Charlie's just had the worst day of his nine-year-old life. Bernard is there to talk him through it, but the conversation back-fires a bit… Fluff, garnished with a sprig of angst. One-shot, complete, but part of a larger picture that I'm workin' on.
O~*~O
We've Got This
O~*~O
"It's December 10th," stated Scott.
"Mmm," Bernard responded, because he was trying to balance a chart of data input with a new sheet of outputs and he couldn't do math and form coherent sentences at the same time.
"I haven't finished The List yet," Scott continued thoughtfully. Bernard knew the signs of an oncoming panic attack and knew very well that Scott Calvin was on the edge.
"Um," Bernard replied. "It… just hold on a sec…" He tapped the end of his pen against the 'net total' box and puzzled over why the answer he was getting was negative. "This doesn't… work…"
"Why? What happened? What's wrong?"
"Nothing, I just… I can't – "
"See? See, that's what I'm saying! Nothing is working! I can't do this, this is too much. See, things are getting screwed up." Bernard finally looked up from his clipboard.
"Now hold on, Santa."
"Seriously. It's December 10th and I'm nowhere near being ready."
"This isn't – "
"This output isn't lining up because I can't keep anything straight. I probably recorded the wrong input and now we're not going to have enough candy canes and then all the children will have a horrible, horrible – "
"Hold on, Santa!" Bernard snapped. Scott turned a baleful stare upon the head elf. "Okay, listen. One," he continued, punctuating the air in front of Scott's face with his pen, "this chart is an electrograph of incoming light from the pole stars. Nothing to do with candy canes, and nothing that you've had a hand in. You didn't screw it up. Two, IF we somehow failed to produce enough candy canes, not only would the world keep spinning, but most kids probably wouldn't even notice, because they're so used to those crummy factory-made ones made of high-fructose corn syrup and pretend mint flavor. Three, this chart is working, I'm just really bad at mental math and I can't concentrate when you're having a panic attack at me. And come over here…"
Bernard grabbed Scott's arm and drew him to the edge of the nearby bannister. From this point they could see several levels of the workshop.
"Four, things are not getting screwed up. Tell me what you see."
"What I see? I see the workshop. I see elves. I see lots of pieces of toys."
"So what's wrong with this picture?"
"This is not the time to get all Socratic on me, Bernard. If you have something to say, say it."
"What I'm sayin' is that nothing is wrong. These guys have got this. I've got this. You'll get it. You don't have to be the perfect Santa on your second season on the job. It's alright that you haven't finished The List yet. Trust me, you'll be fine and everything will turn out come December 25th."
"We'll see about that," scoffed Scott, folding his arms and leaning against the bannister.
"Really. Don't worry, I won't let you ruin Christmas," joked Bernard, turning back to the chart. A second later he looked back up. "And you'd better snap out of this quick, Santa, I don't like you as much when you're not an arrogant smartypants."
"Ha ha."
"Ah," said Bernard, and wrote in another number on his clipboard. "I knew I was forgetting something in there… see, nothing to worry about. Oh, speaking of forgetting, remember that Basil needs to talk to you at 3:00 before he heads out with the reindeer's new line-up. That's in two minutes."
Uttering some choice words, Scott turned to leave, but an elf holding a long-wave radio brought him to a halt.
"Excuse me, Santa?"
"Ursula, right?" he asked, and she smiled.
"Right on, sir. I just got a call from Laura."
"Really?" Scott asked, taken aback. Ursula's smile disappeared.
"She's concerned about Charlie. She says he's really upset about something but he doesn't want to ask for you with the snow globe because he knows you're so busy. She says she wants you to come down and talk with him."
Scott threw his head back to stare at the ceiling, eyes wide with desperation. Charlie had broken three fingers on his left hand several days before while practicing for basketball try-outs, which had done nothing at all for Scott's concentration. The man had gone into hyper-father mode until he'd been sure Charlie was going to be okay. He heaved a sigh and looked back to Ursula.
"Can it wait? I'm late for an important meeting, but it'll only be a few minutes long."
"Laura didn't say."
"Well, if the situation were really desperate she'd say, right?... Arg, it takes time to get down there…"
"Chill, Santa," Bernard said. "I'll go check on Charlie, you go to your meeting, and meet us at Laura's when you get the chance. I'm sure he's just fine."
