A/N: I had some downtime, and boredom led me to write this story. I had thought to have it set during Christmastime, but the timeline wouldn't work, so consider this Christmas adjacent, but with the familiar classic Christmas story tropes. It's set during "From Paris, With Love" and the pilot movie. I hope you enjoy it.

It's a Wonderful Night

Chapter 1

After wandering aimlessly through the dark, cold night, until the tears felt frozen on her cheeks, her feet like blocks of ice, Shane found her way back to the Dead Letter Office. She looked around the cluttered space she had grown to love over the past year. It was very late, and only a small lamp cast eerie shadows over the lost and forgotten objects and letters crowded haphazardly on shelves and every available space. But Shane didn't feel afraid to be there alone after hours. The DLO had actually become a safe haven for her, and she was going to be devastated to leave it for parts unknown, to leave them. To leave him.

When the sudden need to be near him one last time threatened to overwhelm her, she found refuge in Oliver's big leather desk chair. She sat back, closed her eyes, and imagined she could smell the faint scent of bay rum.

"Oh, Oliver," she whispered into the darkness.

She wondered if sitting in his chair would help her see things from his perspective. How does a man, whose wife abandoned him for two years, decide to take her back? How does he dance now with her, when he'd danced the same dance with another woman for nearly a year? How can he suddenly forget the woman he argued with, flirted with and cried with? Shane knew he had feelings for her, knew it in her heart, felt it every time he looked at her, touched her hand, shared his fears and failings. No, she didn't understand him at all.

Feeling no qualms of guilt, she opened his top right desk drawer and retrieved a blank card and envelope from Oliver's personal stationary. It might kill her, but she knew what she had to do. She couldn't stay there and watch him try to be happy with a wife with questionable priorities. She couldn't bear it.

She took out the familiar gold pen he frequently used and pondered what she would write to him. It made the tears flow just thinking about saying goodbye, and she knew she wouldn't be able to tell him in person. This might make her a coward, but it was for her own self-preservation.

Shane sat there some minutes before she decided she couldn't address this to him personally. She might end up humiliating herself by confessing her true feelings, and besides, she felt she lacked the eloquence to fully express what was in her heart without making a fool of herself. And so she decided to address this farewell letter to all of them—Rita, Norman and Oliver. Her friends.

She wrote quickly, fearful that if she stopped, she wouldn't be able to go through with it. With shaking hands she put the card in its matching envelope, replaced Oliver's pen in his drawer, and rose, eager now to get away and go home to lick her wounds.

She found a half-empty box on a shelf, emptied it of its contents, and went to her mobile workspace Norman had made her. She gave a watery smile just looking at it, but then, thinking of the hot bath and glass of red wine awaiting her at home, she began packing up her personal items. It didn't take long, and it wasn't very heavy—ironic that a year's worth of dedication amounted to so little—her heart actually felt heavier. As an afterthought, she took one of Oliver's prized letter openers and added it to her box. She wondered if he would guess that she took it, and hoped that he would. She had to have something tangible to remember him by, something to remember this place. Maybe its absence would remind him of hers.

She had just propped the letter on Oliver's desk when Rita and Norman arrived, startling her. She tried and failed getting through their questions, their hugs, their good-byes, without tears. Had Oliver been with them, she might not have had the strength to leave at all. She left the couple with her letter and words of wisdom she herself hadn't been able to follow, about expressing one's true feelings before it's too late, and, carrying her box of memories, left them while she still could.

The moment she opened the door and stepped out into the empty corridor, she knew something wasn't right. A white, nearly blinding light shone all around her, and she almost dropped her box so she could cover her eyes. Slowly, she raised her eyelids, and saw that the dark hall had been replaced with a blank white space. Nothing looked familiar, and when she turned to go back inside the DLO, the door was gone. Was she dreaming? Had she stepped into the Twilight Zone?

"You're not going crazy, honey, it's all real. Or well, a different reality."

The voice was familiar, one she hadn't heard in months, and she turned around to find none other than Theresa Capodiamonte, in the flouncy pink Good Witch of the North costume she'd been wearing the last time Shane had seen her.

"Ms. Capodiamonte! What are you doing here? What am I doing here? And where is here?"

"One question at a time, sweetie. Yes, it is I, returning to fulfill another important mission for the postal service. And you, my darling girl, are the object of my mission. As for where we are, well, consider this as a sort of attic of the post office, where all things go when they are well and truly lost. It is my job to get them to their final destination."

Shane looked down at her box as if she might have accidentally taken a dead letter, and then Ms. Capodiamonte's true meaning began to set in. "You don't mean…am I-?"

Ms. Capodiamonte laughed merrily. "Dead? You? Well, of course not! But you are lost, aren't you, honey? Or you're about to be, if you actually go through with this quitting business."

Naturally, Shane was overwhelmed, confused, and wondering at her own sanity.

"I need to sit down," she said weakly, but the hallway—or what was once the hallway—was completely empty.

