And our last story is for YouHaveLovelyHair, who requested a Becker style version of 'A Christmas Carol'. I'm surprised at how this one turned out – and how much I really enjoyed writing it, so thank you for the prompt!
Merry Christmas, and I hope you enjoy! x
Captain Hilary Becker was not a fan of Christmas.
He didn't see the point in spending money on presents that would be forgotten about within weeks or cluttering up otherwise neat and tidy surfaces with decorations or, really, celebrating a religious holiday that only had real meaning to those of that particular faith.
He hadn't celebrated Christmas since he'd moved out of his parent's house and had no intention of changing that, no matter how hard a certain Field Co-ordinator tried to get him involved in the ARC's festive frivolities.
He refused to partake in the Secret Santa gift exchange Jess and Connor had arranged for the ARC personnel. He volunteered to work on Christmas Day, New Year's Eve and New Year's Day.
And that night, when everyone else who worked at the ARC barring the skeleton crew on duty were getting together to celebrate, Becker decided to head straight home after work and clean his prized rifle.
Again.
Even Lester, sarcastic and grumpy as he was usually thought to be, had agreed to go to the party and had not-so-quietly declared that the absent Captain was "a modern day Scrooge if ever there was one!"
And there was no denying it.
If there ever was a man who needed a reminder that life was to be lived and Christmas was an ideal time to do so, it was the one and only Captain Hilary Becker...
He woke with a start, hand reaching instinctively for the sidearm he kept in the drawer of his bedside cabinet. Frowning even as his fingers reached the comforting coolness of the metal, Becker sat up in bed and looked around his bedroom, wondering what it was that had caused him to wake.
His stomach gurgled, the sound seemingly too loud in the otherwise quiet room and he groaned softly, blaming the leftover Chinese he'd reheated for his evening meal.
Deciding he was thirsty, Becker replaced the hand gun in its drawer and got out of bed. The smooth wood of the floorboards were cool against his bare feet but he ignored it and padded through his flat toward the kitchen.
Tired and grumpy, he glanced at the clock, surprised that it wasn't yet eleven. The Christmas party, he presumed, would still be in full swing. An image of Jess in a festive outfit, laughing and blushing prettily as his men took it in turns to kiss her under the mistletoe came to him unbidden but he quashed the thought ruthlessly.
What did he care?
Mistletoe was a parasite, Christmas was a once genuine holiday corrupted by the retail industry.
In a few weeks, it'd all be over for another year and he'd be able to get on with his life as normal...
"Is that really what you want?" The Scottish accent was familiar, the voice sounding both amused and pitying. Becker spun around, reaching for a weapon that wasn't there was he stared at the ghost of Nick Cutter. "Your life's not that great, Captain, I hate to be the one to break it to you. Do you really want it to continue the way it is now?"
"You're not here." Becker narrowed his eyes. "I knew I should've thrown out that Chinese."
Cutter shook his head. "I'm here, Becker, to help you see the error of your ways before it's too late."
Becker snorted in disbelief; he couldn't help it. "Don't tell me. You're the ghost of Christmas Past?"
"I'm the ghost of your former boss," Cutter answered with a shrug. "But if it's Christmas Past you want to see, well, who am I to argue?"
As the dead man spoke, a familiar golden light began to fill the small, dark space of his kitchen. Becker made a sound that was definitely not a yelp and tried to move away from it to no avail. The light of the anomaly grew, reaching out towards him.
Becker stared at it in horror and sensed more than saw Cutter approach. He felt icy cold hands on his shoulders and then he was falling, tumbling head first into the anomaly.
His last conscious thought for a while was whether or not anyone would know to look for him and if they'd think he'd willingly broken his own rule.
He was cold and he was wet.
Becker opened his eyes and stared up in confusion at the starry sky above him. He blinked when something fell into his eye, belatedly realising that it was snow.
Just as it was snow that was soaking through the cotton of his pyjama bottoms and t-shirt he'd chosen to sleep in that night.
"I thought you wanted to see Christmas Past?" The Scottish drawl made him sit up, eyes wide as he saw Cutter leaning against the side of a red brick house. "You're not going to see much of it if you just lie there."
Becker frowned, both at the persistent hallucination of the former team leader and at the house he was leaning against. "I've never lived here."
"Oh, you wanted to see your Christmas Past?" Cutter arched an eyebrow but smirked. "Next time, be a little more specific. Come on. We haven't got all night."
