A/N: One of the most unpleasant personal experiences of Bernard's recent life was shared with a Santa named Paul Mason, which was one of the reasons the experience had been so unpleasant in the first place. This is a dramatic little side-story that sort of explains the relationship between Bernard and the same grumpy Santa from Ch. 4 of my fic "Just An Elf" – the guy who came before Scott Calvin.

This is not very medically accurate but let me wave my poetic license around in a lame attempt to excuse myself from being medically accurate. *waves license*

People/places/ideas/etc that belong to The Santa Clause franchise belong to The Santa Clause franchise and I claim no ownership of said nouns.

Theory of Repulsion

1

September 1989

When Mother Nature looked upset, Bernard would usually react by feeling slightly queasy – a reaction that was quite out of his control. It was just that Mother Nature, of all the powerful figures Bernard had met, tended to take things in stride. She worried, yes, but she had the wisdom to know that in the grand scheme of things, most troubles would pass and there usually wasn't a reason to get one's knickers in a knot.

Today she appeared before Bernard as he was taking the stairs down to the main floor of the workshop, and he tripped and almost fell and probably would have cracked his skull (or at least his knee) on the marble landing, had she not reached out and caught his arm just in time.

"Geez, did you have to appear on the stairs?" he gasped, steadying himself. "You know I'm not good with stairs."

"Yes, yes, I'm sorry, but I'm a bit upset about something."

He looked up at her and saw that, yes, she was upset. She looked as if she'd recently been through an earthquake. His gut twisted itself in a knot.

"What happened?" he asked, dreading the answer. Perhaps she'd come to deliver the devastating news that the ice caps were finally breaking up into tiny little pieces, which would mean their ice cave was now highly unstable and likely to collapse and kill them all. Or perhaps she'd tell him that some exploring foreign army was drilling down into Elfsburg as they stood there on the stairs; any moment now a hole would appear high up on the dome, humans in black ninja suits would come dropping through on nylon cords like giant spiders bent on he knew not what –

"It's Santa again," she said in a small voice, as if she were speaking through a plastic straw. She looked at him apologetically. The knot of dread in his stomach uncoiled itself and swiftly reformed into a tiny, angry coal. He took a breath, and then let it out.

"What about him?" he asked, finally.

"He's doing something I don't think you'll be happy about."

"Well that's nothing new," he muttered. "Sweet solstice, you looked like you were about to deliver news of the apocalypse. You were wearing your apocalypse face."

"I have an apocalypse face?" she asked, straightening.

"Yeah, you do. Only comes out about once a decade."

"Well I didn't mean to throw that kind of face at you, but I know you and Santa have been a little rocky lately – "

"Lately? Try always."

" – and I just hate to be the bearer of bad news but I think you should know about this. He's, well, he's looking for more elves."

Bernard could only furrow his brow and cast her a quizzical, sideways look.

"How do you know that?"

"A little bird told me," she said, seriously. "Apparently he's spent the day down in Boston, trying to recruit. He thinks… Well, I don't know what he thinks but I'm surprised he doesn't know about – "

"About what an awful idea that is? Oh, he does know," said Bernard, feeling his previously-controlled temper start to simmer. "He and I had this conversation years ago, he must remember!"

Mother Nature's face crumpled a little. She did not dislike Paul Mason, the current Santa Claus. She didn't like it when Bernard got angry with Santa, and she didn't like it when Santa did dumb things, the likes of which he was usually doing, and this oftentimes left her feeling a bit destitute. Bernard wadded up his anger and shoved it down into some inner pit and tried to calm himself.

"This isn't worth your getting upset," he told her, though she very well knew that already. "Let me know where he is and I'll just pop down there and… fix things."

"Not entirely sure where he is right now," she said. "Boston? South Boston, near the commons. That's where the bird was."

"I'll give him a radio call when I get there," Bernard said. Mother Nature nodded, gave him what he supposed was a reassuring smile, and disappeared. He planted his forefinger and thumb into his eye sockets and thought. This should only take ten minutes. Twenty, tops. Maybe thirty, if Santa was feeling particularly belligerent. Bernard certainly was. He could leave his tasks for that long and everything would be fine. He hoped.

