Title: Dear Santa

Author: Dark Roswellian Angel

Elizabeth McDowell

Disclaimer: I do. I so totally do. Which means that Alec will, of course, be waiting for me in my stocking Christmas morning. Bring on the Christmas cheer :)

Copying/Downloading/Posting: Please let me know first, and let me know where my work will be posted as I would love to come visit it. Make sure that it is put under my name, as I would love to hear how others feel about it. Thanks ;)

Rating: K+, just in case

Synopsis: 7-(short)parter. Snow Day in Las Vegas, NV put me in the mood. It's Christmas time, and several people are writing their letters to Santa. A lot of those letters seem to have a recurring theme. Find out what it is and whether or not Santa will respond. I will update one chapter a day and finish on Christmas Day- It's a Merry Christmas present to my readers.

A/N: Part 5 is up. Yay! Man what a busy day- Christmas party, helped my sister and her family move into their new house, and celebrated my niece's birthday. Blame that on the fact that I'm a few minutes behind my deadline- still, hopefully you guys are all asleep and won't even realize I missed it. And I will be getting the next chapter up sometime today. Hope you all enjoy :)

Santa's bad mood stayed with him the rest of the day and through the next morning, and its effect on the inhabitants of the North Pole was extremely distressing, especially considering the fact that it was only 2 days before Christmas Eve. In fact, it was so depressing that very little work got done, the reindeer went off their feed, and spats started up between several of the elves. In fact, tempers began to flare so much that even the snowmen began to feel the heat (which is very dangerous for them, so they all had to go home early). By the time the Mail Call Bell sounded, almost no one really wanted to go see what had arrived (only a few had hopes that whatever came would alleviate the angst and enliven the situation). But, as is the North Pole custom, they all began trudging their way to the Opening Room.

Upon opening the door, the first thing the disheartened little workers discovered was that Mrs. Claus was standing in the room behind Santa's chair. It had been several decades since Santa had felt the need to call in the big guns for reinforcement- in fact, if memory serves correctly, it was the winter when Dasher and Prancer had made the mistake of teasing Blitzen for coming at the end of the song (you know the one- "You know Dasher and Dancer, Prancer and Vixen, Comet and Cupid and Donner and Blitzen) right when Blitzen was fasting for his annual trip to the vet. And if anybody knows anything about anything, they know that nobody should ever make fun of a hungry reindeer. So before anybody knew what was happening, hooves were flying and almost half of the toys had been destroyed or damaged. By the time the elves were able to pull the reindeer apart quite a few of them had gotten their own share of black eyes and twisted ears. Things escalated to the point where the reindeer separated into 2 separate groups- those who thought that the reindeer listed first were the most important and those who thought that the song focused on the deer mentioned last (you know the save-the-best-for-last versus eat-dessert-first camps). Nobody was talking to anybody else, and rumors of a strike were going around. Santa was beside himself with worry and stress, and nobody knew what to do until good old Mrs. Claus had invited all of the reindeers' wives to a tea. It was she who helped the womenfolk realize how ridiculous their men were behaving- after all the whole song is actually about Mrs. Comet's son anyway- and after that night of female bonding, the men weren't allowed to sleep inside or eat any warm food until they made up. Ever since that whole episode, Mrs. Claus had come to be known as the best weapon in Santa's social arsenal, and the sight of her was enough to make several more elves hope that things would turn out better today. Slowly, they all found their normal perches around the room and waited for Santa to come in.

When Santa arrived, he came in slowly. It was obvious to everyone that he felt bad about the far-less-than-jovial mood he'd been in all day (after all, it had been absolutely ages since the last time he'd been upset like this- usually he was the last one whose feathers could be ruffled), but he still wasn't sure how to get himself out of his funk. He looked at his wife, who smiled a reassuring smile and even winked at him, and the tips of his mouth curled upwards. He sat down and bent towards his bag, acting almost as though he were afraid it would bite him. As he opened his first letter from a sweet little girl asking for a cupcake baking set, a collective sigh of relief sounded throughout the room. The second letter was from a boy asking for a new bone for his dog and the third was another little boy asking that Santa allow him to return his baby sister in favor of a parakeet. For a second, the elves were wary that this would damage their boss' returning good mood, but their worry was unwarranted for this third letter actually brought back some of the humorous twinkle to his eyes. The return of his natural good mood continued through 98 percent of the bag until he finally came across a letter return-addressed from Seattle. Immediately all eyes flew to Mrs. Claus as though she could stave off the calamity they all felt was imminent. Slowly, so very slowly, Santa opened up the letter and began to read.

Dear Santa,

I'm not really sure how all of this works. It's not like I ever heard of you until I received my Cultural Holidays and Traditions training and it's not like our trainers really emphasized the warm & fuzzy side to anything they drilled into us. So I guess I'm not really sure what I'm expecting- probably nothing. Which I'd be fine with- hey, I'm the guy who's always alright, right? Only I have this buddy- Sketchy- you probably already know about him 'cause he told me that he writes one of these to you every year. I don't know- he says it works. But maybe I should take the fact that he's constantly getting himself into jams that he needs help getting out of as a clue to how reliable his opinion of reality is. Oh well- either way I figure this can't hurt- either you're real or you're not. And if you are real, either you'll help me or you won't. I figure I'm probably ahead going to you for this rather than going to the big G. I'm still not even sure He exists, though I've seen some things that make it pretty hard to not believe. Only if He is up there somewhere I'm not too sure what His stand is on me- I'm not exactly one of His natural creations, you know? Plus, I'm a little more comfortable writing this rather than trying the whole praying thing- I'm not really sure how that all works either- if you've noticed me in the past you've probably already figured that out by how badly I did it the two times I've tried. But everything always works out somehow- usually as a result of the actions of a certain spitfire I know.