O~*~O
It had taken Bernard several dozen years to get used to the concept of disappearing from one place and appearing somewhere else far away. Consciousness, feeling, and sight were transported first, but there was a lag between that and actual materialization, and a further lag between materialization and sound, because light traveled much faster than sound. As a result, whenever he disappeared from a place, the sound-world of the place he'd left would stick around for a few seconds, depending on how far away he was going.
Bernard came to be outside of Laura and Neil's door. His body appeared a split second later but the sounds of the workshop lingered in his ears. The hammers, the bells, many footsteps passing where he used to be, somebody asking for a hand in the packing room. Then the sounds faded, and he could hear nothing but a car passing the next street over and somebody's TV across the way. He knocked. It had just snowed, and he stood in half a foot of powder snow on their stoop as he listened to footsteps approaching from the other side of the door. Neil was approaching; he could tell by the gait. The door opened and Bernard braced himself for whatever sweater the man would be wearing.
"Afternoon, Neil," Bernard said, squinting against the bright neons of the button-down.
"Oh, Bernard! Wasn't expecting you. Come on in." Neil opened the door and gestured in, eyeing the single set of standing footprints on the snow of his stoop. "I see you… appeared there. On the stoop. You're not a vampire, you could have just popped right in, you know. You're always welcome."
"Aw, you're a peach. Knocking seems like the polite thing, though."
"You didn't knock the first few times you were here," the man said, smirking as he led Bernard down the hall.
"That's because you wouldn't have let me in otherwise."
"Sure I would have!"
"Lies. You were busy questioning your sanity, remember?"
"Oh, Bernard's here," Laura said, rounding the corner. Her arms were crossed in true worried-mother fashion, eyes wide. "Are you here to see Charlie?"
"Yeah, Scott's in a quick meeting, he'll be out soon. He just wanted to make sure nothing awful happened."
"Oh, no, nothing awful, not really… Well, try-outs for junior basketball was today, and I don't think it went very well…"
"It's his hand!" Neil interrupted, holding up his own hand as an example. "How do they expect a kid to perform well with broken fingers, I ask you?"
"He's just so depressed," Laura continued."I've never seen Charlie depressed, you know? I mean except for last year with that whole thing with Scott and… well, I know this happens to every child at some point but we just don't know how to make him feel better…"
Bernard narrowed his eyes, forgetting about the jibes he and Neil had been exchanging. Charlie was not one to mope for no good reason.
"Well where is he? Think I could talk to him?
"He's in his room. He seems frustrated, but you could try to talk."
Laura's eyes spoke more of regret for not having been able to fix Charlie's problem than they did of worry for Charlie himself, so Bernard wasn't too concerned as he came to a stop outside Charlie's door. Not concerned, but he did love the boy, and his heart hurt a little to think that Charlie was so unhappy. Neil and Laura paused briefly at the end of the hall, watching.
"Hey, Charlie? You in there?" Bernard called.
"Bernard?"
"Yeah, it's me. Heard you were down in the dumps."
"How did you know?"
"I'm the head elf – I know everything, remember?"
A pause, and then Bernard heard Charlie's footsteps shuffing across his carpet towards the door. It opened, and the elf frowned and crouched to be eye-level with Charlie, because the look on the boy's face was unexpectedly upsetting. Charlie wasn't simply depressed about something – there was something fundamentally broken, Bernard could see it all across Charlie's aura. The boy needed his dad, that much was easy to tell without exchanging a word.
"Your dad will be here as soon as he can, Charlie," Bernard said, peering into the child's eyes and wondering what to do. Upon mentioning his dad, Charlie's eyes got glassy and his chin fell to his chest in an attempt to hide a sob, but Bernard well knew that the easiest way to hide one's face when one is crying was to hide it in somebody else's shoulder, so he reached out and Charlie gratefully and wisely took the opportunity to cry and hide and be held at the same time. Out of the corner of his eye Bernard saw Laura and Neil retreat down the hallway, leaving the two of them alone.
Charlie, who was used to being hugged by his father, was used to possibly the best-quality hugs in the world. Scott was large and warm and bear-like and fuzzy and Bernard always felt a little one-upped when he himself hugged Charlie because Bernard was small, didn't have the mass to be very warm, likewise didn't have the mass to give a bear hug, and would never have the beard required to give a 'fuzzy hug'. He did know a thing or two about psychophysiology, though, and knew that an enveloping pressure did wonders to calm the nervous system. So he carefully hugged Charlie as tightly as he could, and could soon feel the boy's heart calming down, his sobs coming slower and weaker, and the painful, broken nature of his aura softening.
