The Spirit of Christmas Past
Disclaimer: I don't own anything.
Summary: "Alright, Kiddos," she spoke up finally. "Sulking time is over so put on your cute little smiling faces I love so much and let's do some Christmas cheer!" Garcia brings a little Christmas cheer to the group of profilers who are stuck on the jet on Christmas Eve.
Merry Christmas, Everyone!
It was Christmas Eve but the team felt anything but the spirit of the holiday as they were sitting on the jet on their way home from Seattle. The silence was deafening as the plane was cutting through the thick clouds of the night sky. Even the always chatty Garcia was sitting in her seat without anything to say. However, she was the only one who seemed eager to do something as her eyes wouldn't stop roaming around in the little space as if waiting for one of her friends to speak up or just to show any indication of snapping out of their quite depressive mood.
But so far, to her dismay, everything was unchanged.
Her sole hope was Emily who was sitting across her. She could even chat with her in the beginning of their flight but now her friend was engrossed in her book not even noticing the outside world.
Rossi was working on a crossword puzzle so intently that Garcia was thinking he was trying to solve the ultimate question of life. She was tempted to tell him that the answer he was looking for is 42 but she'd decided against it a while ago. Hotch had already begun to write up his report which was strange even for him. But she could understand him. It must be easier to concentrate on work than thinking about your son on Christmas Eve. He was so missing his son. So was JJ who was looking out of the window staring into nothingness.
And next to her blond friend were sitting Reid and Morgan who were playing cards in deadly silence. Their mechanical movements made the computer tech consider the fact that her two friends might be robots.
She observed the little group for a little longer but she could already feel the effect of their quite depressing mood and the last thing she wanted was to curl into a ball sobbing because she wasn't at home for Christmas.
"Alright, Kiddos," she spoke up finally. "Sulking time is over so put on your cute little smiling faces I love so much and let's do some Christmas cheer!" With that she grabbed her bag and began emptying it. From it came a little Christmas tree with bright ribbons and a star on the top, a little dancing Santa and many other things that other people would probably never buy.
While Garcia was packing, Rossi, abandoning his crossword puzzle, regarded her bemused, Hotch looked at her with raised eyebrows and Reid seemed totally horrified. The girls just smiled at their friend's antics.
"Alright, Mary Poppins, what's with the gadget shop?" Morgan plopped down in the seat next to Emily.
"I told you," she told him while busying herself by setting up her laptop. When "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" began to fill up the little space on the plane, Garcia looked at Morgan with a huge satisfied smile. "We are celebrating!"
When nobody showed any reaction, she rolled her eyes and patted the seat next to her.
"Come on, darlings. Come closer." Slowly the rest of the team gathered around the table, too. JJ cautiously sat down next to her while Emily put her book away. "That's better. And now I'll tell you what we'll do." Everybody was looking at Garcia expectantly, not knowing whether they should be curious about what she had in mind or whether they should be afraid.
"And now everybody will share their best Christmas with the others. It's like exchanging gifts. You share something, the others share something. Isn't it a great idea?" She was apparently pleased with herself. But it wasn't the case with Emily, who seemed rather reluctant to take part in Garcia's newest game.
"Look, Garcia, I don't think that it's such a good idea," Emily told her hoping that the others would share her opinion.
"Actually, I like it." Slowly every head turned towards the unit chief. "What?" he asked his apparently surprised team.
"Alright," Garcia chimed in enthusiastically. "Who's in then? And don't even listen to the Grinch in the left corner." At that Emily gave her a dirty look but said nothing as everybody seemed to like the idea. She silently sank into her seat resigned, hoping that the others would forget about her. "Who's the first?" Garcia looked around the group expectantly but nobody seemed eager to start. "Well, it's me then. Let's see…" She was thinking hard what to share with her friends. "Oh yeah…" An evil grin appeared on her face. "I didn't know at that time, of course, I was only about six, but anyway, it was a great Christmas. It's a little hazy but my parents put me into bed that night and… you know I was quite a nosy child…"
"Really?" Rossi looked at the computer tech bemused while the others smiled at that confession.
