Some maudlin dog loving sap in the early twentieth century wrote, "Some proverbs live because they are too true to die. Others endure because they have a smug sound and nobody has bothered to bury them."
I always thought all the sappy, sentimental holiday greetings were the latter.
I've seen enough Christmas Specials to know that they are the easiest and cheapest thing in the world to produce because you don't have to write a script because every one of them is exactly the same when you get right down to it, and -if you buy your props after Christmas one year and use them to film next season's holiday special- you get great discounts. Also, people are legally obligated to watch Christmas Specials nonstop for the entire month of December, and parts of November and January, so you have a guaranteed audience. And you barely even have to write dialogue, so long as you make sure one character says that time honored catchphrase, "Christmas isn't about getting; it's about giving."
But a couple of things that special, money-generating phrase doesn't mention is what, exactly, is being given and to whom.
-Darien Fawkes
"Alright, Darien, out with it. What's bothering you?" Claire Keeply asked.
Darien Fawkes, reclining in the much despised chair where he typically received the shot of counter-agent that prevented the Quicksilver Gland in his brain from taking over and wreaking unspeakable havoc on the world, glanced uneasily at the top of the refrigerated medicine cabinet on one wall of The Keeper's little shop of horrors, and said nothing.
"What?" Claire persisted, carefully withdrawing the precise amount of counter-agent she wanted from its vial and into her syringe and then holding the needle aloft as if she would hold its contents hostage until Darien answered her.
During the first stages of their relationship as scientist and subject, Darien would have believed her capable of that cruelty. During those first stages, she might have been, for she had been much angrier then, and her opinion of Darien had been extremely low. It also hadn't been well established what the cost of Quicksilver Madness was. These days, the unspoken threat was a hollow one, more symbolic than anything, and Darien did not respond to it.
"It's the Santa, I think."
This came from Robert Hobbes, who had come in with Darien. They'd just finished off a mission, supposedly their last before the holidays. Darien didn't for a second believe that The Official wasn't Ebeneezer Scrooge and The Grinch combined through some hideous experiment by a quack scientist tampering shamelessly in God's domain and -taking that awareness into account- he also didn't believe The Official would be giving them any time off unless it was to save on expenses.
Claire looked up at the plush Santa she had perched atop the cabinet.
The little Santa was about a foot high in its seated position with its black-booted feet hanging over the edge (making opening the cabinet a minor inconvenience; one Claire was apparently willing to tolerate in the name of the holiday spirit). It had an overly squared wool beard, two bright red cheek spots and a button nose. It was dressed in Santa's famous red and white, and for some reason it wore soft fuzzy green mittens instead of the traditional (and more practical) black leather gloves or the more recently popular silken white gloves. The faux buttons of its coat were little gold snowflakes (each one slightly different, which you could only tell if you really squinted or took a magnifying glass to them), and the big buckle of its wide belt was a bigger, more ornate gold snowflake.
"What's wrong with him?" Claire asked, looking first at Darien, then at Hobbes in puzzlement, to which she added, "Really, Bobby, you can't possibly find him offensive."
"Believe you me, Keep," Hobbes responded with evident pride, "I can find anything offensive."
Claire just stared at him for a moment, letting the meaning of those words sink in.
Then she said, "I believe you. But I'd like to think Darien here is a little more open-minded."
She looked expectantly at Darien, who continued his stare down with the stuffed Santa.
"What's to be open-minded about?" Hobbes asked with indignation, "Some old guy breaks into homes, steals food and leaves God knows what in children's socks. He watches them sleep and invades their minds against their will, reading all their thoughts and making himself judge, jury and executioner of deciding what's good and what's evil. If that's not offensive, I don't know what is."
"Really?" Claire sighed, but she clearly wasn't surprised, "And you'll go along with that, Darien?"
Darien, not really listening, finally said, "It's leering at me."
"What?" Claire asked.
"The Santa. It's leering," Darien clarified.
"He is not leering," Claire said, exasperated, "He's just looking."
"Spying is more like it," Hobbes insisted, but Claire ignored him.
"Looking down with affection, maybe, but absolutely not leering," Claire continued.
"It looks like it's leering," Darien said, still eying the Santa warily.
"Oh please," Claire said, sticking the needle in Darien's arm, "I expected as much from Bobby. Bobby's paranoid, but you, Darien-"
"Watery eyes, flushed face, shaking like jelly? Screams 'addict' to me," Hobbes went on, concluding, "And I'm not paranoid."