"Okay, Charlie," Bernard said, "better tell me what happened."
They drew away. Charlie rubbed away tears and retreated back into the cave of his room – the shades were drawn and no lights were on. Bernard shut the door behind them and it became obvious that Charlie wouldn't be able to see Bernard much, though Bernard by nature could see in the dark rather well. The boy sat himself on the edge of his bed and let his shoulders sag mightily beneath the weight of the mysterious burden. Bernard had never been in a confession box in a church, and didn't plan on ever finding himself in one, but he knew that the Catholics had done something right with that set-up. Talking about difficult subjects was inevitably made easier by talking about them in the dark, and, strangely, by not having to face the person one was talking to. Bernard sat down next to Charlie and gave him a supportive pat on the shoulder.
"Say, how's your hand, tough-guy?"
"It doesn't hurt," Charlie said, mournfully. "I think it's getting better."
"You be sure to keep that up."
"I will. But I don't think I'll ever break any fingers again."
"Why?" asked Bernard, suppressing the urge to chuckle.
"I'll never play basketball."
"Oh buddy, you think the unique privilege of having broken fingers is held aside for basketball players? I had some of my fingers broken before basketball was even invented."
"Really?" asked Charlie, and Bernard was only a little taken aback that Charlie apparently found hope in the realization that people who didn't play basketball could still break fingers. Kids.
"Really. Though if I were you I'd avoid breaking more fingers at almost any cost." There was a pause as Charlie thought, and Bernard could almost hear the gears turning in the boy's head.
"Basketball try-outs were today," he finally stated. "I… I didn't get on the team."
"I know how much you wanted that," Bernard replied. Charlie had been practicing with Neil and Scott for almost a year, hoping that shooting hoops every day would make up for Charlie's shorter stature. "What happened?" Bernard finally asked, not because he really wanted to know, but because he could tell Charlie was teetering on the edge of spilling it all out anyways.
"Jamie Kelso's the team captain," Charlie blurted, and Bernard remembered. Jamie Kelso was the kid in school that everybody wanted to be. Top of his class – not that it mattered much in grade school – , junior basketball captain, almost as tall as the shortest teacher in the school, and he lived in an enormous purple mansion on main street, the envy of every kid who ever biked past. Jamie Kelso was also on the naughty list, but Bernard wasn't at liberty to say as much.
"What's he got to do with it?"
"There were twelve people trying out. We were supposed to divide into two teams, to play a game to see who was good enough… Jamie was one of the captains and I don't know who the other captain was but both the captains would pick someone and then they'd hi-five their new teammate. And the rest of the team would hi-five them."
Charlie paused to heave another sigh. Bernard was beginning to see where this was going, and he wished more than ever that Santa could have been here. This was one of those delicate situations.
"I really wanted Jamie to pick me because… Well, he didn't. I didn't get picked until there were two people left, me and Marcus Fleming, and then Jamie picked Marcus, and then the other captain had to pick me, and then when I went over there nobody even gave me a hi-five!" He'd said these last few sentences in a rush, and now he wiped away a few more tears. "I can't play basketball! I tried really, really hard and I really wanted to play but I can't, and now everybody thinks I'm stupid for even trying out."
"That's not true, Charlie. You know it's not."
"Well Mom and Neil don't… Neil's mad, he thinks it's not fair, because of my hand."
But it had little to do with Charlie's hand, Bernard knew. The hurt had happened before the ball had even entered court. This had less to do with Charlie's admittedly poor ability to play basketball than it had to do with how he thought his peers saw him, but that was a concept that would be difficult for a nine-year-old to grasp, even if it was Charlie.
"Dad always told me I could be anything I wanted to be, because if he could be Santa Claus, then anything is possible. Something must be wrong with me."
"Oh boy," Bernard sighed. For a moment he felt torn; Santa would probably want him to hold his tongue and not take advantage of the fact that Charlie saw Bernard as a role model and as such would likely believe almost anything Bernard said. But, then again, it sounded like Santa had been telling Charlie some silly things, and Bernard wasn't sure how ethical it would be to not address them.
"What?" asked Charlie.
