This chapter is dedicated to Mystic Serenade who in a very nice way got me off my butt and updating.
I have had some reviews asking if I had given up on this story or my other story "Nine Months of Hell". I will never give up any of my chapters, I'm just a little bit lazy, and the chapters do come out slow, but i will never give up on any of my stories. lol
So the setting of this fic started on Dec 10, 2044, so I figure that by now it should be Christmas in this little world that I have created. I do realize that I have missed both Christmas and New Years in the real world. I hope that I don't offend anyone by using Christmas. Christmas is the holiday that I feel most familiar with, seeing as that I celebrate it every year. I got sick from it too. )which is one of the reason's why I'm writing this. Sorry that there won't be any replies to your reviews, I'm just going to post this and thank you guys in the second part of this Christmas special. Thanks for being so patient with me!
Vacant ruby eyes stared out the window. The curtains were pulled back and tucked around metal hooks, so that they wouldn't fall back. The light that spilled through the glass provided the only illumination in the room.
The lone light in the dark.
She shifted her eyes to look back into the room and gazed at the silhouetted room. It was sparsely furnished with a small bed, a dresser, a table and a kitchenette. The dark wood of the door that led to the bathroom and another one perpendicular from it that led to the hall bordered her apartment. It was small, but she didn't need much.
Loose sheets of music littered the floor; echoes of mournful notes could be almost heard by the ears of the past. Singing was what had destroyed her life. It was her life.
She let her head fall back, letting her pale lavender hair cascade over her shoulders and pool behind her back. Her normally prime posture was now replaced by slumped shoulders and a slouched back that relied heavily on the chair behind it. Her body was heavily lined with the depression that could be created when one was utterly alone in the world.
At first the foreign ring of the phone was distant in her ears as her mind focused on the still shadows on the ceiling above. The suddenly it became a harsh annoyance to her ears. She leapt up and looked around for the source of the noise. She had never needed to answer the phone before. Locating it she picked it up.
"Hello?" her voice was flustered with the sneaking suspicion that she had made the caller wait a long time.
"May I please speak to Azamaria?" a boy's voice asked.
"Speaking." Az answered back, who would be calling her?
"Hi! This is Joshua Christopher, you know the one from school?" his voice was cheerful, but there was a slight ring of nervousness to it.
"I-I remember." Az said, slightly cursing the stutter in her words.
"Oh good. Umm, I was calling to talk to you about that math project that we have to do."
"Ah right. I forgot about that." Yeah right. It was constantly on her mind. They couldn't come and work at her apartment, meaning that they would have to work at Joshua's. He probably had a nice perfect family, with his sister and two loving parents. How would she act? The last time that she had been around a slightly normal family was… well never.
Family held no meaning for her. The only thing that she could associate with it would be the yelling, hitting and crying. Talk about a fucked up view.
"Hello? Are you still there?" Joshua asked eagerly.
"Yes, sorry about that. What were you saying?" Why to make a good impression! She wanted to sound friendly and open, not sound like she didn't care what he was saying.
"I was wondering if you wanted to work on it tomorrow." Joshua said.
"Tomorrow is…" she trailed off. She had no need to keep track of dates.
"Uhh, it's Christmas. I'm sorry, that was kind of stupid of me, you'd probably want to spend it with your family." Joshua said, sounding a bit dejected.
"No it's ok. I don't have any family here, unless you want to spend it with your family." Az said hesitantly.
"No family at Christmas?" Joshua asked slight bewildered.
Az cringed, she knew he hadn't meant it, but another reminder that she had no one to celebrate the holidays with hurt, and what made the aching worse was that it was all her fault.
"Well then would you want to come over tomorrow and celebrate Christmas with us? You know what they say, the more the merrier." Joshua continues on.
"Your family won't mind?"
"Nahh, I they'd be happy to have you here. In fact Yuan, he's my uncle, was bugging us to see if we could drag anymore people over."
Az giggled. He was trying so hard to make sure that she would come. How could she say no? "Sure I'll come."
"If you could come over at two that would be great. So see you tomorrow! Jah!"
Az hung up. Maybe this Christmas won't be so bad after all. Then a thought struck her that caused her to go into a slight panic. All through the brief conversation an important detail has been left out. Where did he live?
Yuan looked upon his apartment with pride. It was an elf's dream. Snow spray painted along every window and mirror. Streamers were hung from every corner. Candy canes, wreathes and pine cones were adorning every imaginable surface. And of course his pride and joy. A strategically placed bough of mistletoe that was hung above the Christmas tree. If all went well there would be two happy couples tonight.
Yuan congratulated himself on his brilliance. He has originally thought of the mistletoe plan for Chrno and Rosette, God knows that the two could need some pushing along, and he was pretty sure that Chrno wouldn't care so much about that missing Christmas bonus anymore. However the plot concerning Joshua, that had come into light not too long ago. He was having a girl over for Christmas dinner. It didn't matter that they has originally been working on a math project. Just watching his face blush a light red when telling him about his 'friend' told Yuan that this was no ordinary girl for Joshua. What's more was that the girl's name was Azamaria.
Coincidence? I think not.
