AN: This is a sequel to my other story 'Dear Santa'. I don't think you have to necessarily read that in order to understand this one, but it might be a little bit easier to understand! Please enjoy!
Disclaimer: I think the Christmas season is getting to me… I have no witty remarks! I don't own it either…
"Luce I'm going to be late tonight babe. Could you either make dinner or order pizza, you know where the money is?" Lucy groaned as she listened to the answering machine. Her mom normally worked late one or two nights a week, but Lucy was only 16! She didn't want to be babysitting her sister for the rest of her life.
"I love you girls. Could you… call me when you get in ok? I just need to know you got home safely." Lucy sighed. It was apparently a bad case. Her mom only asked her to call when it involved children, which were always the worst cases.
"Danni! We've got to call mom!" Lucy yelled out through the apartment. Danni came around the corner. She was the exact opposite of Lucy. Lucy had dirty blonde hair with blue eyes. She was the spitting image of her father. Danni on the other hand looked exactly like their mother with her dark brown hair and her brown eyes.
"Alright, can we do pizza tonight then?" Danni asked. Lucy shrugged then dialed their mom's cell phone number and put it on speaker.
"Lucy? Danni?" Lindsay's voice asked over the receiver.
"Hey mom, we're both here. I think we're going to order pizza tonight. Still going to be late?" Lucy asked as Danni turned the TV on and muted it.
"Yeah, sorry girls. It's going to be a long night for all of us. Do you want me to send Flack over to bring you to the lab? It's not a school night" Lindsay offered. Lucy looked at Danni who shrugged.
"Sure mom. Send him over around seven. We'll be done with dinner and packed by then" Lucy replied. Danni rolled her eyes when Lucy motioned for her to switch the channel back to MTV.
"Alright girls. I'll see you in awhile" Lindsay said hanging up the phone. Lucy and Danni looked at each other.
"We should pack" Danni said. Lucy sighed but nodded.
"Yeah, I'm going to take a shower first ok?" Danni nodded and watched her sister head into their shared bathroom. Danni sighed and started to head to her room to pack an overnight bag when something caught her attention. She had never seen it before. It was a plain VHS tape. She checked to make sure Lucy was still in the bathroom before she popped it in and pressed play.
"…Come on Lucy! Smiled for the camera baby! That's a girl! Now tell Santa what you want!" Lucy was stunned when she walked out of the bathroom. She quickly made her way into the living room to see her sister watching home videos. On the screen was a three year old Lucy crying on Santa's lap. Danny was trying to cheer her up while Lindsay took the video. "Please don't cry Luce. You don't want Uncle Mac to know that you were upset do you?" Lucy took a seat next to her sister, watching the video intently.
"Don't tell Uncle Mac!" little Lucy wailed. Danny looked to Lindsay for help, his heart breaking that Santa was scaring his little girl.
"Lindsay, I'm going to use my service weapon to shoot Santa if he doesn't make her smile soon!" Danny growled lowly, almost too softly for the camera.
"Why are you watching this?" Lucy asked Danni softly. The younger girl shrugged her shoulders. Lucy looked over and noticed that Danni was crying. She quickly and gently took the remote from her sister and stopped the video. "Danni look at me" Lucy demanded gently.
"Why?" Danni asked as she looked up to older sister for help. Lucy didn't have to ask Danni to elaborate, she knew what her sister was talking about.
"You know why Danni. He did love you though!"
"He couldn't!" Danni shouted angry. "He died before mom even told him she was pregnant with me!" Lucy felt her heart clench. She missed her daddy fiercely.
"Think about it Danni. Look how much he would do for me. Even if he lived, do you think he would love you any less? Do you think he wouldn't shoot Santa for you if the supposedly jolly man made you cry? Well I have news for you Danielle Elizabeth Messer! He would do anything for you!" Lucy yelled. Danni sat in shock for a few moments before flinging herself at her older sister. They had always had a close bond.
"Will you tell me stories?" she asked softly. Lucy nodded.