After procuring some more Boston-appropriate clothing and dropping his shoulder bag off in a location he'd probably spend half an hour trying to remember upon his return, he cast his mind off to find South Boston, with a small twinge of regret. Seriously, South Boston? Bernard thought. Couldn't he have picked a nicer place to make bad choices? Hawaii? Isle of Man? Some fjord in Norway?

But no; here it was. South Boston. Nothing wrong with it, of itself. The buildings raised themselves into the sky, which was currently a greyish sort of smog, what passed for night in the cities. It was drizzling. It didn't smell all that bad, for a city, he supposed, sniffing the air. Wet pavement. Gasoline and cigarettes, tire rubber and French fries and printer ink and more. Fine. A city was a city. It was the noise of a city that always got to him, and as he stood there on the edge of the Boston Commons, with his back to the park and facing the wall of traffic noise, he regretted for a moment that human hearing wasn't as sharp as elf hearing. If it was, surely humans would just quiet down, even a little.

Whatever. Time for a business call. He reached for his radio and called Santa's signal, and waited. September, and the city was still breathing summer air, though it was now carrying a ribbon of chill. Bernard glanced at his pocket watch and worked at keeping his irritation down to the wadded little ball, tried to keep it hidden away inside. He had to remember that confronting Santa was like confronting a non-Newtonian fluid. The harder Santa was pushed, the harder Santa pushed back, regardless of logic and reason.

Really, though, more elves? There was no reason they needed more elves. Even if it weren't a bad idea to go 'recruiting'. The workshop was doing just fine. They were keeping up. Bernard knew Santa had big ambitions to expand, though, and Santa thought that that meant they needed more elves. If they were going to expand, yeah, sure, a few more elves would have been great, if a few more elves could be found, but the expansion was a bad idea, and Bernard had said as much. Several times.

You're so old-fashioned, Santa would inevitably respond. Thing BIGGER, Bernard. Think of how much more we could do with an expansion! The workshop hasn't expanded alongside the post-Middle-Ages population boom, it needs to catch up! More toys, more happiness, more belief, more joy!

Ugh, you are such a modernist, Bernard would grumble. This is not a direct-correlation situation. An expansion would create an imbalance that we're not prepared to address, besides which, again, this is it as far as workforce. There aren't any more eligible elves.

And again, Santa would snoot, change is life. Life is changing and we need to change with it.

And so on.

People slouched past, hunched against the drizzle inside black parkas. Busses blew down the road and sent eddies of the first frail autumn leaves swirling. Honks reverberated between the buildings like ping-pong balls, setting his nerves on edge.

His radio squealed; he jumped, took a breath, and answered.

"Santa?"

"Yes, it's me, Bernard. You call?"

"Yeah, can we talk? Where are you?"

"I'm on the other end of this call, is where I am. What do you need?"

"Can we talk face to face?"

"... Sure," said Santa's voice, sounding a bit wary. "Boston. I'm at the bus stop at Federal and Franklin, but the bus is pulling up now so maybe you should wait until… Oh."

Bernard shot a quick glance up and down the bus station, finding his bearings, before nailing his boss with a glare. Santa glared back at him, but behind the angry frown of the man's eyebrows there was just a smudge of apprehension. It was either the fact that the bus was pulling up and he hadn't yet managed to find exact change, or the fact that there beside him, hidden nearly entirely by the man's shadow, was a magical being.

Bernard paused, staring into the deep shadow at the form, and felt his skin prickle slightly.

"See," hissed Santa triumphantly, if a bit distractedly (still fishing for change in his pockets), "you said it couldn't be done, but I did it. I found an elf, and that was only after a few hour's search – "

"Shhh!" Bernard said, coming forwards and looking around. "People will think you're a looney."

"This is South Boston, that's okay," said Santa, but lowered his voice, glancing sideways.

"And that's not an elf," muttered Bernard, taking Santa's arm and drawing him away from the smaller form beside him. "It can't be. See, it's a…"

Light from the bus station fell onto the thing, and Bernard had to scramble for pronouns. It was a she, and she had pointy ears (wasn't even trying to hide them), cheeks that flashed in the light, shining black hair pulled back into some sort of bun creation that was gathering drops of drizzle like insects caught in a spider's web, wide green eyes that were lit from within in a very familiar sort of way.

