Star Trek and all its intellectual property is owned by Paramount/CBS. No infringement intended, no profit made.
This story has not been been beta-read, so any mistakes in it are mine.
This is a follow-up of sorts to 'As Dreams Are Born'. It's dedicated to all the great friends I've made through the Enterprise fandom.
"Yesss!"
Edward St Clair put down his newspaper and gazed in mild wonder at his wife as she performed an impromptu jig around the lounge.
He'd heard her mobile phone go off, and it didn't take a genius to deduce who the call was from; only one member of the family qualified for the ringtone 'Rule Britannia'.
Fortunately – he and Sherrie were united on this point, as indeed they were on most points – calls from her brother Stuart were few and far between. Most of those that did occur left her in a state of at least minor irritation.
This one, at least, had been brief and to the point. Edward was not sufficiently interested in the caller to pay all that much attention, apart from wondering idly how far up the 'exasperationometer' his wife would be by the time she ended the call, but he'd gleaned the fact that his brother-in-law was peeved about something. Not in itself an unusual occurrence, and not one that he himself intended to lose any sleep over, any more than Sherrie usually did.
"Well, are you going to tell me what's up at the Reeds', or not?" he called as his wife – now waltzing – disappeared into the kitchen.
She put her head around the door, beaming. "Grumpy-arse has received a summons from On High to sort out some business at the Naval Station in Malaysia."
He frowned. "And that makes you happy, why?" Admittedly it would spare them the brief formal visit on Boxing Day afternoon that Stuart seemed to feel it mandatory that the family should make, but he'd never realised that Sherrie viewed that with more than resignation.
"Because apparently the Powers That Be think it's not appropriate to bring his kids with him. Mary, yes – but not Malcolm or Maddie. So he's asking if we can look after them over Christmas."
Light dawned, though not without a lingering puzzlement; he'd heard her response. "So why didn't you say yes?"
"What, and make his life easy? I'm going to make him sweat for an hour or so. I said I'd think about it and let him know."
=/\=
His heavy face wearing its customary scowl, Stuart Reed paused in the doorway and surveyed his children. "I expect to hear good reports of both of you when your mother and I come back," he said flatly. "You're to uphold the good name of the Reeds at all times, do you hear?"
"Yes, sir." "Yes, Father." The two voices answered almost simultaneously, but Sherrie in the background frowned slightly at the different words they used.
"Go upstairs and change into your indoor clothes. You'll be in the same rooms you had last time," she told the children.
"Yes, Aunt Sherrie." Obediently they removed their shoes in the hall, hung up coats and hats, and trooped upstairs – Edward had already taken up their suitcases when Stuart brought them in from the flitter.
While they did so, she took the opportunity to follow her brother back out to his vehicle. He looked as though he had dismissed his children's existence so completely from his mind that he was actually startled when she asked, her voice low and accusing, whether he'd ever thought of actually kissing them goodbye. "It's bloody Christmas Eve, for God's sake," she ended on a hiss.
"Don't be ridiculous," he growled, getting into the driver's seat. "And I've already told you, Sherrie, I don't want you making them soft while they're here. I've brought those kids up with decent discipline. The boy won't damn well make his way in the Navy by kissing people."
"Yes, and a Merry Christmas to you too, you pompous old git," she said as her brother shut the vehicle door and accelerated away down the front drive. She glanced up at the front of the house. Maddie's face was pressed to the window of her room as she watched her father drive away; her expression was woebegone, but she was at the age when she derived enormous enjoyment from play-acting. Sherrie was prepared to bet that the first proffer of distraction would banish the expression as though it had been wiped away with a cloth.
The window of the room next door to Maddie's had no occupant, or so first glance suggested. However, as she watched, she saw the slightest twitch as the left-hand curtain settled back into place. Malcolm too had watched his father drive away, but from a place of concealment.
Cursing inside, Sherrie walked back into the house. To go upstairs at once would be far too obvious, so she busied herself with a few small tasks around the lounge and made herself a cup of tea. Only after she had drunk it and made a pretence of reading an article in a magazine did she walk slowly upstairs.