"Of course, but we still have to pack and eat dinner. How about I order the pizza real fast, then we can help each other pack and I'll tell you stories?" Danni nodded and sat patiently while Lucy ordered the pizza. "Alright come on, you pack first and I'll tell you a story." The two made their way into Danni's room.
"…We were laughing so hard. Flack had just smeared his ice cream down dad's favorite shirt and then stuck the rest of it in mom's hair. Mom was so mad but dad just picked me up and smeared all the ice cream from his shirt all over my dress. I think mom was going to pull out her gun and shoot them both!" Lucy just finished telling the last story she could remember. They were going through some of the photo albums their mom kept as well.
"You telling Danni the ice cream from hell story?" Don joked as he stood in the doorway of Lucy's room, where the girls had parked themselves with the pizza.
"Of course Uncle Flack" Lucy replied. Danni stifled her giggles. Don eyed the younger wearily.
"You told her my driving story didn't you?" Don groaned. Both girls nodded and giggled.
"Maybe you should have had someone else drive. I don't want to be backed into the precinct tonight!" Danni laughed. Lucy tried to contain her laughter, but it didn't last long.
"Ha ha ha! Let's go! I have to deliver you to your mother shortly or she'll start freaking out. Girls take it easy on her. The two dead girls looked exactly like you" he whispered. Lucy nodded. The whole family wanted to know they were ok.
"Come on then! I want to get some sleep!" Lucy joked as she and Danni grabbed their overnight bags from next to the front door. Lucy also had more photo albums tucked under her arm. If they were going to be stuck at the lab for the night she would tell her sister more stories.
Lucy and Danni were playing around on the elevator. Anybody but their family would have thought that they were five rather than 16 and 12. The doors opened and Mac smirked as they pushed each other out of the elevator into one of his nightly lab workers.
"Sorry!" Lucy called. The lad tech stared them down angrily. Lucy recoiled from the look remembering 12 years ago.
"Could you watch where you're going?" he barked. Lucy started shaking, having flashbacks from her father's murder. Danni grabbed her hand and watched as Mac made his way towards them, noticing how scared his goddaughter's looked.
"Is there a problem Sampson?" Mac barked. The lab tech turned to look at his boss.
"The problem is these kids running around the lab. If Detective Messer could keep her legs closed, then she wouldn't be raising them on her own" he grunted. Lucy and Danni stared at the man in shock. Mac looked beyond pissed and they were worried that he would shoot the man.
"For your information, my husband was killed protecting his daughter" Lindsay said from where she entered the conversation with Stella. Mac's jaw clenched as he pointed to his office.
"My office now Sampson" he growled out. The group watched as he stormed into the office and flopped down on Mac's couch. Lindsay wrapped her arms around her daughter's shoulders and guided them to her office.
"We're sorry mom. We were just playing around with each other" Danni said. Lindsay shushed her and sat the girls on her black leather couch.
"It doesn't matter. He's just sore because he asked me out and I flat out told him no" Lindsay said. She turned to Lucy. "Honey, come back to me babe."
"I'm sorry" she whispered. Lindsay smiled and tucked a loose strand of hair behind Lucy's ear. She noticed the photo albums and pulled them out from under her daughter's arms.
"Were you guys looking through these?" she asked as she opened the one that Danny had made of the family trip to Montana.
"Yeah, I found a movie and I asked Luce to tell me some stories. She was going to tell me more later, but I don't think she's up to it, so I'll just flip through the pictures" Danni supplied. Lindsay nodded and stood up.
"I'm sorry to just run like this, but I've got to go" Lindsay said kissing each on their foreheads before leaving, giving them a fleeting glance.
