TITLE: Oh Holy Night
AUTHOR: Kristen Kilar (chickadee(underscore)from(underscore)3(at)yahoo(dot)com
RATING: PG
DISCLAIMER: Not mine. (sobs) All characters related to Andromeda belong to Tribune, the Sci-Fi Channel, Gene Roddenberry, Robert Hewitt Wolfe, and a bunch of other people. "I'm Dreaming Of A White Christmas" belongs to Bing Crosby. "I'll Be Home For Christmas" belongs to, apparently, Kim Gannon, Buck Ram, and Walter Kent. The Prayer to St. Ignatius of Loyola is public domain, I believe.
ARCHIVE: Automatically granted to Starry Night: the Andromeda Secret Santa Project. After January 1, 2005, anyone else can archive it, just let me know first, please. I like to know where my babies end up.
SUMMARY: Christmas on the Eureka Maru.
SPOILERS: None.
PAIRINGS: None.
WORD COUNT: 1,688
AUTHOR'S NOTES: Written for Beka Pangrac as part of Starry Night: the Andromeda Secret Santa Project. Her request: Write a story about apple cider, snow, gravity, and the Maru. Extra love if you use only these characters: Beka, Harper, and Trance.
Here it is, Beka. Merry Christmas.
AUTHOR'S NOTES PART DEUX: I know it's late for a Christmas story, but since I was unable to archive it until now, I'm forcing it on you anyway! Bwahaha! This one's out of my pattern; it's pure fluff and it's not an introspective! No connections to any of my other work.
All praise, glory, and honorto my betas, Myna/girl from the rockshow/niki blue/rah rah replica/Allie and Des Felidra. You guys rock.
Please read and review, much love if you do. Hey, that rhymed.
Oh Holy Night
"I hate planets," Beka Valentine said aloud.
"We know, Boss," Seamus Harper shouted mirthfully from where he was buried under a mess of wires and parts.
"I hate planets, I hate weather, I hate gravity, I hate—"
"Boss." Harper disentangled himself in order to sit up and flash her that cheeky grin she saw far too often from him. "We know. Look, it's not that bad, y'know? I'll have the Maru up and running in no time. And who knows?" He jumped to his feet and headed for the crew quarters, calling back towards her, "Maybe we'll have a white Christmas while we're here!"
"What the hell is a white Christmas?"
He laughed and was gone.
Trance Gemini, perched on the railing around the pilot's seat, laughed lightly. "I think maybe Harper misses being planetside, Beka."
Beka opened her mouth to protest, and then closed it. Trance might have a point.
But, damn it, she hated planets and weather and gravity, she missed Rev Bem, who was off converting the heathens on Desha, and her baby was unable to fly. Could her life get any worse? Harper enjoying the fact that they were planetbound didn't make her feel any better, although she did like seeing the excitable Earther genuinely happy about something.
Because if they didn't get the Maru fixed quickly, the three of them would be spending Christmas on this rock, without Rev. She'd never spent Christmas anywhere but in space before.
Her thoughts were cut off by Harper's reappearance with a new set of tools. He dug back into working on fixing one of the Maru's many wounds with a vengeance.
"I'm dreaming of a white Christmas…"
Beka groaned, pushing back in her chair. The tax forms were all blurring together, anyway, but Harper singing was never a particularly great distraction.
"Just like the ones I used to know…
Where the treetops glisten…
And children listen…
To hear sleigh bells in the snow…"
She turned around and glared at him. He gave her an impish smile, his hands kept moving on the fried circuit he was repairing, and he didn't stop singing.
"I'm dreaming of a white Christmas…
With every Christmas card I write…
May your days be merry and bright…
And may all your Christmases be white…"
"I come bearing gifts!" Trance's voice rang out brightly. Harper stopped singing and both he and Beka turned to look.
The purple girl walked in, smiling widely, carrying a tray with three glasses on it. "Apple cider," she explained. "I heard somewhere that it's traditional."
"Has anyone ever told you that you're a purple angel of mercy?" Harper answered.
Her brow wrinkled cutely. "Just you."
He grinned and took one of the glasses, sipping at the cider. "It's very good, Trance."
Beka also took a glass. It was very good cider.
When Harper returned to working—and singing—his glass of cider in easy reach, Beka noticed Trance listening to his crooning mistily-eyed.
"I'll be home for Christmas
You can count on me
Please have snow and mistletoe
And presents on the tree
Christmas Eve will find me
Where the lovelight gleams
I'll be home for Christmas
If only in my dreams…
If only in my dreams…"
Beka took another sip of her cider and asked Trance casually, "So what's Christmas like where you grew up?"
"Oh! You know." Trance looked flustered, and her tail swished back and forth nervously. "Not as nice as Christmases out here in space—What about you, Harper?" Beka suppressed a smile at Trance's desperate attempt to change the subject. "What are Christmases like where you grew up?"
Okay, bad subject change. 'Where Harper grew up' was a subject almost everybody tried to avoid.
Harper kept the smile on his face, though. "I can tell ya this. Every Christmas was a white one."
"Sure," Beka said skeptically. "Every Christmas?"
"Hell, yeah, Boss. I'm born and bred Massachusetts; we get some wicked awesome snowstorms every winter." The engineer grinned. "Pissed the ubers off every year, too, they hated that weather—what about your childhood, Bek? What do you remember about Christmas?"