Ms. Capodiamonte waved her magic wand, and suddenly a chair appeared behind Shane, and she sat down on it heavily, the objects in her box shifting and clinking together. Trembling, she slowly set down the box on the floor.

"Breathe, Shane, breathe. That's it." Ms. Capodiamonte rubbed Shane's back consolingly. "I know this is a lot to take in. But there's a method to this madness, I promise you."

Feeling somewhat better, Shane looked up at her companion. "If I'm not dead, are-are you?"

"Why does anyone have to be dead? No, my dear, I am what you might call your spirit guide, meaning that I'm hear to guide your spirit, your inner self, and I am tasked with leading you through what the kids call an Alternate Universe."

Shane frowned. "My spirit guide is Glinda the Good Witch? I never even liked The Wizard of Oz, what with those flying monkeys and all."

Ms. Capodiamonte laughed. "Flying monkeys. You're adorable. I'm just here in a form you will recognize, a manifestation of your secret hopes and dreams, someone you admired and thought to be wise, whose advice you might listen to. Theresa Capodiamonte is alive and well and doing what she's always wanted to do—treading the boards, Off-Off Broadway."

"Okay…well, what happens now? Keeping in mind I'm still not convinced I'm not dreaming, dead, or crazy."

"Good, you just go with it, sweetie; that'll make my job a lot easier. See, here's the deal. This is the second time you've quit this job, and this time I think you really mean to. But before you do anything hasty, I'd like to take you back to the first time you quit, almost a year ago. You remember that?"

"Well, I—"

Before Shane could finish her thought, Ms. Capodiamonte had waved her wand and they were back to that first week on the job at the DLO. Oliver had refused to see that Kelly's letter to Charlie was hand delivered, and she'd just found out she had to wait ten weeks for her transfer to go through, and that her last birthday card from her father had been held up because of some crazy postal regulations. It was the very last straw—or so she'd thought.

"I'm wasting my time here," past Shane proclaimed.

"I take exception to the idea that your time here is wasted." Past Oliver sounded annoyingly cavaliere about her feelings.

"My time, my career, my life."

"I understand you're upset—"

"See if you can understand this: I quit."

Shane was able to see herself, fleeing from the DLO, Oliver sadly holding a coffee pot of what she'd so meanly called "swill." Not her best moment.

"Can they hear me?" Shane whispered.

"No, this is the past; we're just observers. It would be impossible to have two of you in the same time period, what with the space-time continuum and all."

Shane frowned. "Wait, I've seen this movie before. Am I going to be visited by two other spirits, from the Present and Future?"

"This isn't A Christmas Carol and I'm not trying to get my wings, either." She looked to the heavens. "Boy, do I get that a lot. It's sort of the same idea, I suppose, so I understand the confusion. But let me pose a question to you. What do you think might have happened had you truly quit that day, and you didn't go to Charlie's house and meet Oliver there, and you didn't find out Charlie was in jail? How would everyone's lives you've touched since then have changed if you'd tucked tail and run?"

"Well, I suppose Kelly and Charlie wouldn't have been reunited, and Charlie might still be in jail for a crime he didn't commit."

"Yes, not to mention all the other letters you helped reunite with their proper owners. Your gift with the computer really boosted what they've accomplished at the DLO this year; you helped so many people."

"Yes, I guess. But Oliver and the others still had a pretty good track record before me, and I'm sure they'll continue to have success if I leave now…"

Ms. Capodiamonte sighed. "Okay, perhaps, but not on the scale you've contributed. But what about Oliver, Rita, and Norman? How might their lives have been different had you not come along when you did? Aren't you the least bit curious?"

As Shane watched the Oliver from the past put down his coffee pot and tell the others he needed time off, she felt like crying again. He looked so sad, so defeated. Because of her. She turned away. She didn't want to see this, even though she knew what had come next, how he'd met her at Charlie's house with her favorite coffee. Shane stayed stubbornly mute. She was already tired of this game. The past was the past.

"I guess it's better to show than tell," said Shane's spirit guide, and suddenly, the scene in the DLO she was witnessing was nothing she remembered seeing before.

"Ramon and I have a date tonight," Rita was telling Norman. "He's so considerate—he's cooking me a special meal at his house. It's our anniversary, you know. We've been dating six months today. Who would have thought?"

"Yes," said a despondent Norman. "Who would have thought?" Norman looked as if he had lost all hope, with life, with Rita.

"Congratulations, Rita," said Oliver. But he glanced worriedly at his friend Norman.

"Thank you, Oliver. You two have a great weekend. It's five o'clock, and I'd better start getting ready! Ramon always appreciates when I take extra care with my appearance. He never fails to mention it. Not that he doesn't love me just the way I am."

"Of course not," says Oliver. "Have a good time."

"Oh, we will. Good night!"

"Good night," said Oliver.

"Oh no," said Shane to Ms. Capodiamonte."They were supposed to be together."

"No one was there to encourage them," she replied. "It's a shame, isn't it?"