Maddie had unpacked her things and was investigating the contents of the wardrobe, which held an assortment of children's costumes her aunt had purchased from a fancy-dress costume company's closing down sale earlier in the summer. The child's eyes were as round as saucers as she fingered taffeta, lace and velvet, doubtless seeing only the glitter and not the small signs of wear and tear.
"Oh, you've spoiled my surprise," said Sherrie, smiling, shaking her head as Maddie spun around with a gasp of apprehension for her unauthorised trespass in the wardrobe. "I bought them so that we could play games over the holiday. I thought you and Malcolm might like to dress up and pretend."
"I don't think Malcolm likes dresses," his sister said anxiously.
"I don't think so either," Sherrie responded, laughing. "But do you think he might like to be a Pirate King?"
"Oooh, yes!" Delight spread over the little face, banishing the anxiety. "And will he have a sword? He likes swords!"
"Well, maybe not a real sword," temporised her aunt. "But there is a pretend one."
"A real pretend sword! He would love that!" She flew across the room and, throwing her arms around her aunt, buried her head in Sherrie's midriff – almost eliciting an involuntary grunt, for she was a solid child. "Thank you, Aunt Sherrie! Thank you!"
"You're welcome, sweet. Now go downstairs, and you'll find your lunch on the table. Eat it like a good little girl, while I have a word with your brother."
"There's some lunch for Malcolm too?" Maddie asked doubtfully. "He has been very good, I promise."
Mentally heaping more curses on her brother's oblivious head, Sherrie nodded. "I'm sure he has, Maddie. You'll find his down there as well. I'll bring him down in a minute."
As soon as her niece's footsteps had pattered down the stairs, across the hallway and into the kitchen, she knocked on the door of the adjoining room.
"Yes?" asked a voice from within, carefully neutral.
"May I come in?"
With the politeness of all his eight years, the boy came to the door and opened it. As he raised his face to hers, she noted with a further inward sinking of the heart that it was shuttered, his thoughts masked from view with a thoroughness no eight-year-old should have had to master.
Her original intention had been to bring up the subject of the fancy dress, but instinct told her that although he would respond appropriately, it would be nothing but protective camouflage.
Instead, she walked into the room. His suitcase was still sitting where Edward had placed it, unopened. Whereas Maddie had lost no time in distributing her small belongings around the room, making it hers, her brother had made no mark on his whatsoever. The indentation in the counterpane on the bed showed where he had simply sat, motionless, waiting to watch his father leave.
Sherrie sat down next to the place and waited, not speaking; and after a moment Malcolm came over and sat next to her. His hands were placed carefully between his knees, so that he would not even seem to be trespassing on her space.
She wanted to put her arm around the thin shoulders, but that would have been altogether the wrong thing to do just then. Instead she spoke, choosing her words with extreme care.
"Malcolm, I'm sure your father didn't want to have to leave you and Maddie here for Christmas."
"I don't think it mattered to him," came the reply. His tone was fighting for indifference, but he was only eight. "And Mother has to do what he says. Even if … even if she doesn't like it."
"Sometimes that's what all grown-ups have to do," she said gently. "But the important thing is that it's OK for anyone to say they're hurt about it. Admitting being hurt doesn't mean a person's weak."
Silence, in response to that. His fingers clasped together, and the dark head was lowered, studying them. "I wish they hadn't had to go," he admitted at last. "It – it upsets Maddie."
"I'm sure it does." Tactfully she refrained from mentioning that his sister was exhibiting every sign of delight at being reprieved from a typical Reed Christmas. "But that just means that Maddie loves her parents very much, and that Maddie is a very loving and wonderful child. Because it takes someone very special to keep loving when … when things aren't as easy as they should be."
After a long pause, Malcolm spoke to his now still fingers. "Do you ever wish you'd had children, Aunt Sherrie?"
"I would have liked children very much," she said quietly. "But it never happened. And I envy Stuart and Mary. I think they have two amazing children."
He looked up at that, blinking rather rapidly. "Father doesn't." A faint blush coloured the skin over his cheekbones, and he looked down again, clearly ashamed of his moment of weakness and disloyalty.
"He will one day, Malcolm. I promise you, he will."
He was silent for a long moment before raising his eyes again to search her face. She held his gaze, thinking with angry sorrow that it was growing more opaque every time they met. Then, very shyly, and very much to her surprise, he asked, "Aunt, may I have a hug?"
