FRED
"I'm dreaming of a White Christmas, just like the ones I used to know…" Fred hummed along, her feet shuffling across the hallway in a jaunty and yet still somehow languid two-step in time to the sultry voice that carried through the apartment with ease. The song really wasn't applicable at all – in all her years growing up in Texas she might have seen one or two seasons that had a snowfall, and she couldn't recall a single one of them where the temperate climate had been at the proper humidity levels and temperatures to preserve the snowfall overnight, or even more than a few minutes at most… but she couldn't help but adore the song. There was so much about the holiday season that she enjoyed, Christmas had always been one of her favorite times of the year. The mood, of happiness and generosity that bubbled up out of people, the bright lights and glittering decorations, the smell of pine trees and marshmallows, hot chocolate, and of course, while she always stressed that the presents were the least important thing of the season, what girl didn't like presents? Little ones, big ones, a lot, or a few, homemade, store bought, it really didn't matter to her, it was the fact that someone cared enough to bother at all that made her warm and fuzzy, and she always loved watching people's faces light up as they tore at ribbons and bows and all the bright and fancy paper.
And that wasn't even counting the food. Days and days worth of food, and stuffing and turkey and Cornish hens and cornbread and biscuits and cranberry sauce and pickles and deviled eggs and … and that wasn't even counting the desserts. So many that she could've had one for every day of Christmas and then some. And the stockings and the candy and the making of the cookies and the notes left for Santa, even long after she had almost grown out of the belief that there really was a jolly fat red man who managed to squeeze himself into every chimney in the world – and even the houses without chimneys, somehow – all within the very same night…. "May your days be merry and bright," the King intoned, as she drifted into the living room, drawing to a stop in the center of it and scrutinizing the room with a careful eye. The tree that was in the corner was a little sparse in its own right, it was not that far from the Charlie Brown Christmas tree, but she had insisted to Wesley that it was the one that she wanted from the lot. If they didn't love it, who would? She had argued, before he'd given her that half-sided little smile and agreed without any other argument. She was still fairly proud of how it looked, even with the slightly crooked trunk and the sort of wilting branches.
Strings of carefully strung popcorn, accented with the occasional cranberry, and for color and size contrast, a lightly glitter coated pine cone wrapped around the tree from top to bottom, where a tree skirt of festive green and red snowflakes adorned a white cloth, concealing the tree stand. She had avoided any lights on the tree itself out of practicality – as much as she might have loved the wilty tree, she could imagine it's faded green needles catching light all too quickly. A few simple wooden decorations, hand painted, that she'd found at a flea market one of the weekends that she and Wesley had gone searching for one enchanted artifact or another, adorned the branches, and atop the tree sat a simple bronze star, an inaccurate but still pretty representation of the north star. Branching out from the corner that the tree occupied, strings of connected snowmen held hands across the walls – the phenomenon of the never ending paper doll had fascinated her, and admittedly, she might have gotten a bit carried away, but Wesley hadn't seemed to mind.
Softly glittering three dimensional paper snowflakes, each of a different size and of course, no two the same shape, hung from the ceiling by thin, nearly invisible fishing line, creating an oversized illusion of the white Christmas that filled the air by music, and candles on the mantle between the assorted snow globes filled the air with a scent of cinnamon that mingled nicely in her opinion with the aroma of chocolate that filled the room, or at least in her immediate vicinity, given the steaming cup of hot chocolate and many, many marshmallows that she held in her hand. Her long fingers reached out, smoothing the pair of oversized knit stockings that hung from the mantle in anticipation of being filled overflowing later that night, before turning her attention towards the bookshelf that lined the wall where most people's living rooms might have held records, or an entertainment center. It only made sense to her that Wes' apartment would be overflowing with books, and texts, and scrolls, and parchments. There was a television, but it was small, and rarely used, mostly only turned on for the news, and the rare old movie fest. Rather, it was the books that took up the position of prominence, lining and stacked upon almost every available surface – especially when they were neck deep in a case.
There was one row of shelves, however, that had been cleared off last week, after she had begged Wesley to let her experiment with something. He had agreed, without even asking exactly what, and continued to assure her that she was free to do whatever she liked with the place, for the holiday or in general, but she still had trouble considering the apartment anything other than Wesley's apartment. True, she had been living there for almost … well, almost a year now, and sleeping in his bedroom as he refused to let her sleep on the couch even though she was the one that was invading – she had protested, declaring that she would have been just fine with the bathtub, or the closet even, but he had insisted. He had been so incredibly patient with her, these last months… year… as she worked, struggling to piece herself back together all over again. She just hoped that he could come to realize, now, that she was… well… maybe not… whole. Or, her. She would never be… the old Fred. If there was anything she had learned after her five year stint in the hell dimension, it was that one could never go back. They just had to find a way to go forward.
She was ready, she thought, to do that. Now, she just had to find a way to make him realize it. Her head tilted, her fingers plucking at the cotton padding that lined the bottom of the display that she'd created on the bookshelf that they had emptied off the week before, studying the village carefully. It had taken her several tries to get the recipe exact, to find the right consistency of the gingerbread that would hold up against the icing and the piping and the candy decorations, but once she'd had it right, she had fallen into a mildly fascinated routine for that next day or two. Shaping each piece, crafting the village in the image, architecturally speaking, of a Bulgarian lodge village in the 18th century after finding a picture in one of the spell books that had gotten under her skin, and she'd felt compelled to recreate in some form or another. When she'd first finished, with the kitchen covered in flour and piping and little candy wrappers strewn close to everywhere, there had been a complete village, with little windows, and street lamps, and little sleds and sort of blocky people, with fudge stepping stones and caramel coated stained glass windows on the buildings….
Over the course of the week, though, the inhabitants of the village had slowly begun to disappear, and a few of the smaller buildings, like one of the firewood sheds filled with licorice stick logs, and the coal shed filled with chocolate covered raisins, for example, had sort of… vanished. She had been slowly spreading out the display, guiltily hoping that Wes wouldn't notice, but she was fairly sure that it was only a matter of time. As if on cue, in fact, not two seconds after she'd surreptitiously plucked up one of the 'snow covered hay bales' that was actually a crisp treat coated in chocolate, and covered in powdered sugar and stuffed it into her cheek was the exact worst time for the sound of keys jangling in the door that heralded Wesley's return from the Hyperion. Eyes wide, with the look that she tried to project of innocence that really only made her look like the cat that ate the canary, especially with the dusting of powdered sugar on her fingertips and lips, she turned rapidly towards the door to greet Wesley with the quirky little half lopsided smile from behind her cup of hot chocolate that she hoped would help her conceal the rush of an attempt to chew and swallow the forbidden treat without choking on it.