Hello! I promised that I wouldn't be as long in posting with this story! Considering it's the eve of Thanksgiving, posting now gives me a chance to say "Happy Thanksgiving" to everyone out in fan fic land - whether here or abroad! I know I certainly am grateful for the opportunity to have gotten to know so many of you:) And, I'd also like to thank everyone for the feedback.

A couple of other notes about this story. I've had a couple readers mention "It's a Wonderful Life", wondering if this story wasn't more along those lines. I've never seen the movie, so it's not intentional, but that doesn't necessarily mean it might not be:) I'll have to rely on you, the readers, to tell me later on:)

I had the majority of this story line last year, but I could never figure out how to lead into it. After reading T. S. Blue's "Never the Same" story, it planted the seeds of somewhat using that angle. Of course, I asked before proceeding, and she graciously agreed. This is not, however, a war story. It just makes for such a 'dang good' way to build into other stories.

Now that the author's notes are almost as long as the chapter (LOL), all I can say is that I don't own the Dukes and no infringements intended. And of course - Happy Thanksgiving!

A DUKE'S CHRISTMAS CAROL

CHAPTER 2

PERFECT STRANGERS

Luke Duke had not asked to go to war, and the war hadn't asked him to come to it. An invitation had been delivered, and sending his regrets about being unable to attend was not an option. The boy barely out of high school certainly wouldn't have been lacking in things to do nor had he been looking for a fight. Running a family farm was hard work, and his uncle would have welcomed a full-time, full-grown partner compared to the two part-time, half grown helpers his nephews had been while in school. When the day's work was done, Luke could have occupied himself with local girls who would have been more than willing, buddies who were discovering their own new found freedoms and liberties, and of course, favorite past-times he had always shared with his cousins. A conflict far away, not even fully understood, virtually guaranteed that Luke would not be doing any of those things, and when the letter came, it brought with it many emotions, but surprise was not one of them. So, Luke did as he was told, packed his bags, said goodbye to his family, and then did something that no one in that situation should ever do: he promised he would return.

It had been a late spring day as Luke waited on a corner for the chariot that would whisk him away to an unknown future. Surrounded by his uncle and his cousins, they tried to make those final moments last a lifetime, just in case. The temperature was warm, but no where near the full blast heat that summer would soon bring. Skies of blue with scattered white, fluffy clouds that looked like marshmallows hovered above a picturesque looking Hazzard Square that day. The foliage was alive, covered in various shades of green with the remaining late spring blooms still in place making way for the new blooms of summer, and a sweet fragrance floated through the air. If not for muffled cries and brave faces trying to hide apprehension, it could have been called a beautiful scene of a perfect day. The small clusters of families, like the Dukes, lining the sidewalks around the square made that day anything but perfect. So, as the bus, not chariot, arrived, that would carry a handful of Hazzard's youngest, legal citizens to a fate unknown, Luke Duke promised he would be back.

He meant it too. This wasn't something he had volunteered for or wanted to do, but if duty called, Luke Duke was obedient and he would perform his called upon duty. That didn't mean that there would be one minute of any day when he wouldn't have rather been spending time fishing at the Hazzard pond with his youngest cousin, Bo. Cousins by lineage, they had grown up together as siblings, and were as close as any brothers could be. That was the reason Luke had made a promise he had no right to make. While no one in the family had taken the news well, as no one in any family ever does, Bo was devastated. With little time to work with and not many available options, Luke did the only thing he could; he promised to return, and once he did, he knew that he had to, or it might not just be him that would never see his twenty first birthday.

Having been drafted, Luke's life became Uncle Sam's for six years. While the brunette would have been perfectly happy serving his Uncle in Georgia for six years, that amount of time was longer than he wanted to be obligated to an uncle who wasn't even a Duke. Finding a loophole in the one sided invitation, Luke Duke discovered that if he volunteered for two years of combat duty, compared to the usual thirteen month tours that traded off between active, inactive, and reserve, once that debt had been paid, it was standard practice to be sent home under the status of inactive duty. Of course, there were no guarantees, as Uncle Sam could call you back or keep you, if the need arose, and everything was predicated on the fact that you survived, but Luke had to; he had promised. So, thinking that two complete years away was better than six years that would probably have him scattered about, still removing him from the home that he so loved, Luke chose option A. He was tough; he could survive two years. He was a Duke.

At a young age, Luke Duke had not yet perfected the art of making plans, which he would someday come to be known for. Youth often overlooks the fact that fate often fails to read our neatly outlined roadmaps for life, or to follow the path we have laid out for it. That's exactly what happened to Luke.

