Author's Note: This story is completely written. I will be uploading one chapter per day. It is potentially slightly AU, but not on purpose. It does not especially matter, but the story was intended to be set in season 10.

This is my fourth annual Christma fic and, as with all previous stories, all the chapter titles are taken from lyrics of Christmas songs. If you want to know what one is, feel free to ask, or take a guess of your own if you'd rather. So far, I haven't had to repeat, but if a yearly Christmas fic becomes tradition, it'll happen sooner or later. There's only so many Christmas songs out there. I will post the full list of songs at the end of the final chapter if someone requests it.

Thank you for your time, and I hope you enjoy the story.

Winter had come to the Nevada area, and with it a biting wind carrying piled snow clouds on its back. Seemingly overnight, the land had been turned from the dry brown of early winter to frosted white, with drifts deep enough in places that a horse could sink up to his belly in the stuff. It was one of the most sudden winters the area had ever seen, and the cattlemen were unprepared for it.

"I can't believe you two are really going to try and make it home after that snow storm we had last night," Candy remarked as he fumbled at saddling his horse in the morning chill.

Not having expected to run into a blizzard, Hoss and Joe Cartwright had headed up a cattle drive aiming for the north. By luck or God's grace, they had made it through ahead of the storm, and the cattle were someone else's problem now. Despite the inclement weather, both Joe and Hoss were agreed on turning back for home right away, which struck Candy as very odd since they usually spent some time hanging around a town or city as a sort of vacation and reward for their hard work.

"You've never had the Christmas dinner Hop Sing fixes," Hoss said, straightening the blanket on the back of his horse, "Turkey and dumplings and mashed potatoes and biscuits an' gravy..." he trailed off, lost in blissful recollection of Christmas dinners past.

"And it's not like you have to go back with us," Joe put in, warming the bit of his horse's bridle in his hands before offering it to the pinto, "You've been paid, and there's nothin' for you to do around the ranch until at least the first of the year anyhow. You could stay here until the snow clears out."

"I could," Candy acknowledged agreeably, "But I'm not goin' to."

"Why not?" Joe inquired, "You missed last Christmas."

"True, and you two wouldn't stop telling me about it for weeks," Candy reminded them.

His own solution to the cold bit problem had been to put the bridle under his coat while he groomed his horse and put a saddle on him. He now withdrew the bridle, felt the bit to see if the cold edge had been taken off, then put it to his horse. The animal took the bit without any fuss.

"Besides," Candy added, "We were practically strangers then."

"Candy, we ain't been strangers to you since the first night we met out on the trail," Hoss said.

"And not even then," Joe interjected, "You'd been following us long enough to know Hoss' name."

"And a lot more'n that," Hoss continued, "Why you fit in just like family from the start."

Candy adjusted the cheek strap on his horse's bridle, grinning without looking up from the work.

"And you want to know why I'm goin' with you," Candy said with an amused shake of his head.

"I don't follow," Hoss confessed, and Joe merely shrugged when he looked at him.

"Family doesn't let family do stupid things," Candy said, tugging at the strap of the bridle, then stepping back to see how it stayed on the horse, "Not alone anyway."

"Y'know, Hoss, I think Candy just insulted us," Joe remarked.

"It's a darn sight worse'n that, little brother," Hoss told him, "He finally admitted what we've been telling him for months now, that he's all but one of the family."

"I've always wanted a younger brother," Joe said.

Candy took the ribbing without a word of protest, not even to point out that his relationship to the Cartwrights hadn't been anything like so smooth and simple as Hoss suggested.

"I may be younger'n you, an' maybe not," Candy replied, as he moved to tying his saddlebags and bedroll onto the saddle, "But since I'm the only one who thinks it's crazy to ride out in this weather, I'd say that clearly makes me the adult in this situation."

"Hoss," Joe said with feigned indignation, "I think he just insulted us again."

"Only if you take bein' called a child as an insult," Candy said evenly.

Despite a fierce temper and life-long inclination to settle matters with violence or flight, Candy had proven himself to be more than a decent ranch hand, but also a true and loyal friend and steady ally of the Cartwrights. Through hard work and dangerous situations, Candy had earned the right to poke fun at the Cartwright boys quite freely without inducing any real anger in them, and they would give as good as they got, just as if they'd known him all their lives.

