Disclaimer: I don't own anything.
I'm normally not one to write straight song-fics, but this was just too perfect. The song is "The Atheist Christmas Carol" by Vienna Teng.
I know there are many opinions and arguments about the state of religion in the Enchanted Forest, so for the sake of this piece, let's just agree that the commercialization of Christmas/the combinations of Christmas with other traditions he may be familiar with confuse him. Please don't comment just to make an argument about this!
grace coming out of the void
It's Christmas Eve, and Killian asks, "What is this holiday even about?"
Emma pauses, her arm still extended as she fits Mary Margaret's antique angel onto the top of the tree. "What do you mean? It's Christmas."
"So you've said," he concurs, frowning at an ornament in the shape of a reindeer, complete with red glowing nose. "Though – I may be wrong – the last time I checked, I don't believe we were celebrating deities in the form of snowmen or red-suited intruders."
She can't help but laugh at that. "They aren't deities, they're … icons."
He helps her down the stepladder, a grin creasing his face. "The difference being?"
"The difference – being—" she stammers, trying to come up with a better answer than 'it is what it is', and she catches sight of her family – her mother in the kitchen preparing enough food to feed a small army, her father reading 'Twas the Night Before Christmas to her brother, her son not-so-inconspicuously struggling with wrapping the last of her presents. She sees her family, all around her, and Killian right there with his hand warm against hers, waiting for an answer. "The difference being," she says, with conviction, "that Christmas is so much more than that."
"Then tell me, love. What is it about?"
.
It's the season of grace coming out of the void;
Where man is saved by a voice in the distance.
.
All those years trapped in Neverland, he'd lost track of the dates. He'd filled logbook after logbook full of tallies, calendars scrawled in the margins so he wouldn't miss a single landmark. And for years, he'd mourned every death, every anniversary. For years, he'd stayed true and paid his respects to those he'd loved most.
And then the years turned to decades, to centuries, and he'd lost track of the date, lost count of the years. For years, time stood still for him, just as it would never again march on for Liam, for Milah. But though he may have forgotten the dates, he still mourned – quiet and brooding in his cabin, rum burning his throat.
The winter reminds him.
All things must die; flowers must wither, the leaves on the trees must fall, and even Killian Jones – someday – will find himself in a corner he just can't climb out of.
All things must die.
He looks out across the land – not the sea. He imagines the bare trees like hands, reaching up from the earth, clawing and scraping and clinging to life. With luck, they'll make it to spring.
He takes another drink.
The sun is setting, and David groans as he eases himself onto the other end of the bench, wordlessly following Killian's gaze, as if he were watching something particularly enthralling.
"So you've found me then. Are you going to rat me out to your daughter or just to drag me back to town?"
David is quiet for a long moment, before he pulls a flask from his jacket. "Actually," he says, and he smiles furtively. "I came to give you a refill."
.
It's the season of possible miracle cures,
Where hope is currency and death is not the last unknown.
.
There are times when Snow remembers what nearly happened.
What did happen.
There are times that, though she knows the beating of his heart matches her own, she feels compelled to lean her ear to Charming's chest and hear the rushing sound of his breath, feel the steady pounding of his pulse. She's held his lifeless body in her arms too many times, and each moment with him feels like a miracle in and of itself.
"I'm still here," he murmurs, his hand tracing the length of her spine.
She frowns at him. Sometimes it still surprises her how much easier it is for him to read her now, to feel her own anxieties reverberate through him.
And there's nothing more to say than that. It's a simple assurance, not even a promise, but it's all she needs. She trusts him implicitly.
(She thinks of the moment they truly became one, of the glass coffin and when he'd kissed her and light bled through eternal darkness; when she'd woken with snowflakes on her eyelashes.)
Soon, Emma and Henry will be hurdling down the stairs, scrambling for the fruit loops as if they were brother and sister, not mother and son. Soon, Neal will wake and need changing and feeding and dressing, and all those things that parents give their children.
But for now, there is peace and reassurance in the warmth of her husband's embrace.
Outside, snow begins to fall.
.
Time begins to fade;
Age is welcome home.
.
It hits her for the first time when she sees Henry giving her brother a bottle.
He's got the little prince balanced on his hip as he scurries around the kitchen, expertly warming and preparing a bottle. (He's also listening to his iPod, regaling Neal with an off-key rendition of Don't Stop Believin'.) He isn't even on babysitting duty; he's just – doing it. Being responsible. When Emma was his age—
When Emma was his age, she was a runaway foster kid who couldn't bother herself to steal more nutritious food than stale poptarts. And here he is, the picture of responsibility.
(Most of the time.)
"What is it?" her mother asks softly, making her way down the stairs.
"He's growing up," Emma says wistfully.
