The Christmas Letter
Summary: Pre Hale fire: Sixteen-year-olds weren't supposed to believe in Santa Claus, Sydney knew that, but it didn't stop her from asking Father Christmas for just one important thing: to take the pain away, the pain caused by the loss of her parents. After being away from Beacon Hills the last few year, and living with her grandparents in Colorado, she was looking forward to spending the holidays with her best friend Derek Hale and his family. She should've known it never would've been that easy…
Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters of Teen Wolf, Sydney however is all mine.
Chapter 1:
Christmas was all about family.
Okay well that's what Peter was always told and up until he was old enough to realize that Santa wasn't actually real, and that the presents he got from the man occupying the north pole were really from his very own parents, he had been a firm believer in the fact that Christmas was about getting exactly what he asked for. There was no spirit of Christmas within him, it was just a holiday in which he was forced to spend with his family, none of whom truly understood him, so when Derek had announced that his friend was coming to spend the festive holiday with their family, and he hadn't been too pleased.
Sydney Vance had always been more of a nuisance to Peter than anything and in his head; she was definitely Derek's little tag along friend more than someone that he could respect but when he had complained to Talia about an outsider being in their home for Christmas, she had blatantly ignored his protests: apparently Sydney didn't have anywhere else to go. Well that wasn't exactly Peter's problem and it didn't make him feel any less annoyed with having to share his home with her over the winter holiday break.
While it had been quite a few years since he had seen the irritating little girl that Derek had befriended as a toddler, Peter didn't feel the need to wait around for her arrival. There were still a few days before Christmas, a few days to hit the stores and maybe find some more gifts, mostly for him.
But before he had a chance to head out of the house, he wandered through the upstairs hallway, moving swiftly and quietly so as not to disturb the conversation happening in Derek's room between him and Talia. It was interesting to say the least and as Peter stood outside the young man's room with his back pressed against the wall, he was reminded of the dangers that constantly lingered around the town of Beacon Hills.
It had been six years since Sydney had lived in the same town as Derek, six years since her parents had been killed in their own home but that wasn't the interesting part to Peter, no, he was more curious to find out why her grandparents, who had taken her in when she had no one else left, had shipped her off to California to spend the Christmas holidays with them.
He wasn't disappointed either, Derek had spoken openly and freely about how her grandparents were taking off for a friend of a friend's place, wanting to spend one last Christmas with someone named Maude before she succumbed to the cancer that she was apparently suffering from. Okay, okay that was a fair point in Sydney's favour, Peter couldn't have imagined how utterly depressing that sort of Christmas would be and maybe having her here wouldn't be so bad.
Except she was Derek's little friend, an irritating sixteen-year-old who would bring whatever high school drama she had with her. That wasn't something Peter was looking forward to and he certainly didn't want to spend the days leading up to Christmas, and then Christmas itself, in the same house as two moody, brooding teenagers; Derek was quite enough to deal with on his own.
Heading back down the stairs, Peter held on to the bannister tight and considered the possibilities that would make the holidays interesting for them all. He could be a real Grinch if he wanted to and with Sydney Vance, the random girl he didn't much care for, joining the Hales in their very own home, well he could certainly have some fun with her, right?
"Peter?" Talia called out for him and he stopped halfway down the stairs, waiting for her to call out to him again, either that or lay her eyes on him. "Peter, can you do me a favour?"
"What?" He barked back and turned his head back over his shoulder to glance up the stairs. When Talia appeared in his line of vision, he widened his eyes as if to say 'let's get a move on' and she shook her head at him in response.
"Sydney's here, can you run outside and help Laura with her bags?" Talia questioned and Peter rolled his eyes.
Why couldn't Derek do it, why did he have to be the one to help Laura? Derek was her friend after all, wasn't this Derek's responsibility?
"What about Derek?"
"He's just in the middle of something right now." Talia countered and leveled him with a glare, which meant 'no more questions'. She was in charge here, she was the one who gave the orders and Peter knew that, but that didn't mean he wasn't going to put up a fight at all, no, this wasn't right. "Peter, can you please just go?"
"Seriously?" He shot back and considered his options. One he could do what had been asked of him, sure, but what was the fun in that, and plus, just because Talia was his sister, that didn't mean she had the power to just tell him what to do. Two, he could try to argue, try to get her to find someone else to help with their guest's bags, and to him, that sounded like a much better option.
"Peter, please? Derek's wrapping up her Christmas present!" Talia called back out to him and Peter shook his head. So his nephew had gotten his little friend a gift after all, that didn't mean that Peter was going to change his mind.
