Merry Christmas everyone! This is one of four Christmas-themed fics I'll be uploading (I say four, we'll see how many I actually post).
This is based off of the song 12 Pains of Christmas by Bob Rivers, if you haven't heard it, go listen to it because it's hilarious.
This is kind of a hodge-podge of characters from season 1/2/3 bc I love them all
How about that one?" Ray asked, pointing to a tall fir Christmas tree.
"No way!" Nate exclaimed, "There's a huge hole in the middle! Look at it!"
Nate reached into the prickly needles and twisted the tree to reveal a gap in the thick layers of branches.
"I guess you're right," Ray conceded.
Ray, Nate, and the rest of their team were in Central City, 2022. They were spending the holiday season with their retired team members, Leonard and Sara, and their daughter Rory.
That afternoon, they had all headed out to a Christmas tree farm, intent on finding a tree for Sara and Leonard's home. Last year, when it was just the two of them, it had taken Sara and Leonard a half-hour to find a tree. Now, they had been searching for over an hour with no end in sight.
"Guys," Amaya said, "It's Snart's and Sara's house. They should be the ones to pick."
"Thank you, Amaya," Sara said, raising her eyebrow pointedly at Ray and Nate.
"I thought we both liked the one at the front," Leonard told her.
"No!" Ray and Nate exclaimed with exasperation.
"That one was awful!" Ray protested as Nate added, "C'mon guys, how did you have such a nice tree last year."
"It was a Christmas miracle," Sara said sarcastically as they continued walking through the rows of tall trees.
"Sara," Leonard said, lengthening his stride to catch up to his wife, "I should take her home."
Sara followed his gaze to their two year old, Rory, who was asleep in his arms, her chin over his shoulder and her arms pulled in against his chest.
Rory was so excited when they arrived at the Christmas tree farm, running through the trees with insurmountable enthusiasm. One of the workers at the farm had given her a candy cane as they entered, and she'd nearly had a stroke from sheer excitement.
"How come I didn't get a candy cane?" Nate had whined, "I like candy canes too!"
"You're not a child, Nathaniel," Amaya reminded him.
"Still."
This was the first year Rory seemed to really understand what Christmas was. The previous two years they'd celebrated the holidays, she'd been too young to comprehend what was happening. Now, she was two-and-a-half and the joys of the holiday season were finally starting to dawn on her.
"It's her nap time and it's cold out," Leonard continued, running a hand up and down Rory's puffer-coat-covered back.
Sara nodded.
"I can take her if you want," she said.
"No, someone better stay here with them," he gestured to their old team, "to make sure they don't destroy anything, and it's better you than me."
So Leonard took Rory home. She had napped and woken up again before they arrived with the tree.
Once it was standing in the family room, both Leonard and Sara had to admit it was a good tree, although they agreed that it wasn't worth the time they spent looking for it.
Now that they had their tree, it was time to start the best part: decorating.
Stringing lights on the Christmas tree was the only thing Sara didn't like to do. It was dull and monotonous and didn't carry the same sentimental value as hanging ornaments. She hated getting stuck in the prickly pine needles, and besides, she was never tall enough to reach the top of the tree (even standing on a chair). The task was usually handed off to Leonard who, in Sara's words, had the advantage of being freakishly tall. He usually complied because it was never advisable to argue with Sara, and anyway, the tree was incomplete without the little, twinkling lights. This year, however, with all the extra guests in the house, he pawned the job off onto one of his old teammates: Mick.
Mick gave in when he was promised booze, and in retrospect, that was the first sign that giving him that particular task was a bad idea.
Mick is not a patient person, and stringing lights onto a Christmas tree requires a significant amount more patience than he possessed. It also didn't help that he was very drunk while he did it. Although Mick had been at various levels of intoxication since the team arrived, something the rest of the team dismissed because they knew the holidays had never been enjoyable time for their resident arsonist, this was a level they hadn't seen yet. It was just luck that it corresponded with decorating the tree.
Sara sat and watched him try to hang the lights on the tree for a while, but when Leonard said dinner was on the table and they were all going to sit and eat, Sara left him to do his thing.
He was still at work while she did the dishes several hours later.
The next day, Leonard went downstairs to see that Mick was still hanging the lights.