"Here's the thing, Charlie. Your dad is very smart. He's a great guy. One of the best. But let me tweak that advice he gave you, just a little bit, okay?"
"Okay…"
"You can be almost anything you want to be, if you work your butt off and if you're willing to accept that working your butt off isn't always the most fun or rewarding thing you can do."
"You mean…"
"I mean, when you were a little kid you wanted to be a flying squirrel. But now you know that even though that's what you wanted to be, with all of your being, and even if you'd tried and tried to grow fur and a tail and weird flaps of skin between your arms and legs, you still wouldn't have become a flying squirrel."
"But this is different! Everyone else can play basketball, why can't I?"
"Can you snap?"
"Well, yeah."
"Let me hear."
Charlie half-heartedly snapped his fingers on both hands, cleanly. The sound popped off the walls and the room swallowed the echo.
"I can't do that," admitted Bernard.
"You can't?"
"Nope. Believe me, I've tried. I just can't snap. I also can't look at stairs when I'm on them. I lose my balance and trip."
"You do?" asked Charlie, cracking a smile.
"True story. So you see, I'm not going to spend all my time learning how to snap, or learning how to watch the stairs. I'm too busy doing other things that I enjoy, like bossing other elves around and eating pitas and hanging out with Charlie." Charlie's smile settled into his aura a bit, and the boy processed. It was a tricky thing, to help a child who thinks they're broken understand that what they believe is a crack in their being is really just a guideline, one of many that will show them who they are.
"I don't think anybody at school likes me," Charlie said quietly.
"Lots of kids think that about themselves, Charlie, and then they don't show how much they like others because they're afraid nobody will like them back."
"Bernard, how come you're so smart?"
"I'm old."
"I'll never be as smart as you," Charlie said, sighing. "I'll never be as old as you."
Bernard fidgeted. He knew wisdom was generally proportionate to age, but that the rate of accumulation of wisdom in a temporal sense increased exponentially when mortality was a factor. There was nothing quite like the inevitability of death to give a person the opportunity to become more wise, but he wasn't sure he was up to explaining that to a nine-year-old. He was relieved when Charlie switched topics.
"What's the worst thing that happened to you by the time you were nine?" the boy asked.
"Charlie, that was so long ago… the only thing I remember from when I was nine is that there were huge trees and bright stars and really cold winters. I don't think I had a truly bad day until I was maybe 100, and that's just because somebody cut down my favorite tree and used it as firewood."
"What's the worst thing that's ever happened to you?" Charlie asked then. Bernard felt his own heart frost over. Charlie was probably just trying to put his own problems into perspective, which was a very mature thing to do, but Bernard's mind hadn't been prepared for the question.
"Well, I had a musk ox step on my foot once. That was pretty awful."
"Really? That's the worst?"
"What did you expect, a soap opera?"
"I just thought since you were so old…"
"Alright… you're right, I won't lie, that's not the worst thing that's ever happened to me. But to tell you the truth, I don't want to talk about the worst thing."
"Why?" asked Charlie, and Bernard grimaced inwardly. This was not an ideal time for the 'why' game. For the first time since they'd sat down together, Charlie looked up at Bernard, and Bernard was the one to look away.
"Because… I don't think your dad would want me to tell you."
"Why?"
"Oh, Charlie, I wish you wouldn't ask me that…"
"Does my dad know what it is?"
"No, your dad doesn't know what it is."
"Why?"
"Because he's never asked."
"If he did ask, would you tell him?"
"No."
"Why?"
"Because I don't like talking about it. I don't like to remember it."
"Oh," said Charlie, and Bernard fervently hoped that Charlie's innate curiosity wouldn't push the conversation any father down this road. From the corner of his eye Bernard could see that Charlie's expression had taken on a distinct air of guilt; he'd realized that he'd made Bernard think about something he didn't want to think about. The elf didn't know what to say to put the boy back at ease. Rather, he suspected he knew what to say but now he himself was being afflicted by guilt. It had been almost a thousand years and clearly he still hadn't been able to properly deal with what had happened. Even thinking about thinking about it brought a sick feeling to his gut and made his wits start to scatter themselves. Now half his mind was going to be occupied just trying to keep the other half of his mind from going back to those memories. How was he supposed to help Charlie when he couldn't even think?
He'd come here to help Charlie, and now he'd just made the kid feel more awful. Nice.
