A/N: Remember how at the beginning of STC, I said it was going to be a fluffy, happy story? Yeah, well, clearly, as certain people keep pointing out to me – cough, Jade-eye, cough – it isn't. But THIS story IS. (shudder) And Jade-eye is totally to blame for it – did I say blame? I meant thank. (Just kidding!) Anyways, this story is dedicated to the person responsible for its birth: Jade-eye, who reminds me every day that life rocks. The Senshi have nothing on her.

Disclaimer: None of the proper nouns in this story belong to me. Except Buji – he's my baby. The quotation from the end of the story belongs to Dickens.

L

A Christmas Carol

L

"There!" Serena leaned back from the gingerbread house, giggling, and backed up right into Darien.

He snatched vainly at the sack of flour in his hands, but it toppled over onto Serena in a mushroom cloud of white.

Darien stared at her. She stared back, blinking, blue eyes huge and bright as gumdrops in her white-coated face.

Then a bubble of laughter popped out of her and she reached up. He almost flinched –

Her hands slid into his hair. She rubbed her floury hands all across his scalp.

"Geeze, Shields!" She laughed, gingerbread-scented breath warm on his lips. "And you call ME a klutz?"

"Obviously you've rubbed off on me," said Darien automatically as he tried to ignore the fact her nose – forget her nose, her lips! – was – were – mere centimeters from his. Kiss her, kiss her –

"Man, you guys don't even need mistletoe, do you?"

Motoki's teasing voice yanked Darien backward and pulled a blush onto his face. He turned his head to the side, clearing his throat, as he heard Serena's awkward laugh.

"Good job, Fairy Godmother," drawled Asanuma from his spot watching cookies by the oven. "How do you expect them to get together if you keep striking midnight?"

"Guys!" protested Serena. Darien, as his own blush faded stubbornly slowly, noted that her cheeks weren't flushed. Well, she is covered in flour… "ANYWAY, Toki-nii, I still can't believe your dad let us have the arcade for a whole night!"

"And I can't believe you haven't gotten any of that flour in your eyes yet," scolded Lita, coming over from her side of the counter. "Leave the gumdrops for a second and let's wash you up. It's two months too late to come to a party disguised as a ghost."

The glare she sent over her shoulder as she ushered Serena out of the kitchen told Darien that she hadn't missed their little display. "And YOU," she said at him. "Don't shake the flour out of your hair into the cookies."

The door swung shut behind the two girls. Darien sighed.

"Aw, cheer up, pal," said Asanuma. Then he brightened. "Or better yet, take out your rage on Toki! You wouldn't've gotten a smooch if it wasn't for him!"

"Hey!" protested Motoki, although his face turned the color of Rudolph's nose. "Sorry, Dare."

"Nah, I'm glad you stopped me." Darien shoved a hand in his hair. Then, as though he had just heard him Asanuma – "Could we not refer to it as that, please?"

"Good God, not this again!" Asanuma rolled his eyes, completely ignoring the jab at his usage of "smooch." "The only things that go together better than you and Serena-chan are peanut butter and jelly, okay? Stop MOPING!"

"Big words from King Mope himself." Motoki pulled a tray of cookies out of the oven and placed them on the opposite corner, far away from Asanuma the Cookie Monster. "You could have just apologized to Rei, you know."

"I DID apologize!" yelped Asanuma, turning the same shade as Darien, then Motoki, had before. "I've called her nine times! She won't pick up!"

"I don't blame her." Darien said, all too eager to change the subject from his own romantic inadequacies. "I'd be incensed if my significant other made my tongue swell up, too."

"At least we know what base they've been to," chortled Motoki, placing another batch of cookies onto the pan.

"Shut uuuuuuuuup!" howled Asanuma, reddening even further beneath his blonde curls. "I've only known her for a few months! How as I supposed to know she was allergic to gingerbread? We can't all be like Darien here, who knows when Serena lost her first tooth – "

"I lost a tooth?" Serena pushed back into the kitchen with Lita at her shoulder. She was flour-free, wearing a clean green t-shirt that was way too big for her.

"More like your marbles, Odango," said Darien smoothly, though internally his heart had nearly jumped right out of his chest when he thought she'd overheard the conversation. "Get over here and move your ramshackle gingerbread shack before Asanuma tries to forcefeed it to his girlfriend."

Asanuma howled again; Lita snickered; Serena tried to hide a grin.

"That's mean," she told him.

"So is putting flour in my hair," Darien retorted.

"Oh, get over here, you big baby." Serena placed her small hands in the center of his back and pushed him around the counter, out of the kitchen, and down the hall to the staff bathroom.

Darien thought he heard the sound of Lita being forcibly restrained. "Serena," he began.

"Bend over, Daddy Longlegs," Serena commanded, planting him in front of the industrial-sized sink, which already had flour clinging to its basin.

"No, Odango, I was just – " he began, but Serena, with the strength that always surprised him no matter how many times she punched him, shoved his head down under the faucet.

Darien tried to jerk up, which made him bang his head on the mouth of the faucet, which an embarrassed red flush seep up from his shoulder blades to his hairline, and she saw it, laughing and poking his neck, malicious little imp that she was.

"That's what you get!" she sang, turning on the water.

He gave up as the cold water trickled through his hair, despite the awkwardness flooding him and the uncomfortable pain wedging between his vertebrae from the angle at which he bent.

Serena hummed as she rinsed flour from his hair, and while her humming usually soothed him – like when there were going homework, or washing after-dinner dishes on Saturdays – now it just made him supremely tense. He really hoped she didn't feel the goosebumps lifting along every inch of his scalp at the touch of her fingers. He REALLY hoped that the words, "Serena, I know we're best friends, but I love you" didn't spill out of his mouth the way they felt like they were about to, because a love confession in an arcade bathroom while he was bending at a ninety-degree angle with his head in the sink seemed even less romantic than making your girlfriend's tongue swell to the size of a slug because you French-kissed her after eating gingerbread.

"Darien." A poke in his neck. "Eeeeaaarth to Darien!"

He jerked up and bashed his skull on the faucet. Again. The sheer injustice of it wrung a whimper from his throat.

"There, there…" Serena wrapped a towel from who-knew-where around his head and hugged his shoulders from behind. He felt her cheek against the wet skin of the back of his neck. "I really have been rubbing off on you, haven't I? Good thing you'll be going to college soon, so you can get away from my bad influence before I ruin you for life."

She punctuated her words with a laugh, but Darien felt dread drop heavily into his stomach like a fruitcake.

"Serena – " he began, but she was already moving away.

"We better get back to work if the cookies are going to be done by the time everyone gets here!" she said. He heard her exclamation as she left the bathroom and entered the kitchen again. "WAI! NUMA-NII-CHAN, I WAS SAVING THOSE MARSHMALLOWS!"

Another chance lost. Darien sighed, lowering the towel from his hair. Take a hint, man, he thought, morosely eyeing his reflection in the mirror. It isn't meant to be. Girls didn't fall for their best friends. They fell for cheery guys like Motoki or class clowns like Asanuma, not the class nerd, certainly not the class nerd who happened to have known them since they were in grade school. And even if she did defy these intrinsic laws of the universe, there would be not point, because he was going to America in six months, anyway – right after her birthday.