"If you're such a sensible adult," Joe persisted, throwing a blanket across his horse's withers, "How come you're coming along with us loco infants?"

"Who said anything about being sensible?" Candy asked, offering Joe a wry grin, "If I were sensible, I wouldn't have stayed in the saloon all night, frittering away my wages on a card game I was losing."

"The man has a point," Hoss admitted, then added, "But I think Joe was the least responsible of us last night, what with payin' for all those drinks for that purty gal."

"Hey, at least I didn't enter a drinking contest with the town's resident champion," Joe protested.

"Suffice to say, we all should have gone to bed early," Candy interrupted before Hoss could protest that he hadn't known he was up against a champion when he'd entered into it, "But if we were that smart, we wouldn't be ridin' out of town this morning."

"Hoss..." Joe said hesitantly, "I can't tell if he just insulted us or himself that time."

"I don't think it was an either or kinda insult," Hoss answered.

Candy didn't deign to tell him whether he was right or not, and merely led his horse out of the livery stable and onto the frozen street. Hoss and Joe followed shortly. Hoss and Joe had shared the duties of trail boss as usual, and therefore also shared the responsibility of carrying the money from the sale of the cattle. It was currently Hoss' turn. Next drive it would be Joe's.

The three of them mounted their horses, did a last mental check to make sure they'd concluded all the business they had in town, and then they rode out, Joe and Hoss side by each and Candy slightly behind them. Once outside the confines of the town and on the open road, they changed to single file, letting one horse break trail for the other two. They switched leads often, so each horse in his turn got a break from plowing through the snow. They also held their horses to a slow pace to reduce the chances of the animals sweating and getting too cold as a result of becoming wet.

Though he was the smallest of the horses, Joe's pinto took to the snow best, seeming to enjoy shoving chest first into the deepest drifts he could find, despite his rider's efforts to keep him steered toward areas where the snow was shallower. Hoss' tall dark brown would pick his way to shallower areas on his own, not liking any snow that went past his hocks. Candy's chestnut was somewhere in between the two, not seeming to care much which way he went, just so long as the other two horses were nearby.

It had been a long, long drive out, made all the longer by the necessity of driving the cattle around any towns they encountered along the way. Now they planned to take advantage of every one of those towns. The riding conditions through a town were sure to be easier, and they planned to stay in hotels at night to avoid the worst of the cold, as well as to give their horses the luxury of a stable. It was a rather expensive way to travel, which was another objection Candy had to the notion, but none of them were of a mind to spend a night out in the deep snow if they could help it.

Much as he gave them a hard time about it, Candy actually admired how devoted Joe and Hoss were to their home. It had perplexed him at first, that they could love a piece of land so much that they were willing to fight through any obstacle to reach it. But then he'd seen the place, and he understood how a man could grow attached to such a spread. More than that, he'd come to understand that their love of the Ponderosa had little to do with the mountains, trees and streams -though all of those were lovely- and a lot more to do with the fact that it was something they had built and maintained together. The Ponderosa was just the name of the place, the land was just a physical representation of something much larger, more rare and important than whatever money could buy. With the Cartwrights, it was all about family and living by a set of values, sharing their way of life together.

Oh, they could bellyache and complain with the best of them, particularly Hoss, but the boys loved the ranch just as much as their father did. They put their hearts into every part of it, from the ancient pine forests to the man-made streams for the cattle to drink from. They loved every rock and tree of the Ponderosa, because it was their home, and they had built it together.

Candy envied them that, and was grateful that they allowed him to stay, knowing that his life and way of being was the better for having been touched by them and theirs.

He didn't understand why the boys had such a need to hurry home despite the obstacles when they had spent most of the drive alternately moaning about the cold and the long hours of riding and speaking wistfully of a warm hotel bed and some good hot food, but he wanted to learn. And he knew the only way to learn something right was to observe others do it, and to also do it yourself.

Joe and Hoss spent a lot of that day's ride recounting Christmases past, and dreaming of the one that was upcoming. To Candy's ears, it sounded a lot like their usual means of motivating themselves ever forward. On a cattle drive, they motivated themselves by talking about what they'd do when the job was over, the towns they would stop in, what they intended to do there. On the way back from a drive, they would talk about what was waiting for them back home. But normally they would look at bad weather and choose to delay their plans. For some reason, the promise of Christmas dinner seemed to be sufficient motivation to brave the snowy weather. Candy didn't understand why.

