he can see is empty waste, a vast flat plain broken only by the shattered remains of trees.

Didn't Winters used to be beautiful at Christmastime? Didn't all the world used to be beautiful? Had there really been a time he'd greeted the end of the year with hope and not dull resignation -- when there'd been joy in the world? But maybe... maybe, this year, there could be one last time. Maybe a little gesture could start to make things right.

Maxwell hugs the package he carries to his chest, trying to remember what hope felt like.

Stonehenge is quiet when he gets back, most of the old Snow Wood refugees asleep or pretending to be, but Tony's still awake in the saferoom: hands slick with green ooze, a few glistening smudges left on his face and tracing his ragged smile. When Maxwell walks in, his face falls as his distant gaze returns to the present. "Oh," says Tony. "H-hi."

"Christ," says Maxwell. "You were eating that stuff again, weren't you?"

"Does it matter if I was? What's the worst that can happen -- it kills me?"

It's a fair point, and Maxwell just shrugs. He knows by now that the taste of the ooze takes Tony back to the War, to the last time he saw Jeff, and he's not about to begrudge him that. If he dies, he dies; whatever fear Maxwell has of losing him can't be rational. Death is a best-case scenario, most days.

But not on Christmas, he reminds himself. Never on Christmas.

"Look, I... Tony, I just got back from the lab. I found a few prototype notes." Maxwell swallows, and Tony nods, quietly. The supply of notes from Dr. Andonuts's lab is endless; while Maxwell's lost his initial optimism about finding something useful there, something that might save what's left of the world, he still spends a day or two a month scavenging. Every bit helps. "But more than that, I found some other stuff. Stuff you might want."

Something lights up in Tony's eyes. "Like what?" His hands move, as if on reflex, to wipe the slime onto his pants.

"It's some of Jeff's things -- I guess he left them there sometime during the War. I... I think he would have wanted you to have them." Maxwell offers Tony the package, wrapped hastily in shreds of butcher's paper, and watches him sit down on the floor and pick apart the wrapping with a watchmaker's care. As Tony removes each item from the package, he arrays them in front of him, each in its own place on the floor and in his soliloquy: "that's his old protractor -- see? It's got his name on it -- and his ruler... I used to have a matching one, you know, before I lost it... oh! His ratchet wrench!... and this is his sweater, isn't it? I, I remember him wearing this..."

Tony gathers the sweater to him, and for a moment his expression is distant and blissful -- young, as Maxwell can only remember him now, the way he so often looked before the War swept Jeff away from him. It's times like this that Maxwell wishes he'd ever cared about someone that way, even for a minute... but this isn't his time to brood. Besides, he's almost forgotten the other thing, the one Tony's really going to like. "I found this, too." He pulls the photograph from his pocket, and once Tony relinquishes his grip on the sweater, he takes it and looks it over.

"This is... Jeff and his friends, isn't it? I can't remember their names now, but this is them, just like when they were here, and... it's Jeff just like how he was." Tony looks up at him, his smile strangely hungry and desperate. Maxwell can see the tears rising in his eyes. "It is, isn't it? I -- I can't always remember what his face looked like."

"It is him, Tony. You can trust it. The cameras don't lie." Maxwell tries his best to put on the confident, cocky smile, the look he used to have before he stopped being a prefect and started being the last wall between the Snow Wood survivors and madness. "... Merry Christmas, Tony."

"But it's not Christmas today, isn't it? Today's Christmas Eve." Tony looks away from him, and there's the glint of tears on his cheeks. "I almost forgot."

Maxwell sleeps like the dead that night, and he doesn't wake until the knocking at the saferoom door reaches a crescendo. He stumbles to his feet, blinking as he answers it. What's the matter? Last he checked, the food supplies were secure, there was something resembling water, the forest was too burnt-out to catch fire again--

Instead of doom at the door, it's Tony, grinning like a fiend, with Jeff's sweater tied around his waist. "Merry Christmas, Maxwell!"

"... what? ... Christmas, Christmas. Right. With you now."

"It isn't much," says Tony, "but I found it left on one of the catwalks. No idea why someone didn't salvage it by now, but... it's yours." He holds out a box -- white, once, with a faded red ribbon holding it closed. Maxwell fumbles to open the ribbon, then the box, before he dares to look inside.

Sitting inside is a bracelet of fine golden wire and crystal beads, the metal and glass as bright as if it had been made yesterday. Once, Maxwell would have cared that this was a girl's gift; now, he's just surprised to see that anything like this still exists in the world. He'd always suspected Giygas had a knack for destroying precious things first.

Maxwell slides it on; it's a decent fit, somehow, on his ever-bonier wrist. Just having its cool weight there makes him feel better -- more hopeful, almost. If something this fragile and precious can survive... "Thanks," he says. "I have no idea how you found this, but it means a lot to me. A whole lot."

"It's the least I could do for my favorite upperclassman," says Tony. On a normal day, it might have been followed by the usual only-half-a-joke aboutmy only upperclassman left, but today there's something in the air that makes it easy to forget the desolation that waits above.

"C'mon," says Maxwell, wanting to strike while he can still trick himself into hope. "Let's look at those notes. Dr. Andonuts had some interesting ideas about robot-assisted time travel, and you never know..."

There's still a week left of darkness, but the new year will be here soon, and a few bare hopes with it. After all, sometimes there are surprises.