Disclaimer: As ever, Joss Whedon owns all. That'd sure be a nice present though.
I don't think this can be called fluff by any stretch of the imagination, which is weird, because fluff and Christmas seem like fairly inseparable concepts to me. I was putting up my own tree, and my mind wandered.
Just fair warning. There is some serious Mal-angst here. But, it might also be uplifting.
References to the episode War Stories.
Malcolm Reynolds supposed he had the Alliance to thank for standardized calendars; just one more addition to the list of ways that government had made his life difficult. It didn't matter that a month on Londinium wasn't the same month elsewhere. Every year, when the third week of December came, his ship became even less serene than she was usually, borrowing more from a particular valley than from a definition.
Finally, Kaylee would deliver an ultimatum, which was that they would set down planetside, or he would sleep in a frigid bunk. He always gave in, though not because the lack of heat would really bother him; the whole of Serenity would end up freezing anyway because everyone would insist on landing somewhere wintery. It was just safest to assume that if his sweet little mechanic started threatening him, the other crew members were probably on the verge of mutiny.
Like the years before, the captain decided to let them have their holiday. After all, it was good for morale, and he could curl up in his quarters with his army blanket for warmth until the festivities were over.
A melody he knew all too well ruined that plan.
Stories told of a small town preacher back on Earth-that-was who found himself, on Christmas Eve, with a broken pipe-organ unable to accompany his choir. Refusing to be discouraged, he worked until dawn with a friend to compose a hymn that could be played on a guitar.
The church he attended as a boy on Shadow didn't even have access to a piano, and so the song had enjoyed some popularity in his hometown. Silent Night. His momma had loved it.
He suddenly had a powerful need to see his crew, so he climbed up his ladder, following the sound and strands of multi-coloured lights strung along the hallway and down the stairs into the cargo bay.
Someone had dragged in a wretched scrawny-looking tree that had grown irregularly instead of into any normal pine-like shape; seemed almost like they had done it a service by cutting it down. Inara donated some fripperies to the cause, and most of them were engaged in knotting ties to hang various metal objects from around the ship on the branches. They sat on the stairs, listening to Wash as he provided bawdy alternative lyrics for whatever Jayne happened to be playing on his acoustic.
Ten years ago, while fighting hunger, the Alliance, and the cold, he made a Christmas dinner of some unrecognizable barely edible thing he had scavenged during a brief respite in artillery fire. He sang with the other enlisted men huddled in the trenches, most of whom hadn't survived the war. He had bowed his head in prayer to a God who would later abandon him.
"Captain!" Kaylee noticed him, and at her greeting, some of the other revelers looked his way, pleased he'd joined them. "Wanna put up the first'un?"
A colourful sphere with gold ribbon around it was pressed into his hands, and he stared blankly at it. The ornament looked a bit like a crude bomb, only red.
Abruptly, he realized everyone was calling to him, with varying amounts of concern. River materialized in front of him. "Cashmere Christmas," she intoned wisely, leaning over the bauble he was holding and almost pressing her nose to the shiny surface before swaying her head back towards the rest of the crew. "Pretty apples. Pop."
Then Zoë was trying to take the orb from him, and he shook his head, blinking his eyes. They were stinging for some reason. "First one, huh?" he asked, his voice a little thick, as he looked down at the rather pathetic tree. Ai ya, did it ever need some decoration. The former soldier marched down to stand in front of it, made a show of looking for a spot, and tied the ornament to the most prominent branch near the top. He stepped back to admire its position with an exaggerated nod.
"Give me another," he commanded, forcing a smile for his crew that would eventually grow more genuine.