Note: A number of years ago, I did a bunch of Christmas fics for different series and posted them all together, but I don't think anybody knows where to find them (either that or they totally suck, which is a definite possibility). So I'm just going to post them all separately. They're all shamelessly holiday-ish in nature, like this piece of sap, but they were a tremendous amount of fun to do. Enjoy!
Disclaimer: I don't own any of the following characters. I don't really own much of anything other than a pencil and a notebook which I am attempting to make good use of in hopes of someday owning something better. =)
White Christmas
The Chronicles of Riddick
Amos Whirly
She felt her heart stop as she gaped in awe at the branch on the ground. No one else seemed to have noticed it, in the filthy sulfur smoke that filled the air with yellow grime. She wiped her sweaty palms on her pant legs and focused on the branch. It was already beginning to wither in the intense heat of the main floor.
She ran for it, snatched it off the main floor, and scurried up one of the rusty pipe ladders before one of the inmates grabbed her. The men that huddled in the sulfur pockets did not take kindly to anyone taking anything out of their territory.
Kyra landed crookedly on a broken scaffold and teetered for a moment before sliding down a dirty pole, clutching her prize close to her chest. Once she hit a lower walkway, she slinked into the shadows and sneaked back to her cell area.
A week earlier, a new inmate had come in and had announced under his breath that it was the month of December.
December.
At first, she had tried to put the thought out of her mind. She even looked away as one of the hellhounds caught up with that particular inmate.
December.
Something kept whispering to her at the back of her mind.
December. That's the month where it snowed, where everyone was happy, where the tree was bright and decorated.
When she had seen the branch fall to the floor of the Crematoria slam, she could not ignore it any more.
Now, huddled in the meager light of her rundown cell, she looked at the branch she had rescued.
It was little more than a twig, and half of its leaves (what few it had to begin with) had been burnt and singed. But it was part of a tree. It was part of something that had at one time been alive and thriving.
It was something alive in this hellhole pit of a slam.
And it was hers.
She scanned the inside of her cell for a moment before isolating a corner. She grabbed a piece of rock and carved out a hole in its center, in which she hammed the twig. She had a string of fishing line on which she quickly threaded multiple dull razor blades. She hung other shiny objects on the twig until it was nearly doubled over from the weight.
When she was done, she stepped back and admired her handiwork.
It was pitiful. But at the same time it was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. A remnant of a past life, a life she had lost, given up, and almost forgotten.
She remembered Christmas as a child. There had been presents and food, and the ground had been white snow. White and clean. Nothing in Crematoria was white or clean.
She settled herself comfortably in the cleft of a rock in her cell.
Her last Christmas had been much different from the ones she remembered from childhood. But then, she had become a very different person from who she was when her family was alive.
Five years ago. The last time she had celebrated Christmas was five years ago.
With him.
They had come to New Mecca, arrived safely after a long and trying journey from that horrible planet. Imam had celebrated whatever it is that he and his people celebrate in December. Kyra could never remember what it was called.
But not him. He never celebrated anything – at least, that's what it seemed like.
A small smile quirked her chapped lips.
He had been angry when he came down the stairs of Imam's house and found her setting up a Christmas tree. He had said he didn't want anything to do with Christmas or with anyone who would waste their time celebrating it. She remembered throwing an ornament at him. It had hit the back of his shaved head. When he turned around to glare at her, she remembered feeling justified at the slight smile in his flashing silver eyes.
She had discovered, after some time, that no matter how angry she could make him, it seemed that he could never stay angry with her.
"So why did he leave?" she whispered, folding her legs up to her chest and sighing heavily as she lay her head on her knees.
She had lost track of how long he had been gone. He had not even bothered to say goodbye to her. She woke up one morning, and he was gone.
He had said goodbye to Imam.
But not to her.
"He probably knew I would have tried to go with him."
She tried not to think about everything she had done in an ultimately futile attempt to find him. The mercs. The slavers. The blood. All of it had landed her in Crematoria.
Alone.
Life had never been terribly happy when her family was alive, when she had been home. But then, she had never been alone. Even when the Hunter-Gratzner had crashed, she had not been alone. When the darkness fell over that nightmare of a planet and the monsters that still haunted her dreams came after her, she had not been alone.
She had been alone since she woke up that morning and found Riddick gone. Among the mercs she signed up with to find him, she was alone. Beneath the slavers lashes when those same mercs betrayed her, she was alone. And now, in a suffocating cell in the worst triple-max slam in the quadrant, she was alone.
As the prison began to shut down, silence settled over the burning sulfur pits, and the inmates stopped scuttling around the walkways.
"What was it Imam said Fry had asked him?" she murmured. "If he wanted to rejoin the human race. That was it."
She frowned.
"Is that why he left? Because he couldn't remember how to be human?"
In the stillness of the Crematoria evening, for the first time in her life, Kyra began to identify with the man she had idolized on a level deeper than obsession.
"What is humanity? What does it mean to be human?" She regarded her piteous Christmas tree. "Is it celebrating Christmas?" She looked at her arm. "Is it physical? Spiritual? Emotional?"
She stretched out on the floor and stared at the carvings she had scraped into her ceiling. "Is it living when there's no reason to live anymore?"
She looked at the shiv hanging on the back wall of her cell.
"If he couldn't find it again, will I be able to?"
Her fists clenched.
"Do I want to? Do I want to be human again?
She sat up and shook her head, her frizzy brown hair fluttering around her dirty face. "Makes my head spin," she griped. "It's not important anyhow." She returned to gazing at her wretched tree.
She gave a start, though, as something tiny and white fell through the fetid air and settled on the rock.
A snowflake?
In Crematoria?
Impossible!
Her expression stunned, she crawled to where the white flake had settled. She smiled slightly when she saw it. A tiny puff of white cotton. The inmate above her had an old pillow that had started shedding in recent months. She laughed without humor and returned to her place on the rock.
She curled up before her pitiful tree and closed her eyes.
"I know what I'm going to do," she whispered. "Someday, I'm going to get out of here. I'm going to find Riddick, whatever rock he's crawled under, and I'm going to take him to a planet somewhere, someplace cold with lots of cold white snow. And even if it's July, we're going to have a Christmas party. With just me and him. And then we'll have a snowball fight and make snow angels and we won't come in until we're numb and blue. And then we'll drink hot chocolate and apple cider until we're warm again while we listen to music, the old songs from Earth. And if he doesn't like it, that's fine. He can go away again when it's done."
She opened her eyes, surprised to find that a few tears had slid down her face.
"But I would ask him to stay. And maybe he would this time. I'm not some stupid little kid anymore, after all. Maybe he would stay with me."
A breath of hot air flowed through the cell, and the little tree shivered in its stifling embrace. One of the razor blade ornaments fell off and tinkled on the rock floor, flashing silver in the meager light.
"Oh well," Kyra let her shoulders droop as a sad smile graced her face, "it's nice to dream."