"I need more lights," Mick said when he looked up and saw Snart standing in the doorway.
"We only had that one last year and they worked out fine," he replied, "You don't need to strangle the damn thing."
"Wha'?" Mick asked.
"You don't need to wrap the lights around the tree that tightly, but if more lights is what you need, I'll make it happen."
Mick grunted his appreciation.
"Oh," he said, "And more beer."
"Talk to Sara," Leonard replied, "She's going to the grocery store."
"Talk to me about what?" Sara asked, coming into the room with Rory balanced on her hip.
"Beer," Mick told her.
"I'm on it," she replied. She turned to Leonard and handed Rory to him, "She's all ready to go."
"Where are you going?" Ray asked, walking into the room with a mug of hot chocolate warming his hands.
"Good luck," Sara advised Leonard as she grabbed her coat and headed for the door.
"Beer," Mick grunted as he saw her go.
"I'm on it, Mick," she repeated.
"Where are you going?" Ray repeated as Sara left.
"The mall," Leonard told him as he stood Rory on the floor and helped her into her coat.
"Can I come? I still have some Christmas shopping to do."
Leonard sighed. His window of time to shop before he had to get Rory back home for lunch was not long, and he certainly didn't want to waste any of it arguing with Ray.
"You can come if you drive," he told him
"Why do I have to drive?"
"Because I don't want to," he replied, then added, "and that hot chocolate is staying here. Sara might actually kill me if you spill it all over the car."
"Aww," Ray said, but he went to pour the mug into the sink.
In retrospect, letting Ray come may have been a mistake.
"Why didn't you take that spot?" Leonard growled for the fourth time.
"That guy was there first!" Ray protested.
"Who cares?"
"I care! It's not polite to cut him off. He earned that spot."
"He earned," Leonard repeated in aghast disbelief, "Raymond, it's a parking spot."
If he thought that was bad, he was worse in the mall.
Leonard already knew shopping with Rory would be bad. He was ready for her to tear off in the direction of a toy she wanted, and he was ready to drag her way from "Santa Claus" — she already knew the real Santa and would definitely recognize that this was not him.
Leonard was not ready for shopping with Ray, because he was exactly the same way.
"Snart, look at those Christmas decorations — man, does this mall really go all out!"
"Look! A remote control helicopter. I had one when I was a kid. Do you think they'd let me fly it?"
"Raymond, if you don't get a move on, I'm going to leave you here," Leonard threatened.
Their last stop was to find more lights for Mick. They were searching for the string lights in the Christmas section of Target, when they found themselves in an aisle filled with candy.
"Daddy!" Rory said, reaching her hand out and snatching up the nearest package within reach.
"No, Rory," Leonard said warningly, extracting the candy from her fingers and putting it back on the shelf.
"Hey, I didn't know they made Christmas Kit-Kats!" Ray exclaimed, holding up a green foil bag of candy. Rory took her father's distraction as an opportunity to grab a plastic candy cane filled with red and green gum-balls off of its shelf. She shook it in her fist, the loud rattling attracting her father's attention.
"Rory," he said, taking the candy cane and putting it back, "No candy, and Ray, stop getting distracted. Let's get out of here."
As Rory went for a box of chocolates shaped like snowmen, Leonard picked her up and swung her into his arms.
"Daddy!" she whined, "I want candy."
"I know," he replied, leaving the aisle. He glanced back to make sure Ray was still behind him, "but you're not getting any."
He finally found the selection of Christmas lights and picked out the ones that matched what they already had at home.
"Let's go," he said. As they headed for the cashiers, he felt his phone buzz in his pocket. With the hand that wasn't holding Rory, he extracted it from his leather jacket.
"Get batteries," a text from Sara read.
Leonard sighed.
"Never mind," he said, turning back around, "Just one more thing — and I'm driving home."
"Can I get a hot chocolate?" Ray asked.
"No."
—
"Sara," Amaya had asked a few minutes earlier, "Where could I find batteries?"
"What for?" Sara asked, pulling her phone out of her back pocket.
"I got Ray and Nate a karaoke machine for Christmas—"
"Oh God, Mick is gonna flip," Sara interrupted her.
"One of my gifts for him is noise-canceling headphones," Amaya smirked, "Anyway, the box says that the microphones need three double-A batteries. Do you know where I could get some?"