That was the first thing she had said when she saw the letter – she'd snatched the envelope from him when he'd said that he was just going to throw it away, and she'd seen the date first – "July 5! That's right after my birthday!" And then she'd read the rest of the letter and shouted at him that he couldn't NOT go to school in AMERICA!

And there was the answer right there, really, Darien thought miserably. She wanted him to leave. He knew he'd been a bit overprotective of her in these past few years of high school – he knew she hadn't made as many friends as she could have, that she hadn't even dated any boys, even been on any dates, because she'd spent her time with him and his group of friends… He didn't blame her for wanting to get a chance at those things, he didn't. In fact, he regretted that he had never realized it until now, how much of life he'd barred her jealously from, standing like a wall because he hadn't wanted to lose her. He didn't blame her, he just wished…he just wished that he wouldn't become just a ghost of her past. The person in the photo album that she glanced at with her children and remembered, "Oh, yeah, he went to America and I never saw him again. Wonder how he's doing."

He looked down at the towel in his hands. It was red, with clumps of flour dotting it like snowflakes, and he rinsed it out in the sink, watching the white spots disappear down the drain.

"What, didja fall in, Dare-Bear?" said Asanuma when he came back into the kitchen. "We already finished cutting out the last cookies!"

"Which means you get to clean up!" Serena shoved a bowl of dough-crusted cookie cutters into his arms.

"And YOU get to help him!" With a grin, Asanuma plopped another tray into Serena's arms.

Her mouth fell open. "What? Why ME?"

"Because we're doing decorations next, and you're too short to reach anything!" Asanuma tossed her a cheery wink as he skipped out to the arcade proper after Motoki and a still-grumpy Lita.

"Sorry, Odango, looks like you're stuck with me," said Darien, not really sorry at all. "You can dry. It'll be just like on Saturdays."

"Why can't we just use the dishwasher?" Serena whined. If there was anything she hated more than being called short, it was doing chores.

"The cookie cutters are too small." Then Darien shot her a glance. "What, you don't want to spend time with me?"

She tilted her head, a streamer of hair falling over one shoulder. "Well, I'd rather eat cookies…"

"Oh, no, you're not eating all the cookies while I do all the work." Darien grabbed the streamer of hair and pulled her over to the sink. "You'll get a stomachache before the party even begins."

"Not if what you say about me having a black hole for a stomach is true," said Serena cheerily.

He threw a towel at her. It landed over her face. "Dry," he commanded.

"Mmgmph…" She grumbled from beneath the towel, but began. Silence settled over them – but only for a minute. Silence and Serena didn't get along very well together. "All these domestic skills will serve you very well in college."

Darien blamed the soapy water for almost making him drop the knife. "Could we – not talk about that, please?" he nearly gritted out, then wished immediately that he could swallow the words back up.

Her warm, wet hand was on his rolled-up sleeve before he knew it.

"Why don't you want to talk about it?" Serena's eyes stared into him like lighthouse beams.

He forced a smirk and ruffled her hair. "Nothing. I was just being grumpy."

She planted her hands on her hips. "Don't give me that, Darien Shields. I've known you for ten years, and if I can't tell when there's something wrong with you after that long, then I don't deserve a single Christmas present!"

"O-dan-go." He clapped his hands on either side of her face and leaned down to prop his forehead against hers. His eyes fluttered shut for a moment, and he sighed, forcing them back open. Her wide eyes stared back at him. His lips twitched.

And he felt cold fingers seize his earlobes and yank.

"Aaagh!" He sprang backward. "OW, Odango!"

"Don't – don't try to distract me by tangling your eyelashes in mine!" Serena sputtered. There was a bright pink in her face that Darien felt his own mirroring. "You flirt!" She hurled it out as though calling him a pervert.

"I wasn't – " he began

But Serena had already spun back around and began scrubbing the dishes dry with a vengeance, muttering self-righteously to herself. "That jerkface taking advantage of – " Then she stomped her foot and spun around, brandishing the rolling pin at him. "Hey! I was asking you what's WRONG!"

"And I was telling you it's nothing," said Darien, still trying to get his blush back under control. She noticed the eyelash-tangling! He'd thought he was the only one – now he'd ever be able to do it without her noticing!

"URGH!" Serena stamped her foot. "YOU'RE SO AGGRAVATING! You've been acting so WEIRD lately!"

"Uh-huh," said Darien, knowing that the only way to get Serena off this topic was by using food. "Hey, look, Lita forgot to take the last pan of cookies – "

Her eyes widened – then she scowled. "Oh, no you don't!" she cried, a strange mixture between a grimace of pain and a glower of scolding on her face. He saw how strongly the prospect of warm, fresh-baked gingerbread cookies pulled at her – it made him feel a little guilty that he'd just been lying. "You're not tricking me with cookies! You're going to spill, buster!"

Then the arcade doors jingled as someone's opening the door shook the bells fastened to them, and Motoki called, "Guys! Come on! People are here!"

Serena smacked a hand into his chest as he stepped forward to leave the kitchen.

"We'll continue this," she warned him, blue eyes glinting.

"Continue WHAT?" said Lita, entering the kitchen. She eyed the hand Serena had planted on Darien's chest.

"Lita," said Serena, flushing a bit and removing her hand. Those two things didn't stop her from flashing another promising look up at Darien as she followed Lita through the doors.

"Okay, come on now, you little dominatrix-wannabe."

"Lita!" came the second wailing protest.

Darien waited a few moments, trying to quell entirely the blood that he felt hot in his face, before following Serena out of the kitchen.

At least a dozen people had already arrived, gusting into the arcade like a flurry, laughing and talking as they unwrapped their scarves and peeled off their coats.

Serena drifted away from him like a snowflake, joining the clumps of laughter. He watched her squeal and giggle with Lita, Motoki, Molly, Melvin, and the others ones whose names she was always scolding him for forgetting… he watched them reorient themselves around her, like planets adjusting their orbits to revolve around a star.

Someone plopped a pair of reindeer antlers on her head, and they looked as though they had sprouted from her odangoes, and he waited for her to come over so that he could make fun of them. But she didn't.

The party was a teenagers' gathering – a game of Spin the Bottle in one corner, and girls gossiping in another, and dancing around the video game consoles as icicle lights dripped their glow from the ceiling. Darien felt vaguely surprised by how far away from all of the teenagers he felt, like an alien standing in their midst. He stayed at the counter, nursing a cup of coffee that seemed to cool more quickly than usual as Motoki playfully waltzed with Lita and Asanuma was dragged into a corner booth by a stormy-looking Rei, who had appeared after Serena spent a few minutes huddled suspiciously in a corner beside the Christmas tree with her cell phone to her ear. Even Ami, Serena's introverted bookworm friend had slipped her book into her purse and joined a raucous game of Uno.

He had nearly reached the bottom of his mug when she came over, a Rudolph nose blinking like a broken stoplight on her nose, and tapped him on the nose with her candy cane.

"You feel okay?" she asked, placing the striped candy back into her mouth and peering up into his face.

He rubbed the sticky spot on his nose. He was quite aware of the cloud of friends that had followed her like electrons clinging to an atom nucleus and now waited for her to finish talking to him so that they could return to playing Dance Dance Revolution again.

