Name: Memories
Setting: Post-season 5
Prompts: a single person reacts to getting Christmas cards from married couples with pictures of them with their smiling children. * Inspired by a conversation with Aspect.
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Mike Slattery sat on the recliner, feet elevated, watching the Packers play the Rams. He lifted a beer, sipping, before setting it back on the small coffee table. Right next to the large stack of unopened cards.
Eyeing the stack, Mike considered the cards. He wasn't against holiday cards. Not the way Ashley Chandler was, anyway, railing at Tom and Sasha for destroying the environment by wasting all that paper for something that people would look at once and throw away. Listening to Sasha's re-telling of the story, Mike couldn't help but laugh, despite it having hit rather close to home — Whitney having given him a similar lecture not long before the Nathan James left for the Arctic. There was just something so comically absurd in listening to a twenty-year-old lecture the man who, quite literally, saved the world about — you guessed it — saving the world.
But even the memory of Sasha mimicking Ashley wasn't enough to override his sense of melancholy. Christine had loved Christmas cards, especially the ones with pictures and newsletters, claiming that it was one of the few ways that she could keep in touch with friends as they moved from one base to another. Every year, she would string the cards together and hang them on the wall, often leaving them up well into the next year. And while Mike had grumbled at the time, he would give anything to have Christine next to him right now, commenting on each card as she opened it, while he attempted to focus on the game.
Hesitating for another moment, Mike picked up a card. He slid a finger under the flap and opened the envelope. It was from the Greens, and the sight of Frankie and Mark staring at the camera with wide eyes made Mike chuckle — and wonder what Kara threatened them with just before the picture was taken. The next card was from Tom and Sasha, just the two of them with Sam this year, and Mike made a mental note to ask about Ashley. Although that question was answered three cards later when Mike opened a card from Ashley herself — who must have gotten over her environmental objections — prominently displaying a picture of her with Clayton Swain.
Mike could only imagine Tom's reaction to that piece of news.
Mike continued through the stack. Miller and Courtney's card contained an announcement about baby #2. Wolf and Azima didn't bother with a picture but instead sent a postcard from Kenya. Russ's card was on the bottom of the pile, containing a simple Merry Christmas.
For a moment Mike sat, opened cards on his lap. Then he went to the kitchen, rustling through cabinets until he found some string and tape. Thirty minutes later, he stood back, admiring the line of holiday cards running across the wall behind the television. It wasn't quite as nice as what Christine would have done but, as he sat back down to finish the game, Mike thought that she would have been pleased.
He lifted his beer in the direction of the cards. "Merry Christmas, sweetheart."