Cutter moved to stand beside the front door, giving Becker no choice but to follow. Instead of knocking, the ghost walked through the wooden door with its immaculate blue paint job and festive holly wreath. Running a hand through his sodden hair, Becker glanced around as if to make sure no one was watching and then hesitantly reached out to touch the door.
He wasn't expecting Cutter's face to reappear and made another noise – a yelp, definitely, but a very manly one – before he found his hand being grabbed as he was pulled through the still closed door.
It was as warm inside the house as it had been cold outside of it. Becker followed Cutter along the dimly lit hallway into a room decorated in full Christmas regalia. From the six foot Christmas Tree with its sparkling lights and combination of old and new baubles and the neatly wrapped presents underneath it to the stockings hanging over the fireplace where an open fire blazed merrily, the living room was a perfect image of Christmas.
What wasn't so perfect was the woman sitting on the sofa opposite the fire, a tartan blanket around her as she stared into the flames. Pale and thin, her facial features were gaunt but still somehow familiar, as if he'd seen her somewhere before...
As he stared at the woman and tried to connect the dots, a brilliant smile lit up her face as a little girl raced into the room.
It was the smile that made him realise how he recognised her and his eyes widened as he turned to Cutter. "I thought you said this was Christmas Past?"
The Professor inclined his head. "It is."
"Then why does Jess look so old?" Becker asked, glancing back to the woman as the little girl carefully climbed onto the sofa beside her and balanced a plate of biscuits on her lap.
"That's not Jess, Becker. That's her mother." Cutter moved to stand beside the stunned Captain. "The little girl you're looking at, that's your Jess."
Becker opened his mouth to protest but closed it again as he studied the little girl intently. As she smiled, he knew Cutter was right. She had the same smile as her mother but her eyes were bluer, brighter.
He watched as little Jess said something that made her mother smile before cuddling into her side. She snapped one of the biscuits in half, handing one half to her mother before carefully nibbling the half she kept for herself.
"Is Jess's mum going to be okay?" He found himself asking, studying the pallor of the older woman's face.
"She'll be fine," Cutter answered after a pause. "She's not well right now but she'll make a full recovery." He hesitated as a man entered the room and moved to sit down on Jess's other side. "Still, this is the last Christmas they had together as a family. The pressure of being so ill for so long took its toll on their marriage. I'd say they tried to make it work for their daughter's sake but that would be a lie. Her mother, Annabelle, decided life was for living and that she'd rather travel and see the world than be tied down with a husband and child. She's in Italy in your time, living with the latest in a long line of toy-boys."
Seeing the open love and adoration on Jess's face as she gazed at her parents, Becker felt something in his chest begin to ache. She hadn't mentioned anything about her parents being divorced and, although he'd read her personnel file, he'd made a concerted effort not to read too much of the personal side of it.
"So she's spending Christmas with her father this year?" He knew she had no plans to leave the country; she was joining the majority of the team in having Christmas Day off work but her name was on the list of staff to be called in in case of an anomaly-related emergency.
Cutter snorted and shook his head. "Not likely. Her father and wife number four are spending the holiday season skiing in Austria. When I said this is the last Christmas they spent as a family, it's the last one Jess spent with either of her parents. As a child, she spent most of her Christmases with her Grandparents until they died a few years back."
"Really?" Becker's frown deepened. "She's so enthusiastic about the holidays. I thought she must have big plans with her family or something."
"Or something," Cutter confirmed with a shrug. "She has fond memories of Christmas's in the past. Not a lot in the recent past, mind you, but then that's to be expected. She just knows that Christmas ordinarily makes people happy and there's nothing that girl wants more than to see those she loves happy."
As he spoke, young Jess picked up another biscuit. She snapped it again and this time, gave half to her mother and half to her father. As they took them with murmured thank you's and soft smiles, Jess beamed, obviously happy to have done something to please them both.
"She never said anything." Becker stared at the image of the happy family. "So she's going to be alone for Christmas?"
"She's used to it." Cutter shrugged again when Becker turned to glare at him. "Really, she is. She'll spend the day on the sofa watching holiday TV and wait until both of her parents are suitably drunk before dutifully calling them to wish them Merry Christmas. She thinks it's easier that way. The more they've had to drink, the less time they want to spend speaking to her on the phone."