They watched as Oliver went to Norman, patting him on the shoulder, but saying nothing, not even words of comfort. Norman turned away, but not before Shane saw him wipe quickly at his eyes with the back of his hand. The scene shifted, and they could see Rita in her car in the parking lot, crying into a flowered handkerchief.

"Oh, Norman," she wailed.

"They'd known each other for years before you came," said Ms. Capodiamonte, "and neither of them had made a move. Do you think anything would have been different between them had you not stepped in? Oliver was no use here, either, poor thing. He'd lost his own courage years before when his wife left. I've heard it said that an object remains at rest unless it is acted upon by an external force. You were that external force, my dear, on all of them. But without you…well, life follows the laws of science."

"Oliver seems okay," said Shane, as the scene focused once more on the occupants of the DLO.

"Are you sure about that?" She nodded toward the two men, both of whom seemed to be trying desperately to appear okay.

"Why don't you go on home, Norman," Oliver was saying. "It's Friday, after all."

"I'll just stay here a while longer, if you don't mind. I'm still trying to perfect that new formulation for restoring ink on brown envelopes."

"All right. But remember to lock up before you leave."

"I will Oliver. See you Monday."

Oliver went to the coat rack, picked up his hat and coat, and, with a last nod to his friend, left the DLO.

"Does Oliver have plans?" Shane asked. "I know he used to have dance classes and choir practice."

"Oh yes, he still does those things, but during the week. Would you like to see what he does on the weekends?"

"Must I?"

Ms. Capodiamonte was not having her obstinance. "Yes, of course you must."

With a wave of her wand, they were outside a beautiful historical Victorian home, at night. Shane found the sudden relocation very disorienting.

"Do you really have to wave that thing?" asked Shane. She nodded in annoyance toward the star-tipped wand that definitely looked like it came from a costume shop.

"This old thing? Well, no, actually. It sort of adds to the whole persona though, don't you think?"

Shane raised skeptical eyebrows.

"Oh, okay. I'll put the kibosh on the wand." In a blink, it disappeared. "Quit trying to change the subject, and look up at that window on the second floor."

Shane's attention was drawn to the only lighted window in the house, and she could plainly see Oliver, sitting in a leather wingback chair, a glass of wine in his hand, classical music drifting down from the open window. In the other hand, he held a hardback book.

"He's alone, but he looks perfectly content," Shane reasoned.

"You would too, after your fourth glass of wine."

"What? No way."

"Yes, I'm afraid so," said the spirit guide. "And if we stay and watch, you'll see him finish the bottle before he stumbles to bed and sleeps like the dead. Every Friday and Saturday night, it's the same thing. Oliver O'Toole attempts to drink away his loneliness, his pain. He never drinks on a weekday, mind you, but he's been late to church the past several months—since you quit the DLO."

"That's ridiculous," Shane protested. "I've seen him have a drink now and then, but never more than one or two at a time, and I've definitely never seen him drunk. And Oliver, late to church? That's unheard of, I'm sure."

"You're right—in your universe. In Oliver's world without you in it, things are much, much different for him."

"But—when I quit, we would only have known each other, what—two days? How would he have had time to even think of me as a part of his life?"

"He blames himself, you see," said Ms. Capodiamonte, "for your quitting. He realized after you left, when you didn't show up at Charlie's house, that he'd driven you away, just like his mother, just like his wife. He was drawn to you, the first woman since Holly left. Heck, he'd even tried his new dance moves on you. Surely you felt the chemistry."

Shane blushed. "Yes, I uh, did. That's one of the reasons I stayed, if you want to know the truth. This is all a moot point, though. I didn't quit then. I stayed. And Oliver isn't a weekend binge drinker and Rita isn't dating Ramon because she and Norman are madly in love. So, I fail to see the point of showing me all this."

"I think you just made the point yourself. You stayed, and this did not become reality. Think further ahead though, if you had quit. Oliver never would have been stuck in a bank vault and written a letter to that miscreant wife of his, nor would he have even known where to send such a letter. Holly seemed in no big hurry to come back to him, so Oliver would have lived in limbo forever. He's too honorable a man to cheat on his wife to ease his loneliness, and too afraid to make an effort to track her down. Would you have wanted such a life for him?"

"No, of course not. But that didn't happen, remember? And now, would you please take me back to the present. I'm tired, and I have a lot of packing to do in the morning."

Ms. Capodiamonte gave a cluck of disapproval, but a moment later they were back to the white room. Shane went to her waiting box and determinedly picked it up.

"Now, if you'll please just show me the way out—"

"I will, but first, there's one more place I need to show you."

"No," Shane protested, "please—"

But her wishes fell on deaf ears, for when Shane looked around, she saw they were outside in Washington, DC on a beautiful spring afternoon. The cherry blossoms were in bloom, and the Washington Monument loomed majestically in the distance.

"Welcome, Shane dear, to The Future."

A/N: Well, what do you think? Are you in? Chapter 2 is coming soon.