Mere weeks before his obligation in active duty should have been paid in full, a facility 'vital' to the enemy had been discovered by a scout team. It's destruction was listed as top priority, but its location and heavily guarded status required a certain amount of planning and preparation unless Uncle Sam wanted to send his young men into what would surely have been nothing but a massacre. Organizing the right team and taking the necessary precautions was fine, but it took time to do, and since the high ranking officials wanted Luke to be a part of that strike team, it was his time they were taking; time he should have already been spending with his family. The Dukes were duty bound citizens, though, so Luke agreed to the request, soliciting the promise that he would be sent home immediately following the mission, and once there, he would be allowed to remain, permanently, on inactive duty.

When Luke agreed, he never dreamed that from that time on almost another full year would elapse before either Uncle Sam or himself would make good on their promise. It had taken several months to organize, and for the top commanding officers to agree on what exactly should even be done. Finally, the day came when they got their orders. Going in was easy, and went according to the plan. Getting out was the tricky part. Thankfully, they had all made it out before the fireworks started, but that's when the plan went awry. Groups of men got separated, rescue teams were not in place, and Luke Duke found himself wandering around in the jungle with a handful of his comrades for the next few weeks, using every survival skill they'd been taught, until they finally came upon faces with pale complexions; fellow soldiers they could trust.

Taken back to the make-shift base, Luke and the others were checked over, debriefed, and then commended for going above and beyond the call of duty. It was all very nice, but only one thing mattered to Luke; a few simple word: "Son, you're going home." Finally, the words he had waited to hear since the moment he had arrived filtered through the air and registered in his brain, and Luke Duke could not have been happier.

Packing bags, signing papers, and catching transports, Sergeant Duke had been too busy to think about anything in great detail until he was on his way back to his native country. Then, with each mile that brought him closer to home, Luke began to feel uneasy. Pangs of guilt for being spared when others would not began mixing with an apprehension of what lied ahead. Suddenly, Luke decided that not having enough time to think had been a good thing.

Fidgeting on the bus, Luke tried to calm his rising anxiety, telling himself that it was just nerves and quite normal. As soon as he saw his family, everything would fall into place. Yet as each mile brought him closer to Hazzard, something just didn't feel right. Luke recognized the scenery as it passed by, but somehow he felt detached from it, like he'd never really seen it before . When the bus began slowing to a stop, Luke Duke suddenly had the urge to run, something he'd never once thought about doing in the war, or even as a child. If there had been time to unlatch the back door, the brunette just might have, but it was too late. The driver was opening the front door, and Luke knew that his family was outside waiting for him, without ever laying eyes on any of them.

The homecoming was everything the young veteran had expected, and nothing that he had expected. He knew the three people who were waiting there for him. Knowing that Uncle Jesse, Daisy, and Bo would be there for him, whenever he returned, was the one thing that he had never needed extra time to wonder about. Luke knew it for the fact that it was, a certainty that had moved him forward every day to the very spot he was standing in. Secure in that knowledge and having no choice but to keep his promise to his cousin, since the day Luke Duke left Georgia, this was the only moment he had really been fighting for. Yet, standing there at that moment, fate, once again, had failed to read or follow the blueprint in his mind for the way he expected to feel at that moment.

Whatever was lacking for Luke, the rest of his family didn't seem to be experiencing it. Converging upon him, welcoming him home, and telling him how much they missed and loved him was playing out according to schedule. Glad that some things you could really count on, Luke returned the sentiments and greetings, never so happy to see his family as he was at that very moment, whatever else was making him feel discontent.

When his Uncle held him at arm's length, saying that he wanted to 'get a good look at him,' Luke indulged him, but while they were studying him, he was also studying them.

Where their reactions had been familiar and expected, their appearances were not what Luke remembered. He recognized his Uncle, the man he considered to be like a father, and though his hair had turned whiter, this was the man he'd known all his life. His cousins, however, he barely recognized.

Daisy and Bo Duke, his childhood partners in everything, were most definitely changed, and Sergeant Duke didn't need specially trained eyes to see that the two children he had left behind might be the same inside, but they didn't look the same on the outside. Oh, there were features he still knew: Bo's smile, Daisy's eyes, and it wasn't like he wouldn't have known them in a crowd, but they weren't the same as when he had left, and that only caused his apprehension to spike. For nearly three years, familiar images had swirled in his mind, but he had never considered that when you leave people behind for that long, especially youngsters who are still in the growing and changing process, they do, indeed, grow and change. If he had thought about that, he might have been better prepared, and not so affected, but he, too, was but a youth himself.