"That's horrible." It wasn't what he wanted for Jess, no matter how much he hated the holidays himself. "Surely she could spend Christmas with Abby and Connor or Matt and Emily?"
Cutter rolled his eyes. "The lone singleton amongst the happy couples?" He sighed and shook his head when Becker just stared at him. "Don't you listen? They're planning on spending Christmas together this year. The couples, I mean. They invited Jess but she declined, knowing it'd just be the five of them. Now if you were going to be there..."
"I'm working," Becker said automatically. "And it's not like me and Jess... We're not... It's not like that with us."
"It could be. Should be, some would argue." Cutter merely smiled at him as Becker felt the tips of his ears grow hot. "You should realise that by denying yourself the chance of a potentially happy ending, you're denying the person you might potentially have it with a happy ending of their own, too."
Cutter faded away after issuing the warning, disappearing so suddenly Becker was left gaping an empty space.
The Captain opened his mouth to ask how he was supposed to leave when he felt himself being dragged backwards, falling, falling...
Falling...
Waking with a start, it took him a good five minutes to realise where he was.
On the floor of his kitchen, staring up at the ceiling.
Telling himself he'd repaint it sometime soon, Becker pushed himself up into a sitting position with a groan, a hand going to the back of his head.
Had he tripped? Slipped? Banged his head as he'd fallen?
That would explain the crazy hallucination-slash-dream he'd had of the dearly departed Professor. He shrugged but his brow furrowed as he thought of the vision he'd had, the happy Parker family Christmas that he'd been told had been their last.
Was that part real? Was Jess really spending Christmas alone or was that some twisted part of his conscience calling him out on being so down on the holidays?
Shaking himself mentally, Becker got up from the floor and started walking through to his bedroom.
"Do you really think it's over?" Definitely more amused that pitying, the voice made him spin around to face it. Standing beside the bookshelf in his living room, Doctor Sarah Page smirked at him. "You know this is going to go, Becker. You've done the past, now it's time to do the present."
An anomaly formed beside her as he could only gape, his eyes wide as he stared at her. "Sarah...?"
"The one and the only." She smiled and her expression softened. "I'd say it's good to see you but you've changed so much for the worse that it's really not." At his confused look, she shook her head. "You've closed yourself off to the rest of the world and it's taking its toll, not only on you but on those around you." Stepping towards the anomaly, she held out her hand. "Come with me and I'll show you."
Almost against his own will, Becker wordlessly took her hand, her icy fingers lacing with his as she pulled him with her through the golden gateway of light.
Loud music and flashing lights, voices raised in jovial conversations punctuated with laughter greeted them.
The bar was busy, several parties in full swing. Becker looked through the crowds and recognised several of the faces around him, realising in an instant where they were.
"The ARC Christmas Party?" He gave Sarah a quizzical look. "This is where you brought me?"
"It's the present." She shrugged a shoulder but didn't look at him, an almost envious expression flittering across her features for a fleeting moment as she took in the happy people around them. Her smile returned as her gaze fixed on Abby, Connor and Lester, sitting at a table with Emily and Matt towards the back of the room. "They look happy."
"They are." Becker felt a pang of regret, of guilt that he couldn't fighting. "Sarah..."
"It's not your fault, you know." She fixed him with an unblinking stare, the smile fading from her lips. "You blame yourself for so much you're not responsible for. What happened to me happened because it was my time. And it was my choice, Becker. To go through the anomalies, to look for Abby and Connor and Danny..." Her tone softened a little as she mentioned the missing in time team leader but neither of them made any move to acknowledge it. "It was my choice," she repeated. "And it's not one I regret, even now."
"You died. How can you not regret that?" Becker ran a hand through his hair in guilty frustration. "I should've been there. I should've been able to save you."
"You weren't meant to." Sarah shrugged when he looked at her. "You can't save everyone, Becker. That's a lesson you're going to have to learn. Not tonight, of course. Tonight's lesson is something else."
As if reminded of her role, Sarah squared her shoulders and started walking through the crowd. She ducked and weaved her way through the throngs of people – unnecessarily, Becker learned, as when he went to follow he found himself in the unnerving position of being able to literally walk through the people who got in his way.
His guide stopped when she made it to the table her former teammates were settled at, standing beside it with a smile on her face as she unashamedly eavesdropped on the conversation. Joining her, Becker frowned as he looked at the people gathered around the table and realised there was one person missing.