"Just a headache," he told her. "I just took some aspirin. Go ahead. I'll come over soon."

She laid a hand against his forehead, eyes worried, then climbed back down off the stool. "Okay," she said. "Soon." She returned with Molly and company to the DDR game at the other end of the arcade.

He'd lied, of course. But what better time to begin enacting his New Year's resolution than Christmas eve? There was a certain poetic justice about it. And she treasured Christmas, saw it as the crown jewel in the diadem that was the year's holidays, so it was best for her to begin her new, better memories now, with her favorite holiday. Memories of friends who would dance with her at parties in front of other people, friends who were as socially adept as she was, friends who weren't as needy as he was, friends who didn't try to hog her to themselves – friends who aren't in love with her, in other words. He winced, and kept his eyes away from the corner of the room where she was. He joined the poker game that a few of the senior guys had started, and left when he felt their resentment at his winning growing a bit too large to contain. He poured himself a cup of coffee, he counted the number of gingerbread men on the plates, the number of gumdrops on the gingerbread house, the number of candy canes on the table, he kept his eyes away from the DDR game.

Until a huge clamor arose from that end of the arcade, at least. When whistles and claps began to shake the air, he couldn't prevent his eyes from wandering to the game to see a fierce couples contest in progress: Asanuma and Rei against a grinning and panting Serena and one of the junior guys, Seiya.

As Darien watched, the fast-tempoed song ended, and a cheer erupted as Serena and Seiya were declared the winners. Darien waited only long enough to watch a panting Seiya snake an arm around Serena's waist and hug her close before he slipped behind the counter and out of the arcade through the backdoor.

The cold air pressed against his face, a welcome contrast from the stifling warmth of too many people in the arcade, but the streets were still just as alive as the inside of the arcade. Couples strolled down the sidewalks hand in hand past glowing storefronts. Darien sped past them all on his motorcycle, leaning forward over the handlebars and accelerating sharply as he finally escaped the crowded, choked streets of the shopping district for the less populated roads of the residential area. Here, too, there were windows with warm yellow light like butter filled with the silhouettes of happy families and ornamented Christmas trees. He drove faster and longer…

He had intended to return to the arcade to help clean up, but when he finally veered off the empty roads and returned to the shopping district, he found the arcade dark and empty.

Only then did he glance at watch and realize that it was two-thirty a.m.

He spotted a square of white fluttering like a trapped dove on the back door of the arcade and swung off his motorcycle to identify it. It was a note, scrawled in Serena's familiar fat girl-letters –

Rei took over your part of the cleaning, she says you owe her a shift at the temple now. Call tomorrow, okay?

(Heart),

Serena

He took the letter off the door and stuffed it in his pocket, but when he got home and dropped onto the bed with his riding jacket still on, he didn't bother to pull it out.

C

The strange glow that woke him made him think at first that he'd fallen asleep watching TV with Serena again. Then, as he recognized the fabric of his comforter beneath his face, he remembered that there wasn't a TV in his bedroom.

He lifted his head from the coverlet and squinted – then snapped up, scrambling back on his bed, all the way to the headrest.

"Dear God," he said. His heart thumped in his throat even faster than when Serena had stuck her hands in his hair. "Fiore?"

The blue-haired, green-skinned being that stood at the foot of his bed, glowing like a radioactive slime-mold, was far taller and older-looking than his childhood imaginary friend has been, but Darien recognized the streak of pink hair and the 80's mullet.

The adolescent version of Fiore smiled faintly at him. "It's been a long time, Darien," he said in his soft voice. "You haven't talked to me in ten years."

"Yes, I – " Despite all the situation-pondering whirling in Darien's brain, Fiore's words yanked an image into Darien's head – a girl with blonde odangoes and Pink Power Ranger overalls, a Band-Aid on her forehead… Serena ten years ago.

"Since you met her," said Fiore, as though reading his thoughts.

"I – I don't understand." Darien lowered himself carefully to the carpet, standing. The idea of pinching himself occurred to him but was shot down as too immature. "Why are you – "

"I have come to warn you," said Fiore as though he had not heard Darien. "Your decision is the wrong one."

Darien frowned, opened his mouth –

"Three spirits will haunt you." Abruptly, Fiore began to fade, blurring at the edges of his body and dimming. "Do not ignore them."

"Wait – " Darien's eyes widened; he reached forward though he still could not understand what was going on. "Fiore!"

A small smile curved the blue of his friend's face. "I remember you, Darien. You are stubborn. Do not fail in that now, when it is most…" His mouth continued to move, but his voice faded into silence, and then his body, too, faded, plunging the room back into darkness.

Darien stared at the spot where Fiore had been. His eyes fell to the patch of floor where he should have stood and saw nothing. He pinched himself and lay back down in bed, pulling the covers over his fully-clothed body, all the way up to his chin. It was a dream, surely. Too much hot cocoa and gingerbread and candy canes and not enough healthy grain, added with the shock of Serena's hands in his hair…the clock glowed a quarter till three, and slumbed staked itself over him like a warm, dark tent.

C

A hand on his cheek awoke him. Serena poked him when she wanted him to wake up; the gentle pressure of the hand – it was too cold to be hers anyway – punctured his sleep like a needle in a balloon. His eyelids snapped open.

The silhouette of a child stood beside his bed. Darien stared at it, then buried his head in his pillow: it was only his desk chair. But then he felt, again, the cold pressure against his cheek, and he jerked back up.

A white glow forced its ways into his bleary eyes, and Darien stared straight into it. The face that stared back was his own, but not. He scrambled backward off the bed, staring at the apparition – a little boy who looked exactly like his grade school self, from the black hair and blue eyes and uniform right down to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle jacket he'd jealously treasured until the zipper broke after four years of use.

"What – " Darien swallowed, his mouth dry. The memory of his dream of Fiore rushed back into him like an avalanche. He reached for the heavy biology textbook on his nightstand with a trembling hand. "Leave me alone…"

The textbook rose and floated in front of his face, then away, bobbing to the opposite end of the room, where it dropped to the floor near the door. Darien returned his eyes to the doppelganger beside his bed. His own, younger face blinked up at him, face as impassive as a statue's.

"Come with me." It – he – held out a hand.

Darien shuddered despite himself, still able to feel the icy imprint upon his face.

"I'm dreaming," he told himself.

"You're being idiotic." The boy stood beside him suddenly, though a second ago the bed had stretched like a barrier between them. "Come."

Before Darien knew it, his hand was back in the boy's cold one, and they were on the balcony – on the balcony railing.

"Whoah!" cried Darien, head filling with thoughts who sleepwalk and end up walking off bridges or other high places to their deaths. "I'm – not – going – " He fought to back off; the child's small hand was like a vice.

"You will only if you let yourself fall," it said cryptically, dispassionately. He pushed Darien, then jumped after her.

Wind sliced up into Darien's eyes as the street rushed up to meet him, then he blinked, then he stood in a playground, mulch digging into his socked feet. The shout of playing children rang all around him.

"Do you recognize it?"

Darien looked to his side and found his younger self standing there, in that black and green jacket…

And then he realized. He turned his head and took a step to the right to see the swings –

He looked back at his elbow, double-checking. The younger version of himself still stood there, watching him with dark eyes.