Yuan refused to let the thought that Joshua and Az would have made a cute couple back in the day enter his mind. That would only bring the bitter pangs of how life could have been so different for the two couples, instead of the twisted and warped fragments that they had been left with. Those days of pain were gone now. This was a new century. A new beginning and so help God him if he allowed their chances to be screwed over again.
His heroic train of thoughts was interrupted when a certain blonde female entered the scene. She looked quite startled but seemed at ease with the new renovation. However any control that she possessed was lost when she stepped into the bath room slipped on the fake snow on the ground and came out screaming bloody murder. Yuan deemed it a good time to improve his cardiovascular endurance.
Az walked hesitantly up to the door and meekly pressed the door bell. She hoped that she had gotten the right address, it had taken her some time to find Joshua's number in the phone book yesterday and then she had to summon up a large amount of courage to call him. She knew that he did not mean to forget to tell her where she lived on purpose. The embarrassment in his voice when he apologized to her told her that.
She looked quickly down at what she was wearing, a pale lavender shirt and black pants. Not too dressy, and not too casual, she hoped. She had never been a good judge with clothes. What did one wear to Christmas dinner? She gave a small sigh, it didn't matter now. She was here in front of the door and her presence had already been announced with the melodious chimes of the door bell.
The door creaked open and then was flung wide with such a force that she would have normally jumped back. However she was frozen in place when a fairly skinny Santa shouted "Hohoho," at her.
Az was thankful when Joshua appeared, dressed in black jeans, a white tee-shirt and a brown button down shirt thrown over it with brown antlers stuck to his head and pushed the dysfunctional Santa out of the way. "Sorry bout that," he murmured, "I think Rosette banged his head one too many times this morning."
"That's alright, your Dad can dress up however he likes," she said quietly.
"Dad?" Joshua questioned.
"Oh I'm sorry. Is he not? I was wrong of me to assume that he was your father," Az mentally berated herself. She defiantly did not leave the best impressions on him.
"Yuan? Oh no it okay, he's kinda like an adoptive uncle. Took us from the orphanage, gave us a home. Now we have to put up with him whenever he gets into one of his… insane moods. Do you want to come in?" Joshua opened the door and stepped aside, letting the petit girl through.
"Thank you," she said. Az glanced around, decorations that had been placed with care were strewn around. Battered streamers lay dejected and ripped on the floor. The apartment now resembled a war zone.
"Please don't mind the mess," a female voice said. Azamaria turned to her right and saw a blond girl seated on a couch. "Yuan got a bit carried away with the decorations and I felt the need to insure that he would understand that there was a limit to how much a small apartment can be accessorized." She gave a small, sly, grin at her words. "Needless to say he got the point, and I now consider this mess to be a form of… modern art."
Az felt a warm genuine grin form on her face. If she remembered correctly this was Rosette. She took another glance around the apartment and noticed that the ornaments had been shaken off the top of the tree. She sent a questioning look Rosette's way.
"Yuan put up some mistletoe. I wasn't thinking straight when I took it down." She said sheepishly.
"I worked hard to put that up too." Yuan said, reentering the conversation after being shoved out when he had answered the door.
"And I worked had to get it down. Why would you put mistletoe over a Christmas tree of all places?" Rosette asked, with a hint of sarcasm in her voice.
"When are we meeting Chrno for dinner?" Yuan asked, changing the subject quite awkwardly.
Rosette's cheeks were dusted over with a light pink at the mention of the demon's name. She narrowed her eyes and could not help but think that it was no coincidence that his name appeared immediately after the subject of mistletoe.
"6:00" She turned over to where Joshua and Az stood, "You guys might want to start working, you have to about 5: 30, because then we have to go if we want to make our reservation."
"Reservation?" Az asked, her face paled a bit. She was in no way dressed to go to a restaurant on Christmas!
"Joshua you dumbass! You didn't tell her that we were going out for dinner?" Rosette scolded.
"It slipped my mind. Sorry about that Azamaria." Joshua said sheepishly.
"You usually remember stuff like this. Any special reason why you forgot? Any recent distractions?" Rosette sent a sly glance towards Az and then locked gazes with her now slightly redder younger brother.
"Shut up Onee-san, what would you know?" Joshua snapped.
"A lot more than you think," Rosette said in reply, "Azamaria, I'll find you around 5 o'clock and I'll give you something to change into."
"Hai, thank you." Az said, and gave Rosette a small smile. She then found her wrist encircled by a warm hand. She looked up and saw that her captor was Joshua.
"Come on," he mumbled, "We'll go to my room where we can get some work done." And he led her out of sight of both Yuan and Rosette.
Rosette flipped over on the couch so that she was lying down, with her head buried in one of the numerous pillows.
"Wake me up when it's almost 5 o'clock," she muttered.
Yuan looked at the young blonde and smiled. His mistletoe might have been taken down, but that didn't mean that his intentions had gone with it. Oh no, as far as he was concerned, there would be two very happy couples tonight.
End Ch. 7-
Please review on your way out!
Next chapter is going to be filled with fluff, and lo and behold there might just be some actual movement in the plot! There wasn't any Chrno/Rosette stuff in this chapter, but there will be tons in the next chapter. And I do have something specail planned! I'm also pretty sure that it will take a lot shorter time to come out then this chapter did.