Chapter 40, December

Christmastime was a little strange for the Hotchner family. Jack still firmly believed in Santa, but poor Wyatt had found out the truth the hard way on the ranch. Hotch and Kahlan were glad when Wyatt wanted to keep up the wonderful childhood charade, though, and promised to play along with the adults. Both Jack and Wyatt had a hard time trying to figure out what they wanted for Christmas; them both saying they had everything they really wanted. Hotch and Kahlan spent many late nights discussing what to get them, and they had come up with several ideas just to shoot them down again.

Hotch was having just as hard of a time trying to figure out what to get Kahlan. He wanted to get her something that she had no idea about, so he didn't want to ask her what she wanted. She had left little hints here and there for little things, but Hotch was letting the boys get them. As he walked into the bullpen he was trying to come up with something special and he wasn't watching where he was going and he ran into Rossi. "Sorry, Dave," he told him as he picked up the files he had knocked out of Dave's hand.

"What has you so spaced out?" Dave asked as he walked with Hotch to his office.

"Christmas."

"Oh, yeah. Your first official Christmas as a family. You want just the perfect gift for your new wife."

Hotch nodded as he sat in his chair. "Any advice for a friend?"

"Stop stressing."

Hotch laughed. "Wow, that helps," he told him sarcastically.

"I mean it; you know Kahlan will love whatever you get her."

"Yeah, but that's not the point."

Garcia stuck her head in Hotch's office. "We have a case."

Both men got up and went to the conference room, thoughts about Christmas gone as they concentrated on the case at hand. They were headed to San Francisco; apparently someone was dressing up as Santa and going around killing the Salvation Army bell ringers.

"Could the world get any sicker?" Garcia asked as she presented the case.

They were on the jet in less than thirty minutes. After the initial discussion of the case, Hotch went and sat in his usual seat in the back as he studied the files on his tablet. He put the tablet down and texted Kahlan to let her know where he was going. She responded with her usual, 'Be safe'. He knew it was going to be a long flight, so he took out a little notebook and flipped to the page where he had written down ideas on what to get Kahlan for Christmas. Every idea he had written down he had scratched out. He drummed his fingers on the table in front of him.

"What's got Hotch so nervous?" Morgan asked Rossi.

"Kahlan's Christmas present."

Morgan whistled. "Yeah that first gift has got to be perfect." Rossi gave him a questioningly look. "What? It sets the bar for the rest of the time. If it's too great then he'll never be able to top it again." Apparently Morgan had given it a lot of thought at one point in time or another.

Rossi shook his head. "Maybe with the type of women you date, but Kahlan's not like that."

Morgan looked hurt.

"He should get her some sort of Star Wars toy," Reid injected. With their looks he explained. "You didn't see the boxes of her old toys when we helped unload the moving truck?"

"How do you know they were hers and not Wyatt's?" Morgan asked.

"Because they had her name on them plus she had labeled them 'fragile' and 'collectible'. If she still has the toys she played with when she was young, then Hotch getting her something that goes with it would a nice surprise."

Rossi considered it a moment. He smiled and got up to go to Hotch.

"Hey," Rossi said as he sat down beside Hotch. Hotch acknowledged him with a look. "Have you seen Kahlan's toys?"

Hotch got a shocked looked. "Did you really just ask me that?"

"Jesus, Aaron," Rossi half laughed. "I meant real childhood toys."

Hotch relaxed a little, but gave Rossi a puzzled look. "What do mean, toys?"

"Reid said he saw boxes of her old toys when we helped you all move. Apparently you've never seen them."

"No, I didn't know she even had anything like that. Why do you ask?"

"Well, if she's still hanging on to them, then they must be special to her."

Hotch smiled. He thought he knew was Rossi was heading. "I could move my den downstairs, and then give her the room so she could display all of her stuff," he smiled widely. "That's genius, Dave."

"Yes it is, even though I was just going to suggest that you buy her something she was missing," Dave told him with a laugh.

"Yeah, I could do that, too," Hotch said with a laugh. "I'll have to get her out of the house a couple of times, though, Garcia could probably help with that, or maybe her sisters."

"You'll want Reid to come over and help when you're ready to set it up." Hotch gave him another puzzling look. "Are you going to be able to tell what should be displayed with what? Real fans and collectors can get pissy when you put things together that shouldn't be."

"True." Hotch looked at Reid. He gave him a smile and a nod to say thanks.

XXX

The first available weekend day, Hotch called Garcia to come and get Kahlan to go shopping. Once she left, Hotch and the boys got his den moved to a room in the basement that hadn't been used. Then they searched through the storage room and found the boxes of Kahlan's stuff. "I've always wondered what was in these," Wyatt told them reverently.

"Well, they are not for playing with," Hotch told him and the boys could tell by his tone that he meant it.

They unpacked the boxes and spread everything out on the now empty den floor.

"I think we need some bookcases," Jack suggested.

"And some sort of glass case, maybe like a coffee table," Wyatt added.

"I think we need Uncle Spencer to help us figure out the best way to display all this," Hotch told them as he took his phone out to call Reid.

Within thirty minutes, Reid was organizing all of the toys into separate piles. "I think a big glass case would be very cool," Reid agreed with Wyatt.