"Well, no one can be perfect, now, can they?" Garcia put on a little show of huffing then continued her story. "I did what every child probably does on Christmas Eve and sneaked out of bed to get dear old Santa in the act… Well… I didn't get him but I get my parents… and, God, they were in the act." At this she got some snorts and some horrified looks from the others.
"Poor thing, it must have been terrifying for you," JJ told him compassionately. Garcia just shrugged, though.
"I don't know about me, but I bet my folks felt terrible." Her evil smile was again in place. "I remember that I wouldn't stop asking them about it the whole day… And, man, they were terrible liars." Here she stopped as if contemplating something. "It's very interesting how creative parents can get if needed…"
At this even JJ broke and the whole plane was filled with cheerful laughter.
"Alright, folks. Who's next?" Garcia inquired again still smiling broadly.
"I'll do it," Rossi volunteered after he could speak again. He cleared his throat then started his story. "It was the Christmas of 1976. I was still in college and it was my first Christmas with my first wife…"
"There is a lot of firsts here," Emily whispered to Morgan just a little too loud. She seemed to be enjoying herself after all.
Rossi looked at the snorting couple then continued without making any comment.
"We had to do part time jobs to make ends meet. I think I don't have to tell you that we didn't have either the time or the money to make a proper holiday. But, of course, it didn't mean that we hadn't celebrated it. In our way…"
"Man, I hope you'll spare us the details." And here Morgan and Emily broke into loud laughter.
"Very funny, Derek," Rossi turned to the younger profiler. "What you have to know is that Caroline was just a little bit crazy."
"She had to be if she married you." Morgan was enjoying himself too much for his own good. And so did Emily next to him.
"Anyway, she decided that she'd wanted to celebrate Christmas properly. So, to make a long story short, on Christmas Day we ended up in a non-stop supermarket with all the money we could find, which wasn't that much, I must add, and after getting some strange looks from the shop assistants, we went home with some canned food, several packs of chips and three bottles of wine… oh and a tree. It was a little shabby, a little dry and not so straight but it was our first Christmas tree… Well, that was one of the best Christmases I've ever had."
"Oh, the beautiful side of adulthood and independency!" Garcia exclaimed cheerfully.
"Alright, it's my turn," JJ informed the others and all attention was suddenly focused on her. "My best Christmas was when I was first allowed to go out with the boys to get our tree."
"Aww… Isn't she cute?"
"I'm serious here." She rolled her eyes at Garcia. "Do you know what it is like to grow up with four elder brothers?" They all gave her sympathetic looks so, satisfied, she continued. "I turned seven that year so I was officially old enough to venture out into the great wilderness with the others," she explained with exasperated seriousness. "I was so excited; I wouldn't even let anybody else carry the hatchet. Now, I've always been a small girl and man, that hatchet was huge. But I carried it, well, more like dragged it till we found the perfect tree. It was so beautiful and I felt so proud when the next day I found it in the living room standing with all the decoration and the lights. I couldn't stop staring for the rest of the holidays."
"Oh, cutting your own tree sounds fun," Garcia beamed.
"Maybe next year I'll take Jack to a Choose and Cut farm. I think he'd enjoy it."
"I don't know but I found that having an artificial tree saves you much trouble," Rossi observed.
"Oh no, man. You must have a real tree to have a real Christmas," Derek protested and Emily gave him a look.
"I thought this whole thing is about love and family… and all that stuff," she remarked dryly and Derek couldn't help the frown that appeared on his face.
"It is," he agreed. "But don't tell me that the scent of the pine tree doesn't add to the warmness of Christmas." Emily just raised an amused eyebrow at that but remained silent. It was Reid who spoke up.
"Did you know that in the last ten years real trees outsold fake trees by a greater than 3 to 1 margin? It's actually quite interesting becau…"
"All right, my chocolate toy soldier with the impressive… Christmas spirit," Garcia interrupted Reid's babblings before the boy could have warmed up and they'd be informed about every available statistics regarding the holidays. "I want to hear about your best Christmas."