"I don't know who – what," Darien corrected himself, "you are, but this is the playground of my elementary school. His eyes slid from the dispassionate child to the equally stoic one sitting against the wall of the building, behind the swings. It was as hopeless as keeping magnets of opposite poles apart, trying to keep his eyes from the black-haired boy in the Ninja Turtle jacket sitting with his knees drawn up to his chest and drawing in the dirt with mulch. "And that's…"

"A pitiful, misanthropic little boy?" suggested the apparition at his elbow as Darien said, "Me."

The apparition's words entered him but barely registered a wince. A pitiful, misanthropic little boy was exactly what he had been…exactly what he still sometimes – often – was, he thought.

He watched what was clearly his younger self gouging the dirt, close to his foot so that the other children wouldn't see what he was drawing, he remembered. He could even remember what he'd usually drawn, evil monsters for the Ninja Turtles to fight and what he would look like if he could fight like them, if he was one of them, one of the brothers…

"How peculiar that the other children don't talk to him," commented the boy beside him. "Not even to tease."

Darien watched the younger version of himself throw the piece of mulch back into the carpet layering the ground and climb to his feet.

"How lonely," said the apparition again, now almost scornfully.

Darien felt a stab of annoyance and turned to retort that yes, he was, but that he'd changed, since he'd met –

"WAI!"

His attention snapped back to his past self and saw a blonde girl sprawled across his knees.

A very familiar blonde girl.

A sense of realization slammed into him as hard as Serena had first slammed into him, that first day he met. He turned to look down at the boy beside him. "I'm dreaming Dickens?" he said incredulously. He didn't even like Dickens. Dickens was too depressing, Dickens was dreary, Dickens –

"Hits too close to the mark?" said the ghost at his elbow, the Ghost of Christmas Past. He did not turn to face Darien but lifted his arm, pointing. "Watch."

Darien watched, saw the girl with the golden odangoes scramble backward off his knees and his younger self, face flushed bright red but with anger not embarrassment, fight back to his feet, mulch showering from his clothing.

"You – you dumpling head!" His younger self fumed. Darien remembered that he would not usually have responded so vocally, remembered that that day had been the day before Christmas break, and he was sick of people talking, talking, talking about what their parents were going to get them!

Little Serena's head flushed just as red as it did in these days. The sight stimulated a spurt of affection in his heart. "THEY'RE NOT DUMPLINGS!"

"Shall we move on?" The voice beside him was so quiet that Darien did not realize he'd spoke until their surroundings, the bright colors of the playground and the darker mulch, began to melt and swirl like fudge royale ice cream, and before he could protest that he wanted to see grade-school Serena one more time, disappeared altogether. Darien shut his eyes tight until his own voice prompted them back open.

"Are you going to listen, Odango, or can I go back to reading?"

"NOOOOO!" Serena detached from the stuffed animal she'd been hugging and threw herself back into the booth. "I'm listening, I'm listening, I promise I'll listen, Darien, you just can't leave, I HAVE to pass this test! PLEEEEEAAAASE STAY!"

Darien could remember afternoons in the dozens spent like this, helping Serena with homework and studying while she flew about with her drama queen antics. He remembered being proud of how well he hid his amusement, his pleasure at her attention to him, but now, watching himself with Serena, the turned-up corners of his younger self's lips as Serena climbed up on her heels to lean on the table and watch the math problem he was solving out for her.

Flushing slightly, especially since the ghost beside him had the unmistakable air of silent snickering, he let his eyes wander around the rest of the arcade. He could tell from his monochrome uniform and Serena's red bow and blue skirt that they were still in middle school, and he could see Molly and Amy in a booth a few yards away, chatting over banana splits as Motoki and Asanuma wrestled at the claw machine. It was strange to see the same people populating the arcade as a few hours earlier at the Christmas party,

But minus five years of age – Serena's hair was shorter, not tangling in her legs like it did now, and Motoki didn't have to bend over to play the claw game.

"Asanuma is fat," observed the Ghost of Christmas Past.

"Yes," said Darien absently, his attention caught by the gaggle of guys watching Serena from their perches at the counter. High schoolers, some of them! He hadn't noticed them when he was younger, but they were easy to spot now… "He hadn't hit his height growth spurt yet."

"They look curious, don't they?" observed his companion, following his gaze, just as dispassionately as before. "And aren't you?"

"I'm not curious," said Darien, and he wasn't. He knew exactly why those boys were looking at Serena; he knew more reasons for their actions than probably even they did; Serena wasn't just pretty, she was funny and bashful and outgoing and kind and in-your-face and playful and serious and sympathetic and hard-working and young and mature and a whole big oxymoron wrapped up in a beautiful package.

"I'm not curious," he said again, as though once was not enough. "That's me there. I was here. I know what happens."

"But do you appreciate it?" asked the ghost, and his question was punctuated by an eruption of Serena-giggles at the table.

Darien focused on her. She had just removed a candy cane from her mouth and popped it in his – his younger self's mouth, that is. As Darien watched the shocked expression unfurl on his middle school self's face, he remembered exactly what day this was. He was in eighth grade; it was the day before Serena's semester math final, and less than a week from now, he and Serena would both be in the hospital with mono, her catching it from her little brother and him catching it from her candy cane. It would be the first Christmas since moving out of the orphanage that he would not spend alone; instead, he would spend it in a wheelchair in the hospital cafeteria, where the hospital held a mini-celebration for patients stuck in the hospital over the holidays, with her loud, worried family, nearly falling asleep as Serena snored in her own wheelchair next to him. Even if he'd been basically asleep the whole time, it had still counted as a Christmas he hadn't spent alone; he'd had that argument with himself and won it.

But even as Darien stood submerged in his memories of that Christmas Day, the arcade around him began to blur. He started, feeling the cold hand in his own.

"One more," said the ghost.

Darien pulled away. Why did he have to dream of weird novels? Why couldn't he dream about Serena in the context of a fairy tale setting that wasn't depressing, or perhaps even with him as the dashing Han Solo and her as the strangely-bunned Princess of a destroyed planet? He remembered, then, that he was separating himself from Serena, freeing himself from Serena – you're Luke, he reminded himself. Not Han. Brother, not romantic interest. Brotherly. Brotherly. He groaned.

"Just one more," said the child spirit, and the blurred landscape around them stilled.

For a second, Darien thought that they had not moved at all, for they still stood in the arcade, in the shadows near the end of the counter. But it was later, and the booth where his middle-school self had sat with Serena was filled with an Uno game instead, and icicle lights, not tinsel, hung from the ceiling. Darien realized suddenly, and his eyes flicked to the corner where the disco lights of Dance Dance Revolution skittered up and down the walls. And he saw Serena, all smushed up in Seiya's arms with his candy-cane tie slipping forward over her shoulder.

What was the point of this? Darien growled, as he had not the first time he watched this scene, and turned his head resolutely, glaring at the ghost. "Let's go."

The child with his face blinked up at him. Was this the frustration that the orphanage matrons had felt, fighting a battle against his hard, stony, inhuman face.

He seized the sleeve of the familiar black jacket. "Let's go, I said."