"Fine." Peter huffed.
With a frustrated shake of his head, he loped down the remaining stairs and headed right for the front door, stopping only to slip his feet into a pair of well-worn shoes. Since it was California, and it didn't get super cold, he walked out of the house wearing nothing more than the long sleeved shirt and jeans that he had been wearing inside. When he stepped off the porch though, he fought off the urge to laugh at their Christmas visitor.
Sydney Vance was decked out in a chestnut coloured suede bomber jacket, complete with shearling lining. On her hands she wore a pair of matching gloves with fur trim around the wrists and on her ears she adorned a pair of light brown faux fur ear muffs. Apparently she hadn't gotten the memo about Christmas in California being nearly snow free, but that wasn't going to stop him, no, she was the perfect target, it was almost too easy.
"Peter, hi!" Laura shouted from the back of her car, the trunk was popped and she was trying to free Sydney's suitcase from it. She handed Sydney a smaller bag once her suitcase was on the ground and Sydney quickly lifted it up onto her shoulder, wrapping her glove covered hand around the strap. "Did mom send you out to help?"
"I still don't know why Derek couldn't do it." Peter grumbled in reply and closed in on the two females, bending down to grab the handles of her suitcase before hauling it up and holding on to it. He set his sights on Sydney and looked her up and down, still amused by her winter weather get-up, which was almost completely unnecessary here in California. "You know, it's not that cold here, right?"
"I left from Colorado, they have snow there." Sydney snarked back at him and shook her head in disbelief. "If it makes you feel better, I packed my shorts and bikini top in my suitcase."
"What?" Laura piped up and looked between Sydney and her uncle.
"It was a joke." Sydney sighed in frustration and rolled her eyes. It wasn't a secret that she and Peter had never really gotten along, hell, there was far too much of an age difference between them for them to have spent any real time together. Peter would forever look at her as the little nuisance that Derek liked to call a best friend and she would always look at him as the cruel uncle of her closest comrade. "Laura, can you grab the last bag, I put it in the back seat."
"You have another bag?" Peter widened his eyes at her and she forced a sarcastic smile in his direction.
"I do, it's full of Christmas treats, I thought you and your family would appreciate some homemade cookies and chocolates but I mean, if that's not the case-"
"Cookies?" Peter cut her off and looked past her to the car, where Laura was finagling a third, and final, bag out of the back of the car. "Gingerbread?"
"And shortbread, triple chocolate chip…I wanted to make a pie but my grandma pointed out that it might not travel as well, so I didn't." She answered and let out an amused snort at the way that Peter's eyes seemed to light up at the mentioning of cookies. Okay, so maybe Christmas with little Sydney Vance wouldn't be so bad after all, at the very least, he'd have some decent treats to munch on.
"Peter, can you take that upstairs to the guestroom?" Laura commanded politely, pulling him out of his cookie induced trance. She took a step towards them and Peter gave her a slight nod, not even bothering to argue. Without hesitating, he led the way to the house where they paused only to peel off their shoes and for Sydney to strip herself of her winter clothing, then he headed up the stairs with her suitcase while Sydney trailed along behind him.
Laura had veered off and went into the kitchen with the cookies, the cookies that Peter was desperate to get his hands on. Instead of following Laura though, he continued to lead Sydney up the stairs, then down the hall to the last room on the right. When he was inside the guest room, he dropped her suitcase to the floor at the end of the bed and waved around the room.
"Welcome to your room." He remarked flatly and she nodded her understanding.
"Home sweet home for the holidays." She muttered and set the smaller bag she was carrying down on the end of the bed. "Thanks for bringing my bag up."
"Sure."
"Anyways, if you'll excuse me, I have to…I haven't seen a bathroom in hours."
She crossed her arms over her chest, sucked in a breath and brushed past him as she headed for the bathroom. Peter hesitated in the room and looked around at the guest room that Talia had tried to make look a little more Christmas-y than it had ever looked before. There were translucent plastic snowflakes tacked to the window and a bright red garland strung up around the window frame. It wasn't much but it was a lot more than he had allowed Talia to put up in his own room.
Peter's eyes fell on the bed and ultimately the bag that now resided there. It was half unzipped and a bright white envelope with a small red poinsettia sticker on the corner of it was poking out of the opening. Without thinking of what he was doing, he reached into her bag, grabbed the envelope and freed it, noticing that the envelope wasn't sealed.
With a wicked smile on his face, he lifted the flap up and caught the first few words of the letter:
Dear Santa,
He hadn't made it any further than that, he didn't need to, this was golden, this was the ticket to making his Christmas more bearable than ever. He'd use this against her, he'd force her to do his bidding because after all, what sixteen-year-old still believed in Santa, and if they did, they wouldn't want anyone else to know that they did.