"They both are," Snow agrees.
Both of their sons are growing up far too fast.
(She grew up fastest of all, and she isn't sure which of them lost the most in that.)
.
It's the season of eyes meeting over the noise,
And holding fast with sharp realization.
.
"Charming!" Snow admonishes, as much as she herself is laughing.
"What?" Charming replies, his face a mask of innocence for just a moment before he pushes her up against the apartment door once more, his mouth hot and wet against her neck and oh she really wishes he didn't have to stop.
"Charming," she whispers fiercely.
"It's date night," he reminds her. A scrape of teeth against her skin. "We don't get those too often anymore, if you haven't noticed."
"It's date night," she agrees, trying to remain stern even as her knees threaten to buckle under her. "And we have babysitters." She can hear the warble of Emma's laptop speakers, even through the door. "And they're awake."
He sighs, pulling away and she catches his gaze.
Do you really want to traumatize our daughter again?
He reads her, whether or not from years of marriage or from some deeper bond, and he wilts further.
Snow straightens her dress, wrinkles her nose at the not-so-inconspicuous mark she'd left on her husband's neck, and scrapes her key into the lock with every intention to continue their previous activities once they've shooed Emma and Killian off to Granny's. (She makes a point to refrain from thinking that they may strike up a similar activity once they're off.)
But when she pushes the door open, she finds her daughter and her boyfriend sprawled out across the sofa, Emma's head pillowed comfortably over Killian's heart.
"They fell asleep," Snow whispers, voice tinged with something between amusement and endearment.
Charming bites back a snort of laughter and moves to shut off the laptop – still playing through episodes of Lost on Netflix – while she unfolds a quilt to drape over them.
(Their fingers are intertwined and it's so simple and so monumental all at once, and when she meets Charming's gaze she knows he sees it too.)
Snow tucks the quilt around their tangled limbs, and kisses the tops of their heads before slipping off to check on her son.
.
It's the season of cold making warmth a divine intervention;
(You are safe here, you know now.)
.
At first, Emma had thought her brush with hypothermia might have steeled her, given her a certain newfound immunity to the cold. Unfortunately, that isn't the case, and when she slips on a patch of ice, falling neatly into a snowdrift, she is positively frigid.
"You're freezing, Swan."
"Yeah," she deadpans, worming her arms beneath his jacket and pressing the length of her body against his. "I know."
His lips brush against her forehead, and she remembers the last time she'd craved his heat so intensely, when she'd held onto him as if she were dying – fully convinced she really was dying. She remembers curling her hands into the collar of his shirt, his skin like fire against her fingers.
"We're just a few blocks from Granny's," he tells her, his fingers caught up in her hair. "We can get you some cocoa and cinnamon."
"No," she says, perhaps a little too eagerly. "No, I—" she sighs, burrowing further into his embrace, her face against the curve of his neck. "I'd rather just stay like this for a while."
He chuckles, and though she doesn't quite hear it, she can feel it rumbling in his chest. "I can do that."
(She isn't really that cold, she realizes. But it couldn't hurt.)
.
Don't forget;
Don't forget I love, I love, I love you.
.
That wasn't there before, Snow thinks. No, she knows. She knows that this ornament doesn't belong to her, because she'd passed it in the drug store at least a dozen times in the past month, each time lingering in the aisle with Neal strapped to her chest as Emma hunted down her favorite flavor of poptarts. And each time she'd reach out to touch it, to trace the delicate script—
Baby's First Christmas
It's a tiny blue rattle with a neat bow tied to the handle. And while her heart had yearned to buy it, to partake in this fragment of a Christmas tradition reserved for new parents, she couldn't help but think it wouldn't be the same to get a pink one as well, that it wasn't really Emma's first Christmas; couldn't help but think that to only get the one wouldn't be fair – as if somehow it made Emma less her daughter, even in a small way.
But here it is, perched delicately amongst the rest of her ornaments.
And it isn't alone.
Beside the miniature rattle lies something just as precious – a square picture frame, no bigger than an inch on each end; inside, she and Emma giggling tipsily at one another over a pair of fruity drinks. The word 'family' is scrawled in glitter just below the picture.
And what's more, as Snow carefully lifts the two new ornaments from the box, she spies a note – just a scrap of paper:
Merry Christmas, Mom.
Love, Emma.
.
It's the season of scars and of wounds in the heart;
Of feeling the whole weight of our burdens.
.
It's funny that a small town sheriff's station would have a lost and found filled to the brim, coats and hats and scarves spilling out onto the floor. It's a fire hazard, she'd complained once, punting an abandoned football cleat halfway across her office. And upon closer inspection, she's about eighty percent certain some of this stuff has been here since the first curse; reeking of 80's hairspray and musky cologne.