"I just asked Len to pick some up," Sara responded, putting her phone away.
"You really don't need to trouble him."
"It's not a problem," Sara shook her head, "He's already out shopping, and anyway, I need some."
"Really? What for?"
"Yeah, I mean half of Rory's presents need batteries, and I have a whole strategy with them and everything."
"Birdie?"
Sara turned around to see Mick standing behind her with a string of Christmas lights draped over his shoulder.
"What, Mick?"
"Where are your extension cords?"
"Mick, just give it up and let Len do the lights," Sara said, shaking her head in exasperation.
"No."
"Basement," Sara replied, pointing to the door.
A few days later, Sara showed Amaya her strategy.
"So," she began, looking at the piles of different batteries scattered across her bedspread, "I never know which present Rory's gonna want to play with first, so before I wrap it, I check to see what kind of batteries it needs, and then I put them in the box so it's ready."
"That's actually kind of genius," Amaya replied.
"I know," Sara smirked. She ripped the tape off the box of a toy keyboard.
"Won't she notice it's already been opened?" Amaya asked, watching her with fascination.
"She's two," Sara reminded her, dropping a ziplock bag with two C-batteries inside into the box and closing it again.
"Right."
"So what batteries does your present need again?" she asked.
Amaya looked on the side of the tall karaoke machine box she'd brought with her.
"There's two microphones, and they each need three triple-A batteries," Amaya read.
Sara looked through the plastic packages of batteries.
"Here," she said, giving her a handful of triple-A batteries, "If you want, you can put them in the microphones now."
"Why didn't you put batteries in Rory's presents?" Amaya questioned, opening the karaoke machine box.
"Because most of her toys like to spontaneously make a shit-ton of noise and I don't want to deal with that right now," Sara replied, "But you have to manually switch those mics on, so you should be fine."
They relaxed into a comfortable silence, Sara opening another one of Rory's gifts, and Amaya carefully unwrapping the plastic packaging of a black, metal microphone.
—
Downstairs, Jax, Zari, and Nate were in charge of watching Rory.
"Just make sure she doesn't come up here," Sara had told them before going up the stairs with Amaya.
"Easy," Nate had waved her off.
They had given Rory lunch and now she had a newfound surge of energy.
"Where's Mama?" Rory asked, jumping on the couch.
"She's upstairs," Nate quickly told her, "Now stop jumping and we can play a game or something."
Rory launched herself off the couch, landing on the fuzzy white carpet on her knees. She sprang to her feet and ran towards the stairs.
"Yeah, that's not happening," Jax said, catching her around her stomach and lifting her into his arms.
"Let's go play," he said, swinging her upside down. Rory let out a laugh — the amazing belly laugh that Sara never wanted her daughter to grow out of — as Jax carried her back into the living room.
"Where's Daddy?" she asked as Jax rolled her onto the couch.
"Your dad went shopping again," he told her, "and somehow he ended up taking Uncle Ray with him again."
"Why?" she asked, her little nose wrinkling.
"I bet your dad is asking himself the exact same thing right now," Zari smirked, "He'll be home soon, but we gotta stay down here and play. Is there something you wanna do?"
But Rory had already jumped off the couch. Zari turned and saw her hopping around on the rug. She was singing Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer to herself, her mouth tripping over most of the words.
Zari stood up.
"I have an idea."
—
Upstairs, Sara glanced up when she heard loud music start playing from the floor below. She met Amaya's eyes.
"Do you wanna go check on that?" Amaya asked, tipping her head towards the door.
"Not at all," Sara replied, shaking her head. She looked back to the batteries all on her bed. She glanced up every now and then to see Amaya looking intensely frustrated.
"What?" she finally asked her.
"Huh?"
"Why the face?"
Amaya shrugged.
"I guess, even though I've been on the team for a long time, this is the first time I'm actually, I dunno, celebrating Christmas," she began, avoiding Sara's eyes, "and Christmas wasn't really a thing in my village. We still had occasions where we gave gifts to each other, but our gifts weren't like this." She gestured to the karaoke machine, "They didn't need batteries or power plugs and they didn't come from factories."
"Okay?" Sara said, unsure what Amaya was trying to get at.