"-I would've thought you'd like the idea of things being given to you for free," Claire said to Darien, pretending not to have heard Hobbes' interruption.
"Some contortionist thief-" Darien began.
"Contortionist!" Claire exclaimed, but Darien went on undeterred.
"-sneaks in, robs the place, puts the stuff in a sack," Darien explained, "Then the home owner catches him at it and he blurts the first stupid thing that comes into his head."
"I suppose that's something you'd know about," Claire muttered, rolling her eyes.
"Ho ho ho," Darien finished, "And you have Santa Claus."
"Yeah?" Claire asked, withdrawing the needle now the injection was delivered, "And what about the reindeer?" she put a cotton swab on Darien's arm and he put his free hand over it by habit.
"Maybe the home owner was high too," Hobbes suggested.
Darien nodded, giving Hobbes a look of agreement.
"You two are unbelievable," Claire assessed, carefully capping and disposing of the used needle.
"And I still say that Santa's leering at me," Darien said.
"Oh get out," Claire said, half-annoyed and half-amused (but trying not to show it), "the both of you."
Because of the distinctively penny-pinching nature of both The Official as an individual and The Agency as a whole, the halls were decidedly (and mercifully, to Darien's way of thinking) not decked; though Eberts had found some silver(ish) tinsel sticking out of a dumpster after Christmas the year before (or maybe the year before that, by the look of it), tinsel which he had retrieved and given a thorough sterilizing before making it into a shoddy-looking wreath to be hung on The Official's office door during the holidays. The result of this burst of inept festive crafting was that anyone who opened the door would then have to spend several seconds putting the wreath back together as it inevitably leaped off the nail it was hung on and unraveled itself all over the hapless visitor. It had apparently been found inside a vat of glitter sprinkles, because you could tell from down the hall if someone had recently visited The Official by means of the Quicksilver-like flakes glinting out of hair and clothing, flakes that took ages to mostly remove (removing them entirely seemed not to be possible; Darien had concluded that glitter was a kind of plague or curse that could not be conquered through force, but science had yet to discover the cure to this widespread epidemic).
Every time Darien and Hobbes approached the dreaded wreath, they had a brief debate over which of them was going to open the door (there was a rule that when The Official's door was closed, that meant don't come in. But since the wreath had gone up the door was always inexplicably closed, so Darien and Hobbes had taken to ignoring that rule). This time, however, Darien had brought a quarter to flip.
Darien had long ago mastered several techniques of either controlling what side the coin landed on, or discovering before the reveal which side the coin had landed on. There was such a thing as a trick coin, but that was an easily discovered cheat, and one that could get you beat up if you took a bet with the wrong person. Besides, that was just lazy conning, and Darien was better than that. Much better to just take the coin out faster than the other party could produce a coin of their own, initiate the flip and finish the trick before they had time to back out. And unless the mark was a real sucker, it was best to never use the same trick twice; hence learning multiple means of accomplishing the same end.
Having lost the coin toss, Hobbes kicked open the door. Possibly this was just an expression of frustration, more likely it was a ham-handed attempt to avoid getting doused by glitter. A number of things happened that he apparently hadn't counted on when he initiated the maneuver. First of all, the cheap sawdust that someone had once dared call "wood" of which the door was made shattered from around the door latch, leaving it briefly engaged with the door frame (until the latch slipped out and fell to the floor with a noisy thud) while the door swung open with a bang. Secondly, the jarring impact knocked the ersatz wreath from its mooring of one nail, and it came plunging off the door like a silver(ish) snake made of tinsel trying to strike. A cloud of glitter was released into the air. The door bounced off the wall and swung back into position, struck Hobbes in the nose, and then careened back the way it had come, coating him with a fine layer of glitter (Darien would also have taken the glitter, but reflexively went invisible, protecting himself with a layer of quicksilver, which then sloughed off, taking the hateful sparkle substance with it).
"Oh, that's gonna come outta our paychecks," Hobbes muttered, struggling in vain to wipe some glitter off one of his eyelids.
"Our?" Darien asked, shaking off the quicksilver flakes, "What our? You did that all by yourself."
Instead of answering, Hobbes looked at Darien, then watched the descending quicksilver flakes and said, "That's cheating. That is an unauthorized use of the Gland, my friend."