She spent approximately half a second shooting sass out of her eyes at Bernard, but presently her eyes became more focused and her elf charm hardened. She stood more rigid. Her smile faltered.

"Would you look at that," said Bernard, slowly, staring at her.

"Told you," said Santa. "Bernard, this is Judy. Judy, Bernard. Judy's going to come back up to the North Pole with me. I left my car up at a parking meter, though, we've got to catch this bus before the meter expires. Then we'll drive back up to Newton and Comet can – "

"We've already got a Judy at the workshop," Bernard interrupted. "This won't fly. Sorry. You'll have to leave her here."

Santa gave Bernard one of his slow, hard stares, but Bernard could only feel Santa's eyes. He himself was busy staring at Judy, and staring hard. He supposed to Santa it merely looked like the two of them were engaging in a very angry staring contest, which was fine. At the marrow of it all, that's all it was.

"Don't," Bernard warned her.

She narrowed her eyes. Her smile disappeared.

Bernard's head tilted very carefully and very slightly to the side and the lenses of his eyes caught something that Judy saw, which made her take a step back.

"Bernard," said Santa, "What are you – "

Judy gave an ugly sneer and melted, the way elves can melt away into their surroundings and disappear. Bernard blinked, blinked again, and looked around. No sign of her; didn't mean she wasn't around. Santa was aghast.

"What the dickens did you just – "

"Bus," said Bernard, gesturing; the line of people had filed on and the bus driver was watching them with disinterested impatience. Santa scrambled once again to dig out the change as they both headed up the steps. There were no seats left but there was room enough for them to stand crammed between the back exit and some occupied chairs, clutching the handrails. The bus started up and Bernard braced himself; busses were not his favorite, nor was receiving a verbal attack the likes of which he was now expecting from Santa.

"You'd better explain yourself," said Santa, quietly, sideways. The bus turned a corner; all the damp people on board leaned to the left. Bernard readjusted his footing and opened his mouth, but Santa kept talking. "I didn't ask you for permission to recruit more elv—… more employees… because, first of all, and most importantly, and what you seem to keep forgetting – I'm the boss of Christm– … of this business," he said, looking around self-consciously. "I know you advised against recruiting but I don't think you understand business plans. Sometimes we have to alter them. We need to be flexible and allow our work force to change with the seasonal demand."

"Yeah I get that, but first of all this isn't a business we're running, and second, there are some things that can't change, and one of those things is our workforce. Frankly, Sa – … Mr. Mason, you don't know enough about the types of employees we hire for you to go around recruiting. There are no more to be found." Bernard's anger didn't want to stay hidden in the pit anymore; it was expanding. He shed it; it bounded from him and rampaged around the bus, harmless. He ignored it.

"But I just found one," growled Santa, "and you just blew her off like she was some witch. What did you do back there?"

"She was dangerous."

"O-ho, dangerous?" hooted Santa. "You know what, Bernard, I think our Judy back up at the North… I mean at the worksh… At the, um…"

"Headquarters?"

"Yes, thank you, the Judy at Headquarters is more dangerous than the Judy I just met – at least this Judy doesn't wear a hat you could impale yourself on."

"Believe me, this el… This Judy you found did not fit the job profile," said Bernard, and held on to the railing as the bus now swerved right. A woman seated next to where he was standing cast a furtive glance up at the two of them, then stared pointedly out the window.

"You know what, Bernard, after all these years, after all this time working for my company, you keep way too may secrets," muttered Santa. "You say you know these things but then you get mad when I don't know them, but you never tell me anything."

Bernard stared painfully out the window, sharing a visual escape with the woman in the seat next to him. His recently-escaped anger calmed for a moment and stared as well.

"I tell you enough, Mr. Mason," he finally said, under his breath.

"Not enough for me to trust you," said Santa, which stung but did not surprise Bernard. "How do you expect me to take every piece of advice you hand me when you can't back half the stuff up?"

"Are we or are we not in the business of promoting belief in things unseen?" asked Bernard. "Look, raise all the eyebrow at me you want, I don't need you to trust me all the time, but come on. This particular subject is an area you have zero expertise in. I'm trying to help you out here. That is my job, you know."