Their surroundings swirled; he blinked –

Ad then he suddenly jerked up in his bed. The alarm clock's red numbers branded his eyeballs – 2:45 a.m. He squinted, finding something wrong with the scene…

A shadow flickered across his wall. He lifted his head an inch, squinting at the wall, splashed with moonlight…his head turned slowly, sliding across the pillow, to look at the fluttering curtains and open glass doors to the balcony.

The shadow flickered again, in the corner of his eye. He spun, vaguely expecting to see his younger self again, or perhaps – "Fiore?" he called.

Weight pressed upon his feet, and he looked down to see a black cat perched upon his leg.

"Luna?" he said, leaning forward and squinting in the dimness. The unmistakable bald spot of Serena's housecat meeting his eyes cemented his certainty.

"How did you get here?" he murmured, reaching forward to pick her up. "Did Serena hog the catnip again?"

But Luna darted from his hands, scampering like a flash across his bedspread t the bedside table. Then she darted out of the room, across the long room, to the door, which inexplicably, stood open. There she paused on the threshold and stared up at him with glittering dark eyes.

Then she spun with a flick of her tail and disappeared into the hallway.

Darien darted after her, with only enough time to remember that he was only wearing socks. All her could think of was the time that Luna had run away and he and Serena had tracked her for hours only to spot her darting across the street through a river of cars, and Serena had run to catch her and ended up getting hit by a car instead. It hadn't been too severe – for Serena – only a broken leg and some scrapes, but it had terrified him, and now he felt quite sure that if he didn't catch Luna now, something even worse than that first accident would happen… he chased and he chased, always after that glimpse of a black tail, and when he found himself shimmying up an oak tree and found himself perched on a branch and face-to-face not only with Serena's bedroom but with Serena herself, he had no idea how it had happened.

So shocked was he by the sight of Serena curled up there on her window seat staring out at him that he nearly dropped out of the tree. Then claws dug into his arm painfully, snapping him back to awareness. He realized that he had caught Luna at last. At least he would have an excuse for being perched outside her bedroom when Serena yanked open her window and demanded what the heck he was doing.

But her blue eyes, he realized as the seconds passed and his adrenaline ebbed, were not focused on him but through him. Slowly, tentatively, he pressed his hand against the window. He knocked on the glass. Her gaze did not flicker. A sick feeling of nausea crawled into his stomach.

"She can't see you." The voice came from the cat in his lap, and Darien tensed.

Then his hand against the window curled into a fist. "Let me guess," he said, bitterness souring his words. "You're the ghost of Christmas present."

"Mmm," was the answer from the cat. Darien set it down on the other side of the branch, suddenly not wanting to touch it.

He turned his head back to Serena. Her hair stirred with her slow exhalations. He flicked his eyes to the rest of the room, feeling it to be too awkward to look at her face this close when she was unaware, like a voyeur. Her bed was unmussed; she hadn't gone to bed yet – the time on her Cardcaptor Sakura clock changed as he looked on it, the minute hand shuddering to half-past three o'clock.

"Why did you bring me here?" Darien's voice was quiet though if she couldn't see him, she undoubtedly couldn't hear him. His breath didn't even make white puffs in the air.

"Hmm," said Luna, not answering his question. "It's very late for her still to be awake, isn't it? I wonder what has kept her up."

Darien's eyes flicked – almost unwillingly – to her face. He saw the darkened state of her pupils and the straight line that he had only ever seen her lips make after her big blow-out fight with Molly and when her mother was in the hospital.

Too cowardly to continue looking, he looked quickly away, gluing his eyes to the handful of cracked candy canes and the half-empty mug of hot chocolate at her tiny feet.

He spoke to Luna again. "Why is she sad?"

"You're the best friend," said Luna. "I am just a ghost. You must know better than I do."

Serena moved suddenly; Darien started, his eyes flying to her face. He watched, cringing, almost reluctantly, as she snatched her legs up to her chest and buried her face in her knees. A picture frame toppled from her lap to the floor; he caught a glimpse of his own face before disappeared to the floor.

"She is crying."

"It's late." The words escaped Darien. "She'll be happier, no one can be happy at this ungodly hour. Not even the Odango. She'll be happier."

Then – "Luna. The picture – who else is in it?"

"No one else," said the cat.

"Why – why is she – ?"

"Because of the ungodly hour, I thought." Luna rose to all four feet, tail swaying behind her. "I have shown you the present – "

Her voice began to fade, and suddenly, she disappeared in a cold, silent grey fog that rolled in to swallow everything: Luna, the tree, the window, Serena…
Darien rose slowly to his feet. "Fiore?" he called. "Luna?" Then, feeling quite stupid – "Darien?"

The fog rolled over his shoes, beaded on his jacket. He felt sweat roll down his neck, and his scalp itched as though Serena had never washed the flour from his hair. He bit his lip as he thought of her, not daring to allow himself to entertain the hope, there was no way that she would cry over him – he dared not think it.

He turned again, and when he had completed an entire 360 degrees, he found himself face-to-face with a mirror.

He hissed and jumped back.

No, not a mirror. The black-haired, blue-haired man staring back at him had not moved backwards when he did. Nor did his dress match Darien's – he wore a crisp black tuxedo instead of Darien's sleep-rumpled jacket and jeans. And his face was older, leaner, and creased by wrinkles at the edge of his eyes. This was an older version of himself just as the second ghost had been a younger version of him.

Darien cleared his throat. "Are you…" he paused, for her really could not believe the stupid, aggravating dream had dragged on for this long, "here to show me the future?"

The stare that this older version of himself gave him was not unlike the blank, cold stare that the Darien in the Ninja Turtle jacket had given him. But unlike that Darien, this one did not talk; he turned, making no sound, and walked, barely seeming to move but almost immediately melting into the fog.

Darien ran after him. He caught up to the tuxedoed man and found the fog thinning around then, but this time it was an utterly unfamiliar setting that greeted him. A sparse room, with a sofa and an armchair, a TV and a stereo, a desk, and a massive bookcase crammed with equally massive textbooks. The room rose up into a kitchen, divided from it by a counter and a stool. A calendar hung above the desk; only one item printed neatly in black pen upon December 22: Hospital Christmas Party.

The tuxedoed man went to the desk and sat down. The TV was on, but muted. The only sound came from cars honking outside.

"Where are we?" Darien tried, but the man – himself – turned the swivel chair to face the desk and began to type at the notebook computer. Darien saw that it was a long, procedural-type list full of medicinal names and acronyms. He typed with the speed of Serena when she was late to school but the methodicity of a robot.

Darien stick his cold hands in his pockets and slouched beside the window. The curtains were dark and half-drawn; peering outside, he saw a metropolis of skyscrapers and car-choked streets, tinsel hanging from the streetlamps. A huge sign in a storefront below exclaimed "3 MORE DAYS TO SHOP" in English.

He looked back inside, at the apartment. The only sign of the time of year was the commercial on the muted TV, now showing a chuckling Santa Claus eating some brand of chocolate. That, and…

He floated across the room, noting the two open doors, one an immaculate bathroom and the other a bedroom just as Spartan in furnishings as the living room. He reached the kitchen counter and found an opened by empty envelope sitting upon it. He reached to pull it closer to read the addresses, but his hand passed through the paper and then the counter itself like air.