"Rafe and I would open our presents in the airlock—now fix my ship, Harper."
Harper smirked and turned back to the circuit.
Beka looked at him and wondered if he missed Earth, then dismissed the thought. Earth was a hellhole.
But it was his home, a voice in her head said. A voice that sounded suspiciously like Rev Bem.
She wondered what Trance's childhood had been like, and wondered how bad this Christmas would be.
"Beka! Harper! Wake up! It snowed last night!"
Trance's delighted voice cut through Beka's sleepy brain. Snow? she wondered.
"Come on, Boss," Harper called, tumbling out of his bunk. "Get your lazy spacer ass outta bed! The purple princess calls!"
She snarled but got up and headed after him.
They met up with Trance at the airlock. The younger woman was beaming and bouncing up on the balls of her feet. Harper whooped softly when he looked out at the whitened landscape.
"Not as good as a Boston snowstorm," he said cheerfully, "but still."
"It's frozen water," Beka answered. "I don't see what the big deal is." She shivered.
"Oh, come on, Beka," Trance pleaded. "You have to like snow. It makes everything pretty."
"I don't like weather," the captain said stubbornly.
"Spacer," Harper said loudly. "Come on, Boss, I'm gonna show you what planetary weather and gravity can do." He grabbed her hand and tugged her out of the airlock. They were followed by a giggling Trance.
"Harper, what are we doing?" Beka asked wearily.
"All right." He planted them both in front of a decent-sized snow bank and spread his arms. "Let gravity take its course," he instructed her solemnly, and fell backwards into the snow.
She raised an eyebrow, then shrugged and imitated him. Trance did the same.
"Now move your arms and legs back and forth." He demonstrated and the two women mimicked the movement. "All right, now stand up carefully."
When they were all three standing, Harper gestured grandly at the snow. "Congratulations, Rebeka Valentine! You've just created your very first snow angel."
She looked at the silhouette in the snow, at how her leg and arm movements had created the illusion of a dress and wings, and had to smile. "Cute, Harper." Harper's snow angel was distinguishable from hers by the spiky hair, and Trance's angel had a long tail.
"See? Gravity has its uses."
Trance laughed, reached down, and grabbed a handful of snow. She packed it carefully into a snowball and threw it with perfect aim at Harper, who yelped and dived for some snow of his own.
The three crewmates' snowball fight lasted for an hour.
Beka woke up on Christmas Day, and lay still in her bunk. She sighed. Christmas Day, and everything was still wrong.
There were two wrapped boxes on the bed beside her. She smiled, sat up, and picked the larger up. A small piece of paper taped to the top said To Beka From Trance. The other, smaller box had a tag that said, Merry Christmas, Boss! Love and stuff, Harper.
She opened Trance's present first.
A large circle of thick, twisted twine strung across with brightly colored string to form a net. The net was threaded with beads, feathers, and dangling threads. Trance had clipped a note to it; Beka gently disentangled it and read the note, which explained that it was a dreamcatcher, and she should hang it over her bed to catch bad dreams before they could interrupt her sleep. The captain laughed softly to herself—how had Trance known that the nightmares were getting worse?—and carefully put the dreamcatcher aside, making a mental note to find a way to hang it before she went to bed that night.
Next she opened Harper's gift.
It was a small velvet box, the kind that jewelry came in. When she opened it, she found a large, antique silver medallion resting on the cushion. The words inscribed on the medallion were in the Roman alphabet, which she recognized but wasn't familiar enough with to read. She frowned and studied it.
"Do you like it?" an anxious voice asked from behind her. She turned and saw Harper standing in the doorway, looking nervous. "I mean, I know you're not Catholic—who is nowadays, right? But I thought you might like it anyway. I saw it and I thought of you, so…"
"Harper," she interrupted.
"Yes, Boss?"
"What is it?"
He smiled a little and came over to her. "It says, uhm, 'Lord, teach me to be generous. Teach me to serve you as you deserve; to give without counting the cost; to fight and not to heed the wounds; to toil and not to seek for rest; to labor and not to ask for reward, except to know that I am doing your will. Amen.' And on this side…" He took the medallion and turned it over to where there was an image of a man in a holy pose over a few more words. "It says St. Ignatius of Loyola."
Beka froze.
The engineer looked uncomfortable and glanced away from her eyes again. "I know your dad's name was Ignatius and I know how much you miss him, so… Did I do bad?"
"No," she said, a bit hoarsely. "No, Harper, you did very very good." She reached out and wrapped an arm around his neck in a half-hug.
When she finally released him, he was grinning again. "Great. Good. Great. Uhm, the purple pixie has breakfast in the galley, so if you're ready…"
"Let's go," she said, and scrambled out of bed. She took the medallion with her, slipping it into a pocket.
Trance had prepared a huge breakfast and was beaming ear-to-ear when Beka and Harper walked in. "Merry Christmas, Beka!"
Beka paused. The Maru was still a wreck. Rev Bem wasn't even in the same arm of the galaxy. She was on a planet, for God's sake. So was it a merry Christmas?
Yeah, she decided at last. Yes, it was.
"Merry Christmas, Trance."
END