"Well…" Derek was thinking for a little while then a little sad smile appeared on his face which unconsciously made the others sober up from their earlier banter. "I think it was a couple of years after my dad died. He was shot shortly before Christmas so the holidays were just not the same after that. That Christmas was different, though. I remember because for the first time in years my mom really put herself into it. I noticed how she hummed random Christmas songs whenever she felt like it and how enthusiastically she prepared for the holidays. It was so good to see her happy… it was a beautiful Christmas," he concluded finally and gave a warm smile to Emily when she gently squeezed his hand resting between them.
For some time nobody knew how to continue after that but finally Reid broke the reverie.
"I don't really know what makes a good Christmas. I'm an atheist and I never believed in Santa Claus… I don't remember having a proper Christmas even before my father left us," he mused out aloud and Emily gave him a sympathetic smile. She could really relate to him.
"You don't need all that for a perfect Christmas," Rossi told him. "Just think about a time when you felt truly happy around the holidays. When you felt like smiling at strangers just because you felt that everything was all right with the world."
They watched on amused as recognition downed on the boy's face.
"There was that time when I was at college and I had to hand in a paper before the holidays. I don't know what happened that year but I was a little bit behind schedule and I spent Christmas trying to finish my paper on the psycho-physiological processing of emotional and self-referential information in Schizophrenia…"
"Okay," Garcia interrupted him. "That's just sad."
The others chuckled.
"No, not at all," Reid reassured her, missing the point which only made the others smiling at their friend. "I actually finished it around midnight on Christmas Day. I was so ecstatic about it that I had to go and hand it in right away."
"On Christmas Day?" Derek asked incredulously.
"Why?"
"Nothing…" he dismissed him with a disbelieving look.
"So, Hotch, what was your favorite Christmas," Emily asked the unit chief eager to postpone the moment when she'd have to answer that question.
A warm smile appeared on the face of the normally stoic man.
"It was definitely the first Christmas when Jack was able to understand that Santa brings the presents," he answered without hesitation. "He heard some stories in daycare then he just couldn't stop asking about how Santa works. Of course, it made our job all the more difficult and I actually ended up dressed as Santa in case Jack would be spying on him."
The team looked on in awe as Hotch's face practically lit up while relating the events of that night.
"And you never told us about it, Santa Claus?" Rossi asked chuckling.
"Well, it doesn't exactly help my image," Hotch smiled.
"Aww, it's so cute, though," Garcia remarked and everybody laughed out when Hotch pointed out that that was exactly his point.
"I can't wait for Henry to get all excited about Santa," JJ said.
"Yes," Hotch agreed. "It gives a whole new meaning to Christmas when you see your child's eyes lit up in the morning and he clearly believes that a miracle happened."
"What is it, Princess?" Derek asked Emily concerned when he noticed that she withdrew into her own thoughts and instead of laughing with the team, she was now looking out of the small window of the jet with a sad expression.
"Hmm?"
"We lost you there for a minute," he smiled at her and bumped his shoulder to hers playfully.
"It's your turn, Emily," Rossi pointed out.
"It is, isn't it?" she asked with a half-hearted smile. "All right," she sighed finally. "It may sound pathetic but this is my best Christmas…" she looked around her team that consisted of her closest friends, "here, with you… and that awful little dancing Santa… Thank you," she said and reached out over the table to squeeze Garcia's hand gratefully.
"You're right," Derek pulled her into a half-hug. "This turned out to be a pretty good Christmas." Everybody agreed to that.
"Great," Garcia exclaimed excitedly. "Mission accomplished. Now we can start singing," she announced merrily, reaching for her computer, but she was met by collective protest as everybody else insisted that there was no way they would sing anything not alone Christmas songs. Garcia huffed a little but finally she gave up to the others' utmost relief. They never settled back to their silence, though, as the rest of the journey was filled with happy chatter and merry laughter.
THE END