A stab of panic knifed through him, less from his phantom state than from the terror that had gripped him – was this his life? Was this what he was going to become?

A trash can sat in the corner with its lid wedged open by an empty pizza box. He glimpsed something shiny within it, shiny and small and square.

A big red splotch of sauce nearly obscured the candy cane picture on the front of the card, and the card was bent at just the right angle to allow him, if he knelt and peered into the trash can, to make out the words scrawled inside –

Wishing you and yours a happy holiday –

Serena Tsukino

Just that. Just a sentence – not even a sentence, a dependent clause.

He looked back at the envelope, lying on the table, and saw for the first time that it had been ripped, not neatly with a letter opener as was his wont, but torn, in a jagged rip, as though in haste, in eagerness – or anger?

The tuxedoed version of himself shoved away from the desk suddenly. As he pivoted, his eyes locked with Darien's for a millisecond, then slid away. Darien stepped back as his older self strode forward and swept the envelope on the counter into the trash can. Then he moved to the coffee table and turned off the TV with the remote. The disappearance of the broadcast left the TV screen large and black and reflective as a mirror, and Darien stared at their two reflections within it, wondering why, if he was a phantom, he had a reflection. Then he realized that his older self's reflection was staring at Darien's own reflection.

He stared back, eyes wide. "Do you – "

Fog rolled in, cutting him off like a gag in his throat. From the cracks of the windows, the doorways, it billowed in until Darien was left, staring at his older self – until the fog swallowed him up, too.

Only once the fog had completely enveloped him did Darien begin to walk, wearily, miserably, through the fog. He did not call out this time; there did not seem to be a point. In fact, there seemed to be little point at all to his life now that he knew how the rest of it would turn out – silent and alone. Just as it had begun.

The fog thinned like dissipating smoke, and Darien was abruptly warmer. The smell of gingerbread invaded his nose.

Then he found himself nose-to-nose with Serena. He froze.

But not Serena, he was able to realize just before she dropped abruptly back down from her tiptoes and became the height of his chin again. Though she hadn't grown taller, her hair was out of its dumplings and shorter, hanging in a ponytail to her waist, and her eyes were darker, and she was thinner, as though she hadn't touched a milkshake in years.

She was older, just as his other self had been older, she could not see him, for she had been nose-to-nose with him and not known it – he extricated his phantom body now from the cupboard in which she had been rummaging and moved past her where she was pouring something into a pan in order to see the rest of her habitation.

Her apartment was as crammed with knickknacks as future Darien's had been devoid. Stockings and reindeer and Santas and cards plastered the walls and the tables, and he recognized the Rudolph movie playing on the TV. The dialogue was almost drowned out by the Christmas carols blaring from the radio, and bells trembled and jingled as they hung from the window. On the counter lay a heaped red and green blanket.

A laptop computer sat on the coffee table; the desktop was a gaggle of grinning children in red and green. Darien sucked in a breath; then he realized that there were too many of the kids for them all to be hers. Then he remembered the myriad Christmas cards with clumsy drawings and blocky letters on the wall, and he realized that Serena must be a teacher – of very young students, at that.

He glanced back at her golden head bent over the stove in the kitchen. Funny that while almost everything in her apartment chattered with noise, Serena was silent. The humming he had heard as she made her gingerbread house only hours – had it been only hours? – before was absent.

Darien's eyes returned to the laptop. Just because those couldn't all be her kids didn't mean she didn't have kids of her own. She had to be doing all this decorating, all this baking, for someone. Slowly, almost surreptitiously even though he knew she couldn't see him, he crossed the living room to the hallway. He blinked when he saw only two doors – a bathroom and a bedroom. Maybe no children, then…but a husband. Certainly a husband.

The trill of the phone joined the cacophony of sound. Darien stiffened, then crept back into the living room, standing by the window that looked down into a crowded shopping district.

"Moshi moshi," said Serena – then yelped as one of the pans boiled over. "WAI! Just a minute – !" Darien found himself grinning as she hopped around, snatching at pans and dials and spoons and yelping all the while. He took a step forward to help her before he remembered that his hands would just go through the pans.

At last the chaos was contained again, though a burning smell now filled the kitchen, and the smoke detector squeaked indignantly. Serena jammed a fist onto the button to shut it up and crammed the phone back between her shoulder and chin, panting.

She listened to the person on the other end of the line. Her face turned indignant. "Hey!" she exclaimed. "Well, it wouldn't have burned if you hadn't called right in the middle of my Christmas cooking, you spore!"

The person on the other end spoke again. Serena sighed and turned around, leaning against the counter. "No, it's fine, Sammy. No, I'm busy, really I am." She paused, listening, then stomped her foot. "No, do NOT come flying over here in the middle of your trip to see me! That would make Mika very upset – " Again she paused, listening, then – "NO, Sammy, you DON'T leave your girlfriend who you haven't seen in six months on CHRISTMAS to visit your spinster sister who you saw only last week!"

Spinster? Darien's eyes returned to the bedroom, then the decorations that cluttered the apartment.

"No, I'm not alone," said Serena into the phone. Darien's head snapped up; he eyed her, then the apartment, warily. There was certainly no one else in the apartment, but it was foolish of him to think that she could see him – wasn't it?
"No," said Serena into the phone now. "I'm going to the orphanage today to see the kids.

Darien froze again. Dimly, he heard her say, "No, Sammy. Bye, Sammy." His attention focused on the TV, the blaring stereo, the meters and meters of tinsel, the Santas that grinned out everywhere. Suddenly he had remembered the way that Serena – his Serena, the Serena of the present – piled her bed high with stuffed animals and extra pillows until she was nearly buried in fluff and plush. When he teased her about it she said they kept her company when she was alone in the dark at night.

Darien turned away, trying to find a blank space – a patch of wall, of undecorated tree, anything. He found the only spot in the whole apartment – the front door.

As his eyes landed upon it, a hand suddenly emerged through the solid wood. The rest of a body followed, and Darien stared once again at the older version of himself.

His older self did not look back at him. From the moment he had stepped through the door to the soft green carpet, his eyes were pinned to Serena, leaning over the counter to turn off the oven and stove and stacking cookies on a plate. For the second time that night, Darien saw expression on one of the ghosts – a torn sorrow, piercing, like a needle through his eardrum, trickling slowly from his head as he watched it in a mirror.

But on Darien's face, suddenly, there was hope, for surely this older version of himself had come to be with Serena, surely he was…

The memories of the shopping signs in English, the way that Future Darien had walked right through the solid wood of the door, trickled into his mind.

Future Darien looked at him. Darien had never been adept at reading emotions on people's faces – save Serena's – but he could read his own, and he saw hatred boiling in that face.

Darien was not stupid enough to think that his older self would answer him, but he had to ask. He met the smoldering gaze head-on.

"Is she alone?"

His future self did not speak. But the hatred that curled his lips was answer enough.

The older version of himself took a step toward the kitchen. Darien watched with baited breath, unsure what he expected – for the older man to embrace her, to wrap an arm around her too-thin waist? Instead, the ghost tore his pained eyes from Serena and transferred them to the door.