"She left already," Sarah informed him softly, a slight, somehow knowing smile curling the corners of her lips. What it was she thought she knew Becker didn't want to think about but it was enough to make him feel flushed. "After waiting a while for you to show up and putting up with quite a few very amorous soldiers after they'd had a couple of drinks, she decided to give up and go home."
"Amorous soldiers?" His eyes narrowed immediately. "Who...?"
Sarah smirked. "Why, Captain? Does it bother you to think you're not the only one with designs on the pretty Field Coordinator?"
"I don't have designs on her! I don't!" Becker protested instantly and crossed his arms over his chest. "I'm just looking out for her, as I would any member of the team. If someone's been bothering her..."
"Uh huh. Keep telling yourself that and maybe one day someone besides you will believe it." She rolled her eyes and looked back to the people at the table. "Now, shhh. You're here to listen and learn."
"Listen to what...?"
"I can't believe he didn't show up." Connor sighed and shook his head, his hands wrapped around a glass of some strange coloured drink. "Well, I can believe it but I thought this year would be different. I mean, we saved the world! Surely that deserves celebrating?"
"Keep your voice down, Con," Abby warned, glancing around to make sure no one else was listening to the conversation. "We don't want anyone asking questions we can't answer."
"Certainly not," Lester, only a couple of drinks away from being well and truly merry, agreed whole-heartedly. "Discretion, people! That's what we need!"
Matt shook his head, obviously amused. "I don't know why you're surprised, Connor. Becker's not the Christmas type."
"But it's a party!" Connor argued, some of his drink sloshing over the side of his glass as he hit the table emphatically. "And it's Christmas!"
"Christmas doesn't mean the same thing to everyone," Abby, ever the voice of reason, pointed out. "Besides, we don't know why he's so down on the holidays. He might have a perfectly good reason for it. Maybe his family didn't celebrate Christmas when he was a kid or he had a bad experience..." She broke off with a shrug.
As Connor immediately looked contrite, Becker felt a guilty knot form in his stomach. There'd been no trauma or incident that had made him stop liking Christmas. His family still celebrated and often invited him but he'd always found a way to avoid it. A lot of the time he'd been away, anyway, on missions abroad that he couldn't tell them about. Since his assignment at the ARC, he'd always volunteered to work just so he'd have an excuse to get out of it.
Christmas was just another day in his mind. It was a day he'd have to pretend everything was normal and act like he didn't know what kind of dangers – like dinosaurs and rips in time – existed in the world.
"Do you think Jess is okay?" Emily's question brought his attention back to his teammates. The Victorian perhaps wisely pushed away the half-full glass on the table in front of her. "Perhaps one of us should have gone home with her...?"
"She texted to let me know she got home okay," Abby told her quietly. "I think she just wants to be on her own."
"Seems unlikely for Jess," Lester commented with a shrug. "But what do I know?" Their boss added as he was almost completely ignored again.
Emily didn't look convinced or reassured. "She just seems so sad at times but when I ask her about it, she immediately smiles and tells me she's fine."
"She's good at pretending," Matt agreed with a shrug. "Don't think I realised how good till recently." He shrugged again when the others looked at him. "Maybe it's a Christmas thing. Like Abby said, it doesn't mean the same thing to everyone."
"But Jess is such a happy person. Or she was," Emily protested. "Surely Christmas should be a time of great joy and celebration for her?"
"She seemed to like it well enough when we lived with her." Connor glanced at Abby. "That was a good Christmas, yeah?"
A fond smile caused the corner's of Abby's mouth to curve upwards. "It was a great Christmas," she agreed. "We brought Rex home for the day and sat in our pyjamas watching Christmas telly and eating far too much."
"I would feel better if Jess had agreed to celebrate the day with us," Emily announced after a momentary silence.
"She said she has other plans," Matt reminded her, a tender look on his face as he took her hand reassuringly. "I know you're concerned, Emily, but wait till after Christmas before you start getting too worried, okay? It could just be the time of the year."
"Or it could be because Becker's an idiot," Lester piped up, downing the contents of his drink. "There's only so long a girl can wait for something to happen and be disappointed when it doesn't." He shrugged when his employees stared at him in surprise. "What? I see and hear things. I'm not completely oblivious, you know." He shook his head and rolled his eyes, getting somewhat unsteadily to his feet. "I think it's time I took my leave. Merry Christmas, all of you. Don't drink too much."