"Our gifts came from the heart. It wasn't anything like this."
"Things are different now," Sara replied slowly, "This kind of technology is here, for better or for worse — not that it matters because it's not like it's going anywhere, and anyway, I think that gift did come from the heart. I mean, I don't know Nate as well as you do, but I do know Ray, and I know he's going to freak out when he sees that karaoke machine, which means Nate will too. It's something that's going to make him really happy. Sure, it's a piece of tech, but that doesn't mean it wasn't from the heart."
A loud screech came from downstairs and they both looked in the sound's direction.
"Still don't want to check on them?" Amaya asked, her eyebrows raised.
Sara sighed.
"Goddammit," she muttered. She got up and left the room. As she headed down the stairs, the music got louder. She walked into the kitchen to see Mick shoving a string of Christmas lights into the trashcan.
"What are you doing?" she asked him.
"Nobody told me that when one light goes out, they all go out," he said frustratedly.
Sara didn't respond, just continued through the kitchen.
The source of the Christmas music was the den, a cozy little room off the entry way. It had wall to wall shelves in the back that were filled with the books Leonard had collected over the years, along with one shelf dedicated to picture books for Rory — Leonard frequently read to Rory in the den. The coziest couches in the house sat in that room, and they faced a TV hung on the wall. The coffee table was pushed to the side, and in the empty space it created, Rory was dancing to Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree with Jax, Zari, and Nate.
"What are you doing?" Sara asked, raising her voice over the music.
"Rory-bear wanted to play Christmas songs so we're having a dance party," Zari responded, picking up Rory and whirling her through the air.
"We should all go caroling!" Nate said, "It would be so much fun."
"I dunno, Nate," Zari said skeptically.
"Stein!" Nate called loudly. Martin was sitting in the living room on the other end of the house, "Stein, you love to sing! You'll go Christmas caroling with me, right?"
A minute later, Martin appeared in the doorway.
"Pardon me?" he said.
"Will you go Christmas caroling with me?" Nate repeated.
"While I admit one of my favorite pastimes is singing, this is one occasion that I'll respectfully opt out off it, Mr. Heywood," Martin told him.
"Aww, how come?" Nate whined, "It'd be so much fun!"
"Even though I don't partake in much of the holiday season, I do enjoy it because of the joy it brings so many people. I feel that this time of year, people are kinder to one another and to themselves. However, I wish it were more recognized that not everybody celebrates Christmas. All of the songs on the radio and movies on TV are for Christmas."
"We can throw in some Hanukkah songs if you want. I think I know all the words to Dreidel, Dreidel, Dreidel."
"Mr. Heywood," Stein said, "I hope you aren't under the impression that Hanukkah is the Jewish version of Christmas."
"N-no, of course not. I just—I mean, well, uh," Nate stammered.
"Give it up," Sara cut him off, "We're not caroling."
—
A few days later, Zari and Amaya were sitting on the couch with Rory, watching Jax flick through the TV channels.
"Oh look!" Zari said, pointing to the TV, "It's Here Comes Santa Claus!"
"Put i' on," Rory gasped, bouncing up and down in Zari's lap.
"That's Rory's favorite Christmas movie," Sara called from the kitchen.
"Ugh," Jax groaned, but he conceded, putting the TV remote back on the coffee table.
"Not a fan of the claymation classics, Jax?" Zari asked.
"They just get old when you've seen 'em a hundred times and you keep hearing the music over and over," Jax shrugged.
"Cherish your classics," Zari replied warningly, "The music and the movies, because the new Christmas movies in my time are not great."
"I'll second that," Rip said from the dining table, where he was pouring over number-laden documents.
Rip was the only person not taking part in the Christmas festivities.
He had come to the realization that he may have created a monster, well, several monsters.
His rather unconventional career meant he was free from many of the perils and pitfalls of having a job, but he still had his challenges. One of those challenges as of late was money. This wasn't a problem he often encountered — with a timeship that could fabricate nearly anything (although money was one of the few exceptions), funds wasn't a necessity of their team of time travelers, but sometimes it was. The Time Masters had created a system for situations such as these: a bank account, created with the first bank in world history. It had amassed a very large sum of money in it's, so whenever a time traveler was in need of money of any kind, it was available to them, the catch being that they needed to log their withdrawals and submit them to the Time Bureau on a monthly basis.