Peter tucked the enveloped into his back pocket and made sure that his shirt was covering it, at least until he could hide it away from anyone. When he had the chance, he'd let her know that he had her precious letter with the hopes that she'd be too embarrassed about it to do anything other than what he wanted her to do.
Well, hadn't Christmas just gotten a little more interesting.
XxxxxxXxxxxxxXxxxxxX
Sydney had returned from the bathroom to an empty room, which was just fine with her. She hadn't been expecting Peter to have waited around for her and she knew that Derek was currently in the middle of something because she had passed by his room and tried to sneak a peek inside but Talia had put an end to her looking and instead, guided her towards the bathroom, kindly reminding her how bad she had to use the facilities after such a long journey on her own.
It had been a long journey, first by train, then by bus, but Sydney was fine crossing the state borders to get to California. She wasn't exactly thrilled with the idea of spending Christmas away from her grandparents but the other option was to go with them and visit Maude, the old fogey who had never been much of a fan of Sydney. Plus at least if she was staying with Derek and his family, then she'd maybe feel like celebrating instead of moping around wishing the days would pass sooner.
It had been hard, for the last few years since her parents had died, Christmas hadn't felt right since they had been torn from her life, but she had tried to at least pretend to be happy during the holidays. It had never worked out that well though, and without anyone to really talk to about how truly upsetting she found Christmas to be she merely drove her feelings down deeper, hoping that one day she could fake it enough that maybe she'd start to believe in the Christmas spirit again.
Every year since her parents had passed though she had written out a letter to the one and only Santa Claus. She was sixteen, she wasn't stupid, she knew that he wasn't real and that her mailed letters would just be read by some random person who would write her up a generic response, but this year was different, this year, she hadn't been able to mail her letter. Instead, she had tucked it into her bag and was still debating what she wanted to do with it.
She could burn it, the Hales had a fire place in their home and she figured that it would be roaring with a warm fire at some point during her stay, but if she burned it in front of them, then she'd have to explain what it was and maybe that wouldn't be so bad, but she also didn't want anyone to feel sorry for her. She wanted to be treated like a normal teenage girl, not the charity case who had lost her parents at the age of ten.
She could still mail it, although she wasn't figuring she'd get a reply until Christmas was over, if she even got one at all. But did that mean she'd just leave it in her bag while she debated what she wanted to do, of course not. Until she figured it out, the idea of having a letter to Santa with her, in her possession, would continue to linger in her head.
Derek could never see it, in fact no one could. For one thing, she was sixteen and sixteen-year-olds shouldn't still believe in Santa Claus. For another thing, she was too proud to admit that she wanted to believe in Christmas magic again like she had all those years ago. If any time of year seemed like the right time for something good to happen to her, wasn't Christmas as good a time as any?
Sitting down on the edge of her bed, well her bed for the duration of her stay with the Hales, she reached over and nabbed the top of her bag before lifting it up and setting it across her lap. She unzipped the main part of it and looked inside, hoping to find her letter safely tucked away where she had put it when she had still been on the train working away at the finishing touches. It had to be perfect, the words had to make sense and the first draft that she had written had been ruined from the tear stains that had wrinkled the paper.
She had managed to find a Christmas envelope too, a white one with a poinsettia sticker on the corner and without hesitating for a second, she had brought it along with her but she hadn't sealed it, not yet, she wasn't entirely sure she was done with it.
Looking into the bag though, she furrowed her eyebrows together at the sight inside. There were her typical travel necessities, a wallet with money and identification, a brush, a tube of Chap Stick and a few other miscellaneous items that she might've needed on her journey, but there was certainly no letter. Sydney drove her hand inside the zippered part and pushed everything to the side, praying that the letter had gotten lost within the rest of the contents, but as she dug further and further into the bag, she felt her heart picking up in pace.
"No, no, no, where is it?" She pleaded with the bag and felt her frantic heartbeat, but still, the more she looked inside the bag, there was still no evidence of the letter. "Come on, this isn't happening."
"What's the matter?" A voice taunted her from the hallway and when Sydney peeled her eyes off the inside of the bag, she looked up to the doorway and spotted Peter Hale standing there, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed over his chest. "Something wrong?"
"No." She shook her head and moved the bag back to the bed, standing up shortly after. She looked around the room and when she heard his footsteps moving into the room with her, she turned back to glance at him, noticing the mischievous smirk toying on his lips. "Why would you think anything's wrong?"