"I think you're afraid that if I hire more of you people, you'll get replaced," said Santa, with a slight sneer. Bernard huffed indignantly.

"There are several reasons that hadn't crossed my mind yet."

"Maybe you should invite it across so you can consider the possibility, then. I'm not the only one looking for more workers for Headquarters."

Bernard did what was probably a very comical double-take at his boss.

"You… what?"

"Sandman agreed to help me out. He says he can track the location of e—… potential workers… based on the readings he takes…" Santa leaned into Bernard's ear, now whispering, "… of the dreams of children. I believe he's up in Iceland right now. Hopefully having more luck than I have," Santa said, raising his eyebrows and looking out the window.

Bernard almost let his anger back in so he could explode at Santa, but he clenched his fists and kept his eyes firmly inside of his own skull before opening his mouth.

"Sandman is helping you?"

"Yeah… I should probably radio him and see how he's doing, you think?"

Santa unhooked the radio from his belt and made as if to press the call button. Bernard's mind had become a coronary of panic and frustration and fear with this news and he figured what he really should do was just reach out and snatch Santa's radio from his hands and –

Everything around him shifted for the briefest moment.

"What?" he said, because everything looked very strange. It struck him that something was quite wrong; suddenly all was silent, which meant they were no longer… Where had they been? The Isle of Man? Hawaii? Iceland?

Iceland. Sandman!

"Over here!" boomed Santa's voice, very close to Bernard's head. Bernard winced. The man was using his 'emergency' voice, for a reason Bernard couldn't guess. Santa was also hanging over Bernard's face, his great fuzzy beard and moustache and eyebrows and hair obscuring most of Bernard's field of view.

"Over here, I said!" Santa yelled, turning aside. Who was he yelling at? Bernard didn't care.

"Santa," he began, "Let me talk to Sandman, he doesn't understand what you've…"

Bernard's own voice came back to him in a slurry of sounds that didn't sound remotely like speech. Santa turned back to Bernard and Bernard was puzzled by Santa's expression. The man was on high alert, eyebrows furrowed.

"You're awake! Are you hurt?" Not only was Santa's question a bit more inquisitional than Bernard would have liked, but it made no sense. Of course he wasn't hurt – why would he be? – and he tried to tell Santa as much, but once again, the noises that came out of his mouth were not words. He shut his mouth, paused, and tried again.

"Of course I'm okay, what are you… what…" Bernard listened to his own voice, and could not recognize it for a moment, but at least they were clearly words. Santa did not look pleased with this response; he turned away once again and called for help from people that Bernard could not see.

His arm hurt badly. He wondered why, and tried to raise his arm, but became aware then that he was on his back. His ears rang and the white arch of the bus's ceiling above him began to flicker with white, red, yellow, blue. More sounds; people sounds. Scared sounds, cries and shouts that were becoming sharp. Sirens.

Bernard sat up; the bus around him seemed to reel. Santa caught his shoulder.

"Lay back down," he commanded, but Bernard steadied himself on the railing, paused, and then pulled himself to his feet.

"You were just unconscious," said Santa, rising to his feet as well. "You shouldn't stand yet. Let the medical people check you out."

Bernard looked at Santa.

"They should take a look at you, Santa, you're… You've got blood on your shirt. Are you… Did you… Are you okay?" His mind stumbled; he tried to catch it.

"That's your blood, you idiot," said Santa. "Sit. Sit sit," he said, pushing lightly on Bernard's shoulder, which caused Bernard to sit immediately. The bus was scattered with people, most of them looking sick and clinging to rails, some dazed and shuffling off the bus. Windows were gone. His anger was gone.

"What happened?" he finally asked. Santa sat down next to Bernard.

"Don't know. The bus just swerved, suddenly, and we rolled. I think everyone is okay… I don't know though, the EMT's just got here."

Bernard sat with his arm and his boss and the sirens and sounds for a minute, maybe two, and tried to gather himself back together, but his gather-ability wasn't working, not quite. He looked down at his arm and saw some blood on his sleeve; there was glass embedded in his palm, and his wrist was very clearly broken.

"You have to fix this," Bernard heard himself say to Santa.