Of course, he supposed maybe that was because he'd never had a home and family to return to. He'd been an orphaned army brat and a drifter, with no real family of his own, no place on a map he could point to and say 'I started here, I belong here'. He'd been everywhere and nowhere, and none of it had ever been his. He'd tried to make a family once, but that had been swiftly taken away from him, and he knew now that he could not have it back.

It probably wouldn't have worked out anyway. At least, that's what he told himself to dull the pain of it. Candy had a great capacity for anger, but only one man had managed to awaken a dark hatred in him, one it had taken him years to finally let go of. For that, he'd needed the help of Ben Cartwright, to make him take a good look at himself and what he was letting that hate do to him, and the people around him. Even then it hadn't been easy to let go. He knew he never would have managed it alone.

And so he would poke fun at them for riding through the snow to make it home in time for Christmas, but he would go along with them nonetheless, because that was the sort of person he was learning to be, the kind of person he'd always wanted to be, but had never known how or been given a chance to be. Foolishness or not, slogging home through the snow was a piece of what made the Cartwrights who they were, and Candy would take the ridiculous with the sensible for a chance at a better way of living, which was what working for and living near the Cartwrights offered him in spades.

They rode as long as the sun was up, Hoss and Joe opting to pass right through towns they would normally have stopped in. They were eager to be home, and if they had to miss some of their favorite hotels and saloons to get there faster, they were willing to do so. Candy questioned their decision, but they couldn't explain it to him; the best they seemed able to do was to remind him that he really didn't have to haul home with them, he was perfectly free to stop anywhere he liked.

Though it was of course tempting to do so in order to get out of the cold, wet snow and the freezing wind, Candy did not take them up on that, and instead continued to ride with them.

Only when it started to get dark did they start looking for a town to stop in. At first it seemed like they'd let their eagerness get the better of them, because there didn't seem to be any settlement nearby. Just as they were beginning to consider what they'd have to do in order to survive a night out in the snow, Candy -who was leading at the time- caught sight of light up ahead.

Not long after, they rode into a little one horse town. Actually, it was only figuratively one horse, as there was in fact a livery where they could stable their horses.

"Where's a good place to stay for the night?" Joe inquired of the owner of the livery.

"There ain't but one place in town. Lacy's Saloon has a second floor which serves as hotel when need be," the man replied, "Just down the street apiece," he gestured with one hand.

"Thanks," Joe said politely, exchanging a concerned look with his companions.

None of them could imagine getting much in the way of rest above a saloon, but they weren't exactly drowning in other options. With a shrug, Joe led the way down the street to Lacy's.

Lacy proved to be a bored looking blond behind the bar, and her saloon was almost entirely empty except for an unconscious drunk at a table somewhere near the back of the room. She blinked at them from beneath impossibly long eyelashes as Joe explained that they needed rooms for the night. From under the bar, she produced a registry book.

"Sign your names and I'll fetch your room keys," she said, and shuffled off before they could reply.

As per instruction, they each wrote their name on a line of the book. Candy went last, and was just finishing when Lacy returned. She flipped the book around to scrutinize it.

"Canaday, eh?" Lacy muttered, "What's a matter? Ain't you got no first name like these two?"

"Not one I'd write any place," Candy replied evenly.

For the first year they had known him, neither Hoss nor Joe had even heard Candy's real last name. Sometimes they doubted he knew his own first name, seeing as he only ever used the nickname he'd been saddled with from an early age. Assuming it was a nickname; it was something he'd never clarified. For all they knew, it could be his real name, which seemed like some sort of cruel joke, particularly considering it in combination with his last name. Assuming it was his last name.

"And Cartwright," Lacy said, glancing at Joe and Hoss, "I've heard of you."

"Oh really?" Joe asked.

"You're that family's got the big spread out near Virginia City way. Cattle ranchers, ain't ya?"

"That's us," Joe replied.

Lacy looked for a moment like she'd say something more, but then she merely shrugged and handed the keys to Joe, saying, "Only got two rooms, but there's a cot you can drag up and use in the back."

"Thanks," Joe said.

It wasn't long before he and his companions had gone up and gone to bed, with Joe volunteering for the cot and sharing a room with Hoss. Each of them, more tired than he had realized, was asleep almost before he lay down for the night.