So when Henry had suggested they start a clothing drive, there hadn't really been reason to say no.
(She'd thought of Ava and Nicholas Zimmer, of how there must still be boys and girls and men and women in this town with no one to care for them, lost in the winter alone.)
It takes two boxes and three garbage bags, but she finally gets to the end, stuffing half of a fuchsia workout suit into the nearest bag when she sees them.
They're just a pair of boots. Brown. Scuffed. Worn down so far the treads are smooth and the one remaining lace is frayed at the ends.
They're just a pair of boots, but they make her heart skip a beat and her breath catch in her throat.
"Emma, are you almost done in here? I just finished up at the school and I—" her mother trails off, hovering just over her shoulder. "Oh."
"It's nothing," Emma lies before her mother can even ask. "I was just – packing these away."
Snow kneels down beside her. "Emma, sweetheart, you don't have to—"
"They're useless to me," Emma insists, willing her voice not to break. "And they're warm. They're better off – someone could –" and then she can't help it; she chokes, her fingers gripping the worn leather.
"They look like your father's size," her mother interrupts. "Maybe we should keep them. Just in case."
"Mom—"
"We're keeping them," Snow says firmly, and it's only when she closes her hand around Emma's that she realizes she's shaking.
Even if she's moved on; even if she's found happiness in her family's arms, found love in the strangest of places, there's still a void. There always will be, she realizes. No matter what happens, he will always be the man who pulled her out of her shell, pulled loose that first stone from her wall. He will always be Graham, and there will always be a piece of her that aches for him. "I still miss him," she admits quietly, tearfully.
And then her mother is pulling her close, and she's safe and warm and loved.
"I know, honey. I know."
.
It's the season of bowing our heads in the wind,
And knowing we are not alone in fear.
(Not alone in the dark.)
.
"It's stuck, Dad," Emma admits finally; mournfully. "They both are."
David sighs, admitting defeat as well. "Sorry. Looks like my rescue attempt turned out to be a disaster."
A disaster? Not quite; not compared to curses or evil sorceresses, not compared to giant snowmen or actual giants. But it certainly feels like it, shivering against the icy wind with both the cruiser and David's truck stuck in no less than two feet of soft, powdery snow. (And, of course, there isn't another soul in sight.)
"So what's the plan?"
For a long moment, her father seems to consider the mess before them. "Any chance Elsa taught you some ice magic while she was here?"
"Sorry," she says wryly. "We were a little busy saving the town."
"Ah, that's right," he teases, though his amused tone is lost as his voice breaks in the cold. "And I'm guessing any other magic is—"
"Not working. Otherwise I wouldn't have called my dad to dig me out of a snow drift at two o'clock in the morning." Magic begins to fade near the town line; if she could have poof'd herself out of here, she'd be curling up in bed, letting Killian's body heat thaw her frozen limbs.
"Right," he agrees, bundling his coat tighter around himself. "Then I guess we best start walking."
Emma pulls her hat down more firmly over her ears. The storm is picking up, and she watches her feet sink into the newly fallen snow as they trudge along, following the tire tracks left by David's truck. Logically, she knows she should have sent word that the cruiser was stuck, and she'd be walking home (on the off chance that some evil witch might try to kidnap her and drag her into the forest – something that until the past few years, she'd never thought would be a legitimate concern).
But part of her just simply didn't want to be alone.
(And part of her knows, even if she'd insisted otherwise, her father would have gotten that message and come racing to her rescue regardless.)
She hugs herself, then leans her shoulder against his, his love almost tangible in the warmth he radiates, and presses on – one foot in front of the other.
.
Don't forget;
Don't forget I love, I love, I love you.
.
"Then tell me, love. What is it about?"
Emma opens her mouth to respond, but Henry speaks first, though his gaze is still focused on the lopsided bow he'd just tied. "It's about giving."
"Family," her father adds, having paused his recitation of a Christmas classic. On his lap, Neal babbles his agreement.
Her mother slips out from behind the counter, wiping her flour-covered hands on her apron. "It's about hope," she says, as if anyone might have expected otherwise.
And though Emma might have spent her whole life wondering the same thing – what Christmas really meant – here, enveloped in the scent of cinnamon and pine; here with her family safe and close, she knows for certain.
"Love," she says, and her eyes meet Killian's. "It's about love."
(Later, when Henry's passed out on the sofa and her parents are busy putting Neal down for the night, she'll try to expand upon that answer – to say it properly, because it's Killian and it's her, and they deserve to do things properly for once. She deserves to do things properly for once.)
(Later, when she's stumbling over the words, talking herself in circles, he'll kiss her under the mistletoe and say, "I love you too.")
.
Don't forget;
Don't forget I love, I love, I love you.
Merry Christmas.