Serena pulled a sheet of plastic wrap over the plates in front of her, then placed them all in a cardboard box that waited at her feet that already contained dozens of small stocking stuffed with treats. She stood back up, swiped a hand across her bangs, leaving a floury mark just above her eye, and turned off the TV with a remote. She hefted the full box up on her hip and grabbed a ring of keys that had more keychains on it than keys from the edge of the counter. Then she went to the door, walking right through Darien's future self.

She shivered, zipping her jacket the rest of the way up to her chin.

"Someone just walked over my grave," she informed herself, then opened the door. She walked outside, and shut the door, yelped as she tried to turn and found she'd shut the door with her ponytail stuck in it, and wrestled the door back open again. Darien smiled, relieved to see that at least some things never changed, then, as Serena shut the door again, this time with her ponytail safely looped over an arm, and the lock scraped, he cast an uncertain glance at the ghost.

The ghost glided forward, through the door, and Darien followed. Together they made a silent sojourn after Serena, down in the elevator, down the streets, into the subway, back up onto the street, and into the orphanage.

Darien remembered it. He remembered it well. The worn brownish-orange carpet, the corner still with the splotchy stain where Mutou Yoko had thrown up, the brightly painted chairs, and the loud sound of yelling children. He looked at his future self to see if he was noticing the same things, but the ghost was already turned away, following Serena toward the sound of the kids.

The children converged on Serena like nuts sticking to a caramel-coated apple the second she entered. "Serena-san!" went up the cry.

"Hi, guys!" She was laughing. Darien watched her stoop down, ruffle the tousled heads, listen to clumsily told jokes and giggle, and kiss boo-boo's better. He felt cold and nauseous.

At last, a tall man approached and gently detached the aureole of kids from Serena.

"Okay, let's give Tsukino-san some room," he said. "You'd get put on Santa's naughty list if you squished her to death."

Serena smiled, and Darien shifted closer to see them better. The man wore a purple shirt with an identification badge and had an auburn eighties mullet. But Serena still smiled up at him. "Thanks, Alan-kun."

"No problem. Were you baking?" The man lifted a hand to the floury patch above her eyebrow, wiping it away. Serena blushed, scrubbing at the spot herself.

"I was trying," she said wryly. "Succeeding, not so much."

"They look delicious to me," said Alan, taking the box out of her arms. "And the kids'll love anything you made."

"Yes, but if my cooking makes them sick, then I'll go on Santa's naughty list." Serena smiled at him again, then looked around. "Um, where's Buji-kun?"

"Ah, he woke up with a fever this morning," said Alan. "He's in bed."

"Could I…visit him?" asked Serena tentatively.

"Of course." Alan smiled down at her. "Just don't let him hog you the whole time. The others would get quite angry with him. And in the meantime, would you like some hot cocoa?"

"That sounds very nice, thank you," said Serena. "I'll be back soon."

Darien followed her out of the kitchen down the hallways, not even checking behind him to see if the ghost followed.

The door in front of which Serena stopped and knocked was only a few doors away from the room that had been Darien's own.

"Ergh," croaked a small, hoarse voice.

Serena opened the door a crack. "Buji-chan?"

At first, all Darien could see was a curly dark head of hair buried in a blue pillow. Then he slid into the room after Serena and rounded the corner of the bunk bed. He saw his own face staring back at him for the third time that night.

"Hi, Buji," whispered Serena.

No, not his face. Just very much like his face. The eyes were brown, not blue, the face was wider, the hair curlier, but other than that, it was like looking at the ghost of Christmas Past all over again.

Barely had he puzzled to this conclusion before Serena walked through his body to the bed. He froze as she passed through him, waiting for her to shudder, but instead her head tilted to one side for a moment, as though resting beneath his chin, and she paused. Then she shook her head, blinking, and knelt down in front of Buji's bed. Darien took a long, shuddering breath, barely realizing that he had stopped breathing.

The boy's eyelashes fluttered as he struggled to keep his eyes open. "Hi, onee-chan," he coughed.

"Hey, Honey Bunny," said Serena softly. She smoothed some damp curls from his forehead. "You don't feel good, huh?"

Buji coughed again. "Nuh-uh." A bead of sweat trickled from beneath his dark curls to course down his flushed cheek. "Worst Christmas ever."

"Well, there'll be more Christmases," said Serena. "Lots and lots of them." Why did her voice sound sad?

"Yeah…here." The boy rubbed his face across his pillow and coughed again. "Onee-chan."

Serena fluffled his pillow gently. "Hmm, sweetheart?"

"Do you like me more than the other kids?"

Serena rocked back on her heels. Darien, crouched beside her, rocked forward on his heels to see her expression; then Buji spoke again.

"The other kids say I'm your favorite. They say you're going to adopt me. Are you going to adopt me, onee-chan?"

Pain and frustration filled Darien like the agony of a phantom limb. He wasn't in the orphanage anymore, but he could remember the terrible daily aching, the throb to belong and be loved –

"Buji." Serena was crying. "I can't adopt you, sweetheart."

"Why not?" asked Buji plaintively. Another cough shook his shoulders, and even as Darien hated the kid for making Serena feel guilty by asking her to adopt him, he felt a terrible sympathy for the child and almost felt furious with Serena for saying no… He looked at her.

Serena sniffled, wiping her nose. "Buji, you want a family. You want a daddy and a mommy. Don't you? A strong boy like you needs a dad, and brothers and sisters to protect, and I can't give you that, Buji, I can't give you a family. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. If I – if I'd thought - " Her voice was miserable.

Buji coughed and smothered his face in his pillow again, but Darien heard the artificial quality of the coughing and saw the dark wet spots on the pillow when the boy lifted his head from it. But he smiled brashly at Serena with his flushed face.

"That's okay, onee-chan. I told the other kids they were wrong, anyway."

Serena cried harder.

"Oh, c'mon, onee-chan, everyone'll get mad at me for making you cry!" Buji rolled his eyes and began coughing again.

This statement drew an unwilling laugh from Serena. She swiped her jacket sleeve across her face.

Darien watched Buji watch her. "Will you tell me something, onee-chan?"

"Anything," Serena promised in the fervent voice that Darien knew so well.

"Why do you spend more time with me than with the other kids?"

Darien knew the answer. Before Buji had even finished asking the question, he knew the answer, it had flown into his mind like a gust of wind and frozen him with shock, but now it melted uncertainly, for of course it couldn't be true it couldn't, but maybe it could, all the things he'd seen tonight –

With a swift, desperate glance he looked to his future self, seeking the answer in his face, but the ghost was watching Serena intently, lips parted and eyes wide.

"You…" Serena combed a trembling hand through Buji's dark hair. Her voice was a scratchy whisper. "You remind me of someone I loved very much."

"What was his name?" whispered the boy who looked just like him. Darien stopped breathing. He leaned forward, watching Serena's lips move –

C

7:45 a.m. The clock's red numbers sat inches away from his face. Darien blinked, once, then again, as though it would return him to the room in the orphanage. The clock letters only blinked back at him mockingly and, when he opened his eyes the second time, had changed to 7:46, as though reminding him that time was flying past him.

He sprang to his feet, toppling off of the bed. He grabbed his keys and raced out the door, shooting down the stairs and through the lobby like a blizzard. He rammed his keys into the ignition of his motorcycle before he had even landed on the seat, and sped through the empty morning streets like a bullet. He scarcely remembered the kickstand when he reached the Tsukino house and vaulted over the front gate to pound up the porch steps.