Rip and his team rarely needed to utilize this system, but for their journey back to the present time (and knowing it was the holiday season), Rip figured his team had earned a reward for the work they did for him, especially because they weren't exactly compensated it.
Now, as he watched Ray, Nate, Amaya, and Zari return to the Waverider laden with more shopping bags than he thought possible, he dreaded the documentation of their spending.
"The movies are really that bad?" Jax asked Zari with raised eyebrows.
"They're terrible," Zari replied.
"I thought religion was outlawed in your time," Amaya said, then she added "I thought you're Muslim."
"I am, and it is, but in my time, Christmas isn't really tied to a religion — besides in its roots. It's more one of those consumer-holidays like Valentine's Day and Halloween. It's for everyone to celebrate — not that everyone does."
"Do you?" Sara asked, sitting in an armchair with a mug of hot chocolate.
"Yup," Zari nodded, "I loved the novelty of it as a kid, and as I got older, I started to appreciate how it's a time where everyone's a bit nicer to each other. Like Stein said a few days ago, Christmas is a time of universal joy in a world that I'm sure you can imagine needed it."
"Still against going caroling?" Nate asked Stein, who was sitting across from Rip at the dining room table with a cup of tea and the newspaper.
"Yes," Stein replied curtly, without looking up.
"You tried," Jax shrugged at Nate.
"You know what," Nate said to Zari, "You're so right about that whole 'nice' thing. There's all these charity people everywhere — like with the Salvation Army and stuff — and I can't help myself from donating to them every time! I mean, they're ringing that bell in my face and talking about the less fortunate and I just can't resist! I think I've spent more money donating to charity then I have buying presents. Seriously. I can't stop."
Out of the corner of her eye, Sara saw Rip drop his pen onto the dining table and place his head in his hands.
She stood up.
"C'mon Rory, it's nap time," she said, lifting her out of Zari's lap.
"No-o!" she whined.
"Ye-es," Sara mimicked her, "and when you wake up, we're gonna go outside and do something really fun!"
"What?"
"We're gonna take your picture for the Christmas Card!"
Christmas Cards was one part of the holidays Sara was unfamiliar with. Sure, she'd had been in them when she was a kid, but that was the easy part. She had no idea how hard it was to get everything done. She hadn't bothered in the years prior, when it was just her and Leonard, but then, a few years ago, they'd received a card in the mail with festive pictures of Oliver and Felicity's new twins, Tommy and Mara, printed across holiday card-stock, and Sara instantly knew she wanted to do that when she had a kid.
Four years later, and here she was, taking pictures for the second Christmas card of her daughter, Rory.
"Rory," Sara groaned, "Can you just stay still for one minute? I'm only asking for one minute."
She sighed and let the camera swing by it's woven strap around her neck as she went to reposition Rory.
Last year was so much easier than this. She'd only been one-and-a-half, and when Sara had sat her down on the front step with a potted poinsettia beside her, she had gotten the perfect shot in five minutes. Now, she was two-and-a-half and it was an entirely different ballgame.
"Can you please just sit down?" Sara said, picking up Rory and sitting her back on the red metal wagon she'd just climbed out of for what must have been the fifteenth time.
It's not like she didn't know it'd be difficult. She did know, and she'd done everything she could to make it easier: she'd planned the picture beforehand — she'd set up Rory's wagon in front of young holly plant, the wagon's bright hue bringing out the red of the berries — and she'd laid Rory's outfit out so it was all ready to go. She waited until after Rory's nap so she wasn't grumpy and tired when they went outside. After that, there wasn't really much more she could do.
After nearly two hours, Sara decided that of all the pictures she'd taken, there must be at least one good one.
"All done," Sara said, picking Rory up and heading for the house. She pushed the back door open to see the house was dark.
"Len?" she called, her voice conveying her confusion.
"Mick blew a fuse trying to plug in the lights on the tree," Leonard explained, coming down the hallway.
"Daddy!" Rory stretched her arms out towards him. He took her from Sara, pressing a kiss onto the top of her head.
"Did you get any good ones?" he asked Sara, tipping his head towards the camera.