The latter part was more amusing that it should be, mostly because out of all of them, it was Lester who'd clearly consumed more than enough alcohol.
Becker only half paid attention as his boss stumbled through the crowds, muttering under his breath about the idiots getting in his way as he bumped into them. He looked at the team, then at Sarah. "Jess isn't unhappy because of me, is she?"
Even as she hesitated, Becker suspected he knew the answer.
Frowning, he thought back to the last few months and tried to remember the last time he'd seen a smile reach Jess's eyes. It was before convergence, he thought, or maybe just after, when the team had arrived back at the ARC after the giant anomaly had closed.
Was that really the last time he'd seen her smile and mean it...?
"I think we're done here," Sarah said, so softly he almost didn't hear her. "Good luck, Becker." She moved quickly, kissing his cheek in death as she had done once in life. The ghost of her touch lingered even as she disappeared before his eyes. "Let yourself be happy," her voice floated towards him from wherever she'd gone. "You do deserve to be, even if you don't believe it."
He closed his eyes against the tide of emotion rising in him and when he opened them again, he was back in his flat, staring at the bookshelf in his living room.
He tried to stay awake, knowing the story well enough to be certain of a third and final visit. When his eyelids started to droop, he reluctantly retired to the bedroom and lay down on top of the sheets.
His mobile phone sat on the bedside cabinet and he bit his lip, fighting the temptation to reach for it. How could he justify calling her when he wasn't entirely convinced that what he'd seen was real? He'd feel like an idiot if he called Jess and found she was either still out with the team and even if she wasn't, what was he supposed to say to her? 'I'm sorry for ruining your Christmas Party even if I wasn't there?'
"How about 'I'm sorry for ruining your Christmas Party by not being there'? That would be more accurate."
Sitting up abruptly, Becker stared at the woman standing at the end of his bed. "You're not dead."
"Not in this timeline." Jess – this version of it – shrugged her shoulders and clasped her hands together in front of her. "In others, I am."
Rubbing a hand over his eyes, he shook his head. "That's... not what I want to hear."
"Tough." Sounding cheerful and entirely unapologetic, Jess only shrugged again when he looked at her. "It's because of you – the you in my timeline – that I'm here," she pointed out, a little harshly to his way of thinking. "You didn't come back to the ARC," she explained softly. "So when the beetles came through the anomaly, there was no one there to get me the adrenaline. The others tried to keep me alive, of course, but my team and your team are very different and none of them were desperate enough to risk running through potentially deadly radiation to save me. Not that I blame them. That was quite stupid of you."
"Stupid?" He stared at her in shock. "It saved your life!"
"Yes, but you didn't know that and still put your own at risk." She rolled her eyes. "You have issues, Captain, but unfortunately, we don't have time to address them all now." Holding out her hand, Jess waited expectantly for him to take it. "Come on. I'm not going to bite." She arched an eyebrow and smiled when he got off the bed and walked towards her. "Well, maybe if you ask me to but that's another story."
His eyebrows shot up as their hands met. Her fingers were surprisingly warm – hot, even, when compared to the icy cool touch of the two ghosts he'd already been visited by. Instead of an anomaly forming beside or around them, his bedroom gradually faded away, replaced by a cemetery covered in a blanket of white snow.
"Where are we now?" He looked around, his brow furrowed. "Is this where you tell me how I died?"
"Something like that." It was only when she started pulling him with her through the headstones that Becker realised they were still holding hands. "The year is 2014, so we're not too far into the future." She gave him a sideways glance. "And this is your timeline, not mine. You might want to bear that in mind as we continue."
Fully expecting to be confronted with his friends and family gathered around his grave, discussing his faults and weaknesses, Becker followed her reluctantly. He knew how the story went, knew he was supposed to see how pleased everyone was that he'd died but he couldn't bring himself to believe that would really be the case.
He wasn't a bad person. He wasn't someone people would be glad to be rid of. He was...
... staring at himself, kneeling in front of a headstone in the snow.
Letting go of Jess's hand, Becker approached his future self cautiously. Even without looking at the name carved into the marble, he knew who it would be. His instincts screamed at him that it was wrong, his heart both raced and ached in his chest and he felt something inside him break...
"I'm sorry," his older self spoke to the grave, lifting a hand to trace the curve of the 'J'. "I should've been there. I should've told you..."