"What's unauthorized?" Darien wanted to know, "That was reflex. I can't help it if I want to survive to the end of the Glitter Apocalypse with my will to live intact."
"You're opening the door next time," Hobbes declared.
"Oh yeah? Try and make me," Darien challenged.
Whatever Hobbes might have said back was interrupted by The Official clearing his throat ostentatiously to gain their attention and saying, "Boys, either come into the office or shut the door and go away, because -believe it or not- I have better things to do than listen to you bicker."
"I don't believe it," Darien retorted, but he did deign to enter the office.
"Also, one or the other of you will be paying to replace that door immediately," Eberts interjected, as if Darien had not spoken, "The Agency has very strict rules with regards to broken doors, including those broken by employees in fits of rage-"
"Eberts," The Official interrupted, and Eberts shut up.
"I don't suppose there'll be a holiday bonus for us," Hobbes griped, carefully stepping over the pile of glitter in the doorway as he walked into the office.
"Don't be ridiculous; the bank is closed on Christmas," The Official replied harshly, then smiled his evil little smile and added, "Think of it as unpaid overtime."
"And if I'd rather not work overtime during the holidays?" Darien inquired as he and Hobbes took their seats in front of The Official's desk.
"Well that's when your next shot'll be due; so I suppose you could think of it as insane overtime."
"Ah," Darien replied.
Darien knew there were worse devils than The Official, in fact he'd gotten a firsthand taste of that earlier this year. He also knew that The Official could be backed into a corner by the fact that Quicksilver Madness wasn't only bad for Darien; it was bad for everyone, including The Official's precious Agency, meaning the hold he had on Darien wasn't quite as strangling and fear-inspiring as it had once seemed. But the fact remained that Darien was terrified of who he became when he descended into Madness, most especially of how drunkenly he enjoyed being so powerfully out of control, and of the fact that he instinctively knew that there was a still deeper Madness beneath the layer he'd experienced, one worse by far, one he would not want to leave once he got there. Thus, The Official's threat, while somewhat weak, was incredibly effective on Darien because it preyed upon his private worst fear, one he could not shake because it was founded in reality.
But Hobbes was not held by any such chain, and he did have a complaint to make.
"We just finished a mission," Hobbes pointed out, "What? We don't get time off for a job well done anymore?"
Eberts fielded this one, "The Agency has no standing policy with regards to time off after a mission. It never has."
"Certainly not!" The Official grunted, "There's no room in the budget for that. And the enemy never sleeps, so neither can we."
Darien sighed with heavy resignation, "Okay, which terrorist group is threatening to abolish Truth, Justice and the American Way this week?"
"That's need to know," The Official replied coldly, "And you don't."
"Oh here we go," Darien with a shake of his head and roll of his eyes.
"Hey!" The Official admonished, "No eye rolling, I want you all in on this one."
"What about me?" Hobbes asked, clearly still fishing for that mythical holiday bonus.
"Are you our criminal expert?" The Official asked.
Hobbes seemed to think this over for a second, then turned to Darien and said, "Pay attention, Fawkes."
"Really?" Darien asked, but turned with sighing cooperation back to The Official, "Okay, what crime do you need solved this time?"
"This one," The Official said, with a nod to Eberts, who produced a tiny framed photograph of what to Darien looked like any one of a million babies.
"Well the quality on this picture isn't great, I'm sure the photographer was way overpaid, but that's not exactly a crime," Darien remarked, taking the photo to look at it more closely, adding without looking up, "Shoddy framework too, done cheaply I imagine."
"It's not the picture that needs your attention," The Official declared irritably, "It's the boy in the photo. He's been kidnapped, and you and Hobbes are going to devote all of your debatable skills and former free time to finding him and bringing him back by Christmas."
Author's Note: This story is completely written. I will be uploading one chapter per day.
This is my fifth annual Christmas fic and, as with all previous stories, all the chapter titles are taken from lyrics of Christmas songs. If you want to know what one is, feel free to ask, or take a guess of your own if you'd rather. So far, I haven't had to repeat, but if the yearly Christmas fic tradition continues, it'll happen sooner or later. There's only so many Christmas songs out there. I will post the full list of songs at the end of the final chapter if someone requests it.
Thank you for your time, and I hope you enjoy the story.