"…What?" asked Santa, irate. "Isn't that more along the lines of Father Time's duties?"

At this moment a man in a white uniform appeared in front of them and Bernard found himself staring into the bulb of a very bright flashlight. The white uniform was speaking; Bernard couldn't catch what he'd said.

"Would you repeat that?" Bernard asked.

"Can you tell me your name?" asked the man again, patiently. "Don't move your head; follow the light with your eyes."

"That's a lot," griped Bernard, who had meant that it was a lot of instructions.

"What's your name?" the man requested again. Bernard was catching up; really, he was. But how was he supposed to answer that sort of question?

"Um," he supplied. Santa watched him helplessly.

"Can you tell me where you're from?" asked the man in white.

Bernard wanted to answer and prove he was okay, but lies were not as quick to come to him as the truth was, and the truth would surely get him diagnosed with some sort of brain trauma.

"Ah," he said, haltingly. "Well it's complicated."

"I see. Can you tell me when your birthday is?"

"No, I have no idea," he said, which was true, but he realized belatedly that it had been a foolish thing to say, given the circumstance.

"Hmm. Can you tell me today's date?"

Bernard, who was used to North Pole time, and who was still trying to catch up, struggled to remember which day it would be here in… Boston? Yes, Boston. He opened his mouth to answer but found that the man in the white uniform was now talking to Santa.

"What's your name?" the man was asking.

"Paul Mason. This is Bernard."

"What's your relation to Bernard?" asked the man.

"He's, um, we're, I'm his, his, his uncle. We're on a business trip." Santa looked puzzled by what he'd just heard himself say. Bernard did not often get to see Paul Mason scramble for words and he would have enjoyed it were it not for the fact that several very upsetting things were going on.

The man in the white uniform began firing off questions about what, exactly, Santa had seen happen, and Bernard caught bits of questions or answers and he watched as the man in white picked up Bernard's left arm and pushed up the sleeve and poked it and pulled at it and generally caused Bernard an alarming amount of discomfort, all in the name of eventually diagnosing the appendage as broken, which Bernard already knew, though admittedly it was one of the few things he was currently sure of.

Suddenly, the man in white had gone.

"Where'd he go?" asked Bernard.

"He said he's going to get a stretcher. He wants to get you to the hospital."

"Ugh. No. Fix it."

"I already said, that's not my job. Can't we get Father Time?"

"Not… No, not this bus thing, fix this." Bernard held up his broken wrist so Santa could stare at it blankly, and with a little bit of horror.

"I can't unbreak your bones."

"Sure you can," said Bernard, desperately. His arm was on fire.

"No I can't."

"Look, I don't have health insurance – or money – and you just said we were related. Any cost is going to fall onto you. Fix this or you'll have to pay for all the dumb hospital bills."

Santa stared.

"Trying to help you out here," said Bernard.

"You're going to the hospital anyways, though, they think you've got a concussion."

"I'm fine. I'm feeling better. I just… I'll be fine. Just fix this so they'll let me go so we can get out of here."

"How?"

"Just put your hands on it and, I don't know, do your Santa magic thing. You use magic all the time. Hurry, would you?" Bernard hoped Santa wasn't catching on to the fact that Bernard could barely get words out at the right pace; he felt like he had to talk in hyper speed just to sound normal. Santa's hands hovered for a moment above Bernard's arm, dithering.

"Hundreds of dollars for a visit to the ER," Bernard supplied. "Probably thousands if they do surgery."

Santa found the resolve he needed to place his hands around the break; almost immediately there came a quiet noise and a dull pressure and then Santa took his hands away. Bernard raised his wrist, turned his bleeding hand about, flipped it back to front.

"Wow," said Bernard.

"Did it work?"

"Seems so."

"I'm not going to try to fix your head."

"There's nothing wrong with my head. Now let's just…" Bernard rose, probably faster than he should have. He took a step and his headache exploded; his vision left him and the loss of sense was replaced by another sense, which was the sense that he was going to be very ill. He tried to lower himself back down but his balance had also abandoned him. In a moment he was back on the floor. Something was behind his head and someone was asking him a question, over and over.

"Are you okay?"

He couldn't say.