He jabbed the doorbell, just barely resisting the urge to grab the housekey that he knew was hidden under the garden gnome in front of the ferns, jamming his hands into his pockets to keep himself from reaching for it.

Serena's mother opened the door. "Well, hello, Darien," she said, a faintly puzzled smile but a smile nonetheless, wrinkling her forehead. "Good morning."

Darien realized, in a stab of crystal-clear awareness, that he was not wearing any shoes, only socks. He shuffled his feet and asked as politely and not breathlessly as he could (which was still pretty breathlessly), "Merry Christmas, Ikuko-san. May I talk to Serena for just a few minutes?"

Except it came out more as "Merrychristmasikukosanmayitalktoserenaforjustafewminutes?"

If he had been paying attention he would have seen that Tsukino-san's eyes twinkled at him. She stepped aside, opening the door for him. "You're lucky, we're starting Christmas late today. Serena's father's taking pictures at the palace this morning, so he won't be back until at least eleven o'clock. Would you like some coffee?"

Darien realized that he had not invested even a single thought in what Kenji Tsukino would have to say (or rather, what his shotgun would have to say) about an 18 year-old boy – even if it was him – especially if it was him – showing up at eight o'clock Christmas morning to wake up his daughter.

"I'm pretty sure that you'll have to wake her up, though," continued Ikuko, having noticed that Darien hadn't heard a word she'd said about coffee. "She didn't get home until late last night. You're sure you want to brave it?"

"I'm sure," said Darien, his eyes finally sliding back to her. "Thank you, Ikuko-san." He hurried to the stairs, then abandoned all pretense as he pounded up the stairs three steps at a time. He had to know. And NOW!

He flew through her door –

And stopped.

She lay scrunched up on her window seat, exactly where he'd seen her with Luna last night. Her buns were still up, and she still wore her frilly party outfit with the striped leggings. Her head was bowed forward, tiny snores stirring her hair as it hung forward into her lap.

At the sight, all the urgency trickled out of Darien like a sigh. A deep, quiet calm replaced it. Now that he knew, now that he knew what he needed – Serena – and what he needed to do – screw the college in America – there was suddenly all the time in the world.

He walked over to the window seat and levered an arm beneath her knees, lifting her up as he hadn't done since the time she'd gotten hit by the car chasing after Luna. He laid her down on top of her still-made bed, watching her turn over, her face toward him, and snuggle into her pillow. There was a strand of hair hanging over her nose, and her face scrunched up a little when she breathed in. He lifted a hand to brush it away, but as his fingers grazed the tip of her nose, her hand shot out and grabbed his wrist.

Darien's eyes shot to her face.

"Santa?" she mumbled.

Darien couldn't help it. He burst out laughing.

Serena's eyelids snapped open. She blinked up at him, once, twice, bleary-eyed, then he found his laughter muffled by the pillow that met his face.

"It's like four o'clock in the morning," said Serena in a scratchy, crabby voice, turning over and giving her back to him. "Go away, jerkface Santa imposter."

Then she gasped and bolted up in bed, staring at him. "Darien!"

"Yeah," he said, still chuckling at her, the pillow in his lap. "Who'd you think it was? Santa Claus?"

She didn't even scowl at him for the joke. She scrambled forward and grabbed his arms. "Why did you leave last night? Do you know how worried I was? AND you left me with Seiya! You know he flirts like Tamaki! AND you left me with Rei and Lita and Toki and Numa to clean up! They were all mushy with each other the WHOLE TIME, and it was SO AWKWARD – "

Darien wasn't sure exactly how it happened. One second she was chattering away at him, and the next second his eyelashes were tangled in hers.

Serena's tiny gasp stole the breath from his lips. Her eyes were very bright and very blue, and he was thinking that her cheeks were very red, because he felt heat radiating against his face.

"Um," she said. Her eyes, barely a centimeters away, stared into his. "Darien – " He felt her swallow. "I told you it's distracting when you do the eyelash thing – "

"Good," said Darien. And he kissed her.

Her hands slid into his hair. For a split second, Darien's thoughts shot to the day before, her hands with the flour – then he melted back to the present. This was so much better. Soft as marshmallows and sweet as…

They broke apart. Serena's hands slid down to knit around his neck, which was not blushing this time.

She gazed up at him with eyes as blue as gumdrops. Then she giggled. "Hot chocolate."

He grinned, knowing exactly what she was talking about. "Candy canes." He bumped her forehead with his, and their eyes met in that earth-shaking way again –

Then she pulled away. "Darien." Her serious blue eyes gripped him as tightly as her hands did. He focused on them, feeling a sudden pit in his stomach.

"I don't want you to go to college in America."

Her face was worried, guilty. She looked like a child who was just confessed to breaking a vase. Relief flowed through him.

He smoothed the crease from her forehead with a gentle thumb. "Neither do

I."

Disbelieving elation dawned as dazzling as sunshine in her face. "Really?" she breathed. Her eyes flickered away from his for a second. "Because I had this weird dream – "

Darien pulled away from her, holding her chin in his hands. The memory of exactly WHY he had bulleted into Serena's room at eight o'clock Christmas morning had evaporated in the unbelievable ecstasy of Serena's lips, but now the events of the past night slammed back into him. "What kind of dream?"

"Like…weird." Her eyes stared into space, hands clenching in his jacket. Then she shook her head and smiled brightly up at him. "Nothing. But, hey, Darien."

The sight of Serena's small hands curling into his collar had fascinated him. He looked back up at her, unable to contain the smile on his face. "Yeah?"

"How do you feel about adopting a kid?"

He stared at her. No way. She pulled back suddenly, misreading his expression. "I mean, it was just –I know we're not – l" She let out an indignant huff. "I TOLD you, it was a REALLY weird dream!"

He caught her by the arm as she kicked her legs over the side of the bed to stand up and tugged her back to him. He bumped her forehead with his. "I would love to adopt a kid with you, Odango."

Serena gasped a little again. Then she smiled adorably up at him, cheeks tinting pink. "You're so nice today I could just kiss you, Darien Shields."

He lowered his face to hers, grinning, feeling her eyelashes fluttering against his cheek. "As long as you promise not to give me mono again."

She giggled, and her hands on his neck pulled his head back down to hers again. "Speaking of kissing disease…"

C

"I'm home!" Unwinding his scarf, Darien leaned over the back of the armchair to plant a kiss on Serena's lips.

She squeaked, clapping a hand over her mouth. "Your lips are FREEZING!"

"And yours are warm – " Darien leaned over again…

"A-HEM!" Buji cleared his throat. "'Kaa-chan's reading me a book here, otou-san!"

"Ohhh…." Darien pulled off his coat, hiding his smile beneath a penitent expression. "Sorry."

From where she sat in the armchair with Buji in her lap, Serena shot him a half-amused, half-apologetic grin. Then, placing her chin back atop Buji's dark curls, she continued, "He had no further meetings with Spirits, but lived up to his promises to them, ever afterwards. It was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that truly be said of us, and all of us!" She paused, taking a deep breath, and finished, "And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God bless us, everyone!"