Back at Mother's house, Drakken is watching, with one eye, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and with the other observing Lapis as she samples some of Mother's famed Christmas cookies. (Well, they deserve to be famous if they aren't already.)

The pure-sugar cookies earn a nose-wrinkle from Lapis – they are too much for her. But the gingerbread widens her eyes and actually sends her tongue out to lick up the crumbs. It's so adorably unladylike, Drakken can't keep from grinning.

Lapis comes and sits on the arm of the chair beside him, a streak of flour on one cheek and a few flurries of it in her deep-blue hair. She turns to study the TV as the Island of Misfit toys each denote their own faults.

"We're all misfits!" cry the polka-dotted elephant and the train with square wheels and the Charlie-in-the-box. (As well as the doll that Drakken never saw a thing wrong with, to be honest.)

Lapis gives her head a sympathetic tilt. "Santa should just take them and deliver them all to Steven," she says knowingly. "He'd love them even more than his regular toys."

"True," Drakken says. He remembers what Jasper said during their final showdown with her: that Steven took Gems that were defective, defeated, out of options and adopted them into his ragtag family. It was meant to be an insult – anything that comes from Jasper's lips seems an insult – but where would Lapis, or Peridot for that matter, be without Steven?

Maybe the same place Jasper is now.

It is a sad thought, not a very Christmassy one, and even when Drakken remembers Lapis standing her ground and lobbing a punch at Jasper's square granite chin, it doesn't entirely cheer him up. Lapis is stronger now, more grounded, and she will fight for herself and her friends if the occasion arises. And while he knows this is a needed, even positive, change, there is something hauntingly wistful about it, as though some part of her has grown up and been hacked off.

"Are you okay?" Lapis levels at him a gaze that still surprises Drakken with its sharpness. "Are you sad for the toys, too?"

Drakken nods, because it isn't untrue. He is sad for the toys, and he is beginning to choke up at the magnitude of his having a place to belong after all this time, a place he didn't have to burn to the ground and remake in his own image. And Lapis…

He's so glad he found her. So very glad to be part of her healing process. It takes his joy and expounds upon it like an arithmetic series, each day's amount added to the previous day's and then all the days' before that, until there is some grand, six-digit number and his heart is ready to explode.

Just now, Lapis tips a smile at him, one that has shed its shyness but retained its sweetness. When she does that, her mouth slides into a tilted line, her eyes brighten behind her bangs, and her limbs perk as though she's preparing for flight. There can scarcely be a more wonderful sight, especially in light of the shadows she lived under for too long.

And she still manages to care for others…

Drakken feels a floral tug at his neck and looks up, ready to impatiently shove the sprouted vine back in. His hand, however, freezes before it ever reaches the plant, for what blooms at the end isn't his usual cutesy flower but a clipping of mistletoe!

His face out-pinks the naked mole rat's. He can only pray Lapis doesn't notice –

"What's that?" someone asks. It's either Tinker Bell or Lapis.

She noticed.

"M-m-mistletoe," Drakken stammers, cursing himself for being such a poor liar and not claiming poison ivy or some such thing. "Traditionally used to…ward off werewolves."

There! That is also true.

Shego sniffs merrily from the direction of the loveseat – a word that deepens Drakken's blush. "Uh, no. That's not what it means for normal people."

Lapis's eyes are going from one of them to the other. Drakken can't tell what she'll believe, so he just snaps at Shego, "How dare you judge normalcy based on whether or not they're had the misfortune of encountering werewolves?"

Shego doesn't take the bait. She turns to Lapis and says, "Yeah, traditionally, when two people get caught under the mistletoe – they have to kiss. And his flowers know he wants it."

"If…that's…okay…" Drakken mutters. His arms suddenly feel much too long, and they dangle at his sides like two limp fishing rods.

The flour on Lapis's cheek pops as her skin turns a darker blue beneath it. "It's okay with me."

Shego looks like a tiger who's successfully cornered her next meal. "Go on, Doc, pucker up. You owe her one."

Drakken swallows, runs his tongue across his incisors to be sure no cookie-scraps are caught in them, wipes his palms on the back of his pants, heart beating a reveille the entire time. With slowness and dread and curiosity and hope, he inches his arms around Lapis – they are too long; they can encircle her multiple times – and then he is consumed with attempting to hold them there without touching the teardrop life-force on her back. He cannot bump it, cannot do her harm.

Shego's snickering is the only sound.

Closing his eyes seems the thing to do, so Drakken does. He thinks he remembers seeing that in the movies, anyway. With no help from his vision, he leans down and taps his lips against something soft and feathery – it might be Lapis's cheek, or he might have just snagged part of her hair.

Drakken pulls back immediately and opens his eyes. Lapis's are about eight inches below his, and they are windows to all the galaxies she's ever visited, everything she's ever loved. With the darker-blue patches still there, she wisps another smile at him.

A nervous noise leaks from Drakken. "I might not have done that right," he says.

Lapis snorts a faint giggle. "How would I know?"

She gives him a one-armed hug, while Drakken attempts to rein in his vital signs. They are exhilarated from the guess-work and wish to return immediately to the Land of Scientific Law, from this place that teenagers make appear so frivolous.

So this is what it's like to be in love, huh?