~~~ There's a month to go until Christmas, so here is the beginings of my Christmas fic. It's an idea I've been playing with, and although I was initially going to do it with Elle, instead I decided to let Gideon take the lead. Hope you enjoy :) ~~~

Alas! How dreary would be the world if there was no Santa Claus!... There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. ~ Francis Church

The girl from the post office had arrived again. She held out the brown paper package and the electronic pad so he could sign for it.

He did, with a bored disposition. His name - Jason Gideon - barely discernible as anything more than a fancy scribble.

On most days, their interaction didn't go anywhere past, "Delivery," "Thank you," "Have a good day, sir," "You too." But today, the girl changed their usual dialogue to include, "Don't you get cold?"

She was referring to the fact that it was approaching Christmas and Jason Gideon, former FBI profiler extraordinaire, was playing chess outside on his porch. It was not the first time. In fact, every time the girl from the post office delivered a package to his home, the porch and the chessboard was where she found him.

In truth, the porch's rooftop stopped the snow from falling on him and the wall of his house protected him from most of the frosty wind. But what cold weather did get to Gideon didn't bother him. Ever since Frank, he had acquired an aversion to heat, for it reminded him of the hot Arizona desert where they'd first encountered the man Gideon could think of as no less than a monster.

"Only a little bit," Gideon replied now. And gesturing to the chessboard he asked, "Would you like to play?"

"No thanks," answered the girl, "I have to get through all the deliveries. My dad's the manager so, he'd be pretty pissed if I didn't get it done. I'd get fired and grounded."

Gideon chuckled. She looked young. He wouldn't have even put her at sixteen if it wasn't for the fact that she drove one of the big red post office trucks to his house nearly every week.

He knew what was in the package. It was a ShamWow. His newest hobby was watching the infomercials and ordering from them. He'd encountered a man in Seattle who swore there was nothing more fun, and although Gideon had only meant to try it once, he found now that there was something exciting about it. Of course more than half the things he ordered broke within the month, but he had managed to pick up a couple of make-your-life-easier-by-making-it-more-complicated gems.

It wasn't a belief in happy endings. He'd ended that search. Travelled all across America, only to find that where he truly wanted to be was back in Washington DC and so, that's where he was now.

"Although," the girl considered, still not moving off the porch despite the fact that the big red post office truck was rumbling, the keys in the ignition, she only having anticipated making a quick stop, "You always are stuck playing alone, aren't you?"

"The best way to improve strategy," Gideon told her, the same way he would have told Hotch or Reid or Morgan that the serial killer they were tracking had so far murdered only blondes.

And in much the same way one of his former coworkers might have pointed out that perhaps a former girlfriend was blonde, the post office girl answered, "Improving strategy is pointless if you only play yourself."

"Touché," Gideon agreed, with another chuckle. It was too bad he wouldn't get a game of chess out of her - and he wondered to himself if she even knew how to play - but at least he'd gotten some amusement and his delivery.

The girl nodded once and made her way down the steps, but then she stopped halfway and asked slowly (Gideon, although he knew he shouldn't, couldn't help but put his retired profiling skills in action to think that she was a girl who was typically quiet and polite), "Why don't you ever have anyone to play against?"

Gideon pursed his lips, thought and shrugged, "There is nobody for me to play against."

"Well," the girl pushed her hip out to the side, balancing most of her weight on one leg, as though she were getting comfortable on the porch steps, "Why don't you meet people?"

"I'm retired," Gideon said, even though it wasn't fully true. He hadn't retired so much as gone AWOL. "I have no family, no friends," - although this was his own fault, he realized, and no one else's - "where could I meet people?"

But at this enquiry a successful grin broke over the girl's face, and it was obvious to him that she had an answer. "At the post office!"

He tipped his head to the side a moment, considering before repeating her words: "The post office?"

"Yes," she nodded, "It's four and a half weeks to Christmas and we need people to answer the kids' letters."

"Their letters to Santa Claus?" Gideon inquired.

The girl smirked, "Well, he can't answer every one himself, you know. You'd just be…an elf."

"I could do that?"

"Sure," she shrugged, "I mean I used to do that, once I figured out that there was no Santa Claus, and before I wanted to get paid."

Gideon said thoughtfully, "I can volunteer?"

"Totally," assured the girl, "I'll put in a good word for you. My dad's the manager. There's just this form you have to fill out and stuff - to make sure you're not a creeper."

Mentally, Gideon corrected her use of the word 'creeper' to replace it with 'pedophile'. He snorted a bit at the thought of filling out a form which no doubt asked about current or past occupation, and imagined the reactions which would ensue when he answered with FBI.

"Maybe I will," Gideon said, not unsurely, "I'll drop by the post office tomorrow."

"No problem," the girl answered, "See you then. My name's Sabine Murphy. Just ask for B."

Then with a parting wave, she left the steps and got back in her red truck, rumbling off. Gideon looked down at the package in his hand, thought of answering Santa Claus letters and tried to remember what it had felt like to believe in that fairy tale.

And as much as he wanted to tell himself that he did remember, it was really such a long time ago that all he could conjure up was the faintest recollection of smelling cinnamon and peppermint and sitting on the knee of a man dressed in red.