"Now, that is the one thing you never have to ask in this house. Whenever you need a hug, just hold your arms out and take one."
The awkwardness with which he came into her embrace tore at her. Mary, what the hell have you been thinking of? It took a little adjustment before they were both comfortable, but presently his head was pillowed against her cushiony bosom.
"I can hear your heartbeat," he murmured wonderingly after a minute.
"I hope so, or I'm dead," she responded, laughing; but she quickly sobered. "Malcolm, I know it's been upsetting for Maddie that the two of you can't be with your parents this Christmas. But I want the two of you to help Eddie and me have a special Christmas instead. Would you like to do that?"
He lifted his head at that. Once again she encountered a doubtful, searching grey stare, but this time there was a hint of hope in it. "Help you have a special Christmas, Aunt?"
"Absolutely.
"I don't know if you've noticed, Malcolm, but the Christmas tree in the lounge hasn't been decorated. We've been too busy up till now to get around to it, and your uncle was going to do it this morning, but he needed to do a little tidying up around the garden and it's taken longer than he expected. I was wondering if…"
There was no doubt about it: that was awe, with delight hesitating on its heels, shy of its welcome. "But … but we … what if we break anything?"
"Oh, all the baubles are very strong," said Sherrie sunnily, and went on to traduce her husband without a qualm. "I'd never buy anything breakable with Edward in charge of the decorating. Bless him, he's the clumsiest soul I know."
The boy surged to his feet, all eagerness. "May we start straight away? I promise, we'll be very careful! And I'll make absolutely sure Maddie won't make any mess at all!"
She nodded. "It may not be possible not to make any mess," she said fairly, smiling. "But I know you'll clean it up afterwards if you do.
"Maddie's downstairs eating lunch in the kitchen, and after you've had yours too, both of you can make a start on the tree. The decorations are in a box beside it."
"And – and the lights?"
"They're in the box as well. I'd like it if you'd ask your uncle to just keep an eye on you when you're checking them before you put them on the tree, and be very careful when you stand on the steps, but other than that I trust you to do a wonderful job with our Christmas tree this year. And I'll be busy in the kitchen while you're working, waiting to be called in when it's ready, to see what an excellent job you've made of it."
"I'll make it absolutely splendid, Aunt Sherrie!" The second, fervent hug was a little less awkward than the first, but he was, of course, far too excited to linger in it. He detached himself after only a few seconds, his eyes shining at the vista that had opened up before him.
The wild joy with which he bounded out of the door and hurtled down the stairs brought tears pricking to her eyes. For by no means the first time, and certainly not for the last, she wished most heartily for the means and the opportunity to hit her brother over the head with a plank.
She followed Malcolm downstairs rather more sedately. It was no surprise that rather than go straight to the kitchen he was in the lounge, gazing at the beckoning boxes of baubles and tinsel beside the waiting tree (all hastily purchased for the occasion, since the St Clairs did not usually have a Christmas tree at all) – and also, with amazement, at the four wrapped parcels underneath it. One of these bore the legend 'FOR MALCOLM' and another 'FOR MADDIE'.
He looked up as she came through the door. "I don't … Father says…" His voice was husky.
She raised a single finger, silencing him. "Are you in your father's house, or in mine?"
"Yours, Aunt."
"Then the rule in this house is that everyone receives a gift, or nobody does. And since I shall be very cross if I get no Christmas present, then that means you and Maddie have to have one too. And there is no argument."
"Yes, Aunt." He peered at the parcel containing his gift as though it were an item of unexploded ordnance.
"And in the meantime, young man, you have lunch to eat and a tree to decorate, with your sister's help. So off you go, and I want every bite eaten before you so much as make a move back in here."
"Yes, Aunt," he said again, but this time he smiled – a smile that lit his narrow pale face with such warmth and charm that she glimpsed the friend that he would one day be to the select and fortunate few whom he would admit into his inner circle.
Then he walked sedately into the kitchen, sat down beside his sister at the table there and began eating lunch.
Beneath the tree, his first ever Christmas present, a gaily-wrapped parcel containing a book entitled British Naval Battles, sat waiting for the morrow.
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