"You seem a little on edge, weren't you just looking for something in your bag?" Peter asked and he moved to stand next to her, glancing around the room with her, his eyes landing on her bag, the same bag that he had swiped the letter from minutes earlier.
"Uh, no." She groaned and turned her back to the bed, flopping down onto the edge of it with a huff.
"Maybe you were looking for an important item?"
"That's none of your business." She fired back at him and crossed her arms over her chest. "What do you want anyways?"
"I just want to help you find what you were looking for." Peter answered nonchalantly and watched as Sydney leveled her gaze on him. Good, so she was picking up what he was laying down, that was definitely good. She certainly wasn't stupid, nor was she as naïve as he figured, not like Derek anyways.
"I'm not looking for anything." Sydney let out a frustrated sigh. "But even if I was, that's none of your business."
"Well I just want to make sure whatever you lost didn't get into the wrong hands." Peter jeered and turned his back to her. He took a step towards the bedroom doorway but Sydney let out a soft whimper, drawing his attention right back to her.
"Did you take it?" She asked in a soft, fearful tone. "Did you take my letter?"
"Santa will be disappointed not to have heard from you, don't you think?" He taunted and she sucked in a nervous breath.
He had it! He had stolen it from her bag and now she was at his mercy. She didn't want him to tell anyone, she didn't want him to say a word about it to Derek, or Laura, or Talia and if he was a ruthless as she had once known him to be, then this wasn't going to be easy for her either.
"What do you want from me?" She growled. When he backtracked and took up a stance in front of her, she shied away from his gaze and looked down at her feet instead. "Can I please just have it back?"
"I'm not just going to give it back." He shook his head sadistically. "That would be way too easy, don't you think? Plus it's not like you'll go crying to Derek, or Talia for that matter, I'm guessing that you probably don't want anyone under this roof to know about your childlike beliefs in Jolly Old Saint Nick. Am I right?"
"So what if you are?" She shot back but her eyes remained glued to her feet. "What do you want from me?"
"Nothing yet but it's always nice to have leverage. Wouldn't you agree?" Peter gently reached out and set his fingers under her chin, forcing her head up so that her eyes met his. "Maybe I'll make you bake me cookies, or give me your share of the Christmas pudding or something, I haven't decided yet."
"You can't show anyone that letter." She mumbled.
"I won't, so long as you don't give me any reason to."
"I swear, I'll do whatever you want." She was pleading now, what other choice did she have. He held her life in his hands and she wasn't going to chance it. "Just don't…don't say a word about it."
"I might even give it back when you leave." He offered with a sick smile. "It all depends on how well you behave over the holidays."
"I'll do anything!"
"Good. I'm glad we're on the same page."
His hand drifted away from her chin and she narrowed her eyes in on him. Peter had bested her already and she had barely been in the house for fifteen minutes. She knew she should have put it somewhere safer, somewhere that no one would think to look for it. Even if Peter hadn't managed to get his conniving little paws on it, all it would've taken was for one of the Hales to wander into her room.
"Just don't do anything to that letter." Sydney breathed the words out, silently admitting defeat. She didn't know what he had done with it, she didn't know where he had put it and she wasn't going to chance looking for it. If she screwed this up then all it would take was a few seconds for Peter to confess to Derek's family that she was still writing letters to Santa and then what would they all think of her? Most likely that she was some juvenile little girl who hadn't grown up.
And she had, she had grown up so much since her parents had been taken from her, she had too. There was no way for her to be a kid when she no longer had real parents, there was no reason for her to ask for toys and games for Christmas when she had no desire to play with them. Christmas wasn't a happy fun time for her and now it was even worse.
"Don't worry my little Christmas elf," Peter teased and ran his hand over her head, petting her like some sort of dog, "your secret's safe with me, so long as you don't cross any lines and do whatever I say."
"I promise." She murmured, his eyes boring into hers.
"On a side note, I do hope that you'll find your room nice and cozy, after all, you're our guest and I'd hate for you to feel out of place. We'll just have to make sure that we leave extra cookies for Santa on Christmas Eve, maybe even a note to let him know that you're here and not back in Colorado where you belong."
She didn't want to argue, she didn't have the desire to defend herself, nor was she going to give Peter any idea as to how truly heart wrenching it was to spend Christmas in Colorado year after year without her real family.
So instead of saying a word, she stayed silent and held her breath. With a nod of her head, she watched Peter as he marched out of her room with a new, confident, bounce in his step. Peter Hale had everything he needed to make her Christmas visit hell and she knew that if she messed it up, he'd have no problems doing just that.