"We'll see," Sara rolled her eyes, "Someone," she said pointedly, "was not behaving for Mommy."
She tickled Rory until she shrieked with laughter. She threw herself into her mother's arms.
"Oof," Sara let out as she caught Rory.
The lights flickered.
"Looks like Mick got the lights back on," Leonard commented.
Sara did get a good picture — she settled on a candid shot of Rory standing in the wagon, her arm reaching towards berries on the holly bush — but the process of sending out Christmas cards was nowhere near complete. It took her another hour to figure out how to format the card, and then it was time to create the list of who she would send it to.
She figured it would go to a few people, just Lisa, Sara's parents, and Laurel, but then Sara realized that if it went to Laurel, it had to go to the rest of team Arrow, and if it went to team Arrow, it had to go to team Flash and team Legends, and so on until the list seemed to never end.
In the end, she managed to get the cards out with only a week before Christmas.
"Our Christmas card kicked Felicity and Ollie's card in the ass," Sara told Leonard smugly.
"What's new?" he replied, a smirk on his lips.
Leonard played along with Sara's banter, but he really was not looking forward to spending time with Sara's family and friends. Sure, over the years he'd begun to get along better with them — the arrival of their daughter, Rory, helped a lot — but it was still rocky at times. He dreaded seeing Oliver Queen most of all. Of all Sara's family in Star City, Oliver was the only one that made him nervous. Stereotypes of horrible in-laws told him it should be Sara's father, Quentin Lance. He did, after all, possess the ability to arrest Leonard for the things he did in the past, but over the years, they'd formed an unspoken agreement that as long as Leonard stayed out of trouble, Quentin would keep quiet about what he knew.
Oliver Queen, on the other hand, fell into the same morally-grey area that Leonard did. While Queen was no longer actively trying to make Sara "come to her senses" as he had phrased it, the air between them still wasn't quite amicable.
Sara lucked out. She had only one in-law: Lisa, and they got along great, but for Leonard, seeing Sara's side of the family was part of the reason he didn't enjoy the holidays (although he had to admit, this year had been the best Christmas season he'd had in a while).
"How's it going, Mick?" Sara asked, pulling Leonard out of his thoughts. He followed Sara into the family room where Mick was still working on the Christmas tree lights. He'd first been handed the task of doing the lights over a week ago, and it looked like there was no end in sight.
"I'm done," he said.
"Good," Sara replied, "I wanna decorate the tree."
"I'm done," he repeated.
He pushed the plug into the socket and looked up at the tree.
"Why the hell are they blinking!" he roared. He was right. The lights were flashing as if they were in a club, rather than on a Christmas tree. Sara burst out laughing.
"It's not funny," Mick growled.
"Keep at it, Mick," Sara said, still chuckling.
It took him another three days, but finally, he finished the lights. That evening, Zari and Jax made everybody hot chocolate, someone switched on Christmas music, and they all decorated the tree together. Soon, there was only one thing left to do.
Leonard gave Rory the gold star and showed her how to put in on the tree. He lifted her up to the top of the Christmas tree. Rory stretched her little arm up and placed the star on the top-most branch. Leonard lowered her so she was sitting on his arms and stepped back so Rory could admire her handiwork.
"Pretty!" she said, pointing to the tree.
Leonard stood her on the floor. She ran and jumped into Zari's lap.
Sara smiled.
"Y'know," she said, grabbing Leonard's arm and pulling him to sit beside her on the couch, "I wasn't really sure how all this would go, because all of us together usually ends in complete chaos—"
"I could still argue it did," Rip cut in. Sara rolled her eyes.
"Anyway, I'm really glad we got to spend the holiday season with all of you. We don't see you guys much anymore and it was really nice to be with you around this time of year." She looked to Leonard, "What'd you think?"
"Well, besides all the times I somehow ended up shopping with Raymond—"
"Hey, I thought we had fun!" Ray exclaimed, a look of dismay on his face.
"What do you think, Rory?" Sara asked her daughter, "Do you want everybody to come back next Christmas?"
"Yeah!" Rory chirped, wrapping her arms around Zari's neck.
"If we really are coming back next year," Mick said, "I'm not doing the lights."
As Sara started to laugh, Leonard said,
"No, Mick, no you definitely won't."