Clarke had the best Christmas tradition ever, honestly. Every Thanksgiving weekend, she would unpack all the Christmas tree ornaments her family had collected over the years, and decorate her one-room flat with them. It usually took her several hours and lots of nerves, so she had started to invite friends for help – but they rarely knew what they agreed to. Clarke's Christmas ornament collection was a lot.
But Clarke – Clarke just loved it. Collecting Christmas tree ornaments did nothing to change the world for the better. But somehow, it still gave her a sense of meaning, of mission, of importance during the year. Hanging them up meant leaving her hectic, day-to-day life schedule behind for a day. In fact, the whole business made her feel more connected to long-duration matters. The tradition had started with the great-grandmother of her father when she migrated from Germany. She hadn't bought much valuables with her but four Christmas tree ornaments. Unpacking the ornaments every year, looking at them, hanging them up – it all felt relevant.
"Why are we doing this again?", Bellamy asked. He stood in front of her cupboard, hands on hips, and looked at the top shelf. There were five huge card boxes, waiting to be put down. His facial expression was something between damnation and disbelief.
"Because I took over the family tradition after my father died", Clarke answered without giving him any possibility to drop out. "You know how my mother doesn't really have a sense for those things."
"But … five boxes, only filled with Christmas tree ornaments?"
"Four", Clarke corrected him. "The last one are lights and bows and stuff. But, I mean, it started five generations ago and the collection just got bigger and bigger every year. All the family members adding the ones they liked as presents. I know from my grandfather that there were some people who didn't know what to gift him, so he would only get ornaments, all the time, during all those years."
Clarke might have seen a glimpse of awe in Bellamy's face. She knew she could decoy him with talking about her family history. Her friends had never really cared for her stories, only with getting the job done as soon as possible. Bellamy, however, seemed to be attentive. She realised she was glad he finally agreed to help her.
Bellamy put up the ladder and reached for the first box. His shirt moved and Clarke could see some of his skin. She tried to let go of it but it didn't really matter. She had been a goner the moment Bellamy had stepped through her door.
Half an hour later, the sky had turned dark and Clarke's little apartment looked chaotic. Or so it seemed to Bellamy, with all that wrapping paper lying around, lids everywhere, boxes filled with more boxes (he got some serious Matryoschka doll vibes from it, to be honest) and just very little room to put things. But Clarke knew very well where each ornament was to go – only a few onto a small tree, most of them around windows, door frames, shelves – and Bellamy was amazed: by all the little nails in the walls he never noticed before, by Clarke's focus, by the plan in her head, by the sheer kitsch of some ornaments, by the history of everything. When they opened the third box, Bellamy was speechless by the amount of shine, colour and sparkle the ornaments had.
"Ah." Clarke let go a careful breath. "The good ones."
"They look ..." Bellamy searched for words. Clarke grinned up towards him and he couldn't decide what beamed more: the ornaments or Clarke's face.
"These are the nice ones", she told him. "They are made of glass, coated with colour or metal from the inside, always hand-blown. In the beginning, Christmas bulbs were made with a simple silver reaction like this one here," – she pointed towards a perfect ball of silvery colour – "and then they became fancier and got hollows and stones and patterns like this one." She pointed at an incredibly detailed bulb, covered in golden gems, a red pattern, shimmering due to all the light it reflected on its small surfaces. "Some of them are incredibly old."
"How much are they worth?", Bellamy couldn't help but ask.
"I don't know, a fortune by now probably." Clarke shrugged her shoulder. She carefully put her fingers through a few strings and lifted the attached bulbs out of the box. "It's a huge inheritance, yeah, but the emotional worth is much bigger for me, you know?"
"Look at this!" Bellamy reached into a smaller box, took a thin golden string between his hands and lifted it slowly, pulling a golden star out of its compartment.
Clarke smiled. "Ah, you've got the very first and original ornaments there, Bellamy."
Bellamy was stunned. Clarke decided to tell him more. She wanted him to know.
"It all started with the grandmother of my grandfather, Greta. She was born in some lower mountains in Germany and when she immigrated, she didn't bring much valuables with her. One of the few things she did bring was that little box. It could take four Christmas tree ornaments: This golden star, a round blue bulb and a brown pine cone. All made out of glass. And the fourth one under them, bigger and much more detailed. It has the form of a drop or an onion. Or an elve's hat turned around, there's a debate going on about that in the family."