"I'm going to get on the computer, why don't you lay down for awhile?" Danni asked moving to the desk. Lucy nodded and curled up on the couch. A few minutes later Danni looked over and saw what her sister was wearing. She had on a large NYPD t-shirt with the CSU logo on the front and 'NYPD Crime Scene Unit' on the back. She had a pair of grey sweatpants on with the NYPD logo and NYPD down the left leg. She had her hair pulled back into a ponytail using a black ribbon with a thin blue line running through the middle. She used white puffy paint to write 'Danny Messer EOW: 10-26-2013'. She had made another one for Danni to wear. She had two caramel colored teddy bears tucked against her chest each with a white t-shirt on. Danni remembered one time seeing the bears briefly and knew one shirt said 'I feel safe at night, my dad's a cop' with a picture of a baby girl sleeping on it and the other said 'My dad is the detective but I'm the boss'. She knew the last one the best because she had that same teddy bear along with one that said 'My mommy and daddy are the best police officers in the whole' and had a picture of the world on it. Flack had given them to her when she was born.
"Has anyone ever told you how dad died?" Lucy said suddenly. Danni was too engrossed in scrutinizing what her sister was wearing that she didn't even realize that her sister wasn't asleep.
"No. Everyone thinks I'm too young, or so I've been told" Danni replied, rolling her eyes and turning her attention back to the computer screen.
"I won't tell you that. Would you like to hear it?" she asked sitting up. Danni nodded and sat next to her sister. She reached down and grabbed her teddy bears and snuggled next to Lucy.
"Alright, I'm ready now" she said. Lucy nodded and took a deep breath, getting ready to retell the most horrific night of her life.
"Alright so dad was taking me out one day. We were going to the park because it was lunch time and dad always did something with me for lunch since mom spent most of the day with me. We got there and I ran to the playground. Dad hung around me, always overprotective, when this guy came up. Dad got nervous because the guy was watching me so he made sure both of his guns were loaded and easy to get to. He had his badge with him, so I wasn't worried. He told me we were going to get ice cream. I was ok with that, I mean the guy was giving me the creeps, but dad was with me and I knew nothing would happen as long as he was there. Dad picked me up and carried me past the guy. I wrapped my arms around daddy's neck and turned to look back at the guy and that was when I saw it. He had a .44 Desert Eagle. I don't remember how many times he shot, but all I remember is dad pulling me close to his chest as he fell to the ground. I also felt a bullet pierce my ribs. He stood over us and stood with his arms folded across his chest. I thought dad was pretending to be dead, so I played along too, to save myself. When I woke up I was in the hospital recovering from surgery and found out that dad wasn't playing. He was really dead." Danni sat in shock. She never knew her sister was there when their dad was shot.
"What happened to the guy?" she asked softly. Lucy took a deep breath and wiped some of her tears away.
"He was caught and convicted of killing a police officer and wounding me. You see one of the bullets went all the way through dad and pierced my rib cage. I had surgery to remove the bullet. Flack and everyone else made sure that the man would never be released on parole." Danni sighed, but nodded. Her sister was in pain from trying to remember that horrible time.
"I think that's enough of that" Lindsay said as she walked into her office and grabbed her coat and some files from her desk. Lucy and Danni looked up.
"I thought you had to work?" Lucy asked through her thick throat. Lindsay nodded, bending down to pick up the girls' bags.
"I did, but after the incident Mac is sending us home so we can spend some time together. We can pick up some Ben and Jerry's Half-Baked ice cream, some Twix bars, some Almond Joy bars, some peanut M&M's, some brownies, some chocolate chip cookies, and any thing else junk food related that we can find in the store. Then we can snuggle on the couch and watch some of our many chick flicks" Lindsay said. The girls stood up and followed their mom through the lab corridors.
"Can we watch 'The Notebook' first?" Lucy asked, her mood improving slightly. Lindsay smiled.
"If Danni doesn't mind" she replied. Danni shrugged.
"Only if we can watch 'An Officer and A Gentleman' after that" Danni responded. Lucy nodded and the three girls latched their arms together.
"Thank god I have tomorrow off so we can watch 'Breakfast at Tiffany's' later" Lindsay chuckled. They would get through whatever they needed to, as long as they had each other and Danny watching over them.
Ok, so I had people waiting for this for awhile! I'm sorry about not posting it right away… it took some time to write and get perfect… which it's not, but it's as close as it can get! Please review!