Which brings me to the point of this letter- Max…. Oh, sorry, I guess I need to explain more than just her name. Only, to me, everything can be summed up by her name. All the experiences of a lifetime, my lifetime, seem tied up in her- all the hurt and the pain and the disappointment and the feeling that life isn't fair, but all the pleasure and the happiness and the hope and the freedom and the growing and all of the good stuff too. She is the whole reason that Alec McDowell even exists. See, before her, I used to try to rebel against Manticore- not exactly the nicest people you might have come across- but I didn't know how. So I ran scams with other people who were trying to pretend that they didn't actually have to live, eat, and breathe Manticore, and I tried to pretend that it didn't matter even while I was getting commendations for what a good little soldier I was. But I wasn't really living- I was a puppet, a machine that others used however they saw fit. My mini-revolution wouldn't have ever really amounted to anything. I wouldn't have ever amounted to anything- if it hadn't been for her.

See, she was stuck in that place, too. But she and her little rugrat brothers and sisters decided to get out of there- they knew that it was a bad place to be, saw an opportunity to find something better, and took it. I wish the rest of us had been that smart, or lucky, depending on how you look at it. I wish we could have escaped with them. I wish I had been in her unit back then- only, I don't know if I would have been able to handle being so close to her and then being separated. Maybe that's what drove my brother to do what he did- losing her broke him. I could understand that. After all, even when my life was on the line, I couldn't stand the thought of living without her. Even knowing that she probably hated me after I let her infect Logan, I found myself searching for her. Even knowing that if I didn't kill her I would die, I couldn't do it. I knew that a world that didn't have her in it wasn't a world I was interested in staying in. And the idea that it would be my fault that the world lost her- even now it sickens me that I even considered the possibility.

She changed my life just by giving me a name, and suddenly I became a real person with a real future. Talk about scary. I had only considered the option of making choices once before and it hadn't exactly turned out all roses and rainbows- being a machine freed me up from ever having to do that again. And then she freed me. All of us. I don't think she really knew what she was doing- maybe she still doesn't. But she changed all of our worlds.

When it came time for me to realize that I needed direction in my life and I needed help figuring out what it would be, I went back to her. I didn't even think about it. Have you ever heard of the homing instinct in cats? Well, it turns out that it's totally genetic, and since I have a good portion of feline in me, I guess it just makes sense that I have a healthy dose of that, too. I think Manticore bred that into us on purpose so that soldiers would be able to find their base no matter where they were or what had gone down. The reason I bring it up is that I think that somewhere along the way Max became my home. I think that's why I wound up on her doorstep, or to be more precise on her "job," that night and then again at her actually somewhat legit job the next day. I needed to be close to her. I knew that I could learn what I needed from her so that I could survive (even though it wasn't just about surviving when it came to me needing to be around her). What I didn't realize was that she would teach me so much more than that- about helping other people, about morals, about making choices in my life, about deciding who I want to be and becoming that person. I don't know if she realized that she also taught me that I could choose who I want to be with- something tells me that if she knew who I would choose, without it even being a conscious choice, that she wouldn't have let me in on that little secret. Because I choose her- no matter how unrealistic or hard or improbable it is, I have fallen completely and totally in love with her. I never even knew that emotions could be as strong as what I feel for her. It's like she's marked me without my noticing it (although the fact that she hasn't actually done so makes it so that I can try to pretend that I'm not completely smitten and then my own sense of self-preservation makes me go home with a bunch of different girls on regular intervals). And it's wonderful and terrible and freeing and the scariest experience of my life. I've never been more protective of another person before, because the idea that she might get hurt absolutely terrifies me.

And that brings me to what I'm actually asking for. I know you're probably going to guess that I'm going to wish for Max, my Maxie, to fall in love with me just like I've fallen for her, but I'm not. I don't know if I want her loving someone like me- a screw-up in the civilian world, an emotionally-stunted guy with a really amoral past. I want her to love someone who she can respect and look up to and get along with for prolonged periods of time (though not all the time because I think she'd just get bored). I want her to fall in love with someone who will love her with every atom in their body and who will do everything in their power and then some to protect her and support her and have her back whenever she needs them. I want her to be with someone who doesn't send her on dangerous missions just so that they can feel better about themselves. Don't get me wrong- I think she craves the exhilaration of a completed mission and she loves helping people and knowing that she's done something good, but considering the world around her and how things are starting to turn against us transgenics, something tells me that she's going to be getting plenty of adrenaline rushes in the near to distant future without having her not-like-that boyfriend create artificial reasons to put her in danger. Not to mention the fact that she deserves to have someone who will love her for who she is, all the human parts and all the parts that aren't. She has a wealth of life experiences and opinions and insights and I want her to have someone who will appreciate all of the pros she brings with her. And someone who will be pissed at her and fight with her and disagree with her and make her temper flare and know just how to punch all the wrong buttons to bring her fire to the surface sometimes because of all of her cons. She deserves to have someone who sees the real her, not just the her they want to see. Because she's wonderful- not just the parts that are easy on the eyes or that make her want to help people but all of her. And she deserves someone who understands that and helps her to understand it too. So, that is my Christmas wish- that you find (or create) someone who is worthy of the most wonderful woman in my life, and in my opinion in the world.

Thanks,

Alec

As Santa looked up from the letter, his eyes seemed to be filling with tears, but the smile playing across his face seemed to show appreciation for the heart that the writer had just shared with him. He looked at all of his friends and smiled- all the tension from yesterday was gone, but when he turned to his wife, everyone knew that his eyes were only for her. He stood up and took her hand with a smile that only people who truly love each other can have, and together they left the room without another word, leaving the rest of the group to sit silently as they pondered what they had just heard.