"And a desk for the lamp and stuff," Jack pointed out.

"Yeah, definitely a desk, too," Reid told him with a smile.

"Well, then we'll have to get that stuff the next day we can," Hotch told them.

"How are we gonna keep mom out of here until it's done?" Jack asked.

"She never comes in here anyway, but I'll lock the door just in case. We just need to make sure she doesn't go in the room downstairs either," Hotch told the boys expecting their help.

XXX

Garcia helped Hotch get the right pieces of furniture and even had them delivered to Morgan's so the first chance they got, they could sneak them into the house. Reid helped him pick out something to go with the collection, and by Christmas morning everything was perfect.

The boys came downstairs to find new laptops from Santa, and after breakfast, they sat down to open their gifts to each other. Hotch made sure to keep his present to Kahlan for last. Hotch accepted Kahlan's gift to him; it was three boxes wrapped together. Hotch looked at questioningly, but her face revealed nothing of course. He thought he knew what the biggest one was; he had received enough pen cases in his life to recognize the shape, so he put that one off to the side and opened one of the smaller ones. To his surprise it was a pair of cufflinks. He was pretty sure they were made of platinum, but he wasn't going to ask. "Those are for when you work," Kahlan told him with a smile.

"Work?" Hotch asked as he took them out of the package. Maybe they're not platinum. He laughed when he realized what they really were. They looked like normal cufflinks, but the inside piece was actually a handcuff key.

"I hope you never have to use them, but they make for a cool safety accessory."

"Yeah, cool." Then he opened the next little box, expecting to find some other gadget, but a wide smiled spread on his face as he took in the box's content.

"Your brother told me you used to collect coins when you were young," she explained.

Sitting in the box was a 1944 Steel Wheat Penny. "This thing has got to be worth a lot of. . ."

"Nothing. Not if you don't actually sell it." Kahlan tried to play it off.

Hotch knew though that the thing was probably worth over $50,000. Apparently Kahlan didn't want to discuss that, though. "Wow," he told her with a smile. Then he opened the box that he thought was a pen, and he wasn't exactly sure what it was. It looked like a pen, but he knew it wasn't.

Seeing his face, Kahlan laughed. "That's for work, too," she said and then leaned in to whisper because she didn't want the boys to hear. "It's a pen pistol. It shoots tranquilizer bullets."

"Very cool!" Hotch could think of a few times when that would have come in handy.

He leaned over and gave her a kiss. "I suppose you want yours now, huh?"

She smiled excitedly, so Hotch got up and grabbed it from behind the tree. It was a big box about a foot deep, three feet long and two and half feet wide. She looked at the box, clearly trying to figure out what was in it. She went to shake it like the boys had done with their presents, but Hotch stopped her quickly. "Is it breakable?"

"It can be, but it's not glass if that's what you're asking."

She looked at him with furrowed brows, then started unwrapping it. Once she got a glimpse of the corner of the box she frantically tore it the rest of the way open. "Oh My God!" she told him with the biggest smile he had ever seen. "This is what it is, right?" she asked desperately as she looked at an original Millennium Falcon toy that had been sold in the eighties. She noticed the boys smiling at her.

Hotch laughed. "Yes. That would have been a good prank, though." With her look he quickly added, "cruel, but funny."

"That would have deserved a punch! But this definitely deserves a kiss!" she told him, and she leaned over and gave him one. "Wait, how did you know I didn't already have one?" she asked him suspiciously. "And how would know I would even want one?"

"Because," he said as he stood up and reached out for her hand. She eyed him suspiciously but let him take her hand. The boys got up, too. He led her to his den. She looked at him questioningly. He smiled and opened the door and moved to the side so she could see in it. "Because we knew when we did the rest of your present."

She looked past him and her breath caught in her chest. She looked at the boys and knew they were just as excited as she was. She walked into the room and slowly looked at everything. "Reid helped us with the displays," Hotch explained as they followed her into the room. Hotch noticed her eyes watering, and he turned to the boys and gave them high-fives. "This is. . ." she took a deep breath. "This is amazing," she told as she looked at the glass case table that held most of her GI Joe stuff. It was set up to look like they were in a battle: Joes verses Cobra. The book cases held all of her Star Wars stuff set up in the different scenes and such. One shelf was dedicated to all of her transformers, and another to her matchbox cars. All of her old posters were displayed on the walls, too

"So we did good?" Hotch asked.

"Come here. All of you," she told them as she held out her arms and pulled them all into a hug.

"Where are you gonna put the Falcon?" Wyatt asked her.

She smiled. "I'm gonna hang it right over the desk, right above my Darth Vader light." She suddenly looked at Hotch. "Where's your stuff? You weren't supposed to give up your room."

"We moved it downstairs to that room we hadn't done anything with," he told her with a smile.

She shook her head. "I can't believe you all did this without me knowing." She walked up and pulled Hotch into another hug. "You don't mind that your wife was the world's biggest tomboy?"

Hotch laughed. "Not in the slightest."

"I better go get the turkey on," she told him and went to the kitchen. Hotch watched her wipe her face as she walked away.

Dave, Reid, and Garcia were joining them for dinner since they didn't have anywhere else to go, and within no time they were all enjoying a Christmas with family.