As Luke tried to readjust to civilian life on the farm, the unsettled and detached feelings continued to grow. His uncle had insisted that he rest the first few days, but assuring everyone that he was fine and eager to get back to 'real work', Luke finally slid into a routine. The military liked schedules, so substituting chores for duties at prescribed times wasn't difficult, and it gave him less time to think, something he wasn't used to doing much of, and was drawing the conclusion that he didn't necessarily even like.

Except for chores, everything else was awkward, at best. Luke began to grasp that not only had his cousins changed physically, they had continued their lives, and he had missed three years of those lives. More than catching up, it was a lost chunk of time that they would never get back. His family would talk about things that they knew very well, but to Luke, they might have been speaking in a foreign language. They always stopped to explain and fill him in on the happenings, both local and personal. Luke would listen, smile, and nod, but he just knew that he wasn't re-connecting to his family in the way that he should be. It didn't take long to determine that his family was noticing it, too.

In return for sharing the details and secrets of their lives, his cousins expected him to reciprocate the gesture. However Luke's lost years didn't involve boyfriends and girlfriends, high school functions, or family farm matters. Luke had been to war and his experiences did not make pleasant dinner conversation. Bo, Daisy, and even Uncle Jesse could share parts of their lives. Luke hadn't really had a life. He'd been sent away for only one purpose. Honestly, Luke didn't want to remember his last three years nor did he feel there was anything worthwhile to share. He wanted to forget, not remember.

So, Luke simplified everything, saying that there wasn't much to tell. His explanation was hard for his cousins to accept, especially Bo. Since the day the boy learned to talk, it was always Luke that he shared his deepest secrets with, and while the eldest cousin was more of a private person, from an early age, the baby faced blonde could get Luke to confess his own darkest secrets better than an experienced police officer with a bright light shining in his face. For the youngest Duke, little had changed in those three years. Bo started up right where they had left off, as if Luke had simply spent a night away from home, and the boy didn't understand why his cousin couldn't do the same.

Mistaking his inability to talk for an unwillingness to share, neither Daisy nor Bo truly understood. They heard the word 'war', but didn't understand that war was a full-time job. Never having been too far away from home, the youngest Dukes were fascinated that Luke had traveled so far, and seemed to be under the impression that 'playing war' was like any other job, and came with weekends and holidays. So, it wasn't that his younger cousins expected a play by play of military operations or defense secrets, but they sheltered beliefs that Luke had encountered exotic places and unique cultures they might never experience, and what they didn't understand was his reluctance to share those adventures. Hard as he tried, Luke could not convince them that his aversion to their questions wasn't because he was unwilling to share. It was two fold. First, there simply wasn't anything to really tell. War was a full-time job, and even on those rare leaves, the exotic places that his cousins imagined were filled with their own kinds of horrors. Second, Luke Duke wouldn't have wished what he'd witnessed on an enemy. Revealing what he'd seen to the people he loved most was unthinkable.

His uncle, thankfully, did seem to understand. He told his youngest not to press, trying to explain that Luke would talk, when and if, he was ready, but trying to prepare them for the fact that some secrets, Luke may never share. Daisy and Bo tried to heed their uncle's warning and advice, but that was when the first signs of real tensions in the air began to surface.

When Halloween arrived, Luke had been home almost a month. At best, he and his family were polite strangers living in the same house. They worked side by side, sat at the same table and shared meals, did most of the same things they'd always done, but the closeness they'd once shared just wasn't there, and it didn't seem to be coming back. It wasn't a lack of effort on the part of his family that was to blame; that honor was all Luke's. They talked, laughed, even joked, but Luke just couldn't make that connection, so his cousins would try harder, as if an extra effort on their part would make up for Luke's shortcoming. When that didn't work, they'd give him space, as their uncle suggested, but it was easy to see that wasn't what they wanted to do, and it was becoming frustrating, for all of them. Luke watched, trying to convey that it wasn't them, it was him, and they shouldn't feel bad or guilty for any of it. They didn't need to, he felt bad enough for all of them. Unfortunately, Luke had no idea of why he felt this way or what to do about any of it. It wasn't what he wanted, any more than he had wanted to go away in the first place. So, Luke did what he'd always had a knack for doing. Avoiding situations he didn't like, and when anyone got too close, he redirected their attention away from him, trying to concentrate on the lives of his family instead. Their lives, he reasoned, had been much more interesting, but it continued to remind him of just how much he had missed.

Daisy was no longer a little girl in need of a big cousin's guidance. She was a young woman who had turned into a beauty, and she was as capable as any soldier Luke had served with. She could turn the head of any man, and many had dared to hope, but Daisy seemed to have settled on one. A local boy named Jeff Adams had stolen Daisy's heart their senior year in high school, and two years after graduating, the relationship was serious. Rumors were spreading that wedding bells were in the air for the only surviving female Duke come the following spring.