Bellamy looked at the small star in his hands and then at Clarke. "Excuse me, I can't each lunch with you tomorrow, I'm going to have to spend the entire day in the library researching 19th century German Christmas décor."
Clarke chuckled. It felt good having shared the story with someone. "While you're at it, you could also look into the drop bulb." And then she got serious, because it was important to her what Bellamy thought, and observed him. He looked concentrated, attentive. "It's probably the most special one. It's incredibly beautiful, the colour very rich, really fancy. According to legend, Greta used to tell wild stories about it." She couldn't tell if Bellamy thought she was nuts. She suddenly was embarrassed by all of it and moved away to hang up ornaments around the door frame.
"What kind of stories?", Bellamy asked.
"Apparently, it shows you 'your way' or something – guides you, so to say", Clarke said without turning around. "Whenever you're at a crossroad, have a problem or are in a dilemma, it shows you the right way for your life. Greta always claimed she got this in Finland."
"Finland? I thought she was German?"
"She probably travelled there once, I guess. Put the four onto the tree, okay?"
"Sure. – Finland", he said more to himself than to anyone specific. "Sometimes I forget how much people in Europe travelled even before globalization." He found a good tree branch on eye level, a place where the ornaments would be seen well – a place they deserved.
Bellamy put the lid covering the fourth one away and examined the ball. It seemed to have been from a different set of ornaments. The style was indeed a bit different, much more detailed, much fancier and the ornament was slightly bigger. The colour was an amazing, deep, rich shade of red. "What is the ornament supposed to do? I mean, in order to 'show your way'."
"Apparently, it's supposed to change colours." Clarke made a dismissive movement with her one hand. "But I've only seen the drop being white, so I wouldn't give it much thought anyway."
"It's red."
"What?" Clarke hung up a small tree onto the door frame.
"The drop is red", Bellamy said with a serious voice.
Clarke tried to concentrate on untangling two golden strings on her finger. She mumbled: "Stop kidding me, I know the colours of my ornaments, Bellamy."
"I'm seriously not kidding you. There is no white here at all!"
Clarke turned around. Between her dinner table with a huge, pale paper box on top and the dark window onto her inner yard, Bellamy stood there, facing her. The bright and warm light of her kitchen ceiling lamp illuminated the whole room and let the curled, dark hair on top of his head shine with a golden shimmer.
He looked at her and Clarke couldn't quite read his expression. It wasn't shocked, it rather was as if the universe had clicked and showed it in his face. He held his right hand in front of his torso, the golden string wrapped around his index finger. He wore a dark green shirt today and against it, the red colour of the drop ball was even brighter. It blazed very red, shimmered, glowed, and was not white at all.
Clarke rushed towards him and examined the ornament more closely. "But it was always white! White, like this one here!" She pointed towards a white ornament. "How – ?"
"Are you sure it just doesn't look red now because of the different light?" Bellamy seemed like he had to ask the question because a logical analysis of the phenomenon would request it, not because he actually believed it. "I mean … remember that dress? It looked golden for some, blue for others, and it mostly depended on the light in the picture –"
"– and what the viewer had seen before, I know how colours and light waves work, Bellamy." Clarke was surly. She was nervous. This has never happened before. "I don't know any stories about this, Bellamy. It certainly never happened in my life and no one from my family ever mentioned –"
"Doesn't mean it never happened", Bellamy replied with a gentle smirk.
The flat fell silent again. The ceiling light illuminated the scene, pale wrapping paper on the floor, half the door frame decorated with ornaments. Clarke wasn't quite sure if she could hear her own blood in her ears. No one moved.
"But… ", Clarke whispered. She didn't dare to say it. She took a hushed breath. "What does it mean?"
Bellamy observed her, then his lips fell into a small smile. "That you're on your right way, I guess."
"But nothing special happened this year?", Clarke said with a small voice. "What's so different this time?"
As the last word was said, the question seemed to fill the room. Instead of air and light, there only were the words, spreading from her mouth to the ornament, around their bodies, into the corner of the room. The air felt thick and heavy.
Then her eyes fell onto Bellamy.
That was different this year.
A/N: I made Clarke's ancestor German because the Christmas tree originally comes from there and I though it would made much sense that way. (In fact, Greta is from the Erz mountains, a region with totally super douper awesome fancy Christmas décor out of wood and glass.) The magic drop ornament, however, comes from Finland because that's where Santa is supposed to live and that's where the Christmas magic is most likely to come from, right? ^^
Thanks to noemiette for reading through.