"I'm sorry," Charlie said, and Bernard found himself being side-hugged around the middle by the boy. He put his arm about Charlie's shoulders and did a mental double-take.
"No reason to be."
"I made you feel bad."
"No, I made me feel bad. But I don't feel that bad." Which was true. Mostly he feared that he would feel bad, now that the topic was fresh in his mind, but, as he'd just told Charlie, he was the only one making himself feel this way.
"Hey Bernard?" Charlie's voice was slightly muffled by Bernard's cloak.
"Yeah?"
"Neil says he's too busy to hang Christmas lights this year, and mom won't let me do it myself. Will you help me do it?"
"Oh my goodness, too busy to hang Christmas lights? Even I'm not too busy to hang Christmas lights. Of course I'll help."
Just like that, Charlie's aura sprang back into happy innocence, which is where Bernard was used to seeing it. Charlie rocketed from the bed and swept open the door, and in the light from the hallway Bernard could see that the kid was grinning, and there was more to the grin than simple anticipation of hanging Christmas lights with admittedly one of the best Christmas-light-hangers on the planet. Bernard came to the door and went down the hall; he could hear Laura and Neil ask Charlie what the excitement was about as Charlie blew past, and could almost hear Charlie's response, but the boy was talking too fast to really be audible, and then he was gone, into the garage to look for the lights. Bernard met Laura and Neil in the hall as they rounded the corner. Their eyes were full of questions and there was a small smile on each of their mouths.
"How did it go?" asked Neil.
"Pretty well, I guess."
"You guess? I haven't seen Charlie smile like that since Halloween."
"Christmas lights are pretty exciting. I'd better go help him, I think he forgot that he has some broken fingers."
O~*~O
Despite the fact that Laura shared a son with Santa Claus, she and Neil had still not replaced their old Christmas lights, and their tangled sets were full of burnt-out bulbs, faded paint, and twisted cords. Charlie watched with delight as Bernard set to work putting the sets back into order, zapping dead bulbs back to life, and giving the faded paint a new lease on life with a touch of magic. It took all of two hours for them to clip the last cord into place and stand back to admire the show. The Earth had just tipped their continent into shadow and now, in the blue hours between day and night, was Bernard's favorite time to see lights. They were all clearly visible, but so were the trees and the shutters and the rest of the world they lived in. Come dark, all they'd be able to see would be lights, suggesting a house and a tree, but blinding the eyes against anything else.
"We have the best light show in the country! This is even better than Jamie Kelso's Christmas lights. Thanks, Bernard!"
"All on you, little man. I just made them sparkle. Give me five," Bernard said, and Charlie obliged happily.
"What are you kids doing?" called a gruff voice from behind them.
"Hanging your landing lights, you curmudgeon," Bernard said, and turned to see Scott walking up the driveway, still in his workshop attire and looking only a little self-conscious. Charlie ran to give his dad a hug, and Scott shot Bernard a confused look. No doubt the man hadn't come home expecting to see his son in such high spirits. Scott hefted Charlie into his arms and made for the house, admiring the lights.
"Thanks," muttered Scott, as he passed Bernard, and the elf got the impression that Scott wasn't talking about the landing lights. "Whatever you did, it worked."
"I didn't do anything," Bernard replied. "This was Charlie's idea. I'm outta here, I've got work to do."
"Great. See you at the workshop later."
"Will do, chief," Bernard said, waved to Charlie, and sent himself north, back to the city under the ice. As his awareness returned to the workshop, he heard Scott ask Charlie, hanging the lights was your idea? I thought you were bummed out about something.
I was, but Bernard told me some advice. But then I accidentally said something that made Bernard sad, Charlie responded, as Bernard's feet came to rest on the workshop floor. He heard Laura and Neil's front door open.
You did? asked Scott, genuinely surprised.
Yeah, but I thought hanging the lights would cheer him up, and it did!
What in the world did you say to make Bernard sad?
Then the door shut, and the workshop sounds caught up with Bernard's presence, and once again his ears were full of hammering, footsteps, the quiet hum of happy work. Briefly, he worried what Charlie would tell Scott, but he remembered what he'd told Charlie and he decided that he wasn't going to be paranoid. Besides, he was approaching a spiral staircase, which was the scariest kind of staircase, and he had better things to do than worry about what had happened in the distant past. Now that he'd thought about his staircase dilemma, he was going to have to concentrate on not watching his step.