Author's Note: I wanted to do a little Christmas "special" a while ago when it was still, you know, Christmas but I wanted to get the last chapter done first to set a context for Gage's love life or lack thereof. So please enjoy this short, slightly belated Christmas entry from Gage's past. Also to note, I do realize that obviously an Earth holiday like Christmas would not normally be present in Lylat so just think of this as a fun little diversion. Also, thanks to JV for the inspiration to do something around the holidays. -Foxmerc

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A Ghost of Christmas Past
Five years ago

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An old telephone sat on a wooden end table beside the right armrest of a ratty couch. The two items seemed to fit together; old relics of a poor village. Gage stared at it for a moment, then a moment more. Moments dragged into minutes until he finally stepped over to the phone. He picked up the handset and placed it to his ear. Initially it felt strange, not having a viewscreen to talk to, though perhaps for this call that was for the best. With hesitant fingers he punched a long number into the keypad.

"Operator."

"Interplanetary, please. Corneria."

"Your entered number shows location code two-one-six, correct?"

"Yes."

"Have a nice holiday."

Gage grimaced at the irony. A few seconds passed before a tone sounded in the earpiece and repeated. With each ring, Gage's chest tightened a bit. He was just about to hang up, call the whole thing off, when the tone was interrupted by a click, then another click of a viewscreen integrating with a telephone. All she would see was a blank screen with the words, "telephone signal" on it. Yes…it was for the best.

"Hello?"

Gage swallowed. "Marlene?"

A pause of silence and a whispered return. "Gage?"

"Marlene. I'm sorry…"

"Why are you calling me, Gage?"

Why am I calling her? "It's Christmas Eve. I wanted to call earlier but I've been really busy. I just wanted to say…I wanted to…wish you a merry Christmas. You're probably busy, I just—"

A sigh; a mix of exasperation and repressed sorrow. "We're done, Gage. We broke up two months ago. It's time to move on."

"I want to talk about it. I know what you said and you were right. I'm hard to live with sometimes. I'm a little preoccupied sometimes. But we can work on it, I can—"

"You weren't hard to live with, Gage, you were hard to live without. I understood that I would be a military girlfriend when we met but I had no idea that you were already married to your job. You're gone for days, weeks at a time. You could never talk about what you do. When you were gone I knew that you may never return. And when we were together, you woke up shaking in the middle of the night and I had no idea how to comfort you and tell you that I'm there. I couldn't do that, Gage. I just couldn't do it."

Gage sensed a slight quivering in her voice and immediately felt regret for calling. "Please, Leeney, I don't want to make you upset. Things can be better. I don't want to throw away what we have because we have something special."

No sound from the other end. Gage wondered if she had hung up but before long her voice rose again. Not heated or upset, but resigned. "You deserve someone special, Gage. You really do. But until you take a look at your life and set your priorities, you won't find her. You can't do what you do and expect to come home to a wife and kids; you're not that selfish."

A rumble shook the walls around Gage and he grimaced. As he feared, the phone picked it up.

"What was that noise? Oh my God, you're out there right now, aren't you, risking your life?"

"It's not what you think. I'm in someone's house, I have people all around me, there's just a little noise." Gage swung his arm around empty air, forgetting there was no visual. "It's Christmas, where else would I be?" Silence. He couldn't tell whether she believed him.

"Gage," Marlene said after another pause, "I'm not the one for you. I'm sorry. And until you decide which one is more important, your job or your relationships, I don't think you'll ever find someone. I truly hope you're with people as you said. No one should be alone on Christmas." Silence. "Please don't call me again."

"Leeney…"

"Goodbye, Gage." A click: disconnected.

Gage spoke to empty air. "Goodbye, Marlene."

He placed the receiver down and looked around the dim house, moonlight streaming through the boarded windows and illuminating the lingering dust. It also illuminated seven dead soldiers and the streaks of tacky blood that painted the floor through their torn and charred uniforms. Gage had just finished cleaning his knife and reloading his silenced pistol when he noticed the phone and wondered, fatefully, whether it still worked. No one had lived in the village for months since Venomian remnant forces commandeered it after the war officially ended.

"See?" Gage said glumly to empty air. "I'm with people. I'm at someone's house." He picked up the assault rifle he laid on the couch beside a dead sitting soldier and looked him in the cold, lifeless eyes. "We're not alone on Christmas, are we?"

Gage hurried to the doorway and looked outside. He concentrated as hard as he could on the bombing run that had begun on the base a couple miles away, down in the valley beneath the village. He concentrated as hard as he could; if he kept his mind focused, perhaps he could ward off the tears he feared were coming. There was nothing to shed tears like a child about. He knew what his job meant and he knew how difficult normal life could be. Marlene made her choice, Gage made his. There was now time for this anyway, not with work to be done. He pulled his black mask back over his muzzle and slipped out the door, toward the next checkpoint to clear.

"Merry Christmas."

There was nothing to shed tears about…but, as he disappeared into the hostile night, Gage felt them anyway.