Bo was no longer a little boy in need of a big cousin's protection. A senior in high school, the little boy once picked on was now extremely popular with members of both sexes. Girls wanted to date him, boys wanted to be his friend. In Luke's absence, Bo had become close with two, Kevin Daniels and Butch Marshall. Everyone called them the 'Three Musketeers' because where one was found, the other two were normally close by. After Luke's return, Bo began spending less time with them. The youngest Duke cousin claimed that he wanted to spend time with the cousin he hadn't seen for so long, but Luke felt guilty about his role in the diminishing friendships. It was easy to see that when the three friends were together, they were close. Luke was glad that Bo had not been alone in his absence, but he couldn't help but envy the place in Bo's heart that Kevin and Butch now held or the easy closeness that the three shared.

Making matters only worse, Luke didn't even like Jeff, Kevin, or Butch, but again he didn't have any concrete reasons why. Wondering if his experiences had hardened him to the point that he many never like or trust anyone again, Luke kept his feelings to himself. These people were important to members of his family, one on the way to becoming family, and Luke had no reason to not like them. He was hardly in a position to say anything, either. Having been gone for so long, and without any valid reasons behind his dislikes, Luke surely knew that sharing his opinions on this would not have been appreciated. So, Luke remained silent, his trained eyes watching for any signs of the enemy approaching, but saw none, and really didn't know what he would have done if he had.

When the colored leaves began to fall as Thanksgiving began to approach, Luke doubted that he would ever get back what he had lost. He felt less at home with each passing day than he had when he first arrived. He had left Hazzard just as spring turned to summer, when everything was alive and green. The bareness of the trees, the browness of the ground only reminded him of dying and death, a scene that hadn't been far from his thoughts in years, now having followed him home. His time away had taken a toll on him, and despite the best efforts and love of his family, he couldn't shake it. He had left only a boy himself, returned a young man grown too quickly, having seen things that no man should ever witness, and it had changed him, permanently, he feared.

As the Dukes gathered round the table on Thanksgiving, and his uncle added an extra thanks for sending Luke home to them, Luke Duke wanted to ask the wise old man just who it was that had been sent back to them. He knew that he wasn't the Luke that had left them, and there was no way to deny it anymore. He had changed, his family had changed, and there didn't seem to be any way to go back, or forward. From that day on the bus when he wanted to run, to several times since then, Luke had to exert every ounce of self control he had not to bolt from the table and out the door on that day of giving praise. He never knew how he managed to remained seated, passing mashed potatoes, as if nothing were wrong, but right then, he knew that things couldn't remain the way they were. He had to do something, and he had to do it fast.

Luke knew that his family loved him and wanted him, the old him, back. He knew they were doing everything that they could to help him, too, but nothing was working. One thing that hadn't changed was that he still loved them, too. He probably wouldn't have given a second thought to how he was feeling if it hadn't been affecting them, but it was. He was hurting the very people he loved most, and watching the effects through their eyes was killing him. Blue eyes filled with wisdom were now filled with worry, blue eyes filled with awe were now filled with caution, and blue eyes filled with more trust than Luke had ever seen were now filled with sadness, and Luke couldn't help but wonder just what all of those blue eyes saw when they looked into his own blue ones.

So as the season of miracles approached, Luke prayed for one. Christmas had always been special in the Duke household, even when there hadn't been a cent for anything. The best gifts he'd ever received never came from a store anyway. If ever the Duke family needed one of those kinds of gifts, it was that year. Yet, as the days on the December calendar were torn off, Luke's miracle gift did not seem to be on Santa's list. The Dukes were going through the motions of the season, but the joy that usually accompanied the month wasn't there. He had ruined their Halloween, then their Thanksgiving, and Luke now feared he was about to ruin their Christmas, too.

Turning the truck into the drive that led to the farmhouse, one of the tires skidded. Luke quickly turned the wheel, regaining control of the truck.

"Almost went skating with Jesse's truck after all," Bo smirked.

"Yeah. It really got icy fast," Luke acknowledged.

"It's already starting to stick and to glaze," Bo observed, pointing to already sagging branches of the trees and the newly formed icycles swaying in the wind that had started to blow harder. "Good thing we got home when we did."

Opening his door, the boys could hear the smaller twigs already starting to snap from the added weight of the newly formed ice.

"Yeah, good to be home," Luke muttered in a manner that would have made Ebenezer Scrooge proud, and sounded eerily familiar to 'bah humbug!'