Disclaimer: I don't own Buffy, but I do own Sophie, baby Lily, and Echo the puppy :)
"What are we gonna do now?" Faith frowned, gripping the reins with one hand while her other arm remained wrapped around Sophie, still sobbing in her lap.
"Uh.." Tara, still recovering from the shock of seeing her first-born fall out of the sleigh (Okay, maybe Sophie hadn't been 'born' in the traditional sense, but now was hardly the time to argue that point), and now keeping a considerably tighter grip on her second-born, needed a few moments for her brain to kick back into thinking mode. "Um.. Oh, try calling Santa back at the house" she suggested, pulling her cellphone out of the pocket of her outfit and offering it to the Slayer.
"You brought your cellphone?" asked Faith, surprised.
"We're flying around the world. Why would I not bring my cellphone?" Tara frowned.
"Good point" Faith admitted. She handed the reins to Tara in exchange for the phone. "Mind takin' over for a sec, T?"
"Not at all" Tara replied, grinning at how seemingly instinctive it had been for Faith to give up the reins over comforting Sophie. Her little sister was going to make a great Mom one day. It sometimes surprised Tara how quickly that had become natural for her- calling Faith her sister. But it had, and to be honest, Tara was glad that Faith was the one who she was on this little adventure with. As much as she loved her wife, Willow had an unfortunate tendency to panic and overreact, and given the situations they had been faced with so far that night those probably wouldn't have been the greatest personality traits. Now Faith had dialled home, and was waiting rather impatiently for someone to pick up.
"Hello?" came Dawn's voice eventually.
"Hey Pipsqueak, I need to speak to Big Red."
"Uh, Willow's not back yet.."
"I meant Santa Claus" Faith frowned.
"Oh! Sure, I'll just go give him the phone." There was some fumbling, a crash, and hurried apologies, Dawn obviously still as awed by the big man's presence as Tara had been in the beginning, but before long, Santa's jolly old voice travelled through the speaker.
"Hello, Faith dear. What seems to be the problem?"
"Uh, sorry to tell ya this Mr C, but.." Faith paused as Sophie whimpered, gently stroking the little girl's hair to reassure her that the disaster that had befallen the presents was in no way her fault. "There's a huge snowstorm over England, and we kinda lost the presents."
"Oh, not to worry" said Santa cheerily. "Just swing by my Workshop at the North Pole and pick up a new sack."
"Really?" said Faith, surprised. "We have time for that?"
"Of course you do! Time moves more slowly for those in the sleigh, haven't you noticed?"
"Actually, no" said Faith, quickly deciding that it wasn't important, and asking a question that was. "How do we get to your workshop anyway, seein' as you're the only one who knows where it is?"
"Oh, that's easy. Just tell the reindeer to head for home, they know the way."
"You hear that, guys?" Faith shouted to the reindeer, moving the phone away from her ear. "Your boss says head for home!"
Meanwhile, far below our heroes, Vi was roaming the snow-covered grounds of the Slayer school, having somehow been roped by Kennedy into searching for the weapons that the other Slayer-In-Training had left outside before it had started snowing. Digging through the piles of white slush with gloved hands, the girl let out a yelp of surprise when a large red sack crashed to the ground beside her. After staring nervously at it for a moment she decided to investigate. Vi peeked inside the sack, and, bewitched as the thing was to always produce the perfect gift for any particular person, the young Slayer found it filled with a countless number of gifts, all labeled with the names of all the Christmas-celebrating SITs, including a few for herself.
"Hey, everyone!" she grinned, slinging the sack over her shoulder and heading back inside, "Come see what Santa brought us!"