The older Becker hung his head, grief in his voice and on his face. A lone tear slid down his cheek, landing unnoticed on the single pink rose that had been placed next to the grave.
Glancing over his shoulder at his guide, he saw Jess wrap her arms around her middle, a look of such sorrow on her face that made him want to do anything he could to make it go away.
Turning back to the grave and his future self, Becker moved closer, needing to see the name for himself, needing to confirm what he was quickly beginning to suspect was his greatest fear.
'In Memory of Jessica Catherine Parker,
17th May 1991 – 25th December 2012
Beloved Daughter and Friend.'
"Wait, what?" Eyes wide, the breath suddenly fleeing his lungs, Becker spun to face Jess. "That's this year. That's in two days. Jess dies in two days?"
"She was heading to the cemetery, ironically," the alternate timeline's Jess shrugged. "She was feeling lonely, wanted to feel some kind of connection to someone she knew had loved her so decided to put some flowers on her grandparent's graves. She was crossing the street and a drunk driver ran through the lights. It was quick, if that's any consolation."
It wasn't. It was no consolation at all.
His chest felt tight. He felt sick and dizzy, hurt and confused and lost.
Jess was going to die.
"It's not too late." Jess walked towards him, her eyes luminous as they locked with his. "You can still change things. You put so much effort into keeping everyone else safe so they can live full and happy lives and yet it's the one thing you constantly deny yourself. And her. Is that really what you want, Becker? Do you want to be alone for the rest of your life, wondering what might have been if only you took the chance?"
"No." He didn't need to look back at his future self to be sure of the answer. "That's not what I want. I want..."
He wanted to be happy, to be loved. To have a future that was full of everything he wished for his friends.
A future that he could share with Jess.
"What can I do? How can I save her...?" He stared at her desperately. "Tell me, please."
"Why do I need to tell you what you already know?" Jess smiled at him and stepped closer, close enough that he could feel the heat of her body chase away the chill of grief. "Close your eyes. When you open them, you'll be back where you belong."
He followed her order obediently. He was surprised when he suddenly felt her lips against his, cool when he'd thought they would be as warm as the rest of her. Before he could even think about responding to the kiss, Jess was gone and he was alone in his flat, reaching for someone who had never really existed.
She'd just changed for bed when she heard the frantic knocking at the front door.
Jess hesitated, torn between going to see who it was and torn between telling herself it was a drunken reveller mistakenly believing her flat to be their own or one of their friends.
As the knocking persisted, she sighed to herself and looked down at the comfy flannel pyjamas she was wearing. Deciding she was more covered up in her PJ's than she was in most of her work clothes, she reluctantly left the bed she'd been about to crawl into to investigate the commotion.
"Jess. Jess, open up. Damn it, where are you?"
The voice she recognised; the desperation in it she did not.
Hurrying the rest of the way, Jess's fingers fumbled with the locks and the security chain and she threw open the door, a confused and concerned expression arranging her features. "Becker? What's going on? Is everyone okay? Are you... Mmpf!"
His lips were on hers before she could finish the sentence, the kiss urgent and demanding. One of his hands tangled in her hair, the other arm snaked around her waist, pulling her roughly against him and cementing her there.
Dimly, she heard the front door close with a bang as he kicked it shut but that was the last thing outside of Becker that Jess was aware of for a very, very long time.
Christmas Day 2012 came and went.
Becker swapped his shift with one of the soldier's under his command on the understanding that he was on call should there be an alert and hoped for a quiet day with no anomalies. He spent Christmas Eve with Jess, accompanied her to visit her grandparent's graves in the morning and then surprised her by driving them to Abby and Connor's flat instead of her own.
Having already agreed it with his teammates, the only one who was surprised that they'd all be spending Christmas together was Jess and, given the way she thanked him later, Becker was pretty sure she'd thought it was a good idea.
Boxing Day saw them visiting his parents, much to their pleasure and astonishment. And, while New Year's Eve saw them both working, the newly confirmed couple managed to sneak away to share a midnight kiss when the clock struck twelve, celebrating the first of many New Year's begun together.
End.
And that brings us to an end of the Christmas challenge. I hope you've found something enjoyable to read in this little collection of stories!
Thank you to everyone who's reviewed/read/favourited/followed any of my Primeval stories - it is completely and utterly appreciated xx
